tracted me all through the play. The terrible, great invocation
to the powers of evil, with which Lady Macbeth's part opens, was the
only thing of mine that was good in the whole performance.

Dear Harriet, I have no time to prepare lectures on Shakespeare, and it
makes me smile, a grim, verjuice smile, when you, sitting quietly down
there at St. Leonard's, propose to me such an addition to my present
work. I have been three hours and a half at rehearsal to-day; to-morrow
I act a new part; this evening I try on all my new dresses; Saturday I
shall be three hours at rehearsal again; and, meantime, I must study to
recover Ophelia and her songs, which I have almost forgotten.

A commentary upon Shakespeare deserves rather more leisure and quiet
thought than I can now bestow upon it; even such an inadequate one as I
am capable of would require much preparatory study, had I the ability
which the theme demands, and which no amount of leisure Of study would
give me.... I have been in a state of miserable nervousness for the
last two days--in terror during my whole performance of Queen Katharine,
lest I should forget the words, and yet, while laboring to fix all my
attention upon them, distracted with the constant recurrence of _bits_
of Desdemona to my mind, which I fancied I was not perfect in, and then
_bits_ of Ophelia's songs, which I had forgotten, and have been trying
to recover. The mere apprehension of having to sing that music turns me
dead sick whenever I think of it; in short, a perfect nightmare of
fright present and future, through which I have had to act every night,
_tant bien que mal_, but naturally _bien plus mal que bien_.... I do
really believe, as my dear German master used to insist, that people can
_prevent themselves_ from going mad.

My dearest Harriet, Arnold believed in eternal damnation; and those who
do so must have one very desperate corner in their mind--which, however,
reserved for the wicked in the next world, must, I should think,
sometimes throw lurid reflections over people and things in this.
Whoever can conceive that idea has certainly touched the bottom of
despair. "Lasciate ogni speme voi ch'entrate;" and I do not see why
those who despair of their fellow-creatures in the next world should not
do so in this. I can do neither--believe in hell hereafter, or a
preparation for it here.

I am sorry to say that, yesterday, Mr. Ellis, who sat by me at dinner at
Lady Castlereagh's, said that t