forborne all further allusion to the subject, although on some
accounts I regret being obliged to do so.

I was delighted with your long letter of criticisms; I am grateful
to you for taking the trouble of telling me so minutely all you
thought about my play. For myself, although at the time I wrote it
I was rather puffed up and elated in spirit, and looked at it
naturally in far too favorable a light, I assure you I have long
since come to a much soberer frame of mind respecting it. I think
it is quite unfit for the stage, where the little poetical merit it
possesses would necessarily be lost; besides, its construction is
wholly undramatic. The only satisfaction I now take in it is
entirely one of hope; I am very young, and I cannot help feeling
that it offers some promise for the future, which I trust may be
fulfilled. Now even, already, I am sure I could do infinitely
better; nor will it be long, I think, before I try my strength
again. If you could see the multiplicity of subjects drawn up in my
book under the head of "projected works," how you would shake your
wise head, and perhaps your lean sides. I wish I could write a good
prose work, but that, I take it, is really difficult, as good,
concise, powerful, clear prose must be much less easy to write than
even tolerable poetry. I have been reading a quantity of German
plays (translations, of course, but literal ones), and I have been
reveling in that divine devildom, "Faust." Suppose it does send one
to bed with a side-ache, a headache, and a heartache, isn't it
worth while? Did you ever read Goethe's "Tasso"? Certainly he makes
the mad poet a mighty disagreeable person; but in describing him it
seemed to me as if Goethe was literally transcribing my thoughts
and feelings, my mind and being.

Now, dearest H----, don't bear malice, and, because I have not
written for so long, wait still longer before you answer. My mother
has been in the country for a few days, and has returned with a
terrible cough and cold, with which pleasant maladies she finds the
house full here to welcome her, so that we all croak in unison most
harmoniously. I was at the Siddonses' the other evening. My aunt
was suffering, I am sorry to say, with one of her terrible
headaches; Cecilia was pretty well, but as it was a _so