e were going to do it--if we had,--the mind thus runs back to what was
so possible and feasible at one time, while the thing was pending, and
would fain give a bias to causes so slender and insignificant, as the
skittle-player bends his body to give a bias to the bowl he has already
delivered from his hand, not considering that what is once determined,
be the causes ever so trivial or evanescent, is in the individual
instance unalterable. Indeed, to be a great philosopher, in the
practical and most important sense of the term, little more seems
necessary than to be convinced of the truth of the maxim which the wise
man repeated to the daughter of King Cophetua, _That if a thing is, it
is,_ and there is an end of it!

We often make life unhappy in wishing things to have turned out
otherwise than they did, merely because that is possible to the
imagination, which is impossible in fact. I remember, when Lamb's farce
was damned (for damned it was, that's certain), I used to dream every
night for a month after (and then I vowed I would plague myself no more
about it) that it was revived at one of the minor or provincial theatres
with great success, that such and such retrenchments and alterations
had been made in it, and that it was thought _it might do at the other
House._ I had heard indeed (this was told in confidence to Lamb) that
_Gentleman_ Lewis was present on the night of its performance, and
said that if he had had it he would have made it, by a few judicious
curtailments, 'the most popular little thing that had been brought out
for some time.' How often did I conjure up in recollection the full
diapason of applause at the end of the _Prologue,_ and hear my ingenious
friend in the first row of the pit roar with laughter at his own wit!
Then I dwelt with forced complacency on some part in which it had been
doing well: then we would consider (in concert) whether the long tedious
opera of the _Travellers,_ which preceded it, had not tired people
beforehand, so that they had not spirits left for the quaint and
sparkling 'wit skirmishes' of the dialogue; and we all agreed it might
have gone down after a tragedy, except Lamb himself, who swore he had
no hopes of it from the beginning, and that he knew the name of the hero
when it came to be discovered could not be got over. Mr. _H----,_ thou
wert damned! Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announced
thy appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of p