TALBOT572

Harrow ¹
June 17. 1812 -

My dear Mamma,

Is your question, how sheep can place themselves most advantageously so as to protect themselves from a shower of snow? - You have not answered my letter of the 12^th. I should like to see myself growing in mignionette [sic] best - I have seen something like the daisy, in a flower called variegated spurge - Pray preserve me a specimen of the flower - How high are the hops now? - No wonder my hand is half spoiled, I have so much to write here, I shall not recover it till the holidays, which bye the bye, I believe, begin on the 28^th of July It only wants 5 weeks six days to them - It is more than 9 weeks since I saw you - I am translating Micyllus and Alectryon ² for you, that you may see the stile in which Lucian ³ wrote, it is very long - Can you devise some manner now by which I may amuse myself in the holidays with my chemistry, in some place out of doors, or in some garret room, like my laboratory at London - I say now that we may not lose half the holidays in planning - Where is M^r F. ⁴ now? It is a very rainy cold day. - You have not told me whether Jane ⁵ is at Malvern ⁶ or Cheltenham - Make them stay at Malvern till my holidays are over - Has Kit ⁷ come home for his holidays yet? - Today my lessons are Horace's Odes - Theocritus - and Cornelius Nepos ⁸ - of which the second is by far the hardest, as he writes in his plaguy Doric Dialect -. I wish there never had been such people as Dorians - It takes some consideration to find out that potilexath is put Dorice for proselexato (he answered) but so it is - and Krana for Krene (a fountain) Phrasdo for Phrazo (I speak) - ammi for hemin (to us) &c - As this verse

Enth' Ermas pratistos ap' Ü reos × eipe de Daphni
for
Elth'. Ermes protistos ap Ú reos × eipe de Daphni
(Mercury came first from the mountain; and said O Daphnis -)

If you like this sort of classical entertainment I can give you plenty of it - Send me some Latin to correct for you - I am tired of so long a schooltime, and I want the holidays more than I usually do - I know a boy of the name of Martin (a very nice boy indeed) and in the same part of the school with me, who lives 4 miles from Malvern ⁹ I am trying to make some arrangements to go with him - He says that most likely his father is coming for him, and will take me with him, but I don't much like that somehow - I want to go home 2 or 3 days before the holidays under some pretext or other; which will be an augmentation of them. You see I can not write a bit,

So good bye

Y^r Aff^te Son
W. H. F. Talbot

Lady E. Feilding
Malvern
Worcester