Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes

E >> Edward FitzGerald >> Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

_To J. R. Lowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Octr._ 17/78.

MY DEAR SIR,

I scarce like to write to you again because of seeming to exact a Letter.
I do not wish that at all, pray believe it: I don't think letter-writing
men are much worth. What puts me up to writing just now is, the enclosed
two Letters by other men; one of them relating to yourself; the other to
the Spain you are now in. I sent Frederic Tennyson, eldest Brother of
the Laureate, your Study Windows: and now you see what he says about it.
He is a Poet too, as indeed all the Brethren more or less are; and is _a
Poet_: only with (I think) a somewhat monotonous Lyre. But a very noble
Man in all respects, and one whose good opinion is worth having, however
little you read, or care for, opinion about yourself, one way or other. I
do not say that I agree with all he says: but here is his Letter. I am
going to send him a Volume of yours 'Among my Books,' which I know is a
maturer work than the Windows; and you know what I think of it.

The other Letter, or piece of Letter, is from our Professor Cowell, and
has surely a good Suggestion concerning a Spanish Dictionary. You might
put some Spanish Scholar on the scent. And so much about my two Letters.

I was but little at my old Dunwich this Summer, for my Landlady fell
sick, and died: and the Friend I went to be with was obliged to leave; I
doubt his Brain is becoming another Ruin to be associated with that old
Priory wall, already so pathetic to me. So here am I back again at my
old Desk for all the Winter, I suppose, with my old Crabbe once more open
before me, disembowelled too; for I positively meditate a Volume made up
of 'Readings' from his Tales of the Hall, that is, all his better Verse
connected with as few words of my own Prose as will connect it
intelligibly together.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Decr._ 15/78.

MY DEAR NORTON,

You are very good to ask for my _OEdipodes_, etc. And when I can find
Eyes as well as Courage to copy out a '_brouillon_,' I will see what can
be done. Only, you and Professor Goodwin must not feel any way bound to
print them, even if you both approved of them; and that is not at all
certain. How would you two Scholars approve of two whole Scenes omitted
in either OEdipus (as I know to be the case), and the Choephori {259a}
reduced almost to an Act? So that would be, I doubt. Then, as you know,
Sophocles does not strike Fire out of the Flint, as old AEschylus does;
and though my Sophocles has lain by me (lookt at now and then) these ten
years, I was then a dozen years older than when Agamemnon haunted me,
until I laid his Ghost so far as I myself was concerned. By the way, I
see that Dr. Kennedy, Professor of Greek at our Cambridge, has published
a Translation of Agamemnon in 'rhythmic English.' So, at any rate, I
have been the cause of waking up two great men (Browning and Kennedy) and
a minor Third (I forget his name) {259b} to the Trial, if it were only
for the purpose of extinguishing my rash attempt. However that may be, I
cannot say my attempt on Sophocles would please you and my American
Patrons (in England I have none) so well as AEschylus; indeed I only see
in what I remember to have done, good English, and fair Verse, beyond the
chief merit of shaping the Plays to modern Taste by the very excisions
which Scholars will most deprecate. However, you shall see, one day. . . .

I want to send you a very little volume by Charles Tennyson, long ago
published: too modest to make a noise: worth not only all me, but all ---
, ---, & Co. put together. Three such little volumes have appeared, but
just appeared; like Violets, I say: to be overlooked by the 'madding
Crowd,' but I believe to smell sweet and blossom when all the gaudy
Growths now in fashion are faded and gone. He ought to be known in
America--everywhere; is he?

_To J. R. Lowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Decr._ 19/78.

MY DEAR SIR,

I am writing to you because you say you like to hear from me. I dare
say, a Letter from your home, or mine, is acceptable in Madrid, which, by
the by, if Travellers' Stories be true, must be terrible this winter: and
I always try to stuff my Letters with all I can about other people more
or less worth hearing of. But for that I have but little to say,
certainly nothing worth your keeping. But if you like me to write, no
matter why. I wish I could find you a short Letter written to me this
time last year by C. Merivale, Dean of Ely, Roman Historian; a man of
infinite dry humour, and quaint fancy. I have put it away in some safe
place where (of course) I can't find it. Perhaps the like may happen to
yourself now and then. I tell him that some one should pick up his Table-
talk and Letter-talk: for he of course would not do it himself. I have
known him from College days, fifty years ago; but have never read his
History: never having read any History but Herodotus, I believe. But I
should like you to see how an English Dean and Roman Historian can write
in spite of Toga and Canonicals.

_December_ 22.

I left off when my Reader came to finish The Bride of Lammermoor; as
wonderful to me as ever. O, the Austens, Eliots, and even Thackerays,
won't eclipse Sir Walter for long.

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. . . .

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20