ch will be found attached to it. It was composed at
Racedown in Dorset, during the latter part of the year 1795, and in the
course of the following year. Had it been the work of a later period of
life, it would have been different in some respects from what it is now.
The plot would have been something more complex, and a greater variety
of characters introduced, to relieve the mind from the pressure of
incidents so mournful; the manners also would have been more attended
to. My care was almost exclusively given to the passions and the
characters, and the position in which the persons in the drama stood
relatively to each other, that the reader (for I never thought of the
stage at the time it was written) might be moved, and to a degree
instructed, by lights penetrating somewhat into the depths of our
nature. In this endeavour, I cannot think, upon a very late review, that
I have failed. As to the scene and period of action, little more was
required for my purpose than the absence of established law and
government, so that the agents might be at liberty to act on their own
impulses. Nevertheless, I do remember, that having a wish to colour the
manners in some degree from local history more than my knowledge enabled
me to do, I read Redpath's _History of the Borders_, but found there
nothing to my purpose. I once made an observation to Sir W. Scott, in
which he concurred, that it was difficult to conceive how so dull a book
could be written on such a subject. Much about the same time, but a
little after, Coleridge was employed in writing his tragedy of
_Remorse_; and it happened soon after that, through one of the Mr.
Pooles, Mr. Knight, the actor, heard that we had been engaged in writing
plays, and, upon his suggestion, mine was curtailed, and (I believe,
with Coleridge's) was offered to Mr. Harris, manager of Covent Garden.
For myself, I had no hope, nor even a wish (though a successful play
would in the then state of my finances have been a most welcome piece of
good fortune), that he should accept my performance; so that I incurred
no disappointment when the piece was _judiciously_ returned as not
calculated for the stage. In this judgment I entirely concurred; and had
it been otherwise, it was so natural for me to shrink from public
notice, that any hope I might have had of success would not have
reconciled me altogether to such an exhibition. Mr. C.'s play was, as is
well known, brought forward several years after,