Sackville Street <1>
28th December 1816
Thank you, Carissimo, <2> for the ses of the Moon, <3> but that letter was so litured <4> I began to think the Winter must have been mucho perfusus <5> tempora Bacccho. <6> I am charmed to hear of your incipient reformation, chi commincia bene ha la metà dell’opera, <7> as Guerini has it <illegilbe> Your Box is come from Castleford, <8> it is untouched, & shall remain so. –
Your Mosses are gone long ago. I have not heard yet of any astronomer <9> to be had.
I am happy to tell you I understood your Greek perfectly, I mean in the first letter about the Moon & Venus. <10> Send me some more very easy.
Addiò <11>
State sano e ricordativi di Me <12>
W. H. F. Talbot
Burley <13>
Notes:
1. 31 Sackville Street, London residence of the Feildings, often used as a London base by WHFT.
2. Dearest.
3. See Doc. No: 00735.
4. Probably a variation of the Latin word ‘littera’, meaning letter of the alphabet; a letter, dispatch, epistle, that is, WHFT’s letter was literary.
5. Very steeped, soaked, drenched.
6. ‘By significant Bacchus’. She is probably thinking of ‘multo percussum tempora baccho’, which comes from Albius Tibullus’s Second Book of The Ellegies.
7. He who starts well has already done half the work.
8. Castleford, Yorkshire, 10 mi SE of Leeds, where WHFT went to school from 1815-1816.
9. See Doc. No: 00735.
10. See Doc. No: 00734.
11. Goodbye.
12. Keep well, and remember me.
13. Burley, Stamford.