This epilogue was spoken by Miss Ellen Tree.

* * * * *

Page 149.  JOHN WOODVIL.

First published in 1802 in a slender volume entitled John Woodvil:  a Tragedy.  By C. Lamb.  To which are added Fragments of Burton, the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy. The full contents of the book were:—­

John Woodvil; Ballad, From the German (see page 29); Helen (see page 28); Curious Fragments, I., II., III., IV.; The Argument; The Consequence (see Vol.  I., page 29, and note; also pages 30 and 35 of the present volume and notes).

John Woodvil was reprinted by Lamb in the Works, 1818, the text of which is followed here.

If Mr. Fuller Russell was right in his statement in Notes and Queries, April 1, 1882, that Lamb told him he “had lost L25 by his best effort, John Woodvil,” we must suppose that the book was published wholly or partially at his own cost.

The history of the poem which follows is, with an omission and addition here and there, that compiled by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell and contributed by him to The Athenaeum, October 31 and November 14, 1891.  Mr. Campbell had the opportunity of collating the edition of 1802 with a manuscript copy made by Lamb and his sister for Manning.  With that patient thoroughness and discrimination which made his work as an editor so valuable, Mr. Campbell minutely examined this copy and put the results on record; and they are now for the first time, by permission of Mrs. Dykes Campbell and the Editor of The Athenaum, incorporated in an edition of Lamb’s writings.  The copy itself, I may add, when it came into the market, was secured by an American collector.  Mr. Campbell’s words follow, my own interpolations being within square brackets.

Lamb’s first allusion to the future John Woodvil occurs in a letter to Southey (October 29, 1798), at a time when the two young men were exchanging a good many copies of verses for mutual criticism.  “Not having anything of my own,” writes Lamb, “to send you in return (though, to tell the truth, I am at work upon something which if I were to cut away and garble, perhaps I might send you an extract or two that might not displease you:  but I will not do that; and whether it will come to anything I know not, for I am as slow as a Fleming painter, when I compose anything) I will crave leave to put down a few lines of old Christopher Marlowe’s.”  Lamb must soon have got rid of his objections to cutting away and garbling, for before a month had elapsed he had sent Southey two extracts, first the “Dying Lover” [see “Dramatic Fragment,” page 85], and next (November 28) “The Witch” [see page 199], both of which passages were excluded from the printed play. [The letter, which is wrongly dated April 20, 1799, in some editions, concludes (of “The Witch"):  “This is the extract I bragged of as superior to that I sent you from Marlowe:  perhaps you will smile.”]