Still have the will without the power to execute,
      As unfear’d Eunuchs meditate a rape.

This simile, which one reviewer fell upon with some violence, was not reprinted.

Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, writing in The Athenceum, December 28, 1901, remarks:  “The truth is that in Lamb’s imitations of the elder writers ‘anachronistic improprieties’ (as Thomas Warton would say) are exceedingly rare.  In John Woodvil it would not, I think, be easy to discover more than two:  caprice, which, in the sense of ’a capricious disposition,’ seems to belong to the eighteenth century, and anecdotes (i.e., ’secret Court history’), which, in its English form at least, probably does not occur much before 1686.”

This note is already too long, or I should like to say something of the reception of John Woodvil, which was not cordial.  The Annual Review was particularly severe, and the Edinburgh caustic.

* * * * *

Page 109.  “THE WITCH.”

In the Works, 1818, this dramatic sketch followed John Woodvil.

Lamb sent “The Witch” to Robert Lloyd in November, 1798 (see Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, page 91), in a version differing widely from that of the Works here given.  The speakers are Sir Walter Woodvil’s steward and Margaret.  The principal variation is this, after the curse:—­

Margaret.  A terrible curse!

Old Steward.  O Lady! such bad things are said of that old woman,
               You would be loth to hear them! 
               Namely, that the milk she gave was sour,
               And the babe, who suck’d her, shrivell’d like a mandrake,
               And things besides, with a bigger horror in them,
               Almost, I think, unlawful to be told!

In the penultimate line “The mystery of God” was “Creation’s beauteous workmanship.”

* * * * *

Page 202.  “MR. H——.”

Lamb composed this farce in the winter 1805-1806.  Writing to Hazlitt on February 19, 1806, he says:  “Have taken a room at 3s. a week to be in between 5 and 8 at night, to avoid my nocturnal alias knock-eternal visitors.  The first-fruits of my retirement has been a farce which goes to manager tomorrow.”  Mary Lamb, writing to Sarah Stoddart at about the same time, says:  “Charles is gone [to the lodging] to finish the farce, and I am to hear it read this night.  I am so uneasy between my hopes and fears of how I shall like it, that I do not know what I am doing.”  The next day or so, February 21, she says that she liked the farce “very much, and cannot help having great hopes of its success”—­stating that she has carried it to Mr. Wroughton at Drury Lane.

The reply came on June n, 1806, saying that the farce was accepted, subject to a few alterations, and would be produced in due course (see Lamb’s letter to Wordsworth, written in “wantonness of triumph,” of June 26).  Mary Lamb, writing to Sarah Stoddart, probably in October, 1806, says that