TALBOT9406

6 Michaels Grove

22 August 1868

My dear Sir

I am very glad to hear you are come back, and hope to hear you are resuming cuneiforms. You cannot have had hotter weather that we have experienced; I never remember such a summer, not even during my three years stay in the South of Italy. – I have been working hard at my Dictionary, ¹ and have in type up to page 462. – When I look back at part I, I see much that I would alter, but that is a thing of necessity in a study which is tentative and progressive, and I eschew consistency. I am more vexed at seeing so many clerical errors, which arise principally from defective sight, such as may be expected at 73, and partly from haste, as I feel rapidly ageing, and wish to do as much of my work as I can before I give up. I can get no help from the printer’s reader naturally. I am sorry I cannot send you any of Assurbanipal’s inscriptions I have them “in confidence” and I fear I have unintentionally given offence by quoting them in the Dictionary. they are of great interest, but being made up of fragments are full of lacunæ. – If you would like to have the printed sheets of my second part, as I get them, without waiting to the end, I shall have much pleasure in forwarding them to you. I get them dried and pressed about 50 pages at a time, and have now 56 pages (to 408). I expect any another lot soon, I hope before I leave town for a holiday which I expect to do in eight or ten days – D^r Hincks’s “Polyphony” was printed in Dublin 1863, it is a pamphlet of 58 pages, and came out in the “Atlantis Vol. IV” in the form of a Letter to Professor Renouf. ²

I remain, my dear Sir yours very truly
Edwin Norris

H. F. Talbot Esq

&c &c &c

P S. I am now writing the word for the printer, and I am expressing my agreement with you in making it, “I” or “me” generally. Now and then it is certainly “now” as in the old formula “now it came to pass”. I did not think it is ever D^r Oppert’s “quippe qui.”

[envelope:]
Henry Fox Talbot, Esq
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham.