To come down to very little, from once great, Things—I don’t know if it’s your coming home, or my being better this Winter, or what: but I have caught up a long ago begun Version of my dear old Mágico, and have so recast it that scarce a Plank remains of the original! Pretty impudence: and yet all done to conciliate English, or modern, Sympathy. This I sha’n’t publish: so say (pray!) nothing of it at all—remember—only I shall print some Copies for you and one or two more: and you and Elizabeth will like it a great deal too much. There is really very great Skill in the Adaptation, and Remodelling of it. By the bye, would you translate Demonio, Lucifer, or Satan? One of the two I take. I cut out all the precioso very ingeniously: and give all the Mountain-moving,

etc., in the second Act without Stage direction, so as it may seem to pass only in the dazzled Eyes, or Fantasy, of Cyprian. All this is really a very difficult Job to me; not worth the Candle, I dare say: only that you two will be pleased. I also increase the religious Element in the Drama; and make Cyprian outwit the Devil more cleverly than he now does; for the Devil was certainly too clever to be caught in his own Art. That was very good Fun for an Autodafé Audience, however.

But please say nothing of this to any one. I should like to take up the Vida es Sueño too in the same manner; but these plays are more difficult than all the others put together: and I have no spur now.

How would you translate Pliny’s ‘Quisquis est Deus, et quacumque in parte, totus est Sensûs, totus Visûs, totus Auditûs, totus Animæ, totus Animi, totus Sui?’ [61]

This Passage is alluded to by Calderon; but, in the manner of our old Playwrights, I quote it in the Latin and translate. I want to know by you if I have done it sufficiently; and I don’t send you mine, in order that you may send me your Version freely.

Now, Good Bye: I suppose it’s this rainy Day that draws out this, with several other Letters, that had waited some while to be written.

Yours ever E. F. G.

To R. C. Trench.

Market hill: Woodbridge.
February 25/65.

My dear Lord,