Page:The poetical works of Leigh Hunt, containing many pieces now first collected 1849.djvu/15

 longer effusions in this book, I should say it was in passages of this poem, and of the "Legend of Florence."

The "Legend of Florence" is founded on a romance of real life in a periodical Italian publication called the "Florentine Observer" (Osservatore Fiorentino). Among the pleasures which I had in writing this play was the melancholy one of thinking that the beloved friend whom I lost in Italy had chosen the same story for a poem, of which he has left a fragment. I was thus united with him, in a manner, once more, and upon a subject to which even his noble dramatic genius would have welcomed me for love's sake, and the moral's.

May I be permitted to add, that I shall never forget the honour which Her Majesty did my play in coming twice to see it, and the gracious words in which she was pleased to express her approbation of it to the manager? Doubtless the beauty of Miss Ellen Tree's acting, and of the occasional music, contributed to procure me this good fortune; not perhaps without a condescending wish on the part of the Royal visitor to assist a writer who was known to be struggling with difficulties, and who had already tasted her beneficence. Most heartily do I give up any portion of the credit of it, attributable to her Majesty's princely good-nature. It was not the last benefit which the Royal disposition had conferred on me; for I am further indebted to it for the discovery, that "Laureat" odes, or such as by an extra-official courtesy might have been