ons on the story and tragedy very good. I am glad you were
at the play last night, because I thought I acted well--at least, I
tried to do so. I stayed the first act of the new after-piece, and
was rather amused by it. I do not know how the ladies'
"inexpressibles" might affect the fortunes of the second act, but I
liked all their gay petticoats in the first, extremely. The weather
is not very propitious for us; we start to-morrow at nine. I send
you the only copy of Sophocles I can lay my hand on this morning.
Yours ever truly,

F. A. KEMBLE.

A little piece called "The Invincibles," in which a smart corps of young
Amazons in uniform were officered by Madame Vestris in the prettiest
regimentals ever well worn by woman, was the novelty I alluded to. The
effect of the female troop was very pretty, and the piece was very
successful.

I had only lately read Shelley's great tragedy, and Mrs. Jameson had
been so good as to lend me various notices and criticisms upon it. The
hideous subject itself is its weak point, and his selection of it one
cause for doubting Shelley's power as a dramatic writer. Everything else
in the terrible play suggests the probable loss his death may have been
to the dramatic literature of England. At the same time, the tenor of
all his poems denotes a mind too unfamiliar with human life and human
nature in their ordinary normal aspects and conditions for a good writer
of plays. His metaphysical was almost too much for his poetical
imagination, and perhaps nothing between the morbid horror of that Cenci
story and the ideal grandeur of the Greek Prometheus would have excited
him to the dramatic handling of any subject.

His translation from Calderon's "El Magico Prodigioso," and his bit of
the Brocken scene from "Faust," are fine samples of his power of
dramatic style; he alone could worthily have translated the whole of
"Faust;" but I suppose he really was too deficient in the vigorous
flesh-and-blood vitality of the highest and healthiest poetical genius
to have been a dramatist. He could not deal with common folk nor handle
common things; humor, that great _tragic_ element, was not in him; the
heavens and all their clouds and colors were his, and he floated and
hovered and soared in the ethereal element like one native to it. Upon
the firm earth his foot wants firmness, and men and women as they are,