dly knew, myself, what manner of utterance I
should find for my madness. But when the evening came, I uttered shriek
after shriek without stopping, and rushing off the stage ran all round
the back of the scenes, and was pursuing my way, perfectly unconscious
of what I was doing, down the stairs that led out into the street, when
I was captured and brought back to my dressing-room and my senses.

The next piece in which I appeared was Murphy's "Grecian Daughter;" a
feeble and inflated composition, as inferior in point of dramatic and
poetical merit to Otway's "Venice Preserved," as that is to any of
Shakespeare's masterpieces. It has situations of considerable effect,
however, and the sort of parental and conjugal interest that infallibly
strikes sympathetic chords in the _pater familias_ bosom of an English
audience. The choice of the piece had in it, in my opinion, an
ingredient of bad taste, which, objectionable as it seemed to me, had
undoubtedly entered into the calculation of the management, as likely to
increase the effect and success of the play; I mean the constant
reference to Euphrasia's filial devotion, and her heroic and pious
efforts in behalf of her old father--incidents in the piece which were
seized upon and applied to my father and myself by the public, and which
may have perhaps added to the feeling of the audience, as they certainly
increased my dislike for the play. Here, too, I again encountered the
formidable impression which Mrs. Siddons had produced in the part, of
which, in spite of the turbid coldness and stilted emphasis of the
style, she had made a perfect embodiment of heroic grandeur and
classical grace. My Euphrasia was, I am sure, a pitiful picture of an
antique heroine, in spite of Macdonald's enthusiasm for the "attitude"
in the last scene, and my cousin Horace Twiss's comical verdict of
approbation, that it was all good, but especially the scene where "you
tip it the tyrant."

JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, January 17, 1830.
DEAREST H----,

Although my mind is much occupied just now with a new part in which
I appear to-morrow, I take advantage of the bodily rest this day
affords me to write you a few lines, which I fear I might not find
time for again as soon as I wish. There was enough in your last
letter, dear H----, to make me melancholy, independently of the
question which you ask respecting my picture in Juliet, and which