William Linley, the brother of Mrs. Sheridan, charmed the Society with his pure, simple English song: in a melody of Arne's, or of Jackson's of Exeter, or a simple air of his father's, he excelled to admiration,--faithful to the characteristic chastity of the style of singing peculiar to the Linley family. Linley had not what is called a fine voice, and port-wine and late nights did not improve his organ; but you forgot the deficiencies of his power, in the spirit and taste of his manner. He wrote a novel in three volumes, which was so schooled by the Steaks that he wrote no more: when the agony of wounded authorship was over, he used to exclaim to his tormentors:-- "This is no flattery; these are the counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am." His merciless Zoilus brought a volume of the work in his pocket, and read a passage of it aloud. Yet, Linley never betrayed the irritable sulkiness of a roasted author, but took the pleasantries that played around him with imperturbable good-humour: he laughed heartily at his own platitudes, and thus the very martyr of the joke became its auxiliary. Linley is said to have furnished Moore, for his _Life of Sheridan_, with the common-place books in which his brother-in-law was wont to deposit his dramatic sketches, and to bottle up the jokes he had collected for future use; but many pleasantries of Sheridan were deeply engraved on his recollection because they had been practised upon himself, or upon his brother Hozy (as Sheridan called him), who was an unfailing butt, when he was disposed to amuse himself with a practical jest.