"Now, if you would also write to our friend Perry, to beg of him to mediate with Harris and Elliston to _forbear_ this intent, you will greatly oblige me. The play is quite unfit for the stage, as a single glance will show them, and, I hope, _has_ shown them; and, if it were ever so fit, I will never have any thing to do willingly with the theatres.
[Footnote 31: Already given in his Journal.]
"I differ from you about the _Dante_, which I think should be published with the tragedy. But do as you please: you must be the best judge of your own craft. I agree with you about the _title_. The play may be good or bad, but I flatter myself that it is original as a picture of _that_ kind of passion, which to my mind is so natural, that I am convinced that I should have done precisely what the Doge did on those provocations.
"Excuse haste. I believe I mentioned to you that--I forget what it was; but no matter.
"Thanks for your compliments of the year. I hope that it will be pleasanter than the last. I speak with reference to _England_ only, as far as regards myself, _where_ I had every kind of disappointment--lost an important law-suit--and the trustees of Lady Byron refusing to allow of an advantageous loan to be made from my property to Lord Blessington, &c. &c. by way of closing the four seasons. These, and a hundred other such things, made a year of bitter business for me in England. Luckily, things were a little pleasanter for me _here_, else I should have taken the liberty of Hannibal's ring.
"Pray thank Gifford for all his goodnesses. The winter is as cold here as Parry's polarities. I must now take a canter in the forest; my horses are waiting.
"Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter, but do not admit the excuses, except in courtesy; as when a man treads on your toes and begs your pardon, the pardon is granted, but the joint aches, especially if there be a corn upon it. However, I shall scold you presently.
"In the last speech of the Doge, there occurs (I think, from memory) the phrase
"'And Thou who makest and unmakest suns:'
"'And Thou who kindlest and who quenchest suns;
that is to say, if the verse runs equally well, and Mr. Gifford thinks the expression improved. Pray have the bounty to attend to this. You are grown quite a minister of state. Mind if some of these days you are not thrown out. * * will not be always a Tory, though Johnson says the first Whig was the devil.