trying it on. I used to tell some Picture Dealers
they had better hire me for such Millinery: but I have not had much Scope
for my Art down here. So now you have a little Lecture along with the
Picture.

Now, as you are to thank me for this good turn done to you, so have I to
thank you for Ditto to me. The mention of my little Quaritch reminds me.
He asked me for copies of Agamemnon, to give to some of his American
Customers who asked for them; and I know from whom they must have somehow
heard of it. And now, what Copies I had being gone, he is going, at his
own risk, to publish a little Edition. The worst is, he _will_ print it
pretentiously, I fear, as if one thought it very precious: but the Truth
is, I suppose he calculates on a few Buyers who will give what will repay
him. One of my Patrons, Professor Norton, of Cambridge Mass., has sent
me a second Series of Lowell's 'Among my Books,' which I shall be able to
acknowledge with sincere praise. I had myself bought the first Series.
Lowell may do for English Writers something as Ste. Beuve has done for
French: and one cannot give higher Praise. {97a}

There has been an absurd Bout in the Athenaeum {97b} between Miss Glyn
and some Drury Lane Authorities. She wrote a Letter to say that she
would not have played Cleopatra in a revival of Antony and Cleopatra for
1000 pounds a line, I believe, so curtailed and mangled was it. Then
comes a Miss Wallis, who played the Part, to declare that 'the Veteran'
(Miss G.) had wished to play the Part as it was acted: and furthermore
comes Mr. Halliday, who somehow manages and adapts at D. L., to assert
that the Veteran not only wished to enact the Desecration, but did enact
it for many nights when Miss Wallis was indisposed. Then comes Isabel
forward again--but I really forget what she said. I never saw her but
once--in the Duchess of Malfi--very well: better, I dare say, than
anybody now; but one could not remember a Word, a Look, or an Action. She
speaks in her Letter of being brought up in the grand School and
Tradition of the Kembles.

I am glad, somehow, that you liked Macready's Reminiscences: so honest,
so gentlemanly in the main, so pathetic even in his struggles to be a
better Man and Actor. You, I think, feel with him in your Distaste for
the Profession.

I write you tremendous long Letters, which you can please yourself about
reading through. I shall write Laurence your message of Remembrance to
him. I h