I should feel more uneasy than I have done under the impossibility of replying sooner to your last most welcome letter, if I had not commissioned Dame Elizabeth

(so named when we lay side by side in the boat of the Peak Cavern,

like two figures on an old monument) to tell you I would write on the first possible opportunity. The endless round of occupations & engagements in which I am involved in London, you can hardly conceive: they are such as literally not to leave me an interval of rest. Yesterday I got to this quiet Rectory after a most fatiguing morning. To day I have, as a matter not to be delayed, written a short letter to Charles Lamb, which can hardly fail of making him heartily sorry for what he has done, & if he can forgive himself as easily as I forgive him, we shall meet again upon our old terms.

That This done, I set out with you for the forest of merry Sherwood.

A tale of Robin Hood might without impropriety be as little regular in its structure as he was in his way of life.

I think a xxx striking introduction might be made by the funeral of his mother (dying in childbed of him) the immediate departure of the Earl his father to the Crusades, & the delivery of the infant to a kinsman Sir Ranulph as guardian, & the parental care of Father Hugh, the Earls foster-brother. Twelve years may be allowed to elapse, during which the boy has grown wild, his guardian being always engaged in political turmoils, & the Priest an indulgent man: xxxx xxx The Earls heart is then brought home from the Holy Land to be xxx deposited in the same grave with his wife. And then an interval of seven or eight years more, when the proper story of the poem commences – with a service for the souls of the Earl & his Wife. After the service Father Hugh takes the opportunity of mildly lecturing Robin the young Earl Robert, for his propensities to forest sports, & inferior company, & his utter neglect of knightly accomplishments, – it having previously been shown that this had arisen from his guardians constant absence, & entire neglect. It appears now that Ranulph xxx family intention is to xxx bring about a marriage between Robert, & his only dau child Aveline. – But Aveline has already given her heart to Gilbert with the white hand, a Squire of Low Degree, & Robin as his comrades have from childhood called him declares his determination never to marry any body but Maid Marian the Millers daughter. Marian is a skylark, – & Aveline a turtle dove. Gilbert of a gentle, poetical disposition, & yet Robin & he are bosom friends

Ranulph is now one of King Johns

favourites, & on the watch to arrest & make away with King Richard

on his return from captivity. The story is to be wound up by Robin Hood’s delivering Cour de Lion from this danger, being reinstated in his rank &c, but resigning them all to Gilbert & Aveline, & chusing to pass his days always as the King of the forest. It will be easy enough to make out this part of the fable, – which indeed will shape itself while the rest is in progress.

But I must conclude, – not to lose the post, & for the same reason must do without a frank. You may direct to me under cover to John Rickman Esq^r New Palace Yard. – Only one word more, – I hope I have put your books

in a way of being reviewed in the Quarterly.