Chapter III: Part 3

I have the usual Story to tell of myself: middling well: still here, pottering about my House, in which I expect an invalid Niece; and preparing for my Ship in June. William Airy talks of coming to me soon. I am daily expecting the Death of a Sister in law, a right good Creature, who I thought would outlive me a dozen years, and should rejoice if she could. Things look serious about one. If one only could escape easily and at once! For _I_ think the Fun is over: but that should not be. May you flourish in your high Place, my dear Master (now I say) for this long while.

[_June_, 1866.]

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

I won't say that I should have gone to Ely under any Circumstances, though it is the last Place I have been to stay at with a Friend: three years ago! And all my Stays there were very pleasant indeed: and I do not the less thank you for all your Constancy and Kindness. But one is got down yet deeper in one's Way of Life: of which enough has been said.

William Airy was to have come here about this time: and him I am obliged to put off because another old Fellow Collegian, Duncan, {77} who has scarce stirred from his Dorsetshire Parsonage these twenty years, was seized with a Passion to see me just once more, he says: and he is now with me: a Hypochondriack Man, nervous, and restless, with a vast deal of uncouth Humour. . . .

My Ship is afloat, with a new Irish Ensign; but I have scarce been about with her yet owing to 'Mr. Wesley's Troubles.' {78a}

Only yesterday I took down my little Tauchnitz Sophocles to carry to Sea with me; and made Duncan here read--

[Greek text], {78b} etc.

and began to blubber a little at

[Greek text], etc.

in the other Great Play. {78c} The Elgin Marbles, and something more, began to pass before my Eyes.

I believe I write all this knowing you are at Ely: where I suppose you are more at Leisure than on your Throne in Trinity. But no doubt your Tyranny follows you there too; post Equitem and all.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

WOODBRIDGE: Friday [_June_, 1866].

MY DEAR COWELL,

I got your new Address from your Brother a Fortnight ago. You don't write to me for the very good reason that you have so much to do: I don't write to you because I have nothing to do, and so nothing to tell you of. My idle reading all goes down to a few Memoirs and such things: I am not got down to Miss Braddon and Mrs. Wood yet, and I believe never shall: not that I think this a merit: for it would show more Elasticity of Mind to find out and make something out of the Genius in them. But it is too late for me to try and retrace the 'Salle des pas perdus' of years; I have not been very well, and more and more 'smell the Mould above the Rose' as Hood wrote of himself. But I don't want to talk of this.

You are very good to talk of sparing a Day for me when you come down. I will be sure to be at home any Day, or Days, next week. I can give you Bed and Board as you know: and a Boat Sail on the River if you like. Why I don't go over to you I have written and spoken of enough--all I can, if not satisfactorily: only don't think it is indolence, Neglect, or Distaste for you, or any of yours. . . .

I haven't, I think, taken in your Sanskrit morsel as yet, for I am called about this morning on some Furniture Errands: and yet I want to post this Letter To-day that you may have it this week.

I still think I shall take a Tauchnitz Sophocles with me to Sea, once more to read the two OEdipuses, and Philoctetes; perhaps more carefully than before; perhaps not! It is stupid not to get up those three noble Pieces as well as one can.

I have not yet done my house: and, when I write of Furniture, it is because I want to get so much ready as will suffice for an Invalid Niece who wishes to come with her Maid by the End of June, or the Beginning of July. Your old opposite Neighbour Mason is my Apollo in these matters: I find him a very clever Fellow, and so well inclined to me that every one else says he can scarce make money of what he sells me. He has _humour_ too.

I think you and Elizabeth should one day come and stay in this new House, which will be really very pleasant. As far as I am concerned, I sha'n't have much to do with it, I believe; but some one will inherit, and--sell it!

I want you to choose a Lot of my Things to be bequeathed you: Books, Pictures, Furniture. You mustn't think I prematurely deck myself in Sables for my own Funeral; but it happens that I sent the rough Draft of a Will to my Lawyer only three days ago.

My Brother John so much wants a Copy of Elizabeth's Verses to my Sister Isabella in other Days.

This time twenty years you were going to me at Boulge Cottage: this time ten years you were preparing for India.

Adieu, Love to the Lady.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

_To W. H. Thompson_.

LOWESTOFT: _July_ 27 [1866].

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

Your welcome Letter was forwarded to me here To day.

I feel sure that the Lady I once saw at the Deanery is all you say; and you believe of me, as I believe of myself, that I don't deal in Compliment, unless under very strong Compulsion. I suppose, as Master of Trinity you could not do otherwise than marry, and so keep due State and Hospitality there: and I do think you could not have found one fitter to share, and do, the honours. And if (as I also suppose) there is Love, or Liking, or strong Sympathy, or what not? why, all looks well. Be it so!

I had not heard of Spedding's entering into genteel House-keeping till your Letter told me of it. I suppose he will be a willing Victim to his Kinsfolk.

A clerical Brother in law of mine has lost his own whole Fortune in four of these Companies which have gone to smash. Nor his own only. For, having, when he married my Sister, insisted on having half her Income tied to him by Settlement, _that_ half lies under Peril from the 'Calls' made upon him as Shareholder.

At Genus Humanum damnat Caligo Futuri.

So I, trusting in my Builder's Honesty, have a Bill sent in about one third bigger than it should be.

All which rather amuses me, on the whole, though I spit out a Word now and then: and indeed am getting a Surveyor to overhaul the Builder: a hopeless Process, I believe all the while.

Meanwhile, I go about in my little Ship, where I do think I have two honest Fellows to deal with.

We have just been boarding a Woodbridge Vessel that we met in these Roads, and drinking a Bottle of Blackstrap round with the Crew.

With me just at present is my Brother Peter, for whose Wife (a capital Irishwoman, of the Mrs. O'Dowd Type) my Paper is edged with Black. No one could be a better Husband than he; no one more attentive and anxious during her last Illness, more than a year long; and, now all is over, I never saw him in better Health or Spirits. Men are not inconsolable for elderly Wives; as Sir Walter Scott, who was not given to caustic Aphorisms, observed long ago.

When I was sailing about the Isle of Wight, Dorsetshire, etc., I read my dear old Sophocles again (sometimes omitting the nonsense-verse Choruses) and thought how much I should have liked to have them commented along in one of your Lectures. All that is now over with you: but you will look into the Text now and then. I have now got Munro's Lucretius on board again. Why is it that I never can take up with Horace--so sensible, elegant, agreeable, and sometimes even grand?

Some one gave me the July Number of the Cornhill to read the 'Loss of the London' in; and very well worth reading it is. But there is also the Beginning of a Story that I am sure must be by Annie Thackeray--capital and wonderful. I forget the name.

Now I won't finish this Second Sheet--all with such Scraps as the foregoing. But do believe how sincerely and truly I wish you well in your new Venture. And so I will shut up, my dear Thompson, for the present. No man can have more reason to wish you a good Return for your long generous Kindness than your old Friend,

E. F. G.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

WOODBRIDGE: _August_ 13/66.

MY DEAR COWELL,

I think you have given me up as a bad Job: and I can't blame you. I have been expecting to hear of you in these parts: though, had it been so, I doubt if I should have been here to meet you. For the last six weeks I have scarce been at home; what with sailing to the Isle of Wight, Norfolk Coast, staying at Lowestoft, etc. And now I am just off again to the latter place, having only returned here on Saturday. Nor can I say when I shall be back here for any long while: the Kerriches are at Lowestoft; and I have yet one or two more Sea-trips to make before October consigns me once more to Cold, Indoor Solitude, Melancholy, and Illhealth.

My Companion on board has been Sophocles, as he was three years ago, I find. I am even now going to hunt up some one-volume Virgil to take with me. Horace I never can care about, in spite of his Good Sense, Elegance, and occasional Force. He never made my Eyes wet as Virgil does.

When I was about Cromer Coast, I was reading Windham's Diary: well worth reading, as one of the most honest; but with little else in it than that. You would scarcely guess from it that he was a man of any Genius, as yet I suppose he was.

Somehow I fancy you must be travelling abroad! Else surely I should have heard something of you. Well: I must anyhow enclose this Letter, or direct it, to your Mother's or Brother's at Ipswich. Do let me hear of yourself and Elizabeth, and believe that I do not forget you, nor cease to be

Yours very sincerely EDWARD FITZGERALD.

LOWESTOFT: _August_ 19/66.

MY DEAR COWELL,

I don't wish you to think I am in Woodbridge all this while since your Note came. It was forwarded to me here, where I have been since I wrote to you a week ago. The fact is, I had promised to return on finding that the Kerriches were to be here. So, here I am: living on board my little Ship: sometimes taking them out for a Sail: sometimes accompanying them in a walk. In other respects, I am very fond of this Place, which I have known and frequented these forty years; till the last three years in company with my Sister Kerrich, who has helped to endear it to me. I believe I shall be here, off and on, some while longer; as my Brother Peter (who has lately lost a capital Wife) is coming to sail about with me. Should I be at Woodbridge for some days I will let you know.

Do you see 'Squire Allenby,' as the folks at Felixtow Ferry call him? If so, ask him why he doesn't sometimes sail here with his ship; he would like it, I fancy: and everybody seems to like him.

Only yesterday I finished reading the Electra. Before that, Ajax; which is well worth re-reading too. I am sorry to find I have only Antigone left of all the precious Seven; a lucid Constellation indeed! I suppose I must try Euripides after this; some few of his Plays.

This time ten years--a month ago--we were all lounging about in the hayfield before your Mother's House at Rushmere. I do not forget these things: nor cease to remember them with a sincere, sad, and affectionate interest: the very sincerity of which prevents me from attempting to recreate them. This I wish you and yours, who have been so kind to me, to believe.

I am going to run again to the Coast of Norfolk--as far as Wells--to wander about Holkham, if the Weather permit. We have had too much Wind and Wet to make such excursions agreeable: for, when one reached the Places by Sea, the Rain prevented one's going about on Shore to look about. But now that there has been rather a better look-out of Weather for the last few Days, and that--

[Greek text]-- {86}

I shall try again for two or three Days. How do you translate [Greek text] here?

Ever yours, E. F. G.

LOWESTOFT still! _Septr._ 4 [1866].

MY DEAR COWELL,

Still here, you see! Till the end of last week I had my Kerrich people here; I am now expecting my Brother Peter again: he has lately lost his capital Wife, and flies about between Ireland and England for Company and Diversion of Thought. I am also expecting Mowbray Donne over from Yarmouth this week.

I wonder if you ever would come over here, and either Bed and Board in my little Ship, or on Shore? Anyhow, do write me a line to tell me about yourself--yourselves--and do not think I am indifferent to you.

I have been reading Euripides (in my way) but, as heretofore do not take greatly to him. He is always prosy, whereas (except in the matter of funeral Lamentations, Condolence, etc., which I suppose the Greek Audience expected--as I suppose they also expected the little sententious truism at the end of every Speech), except in these respects, Sophocles always goes ahead, and makes his Dialogue act in driving on the Play. He always makes the most of his Story too: Euripides not often. A remarkable instance of this is in his Heraclidae (one of the better Plays, I think), where Macaria is to be sacrificed for the common good: but one hears no more of her: and a fine opportunity is lost when Jocasta {87a} insults Eurystheus whom they have conquered, and is never told that that Conquest is at the cost of her Grand-daughter's Life--a piece of Irony which Sophocles would not have forgotten, I think. I have not yet read over Rhesus, Hippolytus, Medea, Ion, or the Iphigenias; altogether, the Phoenissae is the best of those I have read; the interview between Jocasta and her two sons, before the Battle, very good. There is really Humour and Comedy in the Servant's Account of Hercules' conviviality in Admetus' House of Mourning. I thought the story of the Bacchae poorly told: but some good descriptive passages.

In the midst of Euripides, I was seized with a Passion to return to Sophocles, and read the two OEdipuses again. Oh, how immeasurably superior! In dramatic Construction, Dialogue, and all! How can they call Euripides [Greek text], {87b} putting a few passages of his against whole Dramas of the other, who also can show sentence for sentence more moving than any Euripides wrote.

But I want to read these Plays once with some very accurate Guide, oral or printed. I mean Sophocles; I don't care to be accurate with the other. Can you recommend any Edition--not too German? I should write to Thompson about it; but I suppose he is busy with Marriage coming on. I mean, the present Master of Trinity, who is engaged to the widow of Dean Peacock; a very capital Lady to preside as Queen of Trinity Lodge.

I have also been visiting dear old Virgil; his Georgics, and the 6th and 8th Books of the AEneid. I could now take them up and read them both again. Pray look at lines 407-415 of Book VIII--the poor Matron kindling her early fire--so Georgic! so Virgilian! so unsuited, or disproportionate, to the Thing it illustrates.

Here is a long Letter--of the old Sort, I suppose. All these Books come back to me with Summer and the Sea: in another Month all will be gone together!--I look with Terror toward Winter, though I have not to encounter one, at any rate, of the three Giants which old Mrs. Bloomfield said were coming upon her--Winter, Want, and Sickness. {88}

Pray remember me, in spite of all practical Forgetfulness, to Wife and Friends.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

_To F. Tennyson_.

WOODBRIDGE: _Jan._ 29/67.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

Let me hear from you one Day. I would send you my MS. Book of Morton's Letters: but I scarce know if the Post would carry it to you; though not so very big: and I am still less sure that you would ever return it to me. And what odds if you didn't? It might as well die in your Possession as in mine.

In answer to my yearly Letter to Alfred and Co. I heard (from Mrs.) that they were about to leave Freshwater, frightened away by Hero-worshippers, etc., and were going to a Solitude called Greyshott Hall, Haslemere; which, I am told, is in Hants. Whether they go to settle there I don't know. Lucretius' Death is thought to be too free-spoken for Publication, I believe; not so much in a religious, as an amatory, point of View. I should believe Lucretius more likely to have expedited his Departure because of Weariness of Life and Despair of the System, than because of any Love-philtre. I wrote also my yearly Letter to Carlyle, begging my compliments to his Wife: who, he replies, died, in a very tragical way, last April. I have since heard that the Papers reported all the Circumstances. So, if one lives so much out of the World as I do, it seems better to give up that Ghost altogether. Old Spedding has written a Pamphlet about 'Authors and Publishers'; showing up, or striving to show up, the Publishers' system. He adduces his own Edition of Bacon as a sample of their mismanagement, in respect of too bulky Volumes, etc. But, as he says, Macaulay and Alison are still bulkier; yet they sell. The truth is that a solemnly-inaugurated new Edition of all Bacon was not wanted. The Philosophy is surely superseded; not a Wilderness of Speddings can give men a new interest in the Politics and Letters. The Essays will no doubt always be in request, like Shakespeare. But I am perhaps not a proper Judge of these high matters. How should I? who have just, to my great sorrow, finished 'The Woman in White' for the third time, once every last three Winters. I wish Sir Percival Clyde's Death were a little less of the minor Theatre sort; then I would swallow all the rest as a wonderful Caricature, better than so many a sober Portrait. I really think of having a Herring-lugger I am building named 'Marian Halcombe,' the brave Girl in the Story. Yes, a Herring-lugger; which is to pay for the money she costs unless she goes to the Bottom: and which meanwhile amuses me to consult about with my Sea-folks. I go to Lowestoft now and then, by way of salutary Change: and there smoke a Pipe every night with a delightful Chap, who is to be Captain. I have been, up to this time, better than for the last two winters: but feel a Worm in my head now and then, for all that. You will say, only a Maggot. Well; we shall see. When I go to Lowestoft, I take Montaigne with me; very comfortable Company. One of his Consolations for _The Stone_ is, that it makes one less unwilling to part with Life. Oh, you think that it didn't need much Wisdom to suggest that? Please yourself, Ma'am. January, just gone! February, only twenty-eight Days: then March with Light till six p.m.: then April with a blush of Green on the Whitethorn hedge: then May, Cuckoos, Nightingales, etc.; then June, Ship launched, and nothing but Ship till November, which is only just gone. The Story of our Lives from Year to Year. This is a poor letter: but I won't set The Worm fretting. Let me hear how you are: and don't be two months before you do so.

_To W. B. Donne_.

WOODBRIDGE: _Febr._ 15 [1867].

MY DEAR DONNE,

I came home yesterday from a week's Stay at Lowestoft. As to the Athenaeum, {91} I would bet that the last Sentence was tacked on by the Editor: for it in some measure contradicts the earlier part of the Article.

When your letter was put into my hands, I happened to be reading Montaigne, L. II. Ch. 8, De l'Art de Conferer, where at the end he refers to Tacitus; the only Book, he says, he had read consecutively for an hour together for ten years. He does not say very much: but the Remarks of such a Man are worth many Cartloads of German Theory of Character, I think: their Philology I don't meddle with. I know that Cowell has discovered they are all wrong in their Sanskrit. Montaigne never doubts Tacitus' facts: but doubts his Inferences; well, if I were sure of his Facts, I would leave others to draw their Inferences. I mean, if I were Commentator, certainly: and I think if I were Historian too. Nothing is more wonderful to me than seeing such Men as Spedding, Carlyle, and I suppose Froude, straining Fact to Theory as they do, while a scatter-headed Paddy like myself can keep clear. But then so does the Mob of Readers. Well, but I believe in the Vox Populi of two hundred Years: still more, of two thousand. And, whether we be right or wrong, we prevail: so, however much wiser are the Builders of Theory, their Labour is but lost who build: they can't reason away Richard's Hump, nor Cromwell's Ambition, nor Henry's Love of a new Wife, nor Tiberius' beastliness. Of course, they had all their Gleams of Goodness: but we of the Mob, if we have any Theory at all, have that which all Mankind have seen and felt, and know as surely as Day-light; that Power will tempt and spoil the Best.

Well, but what is all this Lecture to you for? Why, I think you rather turn to the re-actionary Party about these old Heroes. So I say, however right you may be, leave us, the many-headed, if not the wise-headed, to go our way, only making the Text of Tacitus as clear for us to flounder about in as you can. That, anyhow, must be the first Thing. Something of the manners and customs of the Times we want also: some Lights from other contemporary Authors also: and then, 'Gentlemen, you will now consider your Verdict, and please yourselves.'

Can't you act on Spedding's Advice and have your Prolegomena separate, if considerable in size? I don't doubt its Goodness: but you know how, when one wants to take a Volume of an Author on Travel, Ship-board, etc., how angry one is with the Life, Commentary, etc., which takes up half the first volume. This we don't complain of in George III. because he is not a Classic, and your Athenaeum Critic admits that yours is the best Part of the Business by far.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

'_Scandal_'; LOWESTOFT, _June_ 17 [1867].

MY DEAR COWELL,

I wrote to Elizabeth, I think, to congratulate you both on the result of the Election: I have since had your Letter: you will not want me to repeat what, without my ever having written or said, you will know that I feel. I wrote to Thompson on the subject, and have had a very kind Letter from him.

Now you will live at Cambridge among the Learned; but, I repeat, you would rather live among the Ignorant. However, your Path is cut out for you: and, to be sure, it is a more useful and proper one for you than the cool sequestered one which one might like to travel.

I am here in my little Ship--cool and sequestered enough, to be sure--with no Company but my Crew of Two, and my other--Captain of the Lugger now a- building: a Fellow I never tire of studying--If he _should_ turn out knave, I shall have done with all Faith in my own Judgment: and if he should go to the Bottom of the Sea in the Lugger--I sha'n't cry for the Lugger.

Well, but I have other Company too--Don Quixote--the 4th Part: where those Snobs, the Duke and Duchess--(how vulgar Great Folks then, as now!) make a Fool and Butt of him. Cervantes should have had more respect for his own Creation: but, I suppose, finding that all the Great Snobs could only _laugh_ at the earlier part, he thought he had better humour them. This very morning I read the very verses you admired to me twenty years ago--

Ven muerte tan escondida, etc.

They are quoted ironically in Part IV. Lib. VII. Ch. 38.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

WOODBRIDGE: _Oct._ 12 [1867].

MY DEAR COWELL,

When you have leisure you will let me know of your being settled at Cambridge? I also want to have your exact Address because I want to send you the Dryden and Crabbe's Life I promised you. At present you are busy with your Inaugural Address, I suppose; beside that you feel scarce at home yet in your new Quarters.

Mr. Allenby told me on Wednesday that Mrs. Charlesworth was really up again, and even got to Cambridge. Please to remember me to her, and to all your Party.

My Ship is still afloat: but I have scarce used her during the last cold weather. I was indeed almost made ill sleeping two nights in that cold Cabin. I may, however, run to Lowestoft and back; but by the end of next week I suppose she (the Ship) will be laid up in the Mud; my Men will have eaten the Michaelmas Goose which I always regale them with on shutting up shop; and I may come home to my Fire here to read 'The Woman in White' and play at Patience:--which (I mean the Game at Cards so called) I now do by myself for an hour or two every night. Perhaps old Montaigne may drop in to chat with and comfort me: but Sophocles, Don Quixote, and Boccaccio--I think I must leave them with their Halo of Sea and Sunshine about them. I have, however, found the second volume of Sophocles; and may perhaps return to look for Ajax and Deianeira.

Adieu: E. F. G.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE. _October_ 28 [1867],

Now, MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I have put on a new Goose-quill Nib, on purpose to write my best MS. to you. But the new Nib has very little to say for me: the old Story: dodging about in my Ship for these last five months: indeed during all that time not having lain, I believe, for three consecutive Nights in Christian Sheets. But now all that is over: this very day is my little Ship being dismantled, and to-morrow will she go up to her middle in mud, and here am I anchored to my old Desk for the Winter; and beginning, as usual, by writing to my Friends, to tell them what little there is to tell of myself, and asking them to tell what they can of themselves in return. I shall even fire a shot at old Spedding; who would not answer my last Letters at all: innocent as they were, I am sure: and asking definite Questions, which he once told me he required if I wanted any Answer. I suppose he is now in Cumberland. What _is_ become of Bacon? Are you one of the Converted, who go the whole Hog?

Thompson--no, I mean the Master of Trinity--has replied to my half-yearly Enquiries in a very kind Letter. He tells me that my friend Edward Cowell has pleased all the Audience he had with an inaugural Lecture about Sanskrit. {97a} Also, that there is such an Article in the Quarterly about the Talmud {97b} as has not been seen (so fine an Article, I mean) for years. I have had Don Quixote, Boccaccio, and my dear Sophocles (once more) for company on board: the first of these so delightful, that I got to love the very Dictionary in which I had to look out the words: yes, and often the same words over and over again. The Book really seemed to me the most delightful of all Books: Boccaccio, delightful too, but millions of miles behind; in fact, a whole Planet away.

_To W. A. Wright_.

MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE. _Dec._ 11 [1867].

DEAR SIR,

When Robert Groome was with me a month ago, I was speaking to him of having found some Bacon in Montaigne: and R. G. told me that you had observed the same, and were indeed collecting some instances; I think, quotations from Seneca, so employed as to prove that Bacon had them from the Frenchman. It has been the fashion of late to scoff at Seneca; whom such men as Bacon and Montaigne quoted: perhaps not Seneca's own, but cribbed from some Greek which would have been admired by those who scoff at the Latin.

I had not noticed this Seneca coincidence: but I had observed a few passages of Montaigne's own, which seemed to me to have got into Bacon's Essays. I dare say I couldn't light upon all these now; but, having been turning over Essai 9, Lib. III. De la Vanite, I find one sentence which comes to the point: 'Car parfois c'est bien choisir de ne choisir pas.' In the same Essay is a piece of King Lear, perhaps; 'De ce mesme papier ou il vient d'escrire l'arrest de condemnation contre un Adultere, le Juge en desrobe un lopin pour en faire un poulet a la femme de son compaignon.' One doesn't talk of such things as of plagiarisms, of course; as if Bacon and Shakespeare couldn't have said much better things themselves; only for the pleasure of tracing where they read, and what they were struck by. I see that 'L'Appetit vient en mangeant' is in the same Essay.

If I light some other day on the other passages, I will take the liberty of telling you. You see I have already taken the liberty of writing to a man, not unknown to me in several ways, but with whom I have not the pleasure of being acquainted personally. Perhaps I may have that pleasure one of these days; we are both connected with the same town of Beccles, and may come together. I hope so.

But I have also another reason for writing to you. Your 'Master' wrote me word the other day, among other things, that you as well as he wished for my own noble works in your Library. I quite understand that this is on the ground of my being a Trinity man. But then one should have done something worthy of ever so little a niche in Trinity Library; and that I do know is not my case. I have several times told the Master what I think, and know, of my small Escapades in print; nice little things, some of them, which may interest a few people (mostly friends, or through friends) for a few years. But I am always a little ashamed of having made my leisure and idleness the means of putting myself forward in print, when really so many much better people keep silent, having other work to do. This is, I know, my sincere feeling on the subject. However, as I think some of the Translations I have done are all I can dare to show, and as it would be making too much fuss to wait for any further asking on the subject, I will send them if you think good one of these days all done up together; the Spanish, at least, which are, I think, all of a size. Will you tell the Master so if you happen to see him and mention the subject? Allow me to end by writing myself yours sincerely,

EDWARD FITZGERALD.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT. _Dec._ 28 [1867].

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I don't think I told you about Garcin de Tassy. He sent me (as no doubt he sent you) his annual Oration. I wrote to thank him: and said I had been lately busy with another countryman of his, Mons. Nicolas, with his Omar Khayyam. On which De Tassy writes back by return of post to ask 'Where I got my Copy of Nicolas? He had not been able to get one in all Paris!' So I wrote to Quaritch: who told me the Book was to be had of Maisonneuve, or any Oriental Bookseller in Paris; but that probably the Shopman did not understand, when '_Les Rubaiyat d'Omar_, etc.,' were asked for, that it meant '_Les Quatrains_, etc.' This (which I doubt not is the solution of the Mystery) I wrote to Garcin: at the same time offering one of my two Copies. By return of Post comes a frank acceptance of one of the Copies; and his own Translation of Attar's Birds by way of equivalent. [Greek text]. Well, as I got these Birds just as I was starting here, I brought them with me, and looked them over. Here, at Lowestoft, in this same row of houses, two doors off, I was writing out the Translation I made in the Winter of 1859. I have scarce looked at Original or Translation since. But I was struck by this; that eight years had made little or no alteration in my idea of the matter: it seemed to me that I really had brought in nearly all worth remembering, and had really condensed the whole into a much compacter Image than the original. This is what I think I can do, with such discursive things: such as all the Oriental things I have seen are. I remember you thought that I had lost the Apologues towards the close; but I believe I was right in excluding them, as the narrative grew dramatic and neared the Catastrophe. Also, it is much better to glance at the dangers of the Valley when the Birds are in it, than to let the Leader recount them before: which is not good policy, morally or dramatically. When I say all this, you need not suppose that I am vindicating the Translation as a Piece of Verse. I remember thinking it from the first rather disagreeable than not: though with some good parts. Jam satis.

There is a pretty story, which seems as if it really happened (p. 201 of De Tassy's Translation, referring to v. 3581 of the original), of the Boy falling into a well, and on being taken out senseless, the Father asking him to say but a word; and then, but one word more: which the Boy says and dies. And at p. 256, Translation (v. 4620), I read, 'Lorsque Nizam ul-mulk fut a l'agonie, il dit: "O mon Dieu, je m'en vais entre les mains du vent."' Here is our Omar in his Friend's mouth, is it not?

I have come here to wind up accounts for our Herring-lugger: much against us, as the season has been a bad one. My dear Captain, who looks in his Cottage like King Alfred in the Story, was rather saddened by all this, as he had prophesied better things. I tell him that if he is but what I think him--and surely my sixty years of considering men will not so deceive me at last!--I would rather lose money with him than gain it with others. Indeed I never proposed Gain, as you may imagine: but only to have some Interest with this dear Fellow. Happy New Year to you Both!

I wish you would have Semelet's Gulistan which I have. You know I never cared for Sadi.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE. _Jan_: 9/68.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I saw advertised in my old Athenaeum a Review {102} of Richardson's Novels in the January Cornhill. So I bought it: and began to think you might have written it: but was not so assured as I went on. It is however very good, in my opinion, whoever did it: though I don't think it does all justice to the interminable Original. When the Writer talks of Grandison and Clarissa being the two Characters--oh, Lovelace himself should have made the third: if unnatural (as the Reviewer says), yet not the less wonderful: quite beyond and above anything in Fielding. Whether you wrote the article or not, I know you are one of the few who have read the Book. The Reviewer admits that it might be abridged; I am convinced of that, and have done it for my own satisfaction: but you thought this was not to be done. So here is internal proof that you didn't write what Thackeray used to call the '_Hurticle_,' or that you have changed your mind on that score. But you haven't. But I know better, Lord bless you: and am sure I could (with a pair of Scissors) launch old Richardson again: we shouldn't go off the stocks easy (pardon nautical metaphors), but stick by the way, amid the jeers of Reviewers who had never read the original: but we should float at last. Only I don't want to spend a lot of money to be hooted at, without having time to wait for the floating.

I have spent lots of money on my Herring-lugger, which has made but a poor Season. So now we are going (like wise men) to lay out a lot more for Mackerel; and my Captain (a dear Fellow) is got ill, which is much worst of all: so hey for 1868! Which is wishing you better luck next time, Sir, etc.

Spedding at last found and sent me his delightful little Paper about Twelfth Night. I was glad to be set right about Viola: but I think he makes too much of the whole play, 'finest of Comedies,' etc. It seems to me quite a light, slight, sketch--for Twelfth Night--What you will, etc. What else does the Name mean? Have I uttered these Impieties! No more! Nameless as shameless.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

WOODBRIDGE: _May_ 28/68.

MY DEAR COWELL,

I was just about to post you your own Calcutta Review when your Letter came, asking about some Euphranors. Oh yes! I have a Lot of them: returned from Parker's when they were going to dissolve their House; I would not be at the Bother of any further negociation with any other Bookseller, about half a dozen little Books which so few wanted: so had them all sent here. I will therefore send you six copies. I had supposed that you didn't like the second Edition so well as the first: and had a suspicion myself that, though I improved it in some respects, I had done more harm than good: and so I have never had courage to look into it since I sent it to you at Oxford. Perhaps Tennyson {104} only praised the first Edition and I don't know where to lay my hands on that. I wonder he should have thought twice about it. Not but I think the Truth is told: only, a Truth every one knows! And told in a shape of Dialogue really something Platonic: but I doubt rather affectedly too. However, such as it is, I send it you. I remember being anxious about it twenty years ago, because I thought it was the Truth (as if my telling it could mend the matter!): and I cannot but think that the Generation that has grown up in these twenty years has not profited by the Fifty Thousand Copies of this great work!

I am sorry to trouble you about Macmillan; I should not have done so had I kept my Copy with your corrections as well as my own. As Lamb said of himself, so I say; that I never had any Luck with printing: I certainly don't mean that I have had much cause to complain: but, for instance, I know that Livy and Napier, put into good Verse, are just worth a corner in one of the swarm of Shilling Monthlies. {105}

'Locksley Hall' is far more like Lucretius than the last Verses put into his mouth by A. T. But, once get a Name in England, and you may do anything. But I dare say that wise men too, like Spedding, will be of the same mind with the Times Critic. (I have not seen him.) What does Thompson say? You, I, and John Allen, are among the few, I do say, who, having a good natural Insight, maintain it undimmed by public, or private, Regards.

P.S. Having consulted my Landlord, I find that I can pay carriage all through to Cambridge. Therefore it is that I send you, not only your own Book, and my own, but also one of the genteel copies of Boswell's Johnson; and Wesley's Journal: both of which I gave you, only never sent! Now they shall go. Wesley, you will find pleasant to dip into, I think: of course, there is much sameness; and I think you will allow some absurdity among so much wise and good. I am almost sorry that I have not noted down on the fly-leaf some of the more remarkable Entries, as I have in my own Copy. If you have not read the little Autobiography of Wesley's Disciple, John Nelson, give a shilling for it. It seems to me something wonderful to read these Books, written in a Style that cannot alter, because natural; while the Model Writers, Addison, Johnson, etc., have had their Day. Dryden holds, I think: he did not set up for a Model Prose man. Sir T. Browne's Style is natural to him, one feels.

FELIXTOW FERRY: _July_ 25 [1868.]

MY DEAR COWELL,

I found your Letter on reaching Woodbridge yesterday; where you see I did not stay long. In fact I only left Lowestoft partly to avoid a Volunteer Camp there which filled the Town with People and Bustle: and partly that my Captain might see his Wife: who cannot last _very_ much longer I think: scarcely through Autumn, surely. She goes about, nurses her children, etc., but grows visibly thinner, weaker, and more ailing.

If the Wind changes (now directly in our Teeth) I shall sail back to Lowestoft to-morrow. Thompson and Mrs. T. propose to be at the Royal Hotel there till Wednesday, and we wish, I believe, to see each other again. Sailing did not agree with his bilious temperament: and he seemed to me injudicious in his hours of Exercise, Dinner, etc. But he, and she, should know best. I like her very much: head and heart right feminine of the best, it seemed to me: and her experience of the World, and the Wits, not having injured either.

I only wanted Macmillan to return the Verses {107} if he wouldn't use them, because of my having no corrected Copy of them.

I see in the last Athenaeum a new '_and revised_' Edition of Clarissa advertised. I suppose this 'revised' does not mean 'abridged,' without which the Book will _not_ permanently make way, as I believe. That, you know, I wanted to do: could do: and nearly have done;--But that, and my Crabbe, I must leave for my Executors and Heirs to consign to Lumber-room, or fire.

Pray let me hear of your movements, especially such as tend hitherward. About September--Alas!--I think we shall be a good Deal here, or at Woodbridge; probably not so much before that time.

Ever yours and Lady's, E. F. G.

WOODBRIDGE: _March_ 1/69.

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . My Lugger Captain has just left me to go on his Mackerel Voyage to the Western Coast; and I don't know when I shall see him again. Just after he went, a muffled bell from the Church here began to toll for somebody's death: it sounded like a Bell under the sea. He sat listening to the Hymn played by the Church chimes last evening, and said he could hear it all as if in Lowestoft Church when he was a Boy, 'Jesus our Deliverer!' You can't think what a grand, tender, Soul this is, lodged in a suitable carcase.

_To Mrs. W. H. Thompson_.

[1869.]

DEAR MRS. THOMPSON,

(I must get a new Pen for you--which doesn't promise to act as well as the old one--Try another.)

Dear Mrs. Thompson--Mistress of Trinity--(this does better)--

I am both sorry, and glad, that you wrote me the Letter you have written to me: sorry, because I think it was an effort to you, disabled as you are; and glad, I need not say why.

I despatched Spedding's letter to your Master yesterday; I daresay you have read it: for there was nothing extraordinary wicked in it. But, he to talk of _my_ perversity! . . .

My Sir Joshua is a darling. A pretty young Woman ('Girl' I won't call her) sitting with a turtle-dove in her lap, while its mate is supposed to be flying down to it from the window. I say 'supposed,' for Sir J. who didn't know much of the drawing of Birds, any more than of Men and Women, has made a thing like a stuffed Bird clawing down like a Parrot. But then, the Colour, the Dove-colour, subdued so as to carry off the richer tints of the dear Girl's dress; and she, too, pensive, not sentimental: a Lady, as her Painter was a Gentleman. Faded as it is in the face (the Lake, which he would use, having partially flown), it is one of the most beautiful things of his I have seen: more varied in colour; not the simple cream-white dress he was fond of, but with a light gold-threaded Scarf, a blue sash, a green chair, etc. . . .

I was rather taken aback by the Master's having discovered my last--yes, and bona-fide my last--translation in the volume I sent to your Library. I thought it would slip in unobserved, and I should have given all my little contributions to my old College, without after-reckoning. Had I known you as the Wife of any but the 'quondam' Greek Professor, I should very likely have sent it to you: since it was meant for those who might wish for some insight into a Play {109} which I must think they can scarcely have been tempted into before by any previous Translation. It remains to be much better done; but if Women of Sense and Taste, and Men of Sense and Taste (who don't know Greek) can read, and be interested in such a glimpse as I give them of the Original, they must be content, and not look the Horse too close in the mouth, till a better comes to hand.

My Lugger has had (along with her neighbours) such a Season hitherto of Winds as no one remembers. We made 450 pounds in the North Sea; and (just for fun) I did wish to realize 5 pounds in my Pocket. But my Captain would take it all to pay Bills. But if he makes another 400 pounds this Home Voyage! Oh, then we shall have money in our Pockets. I do wish this. For the anxiety about all these People's lives has been so much more to me than all the amusement I have got from the Business, that I think I will draw out of it if I can see my Captain sufficiently firm on his legs to carry it on alone. True, there will then be the same risk to him and his ten men, but they don't care; only I sit here listening to the Winds in the Chimney, and always thinking of the Eleven hanging at my own fingers' ends.

This Letter is all desperately about me and mine, Translations and Ships. And now I am going to walk in _my_ Garden: and feed _my_ Captain's Pony with white Carrots; and in the Evening have _my_ Lad come and read for an hour and a half (he stumbles at every third word, and gets dreadfully tired, and so do I; but I renovate him with Cake and Sweet Wine), and I can't just now smoke the Pipe nor drink the Grog. 'These are my Troubles, Mr. Wesley;' {110} but I am still the Master's and Mistress' loyal Servant,

EDWARD FITZGERALD.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

WOODBRIDGE: Tuesday, [28 _Dec._ 1869.]

MY DEAR COWELL,

Your Letter to day was a real pleasure--nay, a comfort--to me. For I had begun to think that, for whatever reason, you had dropt me; and I know not one of all my friends whom I could less afford to lose.

You anticipate rightly all I think of the new Idylls. {111} I had bought the Book at Lowestoft: and when I returned here for Christmas found that A. T.'s Publisher had sent me a Copy. As I suppose this was done by A. T.'s order, I have written to acknowledge the Gift, and to tell him something, if not all, of what I think of them. I do not tell him that I think his hand weakened; but I tell him (what is very true) that, though the main Myth of King Arthur's Dynasty in Britain has a certain Grandeur in my Eyes, the several legendary fragments of it never did much interest me; excepting the _Morte_, which I suppose most interested him also, as he took it up first of all. I am not sure if such a Romance as Arthur's is not best told in the artless old English in which it was told to Arthur's artless successors four hundred years ago; or dished up anew in something of a Ballad Style like his own Lady of Shalott, rather than elaborated into a modern Epic form. I never cared, however, for _any_ chivalric Epic; neither Tasso, nor Spenser, nor even Ariosto, whose Epic has a sort of Ballad-humour in it; Don Quixote is the only one of all this sort I have ever cared for.

I certainly wish that Alfred had devoted his diminished powers to translating Sophocles, or AEschylus, as I fancy a Poet should do--_one_ work, at any rate--of his great Predecessors. But Pegasus won't be harnessed.

From which I descend to my own humble feet. I will send you some copies of Calderon when I have uncloseted and corrected them. As to Agamemnon, I bound up a Copy of him in the other Translations I sent to Trinity Library--not very wisely, I doubt; but I thought the Book would just be put up on its shelf, and I had given all I was asked for, or ever could be asked for. The Master, however, wrote me that it came to his Eyes, and I dare say he thought I had best have let AEschylus alone. My Version was not intended for those who know the Original; but, by hook or by crook, to interest some who do not. The _Shape_ I have wrought the Play into is good, I think: the Dialogue good also: but the Choruses (though well contrived for the progress of the Story) are very false to AEschylus; and anyhow want the hand of a Poet. Mine, as I said, are only a sort of 'Entr' acte' Music, which would be better supplied by Music itself.

I will send you in a day or two my Christmas Gossip for the East Anglian, where I am more at home. But you have heard me tell it all before.

It is too late to wish you a good Christmas--(I wonder how you passed it, mine was solitary and dull enough) but you know I wish you all the Good the New Year can bring. Love to Elizabeth; do not be so long without writing again, if only half a dozen lines, to yours and hers sincerely,

E. F. G.

_To S. Laurence_.

MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE. _Jan._ 13/70.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

Can you tell me (in a line) how I should treat some old Pictures of mine which have somehow got rusty with the mixt damp and then fires (I suppose) of my new house, which, after being built at near double its proper cost, is just what I do not want, according to the usage of the Ballyblunder Family, of which I am a very legitimate offshoot?