Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 14, 1805, Lamb says: "You had her [Mary's] Lines about the 'Lady Blanch.' You have not had some which she wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung up where that print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully interpreted two female figures from L. da Vinci) had hung, in our room. 'Tis light and pretty." * * * * * Page 42. _Lines on the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, called The Virgin of the Rocks_. This was the picture, one version of which hangs in the National Gallery, that was known to Lamb's friends as his "Beauty," and which led to the Scotchman's mistake in the _Elia_ essay "Imperfect Sympathies." Page 42. _On the Same_. By Mary Lamb. In the letter to Dorothy Wordsworth of June 14, 1805, quoted just above, Lamb says: "I cannot resist transcribing three or four Lines which poor Mary [she was at this time away from home in one of her enforced absences] made upon a Picture (a Holy Family) which we saw at an Auction only one week before she left home.... They are sweet Lines, and upon a sweet Picture." Mary Lamb wrote little verse besides the _Poetry for Children_ (see Vol. III. of this edition). To the pieces that are printed in the present volume I would add the lines suggested by the death of Captain John Wordsworth, the poet's brother, in the foundering of the _Abergavenny_ in February, 1805, when Coleridge was in Malta, which were sent by Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth, May 7, 1805:-- Why is he wandering on the sea? Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be. By slow degrees he'd steal away Their woe, and gently bring a ray (So happily he'd time relief) Of comfort from their very grief. He'd tell them that their brother dead, When years have passed o'er their head, Will be remember'd with such holy, True, and perfect melancholy, That ever this lost brother John Will be their hearts' companion. His voice they'll always hear, his face they'll always see; There's nought in life so sweet as such a memory. * * * * * SONNETS Page 43. _To Miss Kelly_. Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882)--or Fanny Kelly, as she was usually called--was Lamb's favourite actress of his middle and later life and a personal friend of himself and his sister: so close that Lamb proposed marriage to her. See Lamb's criticisms of Miss Kelly's acting in Vol. I., and notes. Another sonnet addressed by Lamb to Miss Kelly will be found on page 59 of the present volume. Page 43. _On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden_. This is, I think, Lamb's only poem the inspiration of which was drawn from nature. * * * * * Page 44. _The Family Name_.