I am afraid Miss Kelly will think me dreadfully rude for not having
availed myself of her kind invitation. Will you present my compliments
to her, and say that my embarassments, harassings and distance from town
are the guilty causes of my omission--for which with her leave I will
apologize in person on my return to London.
All kind and grateful remembrances to Mr. Lamb, he must not forget me
nor like me one atom less than I delight to flatter myself he does now,
when again I come to seize a dinner perforce at your cottage. Percy is
quite well--and is reading with great extacy (_sic_) the Arabian Nights.
I shall return I suppose some one day in September. God bless you.
Yours affectionately,
MARY W. SHELLEY.
_Commey fo_ is Lamb's _comme il faut_.
"In the 'Evangely.'" If by Evangely he meant Gospel, Lamb was a little
confused here, I think. Probably Isaiah iv. I was in his mind: "and in
that day seven women shall take hold of one man." But he may also have
half remembered Luke xvii. 35.
"I am teaching Emma Latin." Mary Lamb contributed to _Blackwood's
Magazine_ for June, 1829, the following little poem describing Emma
Isola's difficulties in these lessons:--
TO EMMA, LEARNING LATIN, AND DESPONDING
Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears,
And call up smiles into thy pallid face,
Pallid and care-worn with thy arduous race:
In few brief months thou hast done the work of years.
To young beginnings natural are these fears.
A right good scholar shalt thou one day be,
And that no distant one; when even she,
Who now to thee a star far off appears,
That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid--
The language-loving Sarah[1] of the Lake--
Shall hail thee Sister Linguist. This will make
Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid,
A recompense most rich for all their pains,
Counting thy acquisitions their best gains.
[Footnote 1: Daughter of S.T. Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist
in the Greek and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the
Abipones.]
A letter to an anonymous correspondent, in the summer of 1827, has an
amusing passage concerning Emma Isola's Latin. Lamb says that they made
Cary laugh by translating "Blast you" into such elegant verbiage as
"Deus afflet tibi." He adds, "How some parsons would have goggled and
what would Hannah More say? I don't like
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