Chapter VIII: Part 8

To come down rather a little from him, my Calderon, which you speak of--very many beside myself, with as much fair Dramatic Spirit, knowledge of good English and English Verse, would do quite as well as you think I do, if they would not hamper themselves with Forms of Verse, and Thought, irreconcilable with English Language and English Ways of Thinking. I am persuaded that, to keep Life in the Work (as Drama must) the Translator (however inferior to his Original) must re-cast that original into his own Likeness, more or less: the less like his original, so much the worse: but still, the live Dog better than the dead Lion; in Drama, I say. As to Epic, is not Cary still the best Dante? Cowper and Pope were both Men of Genius, out of my Sphere; but whose Homer still holds its own? The elaborately exact, or the 'teacup-time' Parody? Is not Fairfax' Tasso good? I never read Harington's Ariosto, English or Italian. Another shot have I made at Faust in Bayard Taylor's Version: but I do not even get on with him as with Hayward, hampered as he (Taylor) is with his allegiance to original metres, etc. His Notes I was interested in: but I shall die ungoethed, I doubt, so far as Poetry goes: I always believe he was Philosopher and Critic.

But, harking back to Calderon, surely you have seen the 'Magico' printed from the Duc d'Osuna's original MS., with many variations from the text as we have it. This volume is edited, in French, by 'Alfred Morel Fatio,' printed at 'Heilbronn' (wherever that is), and to be bought of 'M. Murillo, Calle de Alcala, Num. 18, Madrid.' It contains a Facsimile of the old Boy's MS. I will send you my Copy if there be 'no Coal in Newcastle.'

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 18/79.

MY DEAR NORTON,

It is over six months, I believe, since we exchanged a letter; mine the last shot: which I mention only because that has been my reason for not writing again till I should hear from you that all was well enough with you and yours to justify my writing an idle letter. You have spoken of an aged Mother:--if your Winter has been such as ours! And not over yet, as scarce a leaf on the trees, and a N. E. wind blowing Cold, Cough, Bronchitis, etc., and the confounded Bell of a neighbouring Church announcing a Death, day after day. I certainly never remember so long, and so mortal a Winter: among young as well as old. Among the latter, I have just lost my elder, and only surviving Brother. But I shall close this Bill of Mortality before turning over the leaf.

Well: it is Mr. Clarke's pamphlet which has encouraged me to 'take up the pen,' for I think it was you who sent it to me. All I am qualified to say about it is, that it is very well and earnestly written; but on a Subject, like your own Olympia, that I am no Judge of. I think of forwarding it to Cowell at our Cambridge, who is a Judge of Everything, I think, while pretending to Nothing. . . .

This reminds me of all the pains he bestowed on me five and twenty years ago; of which the result is one final Edition of Omar and Jami. . . . Omar remains as he was; Jami (Salaman) is cut down to two-thirds of his former proportion, and very much improved, I think. It is still in a wrong key: Verse of Miltonic strain, unlike the simple Eastern; I remember trying that at first, but could not succeed. So there is little but the Allegory itself (not a bad one), and now condensed into a very fair Bird's Eye view; quite enough for any Allegory, I think. . . .

And--(this Letter is to be all about myself)--by this post I send you my Handbook of Crabbe's Tales of the Hall, of which I am so doubtful that I do not yet care to publish it. I wished to draw a few readers to a Book which nobody reads, by an Abstract of the most readable Parts connected with as little of my Prose as would tell the story of much prosaic Verse, but that very amount of prosy Verse may help to soak the story into the mind (as Richardson, etc.) in a way that my more readable Abstract does not. So it may only serve to remind any one of a Book--which he never read! The Original must be more obsolete in America than here in England; however, I should like to know what you make of it: and you see that you may tell me very plainly, for it is not as an Author, but only as Author's Showman that I appear.

It is rather shameful to take another Sheet because of almost filling the first with myself. And I have but little to tell in it. Carlyle I have not heard of for these six months: nor Tennyson: I must write to hear how they have weathered this mortal Winter. Tennyson's elder, not eldest, Brother Charles is dead: and I was writing only yesterday to persuade Spedding to insist on Macmillan publishing a complete edition of Charles' Sonnets: graceful, tender, beautiful, and quite original, little things. Two thirds of them would be enough: but no one can select in such a case, you know. I have been reading again your Hawthorne's Journal in England when he was Consul here; this I have: I cannot get his 'Our old Home,' nor his Foreign Notes: can you send me any small, handy, Edition of these two last? I delight in them because of their fearless Truthfulness as well as for their Genius. I have just taken down his Novels, or Romances, to read again, and try to relish more than I have yet done; but I feel sure the fault must be with me, as I feel about Goethe, who is yet as sealed a Book to me as ever. . . . I have (alas!) got through all Sir Walter's Scotch Novels this winter, even venturing further on Kenilworth: which is wonderful for Plot: and one scene, Elizabeth reconciling her Rival Earls at Greenwich, seeming to me as good as Shakespeare's Henry VIII., which is mainly Fletcher's, I am told. I have heard nothing of Mr. Lowell since I heard of you, and do think that I will pitch him a Crabbe into the midst of Madrid, if he be still there. (N.B. Some of Crabbe is not in the Text but from MS. first (and best) readings printed in the Son's edition.)

The Nightingale is now telling me that he is not dead.

_To J. R. Lowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 20/79.

MY DEAR SIR,

By this post I send you a bit of a Book, in which you see that I only play very second Fiddle. It is not published yet, as I wait for a few friends to tell me if it be worth publishing, or better kept among ourselves, who know Crabbe as well as myself. You could tell me better than any one, only that I doubt if any Transatlantic Man can care, even if he knows of a Writer whose Books are all but unread by his own Countrymen, so obsolete has become his Subject (in this Book) as well as his way of treating it. So I think I may exonerate you from giving an opinion, and will only send it to you for such amusement as it may afford you in your Exile. I fancied I could make a pleasant Abstract of a much too long and clumsy Book, and draw a few Readers to the well-nigh forgotten Author. But, on looking over my little work, I doubt that my short and readable Handybook will not leave any such impression as the long, rather un-readable, original; mere length having, you know, the inherent Virtue of soaking it in: so as my Book will scarce do but as a reminder of the original, which nobody reads! . . .

Voila assez sur ce sujet la. I think that you will one day give us an account of your Spanish Consulship, as Hawthorne did of his English: a noble Book which I have just been reading over again. His 'Our old Home' is out of print here; and I have asked Mr. Norton to send me any handy Edition of it, as also of the Italian Journal, my Copies having been lent out past recovery. I am going to begin again with his Scarlet Letter and Seven Gables; which (oddly to myself) I did not take to. And yet I think they are not out of my line, or reach, I ought to say.

We have had such a long, and mortal Winter as never do I remember in my seventy years, which struck 70 on March 31 last. I have just lost a Brother--75. Proximus ardet, etc. But I escaped through all these seven months Winter, till a week or ten days ago, when a South Wind and Sunshine came for a Day, and one expatiated abroad, and then down comes a North Easter, etc. I was like the Soldier in Crabbe's Old Bachelor (now with you), who compares himself to the Soldier stricken by a random Shot, when resting on his Arms, etc. {267} So Cold, Cough, Bronchitis, etc. And To-day Sunshine again, and Ruisenor (do you know him?) in my Shrubs only just be-greening, and I am a Butterfly again. I have heard nothing of Carlyles, Tennysons, etc., save that the latter had written some Ballad about Lucknow. I shall be glad to hear a word of yourself, Calderon, and Don Quixote, the latter of whom [Greek text] from my Bookshelf. Yes, yes, I am soon coming.

WOODBRIDGE. _June_ 13/79.

MY DEAR SIR,

I had just written a Letter to Tennyson, a thing I had not done these two years, when one was brought to me with what I thought his Subscription, which I have not seen for twice two years, I suppose. Well, but the Letter was from you. I ought not to write again so quick: but you know I never exact a Reply: especially as you never will answer what I ask you, which I rather admire too. To be sure you have so much filled your Letter with my Crabbe that you have told me nothing of yourself, Calderon, and Cervantes, both of whom, I suppose, are fermenting, and maturing, in your head. Cowell says he will come to this coast this Summer with Don Quixote that we may read him together: so, if you should come, you will find yourself at home. I have said all I can say about your taking any such trouble as coming down here only to shake hands with me, as you talk of. I never make any sort of 'hospitality' to the few who ever do come this way, but just put a fowl in the Pot (as Don Quixote's _ama_ might do), and hire a Shandrydan for a Drive, or a Boat on the river, and 'There you are,' as one of Dickens' pleasant young fellows says. But I never can ask any one to come, and out of his way, to see me, a very ancient, and solitary, Bird indeed. But you know all about it. 'Parlons d'autres choses,' as Sevigne says.

I was curious to know what an American, and of your Quality, would say of Crabbe. The manner and topics (Whig, Tory, etc.) are almost obsolete in this country, though I remember them well: how then must they appear to you and yours? The 'Ceremoniousness' you speak of is overdone for Crabbe's time: he overdid it in his familiar intercourse, so as to disappoint everybody who expected 'Nature's sternest Poet,' etc.; but he was all the while observing. I know not why he persists in his Thee and Thou, which certainly Country Squires did not talk of, except for an occasional Joke, at the time his Poem dates from, 1819: and I warned my Readers in that stillborn Preface to change that form into simple 'You.' If this Book leaves a melancholy impression on you, what then would all his others? Leslie Stephen says his Humour is heavy (Qy is not his Tragedy?), and wonders how Miss Austen could admire him as it appears she did; and you discern a relation between her and him. I find plenty of grave humour in this Book: in the Spinster, the Bachelor, the Widow, etc. All which I pointed out (in the still-born) to L. S. . . . He says too that Crabbe is 'incapable of Epigram,' which also you do not agree in; Epigrams more of Humour than Wit; sometimes only hinted, as in those two last lines of that disagreeable, and rather incomprehensible Sir Owen Dale. I think he will do in the land of Cervantes still.

When my Copy of Tennyson's Lover's Tale comes home I will send it to you. . . . As to Gray--Ah, to think of that little Elegy inscribed among the Stars, while ---, --- & Co., are blazing away with their Fireworks here below. I always think that there is more Genius in most of the three volume Novels than in Gray: but by the most exquisite Taste, and indefatigable lubrication, he made of his own few thoughts, and many of other men's, a something which we all love to keep ever about us. {270} I do not think his scarcity of work was from Design: he had but a little to say, I believe, and took his time to say it. . . .

Only think of old Carlyle, who was very feeble indeed during the winter, having read through all Shakespeare to himself during these latter Spring months. So his Niece writes me. I do not hear of his doing the like by his Goethe.

I had another shot at your Hawthorne, a Man of fifty times Gray's Genius, but I could not take to him. Painfully microscopic and elaborate on dismal subjects, I still thought: but I am quite ready to admit that (as in Goethe's case) the fault lies in me. I think I have a good feeling for such things; but 'non omnia possumus, etc.;' some Screw loose. 'C'est egal.' That is a serviceable word for so much.

Now have I any more that turns up for this wonderful Letter? I should put it in, for I do think it might amuse you in Madrid. But nothing does turn up this Evening. Tea, and a Walk on our River bank, and then, what do you think? An hour's reading (to me) of a very celebrated Murder which I remember just thirty years ago at Norwich: then 'Ten minutes' Refreshment'; and then, Nicholas Nickleby! Then one Pipe: and then to Bed. Yours sincerely,

E. F. G.

This Letter shall sleep a night too before Travelling. Next Morning. Revenons a notre Crabbe. 'Principles and Pew' very bad. 'The Flowers, etc., cut by busy hands, etc.,' are, or were, common on the leaden roofs of old Houses, Churches, etc. I made him stop at 'Till the Does ventured on our Solitude,' {271} without adding '_We were so still_!'--which is quite 'de trop.' You will see by the enclosed prefatory Notice what I have done in the matter, as little as I could in doing what was to be done. My own Copy is full of improvements. Yes, for any Poetaster may improve three-fourths of the careless old Fellow's Verse: but it would puzzle a Poet to improve the better part. I think that Crabbe differs from Pope in this thing for one: that he aims at Truth, not at Wit, in his Epigram. How almost graceful he can sometimes be too!

What we beheld in Love's perspective Glass
Has pass'd away--one Sigh! and let it pass. {272}

LOWESTOFT. _August_ 20/79.

MY DEAR SIR,

Mr. Norton wrote me that you had been detained in Spain by Mrs. Lowell's severe, nay, dangerous, illness; a very great affliction to you. I venture a bit of a Letter, which you are not to answer, even by a word; no, not even read further than now you have got, unless a better day has dawned on you, and unless you feel wholly at liberty to write. I should be very glad to hear, in ever so few words, that your anxiety was over.

I do not think I shall make a long letter of this; for I do not think of much that can amuse you in the least, even if you should be open to such sort of amusement as I could give you. I am come here to be a month with my friend Cowell; he and I are reading the Second Part of Don Quixote together, as we used to read together thirty years ago; he always the Teacher, and I the Pupil, although he is quite unaware of that Relation between us; indeed, rather reverses it. It so happens that he is not so well acquainted with this Second Part as with the First; indeed not so well with the Story of it as I, but then he is so much a better Scholar in all ways that he lights up passages of the Book in a way that is all new to me. Some of the strange words reminded me again of his wish for a Spanish Dictionary in the style of Littre's French: he would assuredly be the Man to do it, but he has his Sanskrit Professorship to mind.

There is a Book rather worth reading called 'On Foot through Spain'; {273} meaning, as much of Spain as extends from St. Sebastian on the Bay of Biscay to Barcelona on the Mediterranean; with a good deal of Cervantesque Ventas, Carreteros, etc., in it. There is an account of the Obsequies of PAU PI (Basque?) on the last Day of Carnival at Saragossa, which reminded me of the 'Cortes de Muerte,' etc. Hawthorne (whose admirable Italian Journal I brought with me here) says that originally the Italian Carnival ended with somewhat of the same Burlesque Ceremonial, but was thought to mimic too Graciosoly that of the Church. I believe the Moccoli, etc., are a remainder of it.

'Eso alla se ha de entender, respondio Sancho, con los _que nacieron en las malvas_' (II. c. 4), made my Master jump at once to Job XXX. 4.

I cannot but suppose that you are gradually gathering materials for some Essay on Spanish Literature, and it is a rare Quality in these days to be in no hurry about such work, but to wait till one can do it thoroughly; as is the case with you. I suppose you know Lope: of whom I have read, and now shall read, nothing: even Cowell, who has read some, is not much interested in him. He delights in Calderon, of whom he has one thick Volume here, and still finds many obscure passages to clear up. He was telling me of one about Madrid, {274} which (as you are now there) I must quote by way of filling up this Second Sheet of Letter. But, to do this, I must wait till I have been with him for our morning's reading, so as I may give it you Chapter and Verse.

P.S. Here is my Professor's MS. note for you, which I told him I wanted to send. We have been reading Chapters 14-15 of Don Quixote, Second Part. Do you know why Carrasco finds an _Algebrista_ for his hurts? Why the Moorish _Aljebro_ = the setting of Fractions, etc. So said my dear Pundit at once. Ah! you would like to be with us, for the sake of him, rather than of yours sincerely E. F. G.

_To C. E. Norton_.

LOWESTOFT. _Sept._ 3/79.

MY DEAR NORTON,

I must write you a few lines, on my knee (not, on my knees, however), in return for your kind letter. As to my thinking you could be 'importunate' in asking again for my two Sophocles Abstracts, you must know that such importunity cannot but be grateful. I am only rather ashamed that you should have to repeat it. I laid the Plays by after looking them over some months ago, meaning to wait till another year to clear up some parts, if not all. Thus do my little works arrive at such form as they result in, good or bad; so as, however I may be blamed for the liberties I take with the Great, I cannot be accused of over haste in doing so, though blamed I may be for rashness in meddling with them at all. Anyhow, I would not send you any but a fair MS. if I sent MS. at all; and may perhaps print it in a small way, not to publish, but so as to ensure a final Revision, such as will also be more fitting for you to read. It is positively the last of my Works! having been by me these dozen years, I believe, occasionally looked at. So much for that.

Now, you would like to be here along with me and my delightful Cowell, when we read the Second Part of Don Quixote together of a morning. This we have been doing for three weeks; and shall continue to do for some ten days more, I suppose: and then he will be returning to his Cambridge. If we read very continuously we should be almost through the Book by this time: but, as you may imagine we play as well as work; some passage in the dear Book leads Cowell off into Sanskrit, Persian, or Goody Two Shoes, for all comes within the compass of his Memory and Application. Job came in to the help of Sancho a few days ago: and the Duenna Rodriguez' age brought up a story Cowell recollected of an old Lady who persisted in remaining at 50; till being told (by his Mother) that she could not be elected to a Charity because of not being 64, she said 'She thought she could manage it'; and the Professor shakes with Laughter not loud but deep, from the centre. . . .

Pray read in our Athenaeum some letters of Severn's about Keats, full of Love and intelligent Admiration, all the better for coming straight from the heart without any style at all. If I thought that Mr. Lowell would not find these Athenaeums somewhere in Madrid, I would send them to him, as I would also to you in a like predicament. . . .

This letter has run on further than I expected: and I am now going to see Sancho off to his Island, under convoy of my Professor.

_To S. Laurence_.

11 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT. _Septr._ 22/79.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

Your letter found me here this morning: here, where I have now been near six weeks, for a month of which Edward Cowell and his Wife were my neighbours; and we had two or three hours of Don Quixote's company of a morning, and only ourselves for company at night. They are gone, however; and I might have gone to my own home also, but that some Nephews and Nieces wished to see a little more of me; and I thought also that Lowestoft would be more amusing than Woodbridge to a young London Clerk, a Nephew of the Cowells, who comes to me for a short Holyday, when he can get away from his Desk. But early in October I shall be back at my old routine, stale enough. I think that, as a general rule, people should die at 70.

Yes: though Edwards was comparatively a Friend of late growth--he, and his brave wife--they encountered me down in my own country here, and we somehow suited one another; and I feel sad thinking of the pleasant days at Dunwich, which the Tide now rolling up here will soon reach. {277} . . .

I am here re-reading Forster's Life of Dickens, which seems to me a very good Book, though people say, I believe, there is too much Forster in it. At any rate, there is enough to show the wonderful Daemonic Dickens: as pure an instance of Genius as ever lived; and, it seems to me, a Man I can love also.

_Sentence from a Letter written to Prof. Norton Feb._ 22/80.

'I cannot yet get the 2nd Part (Coloneus) to fit as I wish to the first: finding (what I never doubted) that nothing is less true than Goethe's saying that these two Plays and Antigone must be read in Sequence, as a Trilogy.'

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 4, 1880.

MY DEAR NORTON,

Herewith you will receive, I suppose, Part I. of OEdipus, which I found on my return here after a week's absence. I really hope you will like it, after taking the trouble more than once to ask for it: only (according to my laudable rule of Give or Take in such cases) say no more of it to me than to point out anything amendable: for which, you see, I leave a wide margin, for my own behoof as well as my reader's. And again I will say that I wish you would keep it wholly to yourself: and, above all, not let a word about it cross the Atlantic. I will not send a Copy even to Professor Goodwin, to whom you can show yours, if he should happen to mention the subject; nor will I send one to Mrs. Kemble, the only other whom I had thought of. In short, you, my dear Sir, are the only Depository of this precious Document, which I would have you keep as though it were very precious indeed.

You will see at once that it is not even a Paraphrase, but an Adaptation, of the Original: not as more adapted to an Athenian Audience 400 years B.C. but to a merely English Reader 1800 years A.D. Some dropt stitches in the Story, not considered by the old Genius of those days, I have, I think, 'taken up,' as any little Dramatist of these Days can do: though the fundamental absurdity of the Plot (equal to Tom Jones according to Coleridge!) remains; namely, that OEdipus, after so many years reigning in Thebes as to have a Family about him, should apparently never have heard of Laius' murder till the Play begins. One acceptable thing I have done, I think, omitting very much rhetorical fuss about the poor man's Fatality, which I leave for the Action itself to discover; as also a good deal of that rhetorical Scolding, which, I think, becomes tiresome even in its Greek: as the Scene between OEdipus and Creon after Tiresias: and equally unreasonable. The Choruses which I believe are thought fine by Scholars, I have left to old Potter to supply, as I was hopeless of making anything of them; pasting, you see, his 'Finale' over that which I had tried.

I believe that I must leave Part II. for the present, being rather wearied with the present stupendous Effort, at AEtat. 71. If I live another year, and am still free from the ills incident to my Time, I will make an end of it, and of all my Doings in that way.

_To Charles Keene_. {280a}

_Friday_.

MY DEAR KEENE,

. . . Beckford's Hunting is an old friend of mine: excellently written; such a relief (like Wesley and the religious men) to the Essayist style of the time. Do not fail to read the capital Squire's Letter in recommendation of a Stable-man, dated from Great Addington, Northants, 1734: of which some little is omitted after Edition I.; which edition has also a Letter from Beckford's Huntsman about a wicked 'Daufter,' wholly omitted. This first Edition is a pretty small 4to 1781, with a Frontispiece by Cipriani! . . .

If you come down this Spring, but not before May, I will show you some of these things in a Book {280b} I have, which I might call 'Half Hours with the Worst Authors,' and very fine things by them. It would be the very best Book of the sort ever published, if published; but no one would think so but myself, and perhaps you, and half a dozen more. If my Eyes hold out I will copy a delightful bit by way of return for your Ballad.

_To C. E. Norton_.

_May_ 1, 1880.

MY DEAR NORTON,

I must thank you for the Crabbe Review {281} you sent me, though, had it been your own writing, I should probably not tell you how very good I think it. I am somewhat disappointed that Mr. Woodberry dismisses Crabbe's 'Trials at Humour' as summarily as Mr. Leslie Stephen does; it was mainly for the Humour's sake that I made my little work: Humour so evident to me in so many of the Tales (and Conversations), and which I meant to try and get a hearing for in the short Preface I had written in case the Book had been published. I thought these Tales showed the 'stern Painter' softened by his Grand Climacteric, removed from the gloom and sadness of his early associations, and looking to the Follies rather than to the Vices of Men, and treating them often in something of a Moliere way, only with some pathetic humour mixt, so as these Tales were almost the only one of his Works which left an agreeable impression behind them. But if so good a Judge as Mr. Woodberry does not see all this, I certainly could not have persuaded John Bull to see it: and perhaps am wrong myself in seeing what is not there. I doubt not that Mr. Woodberry is quite right in what he says of Crabbe not having Imagination to draw that Soul from Nature of which he enumerates the phenomena: but he at any rate does so enumerate and select them as to suggest something more to his Reader, something more than mere catalogue could suggest. He may go yet further in such a description, as that other Autumnal one in 'Delay has Danger,' beginning--

Early he rose, and look'd with many a sigh,
On the red Light that fill'd the Eastern sky, etc.

Where, as he says, the Decay and gloom of Nature seem reflected in--nay, as it were, to take a reflection from--the Hero's troubled Soul. In the Autumn Scene which Mr. Woodberry quotes, {282} and contrasts with those of other more imaginative Poets, would not a more imaginative representation of the scene have been out of character with the English Country Squire who sees and reflects on it? As would have been more evident if Mr. W. had quoted a line or two further--

While the dead foliage dropt from loftier trees
The Squire beheld not with his wonted ease,
But to his own reflections made reply,
And said aloud--'Yes, doubtless we must die.'

[Greek text]--

This Dramatic Picture touches me more than Mr. Arnold.

One thing more I will say, that I do not know where old Wordsworth condemned Crabbe as un-poetical (except in the truly 'priggish' candle case) though I doubt not that Mr. Woodberry does know. We all know that of Crabbe's 'Village' one passage was one of the first that struck young Wordsworth: and when Crabbe's son was editing his Father's Poems in 1834, old Wordsworth wrote to him that, because of their combined Truth and Poetry, those Poems would last as long at least as any that had been written since, including Wordsworth's own. And Wordsworth was too honest, as well as too exclusive, to write so much even to a Son of the dead Poet, without meaning all he said.

I should not have written all this were it not that I think so much of Mr. Woodberry's Paper; but I doubt I could not persuade him to think more of my old Man than he sees good to think for himself. I rejoice that he thinks even so well of the Poet: even if his modified Praise does not induce others to try and think likewise. The verses he quotes--

Where is that virtue which the generous boy, etc. {283}

made my heart glow--yes, even out at my Eyes--though so familiar to me. Only in my private Copy, instead of

When Vice had triumph--_who his tear bestow'd_
On injured merit--

in place of that '_bestowed Tear_,' I cannot help reading

When Vice and Insolence in triumph rode, etc.

which is, of course, only for myself, and you, it seems: for I never mentioned that, and some scores of such impudencies.

_To R. C. Trench_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 9/80.

MY DEAR LORD,

You are old enough, like myself, to remember People reading and talking of Crabbe. I know not if you did so yourself; but you know that no one, unless as old as ourselves, does so now. As he has always been one of my Apollos, in spite of so many a cracked string, I wanted to get a few others to listen a little as I did; and so printed the Volume which I send you: printed it, not by way of improving, or superseding, the original, but to entice some to read the original in all its length, and (one must say) uncouth and wearisome '_longueurs_' and want of what is now called 'Art.' These Tales are perhaps as open to that charge as any of his; and, moreover, not principally made up of that 'sternest' stuff which Byron celebrated as being most characteristic of him. When writing these Tales, the Poet had reached his Grand Climacteric, and liked to look on somewhat of the sunnier side of things; more on the Comedy than the Tragedy of Human Life: and hence these Tales are, with all their faults, the one work of his which leaves me (ten years past my Grand Climacteric also) with a pleasant Impression. So I tried to make others think; but I was told by Friends whose Judgment I could trust that no Public would listen to me. . . . And so I paid for my printing, and kept my Book to be given away to some few as old as myself, and brought up in somewhat of another Fashion than what now reigns. And so I now take heart to send it to you whose Poems and Writings prove that you belong to another, and, as I think, far better School, whether you care for Crabbe or not. I dare say you will feel bound to acknowledge the Book; but pray do so, if at all, by a simple acknowledgment of its receipt; I mean, so far as I am concerned in it: any word about Crabbe I shall be very glad to have if you care to write it; but I always maintain it best to say nothing, unless to find fault, with what is sent to one in this Book Line. And so to be done by.

_To Lord Houghton_. {285a}

WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 10_th_ 1880. {285b}

DEAR LORD HOUGHTON,

I think I have sent you a yearly letter of some sort or other for several years, so it has come upon me once again. I have nothing to ask of you except how you are. I should just like to know that, including 'yours' in you. Just a very few words will suffice, and I daresay you have no time for more. I have so much time that it is evident I have nothing to tell, except that I have just entered upon a military career in so far as having become much interested in the battle of Waterloo, which I just remember a year after it was fought, when a solemn anniversary took place in a neighbouring parish where I was born, and the village carpenter came to my father to borrow a pair of Wellington boots for the lower limbs of a stuffed effigy of Buonaparte, which was hung on a gibbet, and guns and pistols were discharged at him, while we and the parson of the parish sat in a tent where we had beef and plum pudding and loyal toasts. To this hour I remember the smell of the new-cut hay in the meadow as we went in our best summer clothes to the ceremony. But now I am trying to understand whether the Guards or the 52nd Regiment deserved most credit for _ecraseing_ the Imperial Guard. {286} Here is a fine subject to address you on in the year 1880! Let it go for nothing; but just tell me how you are, and believe me, with some feeling of old, if not very close intimacy,

Yours sincerely, EDWARD FITZGERALD.

_To R. C. Trench_.

WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 18/80.

MY DEAR LORD,

I should have sent a line before now to thank you for your Calderon, had I not waited for some tidings of Donne from Mowbray, to whom I wrote some days ago. Not hearing from him, I suppose that he is out holyday-making somewhere; and therefore I will delay no longer.

You gave me your Calderon when it first came out, now some five and twenty years ago! I am always glad to know that it, or any of your writings, Prose or Verse, still flourish--which I think not many others of the kind will do after the Generation they are born in. I remember that you regretted having tried the asonante, and you now decide that Prose is best for English Translation. It may be so; in a great degree it must be so; but I think the experiment might yet be tried; namely, the short trochaic line, regardless of an assonant that will not speak in our thin vowels, but looped up at intervals with a strong monosyllabic rhyme, without which the English trochaic, assonant or not, is apt to fray out, or run away too watery-like without some such interruption; I mean when running to any considerable length, as I should think would be the case in Longfellow's Hiawatha; which I have not however seen since it appeared. Were I a dozen years younger I might try this with Calderon which I think I have found to succeed in some much shorter flights: but it is too late now, and you may think it well that it is so, with one who takes such great liberties with great Poets, himself pretending to be little more than a Versifier. I know not how it is with you who are really a Poet; and perhaps you may think I am as wrong about my trochee as about my iambic.

As for the modern Poetry, I have cared for none of the last thirty years, not even Tennyson, except in parts: pure, lofty and noble as he always is. Much less can I endure the _Gurgoyle_ school (I call it) begun, I suppose, by V. Hugo. . . . I do think you will find something better than that in the discarded Crabbe; whose writings Wordsworth (not given to compliment any man on any occasion) wrote to Crabbe's Son and Editor would continue as long at least as any Poetry written since, on account of its mingled 'Truth and Poetry.' And this includes Wordsworth's own. So I must think my old Crabbe will come up again, though never to be popular.

This reminds me that just after I had written to you, Crabbe's Grandson, one of the best, most amiable, and most agreeable, of my friends, paid me a two days' Visit, and told me that a Nephew of yours was learning to farm with a Steward of Lord Walsingham at Merton in Norfolk, George Crabbe's own parish; I mean the living George, who spoke of your Nephew as a very gentlemanly young man indeed. I think _he_ will not gainsay what I write to you of his 'Parson.'

Your kind Letter has encouraged me to write all this. I felt some hesitation in addressing you again after an interval of some fifteen years, I think; and now I think I shall venture on writing to you once again before another year be gone, if we both live to see 1881 in, and out.

_To Charles Keene_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Sunday_.

MY DEAR KEENE,

Your Letter reached me yesterday when I was just finishing my Sevigne; I mean, reading it over. I have plenty of Notes for an Introductory Argument and List of Dramatis Personae, and a clue to the course of her Letters, so as to set a new reader off on the right tack, with some previous acquaintance with the People and Places she lives among. But I shrink from trying to put such Notes into shape; all writing always distasteful to me, and now very difficult, at seventy odd. Some such Introduction would be very useful: people being in general puzzled with Persons, Dates, etc., if not revolted by the eternal, though quite sincere, fuss about her Daughter, which the Eye gradually learns to skim over, and get to the fun. I felt a pang when arriving at--

Ci git
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
Marquise de Sevigne
Decedee le 18 Avril 1696

still to be found, I believe, on a Tablet in the Church of Grignan in Provence. I have been half minded to run over to Brittany just to see Les Rochers; but a French 'Murray' informed me that the present owner will not let it be seen by Strangers attracted by all those 'paperasses,' as he calls her Letters. Probably I should not have gone in any case when it came to proof. . . .

I did not forget Waterloo Day. Just as I and my Reader Boy were going into the Pantry for some _grub_, I thought of young Ensign Leeke, not 18, who carried the Colours of that famous 52nd which gave the 'coup de grace' to the Imperial Guard about 8 p.m. and then marched to Rossomme, seeing the Battle was won: and the Colour-serjeant found some bread in some French Soldier's knapsack, and brought a bit to his Ensign, 'You must want a bit, Sir, and I am sure you have deserved it.' That was a Compliment worth having!

I have, like you, always have, and from a Child had, a mysterious feeling about that 'Sizewell Gap.' There were reports of kegs of Hollands found under the Altar Cloth of Theberton Church near by: and we Children looked with awe on the 'Revenue Cutters' which passed Aldbro', especially remembering one that went down with all hands, 'The Ranger.'

They have half spoilt Aldbro'; but now that Dunwich is crossed out from my visiting Book by the loss of that fine fellow, {290} whom this time of year especially reminds me of, I must return to Aldbro' now and then. Why can't you go there with me? I say no more of your coming here, for you ought to be assured that you would be welcome at any time; but I never do ask any busy, or otherwise engaged man to come. . . .

Here is a good Warwickshire word--'I _sheered_ my Eyes round the room.' So good, that it explains itself.

WHITE LION, ALDEBURGH. _July_ 7/80.

MY DEAR KEENE,

I shall worry you with Letters: here is one, however, which will call for no answer. It is written indeed in acknowledgement of your packet of Drawings, received by me yesterday at Woodbridge.

My rule concerning Books is, that Giver and Taker (each in his turn) should just say nothing. As I am not an Artist (though a very great Author) I will say that Four of your Drawings seemed capital to me: I cannot remember the Roundabouts which they initialed: except two: 1. The lazy idle Boy, which you note as not being used; I suppose, from not being considered sufficiently appropriate to the Essay (which I forget), but which I thought altogether good; and the old Man, with a look of Edwards! 2. Little Boy in Black, very pretty: 3. (I forget the Essay) People looking at Pictures: one of them, the principal, surely a recollection of W. M. T. himself. Then 4. There was a bawling Boy: subject forgotten. I looked at them many times through the forenoon: and came away here at 2 p.m.

I do not suppose, or wish, that you should make over to me all these Drawings, which I suppose are the originals from which the Wood was cut. I say I do not 'wish,' because I am in my 72nd year: and I now give away rather than accept. But I wished for one at least of your hand; for its own sake, and as a remembrance, for what short time is left me, of one whom I can sincerely say I regard greatly for himself, as also for those Dunwich days in which I first became known to him. 'Viola qui est dit.'

And I wish you were here, not for your own sake, for it is dull enough. No Sun, no Ship, a perpetual drizzle; and to me the melancholy of another Aldbro' of years gone by. Out of that window there 'le petit' Churchyard sketched Thorpe headland under an angry Sunset of Oct. 55 which heralded a memorable Gale that washed up a poor Woman with a Babe in her arms: and old Mitford had them buried with an inscribed Stone in the old Churchyard, peopled with dead 'Mariners'; and Inscription and Stone are now gone. Yesterday I got out in a Boat, drizzly as it was: but to-day there is too much Sea to put off. I am to be home by the week's end, if not before. The melancholy of Slaughden last night, with the same Sloops sticking sidelong in the mud as sixty years ago! And I the venerable Remembrancer.

MY DEAR KEENE,

I ought to have acknowledged the receipt of your Paris map, which is excellent; so that, eyes permitting, I can follow my Sevigne about from her Rue St. Catherine over the Seine to the Faubourg St. Germain quite distinctly. These cold East winds, however, coming so suddenly after the heat, put those Eyes of mine in a pickle, so as I am obliged to let them lie fallow, looking only at the blessed Green of the Trees before my Window, or on my Quarterdeck. {293} My two Nieces are with me, so that I leave all the house to them, except my one Room downstairs, which serves for Parlour, Bedroom and all. And it does very well for me; reminding me of my former Cabin life in my little Ship 'd'autrefois.' . . .

Do not you forget (as you will) to tell Mr. Millais one day of the pretty Subject I told you; little Keats standing sentry before his sick Mother's Door with a drawn sword; in his Shirt it might be, with some Rembrandtish Light and Shade. The Story is to be found at the beginning of Lord Houghton's Life.

Also, for any Painter you know of what they call the 'Genre' School:

Sevigne and the 'de Villars' looking through the keyhole at Mignard painting Madame de Fontevrauld (Rochechouart) while the Abbe Tetu talks to her (Letter of Sept. 6, 1675). It might be done in two compartments, with the wall slipt between, so as to show both Parties, as one has seen on the Stage.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Nov._ 3, 1880.

MY DEAR NORTON,

. . . With all your knowledge, and all the use you can make of it, I wonder that you can think twice of such things as I can offer you in return for what you send me: but I take you at your word, and shall perhaps send you the last half of OEdipus, if I can prepare him for the Printer; a rather hard business to me now, when turned of seventy, and reminded by some intimations about the Heart that I am not likely to exceed the time which those of my Family have stopped going at. But this is no great Regret to me.

I have sent you a better Book than any I can send you of my own: or of any one else's in the way of Verse, I think: the Sonnets of Alfred Tennyson's Brother Charles. Two thirds of them I do not care for: but there is scarce one without some fine thought or expression: some of them quite beautiful to me: all pure, true, and original. I think you in America may like these leaves from the Life of a quiet Lincolnshire Parson.

. . . We have had the Leaves green unusually late this year, I think: but so I have thought often before, I am told. The last few nights have brought Frost, however: and changed the countenance of all. A Blackbird (have you him as the 'ousel'?) whom I kept alive, I think, through last hard winter by a saucer of Bread and Milk, has come to look for it again.

_To Miss Anna Biddell_.

_Nov._ 30, 1880.

One day I went into the Abbey at 3.5 p.m. while a beautiful anthem was beautifully sung, and then the prayers and collects, not less beautiful, well intoned on one single note by the Minister. And when I looked up and about me, I thought that Abbey a wonderful structure for Monkeys to have raised. The last night, Mesdames Kemble and Edwards had each of them company, so I went into my old Opera House in the Haymarket, where I remembered the very place where Pasta stood as Medea on the Stage, and Rubini singing his return to his Betrothed in the Puritani, and Taglioni floating everywhere about: and the several Boxes in which sat the several Ranks and Beauties of forty and fifty years ago: my Mother's Box on the third Tier, in which I often figured as a Specimen of both. The Audience all changed much for the worse, I thought: and Opera and Singers also; only one of them who could sing at all, and she sang very well indeed; Trebelli, her name. The opera by a Frenchman on the Wagner plan: excellent instrumentation, but not one new or melodious idea through the whole.

_To W. H. Thompson_.

LITTLEGRANGE: WOODBRIDGE. _Decr._ 15 [1880].

MY DEAR MASTER,

I have not written to you this very long while, simply because I did not wish to trouble you: Aldis Wright will tell you that I have not neglected to enquire about you. I drew him out of Jerusalem Chamber for five minutes three weeks ago: this I did to ask primarily about Mr. Furness on behalf of Mrs. Kemble: but also I asked about you, and was told you were still improving, and prepared to abide the winter here. I saw nobody in London except my two Widows, my dear old Donne, and some coeval Suffolk Friends. I was half tempted to jump into a Bus and just leave my name at Carlyle's Door! But I did not. I should of course have asked and heard how he was: which I can find no one now to tell me. For his Niece has a Child, if only one, to attend to, and I do not like to trouble. I heard from vague Information in London that he is almost confined to his house.

I have myself been somewhat bothered at times for the last three months with pains and heaviness about the Heart: which I knew from a Doctor was unsettled five years ago. I shall not at all complain if it takes the usual course, only wishing to avoid _Angina_, or some such form of the Disease. My Family get on gaily enough till seventy, and then generally founder after turning the corner.

I hope you know Charles Tennyson's Sonnets; three times too many, and some rather puerile: but scarce one but with something good in Thought or Expression: all original: and some delightful: I think, to live with Alfred's, and no one else's. Old Fred might have made one of Three Brothers, I think, could he have compressed himself into something of Sonnet Compass: but he couldn't. He says, Charles makes one regard and love little things more than any other Poet.

My Nephew De Soyres seems to have made a good Edition of Pascal's Letters: I should have thought they had been quite well enough edited before; and yet a more 'exhaustive' Edition is to follow the House that Jack built, he tells us.

Groome had proposed a month ago that he would visit me about this time: but I have heard no more of him: and am always afraid to write, for fear of those poor Eyes of his.

I was very glad to meet Merivale on Lowestoft Pier for some days. Mrs. M. writes to me of an enlarged Photo of him whose Negative will be destroyed in a month unless subscribed for by Friends, etc. 'Will I ask Friends, etc.' No: I will not do that, though I will take a copy if wanted to complete a number: though, if it be life size, having no where to hang it up: my own Mother, by Sir T. Lawrence, being put away in a cupboard for want of room.

Now, my dear Master, I want neither you nor the Mistress to reply to this Letter: but please to believe me, both of you, yours as ever sincerely

E. FITZ.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 20, 1881.

MY DEAR NORTON,