ollow my replies.

1. I think you undoubtedly _have_ the right to forbid the turning of
your play into an opera.

2. I do _not_ think the production of such an opera in the slightest
degree likely to injure the play or to render it a less valuable
property than it is now. If it could have any effect on so standard and
popular a work as "The Lady of Lyons," the effect would, in my judgment,
be beneficial. But I believe the play to be high above any such
influence.

3. Assuming you do consent to the adaptation, in a desire to oblige
Oxenford, I would not recommend your asking any pecuniary compensation.
This for two reasons: firstly, because the compensation could only be
small at the best; secondly, because your taking it would associate you
(unreasonably, but not the less assuredly) with the opera.

The only objection I descry is purely one of feeling. Pauline trotting
about in front of the float, invoking the orchestra with a limp
pocket-handkerchief, is a notion that makes goose-flesh of my back. Also
a yelping tenor going away to the wars in a scene a half-an-hour long is
painful to contemplate. Damas, too, as a bass, with a grizzled bald
head, blatently bellowing about

Years long ago,
When the sound of the drum
First made his blood glow
With a rum ti tum tum--

rather sticks in my throat; but there really seems to me to be no other
objection, if you can get over this.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mr. Baylis.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Saturday, First February, 1862._

MY DEAR MR. BAYLIS,

I have just come home. Finding your note, I write to you at once, or you
might do me the wrong of supposing me unmindful of it and you.

I agree with you about Smith himself, and I don't think it necessary to
pursue the painful subject. Such things are at an end, I think, for the
time being;--fell to the ground with the poor man at Cremorne. If they
should be resumed, then they must be attacked; but I hope the fashion
(far too much encouraged in its Blondin-beginning by those who should
know much better) is over.

It always appears to me that the common people have an excuse in their
patronage of such exhibitions which people above them in condition have
not. Their lives are full of physical difficulties, and they like to see
such difficulties overcome. The