From John Jay to William Livingston, [27 August 1787]
To William Livingston
[NYork 27 Augt 1787]
Dr Sir
Since yours by Col. Mason I have recd. a Letter from Mr. Ridley1 mentioning your having been there. [in terms?] He was much pleased with that mark
of your attentions and I am glad he recd. it for I believe him to be a worthy man. I thank you for introducing Col. Mason to me; he really is a man of Talents and an agreable Companion—There are few with whom on so short an acquaintance I have been so much pleased with and I wish ^regret^ that it had been was not convenient to him to have remained longer in this city—[illegible] be pleased to present my Comps. to him, and assure him of my Respect and Esteem—
The long Session of the Convention will I doubt not produce a system so well matured and wise as to leave no Room for applying the moral of the old Fable Montes partuviunt—2 When You ha return from Pha. we expect hope for the Pleasure of ha seeing you here—our little Girls are still speckled by with a sad Eruption which has given them & us much Trouble, and which may perhaps have saved them from some more serious Complaints—Peter is now at Rye where I think it best to leave him a little longer, for at this season the City is generally less healthy than that part of the Country—[illegible] I am Dr Sr yr afft & hble Servt
The Exy Govr Livingston
Dft, NNC (EJ: 8289).
2. In his reply of 4 Sept., ALS, NNC (EJ: 6897), WL wrote “The mountains will bring forth before long; but as they will go longer than any the best man-and-wife upon earth would have calculated, it is less to be feared that the birth will be such a fœtus as a ridiculus mus, than a monstrum horrendium ingenit.” In this case WL is substituting for JJ’s reference to Aesop’s fable, a variation on “Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum” [A monster frightful, formless, immense, with sight removed] from Virgil’s The Aeneid (III, 658).