"Be not surprised if you hear that some signal judgment has befallen the man who calls himself your father; he is now with me, as his signature will shew: abstain from conjecture till you see me.
"Herbert.
"Marmaduke."
In June 1797 Coleridge wrote to his friend Cottle:
"W. has written a tragedy himself. I speak with heart-felt sincerity, and, I think, unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel myself a little man by his side, and yet I do not think myself a less man than I formerly thought myself. His drama is absolutely wonderful. You know I do not commonly speak in such abrupt and unmingled phrases, and therefore will the more readily believe me. There are in the piece those profound touches of the human heart which I find three or four times in the Robbers of Schiller, and often in Shakspeare; but in W. there are no inequalities."
On August 6, 1800, Charles Lamb wrote to Coleridge:
"I would pay five-and-forty thousand carriages to read W.'s tragedy, of which I have heard so much and seen so little." Shortly afterwards, August 26, he wrote to Coleridge: "I have a sort of a recollection that somebody, I think you, promised me a sight of Wordsworth's tragedy. I shall be very glad of it just now, for I have got Manning with me, and should like to read it _with him_. But this, I confess, is a refinement. Under any circumstances, alone, in Cold-Bath Prison, or in the desert island, just when Prospero and his crew had set off, with Caliban in a cage, to Milan, it would be a treat to me to read that play. Manning has read it, so has Lloyd, and all Lloyd's family; but I could not get him to betray his trust by giving me a sight of it. Lloyd is sadly deficient in some of those virtuous vices."—Ed.
| 1845 | |
| ... female ... | 1842 |
... female ...