The modest eye
That met the glance, or turn’d, it knew not why. 
“Rosamund to Henry.”

The poem is one of those in the now scarce volume which Southey and Lovel published jointly at Bath in 1795, Poems:  containing “The Retrospect." [It was this forest passage which, as Hazlitt tells us in his Spirit of the Age, so puzzled Godwin.  After looking in vain through the old dramatists for it, he applied to Lamb himself.]

[Footnote 31:  Sir Jacob Astley(?), but he too was ennobled after Naseby.]

By the end of October the play had evidently been completed (though not yet named), for on the 31st Southey was asked, “Have you seen it, or shall I lend you a copy?  I want your opinion of it.”  None is recorded here, but more than two years later, when Southey was in London, he gave it to Danvers (Letters of R.S., II., 184):  “Lamb and his sister see us often:  he is printing his play, which will please you by the exquisite beauty of its poetry, and provoke you by the exquisite silliness of its story.”

The play must have been baptised as “Pride’s Cure” soon after Hallowe’en, for at Christmas it was submitted under that title to Kemble, and about the same time (December 28, 1799) we find Lamb defending the title (with the vehemence and subtlety of a doubter, as I read) against the adverse criticism of Manning and Mrs. Charles Lloyd.  Lamb had lately been on a visit to these friends at Cambridge, and had doubtless taken a copy of his play with him and received their objections there and then—­for his defence does not seem to have been provoked by a letter. [In a letter to Charles Lloyd that has come to light since Mr. Dykes Campbell wrote, belonging to middle December, 1799, Lamb asks for his play to be returned to him, suggesting that Mrs. Lloyd shall despatch it.  It was probably in the letter that accompanied the parcel that the criticism of the title was found.  Lamb thus defended it:—­“By-the-bye, I think you and Sophia both incorrect with regard to the title of the play.  Allowing your objection (which is not necessary, as pride may be, and is in real life often, cured by misfortunes not directly originating from its own acts, as Jeremy Taylor will tell you a naughty desire is sometimes sent to cure it; I know you read these practical divines)—­but allowing your objection, does not the betraying of his father’s secret directly spring from pride?—­from the pride of wine, and a full heart, and a proud over-stepping of the ordinary rules of morality, and contempt of the prejudices of mankind, which are not to bind superior souls—­’as trust in the matter of secrets all ties of blood, etc., etc., keeping of promises, the feeble mind’s religion, binding our morning knowledge to the performance of what last night’s ignorance spake’—­does he not prate, that ‘Great Spirits’ must do more than die for their friend?  Does not the pride of wine incite him to display some evidence of friendship, which its own irregularity shall make great?  This I know, that I meant his punishment not alone to be a cure for his daily and habitual pride, but the direct consequence and appropriate punishment of a particular act of pride.