Fifty pounds is the very utmost that any bookseller would give for a successful play, _mais en revanche_, by selling my play to the theater it cannot be read or known as a literary work, and as to make a name for myself as a writer is the aim of my ambition, I think I shall decline his offer. My dearest H----, this quantity about myself and my pursuits will, I am afraid, appear very egotistical to you, but I rely on your unchangeable affection for me to find some interest in what is interesting me so much. Always you most affectionate FANNY. CHAPTER VII. The success of the English theater in Paris was quite satisfactory; and all the most eminent members of the profession--Kean, Young, Macready, and my father--went over in turn to exhibit to the Parisian public Shakespeare the Barbarian, illustrated by his barbarian fellow-countrymen. I do not remember hearing of any very eminent actress joining in that worthy enterprise; but Miss Smithson, a young lady with a figure and face of Hibernian beauty, whose superfluous native accent was no drawback to her merits in the esteem of her French audience, represented to them the heroines of the English tragic drama; the incidents of which, infinitely more startling than any they were used to, invested their fair victim with an amazing power over her foreign critics, and she received from them, in consequence, a rather disproportionate share of admiration--due, perhaps, more to the astonishing circumstances in which she appeared before them than to the excellence of her acting under them. One of the most enthusiastic admirers of the English representations said to my father, "Ah! parlez moi d'Othello! voila, voila la passion, la tragedie. Dieu! que j'aime cette piece! il y a tant de _remue-menage_." A few rash and superficial criticisms were hardly to be avoided; but in general, my father has often said, in spite of the difficulty of the foreign language, and the strangeness of the foreign form of thought and feeling and combination of incident, his Parisian audience never appeared to him to miss the finer touches or more delicate and refined shades of his acting; and in this respect he thought them superior to his own countrymen. Lamartine and Victor Hugo had already proclaimed the enfranchisement of French poetical thought from the rigid rule of classical authority; and all the enthusiastic believers in the future glories of the "Muse Romantique" went to the English theater, to be amazed, if not daunted, by the breadth of horizon and height of empyrean which her wings might sweep, and into which she might soar, "puisque Shakespeare l'a bien ose." ST. JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, October 11, 1827, MY DEAREST H----,