t printed in _The
Examiner_ (February 7 and 8, 1819) the passage beginning with line 32,
entitling it "A HINT to the GREATER CRIMINALS who are so fond of
declaiming against the crimes of the poor and uneducated, and in favour
of the torments of prisons and prison-ships in this world, and worse in
the next. Such a one, says the poet,

'on his couch
Lolling, &c.'"

* * * * *

Page 28. POEMS AT THE END OF JOHN WOODVIL, 1802.

The volume containing _John Woodvil_, 1802, which is placed in the
present edition among Lamb's plays, on page 149, included also the
"Fragments of Burton" (see Vol. I.) and two lyrics.

Page 28. _Helen_.

Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge on August 26, 1800, remarking:--"How do
you like this little epigram? It is not my writing, nor had I any finger
in it. If you concur with me in thinking it very elegant and very
original, I shall be tempted to name the author to you. I will just hint
that it is almost or quite a first attempt."

The author was, of course, Mary Lamb. In his _Elia_ essay "Blakesmoor in
H----shire" in the _London Magazine_, September, 1824, Lamb quoted the
poem, stating that "Bridget took the hint" of her "pretty whimsical
lines" from a portrait of one of the Plumers' ancestors. The portrait
was the cool pastoral beauty with a lamb, and it was partly to make fun
of her brother's passion for the picture that Mary wrote the lines.

The poem was reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.

* * * * *

Page 29. _Ballad from the German_.

This poem was written for Coleridge's translation of "The Piccolimini,"
the first part of Schiller's "Wallenstein," in 1800--Coleridge supplying
a prose paraphrase (for Lamb knew no German) for the purpose. The
original is Thekla's song in Act II., Scene 6:--

Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn,
Das Maegdlein wandelt an Ufers Gruen,
Es bricht sich die Welle mit Macht, mit Macht,
Und sie singt hinaus in die finstre Nacht,
Das Auge von Weinen getruebet.
Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer,
Und welter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr.
Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurueck,
Ich habe genossen das irdische Glueck,
Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.

Coleridge's own translation of Thekla's song, which was printed alone in
later editions of the play, ran thus:--

The cloud doth gather, the green