Edward Cowell's return to England {62a} set him and me talking of old Studies together, left off since he went to India. And I took up three sketched out Dramas, two of Calderon, {62b} and have licked the two Calderons into some sort of shape of my own, without referring to the Original. One of them goes by this Post to your Grace; and when I tell you the other is no other than your own 'Life's a Dream,' you won't wonder at my sending the present one on Trial, both done as they are in the same lawless, perhaps impudent, way. I know you would not care who did these things, so long as they were well done; but one doesn't wish to meddle, and in so free-and-easy a way, with a Great Man's Masterpieces, and utterly fail: especially when two much better men have been before one. One excuse is, that Shelley and Dr. Trench only took parts of these plays, not caring surely--who can?--for the underplot and buffoonery which stands most in the way of the tragic Dramas. Yet I think it is as a whole, that is, the whole main Story, that these Plays are capital; and therefore I have tried to present that whole, leaving out the rest, or nearly so; and altogether the Thing has become so altered one way or another that I am afraid of it now it's done, and only send you one Play (the other indeed is not done printing: neither to be published), which will be enough if it is an absurd Attempt. For the Vida is not so good even, I doubt: dealing more in the Heroics, etc. I tell Donne he is too partial a Friend; so is Cowell: Spedding, I think, wouldn't care. So, as you were very kind about the other Plays, and love Calderon (which I doubt argues against me), I send you _my_ Magician. You will not mind if I blunder in addressing you; in which I steered a middle course between the modes Donne told me; and so, probably, come to the Ground! _To John Allen_. MARKET HILL: IPSWICH. {63} _April_ 10/65. MY DEAR ALLEN, I was much obliged to you for your former Letters; and now send you the second Play. This I don't suppose you'll like as well as the first: perhaps not at all; it is rather 'Ercles vein' I doubt. I wish to know however from you what you do think of it; because if it seem to you at all preposterous, I shall not send it to some others: but leave them with the first, which really does please those I wished it to please, with its fine Story and Moral. If you like what I now send, I will send you a Copy of Both stitched together, and another copy to your Cousin: and indeed to any one else you think might be pleased with it. I am indulging in the expensive amusement of Building, though not on a very large scale. It _is_ very pleasant, certainly, to see one's little Gables and Chimnies mount into Air and occupy a Place in the Landscape.