you believe of me, as I believe of myself, that I don't deal in
Compliment, unless under very strong Compulsion. I suppose, as Master of
Trinity you could not do otherwise than marry, and so keep due State and
Hospitality there: and I do think you could not have found one fitter to
share, and do, the honours. And if (as I also suppose) there is Love, or
Liking, or strong Sympathy, or what not? why, all looks well. Be it so!
I had not heard of Spedding's entering into genteel House-keeping till
your Letter told me of it. I suppose he will be a willing Victim to his
Kinsfolk.
A clerical Brother in law of mine has lost his own whole Fortune in four
of these Companies which have gone to smash. Nor his own only. For,
having, when he married my Sister, insisted on having half her Income
tied to him by Settlement, _that_ half lies under Peril from the 'Calls'
made upon him as Shareholder.
At Genus Humanum damnat Caligo Futuri.
So I, trusting in my Builder's Honesty, have a Bill sent in about one
third bigger than it should be.
All which rather amuses me, on the whole, though I spit out a Word now
and then: and indeed am getting a Surveyor to overhaul the Builder: a
hopeless Process, I believe all the while.
Meanwhile, I go about in my little Ship, where I do think I have two
honest Fellows to deal with.
We have just been boarding a Woodbridge Vessel that we met in these
Roads, and drinking a Bottle of Blackstrap round with the Crew.
With me just at present is my Brother Peter, for whose Wife (a capital
Irishwoman, of the Mrs. O'Dowd Type) my Paper is edged with Black. No
one could be a better Husband than he; no one more attentive and anxious
during her last Illness, more than a year long; and, now all is over, I
never saw him in better Health or Spirits. Men are not inconsolable for
elderly Wives; as Sir Walter Scott, who was not given to caustic
Aphorisms, observed long ago.
When I was sailing about the Isle of Wight, Dorsetshire, etc., I read my
dear old Sophocles again (sometimes omitting the nonsense-verse Choruses)
and thought how much I should have liked to have them commented along in
one of your Lectures. All that is now over with you: but you will look
into the Text now and then. I have now got Munro's Lucretius on board
again. Why is it that I never can take up with Horace--so sensible,
elegant, agreeable, and sometimes even grand?
Some one gave me the July Number of the Cornhill to read the 'Loss of the
London' in; and very well worth reading it is. But there is also the
Beginning of a Story that I am sure must be by Annie Thackeray--capital
and wonderful. I forget the name.
Now I won't finish this Second Sheet--all with such Scraps as the
foregoing. But do believe how sincerely and truly I wish you well in
your new Venture. And so I will shut up, my dear Thompson, for the
present. No man can have more reason to wish you a good Return for your
long generous Kindness than your old Friend,
E. F. G.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
WOODBRIDGE: _August_ 13/66.
MY DEAR COWELL,
I think you have given me up as a bad Job: and I can't blame you. I have
been expecting to hear of you in these parts: though, had it been so, I
doubt if I should have been here to meet you. For the last six weeks I
have scarce been at home; what with sailing to the Isle of Wight, Norfolk
Coast, staying at Lowestoft, etc. And now I am just off again to the
latter place, having only returned here on Saturday. Nor can I say when
I shall be back here for any long while: the Kerriches are at Lowestoft;
and I have yet one or two more Sea-trips to make before October consigns
me once more to Cold, Indoor Solitude, Melancholy, and Illhealth.
My Companion on board has been Sophocles, as he was three years ago, I
find. I am even now going to hunt up some one-volume Virgil to take with
me. Horace I never can care about, in spite of his Good Sense, Elegance,
and occasional Force. He never made my Eyes wet as Virgil does.
When I was about Cromer Coast, I was reading Windham's Diary: well worth
reading, as one of the most honest; but with little else in it than that.
You would scarcely guess from it that he was a man of any Genius, as yet
I suppose he was.
Somehow I fancy you must be travelling abroad! Else surely I should have
heard something of you. Well: I must anyhow enclose this Letter, or
direct it, to your Mother's or Brother's at Ipswich. Do let me hear of
yourself and Elizabeth, and believe that I do not forget you, nor cease
to be
Yours very sincerely
EDWARD FITZGERALD.
LOWESTOFT: _August_ 19/66.
MY DEAR COWELL,
I don't wish you to think I am in Woodbridge all this while since your
Note came. It was forwarded to me here, where I have been since I wrote
to you a week ago. The fact is, I had promised to return on finding that
the Kerriches were to be here. So, here I am: living on board my little
Ship: sometimes taking them out for a Sail: sometimes accompanying them
in a walk. In other respects, I am very fond of this Place, which I have
known and frequented these forty years; till the last three years in
company with my Sister Kerrich, who has helped to endear it to me. I
believe I shall be here, off and on, some while longer; as my Brother
Peter (who has lately lost a capital Wife) is coming to sail about with
me. Should I be at Woodbridge for some days I will let you know.
Do you see 'Squire Allenby,' as the folks at Felixtow Ferry call him? If
so, ask him why he doesn't sometimes sail here with his ship; he would
like it, I fancy: and everybody seems to like him.
Only yesterday I finished reading the Electra. Before that, Ajax; which
is well worth re-reading too. I am sorry to find I have only Antigone
left of all the precious Seven; a lucid Constellation indeed! I suppose
I must try Euripides after this; some few of his Plays.
This time ten years--a month ago--we were all lounging about in the
hayfield before your Mother's House at Rushmere. I do not forget these
things: nor cease to remember them with a sincere, sad, and affectionate
interest: the very sincerity of which prevents me from attempting to
recreate them. This I wish you and yours, who have been so kind to me,
to believe.
I am going to run again to the Coast of Norfolk--as far as Wells--to
wander about Holkham, if the Weather permit. We have had too much Wind
and Wet to make such excursions agreeable: for, when one reached the
Places by Sea, the Rain prevented one's going about on Shore to look
about. But now that there has been rather a better look-out of Weather
for the last few Days, and that--
[Greek text]-- {86}
I shall try again for two or three Days. How do you translate [Greek
text] here?
Ever yours, E. F. G.
LOWESTOFT still! _Septr._ 4 [1866].
MY DEAR COWELL,
Still here, you see! Till the end of last week I had my Kerrich people
here; I am now expecting my Brother Peter again: he has lately lost his
capital Wife, and flies about between Ireland and England for Company and
Diversion of Thought. I am also expecting Mowbray Donne over from
Yarmouth this week.
I wonder if you ever would come over here, and either Bed and Board in my
little Ship, or on Shore? Anyhow, do write me a line to tell me about
yourself--yourselves--and do not think I am indifferent to you.
I have been reading Euripides (in my way) but, as heretofore do not take
greatly to him. He is always prosy, whereas (except in the matter of
funeral Lamentations, Condolence, etc., which I suppose the Greek
Audience expected--as I suppose they also expected the little sententious
truism at the end of every Speech), except in these respects, Sophocles
always goes ahead, and makes his Dialogue act in driving on the Play. He
always makes the most of his Story too: Euripides not often. A
remarkable instance of this is in his Heraclidae (one of the better
Plays, I think), where Macaria is to be sacrificed for the common good:
but one hears no more of her: and a fine opportunity is lost when Jocasta
{87a} insults Eurystheus whom they have conquered, and is never told that
that Conquest is at the cost of her Grand-daughter's Life--a piece of
Irony which Sophocles would not have forgotten, I think. I have not yet
read over Rhesus, Hippolytus, Medea, Ion, or the Iphigenias; altogether,
the Phoenissae is the best of those I have read; the interview between
Jocasta and her two sons, before the Battle, very good. There is really
Humour and Comedy in the Servant's Account of Hercules' conviviality in
Admetus' House of Mourning. I thought the story of the Bacchae poorly
told: but some good descriptive passages.
In the midst of Euripides, I was seized with a Passion to return to
Sophocles, and read the two OEdipuses again. Oh, how immeasurably
superior! In dramatic Construction, Dialogue, and all! How can they
call Euripides [Greek text], {87b} putting a few passages of his against
whole Dramas of the other, who also can show sentence for sentence more
moving than any Euripides wrote.
But I want to read these Plays once with some very accurate Guide, oral
or printed. I mean Sophocles; I don't care to be accurate with the
other. Can you recommend any Edition--not too German? I should write to
Thompson about it; but I suppose he is busy with Marriage coming on. I
mean, the present Master of Trinity, who is engaged to the widow of Dean
Peacock; a very capital Lady to preside as Queen of Trinity Lodge.
I have also been visiting dear old Virgil; his Georgics, and the 6th and
8th Books of the AEneid. I could now take them up and read them both
again. Pray look at lines 407-415 of Book VIII--the poor Matron kindling
her early fire--so Georgic! so Virgilian! so unsuited, or
disproportionate, to the Thing it illustrates.
Here is a long Letter--of the old Sort, I suppose. All these Books come
back to me with Summer and the Sea: in another Month all will be gone
together!--I look with Terror toward Winter, though I have not to
encounter one, at any rate, of the three Giants which old Mrs. Bloomfield
said were coming upon her--Winter, Want, and Sickness. {88}
Pray remember me, in spite of all practical Forgetfulness, to Wife and
Friends.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
_To F. Tennyson_.
WOODBRIDGE: _Jan._ 29/67.
MY DEAR FREDERIC,
Let me hear from you one Day. I would send you my MS. Book of Morton's
Letters: but I scarce know if the Post would carry it to you; though not
so very big: and I am still less sure that you would ever return it to
me. And what odds if you didn't? It might as well die in your
Possession as in mine.
In answer to my yearly Letter to Alfred and Co. I heard (from Mrs.) that
they were about to leave Freshwater, frightened away by Hero-worshippers,
etc., and were going to a Solitude called Greyshott Hall, Haslemere;
which, I am told, is in Hants. Whether they go to settle there I don't
know. Lucretius' Death is thought to be too free-spoken for Publication,
I believe; not so much in a religious, as an amatory, point of View. I
should believe Lucretius more likely to have expedited his Departure
because of Weariness of Life and Despair of the System, than because of
any Love-philtre. I wrote also my yearly Letter to Carlyle, begging my
compliments to his Wife: who, he replies, died, in a very tragical way,
last April. I have since heard that the Papers reported all the
Circumstances. So, if one lives so much out of the World as I do, it
seems better to give up that Ghost altogether. Old Spedding has written
a Pamphlet about 'Authors and Publishers'; showing up, or striving to
show up, the Publishers' system. He adduces his own Edition of Bacon as
a sample of their mismanagement, in respect of too bulky Volumes, etc.
But, as he says, Macaulay and Alison are still bulkier; yet they sell.
The truth is that a solemnly-inaugurated new Edition of all Bacon was not
wanted. The Philosophy is surely superseded; not a Wilderness of
Speddings can give men a new interest in the Politics and Letters. The
Essays will no doubt always be in request, like Shakespeare. But I am
perhaps not a proper Judge of these high matters. How should I? who have
just, to my great sorrow, finished 'The Woman in White' for the third
time, once every last three Winters. I wish Sir Percival Clyde's Death
were a little less of the minor Theatre sort; then I would swallow all
the rest as a wonderful Caricature, better than so many a sober Portrait.
I really think of having a Herring-lugger I am building named 'Marian
Halcombe,' the brave Girl in the Story. Yes, a Herring-lugger; which is
to pay for the money she costs unless she goes to the Bottom: and which
meanwhile amuses me to consult about with my Sea-folks. I go to
Lowestoft now and then, by way of salutary Change: and there smoke a Pipe
every night with a delightful Chap, who is to be Captain. I have been,
up to this time, better than for the last two winters: but feel a Worm in
my head now and then, for all that. You will say, only a Maggot. Well;
we shall see. When I go to Lowestoft, I take Montaigne with me; very
comfortable Company. One of his Consolations for _The Stone_ is, that it
makes one less unwilling to part with Life. Oh, you think that it didn't
need much Wisdom to suggest that? Please yourself, Ma'am. January, just
gone! February, only twenty-eight Days: then March with Light till six
p.m.: then April with a blush of Green on the Whitethorn hedge: then May,
Cuckoos, Nightingales, etc.; then June, Ship launched, and nothing but
Ship till November, which is only just gone. The Story of our Lives from
Year to Year. This is a poor letter: but I won't set The Worm fretting.
Let me hear how you are: and don't be two months before you do so.
_To W. B. Donne_.
WOODBRIDGE: _Febr._ 15 [1867].
MY DEAR DONNE,
I came home yesterday from a week's Stay at Lowestoft. As to the
Athenaeum, {91} I would bet that the last Sentence was tacked on by the
Editor: for it in some measure contradicts the earlier part of the
Article.
When your letter was put into my hands, I happened to be reading
Montaigne, L. II. Ch. 8, De l'Art de Conferer, where at the end he refers
to Tacitus; the only Book, he says, he had read consecutively for an hour
together for ten years. He does not say very much: but the Remarks of
such a Man are worth many Cartloads of German Theory of Character, I
think: their Philology I don't meddle with. I know that Cowell has
discovered they are all wrong in their Sanskrit. Montaigne never doubts
Tacitus' facts: but doubts his Inferences; well, if I were sure of his
Facts, I would leave others to draw their Inferences. I mean, if I were
Commentator, certainly: and I think if I were Historian too. Nothing is
more wonderful to me than seeing such Men as Spedding, Carlyle, and I
suppose Froude, straining Fact to Theory as they do, while a
scatter-headed Paddy like myself can keep clear. But then so does the
Mob of Readers. Well, but I believe in the Vox Populi of two hundred
Years: still more, of two thousand. And, whether we be right or wrong,
we prevail: so, however much wiser are the Builders of Theory, their
Labour is but lost who build: they can't reason away Richard's Hump, nor
Cromwell's Ambition, nor Henry's Love of a new Wife, nor Tiberius'
beastliness. Of course, they had all their Gleams of Goodness: but we of
the Mob, if we have any Theory at all, have that which all Mankind have
seen and felt, and know as surely as Day-light; that Power will tempt and
spoil the Best.
Well, but what is all this Lecture to you for? Why, I think you rather
turn to the re-actionary Party about these old Heroes. So I say, however
right you may be, leave us, the many-headed, if not the wise-headed, to
go our way, only making the Text of Tacitus as clear for us to flounder
about in as you can. That, anyhow, must be the first Thing. Something
of the manners and customs of the Times we want also: some Lights from
other contemporary Authors also: and then, 'Gentlemen, you will now
consider your Verdict, and please yourselves.'
Can't you act on Spedding's Advice and have your Prolegomena separate, if
considerable in size? I don't doubt its Goodness: but you know how, when
one wants to take a Volume of an Author on Travel, Ship-board, etc., how
angry one is with the Life, Commentary, etc., which takes up half the
first volume. This we don't complain of in George III. because he is not
a Classic, and your Athenaeum Critic admits that yours is the best Part
of the Business by far.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
'_Scandal_'; LOWESTOFT, _June_ 17 [1867].
MY DEAR COWELL,
I wrote to Elizabeth, I think, to congratulate you both on the result of
the Election: I have since had your Letter: you will not want me to
repeat what, without my ever having written or said, you will know that I
feel. I wrote to Thompson on the subject, and have had a very kind
Letter from him.
Now you will live at Cambridge among the Learned; but, I repeat, you
would rather live among the Ignorant. However, your Path is cut out for
you: and, to be sure, it is a more useful and proper one for you than the
cool sequestered one which one might like to travel.
I am here in my little Ship--cool and sequestered enough, to be sure--with
no Company but my Crew of Two, and my other--Captain of the Lugger now a-
building: a Fellow I never tire of studying--If he _should_ turn out
knave, I shall have done with all Faith in my own Judgment: and if he
should go to the Bottom of the Sea in the Lugger--I sha'n't cry for the
Lugger.
Well, but I have other Company too--Don Quixote--the 4th Part: where
those Snobs, the Duke and Duchess--(how vulgar Great Folks then, as now!)
make a Fool and Butt of him. Cervantes should have had more respect for
his own Creation: but, I suppose, finding that all the Great Snobs could
only _laugh_ at the earlier part, he thought he had better humour them.
This very morning I read the very verses you admired to me twenty years
ago--
Ven muerte tan escondida, etc.
They are quoted ironically in Part IV. Lib. VII. Ch. 38.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
WOODBRIDGE: _Oct._ 12 [1867].
MY DEAR COWELL,
When you have leisure you will let me know of your being settled at
Cambridge? I also want to have your exact Address because I want to send
you the Dryden and Crabbe's Life I promised you. At present you are busy
with your Inaugural Address, I suppose; beside that you feel scarce at
home yet in your new Quarters.
Mr. Allenby told me on Wednesday that Mrs. Charlesworth was really up
again, and even got to Cambridge. Please to remember me to her, and to
all your Party.
My Ship is still afloat: but I have scarce used her during the last cold
weather. I was indeed almost made ill sleeping two nights in that cold
Cabin. I may, however, run to Lowestoft and back; but by the end of next
week I suppose she (the Ship) will be laid up in the Mud; my Men will
have eaten the Michaelmas Goose which I always regale them with on
shutting up shop; and I may come home to my Fire here to read 'The Woman
in White' and play at Patience:--which (I mean the Game at Cards so
called) I now do by myself for an hour or two every night. Perhaps old
Montaigne may drop in to chat with and comfort me: but Sophocles, Don
Quixote, and Boccaccio--I think I must leave them with their Halo of Sea
and Sunshine about them. I have, however, found the second volume of
Sophocles; and may perhaps return to look for Ajax and Deianeira.
Adieu: E. F. G.
_To W. F. Pollock_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_October_ 28 [1867],
Now, MY DEAR POLLOCK,
I have put on a new Goose-quill Nib, on purpose to write my best MS. to
you. But the new Nib has very little to say for me: the old Story:
dodging about in my Ship for these last five months: indeed during all
that time not having lain, I believe, for three consecutive Nights in
Christian Sheets. But now all that is over: this very day is my little
Ship being dismantled, and to-morrow will she go up to her middle in mud,
and here am I anchored to my old Desk for the Winter; and beginning, as
usual, by writing to my Friends, to tell them what little there is to
tell of myself, and asking them to tell what they can of themselves in
return. I shall even fire a shot at old Spedding; who would not answer
my last Letters at all: innocent as they were, I am sure: and asking
definite Questions, which he once told me he required if I wanted any
Answer. I suppose he is now in Cumberland. What _is_ become of Bacon?
Are you one of the Converted, who go the whole Hog?
Thompson--no, I mean the Master of Trinity--has replied to my half-yearly
Enquiries in a very kind Letter. He tells me that my friend Edward
Cowell has pleased all the Audience he had with an inaugural Lecture
about Sanskrit. {97a} Also, that there is such an Article in the
Quarterly about the Talmud {97b} as has not been seen (so fine an
Article, I mean) for years. I have had Don Quixote, Boccaccio, and my
dear Sophocles (once more) for company on board: the first of these so
delightful, that I got to love the very Dictionary in which I had to look
out the words: yes, and often the same words over and over again. The
Book really seemed to me the most delightful of all Books: Boccaccio,
delightful too, but millions of miles behind; in fact, a whole Planet
away.
_To W. A. Wright_.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Dec._ 11 [1867].
DEAR SIR,
When Robert Groome was with me a month ago, I was speaking to him of
having found some Bacon in Montaigne: and R. G. told me that you had
observed the same, and were indeed collecting some instances; I think,
quotations from Seneca, so employed as to prove that Bacon had them from
the Frenchman. It has been the fashion of late to scoff at Seneca; whom
such men as Bacon and Montaigne quoted: perhaps not Seneca's own, but
cribbed from some Greek which would have been admired by those who scoff
at the Latin.
I had not noticed this Seneca coincidence: but I had observed a few
passages of Montaigne's own, which seemed to me to have got into Bacon's
Essays. I dare say I couldn't light upon all these now; but, having been
turning over Essai 9, Lib. III. De la Vanite, I find one sentence which
comes to the point: 'Car parfois c'est bien choisir de ne choisir pas.'
In the same Essay is a piece of King Lear, perhaps; 'De ce mesme papier
ou il vient d'escrire l'arrest de condemnation contre un Adultere, le
Juge en desrobe un lopin pour en faire un poulet a la femme de son
compaignon.' One doesn't talk of such things as of plagiarisms, of
course; as if Bacon and Shakespeare couldn't have said much better things
themselves; only for the pleasure of tracing where they read, and what
they were struck by. I see that 'L'Appetit vient en mangeant' is in the
same Essay.
If I light some other day on the other passages, I will take the liberty
of telling you. You see I have already taken the liberty of writing to a
man, not unknown to me in several ways, but with whom I have not the
pleasure of being acquainted personally. Perhaps I may have that
pleasure one of these days; we are both connected with the same town of
Beccles, and may come together. I hope so.
But I have also another reason for writing to you. Your 'Master' wrote
me word the other day, among other things, that you as well as he wished
for my own noble works in your Library. I quite understand that this is
on the ground of my being a Trinity man. But then one should have done
something worthy of ever so little a niche in Trinity Library; and that I
do know is not my case. I have several times told the Master what I
think, and know, of my small Escapades in print; nice little things, some
of them, which may interest a few people (mostly friends, or through
friends) for a few years. But I am always a little ashamed of having
made my leisure and idleness the means of putting myself forward in
print, when really so many much better people keep silent, having other
work to do. This is, I know, my sincere feeling on the subject. However,
as I think some of the Translations I have done are all I can dare to
show, and as it would be making too much fuss to wait for any further
asking on the subject, I will send them if you think good one of these
days all done up together; the Spanish, at least, which are, I think, all
of a size. Will you tell the Master so if you happen to see him and
mention the subject? Allow me to end by writing myself yours sincerely,
EDWARD FITZGERALD.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT.
_Dec._ 28 [1867].
MY DEAR COWELL,