the model of Shakspere in my Play, and endeavour after a colloquial ease
and spirit, something like him. I could so easily imitate Milton's
versification; but my ear & feeling would reject it, or any approaches
to it, in the _drama_. I do not know whether to be glad or sorry that
witches have been detected aforetimes in shutting up of wombs. I
certainly invented that conceit, and its coincidence with fact is
incidental [? accidental], for I never heard it. I have not seen those
verses on Col. Despard--I do not read any newspapers. Are they short, to
copy without much trouble? I should like to see them.

I just send you a few rhymes from my play, the only rhymes in it--a
forest-liver giving an account of his amusements:--

What sports have you in the forest?
Not many,--some few,--as thus.
To see the sun to bed, and see him rise,
Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes,
Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him:
With all his fires and travelling glories round him:
Sometimes the moon on soft night-clouds to rest,
Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast,
And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep
Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep:
Sometimes outstretch'd in very idleness,
Nought doing, saying little, thinking less,
To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air,
Go eddying round; and small birds how they fare,
When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn,
Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn;
And how the woods berries and worms provide,