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 the mean time, however, he carried them to Europe with him, and seems to have found their only admirer in John Forster, who wrote to him in London: "Your tragedies are very beautiful--beauty everywhere subduing and chastening the sadness; the pictures of nature in delightful contrast to the sorrowful and tragic violence of the laws; truth and unaffectedness everywhere. I hardly know which I like best; but there are things in 'Giles Corey' that have a strange attractiveness for me." Longfellow writes to Fields from Vevey, September 5, 1868: "I do not like your idea of calling the 'Tragedies' sketches. They are not sketches, and only seem so at first because I have studiously left out all that could impede the action. I have purposely made them simple and direct." He later adds: "As to anybody's 'adapting' these 'Tragedies' for the stage, I do not like the idea of it at all. Prevent this if possible. I should, however, like to