I have taken care that you shall have the early sheets of my two
new volumes to-morrow, or Saturday at latest, so that you may, if
so minded, give a poor struggler like myself a lift in your next
week's paper. Do give a poor struggler a lift. You and I have so
much in common, and I have ventured to flatter myself that we are
really friends! I do not flatter you when I say, that not only
would aid from you help me more than from any other quarter, but
also that praise from you would gratify my vanity more than any
other praise. I almost think you will like my "Criminal Queens."
The sketch of Semiramis is at any rate spirited, though I had to
twist it about a little to bring her in guilty. Cleopatra, of
course, I have taken from Shakespeare. What a wench she was! I
could not quite make Julia a queen; but it was impossible to pass
over so piquant a character. You will recognise in the two or
three ladies of the empire how faithfully I have studied my
Gibbon. Poor dear old Belisarius! I have done the best I could
with Joanna, but I could not bring myself to care for her. In our
days she would simply have gone to Broadmore. I hope you will not
think that I have been too strong in my delineations of Henry VIII
and his sinful but unfortunate Howard. I don't care a bit about
Anne Boleyne. I am afraid that I have been tempted into too great
length about the Italian Catherine; but in truth she has been my
favourite. What a woman! What a devil! Pity that a second Dante
could not have constructed for her a special hell. How one traces
the effect of her training in the life of our Scotch Mary. I trust
you will go with me in my view as to the Queen of Scots. Guilty!
guilty always! Adultery, murder, treason, and all the rest of it.
But recommended to mercy because she was royal. A queen bred, born
and married, and with such other queens around her, how could she
have escaped to be guilty? Marie Antoinette I have not quite