give the dramatist's own words:

"Having printed for private circulation a play
entitled 'Love's Martyrdom,' and for which I
desired to obtain the independent judgment of
some of our most eminent literary men, before
seeking the ordeal of the stage, I sent a copy
to Mr. Dickens, and the letter in question is
his acknowledgment.

* * * * *

"He immediately took steps for the introduction
of the play to the theatre. At first he
arranged with Mr. Phelps, of Sadler's Wells,
but subsequently, with that gentleman's
consent, removed it to the Haymarket. There it
was played with Miss Helen Faucit in the
character of Margaret, Miss Swanborough (who
shortly after married and left the stage) as
Julia, Mr. Barry Sullivan as Franklyn, and Mr.
Howe as Laneham.

"As far as the play itself was concerned, it
was received on all sides as a genuine dramatic
and poetic success, achieved, however, as an
eminent critic came to my box to say, through
greater difficulties than he had ever before
seen a dramatic work pass through. The time has
not come for me to speak freely of these, but I
may point to two of them: the first being the
inadequate rehearsals, which caused Mr. Dickens
to tell me on the stage, four or five days only
before the first performance, that the play was
not then in as good a state as it would have
been in at Paris three weeks earlier. The other
was the breakdown of the performer of a most
important secondary part; a collapse so
absolute that he was changed by the management
before the second representation of the piece."

This ill-luck of the beginning, pursued the play to its close.

"The Haymarket Theatre was at the time in the
very lowest state of prostration, through the
Crimean War; the habitual frequenters were
lovers of comedy, and enjoyers of farce and
burlesque; and there was neither the money nor
the faith to call to the theatre by the usual
methods, vigorously and discriminatingly
pursued, the multitudes that I believed could
have been so called to a better and more
romantic class of comedy.

"Even under these