You will smile to see the slender labors of your friend designated by the title of Works; but such was the wish of the gentlemen who have kindly undertaken the trouble of collecting them, and from their judgment could be no appeal. It would be a kind of disloyalty to offer to any but yourself a volume containing the early pieces, which were first published among your poems, and were fairly derivatives from you and them. My friend Lloyd and myself came into our first battle (authorship is a sort of warfare) under cover of the greater Ajax. How this association, which shall always be a dear and proud recollection to me, came to be broken,who snapped the three-fold cord,-whether yourself (but I know that was not the case) grew ashamed of your former companions,-or whether (which is by much the more probable) some ungracious bookseller was author of the separation,-I cannot tell;-but wanting the support of your friendly elm (I speak for myself), my vine has, since that time, put forth few or no fruits; the sap (if ever it had any) has become, in a manner, dried up and extinct. Am I right in assuming this as the cause? or is it that, as years come upon us (except with some more healthy happy spirits), life itself loses much of its Poetry for us? we transcribe but what we read in the great volume of nature; and, as the characters grow dim, we turn off, and look another way. You yourself write no Christabels, nor Ancient Mariners, now. Some of the Sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the general reader, may haply awaken in you remembrances, which I should be sorry should be ever totally extinct—the memory Of summer days and of delightful years even so far back as to those old suppers at our old ***** Inn,-when life was fresh, and topics exhaustless, -and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness.— What words have I heard Spoke at the Mermaid! The world has given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time; but either my eyes are grown dimmer, or my old friend is the same, who stood before me three-and-twenty years ago—his hair a little confessing the hand of time, but still shrouding the same capacious brain,-his heart not altered, scarcely where it "alteration finds.' One piece, Coleridge, I have ventured to publish in its original form, though I have heard you complain of a certain over-imitation of the antique in the style. If I could see any way of getting rid of the objection, without rewriting it entirely, I would make some sacrifices. But when I wrote John Woodvil, I never proposed to myself any distinct deviation from common English. I had been newly initiated in the writings of our elder dramatists; Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, were then a first love; and from what I was so freshly conversant in, what wonder if my language imperceptibly took a tinge? The very time, which I had chosen for my story, that which immediately followed the Restoration, seemed to require, in an English play, that the English should be of rather an older cast, than that of the precise year in which it happened to be written. I wish it had not some faults which I can less vindicate than the language. I remain, My dear Coleridge, Your's, with unabated esteem, But can any tell me the place of his concealment? With minds more slavish than your slave's estate, PETER. That cannot I; but I have my conjectures. DANIEL. Have you that noble bounty so forgot, Which took you from the looms, and from the plows, Two hundred pounds, as I hear, to the man that And entertain'd ye in a worthy service, shall apprehend him. FRANCIS. ALL Where your best wages was the world's repute, How often in old times I hope there is none in this company would be And quickly too: ye had better, for I see mean enough to betray him. Young mistress Margaret coming this way. [Exeunt all but SANDFORD. [They drink to SIR WALTER's safety. Enter MARGARET, as in a fright, pursued by a Gentleman, who, seeing SANDFORD, retires muttering a O Lord! surely not. FRANCIS. I have often wondered how our master came to be excepted by name in the late Act of Oblivion. DANIEL. Shall I tell the reason? Ay, do. ALL DANIEL. curse. SANDFORD, MARGARET. SANDFORD. Good morrow to my fair mistress. "T was a chance On chiding hence these graceless serving-men, "Tis thought he is no great friend to the present Without debauch and mistimed riotings. happy establishment. All things seem changed, I think. I had a friend Some are too tame, that were too splenetic once. SANDFORD. "T were best he should be told of these affronts. MARGARET. I am the daughter of his father's friend, I am not his servant-maid, that I should wait I am somewhat proud: and Woodvil taught me pride. None once so pleasant in his eyes as Margaret: His flatteries taught me first this self-esteem, And ladies envied me the love of Woodvil. SANDFORD. He doth affect the courtier's life too much, Whose art is to forget, And that has wrought this seeming change in him, That was by nature noble. "T is these court-plagues, that swarm about our house, Have done the mischief, making his fancy giddy With images of state, preferment, place, Tainting his generous spirit with ambition. MARGARET. I know not how it is; A cold protector is John grown to me. A man, her equal, to redress those wrongs, But which his own neglects have sanction'd rather, To leave this house this night, and lukewarm John, O lady, have a care SANDFORD. Of these indefinite and spleen-bred resolves. Upon a life of wandering, which your thoughts now, Portray without its terrors, painting lies You know not what it is to leave the roof that shelters you. MARGARET. I have thought on every possible event, The dangers and discouragements you speak of, SANDFORD. Now God forbid; think twice of this, dear lady. MARGARET. I pray you spare me, Mr. Sandford, SANDFORD. But what course have you thought on? MARGARET. To seek Sir Walter in the forest of Sherwood. Of their concealment, place, and manner of life. All which I have perused with so attent One meaning in two words, Sherwood and Liberty. "T is you that must provide now The means of my departure, which for safety SANDFORD. Since you will have it so, (My careful age trembles at all may happen), I will engage to furnish you: I have the keys of the wardrobe, and can fit you With garments to your size. I know a suit Of lively Lincoln green, that shall much grace you That once this day and night were fairly past! Farewell, sweet Devon; farewell, lukewarm John, ACT II. SCENE I. [Exeunt divers ways An apartment in Woodvil Hall. JOHN WOODVIL-alone. WHEN Love grows cold, and indifference has usurp WOODVIL. To say the truth, my love for her has of late stopt short on this side idolatry. LOVEL. ed upon old esteem, it is no marvel if the world Where he hath ventures? does not rather muffle His organs to emit a leaden sound, To suit the melancholy dull "farewell," But 't is the common error of your sex, I know them all. They are jealous, when our larger hearts receive As all good Christians' should, I think. WOODVIL. I am sure, I could have loved her still within the LOVEL. A kind of brotherly affection, I take it. WOODVIL. We should have made excellent man and wife in time. LOVEL. A good old couple, when the snows fell, to crowd about a sea-coal fire, and talk over old matters. WOODVIL. While each should feel, what neither cared to acknowledge, that stories oft repeated may, at last, come to lose some of their grace by the repetition. LOVEL. Which both of you may yet live long enough to discover. For, take my word for it, Margaret is a bird that will come back to you without a lure. WOODVIL. Never, never, Lovel. Spite of my levity, with tears I confess it, she was a lady of most confirmed honor, of an unmatchable spirit, and determinable in all virtuous resolutions; not hasty to anticipate an af front, nor slow to feel, where just provocation was given. LOVEL. What made you neglect her, then? WOODVIL. Mere levity and youthfulness of blood, a malady incident to young men: physicians call it caprice. Nothing else. He, that slighted her, knew her value: and 't is odds, but, for thy sake, Margaret, John will yet go to his grave a bachelor. [A noise heard, as of one drunk and singing. LOVEL Here comes one, that will quickly dissipate these humors. (Enter one drunk.) DRUNKEN MAN. |