a whole scene is
to be found where the author ventured in the original edition (1851) to
introduce a young girl at the midnight _gaudiolum_ or carnival of the
monks, she being apparently disguised as a monk, like Lucifer himself.
This whole passage or series of passages was left out in the later
editions, whether because it was considered too daring by his critics or
perhaps not quite daring enough to give full spirit to the scene.

Turning now to "The New England Tragedies," we find that as far back as
1839, before he had conceived of "Christus," he had thought of a drama
on Cotton Mather. Then a suggestion came to him in 1856 from his German
friend, Emanuel Vitalis Scherb, of whom he writes on March 16, 1856:
"Scherb wants me to write a poem on the Puritans and the Quakers. A good
subject for a tragedy." On March 25 and 26 we find him looking over
books on the subject, especially Besse's "Sufferings of the Quakers;" on
April 2 he writes a scene of the play; on May 1 and 2 he is pondering
and writing notes, and says: "It is delightful to revolve in one's mind
a new conception." He also works upon it in a fragmentary way in July
and in November, and remarks, in the midst of it, that he has lying on
his table more than sixty requests for autographs. As a background to
all of this lie the peculiar excitements of that stormy summer of 1856,
when his friend Sumner was struck down in the United States Senate and
he himself, meeting with an accident, was lamed for weeks and was unable
to go to Europe with his children as he had intended. The first rough
draft of "Wenlock Christison," whose title was afterwards changed to
"John Endicott," and which was the first of "The New England Tragedies,"
was not finished till August 27, 1857, and the work alternated for a
time with that done on "Miles Standish;" but it was more than ten years
(October 10, 1868) before it was published, having first been written in
prose, and only ten copies printed and afterwards rewritten in verse.
With it was associated the second New England Tragedy, "Giles Corey" of
the Salem farms, written rapidly in February of that same year. The
volume never made a marked impression; even the sympathetic Mr. Fields,
the publisher, receiving it rather coldly. It never satisfied even its
author, and the new poetic idea which occurred to him on April 11, 1871,
and which was to harmonize the discord of "The New England Tragedies"
was destined never to be fulfilled. In