rhymes, like fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable distance of
six or eight lines apart, and calls that "observing the laws of verse."
George tells you, before he recites, that you must listen with great
attention, or you'll miss the rhymes. I did so, and found them pretty
exact. George, speaking of the dead Ossian, exclaimeth, "Dark are the
poet's eyes." I humbly represented to him that his own eyes were dark [?
light], and many a living bard's besides, and recommended "Clos'd are
the poet's eyes." But that would not do. I found there was an antithesis
between the darkness of his eyes and the splendour of his genius; and I
acquiesced.

Your recipe for a Turk's poison is invaluable and truly Marlowish....
Lloyd objects to "shutting-up the womb of his purse" in my Curse (which
for a Christian witch in a Christian country is not too mild, I hope);
do you object? 1 think there is a strangeness in the idea, as well as
"shaking the poor like snakes from his door," which suits the speaker.
Witches illustrate, as fine ladies do, from their own familiar objects,
and snakes and the shutting up of wombs are in their way. I don't know
that this last charge has been before brought against 'em, nor either
the sour milk or the mandrake babe; but I affirm these be things a witch
would do if she could.

My Tragedy will be a medley (as [? and] I intend it to be a medley) of
laughter and tears, prose and verse, and in some places rhyme, songs,
wit, pathos, humour, and, if possible, sublimity; at least, it is not a
fault in my intention, if it does not comprehend most of these
discordant colours. Heaven send they dance not the "Dance of Death!" I
hear that the Two Noble Englishmen have parted no sooner than they set
foot on German earth, but I have not heard the reason--possibly, to give
novelists an handle to exclaim, "Ah me! what things are perfect?" I