. . . March 12. You see I leave this Letter like an unfinished Picture;
giving it a touch every now and then. Meanwhile it lies in a volume of
Sir W. Ouseley's Travels. Meanwhile also I keep putting into shape some
of that Mantic which however would never do to publish. For this reason;
that anything like a literal Translation would be, I think, unreadable;
and what I have done for amusement is not only so unliteral, but I doubt
_unoriental_, in its form and expression, as would destroy the value of
the Original without replacing it with anything worth reading of my own.
It has amused me however to reduce the Mass into something of an Artistic
Shape. There are lots of Passages which--how should I like to talk them
over with you! Shall we ever meet again? I think not; or not in such
plight, both of us, as will make Meeting what it used to be. Only to-day
I have been opening dear old Salaman: the original Copy we bought and
began this time three years ago at Oxford; with all my scratches of Query
and Explanation in it, and the Notes from you among the Leaves. How
often I think with Sorrow of my many Harshnesses and Impatiences! which
are yet more of manner than Intention. My wife is sick of hearing me
sing in a doleful voice the old Glee of 'When shall we Three Meet again?'
Especially the Stanza, 'Though in foreign Lands we sigh, Parcht beneath a
hostile Sky, etc.' How often too I think of the grand Song written by
some Scotch Lady, {318} which I sing to myself for you on Ganges Banks!
Slow spreads the Gloom my Soul desires,
The Sun from India's Shore retires:
To _Orwell's_ Bank, with temperate ray--
Home of my Youth!--he leads the Day:
Oh Banks to me for ever dear,
Oh Stream whose Murmur meets my Ear;
Oh all my Hopes of Bliss abide
Where Orwell mingles with the Tide.
The Music has come to me for these Words, little good otherwise than
expressive: but there is no use sending it to India. To India! It seems
to me it would be easy to get into the first great Ship and never see
Land again till I saw the Mouth of the Ganges! and there live what
remains of my shabby Life.
But there is no good in all such Talk. I never write to you about
Politics in which you know I little meddle. . . . March 20. Why, see
how the Time goes! And here has my Letter been lying in Sir W. Ouseley
for the last ten days, I suppose. To-day I have been writing twenty
pages of a metrical Sketch of the Mantic, for such uses as I told you of.
It is an amusement to me to take what Liberties I like with these
Persians, who (as I think) are not Poets enough to frighten one from such
excursions, and who really do want a little Art to shape them. I don't
speak of Jelaleddin whom I know so little of (enough to show me that he
is no great Artist, however), nor of Hafiz, whose _best_ is
untranslatable because he is the best Musician of Words. Old Johnson
{319} said the Poets were the best Preservers of a Language: for People
must go to the Original to relish them. I am sure that what Tennyson
said to you is true: that Hafiz is the most Eastern--or, he should have
said, most _Persian_--of the Persians. He is the best representative of
their character, whether his Saki and Wine be real or mystical. Their
Religion and Philosophy is soon seen through, and always seems to me
_cuckooed_ over like a borrowed thing, which people, once having got,
don't know how to parade enough. To be sure, their Roses and
Nightingales are repeated enough; but Hafiz and old Omar Khayyam ring
like true Metal. The Philosophy of the Latter is, alas!, one that never
fails in the World. 'To-day is ours, etc.'
While I think of it, why is the Sea {320} (in that Apologue of Attar once
quoted by Falconer) supposed to have lost God? Did the Persians agree
with something I remember in Plato about the Sea and all in it being of
an inferior Nature, in spite of Homer's 'divine Ocean, etc.' And here I
come to the end of my sheet, which you will hardly get through, I think.
I scarce dare to think of reading it over. But I will try.
24 PORTLAND TERRACE,
REGENT'S PARK.
_March_ 29, [1857].