I use the expression "exhausting my brains," advisedly. For a man who produces a new work, every year, which has any real value and completeness as a work of literary art, does, let him be who he may, for a time, exhaust his brain by the process, and leave it sorely in need of an after-period of absolute repose. Three hundred a-year, therefore, is the utmost that a fertile original author can expect to get by the English stage, at present market-rates of remuneration. Such is now the position of the dramatic writer--a special man, with a special faculty. What is now the position of the dramatic performer, when he happens to be a special man, with a special faculty also? Is his income three hundred a-year? Is his manager's income three hundred a-year? The popular actors of the time when Colman got his twelve hundred pounds would be struck dumb with amazement, if they saw what salaries their successors are getting now. If stage remuneration has decreased sordidly in our time for authorship, it has increased splendidly for actorship. When a manager tells me now that his theatre cannot afford to pay me as much for my idea in the form of a play, as the publisher can afford to pay me for it in the form of a novel--he really means that he and his actors take a great deal more now from the nightly receipts of the theatres than they ever thought of taking in the time of John Bull. When the actors' profits from the theatre are largely increased, somebody else's profits from the same theatre must be decreased. That somebody else is the dramatic author. There you have the real secret of the mean rate at which the English stage now estimates the assistance of English Literature. There are persons whose interest it may be to deny this; and who will deny it. It is not a question of assertion or denial, but a question of figures. How much per week did a popular actor get in Colman's time? How much per week does a popular actor get now? The biographies of dead players will answer the first question. And the managers' books, for the past ten or fifteen years, will answer the second. I must not give offence by comparisons between living and dead men--I must not enter into details, because they would lead me too near to the private affairs of other people. But I tell you again, that the remuneration for acting has immensely increased, and the remuneration for dramatic writing has immensely decreased, in our time; and I am not afraid of having that assertion contradicted by proofs.