Read it through once

Talfourd’s play, of which mention was made just now, was a work upon which he devoted odd moments of leisure snatched from his busy life of professional duties as one of the leading men of his day at the Bar. Pope’s lines: “I left no calling for this idle trade, no duty broke,” is the fitting motto with which he headed his Preface when the play was published in book form, for, as he said, it was composed for the most part on journeys while on Circuit, and afterwards committed to paper, a process of composition which, it may be readily conceived, extended over a lengthy period. When published it was dedicated to his old schoolmaster, the Rev. Richard Valpy, D.D., as “a slender token of gratitude for benefits which cannot be expressed in words,” and in the course of the Preface there were felicitous references to “the delightful artist,” Mr. Macready, and to the “power and beauty” of, among others, “the play of _Rienzi_.”