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 hi