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 one 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 threefold 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 healthyhappy 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 happily 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 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, PETER. That cannot I; but I have my conjectures. DANIEL. You lazy feasters at another's cost, Being indeed but foul excrescences, And no just parts in a well-order'd family; Who act up to the height your master's vices, MARTIN. Whom does he call thin-face? No prating, loon, but tell me who he was, You miserable men, With minds more slavish than your slave's estate, Which took you from the looms, and from the ploughs, Two hundred pounds, as I hear, to the man that shall And entertain'd ye in a worthy service, apprehend him. Where your best wages was the world's repute, How often in old times 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 happy Without debauch and mis-timed riotings. establishment. O! monstrous! ALL. This house hath been a scene of nothing else All things seem changed, I think. I had a friend. E'en with the dearest friend he had alive, On but a bare surmise, a possibility, 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. A cold protector is John grown to me. The mistress, and presumptive wife, of Woodvil A man, her equal, to redress those wrongs, But which his own neglects have sanctioned rather, His love which long has been upon the wane. For me, I am determined what to do: To leave this house this night, and lukewarm John, And trust for food to the earth and Providence. To seek Sir Walter in the forest of Sherwood. Acquainting me with all the circumstances 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 Since (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 I have the keys of all this house and passages, To bear you on your way to Nottingham. MARGARET. That once this day and night were fairly past! ACT II. SCENE I. [Exeunt divers ways. An Apartment in Woodvil Hall. JOHN WOODVIL-alone. (Reading Parts of a Letter.) WHEN Love grows cold, and indifference has usurp ed upon old esteem, it is no marvel if the world begin to account that dependence, which hitherto has been esteemed honorable shelter. The course I have taken (in leaving this house, not easily wrought thereunto), seemed to me best for the once-for-all releasing of yourself (who in times past have deserved well of me) from the now daily, and not-to-be-endured, tribute of forced love, and ill-dissembled reluctance of affection. MARGARET. Gone! gone! my girl? so hasty, Margaret! Where he hath ventures? does not rather muffle To suit the melancholy dull farewell, So peevish, Margaret? = But 't is the common error of your sex, To be retailed in ballads. I know them all. They are jealous, when our larger hearts receive More guests than one (Love in a woman's heart WOODVIL. To say the truth, my love for her has of late stopt short on this side idolatry. LOVEL. As all good Christians' should, I think. WOODVIL. I am sure, I could have loved her still within the limits of warrantable love. 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 determinate in all virtuous resolutions; not hasty to anticipate an affront, 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. Being all in one). For me, I am sure I have room here Nothing else. He, that slighted her, knew her value : For more disturbers of my sleep than one. Love shall have part, but Love shall not have all. I could have loved her twenty years to come, |