_April_ 21.
MY DEAR LADY, I have told E. B. C. at the close of my long letter to him
how his and yours were put into my hand this morning. Well, as in
telling him that I finished that sheet of Paper, I will e'en take one
scrap more to thank you; and (since you have, I believe, some confidences
together) some things I have yet got to say to him shall be addressed to
you; and you can exercise your own Discretion as to telling him. One
thing tell him however, which my overflowing Sheet had not room for, and
was the very thing that most needed telling: viz. that he, a busy man,
must not feel bound to write me as long Letters in return. Who knows how
long I shall keep up any thing like to my own mark; for I daily grow
worse with the Letter-pen: and, beside his other employments, the Sun of
India will '_belaze'_ him (I doubt if the word be in Johnson). But
'vogue la Galere' while the wind blows! Again you may give him the
enclosed instead of a former Letter from the same G. de T. For is it not
odd he should not have time to read a dozen of those 150 Tetrastichs? I
pointed out such a dozen to him of the best, and told him if he liked
them I would try and get the rest better written for him than I could
write. I had also told him that the whole thing came from E. B. C. and I
now write to tell him I have no sort of intention of writing a paper in
the Journal Asiatique, nor I suppose E. B. C. neither. G. de Tassy is
very civil to me however. How much I might say about your Letter to me!
you will hardly comprehend how it is I almost turn my Eyes from it in
this Answer, and dally with other matter. You make me sad with old
Memories; yet, I don't mean quite disagreeably sad, but enough to make me
shrink recurring to them. I don't know whether to be comforted or not
when _you_ talk of India as a Land of Exile--. . .
Wednesday, April 22. Now this morning comes a second Letter from Garcin
de Tassy saying that his first note about Omar Khayyam was 'in haste':
that he has read some of the Tetrastichs which he finds not very
difficult; some difficulties which are probably errors of the 'copist';
and he proposes his writing an Article in the Journal Asiatique on it in
which he will 'honourably mention' E. B. C. and E. F. G. I now write to
deprecate all this: {328} putting it on the ground (and a fair one) that
we do not yet know enough of the matter: that I do not wish E. B. C. to
be made answerable for errors which E. F. G. (the '_copist'_) may have
made: and that E. F. G. neither merits nor desires any honourable mention
as a Persian Scholar: being none. Tell E. B. C. that I have used his
name with all caution, referring De Tassy to Vararuchi, etc. But these
Frenchmen are so self-content and superficial, one never knows how they
will take up anything. To turn to other matters--we are talking of
leaving this place almost directly. . . . I often wonder if I shall ever
see you both again! Well, for the present, Adieu, Adieu, Adieu!
LONDON, _May_ 7/57.