lock or a little later--and I
thought the visit for the quarter of an hour would as effectually
prevent to-morrow's meeting as if the whole two hours' blessing had
been laid to heart--to-morrow I shall see you, Ba--my sweetest. But
there are cold winds blowing to-day--how do you bear them, my Ba?
'_Care_' you, pray, pray, care for all _I_ care about--and be well, if
God shall please, and bless me as no man ever was blessed! Now I kiss
you, and will begin a new thinking of you--and end, and begin, going
round and round in my circle of discovery,--_My_ lotos-blossom!
because they _loved_ the lotos, were lotos-lovers,--[Greek: lotou t'
erotes], as Euripides writes in the [Greek: Troades].

Your own

P.S. See those lines in the _Athenaeum_ on Pulci with Hunt's
translation--all wrong--'_che non si sente_,' being--'that one does
not _hear_ him' i.e. the ordinarily noisy fellow--and the rest, male,
pessime! Sic verte, meo periculo, mi ocelle!

Where's Luigi Pulci, that one don't the man see?
He just now yonder in the copse has '_gone it_' (_n_'ando)
Because across his mind there came a fancy;
He'll wish to fancify, perhaps, a sonnet!

Now Ba thinks nothing can be worse than that? Then read _this_ which I
really told Hunt and got his praise for. Poor dear wonderful
persecuted Pietro d'Abano wrote this quatrain on the people's plaguing
him about his mathematical studies and wanting to burn him--he helped
to build Padua Cathedral, wrote a Treatise on Magic still extant, and
passes for a conjuror in his country to this day--when there is a
storm the mothers tell the children that he is in the air; his pact
with the evil one obliged him to drink no _milk_; no natural human
food! You know Tieck's novel about him? Well, this quatrain is said, I
believe truly, to have been discovered in a well near Padua some fifty
years ago.

Studiando le mie cifre, col compasso
Rilevo, che presto saro sotterra--
Perche del mio saper si fa gran chiasso,
E gl'ignoranti m'hanno mosso guerra.

Affecting, is it not, in its simple, child like plaining? Now so, if I
remember, I turned it--word for word--

Studying my ciphers, with the compass
I reckon--who soon shall be below ground,
Because of my lore they make great 'rumpus,'
And against me war makes each dull rogue round.

Say that you forgive me to-morrow!

[The following is in E.B.B.'s han