By far the best account and criticism of this piece is Mr. Barham’s metrical report of it in the “Ingoldsby Legends.”  Lord Francis himself used to quote with delight, “She didn’t mind death, but she couldn’t bear pinching.” ...

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, January 22, 1832.

Thank you, my dearest H——­, for your last delightful letter, which I should have answered before, but for the production of a new piece at Covent Garden, which has taken up all my time for the last week in rehearsals, and trying on dresses and the innumerable and invariable etceteras of a new play and part.  It has been highly successful, and I think is likely to bring money to our treasury, which is the consummation most devoutly to be wished.  It is nothing more than an interesting melodrama, with the advantage of being written in gentlemanly (noblemanly?) blank verse instead of turgid prose, and being acted by the principal instead of the secondary members of the company.  This will suffice to make you appreciate my satisfaction, when I am complimented upon my acting in it, and you will sympathize with the shout of laughter my father and myself indulged in in the park the other day, when Lord John Russell, who was riding with us, told us that a young lady of his acquaintance had assured him that “Katharine of Cleves” (the name of the piece) was vastly more interesting than any thing Shakespeare had ever written.

The report is that there is to be no new creation of peers, and that the Bill will not pass.  Certainly poor Lord John looks worried to death.  He and Lord Grey have almost the whole weight and responsibility of this most momentous question upon their shoulders, and it must be no trifle to carry.  As for the judicious young lady’s judgment about “Katharine of Cleves,” it is just this sort of thing that makes me rub the hands of my mind with satisfaction that I have never cared for my profession as my family has done.  I think if I had, such folly, or rather stupidity, would have exasperated me too much.  Besides, I should have been much less useful to the theater, for I should have lived in an everlasting wrangle with authors, actors, and managers on behalf of the mythological bodies supposed to preside over tragedy and comedy, and I should have killed myself (or perhaps been killed), and that quickly, with ineffectual protests against half the performances before the lamps, which are enough to make the angels weep and laugh—­in short, go into hysterics, if they ever come to the play....

Do you know you have almost increased my very sufficient tendency to superstition by your presentiment when you last left us that you should never return to this house.  There is some talk now of our leaving it.  My mother yearns for her favorite suburban haunts, the scene of her courtship, and the spot where most of her happy youthful associations abide, and has half persuaded