" But this was nothing to a fit of writing classical poetry
which soon seized him, in which his Molly figured away as "Maria."
The letter containing the carmen was endorsed by her, "Hebrew
verses sent me by my honoured husband. I thowt to have had a
letter about killing the pig, but must wait. Mem., to send the
poetry to Sir Peter Arley, as my husband desires." And in a post-
scriptum note in his handwriting it was stated that the Ode had
appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, December 1782.
Her letters back to her husband (treasured as fondly by him as if
they had been M. T. Ciceronis Epistolae) were more satisfactory to
an absent husband and father than his could ever have been to her.
She told him how Deborah sewed her seam very neatly every day, and
read to her in the books he had set her; how she was a very
"forrard," good child, but would ask questions her mother could not
answer, but how she did not let herself down by saying she did not
know, but took to stirring the fire, or sending the "forrard" child
on an errand. Matty was now the mother's darling, and promised
(like her sister at her age), to be a great beauty. I was reading
this aloud to Miss Matty, who smiled and sighed a little at the
hope, so fondly expressed, that "little Matty might not be vain,
even if she were a bewty.
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