urs or mine), and where
tears should course I'd draw the waters down: to say where a joke should
come in or a pun be left out: to bring my _personae_ on and off like a
Beau Nash; and I'd Frankenstein them there: to bring three together on
the stage at once; they are so shy with me, that I can get no more than
two; and there they stand till it is the time, without being the season,
to withdraw them.

I am teaching Emma Latin to qualify her for a superior governess-ship;
which we see no prospect of her getting. 'Tis like feeding a child with
chopped hay from a spoon. Sisyphus--his labours were as nothing to it.

Actives and passives jostle in her nonsense, till a deponent enters,
like Chaos, more to embroil the fray. Her prepositions are suppositions;
her conjunctions copulative have no connection in them; her concords
disagree; her interjections are purely English "Ah!" and "Oh!" with a
yawn and a gape in the same tongue; and she herself is a lazy,
block-headly supine. As I say to her, ass _in praesenti_ rarely makes a
wise man _in futuro_.

But I daresay it was so with you when you began Latin, and a good while
after.

Good-by! Mary's love.

Yours truly, C. LAMB.

[This is the second letter to Mrs. Shelley, _nee_ Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin, the widow of the poet and the author of _Frankenstein_. She had
been living in England since 1823; and in 1826 had issued anonymously
_The Last Man_. That she kept much in touch with the Lambs' affairs we
know by her letters to Leigh Hunt.

Major Butterworth has kindly supplied me with a copy of her letter to
Mary Lamb which called forth Lamb's reply. It runs thus:--

Kentish Town, 22 July, 1827.

My dear Miss Lamb,

You have been long at Enfield--I hardly know yet whether you are
returned--and I quit town so very soon that I have not time to--as I
exceedingly wish--call on you before I go. Nevertheless believe (if such
familiar expression be not unmeet from me) that I love you with all my
heart--gratefully and sincerely--and that when I return I shall seek you
with, I hope, not too much zeal--but it will be with great eagerness.

You will be glad to hear that I have every reason to believe that the
worst of my pecuniary troubles are over--as I am promised a regular tho'
small income from my father-in-law. I mean to be very industrious _on
other accounts_ this summer, so I hope nothing will go very ill with me
or mine.