till then; and “a new farce is in rehearsal,” is put up in the bills.  Now, you’d like to know the subject.  The title is “Mr. H.,” no more; how simple, how taking!  A great H. sprawling over the play-bill and attracting eyes at every corner.  The story is a coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich, all the ladies dying for him, all bursting to know who he is; but he goes by no other name than Mr. H.,—­a curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg about the man with the great nose.  But I won’t tell you any more about it.  Yes, I will, but I can’t give you an idea how I have done it.  I’ll just tell you that after much vehement admiration, when his true name comes out, “Hogs-flesh,” all the women shun him, avoid him, and not one can be found to change their name for him,—­that’s the idea,—­how flat it is here; [1] but how whimsical in the farce!  And only think how hard upon me it is that the ship is despatched to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the Wednesday after; but all China will ring of it by and by.  N.B. (But this is a secret,) The Professor [2] has got a tragedy coming out, with the young Roscius in it, in January next, as we say,—­January last it will be with you; and though it is a profound secret now, as all his affairs are, it cannot be much of one by the time you read this.  However, don’t let it go any farther.  I understand there are dramatic exhibitions in China.  One would not like to be forestalled.  Do you find in all this stuff I have written anything like those feelings which one should send my old adventuring friend, that is gone to wander among Tartars, and may never come again?  I don’t, but your going away, and all about you, is a threadbare topic.  I have worn it out with thinking, it has come to me when I have been dull with anything, till my sadness has seemed more to have come from it than to have introduced it.  I want you, you don’t know how much; but if I had you here in my European garret, we should but talk over such stuff as I have written, so—­Those “Tales from Shakspeare” are near coming out, and Mary has begun a new work, Mr. Dawe is turned author; he has been in such a way lately,—­Dawe the painter, I mean,—­he sits and stands about at Holcroft’s and says nothing, then sighs, and leans his head on his hand.  I took him to be in love, but it seems he was only meditating a work,—­“The Life of Morland:”  the young man is not used to composition.  Rickman and Captain Burney are well; they assemble at my house pretty regularly of a Wednesday, a new institution.  Like other great men, I have a public day,—­cribbage and pipes, with Phillips and noisy Martin Burney.