blowing, admiring, and forgetting; however, when I tell you that I
have finished three acts of it, and that the proprietors of Covent
Garden have offered me, if it succeeds, two hundred pounds (the
price Miss Mitford's "Foscari" brought her), you will agree that I
have some reason to be proud as well as pleased.

As nobody but myself can give you any opinion of it, you must be
content to take my own, making all allowances for etc., etc., etc.
I think, irrespective of age or sex, it is not a bad play--perhaps,
considering both, a tolerably fair one; there is some good writing
in it, and good situations; the latter I owe to suggestions of my
mother's, who is endowed with what seems to me really a science by
itself, i.e. the knowledge of producing dramatic effect; more
important to a playwright than even true delineation of character
or beautiful poetry, in spite of what Alfieri says: "Un attore che
dira bene, delle cose belle si fara ascoltare per forza." But the
"ben dire cose belle" will not make a play without striking
situations and effects succeed, for all that; at any rate with an
English audience of the present day. Moreover (but this, as well as
everything about my play, must be _entre nous_ for the present), my
father has offered me either to let me sell my play to a
bookseller, or to buy it for the theatre at fifty pounds.

Fifty pounds is the very utmost that any bookseller would give for
a successful play, _mais en revanche_, by selling my play to the
theater it cannot be read or known as a literary work, and as to
make a name for myself as a writer is the aim of my ambition, I
think I shall decline his offer. My dearest H----, this quantity
about myself and my pursuits will, I am afraid, appear very
egotistical to you, but I rely on your unchangeable affection for
me to find some interest in what is interesting me so much.

Always you most affectionate
FANNY.

CHAPTER VII.

The success of the English theater in Paris was quite satisfactory; and
all the most eminent members of the profession--Kean, Young, Macready,
and my father--went over in turn to exhibit to the Parisian public
Shakespeare the Barbarian, illustrated by his barbarian
fellow-countrymen. I do not remember hear