These verses, printed in Mr. W.C. Hazlitt's Lamb and Hazlitt, 1900, were addressed:—
"For SAINT CECILIA,
At Sign'r Vincenzo Novello's
Music Repository,
No. 67 Frith Street.
Soho."
They were signed C. Lamb. One might imagine Emma, the nut-brown maid, to be Emma Isola, as that was a phrase Lamb was fond of applying to her—assuming the title "The Sisters" to be a pleasantry; but the late Miss Mary Sabilia Novello assured me that the sisters were herself, Emma Aloysia Novello and Clara Anastasia Novello (see above).
* * * * *
Page 102. Love will Come.
"Love will Come" was included by Lamb in a letter to Miss Fryer, a school-fellow of Emma Isola. Lamb writes:—"By desire of Emma I have attempted new words to the old nonsense of Tartar Drum; but with the nonsense the sound and spirit of the tune are unaccountably gone, and we have agreed to discard the new version altogether. As you may be more fastidious in singing mere silliness, and a string of well-sounding images without sense or coherence—Drums of Tartars, who use none, and Tulip trees ten foot high, not to mention Spirits in Sunbeams, &c.,—than we are, so you are at liberty to sacrifice an enspiriting movement to a little sense, tho' I like LITTLE SENSE less than his vagarying younger sister NO SENSE—so I send them.—The 4th line of 1st stanza is from an old Ballad."
The old ballad is, I imagine, "Waly, Waly," of which Lamb was very fond.
Page 102. To Margaret W——.
This poem, believed to be the last that Lamb wrote, was printed in The
Athenaeum for March 14, 1835. I have not been able to ascertain who
Margaret W—— was.
* * * * *