Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/138

138 few days, perhaps, which she devoted to deliberation and forethought, seemed to her an eternity, because they were days instead of hours. Impatient to begin, she was at least as impatient to end; and she proceeded, apart from mistakes of a higher though hardly more important kind, with far too little regard to the necessities that govern scenic representation. She committed the error of supposing that her audience, with one accord, would jump as intuitively to conclusions as she did, and that the truth, which was palpable to her own eyes, would be equally visible to the eyes of an unseeing pit. Before it was quite finished, she discovered the unfitness of its plan for the stage of such a theatre as Covent-garden, not to say for such an audience as would assemble anywhere; and she instantly and earnestly set about the toilsome work of reconstruction and improvement, making many essential additions, and then altering again. She thus alludes to the subject in a letter addressed to us at the close of the year: "I have not sent you my tragedy so soon as I said, because I would not hurry a single line, or neglect the least of your hints. I have lengthened it, given the heroine more speeches, remodelled the character of Arizzi, and brought out that of Leoni, together with the addition of two or three scenes. I am ashamed to tell you how nervous and how anxious I am." But further revision was necessary, and by this time the arrangements for the season were complete, even had the chance of the play's success upon the stage been strong enough to justify its production. Its publication now, enables the dramatic critic to pass sentence upon the attempt; and to that judgment it is committed, in the confident hope that where high aims are visible, and fine powers