November 28, 1798.

         * * * * *
  I showed my “Witch” and “Dying Lover” to
  Dyer [1] last night; but George could not comprehend
  how that could be poetry which did not go
  upon ten feet, as George and his predecessors had
  taught it to do; so George read me some lectures
  on the distinguishing qualities of the Ode, the Epigram,
  and the Epic, and went home to illustrate his
  doctrine by correcting a proof-sheet of his own
  Lyrics, George writes odes where the rhymes, like
  fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable distance
  of six or eight lines apart, and calls that “observing
  the laws of verse,” George tells you, before
  he recites, that you must listen with great attention,
  or you ’ll miss the rhymes.  I did so, and found
  them pretty exact, George, speaking of the dead
  Ossian, exclaimeth, “Dark are the poet’s eyes,” I
  humbly represented to him that his own eyes were
  dark, and many a living bard’s besides, and recommended
  “Clos’d are the poet’s eyes.”  But that
  would not do, I found there was an antithesis between
  the darkness of his eyes and the splendor of
  his genius, and I acquiesced.

Your recipe for a Turk’s poison is invaluable and truly Marlowish....  Lloyd objects to “shutting up the womb of his purse” in my Curse (which for a Christian witch in a Christian country is not too mild, I hope):  do you object?  I think there is a strangeness in the idea, as well as “shaking the poor like snakes from his door,” which suits the speaker.  Witches illustrate, as fine ladies do, from their own familiar objects, and snakes and shutting up of wombs are in their way.  I don’t know that this last charge has been before brought against ’em, nor either the sour milk or the mandrake babe; but I affirm these be things a witch would do if she could.

My tragedy [2] will be a medley (as I intend it to be a medley) of laughter and tears, prose and verse, and in some places rhyme, songs, wit, pathos, humor, and if possible, sublimity,—­at least, it is not a fault in my intention if it does not comprehend most of these discordant colors.  Heaven send they dance not the “Dance of Death!” I hear that the Two Noble Englishmen [3] have parted no sooner than they set foot on German earth; but I have not heard the reason,—­possibly to give novelists a handle to exclaim, “Ah me, what things are perfect!” I think I shall adopt your emendation in the “Dying Lover,” though I do not myself feel the objection against “Silent Prayer.”