My dear Cottle, … Public affairs are in strange confusion. I am afraid that I shall prove, at least, as good a Prophet as Bard. Oh, doom’d to fall, my country! enslaved and vile! But may God make me a foreboder of evils never to come! I have heard from Sheridan, desiring me to write a tragedy. I have no genius that way; Robert Southey has. I think highly of his ‘Joan of Arc’ and cannot help prophesying, that he will be known to posterity, as Shakspeare’s great grandson. I think he will write a tragedy or tragedies.