Your account of the Doctor's warnings to your Cousin in your first note
delighted me greatly: as it did your Father to whom I read it last night.
For, on coming home from Aldbro' (where I had been for a day) I found to
my great surprise your Father smoking in my room, with a bottle of Port
(which he had brought with him!). The mystery was then solved; that,
after his own dinner, Mr. --- was announced, and your Father dreading
lest he should stay all the Evening declared he had most important
business, first at Woodbridge, then, on second thoughts, with me; and so
decamped.
Now as to your second letter which I found also on my return: I am very
glad you like the plays {282} and am encouraged to hope that other
persons who are not biassed by pedantic prejudices or spites might like
them too. But I fully expect that (as I told you, I think) the London
press, etc., will either sink them, or condemn them as on too free a
principle: and all the more if they have not read the originals. For
these are safe courses to adopt. All this while I am assuming the plays
are well done in their way, which of course I do. On the other hand,
they really may not be as well done as I think; on their own principle:
and that would really be a fair ground of condemnation.
_To W. F. Pollock_.
BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE,
_July_ 25/53.