From Coleridge's "Destiny of Nations."

[2] The "Monody" referred to was by Cottle, and appeared in a volume of
poems published by him at Bristol in 1795. Coleridge had forwarded the
book to Lamb for his opinion.

[3] The Monody on Chatterton.

[4] Dr. Faustus's.

IV.

TO COLERIDGE,

_June_ 14, 1796,

I am not quite satisfied now with the Chatterton, [1] and with your leave
will try my hand at it again. A master-joiner, you know, may leave a
cabinet to be finished, when his own hands are full. To your list of
illustrative personifications, into which a fine imagination enters, I
will take leave to add the following from Beaumont and Fletcher's "Wife
for a Month;" 'tis the conclusion of a description of a sea-fight: "The
game of _death_ was never played so nobly; the meagre thief grew wanton
in his mischiefs, and his shrunk, hollow eyes smiled on his ruins."
There is fancy in these of a lower order from "Bonduca": "Then did I see
these valiant men of Britain, like boding owls creep into tods of ivy,
and hoot their fears to one another nightly." Not that it is a
personification, only it just caught my eye in a little extract-book I
keep, which is full of quotations from B. and F. in particular, in which
authors I can't help thinking there is a greater richness of poetical
fancy than in any one, Shakspeare excepted. Are you acquainted with
Massinger? At a hazard I will trouble you with a passage from a play of
his called "A Very Woman." The lines are spoken by a lover (disguised)
to his faithless mistress. You will remark the fine effect of the
double endings.

You will by your ear distinguish the lines, for I write 'em as prose.
"Not far from where my father lives, _a lady_, a neighbor by, blest with
as great a _beauty_ as Nature durst bestow without _undoing_, dwelt, and
most happily, as I thought then, and blest the house a thousand times
she _dwelt_ in. This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, when my first
fire knew no adulterate _incense_, nor I no way to flatter but my
_fondness_; in all the bravery my friends could _show me_, in all the
faith my innocence could _give me_, in the best language my true tongue
could _tell me_, and all the broken sighs my sick heart _lend me_, I
sued and served; long did I serve this _lady_, long was my travail, long
my trade to _win her_; with all the duty of my soul I SERVED HER." "Then
she must love." "She did, but never me: she could not _love me_; she
would not lo