begun with him. Pepys' Diary and Sir Walter, read to me for two hours of
a night, have made those two hours almost the best of the twenty-four for
all these winter months. That Eve of Preston Battle, with the old
Baron's Prayers to his Troop! He is tiresome afterwards, I know, with
his Bootjack. But Sir Walter for ever! What a fine Picture would that
make of Evan Dhu's entrance into Tully Veolan Breakfast Hall, with a
message from his Chief; he standing erect in his Tartan, while the Baron
keeps his State, and pretty Rose at the Table. There is a subject for
one of your Artists. Another very pretty one (I thought the other Day)
would be that of the child Keats keeping guard with a drawn sword at his
sick Mother's Chamber door. Millais might do it over here: but I don't
know him. . . .
I will send you Carlyle's Squire correspondence, which you will keep to
yourself and Lowell: you being Carlyle's personal friend as well as
myself. Not that there is anything that should not be further divulged:
but one must respect private Letters. Carlyle's proves a droll instance
of even so shrewd a man wholly mistaking a man's character from his
Letters: had now that Letter been two hundred years old! and no
intelligent Friend to set C. right by ocular Demonstration.
_To J. R. Lowell_.
LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE.
_February_ 28/78.
MY DEAR SIR,
I ventured to send you Keats' Love Letters to Miss--_Brawne_! a name in
which there is much, as you say of his, and other names. . . . Well, I
thought you might--must--wish to see these Letters, and, may be, not get
them so readily in Spain. So I made bold. The Letters, I doubt not, are
genuine: whether rightly or wrongly published I can't say: only I, for
one, am glad of them. I had just been hammering out some Notes on
Catullus, by our Cambridge Munro, Editor of Lucretius, which you ought to
have; English Notes to both, and the Prose Version of Lucretius quite
readable by itself. Well, when Keats came, I scarce felt a change from
Catullus: both such fiery Souls as wore out their Bodies early; and I can
even imagine Keats writing such filthy Libels against any one he had a
spite against, even Armitage Brown, had Keats lived two thousand years
ago. . . .
I had a kind letter lately from Mr. Norton: and have just posted him some
Carlyle letters about that Squire business. If you return to America
before very long you will find them there. How long is your official
Stay in Spain? Limited, or Unlimited? By the bye of Carlyle, I heard
from his Niece some weeks ago that he had been poorly: but when she
wrote, himself again: only taking his daily walk in a Carriage, and
sitting up till past Midnight with his Books, in spite of Warnings to
Bed. As old Voltaire said to his Niece on like occasion, 'Qu'est ce que
cela fait si je m'amuse?' I have from Mudie a sensible dull Book of
Letters from a Miss Wynn: with this one good thing in it. She has been
to visit Carlyle in 1845: he has just been to visit Bishop Thirlwall in
Wales, and duly attended Morning Chapel, as a Bishop's Guest should. 'It
was very well done; it was like so many Souls pouring in through all the
Doors to offer their orisons to God who sent them on Earth. We were no
longer Men, and had nothing to do with Men's usages; and, after it was
over, all those Souls seemed to disperse again silent into Space. And
not till we all met afterward in the common Room, came the Human
Greetings and Civilities.' {237} This is, I think, a little piece worth
sending to Madrid; I am sure, the best I have to offer.
I have had read to me of nights some of Sir Walter's Scotch Novels;
Waverley, Rob, Midlothian, now the Antiquary: eking them out as charily
as I may. For I feel, in parting with each, as parting with an old
Friend whom I may never see again. Plenty of dull, and even some bad, I
know: but parts so admirable, and the Whole so delightful. It is
wonderful how he sows the seed of his Story from the very beginning, and
in what seems barren ground: but all comes up in due course, and there is
the whole beautiful Story at last. I think all this Fore-cast is to be
read in Scott's shrewd, humorous, Face: as one sees it in Chantrey's
Bust; and as he seems meditating on his Edinburgh Monument. I feel a
wish to see that, and Abbotsford again; taking a look at Dunbar by the
way: but I suppose I shall get no further than Dunwich.
Some one (not you) sent me your Moosehead Journal: but I told Mr. Norton
I should tell you, if I wrote, that I did not like the Style of it at
all; all 'too clever by half.' Do you not say so yourself after
Cervantes, Scott, Montaigne, etc.? I don't know I ought to say all this
to you: but you can well afford to be told it by one of far more
authority than yours most sincerely,
E. FITZGERALD.
_To W. A. Wright_.
WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 3/78.
MY DEAR WRIGHT,
. . . You may infer that I have been reading--yes, and with great
Interest, however little Scholarship--your Fellow-Collegian's new Book of
Notes, etc. {238} And just as I had done my best with his Catullus, came
to hand the Love-Letters of a kindred Spirit, Keats; whose peevish
Jealousy might, two thousand years ago, have made him as bitter and
indecent against his friend Armitage Brown, as Catullus against Caesar.
But in him too Malice was not stronger than Love, any more than in
Catullus; not only of the Lesbia-Brawne, but of the Fraternal, kind.
Keats sighs after 'Poor Tom' as well as he whose 'Frater ave atque vale'
continues sighing down to these times. (I hope I don't misquote, more
Hibernorum.)
That is a fine Figure of old Caesar entertaining his Lampooner at the
Feast. And I have often thought what a pretty picture, for Millais to
do, of the Child Keats keeping guard outside his sick Mother's Chamber
with a drawn Sword. If Catullus, however, were only _Fescennining_, his
'Malice' was not against Caesar, but against the Nemesis that might else
be revenged on him--eh? But I don't understand how Suetonius, or those
he wrote for, could have forgotten, though for party purposes they may
have ignored, the nature and humour of that _Fescennine_ which is known
to Scholars two thousand years after. How very learned, and probably all
wrong, have I become, since becoming interested in this Book!
WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 21 [1878].
MY DEAR WRIGHT,
. . . The Enclosed only adds a little to the little Paper of _Data_:
{239} you may care to add so much in better MS. than mine to the leaves I
sent you. Those leaves were more intended for such an Edition of the
Letters in batches, as now edited; and, as many of them are private
right, _so_ edited they must continue for some time, I suppose.
An odd coincidence happened only yesterday about them. I was looking to
Lamb's Letter to Manning of Feb. 26, 1808, where he extols Braham, the
Singer, who (he says) led his Spirit 'as the Boys follow Tom the Piper.'
I had not thought who Tom was: rather acquiesced in some idea of the
'pied Piper of Hamelin'; and, not half an hour after, chancing to take
down Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, {240a} found Tom against the
Maypole, with a ring of Dancers about him. I suppose Tom survived in
'_Folk lore_' . . . till dear Lamb's time: but how he, a Cockney, knew of
it, I don't know.
I was looking for Keats (when I happened on Browne) to find the passage
you quote {240b}: but (of course) I could not find the Book I wanted. Nor
can I construe him any more than so much of Shakespeare: whether from the
negligent hurry of both (Johnson says Shakespeare often contented himself
with a halfborn expression), or from some Printer's error. The meaning
is clear enough to me, if I conjecture the context right; and more so to
you, I dare say. The passage is one of those bad ones, except the first
line, which he afterwards repeated, mutatis mutandis,
The leaves
That _tremble_ round a Nightingale, {240c}
and is one of those which justly incensed the Quarterly, and which K.
himself knew were bad: but he must throw off the Poem red hot, and could
not alter.
_To C. E. Norton_.
WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 4, 1878.
MY DEAR NORTON,
I wish you would not impose on yourself to write me a Letter; which you
say is 'in your head.' You have Literary work, and a Family to enjoy
with you what spare time your Professional Studies leave you. Whereas I
have nothing of any sort that I am engaged to do: all alone for months
together: taking up such Books as I please; and rather liking to write
Letters to my Friends, whom I now only communicate with by such means.
And very few of my oldest Friends, here in England, care to answer me,
though I know from no want of Regard: but I know that few sensible men,
who have their own occupations, care to write Letters unless on some
special purpose; and I now rarely get more than one yearly Letter from
each. Seeing which, indeed, I now rarely trouble them for more. So pray
be at ease in this respect: you have written to me, as I to you, more
than has passed between myself and my fifty years old Friends for some
years past. I have had two notes from you quite lately: one to tell me
that Squire reached you; and another that he was on his way back here. I
was in no hurry for him, knowing that, if he got safe into your hands, he
would continue there as safe as in my own. I also had your other two
Copies of Olympia: one of which I sent to Cowell, who is always too busy
to write to me, except about twice a year, in his Holydays.
I am quite content to take History as you do, that is, as the
Squire-Carlyle presents it to us; not looking the Gift Horse in the
Mouth. Also, I am sure you are quite right about the Keats' Letters. I
hope I should have revolted from the Book had anything in it detracted
from the man: but all seemed to me in his favour, and therefore I did not
feel I did wrong in having the secret of that heart opened to me. I hope
Mr. Lowell will not resent my thinking he might so far sympathize with
me. In fact, could he, could you, resist taking up, and reading, the
Letters, however doubtful their publication might have seemed to your
Conscience?
Now I enclose you a little work of mine {242} which I hope does no
irreverence to the Man it talks of. It is meant quite otherwise. I
often got puzzled, in reading Lamb's Letters, about some Data in his Life
to which the Letters referred: so I drew up the enclosed for my own
behoof, and then thought that others might be glad of it also. If I set
down his Miseries, and the one Failing for which those Miseries are such
a Justification, I only set down what has been long and publickly known,
and what, except in a Noodle's eyes, must enhance the dear Fellow's
character, instead of lessening it. 'Saint Charles!' said Thackeray to
me thirty years ago, putting one of C. L.'s letters {243} to his
forehead; and old Wordsworth said of him: 'If there be a Good Man,
Charles Lamb is one.'
I have been interested in the Memoir and Letters of C. Sumner: a
thoroughly sincere, able, and (I should think) affectionate man to a few;
without Humour, I suppose, or much artistic Feeling. You might like to
look over a slight, and probably partial, Memoir of A. de Musset, by his
Brother, who (whether well or ill) leaves out the Absinthe, which is
generally supposed to have shortened the Life of that man of Genius.
Think of Clarissa being one of his favourite Books; he could not endure
the modern Parisian Romance. It reminded me of our Tennyson (who has
some likeness, 'mutatis mutandis' of French Morals, Absinthe, etc., to
the Frenchman)--of his once saying to me of Clarissa, 'I love those
large, still, Books.'
I parted from Doudan with regret; that is, from two volumes of him; all I
had: but I think I see four quoted. That is pretty, his writing to his
Brother, who is dwelling (1870-1) in some fortified Town, on whose
ramparts, now mounted with cannon, 'I used to gather Violets.' And I
cannot forget what he says to a Friend at that crisis, 'Engage in some
long course of Study to drown Trouble in:' and he quotes Ste. Beuve
saying, one long Summer Day in the Country, 'Lisons tout Madame de
Sevigne.' You may have to advise me to some such course before long. I
will avoid speaking, or, so far as I can, thinking, of what I cannot
prevent, or alter. You say you like my Letters: which I say is liking
what comes from this old Country, more yours than mine. I have heard
that some of your People would even secure a Brick, or Stone, from some
old Church here to imbed in some new Church a-building over the Atlantic.
Plenty of such materials might be had, for this foolish People are
restoring, and rebuilding, old Village Churches that have grown together
in their Fields for Centuries. Only yesterday I wrote to decline helping
such a work on a poor little Church I remember these sixty years. Well,
you like my Letters; I think there is too much of this one; but I will
end, as I believe I began, in praying you not to be at any trouble in
answering it, or any other, from
Yours sincerely,
E. F. G.
Pray read the Scene at Mrs. MacCandlish's Inn when Colonel Mannering
returns from India to Ellangowan. It is Shakespeare.
WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 16/1878.
Only a word; to say that yesterday came Squire-Carlyle from you: and a
kind long letter from Mr. Lowell: and--and the first Nightingale, who
sang in my Garden the same song as in Shakespeare's days: and, before the
Day had closed, Dandie Dinmont came into my room on his visit to young
Bertram in Portanferry Gaol-house.
_To J. R. Lowell_.
WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 17/78.
MY DEAR (SIR ---)--(LOWELL)?
Your letter reached me just after hearing this year's first Nightingale
in my Garden: both very welcome. I am very glad you did not feel bound
to answer me before; I should not write otherwise to you or to some very
old Friends who, like most sensible men as they grow older, dislike all
unnecessary writing more and more. So that I scarce remind them of
myself more than once a year now. I shall feel sure of your good Will
toward me whether you write or not; as I do of theirs.
Mr. Norton thinks, as a Gentleman should, that Keats' Letters should not
have been published. I hope I should not have bought them, had I not
gathered from the Reviews that they were not derogatory to him. You
know, I suppose, that she of whom K. wrote about to others so warmly, his
Charmian, was not Fanny Brawne. Some years ago Lord Houghton wrote me it
was: but he is a busy man of the World, though really a very good Fellow:
indeed, he did not deserve your _skit_ about his 'Finsbury Circus
gentility,' which I dare say you have forgotten. I have not seen him,
any more than much older and dearer friends, for these twenty years:
never indeed was very intimate with him; but always found him a good
natured, unaffected, man. He sent me a printed Copy of the first draught
of the opening of Keats' Hyperion; very different from the final one: if
you wished, I would manage to send it to you, quarto size as it is. This
now reminds me that I will ask his Lordship why it was not published (as
I suppose it was not). For it ought to be. He said he did not know if
it were not the second draught rather than the first. But he could
hardly have doubted if he gave his thoughts to it, I think. . . .
I want you to do De Quincey; certainly a very remarkable Figure in
Literature, and not yet decisively drawn, as you could do it. There is a
Memoir of him by one Page, showing a good deal of his familiar, and
Family, Life: all amiable: perhaps the frailties omitted. It is curious,
his regard to Language even when writing (as quite naturally he does) to
his Daughter, 'I was disturbed last night at finding no natural, or
spontaneous, opening--how barbarous by the way, is this collision of
_ings_--find_ing_--open_ing_, etc.' And some other instances.
I cannot understand why I have not yet taken to Hawthorne, a Man of real
Genius, and that of a kind which I thought I could relish. I will have
another Shot. His Notes of Travel seemed to me very shrewd, original,
and sincere. Charles Sumner, of so different a Genius, also appears to
me very truthful, and, I still fancy, strongly attached to the few he
might care for. I am sorry he got a wrong idea of Sir Walter from Lord
Brougham, and the Whigs, who always hated Scott. Indeed (as I well
remember) it was a point of Faith with them that Scott had not written
the Novels, till the Catastrophe discovered him: on which they changed
their Cry into a denunciation of his having written them only for money,
'Scott's weak point,' Sumner quotes from Brougham. As if Scott loved
Money for anything else than to spend it: not only on Lands and House
(which I maintain were simply those of a Scotch Gentleman) but to help
any poor Devil that applied to him. Then that old Toad Rogers must tell
Sumner that Manzoni's 'Sposi' were worth any ten of Scott's; yes, after
Scott's Diary spoke of 'I really like Rogers, etc.,' and such moderate
expressions of regard as Scott felt for him and his Breakfast of London
Wits.
Here am I running over to Chapter II. You will be surfeited, like your
Captain, if not on Turtles' Eggs. But you can eat me at intervals, you
know, or not at all. Only you will certainly read my last Great Work,
{247} which I enclose, drawn up first for my own benefit, in reading
Lamb's Letters, as now printed in batches to his several Correspondents;
and so I thought others than myself might be glad of a few Data to refer
the letters to. Pollock calls my Paper 'Cotelette d'Agneau a la minute.'
As to my little Dialogue, I can't send it: so pretty in Form, I think,
and with some such pretty parts: but then some odious smart writing,
which I had forgotten till I looked it over again before sending to you.
But I will send you the Calderon which you already like.
And, if you would send me any samples of Spanish, send me some Playbill
(of the old Drama, if now played), or some public Advertisement, or
Newspaper; this is what I should really like. As to Books, I dare say
Quaritch has pretty well ferreted them out of Spain. Give a look, if you
can, at a Memoir of Alfred de Musset written by his Brother. Making
allowance for French morals, and Absinthe (which latter is not mentioned
in the Book) Alfred appears to me a fine Fellow, very un-French in some
respects. He did not at all relish the new Romantic School, beginning
with V. Hugo, and now alive in --- and Co.--(what I call The _Gurgoyle_
School of Art, whether in Poetry, Painting, or Music)--he detested the
modern 'feuilleton' Novel, and read Clarissa! . . . Many years before A.
de M. died he had a bad, long, illness, and was attended by a Sister of
Charity. When she left she gave him a Pen with 'Pensez a vos promesses'
worked about in coloured silks: as also a little worsted 'Amphore' she
had knitted at his Bed side. When he came to die, some seventeen years
after, he had these two little things put with him in his Coffin.
WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 1878.
Ecce iterum--Crispin! I think you will soon call me '_Les_
FitzGerald_s_' as Madame de Sevigne called her too officious friend
'_Les_ Hacqueville_s_.' However, I will risk that in sending you a Copy
of that first Draught of an opening to Hyperion. I have got it from that
Finsbury Circus Houghton, who gave me the first Copy, which I keep: so
you shall have this, if you please; I know no one more worthy of it; and
indeed I told Lord H. I wanted it for you; so you see he bears no malice.
He is in truth a very good natured fellow. . . .
Well, to leave that, he writes me that he had the original MS.: it was
stolen from him. Fortunately, a friend of his (Edmund Lushington) had
taken a MS. copy, and from that was printed what I send you. The
corrections are from Lushington. I do not understand why Lord H. does
not publish it. He says he has just written to Bendizzy to do something
from the state purse for an aged Sister of Keats, now surviving in great
Poverty. Her name is 'Fanny.' Ben might do much worse: some say he is
about worse, now: I do not know; I cannot help: and I distress myself as
little as I can. 'Lisons tout Madame de Sevigne,' said Ste. Beuve one
day to some Friends in the Country; and Doudan (whom Mr. Norton admires,
as I do) bids a Friend take that advice in 1871. One may be glad of it
here in England ere 1879.
A short while ago we were reading the xith Chapter of Guy Mannering,
where Colonel Mannering returns to Ellangowan after seventeen years. A
long gap in a Story, Scott says: but scarcely so in Life, to any one who
looks back so far. And, at the end of the Novel, we found a pencil note
of mine, 'Finished 10.30 p.m. Tuesday Decr. 17/1861.' Not on this
account, but on account of its excellence, pray do read the Chapter if
you can get the Book: it is altogether admirable--Cervantes--Shakespeare.
I mean that Chapter of the Colonel's return to Mrs. MacCandlish's Inn at
Kippletringan.
We are now reading 'Among the Spanish People,' by the Mr. Rose who wrote
'Untrodden Spain'; a really honest, good-hearted, fellow, I think: with
some sentimentality amid his Manhood, and (I suppose) rather too rose-
coloured in his Estimate of the People he has long lived among. But he
can't help recalling Don Quixote. He has a really delightful account of
a Visit he pays to a _pueblo_ he calls Banos up the Sierra Morena: one
would expect Don and Sancho there, by one of the old Houses with Arms
over the Door. Pray get hold of this Book also if you can: else 'les
Hacquevilles' will have to buy it second hand from Mudie and send--'Coals
to Newcastle.'
With Keats I shall send you an Athenaeum with a rather humorous account
of a Cockney squabble about whether Shelley called his Lark an
'_un_-bodied,' or '_em_-bodied,' Spirit. I really forget which way was
settled by MS. Shelley is now the rage in Cockayne; but he is too
unsubstantial for me.
It is now hot here: I suppose something [like] February in Andalusia. Do
you find Madrid Climate as bad as Rose and others describe it? He has
also a very pleasant [chapter] about the Lavanderas of the Manzanares.
What delightful words!
_To W. A. Wright_.
[1878.]
On looking into my dear old Montaigne, I find a passage which may have
rustled in Shakespeare's head while doing Othello: it is about the
pleasures of Military Life in the Chapter 'De l'Experience' beginning 'Il
n'est occupation plaisante comme la militaire, etc.' in course of which
occurs in Florio, 'The courageous _minde-stirring_ harmonic of warlike
music, etc.' What a funny thing is that closing Apostrophe to
Artillery--but this is not AEsthetic.
Bacon's appropriation you know of C'est bien choisir de ne choisir pas'
(De la Vanite, I _think_).
WOODBRIDGE. _June_ 11, [1878]
MY DEAR WRIGHT,
If you do not remember the passage in Bacon's Essays {251} about 'not to
decide, etc.' I must have fancied it. I am glad you recognize the
Othello bit of Montaigne. You know, as I know, the nonsense of talking
of Shakespeare stealing such things: one is simply pleased at finding his
footsteps in the Books he read, just as one is in walking over the fields
he walked about Stratford and seeing the Flowers, and hearing the Birds,
he heard and saw, and told of. My Canon is, there is no plagiarism when
he who adopts has proved that he could originate what he adopts, and a
great deal more: which certainly absolves Shakespeare from any such
Charge--even 'The Cloud capt Towers, etc.' That Passage in Othello about
the Propontic and the Hellespont, was, I have read, an afterthought,
after reading some Travel: and, like so many Afterthoughts, I must think,
a Blunder: breaking the Torrent of Passion with a piece of Natural
History. One observes it particularly when acted: the actor down on his
Knees, etc. Were I to act Othello (there'd be many a Bellow
From Pit, Boxes, etc., on that occasion) {252}
I should leave out the passage. . . .
An answer from Carlyle's Niece to my half-yearly enquiry tells me that he
is well, and hardy, and reading Goethe which he never tires of: glancing
over Reviews which he calls 'Floods of Nonsense,' etc. I sent them
Groome's 'Only Darter,' which I think so good that I shall get him to let
me print it for others beside those of the Ipswich Journal: it seems to
me a beautiful Suffolk 'Idyll' (why not _Ei_dyll?) and so it seemed to
those at Chelsea. By the by, I will send you their Note, if Groome
returns it to me.
_To C. E. Norton_.
_July_ 2/78.
MY DEAR NORTON,