Page:The history of Mendelssohn's oratorio 'Elijah'.djvu/141

 THE REVISED ORATORIO.

��wait my reply. For you know that it cannot be published a day before Simrock has also done it, and that will take much time still. However, I make haste answering, and shall also do so with your next. I do not think that I shall be able to be in London before the 13th April. But I am sure that is early enough, for I am sure everything which you take in

hand is right.


 * Always yours truly,


 * ' Felix Mendelssohn."

" Leipzig, March 3, 1847.

" My dear Sir, — I have just received your letter of the 24th, and hasten to reply. I like all the passages of the translation you send me with but two exceptions. In No. 30, * that Thou would'st please destroy me ' sounds so odd to me — is it scriptural? If it is, I have no objection, but if not, pray substitute something else. And then in the new No. 8 [the widow scene] — the words from Psalm vi. which you hesitated to adopt are, of course, out of the ques- tion; but I also object to the second part of the sentence which you propose to add to the words of Psalm xxxviii. [6], viz. : ' I water my couch,' etc. [Psalm vi., 6.] — I do dislike this so very much, and it is so poetical in the German version. So if you could substitute something in which no * watering of the couch ' occurred, but which gave the idea of the tears, of the night, of all that in its purity.

" But what is this? Does Staudigl not come? Mr. Buxton told me last autumn he was sure to be there.

�� �