Memoirs of Anne C.L. Botta,: written by her friends. With selections from her correspondence and from her writings in prose and poetry.

Bnne C. X.:Sotta
The two years of labor I have chalked out for myself rather
weigh upon my spirits. My Paradise by the Lake Fucino in
the Abruzzi will have been fairly earned, if I dare say so, by all
that I have gone through of misery, of bitterness, of disquiet, of
irksome labor and most unrecognized effort, before reaching that
haven of my rest,-to which I look, however, with constant
hope, and a flattering thought that perhaps with peace and
leisure I may yet achieve something worthy in those higher regions of intellect from which my theatrical career has perpetually drawn me- exhausting and inspiring in some degree to
those mental faculties, to which, nevertheless, it cannot give adequate scope or employment. God bless you, dear Anne, and if
you can make use of me in any way, remember that you do me
a service in asking one of me.
I am ever yours very affectionately, FANNY.
LETTERS OF N. P. WILLIS.
NEW-YORK, 1 845.
Dear Miss Lynch:... Poetry is a shadow over the heart
that enables us to see to the bottom-like clouds cutting off the
sunshine from a well. I now see the truth in the well of your
heart, but I do not know as I dare tell you what it is like. You
would be bound to deny a part of it, true or not, and (to tell a
truth that is all my own) I do not yet feel sufficiently taken into
your confidence to venture on translating your pulses to yourself- no; I will not venture!
This much I may say, as a literary godfather, and with a freedom given me by never having seen beyond the edge of your
bonnet till a month ago, that the intense passionateness of your
nature is all ready for utterance in undying language; and that
if you do not breathe your heart soon upon an absorbent object,
you will either be corroded by the stifled intensity of undeveloped
feeling, or you will overflow with poetry and (like other volcanoes that find a vent) blacken the verdure around you with the
cinders of exposed agonies. In short, you must love or be famous!
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