Note 41 — POEMS 1809-1813.
Reading edition
[Originally, "Ere Garrick died," etc. "By the by, one of my corrections in the fair copy sent yesterday has dived into the bathos some sixty fathom—
'When Garrick died, and Brinsley ceased to write.'
Ceasing to live is a much more serious concern, and ought not to be first; therefore I will let the old couplet stand, with its half rhymes 'sought' and 'wrote' [vide supra, variant ii.] Second thoughts in every thing are best, but, in rhyme, third and fourth don't come amiss.... I always scrawl in this way, and smooth as much as I can, but never sufficiently."—Letter to Lord Holland, September 26, 1812, Letters, 1898, ii. 150.]