You have accepted my remarks with great good-humour, Sir:  I wish you may not have paid too much regard to them:  and I should be glad that you did not rest any alterations on my single judgment, to which I have but little respect myself.  I have not thought often on theatric performances, and of late not at all.  A chief ground of my observations on your piece proceeded from having taken notice that an English audience is apt to be struck with some familiar sound, though there is nothing, ridiculous in the passage; and fall into a foolish laugh, that often proves fatal to the author.  Such was my objection to hot-cockles.  You have, indeed, convinced me that I did not enough attend to your piece, as a farce; and, you must excuse me, my regard for you and Your wit made me consider it rather as a short comedy.  Very probably too, I have retained the pedantic impression,, of the French, and demanded more observance of their rules than is necessary or just:  yet I myself have often condemned their too delicate rigour.  Nay, I have wished that farce and speaking harlequins were more encouraged, in order to leave open a wider field of invention to writers for the stage.  Of late I have amply had my wish:  Mr. O’Keefe has brought our audiences to bear with every extravagance; and, were there not such irresistible humour in his utmost daring, it would be impossible to deny that he has passed even beyond the limits of nonsense.  But I confine this approbation to his Agreeable Surprise.  In his other pieces there is much more untempered nonsense than humour.  Even that favourite performance I wondered that Mr. Colman dared to produce.

Your remark, that a piece full of marked characters would be void of nature, is most just.  This is so strongly my opinion, that I thought it a great fault in Miss Burney’s Cecilia, though it has a thousand other beauties, that she has laboured far too much to make all her personages talk always in character; whereas, in the present refined or depraved state of human nature, most people endeavour to conceal their real character, not to display it.  A professional man, as a pedantic fellow of a college or a seaman, has a characteristic dialect; but that is very different from continually letting out his ruling passion.  This brings me, Sir, to the alteration you offer in the personage of Mrs. Winter, whom you wittily propose -to turn into a mermaid.  I approve the idea much:  I like too the restoration of Mrs. Vernon to a plain reasonable woman.  She will be a contrast to the bad characters, and but a gradation to produce Barbara, without making her too glaringly bright without any intermediate shade.  In truth, as you certainly may write excellently if you please, I wish you to bestow your utmost abilities on whatever you give to the public.  I am wrong when I would have a farce as chaste and sober as a comedy; but I would have a farce made as good as it can be.  I do not know how that is to be accomplished; but