in time. It happened well too,
altogether, as you have a friend with you, though Mr. Kenyon does not
come, and will not come, I dare say; for he spoke like a doubter at
the moment; and as this Tuesday wears on, I am not likely to have any
visitors on it after all, and may as well, if the rain quite ceases,
go and spend my solitude on the park a little. Flush wags his tail at
that proposition when I speak it loud out. And I am to write to you
before Friday, and so, am writing, you see ... which I should not,
should not have done if I had not been told; because it is not my turn
to write, ... did you think it was?

Not a word of Malta! except from Mr. Kenyon who talked homilies of it
last Sunday and wanted to speak them to Papa--but it would not do in
any way--now especially--and in a little time there will be a
decision for or against; and I am afraid of _both_ ... which is a
happy state of preparation. Did I not tell you that early in the
summer I did some translations for Miss Thomson's 'Classical Album,'
from Bion and Theocritus, and Nonnus the author of that large (not
great) poem in some forty books of the 'Dionysiaca' ... and the
paraphrases from Apuleius? Well--I had a letter from her the other
day, full of compunction and ejaculation, and declaring the fact that
Mr. Burges had been correcting all the proofs of the poems; leaving
out and emending generally, according to his own particular idea of
the pattern in the mount--is it not amusing? I have been wicked enough
to write in reply that it is happy for her and all readers ... _sua si
bona norint_ ... if during some half hour which otherwise might have
been dedicated by Mr. Burges to patting out the lights of Sophocles
and his peers, he was satisfied with the humbler devastation of E.B.B.
upon Nonnus. You know it is impossible to help being amused. This
correcting is a mania with that man! And then I, who wrote what I did
from the 'Dionysiaca,' with no respect for 'my author,' and an
arbitrary will to 'put the case' of Bacchus and Ariadne as well as I
could, for the sake of the art-illustrations, ... those subjects Miss
Thomson sent me, ... and did it all with full liberty and persuasion
of soul that nobody would think it worth while to compare English with
Greek and refer me back to Nonnus and detect my wanderings from the
text!! But the critic was not to be cheated so! And I do not doubt
that he has set me all 'to rights' from beginning to end; and combed
Aria