I was out last night—­to see the rest of Frank Talfourd’s theatricals; and met Dickens and his set—­so my evenings go away!  If I do not bring the Act you must forgive me—­yet I shall, I think; the roughness matters little in this stage.  Chorley says very truly that a tragedy implies as much power kept back as brought out—­very true that is.  I do not, on the whole, feel dissatisfied—­as was to be but expected—­with the effect of this last—­the shelve of the hill, whence the end is seen, you continuing to go down to it, so that at the very last you may pass off into a plain and so away—­not come to a stop like your horse against a church wall.  It is all in long speeches—­the action, proper, is in them—­they are no descriptions, or amplifications—­but here, in a drama of this kind, all the events, (and interest), take place in the minds of the actors ... somewhat like ‘Paracelsus’ in that respect.  You know, or don’t know, that the general charge against me, of late, from the few quarters I thought it worth while to listen to, has been that of abrupt, spasmodic writing—­they will find some fault with this, of course.

How you know Chorley!  That is precisely the man, that willow blowing now here now there—­precisely!  I wish he minded the Athenaeum, its silence or eloquence, no more nor less than I—­but he goes on painfully plying me with invitation after invitation, only to show me, I feel confident, that he has no part nor lot in the matter:  I have two kind little notes asking me to go on Thursday and Saturday.  See the absurd position of us both; he asks more of my presence than he can want, just to show his own kind feeling, of which I do not doubt; and I must try and accept more hospitality than suits me, only to prove my belief in that same!  For myself—­if I have vanity which such Journals can raise; would the praise of them raise it, they who praised Mr. Mackay’s own, own ‘Dead Pan,’ quite his own, the other day?—­By the way, Miss Cushman informed me the other evening that the gentleman had written a certain ‘Song of the Bell’ ... ’singularly like Schiller’s; considering that Mr. M. had never seen it!’ I am told he writes for the Athenaeum, but don’t know.  Would that sort of praise be flattering, or his holding the tongue—­which Forster, deep in the mysteries of the craft, corroborated my own notion about—­as pure willingness to hurt, and confessed impotence and little clever spite, and enforced sense of what may be safe at the last?  You shall see they will not notice—­unless a fresh publication alters the circumstances—­until some seven or eight months—­as before; and then they will notice, and praise, and tell anybody who cares to enquire, ‘So we noticed the work.’  So do not you go expecting justice or injustice till I tell you.  It answers me to be found writing so, so anxious to prove I understand the laws of the game, when that game is only ‘Thimble-rig’ and for prizes of gingerbread-nuts—­Prize or no prize, Mr. Dilke does shift the pea, and so did from the beginning—­as Charles Lamb’s pleasant sobriquet (Mr. Bilk, he would have it) testifies.  Still he behaved kindly to that poor Frances Brown—­let us forget him.