will be best explained by the following extract from a letter from Mr. Southey to the Editor:
"This is the history of
The Fall of Robespierre
. It originated in sportive conversation at poor Lovell's, and we agreed each to produce an act by the next evening; S. T. C. the first, I the second, and Lovell the third. S. T. C. brought part of his, I and Lovell the whole of ours; but L.'s was not in keeping, and therefore I undertook to supply the third also by the following day. By that time, S. T. C. had filled up his. A dedication to Mrs. Hannah More was concocted, and the notable performance was offered for sale to a bookseller in Bristol, who was too wise to buy it. Your Uncle took the MSS. with him to Cambridge, and there rewrote the first act at leisure, and published it. My portion I never saw from the time it was written till the whole was before the world. It was written with newspapers before me, as fast as newspaper could be put into blank verse. I have no desire to claim it now, or hereafter; but neither am I ashamed of it; and if you think proper to print the whole, so be it."
"
The Fall of Robespierre
, a tragedy, of which the first act was written by S. T. Coleridge." Mr. C.'s note in the
Conciones ad Populum
, 1795. (Ed.)