In 1797 Cottle issued a second edition of Coleridge's poems, this time with eleven additional pieces by Lamb,--making fifteen of his in all,--and containing verses by their friend Charles Lloyd. "It is unlikely," observes Canon Ainger, "that this little venture brought any profit to its authors, or that a subsequent volume of blank verse by Lamb and Lloyd in the following year proved more remunerative." In 1798 Lamb, anxious for his sister's sake to add to his slender income, composed his "miniature romance," as Talfourd calls it, "Rosamund Gray;" and this little volume, which has not yet lost its charm, proved a moderate success. Shelley, writing from Italy to Leigh Hunt in 1819, said of it: "What a lovely thing is his 'Rosamund Gray'! How much knowledge of the sweetest and deepest part of our nature in it! When I think of such a mind as Lamb's, when I see how unnoticed remain things of such exquisite and complete perfection, what should I hope for myself if I had not higher objects in view than fame?" It is rather unpleasant, in view of this generous--if overstrained-- tribute, to find the object of it referring later to the works of his encomiast as "thin sown with profit or delight." [10] In 1802 Lamb published in a small duodecimo his blank-verse tragedy, "John Woodvil,"--it had previously been declined by John Kemble as unsuited to the stage,--and in 1806 was produced at the Drury Lane Theatre his farce "Mr. H.," the summary failure of which is chronicled with much humor in the Letters. [11] The "Tales from Shakspeare," by Charles and Mary Lamb, were published by Godwin in 1807, and a second edition was called for in the following year. Lamb was now getting on surer--and more remunerative--ground; and in 1808 he prepared for the firm of Longmans his masterly "Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets contemporary with Shakspeare." Concerning this work he wrote to Manning:-- "Specimens are becoming fashionable. We have Specimens of Ancient English Poets, Specimens of Modern English Poets, Specimens of Ancient English Prose Writers, without end. They used to be called 'Beauties.' You have seen Beauties of Shakspeare? so have many people that never saw any beauties _in_ Shakspeare," From Charles Lamb's "Specimens" dates, as we know, the revival of the study of the old English dramatists other than Shakespeare. He was the first to call attention to the neglected beauties of those great Elizabethans, Webster, Marlowe, Ford, Dekker, Massinger,--no longer accounted mere "mushrooms that sprang up in a ring under the great oak of Arden." [12]