Merry had meanwhile been engaged in other literary ventures. "Paulina", a tale in verse, had appeared towards the close of 1787. "Diversity", an elaborate ode, in the following year and, in 1789, the "Ambitious Vengeance", a drama, which in plot, character, and situation is a travesty of "Macbeth". It was never acted. In the beginning of the same year he wrote the ode for the recovery of the king recited by Mrs. Siddons on 21 April. But the events of the 14th July in Paris gave a new direction to his energies, and coloured the rest of his life. Merry did not judge the French Revolution, but judged everything by it; his friends, himself, literature, art, all civil and social relations. He went immediately to Paris, visited the Assembly, where he saw "some disorder, but all from zeal", and on his return published the "Laurel of Liberty". The poem was ridiculed by Walpole, who fastens with glee upon his "gossamery tears" and "silky oceans". In 1790, Merry presented himself as a candidate for the laureateship, but his principles, already the talk of the town, made his candidature hopeless; and though the "World" moved mountains on his behalf, the court was all for Pye. In the summer of 1791 he was again in Paris, presented to the Assembly a treatise on the "Nature of a Free Government", and resumed an acquaintance with the artist David. On 14 July his ode on the "Fall of the Bastille" was declaimed at a meeting in the Strand of "1,500 English gentlemen", sympathisers with the French Revolution. Three months previously his "Lorenzo", a tragedy, had a brief success at Covent Garden, and in August 1791 he married the well-known actress Ann Brunton.