The composition went on slowly and in a very casual way, for on January 21, 1799, he writes again to Southey:—­“I have only one slight passage to send you, scarce worth the sending, which I want to edge in somewhere into my play, which, by the way, hath not received the addition often lines, besides, since I saw you.”  The “slight passage” is one which, it will be seen, was “edged in” near the end of the second act, but taken out again—­that beginning:—­

      I saw him [John Woodvil] in the day of Worcester fight,
      Whither he came at twice seven years,
      Under the discipline of the Lord Falkland
      (His uncle by the mother’s side), etc.

Lamb naively asks Southey, “But did Falkland die before the Worcester fight?  In that case I must make bold to unclify some other nobleman.”  I suppose Southey must have answered that Falkland had been killed at Newbury eight years before Worcester fight, for when the passage had been edged into the play, Naseby and Ashley were substituted for “Worcester” and “Falkland” respectively.  This was as bad a shot as the first, for Sir Anthony Cooper, whether at Naseby or no, did not become Lord Ashley until sixteen years after that fight[31].  Had the passage escaped the pruning knife, Lamb’s historical research would no doubt have provided a proper battle and a proper uncle for his hero.  Again Lloyd appears as a critic, and this time he is obeyed, probably because his objection to “portrayed in his face” was backed by Southey.  “I like the line,” says Lamb, but he altered it to

      Of Valour’s beauty in his youthful face

in the Manning MS. Four months later, on May 20, Lamb sends Southey the charming passage about forest-life on page 173, and defends his blank verse against Southey’s censure of the pauses at the end of the lines; he does it on the model of Shakespeare, he says, in his “endeavour after a colloquial ease and spirit.”  Talfourd printed the passage in full, but some later editors have cut down the twenty-four lines to the six opening ones, to the loss of a point in the letter.  Lamb says he “loves to anticipate charges of unoriginality,” adding—­“the first line is almost Shakespeare’s:—­

“To have my love to bed and to arise. 
“‘Midsummer-Night’s Dream.’

I think there is a sweetness in the versification not unlike some rhymes in that exquisite play, and the last line but three is yours.”  This line describes how the deer, as they came tripping by,

Then stop and gaze, then turn, they know not why.

Lamb thus gives the line and his reference:—­

——­An eye
That met the gaze, or turn’d it knew not why. 
“Rosamund’s Epistle.”

But, of course, he misquotes both line and title—­though Southey would feel flattered in finding that his friend’s memory had done so well.  As the editors have not annotated the passage, I will say here that Lamb should have quoted