Mother,
CATHERINE WELBORE PERCIVAL."
"_P.S._--Nevile assures me that his cousin, the Bishop, would perform the
rite. This would be a _great thing_. One must think of N's position in the
county."
"Venus, wounded in the side ..." is the opening line of an old poem of
Senhouse's, one of those "Greek Idylls" with which he made his bow to the
world--old placid stories illuminated by modern romantic fancy; nursery-
rhyme versions, we may call them, of the myths. "Venus, wounded in the
side," recounts how the Dame, struck by a shaft of her son's, ran moaning
from one ally to another seeking Pity, the only balm that could assuage
her wound. To the new lover, to the old, to the fresh-wedded, to the long-
mated: from one to the other she ran--hand clapt to throbbing heart. None
could help her. "Pity! What's that?" cried the first. "I triumph: rejoice
with me. Is she not like the sun in a valley?" The second cursed her for a
procuress. The bride stirred in her sleep, and whispered, "Kiss me again,
Beloved." As for the fourth, he said, "All my Pity was for myself. It is
gone; now I am frost-bound." Venus wept: Adonis healed the wound.
Sanchia, reading long afterwards, saw in it a parallel to her case, when
she, stricken deep, ran about London ways for a soothing lotion.
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