[Of this dramatic work I have little to say in addition to the short printed note which will be found attached to it.  It was composed at Racedown, in Dorset, during the latter part of the year 1795, and in the following year.  Had it been the work of a later period of life, it would have been different in some respects from what it is now.  The plot would have been something more complex, and a greater variety of characters introduced to relieve the mind from the pressure of incidents so mournful.  The manners also would have been more attended to.  My care was almost exclusively given to the passions and the characters, and the position in which the persons in the drama stood relatively to each other, that the reader (for I had then no thought of the stage) might be moved, and to a degree instructed, by lights penetrating somewhat into the depths of our nature.  In this endeavour, I cannot think, upon a very late review, that I have failed.  As to the scene and period of action, little more was required for my purpose than the absence of established law and government, so that the agents might be at liberty to act on their own impulses.  Nevertheless, I do remember, that having a wish to colour the manners in some degree from local history more than my knowledge enabled me to do, I read Redpath’s ‘History of the Borders’, but found there nothing to my purpose.  I once made an observation to Sir W. Scott, in which he concurred, that it was difficult to conceive how so dull a book could be written on such a subject.  Much about the same time, but little after, Coleridge was employed in writing his tragedy of ‘Remorse’; and it happened that soon after, through one of the Mr. Poole’s, Mr. Knight, the actor, heard that we had been engaged in writing plays, and upon his suggestion, mine was curtailed, and I believe Coleridge’s also, was offered to Mr. Harris, manager of Covent Garden.  For myself, I had no hope, nor even a wish (though a successful play would in the then state of my finances have been a most welcome piece of good fortune), that he should accept my performance; so that I incurred no disappointment when the piece was judiciously returned as not calculated for the stage.  In this judgment I entirely concurred:  and had it been otherwise, it was so natural for me to shrink from public notice, that any hope I might have had of success would not have reconciled me altogether to such an exhibition.  Mr. C.’s play was, as is well known, brought forward several years after, through the kindness of Mr. Sheridan.  In conclusion, I may observe, that while I was composing this play, I wrote a short essay, illustrative of that constitution and those tendencies of human nature which make the apparently ‘motiveless’ actions of bad men intelligible to careful observers.  This was partly done with reference to the character of Oswald, and his persevering endeavour to lead the man he disliked into so heinous a crime; but still more to preserve in my distinct remembrance,