The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 705 pages of information about The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6.

The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 705 pages of information about The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6.

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.

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 clergymen, but here and there one.  Cary, the Dante Cary, is a model quite as plain as Parson Primrose, without a shade of silliness.”

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The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.