“A Milan paper states that the play has been represented and universally condemned. As remonstrance has been vain, complaint would be useless. I presume, however, for your own sake (if not for mine), that you and my other friends will have at least published my different protests against its being brought upon the stage at all; and have shown that Elliston (in spite of the writer) forced it upon the theatre. It would be nonsense to say that this has not vexed me a good deal, but I am not dejected, and I shall not take the usual resource of blaming the public (which was in the right), or my friends for not preventing—what they could not help, nor I neither—a forced representation by a speculating manager. It is a pity, that you did not show them its unfitness for the stage before the play was published, and exact a promise from the managers not to act it. In case of their refusal, we would not have published it at all. But this is too late.
“P.S. I enclose Mr.
Bowles’s letters; thank him in my name for their candour and
kindness.—Also a letter for Hodgson, which
pray forward. The Milan paper states that I ‘brought forward
the play!!!’
| 482 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1821. |
“You will of course not publish my defence of Gilchrist, as, after Bowles’s good humour upon the subject, it would be too savage.
“Let me hear from you the particulars; for, as yet I have only the simple fact.
“If you knew what I have had to go through here, on account of the failure of these rascally Neapolitans, you would be amused: but it is now apparently over. They seemed disposed to throw the whole project and plans of these parts upon me chiefly.”
