In other letters Metastasio writes concerning his works, and explains his views in the developement of his dramas; but he never makes himself the subject-matter without an apology. "Never in my life," he writes on one occasion, "did I before write so much concerning myself. I perceive this at the end of my letter, and blush, not because I feel myself guilty of too great self-love, but because I shall appear so to you. Remember that few people distrust themselves to a fault, as I do; and in communicating to you the perfection which I desire to attain, I do not fancy that I am exempt from those defects, to which human nature and my own weakness expose me." All his letters to his brother express the most earnest and affectionate interest. It is the more necessary to mention this, as one of the calumnies propagated against him was, an aversion to render service to his relatives. "You know," he writes to his brother, "that your honour and welfare have always been the objects of my solicitude, and that I never proposed to myself any reward, except the agreeable consciousness that my endeavours to introduce you and sustain you in the career of letters, have not failed of success; if you think that you owe me any gratitude, pay it by increasing my self-satisfaction on this account. You can never show yourself more generous to me than by meriting that esteem which begins to be your due." On the death of their father he writes with great feeling:--"The loss of our poor father did not surprise, while it filled me with the liveliest grief. I measure your sorrow by my own. I feel that it will require time to render me reasonable. I thank you for your fraternal kindness in the midst of your affliction. Dear brother, you now fill the place of a father in his stead: do it worthily, and if there is any thing that I can do to comfort you, demand it from me without reserve: your consolation will produce mine. My poor sisters!--how lost they will feel themselves! take care of them, dear Leopold: reflect how much fewer supports they have than we against the assaults of passion, especially of that feeling which is derived from the most sacred of nature's laws. Adieu. If I have always loved you, consider how this affection is augmented by the loss of him who possessed before so large a proportion of it. Let yours increase also."