Chapter XVII: Letter 12: To HENRY MARTIN, ESQ., OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

DEDICATORY LETTER TO THE "FALL OF ROBESPIERRE," A DRAMA IN THREE ACTS BY COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY.

Dear Sir,

Accept as a small testimony of my grateful attachment, the following Dramatic Poem, in which I have endeavoured to detail, in an interesting form, the fall of a man whose great bad actions have cast a disastrous lustre on his name. In the execution of the work, as intricacy of plot could not have been attempted without a gross violation of recent facts, it has been my sole aim to imitate the impassioned and highly figurative language of the French Orators, and to develop the characters of the chief actors on a vast stage of horrors.

Yours fraternally, S. T. COLERIDGE.

Jesus College, September 22, 1794.

[Note: Letters XXXVI-XLII follow No. 12.]

This dedicatory letter is no doubt an apology for a play destitute of dramatic art. The declamatory speeches may be an intentional imitation of the harangues of the Revolutionaries, but they are more likely to be the product of the inflation of youth. The redeeming feature of the play is the beautiful little lyric, "Domestic Peace", which is in rhythm an imitation of Collins' "How Sleep the Brave".

The scheme of Pantisocracy was not much further forward at the close of 1794 than it had been in the summer; and Southey had been advised to try it in Wales instead of on the banks of the Susquehanna. Coleridge writes in December: