as they were well done; but one doesn't wish to
meddle, and in so free-and-easy a way, with a Great Man's Masterpieces,
and utterly fail: especially when two much better men have been before
one. One excuse is, that Shelley and Dr. Trench only took parts of these
plays, not caring surely--who can?--for the underplot and buffoonery
which stands most in the way of the tragic Dramas. Yet I think it is as
a whole, that is, the whole main Story, that these Plays are capital; and
therefore I have tried to present that whole, leaving out the rest, or
nearly so; and altogether the Thing has become so altered one way or
another that I am afraid of it now it's done, and only send you one Play
(the other indeed is not done printing: neither to be published), which
will be enough if it is an absurd Attempt. For the Vida is not so good
even, I doubt: dealing more in the Heroics, etc.

I tell Donne he is too partial a Friend; so is Cowell: Spedding, I think,
wouldn't care. So, as you were very kind about the other Plays, and love
Calderon (which I doubt argues against me), I send you _my_ Magician.

You will not mind if I blunder in addressing you; in which I steered a
middle course between the modes Donne told me; and so, probably, come to
the Ground!

_To John Allen_.

MARKET HILL: IPSWICH. {63}
_April_ 10/65.

MY DEAR ALLEN,

I was much obliged to you for your former Letters; and now send you the
second Play. This I don't suppose you'll like as well as the first:
perhaps not at all; it is rather 'Ercles vein' I doubt. I wish to know
however from you what you do think of it; because if it seem to you at
all preposterous, I shall not send it to some others: but leave them with
the first, which really does please those I wished it to please, with its
fine Story and Moral. If you like what I now send, I will send you a
Copy of Both stitched together, and another copy to your Cousin: and
indeed to any one else you think might be pleased with it.

I am indulging in the expensive amusement of Building, though not on a
very large scale. It _is_ very pleasant, certainly, to see one's little
Gables and Chimnies mount into Air and occupy a Place in the Landscape.

There is a duller Memoir than the 'Lady of Quality,' Miss Lucy Aitken's
Letters, etc. You will find the Private Life of an Eastern Queen a good
little Book. I have now got Carlyle's two last volumes of Frederick: of
which I have only read the latter Part; I don't