The Fall of Robespierre

To
H. Martin, Esq.
of
Jesus College
Cambridge

Dear Sir,

Accept, as a small testimony of my grateful attachment, the following dramatic poem, in which I have endeavoured to detail, in an interesting form, the fall of a man, whose great bad actions have cast a disastrous lustre on his name. In the execution of the work, as intricacy of plot could not have been attempted without a gross violation of recent facts, it has been my sole aim to imitate the empassioned and highly figurative language of the French orators, and to develop the characters of the chief actors on a vast stage of horrors.

Act I

Scene—The Thuilleries.