to find set down clearly in their scriptures, must have probability in its defence[40].  Touching that other question the Casuists with one consent have pronounced the sober man accountable for the deeds by him in a state of drunkenness committed, because tho’ the action indeed be such as he, sober, would never have committed, yet the drunkenness being an act of the will, by a moral fiction, the issues are accounted voluntary also.  I lose my sleep in attending to these intricacies of the schoolmen.  I lay till daybreak the other morning endeavouring to draw a line of distinction between sin of direct malice and sin of malice indirect, or imputable only by the sequence.  My brain is overwrought by these labours, and my faculties will shortly decline into impotence. [Throws himself on a bed.]

End of the Fourth Act.

[Footnote 40:  Lamb had crossed out this passage from “Infinite torments,” and written at “touching” “begin here.”]

In the fifth act of the printed play [page 192] we have simply “Margaret enters.”  In the MS. Sandford prepares his master for her advent, and announces her thus:—­

Sandford.  Wilt please you to see company to-day, Sir?

John.  Who thinks me worth the visiting?

Sandford.  One that traveled hard last night to see you, She waits to know your pleasure.

John.  A lady too! pray send her to me—­ Some curiosity, I suppose.

[Sandford goes out and returns with Margaret.]

Margaret.  Woodvil![41]

[Footnote 41:  “Woodvil!” and some illegible words struck out, and nothing substituted.]

John.  Comes Margaret here, etc.

When, a page further on [page 194], John has declared to Margaret that

      This earth holds not alive so poor a thing as I am—­
      I was not always thus,

the MS. went on (but the passage is struck out as “bad"):—­

      You must bear with me, Margaret, as a child,
      For I am weak as tender Infancy
      And cannot bear rebuke—­
      Would’st think it, Love! 
      They hoot and spit upon me as I pass
      In the public streets:  one shows me to his neighbour,
      Who shakes his head and turns away with horror—­
      I was not always thus—­

Margaret.  Thou noble nature, etc.

The next scene—­the last [page l95]—­is much cut about.  The long speech of Margaret beginning,

      To give you in your stead a better self,

and John’s reply [both printed at pages 196-7], are struck out, and “Nimis” written by Lamb’s pen in large characters in the margin; but after that all goes on in harmony with the print, to the end:—­

      It seem’d the guilt of blood was passing from me
      Even in the act and agony of tears
      And all my sins forgiven. 
At this point in the MS. Simon arrives:—­