The next piece in which I appeared was Murphy’s “Grecian Daughter;” a feeble and inflated composition, as inferior in point of dramatic and poetical merit to Otway’s “Venice Preserved,” as that is to any of Shakespeare’s masterpieces.  It has situations of considerable effect, however, and the sort of parental and conjugal interest that infallibly strikes sympathetic chords in the pater familias bosom of an English audience.  The choice of the piece had in it, in my opinion, an ingredient of bad taste, which, objectionable as it seemed to me, had undoubtedly entered into the calculation of the management, as likely to increase the effect and success of the play; I mean the constant reference to Euphrasia’s filial devotion, and her heroic and pious efforts in behalf of her old father—­incidents in the piece which were seized upon and applied to my father and myself by the public, and which may have perhaps added to the feeling of the audience, as they certainly increased my dislike for the play.  Here, too, I again encountered the formidable impression which Mrs. Siddons had produced in the part, of which, in spite of the turbid coldness and stilted emphasis of the style, she had made a perfect embodiment of heroic grandeur and classical grace.  My Euphrasia was, I am sure, a pitiful picture of an antique heroine, in spite of Macdonald’s enthusiasm for the “attitude” in the last scene, and my cousin Horace Twiss’s comical verdict of approbation, that it was all good, but especially the scene where “you tip it the tyrant.”

                      JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, January 17, 1830. 
     DEAREST H——­,

Although my mind is much occupied just now with a new part in which I appear to-morrow, I take advantage of the bodily rest this day affords me to write you a few lines, which I fear I might not find time for again as soon as I wish.  There was enough in your last letter, dear H——­, to make me melancholy, independently of the question which you ask respecting my picture in Juliet, and which the papers have by this time probably answered to you.

Sir Thomas Lawrence is dead.  The event has been most distressing, and most sudden and unexpected to us.  It really seemed as though we had seen him but the day before we heard of it; and indeed, it was but a few days since my mother had called on him, and since he had written to me a long letter on the subject of my Belvidera, full of refined taste and acute criticism, as all his letters to me were.  It was a great shock; indeed, so much so, that absolute amazement for a little time prevented my feeing all the regret I have since experienced about it.  Nor was it till I sat down to write to Cecilia, to request her to prevent any sudden communication of the event to my aunt Siddons, that I felt it was really true, and found some relief in crying.  I had to act Belvidera that same night, and it was with a very heavy heart that I repeated