, and through the aperture,
assured me that it did not: I was booked for the inside:--"Call at 26
Mall for me."--"Yes, Sir, at 1/2 past five, A.M."--At five I rose like a
ghost from the tomb, and betook me to coffee. No wheels rolled through
the streets but the inaudible ones of that uncreated hour. It struck
six,--a coach was called,--we hurried to the office but _the_ coach was
gone. Here followed a long Brutus-and-Cassius discourse between a
shilling-buttoned-waistcoatteer of a porter and myself, which ended in
my extending mercy to the suppliant coach-owners, and agreeing to accept
a place for Monday. All well thus far. The biped knock of the post
alighted on the door at twelve, and two letters were placed upon my
German dictionary,--your own, which I at first intended to reply to viva
voce, had not the second informed me of my brother's arrival in England,
his short leave of absence, and his intention to visit me here next
week. This twisted my strong purpose like a thread, and disposed me to
remain here about ten days longer. On the 21st at latest I go to
London. Be there and I will join you, or, if not, pursue you to
Southampton.

The Fatal Dowry has been cobbled, I see, by some purblind
ultra-crepidarian--McCready's friend, Walker, very likely; but
nevertheless, I maintain 'tis a good play, and might have been rendered
very effective by docking it of the whole fifth act, which is an
excrescence,--re-creating Novall, and making Beaumelle a great deal more
ghost-gaping and moonlightish. The cur-tailor has taken out the most
purple piece in the whole web--the end of the fourth Act--and shouldered
himself into toleration through the prejudices of the pit, when he
should have built his admiration on their necks. Say what you will, I am
convinced the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold trampling
fellow, no creeper into worm-holes, no reviver even, however good. These
reanimations are vampire-cold. Such ghosts as Marloe, Webster &c. are
better dramatists, better poets, I dare say, than any contemporary of
ours, but they are ghosts; the worm is in their pages; and we want to
see something that our great-grandsires did not know. With the greatest
reverence for all the antiquities of the drama, I still think that we
had better beget than revive; attempt to give the literature of this age
an idiosyncrasy and spirit of its own, and only raise a ghost to gaze
on, not to live with--just now the drama is a haunted ru