Foscolo (Ugo)

Autograph letter signed ('Ugo Foscolo') to an unidentified female correspondent, in French, apologising for the delay in replying to her letter and adding "I grew at the same time the plants with which you have kindly embellished my little garden and I invoked the sun and the rain and the spring to be able to offer you the first flowers, but the lauries have lost their freshness and will only recover it in autumn; and the roses required to be planted on the plain ground in order to bloom again [...] I dare ask you to accept and cultivate the jasmine that the servants of nature call Gardenia Major [...] I have been growing it for years and for the past year I have grown it for you [...] it is perhaps the most beautiful but certainly the most ritrose of the plants from Africa and if I had to choose between writing a beautiful poem and growing a beautiful jasmine, I would prefer being a gardener rather than a poet", two pages, some browning overall, minor handling wear, 4to, Digamma Cottage [London], 26 June n.y. [c. 1824]