I feel your just rebuke. [_Goes out_.]

Scene changes to a bed-room. John sitting alone: a lamp burning by him.

"Infinite torments for finite offences." I will never believe it. How
divines can reconcile this monstrous tenet with the spirit of their
Theology! They have palpably failed in the proof, for to put the
question thus:--If he being infinite--have a care, Woodvil, the latitude
of doubting suits not with the humility of thy condition. What good men
have believed, may be true, and what they profess to find set down
clearly in their scriptures, must have probability in its defence[40].
Touching that other question the Casuists with one consent have
pronounced the sober man accountable for the deeds by him in a state of
drunkenness committed, because tho' the action indeed be such as he,
sober, would never have committed, yet the drunkenness being an act of
the will, by a moral fiction, the issues are accounted voluntary also. I
lose my sleep in attending to these intricacies of the schoolmen. I lay
till daybreak the other morning endeavouring to draw a line of
distinction between sin of direct malice and sin of malice indirect, or
imputable only by the sequence. My brain is overwrought by these
labours, and my faculties will shortly decline into impotence. [_Throws
himself on a bed_.]

End of the Fourth Act.

[Footnote 40: Lamb had crossed out this passage from "Infinite
torments," and written at "touching" "begin here."]

In the fifth act of the printed play [page 192] we have simply "Margaret
enters." In the MS. Sandford prepares his master for her advent, and
announces her thus:--

_Sandford_. Wilt please you to see company to-day, Sir?

_John_. Who thinks me worth the visiting?

_Sandford_. One that traveled hard last night to see you,
She waits to know your pleasure.

_John_. A lady too! pray send her to me--
Some curiosity, I suppose.

[_Sandford goes out and returns with Margaret_.]

_Margaret_. Woodvil![41]

[Footnote 41: "Woodvil!" and some illegible words struck out, and nothing
substituted.]

_John_. Comes Margaret here, etc.

When, a page further on [page 194], John has declared to Margaret that

This earth holds not alive so poor a thing as I am--
I was not always thus,

the MS. went on (but the passage is struck out as "bad"):--

You must bear with me, Margaret, as a child,
For I am weak as tender Infancy
And cannot bear rebuke--
W