I told you plagued me so much, and he thinks
it one of the very best: it is 'All's Well that Ends Well.'"

The work was finished in the autumn of 1806 and published at the end
of the year, dated 1807. Lamb sent Wordsworth a copy on January 29,
1807, with the following letter:--

"We have book'd off from Swan and Two Necks, Lad Lane, this day
(per Coach) the Tales from Shakespear. You will forgive the
plates, when I tell you they were left to the direction of Godwin,
who left the choice of subjects to the bad baby, who from mischief
(I suppose) has chosen one from damn'd beastly vulgarity (vide
'Merch. Venice'), where no atom of authority was in the tale to
justify it--to another has given a name which exists not in the
tale, Nic Bottom, and which she thought would be funny, though in
this I suspect _his_ hand, for I guess her reading does not reach
far enough to know Bottom's Christian name--and one of Hamlet, and
Grave digging, a scene which is not hinted at in the story, and
you might as well have put King Canute the Great reproving his
courtiers--the rest are Giants and Giantesses. Suffice it, to save
our taste and damn our folly, that we left it all to a friend W.G.
who in the first place cheated me into putting a name to them,
which I did not mean, but do not repent, and then wrote a puff
about their _simplicity_, &c., to go with the advertisement as in
my name! Enough of this egregious dupery. I will try to abstract
the load of teazing circumstances from the Stories and tell you
that I am answerable for Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet,
Othello, for occasionally a tail piece or correction of grammar,
for none of the cuts and all of the spelling. The rest is my
Sister's.--We think Pericles of hers the best, and Othello of
mine--but I hope all have some good. As You Like It, we like
least.

"So much, only begging you to tear out the cuts and give them to
Johnny, as 'Mrs. Godwin's fancy'.

"C.L.

"_Our love to all_.

"I had almost forgot, My part of the Preface begins in the middle
of a sentence, in last but one page, after a colon, thus:--

":--_which if they be happily so done_, &c. (see page 2, line 7
from foot).

The former part hath a more feminine turn and does hold me up
something as an instructor to young ladies: but upon my modesty's
honour I wrote it