At present
I have just finished (since writing _Country Stories_, which people
seem so good as to like) writing all the prose (except one story about
the fashionable subject of Egyptian magicians, furnished to me by your
admirer, Henry Chorley; I wish you had seen him taking off his hat to
the walls as I showed him your father's old residence at Heckfield),
all the prose of the most splendid of the annuals, Finden's
_Tableaux_, of which my longest and best story--a Young Pretender
story--I have been obliged to omit in consequence of not calculating
on the length of my poetical contributors. But my poetry, especially
that by that wonderful young creature Miss Barrett, Mr. Kenyon, and
Mr. Procter, is certainly such as has seldom before been seen in an
annual, and joined with Finden's magnificent engravings ought to make
an attractive work.
"I am now going to my novel, if it please God to grant me health. For
the last two months I have only once crossed the outer threshold, and,
indeed, I have never been a day well since the united effects of the
tragedy and the influenza ... [word destroyed by the seal]. What will
become of that poor play is in the womb of time. But its being by
universal admission a far more striking drama than _Rienzi_, and by
very far the best thing I ever wrote, it follows almost of course,
that it will share the fate of its predecessor, and be tossed about
the theatres for three or four years to come.
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