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.

Then I have bought 3 vols of the 'Ladies Magazine' for 1750-3 by 'Jasper Goodwill' who died at Vol. iv. It contains the Trials and Executions (16 men at a time) of the time; Miss Blandy above all; and such delightful Essays, Poems, and Enigmas, for Ladies! The Allegories are in the Rasselas style, all Oriental. The Essays 'of all the Virtues which adorn, etc.' Then Anecdotes of the Day: as of a Country woman in St. James' Park taking on because she cannot go home till she has kissed the King's hand: one of the Park keepers tells one of the Pages, who tells the King, who has the Woman in to kiss his hand, and take some money beside. One wonders there weren't heaps of such loyal Subjects.

Mowbray Donne wrote me that he sent you the Fragments I had saved and transcribed of Morton's Letters; the best part having been lost by Blackwood's People thirty years ago, as I believe I told you. But don't you think what remains capital? I wish you would get them put into some Magazine, just for the sake of some of our Day getting them in Print. You might just put a word of Preface as to the Author: an Irish Gentleman, of Estate and Fortune (which of course went the Irish way), who was Scholar, Artist, Newspaper Correspondent, etc. A dozen lines would tell all that is wanted, naming no names. It might be called 'Fragments of Letters by an "Ill-starred" or "Unlucky" Man of Genius,' etc. as S. M. was: 'Unlucky' being still used in Suffolk, with something of Ancient Greek meaning. See if you cannot get this done, will you? For I think many of S. M.'s friends would be glad of it: and the general Public assuredly not the worse. Some of the names would need some correction, I think: and the Letters to be put in order of Time. {141a} 'Do it!' as Julia in the Hunchback says.

[1872.]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I went to London at the end of last week, on my way to Sydenham, where my second Brother is staying, whom I had not seen these six years, nor his Wife. . . . On Saturday I went to the Academy, for little else but to see Millais, and to disagree with you about him! I thought his three Women and his Highlanders brave pictures, which you think also; but braver than you think them. The Women looked alive: the right Eye so much smaller than the left in the Figure looking at you that I suppose it was so in the original, so that I should have chosen one of the other Sisters for the position. I could not see any analogy between the Picture and Sir Joshua's Graces, except that there were Three. Nor could I think the Highlanders in the Landscape vulgar; they seemed to me in character with the Landscape. Both Pictures want tone, which may mean Glazing: wanting which they may last the longer, and sober down of themselves without the danger of cracking by any transparent Colour laid over them.

I scarce looked at anything else, not having much time. Just as I was going out, who should come up to me but Annie Thackeray, who took my hands as really glad to see her Father's old friend. I am sure she was; and I was taken aback somehow; and, out of sheer awkwardness, began to tell her that I didn't care for her new Novel! And then, after she had left her Party to come to me, I ran off! It is true, I had to be back at Sydenham: but it would have been better to forgo all that: and so I reflected when I had got halfway down Piccadilly: and so ran back, and went into the Academy again: but could not find A. T. She told me she was going to Normandy this week: and I have been so vext with myself that I have written to tell her something of what I have told you. It was very stupid indeed.

WOODBRIDGE: November 1, [1872].

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

The Spectator, as also the Athenaeum, somewhat over-praise Gareth, I think: but I am glad they do so. . . . The Poem seems to me scarce more worthy of what A. T. was born to do than the other Idylls; but you will almost think it is out of contradiction that I like it better: except, of course, the original Morte. The Story of this young Knight, who can submit and conquer and do all the Devoir of Chivalry, interests me much more than the Enids, Lily Maids, etc. of former Volumes. But Time is—Time was—to have done with the whole Concern: pure and noble as all is, and in parts more beautiful than any one else can do. . . .

Rain—Rain—Rain! What will become of poor Italy? I think we ought to subscribe for her. Did you read of one French Caricature of the Pope leaving Rome with the Holy Ghost in a Bird Cage?

WOODBRIDGE, Nov. 20.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I am glad the Rogers Verses {144} gratified you. I forget where I saw them quoted, some ten years ago; but as I had long wished for them myself, and thought others might wish for them also, I got them reprinted here in the form I sent you. . . . I have no compunction at all in reviving this Satire upon the old Banker, whom it is only paying off in his own Coin. Spedding (of course) used to deny that R. deserved his ill Reputation: but I never heard any one else deny it. All his little malignities, unless the epigram on Ward be his, are dead along with his little sentimentalities; while Byron's Scourge hangs over his Memory. The only one who, so far as I have seen, has given any idea of his little cavilling style, is Mrs. Trench in her Letters; her excellent Letters, so far as I can see and judge, next best to Walpole and Cowper in our Language. . . .

I have bought Regnard, of the old Moliere times, very good; and (what is always odd to me) as French as the French of To-day: I mean, in point of Language.

[Nov. 1872.]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

In a late Box of books which I had from Mudie were Macmillan and Fraser, for 1869-1870. And in one of these—I am nearly sure, Macmillan—is an Article called 'Objects of Art' {145} which treats very well, I think, on the subject you and I talked of at Whitsun. . . .

My new Reader . . . has been reading to me Fields' 'Yesterdays with Authors,' Hawthorne, Dickens, Thackeray. The latter seems to me a Caricature: the Dickens has one wonderful bit about Macready in 1869, which ought not to have been printed during his Life, but which I will copy out for you if you have not seen it. Hawthorne seems to me the most of a Man of Genius America has produced in the way of Imagination: yet I have never found an Appetite for his Books. Frederic Tennyson sent me Victor Hugo's 'Toilers of the Sea,' which he admires, I suppose; but I can't get up an Appetite for that neither. I think the Scenes being laid in the Channel Islands may have something to do with old Frederic's Liking. . . .

The Daily News only tells me of Crisises in France, Floods in Italy, Insubordination of London Policemen, and Desertion from the British Army. So I take refuge in other Topics. Do look for 'Objects of Art' among them.

Which are you for

Noi leggiavamo } or } un giorno per diletto? {146a} Noi leggevamo }

WOODBRIDGE: Nov. 28 [1872].

'Multae Epistolae pertransibunt et augebitur Scientia.' Our one Man of Books down here, Brooke, {146b} had told me that the old Editions on the whole favoured 'leggiavamo.' Now I shall tell him that the Germans have decided on 'leggevamo.' But Brooke quotes one Copy (1502) which reads 'leggevam,' which I had also wished for, to get rid of a fifth (and superfluous) o in the line. I suppose such a plural is as allowable as

Noi andavam per lo solingo Piano, etc.

What is all this erudite Enquiry about? I was talking with Edwards one night of this passage, and of this line in particular, which came into my head as a motto for a Device {146c} we were talking of; and hence all this precious fuss.

But I want to tell you what I forgot in my last letter; what Dickens himself says of his 'Holyday Romance' in a letter to Fields.

July 25, 1867.

'I hope the Americans will see the joke of Holyday Romance. The writing seems to me so much like Children's, that dull folk (on any side of any water) might perhaps rate it accordingly. I should like to be beside you when you read it, and particularly when you read the Pirate's Story. It made me laugh to that extent that my people here thought I was out of my wits: until I gave it to them to read, when they did likewise.'

One thinks, what a delightful thing to be such an Author! Yet he died of his work, I suppose.

WOODBRIDGE, Jan, 5/73.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I don't know that I have anything to tell you, except a Story which I have already written to Donne and to Mrs. Kemble, all the way to Rome, out of a French Book. {147} I just now forget the name, and it is gone back to Mudie. About 1783, or a little later, a young Danseur of the French Opera falls in love with a young Danseuse of the same. She, however, takes up with a 'Militaire,' who indeed commands the Guard who are on Service at the Opera. The poor Danseur gets mad with jealousy: attacks the Militaire on his post; who just bids his Soldiers tie the poor Lad to a Column, without further Injury. The Lad, though otherwise unhurt, falls ill of Shame and Jealousy; and dies, after bequeathing his Skeleton to the Doctor attached to the Opera, with an understanding that the said Skeleton is to be kept in the Doctor's Room at the Opera. Somehow, this Skeleton keeps its place through Revolutions, and Changes of Dynasty: and re-appears on the Scene when some Diablerie is on foot, as in Freischutz; where, says the Book, it still produces a certain effect. I forgot to say that the Subject wished to be in that Doctor's Room in order that he might still be near his Beloved when she danced.

Now, is not this a capital piece of French all over?

In Sophie Gay's 'Salons de Paris' {148} I read that when Madlle Contat (the Predecessor of Mars) was learning under Preville and his Wife for the Stage, she gesticulated too much, as Novices do. So the Previlles confined her Arms like 'une Momie' she says, and then set her off with a Scene. So long as no great Passion, or Business, was needed, she felt pretty comfortable, she says: but when the Dialogue grew hot, then she could not help trying to get her hands free; and that, as the Previlles told her, sufficiently told her when Action should begin, and not till then, whether in Grave or Comic. This anecdote (told by Contat herself) has almost an exact counterpart in Mrs. Siddons' practice: who recited even Lear's Curse with her hands and arms close to her side like an Egyptian Figure, and Sir Walter Scott, {149a} who heard her, said nothing could be more terrible. . . .

The Egyptian Mummy reminds me of a clever, dashing, Book we are reading on the subject, by Mr. Zincke, Vicar of a Village {149b} near Ipswich. Did you know, or do you believe, that the Mummy was wrapt up into its Chrysalis Shape as an Emblem of Future Existence; wrapt up, too, in bandages all inscribed with ritualistic directions for its intermediate stage, which was not one of total Sleep? I supposed that this might be a piece of ingenious Fancy: but Cowell, who has been over to see me, says it is probable.

I have brought my Eyes by careful nursing into sufficient strength to read Moliere, and Montaigne, and two or three more of my old 'Standards' with all my old Relish. But I must not presume on this; and ought to spare your Eyes as well as my own in respect of this letter.

WOODBRIDGE, Jan. /73.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I have not been reading so much of my Gossip lately, to send you a good little Bit of, which I think may do you a good turn now and then. Give a look at 'Egypt of the Pharaohs' by Zincke, Vicar of a Parish near Woodbridge; the Book is written in a light, dashing (but not Cockney pert) way, easily looked over. There is a supposed Soliloquy of an English Labourer (called 'Hodge') as contrasted with the Arab, which is capital.

Do you know Taschereau's Life of Moliere? I have only got that prefixed to a common Edition of 1730. But even this is a delightful serio-comic Drama. I see that H. Heine says the French are all born Actors: which always makes me wonder why they care so for the Theatre. Heine too, I find, speaks of V. Hugo's Worship of Ugliness; of which I find so much in —- and other modern Artists, Literary, Musical, or Graphic. . . .

What, you tell me, Palgrave said about me, I should have thought none but a very partial Friend, like Donne, would ever have thought of saying. But I'll say no more on that head. Only that, as regards the little Dialogue, {150} I think it is a very pretty thing in Form, and with some very pretty parts in it. But when I read it two or three years ago, there was, I am sure, some over-smart writing, and some clumsy wording; insomuch that, really liking the rest, I cut out about a sheet, and substituted another, and made a few corrections with a Pen in what remained, though plenty more might be made, little as the Book is. Well; as you like this little Fellow, and I think he is worth liking, up to a Point, I shall send you a Copy of these amended Sheets.

[March 1873.]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

7.15 p.m. After a stroll in mine own Garden, under the moon—shoes kicked off—Slippers and Dressing Gown on—A Pinch of Snuff—and hey for a Letter—to my only London Correspondent!

And to London have I been since my last Letter: and have seen the Old Masters; and finished them off by such a Symphony as was worthy of the best of them, two Acts of Mozart's 'Cosi.' You wrote me that you had 'assisted' at that also: the Singing, as you know, was inferior: but the Music itself! Between the Acts a Man sang a song of Verdi's: which was a strange Contrast, to be sure: one of Verdi's heavy Airs, however: for he has a true Genius of his own, though not Mozart's. Well: I did not like even Mozart's two Bravuras for the Ladies: a bad Despina for one: but the rest was fit for—Raffaelle, whose Christ in the Garden I had been looking at a little before. I had thought Titian's Cornaro, and a Man in Black, by a Column, worth nearly all the rest of the Gallery till I saw the Raffaelle: and I couldn't let that go with the others. All Lord Radnor's Pictures were new to me, and nearly all very fine. The Vandykes delightful: Rubens' Daniel, though all by his own hand, not half so good as a Return from Hunting, which perhaps was not: the Sir Joshuas not first rate, I think, except a small life Figure of a Sir W. Molesworth in Uniform: the Gainsboro's scratchy and superficial, I thought: the Romneys better, I thought. Two fine Cromes: Ditto Turners: and—I will make an End of my Catalogue Raisonnee. . . .

I suppose you never read Beranger's Letters: there are four thick Volumes of these, of which I have as yet only seen the Second and Third: and they are well worth reading. They make one love Beranger: partly because (odd enough) he is so little of a Frenchman in Character, French as his Works are. He hated Paris, Plays, Novels, Journals, Critics, etc., hated being monstered himself as a Great Man, as he proved by flying from it; seems to me to take a just measure of himself and others, and to be moderate in his Political as well as Literary Opinions.

I am hoping for Forster's second volume of Dickens in Mudie's forthcoming Box. Meanwhile, my Boy (whom I momently expect) reads me Trollope's 'He knew he was right,' the opening of which I think very fine: but which seems to be trailing off into 'longueur' as I fancy Trollope is apt to do. But he 'has a world of his own,' as Tennyson said of Crabbe.

March 30/73.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . You have never told me how you thought him [Spedding] looking, etc., though you told me that your Boy Maurice went to sit with him. It really reminds me of some happy Athenian lad who was privileged to be with Socrates. Some Plato should put down the Conversation.

I have just finished the second volume of Forster's Dickens: and still have no reason not to rejoice in the Man Dickens. And surely Forster does his part well; but I can fancy that some other Correspondent but himself should be drawn in as Dickens' Life goes on, and thickens with Acquaintances.

We in the Country are having the best of it just now, I think, in these fine Days, though we have nothing to show so gay as Covent Garden Market. I am thinking of my Boat on the River. . . .

You say I did not date my last letter: I can date this: for it is my Birthday. {153} This it was that made me resolve to send you the Photos. Hey for my 65th year! I think I shall plunge into a Yellow Scratch Wig to keep my head warm for the Remainder of my Days.

* * * * *

In September 1863 Mr. Ruskin addressed a letter to 'The Translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar,' which he entrusted to Mrs. Burne Jones, who after an interval of nearly ten years handed it to Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, Professor of the History of Fine Art in Harvard University. By him it was transmitted to Carlyle, who sent it to FitzGerald, with the letter which follows, of which the signature alone is in his own handwriting.

* * * * *

CHELSEA, 14 April, 1873.

DEAR FITZGERALD,

Mr. Norton, the writer of that note, is a distinguished American (co-editor for a long time of the North American Review), an extremely amiable, intelligent and worthy man; with whom I have had some pleasant walks, dialogues and other communications, of late months;—in the course of which he brought to my knowledge, for the first time, your notable Omar Khayyam, and insisted on giving me a copy from the third edition, which I now possess, and duly prize. From him too, by careful cross-questioning, I identified, beyond dispute, the hidden 'Fitzgerald,' the Translator;—and indeed found that his complete silence, and unique modesty in regard to said meritorious and successful performance, was simply a feature of my own Edward F.! The translation is excellent; the Book itself a kind of jewel in its way. I do Norton's mission without the least delay, as you perceive. Ruskin's message to you passes through my hands sealed. I am ever your affectionate

T. CARLYLE.

Carlyle to Norton.

5 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, 18 April 1873.

DEAR NORTON,

It is possible Fitzgerald may have written to you; but whether or not I will send you his letter to myself, as a slight emblem and memorial of the peaceable, affectionate, and ultra modest man, and his innocent far niente life,—and the connexion (were there nothing more) of Omar, the Mahometan Blackguard, and Oliver Cromwell, the English Puritan!—discharging you completely, at the same time, from ever returning me this letter, or taking any notice of it, except a small silent one.

FitzGerald to Carlyle.

(Enclosed in the preceding.)

[15 April 1873.]

MY DEAR CARLYLE,

Thank you for enclosing Mr. Norton's Letter: and will you thank him for his enclosure of Mr. Ruskin's? It is lucky for both R. and me that you did not read his Note; a sudden fit of Fancy, I suppose, which he is subject to. But as it was kindly meant on his part, I have written to thank him. Rather late in the Day; for his Letter (which Mr. Norton thinks may have lain a year or two in his Friend's Desk) is dated September 1863.

Which makes me think of our old Naseby Plans, so long talked of, and undone. I have made one more effort since I last wrote to you; by writing to the Lawyer, as well as to the Agent, of the Estate; to intercede with the Trustees thereof, whose permission seems to be necessary. But neither Agent nor Lawyer have yet answered. I feel sure that you believe that I do honestly wish this thing to be done; the plan of the Stone, and Inscription, both settled: the exact site ascertained by some who were with me when I dug for you: so as we can even specify the so many 'yards to the rear' which you stipulated for: only I believe we must write 'to the East—or Eastward'—in lieu of 'to the rear.' But for this Change we must have your Permission as well as from the Trustees theirs.

I am glad to hear from Mr. Norton's Letter to you that you hold well, through all the Wet and Cold we have had for the last six months. Our Church Bell here has been tolling for one and another of us very constantly. I get out on the River in my Boat, and dabble about my five acres of Ground just outside the Town. Sometimes I have thought you might come to my pleasant home, where I never live, but where you should be treated with better fare than you had at Farlingay: where I did not like to disturb the Hostess' Economy. But I may say this: you would not come; nor could I press you to do so. But I remain yours sincerely, I assure you,

E. F. G.

P.S. Perhaps I had better write a word of thanks to Mr. Norton myself: which I will do. I suppose he may be found at the address he gives.

To C. E. Norton.

WOODBRIDGE, April 17/73.

DEAR SIR,

Two days ago Mr. Carlyle sent me your Note, enclosing one from Mr. Ruskin 'to the Translator of Omar Khayyam.' You will be a little surprized to hear that Mr. Ruskin's Note is dated September 1863: all but ten years ago! I dare say he has forgotten all about it long before this: however, I write him a Note of Thanks for the good, too good, messages he sent me; better late than never; supposing that he will not be startled and bored by my Acknowledgments of a forgotten Favor rather than gratified. It is really a funny little Episode in the Ten years' Dream. I had asked Carlyle to thank you also for such trouble as you have taken in the matter. But, as your Note to him carries your Address, I think I may as well thank you for myself. I am very glad to gather from your Note that Carlyle is well, and able to walk, as well as talk, with a congenial Companion. Indeed, he speaks of such agreeable conversation with you in the Message he appends to your Letter. For which thanking you once more, allow me to write myself yours sincerely,

EDWARD FITZGERALD.

To W. F. Pollock.

[5 May, 1873.]

DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . I see that you were one of those who were at Macready's Funeral. I, too, feel as if I had lost a Friend, though I scarce knew him but on the Stage. But there I knew him as Virginius very well, when I was a Boy (about 1821), and when Miss Foote was his Daughter. Jackson's Drawing of him in that Character is among the best of such Portraits, surely. I think I shall have a word about M. from Mrs. Kemble, with whom I have been corresponding a little since her return to England. She has lately been staying with her Son-in-Law, Mr. Leigh, at Stoneleigh Vicarage, near Kenilworth. In the Autumn she says she will go to America, never to return to England. But I tell her she will return. . . .

My Eyes have been leaving me in the lurch again: partly perhaps from taxing them with a little more Reading: partly from going on the Water, and straining after our River Beacons, in hot Sun and East Wind; partly also, and main partly I doubt, from growing so much older and the worse for wear. I am afraid this very Letter will be troublesome to you to read: but I must write at a Gallop if at all. . . .

[1873.]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . This is Sunday Night: 10 p.m. And what is the Evening Service which I have been listening to? The 'Eustace Diamonds': which interest me almost as much as Tichborne. I really give the best proof I can of the Interest I take in Trollope's Novels, by constantly breaking out into Argument with the Reader (who never replies) about what is said and done by the People in the several Novels. I say 'No, no! She must have known she was lying!' 'He couldn't have been such a Fool! etc.'

[1873.]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . I am very shy of 'The Greatest Poem,' The Greatest Picture, Symphony, etc., but one single thing I always was assured of: that 'The School' was the best Comedy in the English Language. Not wittier than Congreve, etc., but with Human Character that one likes in it; Charles, both Teazles, Sir Oliver, etc. Whereas the Congreve School inspires no sympathy with the People: who are Manners not Men, you know. Voila de suffisamment perore a ce sujet-la. . . . I set my Reader last night on beginning The Mill on the Floss. I couldn't take to it more than to others I have tried to read by the Greatest Novelist of the Day: but I will go on a little further. Oh for some more brave Trollope; who I am sure conceals a much profounder observation than these Dreadful Denners of Romance under his lightsome and sketchy touch, as Gainboro compared to Denner.

[July 1873.]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

Thank you for the Fraser, and your Paper in it: which I relished very much for its Humour, Discrimination, and easy style; like all you write. Perhaps I should not agree with you about all the Pictures: but you do not give me any great desire to put that to the test.

Max Muller's Darwin Paper reminded me of an Observation in Bacon's Sylva; {160} that Apes and Monkeys, with Organs of Speech so much like Man's have never been taught to speak an Articulate word: whereas Parrots and Starlings, with organs so unlike Man's, are easily taught to do so. Do you know if Darwin, or any of his Followers, or Antagonists, advert to this?

I have been a wonderful Journey—for me—even to Naseby in Northamptonshire; to authenticate the spot where I dug up some bones of those slain there, for Gurlyle thirty years ago. We are to put up a Stone there to record the fact, if we can get leave of the present Owners of the Field; a permission, one would think, easy enough to obtain; but I have been more than a Year trying to obtain it, notwithstanding; and do not know that I am nearer the point after all. The Owner is a Minor: and three Trustees must sanction the thing for him; and these three Trustees are all great People, all living in different parts of England; and, I suppose, forgetful of such a little matter, though their Estate-agent, and Lawyer, represented it to them long ago.

I stayed at Cambridge some three hours on my way, so as to look at some of the Old, and New, Buildings, which I had not seen these dozen years and more. The Hall of Trinity looked to me very fine; and Sir Joshua's Duke of Gloucester the most beautiful thing in it. I looked into the Chapel, where they were at work: the Roof seemed to me being overdone: and Roubiliac's Newton is now nowhere, between the Statues of Bacon and Barrow which are executed on a larger scale. {161} And what does Spedding say to Macaulay in that Company? I never saw Cambridge so empty, but not the less pleasant.

[1873.]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

Two or three years ago I had three or four of my Master-pieces done up together for admiring Friends. It has occurred to me to send you one of these instead of the single Dialogue which I was looking in the Box for. I think you have seen, or had, all the things but the last, {162} which is the most impudent of all. It was, however, not meant for Scholars: mainly for Mrs. Kemble: but as I can't read myself, nor expect others of my age to read a long MS. I had it printed by a cheap friend (to the bane of other Friends), and here it is. You will see by the notice that AEschylus is left 'nowhere,' and why; a modest proviso. Still I think the Story is well compacted: the Dialogue good, (with one single little originality; of riding into Rhyme as Passion grows) and the Choruses (mostly 'rot' quoad Poetry) still serving to carry on the subject of the Story in the way of Inter-act. Try one or two Women with a dose of it one day; not Lady Pollock, who knows better. . . . When I look over the little Prose Dialogue, I see lots that might be weeded. I wonder at one word which is already crossed—'Emergency.' 'An Emergency!' I think Blake could have made a Picture of it as he did of the Flea. Something of the same disgusting Shape too. . . . Blake seems to me to have fine things: but as by random, like those of a Child, or a Madman, of Genius. Is there one good whole Piece, of ever so few lines? . . .

What do you think of a French saying quoted by Heine, that when 'Le bon Dieu' gets rather bored in Heaven, he opens the windows, and takes a look at the Boulevards? Heine's account of the Cholera in France is wonderful.

[1873.]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I am wondering in what Idiom you will one day answer my last. {163a} Meanwhile, I have to thank you for Lady Pollock's Article on American Literature: which I like, as all of hers. Only, I cannot understand her Admiration of Emerson's 'Humble Bee'; which, without her Comment, I should have taken for a Burlesque on Barry Cornwall, or some of that London School. Surely, that 'Animated Torrid Zone' without which 'All is Martyrdom,' etc., is rather out of Proportion. I wish she had been able to tell us that ten copies of Crabbe sold in America for one in England: rather than Philip of Artevelde. Perhaps Crabbe does too. What do you and Miladi think of these two Lines of his which returned to me the other day? Talking of poor Vagrants, etc.,

Whom Law condemns, and Justice with a Sigh Pursuing, shakes her Sword, and passes by. {163b}

There are heaps of such things lying hid in the tangle of Crabbe's careless verse; and yet such things, you know, are not the best of him, the distressing Old Man! Who would expect such a Prettyness as this of him?

As of fair Virgins dancing in a round, Each binds the others, and herself is bound—{163c}

so the several Callings and Duties of Men in Civilized Life, etc. Come! If Lady Pollock will write the Reason of all this, I will supply her with a Lot of it without her having the trouble of looking through all the eight volumes for it. I really can do little more than like, or dislike, Dr. Fell, without a further Reason: which is none at all, though it may be a very good one. So I distinguish Phil-osophers, and Fell-osophers; which is rather a small piece of Wit. And I don't like the Humble Bee; and won't like the Humble Bee, in spite of all the good reasons Miladi gives why I should; and so tell her: and tell her to forgive hers and yours always,

E. F. G.

To W. B. Donne.

ALDE COTTAGE, ALDEBURGH. August 18, [1873].

MY DEAR DONNE,

There being a change of servants in Market Hill, Woodbridge, I came here for a week, bringing Tacitus {164} in my Pocket. You know I don't pretend to judge of History: I can only say that you tell the Story of Tacitus' own Life, and of what he has to tell of others, very readably indeed to my Thinking: and so far I think my Thinking is to be relied on. Some of the Translations from T. by your other hands read so well also that I have wished to get at the original. But I really want an Edition such as you promised to begin upon. Thirty years ago I thought I could make out these Latins and Greeks sufficiently well for my own purpose; I do not think so now; and want good help of other men's Scholarship, and also of better Eyes than my own.

I am not sure if you were ever at this place: I fancy you once were. It is duller even than it used to be: because of even the Fishing having almost died away. But the Sea and the Shore remain the same; as to Nero, in that famous passage {165} I remember you pointed out to me: not quite so sad to me as to him, but not very lively. I have brought a volume or two of Walpole's Letters by way of amusement. I wish you were here; and I will wait here if you care to come. Might not the Sea Air do you good?

To T. Carlyle.

WOODBRIDGE, Septr. 8/73.

MY DEAR CARLYLE,

Enclosed is the Naseby Lawyer's answer on behalf of the Naseby Trustees. I think it will seem marvellous in your Eyes, as it does in mine.

You will see that I had suggested whether moving the Obelisk, the 'foolish Obelisk,' might not be accomplished in case The Stone were rejected. You see also that my Lawyer offers his mediation in the matter if wished. I cannot believe the Trustees would listen to this Scheme any more than to the other. Nor do I suppose you would be satisfied with the foolish Obelisk's Inscription, which warns Kings not to exceed their just Prerogative, nor Subjects [to swerve from] their lawful Obedience, etc., but does not say that it stands on the very spot where the Ashes of the Dead told of the final Struggle.

I say, I do not suppose any good will come of this second Application. The Trouble is nothing to me; but I will not trouble this Lawyer, Agent, etc., till I hear from you that you wish me to do so. I suppose you are now away from Chelsea; I hope among your own old places in the North. For I think, and I find, that as one grows old one returns to one's old haunts. However, my letter will reach you sooner or later, I dare say: and, if one may judge from what has passed, there will be no hurry in any future Decision of the 'Three Incomprehensibles.'

I have nothing to tell of myself; having been nowhere but to that Naseby. I am among my old haunts: so have not to travel. But I shall be very glad to hear that you are the better for having done so; and remain your ancient Bedesman,

E. F. G.

From T. Carlyle.

THE HILL, DUMFRIES, N.B. 13 Sep., 1873.

DEAR FITZGERALD,

There is something at once pathetic and ridiculous and altogether miserable and contemptible in the fact you at last announce that by one caprice and another of human folly perversity and general length of ear, our poor little enterprize is definitively forbidden to us. Alas, our poor little 'inscription,' so far as I remember it, was not more criminal than that of a number on a milestone; in fact the whole adventure was like that of setting up an authentic milestone in a tract of country (spiritual and physical) mournfully in want of measurement; that was our highly innocent offer had the unfortunate Rulers of the Element in that quarter been able to perceive it at all! Well; since they haven't, one thing at least is clear, that our attempt is finished, and that from this hour we will devoutly give it up. That of shifting the now existing pyramid from Naseby village and rebuilding it on Broadmoor seems to me entirely inadmissible;—and in fact unless you yourself should resolve, which I don't counsel, on marking, by way of foot-note, on the now existing pyramid, accurately how many yards off and in what direction the real battle ground lies from it, there is nothing visible to me which can without ridiculous impropriety be done.

The trouble and bother you have had with all this, which I know are very great, cannot be repaid you, dear old friend, except by my pious thankfulness, which I can well assure you shall not be wanting. But actual money, much or little, which the surrounding blockheads connected with this matter have first and last cost you, this I do request that you will accurately sum up that I may pay the half of it, as is my clear debt and right. This I do still expect from you; after which Finis upon this matter for ever and a day. . . .

Good be ever with you, dear FitzGerald, I am and remain Yours truly (Signed) T. CARLYLE.

To W. F. Pollock.

[16 Dec. 1873.]

. . . What do you think I am reading? Voltaire's 'Pucelle': the Epic he was fitted for. It is poor in Invention, I think: but wonderful for easy Wit, and the Verse much more agreeable to me than the regularly rhymed Alexandrines. I think Byron was indebted to it in his Vision of Judgment, and Juan: his best works. There are fine things too: as when Grisbourdon suddenly slain tells his Story to the Devils in Hell where he unexpectedly makes his Appearance,

Et tout l'Enfer en rit d'assez bon coeur.

This is nearer the Sublime, I fancy, than anything in the Henriade. And one Canto ends:

J'ai dans mon temps possede des maitresses, Et j'aime encore a retrouver mon coeur—

is very pretty in the old Sinner. . . .

I am engaged in preparing to depart from these dear Rooms where I have been thirteen years, and don't know yet where I am going. {169}

To John Allen.

GRANGE FARM: WOODBRIDGE Febr: 21/74.

MY DEAR ALLEN,

While I was reading a volume of Ste. Beuve at Lowestoft a Fortnight ago, I wondered if you got on with him; j'avais envie de vous ecrire une petite Lettre a ce sujet: but I let it go by. Now your Letter comes; and I will write: only a little about S. B. however, only that: the Volume I had with me was vol. III. of my Edition (I don't know if yours is the same), and I thought you [would] like all of three Causeries in it: Rousseau, Frederick the Great, and Daguesseau: the rest you might not so much care for: nor I neither.

Hare's Spain was agreeable to hear read: I have forgot all about it. His 'Memorials' were insufferably tiresome to me. You don't speak of Tichborne, which I never tire of: only wondering that the Lord Chief Justice sets so much Brains to work against so foolish a Bird. {170} The Spectator on Carlyle is very good, I think. As to Politics I scarce meddle with them. I have been glad to revert to Don Quixote, which I read easily enough in the Spanish: it is so delightful that I don't grudge looking into a Dictionary for the words I forget. It won't do in English; or has not done as yet: the English colloquial is not the Spanish do. It struck me oddly that—of all things in the world!—Sir Thomas Browne's Language might suit.

They now sell at the Railway Stalls Milnes' Life of Keats for half a crown, as well worth the money as any Book. I would send you a Copy if you liked: as I bought three or four to give away.

You may see that I have changed my Address: obliged to leave the Lodging where I had been thirteen years: and to come here to my own house, while another Lodging is getting ready, which I doubt I shall not inhabit, as it will entail Housekeeping on me. But I like to keep my house for my Nieces: it is not my fault they do not make it their home.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

To S. Laurence.

GRANGE FARM, WOODBRIDGE. February 26/74.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I am not very solicitous about the Likeness {171} as I might be of some dear Friend; but I was willing to have a Portrait of the Poet whom I am afraid I read more than any other of late and with whose Family (as you know) I am kindly connected. The other Portrait, which you wanted to see, and I hope have not seen, is by Phillips; and just represents what I least wanted, Crabbe's company look; whereas Pickersgill represents the Thinker. So I fancy, at least.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. [July 4/74.]

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I am (for a wonder) going out on a few days' visit. . . . And, once out, I meditate a run to Edinburgh, only to see where Sir Walter Scott lived and wrote about. But as I have meditated this great Enterprize for these thirty years, it may perhaps now end again in meditation only. . . .

I am just finishing Forster's Dickens: very good, I think: only, he has no very nice perception of Character, I think, or chooses not to let his readers into it. But there is enough to show that Dickens was a very noble fellow as well as a very wonderful one. . . . I, for one, worship Dickens, in spite of Carlyle and the Critics: and wish to see his Gadshill as I wished to see Shakespeare's Stratford and Scott's Abbotsford. One must love the Man for that.

To W. F. Pollock.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. July 23, [1874].

But I did get to Abbotsford, and was rejoiced to find it was not at all Cockney, not a Castle, but only in the half-castellated style of heaps of other houses in Scotland; the Grounds simply and broadly laid out before the windows, down to a field, down to the Tweed, with the woods which he left so little, now well aloft and flourishing, and I was glad. I could not find my way to Maida's Grave in the Garden, with its false Quantity,

Ad januam Domini, etc.

which the Whigs and Critics taunted Scott with, and Lockhart had done it. 'You know I don't care a curse about what I write'; nor about what was imputed to him. In this, surely like Shakespeare: as also in other respects. I will worship him, in spite of Gurlyle, who sent me an ugly Autotype of Knox whom I was to worship instead.

Then I went to see Jedburgh {172} Abbey, in a half ruined corner of which he lies entombed—Lockhart beside him—a beautiful place, with his own Tweed still running close by, and his Eildon Hills looking on. The man who drove me about showed me a hill which Sir Walter was very fond of visiting, from which he could see over the Border, etc. This hill is between Abbotsford and Jedburgh: {173} and when his Coach horses, who drew his Hearse, got there, to that hill, they could scarce be got on.

My mission to Scotland was done; but some civil pleasant people, whom I met at Abbotsford, made me go with them (under Cook's guidance) to the Trossachs, Katrine, Lomond, etc., which I did not care at all about; but it only took a day. After which, I came in a day to London, rather glad to be in my old flat land again, with a sight of my old Sea as we came along.

And in London I went to see my dear old Donne, because of wishing to assure myself, with my own eyes, of his condition; and I can safely say he looked better than before his Illness, near two years ago. He had a healthy colour; was erect, alert, and with his old humour, and interest in our old topics. . . .

I looked in at the Academy, as poor a show as ever I had seen, I thought; only Millais attracted me: a Boy with a red Sash: and that old Seaman with his half-dreaming Eyes while the Lassie reads to him. I had no Catalogue: and so thought the Book was—The Bible—to which she was drawing his thoughts, while the sea-breeze through the open Window whispered of his old Life to him. But I was told afterwards (at Donne's indeed) that it was some account of a N. W. Passage she was reading. The Roll Call I could not see, for a three deep file of worshippers before it: I only saw the 'hairy Cap' as Thackeray in his Ballad, {174} and I supposed one would see all in a Print as well as in the Picture. But the Photo of Miss Thompson herself gives me a very favourable impression of her. It really looks, in face and dress, like some of Sir Joshua's Women. . . .

Another Miss Austen! Of course under Spedding's Auspices, the Father of Evil.

From W. H. Thompson to W. A. Wright.

On 17 July 1883, shortly after FitzGerald's death, the late Master of Trinity wrote to me from Harrogate, 'As regards FitzGerald's letters, I have preserved a good many, which I will look through when we return to College. I have a long letter from Carlyle to him, which F. gave me. It is a Carlylesque etude on Spedding, written from dictation by his niece, but signed by the man himself in a breaking hand. The thing is to my mind more characteristic of T. Carlyle than of James Spedding—that "victorious man" as C. calls him. He seems unaware of one distinguishing feature of J. S.'s mind—its subtlety of perception—and the excellence of his English style escapes his critic, whose notices on that subject by the bye would not necessarily command assent.'

From Thomas Carlyle.

5 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA 6 Nov. 1874.

DEAR FITZGERALD,

Thanks for your kind little Letter. I am very glad to learn that you are so cheerful and well, entering the winter under such favourable omens. I lingered in Scotland, latterly against my will, for about six weeks: the scenes there never can cease to be impressive to me; indeed as natural in late visits they are far too impressive, and I have to wander there like a solitary ghost among the graves of those that are gone from me, sad, sad, and I always think while there, ought not this visit to be the last?

But surely I am well pleased with your kind affection for the Land, especially for Edinburgh and the scenes about it. By all means go again to Edinburgh (tho' the old city is so shorn of its old grim beauty and is become a place of Highland shawls and railway shriekeries); worship Scott, withal, as vastly superior to the common run of authors, and indeed grown now an affectingly tragic man. Don't forget Burns either and Ayrshire and the West next time you go; there are admirable antiquities and sceneries in those parts, leading back (Whithorn for example, Whitterne or candida casa) to the days of St. Cuthbert; not to speak of Dumfries with Sweetheart Abbey and the brooks and hills a certain friend of yours first opened his eyes to in this astonishing world.

I am what is called very well here after my return, worn weak as a cobweb, but without bodily ailment except the yearly increasing inability to digest food; my mind, too, if usually mournful instead of joyful, is seldom or never to be called miserable, and the steady gazing into the great unknown, which is near and comes nearer every day, ought to furnish abundant employment to the serious soul. I read, too; that is my happiest state, when I can get good books, which indeed I more and more rarely can.

Like yourself I have gone through Spedding, seven long long volumes, not skipping except where I had got the sense with me, and generally reading all of Bacon's own that was there: I confess to you I found it a most creditable and even surprising Book, offering the most perfect and complete image both of Bacon and of Spedding, and distinguished as the hugest and faithfullest bit of literary navvy work I have ever met with in this generation. Bacon is washed clean down to the natural skin; and truly he is not nor ever was unlovely to me; a man of no culpability to speak of; of an opulent and even magnificent intellect, but all in the magnificent prose vein. Nothing or almost nothing of the 'melodies eternal' to be traced in him. Spedding's Book will last as long as there is any earnest memory held of Bacon, or of the age of James VI., upon whom as upon every stirring man in his epoch Spedding has shed new veritable illumination; in almost the whole of which I perfectly coincided with Spedding. In effect I walked up to the worthy man's house, whom I see but little, to tell him all this; and that being a miss, I drove up, Spedding having by request called here and missed me, but hitherto we have not met; and Spedding I doubt not could contrive to dispense with my eulogy. There is a grim strength in Spedding, quietly, very quietly invincible, which I did not quite know of till this Book; and in all ways I could congratulate the indefatigably patient, placidly invincible and victorious Spedding.

Adieu, dear F. I wish you a right quiet and healthy winter, and beg to be kept in memory as now probably your oldest friend.

Ever faithfully yours, dear F., T. CARLYLE.

To W. H. Thompson.

[9 Nov. 1874.]

MY DEAR MASTER,

I think there can be no criminal breach of Confidence in your taking a Copy, if you will, of C[arlyle]'s Letter. Indeed, you are welcome to keep it:—there was but one Person else I wished to show it to, and she (a She) can do very well without it. I sent it to you directly I got it, because I thought you would be as pleased as I was with C.'s encomium on Spedding, which will console him (if he needs Consolation) for the obduracy of the World at large, myself among the number. I can indeed fully assent to Carlyle's Admiration of Spedding's History of the Times, as well as of the Hero who lived in them. But the Question still remains—was it worth forty years of such a Life as Spedding's to write even so good an Account of a few, not the most critical, Years of English History, and to leave Bacon (I think) a little less well off than when S. began washing him: I mean in the eyes of candid and sensible men, who simply supposed before that Bacon was no better than the Men of his Time, and now J. S. has proved it. I have no doubt that Carlyle takes up the Cudgels because he thinks the World is now going the other way. If Spedding's Book had been praised by the Critics—Oh Lord!

But what a fine vigorous Letter from the old Man! When I was walking my Garden yesterday at about 11 a.m. I thought to myself 'the Master will have had this Letter at Breakfast; and a thought of it will cross him tandis que le Predicateur de Ste Marie soit en plein Discours, etc.' . . .

If Lord Houghton be with you pray thank him for the first ebauche of Hyperion he sent me. Surely no one can doubt which was the first Sketch.

To Miss Anna Biddell.

12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT. Jan. 18/75.

DEAR MISS BIDDELL,

I am sending you a Treat. The old Athenaeum told me there was a Paper by 'Mr. Carlyle' in this month's Magazine; and never did I lay out half-a- crown better. And you shall have the Benefit of it, if you will. Why, Carlyle's Wine, so far from weak evaporation, is only grown better by Age: losing some of its former fierceness, and grown mellow without losing Strength. It seems to me that a Child might read and relish this Paper, while it would puzzle any other Man to write such a one. I think I must write to T. C. to felicitate him on this truly 'Green Old Age.' Oh, it was good too to read it here, with the old Sea (which also has not sunk into Decrepitude) rolling in from that North: and as I looked up from the Book, there was a Norwegian Barque beating Southward, close to the Shore, and nearly all Sail set. Read—Read! you will, you must, be pleased; and write to tell me so.

This Place suits me, I think, at this time of year: there is Life about me: and that old Sea is always talking to one, telling its ancient Story.

LOWESTOFT. Febr. 2/75.

DEAR MISS BIDDELL,

I am so glad (as the Gushingtons say) that you like the Carlyle. I have ordered the second Number and will send it to you when I have read it. Some People, I believe, hesitate in their Belief of its being T. C. or one of his School: I don't for a moment: if for no other reason than that an Imitator always exaggerates his Model: whereas this Paper, we see, unexaggerates the Master himself: as one would wish at his time of Life. . . .

I ran over for one day to Woodbridge, to pay Bills, etc. But somehow I was glad to get back here. The little lodging is more to my liking than my own bigger rooms and staircases: and this cheerful Town better (at this Season) than my yet barren Garden. One little Aconite however looked up at me: Mr. Churchyard (in his elegant way) used to call them 'New Year's Gifts.'

To E. B. Cowell.

12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT. Feb. 2/75.

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I hope you have read, and liked, the Paper on the old Kings of Norway in last Fraser. I bought it because the Athenaeum told me it was Carlyle's; others said it was an Imitation of him: but his it must be, if for no other reason than that the Imitator, you know, always exaggerates his Master: whereas in this Paper Carlyle is softened down from his old Self, mellowed like old Wine. Pray read, and tell me you think so too. It is quite delightful, whoever did it. I was on the point of writing a Line to tell him of my own delight: but have not done so. . . .

I have failed in another attempt at Gil Blas. I believe I see its easy Grace, humour, etc. But it is (like La Fontaine) too thin a Wine for me: all sparkling with little adventures, but no one to care about; no Colour, no Breadth, like my dear Don; whom I shall resort to forthwith.

To W. F. Pollock.

LOWESTOFT, Sept. 22, [1878].

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

You will scarce thank me for a letter in pencil: perhaps you would thank me less if I used the steel pen, which is my other resource. You could very well dispense with a Letter altogether: and yet I believe it is pleasant to get one when abroad.

I dare say I may have told you what Tennyson said of the Sistine Child, which he then knew only by Engraving. He first thought the Expression of his Face (as also the Attitude) almost too solemn, even for the Christ within. But some time after, when A. T. was married, and had a Son, he told me that Raffaelle was all right: that no Man's face was so solemn as a Child's, full of Wonder. He said one morning that he watched his Babe 'worshipping the Sunbeam on the Bedpost and Curtain.' I risk telling you this again for the sake of the Holy Ground you are now standing on.

Which reminds me also of a remark of Beranger's not out of place. He says God forgot to give Raffaelle to Greece, and made a 'joli cadeau' of him to the Church of Rome.

I brought here some Volumes of Lever's 'Cornelius O'Dowd' Essays, very much better reading than Addison, I think. Also some of Sainte Beuve's better than either. A sentence in O'Dowd reminded me of your Distrust of Civil Service Examinations: 'You could not find a worse Pointer than the Poodle which would pick you out all the letters of the Alphabet.' And is not this pretty good of the World we live in? 'You ask me if I am going to "The Masquerade." I am at it: Circumspice!'

So I pick out and point to other Men's Game, this Sunday Morning, when the Sun makes the Sea shine, and a strong head wind drives the Ships with shortened Sail across it. Last night I was with some Sailors at the Inn: some one came in who said there was a Schooner with five feet water in her in the Roads: and off they went to see if anything beside water could be got out of her. But, as you say, one mustn't be epigrammatic and clever. Just before Grog and Pipe, the Band had played some German Waltzes, a bit of Verdi, Rossini's 'Cujus animam,' and a capital Sailors' Tramp-chorus from Wagner, all delightful to me, on the Pier: how much better than all the dreary oratorios going on all the week at Norwich; Elijah, St. Peter, St. Paul, Eli, etc. There will be an Oratorio for every Saint and Prophet; which reminds me of my last Story. Voltaire had an especial grudge against Habakkuk. Some one proved to him that he had misrepresented facts in Habakkuk's history. 'C'est egal,' says V., 'Habakkuk etait capable de tout.' Cornewall Lewis, who (like most other Whigs) had no Humour, yet tells this: I wonder if it will reach Dresden.

To Mrs. W. H. Thompson.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. Sept. 23, [1875].

DEAR MRS. THOMPSON,

It is very good of you to write to me, so many others as, I know, you must have to write to. I can tell you but little in return for the Story of your Summer Travel: but what little I have to say shall be said at once. As to Travel, I have got no further than Norfolk, and am rather sorry I did not go further North, to the Scottish Border, at any rate. But now it is too late. I have contented myself with my Boat on the River here: with my Garden, Pigeons, Ducks, etc.; a great Philosopher indeed! But (to make an end of oneself) I have not been well all the summer; unsteady in head and feet; the Beginning of the End, I suppose; and if the End won't be too long spinning out, one cannot complain of its coming too soon. . . .

I had a kindly Letter from Carlyle some days ago: he was summering at some place near Bromley in Kent, lent him by a Lady Derby; once, he says, Lady Salisbury, which I don't understand. He had also the use of a Phaeton and Pony; which latter he calls 'Shenstone' from a partiality to stopping at every Inn door. Carlyle had been a little touched in revisiting Eltham, and remembering Frank Edgeworth who resided there forty years ago 'with a little Spanish Wife, but no pupils.' Carlyle would name him with a sort of sneer in the Life of Sterling; {184} could not see that any such notice was more than needless, just after Edgeworth's Death. This is all a little Scotch indelicacy to other people's feelings. But now Time and his own Mortality soften him. I have been looking over his Letters to me about Cromwell: the amazing perseverance and accuracy of the Man, who writes so passionately! In a letter of about 1845 or 6 he says he has burned at least six attempts at Cromwell's Life: and finally falls back on sorting and elucidating the Letters, as a sure Groundwork. . . .

I have this Summer made the Acquaintance of a great Lady, with whom I have become perfectly intimate, through her Letters, Madame de Sevigne. I had hitherto kept aloof from her, because of that eternal Daughter of hers; but 'it's all Truth and Daylight,' as Kitty Clive said of Mrs. Siddons. Her Letters from Brittany are best of all, not those from Paris, for she loved the Country, dear Creature; and now I want to go and visit her 'Rochers,' but never shall.

To E. B. Cowell.

[1875.]

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I told Elizabeth, I think, all I had to write about Arthur C. I had a letter from him a few days ago, hoping to see me in London, where I thought I might be going about this time, and where I would not go without giving him notice to meet me, poor lad. As yet however I cannot screw my Courage to go up: I have no Curiosity about what is to be seen or heard there; my Day is done. I have not been very well all this Summer, and fancy that I begin to 'smell the Ground,' as Sailors say of the Ship that slackens speed as the Water shallows under her. I can't say I have much care for long Life: but still less for long Death: I mean a lingering one.

Did you ever read Madame de Sevigne? I never did till this summer, rather repelled by her perpetual harping on her Daughter. But it is all genuine, and the same intense Feeling expressed in a hundred natural yet graceful ways: and beside all this such good Sense, good Feeling, Humour, Love of Books and Country Life, as makes her certainly the Queen of all Letter writers.

To C. E. Norton.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE, SUFFOLK. (Post Mark Dec. 8.) Dec. 9/75.

MY DEAR SIR,

Mr. Carlyle's Niece has sent me a Card from you, asking for a Copy of an Agamemnon: taken—I must not say, translated—from AEschylus. It was not meant for Greek Scholars, like yourself, but for those who do not know the original, which it very much misrepresents. I think it is my friend Mrs. Kemble who has made it a little known on your wide Continent. As you have taken the trouble to enquire for it all across the Atlantic, beside giving me reason before to confide in your friendly reception of it, I post you one along with this letter. I can fancy you might find some to be interested in it who do not know the original: more interested than in more faithful Translations of more ability. But there I will leave it: only begging that you will not make any trouble of acknowledging so small a Gift.

Some eighty of Carlyle's Friends and Admirers have been presenting him with a Gold Medal of himself, and an Address of Congratulation on his 80th Birthday. I should not have supposed that either Medal or Address would be much to his Taste: but, as more important People than myself joined in the Thing, I did not think it became me to demur. But I shall not the less write him my half-yearly Letter of Good Hopes and Good Wishes. He seems to have been well and happy in our pretty County of Kent during the Summer.

Believe me, with Thanks for the Interest you have taken in my Libretti, yours sincerely, E. FITZGERALD.

P.S. I am doing an odd thing in bethinking me of sending you two Calderon Plays, which my friend Mrs. Kemble has spoken of also in your Country. So you might one day hear of them: and, if you liked what came before, wish to see them. So here they are, for better or worse; and, at any rate, one Note of Thanks (which I doubt you will feel bound to write) will do for both, and you can read as little as you please of either. All these things have been done partly as an amusement in a lonely life: partly to give some sort of idea of the originals to friends who knew them not: and printed, because (like many others, I suppose) I can only dress my best when seeing myself in Type, in the same way as I can scarce read others unless in such a form. I suppose there was some Vanity in it all: but really, if I had that strong, I might have done (considering what little I can do) like Crabbe's Bachelor—

I might have made a Book, but that my Pride In the not making was more gratified. {187}

Do you read more of Crabbe than we his Countrymen?

To Miss Aitken. {188a}

WOODBRIDGE. Dec. 9/75.

DEAR MISS AITKEN,

It is a fact that the night before last I thought I would write my half- yearly Enquiry about your Uncle: and at Noon came your Note. I judge from it that he is well. I think he will thrash me (as Bentley said {188b}) even now.

I must say I scarce knew what to do when asked to join in that Birthday Address. I did not know whether it would be agreeable to your Uncle: and of course I could not ask him. So I asked Spedding and Pollock, and found they were of the Party: so it did not become me to hesitate. I hope we were not all amiss.

But as to Agamemnon the King: I shall certainly send Mr. Norton a Copy, as he has taken the trouble to send across the Atlantic for it. But as to Mr. Carlyle, 'c'est une autre affaire.' It was not meant for any Greek Scholar, and only for a few not Greek, who I thought would be interested, as they have been, in my curious Version. Among these was Mrs. Kemble, who I suppose it is has praised it in a way that somehow gains ground in America. But your Uncle—a few years ago he would have been perhaps a little irritated with it; and now would not, I feel sure, care to spend his Eyes over its sixty or seventy pages. He would even now think—but in Pity now—how much better one might have spent one's time (though not very much was spent) than in such Dilettanteism. So tell him not quite to break his heart if I don't put him to the Trial: but still believe me his, and, if you will allow me, yours sincerely,

E. FITZGERALD.

Fragment of a Letter to Miss Biddell.

Dec. 1875.

Thank you for the paragraph about Shelley. Somehow I don't believe the Story, {189} in spite of Trelawney's Authority. Let them produce the Confessor who is reported to tell the Story; otherwise one does not need any more than such a Squall as we have late had in these Seas, and yet more sudden, I believe, in those, to account for the Disaster.

I believe I told you that my Captain Newson and his Nephew, my trusty Jack, went in the Snow to the Norfolk Coast, by Cromer, to find Newson's Boy. They found him, what remained of him, in a Barn there: brought him home through the Snow by Rail thus far: and through the Snow by Boat to Felixstow, where he is to lie among his Brothers and Sisters, to the Peace of his Father's Heart.

To S. Laurence.

WOODBRIDGE. Dec. 30/75.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I cannot get on with Books about the Daily Life which I find rather insufferable in practice about me. I never could read Miss Austen, nor (later) the famous George Eliot. Give me People, Places, and Things, which I don't and can't see; Antiquaries, Jeanie Deans, Dalgettys, etc. . . . As to Thackeray's, they are terrible; I really look at them on the shelf, and am half afraid to touch them. He, you know, could go deeper into the Springs of Common Action than these Ladies: wonderful he is, but not Delightful, which one thirsts for as one gets old and dry.

To C. E. Norton.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. Jan. 23/76.

MY DEAR SIR,

. . . I suppose you may see one of the Carlyle Medallions: and you can judge better of the Likeness than I, who have not been to Chelsea, and hardly out of Suffolk, these fifteen years and more. I dare say it is like him: but his Profile is not his best phase. In two notes dictated by him since that Business he has not adverted to it: I think he must be a little ashamed of it, though it would not do to say so in return, I suppose. And yet I think he might have declined the Honours of a Life of 'Heroism.' I have no doubt he would have played a Brave Man's Part if called on; but, meanwhile, he has only sat pretty comfortably at Chelsea, scolding all the world for not being Heroic, and not always very precise in telling them how. He has, however, been so far heroic, as to be always independent, whether of Wealth, Rank, and Coteries of all sorts: nay, apt to fly in the face of some who courted him. I suppose he is changed, or subdued, at eighty: but up to the last ten years he seemed to me just the same as when I first knew him five and thirty years ago. What a Fortune he might have made by showing himself about as a Lecturer, as Thackeray and Dickens did; I don't mean they did it for Vanity: but to make money: and that to spend generously. Carlyle did indeed lecture near forty years ago before he was a Lion to be shown, and when he had but few Readers. I heard his 'Heroes' which now seems to me one of his best Books. He looked very handsome then, with his black hair, fine Eyes, and a sort of crucified Expression.

I know of course (in Books) several of those you name in your Letter: Longfellow, whom I may say I love, and so (I see) can't call him Mister: and Emerson whom I admire, for I don't feel that I know the Philosopher so well as the Poet: and Mr. Lowell's 'Among my Books' is among mine. I also have always much liked, I think rather loved, O. W. Holmes. I scarce know why I could never take to that man of true Genius, Hawthorne. There is a little of my Confession of Faith about your Countrymen, and I should say mine, if I were not more Irish than English.

[WOODBRIDGE. Feb. 7/76.]

MY DEAR SIR,

I will not look on the Book you have sent me as any Return for the Booklet I sent you, but as a free and kindly Gift. I really don't know that you could have sent me a better. I have read it with more continuous attention and gratification than I now usually feel, and always (as Lamb suggested) well disposed to say Grace after reading.

Seeing what Mr. Lowell has done for Dante, Rousseau, etc., one does not wish him to be limited in his Subjects: but I do wish he would do for English Writers what Ste. Beuve has done for French. Mr. Lowell so far goes along with him as to give so much of each Writer's Life as may illustrate his Writings; he has more Humour (in which alone I fancy S. B. somewhat wanting), more extensive Reading, I suppose; and a power of metaphorical Illustration which (if I may say so) seems to me to want only a little reserve in its use: as was the case perhaps with Hazlitt. But Mr. Lowell is not biassed by Hazlitt's—(by anybody's, so far as I see)—party or personal prejudices; and altogether seems to me the man most fitted to do this Good Work, where it has not (as with Carlyle's Johnson) been done, for good and all, before. Of course, one only wants the Great Men, in their kind: Chaucer, Pope (Dryden being done {193}), and perhaps some of the 'minora sidera' clustered together, as Hazlitt has done them. Perhaps all this will come forth in some future Series even now gathering in Mr. Lowell's Head. However that may be, this present Series will make me return to some whom I have not lately looked up. Dante's face I have not seen these ten years: only his Back on my Book Shelf. What Mr. Lowell says of him recalled to me what Tennyson said to me some thirty-five or forty years ago. We were stopping before a shop in Regent Street where were two Figures of Dante and Goethe. I (I suppose) said, 'What is there in old Dante's Face that is missing in Goethe's?' And Tennyson (whose Profile then had certainly a remarkable likeness to Dante's) said: 'The Divine.' Then Milton; I don't think I've read him these forty years; the whole Scheme of the Poem, and certain Parts of it, looming as grand as anything in my Memory; but I never could read ten lines together without stumbling at some Pedantry that tipped me at once out of Paradise, or even Hell, into the Schoolroom, worse than either. Tennyson again used to say that the two grandest of all Similes were those of the Ships hanging in the Air, and 'the Gunpowder one,' which he used slowly and grimly to enact, in the Days that are no more. He certainly then thought Milton the sublimest of all the Gang; his Diction modelled on Virgil, as perhaps Dante's.

Spenser I never could get on with, and (spite of Mr. Lowell's good word) shall still content myself with such delightful Quotations from him as one lights upon here and there: the last from Mr. Lowell.

Then, old 'Daddy Wordsworth,' as he was sometimes called, I am afraid, from my Christening, he is now, I suppose, passing under the Eclipse consequent on the Glory which followed his obscure Rise. I remember fifty years ago at our Cambridge, when the Battle was fighting for him by the Few against the Many of us who only laughed at 'Louisa in the Shade,' etc. His Brother was then Master of Trinity College; like all Wordsworths (unless the drowned Sailor) pompous and priggish. He used to drawl out the Chapel responses so that we called him the 'Meeserable Sinner' and his brother the 'Meeserable Poet.' Poor fun enough: but I never can forgive the Lakers all who first despised, and then patronized 'Walter Scott,' as they loftily called him: and He, dear, noble, Fellow, thought they were quite justified. Well, your Emerson has done him far more Justice than his own Countryman Carlyle, who won't allow him to be a Hero in any way, but sets up such a cantankerous narrow-minded Bigot as John Knox in his stead. I did go to worship at Abbotsford, as to Stratford on Avon: and saw that it was good to have so done. If you, if Mr. Lowell, have not lately read it, pray read Lockhart's account of his Journey to Douglas Dale on (I think) July 18 or 19, 1831. It is a piece of Tragedy, even to the muttering Thunder, like the Lammermuir, which does not look very small beside Peter Bell and Co.

My dear Sir, this is a desperate Letter; and that last Sentence will lead to another dirty little Story about my Daddy: to which you must listen or I should feel like the Fine Lady in one of Vanbrugh's Plays, 'Oh my God, that you won't listen to a Woman of Quality when her Heart is bursting with Malice!' And perhaps you on the other Side of the Great Water may be amused with a little of your old Granny's Gossip.

Well then: about 1826, or 7, Professor Airy (now our Astronomer Royal) and his Brother William called on the Daddy at Rydal. In the course of Conversation Daddy mentioned that sometimes when genteel Parties came to visit him, he contrived to slip out of the room, and down the garden walk to where 'The Party's' travelling Carriage stood. This Carriage he would look into to see what Books they carried with them: and he observed it was generally 'WALTER SCOTT'S.' It was Airy's Brother (a very veracious man, and an Admirer of Wordsworth, but, to be sure, more of Sir Walter) who told me this. It is this conceit that diminishes Wordsworth's stature among us, in spite of the mountain Mists he lived among. Also, a little stinginess; not like Sir Walter in that! I remember Hartley Coleridge telling us at Ambleside how Professor Wilson and some one else (H. C. himself perhaps) stole a Leg of Mutton from Wordsworth's Larder for the fun of the Thing.

Here then is a long Letter of old world Gossip from the old Home. I hope it won't tire you out: it need not, you know.

P.S. By way of something better from the old World, I post you Hazlitt's own Copy of his English Poets, with a few of his marks for another Edition in it. If you like to keep it, pray do: if you like better to give it to Hazlitt's successor, Mr. Lowell, do that from yourself.

To Mrs. Cowell.

12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT. April 8/76.

. . . If you go to Brittany you must go to my dear Sevigne's 'Rochers.' If I had the 'Go' in me, I should get there this Summer too: as to Abbotsford and Stratford. She has been my Companion here; quite alive in the Room with me. I sometimes lament I did not know her before: but perhaps such an Acquaintance comes in best to cheer one toward the End.

To C. E. Norton.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. June 10 {196}, [1876].

MY DEAR SIR,

I don't know that I should trouble you so soon again—(only, don't trouble yourself to answer for form's sake only)—but that there is a good deal of Wordsworth in the late Memoir of Haydon by his Son. All this you might like to see; as also Mr. Lowell. And do you, or he, know of some dozen very good Letters of Wordsworth's addressed to a Mr. Gillies who published them in what he calls the Life of a Literary Veteran some thirty years ago, {197} I think? This Book, of scarce any value except for those few Letters, and a few Notices of Sir Walter Scott, all good, is now not very common, I think. If you or Mr. Lowell would like to have a Copy, I can send you one, through Quaritch, if not per Post: I have the Letters separately bound up from another Copy of long ago. There is also a favorable account of a meeting between Wordsworth and Foscolo in an otherwise rather valueless Memoir of Bewick the Painter. I tell you of all this Wordsworth, because you have, I think, a more religious regard for him than we on this side the water: he is not so much honoured in his own Country, I mean, his Poetry. I, for one, feel all his lofty aspiration, and occasional Inspiration, but I cannot say that, on the whole, he makes much of it; his little pastoral pieces seem to me his best: less than a Quarter of him. But I may be wrong.

I am very much obliged to you for wishing me to see Mr. Ticknor's Life, etc. I hope to make sure of that through our Briareus-handed Mudie; and have marked the Book for my next Order. For I suppose that it finds its way to English Publishers, or Librarians. I remember his Spanish Literature coming out, and being for a long time in the hands of my friend Professor Cowell, who taught me what I know of Spanish. Only a week ago I began my dear Don Quixote over again; as welcome and fresh as the Flowers of May. The Second Part is my favorite, in spite of what Lamb and Coleridge (I think) say; when, as old Hallam says, Cervantes has fallen in Love with the Hero whom he began by ridiculing. When this Letter is done I shall get out into my Garden with him, Sunday though it be.

We have also Memoirs of Godwin, very dry, I think; indeed with very little worth reading, except two or three Letters of dear Charles Lamb, 'Saint Charles,' as Thackeray once called him, while looking at one of his half-mad Letters, and remember[ing] his Devotion to that quite mad Sister. I must say I think his Letters infinitely better than his Essays; and Patmore says his Conversation, when just enough animated by Gin and Water, was better than either: which I believe too. Procter said he was far beyond the Coleridges, Wordsworths, Southeys, etc. And I am afraid I believe that also.

I am afraid too this is a long letter nearly [all] about my own Likes and Dislikes. 'The Great Twalmley's.' {198} But I began only thinking about Wordsworth. Pray do believe that I do not wish you to write unless you care to answer on that score. And now for the Garden and the Don: always in a common old Spanish Edition. Their coarse prints always make him look more of the Gentleman than the better Artists of other Countries have hitherto done.

Carlyle, I hear, is pretty well, though somewhat shrunk: scolding away at Darwin, The Turk, etc.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE, Septr. 10/76.

MY DEAR SIR,

When your Letter reached me a few days ago I looked up Gillies: and found the Wordsworth Letters so good, kindly, sincere, and modest, that I thought you and Mr. Lowell should have the Volume they are in at once. So it travels by Post along with this Letter. The other two volumes shall go one day in some parcel of Quaritch's if he will do me that Courtesy; but there is, I think, little you would care for, unless a little more of 'Walter Scott's' generosity and kindness to Gillies in the midst of his own Ruin; a stretch of Goodness that Wordsworth would not, I think, have reached. However, these Letters of his make me think I ought to feel more filially to my Daddy: I must dip myself again in Mr. Lowell's excellent Account of him with a more reverent Spirit. Do you remember the fine Picture that Haydon gives of him sitting with his grey head in the free Benches of some London Church? {199} I wonder that more of such Letters as these to Gillies are not preserved or produced; perhaps Mr. Lowell will make use of them on some future occasion; some new Edition, perhaps, of his last volume. I can assure you and him that I read that volume with that Interest and Pleasure that made me sure I should often return to it: as indeed I did more than once till—lent out to three several Friends! It is now in the hands of a very civilized, well-lettered, and agreeable Archdeacon, {200} of this District.

I bought Mr. Ticknor's Memoirs in an Edition published, I hope with due Licence, by Sampson Low. What a just, sincere, kindly, modest Man he too! With more shrewd perception of the many fine folks he mixed with than he cared to indulge in or set down on Paper, I fancy: judging from some sketchy touches of Macaulay, Talfourd, Bulwer, etc. His account of his Lord Fitzwilliam's is surely very creditable to English Nobility. Macaulay's Memoirs were less interesting to me; though I quite believe in him as a brave, honest, affectionate man, as well (of course) as a very powerful one. It is wonderful how he, Hallam and Mackintosh could roar and bawl at one another over such Questions as Which is the Greatest Poet? Which is the greatest Work of that Greatest Poet? etc., like Boys at some Debating Society.

You can imagine the little dull Country town on whose Border I live; our one merit is an Estuary that brings up Tidings of the Sea twice in the twenty-four hours, and on which I sail in my Boat whenever I can.

I must add a P.S. to say that having written my half-yearly Letter to Carlyle, just to ask how he was, etc., I hear from his Niece that he has been to his own Dumfries, has driven a great deal about the Country: but has returned to Chelsea very weak, she says, though not in any way ill. He has even ceased to care about Books; but, since his Return, has begun to interest himself in them a little again. In short, his own Chelsea is the best Place for him.

Another reason for this other half Sheet is—that—Yes! I wish very much for your Translation of the Vita Nuova, which I did read in a slovenly (slovenly with Dante!) way twenty or thirty years ago, but which I did not at all understand. I should know much more about it now with you and Mr. Lowell.

I could without 'roaring' persuade you about Don Quixote, I think; if I were to roar over the Atlantic as to 'Which is the best of the Two Parts' in the style of Macaulay & Co. 'Oh for a Pot of Ale, etc.,' rather than such Alarums. Better dull Woodbridge! What bothered me in London was—all the Clever People going wrong with such clever Reasons for so doing which I couldn't confute. I will send an original Omar if I find one.

To E. B. Cowell.

WOODBRIDGE. October 5/76.

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I bought Clemencin's Quixote after all: but have looked little into him as yet, as I had finished my last Reading of the Don before he came . . . I fear his Notes are more than one wants about errors, or inaccuracies of Style, etc. Cervantes had some of the noble carelessness of Shakespeare, Scott, etc., as about Sancho's stolen Dicky. {202} But why should Clemencin, and his Predecessors, decide that Cervantes changed the title of his second Part from 'Hidalgo' to 'Caballero' from negligence? Why should he not have intended the change for reasons of his own? Anyhow, they should have printed the Title as he printed it, and pointed out what they thought the oversight in a Note. This makes one think they may have altered other things also: which perhaps I shall see when I begin another Reading: which (if I live) won't be very far off. I think I almost inspired Alfred Tennyson (who suddenly came here a Fortnight ago) to begin on the Spanish. Yes: A. T. called one day, after near twenty years' separation, and we were in a moment as if we had been together all that while. He had his son Hallam with him: whom I liked much: unaffected and unpretentious: so attentive to his Father, with a humorous sense of his Character as well as a loving and respectful. It was good to see them together. We went one day down the Orwell and back again by Steamer: but the weather was not very propitious. Altogether, I think we were all pleased with our meeting.

To C. E. Norton.

WOODBRIDGE. Novr. 8/76.

MY DEAR SIR,

'Vita Nuova' reached me safe, and 'siempre verde,' untarnished by its Voyage. I am afraid I liked your account of it more than itself: I mean, I was more interested: I suppose it is too mystical for me. So I felt when I tried to read it in the original twenty years ago: and I fear I must despair of relishing it as I ought now I have your Version of it, which, it seems to me, must be so good. I don't think you needed to bring in Rossetti, still less Theodore Martin, to bear Witness, or to put your Work in any other Light than its own.

After once more going through my Don Quixote ('siempre verde' too, if ever Book was), I returned to another of the Evergreens, Boccaccio, which I found by a Pencil mark at the Volume's end I had last read on board the little Ship I then had, nine years ago. And I have shut out the accursed 'Eastern Question' by reading the Stories, as the 'lieta Brigata' shut out the Plague by telling them. Perhaps Mr. Lowell will give us Boccaccio one day, and Cervantes? And many more, whom Ste. Beuve has left to be done by him. I fancy Boccaccio must be read in his Italian, as Cervantes in his Spanish: the Language fitting either 'like a Glove' as we say. Boccaccio's Humour in his Country People, Friars, Scolds, etc., is capital: as well, of course, as the easy Grace and Tenderness of other Parts. One thinks that no one who had well read him and Don Quixote would ever write with a strain again, as is the curse of nearly all modern Literature. I know that 'Easy Writing is d—-d hard Reading.' Of course the Man must be a Man of Genius to take his Ease: but, if he be, let him take it. I suppose that such as Dante, and Milton, and my Daddy, took it far from easy: well, they dwell apart in the Empyrean; but for Human Delight, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Boccaccio, and Scott!

Tennyson (a Man of Genius, who, I think, has crippled his growth by over- elaboration) came suddenly upon me here six weeks ago: and, many years as it was since we had met, there seemed not a Day's Interval between. He looked very well; and very happy; having with him his eldest Son, a very nice Fellow, who took all care of 'Papa,' as I was glad to hear him say, not 'Governor' as the Phrase now is. One Evening he was in a Stew because of some nasty Paragraph in a Newspaper about his not allowing Mr. Longfellow to quote from his Poems. And he wrote a Note to Mr. L. at once in this room, and his Son carried it off to the Post that same Night, just in time. So my House is so far become a Palace, being the Place of a Despatch from one Poet to the other, all over that Atlantic!

We never had the trees in Leaf so long as this Year: they are only just rusty before my window, this Nov. 8. So I thought they would die of mere Old Age: but last night came a Frost, which will hasten their End. I suppose yours have been dying in all their Glory as usual.

You must understand that this Letter is to acknowledge the Vita Nuova (which, by the by, I think ought to be the Title on the Title page as well as outside), so do not feel obliged to reply, but believe me yours truly,

E. F. G.

To Miss Anna Biddell.

WOODBRIDGE. Saturday, Nov. 76.

. . . You spoke once of even trying Walpole's Letters; capital as they are to me, I can't be sure they would much interest, even if they did not rather disgust, you: the Man and his Times are such as you might not care for at all, though there are such men as his, and such Times too, in the world about us now. If you will have the Book on your return home, I will send you a three-volume Collection of his Letters: that is, not a Third part of all his collected Letters: but perhaps the best part, and quite enough for a Beginning. I can scarce imagine better Christmas fare: but I can't, I say, guess how you would relish it. N.B. It is not gross or coarse: but you would not like the man, so satirical, selfish, and frivolous, you would think. But I think I could show you that he had a very loving Heart for a few, and a very firm, just, understanding under all his Wit and Fun. Even Carlyle has admitted that he was about the clearest-sighted Man of his time.

To John Allen.

LOWESTOFT. Decr. 9/76.

MY DEAR ALLEN,

It was stupid of me not to tell you that I did not want Contemporary back. It had been sent me by Tennyson or his son Hallam (for I can't distinguish their MS. now), that I might see that A. S. Battle fragment: {206} which is remarkable in its way, I doubt not. I see by the Athenaeum that A. T. is bringing out another Poem—another Drama, I think—as indeed he hinted to me during his flying visit to Woodbridge. He should rest on his Oars, or ship them for good now, I think: and I was audacious to tell him as much. But he has so many Worshippers who tell him otherwise. I think he might have stopped after 1842, leaving Princesses, Ardens, Idylls, etc., all unborn; all except The Northern Farmer, which makes me cry. . . .

I dare say there are many as good, if not better, Arctic accounts than 'Under the Northern Lights,' but it was pleasant as read out to me by the rather intelligent Lad who now serves me with Eyes for two hours of a Night at Woodbridge. . . . I am, you see at old Quarters: but am soon returning to Woodbridge to make some Christmas Arrangements. Will Peace and Good Will be our Song this year? Pray that it be so.

To Miss Thackeray.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. Decr. 12, 1876.

DEAR ANNIE THACKERAY,

Messrs. Smith and Elder very politely gave me leave to print, and may be publish, three Stanzas of your Father's 'Ho, pretty Page,' adapted (under proper direction) to an old Cambridge Tune, which he and I have sung together, tho' not to these fine Words, as you may guess. I asked this of Messrs. Smith and Elder, because I thought they had the Copyright. But I did not mean to publish them unless with your Approval: only to print a few Copies for friends. And I will stop even that, if you don't choose. Please to tell me in half a dozen words as directly as you can.

The Words, you know, are so delightful (stanzas one, two, and the last), and the old Tune of 'Troll, troll, the bonny brown Bowl' so pretty, and (with some addition) so appropriate, I think, that I fancied others beside Friends might like to have them together. But, if you don't approve, the whole thing shall be quashed. Which I ought to have asked before: but I thought your Publishers' sanction might include yours. Please, I say, to say Yes or No as soon as you can.

I have been reading the two Series of 'Hours in a Library' with real delight. Some of them I had read before in Cornhill, but all together now: delighted, I say, to find all I can so heartily concur and believe in put into a shape that I could not have wrought out for myself. I think I could have suggested a very little about Crabbe, in whom I am very much up: and one word about Clarissa. {208} But God send me many more Hours in a Library in which I may shut myself up from this accursed East among other things.

To C. E. Norton.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. Dec. 22/76. [Post mark Dec. 21.]

MY DEAR SIR,

. . . In the last Atlantic Monthly was, as you know, an Ode by Mr. Lowell; lofty in Thought and Expression: too uniformly lofty, I think, for Ode. Do you, would Mr. Lowell, agree? I should not say so, did I not admire the work very much. You are very good to speak of sending me his new Volume: but why should you? My old Athenaeum will tell me of it here, and I will be sure to get it.

You see —- has come out with another Heroic Poem! And the Athenaeum talks of it as a Great Work, etc., with (it seems to me) the false Gallop in all the Quotations. It seems to me strange that —-, —-, and —-, should go on pouring out Poem after Poem, as if such haste could prosper with any but First-rate Men: and I suppose they hardly reckon themselves with the very First. I feel sure that Gray's Elegy, pieced and patched together so laboriously, by a Man of almost as little Genius as abundant Taste, will outlive all these hasty Abortions. And yet there are plenty of faults in that Elegy too, resulting from the very Elaboration which yet makes it live. So I think.

I have been reading with real satisfaction, and delight, Mr. L. Stephen's Hours in a Library: only, as I have told his Sister in law, I should have liked to put in a word or two for Crabbe. I think I could furnish L. S. with many Epigrams, of a very subtle sort, from Crabbe: and several paragraphs, if not pages, of comic humour as light as Moliere. Both which L. S. seems to doubt in what he calls 'our excellent Crabbe,' who was not so 'excellent' (in the goody sense) as L. S. seems to intimate. But then Crabbe is my Great Gun. He will outlive —-, —- and Co. in spite of his Carelessness. So think I again.

His Son, Vicar of a Parish near here, and very like the Father in face, was a great Friend of mine. He detested Poetry (sc. verse), and I believe had never read his Father through till some twenty years ago when I lent him the Book. Yet I used to tell him he threw out sparks now and then. As one day when we were talking of some Squires who cut down Trees (which all magnanimous Men respect and love), my old Vicar cried out 'How scandalously they misuse the Globe!' He was a very noble, courageous, generous Man, and worshipped his Father in his way. I always thought I could hear this Son in that fine passage which closes the Tales of the Hall, when the Elder Brother surprises the Younger by the gift of that House and Domain which are to keep them close Neighbours for ever.

Here on that lawn your Boys and Girls shall run, And gambol, when the daily task is done; From yonder Window shall their Mother view The happy tribe, and smile at all they do: While you, more gravely hiding your Delight, Shall cry—'O, childish!'—and enjoy the Sight.