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In 1776 William Herschel succeeded Thomas Linley, Sheridan’s father-in-law, as Director of the Public Concerts at Bath. His duties in this capacity, while the season lasted, were most onerous. He had to engage performers, to appease discontents, to supply casual failures, to write glees and catches expressly adapted to the voices of his executants, frequently to come forward himself as a soloist on the hautboy or the harpsichord. The services of his brother Alexander, a renowned violoncellist, and of his sister, by this time an excellent singer, were now invaluable to him. Nor for musical purposes solely. The vision of the skies was never lost sight of, and the struggle to realise it in conjunction with his sympathetic helpers absorbed every remnant of time. At meals the only topics of conversation were mechanical devices for improving success and averting failure. William ate with a pencil in his hand, and a project in his head. Between the acts at the theatre, he might be seen running from the harpsichord to his telescope. After a rehearsal or a morning performance, he would dash off to the workshop in periwig and lace ruffles, and leave it but too often with those delicate adjuncts to his attire torn and pitch-bespattered. Accidents, too, menacing life and limb, were a consequence of that “uncommon precipitancy which accompanied all his actions;” but he escaped intact, save for the loss of a finger-nail.