My dear Mr. Hill,--Your goodness must extend to letting me have the last word--one of sincere thanks. You cannot suppose I doubted for a moment of a good-will which I have had abundant proof of. I only took the occasion your considerate letter gave me, to tell the simple truth which my forty years' silence is a sign I would only tell on compulsion. I never thought your critic had any less generous motive for alluding to the performance as he did than that which he professes: he doubtless heard the account of the matter which Macready and his intimates gave currency to at the time; and which, being confined for a while to their limited number, I never chose to notice. But of late years I have got to _read_,--not merely _hear_,--of the play's failure 'which all the efforts of my friend the great actor could not avert;' and the nonsense of this untruth gets hard to bear. I told you the principal facts in the letter I very hastily wrote: I could, had it been worth while, corroborate them by others in plenty, and refer to the living witnesses--Lady Martin, Mrs. Stirling, and (I believe) Mr. Anderson: it was solely through the admirable loyalty of the two former that . . . a play . . . deprived of every advantage, in the way of scenery, dresses, and rehearsing--proved--what Macready himself declared it to be--'a complete success'. _So_ he sent a servant to tell me, 'in case there was a call for the author at the end of the act'--to which I replied that the author had been too sick and sorry at the whole treatment of his play to do any such thing. Such a call there truly _was_, and Mr. Anderson had to come forward and 'beg the author to come forward if he were in the house--a circumstance of which he was not aware:' whereat the author laughed at him from a box just opposite. . . . I would submit to anybody drawing a conclusion from one or two facts past contradiction, whether that play could have thoroughly failed which was not only not withdrawn at once but acted three nights in the same week, and years afterwards, reproduced at his own theatre, during my absence in Italy, by Mr. Phelps--the person most completely aware of the untoward circumstances which stood originally in the way of success. Why not enquire how it happens that, this second time, there was no doubt of the play's doing as well as plays ordinarily do? for those were not the days of a 'run'. . . . . . . . . This 'last word' has indeed been an Aristophanic one of fifty syllables: but I have spoken it, relieved myself, and commend all that concerns me to the approved and valued friend of whom I am proud to account myself in corresponding friendship, His truly ever Robert Browning.