Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes

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What Plays Reynolds' were, which made George III. laugh so, and put 500
pounds apiece into the writer's Pocket! But then there were Lewis,
Quick, Kemble, Edwin, Parsons, Palmer, Mrs. Jordan, etc. to act them.

WOODBRIDGE, _Jan._ 22, [1871].

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

My acquaintance with Spanish, as with other Literature, is almost
confined to its Fiction; and of that I have read nothing to care about
except Don Quixote and Calderon. The first is well worth learning
Spanish for. When I began reading the Language more than twenty years
ago, with Cowell who taught me nearly all I know, I tried some of the
other Dramatists, Tirso de Molina, Lope de Vega, Moratin, etc., but could
take but little interest in them. All Calderon's, I think, have
something beautiful in them: and about a score of them altogether bear
reading again, and will be remembered if read but once. But Don Quixote
is _the_ Book, as you know; to be fully read, I believe, in no language
but its own, though delightful in any. You know as well as I that
Spanish History has a good name; Mariana's for one: and one makes sure
that the Language, at any rate, must be suitable to relate great Things
with. But I do not meddle with History.

There are very good Selections from the Spanish Dramas published in good
large-type Octavo by Don Ochoa, printed (I think) by Baudry, in Paris.
There is one volume of Calderon; one of Lope, I believe: and one or two
made up of other Playwrights. These Books are very easily got at any
foreign Bookseller's.

An Artist {122a} to whom I have lent my house for a while has been
teaching me 'Spanish Dominoes,' a very good Game. He, and I, and the
Captain whose Photo I sent you (did I not?) had a grand bout with it the
other day. If I went about in Company again I think I should do as old
Rossini did, carry a Box of Dominoes, or pack of Cards, which I think
would set Conversation at ease by giving people something easy to do
beside conversing. I say Rossini did this; but I only know of his doing
it once, at Trouville, where F. Hiller met him, who has published the
Conversations they had together.

Did you lead the very curious Paper in the Cornhill, {122b} a year back,
I think, concerning the vext question of Mozart's Requiem? It is curious
as a piece of Evidence, irrespective of any musical Interest. Evidence,
I believe, would compel a Law Court to decide that the Requiem was
mainly, not Mozart's, but his pupil Sussmayer's. And perhaps the Law
Court might justly so decide, if by 'mainly' one understood the more
technical business of filling up the ideas suggested by the Master. But
then those ideas are just everything; and no Court of Musical Equity but
would decide, against all other Evidence, that those ideas were Mozart's.
It is known that he was instructing Sussmayer, almost with his last
breath, about some drum accompaniments to the Requiem; and I have no
doubt, hummed over the subjects, or melodies, of all.

_To W. H. Thompson_.

WOODBRIDGE, _Feb._ 1, [1871],

MY DEAR MASTER,

The Gorgias duly came last week, thank you: and I write rather earlier
than I should otherwise have done to satisfy you on that point.
Otherwise, I say, I should have waited awhile till I had gone over all
the Notes more carefully, with some of the sweet-looking Text belonging
to them; which would have taken some time, as my Eyes have not been in
good trim of late, whether from the Snow on the Ground, and the murky Air
all about one, or because of the Eyes themselves being two years older
than when they got hurt by Paraffin.

The Introduction I have read twice, and find it quite excellently
written. Surely I miss some--ay, more than some--of the Proof you sent
me two years ago; some of the Argument to prove the relation between this
Dialogue and the Republic, and consequently of the Date that must be
assigned to it. All that interested me then as it does now, and I would
rather have seen the Introduction all the longer by it. Perhaps,
however, I am confounding my remembrances of the Date question (which of
course follows from the matter) with the Phaedrus Introduction.

Then as to what I have seen of the Notes: they seem to me as good as can
be. I do not read modern Scholars, and therefore do not know how
generally the Style of English Note-writing may be [different] from that
of the Latin one was used to. But your Notes, I know, seem excellent to
me; I mean, in the Style of them (for of the Scholarship I am not a
proper Judge); totally without pedantry of any sort, whether of solving
unnecessary difficulties, carping at other Critics, etc., but plainly
determined to explain what needs explanation in the shortest, clearest,
way, and in a Style which is most of all suited to the purpose, 'familiar
but by no means vulgar,' such as we have known in such cases, whether in
Latin or English. My Quotation reminds me of yours: how sparingly, and
always just to the point, introduced; Polus 'gambolling' from the Theme:
old Wordsworth's Robin Hood, etc. And the paraphrases you give of the
Greek are so just the thing. I have not read Vaughan's (?) Translation
of the Republic; which I am told is good. But this I know that I never
met with any readable Translation of Plato. Whewell's was intolerable.
You should have translated--(that is, paraphrased, for however far some
People may err on this score, rushing in where Scholars fear to tread) a
Translation must be Paraphrase to be readable; and especially in these
Dialogues where the familiar Grace of the Narrative and Conversation is
so charming a vehicle of the Philosophy. If people will conscientiously
translate [Greek text] 'Oh most excellent man,' when perhaps 'My good
Fellow' was the thing meant, and 'By the Dog!' and so on, why, it is not
English talk, and probably not Greek either. I say you should have, or
should translate one or two Dialogues to show how they should be done; if
no longer than the Lysis, or one of those small and sweet ones which I
believe the Germans disclaim for Plato's.

'The Dog' however does need a Note, as I suppose that, however
far-fetched Olympiodorus' suggestion, this was an Oath familiar to
Socrates alone, and which he took up for some, perhaps whimsical, reason.
It is not to be found (is it?) in Aristophanes, where I suppose all the
common Oaths come in; but then again I wonder that, if it were Socrates'
Oath, it did not find its way into the Clouds, or perhaps into the
criminal Charge against Socrates, as being a sort of mystical or scoffing
Blasphemy.

I am afraid I tire you more with my Letter than you tired me with your
Introduction, a good deal. And you see, to your cost, that my MS. does
not argue much pleasure in the act of writing. But I would say my little
say; which perhaps is all wrong. . . .

One of your Phrases I think truly delightful, about the Treasure to be
sometimes found in a weak Vessel like Proclus. That I think is very
Platonic; all the more for such things coming only now and then, which
makes them tell. Modern Books lose by being over-crowded with good
things.

* * * * *

In the course of this year 1871, FitzGerald parted with his little yacht
the Scandal, so called, he said, because it was the staple product of
Woodbridge, and on September 4 he wrote to me:--

WOODBRIDGE: _Septr._ 4/71.

'I run over to Lowestoft occasionally for a few days, but do not abide
there long: no longer having my dear little Ship for company. I saw her
there looking very smart under her new owner ten days ago, and I felt so
at home when I was once more on her Deck that--Well: I content myself
with sailing on the river Deben, looking at the Crops as they grow green,
yellow, russet, and are finally carried away in the red and blue Waggons
with the sorrel horse.'

_To W. F. Pollock_.

[1871].

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . A night or two ago I was reading old Thackeray's Roundabouts; and
(sign of a good book) heard him talking to me. I wonder at his being so
fretted by what was said of him as some of these Papers show that he was:
very unlike his old self, surely. Perhaps Ill Health (which Johnson said
made every one a Scoundrel) had something to do with this. I don't mean
that W. M. T. went this length: but in this one respect he was not so
good as he used to be.

Annie Thackeray in her yearly letter wrote that she had heard from Mrs.
A. T. that the Laureate was still suffering. I judge from your Letter
that he is better. . . . I never heard any of his coadjutor Sullivan's
Music. Is there a Tune, or originally melodious phrase, in any of it?
That is what I always missed in Mendelssohn, except in two or three of
his youthful Pieces; Fingal and Midsummer Night's Dream overtures, and
Meeresstille. Chorley {127} mentions as a great instance of M.'s
candour, that when some of his Worshippers were sneering at Donizetti's
'Figlia,' M. silenced them by saying 'Do you [know] I should like to have
written it myself.' If he meant that he ever could have written it if he
had pleased, he ought to have had his nose tweaked.

I have been reading Sir Walter's Pirate again, and am very glad to find
how much I like it--that is speaking far below the mark--I may say how I
wonder and delight in it. I am rejoiced to find that this is so; and I
am quite sure that it is not owing to my old prejudice, but to the
intrinsic merit and beauty of the Book itself. With all its faults of
detail, often mere carelessness, what a broad Shakespearian Daylight over
it all, and all with no Effort, and--a lot else that one may be contented
to feel without having to write an Essay about. They won't beat Sir
Walter in a hurry (I mean of course his earlier, Northern, Novels), and
he was such a fine Fellow that I really don't believe any one would wish
to cast him in the Shade. {128}

_To T. Carlyle_.

WOODBRIDGE, _Dec._ 20, [1871].

DEAR CARLYLE,

Do not be alarmed at another Letter from me this year. It will need no
answer: and is only written to tell you that I have not wholly neglected
the wish you expressed in your last about the Naseby stone. I was
reading, some months ago, your letters about our Naseby exploits in 1842:
as also one which you wrote in 1855 (I think) about that Stone, giving me
an Inscription for it. And it was not wholly my fault that your wishes
were not then fulfilled, though perhaps I was wanting in due energy about
the matter. Thus, however, it was; that when you wrote in 1855, we had
just sold Naseby to the Trustees of Lord Clifden: and, as there was some
hitch in the Business (Lord Carlisle being one of the Trustees), I was
told I had better not put in my oar. So the matter dropt. Since then
Lord Clifden is dead: and I do not know if the Estate belongs to his
Family. But, on receiving your last Letter, I wrote to the Lawyers who
had managed for Lord Clifden to know about it: but up to this hour I have
had no answer. Thus much I have done. If I get the Lawyer's and Agent's
consent, I should be very glad indeed to have the stone cut, and
lettered, as you wished. But whether I should pluck up spirit to go
myself and set it up on the proper spot, I am not so sure; and I cannot
be sure that any one else could do it for me. Those who were with me
when I dug up the bones are dead, or gone; and I suppose the Plough has
long ago obliterated the traces of sepulture, in these days of improved
Agriculture; and perhaps even the Tradition is lost from the Memory of
the Generation that has sprung up since I, and the old Parson, and the
Scotch Tenant, turned up the ground. You will think me very base to
hesitate about such a little feat as a Journey into Northamptonshire for
this purpose. But you know that one does not generally grow more active
in Travel as one gets older: and I have been a bad Traveller all my life.
So I will promise nothing that I am not sure of doing. Only, if you
continue to desire this strongly, when next Summer comes, I will resolve
upon it if I can.

These Naseby Letters of yours--they are all yours I have preserved,
because (as in the case of Tennyson and Thackeray) I would not leave
anything of private personal history behind me, lest it should fall into
some unscrupulous hand. Even these Naseby letters--would you wish them
returned to you? Only in case you should desire this, trouble yourself
to answer me now.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

WOODBRIDGE, _Dec._ 24, [1871]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . The Pirate is, I know, not one of Scott's best: the Women, Minna,
Brenda, Norna, are poor theatrical figures. But Magnus and Jack Bunce
and Claud Halcro (though the latter rather wearisome) are substantial
enough: how wholesomely they swear! and no one ever thinks of blaming
Scott for it. There is a passage where the Company at Burgh Westra are
summoned by Magnus to go down to the Shore to see the Boats go off to the
Deep Sea fishing, and 'they followed his stately step to the Shore as the
Herd of Deer follows the leading Stag, with all manner of respectful
Observance.' This, coming in at the close of the preceding unaffected
Narrative is to me like Homer, whom Scott really resembles in the
simplicity and ease of his Story. This is far more poetical in my Eyes
than all the Effort of ---, ---, etc. And which of them has written such
a Lyric as 'Farewell to Northmaven'? I finished the Book with Sadness;
thinking I might never read it again. . . .

P.S. Can't you send me your Paper about the Novelists? As to which is
the best of all I can't say: that Richardson (with all his twaddle) is
better than Fielding, I am quite certain. There is nothing at all
comparable to Lovelace in all Fielding, whose Characters are common and
vulgar types; of Squires, Ostlers, Lady's maids, etc., very easily drawn.
I am equally sure that Miss Austen cannot be third, any more than first
or second: I think you were rather drawn away by a fashion when you put
her there: and really old Spedding seems to me to have been the Stag whom
so many followed in that fashion. She is capital as far as she goes: but
she never goes out of the Parlour; if but Magnus Troil, or Jack Bunce, or
even one of Fielding's Brutes, would but dash in upon the Gentility and
swear a round Oath or two! I must think the 'Woman in White,' with her
Count Fosco, far beyond all that. Cowell constantly reads Miss Austen at
night after his Sanskrit Philology is done: it composes him, like Gruel:
or like Paisiello's Music, which Napoleon liked above all other, because
he said it didn't interrupt his Thoughts.

WOODBRIDGE, _Dec._ 29 [1871].

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

If you come here, come some very fine weather, when we look at our best
inland, and you may take charge of my Boat on the River. I doubt I did
my Eyes damage this Summer by steering in the Sun, and peering out for
the Beacons that mark the Channel; but your Eyes are proof against this,
and I shall resign the command to you, as you wrote that you liked it at
Clovelly. . . .

I had thought Beauty was the main object of the Arts: but these people,
not having Genius, I suppose, to create any new forms of that, have
recourse to the Ugly, and find their Worshippers in plenty. In Poetry,
Music, and Painting, it seems to me the same. And people think all this
finer than Mozart, Raffaelle, and Tennyson--as he _was_--but he never
ceases to be noble and pure. There was a fine passage quoted from his
Last Idyll: about a Wave spending itself away on a long sandy Shore: that
was Lincolnshire, I know.

Carlyle has written to remind me of putting up a Stone on the spot in
Naseby field where I dug up the Dead for him thirty years ago. I will
gladly have the Stone cut, and the Inscription he made for it engraved:
but will I go again to Northamptonshire to see it set up? And perhaps
the people there have forgotten all about the place, now that a whole
Generation has passed away, and improved Farming has passed the Plough
over the Ground. But we shall see.

_To W. A. Wright_.

WOODBRIDGE, _Jan._ 20/72.

By way of flourishing my Eyes, I have been looking into Andrew Marvell,
an old favourite of mine, who led the way for Dryden in Verse, and Swift
in Prose, and was a much better fellow than the last, at any rate.

Two of his lines in the Poem on 'Appleton House,' with its Gardens,
Grounds, etc., run:

But most the _Hewel's_ wonders are,
Who here has the Holtseltster's care.

The '_Hewel_' being evidently the Woodpecker, who, by tapping the Trees,
etc., does the work of one who measures and gauges Timber; here, rightly
or wrongly, called '_Holtseltster_.' 'Holt' one knows: but what is
'seltster'? I do not find either this word or 'Hewel' in Bailey or
Halliwell. But 'Hewel' may be a form of 'Yaffil,' which I read in some
Paper that Tennyson had used for the Woodpecker in his Last Tournament.
{133}

This reminded me that Tennyson once said to me, some thirty years ago, or
more, in talking of Marvell's 'Coy Mistress,' where it breaks in--

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near, etc.

'_That_ strikes me as Sublime, I can hardly tell why. Of course, this
partly depends on its place in the Poem.

Apropos of the Woodpecker, a Clergyman near here was telling our
Bookseller Loder, that, in one of his Parishioners' Cottages, he observed
a dried Woodpecker hung up to the Ceiling indoors; and was told that it
always pointed with its Bill to the Quarter whence the Wind blew.

_To Miss Anna Biddell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Feb._ 22, [1872].

. . . I have lost the Boy who read to me so long and so profitably: and
now have another; a much better Scholar, but not half so agreeable or
amusing a Reader as his Predecessor. We go through Tichborne without
missing a Syllable, and, when Tichborne is not long enough, we take to
Lothair! which has entertained me well. So far as I know of the matter,
his pictures of the manners of English High Life are good: Lothair
himself I do not care for, nor for the more romantic parts, Theodora,
etc. Altogether the Book is like a pleasant Magic Lantern: when it is
over, I shall forget it: and shall want to return to what I do not
forget, some of Thackeray's monumental Figures of 'pauvre et triste
Humanite,' as old Napoleon called it: Humanity in its Depths, not in its
superficial Appearances.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

THE OLD PLACE, _Feb._ 25/72.

. . . Aldis Wright must be right about 'sear' {135a}--French _serre_ he
says. What a pity that Spedding has not employed some of the forty years
he has lost in washing his Blackamoor in helping an Edition of
Shakespeare, though not in the way of these minute archaeologic
Questions! I never heard him read a page but he threw some new Light
upon it. When you see him pray tell him I do not write to him, because I
judge from experience that it is a labour to him to answer, unless it
were to do me any service I asked of him except to tell me of himself.

My heart leaped when the Boy read me the Attorney General's Quotation
from A. T. {135b}

_From T. Carlyle_.

CHELSEA, 15, _June_, 1872.

DEAR FITZGERALD,

I am glad that you are astir on the Naseby-Monument question; and that
the auspices are so favourable. This welcome 'Agent,' so willing and
beneficent, will contrive, I hope, to spare you a good deal of the
trouble,--except indeed that of seeing with your own eyes that the Stone
is put in its right place, and the number of 'yards rearward' is exactly
given.

I think the Inscription will do; and as to the shape, etc., of the
monument, I have nothing to advise,--except that I think it ought to be
of the most perfect _simplicity_, and should {136} go direct to its
object and punctually stop there. A small block of Portland
stone--(Portland excels all stones in the world for durability and
capacity for taking an exact inscription)--block of Portland stone of
size to contain the words and allow itself to be sunk firmly in the
ground; to me it could have no other good quality whatever; and I should
not care if the stone on three sides of it were squared with the hammer
merely, and only _polished_ on its front or fourth side where the letters
are to be.

In short I wish _you_ my dear friend to take charge of this pious act in
all its details; considering me to be loyally passive to whatever you
decide on respecting it. If on those terms you will let me bear half the
expense and flatter myself that in this easy way I have gone halves with
you in this small altogether genuine piece of patriotism, I shall be
extremely obliged to you.

Pollock has told you an altogether flattering tale about my strength, as
it is nearly impossible for any person still on his feet to be more
completely useless.

Yours ever truly,

T. CARLYLE.

J. A. Froude (just come to walk with me) _scripsit_.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

WOODBRIDGE, _June_ 16, [1872].

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

Some forty years ago there was a set of Lithograph Outlines from Hayter's
Sketches of Pasta in Medea: caricature things, though done in earnest by
a Man who had none of the Genius of the Model he admired. Looking at
them now people who never saw the Original will wonder perhaps that Talma
and Mrs. Siddons should have said that they might go to learn of Her: and
indeed it was only the Living Genius and Passion of the Woman herself
that could have inspired and exalted, and enlarged her very incomplete
Person (as it did her Voice) into the Grandeur, as well as the _Niobe_
Pathos, of her Action and Utterance. All the nobler features of Humanity
she had indeed: finely shaped Head, Neck, Bust, and Arms: all finely
related to one another: the superior Features too of the Face fine: Eyes,
Eyebrows--I remember Trelawny saying they reminded him of those in the
East--the Nose not so fine: but the whole Face 'homogeneous' as Lavater
calls it, and capable of all expression, from Tragedy to Farce. For I
have seen her in the 'Prova d' un' Opera Seria,' where no one, I believe,
admired her but myself, except Thomas Moore, whose Journal long after
published revealed to me one who thought,--yes, and _knew_--as I did.
Well, these Lithographs are as mere Skeleton Outlines of the living
Woman, but I suppose the only things now to give an Idea of her, I have
been a dozen years looking out for a Copy.

I think I love the Haymarket as much as any part of London because of the
Little Theatre where Vestris used to sing 'Cherry Ripe' in her prime: and
(soon after) because of the old Bills on the opposite Colonnade: 'MEDEA
IN CORINTO. Medea, _Signora Pasta_.' You know what she said, to the
Confusion of all aesthetic People, one of whom said to her, 'sans doute
vous avez beaucoup etudie l'Antique?' 'Peut-etre je l'ai beaucoup
senti.'

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I have remembered, since last writing to you, that the Hayter Sketches
were published by Dickenson of Bond Street, about 1825-6, I fancy. I
have tried to get them, and all but succeeded two years ago. I am afraid
they would give you and Miss Bateman the impression that Pasta played the
Virago: which was not so at all. Her scene with her Children was among
the finest of all: and it was well known at the time how deeply she felt
it. But I suppose the stronger Situations offered better opportunities
for the pencil, such a pencil as Hayter's. I used to admire as much as
anything her Attitude and Air as she stood at the side of the Stage when
Jason's Bridal Procession came on: motionless, with one finger in her
golden girdle: a habit which (I heard) she inherited from Grassini. The
finest thing to me in Pasta's Semiramide was her simple Action of
touching Arsace's Shoulder when she chose him for husband. She was
always dignified in the midst of her Passion: never scolded as her
Caricature Grisi did. And I remember her curbing her Arsace's redundant
Action by taking hold of her (Arsace's) hands, Arsace being played by
Brambilla, who was (I think) Pasta's Niece. {139a}

WOODBRIDGE, _July_ 4/72.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I like your Fraser Paper very much, and recognised some points we had
talked of together, {139b} but nothing that I can claim as my own. I
suppose that I think on these points as very many educated men do think;
I mean as to Principles of Art. I am not sure I understand your word
'Imagination' as opposed to realistic (d---d word) detail at p. 26, but I
suppose I suppose I know what is meant, nevertheless, and agree with
that. Is the Prophet of p. 24 _Gurlyle_? {139c} I think so. The fine
head of him which figures as Frontispiece to the People's Edition of
Sartor made me think of a sad Old Prophet; so that I bought the Book for
the Portrait only.

The 'Brown Umbrella' pleased me greatly.

Well; and I thought there were other Papers in Fraser which made me think
that, on the whole, I would take in Fraser rather than the Cornhill which
you advised. Perhaps I am just now out of tune for Novels; whether that
be so or not, I don't get an Appetite for Annie Thackeray's {140} from
the two Numbers I have had.

And here is Spedding's vol. vi. which leaves me much where it found me
about Bacon: but though I scarce care for him, I can read old Spedding's
pleading for him for ever; that is, old Spedding's simple statement of
the case, as he sees it. The Ralegh Business is quite delightful, better
than Old Kensington.

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