Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes

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By the bye, Forby reasons that our Suffolk third person singular 'It go,
etc.,' is probably right as being the old Icelandic form. Why should the
3rd p. sing. be the only one that varies. And in the auxiliaries _May_,
_Shall_, _Can_, etc., there _is_ no change for the 3rd pers. I incline
to the Suffolk because of its avoiding a hiss.

_To George Crabbe_.

MARKET-HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_June_ 4/61.

MY DEAR GEORGE,

Let me know when you come into these Parts, and be sure I shall be glad
to entertain you as well as I can if you come while I am here. Nor am I
likely to be away further than Aldbro', so far as I see. I do meditate
crossing one fine Day to Holland: to see the Hague, Paul Potter, and some
Rembrandt at Rotterdam. This, however, is not to be done in my little
Boat: but in some Trader from Ipswich. I also talk of a cruise to
Edinburgh in one of their Schooners. But both these Excursions I reserve
for such hot weather as may make a retreat from the Town agreeable. I
make no advances to Farlingay, because (as yet) we have not had any such
Heat as to bake the Houses here: and, beside, I am glad to be by the
River. It is strange how sad the Country has become to me. I went
inland to see Acton's Curiosities before the Auction: and was quite glad
to get back to the little Town again. I am quite clear I must live the
remainder of my Life in a Town: but a little one, and with a strip of
Garden to saunter in. . . .

I go sometimes to see the Rifles drill, and shoot at their Target, and
have got John {22} to ask them up to Boulge to practise some day: I must
insinuate that he should offer them some Beer when they get there. It is
a shame the Squires do nothing in the matter: take no Interest: offer no
Encouragement, beyond a Pound or two in Money. And who are those who
have most interest at stake in case of Rifles being really wanted? But I
am quite assured that this Country is dying, as other Countries die, as
Trees die, atop first. The lower Limbs are making all haste to follow. . . .

By the bye, don't let me forget to ask you to bring with you my Persian
Dictionary in case you come into these Parts. I read very very little:
and get very desultory: but when Winter comes again must take to some
dull Study to keep from Suicide, I suppose. The River, the Sea, etc.,
serve to divert one now.

Adieu. These long Letters prove one's Idleness.

_To R. C. Trench_. {23a}

MARKET-HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_July_ 3/61.

DEAR DOCTOR TRENCH,

Thank you sincerely for the delightful little Journal {23b} which I had
from you yesterday, and only wished to be a dozen times as long. The
beautiful note at p. 73 speaks of much yet unprinted! It is a pity Mrs.
Kemble had not read p. 79. I thought in the Night of 'the subdued Voice
of Good Sense' and 'The Eye that invites you to look into it.' I doubt I
can read, more or less attentively, most personal Memoirs: but I am
equally sure of the superiority of this, in its Shrewdness, Humour,
natural Taste, and Good Breeding. One is sorry for the account of Lord
Nelson: but one cannot doubt it. It was at the time when he was
intoxicated, I suppose, with Glory and Lady Hamilton. What your Mother
says of the Dresden Madonna reminds me of what Tennyson once said: that
the Attitude of The Child was that of a Man: but perhaps not the less
right for all that. As to the Countenance, he said that scarce any Man's
Face could look so grave and rapt as a Baby's could at times. He once
said of his own Child's, 'He was a whole hour this morning worshipping
the Sunshine playing on the Bedpost.' He never writes Letters or
Journals: but I hope People will be found to remember some of the things
he has said as naturally as your Mother wrote them. {24}

_To W. H. Thompson_.

MARKET-HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_July_ 15/61.

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

I was very glad to hear of you again. You need never take it to
Conscience, not answering my Letters, further than that I really do want
to hear you are well, and where you are, and what doing, from time to
time. I have absolutely nothing to tell about myself, not having moved
from this place since I last wrote, unless to our Sea coast at Aldbro',
whither I run, or sail, from time to time to idle with the Sailors in
their Boats or on their Beach. I love their childish ways: but they too
degenerate. As to reading, my Studies have lain chiefly in some back
Volumes of the New Monthly Magazine and some French Memoirs. Trench was
good enough to send me a little unpublished Journal by his Mother: a very
pretty thing indeed. I suppose he did this in return for one or two
Papers on Oriental Literature which Cowell had sent me from India, and
which I thought might interest Trench. I am very glad to hear old
Spedding is really getting _his_ Share of Bacon into Print: I doubt if it
will be half as good as the '_Evenings_,' where Spedding was in the
_Passion_ which is wanted to fill his Sail for any longer Voyage.

I have not seen his Paper on English Hexameters {25} which you tell me
of: but I will now contrive to do so. I, however, believe in them: and I
think the ever-recurring attempts that way show there is some ground for
such belief. To be sure, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Quadrature of
the Circle, have had at least as many Followers. . . .

It was finding some Bits of Letters and Poems of old Alfred's that made
me wish to restore those I gave you to the number, as marking a by-gone
time to me. That they will not so much do to you, who did not happen to
save them from the Fire when the Volumes of 1842 were printing. But I
would waive that if you found it good or possible to lay them up in
Trinity Library in the Closet with Milton's! Otherwise, I would still
look at them now and then for the few years I suppose I have to live. . . .

This is a terribly long Letter: but, if it be legible sufficiently, will
perhaps do as if I were spinning it in talk under the walls of the
Cathedral. I dare not now even talk of going any visits: I can truly say
I wish you could drop in here some Summer Day and take a Float with me on
our dull River, which does lead to THE SEA some ten miles off. . .

You must think I have become very nautical, by all this: haul away at
ropes, swear, dance Hornpipes, etc. But it is not so: I simply sit in
Boat or Vessel as in a moving Chair, dispensing a little Grog and Shag to
those who do the work.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_December_ 7/61.

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I shall look directly for the passages in Omar and Hafiz which you
refer to and clear up, though I scarce ever see the Persian Character
now. I suppose you would think it a dangerous thing to edit Omar: else,
who so proper? Nay, are you not the only Man to do it? And he certainly
is worth good re-editing. I thought him from the first the most
remarkable of the Persian Poets: and you keep finding out in him
Evidences of logical Fancy which I had not dreamed of. I dare say these
logical Riddles are not his best: but they are yet evidences of a
Strength of mind which our Persian Friends rarely exhibit, I think. I
always said about Cowley, Donne, etc., whom Johnson calls the
metaphysical Poets, that their very Quibbles of Fancy showed a power of
Logic which could follow Fancy through such remote Analogies. This is
the case with Calderon's Conceits also. I doubt I have given but a very
one-sided version of Omar: but what I do only comes up as a Bubble to the
Surface, and breaks: whereas you, with exact Scholarship, might make a
lasting impression of such an Author. So I say of Jelaluddin, whom you
need not edit in Persian, perhaps, unless in selections, which would be
very good work: but you should certainly translate for us some such
selections exactly in the way in which you did that apologue of Azrael.
{27} I don't know the value of the Indian Philosophy, etc., which you
tell me is a fitter exercise for the Reason: but I am sure that you
should give us some of the Persian I now speak of, which you can do all
so easily to yourself; yes, as a holiday recreation, you say, to your
Indian Studies. As to India being 'your Place,' it may be: but as to
your being lost in England, that could not be. You know I do not
flatter. . . .

I declare I should like to go to India as well as any where: and I
believe it might be the best thing for me to do. But, always slow at
getting under way as I have been all my Life, what is to be done with one
after fifty! I am sure there is no longer any great pleasure living in
this Country, so tost with perpetual Alarms as it is. One Day we are all
in Arms about France. To-day we are doubting if To-morrow we may not be
at War to the Knife with America! I say still, as I used, we have too
much Property, Honour, etc., on our Hands: our outward Limbs go on
lengthening while our central Heart beats weaklier: I say, as I used, we
should give up something before it is forced from us. The World, I
think, may justly resent our being and interfering all over the Globe.
Once more I say, would we were a little, peaceful, unambitious, trading,
Nation, like--the Dutch! . . .

Adieu, My Dear Cowell; once more, Adieu. I doubt if you can read what I
have written. Do not forget my Love to your Wife. I wonder if we are
ever to meet again: you would be most disappointed if we were!

_To W. H. Thompson_.

MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Dec._ 9/61.

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

The MS. came safe to hand yesterday, thank you: and came out of its
Envelope like a Ray of Old Times to my Eyes. I wish I had secured more
leaves from that old '_Butcher's Book_' torn up in old Spedding's Rooms
in 1842 when the Press went to work with, I think, the Last of old
Alfred's Best. But that, I am told, is only a 'Crotchet.' However, had
I taken some more of the Pages that went into the Fire, after serving in
part for Pipe-lights, I might have enriched others with that which AT
{29} himself would scarce have grudged, jealous as he is of such sort of
Curiosity.

I have seen no more of Tannhauser than the Athenaeum showed me; and
certainly do not want to see more. One wonders that Men of some Genius
(as I suppose these are) should so disguise it in Imitation: but, if they
be very young men, this is the natural course, is it not? By and by they
may find their own Footing.

As to my own Peccadilloes in Verse, which never pretend to be original,
this is the story of _Rubaiyat_. I had translated them partly for
Cowell: young Parker asked me some years ago for something for Fraser,
and I gave him the less wicked of these to use if he chose. He kept them
for two years without using: and as I saw he did'nt want them I printed
some copies with Quaritch; and, keeping some for myself, gave him the
rest. Cowell, to whom I sent a Copy, was naturally alarmed at it; he
being a very religious Man: nor have I given any other Copy but to George
Borrow, to whom I had once lent the Persian, and to old Donne when he was
down here the other Day, to whom I was showing a Passage in another Book
which brought my old Omar up.

(end of letter lost.)

MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_March_ 19/62.

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

Thanks for your Letter in the middle of graver occupations. It will give
me very great pleasure if you will come here: but not if you only do so
out of kindness; I mean, if you have no other call of Business or
Pleasure to yourself. For I don't deserve--

You should have sent me some Photograph. I hate them nearly all: but S.
Rice {30} was very good. I wonder you don't turn out well: I suppose,
too black, is it? It is generally florid people, I think, who fail: yet,
strange to say, my Brother Peter has come quite handsome in the Process.
. . .

I am all for a little Flattery in Portraits: that is, so far as, I think,
the Painter or Sculptor should try at something more agreeable than
anything he sees sitting to him: when People look either bored, or
smirking: he should give the best possible Aspect which the Features
before him _might_ wear, even if the Artist had not seen that Aspect.
Especially when he works for Friends or Kinsfolk: for even the plainest
face has looked handsome to them at some happy moment, and just such we
like to have perpetuated.

Now, I really do feel ashamed when you ask about my Persian Translations,
though they are all very well: only very little affairs. I really have
not the face to send to Milnes direct: but I send you four Copies which I
have found in a Drawer here to do as you will with. This will save
Milnes, or any one else, the bore of writing to me to acknowledge it.

My old Boat has been altered, I hope not spoiled; and I shall soon be
preparing for the Water--and Mud. I don't think one can reckon on warm
weather till after the Longest Day: but if you should come before, it
will surely be warm enough to walk, or drive, if not to sail; and Leaves
will be green, if the Tide should be out.

You would almost think I wanted to repay you in Compliment if I told you
I regarded even your hasty Letters as excellent in all respects. I do,
however: but I do not wish you to write one when you are busy or
disinclined.

MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Sept._ 29/62.

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

'What Cheer, ho!' I somehow fancy that a Line of Nonsense will catch you
before you leave Ely: and yet, now I come to think, you will have left
Ely, probably, and will be returning in another Fortnight to Cambridge
for the Term. Well, I will direct to Cambridge then; and my Note shall
await you there, and you need not answer it till some very happy hour of
Leisure and Inclination. As to Inclination, indeed, I don't think you
will ever have much of that, toward writing such Letters, I mean; what
sensible Man after forty has? You have done so much more (in my Eyes,
and perhaps so much less in your own) coming all this way to see me! I
did wonder at the Goodness of that. I suppose Spedding didn't tell you
that I wrote to him to say so. It was very unlucky I was out when you
came: I have often thought of that with vexation.

Well, I have gone on Boating, etc., just the same ever since. And just
now I have been applying to Spring Rice to use his Influence to get a
larger Buoy laid at the mouth of our River; across which lies a vile Bar
of shifting Sand, and such a little Bit of a Buoy to mark it that we
often almost miss it going in and out, and are in danger of running on
the Shoal; which would break the Boat to Pieces if not drown us. Here is
a fine Piece of Information to a Canon of Ely and Professor of Greek at
Cambridge!

Spring Rice does not speak well, I think, of his health; not at all well;
and his Handwriting looks shaky. What a Loyal Kind Heart it is!

_To W. B. Donne_.

MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE,
_Nov._ 28/62.

MY DEAR DONNE,

I talk indignantly against others bothering you, and do worse than all
myself, I think, what with Bookbindings, Dressing-gowns, etc. (N.B. You
know that the last is only in case when you are going your Rounds to St.
James, etc.) Now I have a little Query to make: which, not being even so
much out of your way, won't I hope trouble you. I remember Thompson
telling me that, from what he had read and seen of Grecian Geography, he
almost thought Clytemnestra's famous Account of the Line of Signal Fires
from Troy to Mycenae to be possible (I mean you know in the Agamemnon).
At least this is what _I believe_ he said: I must not assert from a not
very accurate Memory anything that would compromise a Greek Professor: I
am so ignorant of Geography, ancient as well as modern, I don't know
exactly, or at all, the Points of the Beacons so enumerated: and
Lempriere, the only Classic I have to refer to, doesn't help me in what I
want. Will you turn to the passage, and tell me _what_, and _where_,
are:

1. The [Greek text]--

2. The [Greek text]--

3. The [Greek text].

_What_, _where_, and _why_, so called? The rest I know, or can find in
Dictionary, and Map. But for these--

Lempriere
Is no-where;
Liddell and Scott
Don't help me a jot:
When I'm off, Donnegan
Don't help me _on again_.--
So I'm obliged to resort to old _Donne again_!

Rhyme and Epigram quite worthy of the German.

_To W. H. Thompson_.

Fragment of a Letter written in Nov. 1862.

I took down a Juvenal to look for a Passage about the Loaded Waggon
rolling through the Roman Streets. {34} I couldn't find it. Do you know
where it is? Not that you need answer this Question, which only comes in
as if I were talking to you. I remember asking you whence AEschylus made
his Agamemnon speak of Ulysses as unwilling at first to go on the Trojan
Expedition. I see Paley refers it to some Poem called the Cypria quoted
by Proclus. I was asking Donne the other Day as to some of the names of
the Beacon-places in Clytemnestra's famous Speech: and I then said I
_believed_--but only _believed_, as an inaccurate Man, not wishing to
implicate others--that you, Thompson, had once told me that you thought
the Chain of Fires _might_ have passed from Troy to Mycenae in the way
described--_just possibly_ MIGHT, I think--I assure you I took care not
to commit your Credit by my uncertain Memory, whatever it was you said
was only in a casual way over a Cigar. Are you for [Greek text]? {35a} a
point I don't care a straw about; so don't answer this neither.

No, I didn't go to the Exhibition: which, I know, looks like Affectation:
but was honest Incuriosity and Indolence.

. . . On looking over Juvenal for the Lines I wanted I was amused at the
prosaic Truth of one I didn't want:

Intolerabilius nihil est quam femina dives. {35b}

_To George Crabbe_.

_Dec._ 20, 1862.

MY DEAR GEORGE,

. . . I have been, and am, reading Borrow's 'Wild Wales,' which _I_ like
well, because I can hear him talking it. But I don't know if others will
like it: anyhow there is too much of the same thing. Then what is meant
for the plainest record of Conversation, etc., has such Phrases as 'Marry
come up,' etc., which mar the sense of Authenticity. Then, no one
writing better English than Borrow in general, there is the vile
_Individual_--_Person_--and _Locality_ always cropping up: and even this
vulgar Young Ladyism, 'The Scenery was beautiful _to a Degree_.' _What_
Degree? When did this vile Phrase arise?

_To W. H. Thompson_.

_Good Friday_, 1863.

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

Pray never feel ashamed of not answering my Letters so long as you do
write twice a year, to let me know you live and thrive. As much oftener
as you please: but you are only to be ashamed of not doing that. For
that I really want of all who have been very kind and very constant
('_loyal_' is the word that even Emperors now use of themselves) for so
many years. This I say in all sincerity.

Now, while you talk of being ashamed of not writing, I am rather ashamed
of writing so much to you. Partly because I really have so little to
say; and also because saying that little too often puts you to the shame
you speak of. You say my Letters are pleasant, however: and they will be
so far pleasant if they assure you that I like talking to you in that
way: bad as I am at more direct communication. I can tell you your
letters are very pleasant to me; you at least have always something to
tell of your half-year's Life: and you tell it so wholesomely, I always
say in so capital a Style, as makes me regret you have not written some
of your better Knowledge for the Public. I suppose (as I have heard)
that your Lectures {37} are excellent in this way; I can say I should
like very much to attend a course of them, on the Greek Plays, or on
Plato. I dare say you are right about an Apprenticeship in Red Tape
being necessary to make a Man of Business: but is it too late in Life for
you to buckle to and screw yourself up to condense some of your Lectures
and scholarly Lore into a Book? By 'too late in Life' I mean too late to
take Heart to do it.

I am sure you won't believe that I am _scratching_ you in return for any
scratchings from your hands. We are both too old, too sensible, and too
independent, I think, for that sort of thing.

As to my going to Ely in June, I don't know yet what to say; for I have
been Fool enough to order a Boat to be building which will cost me 350
pounds, and she talks of being launched in the very first week of June,
and I have engaged for some short trips in her as soon as she is afloat.
I begin to feel tired of her already; I felt I should when I was
persuaded to order her: and that is the Folly of it. They say it is a
very bad Thing to do Nothing: but I am sure that is not the case with
those who are born to Blunder; I always find that I have to repent of
what I have done, not what I have left undone; and poor W. Browne used to
say it was better even to repent of what [was] undone than done. You
know how glad I should be if you came here: but I haven't the Face to ask
it, especially after that misfit last Summer; which was not my fault
however.

I always look upon old Spedding's as one of the most wasted Lives I know:
and he is a wise Man! Twenty years ago I told him that he should knock
old Bacon off; I don't mean give him up, but wind him up at far less
sacrifice of Time and Labour; and edit Shakespeare. I think it _would_
have been worth his Life to have done those two; and I am always
persuaded his Bacon would have been better if done more at a heat. I
shall certainly buy the new Shakespeare you tell me of, if the Volumes
aren't bulky; which destroys my pleasure in the use of a Book.

I have had my share of Influenza: even this Woodbridge, with all its
capital Air and self-contented Stupidity (which you know is very
conducive to long Life) has been wheezing and coughing all the very mild
winter; and the Bell of the Tower opposite my Room has been tolling
oftener than I ever remember.

Though I can't answer for _June_, I am really meditating a small trip to
Wiltshire _before_ June; mainly to see the daughters of my old George
Crabbe who are settled at Bradford on Avon, and want very much that I
should see how happily they live on very small means indeed. And I must
own I am the more tempted to go abroad because there is preparation for a
Marriage in my Family (a Niece--but not one of my Norfolk Nieces) which
is to be at my Brother's near here; and there will be a Levee of People,
who drop in here, etc. This may blow over, however.

Now I ought to be ashamed of this long Letter: don't you make me so by
answering it.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

_To George Crabbe_.

WOODBRIDGE, _June_ 8/63.

MY DEAR GEORGE,

Your sister wrote me a very kind Letter to tell of her safe Return home.
I must repeat to you very sincerely that I never recollect to have passed
a pleasanter week. As far as Company went, it was like Old Times at
Bredfield; and the Oak-trees were divine! I never expected to care so
very much for Trees, nor for your flat Country: but I really feel as one
who has bathed in Verdure. I suppose Town-living makes one alive to such
a Change.

I spent a long Day with Thompson: {40} and much liked the painted Roof.
On Thursday I went to Lynn: which I took a Fancy to: the odd old Houses:
the Quay: the really grand Inn (Duke's Head, in the Market place) and the
civil, Norfolk-talking, People. I went to Hunstanton, which is rather
dreary: one could see the Country at Sandringham was good. I enquired
fruitlessly about those Sandringham Pictures, etc.: even the Auctioneer,
whom I found in the Bar of the Inn, could tell nothing of where they had
gone.

_To W. B. Donne_.

MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Sat. July_ 18/63.

MY DEAR DONNE,

. . . I can hardly tell you whether I am much pleased with my new Boat;
for I hardly know myself. She is (as I doubted would be from the first)
rather awkward in our narrow River; but then she was to be a good Sea-
boat; and I don't know but she is; and will be better in all ways when we
have got her in proper trim. Yesterday we gave her what they call '_a
tuning_' in a rather heavy swell round Orford Ness: and she did well
without a reef, etc. But, now all is got, I don't any the more want to
go far away by Sea, any more than by Land; having no Curiosity left for
other Places, and glad to get back to my own Chair and Bed after three or
four Days' Absence. So long as I get on the Sea from time to time, it is
much the same to me whether off Aldbro' or Penzance. And I find I can't
sleep so well on board as I used to do thirty years ago: and not to get
one's Sleep, you know, indisposes one more or less for the Day. However,
we talk of Dover, Folkestone, Holland, etc., which will give one's
sleeping Talents a _tuning_.

_To George Crabbe_.

WOODBRIDGE, _July_ 19, [1863].

MY DEAR GEORGE,

You tell me the Romney is at Gardner's: but where is Gardner's? And what
was the Price of the Portrait? Laurence said well about Romney that, as
compared to Sir Joshua and Gainsboro', his Pictures looked tinted, rather
than painted; the colour of the Cheek (for instance) rather superficially
laid on, as rouge, rather than ingrained, and mantling like Blood from
below. Laurence had seen those at last year's Exhibition: I have not
seen near so many. I remember one that seemed to me capital at Lord
Bute's in Bedfordshire.

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