tried to leave
out so much of the text, that I baffled him by getting it printed in
four-and-twenty hours, by Moxon's assistance. He wanted me to call it
'The Sister'!--and I have before me, while I write, the stage-acting
copy, with two lines of his own insertion to avoid the tragical
ending--Tresham was to announce his intention of going into a monastery!
all this, to keep up the belief that Macready, and Macready alone, could
produce a veritable 'tragedy', unproduced before. Not a shilling was
spent on scenery or dresses--and a striking scene which had been used
for the 'Patrician's Daughter', did duty a second time. If your critic
considers this treatment of the play an instance of 'the failure of
powerful and experienced actors' to ensure its success,--I can only say
that my own opinion was shown by at once breaking off a friendship of
many years--a friendship which had a right to be plainly and simply told
that the play I had contributed as a proof of it, would through a change
of circumstances, no longer be to my friend's advantage,--all I could
possibly care for. Only recently, when by the publication of Macready's
journals the extent of his pecuniary embarrassments at that time
was made known, could I in a measure understand his motives for such
conduct--and less than ever understand why he so strangely disguised and
disfigured them. If 'applause' means success, the play thus maimed
and maltreated was successful enough: it 'made way' for Macready's own
Benefit, and the Theatre closed a fortnight after.

Having kept silence for all these years, in spite of repeated
explanations, in the style of your critic's, that the play 'failed in
spite of the best endeavours' &c. I hardly wish to revive a very painful
matter: on the other hand,--as I have said; my play subsists, and is as
open to praise or blame as it was forty-one years ago: is it necessary
to search out what somebody or other,--not improbably a jealous adherent
of Macready, 'the only organizer of theatrical victories', chose to say
on the subject? If the characters are 'abhorrent' and 'inscrutable'--and
the language conformable,--they were so when Dickens pronounced
upon them, and will be so whenever the critic pleases to re-consider
them--which, if he ever has an opportunity of doing, apart from the
printed copy, I can assure you is through no motion of mine. This
particular experience was sufficient: but the Play is out of my power
now; though amateurs a