acknowledge them with many thanks and a few observations, not meant to
instruct such a Man, but just to show that I had read with Attention, as
I did. I think I had much the same to say of them as I said to you: and
so I won't say it again. I think it is a mistake to rely on the reading,
or recitation, for an Effect which ought to speak for itself in any
capable Reader's Head. Tennyson, with the grand Voice he had (I fancy it
is somewhat weakened now) could make sonorous music of such a beginning
to an Ode as
Bury the Great Duke!
The Thought is simple and massy enough: but where is a Vowel? Dryden
opened better:
'Twas at the royal Feast o'er Persia won.
But Mr. Lowell's Odes, which do not fail in the Vowel, are noble in
Thought, with a good Organ roll in the music, which perhaps he thinks
more fitted to Subject and occasion.
_To Mrs. Cowell_.
12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT.
_March_ 11/77.
. . . I scarce like your taking any pains about my Works, whether in
Verse, Prose, or Music. I never see any Paper but my old Athenaeum,
which, by the way, now tells me of some Lady's Edition of Omar which is
to discover all my Errors and Perversions. So this will very likely turn
the little Wind that blew my little Skiff on. Or the Critic who
incautiously helped that may avenge himself on Agamemnon King, as he
pleases. If the Pall Mall Critic knew Greek, I am rather surprised he
should have vouchsafed even so much praise as the words you quoted. But
I certainly have found that those few whom I meant it for, not Greek
scholars, have been more interested in it than I expected. Not you, I
think, who, though you judge only too favourably of all I do, are not
fond of such Subjects.
I have here two Volumes of my dear Sevigne's Letters lately discovered at
Dijon; and I am writing out for my own use a Dictionary of the Dramatis
Persons figuring in her Correspondence, whom I am always forgetting and
confounding.
* * * * *
In May 1877 his old boatman West died and FitzGerald wrote to Professor
Cowell, 'I have not had heart to go on our river since the death of my
old Companion West, with whom I had traversed reach after reach for these
dozen years. I am almost as averse to them now as Peter Grimes. {217} So
now I content myself with the River Side.'
_To W. A. Wright_.
LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE.
_June_ 23/77.
MY DEAR WRIGHT,
. . . I have been regaling myself, in my unscholarly way, with Mr.
Munro's admirable Lucretius. Surely, it must be one of the most
admirable Editions of a Classic ever made! I don't understand the Latin
punctuation, but I dare say there is good reason for it. The English
Translation reads very fine to me: I think I should have thought so
independent of the original: all except the dry theoretic System, which I
must say I do all but skip in the Latin. Yet I venerate the earnestness
of the man, and the power with which he makes some music even from his
hardest Atoms; a very different Didactic from Virgil, whose Georgics,
_quoad_ Georgics, are what every man, woman, and child, must have known;
but, his Teaching apart, no one loves him better than I do. I forget if
Lucretius is in Dante: he should have been the Guide thro' Hell: but
perhaps he was too deep in it to get out for a Holiday. That is a very
noble Poussin Landscape, v. 1370-8 'Inque dies magis, etc.'
I had always observed that mournful '_Nequicquam_' which comes to throw
cold water on us after a little glow of Hope. When Tennyson went with me
to Harwich, I was pointing out an old Collier rolling by to the tune of
Trudit agens magnam magno molimine navem. [iv. 902.]
That word '_Magnus_' rules in Lucretius as much as 'Nequicquam.' I was
rejoiced to meet Tennyson quoted in the notes too, and my old Montaigne
who discourses so on the text of
Pascit amore avidos inhians in te, Dea, visus. [i. 36.]
Ask Mr. Munro, when he reprints, to quote old Montaigne's Version of
Nam verae voces tum demum, etc. [iii. 57.]
'A ce dernier rolle de la Mort, et de nous, il n'y a plus que feindre, il
faut parler Francais; il faut montrer ce qu'il y a de bon et de net dans
le fond du pot.' {219a} And tell him (damn my impudence!) I don't like
my old Fathers '_dancing_' under the yellow and ferruginous awnings.
{219b} . . .
There is a coincidence with Bacon in verses 1026-9 of Book II.
(Lucretius, I mean).
_To John Allen_.
MY DEAR ARCHDEACON,
I have little else to send you in reply to your letter (which I believe
however was in reply to one of mine) except the enclosed from Notes and
Queries: which I think you will like to read, and to return to me.
I think I will send you (when I can lay hand on it) two volumes of some
one's Memorials of Wesley's Family: which you can look over, if you do
not read, and return to me also. I wonder at your writing to me that I
gave you his Journal so long as thirty years ago. I scarce knew that I
was so constant in my Affections: and yet I think I do _not_ change in
literary cases. Pray read Southey's Life of him again: it does not tell
all, I think, which might be told of Wesley's own character from his own
Mouth: but then it errs on the right side: it does not presumptuously
guess at Qualities and Motives which are not to be found in Wesley:
unlike Carlyle and the modern Historians, Southey, I think, cannot be
wrong by keeping so much within the bounds of Conjecture: Conjecture
about any other Man's Soul and Motives!
_To FitzEdward Hall_. {220a}
WOODBRIDGE: _June_ 24 [1877].
MY DEAR SIR,
I have run through your _Ability_ {220b} again, since I sent it to
Wright: but as I before said (I believe) am not a competent Critic. I
know that I coincide (unless I misconstrue) with your Canons laid down at
pp. 162, etc. I am for all words that are smooth, or strong, (as the
meaning requires) which have proved their worth by general admission into
the Language. '_Reliable_' is, what '_trustworthy_' is not, good current
coin for general use, though '_trustworthy_' may be good too for
occasional emphasis.
I remember old Hudson Gurney cavilling a little at '_realize_' as I
innocently used the word in a Memoir of my old Bernard Barton near thirty
years ago: this word I have also seen branded as American; let America
furnish us with more such words; better than what our 'old English'
pedants supply, with their '_Fore-word_' for 'Preface,' '_Folk-lore_,'
and other such conglomerate consonants. Odd, that a Lawyer (Sugden)
should have lubricated '_Hand-book_' by a sort of Persian process into
'Handy-book'!
I remember, years ago, thinking I must rebel against English by using
'_impitiable_' for 'incapable of Pity.' Yet I suppose that, according to
Alford & Co., I was justified, though 'pitiable' is, I think always used
of the thing pitied, not the Pitier. But I should defer to customary
usage rather than to any particular whim of my own; only that it happened
to come handy at the time, and I did not, and do not, much care.
But is not usage against your use of '_imitable_' at p. 100, meaning what
_ought not_, not what _cannot_, be imitated? 'Non imitabile fulmen,'
etc., and, negatively, '_inimitable_'?
'_Vengeable_' with its host of Authorities surprised, and gratified, me.
Johnson, you say (p. 34) called '_uncomeatable_' a low corrupt word:
rather, as you well say, 'a permissible colloquialism.' Yes; like old
Johnson's own '_Clubable_' by which he designated some Good sociable
Fellow.
'_Party_' has good Authority (from Shakespeare himself, as we know), and
is a handy word we ought not to dismiss: better than the d---d
'_Individual_' which should only be used in philosophic or scientific
discrimination. Still, Crabbe, in his fine Opium-inspired 'World of
Dreams' should not recall his beloved as '_that dear Party_.'
Other adjectives beside those that 'exit in _able_' are cavilled at.
'_Fadeless_'; what is '_a Fade_'? Why not 'unfading'? Yet there is a
difference between what has not as yet faded, and what _cannot_ fade. And
I shall become very '_tiresome_,' though I don't know of any '_tire_' but
of a Waggon wheel; and remain yours truly.
E. FITZGERALD.
_To C. E. Norton_.
WOODBRIDGE. _August_ 21/77.
MY DEAR SIR,
You have doubtless heard from Mr. Lowell since he got to Spain: he may
have mentioned that unaccomplished visit to me which he was to have
undertaken at your Desire. I doubt the two letters I wrote to be given
him in London (through Quaritch) did not reach him: only the first which
said my house was full of Nieces, so as I must lodge him (as I did our
Laureate) at the Inn: but the second Letter was to say that I had
Houseroom, and would meet him at the Train any day and hour. He wrote to
me the day before he left for Paris to say that he had never intended to
do more than just run down for the Day, shake hands, and away! That I
had an Instinct against: that one half-day's meeting of two
Septuagenarians (I believe), to see one another's face for that once,
'But here, upon that Bank and Shoal of Time and' then, 'jump the Life to
come' as well as the Life before. No: I say I am glad he did not do
that: but I had my house all ready to entertain him as best I could; and
had even planned a little Visit to our neighbouring Coast, where are the
Village remains of a once large Town devoured by the Sea: and, yet
undevoured (except by Henry VIII.), the grey walls of a Grey Friars'
Priory, beside which they used to walk, under such Sunsets as illumine
them still. This pathetic Ruin, still remaining by the Sea, would (I
feel sure) have been more to one from the New Atlantis than all London
can show: but I should have liked better had Mr. Lowell seen it on
returning to America, rather than going to Spain, where the yet older and
more splendid Moors would soon have effaced the memory of our poor
Dunwich. If you have a Map of England, look for it on the Eastern Coast.
If Mr. Lowell should return this way, and return in the proper Season for
such cold Climate as ours, he shall see it: and so shall you, if you
will, under like conditions; including a reasonable and available degree
of Health in myself to do the honours. . . .
I live down in such a Corner of this little Country that I see scarce any
one but my Woodbridge Fellow-townsmen, and learn but little from such
Friends as could tell me of the World beyond. But the English do not
generally love Letter writing: and very few of us like it the more as we
get older. So I have but little to say that deserves an Answer from you:
but please to write me a little: a word about Mr. Lowell, whom you have
doubtless heard from. [One politeness I had prepared for him here was,
to show him some sentences in his Books which I did not like!] Which
also leads me to say that some one sent me a number of your American
'Nation' with a Review of my redoubtable Agamemnon: written by a superior
hand, and, I think, quite discriminating in its distribution of Blame and
Praise: though I will not say the Praise was not more than deserved; but
it was where deserved, I think.
_To J. R. Lowell_. {224}
WOODBRIDGE. _August_ 26/77.
MY DEAR SIR,
I ought scarce to trouble you amid your diplomatic cares and dignities.
But I will, so far as to say I hope you had my second letter before you
left London: saying that my house was emptied of Nieces, and I was ready
to receive you for as long as you would. Indeed, I chiefly flinched at
the thought of your taking the trouble to come down only for a Day: which
means, less than half a Day: a sort of meeting that seems a mockery in
the lives of two men, one of whom I know by Register to be close on
Seventy. I do indeed deprecate any one coming down out of his way: but,
if he come, I would rather he did so for such time as would allow of some
palpable Acquaintance. And I meant to take you to no other sight than
the bare grey walls of an old Grey Friars' Priory near the Sea; and I
proposed to make myself further agreeable by showing you three or two
passages in your Books that I do not like amid all the rest which I like
so much: and had even meant to give you a very small thirty year old
Dialogue of my own, which one of your 'Study Windows' reminded me of. All
this I meant; and, any how, wrote to say that I and my house were ready.
And there is enough of the matter. You are busied with other and greater
things. Nor must you think yourself called on to answer this letter at
all.
When you were to start for Spain, I was thinking what a hot time of it
you would have there: in Madrid too, I suppose, worst of all, I have
heard. But you have Titian and Velasquez to refresh you. Cervantes too
is not far. We have here (some two or three years old) a Book 'Untrodden
Spain'; unaffectedly and pleasantly written by some Clergyman, Rose, who
lived chiefly among the mining folk. But there is a Chapter in Vol. 2
entitled '[_El_]_ Pajaro_,' and giving account of a day's sport with
[Pedro the Barber] who carries a Decoy Bird, which is as another Chapter
to Don Quixote. Ah! I look at him on my Shelf, and know that I can take
him down when I will, and that I shall do so many a time before 1878 if I
live. . . .
Tell me something of the Spanish Drama, Lope, or Calderon. I think you
could get one acted by Virtue of your Office.
WOODBRIDGE. [_October_, 1877.]
MY DEAR SIR--(which I will exchange for your own name if you will set me
Example).
You see I write to you; but do not expect any answer from the midst of
all your Business. But I have lately been re-reading--(at that same old
Dunwich, too)--those Essays of yours on which you wished to see my
'Adversaria.' These are too few and insignificant to specify by Letter:
when you return to English-speaking World, you shall, if you please, see
my Copy, or Copies, marked with a Query at such places as I stumbled at.
Were not the whole so really admirable, both in Thought and Diction, I
should not stumble at such Straws; such Straws as you can easily blow
away if you should ever care to do so. Only, pray understand (what I
really mean) that, in all my remarks, I do not pretend to the level of an
original Writer like yourself: only as a Reader of Taste, which is a very
different thing you know, however useful now and then in the Service of
Genius. I am accredited with the Aphorism, 'Taste is the Feminine of
Genius.' However that may be, I have some confidence in my own. And, as
I have read these Essays of yours more than once and again, and with
increasing Satisfaction, so I believe will other men long after me; not
as Literary Essays only, but comprehending very much beside of Human and
Divine, all treated with such a very full and universal Faculty, both in
Thought and Word, that I really do not know where to match in any work of
the kind. I could make comparisons with the best: but I don't like
comparisons. But I think your Work will last, as I think of very few
Books indeed. You are yet two good years from sixty (Mr. Norton tells
me), and have yet at least a dozen more of Dryden's later harvest: pray
make good use of it: Cervantes, at any rate, I think to live to read,
though one of your great merits is, not being in a hurry: and so your
work completes itself. But I nearer seventy than you sixty. . . .
You should get Dryden's Prefaces published separately in America, with
your own remarks on them, and also Johnson's very fine praise: in which
he praises Dryden for those unexpected turns in which he himself is so
deficient. But pray love old Johnson, a little more than I think you do.
We have, you may know, a rather clumsy Edition of this Dryden Prose in
four 8vo volumes by Malone; the first volume all Life and a few Letters.
I have bought some three or four Copies of this work, more or less worse
for wear, to give away: one extra Copy, much the worse for wear, on a
back shelf now, waiting its destination. No English Publisher, I
suppose, would do this work, unless under some great name: perhaps under
yours, if your own Country were not the fitter place. As in the case of
your Essays, I don't pretend to say which is finest: but I think that to
me Dryden's Prose, _quoad_ Prose, is the finest Style of all. So Gray, I
believe, thought: that man of Taste, very far removed, perhaps as far as
feminine from masculine, from the Man he admired.
Your Wordsworth should introduce any future Edition of him, as I think
some of Ste. Beuve's Essays do some of his men. He rarely, you know,
gets beyond French.
Now, as I see my Paper draws short, I turn from your Works to those of
'The Great Twalmley,' viz.: the Dialogue I mentioned, and you ask for. I
really got it out: but, on reading it again after many years, was so much
disappointed even in the little I expected that I won't send it to you,
or any one more. It is only eighty 12 mo pages, and about twenty too
long, and the rest over-pointed (Oh Cervantes!), and all somewhat
antiquated. But the Form of it is pretty: and the little Narrative part:
and one day I may strike out, etc., and make you a present of a pretty
Toy. But it won't do now.
I have at last bid Adieu to poor old Dunwich: the Robin singing in the
Ivy that hangs on those old Priory walls. A month ago I wrote to ask
Carlyle's Niece about her Uncle, and telling her of this Priory, and how
her Uncle would once have called me Dilettante; all which she read him;
he only said 'Poor, Poor old Priory!' She says he is very well, and
abusing V. Hugo's 'Miserables.' I have been reading his Cromwell, and
not abusing it. You tell all the Truth about him.
_To C. E. Norton_.
WOODBRIDGE. _October_ 28/77.
MY DEAR SIR ('_Norton_' I will write in my next if you will anticipate me
by a reciprocal Familiarity).
I wish I had some English Life, Woodbridge, or other, to send you: but
Woodbridge, I sometimes say, is as Pompeii, in that respect; and I know
little of the World beyond but what a stray Newspaper tells me. So I
must get back to my Friends on the Shelf.
Thence I lately took down Mr. Lowell's (I have proposed to _un-mister_
him too), Lowell's Essays, and carried them with me to that old Dunwich,
which I suppose I shall see no more this year. Robin Redbreast--have you
him?--was piping in the Ivy along the Walls; and, under them,
Blackberries ripening from stems which those old Grey Friars picked from.
And I had the Essays abroad, and within doors; and marked with a Query
some words, or sentences, which I stumbled at: which I should not have
stumbled at had all the rest not been such capital Reading. I really
believe I know not, on the whole, any such Essays, of that kind: and that
a very comprehensive kind, both in Subject, and Treatment. I think he
settles many Questions that every one discusses: and on which a Final
Verdict is what we now want. I believe the Books will endure: and that
is why I want a few blemishes, as I presume to think them, removed: and
the Author is to see my Pencil marks, when he returns to England, or to
her 'Gigantic Daughter of the West.' I hope he will live to write many
more such Books: Cervantes, first of all!
I have also been reading Carlyle's Cromwell: which I think will last
also, and so carry along with it many of his more perishable tirades. I
don't know indeed if his is the Final Verdict on Oliver: or on so many of
the subordinate Characters whom he sketches in so confidently. A shrewd
Man is he; but it is not so easy to judge of men by a few stray hints of
them in Books. A quaint instance of this Carlyle himself supplied me
with, in his total misapprehension of his hitherto unseen Correspondent
'Squire,' who burned the Cromwell Diary. I was the intelligent Friend
who interviewed Squire; as unlike as might be in Age, Person, and
Character, to the Man Carlyle had prefigured from his Letters. One day I
will send you the little Correspondence between T. C. and his intelligent
Friend, as rather a Curiosity in Historical Acumen.
I, Dryasdust, want to know if the Moon, the 'Harvest' Moon, too, really
'waded through the Clouds' on the night before Dunbar Battle. She makes
so good a Figure in the Scene that I wish the Almanack to authorize her
Presence. Carlyle is, I believe, generally accurate in these as in
sublunary matters, but I had just found him writing of Orion looking down
on Paris on August 9, when Orion is hardly up before Sunrise. . . .
And you have been so near where once I lived as Wherstead! in which
Parish my Family resided from about 1822 to 1835, at a large Square House
on the hill opposite to the Vicarage. I know no more of Mr. Zincke than
his Books, which are very good, I think: there is a bit concerning Hodge
the English Labourer's inward thoughts as he works in a ditch through a
Winter's Day, that is--a piece of Shakespeare. It is one of my few
recital pieces: and I was quoting it the other day to two People, who
wondered they had never observed it in the Book it came from, which is
'Egypt under the Pharaohs,' {231} I think.
WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 14/78.
MY DEAR SIR,
It is so long since I have heard from you that, in spite of knowing how
inopportunely an idle Letter may reach any one amid any sorrows, or much
business, I venture one, you see: but whether it be a trouble to lead or
not, do not feel bound to answer it except in the fewest words, in case
you are any way indisposed. You have--a family: you had an aged Mother,
when last I heard from you: room enough for anxieties and sorrows!
I had your printed Report on Olympia, which I do not pretend to be a
Judge [of]. I lent it to one who thinks he returned it, but certainly
did not: and I wanted to lend it to another much more competent Judge,
very much interested in the Subject, Edward Cowell, a Brother Professor
of yours at our Cambridge: the most learned man there, I believe, and the
most amiable and delightful, I believe, also. He came here to see me a
month ago: and I had one more search for the Pamphlet which I knew was no
longer 'penes me,' which he much wished to see. Will you send me another
Copy for him: if not to 'Professor Cowell, Cambridge, England' direct?
I have been rubbing up a little Latin from some Criticisms and
Elucidations of Catullus, by H. Munro, who edited Lucretius so capitally
that even German Scholars, I am told, accept it with a respect which they
accord to very few English. Do you know it in America? If not, do. The
Text and capital English prose Translation in vol. I; and Notes in vol.
II: all admirable, it seems to me, though I do not understand his English
Punctuation. I do not follow all Lucretius' Atoms, etc.: but other parts
are as fine to me as any Poet has done. Catullus I have never taken much
to: though some of him too is as fine as anything else in its way, I
think. So I have read through this Book of Munro's, only 240 pages, not
commenting on the best of the Poems, but on those which most needed
Elucidation; which are many of them the least interesting, and even most
disagreeable. Like your Olympia, I don't understand much: but what I do
understand is so good that I feel sure the rest (and that is the larger
and perhaps more important part) is as good for those it is intended for.
Just as I shut up Catullus, I opened Keats' Love Letters just published;
and really felt no shock of change between the one Poet and the other.
This Book will doubtless have been in America long before my Letter
reaches it. Mr. Lowell, who justly writes (in his Keats) that there is
much in a Name, will wish Keats' mistress went by some other than 'Fanny
Brawne,' which I cannot digest.
And Mr. Lowell himself? I do not like to write to him amid his
diplomatic avocations; if I did, I should perhaps tell him that I did not
like the style of his 'Moosehead Journal,' which has been sent me by I
know not whom. I hope he is getting on with his Cervantes; which I know
I shall like, if it be at all of the same Complexion as his other two
Volumes, which I still think are best of their kind.
WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 20/78.
MY DEAR NORTON!
If Packet follows Packet duly, you will have received ere this a letter I
wrote you, and posted, a few hours before yours reached me. You will
have seen that I guessed at some Shadow as of Illness in your household:
no wonderful conjecture in this World in any case; still less where a
Life of eighty years is concerned. It is in vain to wish well: but I
wish the best.
Your mention of your Mother reminded me of another Eighty years that I
had forgotten to tell you of--Carlyle. I wrote to enquire about him of
his Niece a month ago: he had been very poorly, she said, but was himself
again; only going in Carriage, not on foot, for his daily Exercise: wrapt
up in furry Dressing-gown, and wondering that any one else complained of
Cold. He kept on reading assiduously, sometimes till past midnight, in
spite of all endeavours to get him to bed. 'Qu'est ce que cela fait si
je m'amuse?' as old Voltaire said on like occasions.