should mention, was the
famous Leipzig publisher, M. Tauchnitz, in whose judgment, as well as in
his honour and good faith, he had implicit reliance, and who thought the
offer fair. On the 17th of April he wrote: "On Monday I am going to dine
with all my translators at Hachette's, the bookseller who has made the
bargain for the complete edition, and who began this week to pay his
monthly L40 for a year. I don't mean to go out any more. Please to
imagine me in the midst of my French dressers." He wrote an address for
the Edition in which he praised the liberality of his publishers and
expressed his pride in being so presented to the French people whom he
sincerely loved and honoured. Another word may be added. "It is rather
appropriate that the French translation edition will pay my rent for the
whole year, and travelling charges to boot."--24th of Feb. 1856.

[199] He wrote a short and very comical account of one of these stock
performances at the Francais in which he brought out into strong relief
all their conventionalities and formal habits, their regular surprises
surprising nobody, and their mysterious disclosures of immense secrets
known to everybody beforehand, which he meant for _Household Words_; but
it occurred to him that it might give pain to Regnier, and he destroyed
it.

[200] Before he saw this he wrote: "That piece you spoke of (the
_Medecin des Enfants_) is one of the very best melodramas I have ever
read. Situations, admirable. I will send it to you by Landseer. I am
very curious indeed to go and see it; and it is an instance to me of the
powerful emotions from which art is shut out in England by the
conventionalities." After seeing it he writes: "The low cry of
excitement and expectation that goes round the house when any one of the
great situations is felt to be coming is very remarkable indeed. I
suppose there has not been so great a success of the genuine and worthy
kind (for the authors have really taken the French dramatic bull by the
horns, and put the adulterous wife in the right position), for many
years. When you come over and see it, you will say you never saw
anything so admirably done. There is one actor, Bignon (M. Delormel),
who has a good deal of Macready in him; sometimes looks very like him;
and who seems to me the perfection of manly good sense." 17th of April
1856.

[201] I subjoin from another of these French letters of later date a
remark on _Robinson Crusoe_. "You remember my