(25th of November), "has thrown me into a perfect passion of
sorrow. To say that there is anything in its subject save what is
lovely, true, deeply affecting, full of the best emotion, the most
earnest feeling, and the most true and tender source of interest, is to
say that there is no light in the sun, and no heat in blood. It is full
of genius, natural and great thoughts, profound and yet simple and
beautiful in its vigour. I know nothing that is so affecting, nothing in
any book I have ever read, as Mildred's recurrence to that 'I was so
young--I had no mother.' I know no love like it, no passion like it, no
moulding of a splendid thing after its conception, like it. And I swear
it is a tragedy that MUST be played; and must be played, moreover, by
Macready. There are some things I would have changed if I could (they
are very slight, mostly broken lines); and I assuredly would have the
old servant _begin his tale upon the scene_; and be taken by the throat,
or drawn upon, by his master, in its commencement. But the tragedy I
never shall forget, or less vividly remember than I do now. And if you
tell Browning that I have seen it, tell him that I believe from my soul
there is no man living (and not many dead) who could produce such a
work.--Macready likes the altered prologue very much.". . . There will
come a more convenient time to speak of his general literary likings, or
special regard for contemporary books; but I will say now that nothing
interested him more than successes won honestly in his own field, and
that in his large and open nature there was no hiding-place for little
jealousies. An instance occurs to me which may be named at once, when,
many years after the present date, he called my attention very earnestly
to two tales then in course of publication in _Blackwood's Magazine_,
and afterwards collected under the title of _Scenes of Clerical Life_.
"Do read them," he wrote. "They are the best things I have seen since I
began my course."

Eighteen hundred and forty-three[66] opened with the most vigorous
prosecution of his _Chuzzlewit_ labour. "I hope the number will be very
good," he wrote to me of number two (8th of January). "I have been
hammering away, and at home all day. Ditto yesterday; except for two
hours in the afternoon, when I ploughed through snow half a foot deep,
round about the wilds of Willesden." For the present, however, I shall
glance only briefly from time to time at his progress with th