Got my seals----. Have again forgot a play-thing for _ma petite
cousine_ Eliza; but I must send for it to-morrow. I hope Harry will
bring her to me. I sent Lord Holland the proofs of the last "_Giaour_"
and "_The Bride of Abydos_" He won't like the latter, and I don't think
that I shall long. It was written in four nights to distract my dreams
from----. Were it not thus, it had never been composed; and had I not
done something at that time, I must have gone mad, by eating my own
heart,--bitter diet;--Hodgson likes it better than "_The Giaour_" but
nobody else will,--and he never liked the Fragment. I am sure, had it
not been for Murray, _that_ would never have been published, though the
circumstances which are the ground-work make it----heigh-ho!
To-night I saw both the sisters of----; my God! the youngest so like! I
thought I should have sprung across the house, and am so glad no one was
with me in Lady H.'s box. I hate those likenesses--the mock-bird, but
not the nightingale--so like as to remind, so different as to be painful
[3].
One quarrels equally with the points of resemblance and of distinction.
[Footnote 1: 'Antony and Cleopatra' was revived at Covent Garden,
November 15, 1813, with additions from Dryden's 'All for Love, or the
World Well Lost'(1678). "Cleopatra" was acted by Mrs. Fawcit; "Marc
Antony" by Young. (See for the allusions, act v. se. 2, and act i. sc.
3.)]
[Footnote 2:
"But words are things; and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
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