I have this day received your most obliging letter, with a packet inclosing notes for ‘Sardanapalus’ and the ‘Foscari,’ which go immediately to the printer. As you so particularly desire the immediate publication of these two tragedies it shall be done. At present Drury Lane Theatre, the most ravenous, is opened for the summer season, and therefore I presume that I am acting according to the spirit of your wishes, in having the plays ready to put forth as soon as both theatres are closed. I told you in my last what Mr. G. had said privately to me about ‘Sardanapalus.’ The two first acts of the ‘Foscari’ he thinks have more life than the first Doge. Mr. Gifford is at Ramsgate, but it is doing him no good, and I begin to entertain serious apprehensions about him, and how I am to supply his place I know not; in all my range of literary acquaintances there is not one that is the least like him in the union of so many and such variety of qualifications.
I had the good fortune to sit by Sir W. Scott in the Hall during the Coronation—a sight which I would not have missed for anything—and he declared it had infinitely surpassed all that he could have conceived possible. Scott never ceases to talk of you with the most firm regard.
I am here for a month on account of my wife’s health, which has been precarious since her late severe and dangerous illness.
I suspect Drury Lane will not close, as it has within these ten days only presented a most superb imitation of the Coronation, at a most enormous expense, and it will require a month to repay them. And the Queen’s death, too, interfered, and everybody has escaped from town. Copleston is here and Professor Monk.
