The Letters of Edward Fitzgerald, Volume 4: 1877-1883 [Course Book ed.] 9781400854028

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THE LETTERS OF

EDWARD FITZGERALD VOLUME IV

1877-1883

The Letters of Edward FitzGerald Edited by

Alfred McKinley Terhune and Annabelle Burdick Terhune

VOLUME IV 1877-1883

Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey

Copyright © 1980 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book The calligraphy of the Persian for the letters was executed by Mohammed Mikail. This book has been composed in Linotype Caledonia Designed by Bruce D. Campbell Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

Chart of Letters

ix

Letters, 1877-1883

1

Cumulative Index for Volumes I-IV

611

List of Illustrations

(Following page 338) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Bredfield Hall Wherstead Lodge Boulge Hall Boulge Cottage Farlingay Hall Market Hill Little Grange 8. Boulge Church

Chart of Letters 1877-1883

Date (1877)

From,

To

First Publ.

Jan. 15

Woodbridge

WAW,III,262

[Jan. 22]β Feb. 1

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Laurence (Fragment) Anna Biddell Norton

[Feb.]

Lowestoft

A. Tennyson

Unpubl. In part in WAW,III,263 Unpubl.

Location

Syracuse Univ. Harvard Univ. Tennyson IjJIclLC

[Feb. 10] Feb. 14

Lowestoft Lowestoft

Anna Biddell W. B. Donne

[Mid-Feb.]

Lowestoft

Mrs. Cowell

Unpubl. Donne and Friends, p. 324 Unpubl.

Feb. 19 Feb. 22

Lowestoft Lowestoft

Fanny Kemble Cowell

WAW,III,267 Unpubl.

Feb. 23

The Academy, London Lowestoft

C. E. Appleton to Quaritch H. S. Wilson

Letters to Quaritch, p. 51 Athenaeum, Nov. 9, 1889, p. 636 Unpubl.

Feb. [March]

A. Tennyson

March 7 March 11

Lowestoft Lowestoft

A. P. Moor Mrs. Cowell

March 15 [March 18] March 20

Lowestoft Lowestoft Lowestoft

Fanny Kemble Wright W. B. Donne

March 20

Lowestoft

[March]

[Lowestoft]

[April]

Lowestoft

Valentia Donne Cowell (Fragment) H. S. Wilson

Unpubl. In part in WAW,III,269 WAW,111,270 Unpubl. Donne and Friends, p. 326 Unpubl. Unpubl. Athenaeum, Nov. 16, 1889, p. 672

R. H. Taylor Cambridge Univ. Cambridge Univ.

Tennyson Estate Syracuse Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Syracuse Univ. Cambridge Univ.

° Brackets around dates or places from which letters were written mean they have been supplied. Blanks under "Location" indicate the original letters have not been found and they have been taken from other sources.

Chart of Letters Date (1877)

From

To

First Publ.

Location

April 9

Lowestoft

W. B. Donne

[April 20]

Little Grange

R. H. Taylor

April 24

Woodbridge

Valentia Donne W. B. Donne

Donne and Friends, p. 327 Unpubl.

Trinity College

May 1 May 3

Little Grange Woodbridge

Wright to FitzGerald Hall Wright

Donne and Friends, p. 328 Unpubl.

May 5 [May 17]

Little Grange Little Grange

Fanny Kemble Cowell

Unpubl. In part in WAW,III,272 WAW,111,273 Unpubl.

May [17] May 18

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Thompson W. B. Donne

Unpubl. Unpubl.

May 19 May 20

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Norton A. Tennyson

[May 20] [May] May 24

Little Grange [Woodbridge] Little Grange

Stidolph Wright Pollock

May 28

Woodbridge

A. Tennyson

Unpubl. In part in Tennyson and Friends, p. 123 Unpubl. Unpubl. Extract deleted in WAW, 111,276 Unpubl.

May 29 June 7

Woodbridge Little Grange

Mrs. Cowell Rev; W. Tate

Unpubl. Unpubl.

[June] June 14

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble Hall

June 14 June 15

Woodbridge Little Grange

H. Biddell W. Tate

WAW,III,280 Nation, April 3, 1902, p. 268 WAW,III,278 Unpubl.

June 17 Longest Day

Woodbridge Little Grange

Hall H. S. Wilson

June 23 June 23

Woodbridge Little Grange

Fanny Kemble Wright

June 24

Woodbridge

Hall

July 2

Little Grange

Cowell

Unpubl. Athenaeum, Nov. 16, 1889, r>» O A70 p. WAW,III,282 Extract deleted in WAW, 111,284 Bit deleted in WAW,III,287 Unpubl.

July 2

Woodbridge

Wright

WAW,IV,20

April 29

x

Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Trinity College New York Public Library Harvard Univ. Tennyson Estate Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Tennyson Estate Trinity College Transcript, F. L. Pleadwell Columbia Univ. Yale Univ. Historical Society of Pennsylvania Trinity College

Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Trinity College

Chart of Letters Date (1877)

From

To

First Publ.

Location

[July 3] [July]

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Cowell Allen

Trinity College Trinity College

12 Juillet July 20

Woodbridge Little Grange

July 20

Little Grange

Crabbe Hallam Tennyson Mrs. Cowell

WAW,IV,24 In part in WAW,111,286 Unpubl. Unpubl.

[July 27] Juillet 28 [July 29]

Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Crabbe Wright

July 30 [Aug. 1] Aug. 2

Grovenor Hotel [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

J. R. Lowell to FitzGerald Wright John Loder (Fragment)

Aug. 2

Woodbridge

Spalding

[Aug.]

Woodbridge

W. B. Donne

[Aug. 18] [Aug. 19] Aug. 19

Woodbridge [Woodbridge] Little Grange

Wright Wright Quaritch

Aug. 21

Woodbridge

Norton

[Aug. 23]

Woodbridge

Wright

Aug. 26

Woodbridge

Lowell

[Aug.]

[Woodbridge]

Aug. 30 Sept. 6 Sept. 11

Woodbridge Dunwich Woodbridge

Mrs. Cowell (Fragment) Wright Wright Wright

Oct. 10

Woodbridge

Wright

Oct. 14

Little Grange

Spalding

[Oct.]

Woodbridge

Lowell

Oct. 21

Woodbridge

F. Tennyson

Oct. 25

Little Grange

Oct. 27

Little Grange

Smith and Elder Quaritch

Oct. 28

Woodbridge

Norton

Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Bit deleted in WAW,III,289 Unpubl. Unpubl. East Anglian Daily Times, April 8, 1939 Unpubl. Donne and Friends, p . 332 Unpubl. Unpubl. Letters to Quaritch, p . 55 Bit deleted in WAW,III,291 In part in WAW,III,279 Extract deleted in WAW, 111,293 Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Bit deleted in WAW,111,295 In part in WAW,III,296 Unpubl. Bit deleted in WAW,111,297 Unpubl. Unpubl. Letters to Quaritch, p . 52 In part in WAW,III,300

Trinity College Tennyson Estate Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College

Boston Pubhc TU,inrarv l U l Ctly Trinity College Trinity College Harvard Univ. Trinity College Harvard Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Harvard Univ. Cambridge Univ. R. H. Taylor

Harvard Univ.

Chart of Letters From

To

First Publ.

Nov. 2

Woodbridge

Quaritch

Guy Fawkes Day Nov. 12 [Nov.]

Woodbridge

Wright

Little Grange [Woodbridge]

Hall F. Tennyson

Letters to Quaritch, p. 53 Extract in note, WAW,III,110 Unpubl. Unpubl.

Dec.

Little Grange

A. Tennyson

Dec. 7 Dec. 7

Woodbridge Woodbridge

[Dec.]

Woodbridge

Wright W. B. Donne (Fragment) Wright

Jan. 25

Woodbridge

Quaritch

Jan. 27

Woodbridge

Quaritch

Jan. 29 Feb. 3

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright F. Tennyson

[Feb.]

[Woodbridge]

Wright

Feb. 14 Feb. 20

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Norton Norton

Feb. 22 Enclosure: Feb. 20

Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble

London

Feb. 22

Woodbridge

Feb. 23

Woodbridge

Lord Hatherley WAW,III,308 to FitzGerald Quaritch Letters to Quaritch, p. 55 Norton Unpubl.

Feb. 28

Little Grange

Lowell

[Feb. 28] March 3

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Anna Biddell Wright

March 14

Woodbridge

W. B. Donne

March 14 March 16

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright R. H. Groome

March 21

Woodbridge

Wright

Date (1877)

Tennyson Memoir, 11,220 Unpubl. Donne and Friends, p. 330 Unpubl.

Location

Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College

1878

xii

Letters to Quaritch, p. 53 Letters to Quaritch, p. 54 Unpubl. WAW,IV,42 Bit deleted in WAW,III,303 WAW,III,304 In part in WAW,111,306 WAW,III,309

In part in WAW,III,312 Unpubl. In part in WAW,III,314 Donne and Friends, p. 336 WAW,III,316 Two Suffolk Friends, p. 127 Extract deleted in WAW,III,317

Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Harvard Univ. Harvard Univ.

Transcript, Harvard Univ. (Original given to H. H. Dole) Harvard Univ. Syracuse Univ. Trinity College

Trinity College R. H. Taylor Trinity College

Chart of Letters Date (1878)

From

To

First PtibL

Location

April 4 April 11 April 11 April 16 April 16 April 17

Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Little Grange

Norton F. Tennyson Cowell Norton Fanny Kemble Milnes

Harvard Univ. Christine Fall Trinity College Harvard Univ.

April 17

Woodbridge

Lowell

April 30

Little Grange

Milnes

[c. May 1] May

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Wright Lowell

May 8

Woodbridge

F. Tennyson

WAW1III,319 Unpubl. WAW,IV,1 WAW,III,323 WA W,IV,3 Reid, Life of Lord Hough­ ton, II, 377 In part in WAWjIV,6 Reid, Lord Houghton, II, 377 Unpubl. Extract deleted in WAW,IV,10 WA W,IV,12

May 15

Woodbridge

May 20

Woodbridge

[June]

[Woodbridge]

June 11

Woodbridge

H. Buxton Forman W. W. Goodwin Wright (Fragment) Wright

[Mid-June]

Woodbridge

W. B. Donne

[June]

[Woodbridge]

Cowell

June [23] June 24 [June] [July]

Woodbridge Woodbridge [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Wright Groome Wright Wright

July 2 July 2

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Norton F. Tennyson

July 8 July 21 Aug. 24 [Aug. 24] Sept. 5 [Sept. 8] Sept. 21

Woodbridge Woodbridge Dunwich Dunwich Lowestoft Lowestoft Lowestoft

Wright Wright Fanny Kemble Wright Wright Wright Wright

Sept. 22

Lowestoft

Pollock

Unpubl. Unpubl. WA W,IV,26 Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. In part in WAW,IV,27 WA W,IV,28

Sept. 22

Lowestoft

F. Tennyson

Unpubl.

Oct. 9

Little Grange

W. W. Goodwin

WAW,IV,31

Unpubl.

Trinity College Harvard Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Harvard Univ. Cambridge Univ. of Texas

WAW,IV,15 In part in WAW1IV,16 In part in WAW,IV,17 Donne and Friends, p. 334 Extract in note, WAW,IV,66 WA W,IV,18 Unpubl. Unpubl. In part in WAW,IV,19 WAW,IV,21 Unpubl.

Trinity College Trinity College

Trinity College Trinity College Yale Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Harvard Univ. Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Cambridge Univ. Harvard Univ.

Chart of Letters Date (1878)

From

To

First Publ.

Location

Oct. 15

Woodbridge

Norton

Harvard Univ.

Oct. 17

Woodbridge

Lowell

[Oct.]

[Woodbridge]

F. Tennyson

In part in WAW,IV,32 In part in WAW,IV,34 WAW,IV,41

Oct. 24

Woodbridge

Unpubl.

[Oct.] Oct. 29 Nov. 2 Nov. 9 [Nov.]

Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge [Woodbridge]

Blanche Donne Wright Wright H. Biddell Cowell Pollock

Nov. 18

London

Unpubl.

Nov. 23

Woodbridge

Quaritch to FitzGerald Quaritch

Nov. 26 Dec. 4

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Cowell Mrs. Cowell

Dec. 9

Little Grange

Quaritch

Dec. 15

Woodbridge

Norton

Dec. 15 Dec. 17

Woodbridge Little Grange

Merivale Quaritch

Dec. 17 Dec. 19

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Lowell

Dec. 26

Lowestoft

Wright

Jan. 1 Jan. 5 Jan. 6

Woodbridge [Woodbridge] Woodbridge

[Jan. 7] Jan. 16 Jan. 16

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge Woodbridge

Cowell Wright Charles Donne Wright Wright Quaritch

Jan. 17

London

Jan. 21

Woodbridge

Quaritch to FitzGerald Quaritch

Jan. 23

Woodbridge

Quaritch

Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl.

Letters to Quaritch, p. 56 Unpubl. Unpubl. Letters to Quaritch, p. 57 In part in WAW,IV,35 WAW,IV,37 Letters to Quaritch, p. 58 Unpubl. Exbact deleted in WAW,IV,39 Unpubl.

Harvard Univ. Cambridge Univ. Syracuse Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Yale Univ. Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Trinity College

Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Harvard Univ.

Trinity College Harvard Univ. Trinity College

1879

xiv

Unpubl. Unpubl. Hannay, p. 126 Unpubl. Unpubl. Letters to Quaritch, p. 60 Unpubl. Letters to Quaritch, p. 61 Letters to Quaritch, p. 62

Trinity College Trinity College Mary Barham Johnson Trinity College Trinity College Transcript, Syracuse Univ.

Chart of Letters Date (1879)

From

To

First Publ.

Location

Jan. 28

Woodbridge

Quaritch

[Jan. 31] Jan. 30

[Woodbridge] London

Trinity College Trinity College

Feb. 6 Feb. 19 [Feb. 25] Feb. 25

Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Quaritch to FitzGerald Wright Wright Wright F. Tennyson

Letters to Quaritch, p. 63 Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl.

Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge

March 5

Woodbridge

Cowell

Unpubl.

Cambridge

March 5 March 8

Woodbridge Little Grange

Unpubl. Unpubl.

[March 11] [March 13] March 16

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Crowfoot (Fragment) Wright Wright Pollock

Trinity College Transcript, Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ.

March 21 [March 23] [March]

Woodbridge [Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Wright Anna Biddell Quaritch

March 24

Woodbridge

Quaritch

March 29 [March 30] March 31

Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge

April 3 April 14

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Wright Spalding (Fragment) Fanny Kemble Quaritch

April 18

Woodbridge

Quaritch

April 20

Woodbridge

Quaritch

April 17 [April]

Llanfairfechan N. Wales [Woodbridge]

CowelI to FitzGerald Quariteh

April 25 May 1 May 3

Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble Wright Cowell

[May] May 7 [May 10]

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge Woodbridge

[May 11] May 14

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Wright Wright Crowfoot (Fragment) Wright Blanche Donne

Unpubl. Unpubl. Extracts deleted in WAW1IV,43 Unpubl. Unpubl. Letters to Quaritch, p. 63 Letters to Quaritch, p. 64 Unpubl. Unpubl. Two Suffolk Friends, p. 125 WAWjIII,45 Letters to Quaritch, p. 66 Letters to Quaritch, p. 67 Letters to Quaritch, p. 68 Letters to Quaritch, p. 71 Letters to Quaritch, p. 72 WAW,IV,49 Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl.

Trinity College Folger Library

Trinity College Trinity College

Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Transcript, Trinity College Trinity College Syracuse Univ.

Chart of Letters Location

Date (1879)

From

To

First Publ.

May 18 May 18

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble Norton

May 20

Woodbridge

Lowell

[May 20]

Woodbridge

Quaritch

May 22 [May 27]

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble Quaritch

[June 2] [June 3]

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Quaritch

June 4

Little Grange

Quaritch

June 9 June [13]

Woodbridge Little Grange

Wright A. Tennyson

June 13

Woodbridge

Lowell

[June] June 20 June 21

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge Woodbridge

Cowell Lowell F. Tennyson

WAW,IV,52 Extracts deleted in WAW,IV,55 Extracts deleted in WAW,IV,59 Letters to Quaritch, p. 65 WAW,IV,61 Letters to Quaritch, p. 73 Unpubl. Letters to Quaritch, p. 73 Letters to Quaritch, p. 74 Unpubl. Tennyson Memoir, II, 240 In part in WAW,IV,64 WAW,IV,70 Unpubl. In part in WAW,IV,68

June 22 June 25

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Norton Pollock

Unpubl. Unpubl.

June 25 Julyl

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Wright

July 4 July 10 July 12 July 16 [July 21] July 22

Little Grange Woodbridge Little Grange Little Grange [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Milnes Norton Hall Milnes Wright Wright

July 24 Aug. 1

Woodbridge Aldboro'

Cowell Wright

Aug. 3 [Aug. 3]

Woodbridge [Woodbridge]

Mrs. Cowell Wright

Aug. 4 [Aug. 5]

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble Wright

Unpubl. Extract in WAW,IV,71 Trinity College Unpubl. Harvard Univ. Unpubl. Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College In part in WAW,IV,71 Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College In part in WAW,IV,72 Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College WAW,IV,74 (Printed as part of Aug. 1) WAW,IV,76 Trinity College Extract deleted in WAW,IV,75

xvi

Harvard Univ. Harvard Univ.

Trinity College

Trinity College Harvard Univ. Trinity College Harvard Univ. Cambridge Univ. Harvard Univ. Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College

Chart of Letters Date (1879)

From

To

First Publ.

Aug. 5

Woodbridge

Quaritch

[Aug. 8]

Woodbridge

Blanche Donne

Aug. 9 Aug. 10

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Mrs. J. White Quaritch

[Aug. 13]

Lowestoft

Wright

Aug. 20

Lowestoft

Lowell

Aug. 20

Lowestoft

Quaritch

Sept. 3

Lowestoft

Norton

Sept. 4

Lowestoft

Wright

Sept. 11

Lowestoft

Wright

Sept. 15 Sept. 16 Sept. 17 [Sept. 17] Sept. 17

Lowestoft Lowestoft Lowestoft Lowestoft

Fanny Kemble H. Biddell Cowell Wright Mrs. Edwards

[Sept.] Sept. 22

Lowestoft Lowestoft

Sept. 24 Sept. 24

Lowestoft Lowestoft

Wright Laurence (Fragment) Fanny Kemble Mrs. Edwards

Letters to Quaritch, p. 75 Syracuse Univ. In part in Donne and Friends, p. 337 Unpubl. Mrs. White Letters to Quaritch, p. 75 Trinity College In part in WAW,IV,77 Harvard Univ. Enclosure deleted in WAW,IV,78 Letters to Quaritch, p. 76 Harvard Univ. In part in WAW1IV,81 Trinity College In part in WAW,IV,83 Trinity College In part in WA W,IV,84 WAW,IV,86 WAW,IV,88 Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College Unpubl. FitzWilliam Unpubl. Museum Trinity College Unpubl. WA W,IV,89

Sept. 28 Sept. 29

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble Wright

[Oct. 7] Oct. 7 [Oct. 12] Oct. 13 Oct. 19

Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Fanny Kemble Wright Wright F. Tennyson

[c. Oct. 20] Oct. 27 Oct. [Nov.] 4 Nov. 10 Nov. 13 [Nov.] [Nov. 17] Nov. 20

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Wright Fanny Kemble Fanny KembIe Wright Fanny Kemble Fanny Kemble Wright F. Tennyson

WAW,IV,91 Unpubl. WAW,IV,92 Extract in note, WAW1IV,92 Unpubl. WAW1IV,93 Unpubl. Unpubl. Extract deleted in WAW,IV,95 Unpubl. WAW1IV,97 WAW,IV,98 Unpubl. WAW,IV,99 WA W,IV,101 Unpubl. Unpubl.

Location

FitzWilliam Museum Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ.

Chart of Letters First Publ.

Date (1879)

From

To

Nov. 23 Dec. 10 Dec. 26

Little Grange Woodbridge Woodbridge

[Dec. 29]

Woodbridge

W. W. Goodwin WAW,IV,103 Fanny Kemble WA W,IV,105 In part in Wright WAW,IV,106 Unpubl. Wright

Location

Trinity College Trinity College

1880 Jan. 2

Woodbridge

Jan. 2 Jan. 8 [Jan. 10] [Jan. 14] Ian. 31 and Feb. 1 Feb. 2 Feb. 3 Feb. 6

Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge

Horace Basham Wright Fanny Kemble Wright Wright Wright

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Fanny Kemble F. Tennyson

Feb. 8 Feb. 12 [Feb. 13]

Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge

Keene Fanny Kemble Mrs. Tennyson

Feb. 22

Woodbridge

Norton

Feb. 23

Woodbridge

Wright

Feb. 24

Woodbridge

March 1 March 4

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Anne Thack­ eray Ritchie Fanny Kemble Norton

March 13 [March]

Woodbridge [Woodbridge]

[March 20]

Woodbridge

Anna Biddell Keene (Fragment) Wright

Vernal Equinox March 26 March 28 March 31 April 5

[Woodbridge]

Cowell

Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Lowestoft

Fanny Kemble Fanny Kemble Wright Wright

April 5

Lowestoft

Spalding

Unpubl. Unpubl. WAW,IV,108 Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. WAW,IV,111 WAW,IV,112 In part in WAW,IV,113 Unpubl. WAW,IV,113 Unpubl. Unpubl. (Last sentence in WA W, IV,114) In part in WAW,IV,115 Unpubl. WAW,IV,118 In part in WAW,IV,119 Unpubl. WAW,IV,121 In part in WAW,IV,116 Extract in note, WAW,IV,234 WAW,IV,122 WAW,IV,124 Unpubl. In part in WAW,IV,126 Unpubl.

Morgan Library Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Syracuse Univ. Tennyson Estate Harvard Univ.

Trinity College Mrs. Belinda Norman-Butler Harvard Univ. Syracuse Univ. Trinity College Trinity College

Trinity College Trinity College Boston Public Library

Chart of Letters Date (1880)

From

To

First Publ.

April 6 April [13]

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble F. Tennyson

WAW,IV,127 WA W,IV,129

April 15 April [20] April 23 [April 29] May 1

Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge [ Woodbridge ] [Woodbridge]

Norton Wright Fanny Kemble Wright Norton

[May] [May 6] May 9 May 10 [May]

[ Woodbridge ] Little Grange Little Grange Little Grange [Woodbridge]

Wright H. Biddell Trench Milnes Wright

May 18 May 23

Woodbridge Little Grange

Trench Quaritch

May 25 [May 25]

Woodbridge [Woodbridge]

Fanny Kemble Wright

May 26

Woodbridge

Quaritch

[June] June 6

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

June 16

London

[June 17] June 17

Woodbridge Woodbridge

June

The Old Place

Keene Caroline Crabbe Spedding to FitzGerald Wright Anne Thack­ eray Ritchie F. Tennyson

Unpubl. Unpubl. WAW,IV,131 WAW,IV,133 Bit deleted in WAW,IV,136 Unpubl. WA W,IV,139 WAW,IV,141 WAW,IV,143 In part in WAW,IV,135 WAW,IV,144 Letters to Quaritch, p. 77 WA W,IV,146 Extract in note, WA W,IV,149 Letters to Quaritch, p. 78 WAW,IV,153 Unpubl.

[June 19] [June 20] [June 22] June 23 June 30 Julyl

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Keene Wright Fanny Kemble Wright Cowell

Unpubl. WA W,IV,151 Unpubl. WAW1IV,155 Unpubl. Unpubl.

July 7 July 15

Aldeburgh Woodbridge

Keene Cowell

WAW,IV,157 Unpubl.

July 16

Woodbridge

Wright

[July 22] July 22

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Quaritch

[July 24] July 26 July 26

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble Norton Goodwin

Extract in note, WAW1IV,161 Unpubl. Letters to Quaritch, p. 79 WAW,IV,159 Unpubl. WAW,IV,162

Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. WAW1IV,149

Location Cambridge Univ. Harvard Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Harvard Univ. Trinity College Yale Univ. Trinity College Trinity College

Trinity College

Columbia Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Mrs. Belinda Norman-Butler Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College

Harvard Univ.

Chart of Letters Date (1880)

From

To

First Publ.

Location

July 26 [July 26] [July 29] [July 29]

[Little Grange] [Woodbridge] Woodbridge Woodbridge

Brooke Wright Wright Wm. Tate

Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl.

Syracuse Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Historical Society of Pennsylvania

[July 30] [Aug. 3]

Woodbridge Lowestoft

WAW1IV1164 Unpubl.

[c. Aug. 5] [Aug. 8] [Aug.] Aug. 20

Lowestoft Lowestoft Lowestoft Lowestoft

Fanny Kemble Horace Basham Wright Wright Wright F. Tennyson

Aug.

Lowestoft

Lowell

Unpubl.

Aug. 31

Merton

Cowell

Unpubl.

Sept. 6 Sept. 9 Sept. 20 Sept. 20 Oct. 2

Lowestoft Lowestoft Lowestoft Lowestoft Lowestoft

Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. WAW,IV,165 Unpubl.

Oct. 4 [Oct. 9] Oct. 16 Oct. 16 Oct. 20 Oct. 21

Lowestoft Lowestoft Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Wright Lowell Fanny Kemble Horace Basham Wright Wright Cowell Wright Fanny Kemble A. Tennyson

Nov. 3

Woodbridge

Norton

Nov. 7 Nov. 12

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright F. Tennyson

In part in WAW,IV,170 Unpubl. Unpubl.

[Nov.] Nov. 17 [Nov. 24] Nov. 30

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge London [Woodbridge]

Unpubl. WAWjIV,171 Unpubl. WA W,IV,173

Dec. 6

Woodbridge

Wright Fanny Kemble Wright Anna Biddell (Fragment) Fanny Kemble

Dec. 15 Dec. 17 [Dec. 21] [Dec. 23] Dec. 25 Dec. 27

Little Grange Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Woodbridge Little Grange

Thompson Wright Wright H. Biddell Fanny Kemble Blakesley

WAW,IV,177 Unpubl. Unpubl. WAW,IV,179 WAW,IV,180 Unpubl.

Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl.

Unpubl. Unpubl. WAW,IV,167 Unpubl. WAW,IV,169 Unpubl.

WA W,IV,174

Morgan Library Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Boston Public Library Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Harvard Univ. Morgan Lihrary Trinity Trinity Trinity Trinity

College College College College

Tennyson Estate Harvard Univ. Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College

British Museum Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Mrs. C. G. ChenevixTrench

Chart of Letters Date (1881)

From

To

First Publ.

Location

Unpubl.

Morgan Library

Jan. 3

Woodbridge

[Jan. 8]

Woodbridge

Horace Basham Wright

[Jan.] Jan. 17 [Jan.]

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge [Woodbridge]

Wright Fanny Kemble Quaritch

[Jan.]

[Woodbridge]

F. Tennyson Quaritch

[Jan.] [Feb.] [Feb. 10] [Feb.] [Feb.] [Feb.] [Feb.] Feb. 20

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Wright Fanny Kemble Wright Thompson Fanny Kemble Fanny Kemble Norton

[March 2] [March 4]

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Wright Wright

[March] [March 10]

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Fanny Kemble Wright

March 13 March 13

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Laurence Norton

Enclosure [March] [March 16] [March]

(Prefece to Oedipus): [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Thompson Wright

March 20 March 20 March 22

Woodbridge [Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Lowell Fanny Kemble Mrs. Tennyson

[March]

[Woodbridge]

Anna Biddell

[March]

[Woodbridge]

Pollock

[March] [March 28]

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Thompson Cowell

Bit deleted in Trinity College WA W,IV,182 Unpubl. Trinity College WAW1IV,183 Letters to Quaritch, p. 82 Unpubl. Cambridge Univ. Letters to Quaritch, p. 80 Unpubl. Trinity College WAW,IV,184 Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College WA W,IV,186 Trinity College WA W,IV,188 Trinity College In part in Harvard Univ. WAW,IV,191 Unpubl. Trinity College Bit deleted in Trinity College WA W,IV,192 WA W,IV,193 Trinity College Extract deleted Trinity College in WAW, IV, 196 WAW,IV,199 In part in Harvard Univ. WAW,IV,197

Norton WAW1IV,343 Unpubl. Bit deleted in WAW,IV,192 Unpubl. WAW,IV,201 In part in Tennyson Memoir,11,262 In part in WAW1IV,205 In part in WA W,IV,200 In part in WAW,IV,204 Unpubl. Unpubl.

Trinity College Trinity College Harvard Univ. Trinity College Tennyson Estate

R. H. Taylor Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Cambridge Univ.

Chart of Letters

Date (1881)

From

To

First Publ.

Location

[March 30] [April 2] [April 10]

[ Woodbridge ] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Thompson Thompson Wright

Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College

[April 12] [Mid-April] [April 17] [April] May 8 May 14 May [14] [May] May 17 [May 24] [May 24] [May 31]

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] Woodbridge [Woodbridge] Woodbridge [Woodbridge]

Thompson Fanny Kemble Thompson Fanny Kemble Fanny Kemble Anna Biddell Fanny Kemble Wright Norton Wright Fanny Kemble Wright

[June 12]

[Woodbridge]

F. Tennyson

Unpubl. Unpubl. In part in WAW1IV,210 Unpubl. WA W,IV,207 Unpubl. WA W,IV,211 WAW,IV,212 Unpubl. WAW,IV,214 Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. WA W,IV,216 In part in WAW1IV,218 Unpubl.

[June 20] [June 23] June 29 Jdy

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] Woodbridge Little Grange

[July] [July] July 30

[Woodbridge] Merton Woodbridge

H. Biddell Wright Lowell Miss S. F. Spedding Wright Wright Cowell

July 31

Woodbridge

Aug. 5

Woodbridge

Miss S. F. Spedding Norton

Aug. 20

Woodbridge

Wright

[Aug. 23] [Aug. 26]

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

[Sept.]

[Woodbridge]

Wright Wright (Fragment) F. Tennyson

[Sept. 11]

Woodbridge

Spalding

Unpubl.

[Sept. 15] [Sept. 26] [Oct. 6] [Oct. 10] [Oct. 10] [Oct. 13] Oct. 13 Oct.

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] Woodbridge Woodbridge

Wright Wright Wright Cowell Wright Wright Thompson Quaritch

Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl.

Nov. 18

Woodbridge

A. Tennyson

Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl. WAW,IV,220

Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Syracuse Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Harvard Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Yale Univ. Trinity College Harvard Univ.

WAW1IV,219 Unpubl. Cowell Biog­ raphy, p. 271 WAW,IV,221

Trinity College Trinity College

In part in WAW,IV,222 In part in WAW,IV,225 Unpubl. Unpubl.

Harvard Univ.

Unpubl.

Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College

Letters to Quaritch, p. 83 Unpubl.

Tennyson Estate

Chart of Letters Date (1881)

From

[Nov.] Nov. 30

[Woodbridge ] [Woodbridge]

[Dec.]

To

First Publ.

Location Trinity College

[Woodbridge]

Fanny Kemble Hallam Tennyson Cowell

WAWjIV,226 Tennyson Memoir,II,271 Unpubl.

Dec. 14 [Dec.] [Dec.] [Dec.]

Woodbridge [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Norton Thompson Fanny Kemble F. Tennyson

[Dec. 28] [Dec.]

Woodbridge [Woodbridge]

H. Biddell Blanche Donne

Unpubl. Unpubl. WAW,IV,228 In part in WAW,IV,230 Unpubl. In part in Donne and Friends, p. 338

[Jan. 1]

Little Grange

Blakesley

Unpubl.

Jan. 5

Woodbridge

Unpubl.

Jan. 12

Woodbridge

[Jan.]

[Woodbridge]

[Jan.] Jan. 18

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Mrs. Wm. MacOubrey Spalding (Fragment) Charles Donne Fanny Kemble Norton

[Jan.] 22

Queen Anne's Mansions

Fanny Kemble to FitzGerald

Jan. 23

[Woodbridge]

Blakesley

Unpubl.

Jan. 23

Little Grange

H. S. Wilson

[Jan. 23] [Jan. 24]

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Jan. 25

Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble Blanche Donne Norton

Athenaeum, Nov. 16, 1889, p. 672 WAW1IV,237 Unpubl.

[Jan. 26]

Little Grange

H. S. Wilson

[Jan. 26] [Feb.]

Woodbridge [Woodbridge]

Fanny Kemble Blakesley

Cambridge Univ. Harvard Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Yale Univ. Syracuse Univ.

1882

Two Suffolk Friends, p. 126 Hannay1 p. 128 WA W,IV,234 In part in WA W,IV,232 Unpubl.

In part in WAW,IV,233 Athenaeum, Nov. 9, 1889, p. 636 WAW,IV,238 Unpubl.

Mrs. C. G. ChenevixTrench Leuba

Mary Barham Johnson Trinity College Harvard Univ. Cambridge Univ. Mrs. C. G. ChenevixTrench

Trinity College Syracuse Univ. Harvard Univ.

Trinity College Mrs. C. G. ChenevixTrench

Chart of Letters Date (1882)

From

To

First Publ.

Location Cambridge Univ. Syracuse Univ.

[c. Feb. 3]

[Woodbridge]

Cowell

UnpubL

Feb. 10

[Woodbridge]

Unpubl.

[Feb. 23]

Little Grange

Blanche Donne H. S. Wilson

[Feb. 24] [Feb.] [Feb.]

[Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Wright H. S. Wilson H. S. Wilson

[c. March 1] [c. March 1]

Woodbridge [Woodbridge]

Fanny Kemble Pollock

[March 5]

[Woodbridge]

F. Tennyson Norton

March 7 [March 30] March 31 April

[Woodbridge] Little Grange [Woodbridge]

[April 11]

[Woodbridge]

Wright Fanny Kemble W. W. Goodwin Spalding

[Mid-April]

[Woodbridge]

H. S. Wilson

[April] May 7 May 9 May 17

[Woodbridge] Lowestoft Lowestoft Little Grange

[May 22]

[Woodbridge]

Fanny Kemble Wright Wright Anne Thackeray Ritchie Wright

May 28

Woodbridge

Hallam Tennyson

Whitmonday June 3

[Woodbridge] Little Grange

[June 4]

[Woodbridge]

Fanny Kemble Horace Basham Wright

[June]

[Woodbridge]

June 9

Woodbridge

Hallam Tennyson Norton

[June 15]

[Woodbridge]

F. Tennyson

Athenaeum, Nov. 9, 1889, p. 636 WAW,IV,239 WAW,IV,242 Athenaeum, Nov. 16, 1889, p. 672 WAW,IV,244 WAWjIV,247 Extract deleted in WAW1IV,249 In part in WAW,IV,252 Unpubl. WAW,IV,253 WAW1IV,258

Trinity College

Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Cambridge Univ. Harvard Univ. Trinity College Trinity College

In part in Two Suffolk Friends, p. 126 Athenaeum, Nov. 16, 1889, p. 672 WA W,IV,256 Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl.

Cambridge Univ.

In part in WAW,IV,259 Tennyson Memoir,11,272

Trinity College

WA W,IV,261 Unpubl.

Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College Mrs. Belinda Norman-Butler

Transcript, Tennyson Estate Trinity College Morgan Library

In part in WAW1IV,262 Unpubl.

Trinity College

Extract in WAW1IV,264 In part in WAW,IV,265

Harvard Univ.

Tennyson Estate

Cambridge Univ.

rt of Letters Location

Date (1882)

From

To

First Publ.

June 22

Woodbridge

Quaritch

June 24 June 25 [June 29]

Woodbridge Woodbridge [Woodbridge]

Fanny Kemble Wright Spalding

Letters to Quaritch, p. 83 WAW,IV ,267 Unpubl. Unpubl.

[July 1] [July]

[Woodbridge ] [Woodbridge]

Wright Quaritch

[July]

Woodbridge

Pollock

July 13

Woodbridge

Norton

July 14

Woodbridge

July 18 [July] [Aug.] [Aug. 13]

Woodbridge [Woodbridge] [Aldeburgh] Aldeburgh

Charles Donne Norton Wright Fanny Kemble Spalding

Aug. 13 Aug. 16 Aug. 28 Sept. 1 [Sept.]

Aldeburgh Aldeburgh Aldeburgh Aldeburgh [Aldeburgh]

Sept. 9

[Aldeburgh]

Wright Wright Wright Fanny Kemble Anne Thackeray Ritchie F. Tennyson

Sept. 23

Lowestoft

F. Tennyson

Unpubl.

Oct.

Little Grange

Quaritch

Oct. 17 Oct. 20

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble Pollock

Oct. 28

Woodbridge

Wright

Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Trinity College

Nov. 1

Woodbridge

Nov. 1

Woodbridge

Unpubl.

Syracuse Univ.

Nov. 8 [Nov.] [Nov. 20] [Nov. 25] [Nov. 26] Dec. 15

Little Grange [Woodbridge] Woodbridge [Woodbridge] Little Grange Woodbridge

Horace Basham Blanche Donne Laurence Fanny Kemble Alfred Smith Cowell John Stidolph A. Tennyson

Letters to Quaritch, p. 84 WAW,IV,277 In part in WAW,IV,280 In part in WAW,IV,281 Unpubl.

Dec. 20

Woodbridge

Norton

Trinity College Trinity College Boston Public Library Trinity College

Unpubl. Letters to Quaritch, p. 81 Cambridge Extract in Univ. WAW,IV,284 Harvard Univ. In part in WAW,IV,269 Hannay, p. 131 Mary Barham Johnson Unpubl. Harvard Univ. Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College WAW,IV,271 Boston Public Unpubl. Library Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College Unpubl. Trinity College WAW,IV,273 Mrs. Belinda Unpubl. Norman-Butler WAW,IV,275

WAW,IV,282 WAW, IV,284 Unpubl. WAW,IV,286 Unpubl. Unpubl. In part in WAW,IV,288

Cambridge Univ. Cambridge Univ.

Morgan Library

Trinity College Fred Smith Trinity College Trinity College Tennyson Estate Harvard Univ.

Chart of Letters Date (1883)

From

To

First Publ.

Location

Jan. 14

Woodbridge

F. Tennyson

Unpubl.

Cambridge Univ.

Jan. 20

Woodbridge

H. S. Wilson

Athenaeum, Nov. 16, 1889, p. 673 In part in WAW,IV,289

[Feb. 7]

[Woodbridge]

Wright

Feb. 18

Woodbridge

Quaritch

Feb. 19

Woodbridge

H. S. Wilson

Letters to Quaritch, p. 84 Athenaeum, Nov. 16, 1889, p. 673 WA W,IV,291 Unpubl. Unpubl. Unpubl.

Feb. 20 [Feb. 20] Feb. 21 [Feb. 21]

Little Grange [Woodbridge] Woodbridge [Woodbridge]

Leslie Stephen Anna Biddell Wright Cowell

Feb. 22

Woodbridge

Quaritch

Feb. 23

Woodbridge

Quariteh

[Feb. 23]

Woodbridge

H. S. Wilson

Trinity College

Trinity College R. H. Taylor Trinity College Cambridge Univ.

Letters to Quaritch, p. 85 Letters to Quaritch, p. 86 Athenaeum, Nov. 16, 1889, p. 673

[Feb.]

[Woodbridge]

H. S. Wilson

Feb. 26 Feb. 27

Woodbridge Woodbridge

Leslie Stephen Quaritch

March 6

Woodbridge

Fanny Kemble

March 7

Woodbridge

[March 9] March 11 [March 18] [March 26] [March 26]

[Woodbridge] Woodbridge [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

[March]

[Woodbridge]

April 9 [April 10] April 12 [April] April 19

Woodbridge [Woodbridge] Woodbridge [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

April May 1 [May 3] [May 5]

Little Grange Woodbridge [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge]

Athenaeum, Nov. 16, 1889, p. 673 WAW1IV,292

Trinity College

Letters to Quaritch, p. 87

Bit deleted in WAW,IV,293 Norton In part in WAW,IV,295 Leslie Stephen WAW,IV,299 H. Biddell Unpubl. Wright Unpubl. Unpubl. Cowell Pollock Extract in WAW,IV,312 Leslie Stephen In part in WAWjIV,297 Leslie Stephen WAW,IV,300 Anna Biddell Unpubl. Fanny Kemble WAW,IV,302 Wright Unpubl. HalIam Tennyson Tennyson Memoir,11,275 Frances Kerrieh Unpubl. Wright WAW,I,v Wright WAW,IV,305 Mrs. Edwards Unpubl.

Trinity College Harvard Univ. Trinity College Yale Univ. Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Trinity College Trinity College R. H. Taylor Trinity College Trinity College

A. Terhune Trinity College Trinity College Trinity College

Chart of Letters Date (1883)

From

To

First Publ.

Location

May 9 [May] [May] May 12

Woodbridge [Woodbridge] [Woodbridge] Woodbridge

Anna Biddell Fanny Kemble Fanny Kemble Norton

R. H. Taylor Trinity College Trinity College Harvard Univ.

May 27 May 29 May 31

Woodbridge [Woodbridge] Little Grange

Fanny Kemble Wright F. Tennyson

Unpubl. WAW1IV,308 WAW1IV,310 In part in WAW,IV,312 WAW,IV,315 Unpubl. Unpubl.

May 31

Woodbridge

Pollock

Unpubl.

June 4 [June 12] [June 12]

Woodbridge [Woodbridge] Woodbridge

F. C. Brooke F. C. Brooke Laurence

Unpubl. Unpubl. WAW,IV,317

EPILOGUE June 14

Merton

Unpubl.

Violet Loder

June 17

Farringford

Crabbe to John Loder A. Tennyson to Pollock

Extract in Terhune, Life of FitzGerald, p. 344

Transcript, Morgan Library (In Pollock's hand)

Trinity College Trinity College Cambridge Univ. Cambridge Univ. Syracuse Univ. Syracuse Univ.

THE LETTERS OF

EDWARD FITZGERALD VOLUME IV

1877-1883

To Samuel Laurence (Fragment) Woodbridge Jan. 15/77 My dear Laurence, Then I sent you the Greek instead of the Persian whom you asked for?1 The two are the same size and binding: so of course I sent the wrong one. But I will send the right one directly: and you need not make a trouble of acknowledging it: I know you will thank me, and I think you will feel a sort of "triste Plaisir" in it, as others beside myself have felt. It is a desperate sort of thing, unfortunately at the bottom of all thinking men's minds; but made Music of. . . . I shall soon be going to old ugly Lowestoft again to be with Nephews and Nieces. The Great Man . . . is yet there:2 commanding a Crew of those who prefer being his Men to having command of their own. And they are right; for the man is Royal, tho' with the faults of ancient Vikings. . . . His Glory is somewhat marred; but he looks every inch a King in his Lugger now. At home (when he is there, and not at the Tavern) he sits among his Dogs, Cats, Birds, etc., always with a great Dog follow­ ing abroad, and aboard. This is altogether the Greatest Man I have known. 1

The 1876 Agamemnon instead of the 1872 Rubdiyat. had painted Posh Fletcher's portrait in 1870.

2 Laurence

To Anna Biddell [Woodbridge] [January 22, 1877] Dear Miss Biddell, I must have some Copy of the "Band-box Bulwer" Verses;1 and, if you don't find it handy to get them transcribed at Ipswich, return them to me and I will get it neatly done for you here. Did you ever see Tennyson's Patriotic Songs in 1852—when L. Na­ poleon was expected to invade us? If not, I will send you a Copy AT

January 1877 gave me at the time, with some corrections of his own. They are, to my thinking, almost the last fine things he has done: being roused by real Passion: one of them indeed to the tune of hot tears running down his face, as he told me at the Time. Now—to pass to a very different work—as you take an Interest in those old Greeks, and in those Mycenae Excavations, shall I send you my Agamemnon? I believe I have never sent you any of my queer Translations; first, from not knowing whether you would care about them, and secondly, not much given to force an Opinion from my Friends, which they feel rather bound to give, whether one asks for it or not. I now think this will interest you, as it has interested others who do not know the Original: and you really need not say any more about it than that: nor that, if you don't feel it. You would see by the Preface that I say, and know, that any such Translations from Great Poets need a true Poet to do: and therefore that these Greek Plays, and, as you say, Homer must wait for some Tennyson. I told him when here he would do well to do us one such service, now when his own Springs of Inspiration are draining dry: but these Poets must go their own way: Pegasus won't go in Harness. Homer, as you say, must wait for his Poet, who will only do the work by somewhat recast­ ing it into his own Self—as Pope has done; most illiteral, but most readable of all Homer's Translators: simply because Pope was a Poet, tho' very unlike Homer. Lusia and Annie Kerrich came to Boulge on Friday, on their way to Lowestoft tomorrow, I believe. They could only see me for half an hour: and Annie wanted to know about you. When she leaves Lowes­ toft I shall try and make her rest here two or three days, and also try to get you to meet her: as three years ago! Ever yours E.FG. 1 Tennyson's "New Timon and the Poets," in which Bulwer-Lytton is satirized, concludes with the lines:

A Timon thou! Nay, nay, for shame: It looks too arrogant a jest— The fierce old man—to take his name, You bandbox. Off, and let him rest. See letter from Tennyson, Nov. 12, [1846].

February 1877

To C. Ε. Norton Woodbridge February 1177 My dear Sir, I really only write now to prevent your doing so in acknowledgment of Thackeray's Song which I sent you, and you perhaps knew the handwriting of the Address. Pray don't write about such a thing, so soon after the very kind Letter I have just had from you. Why I sent you the Song I can hardly tell, not knowing if you care for Thackeray or Music: but that must be as it is; only, do not, pray, write expressly about it. The Song is what it pretends to be: the words speak for themselves; very beautiful, I think: the Tune is one which Thackeray and I knew at College, belonging to some rather free Cavalier words, Troll, troll, the bonny brown Bowl, with four bars interpolated to let in the Page. I have so sung it (with­ out a Voice) to myself these dozen years, since his Death, and so I have got the words decently arranged, in case others should like them as well as myself. Voila tout! I thought, after I had written my last, that I ought not to have said anything of an American Publisher of Crabbe, as it might (as it has done) set you on thinking how to provide one for me. I spoke of America, knowing that no one in England would do such a thing, and not knowing if Crabbe were more read in your Country than in his own. Some years ago I got some one to ask Murray if he would publish a Selection from all Crabbe's Poems: as has been done of Wordsworth and others. But Murray (to whom Crabbe's collected Works have al­ ways been a loss) would not meddle. If I had been "Lord E. FG.," he would, perhaps; and, looking to his market, he judged rightly enough, I doubt not. You shall one day see my "Tales of the Hall," when I can get it decently arranged, and written out (what is to be written), and then you shall judge of what chance it has of success. I want neither any profit, whether of money, or reputation: I only want to have Crabbe read more than he is. Women and young People never will like him, I think: but I believe every thinking man will like him more as he grows older; see if this be not so with yourself and your friends. Your Mother's Recollection of him is, I am sure, the just one: Crabbe never showed himself in Company, unless to a very close

February 1877 and experienced observer: his Company manner was exactly the re­ verse of his Books: almost, as Moore says, "doucereux'·, the apologetic politeness of the old School over-done, as by one who was not born to it. But Campbell1 observed his "shrewd Vigilance" awake under all his "politesse," and John Murray said that Crabbe said uncommon things in so common a way that they escaped recognition. It appears, I think, that he not only said, but wrote, such things: even to such Beaders as Mr. Stephen; who can see very little Humour, and no Epigram, in him. I will engage to find plenty of both. I think Mr. Stephen could hardly have read the later Books: viz., Tales of the Hall, and the Posthumous Poems: which, though careless and incomplete, contain Crabbe's most mature Self, I think. Enough of him for the present: and altogether enough, unless I wish to become a "seccatore" by my repeated, long, letters. But this very "seccatore" word reminds me of your Stendahl's Italian Notes, which I wish to read, and will get (don't send them, for I can get them here). I know something of his Writings, however, and know that he is a Man to be read, tho' S. Beuve gently protests against his being called a "Man of Genius." But I lately saw a sort of Biographical Memoir of him—or rather of his Opinions —gathered from himself: and there was one wonderful thing in it. He had written a Drama: "Jesus Christ": and, when asked if any Love in it, "oh beaucoup"—not, as one might imagine, for Mary Magdalene, or the Samaritan Woman: but for—the Disciple John! Many Great Men, such as Alexander, Caesar, etc., having such a bizarre taste: even Napoleon I for one of his Aidecamps. Could any but a French­ man think of such a Thing! Is it not enough to make an English or American go back to the Catechism, the old Faith, the old Faith of Childhood—anything but such a creed as this! Much more commend­ able is Stendahl's Dictum: "The only Apology for God is—that he does not exist." Mr. Lowell was good enough to send me his Odes,2 and I have written to acknowledge them with many thanks and a few observa­ tions—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!

February 1877 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. Now, my dear Sir, don't write till I write again: but believe me yours very sincerely E.FG. 1 2

Thomas Moore and Thomas Campbell. Three Memorial Odes, recently published.

To Alfred Tennyson Lowestoft Monday [February, 1877] Pray don't ask Hallam to write unless he cares to do so; I only meant, when I wrote to you, to ask him to do so—"one of these days." I meant—when he had something ready to tell about you all. When he shall write, I should like to hear how Annie Thackeray is. Her last note to me spoke of herself as not very well: and I fancied I could detect some further disquietude in her Letter. She has lost all the Drawings of her Father which I sent her: I believe they were stolen in changing houses. I did not want them for myself, but for her. And neither of us are the better. "I've lost my Portmanteau!" "I pity your Grief"— "My Sermons were in it!" "I pity the Thief." Rather neat? I don't know whose; not of yours always E.FG. Do you ever get to the end of Wimpole Street?1 1

No. 21, the London residence of Arthur Malkin, son of B. H. Malkin, EFG's headmaster at Bury St. Edmunds. Although EFG kept in only casual touch with him, Malkin was an intimate friend of Spedding, Fanny Kemble, and others of the correspondents.

February 1877

To Anna Biddell 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft Saturday [February 10, 1877] Dear Miss Biddell, You see that our Letters crossed as sometimes they will. You got mine in time, I hope, to prevent your looking for me at Little Grange on Friday, as you kindly proposed doing. I dare say I should have gone to your Ipswich Picture Academy, had I not come here before it opened; that is—last Monday week. I did not expect you would care for the Greek Play: I said to myself, "She will call it queer." It was only those Mycenaean Discoveries which interested you that made me send it at all. But there was no occasion to return it. Yesterday was the Funeral of Lady Smith1 who would certainly have been 104 years old had she lived till May. She was very sensible, and good, I believe, as well as so remarkably old. So all the Shops were half-shuttered up during the week: and wholly closed during the hour of her Interment, at which, I believe, half Lowestoft at­ tended, and half of those in Black. But Lowestoft has others to mourn for: seven fishing Vessels unheard of since the Gale of last week. At Yarmouth very many more. So much loss of Life and Property not known, I believe, since the "May Gale" of some thirty Years ago. I came here with Books that I found I did not care to read, so had to resort to a Circulating Library, where I was much in the same plight. I tried Miss Broughton's Novels—one of them—"Nancy"2— very clever—very vulgar—and already forgotten. Then I got one of Trollope's, "Phineas Redux," and have been glad to be back with him —a clever, and right-hearted, Man of the World. It is a Political Novel: much better than D'Israeli's, I think: whose writings are to me what his Politics are—showy and shallow. It really is a Disgrace for England's Aristocracy to be dragged about by this Jewish Adventurer. But I have not read a Newspaper for a Month or more. I do not think it a good Account of Edwards: but I am yours always E.FG. 1 Of Lowestoft, widow of Sir James E. Smith, physician, and founder of the Linnean Society. 2 By Rhoda Broughton, 3 vols., 1873-74.

February 1877

To W. B. Donne 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft Feb. 14, [1877] My dear Donne, I had been about to write—but to Mowbray—to ask about you, and also about Valentia's marriage—when?1 But, mind, you are not to answer that, but she herself, or Mowbray, one of these days. Meanwhile, she does well to keep you to your house till Influenza be gone; one's only sorrow is, that she will have to cease her Attention before long, I suppose: I do not know if I ought to say this to you who must long have had it present to your heart; and Valentia too. It is the "amari aliquid"2 in the cup. I have really not looked into a Newspaper since Christmas, and so have kept myself from bothering about what I can't help.3 Gladstone I always looked on as Doctrinaire, but honest, as Politicians can be: D'Israeli as a very clever Quack, whose Statesmanship is as flashy and "superficial as his Novels." Indeed I judge the Fellow by his Books. I read "Coningsby" in the Summer, and find no impression left: his "Lord Hertford" a curious contrast to Thackeray's. And I have been reading Trollope's "Phineas Redux" here; infinitely better than Dizzy in the record of London Society, Clubs, Political Parties, etc., never a caricature as Dizzy is. . . . You speak of cold winds in London; I don't think we have had such here, only wet, wet, wet. When the dry time does come, I think it will last till Midsummer. I wrote a line to old Spedding yesterday, not asking for a Reply; rather deprecating it: but only desiring he would send me, or let me know of anything he publishes anywhere. I see his Name among the Contributors to the "Nineteenth Century"—which seems to me a flabby Title, though the "Athenaeum" tells me that Tennyson so christened it.4 Pollock, and his son and Miladi, figure, I see, among the Contributors. Annie Thackeray, who has lost all the Drawings— which were all I had, save two—of her Father's, wrote me word she had not been well. I shall send off a line or two to Mrs. Kemble; and I am, my dear Donne, whether in Red or Black,5 Ever and ever yours E.FG. 1 Valentia,

Donne's youngest daughter. The date, May 24. bitter."

2 "Something

February 1877 3 The Eastern Question again, which pitted Gladstone, anti-Turkey liberal, against Disraeli, pro-Turkey Conservative Prime Minister. 4 The periodical, first issued in March, was founded and edited by Tennyson's friend, James Knowles. 5 When his eyesight was impaired, EFG often substituted red ink for black.

To Mrs. Cowell 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft [Mid-February, 1877] Dear Elizabeth,

I did not mean to give you any trouble about the little Song1— saying no more (did I?) than I thought it might [interest] Cambridge men. If I had known any Music Seller there, I might perhaps have sent him a Copy; but I had no wish you should take the trouble. So of Oxford. And so much for that. I came here some ten days ago: and have Lusia Kerrich next door, at her Brother's; and Annie half a mile off at her Sister's, over the bridge. Annie caught Cold a week ago: and we have shut her up somewhat ever since. For she caught such a Cold as turned to Pleurisy three years ago at Lowestoft: and when she was a Child had a dangerous inflammation of the same kind. She would take no care of herself if we did not force her. Lusia will go to Florence in a Fortnight, she thinks: I think she might as well stay in England this Summer. But they will all turn Florentines I think: and who can wonder? My only wonder is that People who have ever lived there ever come back. I fancy that both you and Cowell like that Second Series of Lowell. I had to write him an Acknowledgement of the Odes he sent me, and I told him how his Second "Hours," etc. had gone to Professor Cowell, who had been very much pleased with the First. A man named Watson, I think, but I forget from where in America wrote to tell me [he] had printed fifty Copies of the Second Edition of my old Omar for the benefit of himself and his Friends, who found Quaritch's Edition too dear.2 So I sent him the Letter. This will amuse EBC. I am very much entertained with Trollope's "Phineas Redux" where the political as well as other Society is infinitely more natural than in D'Israeli's Novels: as superficial as his Statesmanship, I believe.

February 1877 This Letter, you know, is an answer—so needs none. Only believe me ever yours E.FG. 1 "Ho,

Pretty Page." See letter to Anne Thackeray, Dec. 12, 1876. Colonel James Watson was one of a group in Columbus, Ohio, who first be­ came acquainted with EFG's Rubdiyat through Norton's 1869 critique in the North American Review. They obtained copies of the poem; but, when they ordered more, Quaritch replied that those already received were the last of the 1868 printing. However, he offered copies of the third, 1872, edition at 7s 6d each, the price considered "too dear." Edition 2 had sold for Is 6d. The group thereupon decided to print for themselves and chosen friends. Colonel Watson assumed leadership in the project. His printer—Richard Nevins—produced a near-perfect copy of the original. The format meticulously follows the prototype, except for the omission of the names of publisher and printer from the title page. The type-faces are virtually identical. Bibliographers have conjectured 1870 as the date of printing; but F.F.D. Albery, one of the "pirates," in a letter to the Columbus daily Ohio State Journal of January 21, 1900, states that "the book was published some time between 1870 and 1873." The third edition offered by Quaritch was not published until August, 1872. Albery also states that 100 copies were printed. EFG's letter corrects this to 50. A number of such printings, produced by and for similar groups, have come to light. One, as chance would have it, was the handiwork of the art critic Henry Quilter, brother of Cuthbert, who bought the Scandal in 1871. Henry was ignorant of his poet's identity. 2

To Fanny Kemble 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft February 19/77 Dear Mrs. Kemble,

Donne has sent me the Address on the cover of this Letter. I know you will write directly you hear from me; that is "de rigueur" with you; and, at any rate, you have your Voyage home to England to tell me of: and how you find yourself and all in the Old Country. I suppose you include my Old Ireland in it.1 Donne wrote that you were to be there till this Month's end; that is drawing near; and, if that you do not protract your Visit, you will [be] very soon within sight of dear Donne himself, who, I hear from Mowbray, is very well. Your last Gossip2 was very interesting to me. I see in it (but not in the most interesting part) that you write of a "J· F.," who tells you of a Sister of hers having a fourth Child, etc. I fancy this must be a Jane FitzGerald telling you of her Sister Kerrich, who would have

Febraary 1877 numbered about so many Children about that time—1831. Was it that Jane? I think you and she were rather together just then. After which she married herself to a Mr. Wilkinson—made him very Evan­ gelical—and tiresome—and so they fed their Flock in a Suffolk village. And about fourteen or fifteen years ago he died: and she went off to live in Florence—rather a change from the Suffolk Village—and there, I suppose, she will die when her Time comes. Now you have read Harold, I suppose; and you shall tell me what you think of it. Pollock and Miladi think it has plenty of Action and Life: one of which Qualities I rather missed in it. Mr. Lowell sent me his Three Odes about Liberty, Washington, etc. They seemed to me full of fine Thought, and in a lofty Strain: but wanting Variety both of Mood and Diction for Odes—which are supposed to mean things to be chanted. So I ventured to hint to him— Is he an angry man? But he wouldn't care, knowing of me only through amiable Mr. Norton, who knows me through you. I think he must be a very amiable, modest, man. And I am still yours always E.FG. 1 She had returned from America in January, visited a lifelong friend in Ireland, and arranged for temporary residence in Portman Square. She spent the remainder of her life in England. 2 Atlantic Monthly, Feb., 1877, p. 222.

To E. B. Cowell Lowestoft Feb r 22/77 My dear Sheikh, I am sorry you had the trouble to write about the Text Subscription. I confess I always gave away the Reprints as they came—to Mr. Spalding, and R. Groome: and I incline to withdraw myself from it under its new Regime; rather because of the slight trouble of paying up—for what one does not want—than for the extra 10s. I have bought D. Juan Bowle 1 and shall return Clemencin to Quaritch unless you would like to have him. I did not look far into him: but what I saw was what I wanted not—strictures on Style, etc. Since buying Bowie, I have read a goodish Paper on Don Q. in a number of the Cornhill of some years ago. In this Paper, Bowie is

February 1877 spoken of as, on the whole, the best Editor: Clemencin, it says, loved D.Q. well, but Syntax more. The best Commentator seems Covarruvias—or some such name2—who lived about Cervantes' time, and is profusely quoted by Bowie. The Review speaks of Clark's Translation as not at all good. I think Sir Thomas Browne might have done it! Lusia and Annie are still here, and would, I know, wish their Loves sent if they knew I was writing to you. Annie has not been free from Cough: and Lusia is on the wing for Italy. And I am yours and Eliza­ beth's always E.FG. 1 John Bowie, called Don Bowie by his friends because of his admiration for Cervantes' masterpiece. His Spanish text of Don Quixote (6 vols., 1781), ridiculed by contemporary English critics, was praised by scholars in Spain. 2 Sebastian Covarrubias y Horozco, author of Tesoro de la Lengua castellana, 1611.

C. E. Appleton to Bernard Quaritch The Academy Offices 43 Wellington Street Strand, London W.C. Feb. 23, 1877 Dear Sir, Why haven't you sent us "Agamemnon"; here is Mr. Symonds1 wait­ ing to review it along with Omar Khayyam. By the bye can you tell me who is the publisher of the French Prose Translation of the Rubaiyat mentioned in the preface to your poetical rendering? The author is a certain M: Nicolas. Yours truly, C. E. Appleton B. Quaritch Esq. 1

John Addington Symonds.

February 1877

To Η. Schiitz Wilson 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft February, 1877 My dear Sir,— You were just going among your Mountains when you sent me your Book;1 and I have deferred acknowledging it too long after your re­ turn. It made me some very pleasant Summer Reading in my Garden; and has done the same for others to whom I lent it. I saw you advertized for some Book about those same Mountains some while ago. (N.B. Pray don't take this as a hint for you to send it to me: I should be vext if you did, after thus adverting to it.) I have had very little Acquaintance with them: never knew any one of them above 4,000 feet high, I believe—Skiddaw; and I must say I like them best at a considerable Distance, when they look more or less Cloud­ like, do not shut out Sun, Moon, and Stars, and—are not to be ascended. But I know this indifference to them rises from want of Acquaintance with the best of their kind, and from want of early Acquaintance with any. Norfolk and Suffolk, you may know, do not offer much in this way; but we have the Sea—a very inferior piece of it as compared with that on the west coast, but still—The Sea: which, you know, becomes a Passion to those who grew up by it, as Mountains do to others. But I content myself now with looking at my capricious old Neighbour, whose Temper I used to try by scratching his Back. He is now hidden from me by a Snow-storm—but—there he is. And I am yours sincerely, Edward FitzGerald It seemed odd to me, in some later Travels, people writing about "First Class Mountains, etc." 1 In his published text of the letter (Athenaeum, Nov. 9, 1889, p. 636) Wilson erroneously identified the gift as Alpine Ascents and Adventures, not published until 1878. He probably intended his note to apply to the "advertized" book referred to by EFG in the second paragraph. EFG had acknowledged receipt of the unnamed volume on August 2, 1876.

March 1877

To Alfred Tennyson [March, 1877] My dear Alfred,

I don't know if you have seen, or care to see, the enclosed, which I cut from Notes and Queries. The German looks to me as uncouth as ever it did. I made one more Trial—I suppose the dozenth—to admire Goethe's Faust (in Translation). I could not even read it through. There seems to me no Imagination or Invention in it. But I sincerely suppose I am in the wrong when so many better men are of the opposite Opinion—yourself for one, I believe. I am rather surprized—and not quite sorry (wrong as I may be) to find myself disposed toward that, and most other such things much as I was forty years ago. I heard from the Mistress of Trinity that the Mistress of Farringford was not very well. So I beg she will not think of troubling herself to answer my Letters for you, till she can tell me she is well. As for you, I know you don't love Letter-writing, and you know I don't wish you to bother yourself when there is no particular occasion—as there is not now. I am sure of your old Good Will, and hope you know that I am yours ever E.FG.

To A. P. Moor1 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft March 7/77 My dear Sir,

When I get home to Woodbridge—which will be in about a Fort­ night, I think—I will not forget to look out, and send you, one of Tennyson's Signatures. He never writes a Letter but when obliged to do so: I have lost, or given away, nearly all I ever had from him; but some time ago I made him write me down some half dozen Signatures to supply such Autograph-hunters as asked me; if one such will suffice for you, I will either find up what I had, or find another. "Truro," like most other Cornish Names, sounds always very attrac­ tive to me. For these twenty years I have resolved to go to Penzance in Spring, and look somewhat about the County at a time when Myrtles are thinking of blossoming there, I believe, while scarce a

March 1877 Daffodil dares show its head in East Anglia. But one gets more dis­ inclined to move as one gets old: and I suppose I shall never do what I proposed. This Lowestoft is about as ugly a Place as one can resort to by the Sea: but—it is only an hour and a half Journey from Woodbridge. B. Barton's Letters always seemed to me very pleasant, and I am glad you find them so at the other end of England. One day you will very likely find your way back to Suffolk, as Suffolk men are apt to do, it is said. Meanwhile I am yours truly E. FitzGerald Your Brother is a kind, constant, and very available Friend to me always: and I think your Nephew will worthily succeed him. There is true Blood in all the Moors, I think. 1 Brother

of George P. Moor, EFG's Woodbridge attorney.

To Mrs. Cowell 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft March 11/77 Dear Elizabeth, Annie does not remember the Oriental Lady you speak of: remem­ bers only two young Indian lads at your house in FitzWilliam Street. She begs me to give you—and your Husband—her Love. Lusia went off to Italy on Wednesday, and is, I doubt not, at some Protestant Chapel in Florence while I am writing to you at Lowestoft. If you and EBC have not a copy of Ste Beuve, and have room on your shelves for some Dozen 12m0 Volumes I should like to give them to you: Quaritch having got me a Copy from Paris, which he is now getting half bound. But, if you and E.B.C. don't care for them, don't have them, to take up room of which I dare say you have none to spare. I should give them elsewhere, as I have already done with another Copy: but I should be most pleased if you should like to have them. 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.1 So this will very

March 1877 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 surprized he should have vouchsafed even so much praise as the words you quoted.2 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 dis­ covered at Dijon; and I am writing out for my own use a Dictionary of the Dramatis Personae figuring in her Correspondence, whom I am always forgetting and confounding. And I am yours and Cowell's ever E.FG. The "Page"3 is, of course, for a Man (Tenor) to sing, with such Accompaniment as is noted, if handy. If you want the little Dialogue, I can send you a Copy, at less than a guinea!4 What does that mean? 1 The "Literary Gossip" in the March 10 Athenaeum announced a proposed text and translation of Omar's verses by Mrs. Jessie E. Cadell, who died in 1884 before completing the work. One hundred forty-four of her translated quatrains were published in The Rubayat of Omar Khayam, 1899. Items about Omar continued to pose problems for Athenaeum editors. In 1859 they had commented on EFG's "Rubaitjat." By 1877 they had simplified that spelling to "rubayat" and altered the poet's name to "Omer Khayam." 2 The reviewer in turn bluntly censured and warmly praised features of Aga­ memnon. Though regretting the liberty taken by EFG in paraphrasing rather than translating parts of the play, the writer stated, "but no better versifier has to our knowledge ever put his hand to the work—nor any, we will add, who has succeeded so well in reproducing the stern beauty of Aeschylean drama in those iambic passages in which the original has been most closely followed." The review concludes, "The author has given us a striking and dramatic modern version of a Greek tragedy; we can only regret that he did not give us, as we think he was competent to do, a better translation of the 'Agamemnon' of Aeschylus than has yet been offered to the world" (Pall Mall Gazette, Feb. 22, 1877, pp. 11-12). Charles Merivale, Dean of Ely, wrote to W. H. Thompson, March 8: "I saw some review of a translation or paraphrase of the Agamemnon the other day, and thought it seemed highly commendable; but I did not notice the authorship, or if I did, it did not bring our Edward before my eyes. I never thought he was guilty of verse" (Merivale Autobiography, p. 315). The tragedy was published anonymously. 3 In the Thackeray-EFG song, "Ho, Pretty Page." 4 Evidently Elizabeth had reported seeing a copy of Euphranor priced at a guinea in a used-book catalogue.

March 1877

To Fanny Kemble 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft March 15, [1877] Dear Mrs. Kemble, By this time you are, I suppose, at the Address you gave me, and which will now cover this Letter. You have seen Donne, and many Friends, perhaps—and perhaps you have not yet got to London at all. But you will in time. When you do, you will, I think, have your time more taken up than in America—with so many old Friends about you: so that I wish more and more you would not feel bound to answer my Letters, one by one: but I suppose you will. What I liked so much in your February Atlantic was all about Goethe and Portia1: I think, fine writing, in the plain sense of the word, and partly so because not "fine" in the other Sense. You can indeed spin out a long Sentence of complicated Thought very easily, and very clearly; a rare thing. As to Goethe, I made another Trial at Hayward's Prose Translation this winter, but failed, as before, to get on with it. I suppose there is a Screw loose in me on that point, seeing what all thinking People think of it. I am sure I have honestly tried. As to Portia, I still think she ought not to have proved her "Superi­ ority" by withholding that simple Secret on which her Husband's Peace and his Friend's Life depended. Your final phrase about her "sinking into perfection" is capital. Epigram—without Effort. You wrote me that Portia was your beau-ideal of Womanhood— Query, of Lady-hood. For she had more than £.500 a year, which Becky Sharp thinks enough to be very virtuous on, and had not been tried. Would she have done Jeanie Deans'2 work? She might, I believe: but was not tried. I doubt all this will be rather a Bore to you: coming back to Eng­ land to find all the old topics of Shakespeare, etc., much as you left them. You will hear wonderful things about Browning and Co.— Wagner—and H. Irving. In a late TEMPLE BAR magazine3 Lady Pollock says that her Idol Irving's Reading of Hood's Eugene Aram is such that any one among his Audience who had a guilty secret in his Bosom "must either tell it, or die." These are her words. You see I still linger in this ugly place: having a very dear little Niece a little way off: a complete little "Pocket-Muse" I call her. One of the first Things she remembers is—you, in white Satin, and

March 1877 very handsome, she says, reading Twelfth Night at this very place. And I am Yours ever E.FG. (I am now going to make out a Dictionary-list of the People in my dear Sevigne, for my own use.) 1 Old Woman's Gossip, XIX, Atlantic Monthly, February, 1877, pp. 209-23 and passim. 2 In Scott's Heart of Midlothian. 3 "The Judgment of Paris," Temple Bar, Nov. 1875, pp. 391-400.

To W. A. Wright 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft Sunday, [March 18, 1877] My dear Wright, You told me of Cotgrave as a good Book to have1—I know it is, and don't know why I have never got it. I think (for one reason) you told me you would apprize me of any fair-conditioned and fair-priced Copy. Now, therefore, write on the enclosed Card what is the average Price of the Book, and post it to me. Of course Quaritch has a Copy— for double its worth—and I will not give him more than his due Pound if I can help. I brought here the Lettres Inedites of my blessed Sevigne—very carefully edited now: and have lately got down what is called the Complete Edition of blessed Charles Lamb—so far as his Life and Letters go: edited by my Namesake Percy.2 The Memoir (Talfourd's two Volumes condensed into one) and annotated by P.F. leaves many things unrecorded, even to my Knowledge: and the first glance I took at the Manning Letters showed that the two first Letters were ob­ viously mis-transposed. So much for Hibernian Completeness. The Letters are arranged, not by Date, but in batches to the several Cor­ respondents: I fancy indeed that Sala's Book has been incorporated, and the rest to follow suit. Groome's "Bat's back" Story may be only Lamb's own Version of his being exported drunk from Cary's at the British Museum. I have been here some six weeks and suppose I shall here be till Easter. If you come this way at the time, do not fail to let me know.

March 1877 If not here, I shall be at Woodbridge: but you know I don't advise anyone to go there—unless on their road elsewhere. Groome's Gipsy Son is editing some East Anglian Notes and Queries in our Ipswich Journal,3 I believe: if you can help him, do; "Do you don't"—why, you have enough to do with Jerusalem.4 I hap­ pened on our word "Limb"—puzzling to Forby & Co. in a pleasant Quotation from Tate Wilkinson in some Temple Bar Magazine. A Country Actress is blowing up her Daughter, "I'll tell you what, Ma'am—if you contradict me I'll fell you at my Feet, Ma'am, for you're a Limb, Ma'am, your Father on his Deathbed told me you were a Limb." And again, "What an infernal Limb of an Actress you'll be!"5 Cowell wrote me your Master had been sore-throated. And you see there is nothing for you to answer but about Cotgrave on the Card. Yours E.FG. 1 Randle

Cotgrave, Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, 1611. An edition of Lamb's correspondence initiated by Edward Moxon in 1868. George A. Sala was the first and P. H. Fitzgerald the last of four editors engaged in the work before publication in 1876. 3 Francis Hindes Groome, son of Archdeacon R. H. Groome and author of the biographical sketches of his father and FitzGerald in Two Suffolk Friends, edited East Anglian Notes and Queries from February, 1877, to May, 1878. After leaving Oxford without a degree, he had spent some five years among gipsies in England and on the Continent and became an authority on their life, dialects, and folklore. In Gipsy Tents, published in 1880, he recounts his experiences among the gipsies of East Anglia. Groome abandoned nomadic life in 1876 and settled in Edinburgh, where he engaged in writing for magazines but was chiefly occupied as sub-editor and contributor to encyclopedias and biographical dic­ tionaries, chiefly those of R. and W. Chambers. Swinburne and Theodore WattsDunton, another who knew and wrote of gipsies, were among his friends. 4 Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey, where Wright met with colleagues engaged in revising the King James version of the Old Testament. 5 The many meanings of the word include, by implication at least, wench, strumpet. Tate Wilkinson, an 18th-century actor engaged by Garrick, later oper­ ated a circuit of theaters in Yorkshire. 2

March 1877

To W. B. Donne 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft March 20, 1877 My dear Donne, You see how and why my Answer to your Letter is written and posted a day after "return." I wrote to Mrs. Kemble some days ago, and had her usual prompt anSwef: she had seen you: and was rejoiced to find you better than when she went to America. This is what she writes of you, unsolicited by me, and you know she is sincere: as well as sagacious. I want to hear a word about Annie Thackeray whose last Note to me —of some two months ago—spoke of herself as having been ill. .. . You however need not write about her, as I have asked Hallam Tennyson to let me know whenever he shall write. I am sure you have only to please yourself about calling on the Poet. I will say no more of "Harold" than I said to himself on receiving it—that it does not shake my Loyalty to the "Fairy Prince" of the old Lincolnshire days. Looking into a "Temple Bar Magazine" of three or four years ago, I found a paper by Lady Pollock on some Dramatic theme, in the course of which she says that Irving's Recitation of Hood's "Eugene Aram" is such, that if any one among his audiences cherished a guilty secret in his Bosom he must forthwith either "confess it—or die." You know, I daresay, that Groome's son edits some East Anglian Notes and Queries in the "Ipswich Journal," I believe. If you or Mow­ bray could help him with some of your capital Norfolk you would do Son and Father a good turn. Any scraps—it might amuse you perhaps, and you can be as desultory as you please. I have bought the Biography and Letters of Charles Lamb in P. Fitzgerald's new Edition, which is announced as "complete." Talfourd's two Memoirs are condensed into one; which is very well: but all C. L.'s Letters arranged in Batches to his several correspondents: which may or may not be so well. The two first letters to Manning are transposed, as Date and Text show: so much for Editorial—and Hibernian—accuracy. Then I have two volumes of newly-discovered Letters and Frag­ ments of Letters, by my Blessed Sevigne: no very great addition to what we know of her, but much that is welcome. Whenever you read her, remember always to read "ma Bonne" instead of "ma Fille"

March 1877 which hitherto Editors thought more genteel. I keep thinking I will go to Brittany only to see her Home: but I suppose I shall keep thinking. . . . I am yours as for more than fifty years, my dear Donne. Yours E.FG.

To Valentia Donne 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft March 20/77 My dear Valentia, You will not doubt that I wish you all Happiness in your Marriage. It must be somewhat dimmed by quitting your Father: that must be —let it be the worst! You know one makes little Presents to Friends on such occasions; it is not easy to know what. I suppose you will have enough of the useful, and plenty of Ornamental also, I mean, in the way of House Equipment; so perhaps some little lasting Jewel of Remembrance may be best. Were I in London, I could soon find something to my own Taste: as I am not, nor likely to be, will you find something to your own Taste with the Cheque I enclose to your Father? Mrs. Kemble gladdened me by writing, of her own accord, that she was rejoiced to find him so well—better, she says, than when she last went to America. I believe I once went through Southwell, and had a glimpse of its —Abbey? I fancy it looked well—Town and Country round—not far from Robin Hood Country, is it? I will look for it in the very first Gazetteer I light upon. Send me a 6s Guide to it: I really mean this, if you can get such a thing: I love all such local Guides, and am of course more than doubly interested in this particular. My dear Valentia—whom I knew as a very little Girl indeed— you know you have my best Wishes for your Marriage: and I wish you to believe me yours, as your Father's affectionate old Friend E.FG. N.B. I don't want to tie you down to a Jewel, mind—anything you like.

April 1877

To Ε. Β. Cowell (Fragment) [Lowestoft] [March, 1877] . . . Sunday: Archdeacon Allen wrote to John Newman1 whom he always admired, and had previously corresponded with, asking him to take up his Pen of Logic—and answer some Comte Spinozism (I think) in a Book lately published by LesKe Stephen.2 To whom Allen also wrote on the subject. Allen sends me a Copy of Newman's Reply: which I sent to R. Groome, and now send you, thinking it will interest you and Elizabeth. I must trouble one of you to send it back to me, however. Moreover, I have today received Elizabeth's Suffolk Story, which has greatly pleased me. This also I shall send to R. Groome, who (beside being sure to like it himself) will be glad of it perhaps for the use of his Gipsy Son, who is about some Suffolk or East Anglian Lore (in the Ipswich Journal, I think). But Groome will have to send me back the Story; unless Elizabeth knows where to find him or me another Copy. 1 2

John Henry Newman was still a priest at the time; created cardinal in 1879. History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols., 1876.

To H. Schutz Wilson 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft Sunday [April, 1877] My dear Sir,— The Mountain came to Mahomet—as near as he wishes such a Mountain to come.1 You yourself can't help looking at that Matterhorn without a sort of distrust, though you have been up him. I won­ der how you keep your Body—and Soul—in trim for such perilous Exertion, living so much as you do, I suppose, in London, reading and writing Books, in Easy Chairs, etc. But it is all the more creditable to be able to keep one's Courage, Strength, and Energy for such Adventure when your Holyday does come. And then we in flat Suffolk get the Benefit of it in a Shilling Number of a Magazine—the dear old Gentleman's—and some of us without having to pay even so much for our Pleasures. Thank you for it.

April 1877 I had meant to say thus much To-day—(Sunday a Letter-writing Day somehow). And this day comes your Athenaeum2 Extract about old Omar. You set him afloat a Year ago, and now, I suppose, some of the Critics who praised after you will turn against him when the Lady's Version exposes his Infidelities. But he has had a much longer Life than ever he looked for when he was exposed as a penny Foundling in Quaritch's Castle Street Shop near twenty years ago. The truth is, I just printed it at first—like my other Great Works— for a few friends, and gave the Extra Copies to Q. in his Corner, who had recommended me the Printer. And now those who care must settle the matter to their own liking: and may revenge themselves on King Agamemnon (if any one would give—nine shillings, I believe!3 —for him) for any indiscreet Regard they may [have] been led into for the other. Yours sincerely, E. FitzGerald. 1 Wilson had sent a copy of The Gentleman's Magazine for April, containing "The Matterhorn Without Guides" (pp. 417-32) by Arthur Cust who, with two English companions, had climbed the peak the previous July. 2 The announcement of Mrs. Cadell's proposed translation. 3 Price, 3s 6d.

To W. B. Donne 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft April 9, [1877] My dear Donne, . . . I have been under the doctor's hands for a bad Foot: which would have been well before this had I rested it. But I can't sit in, reading—if I had books to read—all day, with very defective eyes. However I am to be home—at Woodbridge—before the present week ends, I suppose. One day I shall get you to add a Note about Manning in my copy of Lamb.1 I always want to know what became of him; why Lamb's Letters to him ceased. . . . I see dear old Barry Cornwall's Autobiography2 announced, and that of course one will read. Mrs. Kemble's later "Atlantics" are delightful. And I am ever yours, my dear Donne E.FG. Pray don't answer this mere note.

April 1877 1Thomas Manning (1772-1840), Chinese scholar and traveler in Asia with whom Lamb exchanged a sprightly series of letters. His brother William, Rector of Diss, Norfolk, married one of Donne's cousins. Thomas once caused a sensation when, attended by a Chinese servant, he spent a month as a guest of Donne's family at Mattishall (Donne and Friends, p. 68). 2 Bryan Waller Procter: an Autobiographical Fragment, 1877; published with additions by Coventry Patmore.

To Valentia Donne Little Grange: Woodbridge Friday [April 20,1877] My dear Valentia, I only found Southwell on returning home here two days ago. Thank you for it: these local Accounts are always very pleasant to me: I should have liked a little more about the Country round about— with a little Map even! Surely, the Photo of the Minster is good: I fancy I recognize it from the glimpse I once had—or dream I had—in passing through the Town. The organ, I read, is by a German "Smith": I suppose Schmidt—"Father Schmidt" who built the renowned Trio of organs at Trinity, Cambridge—Yarmouth—and the London "Tem­ ple," all of them fine fellows. You will take interest in yours. My dear little Annie Kerrich comes to me today—till Monday only: and then will leave me to visit a poor paralyzed Lady: Annie being (as her Mother said) as loyal as clever. She is a dear little Soul: or rather (as Virgil says of the Bee) a great Spirit in a little Body. An­ other Annie—as tall as the other is short—Anna Biddell—comes to meet her here: and we shall sit abroad if the Sun shine, and look at my red Anemones: and then, on Monday—I shall be left. April draws to a close: and in May—"there shall be done "A Deed of dreadful Note"— shall there not? What a Quotation for a Marriage that promises all so fair, and cannot be fairer than is wished by your ancient Friend E.FG. I suppose I shall never again write the Address on this Letter.1 1 That is, on letters to Valentia. After her marriage in May her address would be Southwell, Nottinghamshire.

April 1877

To W. B. Donne Woodbridge April 24, [1877] My dear Donne, The Narrative of Manning's Journey reached me this morning: and, as your last Letter said that you would ask the Revd C. Manning for it, I have already written to thank him, as I thank you, for asking him for a copy.1 I have just come home from taking my dear little Annie Kerrich to Dovercourt, where she is gone to visit an aged and very infirm Friend. I don't know when I shall see her again. Annie Biddell came to stay with her here—Great A, and little a, as I call them. Old Mrs. Howe says indeed that—Great A would cut down into two of the little. We were merry enough together—sorry to part, I think. I am expecting Edmund K. and his wife and blessed Babe before long; and my two eldest Nieces propose to be with me all June and July. After that I shall empty house, I think, unless you will come— and perhaps even Mrs. Kemble! We really shine in Nightingales just now: and today is a true April day: Annie and I were observing the true Constable cloud, hang­ ing over the Dedham Vale as we travelled by this Forenoon. Now I am going to sit out on the Bench in my Garden and very possibly fall asleep after my journey, though no very long nor laborious one. I am just now puzzled what Book to take up by way of "Piece de Resistance"—perhaps the "Odyssey." It is sad to think that Valentia leaves you: but your life has been one continual sacrifice of yourself to others. I mean what I say, my dear Donne, and also believe that I am right in my meaning: and have that reason, as well as so many others, to continue your Affectionate Friend E.FG. 1 Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa, Charles L. Markham, ed., 1876, sent to EFG by Charles Manning, Thomas's nephew. Manning, the first Englishman to visit Lhasa, reached the city in December, 1811, and remained for five weeks.

April 1877

From W. A. Wright 29 April 1877 My dear FitzGerald,

Your present of Mr. FitzEdward Hall's book on -able and Reliable was very welcome to me.1 I did not require to be convinced of the propriety of the word "reliable" but nothing will ever make me like it. So long as we have "available" I do not see that any one ought to object to the other. Hare has some remarks upon adjectives in -ble in a paper which he printed but never published on Words corrupted by false analogy or false derivation. He says that Coleridge coined the word "reliability" in his eulogium on Southey. Now that I am working at the Midsummer Night's Dream I want you to verify my recollection with regard to the use of the word "woodbine." My strong impression is that I have heard the bindweed or common convolvulus called "Woodbine" in the country, although "woodbine" is properly the honeysuckle, and so in two passages Shake­ speare uses it. But in a third, M. N.'s Dr.IV.i, woodbine and honey­ suckle are used together and must be distinct though I am aware that by a very forced construction they may be made identical. So doth the Woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist Which some punctuate So doth the woodbine—the sweet honeysuckle— Gently entwist, the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.2 Making the object of "entwist" and "enrings" the same. But this does not commend itself to my intelligence and I prefer to regard "Wood­ bine" in this passage at least as the convolvulus which to my recollec­ tion is known by that name in Suffolk. So Cowell says and so says a Shropshire man I was talking with today: that is, he tells me he has heard convolvulus called woodbine in Shropshire. I want an example of "steppe" as early as Shakespeare. "Horde" which comes from the same source was well known in his time. Yours ever W. Aldis Wright 1 2

On English Adjectives in able, with Special Reference to Reliable Midsummer Night's Dream , IV.i.39-41.

(1877).

May 1877

To FitzEdward Hall Little Grange, Woodbridge May I/77 My dear Sir, I thought best to send the Book you were so good to send me to Wright at once: I can get another Copy through Loder here, which will be your Present as much as that which Wright retains. Charles Lamb in some early Letter to Coleridge tells him that the word "enviable" used by C. was enough to damn any Poem. To my thinking it is, like reliable, a very handy, pretty, word, wheresoever it came: "reliable" smoother and more glib than "trustworthy"—which good in its way too. I can't think "available" is a substitute. Perhaps you can tell Wright about his Woodbine. Yours truly E. FitzGerald P.S. Pray excuse the offhand way in which I have endorsed Wright's Letter.1 I have so often done so to my few Correspondents—all old Friends—that I forgot I was now addressing one whom I know not even face to face. So I make the "amende honorable" in a white Sheet, taken express for the occasion. E.FG. I sent your Book so soon to Wright because he is a much better Judge of Philology than I am—who only play with the ornamental, or amusing, part of it. And I thought also that he might advance it in Cambridge. Do not think me ungrateful for a Present which implies that you consider me a better Scholar than I am. 1 He had written the previous portion as an addendum to Wright's acknowledg­ ment of Hall's book.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge May 3, [1877] My dear Wright, Three Woodbridge Savants—Myself for one—know Woodbine for the wild Convolvulus: not for the commonest, however, which enrings

May 1877 blades of Grass and wheat, but could not rise to the Honeysuckle: not that, but a large white sort, which is not uncommon in hedge-rows, which it does climb up, and looks over the top. I have it on my hedge here: and there used to be plenty in Geldeston, down by the marsh, I remember. So we Woodbridge Savants. As I was writing to Mr. Hall when your Letter came, I took the liberty to send it to him: and I enclose you his Reply. One of the Savants I spoke to here told me that in the Rendlesham Parish Books is a Notice of that Living having been bestowed on some one by a Sir John FastoIf—or FaIstaff (he says it is written either way in the Document)—about temp. Henry IV. My Savant discovered and wrote about this in some Newspaper some ten years ago:1 he will now make some abstract for you, and you can look further into it if you choose. We know of a Colvil also; and of a Framlingham Bardolph: as also of a Duke of Norfolk there residing, to whom Sir John was Page. My Savant is a very ingenious, but (I fancy) not very accurate man: one Stidolph, a maker of organs here (Stidolph being supposed to be St. Edulph (?) I am told) and you know I have but a Paddy talent for Facts of all kinds. I will, however, send on St. Edulph's paper directly I have it: and am yours always E.FG. Mr. Spalding, Hadleigh, Suffolk, would be your best Convolvulusite. 1 John Stidolph called attention to the names of characters in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2, in the March, 1865, issue of East Anglian Notes and Queries (II, 167-68).

To Fanny Kemble Little Grange, Woodbridge May 5/77 Dear Mrs. Kemble, I am disappointed at not finding any Gossip in the last Atlantic;1 the Editor told us at the end of last Year that it was to be carried on through this: perhaps you are not bound down to every month: but I hope the links are not to discontinue for long. I did not mean in my last letter to allude again to myself and Co. in recommending some omissions when you republish.2 That—viz.,

May 1877 about myself—I was satisfied you would cut out, as we had agreed before. (N.B. No occasion to omit your kindly Notices about my Family—nor my own Name among them, if you like: only not all about myself.) What I meant in my last Letter was, some of your earlier Letters—or parts of Letters—to H.3—as some from Canterbury, I think—I fancy some part of your early Life might be condensed. But I will tell you, if you will allow me, when the time comes: and then you can but keep to your own plan, which you have good reason to think better than mine—though I am very strong in Scissors and Paste: my "Harp and Lute." Crabbe is under them now—as usual, once a Year. If one lived in London, or in any busy place, all this would not be perhaps: but it hurts nobody—unless you, who do hear too much about it. Last night I made my Reader begin Dickens' wonderful "Great Expectations": not considered one of his best, you know, but full of wonderful things, and even with a Plot which, I think, only needed less intricacy to be admirable. I had only just read the Book myself: but I wanted to see what my Reader would make of it: and he was so interested that he re-interested me too. Here is another piece of Woodbridge Life. Now, if when London is hot you should like to run down to this Woodbridge, here will be my house at your Service after July. It may be so all this month: but a Nephew, Wife, and Babe did talk of a Fortnight's Visit: but have not talked of it since I returned a fortnight ago. June and July my Invalid Niece and her Sister occupy the House —not longer. Donne, and all who know me, know that I do not like anyone to come out of their way to visit me: but, if they be coming this way, I am very glad to do my best for them. And if any of them likes to occupy my house at any time, here it is at their Service—at yours, for as long as you will, except the times I have mentioned. I give up the house entirely except my one room, which serves for Parlour and Bed: and which I really prefer, as it reminds me of the Cabin of my dear little Ship—mine no more. Here is a long Story about very little. Woodbridge again. A Letter from Mowbray Donne told me that you had removed to some house in—Connaught Place?—but he did not name the number. Valentia's wedding comes on: perhaps you will be of the Party. I think it would be one more of Sorrow than of Gladness to me: but perhaps that may be the case with most Bridals. It is very cold here: ice of nights: but my Tulips and Anemones hold up still: and Nightingales sing. Somehow, I don't care for those

May 1877 latter at Night. They ought to be in Bed like the rest of us. This seems talking for the sake of being singular: but I have always felt it, sin­ gular or not. And I am yours always E.FG. 1 Her melange of letters and entries drawn from her voluminous diary ends in the April issue of the magazine. Although, before returning to England, she had resolved to discontinue the work, it concludes without warning or explana­ tion with a diary fragment for May 5, 1832. 2 Doubtless his April letter, which is missing; but see letter of Dec. 29, 1875. 3 Harriet St. Leger, one of Fanny's principal correspondents.

To E. B. Cowell Little Grange: Woodbrige Thursday [May 17, 1877] My dear Cowell, Along with this I post you a little Paper concerning Welsh, which I dare say won't instruct you much, but may amuse you a little. I do not want it back; nor the enclosed Letter, which I received a week ago. I think I do not often record my own Glories to you: being rather ashamed of them: and, in this case, I am not much swollen by the contents of the enclosed, because, tho' the writer is a Man of Power, he is probably not much of a Greek Scholar. However, it was for those who are not Greek Scholars that I made my Aeschylus: and, as I have prefaced myself with avowal of the extreme License of my Version I should not, I think, be accused of misleading unwary Readers from an original of which they have so many more literal—many quite literal—Versions to check me by. Enough of that: I really send you Mr. Lowell's Letter—not for that (I did not send him the Play)—but because you may like to see that much of the man whose Essays you and I like so well. The Criticism of mine which he speaks of was on a passage in the Odes he sent me; about Washington moving thro' Life as with a Minuet regularity: which I told him recalled too much the "Grandison-Cromwell." An English writer, of equal power, would scarce have slipt into such a Metaphor; but there it is, that even the better Americans show the want of being grounded on the best ancient Models, I believe. Pray get hold of Stigand's Life of H. Heine,1 and look it over (for you won't have Time or Inclination for more, I think) till you come

May 1877 to the end, where, on his sick bed—on his Death bed—he catches hold of his old Jewish Bible for a Support which his Heathen Gods (includ­ ing Hegel and St. Simon) could not give him. He has lately bidden Farewell to them all at the Feet of Milo's Venus at the Louvre to which he crawled on his last living Exit from home, and wept at her Feet in a way to melt Stone: and she looked compassionately down on him, he says, but could not help him—for she had no arms. That, you see, is a piece of his witty and fanciful humour. But read this. The Bell of the little St. John's Church near me is just beginning to toll for my poor old Boatman West2 (not Newson) whom I found ill soon after my return from Lowestoft. I shall scarce have heart to prowl about our River again, after fourteen years of his Company: and I wanted no other. Annie Kerrich spent three days here, along with Anna Biddell: and we all liked it. I had a melancholy letter from Arthur who tells of some Aunt's Death which affects his Family. You know I don't want any Answer to this Letter: but give my Love to Elizabeth, and believe me ever yours E.FG. What Lowell says of Calderon is mainly your Due, you know. Burn Lowell, and say nothing of him. 1 William Stigand, The Life, Work, and Opinions of Heinrich Heine, 2 vols., 1875. 2 Ted West, who sailed the Waveney on the Deben.

To W. H. Thompson Woodbridge May [17], 77 My dear Master, I think an Answer from you generally calls forth a Rejoinder from me. This present Rejoinder is by way of Apology to Mrs. Thompson —who, I fear, had the trouble of writing out Carlyle's Letter for me. I should not have asked for it had I guessed at what cost—perhaps it is not in her MS after all: but, if it be, pray make her my Apology, and give her my thanks; and so, I suppose, there's an end of the matter. Only, that I have already pasted the Copy into my Book: at the end; the last of all the other Letters; the last I shall ever have, I suppose: that is the reason why I wanted it of you.

May 1877 If you do not read the German; I mean, do not choose to do so— pray read Stigand's Translation of Heine's last return—to the old Bible —on his long Bed of Sorrow and Pain—after bidding Adieu to his Heathen Gods (Hegel and St. Simon among them) at the foot of Milo's Venus in the Louvre, the last time he ever got abroad. "At her feet I lay a long time, and wept so passionately that a Stone must have had Compassion on me. Therefore, the Goddess looked down com­ passionately upon me, but, at the same time, inconsolably; for—she had no Arms." This is only one bit about a Conversion, which I sup­ pose was not worth much, but all of which is deeply moving, and speaks out through Translation in a way that only Genius can. Perhaps it is all stale to you. And Tuum1 (not dead at all, r.p.s.) has been for three months con­ verted from his Goddess of Beer—in his own Time—at his own Voli­ tion—for no one else's Advice had any effect but that of rather obdurating him in his bad habit. The Great Man—as he is—must go his own way: and if good Friends begin to encourage, etc., he may very likely relapse—not relapse, but determinately retrace his steps to Evil. I generally buy one Biography every year—by way of Sacrifice to our worthy Bookseller here. Last year, Macaulay; this Year, Miss Martineau, whom I have only peeped at as yet. I do not read the News­ papers, whose See-saw about Russia and Turkey really worried me; so I try and shirk all thought of The Plague by help of Dickens, Cer­ vantes, and (of course!) Crabbe: and thus, as the latter says— Thus, with the aid which (ships and sailing) give Life passes on; 'tis Labour—but we live.2 Now, Master, you need not read the two leaves which I herewith enclose—cut away from that Carlyle Book, and not wanted again. Give them to A. Wright, if you don't care to decypher; and believe me Yours always E.FG. I now bethink me you misunderstand: it is not Tuum who is dead, but my River Boatman here. And the Bell is now tolling for his Funeral. 1

From Meum and Tuum, Posh Fletcher. EFG variation of the opening lines of "Amusements," in Crabbe's The Borough: 2 An

Thus, with the aid which shops and sailing give, Life passes on; 'tis labour, but we live.

May 1877

To W. B. Donne Woodbridge May 18, [1877] My dear Donne, Pray don't think twice about Agamemnon: I will send you another Copy: for I think you are the only Greek who tolerates it. To the Greeks it is, probably, Foolishness: but it has certainly pleased those whom it was meant for—Mn-Grecians—and they must not complain if I give them an inaccurate view of the original, having warned them such is the case. As to Tennyson, he probably forgot all about it. And there is enough said of that matter. When I asked you to come here after the marriage, I of course included Blanche also. But you have Company: I hope it won't wear you out. My Nieces come here on June 5, and we shall, I suppose, begin setting the house in order for them a few days before. Yesterday was buried my good old Boatman West, without whom I shall scarce take heart to ply on the river again. I say I shall feel something like Peter Grimes,1 though not burdened with his Remorse. I have been much interested in Stigand's Life of H. Heine; especially with H's last resort to his old Bible, when his Heathen Gods (including Hegel and St. Simon) failed him at the last. He solemnly, and pas­ sionately, bids them all adieu at the feet of Milo's Venus in the Louvre to which he crawled on the very last day he ever left his own door alive. In spite of this—"Hymen! Hymenae Oh!" etc. Da Capo, and believe me with Love to the Lovers as well as to all your house, your loyal Ancient E.FG. I think Mrs. K. does not care to intrude her Blacks (to which she is consecrated, she says)2 among the Marriage Festivities. I shall write to her before she leaves for Switzerland. P.S. Pray don't think necessary to acknowledge this Agamemnon which I send you by this Post, unless it doesn't reach you. "Do you don't get it." It doesn't do one half as well in Quaritch's pretentious Edition as it did in my own. I send it just as he sent it me. 1A

character in Crabbe's Borough. Fanny had clearly abandoned her practice of wearing gowns of a variety of colors in strict rotation. 2

May 1877

To C. Ε. Norton Woodbridge May 19/77 My dear Sir, You are a Lover of Italy; which has put into my head to send you some fragments of Letters sent to me thence thirty years ago. You will find a Notice of the Writer at the end of his Letters. I think you will find them sufficiently interesting to repay the trouble of decyphering my MS. If you think that your Public would be interested also, you are very welcome to tear the pages out of the Book, and send them to be printed (or such parts as you think proper) in any of your Magazines. If not, you will send me back my Book as it is: and you have only to please yourself either way. I may be prejudiced (as I have been told I am) in supposing that these old rags of Letters, clever as they are, could interest the Public now. You see I do not prefix my wild Irishman's Name, for fear of any mischance: but I may say to you that his name was Savile Morton: and he died by the hand of a Friend whose wife he had seduced, or intrigued with, as was his quite conscientious habit.1 He really felt hurt at my undue harshness in remonstrating with him on any such score. I had a batch of yet finer—much finer—Letters from Frederick Tennyson, who was in Italy with this wild Irishman. But these I am vext to have lost in some change of Abode, I believe. The Carlyle Letters—or Fragments—at the other end of the Book, you may like to see also: but of course they are not for print, but only for your Eyes; or Mr. Lowell's, or any of those Good Spirits which do seem to me to make a little Elysium of your Cambridge. Years ago I offered Carlyle to return him all his Letters, knowing what danger they run of falling into unscrupulous hands. (Miss Thackeray has just lost a whole Volume of her Father's Letters and Drawings addressed to me.) Carlyle however replied that the Letters were of no moment; and I am sure he would quite as lief that you should read them as I. I wrote to his Niece a Fortnight ago just to enquire of his health: she has not yet answered: but, as our Athenaeum lately reported that he was about to sit for his Portrait to Millais, I presume he [is] in pretty good health. I have been much interested in Stigand's Life of H. Heine: a Man of Genius indeed, but whether enough to make amends for the use he put it to I am not sure. The account of his conversion to the Bible on

May 1877 his long sick bed is very touching: after bidding Adieu to his Heathen Gods at the foot of Milo's Venus in the Louvre, the last time he ever got out of his house. Pray thank Mr. Lowell (for whom Heine's Life would be a good subject?) for his very kind Letter to me. It will encourage me to write to him again one day when I think I may do so without unduly encroaching on a Man who has so much good work to do. I hope his Cervantes and CaIderon will "simmer" over in time. And pray believe me yours sincerely E.FG. 1 See

Biographical Profile of Savile Morton.

To Alfred Tennyson Woodbridge May 20, [1877] The enclosed scrap from Notes and Queries reminded me (as prob­ ably the writer had been reminded) of your Old Farmer, Sir, the only part of which that goes against me is the "canter and canter away" of the last line. I can scarce tell you (as usual with me) why I don't like Doctor Fell; but you know I must be right. By the by, my old Crabbe's Widow Goe in the Parish Register (Burials) says Bless me! I die—and not a warning giv'n— With much to do on Earth, and all for Heaven; No preparation for my Soul's affairs No leave petition'd for the Barn's repairs, etc. not very good; and (N.B. I don't mean it suggested anything in Shakespeare's Northern Farmer1—for that may pair off with Shallow. By the by (again) I long, long, ago knew some Story of some crazy fellow who used to run after Farmers as they cantered home from Market, chaunting first a Dactyl: like "Propperty, Propperty," etc. (for so I spell, for Dactyl sake) and, when the farmer's horse changed his foot—he changed to "Potatoes, Potatoes," etc. Don't let all this twaddle bore you, Sir, it won't bite you and you know you have no answer to write. I don't know if I should be sending to you but for this second wet long day.

May 1877 By the by (once more) one of you should have written me one line about Annie Thackeray. At last I have heard from another Quarter that she has been ill, as I guessed: but that is all I know. I don't know if you are back to your Isle: but I remain your faithful, humble Servant E.FG. 1 Tennyson's Northern Farmer, "New Style," described by EFG as "the old Brute invested by you with the solemn humour of Humanity—like Shakespeare's Shallow" (Letter to Tennyson, Jan., 1870).

To John Stidolpli Little Grange Sunday, [May 20, 1877] Dear Sir, I have today found Eyes to read the MS Notes you have been so good as to send me:1 interesting, even if they do not identify any of our Falstaff with Shakespeare's. I shall send your Paper to Aldis Wright, who is a far better Judge than I of such matters, and will perhaps be hereabout in the Summer to question you himself. Yours truly E.FG. Someone must come, if you please, to silence that upper Note in my organ—now worse than before tuning—in fact, impracticable. 1 See

letter to Wright, May 3.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [May, 1877] My dear Wright, I am going to send you—to read at your leisure, and then return to me—Lamb's Manning's Narrative of his Thibet Journey: in which you will find some traces of the Humour that C.L. loved him for. Yours always E.FG.

May 1877

To W. F. Pollock Little Grange, Woodbridge May 24/77 My dear Pollock,

Herewith I post you a pleasant Judge's Charge:1 which you shall return me, however. So, as I make my sending it an opportunity for writing to you (also, such a good pen, and fluent red Ink), you may write me a few words of Reply when you return the same. You have almost the best of it in London this black weather: for your Squares are as freshly green as ours down here; and you have Wagners, and Pattis,2 instead of our Nightingales and Blackbirds. I had guessed that Annie Thackeray was ill: Hallam Tennyson tells me she was so—very ill—but now well again. Of course you saw the Poet when he was in London: Hallam tells me he much enjoyed his Visit there, among all the Poets, Wits, and Philosophers. I have even bought Miss Martineau; and am reading her as slowly as I can, to eke her out. For I can't help admiring, and being greatly interested in her, tho' I suppose she got conceited. Her Judgments on People seem to me mainly just. I see she has a hard word for my friend Mrs. Kemble; but not going further than her manners: which, I think, were once liable to the imputation of "Stageyness" that Miss M. speaks of: nevertheless, it was merely manner, which it is strange if Theatrical folks are free from: for a more honest, truthful, and generous, and loyal, and constant Woman I never knew. She never forgets her own, or even her Brother's, old Friends; I was little more than the latter to her, but I am sure she has a sincere regard for me, or she would not say so. I am, I must say, sorry for VaIentia Donne's marriage, on the whole: what will my dear old Donne do without her! But I don't the less wish her all Happiness. I heard that Carlyle was fairly well; Spedding, I suppose, is immu­ table: long may he so continue! I have been reading once, and then hearing read, the wonderful Dickens's Great Expectations; not one of his best, I suppose, but with some of his best in it. At any rate, it helps to shut out the Plague of Eastern Affairs: which I neither read nor wish to hear of since I can't help it. Ever yours E.FG. 1 The

two men made a practice of exchanging clippings that amused them.

May 1877 2 Adelina Patti, operatic and concert soprano, considered the most popular and, except for Jenny Lind, the greatest singer of the century.

To Alfred Tennyson Woodbridge May 28/77 My dear Alfred, Here is the Photo from Pickersgill's Crabbe Portrait. You observed on my Copy of the Picture that, in it, you recognized the Writer; whereas in Murray's Frontispiece (by Phillips) you only see the old Man in his Company mood, which always surprized People, expecting the "sternest Painter," etc. One might think that Leslie Stephen really judged of Crabbe's Character from the common Portrait: likening him to the Vicar in the Borough: Nor one so old has left this World of Sin More like the Being that he enter'd in Never was Critic more mistaken; as one might have supposed the very Nature of Crabbe's writings should have told him. I should hardly be writing to any of you so soon again, but that I am being reminded of your old Breton and Arthurian Days in a pleasant Book now being read to me—A Year in Western France by a Miss Edwards.1 She quotes from Ferguson who concludes that all those upright Stones, Dolmens, Menhirs, etc., are Burial Memorials, com­ mon to other Times and Countries: and a Breath as from the old Village Church of one's own Early days seemed to blow upon me when I heard from Genesis: "Rachel died, and was buried in die way from Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. And Jacob set a Pillar over her Grave; that is the Pillar of Rachel's Grave to this Day." Miss Edwards says that the Breton Youth still chaunt, on going to the Wars, "C'est l'armee d'Arthur, je Ie sais; Arthur marche au devant; si nous mourrons comme doivent mourir des Chretiens, des Bretons, [jamais] nous ne mourrons trop tot."2 This French, however, must be translated from the original Breton; and may be all humbug: quoted probably from Emile Souvestre's3 Brittany: and you know how these Frenchmen lie. As I am a Paddy, however, I believe in all such things; and am still your old and "Weary Pund o'Tow" E.FG.

May 1877 No answer needed: no doubt the Photo will reach you safe: and you will look at it—once. 1 Matilda Betham Edwards, Suffolk novelist, who quotes from James Fergusson's Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries, 1872. 2A Year in Western France (1877), p. 244. 3Emile Souvestre (1806-54), French novelist.

To Mrs. Cowell Woodbridge May 29/77 Dear Elizabeth, Here is a Photo from Pickersgill's Portrait of your favorite Crabbe: your husband's also. It represents the Writer—the Thinker—of those Poems, likable or not—whereas the common Portrait (by Phillips) only represents the amiable old man in company: whose over-polite manners amazed those who expected quite other in Peter Grimes and Co. I have had some copies taken by the Arundel Society from the original Picture now belonging to George Crabbe; and [send] you two Copies: one on card,* and the other to be pasted by way of Fron­ tispiece to the Book. One of these two you can give, if you like, to Aldis Wright who is worthy of it! Blush! I am having read to me a very pleasant Book—"A Year in Western France" by Miss B. Edwards—of our Country—talking indeed of "my native Orwell." You, I am sure, know all about her—more perhaps than you like. This Book of hers, however, seems to me very sensible, dispassionate, and just, no feeling: and descriptive without being too "graphic." The account of those memorial Stones—Dolmens, etc., is extremely interesting. O, I wish I had Pluck enough to go! Why won't you and EBC? Does he not want to save the remnant of Breton before it dies out? Quimper must be delightful. And then—Madame de Sevigne! Pollock wrote me an account of Valentia Donne's Wedding: all very prosperous; the Divines (except Blakesley) evidentially affected to High Church. Annie Thackeray is engaged to a young Cousin who has been at her feet for two years;1 which accounts for her losing all her Father's Drawings which I had entrusted her with. Now, Madame Elizabeth, there is no necessity for you to acknowl­ edge this Letter or the Photos; they will reach you, I know—and you

June 1877 will be grateful for the Portrait of one Hero. But let me hear one day whither you go for your Holiday: and believe me, then, now, and as for so many years ago, Your affectionate E.FG. 9

P.S. Will you supply Card? with a little gum. The Photos will look twice as well on the white ground. 1

Richmond T. W. Ritchie, seventeen years younger than Anne.

To the Reverend William Tate Little Grange; Woodbridge June 7/77 Dear Sir, I hear from Miss Lynn of Wickham Market that old Mrs. Andrews of your Parish thinks herself in danger of going to the Union House. As she was a good deal at one time busied in my old Friend Crabbe's household, I do not like to neglect enquiring from you who, she says, have been very kind to her; and I know that my friends the Miss Crabbes have never lost their Interest in her. Still, the old woman may be in want, and if so, I should be glad to help her. On the other hand, she may be under some imaginary terror, such as (without our wonder) is likely to agitate the poor in old Age. I will ask you to be so good as to let me know how this is; and wish you to believe me, yours and Mrs. Tate's, Sincerely E. FitzGerald I am sorry to say that the younger Miss Crabbe—Mary—is very unwell just now.

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge] [June, 1877] My dear Mrs. Kemble, I only write now on the express condition (which I understand you to accept) that you will not reply till you are in Switzerland. I mean,

June 1877 of course, within any reasonable time. Your last Letter is not a happy one": but the record of your first Memoir cannot fail to interest and touch me. I surmise—for you do not say so—that you are alone in London now: then, you must get away as soon as you can; and I shall be very glad to hear from yourself that you are in some green Swiss Valley, with a blue Lake before you, and snowy mountain above. I must tell you that, my Nieces being here—good, pious, and tender, they are too—(but one of them an Invalid, and the other devoted to attend her) they make but little change in my own way of Life. They live by themselves, and I only see them now and then in the Garden— sometimes not five minutes in the Day. But then I am so long used to Solitude. And there is an end of that Chapter. I have your Gossip bound up: the binder backed it with Black, which.I don't like (it was his doing, not mine), but you say that your own only Suit is Sables now. I am going to lend it to a very admirable Lady who is going to our ugly Sea-side, with a sick Brother: only I have pasted over one column—which, I leave you to guess at.1 I think I never told you—what is the fact, however—that I had wished to dedicate Agamemnon to you, but thought I could not do so without my own name appended. Whereas, I could, very simply, as I saw afterwards when too late. If ever he is reprinted I shall (unless you forbid) do as I desired to do: for, if for no other reason, he would probably never have been published but for you. Perhaps he had better [have] remained in private Life so far as England is concerned. And so much for that grand Chapter. I think it is an ill-omened Year: beside War (which I won't read about) so much Illness and Death—hereabout, at any rate. A Nephew of mine—a capital fellow—was pitched upon his head from a Gig a week ago, and we know not yet how far that head of his may recover itself. But, beside one's own immediate Friends, I hear of Sickness and Death from further Quarters; and our Church Bell has been ever­ lastingly importunate with its "Toll-toll." But Farewell for the present: pray do as I ask you about writing: and believe me ever yours, E.FG. ° You were thinking of something else when you misdirected your letter, which sent it a round before reaching Woodbridge. 1

Atlantic Monthly, Dec., 1875, pp. 725-26.

June 1877

To FitzEdward Hall Woodbridge June 14/77 My dear Sir, Thank you for the "Nation," which I return you, as you desire: sooner than I should do were it not that someone (I know not who) had sent it to me before. So I have had ample time to digest myself. Perhaps I ought not to acknowledge that I think the Review just, seeing that its praise so much overweighs its blame; but I do think so, nevertheless;1 and am yet not intoxicated (at my all but seventy years of Age) with the credit given me for so far succeeding in reproducing other men's Thoughts; which is all I have tried to do. I know that many others would have done as well—and any Poet better—had they as much Leisure, and Inclination, for such work as I have had. I have also seen the Atlantic, which I have taken in for two years on account of my friend Mrs. Kemble's "Gossip" which I am sorry to find is discontinued since she has returned to England. I believe it is from no personal prejudice that I think American Reviews of English Books are apt to be juster than English of English. The Critics are removed from the Authors they criticize: from the Clubs and Coteries and Editors, who are for them or against; and so can judge independently: which is scarce possible otherwise. So I maintain that we Country folks are—ceteris paribus—better Judges than the Londoners, for the same reason; and I see that Wilson (Christopher North) said the same of Scotch Critics to N. P. Willis. "The opinion of one quiet intelligent Country Parson was worth them all," he said. My Versions, such as they are, were originally all privately printed to give to Friends: and these two have found their way into Public; I mean Omar K. and King Agamemnon, the latter of whom remains to be slain anew, or trodden over, by our Athenaeums and Academies, I dare say. I have never sent a Copy to any but such Friends as I have spoken of, and to two or three American Gentlemen who took an interest in the Books. The Price they are published at—not my doing —pre-supposes only a small Sale and seems to me ridiculously high. All which only means, "Will you have one?" I venture this as you have been polite enough to send me its Praises from among my patrons in America. Yours truly E. FitzGerald

June 1877 P.S. I re-post the Paper in the cover it came in, so as to make sure of its finding you as clean as it left. 1 In a review of EFG's Agamemnon, Thomas W. Higginson stated: "The grander soliloquies and descriptions in the Agamemnon have never been so well rendered; we may almost say that they have never been rendered at all. . . . But, after this, it must be said that it is the stirring and dramatic passages in which Mr. FitzGerald is strongest, and that in the more delicate and tender descriptions his touch is not always gentle enough to satisfy" (The Nation, May 24, 1877, p. 311). In June the Atlantic Monthly published "Mr. Edward FitzGerald's Translations" by Thomas Sargent Perry, an eight-page critique of EFG's works, those privately printed as well as published. Perry had also reviewed Agamemnon favorably in the January North American Review.

To Herman Biddell Woodbridge June 14/77 My dear Biddell,

Martineau's third Volume is scarce worth reading, being chiefly made up by a rather gushing female Editor. If she be to be trusted, however, she refutes your surmise about Martineau's blustering about her Atheism, so far as can be proved by a quiet perseverance in it for near twenty years after her Autobiography ends; quite up to the hour of her Death. This, I think, is the chief upshot of Vol. Ill—which I only just looked over. But you will find it here any day you like to call, or send: ready addressed, in case I should not be at home. Your Sister Anna talks of taking Harriet1 to Buxton: I suggest that so doing may be as dangerous as the Sailors think it is to have a Parson on board. They have been known to throw such an one over­ board in a storm. I hope (for Anna's sake) no such occasion will arise on the Rail: but, if it should—let her pitch Harriet over, Portmanteau and all. Edwards called here on his way to Dunwich a fortnight ago: he seemed to me almost himself again: and his Wife writes me that he has become still better since his return to London. So I hope to see him well once more. He is a brave, good fellow. You should read (again, if you once read it) Sir C. Napier's Life, by his Brother, Sir W. There are wonderful things in it; the man indeed a wonderful man.

June 1877 And I am now once more reading Sir Walter's Heart of Midlothian, as wonderful in another way. And also am yours truly E.FG. 1 The

Martineau autobiography.

To William Tate Little Grange: Woodbridge June 15/77 Dear Doctor Tate, I ought to have written before about Mrs. Andrews. If you will be so good as to give her I8 from me for this coming Saturday, I will (unless I catch my Brother in the meanwhile) enclose you a P.O. order for 30s—which (as I compute) will carry on the same payment to the end of this Year. If I be wrong—being but an Irish Accountant—you will please to let me know. The poor old Lady could, of course, have the money in a lump— monthly, quarterly, or altogether—as you found most convenient and proper. Yours sincerely E. FitzGerald

To FitzEdward Hall Woodbridge June 17/77 My dear Sir, I have put King Agamemnon in posting order, but remember now that he must await till tomorrow before he can be—pre-paid (a word which Fonblanque proved to be barbarous in Dr. Whewell's Life!) After I last wrote, I looked again into the "Nation," and am afraid lest I should seem to have accepted the full amount of their praise too self complacently. I only meant that I thought they had been just in their distribution of Praise and Blame. I scarce ever see any Critical paper but the old Athenaeum, which

June 1877 has been an Institution with me these forty years and more. When I had an opportunity of seeing some Numbers of the Quarterly it seemed to me much fallen off—certainly from the Scott and Southey Days that I remember: and I fancy the Edinburgh falls very far short of Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, etc. There was a Notice in the Athenaeum some months ago that some Lady was about a literal Translation of Omar K. with the advice and assistance of some very great Oriental Scholar, whose name I forget, as also hers.1 They were, between them, to sift the true wheat from the Chaff; of Interpolators (of whom no doubt there are plenty in the larger Collections) as also from audacious so-called, Translators. I mention this, in case it may affect your own contemplated Version. No doubt, the thing ought to be done: and the Difficulty will be to separate the Genuine from the false. The King shall go tomorrow, God willing— Yours sincerely E.FG. Do not trouble yourself to acknowledge the Book, which you have already done by anticipation. I do not feel myself reliable enough to philologize on your Book, of which however I have another Copy to remark upon. I can only believe that it proves its point, and drains the Well dry. 1 Jessie E. Cadell and Dr. Hermann Ethe of University College of Wales at Aberystwith. See letter to Mrs. Cowell, March 11, n.l.

To H. Schutz Wilson Little Grange: Woodbridge Longest Day of 1877 [June 21 ] My dear Sir,—

It is very kind of you to remember me and my "Works"! as Quaritch once advertized two Translations. I had seen the Atlantic,1 which in­ deed I have taken in for the last two years because of my friend Mrs. Kemble's "Gossip." She has discontinued that since she returned to England, and I was just thinking I had no more need of the Atlantic; and yet I like to see some American Notices of English Works. I al­ ways think that (ceteris paribus) utter Strangers will be fairer Judges

June 1877 than those who know and live with Authors, Editors, Publishers, and belong to the Clubs and Societies they are to be met at: Even we Country folks have that one advantage over you in London; though London is the best place after all. And all this may seem as if I were scratching the stranger who has scratched me:—but I do not think that is my reason: though you were among the strangers to me who tickled me most effectively. Some one also sent me an American Nation news­ paper1 with a handsome Review in it. I threw the cover of the Paper away on opening it, so I did not recognize the MS. address. But this is enough of all this. Some little while ago I read a Volume of Matterhorn ascents, ending with that fatal one:2 very unaffectedly and well written, I thought; it is stupid to forget the Writer's name. I suppose you will be going off to the snowy peaks soon: Mrs. Kemble writes me she is just going: Mountains being an early passion of hers. She even bid me go too: but it is too late for me to begin to love Switzerland, and I get no further than Suffolk now. You must be hot enough in London, as we are down here: yet I always remember the "shady side" of the long well-watered Streets, and the smell of Mignionette and Roses in the Balconies—in the days when "Medea in Corinto" with Pasta figured out into the dear old "King's Theatre," and Edmund Kean could yet totter on the stage in Othello—never to be forgotten in his last Decay. Let me thank you again for your kind remembrance of yours sincerely, E. FitzGerald 1

See letter to Hall, June 14, n.l. Scrambles Among the Alps, 1871, by Edward Whymper. After several unsuccessful attempts, Whymper led the first climbers to reach the summit of the Matterhorn, July 14, 1865. Three of his companions and a guide perished when their rope broke during the descent. 2Probably

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge June 23/77 Dear Mrs. Kemble, I knew the best thing I could do concerning the Book you wanted was to send your Enquiry to the Oracle itself:—whose Reply I here­ with enclose.

June 1877 Last Evening I heard read Jeanie Deans' Audience with Argyle, and then with the Queen.1 There I stop with the Book. Oh, how refreshing is the leisurely, easy, movement of the Story, with its true, and well-harmonized Variety of Scene and Character! There is of course a Bore—Saddletree—as in Shakespeare, I presume to think— as in Cervantes—as in Life itself: somewhat too much of him in Scott, perhaps. But when the fuliginous and Spasmodic Carlyle and Co. talk of Scott's delineating his Characters from without to within—why, he seems to have had a pretty good Staple of the inner Man of David, and Jeanie Deans, on beginning his Story; as of the Antiquary, Dalgetty, the Ashtons, and a lot more. I leave all but the Scotch Novels. Madge has a little—a wee bit—theatrical about her: but I think her to be paired off with Ophelia, and worth all Miss Austen's Drawingroom Respectabilities put together. It is pretty what Barry Cornwall says on meeting Scott among other Authors at Rogers': "I do not think any one envied him any more than one envies Kings." You have done him honour in your Gossip: as one ought to do in these latter Days. So this will be my last letter to you till you write me from Switzer­ land: where I wish you to be as soon as possible. And am yours always and sincerely E.FG. A Letter from Donne speaks cheerfully. And Charles to be married again!2 It may be best for him. 1

In Scott's Heart of Midlothian. Donne's son Charles married Augusta Rigden1 August 7. His first wife, Mil­ dred, daughter of John M. Kemble, had died in April, 1876. 2

To W. A. Wright Little Grange, Woodbridge June 23/77 My dear Wright, I don't know how far the enclosed will instruct you: but here it is, for better or worse. Don't you forget to return me Manning:1 it will do any time you may be coming this way. I have now two Nieces occupying my house till August: after that, I know not of its being further engaged. I have been regaling myself—in my unscholarly way—with Mr. Munro's admirable Lucretius.2 Surely, it must be one of the most

June 1877 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 Georgic—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"3 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.4 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.5 Ask Mr. Munro, when he reprints, to quote old Montaigne's Version of Nam verae voces turn demum, etc.® "A ce dernier rolle de la Mort, et de nous, il n'y a plus que feindre, il faut parler Fran^ais; il faut montrer ce qu'il y a de bon et de net dans Ie fond du pot." And tell him (damn my impudence!) I don't like my old Fathers "dancing" under the yellow and ferruginous awnings. How do you get on with Adjectives in able?7 Yours ever E.FG. There is a coincidence with Bacon in verses 1026-9 of Book II. (Lucretius, I mean.) 1 See

letter to Donne, April 24. text with prose translation of De Rerum Natura by H.A.J. Munro, Fellow of Trinity. Lucretius had long been EFG's favorite Latin poet. See letters to Cowell, [c. May 1] and June 5, both 1848. 2 Latin

June 1877 3

"In vain." [The wind] "drives and pushes on a ship of great bulk" (IV,902). F. V. Hussey, Ipswich yachtsman, commented to the editors, "A ship, rolling along rhythmi­ cally, staggers now and then. The dominant rhythm of the line reproduces that of the ship; and 'molimine/ for me, represents the stagger." 5 [Mars] "feeds with love his greedy eyes, gazing wistfully towards thee" (1.36). The Montaigne passage, Essais, III.5. 6 "For then at last a real cry is wrung from the bottom of his heart . . ." (111.57). The Montaigne version, Essais, 1.18. 7 FitzEdward Hall's book. 4

To FitzEdward Hall Woodbridge June 24, [1877] My dear Sir, I have run through your Ability again,1 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 admis­ sion 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 B. Barton near thirty years ago: this word I have also seen branded as American; let Amer­ ica furnish us with more such words; better than what our "Old English" pedants supply, with their "Foreword" 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."2 I remember, years ago, thinking I must rebel against English by using "impitiable" for "incapable of Pity." Yet I suppose that, accord­ ing to Alford3 & 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

July 1877 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 1

Hall's book, On English Adjectives. Edward Sugden, Handy Book on Property Law, 1858, the first of many "Handy Books" on a variety of subjects. 3 Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury, author of The Queens English, 1863; a contemporary of EFG at Cambridge. 2 Sir

To E. B. Cowell Little Grange: Woodbridge July 2, [1877] My dear Cowell, You will let me know when, and whither, you leave Cambridge for your Holyday? The "Whither" will be Wales, I suppose. Looking over a Book on my old Brittany by a Mrs. Macquoid (not good), I find our old Midas Story cropping up there too. On the Western Coast is the "lie Tristan" (named from Arthur's Knight, she says) and close by a Village called "Plomar'h" where are said to be the foundations of the Palace of Marc'h, King of Cornouaille. Now "March" (she says) is Breton for Horse: and this King had Horse's Ears, the secret of which his Barber (as in the Nile Story I told you)

July 1877 confides to the Sands: whose Reeds when cut into Pipes, repeated— "MarcTi, March, King of Plomarc'h, has the Ears of a Horse."1 I have been for a second time reading (in my way!) Munro's Lucretius, which surely must be a Model Edition in all respects. The literal English Version reads quite fine by itself: tho' I don't like his Patres, etc., dancing under the reflection of the Curtains in my old favorite passage. "Fluctare"—undulate would have been better.2 But this is a mere Speck which I should not have thought of but that it is one of my favorites. I very much admire Munro's perfect Independ­ ence of Judgment, and yet his always temperate avowal of it. The punctuation I still cannot understand, as I think was the case with you. I think I told you my old Boatman West was dead. I have had no heart to go on the River since; and so content myself with sitting on the Bank, and getting what I may of the Sea breeze. Allenby, I hear, is at Felixstow: his yacht also: but Newson tells me "The Squire" does not go out much in her. Wright tells me that Everybody almost has fled from Cambridge, just when it is very pleasant, with its Gardens and Walks. So, I dare say, you think: and now the weather is cool and rainy: oh, much pleasanter than the great Heats. But you will go away in time: and that is what you or Elizabeth must tell me when the time comes; and believe me always yours E.FG. 1 From K. S. Macquoid's Through Brittany, 1877. Midas' second curse, it will be recalled, was Apollo's award of an ass's ears. For an Egyptian version of the legend see letter to Cowell, May 2, [1855], and the following text. 2 De Rerum Natura, IV, 7Θ-80.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge July 2, [1877] My dear Wright,

I did not—and do not—wish to intrude on Mr. Munro, who either already knows, or would scarce care to know, the little remarks I made on his Lucretius. This has been my second reading of it, in my insuffi­ cient way. I now, you see, enclose you a Quotation which shows that old Ronsard1 knew Titus Lucretius Carus, whether in the original or by Translation, though his Theory differs from it.

July 1877 I never understand why the old French Poetry is to my Palate, while the modern is not. Partly, no doubt, because of its naivete, which is lost from educated Frenchmen. You will be in the old Jerusalem when this Note is put on your Table. You see it needs no answer. When you go to Somerleyton you will, of course, go to Herringfleet, and perhaps also take a sail with Leathes in his Waveney Queen.2 I have a very kind Letter from him this morning, concerning his "Sailors' Shelter," which (contrary to all Expectation) has thus far succeeded in showing a good Balance-sheet. He has done a good Work, whether it prosper or fail; and he is a Good Fellow. 1 can give you another copy of Crabbe—mounted, too, which is more than those were which I sent to The Roue. 3 E.FG. Enclosure: Car Fantique Cybelle (La Nature j'entens) n'a tary sa mamelle Pour maigre n'allaiter Ies siecles a venir Ny ne fera jamais: ce seroit devenir Une mere brehaigne enlieu d'estre feconde, Tout tel qu'au paravant sera tousjours Ie Monde. Ronsard, quoted in Southey's C.P. Book4 1Pierre

de Ronsard (1524-85), French poet. where Wright occasionally visited a friend, and Herringfleet, both near Lowestoft. Lt. Col. H. M. Leathes of Herringfleet Hall, lord of the manor, had recently established the Lowestoft Sailors' and Fishermen's Home, which EFG supported with annual contributions. 3 Spedding. 4 "Analytical Readings," Southey's Common-place Book, Series III, John W. Warter, ed., 1850, p. 302. Southey is quoted verbatim. 2 Somerleyton,

To E. B. Cowell [Woodbridge] [July 3,18777 1 My dear Cowell, Our Letters crossed, you see. It is rather a Shame for me to be writing to you the day after my last: I think I shall become rather a Bore, for I certainly do write Letters which I should not if I had

July 1877 proper occupation, and I can't much edify those I write to. Only yesterday I sent Wright some lines from Ronsard, quoted in Southey's C.P. Book, showing that R. had read Lucretius, who, with his Editor, has been in my mind for the last month and more. My Reader comes at 8 P.M. and reads me Arctic Voyages and such like; is now reading me a pleasant Book—Round my House—by one Hamerton,2 who goes to live in middle France—Au tun, I make out his City to be—describ­ ing his French Neighbours pleasantly, so far as we have gone. We have also read the Heart of Midlothian. How can people set up their Austens, Eliots, Brontes, etc., not only with, but above, these early Scotch Novels! Proctor (Barry Cornwall) says that when he met Scott among the Authors at Rogers, they no more envied him than one envies a King. I know there is plenty of tiresome in these Books, bores like Saddletree, as in Life itself, some theatrical falsity too; but, altogether!—I was glad to have seen Edinburgh and Arthur's Seat. Which leads me to your Welsh Holy day; which set me upon writing this upon receipt of your Letter. For it makes me a little sad that now I never meet you in these Summer times: which is my fault, not yours. But, were I in Wales, I should not manage foot rambles even as well as heretofore, and so stay in old flat Suffolk. You do well, I think, in sticking to one Change, once finding that it suits you; not hunting about for others. "Leave Well alone." I hope that you will soon be off, though the weather is cool now. 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.3 So now I content myself with the River side. All which, I begin to think, I must have written to you yesterday: so here is a bit of the Bore one finds in Scott, and real Life. This has been a bad Year with Gardens hereabout: Roses especially snubbed by some Frosts in June. This evening the Children of St. John's Parish are coming to play in My Grounds! and I do wish the Cloud would pack away for the occasion. I have a large Barn cleared out, and a Swing fixt on a Beam: that is all my Share in the Expenses. But then—My Grounds! E.FG. 1 Misdated

by Wright, 1878. G. Hamerton. 3 A brutish fisherman, suspected of having caused the deaths of three appren­ tices, invariably became conscience-stricken at three reaches of the river on which he sailed (Crabbe's Borough). 2 Philip

July 1877

To John Allen [Woodbridge] [July, 1877] 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:1 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! I took the liberty to write Spedding a few lines—to ask him a Question—which he says is the only way to get an answer from him. As I said also that I had seen some Review of Dr. Abbott's new Book, he replied that he was considering what to do about it: whether to answer or not: but that,2 anyhow, Abbott's Book was one of "the silliest he had ever read"—which is much, you know, for J.S. to say. I stick to my old Athenaeum too, which seems to me as good as any other of its kind, if not better. Better than the "Academy," I think: though the latter has just eulogized your ancient E.FG.3 1

Memorials of the Wesley Family by George J. Stevenson, 1876. A. Abbott, with whom Spedding had tangled in controversy the pre­ vious July, had recently published Bacon and Essex. 3 In a review of Agamemnon by John Addington Symonds, also a translator as well as poet and critic, June 7, pp. 4-6. Symonds anticipated that Greek scholars would not be satisfied with—as the preface describes the play—"This Version or Perversion of Aeschylus" and expressed the hope that EFG would consider recasting the work, since he had proved "his ability to bear the whole Titanic weight [of translation] if he had chosen." EFG was identified in the critique as a writer who, in the Rubdiydt, had revealed himself as "a real poet beneath the garb of a translator." 2 Edwin

July 1877

To George Crabbe Woodbridge 12 Juillet: 77 Mon cher Georges, Je ne sais pas en verite pourquoi precisement je vous adresse cette Lettre. Je voudrais certainement des nouvelles de vos Soeurs: mais c'est peut-etre que vous ne connaissez pas plus que moi. Elles sont deja parties de Merton. Je juge que probablement Caroline me mandera une lettre Du reste, ne vous genez pas pour me repondre si vous n'avez pas de quoi tout pret. Voila la Banniere Royale qui flotte au-dessus de la Tour de Ste. Marie et Ies Cloches resonnent. C'est Ie Jour de la Fete Horticulturale; tres beau temps aussi; tout Ie monde y sera. Tom Pytches ne se retablit pas de son Coup de Soleil: Southgate Ie Recteur aleur en mourra, me dit-on. Edward Kerrich ne va pas mieux, je pense. Mon ami Edwards qui se portait mieux, maintenant defaillit encore. Certes, cette Annee parait assez fatale: je m'etonne de me trouver encore assez sain parmi tant de malades beaufoup plus jeunes que moi. Mais voila notre vieux King de Waterloo qui me rend visite ce matin meme apres une Marche a pied de Bredfield avec ses 89 ans sur Ie dos, gai, debonnaire et parleur toujours, quoiqu'il [savait?] qu'une telle Marche dans une telle Chaleur . . .1 un peu trop pour lui. Il parle toujours de vous tous; et voudra en savoir toutes Ies nouvelles. Mais la soeur me dit hier que Marie ne se portait pas trop bien: ce qu'il me dit qu'il avait deja entendu ailleurs. Il m'a prie de vous faire tous ses "Re­ spects." En verite c'est une ame de "la vieille Roche que ne perd pas l'impression." de ses anciennes Reconnaissances. J'etais a Aldbro' pour trois jours chez ce vieux Leon Blanc. Il y avait peu de gens dans la ville, et (comme vous savez) point d'ombrage. Mais j'avais quelques promenades assez agreables avec ma vieille Contemporaine, Mary Lynn, qui logeait la avec son Frere, Ie Colonel; assez faible et malcontent, celui-la: je ne savais s'il se degouta de ma presence ou non. Elle se devoue a lui, comme votre Caroline a sa Marie; elle me dit quelle avait soixante-cinq Ans Ie Jour meme de mon Depart; c'est a dire ce Lundi dernier. Sur cela, nous nous donnions Ies mains avec effusion. C'est une brave Femme, autrefois belle aussi; et maintenant avec sa belle Ame embellissant toujours ses traits avariees.

July 1877 Voila done une Lettre remplie de Riens: ne vous forcez de rien repondre mais croyez-moi toujours Ie meme. E.FG. 1 Illegible;

the ink on this letter is faint.

To Hallam Tennyson Little Grange: Woodbridge July 20, [1877] My dear Hallam, The Bull Inn Authorities can't yet find any account of your Dinners, Beds, etc., there last Autumn.1 Now "Honour bright!" Tell me if you wiped off that Score which I thought you promised to leave for me; it is, I know, nothing to you or to me; but I only so far satisfied my Conscience for letting you both go to an Inn while my House was disengaged. To be sure, I knew also that you would be more nicely provided for there than by my old Couple here: as you found by an Assay of their Beef. This is all I now write about: and I dare say my Letter will not find you till after many Days, if it find you at all: for I think you may be all fled from your Isle by this time to avoid the Tourists who will be coming. Even I am in a fidget because of a Visit which an American Gentleman proposes to me. Such are the Penalties of Greatness. He must go to the Bull—if he come—for my Home is full of Nieces; but he may find he has not time, for he is on his way to Spain in some diplomatic Capacity. I hope Papa won't be jealous. Well—now here is enough, lest you should think I want more an­ swer than about Bull's Run. That is my little Joke: and I am ever yours, and Papa's, and Mama's, E.FG. 1 During

Tennyson's visit to EFG in September.

July 1877

To Mrs. Cowell Little Grange: Woodbridge July 20, [1877] Dear Elizabeth, Your turn now, you see. But you need not write in reply, but only send me Lowell's Book, "Among my Books," before you flit for Wales. I have wanted to lend it to two or three others (Guilty Creatures that you are!) and I now want it at once, in case I have to show it to the Author himself, who is coming—now on his way to England, on his way to Spain, to whose Embassy he is appointed1 and he talks of running down here just to shake hands with one whom he knows by Letter. This Visit a little alarms me, though I must take it as very kind on his part: but it seems to me strange and sad, this meeting for such a slip of Time in all our Lives, and I now so unused to any Visitors. Perhaps he may not find time to come, and all will blow over. My house will be quite filled with Nieces next week (about which time he thinks of being over) as my two youngest Nieces are coming to join their two Eldest Sisters. However, if he comes I will do my best: and I would show him two or three passages in his Book which jar on my Taste (What a reception to a Stranger!)—but I like the whole of the Book so much that I would tell him what I do not like. He is now warm on Cervantes, and promises himself much from visit­ ing his Country: and the passages in the Book I do not love are least like Cervantes, whose Style (I am told that Montesquieu said) seems made to make all other Styles impossible. All this will exalt you into a Heroic mood—for my sake—you know: but I could well forego it. Yes—yes—I know—I saw (for I take "The Academy") what it said of me: so don't tell me of it. I still wonder at any Greecist condescend­ ing to praise what yet has its merit for unprepossest Readers. Enough of that. Now I think hot weather is setting in again after some Wet and Cold—St. Swithin. You must take wing, and be off to Wales, where I hope St. Swithin won't follow you: for he is strong in those Western parts. Adieu: Love to Cowell: and do you also believe me Ever yours E.FG. I met Allenby's Captain yesterday, who told me his "Governor" had left Felixstow unwell a month ago, but had now returned "all right."

July 1877 1 Lowell, named Minister to Spain, reached England July 24. His post in Spain, and later in Britain, was actually that of ambassador. The United States did not adopt the latter title for its foreign representatives until 1893.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Friday, [July 27, 1877] My dear Wright, Here I am, and shall be very happy to see you if you care to come so far to see me. I can't propose Bed (unless at the Inn) inasmuch as I have now four Nieces filling every cranny of my house except the room I occupy: but I can give you a bit of their one P.M. Dinner, whether along with them, or along with me, as you may prefer. So entirely please yourself. I wish you had proposed to visit me while I was at Dunwich from which I only returned two days ago: putting up at a good Inn which is to be filled with other Company on Monday next. Dunwich is the prettiest place on our coast, I think: with the Walls of its old Priory of Grey Friars, and some Remains of the Priory itself within them— very pathetic. If Lowell of America should come down here, as he thought he might, on his way to Spain, I would fain have taken him there; but I must say (as I said to him) that a Day's Visit out of two whole Lives was scarce worth his trouble, and he may find enough to do in London to keep him there till he sets sail for his present Destination. As he is just now very warm on Cervantes, his Mission is well timed, and I shall expect a good Result. For I think he is the best of our Critics now, and that he should, and could, supply much that St. Beuve has left untouched. I will ask about your White Mary, but do not suppose we shall find here what you have as yet failed to find. Had we been at Dunwich you would have found my friend Edwards there very much interested in all Suffolk topics. He was telling me as I came away of a Farmer (at Soham, I think) who nicknamed his three Daughters, "Muck," "Sweat," and "Cartgrease"—not much coarser than Louis XVth'8 names for "Mesdemoiselles de France." And so—Farewell E.FG. You will have to drink Sherry now for a while? Spedding says Dr.

July 1877 Abbott's last Book is "the silliest" he ever read: and that he (J.S.) is "considering" what is to be done with it. Dreadful Rod in Pickle for the Doctor! P.S. Two Nieces, I find, leave me on Monday: and the remaining twain on Wednesday.

To George Crabbe Woodbridge Juillet 28, 77 Mon cher Georges,

Je ne sais pas si l'Eglise dont je vous envoie une Esquisse se trouve dans Pettit, ou quelque autre Connaisseur. Cependant, la voici. C'est une Copie (faite comme vous savez) audessus d'une Gravure dans un livre de Voyage d'une Madame Macquoid en Bretagne, l'Eglise de St. Fiacre qui donne son nom au Village en ce pays. Elle me parait tres elegante: mais cette copie (faite par Ellen Churchyard) manque un peu de Toriginal. J'ai ete pour trois jours a Dunwich: lieu que j'aime Ie mieux de tous a c6te de notre Mer: mes amis Ies Edwards etaient la, dans une tres jolie petite maison qu'ils ont louee. Ces restes de cette ancienne Prieure donnent un interet pathetique a tout Ie lieu. Si 1'Americain qui m'a propose une petite visite viendra je pense que je l'amenerai la: mais je ne l'ai pas beaucoup encourage a venir, et peut-etre qu'il doit trouver de quoi s'occuper entre son arrivee a Londres et son depart pour Madrid, ou il est nomme Ministre: J. R. Lowell: tres bon Cri­ tique, je pense: mais quoi de bon dans une entrevue d'un jour ou deux dans toute une vie? Cela me fait un peu de peur; mais peut-etre que mon homme ne viendra pas. A present j'ai mes deux Nieces cadettes ainsi que Ies deux ainees chez moi. Mais elles s'envolent toutes Ies quatre Ie premier d'Aout. Je serai triste en Ies perdant car quoique je ne Ies vois pas beaucoup j'aime qu'elles soient ici tant qu'elles s'amusent. Maurice FG. qui a ete tres souffrant avec des hemorragies est avec so famille a Southwold et sera a Boulge bientot. Gerald aussi se porte tres mal en Irlande: quelque chose a peu pres de paralytique, je pense, dont on ne peut pas s'emerveiller. Edmund Kerrich reste toujours Ie meme, selon ce qu'il nous mande; meme symphonie des susdits et

July 1877 d'embarras de tete a tant soit peu de travail. Cependant il s'etait resolu d'assister a une Revue qui s'est fixee pour ce Jeudi passe quoique son Medecin n'autorisait pas une telle attente. Nous verrons quel que sera l'effet sur lui. Voila une longue lettre "des pluribus rebus et quibusdam aliis."1 Compliments a Mademoiselle et croyez-moi toujours Ie meme E.FG. Le cher Doughty s'affaiblit et s'amaigrit toujours, mais il ne souffre que peu. 1 "About

a good many things and some others."

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Sunday [July 29,1877] My dear Wright,

If you will come here to bed as well as board do not come till Thursday, by which time, I conclude, those who now occupy the Bed will be gone, and the Beds made ready for fresh Tenants. If Lowell should come, I should be very glad of your assistance: but I scarce think he will. As to Dunwich, I cannot of course go away from home till this Lowell affair is settled one way or other. If you should wish to go there in the meanwhile, you will find a little Lodging, I think, at a Mr. Dix's. He told me his was to be vacant tomorrow: but it may soon be reoccupied, and the one Inn is taken up by some Ipswich Family. Close by Dix (who is Edwards' Factotum) is my friend Ed­ wards and Wife, very agreeable People: he always interested in Suffolk Subjects, with many Books about them—Dunwich among these—and he will be very glad to be with you, and drive you about in his Poney gig, as he did me to Blythburgh (well worth looking at) and other old Places. As he has been very ill, and wants above all things some cheerful and intelligent Company, he would be the man for you, and you for him just now; and he is so naturally frank and courageous that you would be at home with him, and he with you, at once, on your simply naming yourself, whom he knows of well already, without any Introduction from me, though you would, I dare say, announce yourself as directed to him by me.

July 1877 I tell you all this at once, because you really might like to go at once to this Dunwich with its old Story, and its fresh sea air. A very good Dogcart at Darsham Inn will take you there in less than an hour by a very pleasant road: you could return by the same Dogcart if no Lodging available: though Edwards and Wife (one of the most clever little Bodies in the world) would be glad to give you Bed and Board. I never put up with them, preferring my own Room, etc.; but, at a Pinch, I should find the heartiest welcome: as would you also. If "This-ne" be our Suffolk, it must, I suppose, squint at Thisbe too; but of this we will talk ere long. Edwards would be much interested in all such questions, being a very well read Man in nearly all English Literature, and with a native Aptitude for such matters. I saw the Academy, which I have taken in some while. I wonder at so much favour from a University Scholar, as you tell me the writer of the Article is. And I am yours E.FG.

From James Russell Lowell Grovenor Hotel Park Street 30th July 1877 Dear Sir, I am heartily sorry but I have only today received your letter, and I leave London for Paris day after tomorrow. Otherwise, I should certainly have taken The Bull by the horns. I had not the slightest notion of making you a visitation, but only a morning call, getting back to London the same day. I studied Bradshaw till it fairly wavered under my Eye in the hope of finding some way in which I could run down to Woodbridge and back today, but the only result was a pro­ found conviction that nobody could by any possibility go anywhere which had a kind of desperate comfort in it.1 I am truly sorry that I should have kept a solitary man under the apprehension of a stranger's descent upon him so long, but I could not help it. I should have been very glad to have had a visual impression of a man whom I value so much, but should not have proposed a visit to Woodbridge but for Norton who urged it. That and the remorse of having lost chances which would have been precious memories through shyness overcame my scruples. But I beg you to believe that it never entered my head to intrude myself on you as a guest.

August 1877 I shall still hope to see you for a few moments some day when I am passing through England and till then and always I remain Very faithfully yours J. R. Lowell 1 EFG's trips from Woodbridge to Merton, Norfolk, 40 miles as the crow flies, could require five changes of trains; and traveling on the Eastern Counties Rail­ way was the subject of numerous jokes. One told of a lad of 16 who, detected traveling half-fare, protested that he had been under 12 when he boarded the train. From time to time Punch chaffed Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide for its complexity.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [August 1,1877] My dear Wright, Lowell had but one day in London, it appears, and is even now on his way to Paris and Madrid. Do you come when you will: I will have Tea at any rate ready for you: and can find some Dinner without notice, if you come earlier. I have asked some old Friends to come also till the beginning of next week when I shall give my old Folks here a Holyday after their two months' Midsummer Duty. The old Friends I speak of—Man and Wife, and her Sister—are very homely, good, sensible, not literary, nor obtrusively religious, People. And I am yours E.FG. I may as well enclose the Minister's Letter.

To John Loder (Fragment) [Little Grange] August 2,1877 My dear Loder, I hear—for I have not read—of your defeat in law—not in equity, as all of us who know you know. If you be in want of present money

August 1877 to pay the expenses, pray let me lend you some without interest, and to be repaid at any time . . . and anyhow I wish you to believe me your sincere friend.1 1 John Loder, Woodbridge bookseller, stationer, and printer, had been found guilty of libel in a suit brought by a local schoolmaster. In a letter to the school­ man Loder stated that the teacher had included a leather bag for personal use in an order for school supplies to be paid for by the school's patron. The school­ master denied the allegation and filed suit. Loder lacked witnesses to support his statement, and the jury returned a verdict for £. 100 damages. Within a month, indignant townspeople, firm in their belief in the merchant's honesty and integrity, subscribed to a fund to compensate for "costs and dam­ ages." When a silver tankard, inscribed "Presented with 250 sovereigns to John Loder from his friends and neighbors, August, 1877," was given to him, Loder responded that he wished to expend the money on a public work to benefit the town. The "work" was Loder's Cut, a channel in the Deben enabling small craft to avoid the tortuous channel and muddy shoals of Troublesome Reach, a scant mile below Woodbridge ("The Origen of Loder's Cut," [by E. R. Cooper] East Anglian Daily Times, April 8, 1939, which includes the letter fragment). EFG has been credited with initiating the movement to compensate Loder.

To Frederick Spalding Woodbridge August 2, [1877] Dear Spalding,

I was at Dunwich ten days ago; Edwards did not seem to me very well: but his Doctors have now found some Sugar in his Water, which may, or may not, affect him permanently. He seems (naturally enough) to have lost some of his Painting ambition; but draws a little, and is very pleased to drive one about in his Pony Carriage. Mrs. E. is somewhat worn, but well. I am extremely vext to hear that Mr. Loder has lost his Case, and must pay damages, and (I suppose) costs. He is so honest a Man that I am perfectly certain that his Version of the Story is the true one: and Mason (who has told me the issue) tells me the Verdict is con­ sidered a very unrighteous one. I have not seen a Paper: for indeed I avoid the sight of them now. My Nieces are all flown: the last two yesterday. But I am expecting some of my old Nurseys, and Aldis Wright, till next week, when I shall close the house, and give my old Folks a Holyday after two

August 1877 months Midsummer work. They are both well: Mrs. Howe much whiter. I have not been once on the River since West's Death: and have offered the use of my poor little Waveney to the Fishers of Aldbro, in case they can use, and take care of her on their Aide. Edmund Kerrich whose head was shaken by being upset from his Gig seven weeks ago has been ordered rest from all Business mental or bodily, ever since: notwithstanding which he would go to two Drill, or Field, days, and reports he is not the worse. His Sisters will tell me how he really is. Mrs. Spalding does not need my telling her that I am glad she is safe through her last trouble. And I remain hers and yours truly E.FG.

To W. B. Donne Woodbridge [ August, 1877] My dear Donne, I write to you by return you see, because I am starting today for Dunwich—but twenty miles off on our coast. Aldis Wright goes with me (he has been staying a week here): and Edwards the Artist, is at Dunwich: so we propose to be merry together, if only we can get anything to eat at such an out of the way place. This departure of ours closes my Summer Campaign of visitors, and will give my old People a Holyday. Since June beginning I have had my house full of Nieces; and now all will return to its old Order, I suppose. ... I was to have had a rather notable visitor here: Lowell of America, now Minister to Spain. But partly from some delay in getting my Answer, and partly from press of Business in London, he did not come. I would rather he could have come for two or three days, rather than a day's visit, which seems an absurdity in the lives of two men aged 70. But either way it is as well as it is. This must be hot weather at Madrid. So you are going to old Norfolk again and pleasant Swaffham, where I should almost like to be with you for a while. Wright has picked up a little—very little—about Manning and a

August 1877 Chinaman he brought back with him, and who would go to look after him in Diss Church to the confusion of the Congregation. . . . Ever yours sincerely E.FG.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Saturday [August 18, 1877] My dear Wright, I returned from Dunwich "yester Even" and found your Note; and, this morning, the enclosed—which I will speak of by and by. You should have stayed at Dunwich till the Baufling 1 was finished: I made it over to Mrs. Dix.2 She told me that the old Gentleman who was to have come to see after my Beard, but did not, was chiefly em­ ployed in shaving the Dead: one of whom he had cut so awkwardly, she said, that it made the Patient of a bad Colour, which she did not like at all. But the Man went to reap in the fields, I suppose, instead of coming to me; and I had to sail to Southwold to get the job done. Edwards had the Tempest till I came away: but he also had a Push on his Backside, which kept him in such an Attitude as that windy man who kept waiting for the Conjuror's Pistol shot, and indisposed him (Edwards) to any reading but Sir Walter's Antiquary. He, how­ ever, thought the Type quite sufficient; and he is, I dare say, a better Judge than I. As for the Notes, I will do my best about them, whether in the imperfect copy you left me, or the complete one which you promise. But now—George Crabbe, most amiable, intelligent, and agreeable Divine, comes to me here next Tuesday to stay till the end of the week, I suppose. Cannot you also arrange with your present Host to come here also, and fulfil your stipulated Visit to him afterward? Try and manage this: you will like G.C. very much, and agree with him about Church policies, etc. And, for my part, I shall be glad of some one like yourself to help and make his Stay here so much more agreeable to him. Pray try to arrange this, and let me know that you have settled it as soon as you can. Now for Quaritch. I never wanted a popular, but a much cheaper Edition of any of "my Works"; for it seemed to me a sort of Impudence to charge 7/6 (I believe) for such things.3 And, even for Quaritch's

August 1877 sake, I can't see how it should pay so well, inasmuch a more than one Edition at about 2.6 (I believe) has been printed in America. Quaritch, however, ought to know his own Business; as to my own profit, I have only taken £10 for the last two Editions which I gave to my poor little Icelanders, and some Persian Famine. However, what would you advise? Q. had offered to print another Persian Translation in the same way as Omar; but I really would not have my "Cherry­ stones" so be-monstered: though Cowell wished it. Could not these two be printed together at even a less price than the one now? Though indeed the second "Pome" is twice as long, and not half as good, as the other. Now, come and tell me of this: if not, write a word; and believe me yours E.FG. I do not know your present Host—but if you see his Herringfleet kinsman give him my Love. 1 An unidentified correspondent defined baufling "as a calf of some six months old, the flesh of which is midway between veal and beef, argal, beefling or baufling." The definition, clipped from a letter, was inserted by EFG in a copy of Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, another of his rudimentary works. A slip of paper pasted on the title page bears a supplement in EFG's script: "With Additions from Major Moor's Suffolk Words and Phrases, published 1823." The composite volume, in Trinity College Library, includes definitions and notes by EFG. 2 With whom EFG lodged at Dunwich. 3 Quaritch had proposed a new edition of the Rubdiydt. After publication of Agamemnon, he had offered to publish Saldman and Absdl.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [August 19, 1877] Happening to look into Bacon's Sylva this Sunday, I light upon two cases of Woodbine:1 the first of which is certainly Honeysuckle: but the latter? "The daintiest smells of Flowers are out of those Plants whose leaves smell not; as Violets, Roses, Wall flowers, Gilly flowers, Pinks, Woodbines, Vine-flowers, Apple-blooms, Lime-tree blooms, Beanblooms," etc. Cent: IV, 389

August 1877 "Flowers that have deep Sockets, do gather in the Bottom a kind of Honey; as the Honeysuckles, both the Woodbine and the Trefoil, Lilies, and the like." Cent: V, 496 Thus printed in my common Baynes 1824 Edition. The delightful Book might be worth your looking into even for this Woodbine, which I dare say is oftener mentioned. E.FG. 1 See

letter from Wright, April 29, 1877.

To Bernard Quaritch Little Grange, Woodbridge August 19, [1877]1 Dear Sir, Imprimis. I want you to get for me a little Volume lately repub­ lished. Vies de Haydn, Mozart, Metastase par Henri Beyle2—and post it to F. Tennyson Esq St Heliers Jersey Now as to Omar—overleaf. I never even wished for a "popular Edition" of Omar: but only for one of a price proportionable to his size and value. Even as to market value, the Americans (as I told you, I believe) reprinted him for 2s.6d.—which seems to me enough: a very nice 4t0 which I will send you if I can find what they sent me. Besides this, I fancied that Salaman (which you proposed to print separately) might go along with Omar, if printed at all. Salaman however would be much longer, and not half so welcome: and that is why I did not think he would do alone. Besides, I really could not bear another of my things to be separately published, and recom­ mended by Advertisement, so close upon the other two: whereas, along with Omar for Trumpeter, Salaman might come modestly forth: both, at a moderate price. You, however, may wish to keep the two separate; and that much you can tell me about if you care to do so;

August 1877 and I will then decide what shall be done in this very important matter. Yours truly, E.FG. [Quaritch notation] Permission to reprint Omar and Salaman. 1Misdated

in letters to Quaritch, [1878]. Revised title of a work originally published by Stendhal in 1814. Metastase, the French form of Metastasio, popular 18-century Italian poet and lyric dramatist. 2

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge August 21177 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

August 1877 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. You have not told me what you made of that Morton MS. But, if you have sufficient Leisure, and Health too, you shall do so, will you not? 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. And now I rest yours sincerely E.FG.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Thursday [August 23, 1877] My dear Wright, You will, I doubt, be more bored, than assisted, by my deles and addenda: so trifling in their import, and so ill written—at any rate scarce worthy, any of them, to disturb the present page, with its num­ bers, etc. I have simply done what you asked, at very little cost: as you perceive, though I do not know if I could have done more had I kept the sheets much longer.1 You need therefore be quite at your ease in using, or dismissing, part, or All. You are much better informed on the subject than I, to whom a great deal of the Play was as new. I wonder Miranda could understand her Father's Story.

August 1877 Which reminds me that last Evening, George Crabbe was recalling to me and Loder how the former Mistress of the Crown Inn here had a Daughter she called "Marinda" and was extremely angry with some Shakespearian Bagman who told her he thought she must mean Miranda. Le Capitaine Brohoke 2 was with us one night, descending at the Door from the top of a huge Chestnut Charger. He told us several odd Suffolk things in the Ecclesiastical way. One, of a Parson who some­ times tied up his Pointers to the Altar rails while he did the Duty. Another of some Lady who proclaimed her Right to some Lands in Brightlingsea (Brecclesea) by walking up the Church [aisle] with a Dog and a Hunting whip. I told him he should authenticate all such things for East Anglian N. and Q. I am thinking of a few days at Dunwich again if Dix Hall be yet vacant. If you come, you must bring some Boeufling3 with you, for the meat is inferior thereabout, as Mrs. Edwards says. Edwards was not very well, but has Charles Keene (of Punch)4 to brighten him up now. Yours always E.FG. One more Woodbine from Bacon's Sylva: "There be some other" (Plants) "that creep along the ground, or wind about other Trees or Props; as Vines, Ivy, Briony, Woodbines, Hops, Clematis, Camomile," etc.—Cent. VI. 594. 1

Wright was revising his Clarendon edition Tempest at the time. C. Brooke. 3 Elsewhere spelled baufling. See letter to Wright, August 18. 1 Cartoonist. See Biographical Profile. 2 F.

To J. R. Lowell Woodbridge August 26/77 My dear Sir, I ought scarce to trouble you amid your diplomatic cares and digni­ ties. But I will, so far as to say I scarce 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

August 1877 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,1 which one of your "Study Windows" reminded me of. All this I meant; and, anyhow, 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. I do not know how to address my Letter to you now, so must send it to be properly embossed through Quaritch. Once more, my dear Sir, do not answer this: but do believe me yours very sincerely E. FitzGerald Tell me one day something of the Spanish Drama, Lope, or Calderon. I think you could get one acted by Virtue of your Office. 1

Euphranor.

To Mrs. Cowell (Fragment) [Woodbridge ] [August, 1877]

. . . on too much in the same strain—too long, in fact. I am certainly not the proper Judge of such a Book: but, as you send it to me, I say

August 1877 what seems to me; and I do not think you—or Maria—will be offended. 0 this Steel Pen! . . . [Part of letter cut off. Then:] Ipswich could have a better—and so I wrote to tell him. (O this Goosequill now!) Arthur1 came to me for his Holyday, poor Fellow: and I have asked him here for Christmas. As I had no Boat on the river now—my old Boatman dead (not Newson)—I got the Landlord of the Bull to lend A. one of his horses: and was rather in a Stew all the while lest mischief should happen during rides to Felixstow and Ashbocking. However all ended well. 1 tell A. of some misspellings in his Notes, and bid him get a little Pocket Dictionary if he is to get on as a Clerk. That is not his bent: but he is doing his best, I think. I still like Arthur. Tell Cowell I have declined having old Omar reprinted by Quaritch. I think there has been enough of him, unless he one day come in more reputable Company: but Quaritch would not have Salaman by way of Chaperon: nor would I advise him so to do so far as Profit went. So I must leave Omar to the Americans if they want him.2 And now I am going to walk (7 P.M.) till my Reader comes: who will take this Letter to Post. So adieu. Yours always, E.FG. This horrid Scrawl needs Pardon indeed. 1 Arthur

Charlesworth, Mrs. Cowell's nephew. had probably informed EFG of the edition of the Rubaiyat to be published by Osgood and Co. of Boston. 2 Quaritch

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge August 30, [1877] My dear Wright, Your Notes don't bore me—on the contrary, amuse and interest me —beside instructing—and beside making me read the Play again1— if ever I did so before. There is a fine Sentence. But you are to take my sending back the sheets so soon not as a sign of hurry, but of doing what I could at once. You see how little, so far as any suggestions of mine go.

August 1877 I don't understand your "pointe de vue" of note-making: viz, so much explained as if to Boys, and yet again so much of antiquarian research as if for Scholars. But I have no doubt you know your Plan clearly, and that it is one that is adapted to the needs of the Public, as well as the satisfaction of the Publisher. I really can scarce believe the same hand wrote the foolish rhymed Lovers' Dialogues, that wrote the rest of the Play: and yet any such Theory would be absurd as the Dialogue itself. What a change from all the first part of Scene 1—from Lysander's "Keep promise, Love; look, here comes Helena," to the end of the Scene! And one can almost fancy W.S. taking up the Pen to interpolate—or continue with: "Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid," etc., in Act IIL2 Perhaps however W.S. happened just then to be in a better mood, when he originally wrote all, or did perhaps interpolate his own after an Inter­ val—"Chi sa?" I am going to Dunwich, with a large bag of Semolina (whatever that may be) tomorrow, I believe: Edwards is better, she writes: but was very bad of his Boil before better. Charles Keene of Punch is with them: I go to Dix as before. The Spanish Almanack is wonderful—being of this year, I conclude —by your "current" year, of course: (I don't mean that your word is not precisely the right one—which it is). Quaritch was willing to print the two Persians together at the same Price as the one: but I have told him we will wait awhile. The wicked one (Omar) has almost had his fling, I think: and the good Salaman would only hang on him. I should not have thought of him again but for Cowell's wish: and I dare say he would think it spoiled by the excisions, etc., I should make. If your Master be back, pray make my Duty to him and the Mistress. I doubt Cowell and his Missis have but a wet time of it in Wales. Can't you come with a Jawbone of Bauflingx to Dunwich? Ever yours E.FG. x

A Friend invited another to dine off "An Arse of Beef and Hamper of Greens." 1 Midsummer Night's Dream, Clarendon edition, 1877. EFG's subsequent com­ ment on the editing is valid criticism prompted by such notes as, "In the folios there is only a comma instead of a colon here." 2 III.2.195.

September 1877

To W. A. Wright Dix Hall, Dunwich SepV 6, [1877] My dear Wright, You must not let my notes on your notes trouble you: I have no faith in my insight that way; and, you know, only professed to judge as an ordinary reader, who might either want explanation on some points, or dispense with what you give him on others. Hugo's version of "stol'n the impression," etc., is "Tu Iui a arrache l'expression de sa sympathie avec des Bracelets fait de tes cheveux,"1 etc. I don't recollect why I marked "Because that she, as her attend­ ant," etc. I shied at first at "russet-patted" because somehow I did not recog­ nize "pats-feet" in the English of that day. But if "rousse-patte" had found its way into Books of Natural History then, all right. I thought the mistake might lie somewhere in russet, as applied to the pate of what we call the Jackdaw or the "Carrion Crow" common hereabout —perhaps "rusty-pated"! When I asked Edwards and C. Keene (sepa­ rately) what each understood by The Chough: each said at once, "The red legg'd Cornish Crow." I am ashamed to say I found some of the lighter parts in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (as the servants' talk, etc.) pleasanter in Hugo than in the original: because lighter in Expression, as will be with French, and so the poor quibbles and Jokes more glib and pointed. I shall "embeter" you with Woodbine; but on looking into "Much Ado," Act. III.l, Beatrice is bid to "steal into the pleached Bower, where Honeysuckles ripen'd by the Sun," etc., and a few lines on, she is reported to be "couched in the Woodbine Coverture."2 Nothing more can as yet be drawn out about "Fewterer." If Rose previously knew nothing of "Vaulterer," etc., and yet did hear Browne say "Fewterer" surely you may book the word. C. Keene is a very good Fellow, original, unaffected, and unprofes­ sional, a great reader of old, quaint, Books. He went about the sands playing on a Scotch Bagpipe he carries about with him. Edwards seems better but already complaining of the cold; he must not be here after September. The Robin pipes about the Grey Friars ivy now: loitering under their Walls last night, I seemed to hear them rustling past. I had to go to Southwold to be shaved on Tuesday: and rather think I shall go home for that purpose tomorrow, or Saturday. But, if I do,

September 1877 I shall return here again for a while, for I see that Edwards wants a little Company, and she for him. Now I think you have had enough of my bad scribble, and I will go lie in the Sun on the Shore: and always yours E.FG. I have heard Mr. Spalding, and others, tell of a Superstition that, if a younger Sister marries, her spinster Elder Sister must dance a hole in her Shoes at the younger one's Wedding. Today I see in Taming of the Shrew, II.1, Kate says of Bianca— I must dance barefoot on her Wedding day, And, for your Love for her, lead Apes in Hell. 1 Midsummer Night's Dream, 1.1.32-33. EFG appears to have quoted from memory. His passage differs from Hugo's text. 2 The concluding comment on the woodbine riddle, first broached April 29. Wright devotes more than a page to the subject in his Clarendon Midsummer Night's Dream.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge September 11/77 My dear Wright, I returned from Dunwich yesterday and found your Bacon, which will certainly cause me to read the Essays again1—very likely when I return to Dunwich, which I think of doing next week. Edwards will take pleasure in looking over the Book: he was noticing to me how pathetic were such things as the Garden Essay, "And I would have" so and so. The Vignette on Title page is nicely done: but a little too like Mr. Macready in the character of Lord Bacon. I don't think he stood so, by the same token that I am sure he sat so, as the Monument shows. You ought to have Hugo's French Shakespeare: it is not wonderful to see how well a German Translation thrives: but French Prose— no doubt better than French Verse. When I was looking over King John the other day, I knew that Napoleon would have owned it as the thing he craved for in the Theatre, as also the other Historical Plays: not Love, of which one is sick, but the Business of Men. He said this at St. Helena, or elsewhere. And I am yours Iordinaire E.FG.

October 1877 I find a Letter from Lowell, wishing to be with Dunwich Grey Friars rather than at Madrid. He had, however, seen "Carrasco"2 over a Shop. 1

Second edition, 1877. Carrasco, a waggish bachelor in Don Quixote, Part II, Chap. 3.

2 Sanson

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge October 10/77 My dear Wright, I bid Adieu to Dunwich last Monday: the Sea running up to the Cliffs before a North wind and a Spring tide.1 The place was still delightful, with but a Friend to look in upon of an Evening: but Edwards and Wife left the day I did. They are staying at Framlingham for a few days, his Nation (which, by the way, is good Boccaccio Italian as well as good Suffolk), and where he fancied he would make a Sketch of the Castle. She would let me know, if she could, when they left: but he is become impatient in his ways: and they may be in London by this time, for aught I know. Paullo Majora—a Quill pen. D.G. I know how busy you are; perhaps more than usual; editing two ancient Works, I see by the Academy. But, do you still hold Russian Stock? Two Friends have sent me such desperate accounts of them—on City authority—especially after some late ominous Ukase, that I doubt I ought to get out of them at a loss of 20 per cent rather than keep on till total Bankruptcy. If you are still in them, you may hear from some City Authority also: at any rate, I wish you would tell me in as few words as you please what your view of the case is. One can hardly believe in such a Collapse for Russia: and, spite of all I am told, I see that her Fives still hold higher than Italian Ditto, in which I am also interested. Italian, I know, are not wholly reliable: but yet surely not so desperate as Russian said to be: and yet Russia as yet holds above Italy. What you have done—or would do—in the matter, is all I want to know: Sell out, or Retain. Don't trouble yourself with more. Also, I should like one word about the Cowells. I am always afraid of writing to them for fear of some Illness somewhere. EBC's Brother had heard nothing from him three weeks ago. One day ask some of your mathematic Friends to tell you—and then

October 1877 me—how the Moon was on the night of Sept. 3/1650, night before the Battle of Dunbar. She does so much in Carlyle's fine account, "wading through the Clouds," etc., that I want to know how old she was at the time. He does not, I think, quote from any contemporary as to this: and as I see in his French Revolution that he represents the Pleiads and Orion looking down on the streets of Paris on the Night of August 9, he may have supplied to Dunbar a more considerable moon than the Almanack authoritizes.2 But it is a very fine Book. Ever yours E.FG. 1

Maximum tides occurring shortly after new and full moons. See, also, the October 28 letter to Norton. On January 29 EFG remarked to Wright, "Well: his Moon is right, then, though his Orion wrong." 2

To Frederick Spalding Little Grange: Woodbridge October 14, [1877] Dear Spalding, I went three or four times to Dunwich while the Edwards were there: and came away with them last Monday—so far as Wickham: where they diverged to Framlingham (where he would sketch) and I came on here. She tells me that he finished what he wanted—or what the cold wind would let him finish—by Wednesday and went straight to London. I can scarce say how he is: still far from well. When he first came down, there was thought to be some symptoms of Diabetes: these seem to have passed: but he is not what he was. I think his disappoint­ ments in Art have had great Effect on his Body: but he does not speak of it; courageous and generous as before—but more wayward and ir­ ritable. She is very anxious and looks worn. They will now consult their Doctor Bird: who, a fortnight hence, goes to Egypt. G. Moor has been very ill—of a weak Heart, they say: so kept from Business for two or three weeks. He is now got back to it, and only acknowledges to a slight Bilious Attack: but he will have to take care now. It is a pity he has no Partner: his Nephew (who would have been his best) left him more than a year ago, seeing no opening. There is no one but Allen, when GM is away, as he has been forced to be. This is all the Woodbridge news I know. Phillips, Mother, and

October 1877 Wife are all here still; I think the talk of London was only an excuse for curtailing Expenses here. My Garden has been gayer this year than ever I knew it: no doubt from the wet Summer. And it is gay even now with Geranium, Mari­ gold, and Petunia. The two Howes are much as before, and send their remembrances. Ellen Churchyard looks in sometimes and has still her Brother to maintain. I shall be glad to hear of you all being well. Remember me kindly to Mrs. Spalding, and believe me yours truly, E.FG.

To J. R. Lowell 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, how­ ever 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 Satis­ faction, 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

October 1877 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. This seems a Letter of Compliment: but I know it is sincere. 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 octavo volumes by Malone;1 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 desti­ nation. 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, or what is closely connected with 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.2 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 12mo pages, and about twenty too long, and the rest ouer-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

October 1877 Cromwell, and not abusing it. You tell all the Truth about him, and I am yours very sincerely E.FG. 1 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose, Edmund Malone, ed., 1800. See letter to Notes and Queries, Jan. 26, 1861, n.3. 2 Euphranor.

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge October 21, [1877] My dear old Friend, I was beginning to wonder what had become of you—when yester­ day's Post brought me your Letter. And you have been house-buying! I am sure you have bought a pretty place, and cheap-sounding; but, if it be a Bargain, I think it must be one of the very few you ever made: though I dare say you look on Worldly wisdom as your strong point. However this may be, I should like to see your new place, and your old Face, and have a Quarrel with you once more. But I don't know when all this will be—if ever it be—for you tell me that you are become as much a Fixture as myself. So we must let that take its chance; and meanwhile not neglect stirring each other up by Letter now and then. I can say sincerely that if I did visit anywhere, I would do so to you, Frederick. And this I say, when just about to run to London to see my good friend Miss Crabbe—daughter of my dear old Vicar here—now dead and buried just twenty Years. This Daughter and a younger Sister were left very poorly off by the generous old Boy, but they have just enough to live on as Ladies, and to do good where they live. The younger Sister, however, became very ill—in Mind—some months ago: insomuch that they are advised to leave their own home in Wiltshire; and now are lodging in London; and I am really going up to see them, though I shall see no other of my old Friends. Two days will, I dare say, be the extent of my Visit. The Weather is still mild here: yesterday I was visited by some Wasps in my room, and fell asleep myself on a Bench outside. The Garden has still some Colour in it; but, after this week, I suppose we shall pull up what Vegetation there is, and prepare for—another Year! I know nothing of Friends: I suppose they have all been out for a Holyday, and now getting home again. Some months ago I wrote to

October 1877 your Nephew Hallam, asking him a Question I wanted answer to; but he has not answered. Alfred's name appears from time to time as a Poetical Contributor to the "XIXth Century"1 but I have not seen his handiwork. You will find old Metastasio rather pleasant company in your new house: let me hear one day about him and the house too. My dear Frederick, this sort of Correspondence is a poor substitute for viva voce Face to Face between two old Friends: and I can truly say that no Friend, old or young, is dearer to me than you are. I sup­ pose I rather like Letter-writing now and then—unlike most English­ men (but I am Irish)—you do not, I think: but you must write from time to time; and continue to believe me while I live yours E.FG. 1 Tennyson

poems had appeared in four issues of the Nineteenth Century.

To Smith and Elder, Publishers Little Grange: Woodbridge October 25/77 Dear Sir,

Miss Thackeray could not find the Book of her Father's Drawings which I lent her, but the Portrait of WMT, copied by himself from Maclise must have been taken out of the Book to be engraved as Frontispiece to the Book.1 Is it possible that it may have been left with the Engraver? I am sorry that any of the Drawings should some­ how have strayed where they may be unwarrantably made use of: but this one Portrait was especially valuable to me—and I should have supposed to her. I do not like to trouble you: but I know not where to address her now—married, I am told. Is it worth, do you think, enquiring of the Engraver? Yours truly Edward FitzGerald 1

The Orphan of Pimlico.

October 1877

To Bernard Quaritch Little Grange, Woodbridge OcV 27, [1877] Dear Sir, I think you must be tired of my often asking you the Price of little Books which I do not buy. As may be the case very likely with those I now enquire for; so you have fair warning whether to read further or not. I want to know the size and Price of Walckenaer's Sevigne1—the eternal Sevigne!—which I want only for his Notes: 2ndly Size & Price of her friend "le petit" Coulanges' "Chansons" or "Chansons choisies."2 He is a dear little fellow. Voila—mon petit sac est vide, as she says of Coulanges' stomach after being scoured by Vichy waters. Yours truly, E.FG. The initials of so illustrious a Person are enough. By the by, one of your Catalogues said that Agamemnon the Little3 was out of Print: but he figures in your Last. Is he returned on your hands? 1 Charles A. Walckenaer, Memoires touchant la vie et Ies ecrits de Marie . . . marquise de Sevigne, 6 vols., Paris, 1846-65. 2Philippe-Emmanuel Coulanges, Madame de Sevigne's favorite cousin and one of her chief correspondents. Five days later EFG ordered a copy of his Chanson Choisies de M. de Coulanges, 1754. 3 The 1869 privately printed edition, a small octavo; Quaritch's 1876 volume, a small quarto.

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.

October 1877 Thence I lately took down Mr. Lowell's (I have proposed to unmister him too) 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?1—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 blem­ ishes, 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;2 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 Cor­ respondence 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. Some weeks ago I wrote his Niece my half yearly letter of Enquiry. She replied he was very well, having been no further all the Summer than Epsom Downs, which he thought should be planted with Potatoes. He had also been reading V. Hugo's "Miserables," which he disliked much.

November 1877 I shall get hold of your Doudan3 one day; nay perhaps may get Quaritch to buy him for me—if Russian Stock, of which I am a holder, do not break, as all men of Business tell me it will. I can scarce believe in such a Bouleversement for so great a Country that has all her History before her. 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 Shake­ speare. 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," I think.4 Now, my dear—Sir—here is a long letter which you need not reply to till you like, if at all. If you do reply, tell me what are your Studies, reading or writing, and believe me Sincerely yours E.FG. I wrote to Mr. Lowell in Spain: but told him also not to trouble himself to answer me. 1

See letter to Fanny Kemble, Oct. 4, 1874, n.8. See letter to Carlyle, June 29, 1847. 3 Ximenes Doudan (1800-72), literary critic, whose correspondence in Melanges et Lettres, 4 vols., Paris, 1876-77, is deservedly admired. 4 See letter to Pollock, Jan., 1873, n.l. 2

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Novr 2, [1877] Dear Sir, I would have the Paris Reprint (1754) of Coulanges' Chanson £,1. 5. if you care to get it for me. Walckenaer shall wait till I want him again. You did not answer me about my old Friend Agamemnon whose Destiny puzzles me more than his Tomb did Dr. Schliemann.1 One of your Catalogues spoke of him as "out of print"—as indeed I thought he must be if his 250 Copies were not inexhaustible as the Widow's

November 1877 cruse. But a subsequent Catalogue spoke of him as sufficient in stock to form part of an Auction, and your last devotes a paragraph to his Ghost. Yours truly, E.FG. 1 Heinrich Schliemann, archaeologist, had caused a sensation in 1876 with the discovery, within the citadel at Mycenae, of a circle of graves one of which he believed, erroneously, to be Agamemnon's.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Guy Fawkes Day, [1877] My dear Wright, Don't suppose I have only glanced at your Preface, sending it back as I do on the Day I receive it. I have read it twice, with such care as Irish brains are capable of: I think it altogether excellent both in Thought and Words; and I feel sure that, if I kept it a week, I should find little more to except at than the very little which occurred to me at first and second readings. What does this amount to? Two words, or expressions, which I mark as having stumbled at—which I should not have stumbled at but for the uniform excellence of the composi­ tion: and moreover which I have perhaps no business to stumble at at all. Mere "Word picking" as Johnson said of Hurd: the meaning being perfectly clear. I might have thought that too much space and consideration were given to Knight, Chalmers & Co.1 But you make very good sport of them—quiet sport, as should be—and one would not have the whole Preface of twenty-five pages curtailed. At p.8 you see I suggest that William may have had the notorious year 1594 in his Eye,2 though leading it to a worse (but very natural) upshot. The old Bishop King is fine; and how fresh old Burton—and my dear Doctor Farmer always to the point! I wish you could manage some Biographical Sketch of him, but I suppose there is little more than a few anecdotes in Nichols' Bowyer.3 I am especially glad of your concluding paragraph about Midsum­ mer Eve: I knew all was a Dream, which allows many Freaks: but Midsummer more than all: Bottom, Theseus, etc. "God bless it" as Thackeray wrote to me about it forty years ago.

November 1877 But (what I see I have not said before) I the rather return you the Preface today, because I go to London tomorrow!—to see my good old Friend Miss Crabbe, who won't come to me here. I shall see no one else. It is now just twenty years since the Brave old Boy was laid in Bredfield Churchyard. Two of his Father's Lines might make Epitaph for some good Soul. Friend of the Poor, the Wretched, the Betray'd They cannot pay thee—But thou shalt be paid!4 Pas mal ga, eh? Mais qui Ie lit? Toujours a vous E.FG. 1

Charles Knight and Alexander Chalmers, 19th-century editors of Shakespeare alluded to in Wright's preface to the Clarendon Midsummer Night's Dream. 2 The date of writing Midsummer Night's Dream can only be conjectured. Wright favored 1592. EFG concurs with editors who interpret Titania's speech, II. 1.81-117, as an allusion to storms, violent and prolonged, which assailed Britain in 1594. John King (1559-1621), Bishop of London; Richard Farmer (1735-97), Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; and Robert Burton (15771640), author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, are sources referred to by Wright. 3 William Bowyer, whose memoirs, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Cen­ tury, were printed by John Nichols, 1812-16. 4 See letter to Fanny Kemble, May 2, 1874, n.2.

To FitzEdward Hall Little Grange: Woodbridge Nov 12/77 My dear Sir, When I read of some Stocks being "redeemable" in such a year, I found I was to understand it, not as possibly, but as certainly, to be redeemed. What do you say to such Ability? What a wonderful word is Backwardation of Prices! I should have thought "Fall" or "Decline" sufficient. Such a word reminds me of Browning who has come like a Giant to demolish poor me with such weapons. His Agamemnon, which is good, I doubt not, in many respects, is a very curious piece of English—not as being wrong, but uncouth.1 I would send it to you should you care

November 1877 to see it. And I would be glad if you would send me any Nation which notices it. I believe in that Paper more than in the English Critics. Yours truly Edward FitzGerald 1 Browning's

extremely literal translation of the tragedy published in October.

To Frederick Tennyson [Woodbridge] [November, 1877] My dear Frederick, Write to tell me about your newly purchased house; I want to know that you have settled about it—and in it—without any hitch, whether as regards Place or Purchase. Is Drainage good? Water good? What Aspect? Come; here is really something to write about: yes, to fill one Note sheet with: so, Frederick, write, write, write! A month ago I saw a Copy of your Poems, advertized in some Cata­ logue at its original Price (I think) of 6s, second hand. I ordered it [sent] at once to my little Niece who had long been coveting it. You will one day, I think, have to republish it: I, who couldn't write any one of the Poems, yet think I could use scissors and paste upon them to the general advantage: but you wouldn't consent, though you wouldn't resent: and still less should I resent your Refusal. I have been for two whole Days to London: only to see my good Friend Miss Crabbe, who has been uprooted from her home in Wilts by the severe mental Illness of the Sister who lived with her and is now with her for a while in London. In a dismal part of it beyond Bayswater; and London wet, fog, and slush, all the while: so I must say I was very glad to get home to my own dull Town, where at least we have fresh Air. I saw no Sight but the National Gallery, inwardly rebuilt, and very handsomely, I think: but the old Masters looked very sombre through the November Atmosphere. I was very near go­ ing to Mozart's lovely Nozze1 at Winter opera: but I did not like to stay an Evening abroad: and thought that I should probably only have got out of tune with the performance, so much altered from my remembrances of Sontag and Malibran.21 think it is now best to attend these Operas as given in the Theatre of one's own Recollections. Now, I have no new house to tell you of: but here is my Note-sheet full: so now be a good Boy and let me hear from you before Xmas:

December 1877 and take all my good Wishes for it (I should like to be with you) and believe me ever yours E.FG. 1

The Marriage of Figaro.

2

Henrietta Sontag, soprano, and Maria Malibran, contralto.

To Alfred Tennyson Little Grange, Woodbridge Dec., 1877

Will anyone tell me anything of old Frederick? Three months ago, I think, he wrote me a word of a house he had bought near Jersey, a wonderful bargain, which I told him would be about the first won­ derful bargain he ever made in his life, so far as I could guess. Now a month or so ago I wrote to ask him about himself and his bargain: and, though he is not so liberal a letter-writer as the present, he gen­ erally satisfies me with some answer within such a time. Does anyone at Farringford know about him? And will tell me? Be it noticed that being on distant terms with the whole Laureate Family, I address no one in particular: only am obliged to direct to that paltry poet who is the unworthy head. And, in spite of my wrongs, I do wish them all a happy Christmas and New Year, and am theirs according as they shall behave to They know Whom. That was a nice sonnet of Longfellow's to "The Laurell'd Head";1 the "howling dervishes" will tire out in their dance before long, I do think: never doubted but they would. O but then my Bil-Iy listed, Listed and cross'd the roaring main: For King George he fought brave-ly In Po'tig'l, France, and Spain: Don't you see my Billy a-coming, Coming in yonder cloud: Gridiron Angels ho-vering round him, Don't you see him in yonder clouds? E.FG. 1

"Wapentake, To Alfred Tennyson."

December 1877

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Dec. 7, [1877] My dear Wright, R. Groome has just left me after a two days' Visit. Among other things he told me that, when he was at Cambridge a month ago, he heard that Dean Merivale was ill of a Carbuncle. About the same time the Mistress of Trinity wrote me that her Master was unwell, so altered that I should scarce recognize him. Notwithstanding which, Groome says he found [him] pretty well in Body and mind: driving about with yourself and R.G. Now, busy as you usually are, I wish you would give me a few lines about Dean and Master. It is in vain to ask the Cowells—male or female. I suppose you received a Milton Pamphlet I posted you. I observed the Capitals sparsim; and think you told me—with the great Brown­ ing's Authority—that Milton probably so marked the words he wished to emphasize. But, as he was blind, had he to signify so to his Amanuensis? R.G. brought me his Book of the new E.A. Notes and Queries: very good very many of them, I thought. The two Suffolk Letters he had himself written seemed to me excellent: and I was glad to be able honestly to say so. My poor Edwards seems to get no better: indeed he has been lately laid up with very severe Cold and Cough. But that is of less impor­ tance. I doubt his Head is inwardly affected: indeed She (the brave woman, as you justly call her) made the Doctor confess so much. I had thought so for more than a Year. It is selfish to say it is a Grief to me: those two and their little Dunwich in Summer were among my Pleasures—and will be, I doubt, among my Regrets. My Brother's younger Son1 is dying of diseased Bowel: his elder son, not dying, but paralytic in Ireland. They were to have been Models. And I am yours E.FG. 1

John's son Maurice died before the end of the month.

December 1877

To W. B. Donne (Fragment) Woodbridge Dec. 7,'77 My dear Donne, . . . R. Groome has just left me after two days' visit: pleasant as usual, and well in health, only I fear his Eyes do not mend. He brought me a Book of East Anglican Notes; very good, I thought: and I was particularly glad to say how very much pleased I was with his own two "Suffolk" Letters. He went away this morning, proposing to interview the great Captain Bro-hoke on his way home. . . . Mowbray told you, I daresay, that I went to London—to see Miss Crabbe, who wouldn't come here. . . . They were in a dingy outskirt of London, and it rained all the while I was there. . . . Ever yours, my dear Donne E.FG.

To W. A. Wright Woodhridge Wednesday, [December, 1877] My dear Wright, Here I am: and glad to see you any day if you really think it worth your while to come and go back so far for so little while. I can get you a Chop tomorrow, in case you choose to come with no further notice: perhaps a Fowl on Friday or Saturday, if you give me a word of Post Card Notice. It is quite the same to me, any day. But, as for you, even if you have post-carded a Visit, don't come if weather foul, or anything in the way; I shall only eat up the Fowl alone. Groome sent me a Letter from Mrs. Thompson, saying they were warm and comfortable at Hastings: his Liver pronounced by Doctor Weber? to be neither larger nor less than when before examined: but ever, too large. I don't know what he means about my condescending to Albert—but I believe the Memoir is one of the last I should fly to. I have still Wesley to fall back on; and am even now on my Magnum Opus of Crabbe which will never get beyond me, I suppose, unless you look it over. It is a Good Work, I know—worth all my other little Concerns put together.

January 1878 You forgot to tell me of Merivale. Write of him if you don't come: come only if you like: and believe me yours always E.FG. Da Steel Spike!

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Jan. 25/78 Dear Sir, I know not if I am in any way indebted to you for a handsome—too handsome—Edition of Omar which came here a week ago; Messrs. Osgood, I see, Publishers.1 I wish that, at any rate, they would have let me know of their intention, as I have a few alterations, and an additional Note. I suppose it will be a long while before your Agamemnon be any­ thing near running out; but, if you should know of any American Pub­ lisher thinking of an Edition—a cheap one might perhaps pay them— I should be much obliged if you would tell me, and ask those on the other side of the Atlantic to let me know, as I want to alter some things which I have been told of. Of course I should not sanction any Reprint, if ever contemplated, while your Edition remains on hand. Yours truly, E.FG. 1 James R. Osgood of Boston had published 500 copies of EFG's third edition of the Rubdiydt, December 7, followed by a second printing before the end of the month, all post-dated 1878. Quatrains were printed on one side only of each leaf.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Jan. 27, [1878] Dear Sir, I did not want to add to King Agamemnon, only to alter here and there: which must wait to be done if ever he should be reprinted.

January 1878 I wanted to add (a Note) to Omar but of little consequence. Only, I think Messrs. Osgood who are, I believe, respectable Publishers, might have apprized me before they brought out their Edition. It is such a Curiosity of spinning out that I will send it to you to look at. But I think I will, as I said, leave Omar for the present; there has been enough of him here, and now will be more in America. One day I may bring him out in better Company. Yours truly, E.FG.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Jan. 29, [1878] My dear Wright, I must tell you at once that I am very much obliged to you—busy as you are—for considering my Crabbe; and, I must say, very glad that you approve it as far as you have seen.1 For I think that, if you, who knew the original long before, like my Abstract, others would like it who had not read, or could not read, the same. And this, allowing for some private partiality, as I suppose I may say. But, nevertheless, I suppose my Opus will remain between myself and you, and two or three more; for I could not tell any Publisher that I thought it would pay, even if I found one to entertain the faintest idea of it. The Elder Brother's Story is all done, and I think one of the best of my manipulations. But I thought you carried away with you enough to give you an idea of the thing: and did not—and do not—wish to trouble you with all. If we meet at dear little Dunwich—there will be time for such a word. I have not heard lately from either Edwards: but a young Gentle­ man who came here a month or so ago told me that he was all the better for a slight Fit of Gout: which gives me hope that such was the ailment of the Head. But he must not smoke. I sent your Master a note from Carlyle's Niece, in answer to my half yearly Letter of Enquiry; perhaps the Master has already told you its purport: if not, he will, if you care to ask him. Well: his Moon is all right then, though his Orion wrong.2 We were reading last night a delightful "Amourette" of old Pepys: Feb. 11/66-7, part in French, part in Spanish "mi muger," etc. I have paid £,4.10

February 1878 for the new six Volumes, of which the last two are yet unborn—which is counting of one's Chickens before hatcht. Tell Cowell that when I returned from him I found a copy of my old Persian, stretched to about 80 12m pages, by the simple means of printing only on one side of the Leaf: Osgood, Boston, "Quel drole de Peuple celui-la, eh?" I thought I never saw Cowell look better, or livelier: D.G. Do not tie yourself down to J. Caesar by Easter—but you can do such things. You know that my superficial counsel is at your Service and that I am yours always E.FG. 1 EFG had asked Wright to appraise a portion of the "Readings in Crabbe" which he was compiling from Tales of the Hall. He had become engaged in the project casually ten years before. See letter to Cowell, May 15, 1868. 2 EFG had queried Wright about moonlight on the eve of Dunbar battle and commented on Orion at Paris in his letter of October 10, 1877.

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge February 3/78 My dear Frederick,

I enclose you a scrap by your Friend Weber—from my Musical Record, in which was nothing else I thought you would care for. You can send the scrap back (if you like) in the Letter which you owe me about that new House of yours. Did you ever get a Letter from your Sister Matilda which [she] sent me to direct to you: which I could only direct "St. Helier," having forgotten your new Address. She wrote from Alfred's in the Wight: a Christmas Party, I suppose. But Matilda's Letter to direct was all I heard of them. Mrs. Kemble wrote me two months ago that she had heard a New Poem of AT—but what she did not say. I wrote my yearly Letter to old Merivale, who had (I heard) been ill: so he had: but was well when he wrote—a capital Letter, too— full of his particular Humour and Sense. He sent me a fine Copy [of] his Translation of the Iliad: I told him beforehand I would say nothing about it, whether I liked it or not; as I think best on such occasions: but I might have told him that I could never care for the original, with its brutal Gods and Heroes. I am sure my Taste must be defective in this: and that all the rest of the World has not been mistaken these

February 1878 two or three thousand Years. But so it is. The Odyssey I can read, though I have not done so these thirty years, I believe. You must let me know you are quit of your Colds, as well as about the new House. I hear it has been very bad weather in Florence. Hereabout, mild and wet. I have Scott's Novels, and Pepys' Diary read to me of a night: and am well satisfied. Now I shall not write any more till you have told me what you promised to tell: but I am still Yours always E.FG.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] Thursday [February, 1878] My dear Wright,

You know, I dare say, whether the Dictionary marked in the en­ closed be worth your ordering. Today—at last—a Letter from EBC, who says how many he has written in Imagination. In this case, the Letter would be more than the Spirit. I remember Mrs. Kemble's saying that Julius Caesar was the most exhausting Play she had to read, because of being nearly all in one Key. I suppose one feels this in reading to oneself. We are here reading Rob Roy of a night: a little wearisome till over the Border, and then—beyond any but Cervantes perhaps. And it is wonderful how threads of the Story are woven into the first duller part. Even my young Bookbinder who reads to me calls it "Glorious!" and loves the Baillie. I rejoice in thinking it as good as ever: and am ever yours E.FG. I heard (but know not now when or how) that Ponsonby1 was the original of Warrington. There seems indeed the mixture of some more acid than his; but I don't believe—Venables, whom W.M.T. never much affected and had had his Nose broken by. 1 Warrington, a character in Thackeray's Pendennis and later novels. William G. Ponsonby and George S. Venables, barrister and prominent journalist, were EFG's contemporaries at Cambridge. Venables had broken Thackeray's nose at Charterhouse School, but the incident did not inhibit subsequent friendship.

Febraary 1878

To C. Ε. Norton 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 read or not, do not feel bound to answer it except in the fewest words, in case you are any way indisposed. You have—a fam­ ily: you had an aged Mother, when last I heard from you—room enough for anxieties and Sorrows! I had your printed Report on Olympia,1 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 "Pro­ fessor 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. 1; 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 pub­ lished;2 and really felt no shock of change between the one Poet and

February 1878 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 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. And I am yours sincerely E.FG. 1 A technical paper submitted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on the temple of Zeus at Olympia, site of the ancient Olympic games. 2 The Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, H. Buxton Forman, ed.

To C. E. Norton 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, some­ times till past midnight, in spite of all endeavours to get him to bed. "Quest ce que cela fait si je m'amuse?" as old Voltaire said on like occasions. I have got down the Doudan you recommended me: but have not yet begun with him. Pepys' Diary and Sir Walter, read to me for

Febraary 1878 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!1 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 VeoIan 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. As to poor Morton, pray do not trouble yourself about him;2 if he wants annotation, he is best left in MS: you can send him back to me when you will. 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. Pray do not answer these two letters: only write when you are inclined: and always believe me yours sincerely E.FG. P.S. Some one—Messrs. Osgood?—sent me a Copy of their gay new Omar. But I wish they had let him alone; I had declined Quaritch's republishing it, for I thought there was enough—if not more than enough—for the present, at any rate. To advert to "paullo Majora"—though not in bodily size—there is a very nice new Edition of Tennyson—Is a Volume, pocket—nay, waist­ coat pocket—size. Mrs. Kemble wrote me some months ago that she had been hearing a new MS of his—about which I have no curiosity— unless it should be about his old Lincolnshire, which he should never have quitted. I think a Poet, as well as a Painter, should stick to his "nation" as we say in Suffolk; and as I see Boccaccio says of any Birthplace, much short of the general term we now confine the word to. I was delighted with Longfellow's generous Sonnet to AT, and so was Mrs. Kemble—calling Mr. L. her "noble, beautiful, man." I hope the "howling Dervishes" fit on the Cap. Here is a very long Letter. You like my Letters: I am sure you do

February 1878 if you say so: but indeed I think it is because they are English, which (I never quite understand why) you trans-Atlantic Scholars even— somewhat over-value. All my friends write better Letters (with no more effort than I)—which certainly is none at all. Think of Morton's for instance: I am half tempted to send you an offhand note from— The Dean of Ely—full of Sense and Humour. 1 Scott's

Waverley. transcript of Savile Morton's letters which EFG had sent the previous May, hoping that Norton would place them in some periodical. 2 The

To Fanny Kemble Little Grange, Woodbridge February 22, [1878] My dear Lady, I am calling on you earlier than usual, I think. In my "Academy" I saw mention of some Notes on Mrs. Siddons in some article of this month's "Fortnightly"1—as I thought. So I bought the Number, but can find no Siddons there. You probably know about it; and will tell me? If you have not already read—buy Keats' Love-Letters to Fanny Brawne. One wishes she had another name; and had left some other Likeness of herself than the Silhouette (cut out by Scissors, I fancy) which dashes one's notion of such a Poet's worship. But one knows what misrepresentations such Scissors make. I had—perhaps have— one of Alfred Tennyson, done by an Artist on a Steamboat—some thirty years ago; which, though not inaccurate of outline, gave one the idea of a respectable Apprentice.2 But Keats' Letters—It happened that, just before they reached me, I had been hammering out some admirable Notes on Catullus—another such fiery Soul who perished about thirty years of age two thousand years ago; and I scarce felt a change from one to other. From Catullus' better parts, I mean; for there is too much of filthy and odious—both of Love and Hate. Oh, my dear Virgil never fell into that: he was fit to be Dante's companion beyond even Purgatory. I have just had a nice letter from Mr. Norton in America: an amia­ ble, modest man surely he must be. His aged Mother has been ill: fallen indeed into some half-paralysis: affecting her Speech princi­ pally. He says nothing of Mr. Lowell; to whom I would write if I did

February 1878 not suppose he was very busy with his Diplomacy, and his Books, in Spain. I hope he will give us a Cervantes, in addition to the Studies in his "Among my Books," which seem to me, on the whole, the most conclusive Criticisms we have on their several subjects. Do you ever see Mrs. Ritchie? Fred. Tennyson wrote me that Alfred's son (Lionel, the younger, I suppose) was to be married in Westminster Abbey: which Fred, thinks an ambitious flight of Mrs. A. T.3 I may as well stop in such Gossip. Snowdrops and Crocuses out: I have not many, for what I had have been buried under an overcoat of Clay, poor little Souls. Thrushes tuning up; and I hope my old Blackbirds have not forsaken me, or fallen a prey to Cats. And I am ever yours E.FG. 1 "Mrs, Siddons as Lady Macbeth from Contemporary Notes by George J. Bell," edited by Fleeming Jenkin. The article appeared in the February Nineteenth Century, not in the Fortnightly. 2 Inserted in Tennyson's 1830 and 1833 poems bound by EFG as a single volume, now in Trinity College Library. 3 Lionel Tennyson married Eleanor Locker, February 25.

From Lord Hatherley 31, Great George Street, S.W. Feb. 20, 1878 Dear Edward FitzGerald, I have sent your book ("Mrs. Kemble's Autobiography")1 as far as Bealings by a safe convoy, and my cousin, Elizabeth Phillips, who is staying there, will ultimately convey it to its destination at your house. It afforded Charlotte [wife] and myself several evenings of very agreeable reading, and we certainly were impressed most favourably with new views as to the qualities of heart and head of the writer. Some observations were far beyond what her years would have led one to expect. I think some letters to her friend "S." on the strange fancy which hurried off her brother from taking orders, to fighting Spanish quarrels,2 are very remarkable for their good sense, as well as warm feeling. Her energy too in accepting her profession at the age of twenty as a means of assisting her father to overcome his difficulties is indicative of the best form of genius—steady determination to an end.

February 1878 Curiously enough, whilst reading the book, we met Mrs. Gordon (a daughter of Mrs. Sartoris)3 and her husband at Malkins at dinner, and I had the pleasure of sitting next to her. The durability of type in the Kemble face might be a matter for observation with physiolo­ gists, and from the little I saw of her I should think the lady worthy of the family. If the book be issued in a reprint a few omissions might be well. I fear we lost however by some lacunse which you had caused by covering up a page or two.4 Charlotte unites with me in kindest regards to yourself, Yours very sincerely, Hatherley. E. FitzGeraId, Esq. [FitzGerald enclosed this letter in that of February 22 to Fanny Kemble, and added:] I send this to you, dear Mrs Kemble, not because the writer is a Lord—Ex-Chancellor—but a very good, amiable, and judicious man. I should have sent you any other such testimony, had not all but this been oral, only this one took away the Book, and thus returns it. I had forgot to ask about the Book; oh, make Bentley do it; if any other English Publisher should meditate doing so, he surely will apprise you; and you can have some Voice in it. Ever yours E.FG. No need to return, or acknowledge, the Letter. 1 Bound

installments of "Old Woman's Gossip" from the Atlantic Monthly. Kemble was one of the most active of the Cambridge Apostles who supported General Jose Torrijos, Spanish liberal, in his ill-fated 1831 insurrection. 3 Mrs. Sartoris, Fanny Kemble's sister, Adelaide. 4 The passage on EFG and his family, Atlantic Monthly, Dec., 1875, pp. 725-26. 2 "Jacky"

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Feb. 22, [1878] Dear Sir,

Excuse me for having troubled you about Mr. Norton's Book. As I had to pack it up I thought it as well, after all, to post it at once to

February 1878 America, trusting it will reach him as safe as through your mediation; for which I am equally obliged. "En revanche" I send you the American Omar as sent to me—a curious piece of Much Ado about very Little, at any rate. E.FG. P.S. Saturday 23rd In answer to yours of this morning, I still say I think there has been enough of Omar for the present: and I will bide a "wee" in case of any other Reprint asking his Company.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge Feb r 23, [1878] Only a word— To say that I posted you the Squire-Carlyle Letters yesterday: not as Book, but Parcel. Pray let me know by one line directly they reach you—or let us enquire if they do not reach you in three weeks at most. I am anxious about them as of a private nature. E.FG. I think of sending Keats to Mr. Lowell.

To J. R. Lowell Little Grange, Woodbridge February 28/78 My dear Sir, I ventured to send you Keats' Love Letters to Miss—Brawnel a name in which there is much, as you say of his, and other names. (That is a grim Joke, by the way, of Carlyle who says in his Cromwell that the everlasting Rump by any other name would, etc.) 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

February 1878 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 he had a spite against—even Armitage Brown1—had Keats lived two thousand years ago. If the Book, which I bid the Publisher send through Mr. Stevens, reach you, you will feel bound to acknowledge it to the noble Donor. And, though I do not wish to trouble a busy and official Man to write letters, I shall be glad if Keats serves as an excuse to draw one from you, if it be not troublesome to you. You will tell me if you have seen a Play of Calderon, or Lope, or Tirso,2 or any other of the old School. And Cervantes? 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 Car­ riage, and sitting up till past Midnight with his Books, in spite of Warnings to Bed. As old Voltaire said to his Niece on a 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 pour­ ing 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 com­ mon Room, came the Human Greetings and Civilities."3 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 delight­ ful. 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

February 1878 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."4 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 There have been four short papers on the True Story of the Cenci; which I am half inclined to send along with this Letter. I will do so in another if you wish. Meanwhile, as you have said the best that I think has been said of my old Daddy, I enclose you a notice of a sacred Relic of him. I don't know if you will be too late to secure it. I think it must anyhow be sweeter than what it once contained. [Enclosure:] Wordsworth's Portmanteau. I transcribe the following item word for word from a catalogue of books and curiosities just received. It is difiBcult to realize the kind of collector whose 18s.6d. will be forthcoming:—"7. An old Portmanteau (shabby) formerly the Poet Wordsworth's, with name inside and date 1820. Small size, 18s.6d." Horatio 1 Charles Armitage Brown, Keats's benefactor, who shared his home with the poet. 2 Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina, pseudonym of Gabriel Tellez (1571-1648). 3 Memorials of Charlotte Williams-Wynn, 1877, p. 59. 4 A discursive account of a hunting and fishing excursion to Moosehead Lake in the Maine wilderness. The essay, published in Putnam's Magazine, Nov., 1853, is marred by what EFG condemned as "smart writing."

To Anna Biddell [Woodbridge] [February 28, 1878] Dear Miss Biddell, Howe was to have taken Crabbe (already packed and directed to you) to the Carrier today: but, he being uncertain of the Carrier's

February 1878 habitat we have deferred till tomorrow. Pray do take the Books if not in your way: they are in my way: only bought because I would not see them put up for Sale at 12s6. Frederic Tennyson had written me of his Nephew's Abbey marriage; which F. puts down to the account of Mrs. Alfred's ambition. He does not like her, on that account. I never saw any sign of it in her: but Fred is positive. I am really very glad you like Mrs. Kemble: you being quite an unprepossesst Witness. It is one true and lofty Soul recognizing another. I say so sincerely. As to my grand Family Gold Plate, you know what all that (Silver-gilt is meant) came to.1 As to what I have pasted over —"let that Fly stick to the wall." Mrs. K. is one of the few who exceed in Loyalty not only to their own Friends but to their Brother's School­ fellows; and she has really printed that of myself which is absurd, and would make me ridiculous. It is not Modesty, but Pride—or even Vanity—that makes me cover it over; and I beg even you to leave it as it is. I doubt not it is a pleasure to you to converse with one who can tell you what other people have said and written. That is all: but it is a good deal, when done with agreeable Taste, and in the Country. Ellen Churchyard lost her Key just where you had anticipated—a few steps from her own door; that is, there it had been picked up for her. Last night, and the night before that, we had Sir A. Wardour's Dinner at Monkbarns: rescue after it; and Lovel's haunted Night after­ ward.2 None of it good, I thought: but I may not have been in the humour. I hope you have not gone to Felixstow today, drizzly as it is: and am yours always Sincerely E.FG. Are you interested in the enclosed?3 I don't send it in order to per­ suade you to be so, mind? 1 In "Old Woman's Gossip," Dec., 1875, Fanny wrote: "I also remember, as a feature of sundry dinners at their house, the first gold dessert and table ornaments that I ever saw, the magnificence of which made a great impression upon me; though I also remember their being replaced, upon Mrs. FitzGerald's wearying of them, by a set of ground glass and dead and burnished silver, so exquisite that the splendid gold service was pronounced infinitely less tasteful and beautiful." The table service came under the auctioneer's hammer when Mr. FitzGerald filed for bankruptcy in 1848.

March 1878 EFG pasted sheets over the later portion of the "Gossip" in which Fanny wrote of his "rare intellectual and artistic gifts" and commented on his literary works. The passage in its entirety is reprinted in the Letters and Literary Remains,

III, 200-02. 2 Scott's

The Antiquary. missing.

3 Enclosure

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge March 3/78 My dear Wright, I have ransacked my head for any passage about "Malice—stronger than Love," but cannot find one. Doubtless such a Proposition may be true in particular cases—as in Crabbe's Sir Owen Dale—but surely not predicable of Humanity in general (ask Mr. Munro's Catullus, who knew both passions well enough) nor of such temper as Brutus knew, or believed himself to be. And moreover the questionable Proposition is so obscurely indicated in the Text you send me, that I must prefer Pope's simple "exempt of malice" though I know that cannot be the word,1 and may fall very short of a profounder meaning involved. You may infer that I have been reading—yes, and with great Inter­ est, however little Scholarship—your Fellow-Collegian's new Book of Notes, etc. 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"2 as well as he whose "Frater ave atque vale"3 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,4 his "Malice" was not against Caesar, but against the Nemesis that might else be revenged on him—eh? But I don't under­ stand how Suetonius, or those he wrote for, could have forgotten,

March 1878 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! And all nothing to your purpose—except about Caesar. Ever yours E.FG. Edwards is painting—I hope not smoking—at Beer in Devonshire: well and happy his Wife says. If there were but a Barber at Dunwich I think I would engage Dix Hall for the Season. 1 Julius Caesar, III.1.174-75, obviously corrupt, spoken by Brutus after the assassination, is in question:

To you our swords have leaden points, Mark Antony; Our arms in strength of malice. . . . Spedding emended to read "no strength of malice." See letter to Wright, [c. May 1, 1878], 2 The younger of Keats's two brothers, who had died at the age of 19. 3 "Brother, hail and farewell," the closing words of a lament by Catullus for the loss of a brother. 4 Derived from Fescennia, ancient Etruscan city noted for licentious, scurrilous dialogues in verse.

To W. B. Donne Woodbridge March 14, [1878] My dear Donne, I have sent you many works: none better than the enclosed,1 though it may not be exactly accurate, Biographies differing, and I, a Paddy. I did it for myself, who felt often at a loss for some Data while reading the dear Fellow's Letters: especially as they are now published in Batches to several Correspondents. Then I thought some others might like some such Table also: and so Loder has printed it. You see that it may be stuck in by way of Fly-leaf to any Edition of the Letters, etc. I hesitated at expatiating so on the terrible year 1796, or even mentioning the Drink in 1804: but the first is necessary to show what a Saint and Hero the man was; and only a Noodle would fail to under­ stand the Drink, etc., which never affected Lamb's conduct to those

March 1878 he loved. Bless him! "Saint Charles!" said Thackeray one day taking up one of his Letters, and putting it to his Forehead. You can give a copy, if you please, to Mowbray and one to Mrs. Kemble, if she cares for it: but I shall soon be writing to her. Here I go on from day to day, week to week, month to month. I and my good Reader have made four of Sir Walter's Novels last us over four winter months; only taking him for a last "Bonne bouche." Who is the best Novelist I don't know: but I know that Sir Walter is the most delightful to me. Much weariness, some even bad. But, on the whole, I look back to each with Love; and with sadness to think that I may never read them again. I only speak of the earlier Scott novels. I take it for granted you are well, not hearing otherwise from any one. You know I wish it. Only write when not disinclined; and with love to Blanche, believe me yours always E.FG. I have sent a copy to old Spedding! 1 A calendar of events in the life of Charles Lamb. The four-page pamphlet is reprinted in the Letters and Literary Remains, VII, 426-31. A biography of Lamb, whom he had long and deeply admired, was one of the works EFG began but never completed. Among books from his library, now at Trinity College, are all editions of Lamb's correspondence and virtually every biography published before 1883 as well as memoirs of many of Lamb's friends. All contain numerous marginal notations. EFG also filled notebooks with data on Lamb's life, and collected prints appropriate for a biography. The sole harvest of this labor was the calendar, printed by Loder.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge March 14, [1878] My dear Wright,

I drew up the enclosed for myself, getting often puzzled for Dates of "Saint Charles's" movements, etc., in the Biographies, and espe­ cially with the Letters as now published in batches of several Cor­ respondents. Moxon has published the same, Stereotype (I suppose), under three Editors: 1. Sala: 2. Purnell: 3. my Namesake Percy: and I know no other way of having these Letters. Well, I say I drew up the enclosed for myself, and then thought others might like it also:

March 1878 so printed: and send you six Copies, I believe, for yourself and any one else you may care to give it to. I won't swear to its exact accuracy: for the Biographies are sometimes contradictory, and confused; and I, you know, am a Paddy; really as apt to blunder from over-care as from no care at all. Some Summer Holyday when you have a Volume of the dear Fellow for Company, you may correct any error you find in my Data. I meant to have printed old Wordsworth's "Charles Lamb is a good man if ever there was one";1 but I could not find the passage, and (Paddy though I be) did not wish to quote the Daddy amiss. I wanted to insert it, lest any Noodle should misconceive all the Drink, Smoke, etc., as also to excuse my somewhat expatiating on the horrors of 1796—which I did, however (though with some hesitation), to show forth what the Man had to suffer. After which who but a Noodle can hint about Drink, etc. "Saint Charles!" said old Thackeray, taking up one of his Letters from my Table, and putting it to his Forehead. Give one of the Papers to Cowell, of course. Ask Mr. Munro if Lamb's comical Latin Letters (as that to Barton the "Tremulus") do not prove a good notion of familiar Latin Letter-writing. (Will he condescend to accept—and perhaps even correct—my Great Work?) And do you believe me yours E.FG. 1

O, he was good, if e'er a good Man lived! "On Lamb" in "Elegiac Pieces"

To R. H. Groome Woodbridge March 16, [1878] My dear Groome, I have not had any "Academies" that seemed to call for sending severally: here are some however (as also Athenaeums) which shall go in parcel to you, if you care to see them. Also, Munro's Catullus: which has much interested me, bad Scholar as I am: though not touch­ ing on some of his best Poems. However I never cared so much for him as has been the fashion to do for the last half century, I think. I had a letter from Donne two days ago: it did not speak of himself as other than well; but I thought it indicated feebleness. Eh! Voila que j'ai deja dit tout ce qui vient au bout de ma plume.

March 1878 Je ne bouge pas d'ici: cependant, l'annee va son train. Toujours a vous, et aux votres. E.FG. By the by, I enclose a Paper of some stepping stones in dear Charles Lamb's [Life]—drawn up for my own use in reading his Letters, and printed, you see, for my Friends, one of my best Works; though not exact about Book Dates, which indeed one does not care for. The Paper is meant to paste in as Flyleaf before any Volume of the Letters, as now printed. But it is not a "Venerable" Book, I doubt. Daddy Wordsworth said indeed, "Charles Lamb is a good man if ever good man was"—as I had wished to quote at the End of my Paper: but could not find the printed passage.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge March 21, [1878] My dear Wright, I suppose my Letters rather alarm you than otherwise: for fear of being called on for an answer. But that is not usually so, I think: and certainly not in the present instance. The enclosed only adds a little to the little Paper of Data·, 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 Febr 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, found Tom against the Maypole, with a ring of Dancers about him.1 I sup­ pose Tom survived in "Folk lore"—damned word—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: but (of course) I could not find the Book I wanted. Nor can I construe him any more than so much of Shake-

April 1878 speare: 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 after­ wards repeated, mutatis mutandis, The leaves That tremble round a Nightingale, and is one of those which justly incensed the Quarterly, and which K. himself knew were bad:2 but he must throw off the Poem red hot, and could not alter. E.FG. 1By

William Browne (1591-1643). recollection EFG had confused the words quoted from Tennyson's "The Gardner's Daughter," with some passage by Keats. 2 In

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 Fam­ ily 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 com­ municate 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 occu­ pations, 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

April 1878 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 also 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 SquireCarlyle 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 sym­ pathize 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 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 to his forehead; and old Wordsworth said of him: "If there be a Good Man, C. Lamb is one." I have been interested in the Memoir and Letters of C. Sumner:1 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 re­ minded me of our Tennyson (who bears 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

April 1878 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 Atlan­ tic. Plenty of such materials might be had, for this foolish People are restoring, and rebuilding, old Village Churches that have grown to­ gether 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.FG. Pray read the Scene at Mrs. MacCandlish's Inn when Colonel Mannering returns from India to Ellangowan. It is Shakespeare. 1

Charles Sumner (1811-74), Senator from Massachusetts and anti-slave leader.

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge April 11, [1878] My dear Frederick,

I hope I should not [have] cared for Keats' Letters myself had I found anything derogatory to him; I think I should not have bought them had I seen any such intimation in the Reviews: I certainly should not have sent them to you: yourself a Poet, and reverencing Poets. All I saw encreased, not diminished, my respect for the Man. Anyhow, you have the Book: and have read it through by this time: so the mischief is done. You can keep it as long as you please. I saw—in the Athenaeum, I think—rather oblique Reflection on your Nephew's marriage: "A poetical Wedding" as they called it: the Lady being Daughter of some minor Poet of the Day, I believe. But he may be a very good Fellow: and the Match a very promising one,

April 1878 though inaugurated in Westminster Abbey. I remember your notion of Mrs. AT's ambition: I had never noticed any symptom of it in her: but you say you have rather a "microscopic" Eye for Human Character. My Lad was reading to me a few Nights ago the "Notes of the Month" at the end of Chambers Journal:1 among other things, of the Phonograph which goes to realize our old Munchausen's Horn; of the Photograph which is revealing new Secrets of the old Sun; and of Mr. Fair, the Silver King, of South America, who could endow his Daughter with thirty Millions sterling, and whose enormous subsidies of Silver have suggested to America to pay her Bond-holders in that metal. I have been interested in a Memoir of Alfred de Musset who always was to me the best of modern French Poets. The Memoir (by his Brother) shows him, I think, to have been a fine fellow too, allowing for French Morals, and (I believe) for Absinthe, which is, however, not mentioned in the Memoir. He hated modern French Literature— its Novels—which he said would spoil all Taste: and would read— Clarissa! A Sister of Charity attended him in an Illness he had; and when he died seventeen years after, he desired that a Pen she had given him, with "Pensez a vos promesses" worked round in coloured silk, should be put in his Coffin. I believe I told you that I thought Page's Memoir of DeQuincey2 worth the looking over. But I dare say you won't. What do you read? or write? I sometimes wonder how you get on now your Daughters are flown. Tell me something of all this when next you write; and believe me yours still E.FG. It is verv• cold here too. 1 For March 30, 1878, pp. 205-07. EFG errs in identifying James G. Fair as a South American. Fair, taken to the United States from Ireland as a youth, ac­ quired his wealth chiefly through development, with partners, of the Great Bo­ nanza Mine and other rich sources of gold and silver in the Comstock Lode in Nevada. 2 A . H . J a p p ( p s e u d . , H . A . P a g e ) , Thomas de Quincey: his Life and Writings, 2 vols., 1877.

April 1878 To Ε. Β. Cowell Woodbridge April 11, [1878] My dear Cowell, I did not wish you to be troubled with answering my last: especially when on the Eve of a Journey. I believe I wrote you that you were not obliged to acknowledge Norton's Paper to himself, but I am very glad if you could do so with conscientious commendation, and I know you would not commend unless. He is, from all I gather from himself and others (Carlyle for one), a very amiable and modest man; and will by no means trouble you with Letters; so I am glad that you should strike up a spark of Acquaintance with him, which I know he will value very much. He thinks my Letters a boon; which I tell him implies little more than his Countrymen's wanting a Brick, or Stone, of some old English Church to build into any new one erecting in America. Anything from the old Country; from which he is more lineally descended than myself. It pains me to hear of Elizabeth's being unwell. It may not be amiss, however, for you to get out to a Country you love instead of remaining at Cambridge for Easter Vaca­ tion, as I suppose you would otherwise have done. I have half thought that I perhaps ought to meet you in Wales, as you wish it: but I am not what I was, in acquiring new knowledge, which you do indeed impart so delightfully as no one else, I think: and you must know how little I have to impart in return. Little but a few recollections of Books you know better than I, or of some new Memoir in which you are not much interested: and what I think on all such matters you knew long ago. Then I am become a bad Walker; so neither out of doors nor indoors should I be of much use. So here I will remain: having Sir Walter, and old Pepys, and All the Year Round, read to me of a night. The other day I lit on Paley's Aeschylus, with pencil marks at the end of each Play, to note the day when it was read on board the Scandal, or on Bawdsey Cliff in the Autumn of 1863. A very few years later I was reading Sophocles with you in the same places. My date on the Persae followed Paley1s remarks on the final Chorus (which is all Lamentation and Exclamation) to the effect that in this Play, as in "the Seven," etc., the Chorus was of more importance than the Dia­ logue, and also more addrest to the Eye than the Ear (perhaps to both, rather than to the Thought). I have always said the Chorus in general was little else than a sort of Interact Music, of Nonsense Verse,

April 1878 like an Italian Libretto; but the Wise Men see profound meaning and Beauty in it. I think as little as I can of public matters: you know my notion about them. And I am ever yours and Elizabeth's E.FG.

To C. E. Norton1 Woodbridge April 16/78

Only a word; to say that yesterday came Squire-Carlyle from you: and a kind long Letter from Mr. Lowell: and—and the first Nightin­ gale, 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.2 And I am ever yours E.FG. 1

A transcript. Scott's Guy Mannering.

2 In

To Fanny Kemble The Old (Curiosity) Shop, Woodbridge April 16, [1878]

[Where, by the by, I heard the Nightingale for the first time yester­ day Morning. That is, I believe, almost its exact date of return, wind and weather permitting. Which being premised—] Dear Mrs. Kemble,

I think it is about the time for you to have a letter from me; for I think I am nearly as punctual as the Nightingale, though at quicker Intervals; and perhaps there may be other points of Unlikeness. After hearing that first Nightingale in my Garden, I found a long, kind, and pleasant, Letter from Mr. Lowell in Madrid: the first of him too that I have heard since he flew thither. Just before he wrote, he says, he had been assigning Damages to some American who complained of having been fed too long on Turtle's Eggs:—and all that sort of Busi-

April 1878 ness, says the Minister, does not inspire a man to Letter-writing. He is acclimatizing himself to Cervantes, about whom he must write one of his fine, and (as I think) final Essays: I mean such as (in the case of others he has done) ought to leave no room for a reversal of Judgment. Amid the multitude of Essays, Reviews, etc., one still wants that: and I think Lowell does it more than any other Englishman. He says he meets Velasquez at every turn of the street; and Murillo's Santa Anna opens his door for him. Things are different here: but when my Oracle last night was reading to me of Dandie Dinmont's blessed visit to Bertram in Portanferry Gaol, I said—"I know it's Dandie, and I shouldn't be at all surprized to see him come into this room." No— no more than—Madame de Sevigne! I suppose it is scarce right to live so among Shadows; but—after near seventy years so passed—"Que voulez-vous?" Still, if any Reality would—of its own Volition—draw near to my still quite substantial Self; I say that my House (if the Spring do not prove unkindly) will be ready to receive—and the owner also—any time before June, and after July; that is, before Mrs. Kemble goes to the Mountains, and after she returns from them. I dare say no more, after so much so often said, and all about oneself. Yesterday the Nightingale; and To-day a small, still, Rain which we had hoped for, to make "poindre" the Flower-seeds we put in Earth last Saturday. All Sunday my white Pigeons were employed in con­ fiscating the Sweet Peas we had laid there; so that To-day we have to sow the same anew. I think a Memoir of Alfred de Musset, by his Brother, well worth reading. I don't say the best, but only to myself the most acceptable of modern French Poets; and, as I judge, a fine fellow—of the moral French type (I suppose some of the Shadow is left out of the Sketch), but of a Soul quite abhorrent from modern French Literature—from V. Hugo (I think) to E. Sue1 (I am sure). He loves to read—Clarissa! which reminded me of Tennyson, some forty years ago, saying to me a propos of that very book, "I love those large, still, Books." During a long Illness of A. de M. a Sister of the Bon Secours attended him: and, when she left, gave him a Pen worked in coloured Silks, "Pensez a vos promesses," as also a little "amphore" she had knitted. Seventeen years (I think) after, when his last Illness came on him, he desired these two things to be enclosed in his Coffin. And I am ever yours E.FG. 1Eugene

Sue (1804-57), French novelist.

April 1878

To R. Μ. Milnes Little Grange: Woodbridge April 17 / 78 Dear Lord Houghton, You were good enough to send me a Copy of the First Draught of Keats's Hyperion. Can you—will you—give me another Copy? or, has it been published (as surely it ought to have been) so that one may get more than one Copy without troubling you. I want one Copy, at any rate, for Lowell of America—now Minister, or Ambassador, or Charge d'Affaires—or something of that sort in Spain. Yes, surely that Hyperion Sketch ought to be made public.1 What a fuss now about Shelley, who seems to me a Shadow compared to Hyperion K. I could not help buying his Brawne Love letters, though they ought never to have been published. I gathered from Reviews there was nothing but honourable to him: otherwise, I hope I should not have bought; but can't swear to that. I got the Book just as I had made out what I could of Munro's Catullus; and scarce felt a change. Not only the same Passion for Lesbia-Brawne—but for poor Tom the Brother (I forget the Latin one's name)—and I do think Keats might, in a jealous spite, have written against A. Brawne2 something like Catullus against Mamurra, etc. I now think you may be out of Town for Holydays: but I shall "keep"3—only, I hope not bother you. I am obliged to enclose to Pollock for want of better knowledge of your Address. Please to par­ don that, as also such trouble as it is to cause you: and also my sub­ scribing myself Yours sincerely Edward (one of many a) FitzGerald 1 It had been. Milnes included "Hyperion, A Vision" as an appendix in his 18Θ7 Life and Letters of Keats. EFG had read the Life three times and had given copies to a number of friends. It appears that he paid little heed to tables of content and appendices in books. 2 Although Keats was engaged to Fanny Browne, during his fatal illness he did doubt her loyalty to him. "A. Brawne," a slip of memory. 3 Intercept on the way.

April 1878

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's 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 derog­ atory to him. You know, I suppose, that she of whom K. wrote about to others so warmly—his Charmian—was not Fanny Brawne.1 Some years ago Lord Houghton wrote me that 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.2 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, un­ affected, man. He sent me a printed Copy of the first Draught of the opening of Keats' Hyperion; very different from the final one:3 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. Mr. Norton has just returned me my Carlyle-Squire Correspondence —a curious instance of so shrewd an Historian's miscasting the physi­ ognomy of—Contemporary. If it were proper, you could make a capi­ tal little Sermon on that text. This too I would send you if you much cared to see it, and its transmission to and fro were safe, being private Letters of a Public man. Otherwise, I have no fear in the matter, whether the Letters sink or swim: on March 31—next door to April 1 —I entered on my seventieth year. 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

April 1878 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 nat­ ural, or spontaneous, opening—how barbarous by the way, is this col­ lision of ings—finding—opening," 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 Broug­ ham.4 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"5 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—which I enclose—drawn up first for my own benefit, in reading Lamb's Letters, as now printed in batches to his several Correspond­ ents; 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 Advertise­ ment, 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

April 1878 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 Browning 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! I remember his Namesake Tennyson once saying to me, in a third Floor Story, "I love those large, still Books." 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 CoflBn. And here my Paper fails, if not my Pen; only room to sign myself yours sincerely E.FG. 1

Keats wrote of "Charmian," Jane Cox, with admiration rather than warmth (Milnes's Life and Letters of Keats, pp. 192-93). 2 An allusion to a remark by Lowell on a passage in Milnes's biography about Keats's parentage and social status. "Lord Houghton," wrote Lowell, "seems to have a kindly wish to make him gentleman by brevet" ("Keats," Among My Books, Second Series). "Finsbury Circus gentility" is EFG's term, and he uses "skit" in its sense of persiflage. 3 "Hyperion, A Vision," the fragment Milnes had printed for private distribu­ tion. (See letter to him, April 12, [1874], n.2.) Milnes admitted uncertainty whether the Keats MS was the original draft or a revision of the original. Scholars have differed in their judgments. Inferior elements in the fragment convinced EFG that it was an early draft. 4 Charles Sumner had become acquainted with many prominent men on the Continent and in England while abroad, 1837-40. Lord Brougham, Lord Chan­ cellor, 1830-34, expressed admiration for the American's legal knowledge and "natural legal intellect." 5 The Betrothed, principal work of Alessandro Manzoni, 19th-century novelist and poet.

April 1878

To R. Μ. Milnes Little Grange, Woodbridge April 30, [1878] Dear Lord Houghton, You are as ever very kind to me—not least so in writing me a letter, which I find is a hard task to my oldest friends now; partly because of their being oldest, I suppose. My dear old Spedding, I can barely screw out a dozen lines once a year from him: I have just had them, almost two months before the Year was out: and on them I must try to live another year more. And with the aid such correspondents give, Life passes on—'tis labour—but to live. So says Crabbe—only "Ships and Sailing" in the first Line—from his Borough: which, with the rest of him, no one now reads except myself, I believe. I write at once, not only to thank you, but to return you Lushington s corrections.1 I should have thought they were Printer's— not Copier's—errors. In return for all this, I enclose for you one of my works. You see I drew it for myself because I often found myself puzzled about the few Dates in the dear Fellow's Life, when reading his Letters as they are now edited. Then I thought that some others would like such a "Cotelette d'Agneau a la Minute," as Pollock calls it; and so here it is for you if you please. I am told that the present Generation "sneers" at C. Lamb. I suppose a natural revolt from their Predecessors—us— who loved him so well. But his turn will come again, I feel sure—his Letters. "Saint Charles!" said old Thackeray to me in a third floor in Charlotte Street thirty years ago—putting one of C.L.'s Letters to his Forehead. I won't swear to the exact accuracy of my "Cotelette"—it is not easy to get it all from his Biographies—and I am—Paddy. But I believe it is near enough. Pray do not be at the trouble of acknowl­ edging it. You entertained many people at that 26 Pall Mall—as I can witness for one—and one of us was a thief. I suppose someone stole a Volume I had of Thackeray's Drawings, which I lent to Annie T. when she was about that bad "Orphan of Pimlico." I entreated her to use some of his more graceful Drawings—enough Caricature already—but she, or her Publisher, listened not: and she never could find my Book again

April 1878 —if ever she looked for it at all. I did not want it again, but I did not wish it to fall into other hands than hers. Now I think you have enough of Yours very sincerely, Edward (how many more of the name do you know?) FitzGerald Surely the Keats should be published. What a fuss the Cockneys make about Shelley just now—not worth Keats's little finger. [Lushington's list, retained by Milnes with EFG's letter:] [Book 1] 27. 83. 97. 116. 252. 317. 320. 345. 402. 418. 431.

for

high emboss'd as gumm'd brow venom'd had slumber's an aching unison strecht

for

reef-hid drear metal rich where eye paned river earthy

my MS has . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . .

light embossed when gummed brain vanward hand slumbrous a shaking pleasant unison stretcht

[Book 2] 10. 18. 34. 46. 54. 57. 60.

. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

self-hid dire metals sick while eyes paved roar earthly

1 Corrections by Edmund Lushington, Tennyson's brother-in-law, to the pri­ vately printed version of Keats's "Hyperion, A Vision." EFG explains the list and his subsequent remark about "a thief" at 26 Pall Mall, Milnes's bachelor resi­ dence, in the letter to Wright that immediately follows.

May 1878

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [c. May 1, 1878] My dear Wright, I had forgotten having communicated with old Spedding your Query about "in strength of malice" some while ago. But just now, quite unexpectedly, comes a letter—or Note—from him, with (among other things) his thought on the Passage. "I don't believe they are the words Shakespeare wrote. I believe the Transcriber mistook no for in (an easy mistake, no with the upstroke of the ο imperfectly joined being very like in with the upstroke of the η carried back for the dot over the i) and that what Shakespeare wrote, was: To you our Swords have leaden points, Marc Antony, Our arms no strength of malice, and our hearts Of Brothers' temper, etc.1 There is an instance of your rum plurals in verses from Shelley in last Saturday's Athenaeum. Every little living nerve That from bitter words did swerve Round the tortur'd lips and brow Are like sapless leaflets now Frozen on December's bough,2 In the same Article is a really humorous account of the Cockney Battle as to whether the Skylark was an unbodied, or embodied, Spirit—of the Big and Little-endian sort.3 Young Rose came here yesterday and told me that he had left Edwards better, a week ago, in London. One of his pictures—one which had been denied admittance to the Academy last Year, has found its way in this Year:4 in some such height as old Fuseli talked of, I dare say: "By God, you send him to Heaven before his time." I have had a very nice kind Letter from Lord Houghton, of whom I had asked a Copy of his printed Copy of the Beginning of Hyperion; with some corrections by Edmund Lushington. Lord H. had the origi­ nal MS which some one of his many friends stole from him. Fortu­ nately Lushington had made a MS Copy for himself: from which this Print was taken, but with some Printer's Errors which Lushington corrects. I tell my Lord he should publish it. He says he had just been

May 1878 writing to Dizzy5 for some State Pension, or Gratuity, to Keats's Sister Fanny—now an old and very needy Woman. And I am yours E.FG. 1 Julius Caesar, III.1.174-76. Edward Capell had anticipated Spedding's correc­ tion in his edition of Shakespeare, 1768; nevertheless the emendation rarely ap­ pears in modern texts. 2 From time to time EFG and Wright called attention to singular subjects with plural verbs which each had noted in his reading. The passage quoted is from Shelley's "Lines written among the Euganian Hills." See letter to Wright, March 7, [1879], 3 In "To a Skylark" Shelley likens the lark to "an unbodied joy whose race is just begun." The controversy was precipitated when reviewers noted W. M. Rossetti's emendation "embodied joy" in his 1878 edition of Shelley's Works. Exam­ ination of the original MS proved "the un-party," as the Athenaeum reviewer phrased it, to be correct. "In making this announcement," he concluded, "we experienced the sweet feeling that we are announcing tidings of the most profound importance to thousands" (Athenaeum, April 27, 1878, p. 536). 4 Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), R.A., artist and writer on art. 5 Disraeli was Prime Minister at this time. "Milnes made it his business to be kind," wrote Henry Adams.

To J. R. Lowell Woodbridge May, 1878 Ecce iterum—Crispin! I think you will soon call me "Les FitzGeralds" as Madame de Sevigne called her too officious friend "Les Hacquevilles·." 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, and no Snob. By the by, I fancy he was in America some while ago: if so, no doubt you met him: did you find the "Finsbury Circus" flavour about him? 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

May 1878 Lord Η. 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:1 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 seven­ teen 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 10¾ 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 re­ turn 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 Q. He has a really delightful account of a Visit he pays to a pueblo he calls Bafios 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 finally 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 Anda­ lusia. 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! I shall expect a Play bill: perhaps a Bullfight Bill (though I do not care for that) and a Newspaper, and one or two etceteras of that sort. But, as before said, pray do not write in answer to all this, but believe still in my taking Good Will for Deed: and that I am yours sincerely Fitz Hacqueville

May 1878 I am sure you don't mind my ignorance of your proper official Address. 1 Britain had remained neutral during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 but in June, 1878, concluded an agreement to provide military aid if required to protect Turkey's Asiatic possessions.

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge May 8/78 My dear Frederick, I wish you had retained Keats if you cared for him: but perhaps once read is enough: I suppose I shall hardly look further than the sad portrait hereafter: but I do not regret having read the Letters. I shall post you now (pray keep it—or don't send it back) a small Volume in which you may like to read a good Article on old Carlyle.11 suppose it was in some American Paper or Magazine. The Author (Lowell) has published two volumes of longer Essays on some great Authors; I think on the whole the best yet written on their several Subjects. I would send you either, or both, of these if I knew whether you would care to read them: but you say you are engaged in other speculations, and so they might become rather a burden than a pleasure to you. Lowell (the writer) has written a good deal of Poetry which, so far as I have seen of it, has not interested me; but I think he can judge of it, as well as of the Authors thereof: and is a very able and inde­ pendent Man. This I thought long before I had any acquaintance with the Man, whom I now know only by Letter. He is a Professor at the American Cambridge: but is now gone as Minister to Spain: where he is imbibing Cervantes, one of his chief Idols. A merit about him is, that he is in no hurry to write on any matter, but lets it gather and form within him till as complete as he can make it. I suppose you see the Athenaeum or some such Paper as tells you of new Books, etc. The last Athenaeum gave a remarkable account of Trelawny's reprint of his remarkable account of Shelley and Byron, published over thirty years ago, I think.2 He seems to have loved Shelley as a Man: Byron, not so well: which I think one can sym­ pathize with. The Cockneys are now making a tremendous effort to set up Shelley as the Apollo of his time: for a true Poet I recognise him: but too unsubstantial for me: and poor Keats' little finger worth

May 1878 all his Body: not to mention Byron, with all his faults. Lord Houghton (Dicky Milnes of old) sent me some years ago Keats' first Draught of the opening of Hyperion, printed from a MS which he (Lord H.) had, but which was stolen from him by one of his many Friends. This I would post you if you cared to see it. But I really don't know if my doing so be not a bore to you. I fancy we must now be having Jersey weather here: very warm and wet. All our younger trees are in leaf, fresh if not full: the old Oaks and Elms, whose blood, I suppose, circulates more slowly, still reserving themselves. I have been kept in for two days; and, as my Eyes happen to be rusty just now, am rather puzzled how to get through the Day— And hence arises ancient Men's Report— The Days are tedious, but the Years are short. So says old Crabbe: who elsewhere says: So with the aid that Shops and Sailing (Books and Letters?) give, Life passes on—'tis Labour—but we live.3 There is Mark Tapley for you, at his favourite recreation. I saw another Copy of your Days and Hours in a Bristol Catalogue; sent for it, but it had been sold. You know I have the large Volume from which the publisht one was drawn: but I buy the latter to give away. I see your old friend Browning is in the field again, with another of his odd titles: De Saisiaz—or Croisic—or some such name. I tried to read his Dramatic Lyrics again: they seemed to me "Ingoldsby Legends."4 But I am ever yours E.FG. 1 "Carlyle"

in My Study Windows. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author, 2 vols., 1878, reviewed in the Athenaeum, May 4. Trelawny had published Recollections of the last Days of Shelley and Byron in 1858. 3 The first quotation, the closing lines of "The Old Bachelor," Tales of the Hall; the second, "Amusements," The Borough; both with normal emendation. 4 Browning published La Saiziaz: The Two Poets of Croisic in May. By "In­ goldsby Legends" EFG appears to be implying a resemblance between eccentrici­ ties in Browning's style and the riotous rhymes and rhythms of R. H. Barham's burlesque metrical tales. 2 Edward

May 1878

To Η. Buxton Forman1 Woodbridge May 15178 Dear Sir,

I should have answered your Note before, but was away from home when it arrived. And now I send an ungracious answer. What I have heard—but little, to be sure—of Villon has not made me care to look for him even in his own old French which has a charm for me that I cannot find in modern French Poetry. And when that old French is turned into a Language least akin to it, even by the most skilful Trans­ lator (as I doubt not Mr. Payne2 to be) I fancy that what Charm there was must be in great danger of Evaporating. I am afraid all this will seem unbecoming from one who is himself (to use a Suffolk Superlative) one of the "most translatingest" men alive: but nevertheless, with thanks for complimenting me with your Letter, Yours faithfully Edward FitzGerald 1

Secretary of the Villon Society. John Payne, whose Poems of Master Frangois Villon was published by the Villon Society, 1878. His works include an extremely literal translation of the Rubaiydt, 1898. 2

To W. W. Goodwin1 Woodbridge May 20/78 Dear Sir,

I must thank you for your Paper on Agamemnon, unworthy as I am of any piece of exact critical Scholarship. So much so, that I sent it after some days to one far more able to judge of it—Dr. Thompson, Master of our Trinity College, Cambridge, to whom, I find, that some of your previous disquisitions are known. He tells me, in reply, that he shall consider this paper when he can get clear of College work, now very thick with Syndicates, Examinations, and such things; he being also much of an Invalid, he believes, in the Liver quarter, which indisposes a Man to more work than necessary. He says that he had

June 1878 long been meditating an Examination of the Laurentian MS, but has not yet accomplished it. I can only pretend to judge that your Theory must surely rest on a firm base, and I can feel sure that you have proceeded on it with a modesty and candour which all Critics and Scholars would do well to follow. Some of your suggestions (which I might specify, if Dr. T. had sent me back the Paper) appeared to me simply just: but, as I say, I do not consider myself qualified to pronounce. The interpretation of that Dialogue between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra seemed to me excellent. Surely such cautious work as yours must be better than such as Hermann, who (says Paley's notes) "has not only corrected, but ac­ tually rewritten, at about twice the present length," the conclusion of the Persae. Again let me thank you, and subscribe myself Yours faithfully Edward FitzGerald 1

Professor of Greek at Harvard.

To W. A. Wright (Fragment) [Woodbridge] [June, 1878] . . . I sent an Ivory Profile of Charles XII of Sweden to Pollock, who is a Judge of such things: also telling him of Furnivall's Shakespeare, of which you will see his opinion in the enclosed—which you can tear up when read. Of Furnivall's misdemeanour about Anglosaxon (MS Skeat?) I don't know: I was only thinking of his (as you tell me) innuendo about "Aesthetic"—which, I doubt not, others beside him participate in, in these aesthetic Days; but—stick to it. 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" begin­ ning "II n'est occupation plaisante comme la militaire," etc., in course of which occurs in Florio, "The courageous minde-stirring harmonie of warlike music," etc. What a funny thing is that closing Apostrophe to Artillery—but this is not Aesthetic.

June 1878 Bacon's appropriation you know of Cest bien choisir de ne choisir pas" ("De la Vanite," I think). Can you find the Cat (with but four legs) in the enclosed Card1 which a puss of a Niece sends me from Florence? This you must return to yours always E.FG. No news of Edwards. 1A

jocose reminder of the five-footed cat riddle that had baffled the two men in autumn letters of 1876. See letter to Wright following the Sept. 26, 1876, letter to Tennyson.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge June 11, [1878] My dear Wright, If you do not remember the passage in Bacon's Essays about "not to decide," etc., I must have fancied it.1 I am glad you recognize the Othello bit of Montaigne. You know, as I know, the nonsense of talk­ ing of Shakespeare stealing such things: one is simply pleased at find­ ing 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 hear­ ing 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 Cloudcapt 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) I should leave out the passage. I have not heard from either Edwards for these three weeks; and am always afraid to enquire lest there be nothing good to answer. But, whether for better or worse, I have taken the two Booms at Dix Hall,

June 1878 Dunwich, from July till the end of September: and can always find another Bed, and a Loaf, for you. You must come for some more days than last Summer: and bring Shakespeare with you. 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:2 it seems to me a beautiful Suffolk "Idyll" (why not Eidyll?) and so it seemed to those at Chelsea. By the by, I will send you their Note, if Groome returns it to me. Tell your Master to make Laurence crayon him: if the Drawing succeed, then that to be copied in Oil: without further resort to the Sitter. I am sure that is the only way with Laurence who gets confused colouring from Nature. And I am yours always E.FG. This is very bad MS: but hand shakes, it seems; and Eyes not well. You should do all to trace out your Higham to its source. 1The passage (mentioned in the previous fragment) from "Colours of Good and Evil," included in De Augmentis, was originally published with the Essays. 2 See letter to R. H. Groome, June 24, n.l.

To W. B. Donne Woodbridge [ Mid-June, 1878] My dear old Donne, I think you know why I do not initiate a Letter to you; simply not to trouble you with writing to me till you be in the mind. My principal inquiry of Mowbray is—How are you? and you see that I lose no time now Replying to you when you do write. I hear from Spedding once a year—always a short, but kind, reply. You surely mistake when you say you have not seen him for two years: unless Valentia's wedding was so long ago; I may be mistaken in fancying it was last year: and certainly Mowbray or Pollock wrote me that the old serpent showed his head on that occasion. Mowbray says his Niece's Novel "Chetwynd" is "charming"; I have not read any of hers: I can't afford to have my Mudie Box taken up with three

June 1878 volumes of a Novel one would any way run over in a Day or two, and perhaps not care for at all. Trollope's "Popenjoy" I see in "All Year Round"; the weekly critics speak coldly of it; I wish it, or its like, would continue as long as I live. My half yearly inquiry about Carlyle has resulted in hearing from his Niece that he is quite well; walking the Thames Embankment before Breakfast and going on in his old way, only driving, instead of walking, out of an Afternoon; reads incessantly: just now his eternal old Goethe, whom, she says, he never seems to tire of—and I, poor wretch, never can read at all. Aldis Wright informs me that Laurence is about another Portrait of Trinity's Master. . . . Mrs. Kemble only writes to me when I write to her, and then as you know, she feels it a "Conscience" to reply. Some while ago she said her Book was to be published by Bentley1—which I shall be glad of—with some omissions. I advised several more. It seems as if I at Woodbridge were telling you more News than you in London are aware of. But perhaps not. Anyhow, I do my best, except in matter of MS, which is hurried so as to reach you by an early Post. Ever yours, you know who. 1 Her

"Old Woman's Gossip" in the Atlantic Monthly, published as Records of a Girlhood, 3 vols., 1878.

To E. B. Cowell [Woodbridge] [June, 1878] My dear Cowell,

Dunwich is just the place you would like, so far as our Coast goes: with its Sea, Sand, Cliff-walk, Heath (with its "Dunwich Rose") and shady roads. I was told that a little ugly house built just under the Ruin (which you would like also) was to be let this year: but I have not enquired. I could take you into my two rooms, if no better offered: Wright knows all about them, and the people, and the place. You will not doubt that I should be very glad if you and Elizabeth should come; but I always advise you to get further off—into a different World than Suffolk, for your Holyday. A week at Dunwich would do if it took not too much of your slice of Leisure, or lay not too much out of your way. So far as I am concerned, the longer stay you could make, the better.

June 1878 As you may guess, by this Paper, that my Eyes are not flourishing,1 I was trying yesterday to recover Gray's Elegy as you had been doing down here at Christmas—with shut Eyes. But I had to return to the Book: and am far from perfect yet; though I leave out several Stanzas: reserving one of the most beautiful which Gray omitted. Plenty of faults still: but one doats on almost every line—every line being a Proverb now. Ever yours E.FG. 1 The writing-paper is light green. When his eyesight weakened, as it did from time to time, EFG substituted colored paper for glaring white.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge June [23, 1878] My dear Wright,

I send you six copies of Groome's East Anglian Note, which I like so well as to get him to allow me to reprint it for others' benefit also. Give one or two to Cowell; and to your Master if he be not flown: indeed, I should send him a Copy direct if I were not uncertain of his being "chez lui." Carlyle (I know not why) sent me a copy of his Norway Kings, and Knox:1 which, as I had not read the latter, I was very glad to have. I had, in a previous note of enquiry, asked if he knew Wesley's Jour­ nal: and was answered "Yes," and liked it as I did for its insight of things in last Century. When I wrote again to thank him for the Book, I asked if he knew of two "mountains" (as Wesley calls hills, you know) near Dunbar called "The Peas." I enclose you Carlyle's answer, which shows the young Blood in the old Man. So I wish you to return it, if you please, when you have communicated it to any one you choose. I have not heard from Edwards for a month: but C. Keene wrote of him as having nothing to tell. I suppose this hot weather will turn his thoughts to Dunwich, and it will not be long, I dare say, before I run over for a flying Visit. What is to be the upshot of Congress?2 Yours E.FG. P.S. I must send the "Only Darter" tomorrow, I find.

June 1878 1 The Early Kings of Norway, 1875, which included an essay, "The Portraits of John Knox." 2 The Congress of Berlin which, in July, had concluded a treaty supplanting that terminating the Russo-Turkish war signed at San Stefano in March. Terms of the Berlin treaty engendered twentieth-century Balkan wars.

To R. H. Groome Woodbridge June 24, [1878] My dear Groome y I enclose you a Dozen Darters:1 which I hope will please you: one or two printer's Errors there are—not perceived or rectified by me till printed off: especially "gathered" for "garthered," which you must restore with an r above, or beside; or a " above the letter a. You see I left "due" as first written. I do not think I have intentionally changed anything except substi­ tuting " 'tice" for "bait" instead of glossing the Latter in the Margin. And you know that 'tice is as good Suffolk as bait. I send Copies to Donne, Allen, Edwards, and Wright: and shall doubtless think of others in time. I consider it a very touching Suffolk Idyll, as the fashion now calls such pieces. I hope Mrs. Groome also will be pleased with my share in it: and believe me hers and yours E.FG. 1

Over a pseudonym, "John Dutfen," Archdeacon Groome had contributed "She was the only darter I ivver had" to "Suffolk Notes and Queries," edited by his son Francis Hindes Groome for the Ipswich Journal. The story, written in Suffolk dialect, appeared in No. 30 of the "Notes," Sept. 25, 1877. EFG reprinted the piece with the title, "The Only Darter," and F. H. Groome included it in Two Suffolk Friends, 1895.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [June, 1878] Voila enfin la lettre de T.C. As to Groome, there were two or three idioms, and spellings, I might have altered: but I wished to leave all to him. It is surely a good Suffolk "Idyll."

July 1878 That short story of Sevigne's has almost a flavour of C. Lamb. You may think yourself lucky you don't have this answer in bad French, after hearing her talk. Edwards and Wife go to Dunwich today: C. Keene goes to them July 11: Dix Hall is mine from Monday next; and I am yours always E.FG. No answer needed with the letter: which I would send to Norton in America.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [July, 1878] My dear Wright, I post you a Paper sent to me—you being a far more proper recip­ ient. I take for granted Mr. Skeat has one; I am very glad to read that he is A.S. Professor. I found in Evelyn's Diary (colourless after dear Peepy) the phrase "going the whole Stitch"—"the whole Hog" as now said. May this be our old Suffolk "sketch?"1 I have taken two rooms at Dix Hall for July, August, September, so as I may run to and fro at will. Edwards seems pretty well, and has Pictures of Walberswick at the Academy; Sky-high. "By Gode!" as Fuseli said, "they have sent him to Heaven before his time." This Paper, suitable to the Season,2 comes handy to my Eyes, which are not by any means the freshest. I saw in the Academy some one began to peck at you for want of Aesthetics, etc. Much better in breach than observance. What a pretty phrase is "Aesthetic standpoint" now a favorite piece of Cockney Folk-lore. O, I must tell you: I have become Member of the New Shakespeare Society (which I have no doubt is mainly humbug) be­ cause Mr. Furnivall (Ditto) wrote to propose. I don't know that I should have subscribed, but—by the very same post—came Mr. Forman's offer about Villon: which I declined, with a hint from your Answer to the Same. Then, with hope of a word from Spedding some day, I gave in to Furnivall; and am Ever yours E.FG.

July 1878 Ask some one—and tell me—some good Schoolboy Edition of Virgil —English notes and no Aesthetics. 1 The 2 His

soil turned out of a furrow by the blade of a plow. green stationery.

To C. E. Norton July 2178 My dear Norton, You wrote me a very kind Invitation—to your own home—in America! But it is all too late for that; more on account of habit than time of life: I will not repeat what I feel sure I have told you before on that subject. You will be more interested by the enclosed note: of which this is the simple Story. Some three weeks ago I wrote my halfyearly note of enquiry to Carlyle's Niece; he was, she said, quite well; walking by the river before Breakfast: driving out of an Afternoon: constantly reading: just then reading Goethe of whom he never tired: and glancing over Magazines and Reviews which he called "Floods of Nonsense—Cataracts of Twaddle," etc. I had sent him the enclosed paper written by a Suffolk Archdeacon for his Son's East Anglian Notes and Queries: and now reprinted, with his permission, by me, for the benefit of others, yourself among the number. Can you make out the lingo, and see what I think the pretty Idyll it tells of? If I were in America—at your home—I would recite it to you; nay, were the Telephone prepared across the Atlantic! Well: it was sent, as I say, to Carlyle: who, by what his Niece replied, I suppose liked it too. And, by way of return, I suppose, he sends me a Volume of Norway Kings, and Knox: which I was very glad to have, not only as a token of his Good Will, but also because Knox was, I believe, the only one of his works I had not read. And I was obliged to confess to him, in my acknowledgment of his kindly Present, that I relished these two children of his old Age as much as any of his more fiery Manhood. I had previously asked if he knew anything of John Wesley's Journal, which I was then reperusing; as he his Goethe: yes, he knew that Wesley too, and "thought as I did about it," his Niece said; and in reply to my Question if he knew anything of two "mountains" (as English people called hills a hundred years ago) which Wesley says were called "The Peas" at Dunbar—why, here is his Answer: evincing the young Blood in the old Man still.

July 1878 Wesley's Journal is very well worth reading, and having—not only as an outline of his own singular character, but of the conditions of England, Ireland, and Scotland, in the last Century. Voila par exemple un Livre dont Monsr Lowell pourrait faire une jolie critique, s'il en voudrait: mais il s'occupe de plus grandes choses—du Calderon—du Cervantes. I always wish to run on in bad French: but my friends would not care to read it. But pray make acquaintance with this Wesley; if you cannot find a Copy in America, I will send you one from here: I believe I have given it to half a dozen Friends. Had I any interest with Publishers, I would get them to reprint parts of it, as of my old Crabbe, who still sticks in my Throat. I have taken that single little Lodging at Dunwich for the next three months, and shall soon be under those Priory Walls again. But the poor little "Dunwich Rose," brought by those monks from the North Country, will have passed, after the hot weather we are at last having. Write when you will, and not till then; I believe in your friendly regard, with, or without, a Letter to assure me of it; and am yours always sincerely E.FG.

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge July 2178 My dear Frederick, I do not yet understand how if, as you and other good Judges say, Browning has "abundant material" for Poetry in him—how he could have spoiled it as you seem to think he has willfully done. I lately bought three Volumes of his Dramatic Poems, Ballads, etc., wishing to see something of what better Judges had seen in them: but again, I failed in the discovery. The Dramatic Ballads seem to me—Ingoldsby. It seems to me as if The Beautiful, being already appropri­ ated by former men of Genius, those who are not inspired can only try for a Place among them by recourse to the Quaint, Grotesque, and Ugly: in all the Arts—what I call "The Gurgoyle Style"—and I do think it is better to try for the Beautiful at any cost of Mediocrity and Second-hand. But enough of this. I shall send a shilling Volume of Essays by Lowell of America,1 in which I think you may like two or three articles—those on Carlyle,

July 1878 Chaucer, etc. Do not read the first article, which may set you against those which I recommend. These are not Lowell's best: which are to be found in two Volumes called "Among My Books" and, as I think, include the best Criticism of the Books—and of the Writers—I know of, such as old Wordsworth, Milton, Dryden, and others. Lowell is an American Professor of something at Harvard College in Massachu­ setts—he is now Ambassador or Minister at Madrid. Remember, I do not wish for the Book; it is a free one-shilling gift to you. When next you write, you will tell me if you have taken any pleasure in it. Since I began the last sentence I have been called out to see one of our last Waterloo men,2 just ninety—very handsome—a head which is made for a helmet. He comes down from a neighbouring Village to take his Quarterly Pension here; and always walked the distance— three miles—till last Year. I see advertized a one Volume Edition of Alfred. Of him and his personally, I have not heard these many months: before Christmas, I think: no one seemed to care to write. For answer to my half-yearly Enquiry about Carlyle, his Niece replied that he was very well: walk­ ing out before Breakfast, driving out in the afternoon, and reading his eternal Goethe. (By the by, tell me: can you read him?) And T.C. sent me a Volume of his Norway Kings, and John Knox—the tamer production of late Years, which I like quite as well as the fiery off­ spring of his Prime. I wonder if he ever thinks how much Sound and Fury, etc., he has vented. Ever yours E.FG. 1

My Study Windows.

2 EFG

felt a warm regard for Waterloo veterans and, at Little Grange for a number of years, entertained their dwindling numbers at dinner on anniversaries of the battle.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge July 8, [1878] My dear Wright,

I doubt our Dunwich plan will fall through. Before the end of last Year I heard that Mrs. Dix had been unwell: then heard she was better; and thenceforward heard no more, and thought no more till

July 1878 a week ago; when Mrs. Edwards wrote that, on getting down to the place, she found Mrs. Dix hopelessly ill, of what the Doctor calls, a "Tumour on the Liver"—which is a disease as unheard of by me as was to Wesley what a Country Doctor called "Wind in the Nerves." However, hopelessly ill she is of something; though being of good constitution, she may lie, as now she lies, for some months or may die before so many weeks. Not knowing anything of this—indeed it is only about the last Fort­ night that she has taken to her Bed—I had engaged the rooms for three months, from this July 1; and now Mrs. Edwards tells me the poor old Couple are distressed because I do not go there; saying (of course, I hold myself engaged to them) that my rooms are all ready for me; Maria, the Daughter, sufficient to wait on me as well as on her Mother—I giving no trouble, they say, etc. Poor Mrs. Dix herself, who is yet quite compos of head and courage, quite frets that her Illness should deter me from going where she feels sure I should be as "comfortable" as before. This could not well be, considering them; but I will run over in a few days, for a few days perhaps, just to ease their minds, etc. By what Mrs. Edwards says (who much wishes me to go) Mrs. Dix cannot recover, and so must keep getting worse, however gradually; of course I should not go when she had become much worse; and, even were she to remain as she is, I do not think that two of us could be in the house. Edwards and Wife would indeed be very glad to house and entertain you, if not pre-engaged to others—that I am quite sure of, and I think you can feel sure of yourself from what you have already seen of them. In fact, it would be a boon to both of them, I know. I know of no other company engaged to them except Charles Keene, who proposes to go to them next week, for a fortnight; Edwards is sure to get some one afterward, and I doubt not would be very glad of you, if he could know the time when you were likely to go to Dunwich. If you let me know that, I will let Edwards know our difficulty, with an assurance (which he would not need) that I proposed that Solution of it. Anyhow, let me know when you proposed going, and we must wait and see. I forewarn you of all this now, because, such being the case, you may prefer some other plan for that piece of your Holyday. Here is my house at Woodbridge where it was, you know, and ready to entertain you as before; but you may look Seaward as indeed I should in your case; nay, as you know, in my own. George Crabbe asked me if I could find out for him the meaning of toma or tuma—'s Tun: the Domesday name of what is now called

July 1878 "Thompson," a nearest Village to him whose Church he is writing a Paper about. I should have sent his note to you; but you were gone to Revisions; and, as I knew not what time G.C. might have, I took the bold step of enclosing his Query to Mr. Skeat, whom I only know as an Author. Here is a long letter from yours E.FG. I am afflicted with Lumbague—which however is not particularly Wind in the Nerves of that Quarter.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge July 21, [1878] My dear Wright, I returned here last night after a week at Dunwich, and now answer the letter of yours which I found here. Mrs. Dix was lying abed, as for some weeks she has lain; much wasted, and gradually weakening; but still rather pleased to have me in the house and providing for my comfort: her Daughter, Maria, waiting on me. How long she may continue as now it is, no one can tell; it may be for a month; or two, or three; it may be only so many weeks. Mrs. Edwards says her pulse is yet strong: but also that her Disease must continue, till it kills her, or (at any rate) makes my being in the house unadvisable, if not impracticable. Then, as for Edwards—he is very decidedly worse than last Sum­ mer; less able for bodily, or mental, exercise, indeed, extremely listless either way. Two days when he would walk beyond his means, he came home so bewildered in Speech as well as in consciousness, as to alarm us; then his Doctor sent him some medicine (of which Nux Vomica was part) and this, along with the hot Sun which set in, seemed to revive him a little. But still he continued very torpid, as it were, indifferent to any thing; and, though hospitable and polite, evidently taking no pleasure in the Society of C. Keene, who came down to him, and who is with him now. She does and thinks [of] everything and bears bravely up, though I think she is but little san­ guine of his Recovery. Thus it fares at Dunwich, and I can say nothing of our meeting there at present. Here I shall be, at any rate, till the month's end, when

August 1878 my Nieces leave me: and though I believe they may carry my Cook along with them to Lowestoft, I can manage to entertain you here pretty much as before. I shall certainly return to Dunwich, sooner or later—if Mrs. Dix holds pretty much as now; but, for certain, we cannot both be at her house. And the Inn is to be occupied all August. When I spoke of all this to Mrs. Edwards, she said she would be glad to board and lodge you at her house; and so she would; and so, I believe, would Edwards, if he become no worse: (and he may become better). But, enfin I doubt we must leave the matter for another fort­ night or ten days, and see how the wind blows then. You would be perfectly welcome to my Dix Lodging any time for the next two months, if she were moderately well; but, even if she becomes no worse than she is, I doubt if she would be easy with a Stranger there: even if you were there alone, I mean. This is Much Ado: but I put you up, as well as I can—to the probabilities of the cases, and am yours at all Events E.FG.

To Fanny Kemble Dunwich August 24, [1878] Dear Mrs. Kemble, I forget if I wrote to you from this solitary Seaside, last year: telling you of its old Priory walls, etc. I think you must have been in Switzer­ land when I was here; however, I'll not tell you the little there is to tell about it now; for, beside that I may have told it all before, this little lodging furnishes only a steel pen, and very diluted ink (as you see), and so, for your own sake, I will be brief. Indeed, my chief object in writing at all, is, to ask when you go abroad, and how you have done at Malvern since last I heard from you—now a month ago, I think. About the beginning of next week I shall be leaving this place— for good, I suppose—for the two friends—Man and Wife—who form my Company here, living a long musket shot oif, go away—he in broken health—and would leave the place too solitary without them. So I suppose I shall decamp along with them; and, after some time spent at Lowestoft, find my way back to Woodbridge—in time to see

August 1878 the End of the Flowers, and to prepare what is to be done in that way for another Year. And to Woodbridge your Answer may be directed, if this poor Letter of mine reaches you, and you should care to answer it—as you will—oh yes, you will—were it much less significant. I have been rather at a loss for Books while here, Mudie having sent me a lot I did not care for—not even for Lady Chatterton.1 Aldis Wright gave me his Edition of Coriolanus to read; and I did not think "pow wow" of it, as Volumnia says.2 All the people were talking about me. And I am ever yours truly E.FG. 1 Edward Dering's Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton, had just been pub­ lished. Lady Chatterton, prolific writer and translator, died in 1876. 2Rebuking Virgilia, Coriolanus' wife. II.1.157.

To W. A. Wright Dunwich Saturday [August 24, 1878] My dear Wright, Edwards (who has been better this last week) will return to London on Thursday, or Friday, next: as yet uncertain which. But, whichso­ ever, you can, if you will, come over Monday, or Tuesday; why not Monday, so as to sleep here the night, and go back to Beccles along with me, who must get back to Lowestoft, as Arthur Charlesworth's holyday will be drawing to a close. I can say nothing of sending Pony to Darsham for you, as Pony and Trap are going on approval at the beginning of the week to some possible purchaser: but if you like to walk over here in the morning, you can order a Gig to come for you in the Evening: and, if that Evening be Tuesday, I could share it with you back. Of course if you be minded to come at all, the first fine day will be the best—viz, Monday: and we can find you Board—and Bed —of some sort. Edwards is very desirous you should see some Device in Blythburgh Church; and here are the Town Records, you know; so try and make a night of it. Yours E.FG.

September 1878

To W. A. Wright 13 Denrrmrk Road, Lowestoft Sept. 5 [1878] My dear Wright, I have your Catalogue, and write today for the Books you marked. Why cannot you send me that Walckenaer (however spelt) about Sevigne? It would be very welcome to me here where I am reduced to a Circulating—have just finished the only dull Novel I have read of Trollope's, "The Prime Minister," and am now about to go through a course of "Belgravia" and "London Society." All these magazines have some one Article or two more readable to me than George Eliot— upon whom I was being thrown in despair. In "Temple Bar" for April is an Article on Latimer,1 which makes me wish for his Sermons reprinted by the Parker Society. Well, I left Dunwich the day after you went, all preparations being made for Edwardses to leave on the day after I went. Which, accord­ ingly, (as I hear from her) they did; and in case of his perversely proposing a return there (as he did) she will tell him he must return there without her. She spoke to me very seriously and sadly of his condition; she is almost assured of softening of the Brain; and, beside other symptoms, I had observed some indications of a turn to trifling enquiry, quite unlike the man he was. So I was glad they removed to London, where there are Doctors, Friends, Pictures, Theatres, Shops, etc.—otherwise, I would fain have stayed in view of that old Priory Wall; but it would have been sad to do so when I could not longer meet them now and then as I walked, nor smoked one pipe with them before going to Bed. So I returned here, removing to the Address I have given in page I, and read London Society and listen to Dorla2 by day, and smoke my pipe with Edmund of a night; and so shall probably do for the next two or three weeks; and then back to Woodbridge for the falling Leaf, and Winter, and my Seventy-first Year. Yours always E.FG. Look into Athenaeum August 17 for a Notice of some conscientious Donkey who writes a Book on "Speech-craft" in order to make us all revert to pure Saxon.3 By the way, I would go so far (I know not if with him) as to call what I am now writing an "After-writ" simply

September 1878 because smoother than the clumsy "Post script," though I don't want "Foreword" for Preface. Get the best out of all languages possible. Cowell writes to me from Wales; and says nothing of joining some Oriental Conference at Florence. 1 Hugh Latimer (1485P-1555), Bishop of Worcester burned at the stake on accession of Mary. Temple Bar, August, 1877 (not the preceding April), 529-41. 2 Conductor of the band on the Lowestoft promenade pier. 3 A review of An Outline of English Speechcraft by William Barnes, who fined adjectives as "mark-words of suchness" and included in his proposals substitution of heretofore, now, and hereafter for past, present, and future.

the pp.

de­ the

To W. A. Wright 13, Denmark Road Sunday [Sept. 8, 1878] My dear Wright, Your parcel came as a Godsend yesterday, thank you. I shall ship all the Froudes, etc. Ste Beuve had previously warned me of the Baron's thorough-going habits: surely he must have German blood in him as his name intimates. As you can decypher MS, read the first page and half of the enclosed (paged, by the way, as this letter of mine is). Mrs. Kemble, the writer, gives me credit for knowing more than I do know of Rosalind's Titles; is it more than you know, or believe, or care for? You can read all the Letter if you please, and can; I could not quite: not even the address she gives me. Then, tear the Letter: I do not want it back. You do not say if your Master be returned from his Travels: if he be, tell him to write me a few lines about them, and about his own bodily Estate, before Term begins and he is plagued with other Business. There is a very interesting Hurticle (Thackeray) in last Athenaeum about Homer. If it be true, what becomes of the consistency of the Homeric Character which I have heard so much vaunted, but never could see? It is a strange thing, however, if it has been for present Scholars to discover what had not been questioned by all the Poets and Sages of Homer's own Country almost from his time down to this. I have more faith in Grote than in Gladstone.1 What does the Mas­ ter say? Ever yours E.FG.

September 1878 I shall be here a good Fortnight more. 1 A review of The Problem of the Homeric Poems by W. D. Geddes and Homer, a primer, by W. E. Gladstone (Athenaeum, Aug. 31, pp. 263-65). George Grote, History of Greece.

To W. A. Wright 13 Denmark Road, Lowestoft Sept r 21, [1878] My dear Wright, I shall send you off your books1—with thanks—on Monday: and shall go home myself a day or two after. The Baron is very German, though French, and he told me but little that I had not gathered from her own letters, and the usual annotations. I must apologize for a few pencil marks made in your books; I would rub them out had I the means at hand; but I do not suppose that you take much account of the Book. At the end of Volume III are some pencil references; one of them (I think to p. 420) quotes the dear Soul's religious confession; pray look for it. Also, refer to p. 29 of the same Volume for a delightful trait of her cousin Coulanges' character; (the little singing fellow) after Charles Lamb's heart. I had not an appetite for Latimer: but I shall have; and shall get the Book when I next see it in Catalogue. An incomprehensible Novel, "Far from the Madding Crowd"2 (I tried it on the strength of the title), contains some good Country Life: do you know in what part of England the Shepherd calls, "Ovey, ovey, oveyl" after his sheep? I had a bad account of Edwards from her a week ago; and his Doctor's Brother (one of the Yoxford Birds—married to Laurence's Daughter) writes me word how the Doctor now admits there is either atrophy, or softening, of the Brain; he knows not yet which, the symptoms so far alike—but, either way, almost certainly beyond Re­ covery. Nevertheless, they are to go to Italy for the winter, and try some new medicine. It is useless to say more of it. Your Master, taking the hint you gave him from me, wrote me a kind, long letter concerning his Summer Travels, indicating, though not in so many words, that he was all the better for it. So Laurence,

September 1878 who had seen him in London just before coming here (Laurence, I mean), had given me to understand. Farewell for the present. Ever yours E.FG. 1 Walckenaer's Sevigne, requested September 5, and Bishop Latimer's Sermons, included in Wright's parcel. 2 The first of Thomas Hardy's novels to achieve popular success; originally published in the Cornhill Magazine, 1874.

To W. F. Pollock Lowestoft Sept r 22, [1878] My dear Pollock,

You will scarce thank me for a letter in pencil—perhaps you would thank me less if I used the steel pen, which is my other resource. You could very well dispense with a Letter altogether: and yet I believe it is pleasant to get one when abroad. I dare say I may have told you what Tennyson said of the Sistine Child, which he then knew only by Engraving. He first thought the Expression of his Face (as also the Attitude) almost too solemn, even for the Christ within. But some time after, when AT was married, and had a Son, he told me that Raffaelle was all right: that no Man's face was so solemn as a Child's, full of Wonder. He said one morning that he watched his Babe "worshipping the Sunbeam on the Bedpost and Curtain." I risk telling you this again for the sake of the Holy Ground you are now standing on. Which reminds me also of a remark of Beranger's not out of place. He says God forgot to give Raffaelle to Greece, and made a "joli cadeau" of him to the Church of Rome. I brought here some Volumes of Lever's "Cornelius O'Dowd" Es­ says,1 very much better reading than Addison, I think. Also some of Sainte Beuve's better than either. A sentence in O'Dowd reminded me of your Distrust of Civil Service Examinations: "You could not find a worse Pointer than the Poodle which would pick you out all the letters of the Alphabet." And is not this pretty good of the World we live in? "You ask me if I am going to 'The Masquerade.' I am at it: Circumspice!"

September 1878

So I pick out and point to other Men's Game, this Sunday Morning, when the Sun makes the Sea shine, and a strong head wind drives the Ships with shortened Sail across it. Last night I was with some Sailors at the Inn: some one came in who said there was a Schooner with five feet water in her in the Roads: and off they went to see if anything beside water could be got out of her. But, as you say, one mustn't be epigrammatic and clever. Just before Grog and Pipe, the Band had played some German Waltzes, a bit of Verdi. Rossini's "Cujus animam," and a capital Sailors' Tramp-chorus from Wagner, all delightful to me, on the Pier: how much better than all the dreary oratorios going on all the week at Norwich—Elijah, St. Peter, St. Paul, Eli, etc. There will be an Oratorio for every Saint and Prophet; which reminds me of my last Story. Voltaire had an especial grudge against Habakkuk, Some one proved to him that he had misrepresented facts in Habakkuk's history. "C'est egal," says V., "Habakkuk etait capable de tout." Cornewall Lewis, who (like most other Whigs) had no Hu­ mour,2 yet tells this: I wonder if it will reach Dresden. E.FG. 1 Charles Lever, Cornelius O'Dowd upon Men, Women, and other Things in General, 1864. 2 Cornewall Lewis (1806-63), learned and versatile writer and statesman who, according to Oliver Elton, possessed "a dry mind . . . without a ray of imag­ ination."

To Frederick Tennyson Lowestoft Sepf 22, [1878] My dear Frederick,

I have been away from home—sea-siding at one place or other— these two months; leaving all Correspondence but what is necessary to be resumed when I get back to my own Desk. But I will write a word, though I do it on my knee in reply to your capital Letter which reached me this Morning. "Moonshine" indeed! I wish you would send me any quantity of such (I am speaking of your remarks on Poetry, Novels, etc.). I can't make such Moonshine myself, but I can rejoice in the light of it. I rejoice too that what you write is the result of your approval of Lowell's Book: when I get home (as I think of doing this very week) I shall send you his two more elaborate Volumes; which perhaps you

October 1878 will not like as well as the first; but I am sure you will find much that you will like. I have scarce read any of his Poetry, and did not care for what I did read; but he has at any rate Poetry enough to swell into the finest Prose; like DeQuincey and some others, who, as Lowell says of Carlyle, are Poets in all but Rhythm. One reason for my not writing from the Seaside Place is, that I have long exhausted such Books as I brought with me, and am obliged to resort to the Circulating Library where little but Novels are to be got: and I can't get on with any but Trollope's, which I wish would con­ tinue my Life long. Somehow I can't read G. Eliot, as I presume you can; I really conclude that the fault lies in me not in her: so with Goethe (except in his Letters, Tabletalk, etc.) whom I try in vain to admire. I find some amusement in some of the Monthly Magazines; Cornhill, Temple Bar: a good Paper here and there, whether of origi­ nal remark, or of dishing up old things in new ways for a new Genera­ tion of Readers, who will only read Epitome and Abstract. Boswell is now, I believe, epitomized by Leslie Stephen: Johnson's Poets re­ duced in number to six by M. Arnold. And very good work, too, I think, if well done. Half of my seaside out-stay was spent at that old Dunwich, with its old Priory walls, which I probably have written about before. I shall now have to associate another Ruin with the place: that of the fine fellow Edwards whom I have met there for the last three Sum­ mers. Ruin, not of Fortune, but of Head; softening, or Atrophy, of the Brain (as yet uncertain which) the Doctors say; but, whichever, irrecoverable. I had long suspected something of the kind; as I sup­ pose they did; but now they confess it. He is to go to Italy for the winter. And his brave little Wife! What a prospect, even for her Courage, Affection, and Sagacity! And no Woman has more. And I am still your ancient Pistol Fitz

To W. W. Goodwin Little Grange. Woodbridpe Octr 9/78 My dear Sir, I should have acknowledged your interesting Letter before this had I not been away from home at a little Seaside Lodging where I had to write on my knees, and read Novels from a Circulating Library.

October 1878 I know you are—must be—right about that Aegiplanctus.1 I think I remember substituting "Rock of Corinth," meaning the Rock, as more familiar to the unclassical Readers whom I addressed. But it ought to be altered, if ever Alteration were called for; which is not very likely. I have had the Choephori,2 and Sophocles' two Oedipuses (!) lying by me these ten years, I believe, wrought into such shape as Aga­ memnon. They would do, I think, after some polishing, for some Magazine: but no Magazine would entertain them here, and I can have no more to do with Quaritch's separate publications, monstered by him in his Catalogues so as [to] make me ashamed. All these things have really to be done by the Right Man one day: I do not think by Mr. Browning. Thompson, our Trinity Master, who has, I think, corresponded with you, told me some thirty or forty years ago that he thought Clytemnestra's fires were possible, he having been to Greece as you have been: which, I see, brings the close of my Letter round to the begin­ ning; scarce worth sending to you, but yet I would thank you for yours: and ask you to believe me yours sincerely, Edward FitzGerald 1A

mountain in Megaris about midway between Athens and Corinth; the site of one of the beacon-fires signaling the fall of Troy in Agamemnon. 2 The Choephori of Aeschylus and Oedipus Rex and Oedipus Coloneus by Sophocles.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge October 15/78 My dear Norton, My Morton Book came safe:1 and your Letter after it: thank you for both. I think I shall have said so before, but that, coming home here a Fortnight ago, I found a number of very little things to do, and some Correspondence to make up, now I have got back to my Desk. I got little more than a Fortnight at that old Dunwich; for my Landlady took seriously ill, and finally died: and the Friend whom I went to meet there became so seriously ill also as to be obliged to return to London before August was over. So then I went to an ugly place on the sea shore also, some fifteen miles off the old Priory; and

October 1878 there was with some Nephews and Nieces, trying to read the Novels from a Circulating Library, with indifferent Success. And now here am I at home once more; getting my Garden, if not my House, in order; and here I shall be probably all Winter, except for a few days visit to that sick Friend in London, if he desires it. I fear his Brain is going. We too have been having a Fortnight of delightful weather, so as one has been able to sit abroad all the Day. And now, that Spirit which Tennyson sung of in one of his early Poems is heard, as it were, walking and talking to himself among the decaying flower-beds. This Season (such as we have been enjoying)—my old Crabbe sings of it too, in a very pathetic way to me: for it always seems to me an Image of the Decline of Life also. It was a Day ere yet the Autumn closed, When Earth before her Winter's Wars reposed; When from the Garden as we looked above, No Cloud was seen, and nothing seemed to move; [When the wide River was a silver Sheet, And upon Ocean slept the unanchored fleet;] When the winged Insect settled in our sight, And waited wind to recommence its flight. You see I cross out two lines which, fine as they are, go beyond the Garden: but I am not sure if I place them aright. The two last lines you will feel, I think: for I suppose some such Insect is in America too. (You must not mind Crabbe's self-contradiction about "nothing moving.") If the Copyright permit, I am almost resolved to print, and publish, on my own account (for I know no one would do it for me) a Volume of "Readings" in Crabbe's Tales of the Hall—which I do think I could make a good Job of. If I do it, you shall not fail to have a Copy. I have two Letters I want to send Lowell: but I do not like writing as if to extort answers from him. You see Carlyle's Note within: I do not want it back, thank you. Good night: for Night it is: and my Reader is coming. We look forward to The Lammermoor, and Old Mortality before long. I made another vain attempt on George Eliot at Lowestoft, Middlemarch; and I am yours always sincerely E. FitzGerald Pray excuse this vile Night-scrawl. 1 The

transcript of Savile Morton's letters.

October 1878

To J. R. Lowell Woodbridge Oct r 17/78 My dear Sir, I scarce like to write to you again because of seeming to exact a Letter. I do not wish that at all, pray believe it: I don't think letterwriting men are much worth. What puts me up to writing just now is, the enclosed two Letters by other men; one of them relating to your­ self; the other to the Spain you are now in. I sent Frederic Tennyson, eldest Brother of the Laureate, your Study Windows: and now you see what he says about it. He is a Poet too, as indeed all the Brethren more or less are; and is a Poet: only with (I think) a somewhat monoto­ nous Lyre. But a very noble Man in all respects, and one whose good opinion is worth having, however little you read, or care for, opinion about yourself, one way or other. I do not say that I agree with all he says: but here is his Letter. I am going to send him a Volume of yours, "Among my Books," which I know is a maturer work than the Win­ dows: and you know what I think of it. The other Letter, or piece of Letter, is from our Professor Cowell, and has surely a good Suggestion concerning a Spanish Dictionary. You might put some Spanish Scholar on the scent. And so much about my two Letters. I am not sure if I did not send you the Printed Paper—written by a Venerable Archdeacon here for his Son's East Anglian N.&Q.—but I thought so good that, with his permission, I reprinted it for the bene­ fit of my Friends. Mr. Norton says the lingo is sufficiently American, and bids me send a Copy to you: as perhaps I have done before this. I was but little at my old Dunwich this Summer, for my Landlady fell sick, and died: and the Friend I went to be with was obliged to leave; I doubt his Brain is becoming another Ruin to be associated with that old Priory Wall, already so pathetic to me. So here am I back again at my old Desk for all the Winter, I suppose, with my old Crabbe once more open before me—disembowelled too—for I posi­ tively meditate a Volume made up of "Readings" from his Tales of the Hall—that is, all his better Verse connected with as few words of my own Prose as will connect it intelligibly together: I think I shall do it as well as any one is likely to do, though not so well as might be done; but I know not if any one will care for it when done. I am sure no Publisher will undertake to print it; but, if Copyright permits, I will print it myself, and give away, if I can't sell. I will have this provoking

October 1878 old Crabbe read a little more by a little few—here is a Catalogue on my Table with all his eight Volumes marked for 10s. and Mrs. Hemans for near double that. And I am yours sincerely E. FitzGerald

To Frederick Tennyson [Woodbridge] [October, 1878] My dear Frederick, I post you another Volume of Lowell: which very likely you will not like so well as the first: but much of it you will like, notwithstanding. My pencil-marks in it are not marks of Admiration, but the contrary, I think; sometimes at words, sometimes at whole Sentences of "Fine Writing." There is one at p. 273,1 I think, which is perfectly wonder­ ful in such a Writer as Lowell; you could not find it in an English writer of half the force. There is the loose screw in American Litera­ ture, and it is partly the consciousness of it that makes them sensitive about English Opinion. I know Lowell by Letter; and I tell him all this, for he says he is not thin-skinned; and I can tell him with a good grace of little flaws when I so honestly admire his work in the main. I think he is altogether the best Critic we have; something of what Ste Beuve is in French. I also post you the Musical Record with a paper on our dear Mozart, which I know will interest and please you. Keep both as long as you like; you may not be in the vein for Lowell just at present; and I know what a bore it is to be forced to eat without Appetite. And I am ever yours E.FG. 1

Among My Books, Second Series.

To Blanche Donne Woodbridge Oct. 24, [1878] My dear Blanche, Thank you for telling me of your Sister's prosperity: now she may be as happy as Mrs. Ritchie, though perhaps not so ecstatic.

October 1878 Your Father knows why I do not write to him—he should know also that I am not without Intelligence concerning him from Mowbray; and quite lately from Archdeacon Groome. I think he knows, without my repeating it, that I do not cease to think of him with an Affection which has not gone on diminishing for these near sixty Years. I have been no further all this Summer than our Coast—Dunwich first, then Lowestoft, which has grown large, ugly, and ill-savoured from insufficient Drainage. Now I am back here again, to my old Desk by Day, and my young Reader of a Night: we read All Year Round; Chambers Miscellany; Artemus Ward; and are looking forward to Bride of Lammermoor, Pirate, and Old Mortality, as Winter deepens. Now you see this is a Letter to you, not to your Father, so he is not to write: nor (as you wrote first) have you to write again: except thus much on a Post Card; viz: Mrs. Kemble's Address. Ever yours E.FG.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Monday [October, 1878] My dear Wright, Loder rushed out of his Shop last week to tell me of your Fellow­ ship1—of which he had read in the Times. I did not write to con­ gratulate you: you would know that I was glad without my telling you so; but as you have taken the trouble to tell me yourself, I write to say I am very glad. I hear worse and worse accounts of Edwards. I believe I wrote you that his Doctor (Bird—of the Yoxford Bookseller's Family) decided at last there was Disease of the Brain: since then he has decided it is "premature old Age"—but I hold to the Brain. He is just 56—she says he fares2 twenty years older. The Doctors reprieved them from winter­ ing in Italy: Devonshire might do; and now she says, London will do as well as either. All Rail Travel is bad for him, they say: what is that but Brain? He would go to Norwich last week, from Ipswich, and on getting to London could not tell his Cabman the name of his Square: and was almost delirious all night after. A sister in law of my friend Anna Biddell has been at Death's Door —from the Sting of a Bee! in the back of her Neck. She was ten hours

October 1878 unconscious, and her Life despaired of: but is now, I suppose, mend­ ing. Here—I am back at my old Desk with—positively—my old Crabbe! If no one will—as no one will—publish my Readings in Tales of the Hall, I will print it myself, Coutts que Coutts, and lose my Money in one fair Cause: Copyright permitting. Yours, Mr. Fellow, sincerely, E.FG. I post you C. Smart—of Trinity was he?3 1 Elected Fellow of Trinity. Although Wright, a Dissenter, had been eligible for a fellowship since 1871 and qualified for the honor as "an eminent scholar," he owed the appointment to his status as Senior Bursar of the College (D. A. Winstanley, Later Victorian Cambridge, Cambridge, 1947, p. 262). 2 Suffolk dialect with a variety of meanings: here, "seems." 3 Christopher Smart, 18th-century poet; Fellow of Pembroke College. EFG fares to have sent a copy of one of Smart's works.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge October 29, [1878] My dear Wright,

This is a busy time with you: but, should you know, or can ascertain at some after-dinner hour, any answer to the English part of the Enclosed, I should be very glad if you would record it for me; gladder, if you could write it to G.C. himself—at Merton—Watton—Norfolk. By so doing, what you have to say will not run a chance of being misrepresented by Paddy! and you will strike up a little Spark of Acquaintance with one of the most modest, intelligent, and agreeable men I know; and whom you will not repent knowing more of may be, thereafter. Did I tell you I had got back to his old Grandfather? A provoking old Fellow: but I do mean to make a pretty little Job of his Tales of the Hall. It will not be for want of pains if I fail, as you know; a poor little work, if ever so well done; however, it amuses me to take it up just at this time of Year—I scarce know why. I want, however, to know about Copyright. It was published in 1819—Sixty Years since, come next Year; but I also want some Quotations from the original MS—and MS Journal—published in 1834—Forty-five years, come 1879. But I do not know the Law in such cases. You need

November 1878 not take any thought, or write, about this: but do, when not incon­ venient, satisfy G.C. about his "Inn"—and believe me Yours always E.FG.

To Herman Biddell Woodbridge Νου. 2/78 My dear Biddell, Thank you for the Partridges. You are the only friend who ever sends me such a thing. I heard of your loss: I heard also that you yourself had been ailing. I hope to hear you are well from Sister Anna when next I write to her. That will be when I can tell her something of the Edwardses, of whom I have not heard for some while. I suppose there is no change to tell of in him: a change for the better I scarcely expect. Poor Manby is laid up with Dropsy—at last—in a very critical State, says Doctor Jones. With Compliments to Mrs. Biddell, believe me yours E.FG.

To E. B. Cowell Woodbridge Nov. 9, [1878] My dear Cowell, I mentioned (by Letter) what you last wrote about an Etymological Spanish Dictionary to Mr. Lowell—now in Madrid. He quite agreed in what you said, and would try to get the Question mooted in the Academy there: but without much hope of any result. He sent me a large "Poster" of one of Alarcon's Dramas1 which he saw performed; very fairly well, he says: especially the Gracioso. But they never act Calderon: only admire him because other nations do so. By the way, I have a newly edited Edition of the Magico from Calderons original MS belonging to the Due d'Osuna. Edited, pref­ aced, and commented by one Fatio—but in French:2 and published

November 1878 at Heilbronn wherever that may be. There are many things different from the printed text—much Gracioso omitted: and facsimile of old Calderon's MS. I got it lately from a second hand Bookseller, and have not had appetite to look much at it as yet. If you wish to see it I will post it to you. But I suppose you have plenty else to do just now. I think I saw that Sanskrit might stand in lieu of Greek at future Examinations for Degrees. But this requires confirmation. I want to know of a good and honest Printer to do my "Readings in Crabbe's 'Tales of the Hall'" for me. No Publisher would undertake it, I am sure; perhaps one would publish it,3 though I doubt it would only be a trouble to him as well as total loss to me. Still, I mean to do it, if Copyright all free; as I am told it is. At any rate I can give away; and you, for one, like it. I suppose there must be something over 300 pages of small (crown?) 8V0. Can you help me about a Printer? Wright could do so with Macmillan; but Wright is so busy with his Revisions, and I don't like to trouble him. I have just had a Letter from poor Arthur who is in great trouble about his Brother (John?), the arrival of whose Ship has been long overdue, and he says she is almost given over at Lloyd's. His Mother and Sisters are in a worse Suspense than he, who yet is very affec­ tionate: but he will not give up hope yet, he says. I am of course glad that Elizabeth recovered so much from Welsh Air and Exercise. Give her my Love, and believe me Ever yours E.FG. 1 and my Reader are beginning soon on Sir Walter—but I have a superstitious fear of finishing him. 1Juan

Ruiz de Alarcon (1581-1639). Morel-Fatio's edition of El Mdgico Prodigioso, 1877. 3 That is, permit his name to appear on the title page of an edition to be printed at EFG's expense. 2 Alfred

To W. F. Pollock [Woodbridge ] [November, 1878] My dear Pollock,

King John Murray1 has thought better of it, I suppose, and granted what he could not withold, viz., permission to use such matter as was

November 1878 added to the Edition of 1834. I do not want the notes, of which I think with you the less the better; I only want to substitute some original MS Readings for the text which superseded them: often (as often the case with Second Thoughts) to a disadvantage. One droll instance is, in speaking of a fair Widow, original MS reads: Would you believe it, Richard, that fair She Has had three husbands? I repeat it—Three— Replaced by Would you believe it, Richard, that fair Dame Has thrise resign'd, and re-assumed, her Name!2 The curious Blunders, Inaccuracies, Self-forgetfulnesses there are in the Book, which make it harder to reconcile than you might think, but which I shall leave my readers to find out for themselves, and to lay the blame (if they discover) on my misarrangement. Now I am to look for a Printer, and then for a Publisher, who will have no loss but that of Trouble; and at any rate, my Friends shall have a little Book which I think they will like: and I shall have done a little Duty, and remain your always E.FG. You see no Answer is needed to this, and I think you may consider yourself exempt from further Appeal on the Subject. P.S. I have today a Note from Mrs. A. Tennyson, dated from 4 Sus­ sex Place, Regent's Park, though postmarked "Haslemere." 1 John

Murray, publisher of Crabbe's works. original lines, correctly quoted, were replaced by:

2 Crabbe's

No need of pity, when the gentle dame Has thrice resign'd and reassumed her name;

From Bernard Quaritch London November 18, 1878 Dear Sir, Do let me reprint the Rubaiyat! I have so many inquiries for copies that it is painful to be unable to supply a want felt by that part of the public with which I desire to be in connexion, and which you, as the poet idolized by a small but choice circle, ought to be anxious to

November 1878 gratify personally, rather than throw into the hands of American pi­ rates the opportunity of reprinting and misprinting ad libitum. Allow me to publish another edition, and pay you twenty-five guineas as the honorarium. You know it would be well done, and creditable to us both. Your devoted servant, Bernard Quaritch

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Nov r 23/78 Dear Sir, I am sorry you are plagued about Omar: but the Plague will prob­ ably soon cease. Meanwhile, I must for the present abide by what I wrote before; viz. that I do not care to reprint him alone, and you would not care to reprint him in Company which might detract from what little Profit he can bring you in. I have wished (for one thing) to send Salaman along with him (very much retrenched) since Cowell expressed a wish to that effect; but I cannot say I think it would pay: though the two might go into a smaller shape than Omar has yet been in. I will speak, or write, to Cowell on the subject when his Lecturing at Cambridge is over: and in the meanwhile I will leave things as they are, if you please. Perhaps Persian, Greek, and Spanish, might one day all gather into one little Volume; but that would be quite out of your way. Yours truly, E.FG. Do you never light on a Copy of the Hague Edition (1726) of Sevigne? —Walckenaer says the most accurate of all—at any rate up to his time.

To E. B. Cowell Woodbridge Nov 26, [1878] My dear Cowell, Quaritch has written to me three or four times in the last few months to let him reprint Omar. I replied there was enough of Omar for the

December 1878 present. At the end of last Week came another Epistle very urgent— "American Pirates, etc." I then replied that I did not care to have Omar alone any more; that, as you had wished for Salaman, I would communicate with you on the subject when your Holiday came: and Today comes a letter that Q. will put Salaman and Omar—and any­ thing else I please—together, etc., quite a pathetic piece of—humbug. I had indeed intended to leave all my "Works!" (as Q. calls them) until they might be published together if ever called for; if only to rest quietly. I could not bear his Catalogue puffs for each single piece; had refused him the Magico, on that account; and in short; as I say, wished to wait till all should be asked for, and, if they ever were, resort to some other Publisher. I think he only cares for money, if it be but for such small game as mine: you think (as he also vehemently protests) that he is indifferent to all but Honour, long connection with me, etc. (I would send you his Letters if I were not ashamed of them.) You think there is really something in his protests. So I consider if I may not leave him the two Persians, and leave the others to the future. What say you? You have not got out of harness yet, I know; so do not trouble yourself to write even a line (which would suffice) as I am in no hurry at all, though Q. is, lest the American Pirates, etc. I heard from poor Arthur ten days ago that he and his were yet in dire suspense about the missing Ship. They must surely know by this time. Ever yours E.FG.

To Mrs. Cowell Woodbridge Dec r 4, [1878] My dear Elizabeth, I begin my answer to you by saying how sorry I am that Cowell should have worried himself to write me the Letter I this day received. Why, my dear Lady, you could have told me in yours all I wanted to know—from his Lips. However, he has so far not written in vain that I shall do as he advises, and let Quaritch print Omar and Jami together, if he still wishes so to do: but he may change his mind, as he did before, about this; and I shall not be sorry if he does.

December 1878 Some while ago, when Cowell spoke of Saldman to me, he said he would like it dedicated to him as it first was. Will he like this still? Will he like Omar too with a proviso that he is no further answerable for him (Omar) than having brought him to me as he did Jami? These are questions you neither of you need write about; I hope to see EBC this Christmas; if not, he will have more leisure to tell me his wishes; and he may be sure I shall do nothing without his consent. If he sees Wright, I shall be glad if he finds opportunity to speak of Crabbe; but do not let him look for an occasion—unless it be to take a walk also. What! only two Walks to all that Sanskrit and Syndicate! I seriously say that he is tempting Illness. O, let him beware in Time! I have not heard from poor Arthur as to his Brother's fate; and I never look into a Newspaper which might have informed me. I knew nothing of Allenby's Will till you wrote me: nor of Mr. Ruskin's Lawsuit1 till my Reader told me. We are now with the Bride of Lammermoor, and I am ever yours E.FG. 1 The previous week John Ruskin had been defendant in a libel suit brought by James McNeil Whistler. Among critical comments on the artist's "Nocturne in Black and Gold," published in a Fors Clavigera pamphlet in 1877, Ruskin had stated, "I have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." Whistler was awarded damages of one farthing, without costs.

To Bernard Quaritch Little Grange, Woodbridge Dec r 9/78 Dear Sir, If Omar be reprinted, Cowell wishes Salaman to go along with him. Now, by this post, I send you Salaman, so as you may judge what room he may occupy, and at what expense in a Volume of the size now generally used for Poetry, and with no more ornament within, or without. The spaces between Salaman's Sections might be retrenched; and his Type—if not smaller—yet packed closer: so as to occupy but little more than Omar at four Stanzas a page. Of all this you must judge for yourself; and then let me [know]

December 1878 whether you wish to undertake the Book: for an Edition of how many Copies; and on what terms. If we do not agree, no harm done on either side. Yours E.FG. You could have Salaman's Steel plate Frontispiece to engrave from. [Offered £25 for privilege to print 1,000. Quaritch's note.]

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge Dec r 15/78 My dear Norton, You are very good to ask for my Oedipodes, etc. And when I can find Eyes as well as Courage to copy out a "brouillon," I will see what can be done. Only, you and Professor Goodwin must not feel any way bound to print them, even if you both approved of them; and that is not at all certain. How would you two Scholars approve of two whole Scenes omitted in either Oedipus (as I know to be the case), and the Choephori reduced almost to an Act? So that would be, I doubt. Then, as you know, Sophocles does not strike Fire out of the Flint, as old Aeschylus does; and though my Sophocles has lain by me (lookt at now and then) these ten years, I was then a dozen years older than when Agamemnon haunted me, until I laid his Ghost so far as I myself was concerned. By the way, I see that Dr. Kennedy, Pro­ fessor of Greek at our Cambridge, has published a Translation of Agamemnon in "rhythmic English." So, at any rate, I have been the cause of waking up two great men (Browning and Kennedy) and a minor Third (I forget his name) to the Trial,1 if it were only for the purpose of extinguishing my rash attempt. However that may be, I cannot say my attempt on Sophocles would please you and my American Patrons (in England I have none) so well as Aeschylus; indeed I only see in what I remember to have done, good English, and fair Verse, beyond the chief merit of shaping the Plays to modern Taste by the very excisions which Scholars will most deprecate. How­ ever, you shall see—one day. My Eyes have been chiefly occupied in cutting out what I judge best of Crabbe's "Tales of the Hall" and connecting them by as plain a Prose Narrative as shall bridge over long tracts of weary Platitude.

December 1878 This is not easy to do adroitly: partly because the old man contradicts himself occasionally in his aberrations. However, I have done what I can; and now I am looking for a Printer, who will not cheat me; and then must find a Publisher who will allow his Name to sanction the Book when done. I do not ask any Publisher to undertake the Book: for I know it will only be almost complete Loss to him, as to me. But I have long been possessed with a Desire to make some one read this Crabbe, and can, at any rate, give away some fifty Copies of the Book—to you, and Lowell, among the number. Quaritch is about, I believe, to reprint Omar: and Salaman along with him, very much retrenched. I had wished to have done with Q. and his Puffery: but Cowell wished me to stick so far to him if he would drop in Salaman by way of a counterbalance to the old Sinner. Here is my Paper filled, and all about myself. I want to send you a very little volume by Charles Tennyson, long ago published: too modest to make a noise—worth not only all me, but all Browning, Swinburne, & Co. put together. Three such little volumes have appeared—but just appeared, like Violets, I say2—to be overlooked by the "madding Crowd," but I believe to smell sweet and blossom when all the gaudy Growths now in fashion are faded and gone. He ought to be known in America—everywhere—is he? And I am yours always E.FG. 1 Browning's

translation, 1877; Benjamin H. Kennedy's, 1878; Henry H. Her­ bert, Lord Carnarvon's, 1879. Lord Carnarvon was one of the leading statesmen in Disraeli's cabinets. 2 Charles Tennyson Turner, the Poet Laureate's brother, published four volumes of poems, chiefly sonnets; 1830, 1864, 1868, 1873. EFG was unaware of the 1830 volume, published while Charles Tennyson was a Cambridge undergraduate.

To Charles Merivale Woodbridge December 15, [1878] My dear Dean, Donne gave me your letter when I last saw him, on Friday after­ noon. My scrap appended to his letter did not deserve so good ac­ knowledgment from you: so now, you see, I try to make up for it, especially as you in some measure ask me about Mrs. Kemble.

December 1878 I did not see much of her acting, nor hear much of her reading, for in truth I did not much admire either. She herself admits she had no liking for the stage, and (in a capital paper in some magazine) that she had not a Theatrical gift, though she had, she thinks, a Dramatic, a distinction which I leave for herself to explain. In such readings of hers as I heard, she seemed to me to do the men and the soldiers best, such as the warlike lords in King John. I did not hear her Hotspur, which should have been good, as was her brother Jack's at school. I never heard such capital declamation as his Hotspur, and Alexan­ der's Feast, when we were at Bury together, he about eighteen, and then with the profile of Alexander himself, as I have seen it on medals, etc. When you knew him he had lost, I suppose, his youthful freshness. His sister, Fanny, I say, I did not much admire in public: but she was, and is, a noble-hearted and noble-souled woman, however wayward; and no one more loyal, not only to her own, but to her brother's friends and schoolfellows. And does she not write finely too? Sometimes in long sentences too, which spin out without entanglement from her pen. When I remember your viva voce, and when I read your letters, Merivale, I always wish some one would make notes of your table and letter talk: so witty, so humorous, so just.1 You would not do this yourself; if you thought about what you said and wrote for such a purpose it would not, I suppose, be as good; but I wish others would do it for you—and—I must not say "for me" at my time of day, but for those who come after us both. I had not seen Donne for three years, I think: he seemed to me feebler in body and mind, but the same dear old Donne still. And I am still yours, as his, Old Fitz 1 See

Biographical Profile.

To Bernard Quaritch Little Grange, Woodbridge Decr 17, [1878] Dear Sir, I was away from home when your last letter came and did not return till Saturday Night. About your proposal I will say: 1st That an Edition of 1000 Copies would—at the rate I sell at— amount to a final Edition—for my Life assuredly.

December 1878 2nd I still demur at the 4t0 size you propose. I suppose, the same as previous Omars. I quite understand that only a few buy me, and you suppose that those few will be willing to pay such a price as will make up for many at a cheaper rate. But even were that so, you see Osgood made a very small Volume of Omar, though doubling its size by blank pages; and if Jami were added to Omar, those pages might be occupied. All Verse should, I feel sure, be in a handy, pocketable size: as much better Verse than mine is generally printed in. And I have a dislike to see my minor things swelled out into 4t0 margin as if they were precious things. You said in a former letter that I could choose my own shape of Book: and, unless you care to trouble yourself with further Argument on so small a matter, I am for the usual size. All this you can consider if you choose: there can be no hurry for I suppose no one will think of printing till Xmas is over and 1879 come. Meanwhile now you have seen Salaman so as to judge of what space he would occupy, I wish you would send him safely back to me, as I would consult Cowell about some points which are better certified in MS than in Print. Yours E.FG. Direct always, Little Grange, Woodbridge.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Dec. 17, [1878] My dear Wright, If your Revisions are over, and College Business somewhat lulled, please to bestow a few words of Counsel on me. Quaritch sent me several Letters asking to reprint Omar—which I declined. At last, after a humbugging Letter of his about "his Cus­ tomers"—"twenty years connection," etc., I replied that I would refer to Cowell if he still wished Salaman to be reprinted: if he did, then I would see about joining Omar and Jami together, etc. Cowell (who has more faith in Quaritch than I) did wish; and Quaritch proposes an Edition of 1000 in the same 4t0 size as before, with what he calls an "honorarium" of £,25. Now, leaving the "honorarium" out of the question— 1st 1000 would, at the rate I sell at, be a final Edition, so far as my Life is concerned, and, I should think, Quaritch's also.

December 1878 2ndly As to 4t0 He says that as only the few buy me, those few must pay in 4t0 for what the many would pay in common size. Now, I hate being margined—furbelowed—into importance as if I were one of The Quality (who were all contented with the common apparel: and you told me that all Verse (Poetry or not) should be in handy, pocketable, size, whether for the few, or the many. Osgood (the American) brought out Omar alone in a very much smaller size, with every other page blank! to swell a Volume with. Then, would not Jami added (though much retrenched) to Omar, swell out a yet bigger Volume without blanks? This is the question on which I want a word from you. And ditto about my Crabbe—Size of Book would be, I suppose, crown 8™ or post d°—but type? A larger type for Crabbe: or less for me: both as cheap as consistent with readableness. An old and now retired London Publisher, who happened to be staying in this Country, came to visit me, after fifty years' interval; and as Crabbe was on my Desk, I told him what I was about. He offered all Assistance; recommended an honest Printer who had just disposed of his Business, and would look out for another, etc. Cowell said he would speak to you when you should both be at leisure on this point; also, as to a Publisher who would put his name to the Title page. I ask none to undertake the expense of a Book which is not expected to pay Is. in the £.1. But I mean somehow to do this Kttle work at my own charges. Tell me your notion of it. Last wintry week I was in London to see Edwards, who gradually declines in Body and Mind. He was pleased to see me, I think: he is cheered by any Friend calling; and he has so many calls that I do not suppose I was much needed. But I thought she wished me to go. She looks worn; with him Day and Night: scarce ever getting abroad: assured of the fatal upshot, but uncertain how near, how far off; doing all she can with all her Wit and Courage. Do not reply to all my Questions if you are still busy, but when at leisure. You know you will be welcome here if you wish to come at any time. Yours ever E.FG. 1 Later identified as Newby, bookseller on Trinity Street across from the Senate House when EFG was at Cambridge. In 1843 Newby sold his business to the Macmillans, who went on to build their publishing house.

December 1878

To J. R. Lowell Woodbridge Dec r 19/78 My dear Sir, I am writing to you because you say you like to hear from me. I dare say, a Letter from your home, or mine, is acceptable in Madrid, which, by the by, if Travellers' Stories be true, must be terrible this winter: and I always try to stuff my Letters with all I can about other people more or less worth hearing of. But for that I have but little to say—certainly nothing worth your keeping. But if you like me to write, no matter why. I wish I could find you a short Letter written to me this time last year by C. Merivale, Dean of Ely, Roman Historian— a man of infinite dry humour, and quaint fancy. I have put it away in some safe place where (of course) I can't find it. Perhaps the like may happen to yourself now and then. I tell him that some one should pick up his Table-talk and Letter-talk: for he of course would not do it himself. I have known him from College days, fifty years ago; but have never read his History—never having read any History but Herodotus, I believe. But I should like you to see how an English Dean and Roman Historian can write in spite of Toga and Canonicals. By the by, you never told me how you liked my Archdeacon's Suffolk —"only Darter," which I know I sent you. Mr. Norton said you would understand, and relish, it even more than he did, inasmuch as you are more apt at such Lingo; he says, not at all unintelligible to America. Mind you tell me of this when next you write—but no hurry for that. December 22 I left off when my Reader came to finish The Bride of Lammermoor —as wonderful to me as ever. O, the Austens, Eliots, and even Thackerays, won't eclipse Sir Walter for long. To come down rather a little from him, my Calderon, which you speak of—very many beside myself, with as much fair Dramatic Spirit, knowledge of good English and English Verse, would do quite as well as you think I do, if they would not hamper themselves with Forms of Verse—and Thought—irreconcilable with English Language and English Ways of Thinking. I am persuaded that, to keep Life in the Work (as Drama must) the Translator (however inferior to his Original) must re-cast that original into his own Likeness, more or less: the less like his original, so much the worse: but still, the live

December 1878 Dog better than the dead Lion—in Drama, I say. As to Epic—is not Cary still the best Dante? Cowper and Pope were both Men of Genius, out of my Sphere—but whose Homer still holds its own? The elabo­ rately exact, or the "teacup-time" Parody? Is not Fairfax' Tasso good! I never read Haringtons Ariosto, English or Italian. Another shot have I made at Faust in B. Taylor's Version: but I do not even get on with him as with Hayward, hampered as he (Taylor) is with his allegiance to original metres, etc. His Notes I was interested in: but I shall die ungoethed, I doubt,1 so far as Poetry goes: I always believe he was Philosopher and Critic. But, harking back to Calderon, surely you have seen the "Magico" printed from the Due d'Osuna's original MS, with many variations from the text as we have it. This volume is edited—in French—by "Alfred Morel Fatio," printed at "Heilbronn" (wherever that is), and to be bought of "M. Murillo, Calle de Alcala, Num. 18, Madrid." It contains a Facsimile of the old Boy's MS. I will send you my Copy if there be "no Coal in Newcastle" and I am yours sincerely E.FG. 1 EFG had attempted to read Goethe's Faust as early as the age of 20, but the poem failed to hold his interest then and in repeated subsequent efforts. Bayard Taylor, whose books of travel were popular in Britain as well as America, published his translation, 1870-71.

To W. A. Wright Lowestoft Dec. 26, [1878] My dear Wright,

Your letter (thank you for it) reached me Today—here, whither I came Tuesday last. I shall get home, if a Cold will permit me, the day after tomorrow (Saturday). Had weather been better, I should have sent to BeccIes to apprize you of my being here, so as you might pay me a Visit here, if you pleased, rather than at Woodbridge. But I thought that every one was best at home at such a time: and wished I had kept there myself instead of coming to lodge in an Ice-house. Mais enfin, Voila qui est fait. I believe I told you that an old London Publisher who had been to visit me at Woodbridge1 had offered his Services in regard to Printer and Publisher. A respectable Publisher he has found, he thinks, in

December 1878 one Wilson, 12 King William Street (whom I had supposed a second hand Bookseller) and I shall commit myself to him.2 But what you urge as to one type for Verse and Prose will decide me for that, if such a type as Bourgeois will include all in some 300 and odd pages. If not, a smaller type? Tell me, if you have leisure where now you are, whether a smaller than Bourgeois would do? Bourgeois, I know, is large enough: and him, as I say, I will have in case he does not swell me out—as you are to be with Christmas Cheer. It is very good of you to offer to read my Proofs. I felt so much distrust of myself in all but the Selection, that near a month ago I asked Spedding if he would read and correct and suggest for me— scarce anticipating that he would, but he says he will be "delighted." If I had but his Pen to write it all! And you too would have done it much more succinctly and clearly. But that could not, I knew, be. I shall be very glad if you, as well as Spedding, will look at the Proofs: and especially indicate where there is any Chasm in the Narrative I supply, or in its relation to the Text. Two Cooks will not be too much, for one cannot suppose that two busy men will give all their attention to such work, and one may hit a blot which the other might miss. All this seems a mighty fuss about a little thing: but I don't want to bungle, and pay for it also. Voila. Quaritch is willing to print in any size, etc., only he must do it "creditably" before he makes his "exit," he says, from this World— as he supposes also that I ought to wish, being as far advanced— toward the next as himself. However, I told him there was no hurry; and he could send me a specimen page when the New Year came. It seems to me very odd that he should care to have any trouble about what can only bring him in a few Pounds. This is worse MS of mine even than usual, resulting from all the materials I find in—"Brandon House." Yesterday I thought often of the far from Merry Xmas those poor Edwardses were passing in Golden Square, 26. Do give them a look if you can in passing through London; a Visit cheers him, and relieves her: and both of them remember your Society with great pleasure. Ever yours E.FG. 1

"Newby," added by Wright in margin of the manuscript. it turned out the 1879 Crabbe was printed privately, not published. Billings and Sons of Guildford, Surrey, were the printers. 2 As

January 1879 Effingham Wilson, father of EFG's correspondent Henry S. Wilson, had pub­ lished Tennyson's first volume of poems, 1830. EFG was not aware of these associations.

To E. B. Cowell Woodbridge Jan. 1/79 My dear Cowell, First—The Good Wishes of the Season to you and Elizabeth. I am glad I sent you Arthur's Letter concerning his Brother's Re­ turn. What the Brother may be I know not, but am also glad of your improved Opinion of him. At any rate, you see that he was not dis­ couraged by his late disasters from persevering in the calling he has adopted: so, at least, Arthur wrote. As to Arthur, all his Letters—and all he ever says to me—show a very loyal Attachment to all his Fam­ ily: his Heart is good and unspoiled; he also sticks to [his] desk, you see: and I think much of his native Sagacity, Observation, and Hu­ mour. It is well he did not come for his Holyday down here: Roads too hard to ride on: ice, too uncertain to skate on. I was at Lowestoft from Monday till Saturday, with Kerriches: Lusia K. was there, and talked with great warmth about you both. She is very soon travelling away to Manchester, where her Brother and Sisters now reside. I suppose she will return to Florence before the Year is out. I did write to Wright; and he replied from Brighton. As to Crabbe, I have entrusted him to a very friendly quondam Publisher, who proposes to find a suflBcient Printer and Publisher and so to him I have left the Matter. To my astonishment, old Spedding said he should be "delighted" to read over my Proofs: I had merely hinted at such a piece of Good Fortune without much expectation of meeting with it. If only he would re-write my Prose part, which I find very difficult now, and I doubt not shall muddle, easy as the task would be to any penny-a-liner almost now. But you will like the Book if ever it gets launched. As to Salamdn and Co., it was at your wish that I thought to reprint it; you also wished to be Dedicatee for Auld Lang Syne. Pray under­ stand this, and please yourself. I only suggested Omar also, inasmuch as you taught me both: and, had I dedicated all the Volume to you, I should have made a proviso as to your not approving of Omar's

January 1879 Morals, etc., showing you the Dedication for your Approval, before finishing it. I have not, however, settled with Quaritch about the Size of the Book, which I won't have in his ornamental 4tos any more; per­ haps he will cool down about reprinting and I shall be none the sadder for that. I assure you I should not have meddled any more with him but because you wished this one thing done. I see there is another Agamemnon in the Field! By one of your Big Wigs: so I have at least the Credit of setting others off. Read "Sources of the Blue Nile" and "The Bride of Lammermoor," both of which we have just finished. O, Sir Walter will fly over all their heads "come Aquila" still. E.FG.

To W. A. Wright [Woodhridge ] Jan. 5, [1879] My dear Wright, Sir Michael Stanhope 1 is, I think, the name of the Hero whose Body was made so much of: Eyke was certainly one of the Parishes he so enriched: and I think Smith told me they took him, nolus-bolus,2 to Gedgrave and Orford. If you have time at Beccles, you may like to enquire about this. I believe I forgot to tell you that all the passages enclosed thus [in my Crabbe, are left ad libitum for other readers to retain or omit; I think they are better omitted.3 If all reads clear and well without them, sufficit. I think there is a paragraph in the first part—of the Brothers, "Come then, fair Truth"—which must be omitted as my text runs; passing at once to "George loved to think," etc. You understand that I do not propose my text as the text of the Book: but only as Readings of it: for such as have hitherto declined the whole. E.FG. I suppose it can come back flat by Post. Pay that Sacrifice for the Great Work, and let me know one day what you make of it. 1 In the sixteenth century Sir Michael granted to ten parishes in Suffolk, "upon trust for the relief of the poor," yearly rents out of the demesne lands of Valence

January 1879 in Blaxhall. For his involvement in the ruin of his brother-in-law, Edward Seymour Somerset, Protector of England, he was beheaded in the Tower in 1552. 2 "Willy-nilly"; Farmer Smith's emendation of nolens-volens. 3 The device was discarded before printing.

To Charles Donne Woodbridge Jan. 6 [79 Dear Charles,

Thank you for your Letter with all its Good Wishes, which I can sincerely return. I have nothing to tell of myself, save that I was for two months in the Summer on our Coast—Dunwich, and Lowestoft—and at the be­ ginning of October returned to my Winter Quarters here—at a Desk all the Morning using my own Eyes in reading or writing: and at Night listening to another who reads me Sir Walter Scott, The Woman in White, All the Year Round, Chamber's Miscellany, and so on. A month ago I went to London to see a poor Fellow who is fast sinking in some paralytic way: the only other Friend I visited was your Father, whom I was very glad to find well, if not strong. He and Blanche seem to keep house very comfortably together. I did not look into Playhouse, Concert Room, or Picture Gallery; and was glad to get home to old dull Woodbridge. I have not heard from Gerald this long while: but am soon about to write to him.1 He had been expressing some wish, his Father told me, to come to Boulge—but I suppose it would be a ticklish Journey for him during this weather, even if he held to that wish. I do not think my Brother has been very well of late; and his Wife is very ill even now, if not dangerously so. Your Wife I do not know, but you must give her my good Wishes for the New Year, and long after that; and believe me yours very sincerely E.FG. 1

EFG's nephew, son of John who lived at Boulge Hall.

January 1879

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [January 7, 1879] (AIR: HIGHLAND LADDIE)

Let other Bards the praises swell Of Pica, Primer, Nonpareil: But if to me you leave the Choice, Give me, give me, the brave Bourgeois: The Brave Bourgeois The Brave Bourgeois, He is Great Matthew Arnold's Choice And I will swim in the Boat with him, And carry off my Public with the Brave Bourgeois. So I sang after your Letter came till Noon Post brought me the enclosed Primer from my exempt Publisher, and his Letter also. You see how very polite he is: why he is so on the mere remembrance of sixty years ago11 know not. But I shall bid him do exactly as he thinks fit; only asking if the Brave Bourgeois would not do better. I think he must be wrong about 120 pages only: when he saw the MS a month ago he thought more than double that. The Proof he sends is not from the work itself, but only some scraps stuck in with hasty lines between to show the proportion of Verse and Prose. He, and Printer, don't see it is nonsense—nor perhaps would you, if just called in from other work to see a Friend's Proofs. Eh? However, as you are upon Holyday just now, and Tomorrow is Sunday—give me a line as to Proof and Proposal. As to coming over here—any day suits me: I can always get you something an hour after you arrive: if you write me beforehand, as soon as you arrive: and Bed as well as Board. But, even if you have written, don't come if weather against: no harm will follow, except the loss of your Company to yours E.FG. 1 Fifty

years, as mentioned in the Dec. 17, 1878, letter.

January 1879

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Jan. 16, [1879] My dear Wright, Some days ago Quaritch sent me the enclosed, along with another about the size of this curtailed from the Italics. Which latter will do best, but for the Cockney ornament. However, this is not what I wanted to ax you about; and I don't think you can answer, ax I never so nicely. I think I spoke of it before to you. Quaritch wants an Edition of 1000 Copies: which, at my rate of selling, would out-run my rate of living twice over; and probably his also. Well then: is it not better to limit to 500, which might give us a chance, though a remote one. For the last Edition of Omar was published, I think, seven years ago: 500 then (as he said) and what chance is there of its selling faster now? with old Jami by way of Drag? If you have a lurid Interest, give me a word about this: I know not whom else to ask: and I have told Quaritch that, if he wants to be rid of my doubts, etc., he need only drop the concern, and no harm done to either. I sent Newby a page of Brave Bourgeois with some 46 lines in a page, I think, and told him that was my Hultimatum. I hope you duly received your Arnold—which I did not at all wish to keep. Come; I do think my Crabbe will be better than that Sawny1 pedantic stuff. I did think of the Horse dealer showing off a "serious old 'un"—"Tom!— just put a crum of Ginger into his rosette." No more word of poor Edwards. Yours E.FG. 1 "Sawney":

foolish, silly.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Jan. 16/79 Dear Sir, I prefer the smaller page (which I enclose). Should have liked it better with either no frame line, or a quite plain one. I am not so precious.

January 1879

In case of our agreeing to print, I want to stipulate— 1st That Omar, who is to stand first, be never reprinted separate from Jami. 2ly That I should have Proof, and Revise, sent me of both Poems before going to Press (which was not done with Agamemnon). And that any Alterations I make be strictly done. 3'5'· That my Name do not appear in any Advertisement, nor any notice of the Book added to any such Advertisement unless quoted from some independent Review. I should much prefer 500 Copies instead of 1000—unless under some understanding as to the Copyright reverting to my Heirs, Execu­ tors or Assigns, in some stipulated time after my Decease. I feel pretty sure that, at my rate of sale, 500 will see me out—however it may be with you. I wish this point to be settled between us before we begin: and, if you do not care for all such Bother, you have but to drop the thing, and no harm done on either side. Yours truly, E.FG. I will send you the original Frontispiece to "Solomon" to use or not as you please. But I should like his Seal at the end to be done in Red Line, and red inscription, as I marked in the Book.

From Bernard Quaritch1 15 Piccadilly London January 17, 1879 Dear Sir As I am very anxious not to sever the bond which has connected us for above 20 years I agree to all the stipulations of your letter of yes­ terday, and I here briefly recapitulate them: 1. The smaller page specimen to be adopted.2 2. Omar to stand first and never to be reprinted separate from Jami. 3. You to receive proof and revise before going to press. 4. Your name not to appear in any advertizement of mine; and no note of mine to be added to my advertisement of your book. 5. I to pay you £25 on the completion of the printing.

January 1879 6. The impression to be limited to a thousand. 7. The copyright to remain yours; of course no new edition to be brought out by you or your representatives whilst I have a stock of say fifty unsold copies. If I printed only 500 copies I should not see my money back for printing, etc. it is the second 500 which would ultimately recoup me. The frontispiece to Salaman shall be reproduced as you wish it. The sooner the setting up into type of Omar and Salaman and Absal is commenced the better. I remain, dear Sir, Your very obedient servant (signed) Bernard Quaritch 1 The original of this letter, no doubt found among EFG's business papers at Little Grange, was sent by Aldis Wright to his publishers, Macmillan, while he was editing the Letters and Literary Remains. The text printed here was taken from a transcript sent by Wright to George Moor, EFG's attorney, December 11, 1887. The transcript is in the FitzGerald Collection at Syracuse University. 2 Quaritch reduced the dimensions to a large octavo. Price, IOs 6d.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Jan. 21/79 Dear Sir,

Well then—take Omar and Jami on the terms proposed in your letter of Jan. 17. It is not worth more fuss on either side; only I should like, in addition, to have some twenty Copies for myself included. I send you, along with Jami, the Copper plate, which you can use or not as you please; I don't care about. . . .1 I enclose also what you can add or not, as you please, to note 24 of Omar.2 Send it back to me if you want it not. Omar's first three Stanzas should contrive to go on his first page: they are the "Lever de Rideau" as it were.3 Yours truly, Edward FitzGerald 1 The plate for the polo game frontispiece which also appears in the 1856 SalAmdn and Absdl. The remainder of the paragraph was cut from the MS. 2 Mrs. Wrentmore, editor of the Quaritch letters, must have misread EFG's numeral. There is no note for quatrain 24 (nor for 74) in any version of the

January 1879 poem. In 1859 and 1868 notes were identified by consecutive Roman numbers; thereafter by quatrain numbers. 3 In correspondence for the next six months, references to texts and proofs in letters to Quaritch apply to the 1879 Rubmyat-Salaman and Absal volume; those sent to Wright, almost invariably to Readings in Crabbe.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Jan. 23, [1879] Dear Sir, As you tell me the Copper has arrived, I suppose the Copy also— of Salaman. On the other side of this paper is my interpretation of my own Enigma, about the Seal at the end of Salaman. You can please yourself about when to print. Only let me see the Proof, etc., of Omar; as well of the others. Yours E.FG. J&mi's Seal at the end of Salaman to be done in red—on oval lines, with, or without flourish—letters in small Caps—as marked in Copy.1 1 The postscript is "my interpretation" mentioned in the note. EFG's transla­ tion of the poem concludes:

Enough—the written Summary I close, And set my Seal— THE/TRUTH/GOD ONLY/KNOWS The words were printed in a single line in previous editions. In Persian MSS Jami's seal, decorative, precedes the text.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Jan. 28, [1879] Dear Sir, Aldis Wright, a considerable Authority on Editing, Printing etc., says he much dislikes the mixture in a page of roman and italic in my Salaman.

January 1879 I do not care at all: if you prefer roman also, into roman let the little o-b^go. The long note at end about "Intelligences"2 should go in Appendix so as to leave text clear. Do as you please. No answer needed. E.FG. 1 "Roman" or "tale." Quaritch had set the narrative of the poem in roman type, the apologues in italics. 2 Jami was a Sufi, or Persian mystic. According to the Sufis, ten Intelligences, in descending rank and power, rule Creation. The earth is the peculiar sphere of the tenth and lowest Intelligence—a tenet, one is tempted to observe, effec­ tually supported by history. A note for the closing segment in all editions of the poem explains the term; but EFG here alludes to information, recently sent by Cowell, which was added to the appendix in 1879.

To W. A. Wright1 [Woodbridge] [January 31, 1879] I wrote Quaritch that you disapproved of Italics with Romans; but he was to do as he chose, it being his affair now rather than mine. Behold his Rescript, on a sheet that might contain a Diploma. The poetic Quaritch! I did not suppose you left Arnold for me to keep: if I had so thought, I should have kept it; certainly not returned it with a dis­ dainful word. I only meant to say that I felt no desire to steal it. E.FG. You may however keep Quaritch. 1

Added to the following letter from Quaritch.

From Bernard Quaritch London, 15 Piccadilly, W. 30 January 1879 Edward Fitzgerald, Esq. Dear Sir, I admire and applaud for its chaste and severe propriety, the taste of Mr. Aldis Wright with regard to printing; but I doubt whether we ought to apply to a Persian poem the severe canons of classical beauty.

February 1879 The appearance of italics between romans is a pleasant relief, and keeps the reader's attention from flagging. The loss of uniformity is no discord. It was Cowley, I think, who has said— "Tell her such differing chords make all our harmony." With your permission, therefore, I will not adopt, however much I may admire, the excellent opinion of Mr. Aldis Wright. I am, dear Sir, Your obedient servant Bernard Quaritch

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Feb r 6179 My dear Wright, I told you Spedding would read my Proof: I should have sent one to you, but supposed you might be at Revisions, etc. For one thing—I wanted advice about the spaces between the paragraphs, here irregularly set, and giving a disconnected look to prose and Verse. I should not have thought any space was wanted between those two—however, I have bid them confine it to a line's space. For I have sent off to Newby the second Copy he sent me of this Proof I. So do not trouble yourself about it: any suggestions you may have to make (if you care to do so) may avail in Revise. What can Paddy say about the passage in Coriolanus if W.A.W. feels any doubt about its meaning? I have read the preceding scenes: but ". . .'s1 God!" I don't guess what old Jem (I told him I had told you of Bacon, etc.) means about the Lord of the Admiralty: I suppose something to do with some present Blunder: but I have seen no Papers for months. E.FG. The Master will show you a letter about Gurlyle. 1 An

indecipherable name.

February 1879

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Feb r 19, [1879] My dear Wright,

Ten days ago I left my Farmer1 at my Reader's for Brooke: he has not called for it yet, having (I believe) gone away for awhile to one of his married Daughters. I will wait a day or two longer; and then, if he do not send for it, I will send it at once to you, whether for your Library, or yourself. I think I can say so much of it, that there are no names of purchasers added to the Prices: which are mostly Shillings and sixpences, I think. Unless the one look I gave into the Book de­ ceives me. Florio's Montaigne went for a Shilling. But—Paddy! I have had but one Proof more than what I sent you: one copy I returned almost at once to Printer in order to cut out over a page of Verse; the other Copy I sent to Spedding, as before, who has not yet returned it: or you would have had it before this. I will either send it you, when Jem sends it back; or will send you the Revise with its alterations. The Proof is nearly all of Verse. Spedding tells me not to be "stingy" of my Prose: but I really now shirk it as much as I possibly can. I sincerely wish you had it to do. But tell me—how long is [it] proper for me to keep Proof, and Revises? And also: Should I see a Proof of the Revise before "Press." Don't forget to tell me these two things. Two Proofs also from Quaritch—so you see it appears the World must bear it patiently. The Copy of the Photo will, as I anticipated, be a failure. "Hamlet" omitted. Ever yours E.FG. 1 Sale catalogue for the library of Richard Farmer, Master of Emmanuel Col­ lege, Cambridge, and author of Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare. The library was sold at auction in London in 1798, the year after Farmer's death.

February 1879

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Tuesday [February 25, 1879] My dear Wright, I gave you up, and so sent my Proof and Revise off. In truth, I fancied you had received some worse account of your Mother, and might be at Beccles—not to be troubled by me. I wish I had received your comment: though I believe there was but one which I could have availed myself of: that one about "lacking." Somehow I write very faulty English; which I knew before, and would fain have had someone like yourself to write it for me. I try to compress myself into as small compass as I can, so as to keep Crabbe chief Performer: and thus "obscurus fio."1 However, when all is printed, if you and others worth consulting think the Book won't do for the Public, I can keep it to give away to Friends who will excuse my blunders. I wonder your Master did not wither up my Proof with Scorn: but perhaps he thinks it is all well for ancient Fitz. Spedding returned it to me with "no hitch"—so off it went to Press. The two couplets you mention I had a reason for striking out. The "assembled Rooks" had flown, and so were no part of the present Picture: and the couplet about Harry Bland's Presents to the Miller's wife2 was very unmusical and not very clear in grammar, and so the husband stalked away leaving his wife to reconcile them as she might. I now enclose Proof III which came some ten days ago and was sent off: Revised: and now gone to Press also. But do you mark any error, notwithstanding, if you will. I have now Proof IV and V, which must go to old Jem first: and he is never in a hurry to return them. I find that more than 100 pages of my Copy go to 80 of Print: so my 350 will come well within 300, if after Copy be as former. Enough of myself & Co. I have not found dear Lamb's Verses. There is an odd thing, as you say. Wesley I will look into when Crabbe and Quaritch are done with. I should like all this little work if I were not now engaged to it. But I have only as yet two Proofs from Quaritch. Shall I send Farmer, or keep him till you come? I had not heard of Brooke's Marriage. But am yours E.FG. 1 From 2 In

Horace's Ars Poetica, xxv: "In trying to be concise, I become obscure." "Boys at School."

February 1879

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge Feb r 25, [1879] My dear Frederick, It is very good of you to want to know about me. Well, I have done very well all through this long winter, which has not, it appears, done with us yet: for it is even now treating us to a cold sleet from the N.E. I suppose that wind becomes somewhat softened by crossing the Seas as far as Jersey: here, you know, we have it neat,1 from Scandinavia, I suppose. We shall have the less of it, perhaps, when it generally rules strongest; viz, from March onward to Midsummer. I have not moved from Woodbridge Parish since last I wrote; but yet hardly into Woodbridge Town, though it is but a stone's throw off. I do but walk up and down my Garden, and up and down a field above, where I pace what I call my "Quarterdeck." This is as good as any walk beyond, at this time of Year: and one can get back at once within doors if one feels tired or the sky looks threatening. How do you manage? Will you ever come to join me here? I think that is about as unlikely now as my finding my way to Jersey. But this I can say: if I went away to visit anyone, I believe it would be yourself. I heard from Annie Ritchie (Thackeray who was) that Alfred and Co. were coming up to stay at Sir Somebody Simeon's in London. I do not write to any of them now because poor Mrs. A. seemed to have the task of answering my half-yearly letters; and though you don't like her much, I think you would not put her to that trouble, invalid as she is. I hear no more of Alfred's "Tom a Becket" which I was told was forthcoming. I think he may as well repose on his old Laurels. I see your old Friend Browning is announced for a new Vol­ ume,2 and I think he also might as well leave it alone. Not so with their great Contemporary E.FG. who is even now dading3 through the Press a small Volume—not of his own Poems—but of his old Crabbe's "Tales of the Hall"—Readings in them—all at his own ex­ pense, for nobody to buy; but for him to give away to some old Friends—F.T. among the number: who will probably not read one half of them. Trollope (Anthony) wrote to me for some particulars of Thackeray between 1830-40, being engaged to make a sort of Biography of WMT for Macmillan. I could tell him very little, having burned nearly all the Letters that he (WMT) wrote me during that time; and you may

March 1879 know that 'tis not easy to remember when called upon so to do. I am glad Trollope has the job if to be done at all: he is a Gentleman as well as an Author—was a loyal friend of Thackeray's, and so, I hope, will take him out of any Cockney Worshipper's hands. My Reader comes nightly at 8; we read Scott (just now the Pirate) till 9; then "ten minutes' Refreshment," and Dickens (just now Martin Chuzzlewit) till 10. This I call the Farce after the Play;4 and both very good. You need never return me the Musical Papers; I only throw them away when they come home. I have not heard from Lowell for months, nor do I know why he should write to me. Well, at any rate, I have written here a long letter to you, which perhaps will try your Eyes. Pray do as I have done since my Eyes went wrong: have a Reader at Night. You never say anything about any of your Family—Wife, or Children; of whom I should be glad to hear that all were well and happy, as this World goes. And I am still yours as ever E.FG. 1

As elsewhere, undiluted. Tennyson printed his play Becket privately but withheld publication for five years. Browning published the first series of Dramatic Idyls in May. 3 "Dade," to move slowly. 4 Minor productions, farces and comedies usually, opened and closed an eve­ ning's program in Victorian theaters. Entertainment began as early as 6:30 or 7 and continued until midnight. 2

To E. B. Cowell Woodbridge March 5, [1879] My dear Master, You tell me you even like to be applied to by your old Scholar on the old Studies you guided him in (this looks rather in Dedication Style) so I venture to tell you I am not quite sure about Salaman's arrow that— . . . but Heaven were made of Adamant Would overtake (?) the Horizon as it roll'd. Should it not be "pierce," so far as the "Adamant" goes: whatever that may be in Eastern Cosmogony.1 I dare say you told me all about it twenty-five years ago!

March 1879 Thank you much for "Gnostic" and even "illi"2 which I suppose should have circumflex "illi" for Genitive, or Dative—I forget which. I should send you Salaman Proofs—when they come—were it not your busy time, and were I not almost assured you would disapprove of many omissions and Alterations, which now I cannot alter. But, if you can divest yourself of first prepossessions, I believe you will like the new Version better on the whole. I shall send you the Calderon Magico (which I wrote you of) in a parcel of Books I am about to pack off to—Doctor Wright. Ever yours and Elizabeth's E.FG. 1 Before publication EFG canceled three lines at this point in a description of Salaman's prowess as an archer. 2 "Gnostic," a reference to substance in EFG's explanation of the Siifi doctrine of Ten Intelligences. In his preface EFG substituted "illi", for the "intra" of previous editions, in a "Monk Latin" couplet illustrating the meter of the original Persian.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge March 5, [1879] My dear Doctor,1 I rail you three or four Books: 1. My Work on Dryden: which you must Macmillanize. You see that much of it is Malone's; delenda est Carthago;2 and if there remain yet too much for a handy book, you must except more. You see I begin with the Dialogue on Dramatic Poesy by way of a notable outset, though not, grand Dialogue, felicitous, nor (I think) at all of Dryden's best Vintage in matter. On the contrary, he keeps getting better the older he grows, and his very last Preface to Virgil in the very last years of his Life, seems to me richest of all. Lowell notices that Dryden was of very slow growth: his very Alexander's Feast one of his latest Poems. A very little, and I fancy not unpleasant, work will supply you with all that is needed in the way of Dates, etc., if more be needed than what Malone prefixes and annotates to each Preface. If you have no mind to the task, in some holiday leisure, why then some one else must: for done it must be by some one, if not from the material I have put together.3

March 1879 2. Is my dear, and your Brother Doctor's Sale Book; which you must dispose of as you please. 3. A very precious Volume of Stow Gardens4 which you are to show to your Master, who is a Lover of Architecture, and (I was always convinced) might have been a Performer in it also. But, as he turned Scholar, recommend him the Latin Inscriptions—especially that on St. Augustine's Cave at p. 11. 4. Barrister Cooper—for the new Doctor. 5. I can't lay hands on a Calderon I meant for Cowell—(he will be Doctored next, damme!) so, if it doesn't turn up before Howe is ready for Train, it must follow by Post. You will next have "The Sisters" Revise: for the Proof was too dis­ jointed. Doctor Cowell writes me that you showed him one Proof, which he says read very well indeed: which encourages me to go on; else, my Eyes are weary if nothing else. I enclose a Letter about my poor Edwards, and am yours E.FG. I see De Quincey praises dear C. Lamb's Latin Letters, of whose goodness I had only an ignorant conviction. Perhaps Mr. Munro might like to elucidate Stow Gardens. NB. Pray, when you find a hitch in my Proofs or Revises, correct as well as note it. I get very addlepated. 1

An honorary LL.D. degree was conferred on Wright by the University of Edinburgh, April 22, 1879. The oifer had been approved by the Senate in February. 2 "Carthage must be destroyed" (Cato the Elder). 3 EFG had applied to Edmund Malone's edition of Dryden's "Prefaces" the same editorial method he had practised in Readings in Crabbes "Tales of the Hall," deleting liberally—though, with Dryden, interpolating rarely. Repeated urging failed to induce Wright to prepare EFG's text, now in Trinity College Library, for publication by Macmillan. 4 In February, 1833, EFG commissioned John Allen to buy a "blackletter Stowe's Chronicles, very dirty and burnt," he had seen in London "if it only costs three shillings or so." Books given by EFG to Frederick Spalding, auctioned at Sotheby's July 1, 1901, included "Item 181. Stow (John). A summarie of the Chronicles of England (imperfect), calf, 1598. With the autograph Έ. FitzGerald1 1833' on the fly-leaf."

March 1879

To W. E. Crowfoot (Fragment) Little Grange, Woodbridge March 8, 1879

. . . I never remember so mortal a winter among those I more or less know. I must not complain of myself, but I feel somewhat that this is the last year of security—on March 31st I shall have completed my seventy years; we know what that infers. I think you are about in the same plight. I already feel more addle-headed than even a few years ago; getting puzzled in so slight a work as I thought would be only amusement—viz, a little Volume of "Readings in Crabbe's Tales of the Hall," which no one will read "in extenso." Scissors and Paste are my chief work, but I have occasionally to patch in some prose of my own which I do with great trouble now and had better be reading others than trying to make others read me. I am not sure the book will be published; meant originally for friends, of whom you, my dear Crow­ foot, will be one of the first remembered by yours sincerely, yes affectionately E.FG.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [March 11, 1879] My dear Wright,

I yesterday sent off two Proofs to Spedding, asking him to forward them to you by Sunday. For, I think you told me you had to return to another sort of Revision on March 18—the "Delay has Danger." Proof has (DG) scarce anything of mine in it: but I want you to consider the arrangement of Crabbe's matter (so cut short). See if some paragraphs want anything omitted, or might not be profitably transposed. Also, tell me whether I should send you other Proofs—when you are in Jerusalem.1 I do not wish to trouble you: but I think you said that you had opportunities to look into secular matters even there. I hope you found Habakkuk (?) more trustworthy than Voltaire did: who, on being remonstrated with for making some false accusations against that Prophet, said— "C'est egal: Habakkuk etait capable de tout."

March 1879 You may see that I selected nearly all whole pieces of Dryden: Nor should I have taken parts of the First Essay, but that it was the first, and with something of a Dramatic treatment of its own, different to his Prefaces, etc. If, as you say (and I doubt not, truly) that "excerpts" won't go down now—for what have I been fighting with Crabbe, etc.? But you will have to tell me when all is done whether I had better publish, or keep the Book among Friends. In either case, I shall have done the little work I had long a mind to do, and shall pay for without a grudge. I shall certainly never meddle with such another. I hope your Master is not offended at my Stow; I thought the wonderful Architecture would amuse him. As to the Inscriptions— I am tickled with the thought of the Beaux being asked for an Inter­ pretation by the Belles of the time: as Walpole by Princess Amelia, whom he was ordered to meet there. I may be in London "ipse" the beginning of next week—just only for a call or two in Golden Square.2 I know not if he will be able if desirous, to see me: but she will. Ever yours E.FG. Are you Doctor yet? 1 2

Jerusalem Chamber. Where Edwin Edwards lived.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Thursday [March 13, 1879] My dear Wright, I send you the last sheet before it goes to Spedding, because you might be off to Edinburgh by the time he might forward it to you. Whereas you have just now a little leisure at Beccles: and, when you have seen enough of the Proof, send it on to Jem. You see that I make short work of the old Lady's Story of her absurd Ghost:1 and query if it might not be further contracted by omitting (in prose) the Lover's engagement to appear to her: which is, Lady Bab. over again. The Lover might die, no such promise made; and she might expect to see him all the same in her Cathedral Visions. Perpend this, and tell me, please.

March 1879 I have another Copy of Proof sent me, so you need not fear pen­ cilling what I sent you. Note to—"No doubt Othellos every place supply."2 "Not a solitary instance of the Verb getting puzzled between its two nouns in Crabbe"—or—"of Crabbe's confusing nominative and accu­ sative," etc., which are lumbering words. There might be something of predicate and something else: but I (Paddy) forget what. If the first form will do, why—enough. Yours always E.FG. 1 In

"Lady Barbara." "William Bailey," where EFG inserts a note on Crabbe's grammatic care­ lessness. 2 In

To W. F. Pollock Woodbridge March 16, [1879] My dear Pollock, Tell me how you and Lady Pollock and all of you have weathered this Winter, which has made the Bell go for more of us hereabout than ever I remember. And even now we are not out of it. I have had a little correspondence with your neighbour Trollope, who asked me for some recollections of WMT between 1830-40. I could tell him very little, having long ago burned nearly all the Letters which could have assisted my Memory. But, even with their aid, I could not have told Mr. T. much that would have aided him in the short Biography he was drawing up. Two or three particulars which Annie T. had given him, I was able to prove wrong. I think her Irish blood comes out in her—may it not prove too much of the Mother's. Then—my Crabbe is printing—Hurrah, Boys! and will make a neat little something 8™ Volume, of some 250 pages, which but few would read if they got it for thanks, and much fewer would pay for. Old Jem reads Proofs, and tells me of a blunder here and there: and he, and you, and Miladi, and half a dozen more shall tell me if it be worth publishing when you have your presentation Copies. If you think not —well, I shall have done the little work I had somewhile thought of, and shall not grudge the money spent—as I shall never do another such. I was advised to pay an Artist (one Piercy, Pall Mall East) to

March 1879 make a Drawing from a Photo of Pickersgill's Portrait—to be repro­ duced by some "Woodberry Type."1 He sent me what he had done, asking for any alterations I might see good. I saw his Version was too young, too amiable, too smooth, but could not point where: so sent to old Jem, who did point out several particulars of dissimilarity. Of course the Hartist could not see them. Whether he has tried to alter I do not know: I heard he had been ill since. So I suppose that part of my little Scheme will fail. I have had Sir Walter read to me first of a night by way of Drama; then ten minutes for Refreshment; and then Dickens for Farce. Just finished the Pirate—as wearisome for Nomas, Minnas, Brendas, etc., as any of the Scotch Set: but when the Common People have to talk, the Pirates to quarrel and swear, then Author and Reader are at home; and at the end I "fare" to like this one the best of the Series. The Sea scenery has much to do with this preference, I dare say. After the Pirate, two of Mr. Trollope's early Barchesters have been lying ready for a month and more. I did not tell him so: but such is the fact. Aldis Wright either is, or is to be, Doctor—of Edinburgh Univer­ sity, I think. Now you see my Paper is done. Write me a few lines in return, telling me about yourselves; and with kind regards to Miladi, Ever yours E.FG. 1 A process named Woodbury-type by W. B. Woodbury, who devised it. The artist's copy of the portrait proved unsatisfactory.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge March 21, [1879] My dear Wright, I had your letter and the proofs when I got home from London on Wednesday afternoon. Thank you much for both: I have taken, I be­ lieve, all your suggestions except that which is, I believe, very likely to be the best of all: viz: as to the Dislocation of Sir Owen's text. But I wanted to have his early mood indifference specified, and why (as by his Wife's influence) and then pass to his Neighbour's inferences. Such is my reason for disobeying you, right or wrong. As to the

March 1879 change from "that Wife" to "His" I reserve to myself that licence so far as Particles, Pronouns, Adverbs, etc., in case of dislocated para­ graphs, as I have made a note of confessing in my bit of a Preface, if I come to publishing. No other change of text, so far as I know; that which you detected of "Profuse greeting" for "Looks expressive" had, I see, been one of very many marginal suggestions written on Copy, which had escaped my pen drawn across it ere going to Printer. You see that when I do offer an amendment, I put it in a Note. Any Po­ etaster can amend every nine out of ten of Crabbe's clumsy careless verses—and I often have done so for my own satisfaction when they mar a passage which only a Poet could write. I sent Spedding another Proof yesterday, I think; bidding him for­ ward it to Jerusalem when done with. It is not easy to cobble conscientiously, and certainly I won't try again. You and one or two more shall judge if the Book had better be quietly stifled among us when finished. Yes: I went to London on Monday and was with Edwards most of the Day till Wednesday. He had been somewhat better for a week before I came in, but very much weaker in Body—much wasted— and still failing in mind. It happened that other friends did not call the two days I was there: and she said my Visit was "a Success." He is sometimes very violent, wanting to attempt what he cannot, or ought not. One night when it was getting time for him to go to Bed (about 9 P.M. ) I looked in for an hour at Irving. I have seen many Hamlets, from Drury Lane to a Barn—but I can safely say, I never saw so bad a Hamlet as Irving's. How could he have the impudence to lecture the Players? I had soon enough of him and his Troop.1 E.FG. 1 See

letter to Fanny Kemble, April 3.

To Anna Biddell [Woodbridge ] [March 23, 1879] Dear Miss Biddell, At my Sunday work, you see. I went to London last Monday: put up at Wood's Hotel, Furnivall's Inn, Holborn (very clean, quiet, and good) and was at Golden Square

March 1879 an hour after. I found that he had been better for a week before, getting out in a Cab three times, though with great difficulty. I saw that he was much wasted and much more feeble, than when I saw him three months before: but cheerful, and glad to see me, I think. She, pretty well, and courageous and clever as before. When time for him to draw to bed-ward (9 P.M. ) I went for an hour to see a bit of Mr. Irving's Hamlet; incomparably the worst I ever saw in my Life—and I have seen Hamlet in a Barn. Next day (Tuesday) I was again most part of it at Golden Square: went away at night, as before: but was tired, and glad to get to my Inn. On Wednesday I returned home here: very glad to get away from London itself. There happened to be no callers at Golden Square the whole two days I was there (O yes, I believe there were two one day, though I saw them not) and poor Mrs. E. said my Visit was "quite a Success." So I am very glad I went. Here is a Wind for us! My Crocuses are all snubbed: Daffodils, which Shakespeare says, Come before the Swallow dares, and take The winds of March with Beauty1 dare not face this North Easter. And I am yours always E.FG. 1

Winter's Tale,

IV.4.119.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Monday, [March, 1879] Dear Sir, N.B. I am in not the least hurry for Proofs, which may be deferred as long as you please. But, as such little Papers are apt to stray by a Country Post, this line is only to say that no Proof has reached me since the Second in which I crossed out all the Second Prefaces as I hope was duly attended to. I also suggested the omission of the nu­ merals in the Text referring to after notes, both in Omar and Salaman: but I merely suggested it for you to choose or not, the Edition being yours. I had Colomb's "Song of the Bell," thank you.

March 1879 Could you get me a French Play "La Boule" played in Paris some four years ago. Yours E.FG.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge March 24/79 Dear Sir,

Here are the two Sheets, so carefully and critically noted before coming to me that I have not looked very closely myself, feeling as­ sured that all that was to be done already was done, better than I could do it. The Preface to Jami is too long for the very contracted Poem, as I ought to have remembered before: all the Travel part might well be contracted into less than a quarter by the skilful hand of the Annotator. But if, now as 'tis printed you prefer keeping it—C'est egal! By the by, (of French) I will enclose Post Stamps for "La Boule"— an admirable thing of its kind. And am yours, E.FG. I was in London for a day last week: but near all day with a sick Friend.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge March 29, [1879] My dear Wright,

Though I told you I was minded to disobey your advice concerning Sir Owen, it caused me to refer to the original; and I now enclose you the result. You see that in the first (and added) lines, My Lady is an "easy" wife, whose Death, as we read further on, Sir Owen did not much feel. How then should she school down those passions which were to break out afterwards, not on account of her loss, but because of Sir

March 1879

Owen enlarging his faculties by Travel, Reading, etc. The first lines tell us it was "early habit" and prudence that ruled him. So I have cut the knot by cutting out that intermediate couplet about her "pure discretion" and, I do think, left a reasonable account of his former, and latter, condition, without altering a word. I think you will approve of it; but do not write only to say whether or no; for—I will alter no more! You will have the end of Lady Barbara and most of "the Widow" from Spedding in a few days, I dare say. I bid him address to Trinity College, as you told me Jerusalem would be over—yesterday. I have taken care, since you told me of a "bold change" which had crept into the text from my marginal note, to compare my reprint with "Copy," as I ought to have done from the first. On looking back over the previous sheet I find some half dozen words of mine stolen into Text: which I shall mark as such among "errata." For, careless and bad as the text often is, I do not wish (except in the case of hooking on originally separated paragraphs) to alter a word. I think my Brother will not recover from a Bladder attack he has for the last month been confined with. My Father suffered from some­ thing of the same: and I feel sure of feeling symptoms of it myself: which will develop themselves before long, and bore one with pain before the Heart can polish one off decently. On Monday (31) I shall have completed my "Seventies." Well for one if the rest could be silence—as it might if one had more of the Roman than of yours E.FG. I don't want the sheet back—it is the Devil's own now. Tell me when I am to Doctor you—and how.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Sunday [March 30,1879] My dear Wright, I never did—and probably never should—observe there was any discrepancy in the Coriolanus Dialogue. But, when I read it in your letter, after you had suggested something, I immediately re-distributed the Speakers as I afterward found you had done. So let my opinion go for what it is worth as (so far) independently co-incident with yours. I should say it must be so; and it were not, it ought to be.

March 1879 Your new version of Head and Heart reads well—might it run "Where Reason is (or, sits) enthroned"—avoiding "has its?" What Scribblerism! Somehow "attendant Passions" doesn't come home to me as the word: but my little well of English is run dry; as you might judge by some things in my Crabbe. Yet I don't know if I must not retain that vile "disacknowledged"—unless "disannulled!" Your "re­ buff" is somehow no more poor Ellen's, than "Bastards and all" Virgilia's. "Disclaim" is nearer perhaps. What trifling! I should not have retained the old Lady with her "O, Bother, Blar­ ney," etc., but for the pleasant Introduction which must lead to some Story. "Smugglers and Poachers" was, I doubt not, much better when told in a few sentences by Sir S. Romilly—as probably "Ellen" was from old Roger's lips. But I could quote some pretty things from the latter: whereas, scarce anything worth quoting from the former; ex­ cept the fine lines at the end, beginning "As men may Children at their sports behold" which I shall quote in a Preface, if Publication makes a Preface neces­ sary. Of which, by the by, you can now judge. I have not read the second Coriolanus yet1 as I want to have done with this old Crabbe, in which (you saw) old Spedding made several suggestions; which I do not know if I can now use; for—I am tired of the job. And I have Arthur Charlesworth with me for Holydays. I post you Lord Carnarvon's Agamemnon, which I really think is the best of us. You can post it back, or carry it with you for awhile, if you care so to do. Yours always E.FG. 1A

second set of proofs.

To Frederick Spalding (Fragment) Woodbridge March 31/79 . . . A month ago Ellen Churchyard told me—what she was much scolded for telling—that for some three weeks previous Mrs. Howe had been suffering so from Rheumatism that she had been kept awake in pain, and could scarce move about by day, though she did the house

April 1879

work as usual, and would not tell me. I sent for Mr. Jones at once, and got Mrs. Cooper in, and now Mrs. H. is better, she says. But as I tell her, she only gives a great deal more of the trouble she wishes to save one by such obstinacy. We are now reading the fine "Legend of Montrose"1 till 9; then, after ten minutes' refreshment, the curtain rises on Dickens's Copperfield, by way of Farce after the Play; both admirable. I have been busy in a small way preparing a little volume of "Readings in Crabbe's Tales of the Hall" for some few who will not encounter the original Book. I do not yet know if it will be published, but I shall have done a little work I long wished to do, and I can give it away to some who will like it. I will send you a copy if you please when it is completed. 1 One

of Scott's Tales of My Landlord.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge April 3/79 My dear Mrs. Kemble, I know well how exact you are in answering Letters; and I was afraid that you must be in some trouble, for yourself, or others, when I got no reply to a second Letter I wrote you addressed to Baltimore Hotel, Leamington—oh, two months ago. When you last wrote to me, you were there, with a Cough, which you were just going to take with you to Guy's Cliff. That I thought not very prudent, in the weather we then had. Then I was told by some one, in a letter (not from any Donne, I think—no, Annie Ritchie, I believe) that Mrs. Sartoris was very ill; and so between two probable troubles, I would not trouble you as yet again. I had to go to London for a day three weeks ago (to see a poor fellow dying, sooner or later, of Brain disease), and I ferreted out Mowbray Donne from Somerset House and he told me you were in London, still ill of a Cough; but not your Address. So I wrote to his Wife a few days ago to learn it; and I shall address this Letter accordingly. Mrs. Mowbray writes that you are better, but obliged to take care of yourself. I can only say "do not trouble your­ self to write"—but I suppose you will—perhaps the more if it be a trouble. See what an Opinion I have of you!—If you write, pray tell me of Mrs. Sartoris—and do not forget yourself. It has been such a mortal Winter among those I know, or know of,

April 1879 as I never remember. I have not suffered myself, further than, I think, feeling a few stronger hints of a constitutional sort, which are, I sup­ pose, to assert themselves ever more till they do for me. And that, I suppose, cannot be long adoing. I entered on my 71st year last Mon­ day, March 31. My elder—and now only—Brother, John, has been shut up with Doctor and Nurse these two months—Aet. 76; his Wife Aet. 80 all but dead awhile ago, now sufficiently recovered to keep her room in tolerable ease: I do not know if my Brother will ever leave his house. Oh dear! Here is enough of Mortality. I see your capital Book is in its third Edition,1 as well it deserves to be. I see no one with whom to talk about it, except one brave Woman who comes over here at rare intervals—she had read my Atlantic Copy, but must get Bentley's directly it appeared, and she (a woman of remarkably strong and independent Judgment) loves it all—not (as some you know) wishing some of it away. No; she says she wants all to complete her notion of the writer. Nor have I heard of any one who thinks otherwise: so "some people" may be wrong. I know you do not care about all this. I am getting my "Tales of the Hall" printed, and shall one day ask you, and three or four beside, whether it had better be published. I think you, and those three or four others, will like it; but they may also judge that indifferent readers might not. And that you will all of you have to tell me when the thing is done. I shall not be in the least disappointed if you tell me to keep it among "ourselves," so long as "ourselves" are pleased; for I know well that Publication would not carry it much further abroad; and I am very well content to pay my money for the little work which I have long meditated doing. I shall have done "my little owl." Do you know what that means?—No. Well then; my Grandfather had several Parrots of different sorts and Tal­ ents; one of them ("Billy," I think) could only huff up his feathers in what my Grandfather called an owl fashion; so when Company were praising the more gifted Parrots, he would say—"You will hurt poor Billy's feelings—Come! Do your little owl, my dear!"—You are to imagine a handsome, hair-powdered, Gentleman doing this—and his Daughter—my Mother—telling of it. And so it is I do my little owl. This little folly takes a long bit of my Letter paper—and I do not know that you will see any fun in it. Like my Book, it would not tell in Public.

April 1879 Spedding reads my proofs—for, though I have confidence in my Selection of the Verse (owl), I have but little in my interpolated Prose, which I make obscure in trying to make short. Spedding occa­ sionally marks a blunder; but (confound him!) generally leaves me to correct it. Come—here is more than enough of my little owl. At night we read Sir Walter for an Hour (Montrose just now) by way of "Play"—then "ten minutes refreshment allowed"—and the Curtain rises on Dickens (Copperfield now) which sends me gaily to bed—after one Pipe of solitary Meditation—in which the—"little owl," etc. By the way, in talking of Plays—after sitting with my poor friend and his brave little Wife till it was time for him to turn bedward— I looked in at the famous Lyceum Hamlet; and soon had looked, and heard, enough. It was incomparably the worst I had ever witnessed, from Covent Garden down to a Country Barn. I should scarce say this to you if I thought you had seen it; for you told me you thought Irving might have been even a great Actor, from what you saw of his Louis XI. I think. When he got to "Something too much of this," I called out from the Pit door where I stood, "A good deal too much," and not long after returned to my solitary inn. Here is a very long—and, I believe, (as owls go) a rather pleasant Letter. You know you are not bound to repay it in length, even if you answer it at all; which I again vainly ask you not to do if a bore. I hear from Mrs. Mowbray that our dear Donne is but "pretty well"; and I am still yours E.FG. 1

Records of a Girlhood, 1878.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge April 14, [1879] Dear Sir,

I shall not be able perhaps to send back Jami Proof for a few days as I am engaged with the business of Visitors just now. I only write a line to answer your Query about whether Notes should be at bottom of several pages or lumped, according to page, at the end. The latter would, no doubt, look best: and would need no more than just the

April 1879 page (without line) specified. But in this you must please yourself, whose Edition it is. I only write this line now in case the future print­ ing be affected by it. Yours E.FG. N.B. Proof came with open Envelope.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge April 18, [1879] My dear Sir, Please to show the enclosed to your able Critic—it concerns two MS notes he put to the first Salaman Proof. I do not like to go against his Authority unless my old Sheikh1 warrants me in so doing. I shall send you both Proofs by Monday: there is indeed nothing to be altered all through Poem I believe (except a word now and then) except the first d d sentence. But what has detained me thus long, is, the meaning to weed out a lot of Capitals, which some one said stuck up like thistles out of corn. On looking at the pages again, I doubt not that, as far as look goes the notes ought to be reserved to the end, "en masse"—not only on account of their taking room in an already small page: but taking it up with a third type. But I say it is for you to judge, whose Edition it is —I being Yours truly, E.FG. 1 Ε.

B. Cowell.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge April 20, [1879] Dear Sir, I enclose you the two Sheets of "Soloman and Absolom" as Mr. Childs' printers called it. I should like to see Revises when your Apollonius1 (v. note p. 52) of a Critic has "scrutinized" and decided (if he will take the trouble) on some points I have submitted to him.

April 1879 I hope he understands that I am very grateful to him for his sugges­ tions, of which (he sees) I generally avail myself: when I do not, I hope he believes that I may have some little reason, not worth nam­ ing, which prevails with me against his much superior scholarship and equally poetical taste. I ought to say versifying: for I pretend to little more. You (who have no time for such things) will see that I only fuss about the opening Sentence—the "premier pas." I think there be no further hitch. I submit this to your Critic on a separate paper for him to decide on. The rest is, and will be, little else than changing some of those tall capitals to common type. They got in because of my habit of begin­ ning Nouns with Capitals: but it is contrary to the usage of far better men than myself, and looks ugly. Perhaps your Critic would be at the trouble of striking out those which he considers not emphatically wanted. They puzzle my bad Eyes a good deal, which is not a proper reason for puzzling his: but he brings a clearer head to that, as to much else, in regard to the Book. You will, I daresay, give him this letter, as well as the enclosed paper: both of them referring rather to him than to your busy self. Yours truly, E.FG. Cowell's Letter not wanted back.2 [Enclosure—suggested revisions of opening lines of Saldmdn and Absdl:] O Thou whose Spirit through this Universe In which Thou dost involve Thyself diffused Shall so perchance irradiate Ί Shall strike a splendour into) Humanclay That men, suddenly dazzled, lose themselves In ecstasy before a mortal Shrine Whose Light is but a shade of the Divine or O Thou whose Spirit from his fount unseen Through all created Universe diffused Shall so perchance irradiate, etc. Please to choose one of these Versions3—neither of them good, nor worth the bother; but one would not have the reader stumble over

April 1879 the threshold. The first might be best if it were not somewhat repeated next page, though I there change "invest," etc., to "behold" or "reflect" himself, etc. That whole paragraph beginning "Thou lurkest," etc., down to "scrutinize" might as well be omitted, so as to bring the preceding paragraph about the "Double World" next to the cognate one about "Dividuality," etc., but there is a quaintness about that "scrutinize," and I suppose one must not make the Serious Exordium out of proportion short, compared to the Pumpkin afterpiece.4 I am glad to find that I had revolted with reason from "pectus intra." Twenty-five years ago, when the Poem was published, I know "ejus" was the word, but "Pectus ejus" was intolerable; and I asked Cowell if "illi" might do—for an unnatural Monk. 1 The

Sage of Keats's "Lamia." letter follows. 3 The first of the two passages offered opens the Invocation of the poem as published, with line three reading, "Shall so perchance irradiate human clay." The editors recommend a reading of Jami's lamentation on his waning powers in the Invocation as a demonstration of the ingenious and felicitous imagery of Persian poetry and the skill and rhythmic beauties of EFG's translation. As trans­ lators, EFG and Dryden were akin. "Those thoughts," said Dryden in defending deviations from literalness in his translations, "may be fairly deduced from him" [the original poet], (See also A. J. Arberry's edition of FitzGerald's Salamdn and Absal, Cambridge University Press, 1956, pp. 45-50.) 4 The apologue of the "simple Arab" included in the Invocation. 2 The

From E. B. Cowell Marion House Llanfairfechan N. Wales Ap. 17,1879 My dear FitzGerald, We are staying here for a fortnight or so as I felt rather overdone by the hard work of last Term and so I came here to rest and enjoy my­ self. I have brought a Volume of Calderon to amuse myself with. I have been enjoying it exceedingly. Calderon has been brought to my mind lately, as I have been teaching a friend of mine, one of the Fel­ lows of Corpus, a little Spanish, and we read together occasionally of an evening part of the Civic play, Έ1 mayor encanto Amor." I wish you were here to read a play with me now.

April 1879 I am delighted to hear that Salaman is in the printer's hands. I should certainly keep that note about Spectacles. The Feringhi glasses of the text must mean some kind of spectacles.1 Jami lived till the latter half of the fifteenth century (did he not die about 1490?) and so I see no incongruity in his mentioning them. If the lines are not interpolated they must mean "spectacles," and I should certainly leave the note, if only to promote discussion. I see no reason for doubt about it. As for the Chaucerian bit about the old man, we did not suppose that either borrowed from the other. I was always interested in the parallel as a parallel,2—it is always so interesting to compare two representations of the same thought in two different authors, when, as here, there could be no suspicion of borrowing. Homo ex humo is good philology as well as good science; and it seems a word as old as the oldest days of the Indo-European tribe; the idea is natural enough. I shall quite look forward to seeing the Crabbe—I liked very much the two sheets Aldis Wright has.. . .3 The Prophet's name is Khizr. Is not intra better after all than Uli in the line of monkish latin? "His bosom boils within." We had a beautiful walk yesterday to Aber waterfall. The Spring is really coming on. We saw hundreds of the unfolding leaves of the Wood-sorrel. 1

A reference to lines in the "Preliminary Invocation:" . . . my two Eyes see no more Till by Feringhi glasses turn'd to four;

Feringhi, originally a transliteration of Frank (here, Prankish) but later applied to Europeans generally. EFG suggested in a note: "First notice of Spectacles in Oriental Poetry, perhaps." Jami died in 1492. 2A reference to lines in Jami's "Invocation" and the remark by Death, dis­ guised as an old man, in the "Pardoner's Tale:" "Thus I walk and, on the ground which is my mother's gate, I knock with my staff and say, 'Dear Mother, let me in.'" 3 Remainder of letter missing. The lines that follow were added to p. 1.

April 1879

To Bernard Quaritch [Woodbridge] [April, 1879] Dear Sir, You will take care that your printer does not print you both the Stanzas I left to your choice? He might do so unless one of them be crossed out—and then A Bother. E.FG.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge April 25, [1879] Dear Mrs. Kemble, I think I have let sufficient time elapse before asking you for another Letter. I want to know how you are: and, if you can tell me that you are as well as you and I now expect to be—anyhow, well rid of that Whooping Cough—that will be news enough for one Letter. What else, you shall add of your own free will:—not feeling bound. When you last wrote me from Leamington, you crossed over your Address: and I (thinking perhaps of America) deciphered it "Balti­ more." I wonder the P.O. did not return me my Letter: but there was no Treason in it, I dare say. My Brother keeps waiting—and hoping—for—Death: which will not come: perhaps Providence would have let it come sooner, were he not rich enough to keep a Doctor in the house, to keep him in Misery. I don't know if I told you in my last that he was ill; seized on by a Disease not uncommon to old Men—an "internal Disorder" it is polite to say; but I shall say to you, disease of the Bladder. I had always supposed he would be found dead one good morning, as my Mother was—as I hoped to be—quietly dead of the Heart which he had felt for several Years. But no; it is seen good that he shall be laid on the Rack—which he may feel the more keenly as he never suffered Pain before, and is not of a strong Nerve. I will say no more of this. The funeral Bell, which has been at work, as I never remember before, all this winter, is even now, as I write, tolling from St. Mary's Steeple. "Parlons d'autres choses," as my dear Sevigne says. I—We—have finished all Sir Walter's Scotch Novels; and I thought

April 1879 I would try an English one: Kenilworth—a wonderful Drama, which Theatre, Opera, and Ballet (as I once saw it represented) may well reproduce. The Scene at Greenwich, where Elizabeth "interviews" Sussex and Leicester, seemed to me as fine as what is called (I am told, wrongly) Shakespeare's Henry VIII. Of course, plenty of melo­ drama in most other parts:—but the Plot wonderful. Then—after Sir Walter—Dickens' Copperfield, which came to an end last night because I would not let my Reader read the last Chapter. What a touch when Peggotty—the man—at last finds the lost Girl, and—throws a handkerchief over her face when he takes her to his arms—never to leave her! I maintain it—a little Shakespeare—a Cock­ ney Shakespeare, if you will: but as distinct, if not so great, a piece of pure Genius as was born in Stratford. Oh, I am quite sure of that, had I to choose but one of them, I would choose Dickens' hundred delightful Caricatures rather than Thackeray's half-dozen terrible Photographs. In Michael Kelly's Reminiscences (quite worth reading about Sher­ idan) I found that, on January 22, 1802, was produced at Drury Lane an Afterpiece called Urania, by the Honourable W. Spencer, in which "the scene of Urania's descent was entirely new to the stage, and produced an extraordinary effect."1 Hence then the Picture which my poor Brother sent you to America. "D'autres choses encore." You may judge, I suppose, by the N.E. wind in London what it has been hereabout. Scarce a tinge of Green on the hedgerows; scarce a Bird singing (only once the Nightingale, with broken Voice), and no flowers in the Garden but the brave old Daffydowndilly, and Hyacinth—which I scarce knew was so hardy. I am quite pleased to find how comfortably they do in my Garden, and look so Chinese gay. Two of my dear Blackbirds have I found dead—of Cold and Hunger, I suppose; but one is even now singing— across that Funeral Bell. This is so, as I write, and tell you—Well: we have Sunshine at last—for a day—"thankful for small Blessings," etc. I think I have felt a little sadder since March 31 that shut my sev­ entieth Year behind me, while my Brother was—in some such way as I shall be if I live two or three years longer—"Parlons d'autres"— that I am still able to be sincerely yours E.FG. 1 For Urania, in which her mother played the lead, see letters to Fanny Kemble, Feb. 2 and March 16, 1876. Michael Kelly (1762-1826), opera singer, actor, and composer. EFG refers to his Reminiscences edited by Theodore Hook, 2 vols., 1826, II, 166.

May 1879

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge May 1, [1879] My dear Doctor,

I sent off your Athenae OX-and Franco-Italian Dictionary some while ago, just after Easter. I do not want you to thank me again for the Books; but simply to let me know if you did not receive them. My Brother gradually weakens, and the End—which he has so long wished for—cannot now be far off. Cowell wrote to me from Wales, where he went for relaxation, and found it. I suppose that he is now back at Cambridge. I had a Card from poor Mrs. Edwards three days ago telling me that her husband had been in Bed three days, and was but half conscious: a ghastly race between him and my brother to the Bourn, etc. "Parlons d'autres choses," as Sevigne says; and you may say of me, I think, with all my Screech-owl Notes as she does to her Daughter of some pious friend—"Defaites vous aussitot de cette Trompette de Jugement." Crabbe is all done, for better or worse, I suppose, except the Por­ trait, and—some Preface to explain my "modus operandi"—in case I publish the Book. Now, you—for one—are in a plight to advise me as to that; do so plainly: if you think publishing as well let alone, I shall not be at all sorry to keep the little Book for a few Friends, who I believe would like it.1 I have heard no more of a Publisher— nor indeed have asked. Quaritch is polishing off Omar and Salaman, the latter of which is really reduced to a better, though by no means the proper, Form and I am yours always E.FG. What of the remainder of Coriolanus? 1 Three hundred and fifty copies of Readings in Crabbe s "Tales of the Hall" had been printed by BiUings and Sons of Guildford, Surrey.

May 1879 To Ε. Β. Cowell Woodbridge May 3, [1879] My dear Cowell,

I suppose that you are got back to Cambridge, and its Duties: I only wish to interfere with them to ask you if you approve of the Dedica­ tion which I have sketched at the end of this Letter. If you wish for a Dedication at all, I wish you would alter this to your Liking, whether as to matter, or Style (which latter is not at all good) in doing which you see you will not be praising yourself, but simply adjusting my words to the exact measure of your approval of the two Poems. If you prefer to have no Dedication at all, only say so; I shall quite understand why, and then there will be no difficulty in explaining your relative Regard for the Poems. Your Letters about Horizon were very interesting: but, on looking at the passage again, I decided on cutting out the whole passage— viz., those three lines. Had I retained them altering "overtake" to "pierce" which I had done, they would have wanted a Note as much as anything else in the Poem; and it seemed to me that, after that Oriental bombast, the descent to hitting Bird and Fawn was Anti­ climax. So I have cut it out, if Quaritch and his Critic heed my "Dele." But all you have now to write about is the Dedication on the other side; whether or not—and if accepted make any alterations you see good whether in matter or manner. Ever yours E.FG. I will send you a Copy of the Calderons directly. JSgr 1

Send back if approved—else, burn

My dear Cowell,

Twenty-five years ago you taught me the original of the two follow­ ing Poems; that of Jami which you could unreservedly like; and, not long after, poor Omar's, despite the dismal use which you thought he put his Talent to. With this distinction, pray accept the dedication of these two Versions from your grateful and affectionate Pupil and Friend. [Cowell informed Aldis Wright in a letter dated July 23, 1888: "I would not have it done, as I never cared very much for Omar—

May 1879 my favorites were the Salaman and Bird Parliament and Mesnavi; and so it was eventually dropped."]

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [May, 1879] My dear Wright, Now here is the Book in undress: and what I want to know from you is—whether, on looking over it complete, you think it worth dress­ ing at all, so as to appear in Public.11 have told you that I am not at all solicitous that it should; and you will not in the least disconcert me if you say "No." On looking over it "en bloc" the Stories—several, if not most, of them—appear to me cut too short to produce the effect which is produced by the too long originals. They are rather unread­ able; but, once read, leave their mark: my Version is venTTeadable; but is it not too much so for any such impression as the original makes? Then again—on reading it over, does the present tense of my Narra­ tive clash with the Past tense of the Original? These are the two points [on which] I most wish to have your opinion: and, if you believe me, you can speak it very freely. This is a case, in which I ask for a friend's reply when sending him a bit of one's handywork; and I want yours. Which till I know I shall not trouble myself about any Preface—except a few words as to my part in the Book: viz: much omission; some transposition; and the change of some initial word when two originally separated paragraphs come together: and a list of such words as I have detected creeping into the text from my annotated "Copy." Also, that I have used some of Crabbe's own MS version instead of the present Text. Now, tell me this: and believe me yours E.FG. 1 Friends to whom EFG sent unbound copies failed to "encourage" publica­ tion; so in June he had "two or three dozen" bound in Woodbridge to distribute as gifts. However in February, 1883, he sent Quaritch 47 copies, with a preface, to be bound and sold with Quaritch's imprint. When EFG died in June of that year, Billings and Sons were printing two hundred copies of an expanded preface. Obviously, he had decided to publish the remainder of the 1879 printing. The Readings, with the new preface, was published by Quaritch in the latter half of 1883.

May 1879

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge May 7179 My dear Wright, I can only say that to me—Paddy—your explanation of "vent" is very satisfactory. But the last advocate is very apt to appear right to me. I see that Halliwell gives "Vent: to snuff up; to smell. Lat." That in­ verted order of relations which you point out in the lines seems very odd to me, though scarce to be doubted. Do you find other such Instances in William? I see by Athenaeum that Charles Tennyson (Turner) is dead.1 Now people will begin to talk of his beautiful Sonnets: small, but original, things, as well as beautiful. Especially after that somewhat absurd Sale of the Brothers' early Editions. My Brother died peacefully on Sunday Afternoon—7 P.M. He had not suffered—or but little for the last ten days of his Life, and lay much dozing. So for "my last End," etc., unless it be sudden—which, best of all.2 Edmund Kerrich is at the house, as Executor and Trustee. Edwards. I had not heard from her since I went up to see them near two months ago, till about ten days since; when a Post Card told me that he had been in bed three days, in somewhat of a comatose state. Mowbray Donne wrote me that Blakesley had been seriously ill— of Pleurisy. Cowell wrote me two cheerful and concise excellent Let­ ters about a point in Oriental Cosmogony which I asked him about; but which, after all, I shall do without. Pray show him Lord Carnarvon which I told him of,3 and which he wishes to see, having known somewhat of him at Oxford. I feel sure he will [like] the Book. You did not tell me if I had better publish Crabbe; I have told you that I am very indifferent about it: some of my friends, I feel sure will like it; and any public Sale would be too small to be of any con­ sideration in the way of repayment for Costs which I can well afford. I was determined to do the little opus, coute que cowtel Till I know about publishing, I can't set about prefacing. E.FG. 1The

Poet Laureate's brother (b. 1808) had taken the name Turner in 1835 on inheriting the property of his great-uncle Samuel Turner, Vicar of Grasby, Lincolnshire, a living which Charles retained until his death. A brief obituary paragraph in the Athenaeum's "Literary Gossip," May 3, mentioned the auction of copies of a volume of poems by Charles, Alfred, and Frederick Tennyson pub­ lished while all three were still in their teens.

May 1879 2 "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!" (Numbers, XXXIII, 10) John FitzGerald died May 4. The morning of June 14, 1883, while visiting George Crabbe of Merton, EFG was found in his bed by his host, "as if sleeping, but quite dead." 3 A recent translation of Agamemnon EFG had commended.

To W. E. Crowfoot (Fragment) Woodbridge Saturday, [May 10], 1879

. . . I say nothing of my Brother's death—only that—one's own turn shows so much the nearer. If the end is to be tolerably painless, I think I shall not demur at leaving this World: one has had a very prosperous time of it, and yet that Prosperity supplies one but little to care about now. When I shut the door on seventy years on March 31, I felt the Play was done—except the sad last Act, which must be a short one and one hopes not very tragical. I have finished my Crabbe Book. I do not think I shall publish it, but shall give it to some Friends, who, I think, will like it; dear William Crowfoot among them!

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [May 11,1879]

"Not knowing, can't erzackly say" whether you be at Cambridge or Jerusalem. Why did you not say a Word as to whether "publish or not." That is the Question. I won't write any preface if only for Friends, for I can scarce put words together now. My Brother was buried yesterday. I suppose I ought to feel ashamed that I did not go. I should have done so had there not been Kerriches and DeSoyres to represent me, and more than me. A letter from Mrs. Edwards says that he goes on declining, and she worn out with watching and waiting. Ajew! E.FG.

May 1879 Monsr Ie Docteur— Do you want the old Folio (not the good Edition) of D'Herbelot's Oriental Dictionary?

To Blanche Donne Woodbridge May 14, [1879] My dear Blanche, Thank you for your Letter—I have nothing to say on the main sub­ ject of it—C'est fini avec mon Frere: et mon tour arrivera. Mowbray had written to me that Valentia and her Party had given your dear Father much pleasure, and done him some good. I need not say this was good news to me. I shall soon be sending him my "Crabbe's Tales of the Hall," of which I have a few copies stitched up for friends: and they must tell me whether better to keep them among friends, or publish them. I do not ask this of your Father, however: for I know beforehand that he would be sure to like them, and to think that others would like them also. I am not in the least anxious to publish: few would buy, and Critics might abuse; I had long deter­ mined to do the little work, had money to pay for doing it, and feel pretty sure that friends will be, at any rate, none the worse for it. I wait for a Portrait, which will be a failure: and have not even settled on applying to any Publisher—who could not lose, but might not want to be bothered with it. Enough of that. After escaping all the long Winter cold, I am now wheezing a little in the middle of May. My old Woman Housekeeper has been almost laid up with Rheumatism these two months and more. If she gets about again, I suppose my Nieces will be here in June; and I am yours and dear Dad's always E.FG.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge May 18, [1879] My dear Mrs. Kemble, By this Post you ought to receive my Crabbe Book, about which I want your Opinion—not as to your own liking, which I doubt not will

May 1879 be more than it deserves: but about whether it is best confined to Friends, who will like it, as you do, more or less out of private preju­ dice—Two points in particular I want you to tell me; (1) Whether the Stories generally seem to you to be curtailed so much that they do not leave any such impression as in the Original. That is too long and tiresome; but (as in Richardson) its very length serves to impress it on the mind:—My Abstract is, I doubt not, more readable: but, on that account partly, leaving but a wrack behind. What I have done indeed is little else than one of the old Review Articles, which gave a sketch of the work, and let the author fill in with his better work. Well then I want to know—(2) if you find the present tense of my Prose Narrative discordant with the past tense of the text. I adopted it partly by way of further discriminating the two: but I may have mis­ judged: Tell me: as well as any other points that strike you. You can tell me if you will—and I wish you would—whether I had better keep the little Opus to ourselves or let it take its chance of getting a few readers in public. You may tell me this very plainly, I am sure; and I shall be quite as well pleased to keep it unpublished. It is only a very, very, little Job, you see: requiring only a little Taste, and Tact: and if they have failed me—Voilal I had some pleasure in doing my little work very dexterously, I thought; and I did wish to draw a few readers to one of my favourite Books which nobody reads. And, now that I look over it, I fancy that I may have missed my aim—only that my Friends will like, etc. Then, I should have to put some Preface to the Public: and explain how many omissions, and some transpositions, have occasioned the change here and there of some initial particle where two originally separated paragraphs are united; some use made of Crabbe's original MS (quoted in the Son's Edition); and all such confession to no good, either for my Author or me. I wish you could have just picked up the Book at a Railway Stall, knowing nothing of your old Friend's hand in it. But that cannot be; tell me then, divesting yourself of all personal Regard: and you may depend upon it you will—save me some further bother, if you bid me let publishing alone. I don't even know of a Publisher: and won't have a favour done me by "e'er a one of them," as Paddies say. This is a terrible Much Ado about next to Nothing. "Parlons," etc. Blanche Donne wrote me you had been calling in Weymouth Street: that you had been into Hampshire, and found Mrs. Sartoris better—Dear Donne seems to have been pleased and mended by his Children coming about him. I say but little of my Brother's Death.

May 1879 We were very good friends, of very different ways of thinking; I had not been within side his lawn gates (three miles off) these dozen years (no fault of his), and I did not enter them at his Funeral—which you will very likely—and properly—think wrong. He had suffered considerably for some weeks: but, as he became weaker, and (I sup­ pose) some narcotic Medicine—O blessed Narcotic!—soothed his pains, he became dozily happy. The Day before he died, he opened his Bed-Clothes, as if it might be his Carriage Door, and said to his Servant "Come—Come inside—I am going to meet them." Voila une petite Histoire. Et voila bien assez de mes Egoi'smes. Adieu, Madame; dites-moi tout franchement votre opinion sur ce petit Livre; ah! vous n'en pouvez parler autrement qu'avec toute franchise —et croyez moi, tout aussi franchement aussi, Votre ami devoue E.FG.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge May 18/79 My dear Norton, It is over six months, I believe, since we exchanged a letter—mine the last Shot; which I mention only because that has been my reason for not writing again till I should hear from you that all was well enough with you and yours to justify my writing an idle letter. You have spoken of an aged Mother: if your Winter has been such as ours! And not over yet, as scarce a leaf on the trees, and a N.E. wind blowing Cold, Cough, Bronchitis, etc., and the confounded Bell of a neighbouring Church announcing a Death, day after day. I certainly never remember so long, and so mortal a Winter: among young as well as old. Among the latter, I have just lost my elder, and only sur­ viving Brother. But I shall close this Bill of Mortality before turning over the leaf. Well: it is Mr. Clarke's pamphlet which has encouraged me to "take up the pen," for I think it was you who sent it to me. All I am qualified to say about it is, that it is very well and earnestly written; but on a Subject, like your own Olympia, that I am no Judge of. I think of forwarding it to Cowell at our Cambridge, who is a Judge of Everything, I think, while pretending to Nothing. He is giving

May 1879 away his Life to teach Sanskrit to dull Scholars at Cambridge, while he might be doing something to distinguish himself: but that he never thinks of: only to do the work of tuition which never should have been given him to do by a rich University. He should only be called on to Lecture. This reminds me of all the pains he bestowed on me twenty-five years ago; of which the result is one final Edition of Omar and Jami, now forthcoming from Quaritch. Omar remains as he was; Jami (Salaman) is cut down to two-thirds of his former proportion, and very much improved, I think. It is still in a wrong key: Verse of Miltonic strain, unlike the simple Eastern; I remember trying that at first, but could not succeed. So there is little but the Allegory itself (not a bad one) and now condensed into a very fair "Bird's Eye view"—quite enough for any Allegory, I think. I should not have meddled with it again, but CoweIl wished. I will send you a copy of the two in one when born. Quaritch has spoilt the look of the page by Cockney orna­ ment—but as it was his Edition (neither I nor he will ever see an­ other) I let him go his own way. And—(this Letter is to be all about myself)—by this post I send you my Handbook of Crabbe's Tales of the Hall, of which I am so doubtful that I do not yet care to publish it. I wished to draw a few readers to a Book which nobody reads, by an Abstract of the most readable Parts connected with as little of my Prose as would tell the story of much prosaic Verse, but that very amount of prosy Verse may help to soak the Story into the Mind ,(as in Richardson, etc.) in a way that my more readable Abstract does not. So it may only serve to remind any one of a Book—which he never read! The Original must be even more obsolete in America than here in England; however, I should like to know what you make of it: and you see that you may tell me very plainly, for it is not as an Author, but only as Author's Showman that I appear: and if you, and other friends, think that I had better keep my little Show among ourselves, nothing is more easy. I can gain nothing from the Public, whether of Praise or Pelf; neither of which was my object—which was simply to try and gain a few Readers to this awkward old Genius. And if you and others judge I am not likely so to do—why, you and they will like what I have done, and I shall have done my little work, and so All Well. It is rather shameful to take another Sheet because of almost filling the first with myself. And I have but little to tell in it. Carlyle I have not heard of for these six months: nor Tennyson: I must write to hear how they have weathered this mortal Winter. Tennyson's elder, not

May 1879 eldest, Brother Charles is dead: and I was writing only yesterday to persuade Spedding to insist on Macmillan publishing a complete edi­ tion of Charles' Sonnets: graceful, tender, beautiful, and quite original, little things. Two thirds of them would be enough: but no one can select in such a case, you know. I have been reading again your Haw­ thorne's Journal in England when he was Consul here; this I have: I cannot get his "Our Old Home," nor his Foreign Notes:1 can you send me any small, handy, Edition of these two last? I delight in them because of their fearless Truthfulness as well as for their Genius. I have just taken down his Novels, or Romances, to read again, and try to relish more than I have yet done; for I feel sure the fault must be with me—as I feel about Goethe, who is yet as sealed a Book to me as ever. I think Mr. B[ayard] Taylor's Translation added nothing to such prose Versions as I have read; but the Notes very interesting. I have (alas!) got through all Sir Walter's Scotch Novels this Winter —even venturing further on Kenilworth: which is wonderful for Plot: and one scene, Elizabeth reconciling her Rival Earls at Greenwich, seeming to me as good as Shakespeare's Henry VIII, which is mainly Fletcher's, I am told. I have heard nothing of Mr. Lowell since I heard of you, and do think that I will pitch him a Crabbe into the midst of Madrid, if he be still there. (N.B. Some of Crabbe is not in the Text but from MS. first (and best) readings printed in the Son's edition.) and I am sincerely yours E. FitzGerald The Nightingale is now telling me that he is not dead. 1 Our Old Home, English sketches, 1863; Passages from the English Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1870; Passages from the French and Italian Note-books, 1871; the latter two edited by his widow. See letter to Fanny Kemble, [April, 1872], Hawthorne served as consul at Liverpool, 1853-58.

To J. R. Lowell Woodbridge May 20/79 My dear Sir, By this post I send you a bit of a Book, in which you see that I only play very second Fiddle. It is not published yet, as I wait for a few friends to tell me if it be worth publishing, or better kept among our­ selves, who know Crabbe as well as myself. You could tell me better

May 1879 than any one, only that I doubt if any Transatlantic Man can care, even if he knows of a Writer whose Books are all but unread by his own Countrymen, so obsolete has become his Subject (in this Book) as well as his way of treating it. So I think I may exonerate you from giving an opinion, and will only send it to you for such amusement as it may afford you in your Exile. I fancied I could make a pleasant Abstract of a much too long and clumsy Book, and draw a few Read­ ers to the well-nigh forgotten Author. But, on looking over my little work, I doubt that my short and readable Handybook will not leave any such impression as the long, rather unreadable, original; mere length having, you know, the inherent Virtue of soaking it in: so as my Book will scarce do but as a reminder of the original, which nobody reads! Anyhow, but very few would buy me—especially if (as probable) any Critic sneered at me; and I am quite well content to keep the Book for Friends, as most of my other illustrious works were kept, till their overpowering Splendour broke out, etc. So—mind—I do not want you to say a word: but to be amused, or not, as you feel inclined. Voila assez sur ce sujet la. I think that you will one day give us an account of your Spanish Consulship, as Hawthorne did of his English: a noble Book which I have just been reading over again. His "Our old Home" is out of print here; and I have asked Mr. Norton to send me any handy Edition of it—as also of the Italian Journal, my Copies having been lent out of past recovery. I am going to begin again with his Scarlet Letter and Seven Gables; which (oddly to myself) I did not take to. And yet I think they are not out of my line—or reach, I ought to say. We have had such a long, and mortal Winter as never do I remem­ ber in my seventy years, which struck 70 on March 31 last. I have just lost a Brother—75. Proximus ardet, etc.1 But I escaped through all these seven months' Winter, till a week or ten days ago, when a South Wind and Sunshine came for a Day, and one expatiated abroad, and then down comes a North Easter, etc. I was like the Soldier in Crabbe's Old Bachelor (now with you), who compares himself to the Soldier stricken by a random Shot, when resting on his Arms, etc. So Cold, Cough, Bronchitis, etc. And Today Sunshine again, and Ruisenor (do you know him?) in my Shrubs only just be-greening, and I am a Butterfly again. I have heard nothing of Carlyles, Tennysons, etc., save that the latter had written some Ballad about Lucknow, which I sup­ pose he might as well have let alone. I should be glad to hear a word of yourself, Calderon, and Don Quixote—the latter of whom σαίνει με2

May 1879 from my Bookshelf. Yes, yes, I am soon coming—and meanwhile am very sincerely yours E.FG. I make a Shot at "Your Excellency," being very ignorant of all Titles, English or Foreign. But I read something of it in Hawthorne. 1

"The next of kin burns," i.e., EFG might be the next to go. at me." EFG's Greek, like his French, is not always grammatical.

2 "Looks

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Tuesday [May 20, 1879] Dear Sir, I find an incorrect correction in the following passage of the Proof I returned you:

as

And what the Flood on which they sail'd, with those Fantastic creatures peopled; and that Isle In which awhile their Paradise they found,° And thought, for ever?—That false Paradise Amid the fluctuating Wilderness Waters found 1 Of Sensual passion, in whose bosom lies A World of Being from the Light of God Deep Λ in unsubsiding Deluge drown'd

substituting ""found" for "made" forgetting that "found" occurs again two lines on. I brought it to the latter place so as to approach it nearer to its rhyme "drowned" at the expense of somewhat tautological "fluc­ tuating Waters." Let your Critic decide on which rendering to retain. Yours truly, E.FG. Don't take any trouble about the Seal; only don't have that mural monument.2 I should like to see Revise before struck off; and then Adieu to Persia. E.FG. 1

EFG cancels alterations in the proof and restores manuscript readings: "made" for "found" in 1.3; "Waters found" for "Wilderness" in 1.5.

May 1879 2 On a proof sheet, EFG had proposed that "Jami's Seal" be enclosed in a circle or an oval in red ink. The printer had set the words up "in black in a heavy wavy diamond frame" (Letters to Quaritch, p. 66).

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge May 22, [1879] My dear Mrs. Kemble, I must thank you for your letter; I was, beforehand, much of your Opinion; and, unless I hear very different advice from the two others whom I have consulted—Spedding, the All-wise—(I mean that), and Aldis Wright, experienced in the Booksellers' world, I shall very gladly abide by your counsel—and my own. You (I do believe), and a few friends who already know Crabbe, will not be the worse for this "Handybook" of one of his most diffuse, but (to me) most agreeable, Books. That name (Handybook), indeed, I had rather thought of calling the Book, rather than "Readings"—which suggests readings aloud, whether private or public—neither of which I intended—sim­ ply, Readings to oneself. I, who am a poor reader in any way, have found it all but impossible to read Crabbe to anybody. So much for that—except that the Portrait I had prepared by way of frontispiece turns out to be an utter failure, and that is another satisfactory reason for not publishing. For I particularly wanted this Portrait, copied from a Picture by Pickersgill which was painted in 1817, when these Tales were a-writing, to correct the Phillips Portrait done in the same year, and showing Crabbe with his company Look—not insincere at all— but not at all representing the writer.1 When Tennyson saw Laurence's Copy of this Pickersgill—here, at my house here—he said—"There I recognise the Man." If you were not the truly sincere woman you are, I should have thought that you threw in those good words about my other little Works by way of salve for your dictum on this Crabbe. But I know it is not so. I cannot think what "rebuke" I gave you to "smart under" as you say. If you have never read Charles Tennyson (Turner's) Sonnets, I should like to send them to you to read. They are not to be got now: and I have entreated Spedding to republish them with Macmillan, with such a preface of his own—congenial Critic and Poet—as would

May 1879 discover these Violets now modestly hidden under the rank Vegetation of Browning, Swinburne, and Co. Some of these Sonnets have a Shake­ speare fancy in them:—some rather puerile—but the greater part of them, pure, delicate, beautiful, and quite original. I told Mr. Norton (America) to get them published over the water if no one will do so here. Little did I think that I should ever come to relish—old Sam Rogers! But on taking him up the other day (with Stothard's Designs, to be sure!) I found a sort of Repose from the hatchet-work School, of which I read in the Athenaeum. 1 like, you know, a good Murder; but in its place— The charge is prepared; the Lawyers are met— The Judges all ranged, a terrible Show—2 only the other night I could not help reverting to that sublime—yes! —of Thurtell, sending for his accomplice Hunt, who had saved himself by denouncing Thurtell—sending for him to pass the night before Execution with perfect Forgiveness—Handshaking—and "God bless you—God bless you—you couldn't help it—I hope you'll live to be a good man."3 You accept—and answer—my Letters very kindly: but this—pray do think—is an answer—verily by return of Post—to yours. Here is Summer! The leaves suddenly shaken out like flags. I am preparing for Nieces, and perhaps for my Sister Andalusia—who used to visit my Brother yearly. Your sincere Ancient E.FG. 1Henry

Pickersgill (1782-1875); Thomas Phillips (1770-1845). the song by Macheath, the highwayman-philanderer, as he is taken to the Old Bailey for trial (John Gay's Beggar's Opera, 111,1). 3 John Thurtell, murderer of William Weare, a fellow gambler, October, 1823, maintained that Weare had cheated him of money gained in their gambling oper­ ations. Thurtell and Joseph Hunt, an accomplice, were found guilty and sentenced to death. Thurtell was hanged January 9, 1824; the sentence of Hunt, who had confessed, was commuted to transportation for life. A second accomplice escaped trial by turning King's evidence. The element of magnanimity in Thurtell's character, implicit in his remarks quoted by EFG, finds little support in accounts of the man's career. EFG was one of the many for whom the Gill's Hill Murder held a strange fascination. It is the subject of commentary or essay by Scott, Borrow, Carlyle, Thackeray, Hazlitt, and Pierce Egan. 2 From

June 1879

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Tuesday, [May 27,1879] Dear Sir, As I am going away from home till the week's end I return you the Revise, which I have scarce read over, relying on your Excellent Critic's bienveillance in the matter. I only persist in sief-ting at p. 105, for a reason I could give if it were worth troubling him or you with it. And so, Adieu to Persia! I hope that your Critic as well as yourself think Salaman improved —by abbreviation—at any rate: and I think that if you name it in any of your Catalogues you can just say "Revised"—and no more. Yours truly, The Great Un-nameable

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Whit Monday [June 2, 1879] My dear Wright, I think that, on the whole, I shall at any rate defer publishing, and simply give away what I think will be an acceptable Present to Friends —whether for Rail, or Sea-side. Everyone seems to like the Book, but no one seems to encourage venturing it on the Public, during the reign of Browning, Swinburne, etc. And I do not want to bother myself, or a Publisher, about what may prove to be unsaleable Stock. If I find that there should rise any demand from the outer World, why then little Quaritch (if no better offers) can sell for so much a head. Voila! I have written to ask Cowell to write "Yes" or "No" on a Card which I enclose him. This is simply to answer a Question which I thought— and think I am quite sure of; but I am always so afraid of Paddy's "sureties"; and Paddy doubting Paddy is apt to blunder more than Paddy "pure and simple." Tell Master I shall send him a Crabbe when clothed. It will contain a very few words as to my share in the Book; and a list of some twenty words which inadvertently slipped into the Text from my "Copy." Yours always E.FG.

June 1879

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Tuesday, [June 3, 1879] Dear Sir, Here are the Proofs for Press when two or three Corrections are duly seen to. Some people have preferred the form of Stanza XXXIV as it stood in Edition 2.1 It has the merit of a fuller Rhyme; whether any other advantage I know not; and will leave to you and your able Critic Over­ seer to choose whether to restore or not. I am quite indifferent about it. If you find any difficulty in paging the Notes at the end, I will do it. The Text looks all the better without the Numerals I think, and I am Yours truly E.FG. 1 Quatrain XXXI in all except the second edition. The third (1872) version was retained.

To Bernard Quariteh Little Grange, Woodbridge June 4, [1879] Dear Sir, The last page of the Preface to Salaman (about the metre) must be cancelled if already, as I suppose, struck off. It contains a blundering misremembrance which would hurt us both. I will pay for the extra expense; but it must be done, "coute que coute." If you will send the leaf directly, I will return it by return of Post: for it is only to strike out a line or two. E.FG.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge June 9/79 My dear Wright, I deserve that no more Proofs should be sent me, seeing how I dirty them.1 More than once with hands soiled from weeding, hoe-ing, etc.,

June 1879 and now (worse) from a bit of (I suppose) buttered bread for Ducks, etc., in the pocket where I shoved Proof to be read "al fresco"—Damn! —but I'll do so no more. I was from Tuesday to Saturday last in Norfolk with my old Bredfield Party2—George, not very well: and, as he has not written to tell me he is better, I am rather anxious. You should know him; and his Country: which is still the old Country which we have lost here; small enclosures, with hedgeway timber: green gipsy drift-ways: and Crome cottage and Farmhouse of that beautiful yellow "Clay-lump" with red pantile roof'd—not the d d white Brick and Slate of these parts. I am getting two or three dozen Copies of Crabbe done up for Friends3—with just a word of Advertisement as to what I have done with him. I want to get these done before Friends have got away holiday-making: but I know not if I shall manage it. You see I have relinquished Publication for the present: which, at any rate, saves trouble. Quaritch, I suppose, will soon have his Omar and Jami out: of which I will send you a Copy, though you will hate the look of the Book: and I dare say have had enough of the contents. Yours always E.FG. Edwards keeps much the same, and talks of Dunwich! She must not go with him alone. 1

Proof of a portion of Coriolanus sent by Wright for criticism. Merton with George Crabbe and two sisters, May 28-31. 3 Bound by C. J. Fox of Woodbridge. All copies seen by the editors are in green cloth boards. Fox, perhaps, exhausted his supply of green binding, for one copy at least, sent to Pollock, was red. 2 At

To Alfred Tennyson Little Grange, Woodbridge June [13], 1879 My dear Alfred,

I do not write to you now, because when I have done so lately, Mrs. Tennyson has taken the trouble to answer me, which I did not wish her to have the trouble of doing. Spedding tells me he has been on a visit to Farringford to arrange with you about an edition of your brother Charles' sonnets. Six months

June 1879 ago did I beg Spedding to make them more known to the world by some review, which he was the one man to do; and now he is going to do something of the kind, for a better, if sadder, reason than any request of mine. I believe that these sonnets, along with your own poems, are the only poetry of our times destined to survive: I could wish some of the sonnets omitted; but that I suppose even you must not do. Then I have to thank you for your last,1 of some lines of which I have an echo in my head from some fifty years ago. Was not the origi­ nal name Cadrilla, which I thought too remindful of Paine's first set (of quadrilles), which you used to talk about and in which I believe you greatly excelled?2 Now, in my turn, I shall send you my Readings (not Recitations) in old Crabbe's Tales of the Halh which you will just look into. Had I published, I should have used your authority, though not your name, for advising the world to read a little of the old chap, now buried, but "post tres dies" to rise again, if the critics and creators of two genera­ tions agone were not mistaken. So I should have quoted one of our time (AT) saying to me, "Crabbe has a world of his own," which I suppose means originally the poems will live, as your brother's will, when others lie past howling. Well: had I thought proper to name you, I might have published: for then I should have succeeded in getting two or three hundred people perhaps to try a taste of my old boy before his regular turn comes; but no one would be tempted by my solitary recommendation; a critic or two might quash me and mine— so "enfin" I keep the book for my friends; some of whom may think that, as my old Montaigne says, "Tout abrege d'un bon livre est sot abrege." When you get the book you had better say nothing to me about it; which I do think is the best to be agreed on beforehand by friends in such cases, give or take. Think of old Carlyle (who has been but weakly this winter) reading right through Shakespeare during the Spring months! So his niece writes me. I do not hear of his doing the same by his Goethe. I lately made another shot at Faust in B. Taylor's translation, but I am as deaf to the charmer as ever. I really do suppose it is my obtuseness, as so many great people believe in him. Are you ever coming this way again? It was very good of you to think of me in your travel three years ago. Three years! A considera­ tion, when one has left seventy behind one. I only wonder to find myself alive after this most mortal winter.

June 1879 Farewell: do not let Mrs. Tennyson write in reply. I take for granted from Spedding's letter that all is well with you all, and do you believe that I am always your ancient E.FG. 1 The Lovers Tale, written at the age of 19; recently published because parts of an early private printing had been pirated. 2 "Alfred loved dancing and was an excellent partner" (C. Tennyson, Tennyson, p. 102).

To J. R. Lowell Woodbridge June 13/79 My dear Sir, I had just written a Letter to Tennyson, a thing I had not done these two years, when one was brought to me with what I thought his Superscription, which I have not seen for twice two years, I suppose. Well, but the Letter was from you. I ought not to write again so quick: but you know I never exact a Reply: especially as you never will answer what I ask you, which I rather admire too. To be sure you have so much filled your Letter with my Crabbe that you have told me nothing of yourself, Calderon, and Cervantes, both of whom, I sup­ pose, are fermenting, and maturing, in your head. Cowell says he will come to this coast this Summer with Don Quixote that we may read him together: so, if you should come, you will find yourself at home. I have said all I can say about your taking any such trouble as coming down here only to shake hands with me, as you talk of. I never make any sort of "hospitality" to the few who ever do come this way, but just put a fowl in the Pot (as Don Quixote's ama might do), and hire a Shandrydan for a Drive, or a Boat on the river—and "There you are," as one of Dickens' pleasant young fellows says. But I never can ask any one to come—and out of his way—to see me, a very ancient, and solitary, Reed indeed. But you know all about it. "Parlons d'autres choses," as Sevigne says. I was curious to know what an American, and of your Quality, would say of Crabbe. The manners and topics (Whig, Tory, etc.) are almost obsolete in this country, though I remember them well: how then must they appear to you and yours? The "Ceremoniousness" you speak of is overdone for Crabbe's time: he overdid it in his familiar intercourse, so as to disappoint everybody who expected "Nature's

June 1879 sternest Poet," etc.; but he was all the while observing. I know not why he persists in his Thee and Thou, which certainly Country Squires did not talk of—except for an occasional Joke—at the time his Poem dates from—1819: and I warned my Readers in that still-born Preface1 to change that form into simple "You." If this Book leaves a melan­ choly impression on you, what then would all his others? Leslie Stephen says his Humour is heavy (Qy—is not his Tragedy?), and wonders how Miss Austen could admire him as it appears she did; and you discern a relation between her and him. I find plenty of grave humour in this Book: in the Spinster, the Bachelor, the Widow, etc. All which I pointed out (in the still-born) to L.S. I doubt if he has any Humour himself, Excellent Critic as otherwise he is. He says too that Crabbe is "incapable of Epigrams," which also you do not agree in; Epigrams more of Humour than Wit—sometimes only hinted, as in those two last lines of that disagreeable, and rather incomprehensible Sir Owen Dale. I think he will do in the land of Cervantes still. When my Copy of Tennyson's Lover's Tale comes home, I will send it to you. He might as well have let it alone, I think: but so I think of his Poems for the last thirty years and more. As to Gray—Ah, to think of that little Elegy inscribed among the Stars, while Browning, Swin­ burne & Co., are blazing away with their Fireworks here below. I always think there is more Genius in most of the three volume Novels than in Gray: but by the most exquisite Taste, and indefati­ gable lucubration, he made of his own few thoughts, and many of other men's, a something which we all love to keep ever about us. I do not think his scarcity of work was from Design: he had but a little to say, I believe, and took his time to say it. He was a costive writer, in spite of the Epigram which old Rogers used to repeat of him. Do you know it? I venture on it—saving your "Excellency." It is the Spirit of Gray to me. They say he is a Man of Wit, And looks as he felt it. He walks as if he were besh—t, And looks as if he smelt it. Talking of old Rogers I have positively come to what I never should have believed: that is, to turn to some of his Poems where one can at least find Repose in the midst of this feverish modern Literature. It is at any rate simple, graceful, and melodious: but I am not sure if Stothard's beautiful Designs are not the best part of it. I do not mean Designs in the grand Turner Edition: but some little Woodcuts in the

June 1879 early Edition of 1812-26. These are sold for two or three shillings second-hand: I always buy them up to give away. Only think of old Carlyle, who was very feeble indeed during the winter, having read through all Shakespeare to himself during these latter Spring months. So his Niece writes me. I do not hear of his doing the like by his Goethe. I had another shot at your Hawthorne, a Man of fifty times Gray's Genius, but I could not take to him. Painfully microscopic and elab­ orate on dismal subjects, I still thought: but I am quite ready to admit that (as in Goethe's case) the fault lies in me. I think I have a good feeling for such things; but "non omnia possumus, etc.;" some Screw loose. "C'est egal." That is a serviceable word for so much. Now have I any more that turns up for this wonderful Letter? I should put it in, for I do think it might amuse you in Madrid. But nothing does turn up this Evening. Tea, and a Walk on our River bank, and then, what do you think? An hour's reading (to me) of a very celebrated Murder which I remember just thirty years ago at Nor­ wich:2 then "Ten minutes' Refreshment"; and then—Nicholas NickIeby! Then one Pipe: and then to Bed. Yours sincerely E.FG. This Letter shall sleep a night too before Travelling. Next Morning. Revenons a notre Crabbe. "Principles and Pew" very bad. "The Flow­ ers, etc., cut by busy hands, etc.," are—or were—common on the leaden roofs of old Houses, Churches, etc. I made him stop at "Till the Does ventured on our Solitude," without adding "We were so still!"— which is quite "de trop." You will see by the enclosed prefatory Notice what I have done in the matter, as little as I could in doing what was to be done. My own Copy is full of improvements: yes, for any Poet­ aster may improve three-fourths of the careless old Fellow's Verse: but it would puzzle a Poet to improve the better part. I think that Crabbe differs from Pope in this thing for one: that he aims at Truth, not at Wit, in his Epigram. How almost graceful he can sometimes be too! What we beheld in Love's perspective Glass Has passed away—one Sigh! and let it pass. 1A

preface he had written and "quashed" when he decided not to publish. trial of James Rush for murder, with a pistol, of Isaac Jermy and his son at Stanfield Hall, nine miles from Norwich. The younger Jermy's wife and a woman servant were wounded, the former severely. Jermy, Sr., and Rush had 2 The

June 1879 engaged in considerable litigation. The eighth day of the trial, April 5, 1849, Rush was found guilty of both murders. Accounts of murders and trials, in detail, were and still are popular features in British newspapers and journals.

To E. B. Cowell [Woodbridge ] [June, 1879] My dear Cowell,

I am sorry you took time and trouble in writing me a Letter after answering my Query about the Metre. I had not seen the Shah Nameh for twenty years, and made sure of its being in the same metre as Salaman: so I was obliged to have the page cancelled in which I had so said.1 I know not when Quaritch comes out with the two Persae: of course you will have a Copy sent to you. Some things in Salaman you won't like at all; but I believe that, on the whole, you will think it improved—after a while. And so, I bid Adieu to him and Omar: for I shall certainly not live to see another Edition. By the bye, there was a temperate and just Article on Omar in Fraser, either last month or the month before.2 So I think. I had a curiosity to see what an American would say to Crabbe: and will enclose you Lowell's answer. I knew that Americans could hardly understand what in England is nearly obsolete; but I am rather surprized at Lowell's misconception in many respects. He seems to me to theorize about the least valuable things in the Poetry. Of course, again, you will have a Copy when clothed. I doubt if any one will care for it who had not a previous acquaintance with it, so as to use it by way of Reminder, or Handybook. As such, it will be a pleasant companion to the Seaside. Of course I shall be very glad to meet you at Lowestoft: but (as I said once before, I believe) I strongly advise you to go to some more distant and agreeable Place. Lowestoft is scarcely pleasant in Summer now. Ever yours, E.FG. I do not want the letter back. 1 The meters of the two poems are very similar and easily confused. The misstatement in EFG's MS was corrected before publication. 2 "The True Omar Khayam" by Jessie E. Cadell, Fraser's Magazine, May, 1879, pp. 650-59. See letter to Mrs. Cowell, March 11, 1877, n.l.

June 1879

To J. R. Lowell Woodbridge June 20, [1879] My dear Sir,

I think I forgot to say in my Letter, that for this month and to the end of July, this house of mine is filled (not being very spacious) with two Nieces, one of whom is Invalid, with her Maid, etc. Insomuch, that I have to retire entirely into one Room which serves me for parlour, Bedroom, Dining room and all: for I keep to my own ways and let them go theirs. I believe I told you all this two years ago when you spoke of coming "to shake hands." If you take the trouble to come at all, I would much rather you came for more than just to say "How are you?" and "Adieu" which seemr to me far worse than not meeting at all. My Nieces are indeed the most quiet and unpretending crea­ tures; but one, as I said, Invalid—and the other always along with her: and so I leave them alone, as indeed I do with any continuous Guest. After July, I and my house will be free and glad to do our best for you.1 I have not heard from Mr. Norton for these eight months, but I sent him a Letter, along with a Crabbe, about the same time I sent to you. I asked him if he could get me Hawthorne's "Our Old Home" and Italian Journal—both out of print here; and he has sent me three Volumes of them which will be excellent for my seaside Lodging. For I do admire him as an observer whether of Men, or Art, or Nature. I suppose I am too old for his sad, austere, Stories: as I find myself for Thackeray's now: Dickens' light, good-humoured, healthy touch (of course, his comic) suits me best at seventy. I was reminded of Cervantes' self at the roadside Inn where Nicholas N. falls in with Mr. Crummies and his Boys. Ever yours E.FG. 1 Lowell intended to stop in England en route to the United States for a sum­ mer visit, but his wife was stricken with typhus and the trip was canceled.

June 1879

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge June 21/79 My dear Frederick, It is very long since I heard from you—pray write and let me hear how it is with you. This has been the most mortal winter I ever remem­ ber among those whom I knew or knew of: of my own family, my eldest and only Brother, and a few weeks after him, his Son. Of worthy People in this Neighbourhood, many. I suppose that your Brother Alfred is in good plight, having heard about him from old Spedding, who went to Farringford some weeks ago to confer about the publica­ tion of your Brother Charles's Sonnets, of which many unpublished ones were found left behind him. I wish Alfred would publish about a Quarter of such as I know: and I do think they would .live when Browning & Co. are forgotten. Many of the Sonnets seemed to me somewhat puerile: but the better ones as fresh as Violets. What say you? Alfred is, I believe, to edit the Book with a few words of Intro­ duction; and Spedding to prepare the way by a Paper in the "Nine­ teenth Century." Alfred's Publisher sent me The Lover's Tale, with Author's Compliments; but I think it might have [been] left to be pirated by any one who chose. Mr. Lowell lately observed in a Letter to me what a Pity that so few were of Gray's mind in seeing how much better was too little than too much. But I fancy Gray would have written and published more had his ideas been more copious, and his expression more easy to him. Dickens said that never did a Poet come down to Posterity with so little a Book under his Arm.1 But the Elegy is worth many Volumes. I have got through Sir Walter's Scotch Nov­ els: and now am with Dickens, who delights me almost as much in a very different way. I cannot revert to Thackeray: he is too melancholy and saturnine: we are old enough to prefer the sunny side of the Wall now. Carlyle's Niece wrote me lately that her Uncle, who had been very feeble in the Winter, had picked up in the Spring, and had been reading Shakespeare right through. I do not hear of his going through his Goethe. I made another shot at another Translation (Bayard Tay­ lor's) of Faust: but remained as indifferent as before. Pray, how is [it] with you as to Goethe? I shall soon send you the Crabbe I believe I told you [about], which I dare say you won't like—certainly, not care for. But, as I only play Chorus in it, I venture on presenting it to you. It is not published, as I

June 1879 had intended it should be: but I thought I did not carry weight or name to get the Public to read my obsolete old Favourite; so I reserve it for Friends: and am one of yours most truly, I think— E.FG. 1 Recorded by J. T. Fields, Yesterdays with Authors. See letter to Cowell, Jan. 9, 1876, n.3.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge June 22/ 79 My dear Sir—(Norton, I mean) I suppose I ought to be ashamed of having asked for the three Books which you have sent me. I did not know there was so much of them; in one respect I am very glad to find there is so much: and "au reste" I think you are not sorry: and so no more on that head. I look to carry them to the seaside with me; for that purpose I keep them unread—I could begin at once and read all off now: but I will keep my Cake. And let me thank you very much for it. I wished to hear something of yourself: perhaps that will follow. You may be looking ovgr that Crabbe of mine before you write: but do not stand for that, nor for finding anything nice to say about it. You know I only act as Chorus in it, and for old Crabbe's sake, not for my own. I should think it very unlikely that you would take much interest in a Book of English Life which is almost obsolete in England itself: but I had a curiosity to know how much from one so capable of judging, and so sincere in telling it, as yourself. I sent the Book to Mr. Lowell, who finds it strange but very interesting too. He talks of coming over here (I suppose on his way to America?) this Summer, and of paying me a flying Visit: I tell him, if he comes, let him not do so merely to say Welcome and Farewell; that seems to me a sadder thing even than a longer Visit which must probably be the only one! But it is very kind of him. He says nothing of himself: or his Studies; or Madrid; or Spain: but I dare say he has told you much about all. I will enclose you the Note I had from Carlyle's Niece, which I think I must have mentioned to you in my last. I tell her I shall send her a Copy of Crabbe, and she is to send me a Copy of her Collection, or Selection, of Scotch Songs (for such I understand had been published some while ago): and we are neither of us to say a word to each

June 1879 other about either Book. After having asked two or three Friends whose Advice I could rely on as to publishing, I want no more—except from your side of the Water as a matter of curiosity. So much for that. Some literary People are getting up a Subscription for Keats' last surviving Sister who is left in indigence, they say. If so I have been very glad to give a little, and shall be glad to give more, if wanted. Surely we can put no Poet of his, or our, Times on a level with him: though I know that Mr. Lowell ranks Wordsworth higher than him. However this may be, pray remember that I do not name this Sub­ scription as hinting a wish that you should add to it: that is a thing I never do in any case; and in this case I do not at all know whether it really calls for help, or is only a little Cockney outcry: the man who apprized me of it is a Mr. Buxton Forman (or vice-versa) of whom I know nothing. But I am sincerely yours E.FG. I do not want Miss Aitken's Letter again.

To W. F. Pollock Woodbridge June 25/79 My dear Pollock, Here is my Great Work: two Copies, of which please to give one to your Neighbour, Mr. Trollope. I suppose he has scarce time, if incli­ nation, to look into it; but I told him I would send him a Copy by way of acknowledgment of his Thackeray:1 on the understanding that neither of us was to say a word about either Book. So be it with you although you have not sent me a Book. I think this is the best way altogether, when the thing is done, for better or worse. You see it is not published: for one or two liked it and one (I might as well have asked you also) told me he thought I should not make any Convert to Crabbe by it; so for the present at least, I make a nice little Present of a "Handy book" of the Poem to those who knew it before. As I say, I might have done well to ask you and Miladi; but, as I did not, just make the best of the Book you can, and say nothing to me about it. I guess you will like it very well—"et Voila!" I suppose you are much engaged with French Plays and Players.

June 1879 I have finished all my Scotch Novels; and now am come to Dickens, who delights me still. Then we have Rush's Trial (having done Thurtell's) and are on the way to Palmer.21 think A.T. might as well have left his Lover's Tale to be printed by anyone who chose; and I am yours still (70 on 31 March last) E.FG. 1 Anthony

Trollope's Thackeray, "English Men of Letters," 1879. Palmer, "the Rugeley poisoner," a physician who fell deeply into debt after taking to the turf as owner, breeder, and bookmaker. After the death of his wife in September, 1854, and a brother the following August, whose lives he had insured for £ 13,000 each, he was charged with their deaths and that of a friend and creditor who died in December, 1855. Tried and found guilty on the last charge only, Palmer was hanged, June 14, 1856. For the Rush trial, see letter to Lowell, June 13, n.2; for the Thurtell trial, see letter to Fanny Kemble, May 22, n.3. 2 William

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge June 25, [1879] My dear Wright, I send by Rail four Copies of Crabbe, clothed by my Reader and his Father, and very nicely, I think. One of these Copies please to give to Cowell; one to your Master, telling him he is not to write anything about it: and of the other two you must keep one, if you will, to your­ self, and give tother to whom you choose. "Voila qui est fait." I doubt that I can't pay carriage all the way to Cambridge: so you must screw —or un-screw—your Courage to the remaining outlay. The Sailors' song duly came along with the Leisure Hour which latter I sent to Spedding as a Specimen of "how not to do it." The Sailors' "beggar" is, I suppose, a misprint. When do your HoIydays begin? I think you said you were going earlier than heretofore to Herringfleet. Cowell spoke of being a month at Lowestoft; glad as I should be to meet him there, I advise him to go further afield for his Holyday. Poor Edwards has given up Dunwich; I believe I shall run up to London on Friday to see her, and to escort one of my Nieces now here on her way home. Yours always E.FG.

July 1879 Ah, mais, envoyez un Exemplaire au Maitre de Sidney,1 avec tous mes compliments. 1 Robert Phelps, Master of Sidney Sussex College. See letter to Spring Rice, April 15, 1853.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge July 1/79 My dear Wright, You see that, as usual, I have but little to remark on your Preface: which seems to me altogether sufficient and the North Quotations an excellent Addition. Munro's Version is, I suppose, Lucretian rather than Virgilian:1 which latter I think it ought to have been, inasmuch as Milton cer­ tainly modelled his English verse on Virgil (as Tennyson observed to me some forty years ago) and I think Virgil's more equable Majesty would better have suited the Subject and Verse. But it is very likely that I may be all wrong. I ran to London last Friday to see the Edwardses; he very much weaker in Body and mind than when I last saw him in March; she very much worn. Do call on her if you can: it will gratify her (you probably will not see him) as she very much liked what she knew of you. All thought of Dunwich is given up: he still talks crazily of Harwich, which is equally out of the Question. If it were not too sad, I should almost propose their pleasant Dunwich House (which was to be let furnished) to Cowell for a month—but that won't do! I do not advise Lowestoft, partly because I do not think it is (unless newly drained since last Summer) so healthy as many another Place equally avail­ able. Yours always E.FG. Carlyle is got to Dumfries; and is somewhat stronger for the change. 1

Milton's "Lycidas," which was among poems H.A.J. Munro, Trinity College classics scholar, translated into Latin.

July 1879

To R. Μ. Milnes Little Grange: Woodbridge July 4/79 Dear Lord Houghton, It has come into my head to send you a little Volume which, if you get it along with this Letter, will tell its own Story. I had wanted to get a few of the present Generation to read a little of old Crabbe; and even to read one of his least "stern" works; and I had made a neat little prefage (Gamp)1 to try to put some of the young ones on a right tack. But two or three of those who like me and my Crabbe very well, think that scarce any one in these transcendental Browning & Co. days would care for it: so I quash my preface, and have not to look for a Publisher, nor be at the mercy of Critics, but, having done a little job which I had wished to do, give the product to friends, of whom I venture to call you one, on the score of long if not very intimate acquaintance: and, I am sure, with no want of genial kindness on your side. (That is a long sentence, I think.) Also you are old enough to remember when old Crabbe had some readers, and to believe that he will yet have them again if Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Jeffrey, etc., be not all mistaken. I always g in2 these "presentation" cases, of never saying a word but of simple thanks, on receiving: and only giving on the under­ standing that only simple thanks are to be given me in return. Other­ wise, it seems to me an odious Tax and Bore. In this present case, all may go smooth enough: for, as I am not sure of your Address, or indeed, sure of whether you are still in London, I will wait till you be good enough to send me a line, which may just tell me how you have weathered this long winter, which has tried—if not done for—so many; and then you can also thank me beforehand for the Book, and then have no more to say about it. Think of old Carlyle (Gurlyle, according to WMT) reading all through Shakespeare this Spring! I ask if he has done the same by his Goethe. He is now at Dumfries, and a little the better for it: and I am yours sincerely E. FitzGerald 1 He is referring to Sarah Gamp, a tippling Cockney in Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit. 2At this point EFG appears to have been interrupted.

July 1879

To C. Ε. Norton Woodbridge July 10/79 My dear Norton, I thought I had acknowledged the receipt of your Hawthorne, in my last Letter which announced Crabbe. But I dare say I blundered. You will not have doubted meanwhile, I hope, lest the Book should have miscarried, or I indifferent to its arrival. I was very glad to see it: very much obliged to you for sending it to me; and, though I could now begin and end it with more appetite than any in Mudie's Box, I reserve it till such time as I may leave home on some Sea-side Visit, when its handy size, as well as all the good things packed into it, will make it famous Company. I forget if I told you that I had again read his Seven Gables, and Scarlet Letter: but I do not love them: works of true Genius, but dis­ mal subjects over-elaborated, as I think, in execution. He somewhere in Journals says he thinks he should not like his own Novels if he came fresh to reading them. In his Journals he evinces all the Power of Insight and Expression that mark his Novels, without having time to consider things so minutely and deeply. So I think. I believe I have told you before that I think it a good rule not to exchange any comments on presentation Copies, given, or taken—a rule which puts Giver and Receiver at ease. I know not if I made any Exception in Crabbe's case, where I had a little Curiosity to know how he would strike you on the other side of the water, not supposing that he would be previously known or read there—even so much as here; which is next to not at all. And now you may read him more than his own Countrymen; and be more interested in those very peculiari­ ties which have made him almost obsolete here. All that old Country Gentleman's Talk: Whig and Tory, etc., which I remember so well, but which the present Generation knows and cares nothing about. Yet you are interested in it. Leslie Stephen in his Paper on Crabbe a few years ago, speaks of his Humour as very heavy (is not that also the character of his Tragedy?—all apt to be overdone—yes, somewhat Hawthorne-like!) and, had I published, I meant shortly to point out much in these Tales which seemed to me of a very high kind of Humour. I suspect that is a Quality which L.S. is himself very deficient in. But when the two or three Friends whose opinion I asked, and who I knew liked Crabbe, and me, and the little Book, did not yet

July 1879 encourage me to publish, I left Crabbe to make his own way with those whom I should give it to, and who are quite as capable to find out his merits as myself. I hardly anticipated (as I say) that you and two or three of yours, who know what is good, would yet be so well interested in so very alien a Writer as I thought Crabbe to be; and I feel rather proud (as I may say in such a case) that so it is; and I shall send you over three or four more Copies for any Friends you may choose to give them to, and shall feel that I have done a little stroke of work. I did send a Copy to Mr. Lowell, who also is interested in it. He very kindly proposed again to run down here on his way home —just to shake hands, and then Away! But that seemed, as before it did, too sad a thing: and, as he asked me to tell him frankly, I did so; and I think he will not be sorry to be spared a trouble which I should have felt some trouble in his taking. I hope your Son will have better weather for his Tent Life in Amer­ ica than the West Winds have brought us here. Little but Wet, Wet, Wet! The red blot on the opposite page is caused by a Drop of Rain which fell from the roof-pane of the little Greenhouse in which I write. Our Farmers are in despair, and their Landlords too: some of whom will almost have to give up Game-preserving and to take to Farming themselves. I shall not venture to that poor little Dunwich about which, with its old Abbey walls, I have told you. The Friend who used to be with me there is dying; Mind and Body together; so I must go elsewhere if I go at all. As to Translations1—I looked at them, as I have done some time for several Years past, and still saw something to be done where I had least business to be doing—viz, in construction and arrangement (not content with Sophocles, Oh!) and once more laid them by. I am sure at any rate that I do my best in these matters, however little called on so to do; and am always Sincerely yours E.FG. I was very glad to hear from you, having feared something might be wrong. But, as you are a busy man, do not feel bound to write. 3rdly and Lastly2 Not to forget your kind proposal about Emerson's Portrait. He is a Philosopher, and therefore somewhat out of my Line, you know. I would rather have any small, if authentic, Portrait of Hawthorne. I have spent a dozen Pounds in vain about a Photograph of Crabbe from a Portrait taken in 1817,3 when the Tales were under way. I have

July 1879 now got another Photo done, from a Copy from the original Picture, which Picture from its peculiar surface, will not allow a good Photo to be taken from it. What is done from the Copy is sufficiently good to let me present it along with the Book. I will send you copies which can be stuck in on the flyleaf when I get them. So you see I take some pains with my old Crabbe. "J'ai une idee!" Do you think Mr. Longfellow, whom I love so well in the Spirit, would accept one of the Copies I send you? If he would, do give him one as from yourself: and then he will be under no obliga­ tion to acknowledge it; which I do not wish him to do. 1 The

two Oedipus plays by Sophocles. letter is written on two folded sheets plus a half sheet. 3 The Pickersgill portrait.

2 The

To FitzEdward Hall Little Grange, Woodbridge July 12, [1879] My dear Sir, Archdeacon Groome who was here yesterday said he thought you would like a Copy of the Book which I pack along with this Letter. Those whom I consulted, though themselves well inclined to Crabbe, and me, and our joint work, thought that the Public would not accept it in these Browning & Co. times: so I have confined myself to giving it away to Friends: and am not at all sorry to have spent my money in so doing. Had I published, I should have prefixed a few words by way of directing Strangers to Crabbe a little way concerning his peculiar Gift: but those whom I know are more or less acquainted with all this beforehand. I had a little Curiosity to know what American Scholars would make of a Writer whose Subject and Style are almost obsolete in England: since Messrs. Lowell and Norton are both interested—it may even be that more is known of Crabbe in America than here, because of the old World Life which has ceased to interest us. You, from living in Suffolk, may take some additional interest in the Man, who also falls into what I suppose is an A.S. form of Infinitive—"For Time to shapen" in the first story or the second. However this may be, pray consent to my own rule as to "presentation Copies" whether given or received: viz—Say nothing about them to the Presenter, which really relieves both parties of an odious tax. I did ask two or three

July 1879 Friends as to Publication: and having abided by their Advice—why, let others make what they can of the little Book and say what they have to say about it "Sans gene" to others, and not to yours sincerely Edward FitzGerald

To R. M. Milnes Little Grange: Woodbridge July 16/79 Dear Lord Houghton, I send you my Crabbe, which I am sure you will like well enough when you have leisure to look over it. Therefore, you see, there is no occasion for you to write and tell me so—or the contrary. His Son's capital Biography of him tells us it was £,3000 he got from Murray for the Copyright of all his Works: which never repaid him. Old Rogers did not, I think, propose the sum, but secured it to the "Pote," as Thackeray used to quote from my Countrymen. Mr. Trollope seems to me to have made but an insufficient Account of WMT, though all in gentlemanly good Taste, which one must be thankful for. I will say no more of the "Agamemnonidae" but that I thought Lord Carnarvon's Version, on the whole, the best of us. And it was very modestly put forth. Something much better than all that, is that Tennyson (Alfred) and old Spedding are about editing and publishing Charles's Sonnets, the better half—or quarter—of which I do think will live. I wish they would reject the rest. Thank you for your Letter: it is a-wonder to see it unfringed with Black after this most Mortal Winter—not yet ended. Sincerely yours E. FitzGd.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [July 21,1879] My dear Wright, What is become of Cowell? I sent him (through my Nephew De Soyres, by mistake) a piece of Lope de Vega; and through him

July 1879 (mutatis mutandis) a Crabbe for De Soyres. Also, I expected to hear somewhat of Cowell's summer Excursion by this time. I had not rec­ ommended Lowestoft, as I believe I told you, nor poor dear little Dunwich (ditto) and advised him, as before, to go farther afield to make the most of his Holyday. I shall hear (as heretofore) at the end of September where he has flown—unless you tell me sooner. I have as yet no scheme for my own flitting. My Nieces leave me at this month's end: and I have offered Edmund K. the use of my house here if he chooses to take it. He wants a Change: and was hop­ ing to let his Lowestoft home for a month or six weeks; but the weather does not promise well for Seaside Visitors. As I remember, you must be going to Somerleyton before long—What then? A Letter from Mrs. Edwards today tells me that he goes on slowly declining, and no Holyday for her, poor thing. I dare say I shall run up to see her in August, when her London Friends are flown. Farewell E.FG.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] July 22, [1879] My dear Wright, I yesterday posted you a note addressed to Cambridge, asking if you knew anything of Cowell, or his movements; he not having vouch­ safed to answer me himself. I shall expect to hear that he is gone, or going, to Wales. Any day you like to come over, here I am for the present, and always something to eat, while my Nieces are here. They leave me, I believe, the beginning of next week; but, if you come earlier, they will not hurt you. However, of course you will not come while this weather holds. I see in the Athenaeum Gossip that Macmillans are preparing a Selection from Addison.1 And you persist in not preparing ditto for Dryden? I don't at all want you to abide by my Selection, not at all, but you can select out of my Selection.2 Whole Prefaces or Dedica­ tions; with an Appendix (if you please) of Excerpts, as upon Transla­ tion, etc. All the finer Prefaces are toward the End, as I dare say you will agree: there is some good passage in Lowell's Essay as to Dryden's

July 1879 very late ripening. His very Ode was near Aetat. 60. I think my old Crabbe was somewhat of the same: at least I like his latest works best: and his very latest Posthumous Volume3 almost as well as any, when past seventy. It was composed at leisure, in the country: some of my Tales in a hurry, and in Town. But the latter have some Dramatic Interest, and all the Country Rides, and friendly Conversations, endear them to me. But get Dryden done. I am rather hurt that no one ever will take my Advice on such points where I really feel some confi­ dence in Yours always, E.FG. ¢3?3 How neatly turned!4 1

A volume EFG had once proposed. See letter to Allen, August 22, 1834. letter to Wright, March 5, [1879]. s Posthumous Tales, published in Collected Work?, 1834. 4 That is, his confidence in his critical judgment canceled by his lack of confi­ dence in his power to present his case satisfactorily. Reluctance to undertake the burdens of publication were largely responsible for EFG's "shyness." 2See

To E. B. CowelI Woodbridge July 24, [1879] My dear Cowell, Some fortnight ago I sent John De Soyres a piece of Lope de Vega meant for you, and to you a Crabbe meant for him. I understand from him that he had sent you the Lope; but I could not make out from some Hieroglyphics he put on a card, whether he had got Crabbe in return; though I know he would have it sooner or later. But he, I think, is in a hurry about many things. The Lope I did not want to be ac­ knowledged. I bought it at a venture for some 2s. from some Second­ hand Bookseller: just looked at the pleasant Spanish Text, and liked the Portrait: so sent it to you. I hear no more of Omar and Salaman, which was long ago printed; so perhaps Quaritch finds the times un­ favorable for further outlay on such a Book. Then about Lowestoft and Dunwich, of both of which I wrote you the best Advice I could for your own Behoof. The Dunwich House is let; there, as I told you, I could not have gone: Lowestoft is still in the Market: though, should Sun shine, it will be crammed in August. As I can always find some hole to dwell in, I shall probably be there

August 1879 for most part of the month, and should of course be very glad to find you there: what I told you about going further, etc., was for your sake, not for mine. I shall not be surprized to find that you are already in Wales, though I do not wish you there while these S.W. winds and rains hold. Wright is just now at Beccles and talks of running—or swimming— over here for the Day. But the railway Bridge at Ufford is overflown, and I know not how he can manage. He has only to please himself. Ever yours and Elizabeth's E.FG.

To W. A. Wright White Lion, Aldboro' August 1, [1879] My dear Wright,

Your letter was forwarded here yesterday: it is dated, I see, July 27, so as I ought to have had it on Monday 28, before I set off hither. I cannot therefore answer you as to the Major's "Suckling" till I return in a day or two. "Stowing trees" is quite familiar to me. I might as well wait till home I shall be; but I have finished reading the Volume of Hawthorne which I brought with me, and also once more looking over my eternal Crabbe's Posthumous Volume: so I write by way of something to do: and my Letter won't hurt you at Somerleyton. Crabbe's Humour. I think Stephen speaks rather of Stories than of single Lines: of both of which he might have found good samples in the Tales and the Posthumous; I doubt if he ever got so far in the Works: if he did, he, or I, must be very obtuse on that score. Please to read about the two Kinds of Friendship at the Beginning of "Danvers and Rayner"; and of the Suitors that a Woman likes to have in store, if ever wanted, in "Barnaby the Shopman":1 Lovers like these, as Dresses thrown aside, etc. I do not believe that you give my old Boy his due credit. His verbal Jokes are as bad as—Shakespeare's. You should annotate Ellacombe's Book,2 so as John De Soyres (to whom it belongs) may show it to him. I am too inaccurate myself to detect inaccuracies, unless in such long acquaintance as Crabbe; but the Book reads pleasantly, and is not gushing or Cockney. "Buttons"

August 1879 startled me also. I certainly thought of some relation to what I once heard the present Sir Thomas Munro,3 when a lad of fourteen, say aloud to his gentle Mother before the company at Dessart. He was to go off by Coach next morning; she, to follow in a Post Chaise—"We shall catch you up, Tom."—"You! It isn't in your Breeches!" By all means annotate "Caraways." Crabbe's clumsy lines about Sir Walter of course refer to the "Great Unknown," etc.4 A Letter from Elizabeth Cowell trebly underscores their Delight at a Prospect of Lowestoft. My Nieces are to look out for Lodgings for them: and there we shall meet, I suppose: yourself for one, I hope. I believe I shall get home tomorrow Evening after a Sail, and am yours always E.FG. I will forward Athenaeum which I do not get till a Tuesday. A sailor telling me of a railing Wife said, "She gave it him Pillow and Bolster." I was saying (off in a Boat) I wondered why there was so much sound of Surf on the Beach with so little Wind to account for it. "That is the Sea calling on the Wind to blow on shore." How like a bit of the Tempest! Did you know that Lobsters were soft Eating till the corn had hardened? Yes. I saw poor old Dunwich Tower in the offing. Eheu! I shall go to London once again before Lowestoft. There is a copy of a Map of Aldbro' in 1598 (I think) in the old Moot Hall here, with one row of houses since then washed away. 1 Titles of stories in Posthumous Tales. "Stephen," an allusion to Leslie Stephen's essay in Hours in a Library. 2 The Plant Lore and Garden-Craft of Shakespeare. H. N. Ellacombe, 1878. 3 Second baronet; J. P., Forfar, Scotland. 4 Six lines beginning "Sir Walter wrote not then," "Silford Hall," Posthumous Tales.

To Mrs. Cowell Woodbridge Aug. 3, [1879] Dear Elizabeth, Thank you for troubling yourself to write to me. I suppose you received my Post Card with Fanny Kerrich's right Address. If you tell her what you want: number of rooms; what price

August 1879 (they are all about £1 a week each at this time) when you want them: and (if you can) for how long: she will provide for you as well as any one could, and as willingly. I have been for some days at Aldboro', which I fancied would, in some respects, suit you almost better than Lowestoft: being on a better Sea—but with a less pleasant Country beside and behind it: and some very pleasant Lodgings, which doubtless will fill (as at Lowestoft) in August: and Cowell would perhaps like its quietude. But Lowestoft, which you already know, will be safer to go to, especially with Fanny to provide for you: and you may both be the better for some Company such as you will be sure to happen on, and see as much of as you like: for indeed I am not sufficient now; which I wish you both to believe, for fear of any disappointments. I am very glad that you are reconciled to your Nephew. I know nothing of "Jack" but what Arthur has told me, and what I believe in, having confidence in Arthur's Truth, and Good Sense, as well as in his Family Affection, which is a very good point in him. I shall ask him to spend what he can of his Holyday with me: so as perhaps you may renew old Regards with him also by the Seaside. By this Post I send EBC a Copy of my two Persians. He will not like some Alterations, as well as omissions in Salaman: but I think I could persuade him that, on the whole, the Poem is improved. How­ ever that may be, I have now done with it—for Ever! Tell him to look at Old Clome, p. 34: and see if I have quoted aright what he told me of the Muezzin's Call: pp. 81,111. All which we can talk of when we meet; and meanwhile believe me Yours as Ever, E.FG.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [August 3, 1879J1 Sucklin. White or Dutch Clover. Also the Honey-suckle. Stow. Rhyming to now. To cut the boughs of a pollard tree close to the head. The cuttings are called stowins. In Scottish "to stow, stowe, stoo, to crop, to lop." Moor's Suffolk Words. On the road from Rome to Florence Hawthorne says, "Woods were not wanting: wilder forest than I have seen since leaving America,

August 1879 of oak trees chiefly; and among the green foliage grew golden tufts of broom, making a gay and lovely combination of hues." This apropos of "broom Groves," you see—quantum valeat. This Sunday: I returned last evening from Aldbro' after a brave Sail: and am yours E.FG. Let me know if you will call here on your way to Cambridge. I am alone now. Here I find my two Siamese Persians, done up in a style you won't like: but I have done with them—for ever! I post you the last Athenaeum I have. 1

Published by Wright as though part of the August 1 letter (IV, 74-75).

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge August 4, [1879] My dear Mrs. Kemhle,

Two or three days, I think, after receiving your last letter, I posted an answer addrest to the Poste Restante of—Lucerne, was it?—any­ how, the town whose name you gave me, and no more. Now, I will venture through Coutts, unwilling as I am to trouble their Highnesses —with whom my Family have banked for three—if not four—Genera­ tions. Otherwise, I do not think they would be troubled with my Accounts, which they attend to as punctually as if I were "my Lord;" and I am now their last Customer of my family, I believe, though I doubt not they have several Dozens of my Name in their Boolcs— for Better or Worse. What now spurs me to write is—an Article I have seen in a Number of Macmillan for February, with very honourable mention of your Brother John in an Introductory Lecture on Anglo-Saxon, by Professor Skeat.1 If you have not seen this "Hurticle" (as Thackeray used to say) I should like to send it to you; and will so do, if you will but let me know where it may find you. I have not been away from this place save for a Day or two since last you heard from me. In a fortnight I may be going to Lowestoft along with my friends the Cowells. I take great Pleasure in Hawthorne's Journals—English, French, and Italian—though I cannot read his Novels. They are too thickly detailed

August 1879 for me: and of unpleasant matter too. We of the Old World beat the New, I think, in a more easy manner; though Browning & Co. do not bear me out there. And I am sincerely yours E.FG. 1 Praise of John M. Kemble's scholarship in W. W. Skeat's inaugural lecture as Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge, published in Macmillan's Magazine, Feb., 1879, pp. 304-13.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Tuesday [August 5, 1879] My dear Wright, You know that I should be very glad to see you on your Road through Woodbridge; so you have only to suit yourself whether or no to cut your Journey in twain by an hour or two here. Only let me know beforehand, so as we may have a Chop ready. I began to think that Aldbro' would suit Cowell better than Lowestoft: a bluer (?) Sea, houses right upon it, no Company. But it may be better for him—and me—that we should be where he may light on a Cambridge Friend now and then. Here is a Copy for you of my two Persians—I was going to say, "If you care to have them"—but you would be obliged to say that you would care: and since you have all my Works, you shall e'en have this—if only to spew at Quaritch's Ornamentation; which leaves a pretty Book, however. Omar remains as he was; but Solomon (as Childs' men called him) is cut down about a Quarter, and all the better for it. Now, do I not sometimes know what is good for you when I recom­ mend Macaulay? I do say all Englishmen should make his Acquaint­ ance; though I do not say you should dwarf Roubiliac's Newton by a Statue of him in your Ante-Chapel. You should have had a simple Medallion Tablet on the wall—as also of Barrow; leaving your two Great Men to themselves.1 Ever yours E.FG. P.S. The Professor's Letter turns up 1 P.M. Can he mean next Friday? He was not to have been in Lowestoft before August 18 or 19.

August 1879 1 Trinity's "two Great Men," Francis Bacon, B.A., 1575. Isaac Newton, 1665. Isaac Barrow, 1648, first Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, resigned the post in favor of Newton, 1669.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Aug. 5, [1879] Dear Sir, I found my Persian "Siamese" here awaiting me: they look very handsomely in their new Clothes. One Erratum I found—my oversight, I daresay, which, as it con­ fuses the Sense, should be set right in a preliminary strip—as overleaf. Yours truly, E.FG. Erratum. Preface to Omar p. xv, Line 2 from top. For "Sometimes as in the Greek Alcaic" read "Somewhat, etc."

To Blanche Donne Woodbridge Friday [August 8, 1879] My dear Blanche, Thank you for your Letter, evil news as it announced. This mortal Year! Will it never have done with one's Friends! It was only yesterday that a thought came into my head that I would send Mrs. Sartoris1 one of my Crabbes. I wrote to Mrs. Kemble some days ago supposing her to be somewhere in Switzerland, and begged Coutts to direct my Letter accordingly. She was probably telegrammed home. Mowbray wrote me a pleasant Letter from Man. I suppose he will have more Holyday by and by: but he did not say when, or where. Next week I go to Lowestoft where the Cowells are gone for a month, I suppose: but I tell him he must not [look] for me to be so alert in Body or Mind as when we were there together nine years ago. I wrote to Merivale and Blakesley—yes, and sent each of them a Crabbe— some few weeks ago: and had very kind Letters in reply from both. When you go to Lincoln you must thank the Dean2 for his kind invita­ tion thither—holding out the temptation of meeting Papa and you,

August 1879 but you know I go nowhere. He spoke of himself as very well now: and Merivale did not say otherwise of himself: he was then at Brighton. I need not, save for form's sake, add that I am your dear Dad's and yours as ever E.FG. 1 Fanny 2

Kemble's sister Adelaide, who had died August 4. J. W. Blakesley, Dean of the Cathedral.

To Mrs. Joseph White1 Woodbridge August 9/79 Dear Mrs. White, You must allow me to thank you for your kind Messages sent to me through Miss Bland and my Niece. I felt assured from what you said last Year that I might use your permission to go over my old Bredfield Grounds when I would: and, were they but a mile nearer, you would see me there oftener. I have more than once gone into the Lawn: yes, and up the lime Avenue to the Pond, where I used to see many a Tench caught. I have not been into the Garden since you were so good as to come out to me there: I should never go so far without announcing myself by a Ring at your Hall Door. And now I am going off to Lowestoft to meet some very old Friends there; but I shall be back before the leaves are so far gone as when I visited you last Year. Ah! How little time ago that last Year seems! And I am with sincere thanks, Yours very sincerely Edward FitzGerald 1 Mistress,

at the time, of Bredfield White House, EFG's birthplace.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Aug. 10, [1879] My dear Sir, I am very sorry to trouble you about a Slip which I ought to have corrected in the Proof. It is but a word wrong, I know: but a word that alters all the meaning and the fact.

August 1879 The Blank third Line in the Stanza does not "sometimes" resemble that in the Alcaic, but does ALWAYS "somewhat" resemble it: which makes all the difference, surely. It may be a trifle: but must it not be more aesthetically wrong than such a very tiny Slip (as small as may be) which may be inserted at the beginning or end to correct it? Yours E.FG. The 2nd Batch of Books came safe, thank you. I want Inglis' Book1 about following the Footsteps of Don Quixote. I forget exact Title— published some fifty years ago. I am going to read with Cowell. Page XV. Two lines from top—For "Sometimes as in the Greek Al­ caic," read "Somewhat as in, etc." P.S. I would just as soon—nay, rather—have just the one Word cor­ rected by a Pen in the margin. 1

H. D. Inglis, Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote, 1837.

To W. A. Wright 38 Minerva Terrace (how appropriate!), Lowestoft Wednesday [August 13,1879] My dear Wright, Thank you for asking Mr. Munro for his Gray's Elegy, which he sent me; and which I have acknowledged by Letter, and by a Copy of my Great Work. Of course I blundered in directing both letter and book to Esquire, after reading your remembrances of "Levitical"— but Cowell tells me he won't mind. Only, if Book and Letter do not reach him, enquire of the Post Office, will you? Yes: here are Cowell and Wife at 9 Esplanade, and we have already had Chapter I of the second (and best) Part of dear Don Quixote together, Cowell never having read it before—not the blessed Second part. Of course he lights up several passages which I had been contented with seeing darkly before, but not even he can make me love the whole better. I seem to be in a sufficiently pleasant Lodging on t'other side of the Bridge,1 near him and Nieces. I have not yet asked the Professor as to

August 1879 how long he will be here; he talks of Wales afterward. But you will be over here ere that. I am got back, you see, to black Ink,2 and Steel Spike; which freeze the genial Current, etc., and so I remain no more than yours E.FG. I must add that I ran to London on Monday, and found poor Ed­ wards far weaker in Mind and Body than when I saw him two Months ago: her looking a little fresher in spite of it because of having got a little to do, shopping, etc. He was rather pleased to see me, and wished me to go an hour's drive with him in a Cab—which of course I did. Quaritch complies in an elegant way to the "Somewhat." Whether by Cancel, inserted slip, or (as I advised) with pen correction, I know not.3 1 A bridge over a channel connecting the outer and inner harbors. EFG pre­ ferred lodgings in the "Old Town," north of the bridge, to South Lowestoft, which had developed during the 19th century when the popularity of the town as a summer resort increased. Mrs. Ballington Booth, who with her husband founded the Volunteers of America, informed the editors that she was Maud Charlesworth, one of the nieces referred to. Her husband was the son of William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. 2 Recent letters had been written in red ink, which he used when his eyesight weakened. 3 The correction was not made.

To J. R. Lowell Lowestoft August 20/79 My dear Sir, Mr. Norton wrote me that you had been detained in Spain by Mrs. Lowell's severe, nay, dangerous, illness—a very great affliction to you. I venture a bit of a Letter, which you are not to answer, even by a word—no, not even read further than now you have got, unless a better day has dawned on you, and unless you feel wholly at liberty to write. I should be very glad to hear, in ever so few words, that your anxiety was over. I do not think I shall make a long letter of this; for I do not think of much that can amuse you in the least, even if you should be open

August 1879 to such sort of amusement as I could give you. I am come here to be a month with my friend Cowell; he and I are reading the Second Part of Don Quixote together, as we used to read together thirty years ago; he always the Teacher, and I the Pupil, although he is quite unaware of that Relation between us; indeed, rather reverses it. It so happens that he is not so well acquainted with this Second Part as with the First; indeed not so well with the Story of it as I, but then he is so much a better Scholar in all ways that he lights up passages of the Book in a way that is all new to me. Some of the strange words re­ minded me again of his wish for a Spanish Dictionary in the style of Littre's French: he would assuredly be the Man to do it, but he has his Sanskrit Professorship to mind. There is a Book rather worth reading called "On Foot through Spain"1—meaning, as much of Spain as extends from St. Sebastian on the Bay of Biscay to Barcelona on the Mediterranean; with a good deal of Cervantesque Ventas, Carreteros, etc., in it. There is an account of the Obsequies of Pau Pi (Basque?) on the last Day of Carnival at Saragossa, which reminded me of the "Cortes de Muerte," etc. Haw­ thorne (whose admirable Italian Journal I brought with me here) says that originally the Italian Carnival ended with somewhat of the same Burlesque Ceremonial, but was thought to mimic too Graciosoly that of the Church. I believe the Moccoli, etc., are a remainder of it. "Eso alia se ha de entender, respondio Sancho, con Ios que nacieron en las malvas" (II.c.4), made my Master jump at once to Job xxx.4. I cannot but suppose that you are gradually gathering materials for some Essay on Spanish Literature, and it is a rare Quality in these days to be in no hurry about such work, but to wait till one can do it thoroughly; as is the case with you. I suppose you know Lope: of whom I have read—and now shall read—nothing: even Cowell, who has read some, is not much interested in him. He delights in Calderon, of whom he has one thick Volume here; and still finds many obscure passages to clear up. He was telling me of one about Madrid, which (as you are now there) I must quote by way of filling up this Second Sheet of Letter. But, to do this, I must wait till I have been with him for our morning's reading, so as I may give it you Chapter and Verse. P.S. Here is my Professor's MS Note for you, which I told him I wanted to send. We have been reading Chapters 14-15 of D.Q., Second Part; do you know why Carrasco finds an Algebrista for his hurts? Why the Moorish Aljebro — the setting of Fractions, etc. So said my

August 1879 dear Pundit at once. Ah! you would like to be with us, for the sake of him—rather than of yours sincerely E.FG. [The enclosure, in Cowell's handwriting:] MADRID

Bien dijo uno, que su planta, Aunque al parecer esta Eminente, esta fundada En un hoyo, pues a cuantos Miran su facil entrada, Se hace cuesta abajo el verla, Y cuesta arriba el dejarla Cada uno para si2 1

J. S. Campion, Qn Foot in Spain, 1879.

2 Keil, Calderon,

IV, 731.

After leaving Lowestoft Cowell wrote to a sister: "We very much enjoyed our time at Lowestoft, and it was exceedingly pleasant spend­ ing some time again with Edward FitzGerald. . . . He thoroughly en­ joyed reading Spanish again with me. We read two volumes of Don Quixote together. It is curious to see how very fond he is of that book. He never seems to tire of it. I think he so enjoys the pleasant glimpses of country life and country people amid the satire. He reads every book of travel he can get hold of about Spain, and cuts them up into volumes, pasted together and bound up, to illustrate Don Quixote."

To Bernard Quaritch 38, Minerva Terrace, Lowestoft August 20, [1879] Dear Sir, I had your Note of August 16 concerning "Inglis," but not some previous note which this refers to. Cowell says the Inglis is a poor, pert Book: so I am sorry to have troubled you about it. What I do wish you to send me at once is any respectable Copy of Lord Bacon's "Sylva" (I think is the name), a collection of Experi-

September 1879 ments or Experiences in Natural History. The Book used to be common enough: a small, thin, Folio. Please send a decent Copy to me here. I want it for Cowell. If he were not engaged as Sanskrit Professor, he would be the man to do the Work which he says is the Work wanted: viz, a Dictionary of the Spanish Language on same plan as Littre's, and more needed, inasmuch as there are more Languages mixed up in it—Latin— Arabic—Goth—Carthaginian—Basque, and the Lord knows what beside. This would be a Work for you to undertake if you could find the man to do it. Yours truly, E.FG.

To C. E. Norton Lowestoft Sept r 3/79 My dear Norton, I must write you a few lines—on my Knee—(not, on my knees, how­ ever) in return for your kind Letter. As to my thinking you could be "importunate" in asking again for my two Sophocles Abstracts, you must know that such importunity cannot but be grateful: I am only rather ashamed that you should have to repeat it. I laid the Plays by after looking them over some months ago, meaning to wait till another year to clear up some parts, if not all. Thus do my little works arrive at such form as they result in, good or bad; so as, however I may be blamed for the liberties I take with the Great, I cannot be accused of over haste in doing so, though blamed I may be for rashness in med­ dling with them at all. Anyhow, I would not send you any but a fair MS if I sent MS at all; and may perhaps print it in a small way, not to publish, but so as to ensure a final Revision, such as will also be more fitting for you to read. It is positively the last of my Works! having been by me these dozen years, I believe, occasionally looked at. So much for that. Now, you would like to be here along with me and my delightful Cowell, when we read the Second Part of Don Quixote together of a

September 1879 morning. This we have been doing for three weeks; and shall continue to do for some ten days more, I suppose: and then he will be return­ ing to his Cambridge. If we read very continuously we should be al­ most through the Book by this time: but, as you may imagine, we play as well as work; some passage in the dear Book leads Cowell off into Sanskrit, Persian, or—Goody Two Shoes—for all comes within the compass of his Memory and Application. Job came in to the help of Sancho a few days ago: and the Duenna Rodriguez' Age brought up a story Cowell recollected of an old Lady who persisted in remaining at fifty; till being told (by his Mother) that she could not be elected to a Charity because of not being 64, she said "She thought she could manage it"; and the Professor shakes with Laughter not loud but deep—from the centre. I took courage from your saying that Mrs. Lowell was recovering to write to him for a further report. I told him also of this Don Quixote business. And he wrote me back a very kind letter a few days ago: telling me that his Wife was slowly recovering: and also that he was laying in for Calderon and Cervantes. It is fine in him to be in no hurry, but to take his time; and no doubt, it is partly on that account that when he does come out, he comes out to some purpose. Pray read in our Athenaeum some Letters of Severn's1 about Keats, full of Love and intelligent Admiration, all the better for coming straight from the heart without any style at all. If I thought that Mr. Lowell would not find these Athenaeums somewhere in Madrid, I would send them to him, as I would also to you in a like predicament. How this may be you will tell me when next you write: but I always say, do not write only for answer's sake. I brought two Volumes of your Hawthorne here, and am very sorry to have got through them once more. Cowell is to carry them to Cam­ bridge with him. They are very fine, I think. Cannot you find me any small portrait of him? I know, from many previous offers on your part, that you would be pleased to do me this little Service. You see that I herewith enclose you some Photos of Crabbe to stick into my Book: Photos, not from the original Picture, but from a Copy of it, because of the Copy presenting a better surface for Photography. Something of the original Picture's Vitality is lost: but the Author of those Tales is still more recognizable than in the Portrait by Phillips prefixt to Murray's Editions: both Portraits printed in 1817 when those Tales were under way, and in the 63rd year of the Poet's Life.

September 1879 This letter has run on further than I expected: and I am now going to see Sancho off to his Island, under convoy of my Professor. Ever yours truly E.FG. 1 "Extracts from Letters of Joseph Severn to Charles Brown," Athenaeum, Aug. 23, 1979, pp. 238-39; and Aug. 30, pp. 271-72.

To W. A. Wright 38 Minerva Terrace, Lowestoft Sept r 4, [1879] My dear Wright, Here have I been for three weeks, and Cowell at 9 Esplanade for some days more, wondering that we hear nothing of your coming. I suppose that he will not stay beyond next week; after which he purposes running to Lincoln to see the Cathedral and some of his wife's old haunts for two or three days, and then back to Cambridge. We think you must have been having some tough work with your Yorkshire Farmers on account of these bad times.1 But let us know something of yourself, by letter if not in person. I can give Bed and Board if you like that better than running to and fro Beccles, as your wont. We read Don Quixote for two or three hours of a Forenoon, and of course Cowell lights it all up as it was never lighted to me before. I do not walk with him,2 as my feet have been out of order, and besides I like a long interval of fallow, after even his company. So we meet again at night for two or three hours' chat, during which I drink his Blackstrap. He has not found his Roman Nettle yet; but some other not very common flowers he has found, and rejoices in them like the great big Boy he is. I never saw him better in mind or Body. For some while he was afraid of venturing on the Pier because of Hans Breitmann,3 who was staying at the Royal: but Hans is gone, and the Professor occasionally mixes in the gay crowd. Nay, he is rather pleased to light upon the Archdeacon of Ely4 who is now staying here; with whose Appearance I fell in love without knowing who he was. However, that is all I know, or shall know, of him, except from hearing that he is as amiable as he looks. He hides his Apron so discreetly too somehow under his coat; and so contracts his Shovel: and his gaiters do not look absurd; he manages so well in keeping to his Cloth, etc.

September 1879 I think poor Edwards must be near the End, from what she writes me. I ran up to see them the day before I came here. Pray make my Duty to the Master and let us see or know of you. Yours ever E.FG. Do not miss Severn's letters about Keats in Athenaeum. 1 Economic conditions in 1879 imposed heavy burdens on college bursars. The winter of 1878-79 had been severe; and spring weather, EFG reported, had not yet arrived in May. "The summer . . . was the worst in modern times. It rained continuously . . . harvests blackened in the fields; . . . in England and Wales three million sheep died" (Arthur Bryant, The Pageant of England, 1941, p. 229). 2 In the fields. Cowell was an amateur botanist. 3 Pseudonym of Charles G. Leland, American-born authority on folklore and gipsies; writer, also, of humorous dialect verse. He completed his education in German universities and lived much abroad; from 1869 to 1880, chiefly in London. 4 William Emery, Archdeacon, 1864-1907.

To W. A. Wright 11 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft

Sepr 11/79 My dear Wright,

I had got Spedding's Article1 from the first: and had observed to Cowell somewhat as the Master observes in his letter to you: if not too "partial," certainly appearing so, in a way likely to prejudice his Read­ ers against Charles Tennyson. As a matter of Policy he should have abstained from all that about noting down stray verses (of no great importance) from C.T.'s lips: and I doubt if those citations about Scarecrow and Rocking-horse—beautiful to me—will not seem some­ what puerile to strange Readers. There is a want of worldly tact, I think, in all this: but the Article is full of old Spedding's beautiful Wisdom. What a man it is! Cowell and I have read through Don Quixote's second part, down to where Sancho makes the Night-patrol of his Island. There, our Books fell short, and so there we stopped. Whether we shall ever finish it together? I think he and Wife have been happy enough here: I know they have made me so: and their departure today drives me rather sorrowfully back into my old Quarters. There—sc. here—I shall be till

September 1879 the end of the month, I suppose: and young Arthur Charlesworth will come to me for his Holyday. Yesterday this mad Professor was seized with a wish to talk Welsh with George Borrow:2 and, as he would not venture otherwise, I gave him a Note of Introduction, and off he went, and had an hour with the old Boy, who was hard of hearing, and shut up in a stuffy room, but cordial enough; and Cowell was glad to have seen the Man, and tell him that it was his Wild Wales which first inspired a thirst for the Language into the Professor. Of all this he will himself tell you. For tomorrow (Friday) he will be at Scroope Terrace,3 after stopping a Night and a Day at Norwich, to see the Cathedral and St. Peter's Mancroft. I might accompany him so far, but my feet are much indis­ posed for walking just now, and I have no turn for sight-seeing. I had a Card from Mrs. Edwards saying that her husband had been having convulsive fits, and could not (the Doctors thought) last long. Of course it is not to be wished that he should, whether for his own sake, or hers. Ah, pleasant Dunwich Days! I should never again know a better Boy than Edwards, nor a braver little Wife than her, were I to live six times as long as I am like to do. Mr. Munro sent me a very kind Letter in acknowledgment of my Crabbe, which I had sent him in return for his Gray's Elegy. It is odd to me that Cowell (as he says) does not see the fine turns of humour, pathos, and epigrammatic wit in the Poems till separately pointed out to him: he does not care enough for the whole to distinguish the parts: else, who so capable? Not I, I am sure. Perhaps I too, like old Spedding, am too "partial," as the Master says: though certainly not from any personal associations. Pray remember me kindly to the said Mas­ ter. You know I shall be very happy to see you here; but I doubt that, as your Vacation is over, you will scarce get free till October is well set in, and I may be at dull old Woodbridge again—not the less glad to see you there, however, than here; and Yours always E.FG. 1 "Charles Tennyson Turner," a critique of Charles's poetry, Nineteenth Cen­ tury Magazine, Sept., 1879, pp. 461-80. 2 Who lived at Oulton, adjacent to Lowestoft. 3 Cowell's Cambridge address.

September 1879

To Fanny Kemble Lowestoft SepV 15, [1879] My dear Mrs. Kemble, Your last letter told me that you were to be back in England by the middle of this month. So I write some lines to ask if you are back, and where to be found. To be sure, I can learn that much from some Donne: to the Father of whom I must commit this letter for any further Direction. But I will also say a little—very little having to say —beyond asking you how you are, and in what Spirits after the great Loss you have endured. Of that Loss I heard from Blanche Donne—some while, it appears, before you heard of it yourself. I cannot say that it was surprising, however sad, considering the terrible Illness she had some fifteen years ago. I will say no more of it, nor of her, of whom I could say so much; but nothing that would not be more than superfluous to you. It did so happen, that, the day before I heard of her Death, I had thought to myself that I would send her my Crabbe, as to my other friends, and wondered that I had not done so before. I should have sent off the Volume for Donne to transmit when—Blanche's Note came. After writing of this, I do not think I should add much more, had I much else to write about. I will just say that I came to this place five weeks ago to keep company with my friend Edward Cowell, the Pro­ fessor; we read Don Quixote together in a morning, and chatted for two or three hours of an evening; and now he is gone away to Cam­ bridge and [has] left me to my Nephews and Nieces here. By the month's end I shall be home at Woodbridge, whither any Letter you may please to write me may be addressed. I try what I am told are the best Novels of some years back, but find I cannot read any but Trollope's. So now have recourse to Forster's Life of Dickens—a very good Book, I still think. Also, Eckermann's Goethe1—almost as repeatedly to be read as Boswell's Johnson—a Ger­ man Johnson—and (as with Boswell) more interesting to me in Ecker­ mann's Diary than in all his own famous works. Adieu: Ever yours sincerely E.FG. I am daily—hourly—expecting to hear of the Death of another Friend—not so old a Friend, but yet a great loss to me.

September 1879 1 Johann Eckermann, Gesprache mit Goethe, 1836, translated by John Oxenford in Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret, 1850.

To Herman Biddell 11 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft Sept. 16, [1879] Dear BiddeU, Your Sister Anna told me you would like to see a Book I named to her—Lady Anne Blunt's Bedouins of the Euphrates,1 with some Ap­ pendix by her Husband as to the Pedigree of the true Arab Horse there to be met with. I did not read it: but I gather from such parts of the Book as I did read, that the Major is worth listening to on such a subject. So should I have supposed my Lady Anne to be also, so devoted is she to the Horse (though not Horsey) which yet, with all her Devotion, she calls the stupidest of Animals. I could have under­ stood that of our horses shut up in Stables, etc., but the Desert Horse? The Book is a very good one indeed, in all respects, I think: and the upshot of my Letter about it is—that, if you wish to see the Book, you will find it in a Hamper which I sent home a week ago, and which old Howe (at my House) will show you, and you can take from, what you please. Only, do not keep it one of your unconscionable lengths, but send it back in not less than a Fortnight, so as it may be returned to Mudie when I myself return to Woodbridge about that time, if not earlier. This morning's Post brought me word of my poor Edwards' Death —at last!—at 1 A.M. yesterday. I have long expected it: for more than a year indeed I have known it to be inevitable, unless merged into the yet worse fate of Imbecility. My thoughts keep wandering along the Coast to dear little Dunwich, where we were all so happy for three Summers. A brave, generous Boy was he: yes, and of admirable Sense, Sagacity, but not an Artist. I feel his Loss as I could feel that of other Friends whom I have known five times as long. 1

Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, 2 vols., 1879.

September 1879

To Ε. Β. Cowell 11 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft Sept. 17, [1879] My dear Cowell, Thank you for troubling yourself to write out the piece from Balfour. Pray read some passages on the subject in Eckermann: marked in the Index to Bohns one Volume Edition 1874—a Book worth owning if ever Book were. I was not sorry for Edwards' Death in so far as it put an end to Troubles and Pains which could end in nothing else, and were so pitiable that the sooner an end came the better, for her sake as well as his. And I must have known also that, for a year past, the man could scarce be looked on as other than half dead, and assuredly destined to shortly lose what Life he yet had. Still, when Death does come— I am not very well myself just now, and you know there is nothing very cheerful in the Air just now, with its reports of War abroad, and Poverty at home. I am sorry we could not finish Sancho's Government of his Island. I wanted you to see Dryden1 before your Duties began, so as you and Wright might concoct something out of it. For if any Writer should be recalled to Memory it is Glorious John. Ever yours and Elizabeth's E.FG. 1 See

letter to Wright, March 5, 1879.

To W. A. Wright [September 17, 1879] Mon pauvre Edwards mourut a une heure A.M . Lundi dernier. On I'enterra demain a Woking. Je m'attriste en regardant cette mer qui va se repandre sur Ies sables, etc. La pauvre petite Dunwich. E.FG.

September 1879

To Mrs. Edwards 11 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft Sept. 17,1879 Dear Mrs. Edwards,

I could not grieve when I heard that what must be was over. But I believe there is no one—no, not even of Friends of more than fifty years—whose loss I should more feel. It makes me very melancholy now, by the side of the Sea that is now running up to Dunwich, where we had pleasant Days. I should like to have that just begun Sketch of the ruined Church there: though I know not if it be well to sadden oneself over such recollections. I am not very well myself just now, and things are not very cheerful about me. My Nephew Edmund has been much out of sorts for the last fortnight: and now his Wife for the last few days has been in great disquietude lest he be called to India when his Adjutancy ends here with the end of October. I know not if I ought to speak of such troubles in other quarters, when you are in the depth of your own. But it still is something to know that one is not alone in one's sorrow. When you can, you will let me hear of you, and pray tell me if I can be of any use. I suppose Arthur Charlesworth will be here by Saturday: but that depends on whether he can get away. And I suppose I shall be tending homeward by the end of the month. But, remember, I am quite ready to go up to London, in case you should wish to see me. Here is an old Gentleman of eighty-five actively engaged in garden­ ing under the windows. Life has run on easily and prosperously, with him, at any rate! This Letter would seem much out of Season to most people in your Circumstances: but you are too sensible to care for "condolence," and will, I hope, believe in the sincere regards of yours E.FG.

To W. A. Wright 11, Marine Terrace, Lowestoft [September, 1879] My dear Wright,

Now you are (as your Letter of this morning forewarns me) back among your Books, you can add to your Forby, if you please, two words that G. Crabbe has named to me.

September 1879 Batter (a wall) to widen upward, as some Church walls, he says, pur­ posely did. Shrovy—of a Tree half stript of leaves, or Blossoms. "To fare so shrovy." Richardson, he says, gives "Shrive trees = to prune them." I will duly let you know where I shall be about October 3, a matter I am not as yet sure of, as I depend somewhat on Arthur Charlesworth, whose Holyday is not yet certainly fixt. Unless I go to London to see Mrs. Edwards (as I shall do at any time she may wish), I shall be either here or at Woodbridge, and glad to see you at either place, if you care to come. I bid the Professor ask you for a look at that Dryden, so as you and he might see if anything could be done. I think I am becoming a Bore about Dryden, as I was about Crabbe—but that latter Ghost is laid, anyhow. I am now reading Forster's Life of Dickens again, and with perhaps more wonder at the Daemonic Man than when first read. Ever yours E.FG.

To Samuel Laurence 11 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft Sept r 22/79 My dear Laurence, Your letter found me here this morning: here, where I have now been near six weeks, for a month of which Edward Cowell and his Wife were my neighbours; and we had two or three hours of Don Quixote's company of a morning, and only ourselves for company at night. They are gone, however: and I might have gone to my own home also, but that some Nephews and Nieces wished to see a little more of me; and I thought also that Lowestoft would be more amusing than Woodbridge to a young London Clerk, a Nephew of the Cowells, who comes to me for a short Holyday, when he can get away from his Desk. But early in Octobex I shall be back at my old routine, stale enough. I think that, as a general rule, people should die at seventy. Yes: though Edwards was comparatively a Friend of late growth— he, and his brave wife—they encountered me down in my own country here, and we somehow suited one another; and I feel sad thinking of the pleasant days at Dunwich, which the Tide now rolling up here will soon reach. . . .

September 1879 I am here re-reading Forster's Life of Dickens, which seems to me a very good Book, though people say, I believe, there is too much Forster in it. At any rate, there is enough to show the wonderful Daemonic Dickens; as pure an instance of Genius as ever lived; and, it seems to me, a Man I can love also.

To Fanny Kemble 11 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft Sept r 24, [1879] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

I was to have been at Woodbridge before this: and your Letter only reached me here yesterday. I have thought upon your desire to see me as an old Friend of yourself and yours; and you shall not have the trouble of saying so in vain. I should indeed be perplext at the idea of your coming all this way for such a purpose, to be shut up at an Hotel with no one to look in on you but myself (for you would not care for my Kindred here)—and my own Woodbridge House would require a little time to set in order, as I have for the present lost the services of one of my "helps" there. What do you say to my going to London to see you instead of your coming down to see me? I should anyhow have to go to London soon; and I could make my going sooner, or as soon as you please. Not but, if you want to get out of London, as well as to see me, I can surely get my house right in a little time, and will gladly do so, should you prefer it. I hope, indeed, that you will not stay in London at this time of year, when so many friends are out of it; and it has been my thought—and hope, I may say—that you have already betaken yourself to some pleasant place, with a pleasant Friend or two, which now keeps me from going at once to look for you in London, after a few Adieus here. Pray let me know your wishes by return of Post: and I will do my best to meet them immediately: being Ever sincerely yours, E.FG.

September 1879

To Mrs. Edwards 11 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft Sept. 24, [1879] My dear Mrs. Edwards, I hope you did not take amiss my not going to your Husband's Funeral: you may know that I was not at my Brother's, close by, a few months ago: nor at that of my Sister Kerrich whom I should indeed have followed to the Grave, if any one! It so happened indeed that I did not open your In Memoriam card till the day after I had it: that is, on the very Day of the Funeral which it announced on the inside; not knowing the custom, and rather wondering at the bare Inscription outside. Had I opened it in time, I cannot say that I should have gone up any the more; but I certainly should not have written you the letter I did, not even adverting to the subject. I shall say no more on that head; nor on him; whose generous Nature is not first revealed to me by the story you tell me of the Thief he made an honest man of. It was this very Generosity and Human Kindliness that made me especially love him, as I have loved but few before, and now shall love none after. I hope you will remain away from Golden Square for some while, so long as you remain in a pleasant place, among those who love, and understand you. But I want you to tell me in a line, by return of Post, when you are likely to be in town. You know I told you I would visit you there whenever you wished me: and now I believe I shall have to go there very soon, whether you be there or not. My friend Mrs. Kemble, who is sorely tried by the Death of her Sister Mrs. Sartoris, finds herself very desolate in London, from which most of her Friends are absent: she wishes to see me whom she has not seen these twenty years; even spoke of coming down here for that purpose; which would almost distress me—her coming so far for so poor a return. I write to her this day that, though I will wait here if she chooses, or provide her such entertainment as I can at Woodbridge, if she prefers that: I think I had better go up and see her in London, if she still keeps there. This is why I want to know about you; but by no means to advise your going up a whit sooner than you must. If you have to come to Suffolk, why not come to me, where you know Mrs. Howe will take all care of you, for as long as you will stay, without any trouble of entertainment, whether to her, or to me? Whether you have Business in Suffolk or not, pray come to us if it be any pleasure, or relief, to you: and believe me yours always E.FG.

September 1879 Arthur Charlesworth cannot get away till Saturday week: so he must come to Woodbridge if he wants me. But I should probably send him on here for a change.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Sept. 28, [1879] Dear Mrs. Kemble,

I cannot be sure of your Address: but I venture a note—to say that —If you return to London on Wednesday, I shall certainly run up (the same day, if I can) to see you before you again depart on Satur­ day, as your letter proposes. But I also write to beg you not to leave your Daughter for ever so short a while, simply because you had so arranged, and told me of your Arrangement. If this Note of mine reach you somehow tomorrow, there will be plenty of time for you to let me know whether you go or not: and, even if there be not time before Wednesday, why, I shall take no harm in so far as I really have a very little to do, and moreover shall see a poor Lady who has just lost her husband, after nearly three years anxious and uncertain watching, and now finds herself (brave and strong little Woman) somewhat floored now the long conflict is over. These are the people I may have told you of whom I have for some years met here and there in Suffolk—chiefly by the Sea; and we some­ how suited one another. He was a brave, generous, Boy (of sixty) with a fine Understanding, and great Knowledge and Relish of Books: but he had applied too late in Life to Painting which he could not master, though he made it his Profession. A remarkable mistake, I always thought, in so sensible a man. Whether I find you next week, or afterward (for I promise to find you any time you appoint) I hope to find you alone—for twenty years' Solitude make me very shy: but always your sincere E.FG.

September 1879

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Sept r 29, [1879] My dear Wright,

I am back—to my red ink, you see: for a while, if not for good. I returned from Lowestoft on Saturday: and on Wednesday (after tomorrow) go to London till the Saturday after. So I shall not catch you here on your way to Beccles, if you go, as you proposed, on October 3. But perhaps I shall see you on your way back to Cambridge: in case you do not run over here between whiles. My object in going to London is, to see poor Mrs. Edwards, who writes me that she has much collapsed in strength (no wonder!) after the Trial she endured for near three years more or less, and, you know, a very hard fight for the last year. I hope she will come down here for a time before long, when she has had time to look about her, and see what is to be done. Besides her, Mrs. Kemble, who has lately lost her Sister, and re­ turned from Switzerland to London just at a time when most of her friends are out of it—she wants to see me, an old Friend of hers and her family's, whom she has not seen for more than twenty years. So I hope to do my "petit possible" to solace both these poor Ladies at the same time. I had a Letter from Cowell who seemed very happy in some Llandudno Hotel; reading Lope de Vega, whom, however (as I sus­ pected), he does not find so interesting as Calderon. Were that not so, we should have had Translations of him, as of Calderon, long ago. I found your Coriolanus waiting for me here, thank you; and am yours always Littlegrange Read, if you find time, Major Campion's "On Foot in Spain," which I took to Lowestoft, and Cowell was very pleased with.

October 1879

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Tuesday [October 7, 1879] My dear Wright, I returned here last night, and found your Note. I shall have a Chicken and Bottle of Port ready for you on Thursday: but only come for them in case you find it convenient to you. I found Mrs. Edwards decidedly better than when I last saw her two months ago. She is determined to continue in the Golden Square house: and, with plenty of Friends, and plenty to do for them, I think she will get on. Her Spirit, Courage, Activity, and Cleverness, etc., you know. Mrs. Kemble also—of another sort, though courageous too—and much else good. We talked over old Days, etc. Of all which I will tell you over Chicken and Port on Thursday, if you like. Ever yours E.FG.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge October 7, [1879] Dear Mrs. Kemble, When I got home yesterday, and emptied my Pockets, I found the precious Enclosure which I had meanfto show, and (if you pleased) to give you. A wretched Sketch (whether by me or another, I know not) of your Brother John in some Cambridge Room, about the year 1832-3, when he and I were staying there, long after Degree time— he, studying Anglo-Saxon, I suppose—reading something, you see, with a glass of Ale on the table—or old Piano-forte was it?—to which he would sing very well his German Songs. Among them,

Do you remember? I afterwards associated it with some stray verses applicable to one I loved.1

October 1879 Heav'n would answer all your wishes, Were it much as Earth is here; Flowing Rivers full of Fishes, And good Hunting half the Year. Well:—here is the cause of this Letter, so soon after our conversing together, face to face, in Queen Anne's Mansions. A strange little Afterpiece to twenty years' Separation. And now, here are the Sweet Peas, and Marigolds, sown in the Spring, still in a faded Blossom, and the Spirit that Tennyson told us of fifty years ago haunting the Flower beds, and a Robin singing— nobody else. And I am to lose my capital Reader, he tells me, in a Fortnight, no Book-binding surviving under the pressure of Bad Times in little Woodbridge. "My dear Fitz, there is no Future for little Country towns," said Pollock to me when he came here some years ago. But my Banker here found the Bond which he had considered unnecessary, safe in his Strong Box—and I am your sincere Ancient E.FG. Burn the poor Caricature if offensive to you. The "Alexander" pro­ file was become somewhat tarnished then. 1 W.

K. Browne.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Sunday [October 12, 1879] My dear Wright, I return your Richard,1 with only a few queries (marked by a side line) as to whether you mean to note for young scholars the final accent of Perfect or Participle, as in "butchered, replenished," etc., of which I fancy there is more use than in William's better plays. If he did write all this Richard, one may say he was not in his better vein. This "accent," I say, and a few other pencil marks to indicate where the young reader might want a word of explanation. All which you know better than I. Here is a Day to think of Worms, Graves, and Epitaphs.2 And my good Reader leaves me to make the best of it all.

October 1879 I forgot to ask you to return my kindest remembrances to the Master and Mistress, in return for those they sent by you. I should oftener write him a bit of a Letter, but he would think it called for a Reply. And I am yours E.FG. 1

Proof for Richard III, Clarendon Press, 1880. 2 Richard II, III.2.144-45.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Oct r 13, [1879] My dear Wright, I sent off your Richard, and a steel-penned Letter of mine—yester­ night: forgetting to say one thing which has been on my conscience ever since you left. A very little thing perhaps: simply, that I remem­ ber to have told you that Elizabeth Cowell could be "vindictive"— which is not the word at all: but I mean implacable when once she has taken a dislike. It is not often she does so; and, when she does, not on her own account, but others': as in the case of those nephews and nieces who she thought were ungrateful to her Sister. So it was with my Brother, who, she thought, alienated me from the Good Faith, by not doing all he jawed about, though a good deal, poor Fellow. This is what I wanted to tell you: for, though she has Some­ thing of a craze, she is quite incapable of Revenge. Brooke is, as you say, so wonderful an Elder, that he may have fought at Waterloo when six years old; a few months younger than I who was not there, but yet was born on March 31—1809. I do not want Harriet back if you have the lessest desire to keep her. La Boule will I hope, turn up by a later Post. "I hope," say I; and yet the Boule will serve to make me melancholy, with the remembrance of Edwards and Dunwich. If Cowell does not care for Olivier1—the dear Phantom!—pray do you keep him. Read a little piece—the two first Stanzas—beginning: "Dieu garde de deshonneur," p. 184, quite beautiful to me; though not classed as Olivier's. Also "Royne des Fleurs," etc., 160. These are things that Beranger could not reach with all his Art: but Burns could without it. Ask Mr. Munro, and believe me yours E.FG. 1

A volume of de Basselin's poetry.

October 1879

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge Oct. 19, [1879] My dear Frederick, It is a long time since I have heard from you, and I am pretty sure that I wrote last. I do not mean to claim a debt: but, however, I want to hear of you from yourself. A good slice of the year has fallen away since last I wrote, I know. Since which I have been to my old resort, Lowestoft, for near two months: five weeks of which my friend Ed­ ward Cowell, whom you remember, was there with his Wife: and we read Don Quixote of a Morning, and chatted together of a Night. And so that went. After which, I went up to London to see two be­ reaved Ladies: one of whom has just lost her husband, the brave Boy, and bad Painter, whom I have spent several weeks along with by our Shores for some years past—Edwards, his name: and then Mrs. Kemble, who has recently lost her Sister, Mrs. Sartoris, whom you once heard sing Weber's Mermaid Song at Florence. Well, I had not seen Mrs. Kemble for over twenty years; and she wished once more, she said, to see an old Friend of herself and her Family. So I went, and was four days in London visiting these two Ladies alternately; and am now down again in Winter Quarters, I suppose. But my excellent Reader has left me in the lurch, and his successor is a younger Brother, not sixteen years old, with a boyish treble which sounds odd enun­ ciating Trollope's Novels to me. It is sad to me to think that I have exhausted Scott; and all of Dickens, except two which I reckoned on for this winter with my old Reader, who relished them as much as I. Well, we must try the Boy's pipe. When I was in London, I went to morning Service in Westminster Abbey: and, as I sat in the Poet's Corner Transept, I looked down for the stone that covers the remains of Charles Dickens, but it may have been covered by the worshippers there. I had not been inside that Abbey for twenty years, I believe; and it seemed very grand to me; and the old Organ rolled and swam with the Boys' voices on the Top through the fretted vault, as you know. Except that, I heard no music, and saw no Sights, save in the Streets. If you did not see (as I dare say you did not) old Spedding's pre­ liminary Notice of your Brother Charles's Sonnets, I will send it to you. It has—it must have—fine things in it: but it is not calculated, I think, to propitiate those who previously knew little, or nothing, of him whom Spedding would recommend.

October 1879 Now, my dear Frederick, do write and tell me how you are, and what else you can find to tell me of yourself. And believe me still your ancient, loyal, and loving E.FG. Excuse this very bad candle-light MS.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [c. October 20,1879] My dear Wright, I scarce know if the enclosed from that veteran Newby will amuse you. He really is a wonder, both on account of evergreen faculty for Novel-writing, and for his kindly feelings toward myself. I have not availed myself of his offer however. I have your Pall Mall with its Trollope Review; a little too elab­ orately hard on him, I think. My old Reader has left me for London: his younger Brother, be­ tween fifteen and sixteen, replaces him—long intervallo—small, and yet treble, of his age: but an intelligent little Chap, whose blunders faintly amuse me as in the case of some of his Predecessors. Here is one you will be pleased with. Captain Gronow1 is describing D'Orsay at Holland House; where "owing to a considerable abdominal developement, her Ladyship was continually letting her napkin slip from her lap," etc. Please to correct to "abominable developement." Fact. Ever yours E.FG. Newby not wanted back. Mrs. Thompson sent me a very kind Letter of spontaneous praise of my Crabbe; which I think you will understand, I can accept for him. 1

Reminiscences and Recollections of Captain Gronow, 2 vols., 1900, I, 279.

November 1879

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Oct. 27, [1879] My dear Mrs. Kemble, I am glad to think that my Regard for you and yours, which I know to be sincere, is of some pleasure to you. Till I met you last in London, I thought you had troops of Friends at call; I had not reflected that by far the greater number of them could not be Old Friends; and those you cling to, I feel, with constancy. I and my company (viz. Crabbe, etc.) could divert you but little until your mind is at rest about Mrs. Leigh. I shall not even now write more than to say that a Letter from Mowbray, which tells of the kind way you received him and his Brother, says also that his Father is well, and expects Valentia and Spouse in November. This is all I will write. You will let me know by a line, I think, when that which you wait for has come to pass. A Post Card with a few words on it will suffice. You cross over your Address (as usual) but I do my best to find you. Ever yours E.FG.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Oct r [November] 4/79 My dear Lady, I need not tell you that I am very glad of the news your note of Sunday tells me: and I take it as a pledge of old Regard that you told it me so soon: even but an hour after that other Kemble1 was born. I know not if the short letter which I addressed to 4 Everton Place, Leamington (as I read it in your former Letter), reached you. What­ ever the place be called, I expect you are still there; and there will be for some time longer. As there may be some anxiety for some little time, I shall not enlarge as usual on other matters; if I do not hear from you, I shall conclude that all is going on well, and shall write again. Meanwhile, I address this Letter to London, you see, to make sure of you this time: and am ever yours sincerely E.FG.

November 1879 By the by, I think the time is come when, if you like me well enough, you may drop my long Surname, except for the external Address of your letter. It may seem, but is not, affectation to say that it is a name I dislike; for one reason, it has really caused me some confusion and trouble with other more or less Irish bodies, being as common in Ireland as "Smith," etc., here—and particularly with "Edward"—I suppose because of the patriot Lord who bore [it].21 should not, even if I made bold to wish so to do, propose to treat you in the same fashion; inasmuch as I like your Kemble name, which has become as it were classical in England. 1

Fanny Kemble's grandson, Pierce Butler Leigh, born November 2. Edward Fitzgerald (1763-98), Irish revolutionary leader. For other "Irish bodies" see letter to F. Tennyson, May 4, 1848, n.l. 2Lord

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Nov. 10/79 My dear Wright, Professor Goodwin of America has sent me his Greek Grammar, of which, as you know, I am no Judge. As I see it is a new and revised Edition published by Macmillan, I suppose it may be used, or known, at Cambridge. Nevertheless, I post it to you in order that you may yourself see, and make others of your learned Friends see, and report of it to me—the more favourably, the more agreeably to me, inasmuch as I shall be able to return my thanks with a better grace. I should have sent the Book to your Master, who told me on another such occa­ sion, that he had a good opinion of the Professor as a verbal Scholar; but I dare not venture to do so now for fear lest he may be in the last trouble about his Sister. If this be not so, please to ask him about the Book. You, I take it, are very busy too about your College Rents: Mrs. Thompson wrote me that several Colleges had some of their Lands thrown upon them. Brooke, whom I met today on his black Charger, tells me he has not lost a tenant: old Stradbroke 1 I hear—and hope— has several thousand Acres in the market. Mrs. Edwards is, I believe, busy preparing an Exhibition of her husband's Pictures, etc.,2 as I knew she would, in spite of my advice

November 1879 to the contrary. Of course I hope that she may be justified in rejecting it: and am yours always E.FG. I have a new Murder: Holloway's near eighty years ago:3 but a very vulgar one. 1 The Earl of Stradbroke, John Edward Rous of Henham Hall, near Wangford, Suffolk. 2 Mrs. Edwards held a private sale November 8. A prolonged public sale opened November 10. 3 John Holloway and Owen Haggerty were convicted, February 20, 1807, of murdering a man named Steele on Hounslow Heath, November 9, 1802. The verdict was reached on the testimony of an accomplice who five years later turned state's evidence, and conversations of the defendants overheard by a guard while the two were lodged in separate cells awaiting trial. Twenty-eight persons were trampled to death in the crush of spectators watching the hangings, February 23.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Nov. 13/79 My dear Lady, Now that your anxieties are, as I hope, over, and that you are re­ turned, as I suppose, to London, I send you a budget. First: the famous Belvidere Hat; which I think you ought to stick into your Records.1 Were I a dozen years younger, I should illustrate all the Book in such a way; but, as my French song says, "Le Temps est trop court pour de si longs projets." Next, you behold a Photo of Carlyle's Niece, which he bid her send me two or three years ago in one of her half-yearly replies to my Enquiries. What a shrewd, tidy, little Scotch Body! Then you have her last letter, telling of her Uncle, and her married Self,2 and thanking me for a little Wedding gift which I told her was bought from an Ipswich Pawnbroker3—a very good, clever fellow, who reads Carlyle, and comes over here now and then for a talk with me. Mind, when you return me the Photo, that you secure it around with your Letter paper, that the Postman may not stamp into it. Perhaps this trouble is scarce worth giving you. "Clerke Sanders" has been familiar to me these fifty years almost; since Tennyson used to repeat it, and "Helen of Kirkconnel," at some

November 1879 Cambridge gathering. At that time he looked something like the Hyperion shorn of his Beams in Keats' Poem: with a Pipe in his mouth. Afterwards he got a touch, I used to say, of Haydon's Lazarus. Talking of Keats, do not forget to read Lord Houghton's Life and Letters of him: in which you will find what you may not have guessed from his Poetry (though almost unfathomably deep in that also) the strong, masculine, Sense and Humour, etc., of the man: more akin to Shake­ speare, I am tempted to think, in a perfect circle of Poetic Faculties, than any Poet since. Well: the Leaves which hung on more bravely than ever I remember are at last whirling away in a Cromwell Hurricane—(not quite that, neither)—and my old Man says he thinks Winter has set in at last. We cannot complain hitherto. Many summer flowers held out in my Garden till a week ago, when we dug up the Beds in order for next year. So now little but the orange Marigold, which I love for its colour (Irish and Spanish) and Courage, in living all Winter through. Within doors, I am again at my everlasting Crabbe! doctoring his Posthumous Tales a la mode of those of "The Hall," to finish a Volume of simple "Selections" from his other works: all which I will leave to be used, or not, whenever old Crabbe rises up again: which will not be in the Lifetime of yours ever E.FG. I dared not decypher all that Mrs. Wister4 wrote in my behalf— because I knew it must be sincere! Would she care for my Eternal Crabbe? 1 Aldis Wright errs (Letters and Literary Remains, IV,99, n.2) in assuming that EFG's "Belvidere Hat" prompted Fanny Kemble to include in Records of a Girlhood (11,41) a passage relating to her preparations to play Belvidera, in Otway's Venice Preserved, the second success in her stage career. Records had been published in 1878 and the passage also appears in chapter XII of Old Woman's Gossip, as the work was called when published serially in the Atlantic Monthly. EFG's enclosure, most likely, was a picture of a hat, mentioned in the Records, which Fanny wore in the production. It was probably copied by milliners during the peak of her popularity. (See letter to Barton, Jan. 11, 1845, n.2.) 2 Mary Aitken had recently married Alexander Carlyle, a cousin. 3 One of EFG's stock jokes. Directories list William Mason, to whom he refers, at one address as "pawnbroker and silversmith." However, his principal business, at other premises, was the sale of furniture and antique pictures, jewelry, gems, and rare books. 4 Fanny Kemble's daughter.

November 1879

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge] [November, 1879] My dear Lady, I must say a word upon a word in your last which really pains me— about yours and Mrs. Wister's sincerity, etc. Why, I do most thor­ oughly believe in both; all I meant was that, partly from your own old personal regard for me, and hers, perhaps inherited from you, you may both very sincerely over-rate my little dealings with other great men's thoughts. For you know full well that the best Head may be warped by as good a Heart beating under it; and one loves the Head and Heart all the more for it. Now all this is all so known to you that I am vexed you will not at once apply it to what I may have said. I do think that I have had to say something of the same sort before now; and I do declare I will not say it again, for it is simply odious, all this talking of oneself. Yet one thing more. I did go to London on this last occasion pur­ posely to see you at that particular time: for I had not expected Mrs. Edwards to be in London till a Fortnight afterward, until two or three days after I had arranged to go and meet you the very day you arrived, inasmuch as you had told me you were to be but a few days in Town. There—there! Only believe me; my sincerity, Madam; and—Voild, ce qui est fait. Parlons, etc. Well: Mrs. Edwards has opened an Exhibition of her husband's works in Bond Street—contrary to my advice—and, it appears, rightly contrary: for over £,300 of them were sold on the first private View day, and Tom Taylor, the great Art Critic (who neither by Nature nor Education can be such, "cleverest man in London," as Tennyson once said he was), has promised a laudatory notice in the omnipotent Times, and then People will flock in like Sheep. And I am very glad to be proved a Fool in the matter, though I hold my own opinion still of the merit of the Picture part of the Show. Enough! as we Tragic Writers say: it is such a morning as I would not have sacrificed indoors or in letter-writing to any one but yourself, and on the subject named. BELIEVE ME YOURS SINCERELY.

November 1879

To W. A. Wright [Woodhridge ] [November 17, 1879] My dear Wright, The enclosed Paper has been sent to me as Member of the AntiMacassar Society;1 with an additional Note from the Honorary Secre­ tary to get what signatures I can. So I have got, you see, the Captain's for one; but he should have given "Ufford Place" to intimate some­ thing of his Quality; as I give "Little Grange" which may convey a notion of more meant than meets, etc. So, if you sign, and get others to sign, add all your Titles, of M.A., D.C.L., etc., as well as your Colleges: and when you have got what names you can, serve up to W. Morris, Esq.2 But I may as well enclose Lithograph note. I never was at Venice, nor (I suppose) ever shall be: but I suppose also that this Memorial can do no harm—and no good. Get the Master to sign, with full Flourish, and Cowell, "Professor." Kun fa Yakun3 I wrote Mrs. Edwards your word about the Burlington Rooms. But she had already engaged and hung a Room in Bond St. where, at the private view on Saturday last, over £300 worth of the work was sold, which will pay all expenses, and leave what else comes in for profit. She finished her work on the Thursday before that Saturday; felt ill; worse on Friday; worse yet on the Saturday, when her Maid told the Doctor she was dying. "No," said he, "It will take more to kill her." However, he found her in a worse way than he had expected; kept her in Bed three days; and now she says she is "all right." Doctor wonders she did not give way long ago: and bids her try two months abroad, which I dare say she will not. I must not omit to say that she expressed herself as much obliged to you for "thinking and writing about me." Those are her words. Yes: you ought to get Dryden done. What is Addison to him? You know you have only to use what you choose of my Volume and in your own way. Very little editing needed, I think; but, little or much, you are the Man to do it; not yours E.FG. 1 EFG

appears here to be indulging in a clumsy play on names.

November 1879 2 In 1877, William Morris founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and served as secretary. The Society was popularly known as "AntiScrape." Morris circulated a "Memorial of Protest Against the Restoration of St. Mark's, Venice" when extensive renovations, including rebuilding the western fagade, were begun in 1879. 3 "Be! and it is." EFG's note on the term, which appears in Salaman and Absdl, reads, "the famous Word of Creation stolen from Genesis by the Kuran."

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge Nov. 20/79 My dear old Frederick,

I cannot guess why you should suspect me of disinclination to write —at any rate, as compared with yourself. For surely I write you two letters to one you write me. But no matter for that: I do not think I am more disinclined to write than ever I was, unless for having less to write about—which I suppose you can understand from your own circumstances. I hope it is well for you, and agreeable to you, that many of your Family are—or, when you last wrote, were—in Jersey. "C'est selon," as the French say. Shall you never cross the sea to England again? I never now hear of Alfred and his: for no one ever would answer any letter of mine except Mrs. Alfred: and, as she is but an Invalid, I do not choose to put her to the trouble. Hallam might write me a few lines, I think; but, as he will not, I let the whole thing drop: only being ready to answer at once, and at full, if any one of them ever writes to me. When you do next write, you must tell me what you think of old Jem Spedding's Paper on your Brother Charles's Sonnets; which paper I did not think calculated to prepossess the Public in their Favour. Since that, two Volumes of old Jem's Essays have been reprinted from various Reviews; there was a nasty, spiteful, little Article about them in the Athenaeum;1 but, as I supposed the Athenaeum did not lie in asserting that three-fourths—or five-sixths—of the Book consisted of political, and statistical, Essays, I have not bought it. There is a curious Article in my last Athenaeum as to why the present Generation of Young Poets—followers of Swinburne and Rossetti—have been now for some while silent.21 fancy the reason is not far to seek, though the Athenaeum goes farther. I was surprized to find that I felt a little sense of refreshing coolness in old Rogers; but then, there were

November 1879 Stothard's lovely little Designs to recommend him. There is—or was —to be had a School Selection of old Wordsworth, which gave one all one wanted of him; I doubt not much better than pedantic Arnold's Work. My old and good Reader has left me to find his Fortune in London: and now I have his younger Brother—between fifteen and sixteen years old, with a piping Voice—to fill his Place. He makes odd blun­ ders too: especially when tired, as he is apt to become of a night. In reading how Lady Holland had become "abdominally protuberant of later years," he gave it—"abominably protuberant." This will make you grimly smile; perhaps even laugh. We are now reading an English Translation of Theophile Gautier's Travels in Spain—of which I never tire. Then we have a new Novel of Trollope's3—always delightful to me—in All the Year Round, and it is comical to hear my little man reading about Dukes of Omnium, Major Tifto, etc. I think you must like the Papers I send you about Mendelssohn and Wagner; our dear Mozart, I see, still lives in London. I never play Organ or Piano now: but I go over some of the old Immortals in my head, especially when wrapt up in the bed clothes. As I shall in an hour from this (10 P.M. ) after one Pipe: who am ever yours as of old E.FG. 1A critique of Reviews and Discussions, Literary, Political, and Historical, "not relating to Bacon," 1879 (Athenaeum, "Our Library Table," Oct. 25, 1879, p. 527). 2 In a review of New Poems by Edmund Gosse, the critic states that recent poets, influenced by "L'art pour l'art," had produced "poetry for poets" which failed to win popular support in England (Athenaeum, Nov. 15, 1879, pp. 625-26). 3 The Duke's Children.

To W. W. Goodwin Little Grange, Woodbridge Nov. 23/79 My dear Sir, Thank you very much for your Greek Grammar, forwarded to me by your English Publisher ("yours," I hope) Macmillan. I am really so Irish a Scholar (I sometimes ask if any Irish Scholar ever were, or were possible) that I will not venture any Judgment of my own: but I heard from some of my learned friends at our Cambridge that as

December 1879 your Greek Moods and Tenses were "the best Book on the subject," no doubt that your Grammar was equally good. This was told me when the Book first came out, and before it had been duly examined, and, I doubt not, put in use: if it were not in use before, for I see this is a new Edition. When I was looking into Aeschylus' Choephori two or three years ago (I could not make any hand of it in my way), I was haunted with a notion that Hermes himself, to whom Orestes so much appeals, might be understood under the Person of Pylades, accompanying Orestes as Pallas did Telemachus, providing for his Incognito a Recognition at the proper time, and, in the only few words he has to speak, recalling Orestes when he falters to what he is bidden to accomplish. I do not say, or think, that Aeschylus intended this: but I think he may not be wronged by such an understanding—"se non vero, etc." I am rather tickled with the irony (not like Aeschylus) of Orestes appealing to Hermes, whom he thinks safe underground, but who is at his very side. So far my Irish extends, and no further. I want to know how Mrs. Lowell is, and have taken the dangerous step of asking about her from himself. I had meant to ask Mr. Norton rather: but "volla qui est fait," as Madame de Sevigne says. I mean to write to Mr. Norton very soon, however. Mrs. Kemble tells me that Mrs. Wister tells her of the Thermometer "tumbling" from 80 to 20 degrees in twenty-four hours, I think. We have something of the same here: though I suppose not so violent a change as with you. Now, pray believe me Yours sincerely, E. FitzGerald

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Dec r 10, [1879] My dear Lady, Pray let me know how you have fared thus far through Winter— which began so early, and promises to continue so long. Even in Jersey Fred. Tennyson writes me it is all Snow and N.E. wind: and he says the North of Italy is blocked up with Snow. You may imagine that we are no better off in the East of England. How is it in London, and with yourself in Queen Anne's Mansions? I fancy that you walk

December 1879 up and down that ante-room of yours for a regular time, as I force myself to do on a Landing-place in this house when I cannot get out upon what I call my Quarter-deck: a walk along a hedge by the upper part of a field which "dominates" (as the phrase now goes) over my House and Garden. But I have for the last Fortnight had Lumbago, which makes it much easier to sit down than to get up again. However, the time goes, and I am surprised to find Sunday come round again. (Here is my funny little Reader come—to give me "All the Year Round" and Sam Slick.1) Friday.

I suppose I should have finished this Letter in the way it begins, but by this noon's post comes a note from my Brother-in-law, De Soyres, telling me that his wife Andalusia died yesterday.2 She had somewhile suffered with a weak Heart, and this -sudden and extreme cold paralysed what vitality it had. But yesterday I had posted her a Letter re-enclosing two Photographs of her Grand Children whom she was very fond and proud of; and that Letter is too late, you see. Now, none but Jane Wilkinson and E.F.G. remain of the many more that you remember, and always looked on with kindly regard. This news cuts my Letter shorter than it would have been; nevertheless pray let me know how you yourself are: and believe me yours Ever and truly, E.FG. I have had no thought of going to London yet: but I shall never go in future without paying a Visit to you, if you like it. I know not how Mrs. Edwards' Exhibition of her Husband's Pictures succeeds: I begged her to leave such a scheme alone; I cannot admire his Pictures now he is gone more than I did when he was here; but I hope that others will prove me to be a bad adviser. 1 The title character in three series of letters, including The Attache, or Sam Slick in England (1843-44) by T. C. Haliburton, a judge of the Supreme Court and satiric humorist of Nova Scotia. 2She died December 11; his surviving sister, Jane, lived in Italy.

December 1879

To W. A. Wright Woodhridge Dec. 26, [1879] My dear Wright,

I have been so long silent for no other reason than because I thought you were very busy with College Rentals, etc., in these bad days. Mrs. Thompson had told me that many Colleges would be troubled in that way this winter, and though she did not specify Trinity, I concluded you would partake of the trouble.1 So I would not write and so not seem to ask an answer. Otherwise, you know I have not much to prevent me. I have not wholly escaped the evil Influences, having had Lumbago, which still half-articulately intimates that it is not wholly gone. Here have I been ever since you last heard from me, going on in my old way; at my Desk, or in my Armchair while Daylight lasts, excepting three or four daily tramps up and down my Quarter-deck: and then my quaint Reader for two hours of a Night. We too have been nibbling at Dickens in some stray papers of his in "All the Year Round," and Mrs. Lirriper2 has made me—cry a little! I have not yet entrusted the Boy (who improves) with Bleak House and Dombey, which await us. I bless and rejoice in Dickens more and more. Read Forster's very good Life of him, and see what a mighty little Magician, and inspired Seer he was, if his Books do not sufficiently prove it to you. Arthur Charlesworth is come to me for his Christmas Holyday, and is now rolling the Billiard Balls about the Hall table. He is as good a young Fellow as I have ever known: and it is a pity his good Aunts are so implacable. But he never complains, and is very fond of Elizabeth. You know, without my telling you, that I wish you well out of your Illness. Also that, if you travel this way to Beccles, I shall be very glad if you Kke to stop here for a Fowl, Bottle of Port, and Cigar. But I certainly should advise you—or any body—once in the Rail Carriage, to go on to the end. My not having heard from you of your coming this way was one reason for my thinking that you were kept at Cam­ bridge by College Business. Mrs. Edwards has closed her Gallery of her Husband's works, which I strongly advised her not to undertake. She sold enough on the open­ ing Day to pay Expenses, I believe: I do not hear of much more Money coming in; which means, many more people going to look: and the notices I have seen in the Papers were too just, I thought, to

December 1879 attract many. This it is that, if so it be, will disappoint her; she did [not] even think of the money. She seems lost without him, and wishes herself lying by his side. If she would ever marry some other good fellow to take care of as she did of him, all might be well. But good Fellows such as he are not common, and I am always yours E.FG. I have just lost a Sister, the intense cold paralyzing a feeble Heart. P.S. A note from Carlyle's Niece tells me he is well, and able to drive out two or three hours daily. He had just finished Shakespeare, and was "busy" with Boswell's Hebrides. I suppose that Tennyson's Falcon3 turned out much what one would have expected, and had been better to have been played at home by some Christmas party of Worshippers. You say nothing of my Old Man of the Sea, "Glorious John," and like Mrs. John Thomas I know I never shall enjoy that. But I would have you know that, for the first time in my Life, after several Trials, I at last appear in a Magazine: "Temple Bar" for January: in the shape of quite a pleasant little Paper on Percival Stockdale,4 which I turned up out of a Box and sent to Pollock, who got it in—and "There you are!" If the Magazine were out, it would just do for you as you are, that is, for about fifteen minutes. I think you will repent of having set me awriting. 1 See

letter to Wright, Sept. 4 , n.l. house proprietor in "Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings" and "Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy," Christmas Stories, Dec., 1863 and 1864, respectively. 3 A one-act dramatization of a story by Boccaccio which opened December 18 and ran for nine weeks. 4 "Percival Stockdale and Baldock Black Horse," one of EFG's entertaining biographical sketches (Temple Bar, Jan., 1880, pp. 21-28; FitzGerald Variorum Edition, VII,38-51). 2 Rooming

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Monday [December 29,1879] My dear Wright, I have nothing, as you know, to say about the poor Lady, only to be glad she suffers no pain but Weakness. If one could but anticipate any such Euthanasy oneself!

December 1879 I sent you an Academy which you may not have seen—nor have I read. I conclude that you have seen Athenaeum, by what you say of its announcement of Spedding's Article. If you have not that, I will send it next post. Also, by way of amusing you a very little, Temple Bar, which may have something of the light kind better than Stockdale: to which you need not bring "the whole force of your Understanding," as Dr. Parr said when had had to answer Hurd or some other Doctor. My Hurticle is just one of the innumerable in these light literature days; but I thought it might do as well as others, and wanted the Story part printed at no expense to myself. When you have done with it, would you post it to Miss Crabbe 11, Clifton Hill Brighton to whom I send all my performances. I was really ashamed to take £4.4 which Bentley sent me for such a thing, which was printed for my convenience; but Pollock told me to do as others did (Lady Pollock among others, I suppose) and there is an end. I know there has been some discontent at Forster's Dickens; Pollock called it, in his witty way, "Bi-fosterate of Dickens"—but I thought it from the first a loyal, truthful, and sufficient Book. I have the new Letters:1 but keep them till my Mudie Box be exhausted. My good Lad, Arthur, left me this morning: and I must write an answer to a Letter from Cowell telling him and Elizabeth what a very good Lad I find him still—devoted to his Mother, Brothers and Sisters, of whom he is almost the support. But this will positively only harden the "Implacable." I hope I do not malign one so good in so many respects: as I told you, she resents for her Sister, not for herself. Do exactly as you like about stopping here on your way elsewhere; I can only say that I shall be glad to see you. The weather, as you know thirty miles off, is better: almost like a late September Day; and 1 am always yours E.FG. I can't find Temple Bar. 1 The Letters of Charles Dickens, Mary Dickens and Georgina Hogarth, eds., 2 vols., 1880. John Forster's biography, 1872-74, is composed largely of letters.

January 1880

To Horace Basham Woodhridge Jan. 2/80 Dear Horace,

I enclose you an order for £,1.6: which I think will carry Fisher,1 at 2s. per week, from Jan. 1 to April 1. I was sorry you could not come here in Xmas week, and am Sincerely yours, E.FG. 1 James

Fisher of Aldeburgh, whom EFG had added to his list of pensioners a year before.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Jan. 2/80 My dear Wright,

I found Temple Bar a day or two after I last wrote, but sent it off to Miss Crabbe, thinking it might light upon you unseasonably. As you still ask for it, I send you my customary monthly Copy (the former was a Publisher's Courtesy) which you can bring, or send, or keep as you see good. I can get another, which I only want for some Friends here who are interested in the Novel part of it, and neither know, nor would care, for Percival [ Stockdale]. But I here enclose something better than T. B. I had written to old Spedding telling him I had heard of the Edinburgh,1 etc., and that his Book of Essays would be too wise for me; and that I thought his Charles Tennyson Essay was not best calculated, etc., in short, a pleas­ ant New Year's Letter, with I knew he would like better than Compli­ ments, even if sincere. The Rent in his Reply did not begin by way of tearing up—but from blunder in opening the Kiver. Send it on to your Master, if you think he would like to see it. If you want any Books or Papers I have, let me know: and believe me yours always E.FG. You know I want nothing said about Sir Percival; you will be slightly pleased with so slight a thing—Et voila tout on that score. But when one thinks of such a Life as old Spedding's spent in furnishing "data"

January 1880 for all men to judge of Bacon's Character!—"data" which leave them with a rather poor estimation of it, to say the least—only, not quite so bad as Macaulay's. I do not think Swillburne will fall foul of you, who pretend to no Aesthetic, or Mill-stone-seeing, Theories about William: but give "data" for all men to see as they please—without spending a Life on doing so. Anyhow, whatever S. and F. say, do not be irritated to reply. Let Mossop kick Barry, etc.2 1 A review of Spedding's Letters and Life of Bacon, 1861-74, and Life and Times of Bacon, 1878. After stating that the delay in reviewing the volumes was a tribute to their merits, the writer subjected features of the works to blunt, adverse criticism (Edinburgh Review, Oct., 1879). 2 "S and F," Swinburne and F. J. Furnivall, who had been engaged in an acrimonious controversy on Shakespearian criticism since 1875. EFG likens their strife to a bitter "War of the Theaters" carried on by Henry Mossop and Spranger Barry in Dublin, 1760-67. (See letter to W. H. Thompson, [Feb., 1881], n.l.)

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Jan. 8/80 My dear Mrs Kemble,

I think sufficient time has elapsed since my last letter to justify my writing you another, which, you know, means calling on you to reply. When last you wrote, you were all in Flannel; pray let me hear you now are. Certainly, we are better off in weather than a month ago: but I fancy these Fogs must have been dismal enough in London. A Letter which I have this morning from a Niece in Florence tells me they have had "London Fog" (she says) for a Fortnight there. She says, that my sister Jane (your old Friend) is fairly well in health, but very low in Spirits after that other Sister's Death. I will [not] say of myself that I have weathered away what Rheumatism and Lumbago I had; nearly so, however; and tramp about my Garden and Hedgerow as usual. And so I clear off Family scores on my side. Pray let me know, when you tell of yourself, how Mrs. Leigh and those on the other side of the Atlantic fare. Poor Mrs. Edwards, I doubt, is disappointed with her Husband's Gallery: not because of its only just repaying its expenses, except in so far as that implies that but few have been to see it. She says she feels as if she had nothing to live for, now that "her poor Old Dear"

January 1880 is gone. One fine day she went down to Woking where he lies, and— she did not wish to come back. It was all solitary, and the grass begin­ ning to spring, and a Blackbird or two singing. She ought, I think, to have left London, as her Doctor told her, for a total change of Scene; but she may know best, being a very clever, as well as devoted little Woman. Well—you saw "The Falcon"? Athenaeum and Academy reported of it much as I expected. One of them said the Story had been drama­ tised before: I wonder why. What reads lightly and gracefully in Boccaccio's Prose, would surely not do well when drawn out into dramatic Detail: two People reconciled to Love over a roasted Hawk; about as unsavoury a Bird to eat as an Owl, I believe. No doubt there was a Chicken substitute at St. James', but one had to believe it to be Hawk;1 and, anyhow, I have always heard that it is very difficult to eat, and talk, on the Stage—though people seem to manage it easily enough in real Life. By way of a Christmas Card I sent Carlyle's Niece a Postage one, directed to myself, on the back of which she might [write] a few words as to how he and herself had weathered the late Cold. She replied that he was well: had not relinquished his daily Drives: and was (when she wrote) reading Shakespeare and Boswell's Hebrides. The mention of him reminds me of your saying—or writing—that you felt shy of "intruding" yourself upon him by a Visit. My dear Mrs. Kemble, this is certainly a mistake (wilful?) of yours; he may have too many ordinary Visitors; but I am quite sure that he would be gratified at your taking the trouble to go and see him. Pray try, weather and flannel permitting. I find some good Stuff in Bagehot's Essays, in spite of his name, which is simply "Bagot,"2 as men call it. Also, I find Hayward's Select Essays so agreeable that I suppose they are very superficial. At night comes my quaint little Reader with Chambers' Journal, and All the Year Round—the latter with one of Trollope's Stories—always delightful to me, and (I am told) very superficial indeed, as compared to George Eliot, whom I cannot relish at all. Thus much has come easily to my pen this day, and run on, you see, to the end of a second Sheet. So I will "shut up," as young Ladies now say; but am always and sincerely yours E.FG. 1

EFG summarizes the action of Tennyson's play neatly and completely. Bagehot (he pronounced it Ba'jut), editor of the Economist news-

2Walter

January 1880 paper, had died in 1877. EFG refers to his Literary Studies, 1879. Abraham Hayward, also mentioned, translator of Goethe's Faust and contributor to leading periodicals on diverse subjects. His Selected Essays were published in 1878.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Saturday [January 10, 1880] My dear Wright, Howe duly went to yesterday's 4/56 (I think) P.M. Down Train with your umbrella; looked along all the Line of Carriages; but seeing nothing of you, brought Umbrella back with him. I was half minded to send it to Beccles today: but on the whole have thought best to wait your commands. I hope no Cold or other Illness, prevented you from accomplishing your Journey as you proposed. I post you an Academy, which I hope will not seem too unseason­ able. If it be so, you know it is easily put away. Directly after you left me, I found Munro in the very Drawer which I had first looked into, and almost obvious to the Eye. He has "wind slowly," not winds1—and I am yours E.FG. 1 Thomas Gray's "Elegy, Written in a Country Churchyard" was one of the poems translated into Latin by H.A.J. Munro and distributed privately.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Wednesday [January 14, 1880] My dear Wright, I could all but swear that your Note said Thursday, not Tuesday, for the Day of your return through Woodbridge; I read it more than once to make sure of the Day, and of the Hour 8/10 pencilled above: and was duly prepared to send Howe down with the fatal Umbrella on that Day and at that Hour. But I am Paddy and more likely to blunder than you; and therefore, un-Paddy-like, I would not swear.

January 1880 I can swear however that Howe took that Umbrella directed by myself to you at Jerusalem1 down to the 10 A.M. Train thither this morning. So I hope all will come right. So assured was I of Thursday, that on Tuesday I sent you an Athenaeum which I do not want again. You, on your part, forgot to take Dodsley's Gray2 with you. I know not if you had left Beccles before my Letter told you that I had found Munro as soon as you left, and that he reads "lowing herd wind." And I am yours E.FG. Our Lady Rendlesham died rather suddenly last night. I am sorry: for she was a sensible and good Woman, I believe. 1

Wright had gone to London for a meeting of the Old Testament Revision "company." 2 Robert Dodsley, publisher of Gray's "Elegy," 1751.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Jan. 31/80 February 1, 1880 My dear Wright, I don't know what I shall make of this here Letter, which I begin with a Steel Pen and one Composite Candle at 7/45 P.M. waiting for my Boy to come and read. He eat such a Quantity between the Acts that he became stupefied and inarticulate; so that I was at last obliged to tell him that he was now old enoug"h to cease being a Pig and since then we do better. He has good Wits—of the practical sort, I think: no Humour at all, so far as I have seen; so that I have Dickens (Dombey) served out to me as by machinery. But Quand on n'a pas ce qu'on aime, il faut aimer ce qu'on a. I only yesterday returned from a week's Visit to Lowestoft— The Pig appears. February 1, 9.45 P.M. (being the same Night on which what precedes was written: but I did not know till told by my learned Pig after Sup­ per) He is gone, after reading to me that delightful account of Uncle Sol and Florence, and Miss Nipper, and the Wooden Midshipman. Bless Dickens, say I—whose Letters I have just half read at Lowestoft:

February 1880 which, so far, add little else to Forster, except further showing what a wonderful Good Fellow, as well as Mighty Magician he was. So I will finish my Steel Engraving on this first Sunday of the Five in this singular February. A Letter from Professor Goodwin tells me that Lowell's Wife is only very slowly recovering Mind as well as Body after her Fever. I found so laudatory a Notice of Goodwin's Greek Grammar in yesterday's Academy that I posted it to him at once. He contrasts Macmillan's handsome treatment of him as compared to his American Dealings with English Authors. Cowell called here the Day I was going to Lowestoft a week ago: but in time for three or four hours' Chat, and a bit of BufHing.1 Do you know what "Stub Iron" is? (I do) and what "Heel-taps" derives from: which Mrs. Kemble asks, and I cannot tell her: but am yours always E.FG. 1

Elsewhere spelled boeufling and, usually, baufling.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] Monday, Feb. 2, [1880]

Your Note reaches me through Edmund K., who lives at Ivy House, not in Marine Parade. I dare not look over last night's scrawl; neither need you. If you choose to call here on your way back to Cambridge, you will find me as before, and have only to please yourself. As to Thackeray—I only knew him in the October Term of 1829, and always fancy that was his Freshman's year: though at what term he came up I cannot say. Perhaps in October '28? It was not I who told Trollope that WMT went up to Cambridge in 18291—I only know that then it was I first knew him, and have always fancied him in his Freshmanhood. I first met him at his former Tutor's, with whom he had travelled a little before coming to Cambridge, and who was Editor of that same "Gownsman" which I gave you—one "Williams,"2 who also just got me through the Poll in 1829-30; and who afterwards took orders and died some twenty years ago or more. He had been much with Athanasius Gasker: and from him WMT imbibed so great an interest in that Philosopher. [No signature]

Febraary 1880 1 Thackeray matriculated in February, 1829, but attended the University for one year only. 2 William Williams, who tutored EFG in preparation for the examinations for his degree, had edited The Snob, succeeded by The Gownsman, both undergrad­ uate weeklies. For Athanasius Gasker, also mentioned, see letter to Thackeray, Nov. 29, 1838, n.4.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Feb r 3/80 Mij dear Lady,

I do not think it is a full month since I last taxed you for some account of yourself: but we have had hard weather, you know, ever since: your days have been very dark in London, I am told, and as we have all been wheezing under them, down here, I want to know how you stand it all. I only hope my MS is not very bad; for I am writing by Candle, before my Reader comes. He eat such a Quantity of Cheese and Cake between the Acts that he could scarce even see to read at all after; so I had to remind him that, though he was not quite sixteen, he had much exceeded the years of a Pig. Since which we get on better. I did not at all like to have my Dombey spoiled; especially Captain Cuttle, God bless him, and his Creator, now lying in West­ minster Abbey. The intended Pathos is, as usual, missed: but just turn to little Dombey's Funeral, where the Acrobat in the Street suspends his performance till the Funeral has passed, and his Wife wonders if the little Acrobat in her Arms will so far outlive the little Boy in the Hearse as to wear a Ribbon through his hair, following his Father's Calling. It is in such Side-touches, you know, that Dickens is inspired to Create like a little God Almighty. I have read half his lately pub­ lished letters, which, I think, add little to Forster's Account, unless in the way of showing what a good Fellow Dickens was. Surely it does not seem that his Family were not fond of him, as you supposed? I have been to Lowestoft for a week to see my capital Nephew, Edmund Kerrich, before he goes to join his Regiment in Ireland. I wish you could see him make his little (six years old) put him through his Drill. That is worthy of Dickens: and I am always yours sincerely— and I do hope not just now very illegibly— Littlegrange

February 1880

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge Feb r 6/80 My dear Frederick, Let me have a few—ever so few—lines to tell me how you are. No unmeaning formula after such a Winter—which is not yet done— and so much Sickness, Death, and general Discomfort abroad. I have not quite escaped, and may not perhaps quite yet, having a Cold which keeps me indoors more than is my wont. Mrs. Kemble writes me that the Fog in London gave her a sense of Suffocation, and an­ other Friend tells of having lost twenty Friends or Acquaintances in the course of last month. So, I say, one does not ask about one's own without reason. Mrs. K. tells me the winter has been unusually mild in North America; as also, she hears, at the—North Pole. A niece of mine living [in] Florence wrote me three weeks ago that there had been a "London Fog" for a Fortnight. I suppose that your Brother Charles's Book is in train: some short preliminary Verses (I think) by Alfred: some Memoir by Hallam: Old Jem's Critique, and then, The Sonnets. I think the whole Affair may be overdone. If I were with you, I would try and persuade you to retrench, and select from your own Poems; but I know you would not, though you admit how salutary such a process is even with some of the best Poets. You could, and should, leave a Volume to last like your Brothers'—the only Volumes of Verse of these times that will last, as I believe. I never write to Alfred now, because of his and Hallam's always having left it to Mrs. A. to answer me: and I do not like putting her to that trouble. Dombey is being read to me of a night; not among the wonderful Creator's best, but alive with wonderful things. His lately published Letters add little to those in Forster's Book, except in proving more and more what a good Fellow and Friend—and, I be­ lieve, Father—he was. Requiescat in Westminster Abbey, where all Men may salute his Tomb! Ever yours (now do write a line) E.FG.

February 1880

To Charles Keene1 Woodbridge Feb r 8/80 My dear Keene, I send you three very fine Drawings: two of Baldock and its Mill: and one of another Mill in Bedfordshire (Newton, I think—Cowper s Country) which is shown to be an Inn, like Baldock Horse, by some Sign which I cannot now make out. I remember myself and [Browne] getting a Pike cooked there which he had fished out of the Ouse.2 Observe what I suppose to be the "Jossing-block" for People to mount their horses from: especially for Women when they rode Pillion. These Jossing blocks were however very common in my young Days, long after Pillions were gone; and the word "Joss! Joss!" is used by Chaucer to make a horse sidle to the wall. I remember a bit of what you call "The Deserter's Song" quoted in some old Blackwood; as also that fine Stanza beginning This changeable World to our Joys is unjust Its Pleasures are fleeting, so down with your Dust. As to Sea Songs, Sketky3 should have known one I used to hear at Lowestoft beginning We are the Boys who fear no noise When thundring Cannon roar O, We go to Sea for the Yellow Boys, And spend them all ashore O. And "The Fatal Ramilies" of which I have part of a Version given me by my old Boatman here—now dead—and I have never been on the River since. Yours sincerely E.FG. Where is my Scrap of Drawing? 1

See Biographical Profile. colors, not drawings. The pictures bear EFG's identification: "Baldock from the Black Horse Meadows"; "Baldock Black Horse [Inn], 1857"; "Newton Old Mill, near Turvey, Beds. About 1840, I suppose." A note on the reverse of the third picture gives the exact date, "Friday, July 7, 1837." EFG often sketched while accompanying his sportsman friend, W. K. Browne of Bedford, when the latter fished. The mill picture was the product of one such outing. The water colors, the letter to Keene, and the "Percival Stockdale and Baldock 2 Water

February 1880 Black Horse" pages from the January Temple Bar compose an attractive volume in the Syracuse University Library. EFG took pains with detail and color in the Newton Mill picture. Penciled silhouettes of portions of trees and shrubs in that of the Black Horse Inn remain uncolored. 3John C. Schetky (1778-1874), marine painter to George IV, William IV, and Queen Victoria; for many years professor of drawing at the Royal Naval Academy, Portsmouth. He was also an accomplished musician and vocalist.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Feb r 12/80 My dear Mrs. Kemble: A week ago I had a somewhat poor account of Donne from Edith D. —that he had less than his usually little Appetite, and could not sleep without Chloral. This Account I at first thought of sending to you: but then I thought you would soon be back in London to hear [of] him yourself; so I sent it to his great friend Merivale, who, I thought, must have less means of hearing about him at Ely. I enclose you this Dean's letter: which you will find worth the trouble of decyphering, as all this Dean's are. And you will see there is a word for you which you will have to interpret for me. What is the promised work he is looking for so eagerly?1 Your Records he "devoured" a Year ago, as a letter of his then told me; and I suppose that his other word about the number of your Father's house refers to something in those Records. I am not surprised at such an Historian reading your Records: but I was sur­ prised to find him reading Charles Mathews' Memoir,2 as you will see he has been doing. I told him I had been reading it: but then that is all in my line. Have you? No, I think: nor I, by the way, quite half, and that in Vol. ii.—where is really a remarkable account of his getting into Managerial Debt, and its very grave consequences. I hear that Mr. Lowell is coming Ambassador to England, after a very terrible trial in nursing (as he did) his Wife: who is only very slowly recovering Mind as well as Body. I believe I wrote all this to you before, as also that I am ever yours E.FG. I cannot remember Pangloss in Candide: only a Pedant Optimist, I think, which became the soubriquet of Maupertuis' Akakia Opti­ mism; but I have not the book, and do not want to have it.

February 1880 1 2

Records of a Later Life, 2 vols., 1882. The Life of Charles James Mathews, Charles Dickens, ed., 2 vols., 1879.

To Mrs. Tennyson Woodbridge Friday [February 13,1880] My dear Mrs. Tennyson, I wish you to believe (what I have before said, I am sure) that I do not write to Farringford simply because my doing so puts you to the trouble of answering. So, now your very kind Letter is come of its own accord, I do not lose half an hour, I assure you, in answering it. Oh, I could often write, but for the reason I give you above. Of Alfred I hear, as you may guess, in Athenaeum or Academy, which are the only Papers I see; and he and you know, I hope, that I am glad to hear of all that goes well with him, in all ways. A Letter from dear old Frederick was laid on my table along with yours. He has had (as I wrote him I had also) some Lumbago, and some Bron­ chial Affection; but was better, if not well, and with great Faith in some magnetic Bandage which was to prevent his being "crucified" (he says) for the remainder of Winter. You know how Londoners have been plagued with Fogs, which Mrs. Kemble says half suffocated her; and even our dull Woodbridge, which had little but good Air to recommend it, has been darkened in the same way; though I suppose not so bad, inasmuch as we have been able to read by Day without Gas or Candle. It seems odd to me that in Norfolk—generally so much colder than here—there have been no Fogs; and Trinity's Master wrote me that he had found the Air at Scarboro quite genial—as it has been at the North Pole, I was told. A Niece at Florence wrote me they had "London Fog" for a Fortnight, some weeks ago. I should not wonder if brave old Lincolnshire has not been more genial than Wright, for once in a way. Dear old Spedding, I am sure, delights in his labour about Charles's Sonnets; and I, among many more, shall hail the result. Annie Thack­ eray is about to bring another into the World, Mrs. Kemble says—who also says that the First born is a wonderful Beauty indeed. And I am, with sincere thanks for your Letter, yours, and all yours, Sincerely, E.FG.

February 1880

To C. Ε. Norton Woodbridge, Feb r 22/80 My dear Norton, I somehow guessed that you had been under some domestic trou­ ble; yes, and about your Mother, whose decline you had before told me of. However, you know that I never wish you to write to me—you a busy to me an idle man—unless "quite agreeable" as we say here­ about. I wrote to Mr. Lowell, in October, I think: half afraid lest I should intrude upon a great Sorrow with him; but I should not have done so had not his own Letter of some six weeks before given me hope that all was mending with him. He has not answered me: which, as in your case, I quite understand: am even glad that he feels he is not bound to answer. But Professor Goodwin, to whom I wrote thanks for his Greek Grammar, told me in reply that Mrs. Lowell was mend­ ing very slowly still; and how bravely her husband had watched her all through her Illness. I need not say that I trust he may be rewarded by her complete Recovery. Thank you very much for Hawthorne's Photo, which exactly fulfils my idea of him. Mr. James' "Monograph" 1 as they now call it, did not: I mean, it was not personal enough: better than too much, I dare say: and probably the Series he wrote for is meant much more for the Writer, than the Man; but I wanted more of so remarkable a Man. Trollope's Thackeray seemed to me wanting in the same way to those who knew as little of WMT as I of Hawthorne. You must send me your own Photo. I cannot promise to requite you with mine, for I can find no copy of the only one that was ever made of me—seven or eight years ago, for a few very old Friends who claimed of me as good as they had given. And for the Ipswich Artist, who did mine, died, I am told, some months ago: his "Negatives" all lost, I suppose: himself a Negative—to be reproduced hereafter, how­ ever, they say. Carlyle had weather'd our cold Winter well when I heard from his now married Niece, a little after Xmas. He had driven out daily through all the cold, and was again reading Shakespeare, as he was the winter before this. You read of what a Winter it has been even in the Southern parts of Europe: worse than in the Northern, I believe; indeed unusually genial about the North Pole. So Mrs. Kemble wrote me, who reports from her Daughter that your part of America has been "highly favoured," as our old Ladies used to say when the weather held up for some little Excursion.

February 1880

Tennyson's Play I have not seen, nor have I heard much about it. I wonder he did not see that his Story was one that does well lightly touched in Boccaccio's Prose, but which should not be drawn into Dramatic Action—two Lovers reconciled over a roasted Falcon, which, I believe is almost as bad as an Owl. I do not hear if the Play continues on the Stage. Which leads me to the great Event of the Day: viz that I—far superior Dramatist of other People's Thoughts!—have printed the first half of my two Oedipuses,2 and will send it to you when a Copy has been stitched. I should indeed have waited till it might accompany this Letter; but I should have somewhat to say about it, and I wished to write of other matters first, of which here is already a letter full, you see. I should probably have printed it for myself, because I can only approximately finish from Type, in which, you know, one sees one's face reflected otherwise than in MS. But I have perhaps printed the sooner because of your having troubled yourself to ask for it more than once. I believe you will like it quite as much as it deserves— and more: so pray do not write to say so. Such is my stipulation with all to whom I send any of my Works (!) and I engage to act likewise to those who send me theirs—otherwise, the thing is apt to become a burden and a bore. And please do not let a word of it, now or here­ after, cross the Atlantic, where my laying hands on the sacred Ark of Greek Tragedy is considered more profane than by you. I think I will send a Copy to Professor Goodwin who tolerated what I did before, and encouraged me to do the like again. I shall not give one to anyone in England unless it be to Mrs. Kemble, whom I can quite trust. I cannot yet get the 2nd Part (Coloneus) to fit as I wish to the first: finding (what I never doubted) that nothing is less true than Goethe's saying that these two Plays and Antigone must be read in Sequence, as a Trilogy. Enough now from yours very sincerely Littlegrange 1 Henry

James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, English Men of Letters, 1879. Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles, adapted and printed privately as "Oedipus in Thebes," Part I of The Downfall and Death of King Oedipus. 2

February 1880

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Feb. 23, [1880] My dear Wright, I have been to London for two days: perhaps you were in Jerusalem at the same time. I found the poor Missis1 better in looks, and perhaps in Spirits, though she says her Spirit is gone. She busies herself with taking oif Copies of some Copperplate Etchings he left: she works at them some hours a day, rolling a Press like a mangle: and it will take her, she says, some four months of that work before she has done. C. Keene came in on Friday Evening and he and I sat drinking Whiskey till 11. I put up at the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, a very cheerful, clean, well-ordered, and even quiet Quarters. I visited Mrs. Kemble every day, or Night rather: and also my poor dear Donne, who is decidedly feebler than I saw him in October. The only Theatre I looked into was that of the Aquarium,2 on my way from Mrs. Kemble: "As You Like It" being played by Housemaids and Cooks, it seemed to me; a wonder to me, who yet had been apprized of what Shakespeare had fallen to. So that when some Hunting-horns began, and some men to sing, "What shall he have that killed the Deer?" to the good old Tune, I was fairly overset by the reaction from detestable, and waited for no more. I saw some stuff in the Academy about the want of Aesthetics in the Clarendon Press notes: a pretty mess the Aesthetics make of it: and I hope you will stick to the Incontrovertible. You see that I send you a slip to be stuck on the last page of my Crabbe:3 a pendant to Richard's Vision, the Children's game. Please to give a Copy to all who have the Book, and believe me yours always E.FG. 1

Mrs. Edwards. Imperial Theatre in Tothill Street; opened in 1876 as The Royal Aquar­ ium and Winter Garden. 3 Printed copies of the ten closing lines of "Smugglers and Poachers"; included in C. E. Norton letter, Dec. 22, 1876. 2 The

February 1880

To Anne Thackeray Ritchie Woodbridge Feb r 24/80 Dear Mrs. Ritchie, I am not surprized at your remembering kindly one of your Father's old Friends; but I must thank you sincerely for writing to him at such a time. I enclose a Card directed to myself which perhaps Mr. Ritchie will enclose with the simple old words "All's Well" when the time comes for saying them.1 You need not doubt that I shall be glad of the two words on the "Return Card." Your Father's Letter recalled all Albion Street to me; your Grand­ father sitting with a sort of Apron over his knees and some sort of Spaniel Dog on that. I do not think I was ever asked to dine there; I do not think Grandmamma much wished to see me. I suppose it was this year in which your Father made me some Drawings in a Copy of Undine I had: or in the year after—or the year after still, when I know he was there because of the famous "Library of Useless Knowledge" then coming out.2 I suppose you have heard him talk of it: he once said that it was a test of any Reader's Sense of Humour. Many were the Illustrations he made of it, and scarce a phrase but he repeated as we walked along London Streets. "Voila bien long temps de 5a." I am glad of what you say of Mrs. Kemble: a right royally noble woman. I had not seen her for over twenty years till October, when she was sent [for] after her Sister's Death, and wished once more to see an old friend of herself and her Family. "Paper's up!" Adieu; Let All end well and be All's Well: and be­ lieve me Yours sincerely E.FG. 1 To 2 See

announce the birth of her son, William. letter to Thackeray, Nov. 29, 1838.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge March 1, [1880] My dear Lady, I am something like my good old friend Bernard Barton, who would begin—and end—a letter to some one who had just gone away from

March 1880 his house. I should not mind that, only you will persist in answering what calls for no answer. But the enclosed came here To-day, and as I might mislay it if I waited for my average time of writing to you, I enclose it to you now. It shows, at any rate, that I do not neglect your Queries; nor does he to whom I refer what I cannot answer myself. This Wright edits certain Shakespeare Plays for Macmillan: very well, I fancy, so far as Notes go; simply explaining what needs expla­ nation for young Readers, and eschewing all aesthetic (now, don't say you don't know what "aesthetic" means, etc.) aesthetic (detestable word) observation. With this the Swinburnes, Furnivails, Athenaeums, etc., find fault: and a pretty hand they make of it when they try that tack. It is safest surely to give people all the Data you can for forming a Judgment, and then leave them to form it by themselves. You see that I enclose you the fine lines which I believe I repeated to you, and which I wish you to paste on the last page of my Crabbe, so as to be a pendant to Richard's last look at the Children and their play. I know not how I came to leave it out when first printing: for certainly the two passages had for many years run together in my Memory. Adieu, Madame: non pas pour toujours, j'espere; pas meme pour long temps. Cependant, ne vous genez pas, je vous prie, en repondant a une lettre qui ne vaut—qui ne reclame pas meme—aucune reponse: tandis que vous me croyez votre tres devoue Edouard de Petitgrange.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge March 4, 1880 My dear Norton, Herewith you will receive, I suppose, Part 1 of Oedipus,1 which I found on my return here after a week's absence. I really hope you will like it, after taking the trouble more than once to ask for it: only (according to my laudable rule of Give or Take in such cases) say no more of it to me than to point out anything amendable: for which, you see, I leave a wide margin, for my own behoof as well as my reader's. And again I will say that I wish you would keep it wholly to yourself: and, above all, not let a word about [it] cross the Atlantic.

March 1880 I will not send a Copy even to Professor Goodwin, to whom you can show yours, if he should happen to mention the subject; nor will I send one to Mrs. Kemble, the only other whom I had thought of. In short, you, my dear Sir, are the only Depository of this precious Document, which I would have you keep as though it were very precious indeed. You will see at once that it is not even a Paraphrase, but an Adapta­ tion, of the Original: not as more adapted to an Athenian Audience 400 years B.C. but to a merely English Reader 1800 years A.D. Some dropt stitches in the Story, not considered by the old Genius of those days, I have, I think, "taken up," as any little Dramatist of these Days can do: though the fundamental absurdity of the Plot (equal to Tom Jones according to Coleridge!) remains; namely, that Oedipus, after so many years reigning in Thebes as to have a Family about him, should apparently never have heard of Laius' murder till the Play begins. One acceptable thing I have done, I think, omitting very much rhetorical fuss about the poor man's Fatality, which I leave for the Action itself to discover; as also a good deal of that rhetorical Scolding, which, I think, becomes tiresome even in its Greek: as the Scene be­ tween Oedipus and Creon after Tiresias: and equally unreasonable. The Choruses which I believe are thought fine by Scholars, I have left to old Potter2 to supply, as I was hopeless of making anything of them; pasting, you see, his "Finale" over that which I had tried. I believe that I must leave Part II for the present, being rather wearied with the present stupendous Effort, at Aetat. 71. If I live another year, and am still free from the Jlls incident to my Time, I will make an end of it, and of all my Doings in that way. I seem to make a great fuss about this little matter; but am Yours sincerely E.FG. I saw none of the Great Folks in London where I was for three days: Tennyson about to bring out another Play, I believe. O, I must enclose you some copies of a Note to be pasted into the last page of my Crabbe: a sort of pendant picture to Richard's. "Oedipus in Thebes." Potter (1721-1804), Sophocles, and Euripides. 1

2Robert

translator

of

the

tragedies

of

Aeschylus,

March 1880

To Anna Biddell Woodbridge March 13, [1880] My dear Miss Biddell, Though you will not get this Letter till Monday, it is written not on Sunday, but on Saturday night, my Reader being just gone, and myself about to smoke my one pipe before Bedtime. As Tuesday next (your only spare day in the week) is also your Market day, I will defer my visit to your Exhibition till the week after, when I will meet you at the Gallery1 any day you choose to appoint. I wish I had a Vote for West Suffolk that I might give it to your Brother William,2 for whom I have a very great respect. If Herman should stand for East Suffolk I will do the same for him—but—I doubt I cannot wait for another Election! I really did not know that this one was so near at hand till my Reader informed me it was to be—in April, he says. When you next come over here you will see a Chalk drawing of my Mother by Sir Thomas Lawrence—the only truthful one ever made of her—some seventy years ago, I suppose—and (as we used to say) also rather like the Duke of Wellington. I am got into a bad way of writing lately3—not from negligence, I assure you, which I do not think allowable unless one is in a hurry. And here is an ugly smear which I beg you to excuse. Yours always E. Littlegrange Yes: you gave that name to my house, and I like it much better than my own. 1 At

Ipswich, where Anna Biddell lived. William Biddell of Lavenham was elected to Parliament. 3 A strange comment, for the script is more legible than that in many other letters. 2

March 1880

To Charles Keene (Fragment) [Woodbridge] Friday [March, 1880] My dear Keene,

. . . Beckford's Hunting1 is an old friend of mine: excellently written; such a relief (like Wesley and the religious men) to the Essayist style of the time. Do not fail to read the capital Squire's Letter in recom­ mendation of a Stableman, dated from Great Addington, Northants, 1734: of which some little is omitted after Edition I; which edition has also a Letter from Beckford's Huntsman about a wicked "Daufter," wholly omitted. This first Edition is a pretty small 4t0 1781, with a Frontispiece by Cipriani!2 . . . If you come down this Spring, but not before May, I will show you some of these things in a Book I have, which I might call "Half Hours with the Worst Authors,"3 and very fine things by them. It would be the very best Book of the sort ever published, if published; but no one would think so but myself, and perhaps you, and half a dozen more. If my Eyes hold out I will copy a delightful bit by way of return for your Ballad. 1

Thoughts on Hunting, a series of letters, by Peter Beckford, 1781. Cipriani (1727-85), a native of Florence who lived in England the last 30 years of his life; a charter member of the Royal Academy. 3 A commonplace book, later presented to Trinity College Library by Aldis Wright with the title, "Half Hours with Obscure Authors." 2Giovanni

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Saturday [March 20, 1880] My dear Wright,

I doubt that my copy of Eikon1 wants a Frontispiece; such as it is, I send it to you to do as you will with. Walpole, I find, I had given to Le Grand Capitaine Brohoke, who thought it must be "rare" because of only some 250 copies printed, but I saw another Copy advertized in one of my second hand farragos at much the same price as the one I bought: some 2.6, I think. There is very little in the Book: some

March 1880 names of obscure People alluded to by Pope, along with several one knows of, Lady Mary, Lord Hervey, etc. If I can light on that other Copy in any Catalogue not yet gone to Pot, I will write for it. Brooke lent me a short Book on Waterloo by one Kennedy2 who was there, and who divided the Battle for me into five Acts, which I began to comprehend. But Ie Capitaine is to come one day and explain all to me. I was rather gratified to find that he had to order out a low chair by way of "Jossing-block" to mount his black Charger from. He said he had sprained his knee: I cannot help hoping that there was some of the stiffness of Age as in the rest of us Septuagenaries. If you come this way, and stop here on your road (as I hope you will if you like), we will have him over. In case you like to stay here, running over to Beccles daily for a few hours, instead of vice versa, I can give you Bed as well as Board, and welcome both. I am touched by the Sidney Master's kind words of remembrance. As to the Americans you met, if I were ten years younger I should really be disquieted by such over-estimation* as must make me ridicu­ lous here. It is very odd. I had supposed that they looked with a kind of prepossession in favour of anything from the old Country: but Mrs. Kemble told me they were got over that now. She says they are of a subtler intellect than English (perhaps in the German style), and that they all have "mad eyes." I have only heard of Lowell that he has nursed his Wife night and day : which Mrs. K. also says is usual with American husbands. But I wish—well, I think you know what I mean. I did not know your superscription on your letter: smaller MS than usual. I thought it was Mrs. Thompson's. Did you ask Mr. Munro to turn those lines into Latin Hexameter? No; but I fancy I see them as in a glass. There seem to me some fine things in Milton's Latin Verses "Ad Patrem," written I suppose before leaving College (but I have no notes in my Edition); "Immortale Melos, et inenarrabile carmen," which, I suppose, forestalls the "unexpressive (!) nuptial song" of Lycidas; "Demissoque ferox gladio mansuescit Orion";3 who, by the by, looks truculent enough now before my windows of a night. I ask Tennyson if he ever did see him "sloping slowly to the West."* He is scarce quite erect at 8 P.M. here, or at Locksley Hall; and I think he could hardly slope down (as we see him slope up) before Morning caught him. But Tennyson once used to watch longer on the Lincoln­ shire wolds than ever I (the great American Pote) have done from the Suffolk Flats. People often do apologize for long Letters, even when more legible

March 1880 than mine. But, if I am not worse than usual, my talk may be a little change—from Jerusalem; and anyhow you are not compelled to read. Ever yours Littlegrange xI mean as Translator, not Poet, of course. 1 Eikon Basilike, a work representing Charles I as a Christian martyr, published immediately after his execution. 2James Shaw Kennedy, Notes on Waterloo, 1865. 3 The three passages in Latin: "To My Father"; "Immortal melody and in­ describable song"; "Dropping his sword, fierce Orion grows gentle." 4 From "Locksley Hall":

Many a night . . . Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west.

To E. B. Cowell [Woodbridge] Vernal Equinox/ 1880 My dear Cowell,

I am glad to hear that you have begun your Holyday. You must take good long walks, in spite of N.E. winds, and find Bee Orchis— in some sheltered Pit-side about Cherry Hinton. You have one faculty, among many others indeed, of interesting others in all your pursuits: and so you have infected Cambridge with Spanish. I see by a Catalogue which was this morning laid on my table that Quaritch has a Copy of Cervantes for over £250. "Parent Edition" he calls it, I think: and a new phrase to me. I had not heard till your letter told me that Lowell was in England.11 have not heard from him since September when I was with you at Lowestoft: but Mr. Norton wrote me that he had nursed his Wife most assiduously, Night as well as Day. This, Mrs. Kemble tells me, is very usual with American hus­ bands. She thinks the Americans of a much "subtler" intellect than the English: with, she says, "mad Eyes." I went for three days to see her and Mrs. Edwards three weeks ago. Tennyson was in town at the time, I was told: but I did not go to look for him. My dear Donne (who also was one object of my going) seemed to me feebler in Body and mind than when I saw him in October—I need not say, the same Gentleman. Mrs. Kemble says that he, more than anyone she has known, is the man to do what Boccaccio's Hero of the Falcon did. Blanche is very

March 1880 attentive to him; and he has Mowbray at hand always: than whom he could scarce have a better. Brooke lent me a short account of Waterloo which greatly interested me: being divided by the Author into Five Acts, with a Chorus of Cannonade between. I am still somewhat puzzled as to the Stage, and much of the military movements; but Brooke, whom I saw yesterday on his Black Charger, is to come one day and enlighten me. I heard so much of this Battle when I was young that I am interested in it; the only Battle—almost, except some of Nelson's, Naseby, and Dunbar. I think Arthur (not Wellesley,2 but Charlesworth) may come to me on Saturday for a very short Holyday. He cannot get away sooner. His invalid Brother is at home with him, I think. And I am, with Love to Elizabeth, yours always Littlegrange. 1 After having served two and a half years as minister to Spain, Lowell had been appointed to the same post, actually ambassadorial, in Britain and had gone to London to present his credentials to the Queen. 2 Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge March 26, [1880] My dear Lady, The Moon has reminded me that it is a month since I last went up to London. I said to the Cabman who took me to Queen Anne's, "I think it must be close on Full Moon," and he said, "I shouldn't won­ der," not troubling himself to look back to the Abbey over which she was riding. Well; I am sure I have little enough to tell you; but I shall be glad to hear from you that you are well and comfortable, if nothing else. And you see that I am putting my steel pen into its very best paces all for you. By far the chief incident in my life for the last month has been the reading of dear old Spedding's Paper on the Merchant of Venice: there, at any rate, is one Question settled,1 and in such a beautiful way as only he commands. I could not help writing a few lines to tell him what I thought; but even very sincere praise is not the way to conciliate him. About Christmas I wrote him, relying on it that I should be most likely to secure an answer if I expressed dissent

March 1880 from some other work of his; and my expectation was justified by one of the fullest answers he had written to me for many a day and year. I read in one of my Papers that Tennyson had another Play accepted at the Lyceum.2 I think he is obstinate in such a purpose, but, as he is a Man of Genius, he may surprise us still by a vindication of what seem to me several Latter-day failures. I suppose it is as hard for him to relinquish his Vocation as other men find it to be in other callings to which they have been devoted; but I think he had better not en­ cumber the produce of his best days by publishing so much of inferior quality. Under the cold Winds and Frosts which have lately visited us—and their visit promises to be a long one—my garden Flowers can scarce get out of the bud, even Daffodils have hitherto failed to "take the winds," etc. Crocuses early nipt and shattered (in which my Pigeons help the winds) and Hyacinths all ready, if but they might! My Sister Lusia's Widower has sent me a Drawing by Sir T. Law­ rence of my Mother: bearing a surprising resemblance to—The Duke of Wellington. This was done in her earlier days—I suppose, not long after I was born—for her, and his (Lawrence's) friend Mrs. Wolff: and though, I think, too Wellingtonian, the only true likeness of her. Engravings were made of it—so good as to be facsimiles, I think—to be given away to Friends. I should think your mother had one. If you do not know it, I will bring the Drawing up with me to London when next I go there: or will send it up for your inspection, if you like. But I do not suppose you will care for me to do that. Here is a much longer letter than I thought for; I hope not trouble­ some to your Eyes—from yours always and sincerely Littlegrange I have been reading Comus and Lycidas with wonder, and a sort of awe. Tennyson once said that Lycidas was a touchstone of poetic Taste. 1 In "The Story of the Merchant of Venice," prompted by a London production of the play, Spedding challenged the theory that Shakespeare portrays Shylock as a man, like Lear, "more sinned against than sinning" (Cornhill Magazine, March, 1880, 276-89). See letter to Frederick Tennyson, April [13], 1880. 2 The Cup, which began a four months' run the following January.

March 1880

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge March 28, [1880] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

No—the Flowers were not from me—I have nothing full-blown to show except a few Polyanthuses, and a few Pansies. These Pansies never throve with me till last year: after a Cartload or two of Clay laid on my dry soil, I suppose, the year before. Insomuch that one dear little Soul has positively held on blowing, more or less confidently, all winter through; when even the Marigold failed. Now, I meant to have intimated about those Flowers in a few French words on a Postcard—purposely to prevent your answering— unless your rigorous Justice could only be satisfied by a Post Card in return. But I was not sure how you might like my Card; so here is a Letter instead; which I really do beg you, as a favour, not to feel bound to answer. A time will come for such a word. By the by, you can make me one very acceptable return, I hope with no further trouble than addressing it to me. That "Nineteenth Century" for February, with a Paper on "King John" (your Uncle) in it.1 Our Country Bookseller has been for three weeks getting it for me—and now says he cannot get it—"out of print." I rather doubt that the Copy I saw on your Table was only lent to you; if so, take no more trouble about it; some one will find me a Copy. I shall revolve in my own noble mind what you say about Jessica and her Jewels: as yet, I am divided between you, and that old Serpent, Spedding. Perhaps "That is only his Fancy," as he says of Shylock. What a light, graceful, way of saying well-considered Truth! I doubt you are serious in reminding me of my Tumbler on the Floor; and, I doubt not, quite right in being so. This comes of one's living so long either with no Company, or with only free and easy. But I am always the same toward you, whether my Tumbler in the right place or not, The Laird of Littlegrange. 1 "An Eye-Witness of John Kemble," by Sir Theodore Martin. The essay is based on letters written by Ludwig Tieck, German critic, and editor of Shake­ speare, while visiting England in 1817 (Nineteenth Centuru Magazine, Feb. 1880, pp. 276-96).

March 1880

To Charles Keene Woodbridge March 28, [1880] My dear Keene, I never expect you to write, busy man as you are, unless I ask a particular question; but I am all the more pleased when your letter does come if I think the writing it has not been unseasonable to yourself. I do not remember any of the Books I sent you as being wanted back—unless, I believe, that Commercial who properly resented one of his Fellow's wiping his razor (well that it was no worse) on a leaf of the "Good Book"—which I respect him for. The Book reminds me of many old Commercial Rooms in old Inns in old Coach days; I re­ ceived many hints of good Behaviour proper to those consecrated Precincts; and sometimes met an intelligent elderly Bagman (as he used to be called) who told one of the Towns he travelled through. I am going to send you—not to be returned—the 2nd Part of Harri­ son's "Description of England"1 reprinted by the New Shakespeare Society (I had not Vol. I) and Stubbes' "Anatomy of Abuses,"2 ditto, complete: in which a very good Index will point you to some things you may like to read of: the whole Book would be intolerable, I should think, to any one—except yourself! This, and one or two more rags, would have gone to you before now, but that I lent Stubbes to our great Captain Brooke, who, I think, might like to own it: but it is yours. If ever you come here, you shall go over to Brooke's to see his Library which is especially rich, I believe, in Topography, Local History, etc., and Heraldry—there being a closet, I believe, devoted to the Cobham Family of which Brooke believes himself to be the rightful Representative. He will be enchanted to show you all he has, and you will find yourselves quite at ease together, Cobham and all. But I do not even hint at your coming while this weather holds, when not even a Daffodil is full blown; which the "Divine William" says "takes the winds of March with Beauty."3 Froissart, and Philip de Commes,4 I am always proposing to read, and may take a small and rather close Reprint of the latter as "piece de resistance" to the Seaside this year. But not to Dunwich! Like you, I could not care for WfW Wales—for too much of Mrs. B. and Miss Clarke waiting Tea, etc., at a Window.5 Borrow, I believe, is very inaccurate in his Welch as in his Gipsy Sanskrit; but he is a Man of individual Genius.

March 1880 Another Sheet, "s'help me Bob!" See what it is to be an idle man— on a Sunday—at Woodbridge. My Reader who is a quaint little sturdy Chap was telling me of our inferior Menagerie on our Markethill— which, he said, "stunk horrid, and no Serpents." Also of a real live Zulu, whose Authenticity was proved by Drawing a nail over his skin, which left a white mark like Chalk; and, as I told him, might have been that. I somehow guessed that you would be pleased with those Alnwick Prints: two, I find, were left out of the batch I sent you, and shall go with the Books I shall send. Now you have a Crabbe, read his Life by his son, my old George, and observe all the Suffolk part: Glemham, Parham, Aldboro'. See if you do not feel in the Parham Farmhouse after Dinner, etc., in that Dutch Picture from pp. 141-6. I wonder you admire the Stanfield Views: which always seemed to me very thin and hard: and, I know very unfaithful. The name of the Bristol Man is William George, 26 Park Street, Bristol. I sent you one of his last Catalogues, with a leaf or two gone —not for any such purpose as the Bagman's, but to return by way of order to the man. I brought up the other day one of your Punches representing a German Brass Band retiring in despair from a Window in the inside corner of which is a Gentleman making his own Music with a Bagpipe. This I put as Companion to that of another poor Gentleman we knew in a tilted machine going Seawards! I do not want you to send me any Punches, of which I already have several: but just ever so small a scrap of your own Drawing. I think I will send you Thackeray's Woodblock which he drew for me one Day in Coram street, for a Bookplate. Now I think I have given you an over-dose of letter: as bad for you to read, as to reply to ever so shortly. But do not reply—no, not even to acknowledge the next parcel of Rags, unless by a P.Card to say they „ , • ι 1 are arrived, Yours always andj sincerely Littlegrange William Harrison (1534-93), who contributed his humorous, detailed "De­ scription of England" to Raphael Holinshed's Chronicle of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1577. The New Shakespeare Society reprint was published 1877-78. 2Philip Stubbes shows his extreme Puritanic views in The Anatomy of Abuses, 1583. 3 Winter's Tale, IV.3. 4Phillippe de Commines (c.1445 - c.1511), best known for his Memoirs, used by Scott in his Quentin Durward. 1

March 1880 Jean Froissart (1337P-1410) whose Chroniques, dealing with the affairs of Flanders, France, Spain, Portugal, and England, cover the years 1325-1400. 5 George Borrow's wife and stepdaughter, who accompanied him on his trip through Wales in 1854; he published Wild Wales, his account of the trip, in 1862.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge March 31, [1880] AEtat 72 My dear Wright, I had a Letter from Cowell yesterday proposing a Visit to Lowestoft on Friday or Saturday; provided, first, that I would meet him there: and, secondly, that I would engage the N.E. winds not to visit him and her too roughly on that coast. I replied last night that I, for my part, would meet him there if there he decided on going: but I strongly advised him not to go to that ugly place at this Season of N. Easters. Perhaps you will see him, and hear what he decides on. At any rate I will let you know what he writes to me on the matter. And, on whichever course he determines, you will be welcome to me (as to him, in case, etc.). For if I be not at Lowestoft at the end of next week, do you come to me here; and if I be at Lowestoft, come to us both there, and accompany him in those walks of his which I am not up to, and which Elizabeth will be very grateful to be spared. I shall wait till I hear from him that he is for Lowestoft before I decide on my Lodging: but I can find you Bed and Board, I doubt not. A funny little Church Service, with New Testament 1667 and Sternhold and Hopkins' 16621 has returned upon me after (I see) forty-five years' oblivion: in a rather sorry condition, with Title lost, and many loose leaves; margined with red lines: and in the original Binding. I know not if it is of any sort of value: but here it is at your Service. It is a very small, fat Quarto. Brooke returned me the Walpole with some other books I had lent him, not understanding, I suppose, that I had given him Walpole: or perhaps not caring to keep it. So you and the Captain must toss up for it Yours The American Champion

April 1880 Excuse worse writing resulting from chapped hands. For which my Reader prescribes "Turkey's fat" as sovereign cure. 1 In 1562 "The Whole Book of Psalms," put into verse for the most part by Thomas Sternhold (d. 1549) and John Hopkins (d. 1570), was added to the Prayer Book.

To W. A. Wright Lowestoft 6 Marine Parade (mark!) Monday, April 5, [1880] My dear Wright, Cowell and Wife came here on Friday: and were at the Rail Station to welcome me on Saturday. As they lodge at 9 Esplanade, I put up near them (voyez-vous?), and we are going to join Don Quixote in half an hour. I can well find you Bed and Board here. You will have plenty to talk over with the Professor, and can discuss in some long walk. He was telling me last night of one thing; your "Council" having declined to send a Representative of the University to my Friends in the American Cambridge, I think:1 which I may say that he is sorry for, as I am. He did not know of the decision till just before he came here. Surely it would have been a graceful, and not very expensive, thing to have done. But do not speak of his opinion till you hear it from himself. Hibernicus sum. He tells me also of the great change in political opinion which must turn Beaks out and put Glads in.2 So much so, that our Professor votes for Beaks only for the sake of not leaving him in too small a minority to curb the other Palaverer. This I am sure the Professor did say to me on the Pier—Saturday last. Let me know if, and when, you come, so as Bed and Baufling be ready. Yours ever Littlegrange (I somehow detest my own scrolloping Surname.) 1 For the centenary of the American Academy of Arts. Two men were nomi­ nated, Wright notes, "but they were unable to go." 2 Economic depression in agriculture and industry, war with Zulus in Africa, and the irrepressible Eastern Question produced a victory for Gladstone over Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfleld) in a general election.

April 1880

To Frederick Spalding 6 Marine Parade, Lowestoft April 5/80 Dear Spalding, I came here the end of last week to meet Cowell, who is come here for ten days' holiday. After that I shall return to my own home, and see about my Garden and Spring flowers. I have exchanged Terrace for Parade as you see, on this occasion: in order to be near him on the Esplanade. Miss Green gave up her Terrace house, and has gone to a much larger on Kirkley Cliff, which I should think she will find as unprofitable. No. 11 Terrace is, however, tenanted by a respectable woman who made me as comfortable as crazy windows and doors would allow at the end of January. I was here then to see the last (for the present only, I hope) of Edmund Kerrich, who was ordered to join his Regiment, not in India, but at Keoldale in Ireland. That place, however, is so comfortless that he did not carry Wife and Boy over with him; they wait (though not here) till he may move to some better Quarters. My two Nieces are here as usual, and will, I suppose, pay me their annual visit of two months when Summer is on. I did not know till Cowell told me how much the Elections have gone toward a Change of Ministry and consequently of Policy. He says it is a very extraordinary change of Public Feeling; I suppose on ac­ count of Wars which some think worse than useless, and of what they call Agricultural Trouble. I am glad that W. Biddell is returned for W. Suffolk: I do not know what the chances are for the East: but I conclude that it will be some close contest, judging from the impor­ tunity of both Candidates in whipping in votes. I hope that what my little Reader told me is true; viz, that the scoundrel Tomline is not returned for Harwich. But the news is almost too good to be true. I think I have no Woodbridge news to tell you. Loder seems well, but devolves most of the Business on his Wife and Mr. Gibbs. Yes; and Mr. Jackson of the Bank has been laid by for a while with over­ work, I suppose, acting on an Excitable Brain. He is recommended change and relaxation: but he was in the Bank again last week. Ellen Churchyard suffers much from Rheumatism; as she will so long as she persists in remaining in her house, of which she has all the work to do. Mr. and Mrs. Howe have gone well through the winter: both of them gratified by your remembrance of them: and I am yours and Mrs. Spalding's Truly E.FG.

April 1880

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge April 6, [1880] My dear Lady,

I hope my letter, and the Magazine which accompanies it, will not reach you at a time when you have family troubles to think about. You can, however, put letter and Magazine aside at once, without reading either; and, anyhow, I wish once more—in vain, I suppose— that you would not feel bound to acknowledge them. I think this Atlantic, which I took in so long as you were embarked on it, was sent me by Mr. Norton, to whom I had sent my Crabbe; and he had, I suppose, shown it to Mr. Woodberry, the Critic.1 And the Critic has done his work well, on the whole, I think: though not quite up to my mark of praise, nor enough to create any revival of Interest in the Poems. You will see that I have made two or three notes by the way: but you are still less bound to read them than the text. If you be not bothered, I shall ask you to return me the Magazine. I have some thought of taking it in again, as I like to see what goes on in the literary way in America, and I found their critics often more impartial in their estimation of English Authors than our own Papers are, as one might guess would be the case. I was, and am, reading your Records again, before this Atlantic came to remind me of you. I have Bentley's second Edition. I feel the Dull­ ness of that Dinner Party in Portland Place2 (I know it was) when Mrs. Frere sang. She was somewhile past her prime then (1831), but could sing the Classical Song, or Ballad, till much later in Life. Pasta too, whom you then saw and heard! I still love the pillars of the old Haymarket Opera House, where I used to see placarded MEDEA IN CORINTO.

And I am still yours sincerely Littlegrange. You are better off in London this black weather. P.S. Since my letter was written, I receive the promised one from Mowbray: his Father well: indeed, in better health and Spirits than usual: and going with Blanche to Southwell on Wednesday (to­ morrow) fortnight. His London house almost, if not quite, out of Quarantine. But— do not go! I say. G. E. Woodberry, whose critique, "A Neglected Poet," appeared in Atlantic

April 1880 Monthly, May, 1880, pp. 624-29. Norton, it seems, had sent an advance copy. See letter to Norton, May 1, 1880. 2 A dinner at the FitzGerald London house in 1831, described as dull in Records of a Girlhood.

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge April [13], 1880 My dear Frederic, I hope you got the Beethoven which I posted you some little while ago: and also that you have been entertained with it. I now post you a Paper by old Spedding—a very beautiful one, I think: settling one point, however unimportant; and in a graceful, as well as logical, way such as he is Master of. A case has been got up—whether by Irving, the Stage Representa­ tive of Shylock, or by his Admirers—to prove the Jew to be a very amiable and ill-used man: insomuch that one is to come away from the theatre loving him, and hating all the rest. He dresses himself up to look like the Saviour, Mrs. Kemble says. So old Jem disposes of that, besides unravelling Shakespeare's mechanism of the Novel he draws from, in a manner (as Jem says) more distinct to us than in his treat­ ment of any other of his Plays "not professedly historical." And this latter point is of course far more interesting than the question of Irving and Co.—which is a simple attempt, both of Actor and Writer, to strike out an original idea in the teeth of common sense and Tradi­ tion. You must return me this Paper, I think: for I know not if I can find another Copy. I have been for ten days at our ugly Lowestoft, reading Don Quixote with that same Cowell whom you may remember staying with at Ipswich many years ago. He is a delightful fellow; "a great Boy" as well as a great Scholar: and She is as young in Spirit as ever; and both of them very happy in themselves and one another. We cannot get the wind away from the cold East: therefore all is behindhand: Flower and Leaf. You will tell me how it is with you one of these days. I think I told you I was in London some six weeks ago: but I did not look for Alfred, who I heard was there. Since then Mrs. Kemble writes me that he had called on her; complaining some­ what of a Dimness before his Eyes: as I remember he once did before.

April 1880 Farewell for the present, my dear old Friend, and believe me yours as ever, E.FG.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge April 15/80 My dear Norton, I am glad you like the Play,1 and am very much obliged to you for your comments on it. Pray alter anything you like: as the rhyming line at p. 6, as also supplying the missing word "know" at p. 15. "You know what others know only too well." You are undoubtedly right about the Ο KOTOS ,2 etc., p. 45: and I will (unless you will do it for me) try something nearer the true meaning. But just now I rather "loathe" myself to look on what I have done— "Look on't again I dare not." As to the Choruses, I could never interest myself in them and so took old Potter's Version, not daring to venture on any later and better done, for fear of Copyright. I know that literal Prose would be essen­ tially better than Potter's Verse; but I still thought it best to have some sort of Interact Music, which is nearly all that so many Greek Choruses seem to me meant for. Had I thought of Potter at the time, I should have used him for King Agamemnon, though in that play the Choruses did interest me so much that I felt I could not do them justice, fragments as they are. If you were as leisure a man as myself, I might ask you to help me to a Version of these Choruses: the plain bit which you send me ending with as good a Verse as I could wish for: "Speak, Child of golden Hope, O Voice divine." I say I "might" ask you to do this, if at leisure, because, though oth­ erwise improper to invite you to such an office, you take an interest in my share of the Play. I am really glad that you want a Copy or two more of my Crabbe: which I send you directly I have pasted in the Photo, and the addi­ tional Verses. I was talking to Mrs. Kemble some while ago of Mr. Lowell's un­ remitting care of his Wife; and she said that was no new thing to her with American husbands; which is a truly fine national feature.

April 1880 Pray thank Professor Goodwin for the Paper on Thucydides (I was about to mis-spell him!) of whose Scholarly value I must not pretend to judge. I only know that it is well written, and looks all right to me. I shall send it to Cowell; and am yours sincerely, E.FG. P.S. I think it is better to keep Oedipus to yourself, for fear of any word of him getting over here. I am not afraid of your Countrymen, who though Scholars, are not Pedants, and can judge of what is meant for English Readers without exacting what is unintelligible to them— Cowell tells me that there is scarce any Scholarship at his Cambridge except eternal Philology, in the narrowest sense of the word: very unlike his own. Neither he, nor anyone else except yourself knows this last Escapade of mine; and you and I can keep it to ourselves— along with Part II, if I can settle the 2nd Act of that part to my liking. I do not like that skipping in and out of the great Theseus, when called upon (like Calderon's King Pedro), and Creon's raid after Oedipus right up to the walls of Athens seems to me a strange thing. And excuse this rather dirty fragment of Paper: of which I meant to send only sufficient for the first sentence. 1

"Oedipus in Thebes."

2 "Darkness."

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge April [20], '80 My dear Wright, Here is a rather odd example of literary manufacture, I think. In Trollope's good Serial in All Year Round ("Duke's Children") a Lady Mabel talks of an American "Miss Boncassen," of whom she is jealous, as "A Convict's Daughter."1 Mr. B., being a very enlightened Ameri­ can, expected to be chosen President. I knew, of course, that such a phrase was only pitched out in a fit of jealous spleen: still, it was once, as I remember, spoken as serious truth by many English some fifty years ago: and I wrote to Trollope that I wished he would in his three Volumes cancel, or alter, a phrase that could only rouse up disagree­ able recollections. I know no more of him than from corresponding with him about Thackeray last year. I am sure he is quite sincere in

April 1880 saying he forgets all the details of his Book, though he remembers the upshot: which I am sorry he has told me beforehand. The weekly reading of his Novel is one of the pleasures I count on here. Thank you much for copying out the Italian Novel: I forget (and want to know) the name of the Author2—having sent my copy of old Jem's Paper to Frederick Tennyson. But do not write merely to tell me of that; any time will do. Le grand Capitaine wants to know. I shall bind up your Note with the Paper, and so make a Work of it. Tell Cowell when you see him (if you remember) that my mer­ curial Nephew John De Soyres is going as Chaplain to St. Petersburg, Russia, being, he thinks, coming to the fore of the civilized World. Hulsean Essays, Pascal Editions, etc., are very well in their way; but he must digest some greater work: which I should think he will not. Ever yours The Laird of Littlegrange Send back Trollope one day. 1 Lady Mabel Grex, after rejecting Lord Siverbridge, changes her mind and is angered to learn that he has fallen in love with Miss Boncassen. "Of course I intended to accept him—but I didn't. Then comes this convict's grand-daughter." 2 Ser Giovanni, a notary of Florence, gives the story of The Merchant of Venice in Il Pecorone, a collection of tales written about 1378 and published in Milan in 1558. Spedding tells of it in his Cornhill article.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge April 23, [1880] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

I was really sorry to hear from you that you were about to move again. I suppose the move has been made by this time: as I do not know whither, I must trouble Coutts, I suppose, to forward my Letter to you; and then you will surely tell me your new Address, and also how you find yourself in it. I have nothing to report of myself, except that I was for ten days at Lowestoft in company (though not in the house) with Edward Cowell the Professor: with whom, as in last Autumn, I read, and all but fin­ ished, the second part of Don Quixote. There came Aldis Wright to join us; and he quite agrees with what you say concerning the Jewelrobbery in the Merchant of Venice. He read me the Play; and very

April 1880 well; thoroughly understanding the text: with clear articulation, and the moderate emphasis proper to room-reading; with the advantage also of never having known the Theatre in his youth, so that he has not picked up the twang of any Actor of the Day. Then he read me King John, which he has some thoughts of editing next after Richard III. And I was reminded of you at Ipswich twenty-eight years ago; and of your Father—his look up at Angiers' Walls as he went out in Act II. I wonder that Mrs. Siddons should have told Johnson that she preferred Constance to any of Shakespeare's Characters: perhaps I misremember; she may have said Queen Catharine.1 I must not forget to thank you for the Nineteenth Century from Hatchard's;2 Tieck's Article very interesting to me, and I should suppose just in its criticism as to what John Kemble then was. I have a little print of him about the time: in Oedipus—(whose Play, I wonder, on such a dangerous subject?) from a Drawing by that very clever Artist De Wilde:3 who never missed Likeness, Character, and Life, even when reduced to 16mo Engraving. What you say of Tennyson's Eyes reminded me that he complained of the Dots in Persian type flickering before them: insomuch that he gave up studying it. This was some thirty years ago. Talking on the subject one day to his Brother Frederick, he—(Frederick)—said he thought possible that a sense of the Sublime was connected with Blind­ ness: as in Homer, Milton, and Handel: and somewhat with old Wordsworth perhaps; though his Eyes were, I think, rather weak than consuming with any inward Fire. I heard from Mr. Norton that Lowell had returned to Madrid in order to bring his Wife to London—if possible. She seems very far from being recovered; and (Norton thinks) would not have recovered in Spain: so Lowell will have one consolation for leaving the land of Cervantes and Calderon to come among the English, whom I believe he likes little better than Hawthorne liked them. I believe that yesterday was the first of my hearing the Nightingale; certainly of hearing my Nightingale in the trees which I planted, "hauts comme 9a," as Madame de Sevigne says. I am positively about to read her again, "tout Madame de Sevigne," as Ste. Beuve said. What better now Spring is come? She would be enjoying her Rochers just now. And I think this is a dull letter of mine; but I am always sincerely yours E. de Petitgrange 1 Mrs. Siddons named Katharine, divorced queen in Henry VIII, not Con­ stance in King John.

April 1880 2 Sent

in response to EFG's request of March 28. De Wilde (1748-1832), noted for his portraits of actors in character

3Samuel

parts.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [April 29, 1880] My dear Wright, I had written to Mrs. Kemble how you had been reading Shake­ speare to me at Lowestoft; very well indeed, I thought—partly be­ cause there was no tang of the Theatre about you: a very rare thing with those who have much frequented it. I enclose you such part of her Letter as refers to you: perfectly sincere in all she says, though sometimes the manner of saying, derived from old Theatrical sur­ roundings, belies her Truth. I think you should go and see her in Queen Anne's Mansions, Westminster, when you are at Jerusalem. I copied out for Brooke what you wrote about Waterloo: and that Great Commander himself, after referring to Leeke1 and the other man, was in much the same uncertainty as yourself concerning that 52nd, but told me (some ten days after, from the top of his Black Charger) that he should go thoroughly into the matter. His Shaw Kennedy, I feel sure, says that the French Army was in some confusion, "meanwhile" sc., while the 52nd had advanced: the Duke riding up and bidding Colborne advance further. "They won't stand"—which looks as if he knew they had given way elsewhere. But it seems odd there should be any doubt on such a point. I showed Brooke Lord Malmesbury's testimony as to Wellington's certainly having been "surprized." "He has humbugged me," he said to Duke of Richmond at the Duchess's Ball, after receiving a Despatch there. At least so Duke of Richmond told an officer named Bowie or Bowles, a few minutes afterward: who told it to Lord Malmesbury. The Duke of Richmond had made a pencil-mark under the mark of Wellington's thumb-nail, pointing out where Napoleon had stolen on him. E.FG. 1 William Leeke, The History of Lord Seaton's Regiment . . . at the Battle of Waterloo, 2 vols., 1866-71, London and Norwich.

May 1880

To C. Ε. Norton [Woodbridge] May 1,1880 My dear Norton,

I must thank you for the Crabbe Review you sent me,1 though, had it been your own writing, I should probably not tell you how very good I think it. I am somewhat disappointed that Mr. Woodberry dismisses Crabbe's "Trials at Humour" as summarily as Mr. L. Stephen does; it was mainly for the Humour's sake that I made my little work: Humour so evident to me in so many of the Tales (and Conversa­ tions), and which I meant to try and get a hearing for in the short Preface I had written in case the Book had been published. I thought these Tales showed the "stern Painter" softened by his Grand Cli­ macteric, removed from the gloom and sadness of his early associa­ tions, and looking to the Follies rather than to the Vices of Men, and treating them often in something of a Moliere way, only with some pathetic humour mixt, so as these Tales were almost the only one of his Works which left an agreeable impression behind them. But if so good a Judge as Mr. Woodberry does not see all this, I certainly could not have persuaded John Bull to see it: and perhaps am wrong myself in seeing what is not there. I doubt not that Mr. Woodberry is quite right in what he says of Crabbe not having Imagination to draw that Soul from Nature of which he enumerates the phenomena: but he at any rate does so enumerate and select them as to suggest something more to his Reader, something more than mere catalogue could suggest. He may go yet further in such a description, as that other Autumnal one in "Delay has Danger," beginning— Early he rose, and looked with many a sigh, On the red Light that filled the Eastern sky, etc., where, as he says, the Decay and gloom of Nature seem reflected in —nay, as it were, to take a reflection from—the Hero's troubled Soul. In the Autumn Scene which Mr. Woodberry quotes and contrasts with those of other more imaginative Poets, would not a more imagina­ tive representation of the scene have been out of Character with the English Country Squire who sees and reflects on it? As would have been more evident if Mr. W. had quoted a line or two further—

May 1880 While the dead foliage dropt from loftier trees The Squire beheld not with his wonted ease, But to his own reflections made reply, And said aloud—"Yes, doubtless we must die."2 οϊη irtp φύλλων yevt-η—3

This Dramatic Picture touches me more than Mr. Arnold. One thing more I will say—that I do not know where old Words­ worth condemned Crabbe as unpoetical (except in the truly "prig­ gish" candle case) though I doubt not that Mr. Woodberry does know. We all know that of Crabbe's "Village," one passage was one of the first that struck young Wordsworth: and when Crabbe's son was edit­ ing his Father's Poems in 1834, old Wordsworth wrote to him that, because of their combined Truth and Poetry, those Poems would last as long at least as any that had been written since4—including Words­ worth's own. And Wordsworth was too honest, as well as too exclusive, to write so much even to a Son of the dead Poet, without meaning all he said. I should not have written all this were it not that I think so much of Mr. Woodberry's Paper; but I doubt I could not persuade him to think more of my old Man than he sees good to think for himself. I rejoice that he thinks even so well of the Poet: even if his modified Praise does not induce others to try and think likewise. The verses he quotes— Where is that Virtue which the generous boy, etc.5 made my heart glow—yes, even out at my Eyes—though so familiar to me. Only in my private Copy, instead of When Vice had triumph—who his tear bestowed On injured merit—5 in place of that "bestowed Tear," I cannot help reading When Vice and Insolence in triumph rode, etc. which is, of course, only for myself, and you, it seems: for I never mentioned that, and some scores of such impudencies suggested by Yours sincerely and always Littlegrange Do you think Mr. Woodberry would like a Copy of my Crabbe?

May 1880 1 G. Ε. Woodberry's article, "A Neglected Poet," in the May Atlantic Monthly is not a review of EFG's Readings in Crabbe s "Tales of the Hall." 2 "Adventures of Richard," which precedes "Delay Has Danger" in Tales of the Hall. 3 "As are the generations of leaves, [so also are those of men]." 4 Crabbe's The Village, Book I, n.19. 5 Both quotations are from the same passage in "Boys at School," Tales of the Hall.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [May, 1880] My dear Wright, Mr. Norton has sent me the Magazine which I now send to you, and which shows, I believe, that I have at least made one man in America look into Crabbe, and to write a very good Paper, I think, about him, though too moderate in his praise to attract others toward him. The Critic, you will see, treats Crabbe's Humour as summarily as L. Stephen did—the very Quality which makes me prefer those later Tales to any earlier ones. Stephen, I should have suspected to have no Humour of his own: Mr. Woodberry may be too aesthetic, etc. But I really don't know if any of those I have bored about it in England see what I see—even that dreadful Professor of ours—only yourself, I do think—so as we may be wrong. As to the imaginative Vision of Nature, etc., I dare say Crabbe had it not as Wordsworth, etc. But it would certainly have been dramati­ cally out of place in describing that "Morning Walk" when the aspect of Nature is to be seen as reflected in a sensible Country Squire's Soul, not in a Poet's, as would have been better understood had the critic finished with the moral—"We must die." Otij ιτίρ φνλλων ytvfq

Anyhow, it impresses me more than the Arnold Passage compared to it. I think you will have to return me the Review—for which perhaps you won't thank me. Brooke was here two Evenings ago; still somewhat in the dark as to the 52nd. He wants you to go and see his Library, etc., which you must do one day. Yours always Littlegrange and All

May 1880

To Herman Biddell Little Grange Thursday [May 6,1880] Dear Herman Biddell, I feel half sorry that you have given your Book to one who knows so little of the subject it treats of,1 and is now so much too old to learn! But I do not the less—no, all the more—thank you for making me such a handsome present, which some of my Heirs, Assigns, etc., may profit by more than myself; and without very long to wait before they do so. I shall read all that is not purely genealogical. As to my Criticism on Style]—what could I have to say of that [of] which I have already seen enough to see that it fulfills the absolute conditions of Good Writing, viz. "the saying in the most perspicuous and succinct way what one thoroughly understands?" This, of course, includes Good English, or it would not be perspicuous to others, however, clear to oneself. Really, the Perfection is to have all this so naturally that no Effort is apparent; and so the very best Style where there are no marks of it. All this you seem to me (judging by what I read in the News­ papers your Sister Anna sent me) to possess, with, besides, a great deal of quiet Humour, which lightens all. I believe I wrote as much to your Sister; and so you will not think I say it in acknowledgment of the Book you send me: in which cases I think it best, as a general rule, to say nothing, nor to wish anything to be said to one if one be the Giver instead of being the Receiver. I should feel rather ashamed to find fault with a few words or expressions—even if I found fault at all—when the whole texture of a Book is so good, manly, simple, and clear; but as you wish me so to do, I will tell you if I find any fault which seems to me worth finding. Meanwhile, accept my very sincere thanks, and believe me yours sincerely E.FG. P.S. Your Suffolk Horses remind me, by wholesome contrast, of what old Louis Philippe said on looking at his eldest Son's Stud of Racers— "If you go on breeding such very long fine legs, you will eventually refine your Racers into no legs at all." I enclose you a Photo of my poor Edwards standing by his Mule in one of his "Old Inn" Excursions—in this case, at Guildford, I think. You see the Mule moved her Ears during the short process. Please to return it to me well packed.

May 1880 1 The Suffolk Stud Book, a history and register of the Suffolk Punch, a breed of draft horses, 4 vols., Diss, 1880; vols. 1-3 by Herman Biddell, vol. 4 by Fred Smith. The work was long rated as "the most exhaustive record of its kind in England."

To R. C. Trench Little Grange, Woodbridge May 9/80 My dear Lord, You are old enough, like myself, to remember People reading and talking of Crabbe. I know not if you did so yourself; but you know that no one, unless as old as ourselves, does so now. As he has always been one of my Apollos, in spite of so many a cracked string, I wanted to get a few others to listen a little as I did; and so printed the Volume which I send you: printed it, not by way of improving, or superseding, the original, but to entice some to read the original in all its length, and (one must say) uncouth and wearisome "longueurs" and want of what is now called "Art." These Tales are perhaps as open to that charge as any of his; and, moreover, not principally made up of that "sternest" stuff which Byron celebrated as being most characteristic of him.1 When writing these Tales, the Poet had reached his Grand Climacteric, and liked to look on somewhat of the sunnier side of things; more on the Comedy than the Tragedy of Human Life: and hence these Tales are, with all their faults, the one work of his which leaves me (ten years past my Grand Climacteric also) with a pleasant Impression. So I tried to make others think; but I was told by Friends whose Judgment I could trust that no Public would listen to me. . . . And so I paid for my printing, and kept my Book to be given away to some few as old as myself, and brought up in somewhat of another Fashion than what now reigns. And so I now take heart to send it to you whose Poems and Writings prove that you belong to another, and, as I think, far better School, whether you care for Crabbe or not. I dare say you will feel bound to acknowledge the Book; but pray do so, if at all, by a simple acknowledgment of its receipt; I mean, so far as I am concerned in it: any word about Crabbe I shall be very glad to have if you care to write it; but I always maintain it best to say noth­ ing, unless to find fault, with what is sent to one in this Book Line. And so to be done by.

May 1880 1 Keene provided eight plates and ten initial letters for the Roundabout Papers Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

To R. M. Milnes Little Grange: Woodbridge May 10180 1 Dear Lord Houghton,

I think I have sent you a letter of some sort or other for several years. So it has come upon me once again. I have nothing to ask of you except—How you are? I should just like to know that, including "yours" and "you"—just a very few words will suffice, and I dare say you have no time for more. I have so much time that it is evident I have nothing to tell, except that I have just entered on a Military Career insofar as having become much interested in—the Battle of Waterloo! which I just remember a year after it was fought, when a solemn Anniversary took [place] in a neighbouring Parish where I was born, and the Village Carpenter came to my Father to borrow a pair of Wellington Boots for the lower limbs of a stuffed Effigy of Buona­ parte which was hung on a Gibbet, and Guns and Pistols were dis­ charged at him, while we and the Parson of the Parish sat in a tent where we had Beef and Plum pudding and loyal Toasts. To this hour I remember the smell of the new cut Hay in the meadow as we went in our best summer Clothes to the Ceremony. But now I am trying to understand whether the Guards, or the 52nd Regt deserved most credit for "ecraseing" the Imperial Guard. Here is a fine Subject to address you on in the year 1880. Let it go for nothing; but just tell me how you are: and believe me, with some feeling of old, if not very close intimacy, Yours sincerely Edward FitzGerald 1 Misdated 1881 by T. Wemyss Reid in The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, 1890, 2 vols., II, 406, the source of Aldis Wright's text. The present text, transcribed from the original MS, corrects errors in the previous versions.

May 1880

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [May, 1880] My dear Wright, I return your Fumivall's Card at once—for fear of losing—what you may not want again. What a harum-scarum Chap to set himself up for Philologist, Com­ mentator, Founder of Shakespeare Societies, etc. I think that flint stone which you saw over the manger in Cam­ bridgeshire may have been a charm against another Nightmare than we more generally recognize for such. In my dear Fualdes, one of the Witnesses is a stable-boy of the dreadful Bastide's Farm near Rodez (place of the murder), whither, and home from which, Bastide rode at such speed (in order to prove Alibi) that the Boy said he supposed Bastide's horse had been ridden all night by the "Drax"1 (I think is the word), a Goblin or Witch that gets a mount in that way, so as the horse is found in the morning "all of a muck-sweat," as a Boy near here told Major Moor he found himself in, after being overtaken by the "Galley-trot." The "Galley-trot" was a sort of Ezekiel-Iike winged Horse-Cow, and so more of a Night-mare than Bastide's. But I suppose Nightmare may not mean of the Horse species at all. All which is of the Furnivall order of Comment: but then I do not pretend to Edit, etc. I have been reading Leeke, and also his Supplement: but I cannot judge where Brooke is at fault. But am always yours E.FG. 1 "Not 'drax' but drague" (Wright's note). For Fualdes, see letter to Fanny Kemble, [Nov., 1875], n.7.

To R. C. Trench Woodbridge May 18/80 My dear Lord, I should have sent a line before now to thank you for your Calderon,1 had I not waited for some tidings of Donne from Mowbray, to whom I wrote some days ago. Not hearing from him, I suppose that

May 1880 he is out holyday-making somewhere; and therefore I will delay no longer. You gave me your Calderon when it first came out, now some five and twenty years ago! I am always glad to know that it, or any of [your] writings, Prose or Verse, still flourish—which I think not many others of the kind will do after the Generation they are born in. I remember that you regretted having tried the asonante, and you now decide that Prose is best for English Translation. It may be so; in a great degree it must be so; but I think the experiment might yet be tried; namely, the short trochaic line, regardless of an assonant that will not speak in our thin vowels, but looped up at intervals with a strong monosyllabic rhyme, without which the English trochaic, asso­ nant or not, is apt to fray out, or run away too watery-like without some such interruption; I mean, when running to any considerable length, as I should think would be the case in Longfellow's Hiawatha; which I have not however seen since it appeared. Were I a dozen years younger I might try this with Calderon, which I think I have found to succeed in some much shorter flights: but it is too late now, and you may think it well that it is so, with one who takes such great liberties with great Poets, himself pretending to be little more than a Versifier. I know not how it is with you who are really a Poet; and perhaps you may think I am as wrong about my trochee as about my iambic. As for the modern Poetry, I have cared for none of the last thirty years, not even Tennyson, except in parts: pure, lofty, and noble as he always is. Much less can I endure the Gurgoyle school (I call it) begun, I suppose, by V. Hugo. . . . I do think you will find something better than that in the discarded Crabbe; whose writings Wordsworth (not given to compliment any man on any occasion) wrote to Crabbe's Son and Editor would continue as long at least as any Poetry written since, on account of its mingled "Truth and Poetry." And this includes Wordsworth's own. So I must think my old Crabbe will come up again, though never to be popular. This reminds me that just after I had written to you, Crabbe's Grandson, one of the best, most amiable, and most agreeable, of my friends, paid me a two days' Visit, and told me that a Nephew of yours was learning to farm with a Steward of Lord Walsingham at Merton in Norfolk, George Crabbe's own parish; I mean the living George, who spoke of your Nephew as a very gentlemanly young man indeed. I think he will not gainsay what I write to you of his "Parson."

May 1880 Your kind Letter has encouraged me to write all this. I felt some hesitation in addressing you again after an interval of some fifteen years, I think; and now I think I shall venture on writing to you once again before another year be gone, if we both live to see 1881 in, and out. 1 Trench's Essay on Calderon with translations of Life's a Dream, and The Great Theatre of the World, first published in 1856; both editions in assonant verse. Trench appraises and commends EFG's translation, pp. 120-22.

To Bernard Quaritch Little Grange, Woodbridge May 23/80 My dear Sir,

I suppose that Sir F. Leighton1 enquired for the Six Calderon Plays published by Pickering, now thirty years ago. I have not a copy left, except one, for my own keeping. I do not know what became of the rest.2 As to Omar: I should have thought his day was done before your last Reprint; which, you know, was at your own wish; so as I am not to blame if it sticks on the market. I take for granted that you are not worse in health, if not younger, than when I last heard from you a year ago. I am not better, if not yet much worse, and Yours truly, E.FG. Pray, what is the price and number of Volumes of the last and best Edition of Sevigne's Letters? And also of some Dictionary of her pe­ culiar Words? I know not the names of the Editions. 1

Sir Frederick, artist and sculptor; president of the Royal Academy of Art. After EFG's death, 30 copies of the Six Dramas were found by his executors. Calderon, Polonius, and the first edition of Euphranor were all published by Wil­ liam Pickering. EFG wrote to Pollock, March 15, 1854, "When Pickering broke up, and I put my small affairs into Parker's hands, I let him do as he liked, and lump all under one name." There is no evidence to support Aldis Wright's state­ ment that EFG "suppressed" the Calderon volume (Letters to Quaritch, p. 89). EFG's customary practice of retaining copies of works for distribution among friends explains the Six Dramas found at Little Grange. 2

May 1880

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge May 25/80 My dear Lady,

Another full Moon reminds [me] of my monthly call upon you by Letter—a call to be regularly returned, I know, according to your Etiquette. As so it must be, I shall be very glad to hear that you are better than when you last wrote, and that some, if not all, of the "trouble" you spoke of has passed away, I have not heard of Donne since that last letter of yours: but a Post Card from Mowbray, who was out holy day-making in Norfolk, tells me that he will write as soon as he has returned to London, which, I think, must be about this very time. I shall be sorry if you do not get your annual dose of Mountain Air;1 why can you not? postponing your visit to Hampshire till Autumn— a season when I think those who want company and comfort are most glad of it. But you are determined, I think, to do as you are asked: yes, even the more so if you do not wish it. And, moreover, you know much more of what is fittest to do than I. A list of Trench's works in the Academy2 made me think of sending him my Crabbe; which I did: and had a very kind answer from him, together with a Copy of a second Edition of his Calderon Essay and Translation. He had not read any Crabbe since he was a Lad: what he may think of him now I know not: for I bid him simply acknowl­ edge the receipt of my Volume, as I did of his. I think much the best way, unless advice is wanted on either side before publication. If you write—which you will, unless—nay, whether troubled or not, I think—I should like to hear if you have heard anything of Mr. Lowell in London. I do not write to him for fear of bothering him: but I wish to know that his Wife is recovered. I have been thinking for some days of writing a Note to Carlyle's Niece, enclosing her a Post Card to be returned to me with just a word about him and herself. A Card only: for I do not know how occupied she may be with her own family cares by this time. I have re-read your Records, in which I do not know that I find any too much, as I had thought there was of some early Letters. Which I believe I told you while the Book was in progress. It is, I sincerely say, a capital Book, and, as I have now read it twice over with pleas­ ure, and I will say, with Admiration—if but for its Sincerity (I think

May 1880 you will not mind my saying that much)—I shall probably read it over again, if I live two years more. I am now embarked on my blessed Sevigne, who, with Crabbe, and John Wesley, seem to be my great hobbies; or such as I do not tire of riding, though my friends may weary of hearing me talk about them. By the by, to-morrow is, I think, Derby Day; which I remember chiefly for its marking the time when Hampton Court Chestnuts were usually in full flower. You may guess that we in the Country here have been gaping for rain to bring on our Crops, and Flowers; very tan­ talising have been many promising Clouds, which just dropped a few drops by way of Compliment, and then passed on. But last night, when Dombey was being read to me we heard a good splash of rain, and Dombey was shut up that we might hear, and see, and feel it. I never could make out who wrote two lines which I never could forget, wherever I found them:— Abroad, the rushing Tempest overwhelms Nature pitch dark, and rides the thundering elms. Very like Glorious John Dryden; but many others of his time wrote such lines, as no one does now—not even Messrs. Swinburne and Browning. And I am always your old Friend, with the new name of Littlegrange 1 Mrs.

Kemble spent her summers in Switzerland until late in life. the following letter, to Wright, EFG assigns the list to Macmillan's. None is found in either magazine. 2 In

To W. A. Wright [Wood-bridge ] [May 25,1880] My dear Wright,

Will you tell G. Crabbe what he asks of me? I only find "heme" a corner—angle—in my Dictionary, and that may not be right. "Hulner" is nowhere.1 G.C.'s address is Merton, Watton, Norfolk. He (G.C.) came with his Ma'amselle here for two days a fortnight ago: and when he got to Beccles found that a Cough he brought with him here was a slight congestion of lungs; or of one lung. So Crowfoot told him.

May 1880 In answer to a note from Quaritch I had told him I was no better than when he last heard from me a year ago: simply meaning, not younger. But he thinks I am very bad, I suppose, and writes quite a pathetic note to recommend change of Air, etc., offering his Services in London. Last night when Miss Tox was just coming, like a good Soul, to ask about the ruined Dombey, we heard a Splash of Rain, and I had the Book shut up, and sat listening to the Shower by myself—till it blew over, I am sorry to say, and no more of the sort all night. But we are thankful for that small mercy. I am reading through my Sevigne again—welcome as the flowers of May. Much more so than what the Athenaeum quotes of a new Pome of Swinburne's. Seeing a list of Trench's works in Macmillan, I sent the Archbishop my Crabbe: he had read none of him since Boyhood, but just remembered there was more "substance" in him than in the present race of Potes. He sent me in return his new Edition of Calderon: and neither I nor the Archbishop say anything of each other—as I prescribed beforehand. Please to remember me to Master and Mistress, now thinking of their Summer Flight, I suppose: and believe me yours always Littlegrange I enclose an illegible from Brooke. 1

Heme, heron; "hulner," not included in standard dialectic dictionaries.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge May 26, [1880] Dear Sir,

I did not mean to say I was now suffering with any special Illness, but only not the better of being a year older than when last you heard from me. I am not the less obliged to you for your friendly and hospitable offers, but I scarce get to London now-a-days. I am sorry to have troubled you about Sevigne: I only wanted the newest Edition for Notes, and Vocabulary, preferring the type and Paper of older Editions; and also smaller. You must not take the trouble to send me your learned Catalogues;

June 1880 for you see I do not avail myself of them. Cowell said that your September Spanish one offered quite a History of that Literature. Yours truly, E.FG.

To Charles Keene [Woodbridge] [June, 1880] My dear Keene,

I ought to have acknowledged the receipt of your Paris map, which is excellent; so that, eyes permitting, I can follow my Sevigne about from her Rue St. Catherine over the Seine to the Faubourg St. Ger­ main quite distinctly. These cold East winds, however, coming so suddenly after the heat, put those Eyes of mine in a pickle, so as I am obliged to let them lie fallow, looking only at the blessed Green of the Trees before my Window, or on my Quarterdeck. My two Nieces are with me, so that I leave all the house to them, except my one Room downstairs, which serves for Parlour, Redroom and all.1 And it does very well for me; reminding me of my former Cabin life in my little Ship "d'autrefois." . . . Do not you forget (as you will) to tell Mr. Millais one day of the pretty Subject I told you; little Keats standing sentry before his sick Mother's Door with a drawn sword; in his Shirt it might be, with some Rembrandtish Light and Shade. The Story is to be found at the begin­ ning of Lord Houghton's Life. Also, for any Painter you know of what they call the "Genre School": Sevigne and the "de Villars" looking through the keyhole at Mignard painting Madame de Fontevrauld (Rochechouart) while the Abbe Tetu talks to her (Letter of Sept. 6, 1675). It might be done in two compartments, with the wall slipt between, so as to show both Parties, as one has seen on the Stage. 1 The room was spacious, and folding doors partitioned the sleeping area from the remainder.

June 1880

To Caroline Crabbe [Woodbridge] Wednesday, June 6, [1880] Dear Miss Crabbe, I have written to George that he may settle whether I am to meet you at Merton next week, or the week after. I do not know that it can make any difference to me: Fanny and Elizabeth Kerrich come here on Friday, and it cannot matter to them whether I leave them one week or another as they will be here a month assuredly—two months, I hope. And, if next week or the week after be the same to you and Mary, it is surely best in all respects for George to settle the matter. I shall quite understand (I tell him) if he would rather not have me if he do not feel up to it. I have thought much of him since Sunday, when this cold NE wind set in with this hot sun; we must hear how he finds himself after it— nay, before, if (as I think likely) the same wind (if perhaps not so strong) will prevail till Midsummer. I was much interested in your letter about Parham: I had forgotten that Corrance had bought it of your Family.1 I shall be very glad to talk with you about this: and if we should not meet at Merton, I will assuredly go to Brighton, if I live, sooner or later in the year—unless you will come here: which I cannot see why not. Mary Lynn is soon to start with her Nieces for Switzerland. But she is very nervous about it. Ever yours E.FG. 1 Parham Lodge, eight miles north of Woodbridge, from 1792-96 the residence of the poet Crabbe. In 1851 Frederick Corrance, formerly of Loudham Hall, Petistree, replaced the Lodge with Parham New Hall.

From James Spedding 80 Westbourne Terrace 16 June/80 My dear Fitz I sent Aldis Wright the other day a copy of Pickersgill's answer to my paper on the two versions of Richard III, with my rejoinders interleaved.1 He said it came seasonably; for he had just finished his

June 1880 notes to Richard III and was going into the country to write the preface, that he should probably see you on the way, and that if I had not sent you a copy he wished I would. I did not send you a copy partly because I did not think you would care about it: (You had a copy of my original paper and agreed with me on the main point; and Pickersgill's objections do not seem to me to be worth anything.) Partly because, in making my copies by a process at which I was not expert, I got impressions of many of the leaves so faint that I thought they would not be good for your eyes and your reader would not be able to help you. If Wright thinks that Pickersgill's answers have any weight and wishes for your opinion, let me know and I will replace the less legible leaves by fresh ones. In the meantime I send you by book-post copies of some notes which I wrote on Daniel's theories2 concerning Romeo and Juliet and Henry V, which you can show to Wright, and ask whether they are worth anything. I have another set on the "Revised Text" of Romeo and Juliet treating the same questions more at large: but the copies were made before these and several pages have come off imperfect. He, however, will be able to read them well enough if he wishes, and I have a few copies ready. These, which I shall book-post at the same time with this letter, exhibit the variable results of various experiments of my own in the preparation of the paper: but though many are blunders, I think you will find them all legible. Yours ever J M Spedding 1

Commentaries on Shakespeare's play by Spedding and Edward Pickersgill published in Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, No. Ill, 1875. 2Peter Daniel in 1870 published a volume of "notes and conjectural emenda­ tions" on doubtful passages in Shakespeare's plays.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Thursday [June 17,1880] My dear Wright,

I came home last Evening and found your Letter. I am sorry to have been away (at G. Crabbe's) when you called here; and shall be glad if you care to call on your way back to Cambridge.

June 1880 This morning came a note from Spedding, and two Papers copied off by some Process of his own on Daniel's Commentary on Henry V and Romeo and Juliet. But I will enclose his Note. As to asking me whether they are worth your looking at, I am sure they must be that without first reading them: and perhaps I should scarce be a better Judge if I had read them. For, as you know, I have no faith in my analytical faculty, however much I may have in my Doctor Fell ditto. I do not think my Eyes will tackle Henry just now; Romeo and Juliet I shall manage: but I wish you to see the Papers as speedily as possible. If you be still at Beccles, I will post them directly I hear from you: or to Cambridge, if there you be returned: or keep them for you here if you choose to call for them. George Crabbe told me you had written to him very kindly. He did not like to trouble you again, but asked me to get you to answer one day the Query of which he made a Note on the Enclosed "Kiver"— which was for my use, not yours. You should one day go and see that George: as amiable, agreeable, a fellow as ever I knew; sensible in all ways; and exact and accomplisht in the Archaeology he follows. His housekeeping is quite plain and easy going—no Snobbishness or Formality Divine or Human: the Country he lives in, as the Country was; and several Churches re­ markable in it. That Thompson for one. He is not very strong just now: but God send him so as Summer gets on. Then go and see him; and believe me yours Littlegrange

To Anne Thackeray Ritchie Woodbridge June 17, [1880] Dear Mrs. Ritchie, Pray believe that I am sincerely glad of all the Gladness you tell me of in yourself, and thank you for telling me of it so soon. As to your Father's Book of Drawings, etc., I had given it up as lost, and was afraid of seeing some of the Drawings advertized by some unscrupulous Publisher into whose hand they might have fallen.1 But they soon turned up when once looked for, it seems. You know that I wished you to keep the Book if you wished so to do. But there was one Drawing, not in the Book, but sent up along with it, which I very

June 1880 much wish to be returned to me, in order that I may return it to its owner. A Pen and Ink Drawing of a Man and Woman in a Street— he with his hat in his hand—mounted on gray Paper, I think: and (I think) marked at the back with the name of the Person I had given it to—"F. Spalding." However that may be, I think you cannot mistake the Drawing, if it be still in company with the Book, and if you can spare thought enough from better things to identify it from my Description. If you have the original Drawing of your Father by Maclise, you can, if you please, let me have—for a while (Aetat 70) your Father's Copy of it which was in the Book.2 But if you have not the original, by all means keep your Father's Copy—yes, and frame it—and hang it up—without waiting for it a Year—a Day—or an Hour. You must tell Mr. Ritchie that I cannot wish him better than wishing all well to you: and that I am yours and his Very sincerely, E.FG. 1 The album of sketches by Thackeray sent to Anne when she was compiling illustrations for The Orphan of Pimlico in 1875. 2 Thackeray at the age of 23, reproduced in Gordon Ray's Thackeray, The Uses of Adversity, following p. 142. Thackeray's copy differs from the original by Daniel Maclise, which appears as the frontispiece in The Yellowplush Papers, vol. Ill of Anne's Biographical Edition of her father's works. The portrait is dated by Anne, 1832; by Ray, 1833.

To Frederick Tennyson The Old Place June, [1880] My dear Frederick,

I did not send you the last Musical Times, because it seemed to me less interesting than others which I had sent you before. But yesterday it turned up again from a heap of discarded "paperasses," and I think it may as well be posted to you—to be read or not as you please. You know that I do not want it to be returned to me: but I do want you to send me a line concerning yourself, and your own health, which you somewhat complained of in your last. I have been away for a week to make my one visit: which is to George Crabbe, my Poet's Grandson, a Parson in Norfolk, and one of the most amiable, intelligent, and agreeable of men. But my object

June 1880 in going was less to see him (whom I catch a sight of otherwise now and then)—not so much him, I say, as his two Sisters whom I also much regard, and whom I never see but when I look for them at his house. We had a very pleasant week together. Some little while before this, I was meditating a much longer Journey, which was to have included Jersey! and yourself in it! and then a flight across to Brittany—with one single object in view: and that was—just to look at my dear old Sevigne's home near Vitre, and then—home again: just as when I had seen Sir Walter Scott's Abbotsford. I had been reading her through again; and felt a desire to realize what I read so much, and so delightfully, about; a desire I had often felt before and which will, I suppose, never get further. You know by yourself that one becomes very slow to move so far at our time of Life. A note from old Spedding some days ago told me that Alfred, and his Son Hallam, were gone to Venice: so he is apparently not so super­ annuated as you and I. But then he has a Son who acts Courier for him. I could travel anywhere if quite at ease; but Steam Boats, Rails, Hotels, etc., all to be settled with, as well as to be endured, are now too much for me. I should have thought the Season was rather far advanced for Venice, which, I believe, smells badly in Summer. Here in England we have not yet Heat to complain of: and Hay in the Fields, and Mignonette in the Garden are better than stagnant Offal. Now, write me a few lines to tell me you are better; and always believe me your ancient Friend, E.FG.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [June 19, 1880] My dear Wright,

The enclosed will tell you why I do not send the Spedding Papers. I have written to tell him you are to be where you are till next week, and that I know you will be doubly glad of them while there. Do not fear: I have only read the Romeo which is short, and far sweeter than short: the Henry V is not so legible, and (to say truth) I kept it till you might possibly be coming this way to read it to me. But I shall not wait for you now. Furnivall I have not cared to read—thank you. He (I suppose) sent

June 1880 me a printed proposal of some reprint of Shakespeare Text. I forget what: but as I supposed that he would not do better than could be found in the Cambridge Edition, I made no sign. I think you would do best to make him no reply, now or hereafter, leave him among the Cockneys. I wonder you do not see that such is the best way. I forgot in my former letter to thank you for your "Generydes,"1 which I suppose you take mainly as a piece of old English. One cannot wonder at such Grandam Narrative in Century 14, when the Court of Louis XIV was amusing itself with Calprenede and Scuderi2 three Centuries after, and we in England with Pamela: Grandison3 a hun­ dred years after that. I also remembered Waterloo: and when my Reader and I were going to Supper, I thought of that Colour Sergeant who, just at that hour all those years ago, offered a slice of Bread to young Leeke: "Take it, Sir—I am sure you have deserved it." There is a Compliment to remember; and I am yours E.FG. 1

A Middle English metrical romance edited by Wright; published 1878. de la Calprenede (1610-63); Madeleine Scuderi (1607-1701), both authors of voluminous heroic romances. 3 Pamela and Sir Charles Grandison, novels by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761). 2Gauthier

To Charles Keene Woodbridge Sunday, [June 20,1880] My dear Keene,

Your Letter reached me yesterday when I was just finishing my Sevigne; I mean, reading it over. I have plenty of Notes for an Intro­ ductory Argument and List of Dramatis Personae, and a clue to the course of her Letters, so as to set a new reader off on the right tack, with some previous acquaintance with the People and Places she lives among. But I shrink from trying to put such Notes into shape; all writing always distasteful to me, and now very difficult, at seventy odd. Some such Introduction would be very useful: people being in general puzzled with Persons, Dates, etc.,1 if not revolted by the eternal, though quite sincere, fuss about her Daughter, which the Eye grad­ ually learns to skim over, and get to the fun. I felt a pang when arriv­ ing at—

June 1880 Ci git Marie de Rabutin-Chantal Marquise de Sevigne Decedee Ie 18 Avril 1696 still to be found, I believe, on a Tablet in the Church of Grignan in Provence. I have been half minded to run over to Brittany just to see Les Rochers; but a French "Murray" informed me that the present owner will not let it be seen by Strangers attracted by all those "paperasses," as he calls her Letters. Probably I should not have gone in any case when it came to proof. . . . I did not forget Waterloo Day. Just as I and my Reader Boy were going into the Pantry for some grub, I thought of young Ensign Leeke, not 18, who carried the Colours of that famous 52nd which gave the "coup de grace" to the Imperial Guard about 8 P.M. and then marched to Rossomme, seeing the Battle was won: and the Colour-serjeant found some bread in some French Soldier's knapsack, and brought a bit to his Ensign, "You must want a bit, Sir, and I am sure you have deserved it." That was a Compliment worth having! I have, like you, always have, and from a Child had, a mysterious feeling about that "Sizewell Gap."2 There were reports of kegs of Hollands found under the Altar Cloth of Theberton Church near by: and we Children looked with awe on the "Revenue Cutters" which passed Aldbro', especially remembering one that went down with all hands, "The Ranger." They have half spoilt Aldbro'; but now that Dunwich is crossed out from my visiting Book by the loss of that fine fellow,3 whom this time of year especially reminds me of, I must return to Aldbro' now and then. Why can't you go there with me? I say no more of your coming here, for you ought to be assured that you would be welcome at any time; but I never do ask any busy, or otherwise engaged man to come. . . . Here is a good Warwickshire word—"I sheered my Eyes round the room." So good, that it explains itself. 1 EFG's Dictionary of Madame de Sevigne, edited by Mary E. FitzGerald Kerrich, his great-niece, was published in 1914. 2 During the latter half of the 19th century, the sea erased "precipitous cliffs" bisected by Sizewell Gap four miles north of Aldborough. Virtually only the name survives of the ravine that had provided access from the beach to the heath above for smugglers with their burdens of wines, gin, and laces. It is recorded that shepherds, after the passage of a cargo, obligingly effaced the tracks

June 1880 of carts and pack horses at the head of the Gap by driving their sheep along the routes taken by the smugglers. 3 Edwin Edwards.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Tuesday [June 22,1880] My dear Wright, You will call here on your road as you find it convenient: as my Nieces are here, there is always some sort of Baufling for Sunday's Dinner at about 1 P.M. If you should decide on coming by the earlier 10 A.M. Train, would you like Brooke to meet you at Dinner? If so, give me a line by Post Card on Thursday. He was on his black Charger yesterday Evening, observing, though not commanding, the Evolutions of Volunteers in my Neighbour Phillips' Lawn over the road. Spedding has sent me his MS interleaved with Pickersgill's Pam­ phlet. I am quite unworthy of all the trouble he has put himself to: and shall return him the Pamphlet (Richard III) when I have done my best with it: so as he may bestow it upon some more worthy Critic. The Henry V and Romeo, being copied MS, I shall keep. I did not buy Read's Cotgrave,1 having already bought one at your recommendation a few years ago. And that I cannot find, Folio as it is, and I wanting to find some Sevigne words in it. It is very kind of you to have subscribed to Edwards' Old Inns.2 I think Mrs. E. must have wished for your Name rather than for your Money, as she is in no want; but, sensible Woman as she is, she has a craze about her Husband's Works, and Fame. Whatever her motive in applying to you, I had nothing to do with it. I never ask others to subscribe, even when there is want: nor ever hint that others may be applied to—as the custom is with some. There was an interesting Notice in the last Academy but one, of Agamemnon done in the original at Oxford.3 Years and years ago I told your Master that some of the Greek Plays should be done in your Senate house, as the Latin Comedies at Westminster. Yours always Littlegrange 1

Randle Cotgrave, French-English Dictionary, 1611.

1. Bredfield Hall, EFG's birthplace

2. Wherstead Lodge

3. Boulge Hall, side view

4. Boulge Cottage

5. Farlingay Hall

6. Market Hill, where EFG had rooms

7. Little Grange

8. Boulge Church, in whose churchyard EFG was buried

June 1880 2 Edwin Edwards had privately printed Part 1 of his etchings, Old Inns, in 1873. Parts 2 and 3 were issued by his wife in 1880 and 1881 respectively. 3 "The Agamemnon of Aeschylus at Oxford," Academy, June 12, p. 438.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge June 23, [1880] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

You smile at my "Lunacies" as you call my writing periods; I take the Moon as a signal not to tax you too often for your inevitable answer. I have now let her pass her Full: and June is drawing short: and you were to be but for June at Leamington: so—I must have your answer, to tell me about your own health (which was not so good when last you wrote) and that of your Family; and when, and where, you go from Leamington. I shall be: sorry if you cannot go to Switzer­ land. I have been as far as—Norfolk—on a week's visit (the only visit of the sort I now make) to George Crabbe, my Poet's Grandson, and his two Grand-daughters. It was a very pleasant visit indeed; the peo­ ple all so sensible, and friendly, talking of old days; the Country flat indeed, but green, well-wooded, and well-cultivated: the weather well enough. I carried there two volumes of my Sevigne: and even talked of going over to Brittany, only to see her Rochers, as once I went to Edinburgh only to see Abbotsford. But (beside that I probably should not have gone further than talking in any case) a French Guide Book informed me that the present Proprietor of the place will not let it be shown to Strangers who pester him for a view of it, on the strength of those "paperasses," as he calls her Letters. So this is rather a comfort to me. Had I gone, I should also have visited my dear old Frederick Tennyson at Jersey. But now I think we shall never see one another again. Spedding keeps on writing Shakespeare Notes in answer to sundry Theories broached by others: he takes off copies of his MS. by some process he has learned; and, as I always insist on some Copy of all he writes, he has sent me these, which I read by instalments, as Eyesight permits. I believe I am not a fair Judge between him and his adver­ saries; first, because I have but little, if any, faculty of critical Analysis; and secondly, because I am prejudiced with the notion that old Jem is

June 1880 Shakespeare's Prophet, and must be right. But, whether right or wrong, the way in which he conducts, and pleads, his Case is always Music to me. So it was even with Bacon, with whom I could not be recon­ ciled: I could not like Dr. Fell: much more so with "the Divine Williams," who is a Doctor that I do like. It has turned so dark here in the last two days that I scarce see to write at my desk by a window which has a hood over it, meant to exclude—the Sun! I have encreased my Family by two broods of Ducks, who compete for the possession of a Pond about four feet in diameter: and but an hour ago I saw my old Seneschal escorting home a stray lot of Chickens. My two elder Nieces are with me at present, but I do not think will be long here, if a Sister comes to them from Italy. Pray let me hear how you are. I am pretty well myself:—though not quite up to the mark of my dear Sevigne, who writes from her Rochers when close on sixty—"Pour moi, je suis dune si parfaite sante, que je ne comprends point ce que Dieu veut faire de moi." But yours always and a Day, Littlegrange

To W. A. Wright Woodhridge June 30, [1880] My dear Wright,

It is very good of you to tell me of the Master. I do not know what "Bright's Disease" means, though it may be now privately making my acquaintance: do not trouble yourself to inform me, nor to write till you have some definite account to give of my poor Master's condition. Not that I am the less interested: but I do not want you to write to me when you are in Jerusalem. I must confess to you also that I made bold to send your Letter to Spedding, who is as old, and has been a more intimate friend, of the Master than I; so you must judge whether I am worthy to be trusted with any further Letter in such a case. Come—now I think we have not Cold to complain of, I get down to our River bank, or Wall, and there imbibe a Draught from the Sea. Robert Groome1 is coming to Woodbridge for some Visitation on Monday; and thence, on the same day, I think, over what they call "The Sands" to Orford; where, if the present Rector do not invite him

July 1880 (as I suppose he will) to the Rectory, the Archdeacon will put up at the Castle Inn; and I should be half tempted to put up there with him for the night. If you were here, now, this would be a pleasant thing for all of us; but you are not, and cannot be here: and the Rector will take in his Archdeacon—"Et voila qui est fait," as says my Sevigne. The Great American cannot restrain his divine Oestrus. By the way, I wrote to Quaritch offering my Bri ght's Pepys in part exchange for his £8.8 Sevigne: but he replies that he has already two Copies of Bright in stock, and therefore, etc. "Voila de la Juiverie," as my friend says again—what a pretty word. Half her Beauty is the liquid melodious­ ness of her Language—all unpremeditated as a Blackbird's. Great American again: and yours always The young Lord of Littlegrange You are quite welcome to Part I of the Old Inns; whether to be sent to, or taken by, you. Compliments to Job.2 I wonder if he, poor fellow, had Bright's Disease among his others. I do not mean to be witty however. 1

Archdeacon of Suffolk. No doubt Wright and his fellow Biblical scholars were revising Job at the time. 2

To E. B. Cowell Woodbridge July 1/80 My dear Cowell,

I am glad you made a fairly prosperous Pilgrimage into Lincoln­ shire: and very glad that you found Donne pretty well at Southwell. Aldis Wright spent some hours here on his way from Beccles to Cambridge last Saturday. His Master had not been well for some little while: and, though he spoke of himself as being better when Wright arrived in Cambridge, Mrs. Thompson seemed anxious about him. I do not quite know the Nature of his Complaint. I enclose you a cutting from George of Bristol's Catalogue, you may still be wanting a Copy of Bowie for somebody, as you were last year. By this same post I send another cutting from the same Catalogue— Cotgrave's Dictionery to Wright, who had just been too late for one at Barrett's.

July 1880 I was for a week—and a very pleasant week it was—at George Crabbe's, with his two Sisters. I believe that I shall go to him again in the course of the Summer with Wright for two days or so. I think that he and G.C. will be pleased with one another, and perhaps mutually useful. I was tempted (as more than once before) to run over to Brittany taking Jersey on my way: in order to see Frederick Tennyson at the latter place, and my friend Madame de Sevigne's abode in the other. But I found it—as before—much easier to remain at home. I suppose I may get as far as Lowestoft by and by; my Italian Niece proposing to bring herself and her Boy there to see their Aunts, and to inhale some Sea Air. You, I suppose, will be going to Cornwall; which is much more worth going to: and where I wish you and Elizabeth all health and Pleasure; and am always hers and yours sincerely E.FG.

To Charles Keene White Lion, Aldeburgh July 7/80 My dear Keene,

I shall worry you with Letters: here is one, however, which will call for no answer. It is written indeed in acknowledgment of your packet of Drawings, received by me yesterday at Woodbridge. My rule concerning Books is, that Giver and Taker (each in his turn) should just say nothing. As I am not an Artist (though a very great Author) I will say that Four of your Drawings seemed capital to me:1 I cannot remember the Roundabouts which they initialed: except two: 1. The lazy idle Boy, which you note as not being used; I suppose, from not being considered sufficiently appropriate to the Essay (which I forget), but which I thought altogether good; and the old Man, with a look of Edwards! 2. Little Boy in Black, very pretty: 3. (I forget the Essay) People looking at Pictures: one of them, the principal, surely a recollection of W.M.T. himself.2 Then 4. There was a bawling Boy: subject forgotten. I looked at them many times through the forenoon: and came away here at 2 P.M. I do not suppose, or wish, that you should make over to me all these Drawings, which I suppose are the originals from which the Wood was cut. I say I do not "wish," because I am in my 72nd year:

July 1880 and I now give away rather than accept. But I wished for one at least of your hand; for its own sake, and as a remembrance, for what short time is left me, of one whom I can sincerely say I regard greatly for himself, as also for those Dunwich days in which I first became known to him. "Voila qui est dit." And I wish you were here, not for your own sake, for it is dull enough. No Sun, no Ship, a perpetual drizzle; and to me the melan­ choly of another Aldbro' of years gone by. Out of that window there "le petit" Churchyard sketched Thorpe headland under an angry Sunset of Oct., 55 which heralded a memorable Gale that washed up a poor Woman with a Babe in her arms: and old Mitford had them buried with an inscribed Stone in the old Churchyard, peopled with dead "Mariners"; and Inscription and Stone are now gone. Yesterday I got out in a Boat, drizzly as it was: but today there is too much Sea to put off. I am to be home by the week's end, if not before. The melancholy of Slaughden last night, with the same Sloops sticking sidelong in the mud as sixty years ago! And I the venerable Remembrancer. 1

Keene provides eight plates and ten initial letters for the Roundabout Papers in an edition of Thackeray's works published by Smith and Elder in 1879. 2 "A Study for one of the Portraits of Thackeray," reproduced in the Keene Life and Letters, facing p. 305.

To E. B. Cowell Woodbridge July 15/80 My dear Cowell, On returning from Aldbro yester Evening I found a Note from Professor Goodwin saying that he was going to your Cambridge on Saturday, on a visit to Mr. Jebb,1 and should he come and see me in the interim (his note having been written on Monday). I have replied, as to Mr. Lowell, that it really distressed me to think of either of them coming out of their way for such a purpose: and that I will not even invite old English friends on any such Errand as they can testify. It is, in any case, too late for him to come now: but as he spoke also of September I thought best to say what I did. I took the liberty to say also that I believed he would find yourself, and Wright, at Cambridge, both much more to his purpose in all respects: and (as I believe he

July 1880 is an amiable, modest, and unaffected man) I hope you will make, or improve, his acquaintance. I also advised him to make a trip to Bury; if not to explore the ruins of the Abbey, with its memories of Samson and Jocelyn,2 yet to look at the Abbey Gate which one can so well do from the windows of the AngeI Inn opposite, while taking a Biscuit and a Glass of Sherry—as I have often done, and might be tempted to meet him midway there, were it not that such an Interview in one's whole Life, probably never to recur at my time of Life, is rather sad: and, if mutually arranged from a distance, apt to fail. I even hinted that perhaps you, who know of the matter, might accompany him! This removing any responsibility from my Shoulders to yours needs some Apology; but you need none in declining any share in it. Perhaps you are not in Cambridge at all: I do not write to Wright because he may be away at Revision. But, if you are there—either, or both of you, I think you will not be indisposed to show what courtesy you conveniently can to the transatlantic Professor. I shall soon be going to Lowestoft, I suppose, where (I believe) my Italian Niece is going to join her Sisters for a while: and I am always yours and Elizabeth's— E.FG. 1 William

Goodwin, Professor of Greek at Harvard; Richard Jebb, then Profes­ sor of Greek at the University of Glasgow. 2 Samson, the monk who, in 1182, became abbot of the monastery at Bury St. Edmunds and restored the strength and prestige of the foundation, left deci­ mated and debt-ridden by previous maladministration. Jocelyn of Brakelond, one of the order, recorded in his Chronicles the events of Samson's tenure. Jocelyn's work is the source of "The Ancient Monk" in Carlyle's Past and Present, recommended to modern readers for entertainment as well as food for thought.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge July 16, [1880] My dear Wright,

Not being assured that you were back from Revision, I wrote yester­ day to Cowell asking him—and you, when returned—to call on Pro­ fessor Goodwin, of the American Cambridge, who goes tomorrow to your Cambridge, to see, if not to stay with, Mr. Jebb. Mr. Goodwin proposed to give me a look here before he went to Cambridge: but

July 1880 I told him I could not bear the thought of his coming all this way for such a purpose. I think you can witness that I do not wish even old English Friends to take me except on their way elsewhere: and for an American Gentleman! It is not affectation to say that any such proposal worried me. So what must I do but ask him to be sure to see Messrs. Wright and Cowell when he gets to Cambridge: and spend part of one of his days there in going to Bury, and (even if he cared not for the Abbey with its Abbot Samson and Jocelyn) to sit with a Bottle of light wine at the Angel window, face to face with that lovely Abbey gate. Perhaps Cowell, I said, might go over with him—knowing and loving Gothic—that was a liberty for me to take with Cowell, but he need not go. I did not hint at you. I suppose I muddled it all. But do show the American Gentleman some civilities, to make amends for the disrespect which you and Cowell told me of in April. I dare say you would meet him at, or with, Mr. Jebb, with­ out any advertisement of mine. If you have an opportunity, I wish you would tell the Master that I have not been thankless to you for the reports you have sent me of his health: I need not say that I rejoice to hear of its amendment. Would not Hastings be very hot just now? I should have thought his own Scarboro' far better; but no doubt he is well advised. My grand friend Anna Biddell came in from Ipswich this morning and told me of Tom Taylor's death:1 which I should have thought my own would have anticipated by many years. Miss Crabbe wrote me a week ago that her Brother did not speak of himself as stronger than when I left him five weeks ago. He is rather dreading to go (as he has promised) to Lincoln for some Archeological Meeting: after which his Entertainer there (one of the Crowfeet) is to be entertained in turn at Merton. So I can say nothing of our visit there till further advices. I am ready at any time. I have been for a week at old Aldboro—for want of old Dunwich, whose ruined tower I saw from Sea—where I got seasoned with Salt, Spray, Wind and Sun. Now I am in part attendance on two capital Irish Women Cousins, at present staying with my Brother's Widow. And hence one reason for my now writing. My Nephew Gerald who died last year at Waterford, left behind him a lot of Books which must be sold to help pay his debts. These Cousins of course think the Books are innumerable and very valuable: I know nothing of them but that he told me from time to time that he had bought some expensive Editions of French Books—from

July 1880 Quaritch. Can you advise me the best way of selling them? offering the lot to Quaritch? or how? Not in Ireland, I think, nor at this time of year anywhere. Ever yours, Littlegrange the Great 1 Tom Taylor had died July 12 at the age of 63. He was the author of more than 100 plays, and in his varied career had served as leader writer for the Morning Chronicle and the Daily News, as editor of Punch, 1874-80, and as art critic for The Times.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Thursday [July 22,1880] My dear Wright,

Thank you for the news about our Master: as also about the Norfolk Constabulary which I send to Edmund by this Post. He is still in Ireland. I have heard no more of G. Crabbe since his sister's letter about him: and I must write to enquire of himself. I hope Professor Goodwin does not think me uncivil for declining a flying Visit which must have been so much more trouble than profit to himself, and would therefore have [been] some trouble to me. Cowell may get a Sevigne, but shall "we" like it? Only a few days ago I lighted on a story. One of the Paris troupe of Actors who was supposed to have a "mechante" disease, was spoken of as about to marry; on which another man of the troupe said to him, "Pray do not marry, or we shall all of us have it." This (but in better words, as you may imagine) Sevigne's Son tells her, and she writes to her Daughter. I am still reading her! And could make a pretty Introduction to her; but Press work is hard to me now, and nobody would care for what I should do, when done. Mrs. Edwards has found me a good Photo of "nos pauvres Rochers"—a straggling old Chateau, with (I suppose) the Chapel which her old "Bien Bon" Uncle built in 1671—while she was talking to her Gardener Pilois and reading Montaigne, Moliere, Pascal, or Cleopatre, among the trees she had planted. Bless her! I should like to have made Lamb like her, in spite of his anti-gallican obstinacy. I will write to Quaritch about my Nephew's Books. If you come this

July 1880 way, you know you are welcome. Brooke was here yesterday and the Day before. We have settled Waterloo. Lord Houghton wrote me that he had asked Lord Albemarle about it on last Waterloo Day; and (as well as I could decypher) Lord A. said the 52nd had done the business for which the Guards were credited; but he did not choose to stir the question in his published Memoirs. Ever yours E.FG.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge July 22, [1880] Dear Sir,

My Nephew Gerald, who died a year ago, left a Collection of Books, which his Irish Kinsfolk think very large and very choice. And they want to sell them. I think he had many of his best—French and Classic—from you; so that you can judge better what should be done with them than any Irish Kinsfolk—myself included, who never saw one of them. I do not ask you to buy them: but to be so good as to tell me the best way of selling them. Ireland is out of question. Yours truly, E.FG.

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge] [July 24,1880]

"II sera Ie mois de Juillet tant qu'il plaira a Dieu" writes my friend Sevigne—only a week more of it now, however. I should have written to my friend Mrs. Kemble before this—in defiance of the Moon—had I not been waiting for her Address from Mowbray Donne, to whom I wrote more than a fortnight ago. I hope no ill-health in himself, or his Family, keeps him from answering my Letter, if it ever reached him. But I will wait no longer for his reply: for I want to know concerning you and your health: and so I must trouble Coutts to fill up the Address which you will not instruct me in.

July 1880 Here (Woodbridge) have I been since last I wrote—some Irish Cousins coming down as soon as English Nieces had left. Only that in the week's interval I went to our neighbouring Aldeburgh on the Sea—where I first saw, and felt, the Sea some sixty-five years ago; a dreary place enough in spite of some Cockney improvements: my old Crabbe's Borough, as you may remember. I think one goes back to the old haunts as one grows old: as the Chancellor l'Hopital said when he returned to his native Bourdeaux, I think: "Me voici, Mes­ sieurs," returned to die, as the Hare does, in her ancient "gite." I shall soon be going to Lowestoft, where one of my Nieces, who is married to an Italian, and whom I have not seen for many years, is come, with her Boy, to stay with her Sisters. Whither are you going after you leave Hampshire? You spoke in your last letter of Scarboro': but I still think you will get over to Switzerland. One of my old Friends—and Flames—Mary Lynn (pretty name) who is of our age, and played with me when we both were Children—at that very same Aldeburgh—is gone over to those Moun­ tains which you are so fond of: having the same passion for them as you have. I had asked her to meet me at that Aldeburgh—"Aldbro'" —that we might ramble together along that beach where once we played; but she was gone. If you should come to Lowestoft instead of Scarbro', we, if you please, will ramble together too. But I do not recommend the place— very ugly—on a dirty Dutch Sea—and I do not suppose you would care for any of my People; unless it were my little Niece Annie, who is a delightful Creature. I see by the Athenaeum that Tom Taylor is dead—the "cleverest Man in London" Tennyson called him forty years ago. Professor Good­ win, of the Boston Cambridge, is in England, and made a very kind proposal to give me a look on his travels. But I could not let him come out of his way (as it would have been) for any such a purpose. He wrote that Mrs. Lowell was in better health: residing at South­ ampton, which you knew well near fifty years ago, as your Book tells. Mr. Lowell does not write to me now; nor is there reason that he should. Please to make my remembrances to Mr. Sartoris,1 who scarcely re­ members me, but whose London House was very politely opened to me so many years ago. Anyhow, pray let me hear of yourself: and believe me always yours sincerely The Laird of Littlegrange 1 Widower

of Fanny's sister Adelaide.

July 1880

To C. Ε. Norton Woodbridge July 26/80 My dear Norton: A week ago arrived a handsome Volume of your American Archaeol­ ogical Institute,1 presented to me by its Executive Committee. For this Present I know I am primarily indebted to your Suggestion: but I am not the less grateful to your Fellow Members for adopting it: and I rely upon it that you will be kind enough to tell them as much from me. I wish I were more worthy of such a present: but you know that I am not a "Scholar" in any department. I am something like my dear friend (if she would allow me to call her so) Madame de Sevigne: Les uns disent oui, Ies autres non: et moi je dis oui et non." So, as in former cases, I appeal to such a Judge as Edward Cowell, and will say Oui or Non with him when he has read the Book, which he shall do if it can reach him at his Cambridge before he sets out for his Summer Holiday to Cornwall; where he will be busied with Monu­ ments as ancient, and interesting, as some of those which your Book treats of. Professor Goodwin very kindly offered to run down here just to give me a Look—which (as with Mr. Lowell) I would not let him do: not even letting friends in England come out of their way only to see me— and Woodbridge—still less a learned and busy Man from America, on his way to the wise men of our Cambridge, and to Rugby, and then to —Europe! And a Visit which, unlike those of English Friends, might be just a Glimpse of Welcome and Farewell—for Ever! As probable at my Age, and with the Atlantic between us! I do hope that Mr. Good­ win will understand, and allow for, this: and set down my discourage­ ment to anything rather than misappreciation of his kindness, or of his company. The reason is rather that I felt sure of both: if you can understand that—to whom I should have said the same, for the same reason. I told him to give up half a day of his Visit at Cambridge to running over (in an hour and half) to Bury St. Edmunds, if only to look at the Abbey Gate there—Abbot Samsons, Abbey, though not his Gate— from the windows of the Angel Inn just opposite—with a Biscuit and a Pint of Sherry—as I have so often done: nay, did only six weeks ago on returning from Norfolk. Mr. Lowell might do this from London, and perhaps do more, in rambling among what does remain of Samson and

July 1880 Jocelyn, with no Guide-Book but that of Carlyle in his hand—or in his head. Mr. Goodwin told me in his Letter that Mrs. Lowell was in better health—at Southampton. He did not say how Mr. Lowell himself was, and how he got on with the People he does not well like, in that most unlovely London, and during the present hot weather. I was told that the Heat was even fatal in New York: and perhaps we are to have it over from you by some West Wind before long. You are, I hope and suppose, in a cooler region, and I shall be glad to hear—but not till you are quite at leisure—that you and yours are not the worse. I do not write to Mr. Lowell for any news about himself, because I do not wish to call upon him for any answer: busy as he must needs be with public Business, and still anxious perhaps about his own home. I think here is enough for you now. I am soon going to the Seaside— ugly Lowestoft—where half a dozen Nieces are gathered. And always sincerely yours The Laird of Littlegrange P.S. Another very kind letter from Mr. Goodwin, since this of mine was finished, to assure me that he understands my letter as I meant he should. He seems pleased with his visit to Cambridge, where he saw my friend, Aldis Wright: but not Cowell, which I am sorry for. Professor Jebb had not invited him: and Cowell is too shy to make a first step. Mr. Goodwin had not time to visit Bury. I am really very glad, and grateful, that he believes kindly in me still: I know that I am not undeserving of his Belief in this matter. 1 The first annual report of the Institute founded in 1879 under the leadership of Norton, who served as its initial president.

To W. W. Goodwin Woodbridge July 26, [1880] My dear Sir, Your very kind letter today received has been really a relief to me: I do think you can allow for me. Oh, it is not the English Independence you speak of that made me reply to you as I did: I am a Paddy, though born here: and I can say no more about my ways than I wrote you before. Perhaps Aldis Wright bore me witness, if you needed it. He has written to me to say that I missed a good Opportunity in missing

July 1880 you; I supposed that beforehand, and still answered as I did. Were I not paddy, I should feel sorry at what you say of English hospitality: yet we Paddies have not been behind the "Saxon" in that. I know that it was not a want in that direction that dictated my Letter: and I believe you believe it too. I know nothing of English Schools now, but I wish the young Gentle­ men did not talk slang (as I hear they do), "Awful—Jolly—beastly," etc.—but leave that to the young Ladies, whom I hear of—but do not hear—as abounding in that way. Last week's Academy tells me of a not otherwise ill-written Novel in which the Hero talks of having "spooned other women," though he is only in love with the Lady to whom he thus confides. And when I am told how Ladies (with, I suppose, their Husbands', and Brothers', and Fathers' sanction) prosti­ tute their faces in Photograph among Actresses, etc., in London Shops, I do not think this Country can have long to live, though it may last my time. I should be very glad to hear something from you when you are home from "The Continent." I shall be no farther off Woodbridge than Lowestoft (thirty miles off), where I am soon going to be among Nephews and Nieces: and there, as well as here, very sincerely yours, E. FitzGerald

To F. C. Brooke [Little Grange] July 26, 1880, Pmk. My dear Brooke, I cannot light just now on the letters which touch on the Combat— somewhere near the End of them, I know, and shall find ere long. My Eyes are rather puzzled today with your St. Helena MSS. These I send to Fox's whither I yesterday sent Thiers' Waterloo:1 that Ameri­ can Archaeological Book which I have not yet read; and a copy of two of my own immortal works: viz, a Copy of that Sea-Slang you asked for: and of my two Persians bound together in Quaritch's last.2 These you did not ask for: but, as I have several copies, here is one to adorn your Library with. You know I want nothing to be said of either im­ mortal work: but am yours truly E.FG.

July 1880 1 Probably The Campaign of Napoleon . . . extracted from Louis Thiers' His­ tory of the Consulate and the Empire, Ε. E. Bowen, ed., 4 vols., 1873-75. 2 EFG's Sea Words and Phrases, 1869-71, bound by Brooke, and the RubdiyatSaldmdn volume are in the FitzGerald Collection at Syracuse University. The copy of the translations is inscribed, "To F. C. Brooke of Ufford from the young Apollo of Woodbridge, July 26, 1880."

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [July 26, 1880] My dear Wright,

Excuse my troubling you again about Quaritch. I forgot to specify the Question I wanted your advice on in the letter you have returned me: viz, whether the Books should be packed and sent him by Irish hands—without any notion of their contents or value—or whether he should send over one of his "People" to pack, etc., leaving all to him. A very few words on a Post Card will tell me this. I was glad to receive a letter today from Professor Goodwin to say that he understood my excuse as I had meant it: and speaking very highly of the kindness and hospitality he had met with at Cambridge. Ever yours The Littlegrange A note from G. Crabbe reports that he is "assez bien" that he goes to Lincoln on Monday next. "Nous verrons" I think I shall be going to Lowestoft by the beginning of next week: where to put [up] I know not. I shall probably be for at least a month there, off and on, and will let you know of my "location."

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Thursday [July 29,1880] My dear Wright,

I think that either a note of mine missed you, or your word of answer, me—or you may have been away, etc. I wanted to know whether my Nephew's Books had better be num­ bered, and packed, in Ireland, or let Quaritch send one of his men to do it all. He left me to decide which alternative: and I wanted

July 1880 from you just a few words on a Post Card; which I wait for now, please. I enclose you two rather pretty views of William's reputed Birth­ place, and Death place: the latter well enough, and coloured ages ago by yours always1 E.FG. They will do to stick into some of your Copies. I lighted on them by chance some days ago. 1

The enclosures were two prints, both delicately and beautifully colored. The second is the interior of the Church of the Holy Trinity from the rear, showing the bust of Shakespeare executed soon after his death, on the wall above the dramatist's grave. EFG's "ages ago" was 1840, after a visit to Stratford with Tennyson in June.

To William Tate Woodbridge Thursday [July 29, 1880] Dear Dr. Tate,

I was very sorry to hear some while ago that you were going to leave us: but I suppose it is well for yourself that you do so. It is a fact that only yesterday Evening I was thinking that I would write to you and ask the very question you propose to answer: I mean, whether your Successor (whose Name I know not) will pay Mrs. Andrews for me as you have been good enough to do. If not he, any one else in the Parish whom you may recommend. I had also considered that the money I advanced was (as I think) exhausted by July 1: so that I am a month's allowance in your debt. All which I will set right at once if you will tell me whom I am to look to for the future. Pray make my kind remembrances to Mrs. Tate, who will be missed at Bredfield as you will be missed. You will have one pleasant neighbour at any rate near where you are going to: Archdeacon Groome—as amiable, well read, and agree­ able a man as I know. I am much afraid that his Eyesight will leave him: but the London Doctor had not told him so: but I think Groome himself is resigned to it. Happily, he has a good Wife and Daughters to wait upon him. Yours sincerely E. FitzGerald

July 1880

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge [July 30, 1880] My dear Lady, I send you Mowbray's reply to my letter of nearly three weeks ago. No good news of his Father—still less of our Army (news to me told to-day) altogether a sorry budget to greet you on your return to London. But the public news you knew already, I doubt not: and I thought as well to tell you of our Donne at once. I suppose one should hardly talk of anything except this Indian Calamity:1 but I am selfish enough to ignore, as much as I can, such Evils as I cannot help. I think that Tennyson in calling Tom Taylor the "cleverest man," etc., meant pretty much as you do. I believe he said it in reply to something I may have said that was less laudatory. At one time Tennyson almost lived with him and the Wigans whom I did not know.2 Taylor always seemed to me as "clever" as any one: was always very civil to me: but one of those toward whom I felt no attraction. He was too clever, I think. As to Art, he knew nothing of it then, nor (as he admits) up to 1852 or thereabout, when he published his very good Memoir of Haydon.:i I think he was too "clever" for Art also. Why will you write of "If you bid me come to Lowestoft in October," etc., which, you must know, is just what I should not ask you to do: knowing that, after what you say, you would come, if asked, were— (a Bull begins here)—were it ever so unlikely for you. I am going thither next week, to hear much (I dare say) of a Brother in Ireland4 who may be called to India; and am Ever yours sincerely, Littlegrange Why won't you write to me from Switzerland to say where a Letter may find you? If not, the Harvest Moon will pass! 1 The defeat of a British force in Afghanistan during an insurrection suppressed in September. 2 See letter to Tennyson, November 12, 1846, n.5. 3 The Life of Benjamin R. Haydon . . . from his Autobiography and Journals, 1853. 4 EFG's nephew, Edmund Kerrich.

August 1880

To Horace Basham 18 Arnold St., Lowestoft Tuesday [August 3,1880] Dear Horace, Thank you for telling me of your Shoebury exploits, by which I am glad that some of your Corps gain credit. You see that I am got to Lowestoft after all. The reason is, that a Niece of mine, married to an Italian, has come over with her Boy to stay with her Sisters here: and, as I have not seen her for many years, I am come to be with them all. But for this, I should have gone to Aldbro, with Arthur Charlesworth, whom I told you of, and who is coming to stay with me here next week. Lowestoft becomes uglier as it becomes larger: and less healthy in its air in proportion as the new Building exceeds the original Drainage. Nor do I care to go out on this very dirty Sea. But here I must be for the present. I should be very glad to see you here at any time; but I suppose you are busy. You speak in your letter of "going to Sea" on Wednesday—tomor­ row, I suppose. I suppose you do not mean "going to Sea" for any considerable Voyage: but on some such cruise as you took with Mr. Baker when I was last at Aldbro. I write by return of Post, hoping to catch you before you set sail: and am yours very sincerely E.FG.

To W. A. Wright 18 Arnold Street, Lowestoft [c. August 5, 1880] My dear Wright, I came here on Tuesday night, and am immerst in Nieces, though living, as usual, by myself. Here you will find me some time in the Day: at 1 P.M., Potato, and 6 P.M., Tea. Your Preface is made up so much from the Chronicle that you see Scriblerus has but little to annotate. Only—get rid of that Stuff of Hare's at the end:11 wonder you do not see how obsolete it is in style, and even thought also—Perhaps—Probably—you see all this so far as Style is concerned: I say, if you approve the Thought, put into your own words. I think you rather feel loyal to your old Trinity Dons and

August 1880 Scholars "as in private Duty bound"—which is good too: but Hare was a Pedant always, and now is an antiquated one. So thinks, wrongly maybe Yours always E.FG. Fancy what another thing Spedding would have turned out in a Sentence. G. Crabbe writes me he heard Great Tom of Lincoln toll for Mrs. Blakesley.2 1

The preface to Wright's Clarendon Press Richard III. EFG objected to a passage by Julius Hare on "the self-reflective characters of Shakespeare's villains" quoted from Guesses at Truth, 1827, pp. 61-64. 2 The wife of J. W. Blakesley, Dean of Lincoln, who died July 28.

To W. A. Wright 18 Arnold St r , Lowestoft Sunday [August 8,1880] My dear Wright, I enclose you Letters from two very different people, but in both of which you are alluded to. I think you will be pleased with what you find of yourself, and your William, in John De Soyre's letter. Which I wish you would forward, if you know how, to Cowell. He is inter­ ested in the Writer's doings: and Elizabeth will not be displeased at what is said of her husband. The other letter is from C. Keene, to whom I sent your "Generydes," knowing that it was a Book rather for him than for me. I send him all the Shakespeare Society Publications; and do not think you will resent my bestowing your Book on one who will relish it more than I do. Little must the readers of Punch know what a queer Spirit lurks behind those Woodcuts of his. I am more and more convinced that you should drop, if you do not distil into short Prose, that mad March Hare Guess. It is not only alien to the Character of your Edition, as well as of yourself: but is also quite disproportionate in length. I should drop it altogether: but if you think the substance of it worth retaining for the benefit of younger Readers—condense (with acknowledgement) from it: or refer to it in a note to what you have yourself said of Richard's Character in a former Page. But do not hang that long, incongruous, and heavy,

August 1880 weight at the end of your Preface. "The Crane's Expectation" is noth­ ing compared to it. So says your infallible E.FG. Do you know what it is to "flamber un Celestin?"

To W. A. Wright 18 Arnold St., etc. [August, 1880] My dear Wright, What are your wishes concerning the enclosed?1 I am rather in favour of the week after the 23rd because of Arthur Charlesworth coming to me here for his Holiday next week. It is true, I could leave him for two days as I have heretofore done: he can always amuse himself, and my Nieces, who know him, also like his Company. But, if August 30 be to your liking, as also to G.C.'s convenience, I think it would do better for me. Please to let me have a line on the subject: and I will at once apprize G.C. You could surely omit the first part of Hare—about Richard's Will, etc., and go to that which you seem to want about William's treatment of the Play. Yours always E.FG. 1

An invitation for Wright and EFG to visit Crabbe at Merton.

To Frederick Tennyson 18 Arnold Street, Lowestoft August 20/80 My dear Frederick, You say that I generally write more cheerfully from this Lowestoft: I cannot say if it will seem so to you now: but I will write at any rate. I came here nearly three weeks ago for the purpose of being among six Nieces: one of whom is married to a Florentine, named Funajoli, and is now come over with her Son of six years old to see Sisters and

August 1880 Kinsfolk. The Husband is not come with her: he is gone for the Sum­ mer to Volterra, which is his "Nation," as we used to say in Suffolk: an Artist he is—or rather was—for indifferent health has of late rendered him less capable of work. His line of Art is, or was, of a sort of medal­ lion Sculpture, which is, or was, admired, I believe: but I did not understand it. We are all glad to meet one another once again, after some dozen years of Separation. I want you to know that I should not have meditated a Visit to my friend Sevigne's Chateau in Brittany, but with a view of visiting my friend Frederick Tennyson in Jersey by the way: and both Visits col­ lapsed for the one reason—of my inaptitude to travel: a reason which you, it seems, participate in. Let us however keep up our old communi­ cation by Letter, and do you believe there is no one whom I have felt a desire to visit in person once again more than yourself. I send you a Musical Times which has not much to interest you— perhaps some remarks of Wagner on Beethoven. This very day have I been hearing a bit from Wagner: Rienzi played by a Band on the Pier of this town: but I could not make much of it in spite of the German Bandmaster's clever arrangement for his Cornets and Clar­ ionets. A street Band which played the old Irish Melody of "Green Bushes" which Moore set to his "Meeting of the Waters," was far more to my liking. My Italian Nephew in law writes to his Wife that he finds, not Summer, but Autumn, in Volterra: so we must not complain of cold and cloudy weather here. How is it with you in Jersey? This is a sorry letter: but I am not the less your sincere old Friend E.FG. You will probably forget my present Address: but "Woodbridge" will reach me. Write ever so few lines.

To J. R. Lowell 18 Arnold St., Lovoestop August, [1880] My dear Sir,

It is now nearly a year since I heard from you at this same place. I have often wished to write to you since then: but I knew you were disquieted about Mrs. Lowell; and you have plenty of public business on your hands also. Therefore—and solely therefore—I did not wish

August 1880 to trouble you even with a Letter: which might make you think at times that you ought to reply; though such an "ought" never need trouble you. For you are a busy man: and I an idle. But, though not hearing from yourself, I have heard of yourself from Mr. Norton and Mr. Goodwin: the latter of whom, you probably know, has been in England—at our Cambridge: and (I am glad to say) well pleased with his reception there, and elsewhere in this old Country. I rather wonder to hear him speak of English Hospitality; for I thought that your American was more than in this Land where, as your Hawthorne says, any man will do anything for a shilling. You also do not, I think, much like the people you have now to deal with —or to live among. Cowell was sorry that you ever left your Studies (especially Spanish) for London: and Mr. Norton hopes that you will soon be home again, to go on with them. I have nothing to tell of myself but the same old Story: three quar­ ters of the year at Woodbridge, and now some two or three months with Nieces here, and hereabout. Now, if I had more to say I should scarce say it: for I do not wish to trouble you; I should simply like a word of answer as to how you get on: yet I should not ask if I had not heard that Mrs. Lowell was going on better. I do not know your official Designation, or Address, but that you will not mind. Only, believe me yours sincerely E. FitzGerald

To E. B. Cowell Merton Rectory, Norfolk August 31, [1880] My dear Cowell, Who do you think is sitting beside me here? Aldis Wright—who came with me yesterday in order that he might become acquainted with George Crabbe, Rector of this Place, and one of the most amiable and agreeable of men. Today they are to go to see two Churches— all through Harvest and Sunshine: tomorrow, to look over the Walsingham House here: and on Thursday we shall separate—Wright to Cambridge, I to Lowestoft, where I shall again find Arthur Charlesworth, who came to spend his Holyday with me last week. He is a great favorite with all my kinsfolk there. I had not known of Spedding's Paper in the Cornhill till you wrote

September 1880 to me of it. One almost wonders that he drew his fine Wit forth to slay so absurd and clumsy an Adversary, or Champion: but perhaps it was as well to slay (if Truth and Wit can slay) a whole host of such Aesthetics as Wright tells me there are in Furnivall.1 One needs but to see what all such Criticism looks when simply inserted in old Spedding's Prose independent of the Matter contained in it. But I sup­ pose the Dunciad will survive and go on prospering for its time. I am not at all sure of the Name of the Inn I was at with Spedding of the Fine Sword, and Tennyson, in the year 1835—forty-five years ago: but Wright thinks it must have been the "Salutation."2 Anyhow, it was the main—or only—Inn of the Place at the time we were there; with a little Force and a Waterfall—at the Back, where I remember Spedding making a Sketch of Tennyson as he stood in an old Cloak looking at it through his Eyeglass. Hartley Coleridge came to dine with us, and did not sit three minutes in his Chair without getting up to walk about while he talked. Now I am going to have a bit of Henry V read to me by Wright, who reads Shakespeare right well: and am yours and Elizabeth's always E.FG. Wright sends you love by me, and—was going to send a Philological Paper by some crazy Philologist to prove that "on dit" = "Unum dicit" but thinks you will only be bored, and so will return it to the Author. 1 Spedding questioned the reliability of a method F. J. Furnivall had proposed for determining the sequence of composition of Shakespeare's plays in "Why did Shakespeare Write Tragedies?" Cornhill Magazine, August, 1880, pp. 153-72. 2At Ambleside in the Lake Country.

To W. A. Wright 18 Arnold St., Lowestoft Sept. 6, [1880] My dear Wright, Thank you for Quaritch's pathetic exordium. I don't know what he means by announcing in his first page that Agamemnon whom I thought dead—"out of print," as Q. said—a year or more ago. Has he "re-buried?" I think we may say that we had a pleasant time of it at G. Crabbe's last week: beginning with this day week. My party here is beginning

September 1880 to dissipate: the "fiancee" Niece going on Wednesday with another for company: and my little Nanny soon after—my little "Pocket Muse"— with such a Wit and such a Heart in her little Body, going away to be occupied, as usual, for others rather than for herself. The Italian will, I suppose, be here a month longer—a Capital Woman too: and I shall probably be here nearly all the time of her stay. By the by, I may as well enclose you Lowell's answer to a Letter I wrote him a week ago. I do not know what I can say to his proposed Visit but what I said before: but I am not ungrateful for his kindness in repeating his offer. Ever yours E.FG. I do not want the Letter back. But you will post-card me a word if you have a word to say about the Master. [In the enclosure Lowell responded in part:] My dear Sir,—is it a year? It does not seem so to me. . . . I am much obliged by your solicitude about Mrs. Lowell and so is she. She is much better. . . . Yes, I like the people here and always have liked them. . . . I can't say that I like the life much quoad diplomacy, but sometimes I find it amusing—though I confess it is disheartening to discover how tedi­ ously alike mankind is wherever you dip in. . . . When you get back to Woodbridge (by the way, it is put in Suffolk by the A.B.C. Railway Guide—I thought it in Kent) I hope you will let me run down and take you by the hand. I see that I can go and come the same day, so that I should hardly bother you at all. . . . Yours very sincerely J. R. Lowell

To W. A. Wright Lowestoft Sept. 9, [1880] My dear Wright, I return you at once your Master's Letter, as you may wish to show it to others; and I thank you very much for sending it to me. I should not know from the matter, or the MS, but that he was other than I have so long known him. At any rate, he speaks of himself as

September 1880 mending—gradually, if slowly. But I suppose also that he must not exert Mind or Body much. I see that old Jem has come out in the Athenaeum1 as well as in the Cornhill. I wish he would annihilate Furnivall, and leave room for you to be at the head of the Shakespeare Society, if such a Society there is to be. There was a good paper, I think, in the last Athenaeum concerning B. Forman's Edition of Shelley's Prose.21 should not care if his Poetry followed it (as one day it will, I believe), Man of Genius as he was— but too unsubstantial for much sympathy but from Cockney Aesthetics. Ever yours E.FG. 1

"The First Two Editions of 'Romeo and Juliet'," August 28, 1880, pp. 272-73. review of The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, H. Buxton Forman, ed., 4 vols., 1880; Athenaeum, Sept. 4, 1880, pp. 297-99. 2A

To J. R. Lowell Lowestoft Sept. 20, [1880] My dear Sir, I am very much obliged to you for writing to me in the midst of all your work, and very glad to hear from yourself so favourable an account of Mrs. Lowell's health. I suppose that I shall be here till near the middle of October, when a Niece of mine who married an Italian and has not been among her kinsfolk for these dozen years, will be returning to Florence. And so, Adieu to her—forever, I suppose, so far as I am concerned. To your very kind—and everyone but yourself would say "flattering" —proposal to visit me, I can but say what I believe I said to you some three years ago,1 and what I said to Mr. Goodwin three months ago. If you still think it worth while to pay a Visit which is likely, at my Age, to be the Be-all and the End-all here of our personal intercourse, let it not be for the "few hours" only which you speak of but a few days rather—over my Fire, as now, I suppose, it would have to be. What would most really bother me as you phrase it, would be for a man like you to come out of his way for a few hours just to behold, and exchange a few words with— Yours sincerely E. FitzGerald

September 1880 I suppose that such as live long enough will sooner or later profit by all you have laid up concerning Spain, and her two chief Authors. All the more so because (unlike the modern practice) you do work till your work is matured. 1

In June, 1879, Lowell repeated his 1877 proposal to visit EFG. In a letter to Wright after publication of EFG's works, Lowell stated: "It is one of my great regrets that I never saw him, one of my most poignant that he may have thought me neglectful. I was so overwhelmed with bothers, Irish and other, so bewilderingly busy with duties official and social, that I could never find time to visit him at Woodbridge, and the state of Mrs. Lowell's health was such that I could not, most of the time, ask him to make his home with me, if by some rare chance he came to London" (MS letter, July 4, 1889, Trinity College Library).

To Fanny Kemble Ivy House, Lowestoft Sept r 20, [1880] 1 My dear Mrs. Kemble, Here is a second Full Moon since last I wrote—(Harvest Moon, I think). I knew not where to direct to you before, and, as you remain determined not to apprize me yourself, so I have refused to send through Coutts. You do not lose much. Here have been for nearly two months Five English Nieces clustered round a Sister who married an Italian, and has not been in England these dozen years. She has brought her Boy of six, who seems to us wonderfully clever as compared to English Children of his Age, but who, she tells us, is counted rather behind his Fellows in Italy. Our meeting has been what is called a "Success"—which will not be re­ peated, I think. She will go back to her adopted Country in about a month, I suppose. Do you know of any one likely to be going that way about that time? Some days ago, when I was sitting on the Pier, rather sad at the Departure [of] a little Niece—an abridgment of all that is pleasant— and good—in Woman—Charles Merivale2 accosted me—he and his good, unaffected, sensible, wife, and Daughter to match. He was look­ ing well, and we have since had a daily stroll together. We talked of you, for he said (among the first things he did say) that he had been reading your Records again: so I need not tell you his opinion of them. He saw your Uncle in Cato when he was about four years old; and

October 1880 believes that he (J.P.K.) had a bit of red waistcoat looking out of his toga, by way of Blood. I tell him he should call on you and clear up that, and talk on many other points. Mowbray Donne wrote me from Wales a month ago that his Father was going on pretty well. I asked for further from Mowbray when he should have returned from Wales: but he has not yet written. Merivale, who is one of Donne's greatest Friends, has not heard of him more lately than I. Now, my dear Mrs. Kemble, I want to hear of you from yourself: and I have told you why it is that I have not asked you before. I fancy that you will not be back in England when this Letter reaches West­ minster: but I fancy that it will not be long before you find it waiting on your table for you. And now I am going to look for the Dean, who, I hope, has been at Church this morning: and though I have not done that, I am not the less sincerely yours E.FG. 1

Corrected to 19 by Wright. of Ely. Wright's reference to the Dean's Autobiography (EFG Letters, IV, 166) should read p. 20, not p. 25. 2 Dean

To Horace Basham 18 Arnold Street: Lowestoft October 2/80 Dear Horace, Here have I been ever since I last wrote to you: but I go home next week. Before the leaves are off the trees, I hope for a run to Aldbro; and, if we have some fair October days, to get a Sail in Cable's Boat. I have not been out once during the two months I have been here: the Sea is too dirty. The Herring Dandies, and the grand Scotch Lug­ gers, have come in for the Home Voyage: and it is to be hoped they will do better than they have done on the North Sea. You, I suppose, will be catching some on-shore Herring: and then November will bring you Sprats; and some of the well-fed Codfish that have regaled on them. Meanwhile, I send you a Post Order for Fisher till 1881. Remember me to him, and believe me Always yours E.FG.

October 1880

To W. A. Wright 18 Arnold Street, Lowestoft October 4, [1880] My dear Wright, I have been here ever since we last exchanged a Letter—now a month ago I believe—but I shall be home at Woodbridge by the end of this week, or beginning of next. I dare say that I shall take my Italian Niece to London in about another fortnight; do you, or any of your acquaintances, know of any one who will see her and her Boy from Dover to Paris, and there see her off by Italian Train? You do not know of anyone such: but I ask still. She is a very sensible woman who could take care of herself well enough: but has a Boy of six, as well as Luggage, etc., for Porters, Hotels, and Customhouse. Once fairly off on Italian Rail, she will do well enough. I would go with her if I were not likely to be of more trouble than the Child. A fortnight ago Merivale and his Wife and Daughter accosted me on the Pier: and for a week, we met pleasantly there, out of the reach of Dorla.1 He knew little of your Master but what I told him on your authority: and though I have talked of my Niece first, my first object in writing to you was, to ask about him. A Postcard with Initials will tell me all, in case you are too busy to write: and you know where to find me this week, and—for the Winter! I sent home my dear old Sevigne packed up in a Box as Revd. Watson did his Wife some while ago2—I mean in her own Volume, not in mine. Perhaps I may serve up a rechauffee one day: or leave it to some one else to do it for me. I could do this very neatly and succintly but no one else would think so. I look back with pleasure of a sad sort on that visit to Merton: and was almost minded to go home that way. But I suppose not. I often think of Dunwich and my poor Edwards: and shall see her and Mrs. Kemble and my old Donne when I take my Niece to London—whom I shall never see again. But yours always "en attendant"— E.FG. Do not forget to give my old Love to the Master. 1 Leader

of the band on Lowestoft pier. S. Watson, on February 9, 1871, the day after he murdered his wife, had ordered and provided exact measurements for a box, never delivered. See letter to Wright, January 20, 1872, n.4. 2John

October 1880

To W. A. Wright Lowestoft Saturday [October 9,1880] Thank you for your Letter written under a bad Cold. Here we have wet and wet. I shall go home on Monday or Tuesday, when my Niece departs—to stay at Boulge for some days before starting for Italy: if she cannot fall in with Company going the same way, I shall send some one commissioned by the "Lord Warden" to see her on board the Italian Rail at Paris—and shall never see her again myself, I think. You see—a Letter from Big Badger,1 who, I suppose, will soon follow it to Cambridge. Pray do not, if you are busy, tip me more than a Post Card in some unknown Tongue as to Master's health: but, tip me that much, and give him the Love of Ever yours Littlegrange 1 Ε. B. Cowell's nickname at Ipswich Grammar School. "It was Big and Little Badger. The brothers were named from their bristly hair," a schoolfellow, Charles Keene of Punch, reported to a friend (Keene, Life and Letters, p. 296).

To E. B. Cowell Woodbridge Oct. 16, [1880] My dear Cowell, Thank you for your second letter from the Lakes. I came home here on Monday to my usual routine: saving that on Monday next (the day after tomorrow) I take up, or rather accompany, my Niece Mary Funajoli to London—perhaps to Dover—on her return to Italy, with her Boy of six years old: a mercurial Italian, very unlike Master Bull, but, she tells me, thought rather a Dunce in Italy. I think that is because she wisely (as I think) keeps him back in learning. I shall send a Courier over with her from Dover to Paris, who will see her safe upon the Italian Rail, where all will, we think, be smooth to her. I do not offer to go with her myself, being more helpless in Travel than herself, who, being a very sensible woman, would have to look out for me rather than I for her: and if once in Florence I think I should never come back. Professor Norton has sent me a fine Book about the mediaeval Archi-

October 1880 tecture of Italy:1 rather interesting to me who knew nothing of the matter before: very well and unaffectedly written. I shall send it on to Cambridge one of these days. Aldis Wright gives me no very good account of Thompson. Merivale accosted me on Lowestoft Pier one day, and for the week he stayed there we met pleasantly for a daily chat. I liked her very much: and the Daughter was a Young Lady and not a fast young Gentleman. I have no news to tell of Books: I begin to crave Sir Walter Scott again. People may, I think, save themselves the trouble of predicting his Fall, hasty, careless, and bad as much of the Work is. The Bride of Lammermoor, etc., will not out of sight. With Love to Elizabeth Ever yours E.FG. 1 Historical Studies of Church Buildings in the Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence, New York, 1880.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Oct. 16, [1880] My dear Wright, I came home on Monday: and the day after tomorrow accompany my Italian Niece and her Boy to London, perhaps to Dover—where I engage a Courier to see her safe to Paris and embarked on the Italian Rail. Once off on that she will do very well, we believe. I should only be more trouble than help by going myself: and, if once I got to Florence, should very likely never leave it. Professor Norton has sent me a very handsome Book on Italian Mediaeval Architecture which I think I can take some interest in, but shall forward it ere long to some of you who are better judges of the matter. I think the Book is very well written: a matter which I think I can judge of. Richard duly came, thank you.11 think that some of Hare's prelimi­ nary stuff is left out, and well left out. When you reprint I should leave out "worthily" as to "this Preface," etc. I may not think Hare worthy of the Preface: others may think the Preface unworthy of such sublime utterances.2

October 1880 But more probably my exceptions are not worthy of being proposed to you. As to !Catherine's Con3—I should think the Purists would more easily pardon your excision of it than your tampering with Shylock's urine: the "Essence" of which is strongly recommended by Sevigne. You will think I am always nibbling at that Shylock passage; but I know I am not a Purist, whether as regards the Greatest Poet, etc., or any one else. You are a much better Judge of the matter you ask me about than I: and, if you distrust yourself, can find better Advisers. Mr. Munro, for one, I should think, in spite of Catullus' "greatest love song," etc. Ever yours E.FG. By the way did not Alice say "de Goun," which K. easily turns into "de Coun." Bowdler4 cuts out the whole Scene! 1

The Clarendon edition of Richard III. See letter to Wright, [c. Aug. 5, 1880]. 3 When Katharine, the French Princess in Henry V, is being instructed in English by a lady-in-waiting, the First Folio reads: [Kath.] Comment appelle vous Ies pied et de roba? [Alice] Le Foot Madame, et Ie Count. [Kath.] Le Foot, et Ie Count: O Seignieur Dieu. . .. Wright had emended the passage to read "coun" for "Count," an alteration ac­ cepted by most modern editors (III.4.51-55). EFG's spellings, "Katherine" and "con," are found in Wright's "Reprints" of the early quartos, Cambridge Shake­ speare, IX, 479. 4 Thomas Bowdler, editor of The Family Shakespeare, 1828. 2

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Octr 20,1880 My dear Mrs. Kemble, I was to have gone to London on Monday with my Italian Niece on her way homeward. But she feared saying "Farewell" and desired me to let her set off alone, to avoid doing so. Thus I delay my visit to you till November—perhaps toward the middle of it: when I hope to find you, with your blue and crimson Cushions in Queen Anne's Mansions, as a year ago. Mrs. Edwards is always in town: not at all forgetful of her husband; and there will be

October 1880 our Donne also of whom I hear nothing, and so conclude there is nothing to be told, and with him my Visits will be summed up. Now, lose not a day in providing yourself with Charles Tennyson Turner's Sonnets, published by Kegan Paul.1 There is a Book for you to keep on your table, at your elbow. Very many of the Sonnets I do not care for: mostly because of the Subject: but there is pretty sure to be some beautiful line or expression in all; and all pure, tender, noble, and—original. Old Spedding supplies a beautiful Prose Over­ ture to this delightful Volume: never was Critic more one with his Subject—or, Object, is it? Frederick Tennyson, my old friend, ought to have done something to live along with his Brothers: all who will live, I believe, of their Generation: and he perhaps would, if he could have confined himself to limits not quite so narrow as the Sonnet. But he is a Poet, and cannot be harnessed. I have still a few flowers surviving in my Garden; and I certainly never remember the foliage of trees so little changed in October's third week. A little flight of Snow however: whose first flight used to quicken my old Crabbe's fancy: Sir Eustace Grey written under such circumstances. And I am always yours Littlegrange (not "MarkethiH" as you persist in addressing me.) 1

Collected Sonnets, Old and New.

To Alfred Tennyson Woodbridge Oct. 21/80 My dear Alfred, Thank you for the Copy of your Brother's Sonnets sent me by your Publisher: "Thanks fully" I might sincerely say in the phrase of mod­ ern young Ladies and Gentlemen. For it is delightful to me, and will continue so to be, I am sure, as long as I live: and, as I believe, a long while after that. I wish old Frederick could have compressed himself into some such Kmits: so as to make one of the three Brothers who, as I beKeve, only will Kve beyond their Generation. But it is because [he] is the Poet that he is that he must go his own way. Dear old Spedding's Essay is just the overture wanted for the Music that fol-

November 1880 lows: and far more in place where it is, I think, than it was in the Magazine it first appeared in, without the Music to follow and jus­ tify it.1 I have told you why I do not write oftener to you: for the reason that my doing so puts Mrs. Tennyson to the trouble of answering me. But I hope you do not think that I forget you, or the old Days when we were together, during the Interval. Oh, no! I have, as usual, nothing to tell you of myself: all goes on as for the last twenty years: some ten months of the year at this Woodbridge, with much the same Books to read, nothing to do, and daily routine of walks in my Garden or by the Riverside. About two months by the Sea: and a few days in London just to see Mrs. Kemble, Donne and one or two others who seem desirous of seeing me again," and whom it is easier for me to go to than for them to come to me. But I am not the less also your ancient and unforgetting Fitz xI 1

don't mean but I believe that you would be pleased also. See letter to Wright, September 11, 1879.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge Νου. 3, [1880] My dear Norton, Your very handsome Book1 reached me here a fortnight ago. You know my way in the matter of "presentation Copies"—which I make bold to believe is yours also: therefore I shall only say that I have read with Interest what, unless for its being well presented, I probably should not have read at all; viz., a History. To this Day I have never read Hallam's Middle Ages, which, I suppose, treats incidentally of their Architecture. Your account of the Rise of Venice was all new to me, and wonderful as the Sight of Venice itself is, I suppose, to those who first "go on board" of it, as Dickens says. I stumbled at one word in your Book: "oversight" p. 223, a much better word indeed than the lanky "Superintendence" generally used for it: but "oversight" is now too much devoted, I think, to the very opposite of the meaning you give it to be recoverable as yet to your purpose.

November 1880 With all your knowledge, and all the use you can make of it, I won­ der that you can think twice of such things as I can offer you in return for what you send me: but I take you at your word, and shall perhaps send you the last half of Oedipus, if I can prepare him for the Printer; a rather hard business to me now, when turned of seventy, and re­ minded by some intimations about the Heart that I am not likely to exceed the time which those of my Family have stopped going at. But this is no great Regret to me. I have sent you a better Book than any I can send you of my own: or of any one else's in the way of Verse, I think: the Sonnets of Alfred Tennyson's Brother Charles. Two thirds of them I do not care for: but there is scarce one without some fine thought or expression: some of them quite beautiful to me: all pure, true, and original. I think you in America may like these leaves from the Life of a quiet Lincolnshire Parson, destined, I believe, to outlive the Brownings, Swinburnes of the London Clubs. I think you will like to have the Book on your table, and take a Sonnet from it now and then as it lies there. Nov 5 I take in your Atlantic Monthly, and generally find something to interest me there. A Paper or two by "Mark Twain"2 give me some desire to know more of him: I know not why up to this time he has been but a Name to me. If I lived in London, or in any Town with a good Library, I should have made his acquaintance, and that of many others long ago. You see that I have made two bites, as they say, of my Letter: which will end on Guy Faux Day; now almost uncelebrated. We have had the Leaves green unusually late this year, I think: but so I have thought often before, I am told. The last few nights have brought Frost, however: and changed the countenance of all. A Blackbird (have you him as the "ousel"?) whom I kept alive, I think, through last hard winter by a saucer of Bread and Milk, has come to look for it again. And I am always and sincerely yours, E. FitzGerald 1

See letter to Cowell, October 16, n.l. "Edward Mills and George Benton," August; "Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning," Sept., 1880. 2

November 1880

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Nov. 7, [1880] My dear Wright,

I suppose you have nothing new to tell me of the Master: you guess that I have nothing more to tell you of myself. I was prepared three weeks ago to accompany my Italian Niece to London—if not to Dover: but she slipped away without a Farewell—which she probably felt would be for Ever. I had arranged with the Dover Landlord to send his Commissaire over to Paris with her: but that also she declined, by way of saving me an Expense which has cost me more trouble, in the way of Apology to my "Lord Warden," etc. than the money's worth. He, however, was very civil; "Et voila'. She got back to Italy with a tedious Voyage. I saw in some recent Academy or Athenaeum that "Winter's Tale" was one of the favourite plays in Germany. I am not sure that I (Rival Dramatist) ever read it through: but, if you edit it, I will. I suppose it is quite a safe Play for Boys and Virgins. Groome's Son has written a good Book (so far as I have heard from my Reader's Lips) about his Gipsies:1 pity that it was not some hundred years ago when the native Colour was less washed out of them. I was told of Maria Charlesworth's2 Death: and this day I have a Paper from Fanny Kerrich with some account of her Funeral. If you know anything of its Effect on Elizabeth, you will let me know? I shall send you tomorrow an Atlantic Monthly with a paper on Cambridge and Oxford by Grant White3 which may interest you. But I am afraid you will have to return it because of another Paper by Mark Twain, which gives me a desire to make some further Acquaint­ ance with him. After I have done with Garden and Tree-planting I shall go for a few days to London, where I want to see Widows Kemble and Ed­ wards, as also my dear old Donne. And those are all I shall look for. Tennyson sent me his Brother's Sonnets, which every one who can afford should buy: about two thirds too much of all: but something beautiful in all: and some—which will live, I believe, when Swinburne & Co. lie howling. Ever yours E.FG.

November 1880 1 Francis Η. Groome's In Gypsy Tents, based on his experiences among gypsies of East Anglia. See letter to Wright, March 18, 1877, n.3. 2 Mrs. Cowell's sister, who had died October 16. 3 "Oxford and Cambridge," by Richard Grant White, American Shakespearian scholar, Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1880, pp. 385-96.

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge NoV 12, [1880] My dear Frederick, It is now some three months, I think, since we exchanged a letter: one of yours being the last. I remained at Lowestoft till the middle of October, and then returned here, where I resume the old routine you have heard about these twenty years past. So there is nothing to tell on that score. I think the chief Event in that Interval of my Life has been the reception of a Copy of your Brother Charles' Sonnets from the Publisher, at Alfred's request. Though I do not care for two-thirds of them, there is scarcely one without some beautiful Thought, or Expression: some quite delightful: all . . .1 and original—I think, destined to live. You should have added your Triad: which you would have done could you—or would you—have compressed yourself into some limits nearer to the Sonnet, if not quite so confined: and so made one of the only Men whose Verse, as I believe, is destined to survive, when Browning and Co. are dead and buried. But, as you are a Poet, you must go your own way, and not be put into harness nor have your wings clipt: and you will leave what other Versificators—not Poets (perhaps you know of some)—will purloin from, though their stolen goods will not profit them to what we call Immortality. "Immor­ tality"! What a word for us to use of the best of us Shadows. Charles also is too fond of "mighty", which is to modern Poets what "nice" is to young Ladies, I think: and, anyhow, scarce appropriate to this poor little Planet, and all which it inherit. I have not sent you any more Musical Times, because I found nothing, as I thought worth sending: except one Number which I mislaid, with some words about Wagner's Theory tantamount to yours; and a remark of old Rossini's about the Music of the Future. "Here is the Music of the Future," pointing to one of Offenbach's Operas. Write to me: tell me how you are: and believe me yours ever E.FG.

November 1880 1 Portion indecipherable. In his November 3 letter to Norton, EFG described Charles's sonnets as "quite beautiful to me: all pure, true, and original."

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [November, 1880] My dear Wright, Will next week find you at Jerusalem? I have carefully gone over your Proof:1 and enclose—nearly all your Amendments, some of which I had anticipated in my Proof. If you are [at] Jerusalem next week I will send you the Revise, which is not yet come, whether corrected or not by myself. If I do not give Printer too much to decypher, I will correct all the ed's which you mark:21 should do so of course had the good rule been attended to in Part I—which it is not. But has not William "thick-ribbed Sea" and countless devia­ tions? I am not sure. By the way, I sent my Reader to two Shakespeare Plays: Shylock and Hamlet: the first he ever knew of William: and he says he liked it better than Negro Melodists, to whom I told him I should not have sent him, at the Cost of two solitary Nights to me. He said he was much interested in what Hamlet and Gravedigger said about "Poor Erick," or "Yerrick," which is his contribution to Shakespeare Criticism: he never having read a word of him, but not unfamiliar perhaps with the Erics and Ericssons who sail into this Port. Ever yours E.FG. 1

Proof for "Oedipus in Athens." question: 'd or ed, when the final e is unsounded. EFG used both indis­ criminately, and Wright also was inconsistent in editing texts for the Literary Remains. 2The

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Nov r 17/80 My dear Lady, Here is the Moon very near her Full: so I send you a Letter. I have it in my head you are not in London: and may not be when I go up

November 1880 there for a few days next week—for this reason I think so: viz., that you have not acknowledged a Copy of Charles Tennyson's Sonnets, which I desired Kegan Paul to send you, as from me—with my illus­ trious Initials on the Fly Leaf: and, he or one of his men, wrote that so it should be, or had been done. It may nevertheless not have been: or, if in part done, the illustrious Initials forgotten. But I rather think the Book was sent: and that you would have guessed at the Sender, Initials or not. And as I know you are even over-scrupulous in acknowl­ edging any such things, I gather that the Book came when you had left London—for Leamington, very likely: and that there you are now. The Book, and your Acknowledgment of it, will very well wait: but I wish to hear about yourself—as also about yours—if you should be among them. I talk of "next week," because one of my few Visitors, Archdeacon Groome, is coming the week after that, I believe, for a day or two to my house: and, as he has not been here for two years, I do not wish to be out of the way. A Letter about a fortnight ago from Mowbray Donne told me that his Father was fairly well: and a Post Card from Mowbray two days ago informed [me] that Valentia was to be in London this present week. But I have wanted to be here at home all this time: I would rather see Donne when he is alone: and I would rather go to London when there is more likelihood of seeing you there than now seems to me. Of course you will not in the slightest way hasten your return to London (if now away from it) for my poor little Visits: but pray let me hear from you, and believe me always the same E.FG.

To W. A. Wright Golden Cross Hotel Charing Cross, London Wednesday [November 24, 1880] My dear Wright, Vous voyez—I came up on Monday Evening, and have seen my two Widows and Donne. Mrs. Kemble has heard that Mr. Furness (Shake­ speare man) is ill somewhere in England: and, as she was well ac­ quainted with him in America, she wants to know if you, or any one else, can tell her of his whereabouts. I was on the point of asking for you at Jerusalem on my way to Queen Anne's yesterday Afternoon:

November 1880 but, on going to enquire where Jerusalem lay from some Verger in the Abbey, I heard an Anthem beginning, and so went in, and listened to the end of the Service; thinking the Abbey all the while a remark­ able structure for Monkeys to have erected. By the time Service was over, it was Dusk: "The sad Arndern shutting out the Light"1—and I supposed your work was over for the Day. And Today I reflect that I should disturb you less by a letter than by a Call out from Jerusalem. If you can send me here, or to Mrs. K. at Queen Anne's, any information about Mr. Furness you will oblige both of us. I suppose I shall go home tomorrow; this Evening I believe I am to meet C. Keene at 26 Golden Square (Edwards). If you could come, you would find a bit of Dunwich again. And so— Yours always Littlegrange 1

EFG misquotes Michael Drayton. See letter to Wright, March 13, 1874, n.5.

To Anna Biddell (Fragment) [Woodbridge ] Nov. 30,1880 One day I went into the Abbey at half past three while a beautiful anthem was beautifully sung, and then the prayers and collects, not less beautiful, well intoned on one single note by the Minister. And when I looked up and about me, I thought that Abbey a wonderful structure for Monkeys to have raised. The last night, Mesdames Kemble and Edwards had each of them company, so I went into my old Opera House in the Haymarket, where I remembered the very place where Pasta stood as Medea on the Stage, and Rubini singing his return to his Betrothed in the Puritani, and Taglioni floating every­ where about: and the several Boxes in which sat the several Ranks and Beauties of forty and fifty years ago: my Mother's Box on the third Tier, in which I often figured as a Specimen of both. The Audience all changed much for the worse, I thought: and Opera and Singers also; only one of them who could sing at all, and she sang very well indeed; Trebelli, her name. The opera by a Frenchman on the Wagner plan:1 excellent instrumentation, but not one new or melodious idea through the whole. 1

Bizet's Carmen.

December 1880

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Dec r 6, [1880] My dear Lady, I was surprised to see a Letter in your MS which could not be in answer to any of mine. But the Photos account for it. Thank you: I keep that which I like best, and herewith return the other. Why will you take into your head that I could suppose you wanting in Hospitality, or any other sort of Generosity! That, at least, is not a Kemble failing. Why, I believe you would give me—and a dozen oth­ ers—£1000 if you fancied one wanted it—even without being asked. The Law of Mede and Persian is that you will take up—a perverse notion—now and then. There! It's out. As to the Tea—"pure and simple"—with Bread and Butter—it is the only meal I do care to join in:—and this is why I did not see Mowbray Donne, who has not his Dinner till an hour and a half after my last meal is done. I should very gladly have "crushed a Cup of Tea" with you that last Evening, coming prepared so to do. But you had Friends coming; and so (as Mrs. Edwards was in the same plight) I went to the Pit of my dear old Haymarket Opera: remembering the very corner of the Stage where Pasta stood when Jason's People came to tell her of his new Marriage; and (with one hand in her Girdle—a movement, Mrs. Frere said, borrowed from Grassini) she interrupted them with her "Cessate—intesi!"—also when Rubini, feathered hat in hand, began that "Ah te, oh Cara"—and Taglioni hovered over the Stage. There was the old Omnibus Box too where D'Orsay flourished in ample white Waistcoat and Wristbands: and Lady Blessingtons: and Lady Jersey's on the Pit tier: and my own Mother's, among the lesser Stars, on the third. In place of all which I dimly saw a small Company of less distinction in all respects; and heard an Opera (Carmen) on the Wagner model: very beautiful Accompaniments to no Melody: and all very badly sung except by Trebelli, who, excellent. I ran out in the middle to the dear Little Haymarket opposite—where Vestris and Liston once were: and found the Theatre itself spoilt by being cut up into compartments which marred the beautiful Horse-shoe shape, once set off by the flowing pattern of Gold which used to run round the house. Enough of these Old Man's fancies—But—Right for all that! I would not send you Spedding's fine Article1 till you had returned

December 1880 from your Visit, and also had received Mrs. Leigh at Queen Anne's. You can send it back to me quite at your leisure, without thinking it necessary to write about it. It is so mild here that the Thrush sings a little, and my Anemones seem preparing to put forth a blossom as well as a leaf. Yesterday I was sitting on a stile by our River side. You will doubtless see Tennyson's new Volume,2 which is to my thinking far preferable to his later things, though far inferior to those of near forty years ago: and so, I think, scarce wanted. There is a bit of Translation from an old War Song which shows what a Poet can do when he condescends to such work: and I have always said that 'tis for the old Poets to do some such service for their Predecessors. I hope this long letter is tolerably legible: and I am in very truth Sincerely yours The Laird of Littlegrange 1 Enclosure missing. Wright identifies it as the critique mentioned in the letter of March 26, 1880. 2 Ballads and Other Poems.

To W. H. Thompson Little Grange: Woodbridge Dec r 15, [1880] My dear Master,

I have not written to you this very long while, simply because I did not wish to trouble you: Aldis Wright will tell you that I have not neglected to enquire about you. I drew him out of Jerusalem Chamber for five minutes three weeks ago: this I did to ask primarily about Mr. Furness on behalf of Mrs. Kemble: but also I asked about you, and was told you were still improving, and prepared to abide the winter here. I saw nobody in London except my two Widows, my dear old Donne, and some coeval Suffolk Friends. I was half tempted to jump into a Bus and just leave my name at Carlyle's Door! But I did not. I should of course have asked and heard how he was: which I can find no one now to tell me. For his Niece has a Child—if only one— to attend to, and I do not like to trouble. I heard from vague Informa­ tion in London that he is now almost confined to his house. I have myself been somewhat bothered at times for the last three months with pains and heaviness about the Heart: which I knew from

December 1880 a Doctor was unsettled five years ago. I shall not at all complain if it takes the usual course, only wishing to avoid Angina, or some such form of the Disease. My Family get on gaily enough till seventy, and then generally founder after turning the corner. I hope you have Charles Tennyson's Sonnets—three times too many, and some rather puerile: but scarce one but with something good in Thought or Expression: all original: and some delightful: I think, to live with Alfred's—and no one else's. Old Frederic might have made one of Three Brothers, I think, could he have compressed himself into something of Sonnet Compass; but he couldn't. He says that Charles makes one regard and love little things more than any other Poet. My Nephew De Soyres seems to have made a good Edition of Pascal's Letters:1 I should have thought they had been quite well enough edited before; and yet a more "exhaustive" Edition is to follow the House that Jack built, he tells us. Groome had proposed a month ago that he would visit me about this time: but I have heard no more of him and am always afraid to write, for fear of those poor Eyes of his. I was very glad to meet Merivale on Lowestoft Pier for some days. Mrs. M. writes to me of an enlarged Photo of him whose Negative will be destroyed in a month unless subscribed for by Friends, etc. "Will I ask Friends," etc. No: I will not do that, though I will take a copy if wanted to complete a number: though, if it be life size, having no where to hang it up: my own Mother, by Sir T. Lawrence, being put away in a cupboard for want of room. Now, my dear Master, I want neither you nor the Mistress to reply to this Letter: but please to believe me, both of you, yours as ever sincerely E. Fitz. 1

John de Soyres, The Provincial Letters of Pascal, 1880.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Dec. 17, [1880] My dear Wright,

In a Letter which I wrote to Cowell (after hearing from him that he and Elizabeth were not knocked up by Maria's Death) I asked him this question, believing somewhat in his political, as well as other,

December 1880 Intuitions. "Should I sell out Norwegian and Swedish Securities which I had bought in exchange for Russian?" For that is what I did, being told a year ago that Russian were all unsafe: and now I am told that she flourishes amain, and that Sweden or Norway—or both—may be seized by her one of these days, if for no other purpose than to com­ mand Ports in the Baltic so as to check other European Fleets, etc. To me it would not matter financially if all this, with its worst consequences, happened tomorrow; but I do not wish to lose £.5,000 for ten Nieces and Nephews. I enclosed a Post Card to EBC just to add Yes or No to it, for his Advice: he answers "Noli vendere" but that A. Wright would know more than he. I do not send you a Post Card thinking you may have a little more to say to me: which, as Christmas is coming, I wish you would say as soon as convenient. To wit. Are you coming this way this Christmas, and do you wish, or care, to look in here—or stay here—by the way? There will be no one except Arthur Charlesworth and I know not yet if he. If no one proposed to come, I might run off elsewhere for three or four Days; but I do not want so to do. John De Soyres was to have come, at his own Invitation: but Arch­ deacon Allen wants his Clerical Assistance in Shropshire: so thither he goes. He had sent me his new Edition of Pascal's Provincial Letters: with (of course) an intimation at the outset that it was the finest work in French Prose, hitherto insufficiently edited, etc. I should have thought it had been quite sufficiently edited long ago—like Spedding's Bacon; and, it appears, that some "exhaustive" (oh Damn) French Edition is under way. However, John's Edition seems to me well done. He has a shot in his Preface at your (not your) "Signboard Criticism," which I always say should have been "Aesthetic Fingerpost," which I am glad of. Is there no rebellion to dethrone Furnivall and put you on his Throne? Relying on the accounts you gave me from Jerusalem of your Mas­ ter's amendment, I wrote to him—yesterday, I believe—to prove that I had not ceased of late to do so from any motive but a wish not to trouble him. I met Brooke on his black Charger yesterday; and told him that, in case you came here, I should ax him to a dejeune at noon as I do not wish him to come here for a Cup of Tea on these winter Nights. Such Winter as yet has been: with Thrushes chirping, and Anemones on the start. Today it is colder; Wind having gone Eastwards. Ajewl (as Braham) used to say1—from yours allwayst E.FG.

December 1880 My Reader saw a moveable waxwork on Markethill: one of the Pieces being "Some very ancient Chap what his Daughter suckled." 1John Braham (1774-1856), tenor. "Pleasant was it to hear him speak of the public singers of those early days. Braham, so great, in spite of his vulgarity" (F. H. Groome's recollections: preface to Letters and Literary Remains).

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Tuesday [December 21,1880] My dear Wright, January 1/1881 will find you Bed, Board, and Welcome for as long as you please. I wish you could have come this Christmas Saturday— or Friday—over this Sunday, so as to have made something of a Christmas for me, who will now have to go through it alone. Charlesworth very properly stays with his Mother, whose two other—and only other—Sons embark for Tasmania this very day—are about it while I write. My Reader also leaves me: so I must get on as I can alone, unless you will anticipate a week—which however I suppose you will not. Come then the week after. As to Mr. Lowell—other reasons apart, I could not well ask him here after declining Professor Goodwin, whom I yet believe a very amiable man. I will write no more on this subject: but may perhaps exchange a few words with you when you come. If Lowell were to make me a Visit, I would much rather he should do so when you could meet him. But I cannot ask him: my wonder is that he can think any more about the matter. I half wrote a Letter to him a week ago to tell him of Guzman D'Alfarache which Cowell had written to me about:1 and this Letter I shall perhaps send with Christmas Good Wishes. Were I of importance enough, I should secede alone from the Shake­ speare: I will do so with any other half dozen I can hear of: or would follow in the wake of one such as Spedding. You do not mention the Master, to whom I ventured to write some days ago. I conclude from your Silence that he is going on well: and very likely away from Cambridge now. Ever yours E.FG. Is Ingleby2 a weakish man? Who is Elliot Browne?3

December 1880 1 Guzmdn de Mfarache (1599), a picaresque novel by Mateo Aleman, many features of which are found in Don Quixote. A letter which Cowell wrote to another friend years later notes many parallels in the two works and, no doubt, duplicates the letter EFG had received. See Cowell biography, p. 367. 2 Clement M. Ingleby, Shakespeare scholar; a vice president of the New Shakspere Society. 3 Probably Elliott Kenworthy Browne, son of his old friend, W. Kenworthy Browne. EFG had not seen him in many years.

To Herman Biddell Woodbridge Thursday [December 23,1880] Dear Herman Biddell,

Thank you for the Birds (you are the only sender of such Presents now), and still more for the kindly remembrance of me, which the Birds bear witness to. I might say that I wonder why you do always so kindly remember me: but you do, and that is enough: and I am grateful for it—sincerely so. Anna writes me that you were all of you at her Brother George's— I suppose on occasion of the Cattle show. Your famous Suffolk Horses were not part of the Show, I suppose. Carlyle is, I suppose, fast extinguishing: I hear, has to be carried up and down stairs now—"very quiet" he is, I am told: which the Doctors count an evil sign: but when one thinks that his sensitive temperament might easily have taken another turn, surely a welcome sign—for himself, and for his Friends—who may so soon be in his plight. Mr. Froude (the Worshipper of Henry VIII)1 is his constant Companion. This letter was to have been written yesterday, but I knew that I should not send my old Man out in the Wet to post it. And now he is gone this Forenoon without it. My dear Biddell, let me wish you and yours what People call a "Happy Christmas"—usually a very dull, if not doleful, Affair to me. 1 James A. Froude, Carlyle's first biographer, is generally charged with having "white-washed" Henry VIII in his History of England.

December 1880

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Christmas Day, [1880] My dear Lady, You are at Leamington for this day, I expect: but, as I am not sure of your address there, I direct to Queen Anne as usual. This very morning I had a letter from my dear George Crabbe, telling me that he has met your friend Mr. H. Aide1 at Lord Walsingham's, the Lord of G.C.'s parish: and that Mr. Aide had asked him (G.C.) for his copy of my Crabbe. I should have been very glad to give him one had he, or you, mentioned to me that he had any wish for the book: I am only somewhat disappointed that so few do care to ask for it. I am here all alone for my Christmas: which is not quite my own fault. A Nephew, and a young London clerk, were to have come, but prevented; even my little Reader is gone to London for his Holyday, and left me with Eyes more out of Kelter than usual to entertain myself with. "These are my troubles, Mr. Wesley," as a rich man complained to him when his Servant put too many Coals on the fire. On Friday, Aldis Wright comes for two days, on his road to his old home Beccles; and I shall leave him to himself with Books and a Cigar most part of the Day, and make him read Shakespeare of a night. He is now editing Henry V. for what they call the Clarendon Press. He still knows nothing of Mr. Furness, who, he thinks, must be home in America long ago. Spedding writes me that Carlyle is now so feeble as to be carried up and down stairs. But very "quiet," which is considered a bad sign; but, as Spedding says, surely much better than the other alternative, into which one of Carlyle's temperament might so probably have fallen. Nay, were it not better for all of us? Mr. Froude is most con­ stantly with him. If this Letter is forwarded you, I know that it will not be long before I hear from you. And you know that I wish to hear that all is well with you, and that I am always yours E.FG. How is Mr. Sartoris? And I see a Book of hers advertised.2 1 Charles Hamilton Aide, a man of diverse artistic and literary interests, promi­ nent in London social circles. 2Two posthumous volumes by Adelaide Kemble Sartoris were published in 1880: Past Hours, and Medusa and Other Tales first published in 1868.

December 1880

To J. W. Blakesley Little Grange, Woodbridge Dec r 27/80 My dear Blakesley, I like to get a letter from you once a year at least: and I suppose you would not care to write oftener, having doubtless more than enough on your hands already. I do not go, however, a whole year without hearing of you, if not from you: dear Donne, whom I make a visit to twice a year, always tells me about you. Him I saw a month ago— feebler in all respects: but not in pain of Body or Mind, so far as I understood. And that may be counted much at our time of Life. The last time I was in London before this last, Mrs. Blakesley's Brougham was almost daily calling at Donne's door to take him out. I will say no more of that, except to say that I knew that to be one trait in her most amiable Character, of which I heard the same report wherever I heard her named. I met your Brother Dean of Ely at Lowestoft in September: he, with Wife and Daughter, stayed there for two weeks and we had a daily chat about other Days on the Pier. He looked and seemed very well in Body and Mind also. I had not written to Trinity's Master since he fell ill last June, for I did not wish to bother him even by a Letter. I heard of him, however, from his Bursar, AIdis Wright. And, hearing a fortnight ago that he was much better, I took heart to write once again: and had a long and cheerful Letter dated from the "Crab and Lobster" Hotel at Ventnor. He seems to think he has got over his Ailment. Of myself I have, as usual, nothing to report, except that my Eyes just now bother me more than of late. So I sit with them shut up half the Day. This Letter is enough for them now: I dare say, for you also. But I wish you to continue in believing that I am always yours sincerely E. FitzGerald

January 1881

To Horace Basham Woodbridge Jan. 3, [1881 ] Dear Horace Basham,

Thank you for good wishes, which I heartily return for 1881. I enclose you a P.O. order for £3.2: £,2.12 to last Fisher till July, 10, for the enclosed Bill, if you will be kind enough to pay it for me. There was a mistake made by my old People here about the Had­ dock which you tell Cable sent me: so that I did not eat it myself, which I should have done had I been better informed. I wish to pay Cable for it with money as well as thanks: and will do so with both when next I come to Aldbro. My Eyes are so out of order just now, and the present day so dark that I will write no more but that I am ever yours E.FG. Fisher's payment begins from last Saturday: Jan. 1.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Saturday [January 8, 1881 ] My dear Wright,

My Eyes were so lame when you were here that I was all but tempted to ask you to look over this proof, which I had half got through. Eyes revolt at it now: but I have managed to do all, in a way; but I want you to be so good as to look it over, not to correct printers' Blunders, but mine, as regards obscurity, or bad grammar, which I am apt to fall into by close packing. "Obscurus," etc. I send it to you now because you are in some measure Holyday-making: but, that you may not think necessary to hurry about it, I am now sending off my dupli­ cate to the Printer, and can (I hope) revise from any such suggestions as I ask you to make. As you said that you had lately read the original, you will find terrible alteration (even of the Plot) here; but, as I noted in Part I (Oedipus in Thebes = Tyrannus), it is not Translation, or even Para­ phrase, but "taken chiefly from Sophocles," and I could give you rea­ sons, right or wrong, for what I have done—partly in order to connect

January 1881 the two parts into a whole (which it is not in the original, though Goethe hints at its being so). You know that you are to say nothing of it to me, unless pointing out errors, etc.; and I rely on your not mentioning its existence to any one else. No one knows of it (beside yourself now) except Norton of America, [to] whom (in answer to some question of his) I said I had sketched it out years ago, and so took it up again, and sent him the first Part a year ago. I shall, I think, give Mrs. Kemble a Copy: and to no one else. I do not want to be accused of murdering Sophocles as well as Aeschylus: but I wished to do this little work as well as I could: printed Part I, without doing which I can't see my way to do my best: and will do the same for the same reason with Part II. You, though a Scholar, are not a Pedant, and will allow for me. Cowell, no Pedant, would not care for it, even if he did not find it too great a Treason toward the Greek he loves. Yours E.FG. I need not say that if you like to stay here on your return, I shall like; but only so.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [January, 1881 ] My dear Wright, Here is a Duplicate of the Revise I have sent back to Press with some alterations—yours, as well as mine. If you have any more to make, do so on the margin of what I send: at your leisure, quite: if you care to do so at all: and send it to me; perhaps in time to rectify Norton's Copy. But, as I say, do not disannul yourself. Cowell wrote to me from Cambridge, and in my reply, I asked him if Greek Heralds carried, or wore, the olive in token of Peace—of which I am doubtful: but I said not a word of my reason for asking. Yours always LittleG. The Beginning is altered from what you saw—for better or worse— but for a reason.

January 1881

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Jan. 17, [1881] Dear Mrs. Kemble,

The Moon has passed her Full: but my Eyes have become so trou­ bled since Christmas that I have not written before. All Christmas I was alone: Aldis Wright came to me on New Year's Day, and read to me, among many other things, "Winter's Tale" which we could not take much delight in. No Play more undoubtedly, nor altogether, Shakespeare's, but seeming to me written off for some "occasion" theatrical, and then, I suppose that Mrs. Siddons made much of the Statue Scene. I cannot write much, and I fancy that you will not care to read much, if you are indeed about to leave Queen Anne. That is a very vexatious business. You will probably be less inclined to write an answer to my letter, than to read it: but answer it you will: and you need trouble yourself to say no more than how you are, and where, and when, you are going, if indeed you leave where you are. And do not cross your letter, pray: and believe me always your sincere old friend E.FG.

To Bernard Quaritch [Woodbridge ] [January, 1881 ] My dear Sir,

I have before this asked you about Books which I did not get when you told me of them. And now so it is about Paris. But only think: I want but to know the definitions of old Paris—where Ville—lie—and Faubourg began and ended—where the Hotel Carnavalet and its street "Rue de la Culture Ste Catherine" were: that is all—and surely to buy Folios of £16.16 merely to find out that would be "Taking a Gun to shoot a Fly" and at a very considerable cost. I thought there might be some little old Guide or Sight Book of such places: indeed I once had one, gone I know not where. Or I do think you might get one of your Staff to make out and very briefly answer these few Ques­ tions for me, for old (Omar) acquaintance sake. Any cost for any such work I shall be glad to pay.

January 1881 Why you must be capable of boring through the Alps like Hannibal if you could carry a Bag of Books from Piccadilly to Haverstock Hill through that Snowstorm1 when we country folks could scarce keep our legs. Well, surely old Omar never was at such a "pareille fete" as you tell me of, before. Yours E.FG. If I knew your Haverstock Address, I should Esquire you which I suppose you mind no more than I do. 1

According to the Annual Register, the January 18, 1881 storm was the "worst since 1854."

To Frederick Tennyson [Woodbridge ] [January, 1881 ] My dear Frederick, I should have written to you before this but that my Eyes have been much disordered: so as to refuse me reading or writing, and hang a little Familiar of a Spectrum before me when I looked abroad. So I have done little else for near a month than to keep them closed, since Christmas: all which time I have been alone, except for three days when AIdis Wright stayed with me, and read to me very kindly, and very well: some Shakespeare among other things. Thus you see I have not had a particularly cheerful time of it. These Eyes of mine, you may remember, had gone wrong a dozen years ago, but had remained at about the same degree of serviceable badness till thus late: and I was afraid they would not recover at seventy-two as they partially did at sixty. They probably will not: but (pace Nemesis) they seem some­ what better since a Month's solitary confinement, and I make fresh use of them this black day of Thaw and Frost combined (as my old Man tells me) to tell you about myself, and to ask you some tidings of yourself in return. Alfred sent me his last Volume, which, to say the most of it, did not in my opinion add anything to what he had done before, and so (as I think) might as well have remained unpublished. For so much of in­ ferior work seems to me to hang as a weight on all that better part

January 1881 which Posterity will want to preserve. And now there is a new Play to be added to the freight.1 Perhaps you will not agree with me. I suppose that you in Jersey have not fared much better in your weather than, as I am told, they have fared in parts of Italy. But, unless the Weather hold on much longer, we must not complain, re­ membering how civilly Zeus treated us up to Christmas. A Gale from the N.E. ten days ago is said to have been the worst (from Snow and Wind combined) which has been known for many years, causing great Damage and Loss of Life on this Coast. Now I am going to shut my Eyes, 10 P.M. though it be. I shall gladly open them to read a few Lines from you, whom I wish to believe me ever yours E.FG. 1 Tennyson's play The Cup opened for a creditable run at the Lyceum, Jan­ uary 3.

To Bernard Quaritch [January, 1881 ] My dear Sir,

I write at once so as to catch you (I hope) before leaving Piccadilly for Haverstock Hill, which I know to be your Esquire address. I wish to thank you at once for your offer of showing me your fine Books: I am sure you do so with all free Goodwill and wish that I could avail myself of them. But— 1st I really hate all big Books—having given all my own away be­ cause of unhandiness as well as want of room. 2ly I probably should not find out the little I want—even though Aldis Wright, who comes to "faire ses Piques" here, were with me. 3Iy I should be bothered about repacking and renvoying them safe to you. So—"Thank you all the same" as they say: I would rather not have them. I shall find out what I want somehow: my Neighbour Le Capitaine Brooke may perhaps help me: and, if I do not get to know at all, I can do without it. I think you must be laughing in your sleeve when you talk of the honour of my Publication!—of one Book of some 70 or 80 pages: which I only wonder People have not grown so tired of as to say it is poor

February 1881 stuff. For that is a very common Fate for such minor Successes after less than twenty years. Yours truly E.FG. alias "Laird of Little Grange," or as Sevigne directs to me A Monsieur Monseigneur de Petit Grange

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [February, 1881 ] Much Thanks—my quarrel with Sophocles about Oedipus' old Age was not on account of the lapse of time between the two Plays (which we are used to in William in one) as that I thought Oedipus' myste­ rious Death was more impressive if not determined by an Age when he must have died somehow—like Carlyle, I suppose. I have, on this account, eliminated (!) all in either Play which could any way fix his Age: the Chorus in the Coloneus simply saying that he looks stricken in Years, after his Journey, etc.—and he himself saying afterwards that he is bowed more by Affliction than Age. I was going to write of this and more of the sort to Norton: but found too much for a Letter, or for my Eyes. I half inclined to print a sort of Letter of Introduction but that may be making too much of the matter. Halliwell's Manifesto1 has just come by Post: I would send it to you if I were sure you would be yet at Somerleyton. You can tell me at some time what I am to do—or not to do—about it: and I shall follow your directions. Yours E.FG. On second Thoughts I will send Halliwell at a venture. I have not read Halliwell (nor want to)—only seeing some Cockney Rot from Browning and another about "gentle Spirit." Howe seals this. 1 "Correspondence with Robert Browning," a pamphlet issued by James HalIiwell-Phillips, eminent Shakespearean scholar. See letter to Wright of Feb. 1881, following, n.l.

February 1881

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] [February 10,1881 ] My dear Lady, I expected to send you a piece of Print as well as a Letter this Full Moon. But the Print is not come from the Printer's:1 and perhaps that is as well: for now you can thank me for it beforehand when you reply (as I know you will) to this Letter—and no more needs to be said. For I do [not] need your Advice as to Publication in this case; no such Design is in my head: on the contrary, not even a Friend will know of it except yourself, Mr. Norton, and Aldis Wright: the latter of whom would not be of the party but that he happened to be here when I was too purblind to correct the few Proofs, and very kindly did so for me. As for Mr. Norton (America), he it was for whom it was printed at all—at his wish, he knowing the MS. had been lying by me unfinisht for years. It is a Version of the two Oedipus Plays of Soph­ ocles united as two Parts of one Drama. I should not send it to you but that I feel sure that, if you are in fair health and spirits, you will be considerably interested in it, and probably give me more credit for my share in it than I deserve. As I make sure of this you see there will be no need to say anything more about it. The Chorus part is not mine, as you will see; but probably quite as good. Quite enough on that score. I really want to know how you like your new Quarters in dear old London:2 how you are; and whether relieved from Anxiety concerning Mr. Leigh. It was a Gale indeed, such as the oldest hereabout say they do not remember: but it was all from the East: and I do not see why it should have travelled over the Atlantic. If you are easy on that account, and otherwise pretty well in mind and Body, tell me if you have been to see the Lyceum "Cup" and what you make of it. Somebody sent me a Macmillan with an Article about it by Lady Pollock:3 the extracts she gave seemed to me a somewhat lame imitation of Shakespeare. I venture to think—and what is more daring—to write, that my Eyes are better, after six weeks' rest and Blue Glasses. But I say so with due regard to my old Friend Nemesis. I have heard nothing about my dear Donne since you wrote: and you only said that you had not heard a good account of him. Since then you have, I doubt not, seen as well as heard. But, now that I see better (Absit Invidia!)41 will ask Mowbray.

February 1881 It is well, I think, that Carlyle desired to rest (as I am told he did) where he was born—at Ecclefechan, from which I have, or had, sev­ eral Letters dated by him. His Niece, who had not replied to my note of Enquiry, of two months ago, wrote to me after his Death.5 Now I have written enough for you as well as for myself: and am yours always the same Littlegrange. * * "What foppery is this, sir?"—Dr. Johnson. 1 His "Oedipus in Thebes" and "Oedipus at Athens" combined as The Down­ fall and Death of King Oedipus. 2 Marshall Thompson's Hotel, Cavendish Square. 3 W. F. Pollock's wife; February issue, pp. 316-20. 4 "Take it not amiss." 5 Carlyle had died February 5, and was buried on the 10th.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [February, 1881] My dear Wright, Directly that I received "Pigsbrook,"1 etc., I thought of writing to Mr. Snelgrove to withdraw my illustrious name from the Society: but, as I had said I would abide by you, I waited till your Note came to say that you had withdrawn your Name. On which I wrote at once (Sun­ day)2 to the same effect. Now then I shall do as I have done—that is, what you and old Jem decide on doing. The idea of that old Creature not thinking his name of sufficient Importance to lead a Revolution! But, the Elephantine Wisdom of the Man! I say one thing to you which you know already better than I: to wit —that if there be any Likelihood of yourself being called on to fill Furnivall's Chair, you (who are so properly entitled otherwise to do so) must not head, or be conspicuous in, any movement against Furnivall. I know your opinion that the whole Concern were better quash'd —but, if it survive, I think you will very probably—and very properly —be askt to undertake the headship: against your doing which is but one single objection that I see: and that is on your own account: namely, having already so much of other Work to do. But, as I said, I shall follow exactly the Line which you—and the Elephant—direct, only—Furnivall must be got rid of.

February 1881 I think I remember correcting by pen mark "River" to "Liver" in the Copies I first distributed of Rogers.3 Of course it is that. But Loder had once read of Styx, etc. I am glad that Carlyle could be laid (as I hear he desired) in his old first home: and am ever yours LittleG. 1 Swinburne and J. F. Furnivall, founder of the New Shakspere Society, had been engaged in a Billingsgate type of controversy, since 1875. Swinburne, favoring aesthetic criticism, ridiculed the metrical and verbal analyses of Shake­ speare's works practiced by the "Sham Shaxpere Society," as he called it, under the leadership of its founder. Furnivall dubbed Swinburne "Pigsbrook" in retalia­ tion for the epithet "Brothelsdike." EFG's "Pigsbrook" refers to "The 'Co.' of Pigsbrook & Co.," a pamphlet circu­ lated by Furnivall in February. The "Co." was James Halliwell-Phillips, whom Furnivall had chosen to involve in the controversy. 2 February 13. A. G. Snelgrove was secretary of the Society. EFG's enigmatic sentence immediately following is correctly transcribed. 3 A typographical error in EFG's reprint of Byron's "On Sam Rogers." Byron wrote: Bowells (but they were forgotten, Save the liver, and that's rotten).

To W. H. Thompson [Woodbridge] [February, 1881 ] My dear Master, I should have replied to your long and kind Letter from Ventnor but for my Eyes—which took on very bad about that time. They have not done much better ever since, in spite of keeping them closed three quarters of the Day, and dreadful blue Goggles over them when open. If I did think them better, I should be afraid to say so out of respect to my old Friend—Nemesis. Wright may have told you that he was here for all but three days of this New Year,1 and very kindly and very effectively read Shake­ speare and other good Books to me. By the by, this Furnivall—I sent to withdraw my august name from his Society when Pigsbrook came: I have not heard that the Society has collapsed in consequence: but surely you, and old Jem, and other men of Name and Station should do as the great "American Pet" (W. A. Wright calls me) has done. I told you in my last—long ago—I believe, that Mrs. Merivale had

February 1881 asked me to buy the Dean's improved Photo for £2. I did not by any means intend to hint to you to do so: nor to do so myself. I simply asked her if the original Photo would not be sufficient: and have ac­ cordingly bought one for 2s.: and this I can recommend you to buy, as it is very good. She cannot, as you said, be a very wise—or delicate —Lady: but she seemed to me to be very unpretending and sensible, and well-meaning, at Lowestoft. I did not think that Tennyson's last Volume added anything to what he had done; and, even so, might as well have been spared. But still more so when I think it falls far short of Locksley Hall, Talking Oak, and Will Waterproof of near forty years ago. Mr. Pigsbrook, as I read in some Academy, thinks Rizpah much finer than all done before: I suppose because more in the way of his "adorable" Victor Hugo. You might have been pleased with a Letter from me while you were at Ventnor: now you have much else to attend to. You know that you need not answer me: but do not fail to believe me always yours the same E.FG. My heart yearns to Carlyle at Ecclefechan. 1 Correctly transcribed. Wright spent January 1-3 at Little Grange. Perhaps EFG intended to write, "for all of three days."

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] [February, 1881] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

As you generally return a Salute so directly, I began to be alarmed at not hearing from you sooner—either that you were ill, or your Daughter, or some ill news about Mr. Leigh. I had asked one who reads the Newspapers, and was told there had been much anxiety as to the Cunard Ship, which indeed was only just saved from total Wreck. But all is well so far as you and yours are concerned; and I will sing "Gratias" along with you. Mowbray Donne wrote to tell me that he and his had provided for some man to accompany our dear old Friend in his walks; and, as he seems himself to like it, all is so far well in that quarter also. I was touched with the account of Carlyle's simple Obsequies among his own Kinsfolk, in the place of his Birth—it was fine of him to

February 1881 settle that so it should be. I am glad also that Mr. Froude is charged with his Biography: a Gentleman, as well as a Scholar and "Writer of Books," who will know what to leave unsaid as well as what to say. Your account of "The Cup" is what I should have expected from you: and, if I may say so, from myself had I seen it. And with this Letter comes my Sophocles, of which I have told you what I expect you will think also, and therefore need not say—unless of a different opinion. It came here I think the same Day on which I wrote to tell you it had not come: but I would not send it until assured that all was well with you. Such corrections as you will find are not meant as Poetical—or rather Versifying—improvements, but either to clear up obscurity, or to provide for some modifications of the two Plays when made, as it were, into one. Especially concerning the Age of Oedipus: whom I do not intend to be the old man in Part II. as he appears in the original. For which, and some other things, I will, if Eyes hold, send you some printed reasons in an introductory Letter to Mr. Norton, at whose desire I finished what had been lying in my desk these dozen years. As I said of my own Aeschylus Choruses, I say of old Potter's1 now: better just to take a hint from them of what they are about—or imagine it for yourself—and then imagine, or remember, some grand Organ piece—as of Bach's Preludes—which will be far better Interlude than Potter—or I—or even (as I dare think) than Sophocles' self! And so I remain your ancient Heretic, Little G. The newly printed Part II would not bear Ink. 1

Robert Potter, 18th-century translator.

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] [February, 1881 ] My dear Lady, Pray keep the Book: I always intended that you should do so if you liked it: and, as I believe I said, I was sure that like it you would. I did not anticipate how much: but am all the more glad: and (were I twenty years younger) should be all the more proud; even making, as I do, a little allowance for your old and constant regard to the

February 1881 Englisher. The Drama is, however, very skilfully put together, and very well versified, although that not as an original man—such as Dryden—would have versified it: I will, by and by, send you a little introductory letter to Mr. Norton, explaining to him, a Greek Scholar, why I have departed from so much of the original: "little" I call the Letter, but yet so long that I did not wish him, or you, to have as much trouble in reading, as I, with my bad Eyes, had in writing it: so, as I tell him—and you—it must go to the Printers along with the Play which it prates about. I think I once knew why the two Cities in Egypt and Boeotia were alike named Thebes; and perhaps could now find out from some Books now stowed away in a dark Closet which affrights my Eyes to think of. But any of your learned friends in London will tell you, and probably more accurately than Paddy. I cannot doubt but that Sphinx and heaps more of the childish and dirty mythology of Greece came from Egypt, and who knows how far beyond, whether in Time or Space! Your Uncle, the great John, did enact Oedipus in some Tragedy, by whom I know not: I have a small Engraving of him in the Character, from a Drawing of that very clever artist De Wilde; but this is a heavy Likeness, though it may have been a true one of J. K. in his latter years, or in one of his less inspired—or more asthmatic—moods. This portrait is one of a great many (several of Mrs. Siddons) in a Book I have— and which I will send you if you would care to see it: plenty of them are rubbish such as you would wonder at a sensible man having ever taken the trouble to put together. But I inherit a long-rooted Affection for the Stage: almost as real a World to me as Jacques called it. Of yourself there is but a Newspaper Scrap or two: I think I must have cut out and given you what was better: but I never thought any one worth having except Sir Thomas's, which I had from its very first Appearance, and keep in a large Book along with some others of a like size: Kean, Mars, Talma, Duchesnois, etc., which latter I love, though I heard more of them than I saw. Yesterday probably lighted you up once again in London, as it did us down here. "Richard" thought he began to feel himself up to his Eyes again: but To-day all Winter again, though I think I see the Sun resolved on breaking through the Snow clouds. My little Aconites— which are sometimes called "New Year Gifts," have almost lived their little Lives: my Snowdrops look only too much in Season; but we will hope that all this Cold only retards a more active Spring. I should not have sent you the Play till Night had I thought you

February 1881 would sit up that same night to read it. Indeed, I had put it away for the Night Post: but my old Hermes came in to say he was going into Town to market, and so he took it with him to Post. Farewell for the present—till next Full Moon? I am really glad that all that Atlantic worry has blown over, and all ended well so far as you and yours are concerned. And I am always your ancient Little G.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge February 20, [1881 ] Mij dear Norton,

My Eyes have been very much out of order since Xmas, insomuch that I have been very little able to read or write. So I have not had a lively time of it. I do not find these Eyes get better as yet, with all the rest I give them, and all the blue Glasses I cover them with. Nor can I feel any confidence they will much, if at all, improve at Aetat 72, as they did after the Injury I did them (by ParaflBn lamps mainly) twelve years ago: but I must wait in hope at any rate. Spring will come and bring Verdure along with it, and, if that do not recover my Eyes, it will at least give them something which all Eyes are the better for looking upon. At present, all is very dark and cold, above and below. The 2nd Part (Coloneus) of Sophocles1 came to me in Print a month and more ago; but I was so purblind that I was obliged to ask Aldis Wright who happened to be staying with me to read over, and correct, the Proofs—under the same pledge of Secrecy which I laid upon you: and he suggested some corrections, and I myself found several things to alter (as one does find when one sees in Print, you know) so that altogether I only ten days ago got the sheets home; and they still so wet that I cannot write on them some few alterations which occurred to me since printing. I was, nevertheless, about to send it off to you when a Letter of Explanation which I had half written to go along with it, ran on to such length, that I have sent the Letter to be printed too; so as at any rate you may not be troubled in reading, as I was in writing it. But I became interested in the vindication of my audacious treatment of the Greek, and so ran on—spite of Eyes. You will tell me if I make out any case for myself in respect of my Scholarship which

March 1881 is not deep; but you know that I do not wish you to say anything about poetical merits, which I already doubt not you will think better of than they deserve. Enough of this for the present. I have little to say about Carlyle, but that my heart did follow him to Ecclefechan, from which place I have, or had, several letters dated by him. I think it was fine that he should anticipate all Westminster Abbey honours, and determine to be laid where he was born, among his own Kindred, and with all the simple and dignified obsequies of (I suppose) his own old Puritan Church. The Care of his Posthumous Memory will be left in good hands, I believe, if in those of Mr. Froude. His Niece, who had not answered a Note of Enquiry I wrote her some two months ago, answered it a few days after his Death: she had told him, she said, of my letter, and he said, "You must answer that." My Eyes have had enough of it for the present: you will soon have more of me: I should be glad to know how you and yours have got thus far through the winter: and am ever yours E.FG. 1

EFG's title, "Oedipus at Athens."

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [March 2, 1881] My dear Wright, Capital, old Jem. Still, I think he should do something. I wrote to your Master a few days ago telling him the same. I have had a Copy, I suppose, of what you call the second Edition of Pigsbrook:1 so I suppose I am not known to have withdrawn my name from the So­ ciety: which is a terrible insult in itself. But those who wish the Society to hold together (which I do not unless you be at the head of it) should, as Mr. Munro said, kick Furnivall out. I have not read the second Paper, which now concerns not me. G. Crabbe wrote me that he hoped to cross "La Manche"—which I had thought to be in Spain till Loder set me right—about March 2. He talked of Florence: but I hope he will not go there for two months, at any rate. Herman Biddell (whom you must see here when next you come) was Juryman on a Civil Case at Ipswich Assizes when the right was tried of what was set down in a very old Map as a "Parnell Road."

March 1881 Judge, Barrister, and Jury were at a loss: till Herman afterwards conjectured it meant a "Pannel Road" meaning a Saddle—or Bridle— Road: the word Pannel being "Saddle" even in old Johnson: and (I am told—by Loder, of course) still used hereabout for a Woman's Side­ saddle. But the pretty part of the Story to my mind was; that this particular Pannel Road lay between Bury Edmunds and Elmswell (some six or seven miles off) and was supposed to have been used by the old Abbots going to and fro that Elmswell where they had a Hunting Lodge. This would have made old Carlyle dilate his Eyes (as they would do when in Wonder). Samson knew all about the rights of that Road, whether he travelled it to hunt or not. There was an old Hall, Herman tells me; but nowhere now. I return you Jem's letter, and am always yours LittleG. 1 Fumivall distributed three printings of his "Pigsbrook & Co." pamphlet within a month.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] Friday [March 4, 1881 ] My dear Wright, I am very sorry to have troubled you at such a time—I mean, when you were out, or only just returned. You tell me the first I have heard of my dear Spedding's Disaster.1 I should go up to London at once—not to see him, but to ask about him—if (with all these Eyes which will not endure even Woodbridge Lamps) I could learn any tidings but such as one Post will bring me. I have asked Mowbray Donne to write just two or three words on a Post Card. I can say nothing of anything else except that I am you know yours always E.FG. 1 Injuries sustained when he was run down by a cab March 1 resulted in Spedding's death. He absolved the driver of blame.

March 1881

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] [March, 1881 ] My dear Lady, It was very, very good and kind of you to write to me about Spedding. Yes: Aldis Wright had apprised me of the matter just after it happened—he happening to be in London at the time; and but two days after the accident heard that Spedding was quite calm, and even cheerful; only anxious that Wright himself should not be kept waiting for some communication which S. had promised him! Whether to live, or to die, he will be Socrates still. Directly that I heard from Wright, I wrote to Mowbray Donne to send me just a Post Card—daily, if he or his wife could—with but one or two words on it—"Better," "Less well," or whatever it might be. This morning I hear that all is going on even better than could be expected, according to Miss Spedding. But I suppose the Crisis, which you tell me of, is not yet come; and I have always a terror of that French Adage—"Monsieur se porte mal—Monsieur se -parte mieux— Monsieur est"—Ah, you know—or you guess, the rest. My dear old Spedding, though I have not seen him these twenty years and more—and probably should never see him again—but he lives—his old Self—in my heart of hearts; and all I hear of him does but embellish the recollection of him—if it could be embellished— for he is but the same that he was from a Boy—all that is best in Heart and Head—a man that would be incredible had one not known him. I certainly should have gone up to London—even with Eyes that will scarce face the lamps of Woodbridge—not to see him, but to hear the first intelligence I could about him. But I rely on the Postcard for but a Night's delay. Laurence, Mowbray tells me, had been to see him, and found him as calm as had been reported by Wright. But the Doctors had said that he should be kept as quiet as possible. I think from what Mowbray also says, that you may have seen our other old Friend Donne in somewhat worse plight than usual because of his being much shocked at this Accident. He would feel it indeed! —as you do. I had even thought of writing to tell you of all this, but could not but suppose that you were more likely to know of it than myself; though sometimes one is greatly mistaken with those "of course you knows, etc."—But you have known it all: and have very kindly written of it to me, whom you might also have supposed already informed

March 1881 of it: but you took the trouble to write, not relying on "of course you know, etc." I have thought lately that I ought to make some enquiry about Arthur Malkin, who was always very kind to me. I had meant to send him my Crabbe, who was a great favourite of his Father's,1 "an excel­ lent companion for Old Age" he told—Donne, I think. But I do not know if I ever did send him the Book; and now, judging by what you tell me, it is too late to do so, unless for Compliment. The Sun, I see, has put my Fire out—for which I only thank him, and will go to look for him himself in my Garden—only with a Green Shade over my Eyes. I must get to London to see you before you move away to Leamington; when I can bear Sun or Lamp without odious blue Glasses, etc. I dare to think those Eyes are better, though not Sun-proof: and I am ever yours Little G. 1 Benjamin

H. Malkin, EFG's headmaster at Bury St. Edmunds' School.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [March 10,1881 ] My dear Wright,

Thank you for all your despatches: I have heard every Day's post from the Donnes: and never had any Hope from almost the Beginning. This morning Loder sends me word from The Times of the Upshot.1 I had asked Carlyle's Niece for the Bowl and an inch or two of the stem of such Clay pipes as I used to smoke with Carlyle under a little Pear tree—I think it was—in the little garden-plot behind his Chelsea house. She has sent me a handsome old Meerschaum, as you will see by the enclosed: for which, as I tell her, I am almost sorry, considering that he had many friends really much more worthy of it in many ways than myself: and that I have so short a time of my own to possess it. I ask her if she would like me to bequeathe it to any one? If not, it will pass into the hands of my little Annie Niece, who will not throw it away—nor sell it! I think I can see Carlyle—changed as he was from twenty-five years ago—hearing of Spedding's Accident and its Results. I believe that, unless he were as for the last three weeks of his Life he was, he would have had himself carried to St. George's Hospital.

March 1881

Mowbray Donne wrote me that Laurence had been there four or five days ago, when Spedding said that, had the Cab done but a little more, it would have been a good Quietus. Socrates to the last. And I am yours always E.FG. I think I must trouble you to return me Mrs. C.'s Letter, that I [may] put it along with the Pipe in its case. Tell your Master that R. Groome called here yesterday—seemingly very well and in good Spirits. He will put up for a Night on Tuesday. 1 Spedding

died March 9.

To Samuel Laurence [Woodbridge] March 13/81 My dear Laurence,

It was very very good of you to think of writing to me at all on this occasion: much more, writing to me so fully, almost more fully than I dared at first to read: though all so delicately and as you always write. It is over! I shall not write about it. He was all you say. So I turn to myself! And that is only to say that I am much as usual: here all alone for the last six months, except a two days' visit to London in November to see Mrs. Kemble, who is now removed from West­ minster to Marshall Thompson's Hotel, Cavendish Square: and Mrs. Edwards who is naturally better and happier than a year ago, but who says she never should be happy unless always at work. And that work is taking off impressions of yet another—and I believe last—batch of her late Husband's Etchings. I saw and heard nothing else than these two Ladies: and some old Nurseys at St. John's Wood: and dear Donne, who was infirmer than when I had seen him before, and, I hear, is infirmer still than when I saw him last. By the by, I began to think my own Eyes, which were blazed away by ParaflBn some dozen years ago, were going out of me just before Christmas. So for the two dreary months which followed I could scarce read or write. And as yet I am obliged to use them tenderly: only too glad to find that they are better; and not quite going (as I hope) yet. I think they will light me out of this world with care. On March 31 I shall enter on my seventy-third year: and none of my Family reaches over seventy-five.

March 1881 When I was in London I was all but tempted to jump into a Cab and just knock at Carlyle's door, and ask after him, and give my card, and—run away. . . . The cold wind will not leave us, and my Crocuses do not like it. Still I manage to sit on one of those Benches you may remember under the lee side of the hedge, and still my seventy-third year approaches.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge March 13, [1881 ] My dear Norton, Our Letters crossed on the Atlantic, I suppose: and, unless mine should have gone astray, you will have read some answer to the kind Enquiries which you wrote for me to answer. Those Evil Eyes which I told you of have on the whole bettered (I dare even to write as well as to think) since I told you about them: but I am obliged to use them very tenderly still. I send you along with this Letter Part II of Oedipus: with some corrections or suggestions which I have been obliged to make in Pen­ cil, because of the Paper blotting under the lightest Penwork. And, along with it, a preliminary Letter, which I believe I told you of also, addressed to your Initial: for I did not wish to compromise you even with yourself in such a Business. I know you will like it—probably more than it deserves, and excuse its inroads on the Original, though you may, and probably will, think I might better have left it alone, or followed it more faithfully. As to those Students you tell me of who are meditating—or by this time may have accomplisht—their Repre­ sentation, they could only look on me as a Blasphemer. I should not be at all afraid, however, of American Scholars: whom I have no rea­ son to think Pedants: as (by what I heard some while ago from Cowell) our Cambridge seems becoming: all their concern being the Letter, not the Spirit, of the Greek and Latin—as was, I believe, the case with other late Schools of Learning. And, though I never see any of them, I do not want any Friends I have at Cambridge to be taunted with my Treason to Sophocles, as it was to Aeschylus. It seems almost wrong or unseasonable of me to be talking thus of myself and my little Doings, when not only Carlyle has departed from

March 1881 us, but one, not so illustrious in Genius, but certainly not less wise— my dear old Friend of sixty years, James Spedding: whose name you will know as connected with Lord Bacon. To re-edit his Works— which did not want any such re-edition—and to vindicate his Charac­ ter which could not be cleared, did this Spedding sacrifice forty years which [he] might well have given to accomplish much better things; Shakespeare, for one. But Spedding had no sort of Ambition, and liked to be kept at one long work which he knew would not glorify himself. He was the wisest man I have known: not the less so for plenty of the Boy in him—great Sense of Humour—a Socrates in Life and in Death, which he faced with all Serenity so long as Consciousness lasted. I suppose something of him will reach America—I mean, of his Death, run over by a Cab and dying in St. George's Hospital to which he was taken, and from which he could not be removed home alive. I believe that had Carlyle been alive, and but as well as he was three months ago, he would have insisted on being carried to the Hospital to see his Friend, whom he respected as he did few others. I have just got the Carlyle Reminiscences, which will take me some little time to read, impatient as I may be to read them. What I have read is of a stuff we can scarce find in any other Autobiographer: whether his Editor Froude has done quite well in publishing them as they are, and so soon, is another matter.1 Carlyle's Niece thinks, not quite. She sent me a Pipe her Uncle had used, for Memorial. I had asked her for the Bowl, and an Inch of stem, of one of the Clay Pipes such as I had smoked with him under that little old Pear tree in his Chelsea garden many an Evening. But she sent me a small Meerschaum which Lady Ashburton had given him, and which he used when from home. I suppose you have this Posthumous Book of his by this time in America: and will have read it before my poor Packet comes. I ought to have delayed it, I think, till a better time. But here it is—or ought to be—after being so long talked of: and I am truly—and I hope not too illegibly— Yours E.FG. Pray do remember me very kindly to Professor Goodwin, who, I hope, does not remember me unkindly. I am sure he does not, from all I have heard of him from our Cambridge. I should send Oedipus to him, if to any one, with all confidence. 1 Within a month after Carlyle's death, James A. Froude, close friend of his later years, published Carlyle's Reminiscences, described in Froude's preface as

March 1881 "Mr. Carlyle's own handiwork . . . not edited by himself, not corrected by him­ self, perhaps most of it not intended for publication." Froude had ignored Car­ lyle's appended injunction against publishing the manuscript without editing, stating that Carlyle had orally granted permission to do so. Froude's action and methods on the one hand and Carlyle's bluntly stated personal opinions of con­ temporaries elicited partisan attacks on both men and created bitter controversy. The work is not an autobiography as EFG implies, but consists of pen portraits of Carlyle, his wife, and his parents; notes on contemporaries; and innumerable interjected thumbnail personality sketches.

To C. E. Norton [Woodbridge ] [March, 1881 ] My dear N, Some while ago you asked me to complete a version of the Oedipus Tyrannus and Coloneus of Sophocles, which had been lying by me some years. Here they are at last, the two Tragedies united into one Drama under the ponderous alliteration which figures on the Titlepage;1 for which, however, I could hit on no so comprehensive a sub­ stitute. If you can, pray do so. There also, you see that my Drama professes to be neither a Translation, nor a Paraphrase of Sophocles, but "chiefly taken" from him: I need scarcely add, only intended for those who do not read the Greek. As you, however, to whom I send it, are a Scholar, who not only knows, but reveres the original, I shall try to excuse some of the liberties which I have taken with it. For my very free treatment of what I have retained you are already sufficiently prepared; not so, perhaps, for the much I have omitted: still less for one audacious substitution of my own work for that of Sophocles in what I may call the Second Act in the Second Part of my Play. Well, then, to begin with the more venial sins of omission. You will see that I have dispensed with all (including what I believe is called the Kommos2) which follows the narration of the catastrophe as re­ lated by the several witnesses; as I think is the case in some of the Tragedies of Euripides. What Professor Paley says of the Kommos which terminates the Persae of Aeschylus must, I think, be true of all: that, whatever effect the vehement recitation might add to it, the Dialogue is secondary to the Spectacle—by which I understand him to mean those outward signs of woe which are implied in the name. Even as I venture to believe—proh Scholasticus!—that in most of the

March 1881 Lyric Chorus (unless in the case of Aeschylus) the words are second­ ary to the Lyre: are; in fact, a kind of better Libretto for the Music. However this may be with Ode or Kommos, I think no English reader will care to have the horror of the catastrophe in the first Play increased, even to his Mind's eye, by the exhibition of the poor selfblinded King staggering into the public street, whither his two daugh­ ters have been summoned to weep, and be wept over by him. In the original, you know, the spectacle he presents is much more revolting— a spectacle indeed of royal degradation surely worse than any which Aristophanes satirized in Euripides. And is not the catastrophe when told of as being accomplished within doors, more terrible, though less horrible, than when exhibited without? And, on the other hand, does not a reader find the impression left on him by the grand catastrophe of the Coloneus dissipated rather than enhanced by the Lamentations which follow, and conclude the Tragedy? Thus far I do not think you will much differ from me: but what will you say to the disappearance of two principal Characters from the Dramatis Personae—that of Creon from the first Play, and that of Ismene from the second? Oedipus, you know, has involved Creon in the same groundless charge of Treason which he brings against Teiresias; and, after much and violent altercation with the Prophet, turns with yet more vindictive fury upon the Prince, who comes to vindicate himself from the charge. From all which little results except to show that the Creon of this Play (the Tyrannus) proves himself by his temperate self-defence, and subsequent forbearance toward his accuser, very unlike the Creon of the two after Tragedies, which Goethe thought should be regarded as parts of a connected Trilogy— a theory which is not favoured either by this dissimilarity of character in the several Tragedies, or by the dates usually assigned to the com­ position of each; the Antigone being reputed as among the earlier, and the Coloneus, as tradition tells, the very last of all the Poet's works. As for Ismene—her cautious refusal to help in burying her revolted brother may not be inconsistent with her singular exploit of riding alone to Athens to acquaint her banished father with what is plotting against him in Thebes. But her arrival brings with it more of paternal and filial effusion than comes within the compass of my Play. So I pretend that some loyal Theban—she, if you please, on her Sicilian filly—had told all that was to be told previously to the opening of the Play: and thus Ismene "disappears from my Playbill" altogether. And Oedipus seems to me to present us a no less pathetic figure when

March 1881 accompanied only by the one daughter who is traditionally associated with him as the type of filial, as afterward of sisterly devotion. The disappearance of the two sisters along with that Kommos from the first Play helps to connect it with the second in point of Time, with­ out, I think, diminishing the interest of either. In the Tyrannus, you know, Oedipus appears as a man little, if at all, beyond the prime of life. He came quite young, he tells us, to Thebes; his unlucky marriage, by which the State thought to confirm his other claims to the throne, would, for the same reasons, be not long delayed; those two daughters of his are scarce in their teens—certainly not marriageable—when brought in to him just before his expulsion; which, as the life of Thebes depended on it, must have followed immediately on his conviction. Creon, at any rate, must have been, by his ill-starr'd relation with Oedipus, considerably the older of the two; and he, we see, is capable of very active service both in the Coloneus and Antigone. And certainly if Oedipus became an old man between the time of his leaving Thebes, and that of his arrival at Athens, Antigone, who figures along with him in both the original Tragedies, may, on her subsequent return to Thebes, have been a suitable bride in point of years to Creon's son Haemon, but scarcely such as he would have been so much en­ amoured of as to sacrifice himself at her side. Nevertheless, in the original Coloneus, Oedipus has become an old —I think, a very old man. Our own Theatre—our own Shakespeare— has "jumped the life" of his people over as wide an interval in the compass of a single Play as Sophocles has done in two several Trage­ dies: but, especially if considering them as parts of a Trilogy, one cannot help asking one's self where, in all the little world of Greece, Oedipus could have found Space to wander in all the Time. Perhaps, however, so ran the Legend; or Sophocles considered that, as usual, I think, in ancient Tragedy—the "Pity of it" was increased by adding the weight of old age to blindness and calamity. I do not question that: but is it so with the grandeur of his praeternatural "tak­ ing off," if determined to a time of life when death in some way or other is inevitable? So much for omission. And now for my capital act of treason com­ mitted against Sophocles, amounting to nothing less than the re-casting of the whole Second Act (as I call it) of the Coloneus, including Creon's bootless expedition to Athens. I never understood, though I doubt not the Athenian audience ap­ proved, that coming of his with a considerable force (as in the original

March 1881 he does) unprevented—uninterrupted, and apparently unobserved, under the very walls of their City, and seizing on those who were taking refuge there. Insomuch that, when King Theseus, alarmed by the outcries of the Chorus, comes to the rescue, Antigone and Ismene have already been forced away by some of Creons people, and Oedipus only just escapes being carried off by Creon himself. In re-casting all this, I hope that whatever wrong I may have done Sophocles, King Theseus, at any rate, has not suffered indignity at my hands, if Creon be made to regard him of sufficient account as to apprize him before advancing to his walls; not with the rash design of seizing and carrying off those who are under his protection; but to prevail on them, if he can, by fair argument, to return to Thebes: Theseus standing between the two parties to hear, if not to judge, what has to be said on either side. And on that score also I have something to say. Up to this visit of Creon's, I could never see any just ground for the rancorous hate which Oedipus entertains and exhibits toward Creon or toward his own sons, which occupies so much of the Coloneus with imprecations, that re­ mind one of Lear's against his daughters, but without as much reason, and therefore without engaging our sympathy in his behalf. For how stands the case? Phoebus had announced that, until the murder of King Laius were avenged, Thebes would not rid herself of the Plague that was devouring her: Oedipus denounces Excommunication on the Criminal; convicts himself;3 and, after putting out his own eyes, calls aloud for Thebes to execute the sentence he had called down upon himself, whether by banishment or death. Creon, however, who is now left in charge of the City, decides, with the concurrence of Oedipus' two sons, that banishment will be sufficient accomplishment of the Oracle; and Oedipus is accordingly banished. He soon indeed repents of his rash self-denunciation, and prays to be restored to Thebes: but how could that be until the God, by Oracle or Augury, should sanction his return, without danger of bringing back the Plague which he took away with him? And when the Oracle at last declares that Thebes can only secure herself from her enemies by repossessing herself of her old King, it is on the strange condition that she is to keep her treasure, whether alive or dead, upon neighbouring territory, for the very reason that he is polluted by his father's blood. Not a satisfactory arrangement for him, whatever it might be for Thebes. But for this, and for all thus far, the Gods were responsible, not Creon and the sons upon whom he fulminates his wrath.

March 1881 But when Creon appears, and afterward Polynices, to persuade, if not to force him home, he being apprised of their ulterior intentions regarding him, we do not wonder at his blazing up against their selfish duplicity. But still it is, I think, their previous ill-usage (as he thinks it), rather than their present design upon him, which mainly supplies the fuel of his wrath. Now, had his first expulsion been aggravated by unnecessary cruelty and insult on their part; and had they persisted in keeping him out when the Gods, under some favourable auspices, might have been supposed to license his return to Thebes, polluted as he might still be with the blood which had not prevented his reigning there for so many years before: I think he would have been furnished with such reason for his Fury as would have carried our feelings along with him. And, whatever ancient Legend or Mythology might say, neither of them was very impracticable, had the Poet chosen to deal with them as I have ventured on doing with him. While doing, as well as saying all this, I am sure you will understand that I am not pretending to improve on Sophocles, whether as a Poet or a Dramatist. As for Poetry, I pretend to very little more than representing the old Greek in sufficiently readable English verse: and whatever I have omitted, added, or altered, has been with a view to the English reader of Today, without questioning what was fittest for an Athenian theatre more than two thousand years ago. Those great ancient Tragedians were not, any more than their audiences, nice about such consistencies and probabilities as any modern playwright would provide for, and, so far, be the better for it. One modification of the original not even the English Scholar—I do not mean, Scholastic—would resent; namely, leaving the terrible story to develope itself no further than needs it must to be intelligible, without being descanted, dwelt, and dilated on, after the fashion of Greek Tragedy. As I thought I should do no better with the Choruses than old Potter, I have left them, as you see, in his hands, though worthy of a better Interpreter than either of us; all of them, I say, excepting the two fragments which might otherwise be imputed to him: one at page 32 of the First Part during which Iocasta is supposed to be making her oblations at the altar before the Corinthian Herald interrupts her: secondly, at page 414 of the Second Part, by way of giving Theseus a little while before he enters on the scene to which he has been so hastily summoned: and, lastly, the little Choral morality which ends each play.5 You say that good literal Prose translation would be better

March 1881 than Potter. So think I too in some respects; but with Potter the Lyric Form, so essential to the conception of Greek Tragedy, is retained, if nothing else: though some grand piece of appropriate organ music would answer the purpose much better. What I meant for a written letter has grown to such a length—and long-windedness, I fear—that it shall even go to the printer along with the play which it prates about, and, at any rate, give you no trouble in deciphering. Pray mark down what you see amiss in both: and believe me yours, as ever, sincerely, Littlegrange 1 The Downfall and Death of King Oedipus. The title page adds: "A Drama in Two Parts. Chiefly taken from the Oedipus Tyrannus and Colonaeus of Sophocles." EFG had sent Part I, "Oedipus in Thebes," the previous February. Aldis Wright chose to date this letter [February, 1880] when adopting it as a preface for EFG's complete play. 2 "Dirge." 3 "For, so far as I see, the sole surviving witness of the deed whom he has ultimately—(not immediately, as would Justice Shallow)—sent for to decide the question, had not yet arrived; or, being, as the Chorus surmises, the same who convicts Oedipus of his fatal parentage, is not interrogated at all as to his Father's murder" (EFG note). 4 In transcribing the letter Aldis Wright, for the original page references, sub­ stituted the pagination in Vol. VI of the Letters and Literary Remains. 5 As an afterthought, EFG discarded the choral moralities but neglected to amend his preliminary letter, written before February 20. As originally printed, both portions of the play conclude with passages that parallel lines in the Greek text. A year later he composed new choruses and sent them to Norton with letters of January 18 and 25, 1882. Wright added only the lines suggested for "Oedipus at Athens" in 1889 when the play was first published.

To W. H. Thompson [Woodbridge] [March 16,1881] My dear Master, You see the Date of the enclosed Letter: I should have forwarded it to you at once, but kept it to show R. Groome, to whom I have just read it. He seems in good health and Spirits: his Eyes apparently not worse than when he was last here—near two years before. I need scarce say that he sends all good remembrances. He bids me say that

March 1881 "he hopes to pay a visit to Cambridge before the Spring is over—to see old Cambridge, and the few that he now knows in it." These are his "ipsissima verba" as dictated to me this very fine morning March 16, 11/45 A.M. At 1 P.M. we shall dine: and then the Archdeacon will sally forth to make two visits, jwhile I doze in the Sun on the "Quarter­ deck" which Wright will tell you of. Please to let him have Laurence's Letter: and then, one of you, post it to the Venerable John Allen, Prees, Shrewsbury. I had asked Carlyle's Niece to send me the bowl and inch of stem of one of his old Clay pipes such as I had smoked with him. But she sent me a Meerschaum which is more than enough at my age. I think I told your Bursar of this, however, who, I dare say, showed you her Letter, which, by the by, he must return to me so [as] to deposit along with the Pipe. I say nothing of our own more familiar loss—Cui bono? Do not trouble yourself to answer this Letter, but believe me yours and the Lady's always E.FG. I am glad to see that you have cut the Shakespeare.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [March, 1881]

I have a kind Letter from Mrs. A. Tennyson telling me of Spedding. Tennyson called at the Hospital but was not allowed to see him: though Hallam did, I think. Some one calling afterwards, Spedding took the Doctor's arm, and asked, "Was it Mr. Tennyson?" Doctors and Nurses all devoted to the patient man. Some of his Letters should be edited by some more scrupulous Editor than Froude, who has carried out CarlyIe to the Letter: who was entitled to put down for his own satisfaction what he thought of People, living as well as dead—and I think he is generally quite right—but he might have restricted Froude in publishing. I always thought that Carlyle showed his National Indelicacy in such matters; as I dare say I have told you—with illustra­ tions—before. There would be little fear with Spedding's Letters, even had his Cousin1 to edit them. I tell Mrs. Tennyson why not Hallam T?

March 1881 or Pollock or his Son? or Aldis Wright? Allen sent me one about Darwin's Philosophy2 which could step into Print as it is and make all the World wiser and better. Yours E.FG.—who might as well have begun a new Sheet as have blurred George's.3 1

James A. Froude. Published in R. M. Grier's John Allen, a Memoir, pp. 35-37. 3 EFG began his letter on the reverse of one from George Crabbe dated Hyeres, France, March 15. 2

To J. R. Lowell Woodbridge March 20, [1881 ] My dear Sir, The enclosed Letter is not meant to instruct you—unless in what it says of our friend Calderon getting a footing in our Cambridge. He will perhaps rouse some of the Pedants there: I hope not to make a Calderon Society—like our Shakespeare with Mr. Furnival at its head. I always thought it an absurd thing and its Books lumber: so I was not sorry when Furnival's last escapades gave me an excuse for cutting the concern altogether. I must say I hope that you, and other men of Name and Station will do so, for example—better reason than mine. You are so busy a man that I never like to ask for a Letter: but I should be really glad to hear that Mrs. Lowell is well, as well as yourself: and that you go on with Spanish as before. What of a new Translation of Don Quixote, which the Translator (as I read) says is the only good one? You have, I suppose, read Carlyle's Reminis­ cences; interesting enough to us Outsiders, but which, if published at all, should not have been published yet awhile, or very considerably deleted. Carlyle's Niece wonders that Mr. Froude, whom her Uncle esteemed above all men, she says, for his Gift of Reticence should have been in such a hurry: we may wonder also that Carlyle himself should have left to any one's Discretion to publish all those apostrophes to his "radiant one," etc. as his contemptuous flings at others—not unjust in general, I believe—but certainly better have been suppressed, at any rate till the Victims or the Victims' Kinsfolk were out of hearing. But

March 1881 Carlyle, gentleman as he essentially was, was deficient always, so far as I knew of him, in any such Delicacy—I think, a Scotch failing. But, such as we have these Memoirs, they are distinct from any other Autobiographic Notice, so far as I know: stamped with the Individual­ ity of the Man—Montaigne, perhaps, another. I am writing you a very long letter, considering that my Eyes have been so amiss for two months before and after Christmas that, till the last Fortnight, I have scarce read or written at all. And now I am doing too much for myself, and perhaps for you. But I say again that I do wish to have a few lines from yourself to tell me what I have asked about. Mr. Norton has written me two kind Letters since November, but in neither of them has spoken of you, as usually he has done. I suppose he may think that I hear of you from Friends or Newspapers: and from Friends I have heard somewhat, but not of your Family Welfare. Newspapers I never see. I do not know if you chanced to meet my dear old friend (yes, altho' not seen these twenty-five Years) James Spedding though I was aware that you knew his Bacon, at any rate insomuch as you have quoted a curious passage from it. Ah yes! I have one reason to regret the Shakespeare Society in so far as he occasionally sent them a Paper which atoned for all the Ineptitude of them. I had known him sixty years—wisest of Men even when a Boy, and of Boys when a Man. This is quite true, and not post mortem "rationes," etc. And I am sincerely yours E. FitzGerald

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge] March 20, [ 1881 ] My dear Lady, I have let the Full Moon pass because I thought you had written to me so lately, and so kindly, about our lost Spedding, that I would not call on you too soon again. Of him I will say nothing except that his Death has made me recall very many passages in his Life in which I was partly concerned. In particular, staying at his Cumberland Home along with Tennyson in the May of 1835.1 "Voila bien long temps de gal" His Father and Mother were both alive—he, a wise man, who mounted his Cob after Breakfast, and was at his Farm till Dinner at

March 1881 two—then away again till Tea: after which he sat reading by a shaded lamp: saying very little, but always courteous, and quite content with any Company his Son might bring to the house so long as they let him go his way: which indeed he would have gone whether they let him or no. But he had seen enough of Poets not to like them or their Trade: Shelley, for a time living among the Lakes: Coleridge at Southey's (whom perhaps he had a respect for—Southey, I mean), and Words­ worth, whom I do not think he valued. He was rather jealous of "Jem," who might have done available service in the world, he thought, giving himself up to such Dreamers; and sitting up with Tennyson conning over the Morte d'Arthur, Lord of Burleigh, and other things which helped to make up the two Volumes of 1842. So I always asso­ ciate that Arthur Idyll with Basanthwaite Lake, under Skiddaw. Mrs. Spedding was a sensible, motherly Lady, with whom I used to play Chess of a Night. And there was an old Friend of hers, Mrs. Bristow, who always reminded me of Miss La Creevy, if you know of such a Person in Nickleby. At the end of May we went to lodge for a week at Windermere— where Wordsworth's new volume of Yarrow Revisited reached us. W. was then at his home: but Tennyson would not go to visit him: and of course I did not: nor even saw him. You have, I suppose, the Carlyle Reminiscences: of which I will say nothing except that, much as we outsiders gain by them, I think that, on the whole, they had better have been kept unpublished—for some while at least. As also thinks Carlyle's Niece, who is surprised that Mr. Froude, whom her Uncle trusted above all men for the gift of Reticence, should have been in so much hurry to publish what was left to his Judgment to publish or no. But Carlyle himself, I think, should have stipulated for Delay, or retrenchment, if publisht at all. Here is a dull and coldish Day after the fine ones we have had— which kept me out of doors as long as they lasted. Now one turns to the Fireside again. To-morrow is Equinox Day; when, if the Wind should return to North East, North East will it blow till June 21, as we all believe down here. My Eyes are better, I presume to say: but not what they were even before Christmas. Pray let me hear how you are, and believe me ever the same E.FG. Oh! I doubted about sending you what I yet will send,2 as you already have what it refers to. It really calls for no comment from any

March 1881 one who does not know the Greek; those who do would probably repudiate it. 1 April, not May. After visiting Spedding for three weeks at Mirehouse on Bassenthwaite Lake, near Keswick, EFG and Tennyson went to Windermere the first week in May. 2A copy of the "preliminary Letter" sent to Norton with the translations of Sophocles.

To Mrs. Tennyson1 Woodbridge March 22, [1881] My dear Mrs. Tennyson,

It is very, very [good] of you to write to me, even to remember me. I have told you before why I did not write to any other of your Party, as I might occasionally wish to do for the sake of asking about you all: the task of answering my Letter was always left to you: and I did not choose to put you to that trouble. Laurence had written me some account of his Visit to St. George's: all Patience: only somewhat wish­ ful to be at home: somewhat weary with lying without Book, or even Watch, for company. What a Man! as in Life so in Death, which, as Montaigne says, proves what is at the bottom of the Vessel. I had not seen him for more than twenty years, and should never have seen him again, unless in the Street, where Cabs were crossing! He did not want to see me; he wanted nothing, I think: but I was always thinking of him, and should have done till my own Life's end, I know. I only wrote to him about twice a year: he only cared to answer when one put some definite Question to him: and I had usually as little to ask as to tell. I was thinking that, but for that Cab, I might even now be asking him what I was to think of his Cousin Froude's Carlyle Remi­ niscences. I see but one Quotation in the Book, which is "of the Days that are no more," which clung to him when his Sorrow came, as it will to many and many who will come after him. I certainly hope that some pious and judicious hand will gather and choose from our dear Spedding's Letters: no fear of indelicate per­ sonality with him, you know: and many things which all the world would be the wiser and better for. Archdeacon Allen sent me the other day a Letter about Darwin's Philosophy, so wise, so true, so far as I could judge, and, though written off, all fit to go as it was into Print,

March 1881 and do all the World good. Will not Master Alfred say something on this score? Why, it would be a good work for Hallam, a pious work. It was fine too of Carlyle ordering to be laid among his own homely Kindred in the Village of his Birth: without Question of Westminster Abbey. So think I, at least. And dear J.S. at Mirehouse where your Husband and I stayed, very near upon fifty years ago, in 1835 it was, in the month of May, when the Daffodil was out in a field before the house, as I see them, though not in such force, owing to cold winds, before my window now. Does A.T. remember them? And what J.S. persisted in calling "gale" which grew by the lake? No other answer could be got in spite of demand for extra definition. "If not gale I don't know what it is." Matthew is in his grave, but now methinks I see him stand as at that moment In the days that are no more. Tell Alfred that, since this happened, I have turned to him "for Auld Lang Syne," and did not write to any of the Spedding party, whom I scarce ever saw, because I thought they would have enough of nearer and dearer friends to write to. I should still wish them to know, if they know of my existence, that I had a report every day from Mowbray Donne, who lives near them. Here is a long letter, dear Mrs. Tennyson, which you will like well enough. You give me no address with your letter. 1 MS

missing. Text taken from Letters and Literary Remains, IV, 205-07 with deletions inserted from the Tennyson Memoir, II, 202-63. Neither of these in­ cludes a signature.

To Anna Biddell [Woodbridge] [March, 1881] My dear Miss Biddell, I can only say of Carlyle, what you say; except that I do not find the style "tiresome" any more than I did his Talk: which it is, only put on Paper—quite fresh, from an Individual Man of Genius, unlike almost all Autobiographic Memoirs. I doubt not that he wrote it by way of some Employment, as well as (in his Wife's case) some relief to his Feelings: what relates to her is all allowable though probably over-

March 1881 done: what he says of other People is, so far as I can judge, true, in nine cases out of ten: very allowable for him to set down: but not so well to leave to an Editor to publish. I think Froude will lose more than Carlyle by his Indiscretion. If you think Herman would like to see the Book, let him have it: no one hereabout would care for it. I think I may have to go over to Ipswich one day next week in the Afternoon: and will leave the other Volume at Thompson's, the Pastry Woman's, to whom I owe 2.6 for Buns and Rolled Meats bought there when last I saw you. I still look for the Shop you told me of in Brook Street. I did not know that I should feel Spedding's Loss as I do, after an interval of more than twenty years meeting him. But I knew that I could always get the Word I wanted of him by Letter, and also that from time to time I should meet with some of his wise and delightful Papers in some Quarter or other. He talked of Shakespeare, I am told, when his mind wandered. I wake almost every morning feeling as if I had lost something—as one does in a Dream: and truly enough, I have lost him! "Matthew is in his Grave," and I am always yours E.FG.

To W. F. Pollock [Woodbridge ] [March, 1881 ] My dear Pollock, Thank you for your kind Letter, which I forwarded, with its en­ closure, to Thompson, as you desired. If Spedding's Letters—or parts of them—would not suit the Public, they would surely be a very welcome treasure to his Friends. Two or three pages of Biography would be enough to introduce them to those who knew him less long and less intimately than ourselves: and all who read would be the better, and the happier, for reading them. I am rather surprised to find how much I dwell upon the thought of him, considering that I had not refreshed my Memory with the sight or sound of him for more than twenty years. But all the past (before that) comes upon me: I cannot help thinking of him while I wake; and when I do wake from Sleep, I have a feeling of something lost—as in a Dream—and it is J.S.

March 1881 I suppose that Carlyle amused himself, after just losing his Wife, with the Records he has left: what he says of her seems a sort of peni­ tential glorification: what of others, just enough in general: but in neither case to be made public, and so immediately after his Decease. Therefore I think that he was wrong in leaving it to the Discretion of any one less delicate and discreet than our J.S. and that Froude was wrong in publishing, etc. So Carlyle's Niece wrote me that she thought. I keep wondering what J.S. would have said on the matter— but I cannot ask him now, as I might have done a month ago. I never see any Newspaper but the old Athenaeum: the Saturday dealing in Politics, etc., which only perplex and worry me. Loder, our Bookseller here, used to take, and send it to me occasionally when he thought some article would interest me: and so would he have done in this case—I mean of yours and your Son s Article about J.S.1 I have bid him get me the Number: but we are not very brisk in such matters down here. Dear old Jem! His Loss makes one's Life more dreary, and "en revanche" the end of it less regretful. Ever yours E.FG. 1

An obituary, Saturday Review, March 12, 1881, pp. 330-31.

To W. H. Thompson [Woodbridge] [March, 1881 ] My dear Master,

Let me know—by a Postcard—whether you would like me to send you an oil sketch of Spedding, done hy Laurence forty years ago— which Spedding himself, on then looking at, said he could "feel him­ self very well in it," though Carlyle, when he was down here twentyfive years ago, said that it was not up to Spedding's mark. The Nose looks, I think, somewhat too prominent—or long—whether owing to defective Drawing, or Colouring, I cannot say: and the Forehead and Skull—Oh, that skull!—not quite significant enough: but the Eye and Mouth are The Man's: and altogether such a Face of him at his Prime as you can find nowhere else, I believe. Were any Medallian, or Altorelief wanted, here is the thing: if not that, something that all who love the Man would be grateful to behold. Insomuch, that I should

March 1881 send it off at once to you, were I sure that you were not flown, or on the wing, from Cambridge for Easter. If that be so, I would send it to Wright unless he be flying also; for he and Mr. Munro, and some others, would, I am sure, like to see the Man—as you and I remember him. I am almost glad I have not seen him in his later years—thus he lives in my Recollection—for he was not much altered from it in 1858, when last I saw him. I wonder that all that Interval makes me dwell as I do on his Memory: but, though I saw him not, I knew that he was alive for the Good of myself and others. Now, I wake of a morning feeling as if something were lost—as from a Dream—but the lost does not come back with Daylight. All this has positively made my Heart come out of its Closet again; I think it would be a good Death for me to die of regretting such a Master—like a Dog. But that won't be, I doubt. E.FG. To E. B. Cowell [Woodbridge ] [March 28,1881] My dear Cowell, It is kind of you to write to me in the midst of all your work. I am glad that Calderon has taken root at Cambridge by your means: and under them I doubt not will thrive. Lord Houghton writes me that Poems about him are to be sent in to the Spanish Ambassador.1 I miss my dear old Jem as I scarcely expected to do after more than twenty years personal separation—unless by Letter, and that was but twice a year. But I was always thinking of him: almost daily turning the page of old Recollection to read about him: always conscious that I could have a wise word in reply to any Question I might put to him: always expecting some one of his beautiful Papers in some Magazine. I wake of a morning with a confused feeling that I have lost some­ thing, as one wakes from a Dream: but I do not find it. They talk of some Memorial of his beautiful Head in Trinity Chapel—near to that old Bacon to whom he sacrificed some forty years of his Life—to no great purpose, I think. I associate him much more with Shakespeare, whom he ought to have edited, as he could have done in a third of the time. I hear that he murmured about him in his last wanderings— something also about Hawking—which he might have been reading about in some Book of the time—his time.

March 1881 Farewell. Elizabeth knows that I wish her well. On Thursday I leave seventy-two years behind me. I know also that you both wish me well through another: but say nothing about it; and believe me, both of you, yours E.FG. 1 A competition, open to foreigners as well as Spaniards, for poems honoring the dramatist was included in a program arranged by the Spanish Royal Academy for May 22-29 to commemorate the bicentennial of Calderon's death.

To W. H. Thompson [Woodbridge] [March 30, 1881] My dear Master,

We send the Picture off, as I notified that we would do on a Post Card this morning. For I conclude from your Note that you will not leave Cambridge while Mrs. Thompson is unwell; but, I also rely on it, not so unwell but that she, as well as you, may take some pleasure in the Picture. If it be in your way, you can send it to Wright. At any rate you need not, unless you please, unscrew it [from] the case: the brown Paper can be sliced away without further trouble. I think you will be startled when the Veil comes off: but perhaps not. Your Letter is dated March 28, but it did not reach me till this morning. I am afraid that I have rather pestered you with Letters of late: but, as I told you, they called for no reply. I do not want Pollock's or his Enclosure back now, or at any time. If Spedding be so little known to the Cambridge of Today, perhaps you may not judge it meet, in spite of your own wishes, to occupy a Space in your Chapel with a Bust or Medallion of him to wonder at— as I wonder at your huge Barrow—and even Macaulay, of whom Tablets would have been enough, as I think: leaving Newton erect, and Bacon seated by the organ, as I have said before. The other two would do well out of Doors at some angles of the Grass Plot. Here is Imperence to the Master! By the way I suppose I ought not to have notified on my Card about our not paying Carriage: we (my old People) think things more safe to reach their Destination safe if unpaid till Delivery. Ever yours E.FG.

April 1881

To W. H. Thompson [Woodbridge ] [April 2,1881] My dear Master, I have your Card to report the Picture's safe arrival. Do not trouble yourself to write further about it at present: only, keep it as long as you like, and show it to some few who, if they cannot see what lies in that Head with their own Eyes, may at least have some of its contents from what he has written: and you can answer for the Heart that dwelt a little below. His Burial among his own Lakes has drawn me back to his own Wordsworth, whom I have been reading this Forenoon, in a hot Sun, but a Wind that blows from that Quarter. It has made me love it as I scarcely did before: it, and its Poet with all his homely Pathos: for I do not find much of the Sublime that People talk of: nor do I want to find it. One gets back perhaps to more familiar things, Merivale has written me one of his excellent Letters about a Visit to London, and what he learnt there of Carlyle's Book. I keep thinking "What would Spedding have said of it?" But he was too deep for me to guess: and here is one, one of so many things, in which I miss him. But I am always yours E.FG. I was thinking yesterday as I sat on my Sun-bench, "Perhaps at this moment he (you) has opened the case, and stands looking at the contents." If you do not want to have any "Levee" to see it, perhaps Wright would. But keep it as long as you like—and no longer.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [April 10,1881 ] My dear Wright, By all means come here if you like it: I shall. But, if you come at all, why not stay over Good Friday and Easter Sunday, which can scarce be less dull here than at Beccles? Determined as you are in your plans, try to arrange this. I shall not again tax you with reading to me, though I believe you read to me with all Good Will at Christmas: but

April 1881 I blunder on better by myself than I did then. Only, let us have The Two Noble Kinsmen; which I have not seen these forty years. I must say that the two Manifestoes I read in the Athenaeum, one from Committee (I believe) and the other from Nicholson,1 were very feeble things. Perhaps it was more magnanimous to deal so gently with Furnivall but I have at any rate Mr. Munro on my side; which is simply, to "kick the Man out." Such would be my vote were I still a Member of the Society. Carlyle we shall talk of when you come; and still more if you stay over the Resurrection. Mrs. Oliphant in last Macmillan2 goes nearer, I think, to hit the nail on the head than any one. She writes better than any of the Press about the Matter, "selon moi." Contrive, I say, to abide here as I have advised; you can bring any work you want here; can have a room to yourself to digest and turn them into such matter as you want: and will have plenty of time for Beccles beside. Arthur Charlesworth will probably be here: in no one's way: and I am always yours, LittleG. You do not say a word of the Laurence Portrait: which I rather wanted to hear of. 1 Items relating to the Furnivall controversy in the Athenaeum elicited re­ sponses from A. G. Snelgrove, secretary of the New Shakespeare Society, March 19, 1881, p. 397, and Brinsley Nicholson, "Committee Chairman," April 2, p. 461. 2 "Thomas Carlyle," Macmillan's Magazine, April, 1881, pp. 482-96.

To W. H. Thompson [Woodbridge ] [April 12,1881 ] My dear Master,

Keep the Picture as long as you please, and no longer. I doubt not that you are right about it, and that Mrs. Cameron's and other later Portraits, are more justly satisfactory,1 especially to those who saw the original later than I did. But I believe that I should prefer my Laurence still: as representing (though incompletely) the Spedding of forty years ago, pretty much as he remained till near twenty years after; though a little more serious no doubt. And so, Epicure-like, I do like to remember those I love. Mrs. Kemble told me a year ago that he and she had faced one another, without recognition on either side, at

April 1881 a London Dinner. I can hardly think that can have been so with him who had a very critical Eye for Faces, as you know; she, though with very strong Eyes still, probably had not a like Faculty belonging to them. But she thought he looked very old—and I am not sorry not to have seen him, base as the feeling may be. I cannot help thinking still what he would have said of Froude's Carlyle. But I cannot guess, as you may suppose. The only good word I have seen about the Book seems to me Mrs. Oliphant's in Macmillan. I believe that he was a little "off his head," if not when he put down all that he did, yet when he left it to any other man's Discretion to publish it or not. It appears from Froude's own account that he (Carlyle) had forgotten having written about Irving.2 What he says of others seems to me in the main true; but not the less unfit to be made public. I suppose you hear more than enough about the matter. Wright told me of your Cold: and as Mrs. Thompson (I am sorry to hear from you) is not clear of Bronchitis, I suppose you will hardly leave Cambridge yet. Ever yours, E.FG. 1

Mrs. Julia Cameron, friend of the Tennysons and amateur pioneer photogra­ pher, whose published portraits form a gallery of distinguished Victorians. Twenty-five are in Alfred Lord Tennyson and His Friends issued in a limited edi­ tion by T. Fisher Unwin in 1893 and published in 1926 by Hogarth Press as Victorian Photographs of Famous Men and Fair Women. The latter, with 22 ad­ ditional plates, was again published in 1973. 2 Edward Irving, Carlyle's friend from boyhood who, in London, became so popular an evangelical preacher that tickets were issued for admission to his services. Extreme fundamentalism led to his being deprived of his ministry by the presbytery of his church in 1833, the year before his death at the age of 42. The Irving "Reminiscence," almost 300 pages, is the longest of the four essays.

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] [Mid-April, 1881] My dear Mrs. Kemble, Somewhat before my usual time, you see, but Easter comes, and I shall be glad to hear if you keep it in London, or elsewhere. Else­ where there has been no inducement to go until To-day: when the Wind, though yet East, has turned to the Southern side of it: one can

April 1881 walk without any wrapper; and I dare to fancy we have turned the corner of Winter at last. People talk of changed Seasons: only yester­ day I was reading in my dear old Sevigne, how she was with the Duke and Duchess of Chaulnes at their Chateau of Chaulnes in Picardy all but two hundred years ago; that is in 1689: and the green has not as yet ventured to show its "nez" nor a Nightingale to sing. You see that I have returned to her as for some Spring Music, at any rate. As for the Birds, I have nothing but a Robin, who seems rather pleased when I sit down on a Bench under an Ivied Pollard, where I suppose he has a Nest, poor little Fellow. But we have terrible Superstitions about him here; no less than that he always kills his Parents if he can: my young Reader is quite determined on this head: and there lately has been a Paper in some Magazine to the same effect. My dear old Spedding sent me back to old Wordsworth too, who sings (his best songs, I think) about the Mountains and Lakes they were both associated with: and with a quiet feeling he sings, that somehow comes home to me more now than ever it did before. As to Carlyle—I thought on my first reading that he must have been "egare" at the time of writing: a condition which I well remember saying to Spedding long ago that one of his temperament might likely fall into. And now I see that Mrs. Oliphant hints at something of the sort. Hers I think an admirable Paper: better than has yet been writ­ ten, or (I believe) is likely to be written by any one else. Merivale, who wrote me that he had seen you, had also seen Mrs. Procter, who was vowing vengeance, and threatening to publish letters from Carlyle to Basil Montagu full of "fulsome flattery"—which I do not believe, and should not, I am sorry to say, unless I saw it in the original. I forget now what T.C. says of him:1 (I have lent the Book out)—but certainly Barry Cornwall told Thackeray he was "a humbug"—which I think was no uncommon opinion: I do not mein dishonest: but of pretension to Learning and Wisdom far beyond the reality. I must think Carlyle's judgments mostly, or mainly, true; but that he must have "lost his head," if not when he recorded them, yet when he left them in any one's hands to decide on their publication. Especially when not about Public Men, but about their Families. It is slaying the Innocent with the Guilty. But of all this you have doubtless heard in London more than enough. "Pauvre et triste Humanite!" One's heart opens again to him at the last: sitting alone in the middle of her Room—"I want to die"—"I want—a Mother." "Ah, Mamma Letizia!" Napoleon is said to have murmured as he lay. By way of pendant to this, recurs to me

April 1881 the Story that when Ducis was wretched his mother would lay his head on her Bosom—"Ah, mon homme! mon pauvre homme!"2 Well—I am expecting Aldis Wright here at Easter: and a young London Clerk (this latter I did invite for his short holiday, poor Fellow!) Wright is to read me "The Two Noble Kinsmen." And now I have written more than enough for yourself and me: whose Eyes may be the worse for it to-morrow. I still go about in Blue Glasses, and flinch from Lamp and Candle. Pray let me know about your own Eyes, and your own Self; and believe me always sincerely yours Littlegrange. I really was relieved that you did not write to thank me for the poor flowers which I sent you. They were so poor that I thought you would feel bound so to do, and, when they were gone, repented. I have now some gay Hyacinths up, which make my patty-pan Beds like China Dishes. 1 Bryan Procter's wife (Anne Skepper) was a daughter by a previous marriage of Basil Montagu's third wife. Carlyle recorded sincere praise for her mother but his appraisal of Montagu included: "Much a bore to you by degrees, and considerably a humbug if you probed too strictly" (Reminiscences, I, 224). 2Jean Ducis (1733-1816), dramatist; adapted Shakespeare's plays for the French stage.

To W. H. Thompson [Woodbridge] [April 17,1881 ] My dear Master,

The Case arrived here safe two days ago, and I doubt not contains the Jewel entire as when I sent it off to you.11 am rather sorry it was not more satisfactory to you than I doubt it was. Wright, who is now here, thinks it gives no idea of the Man. But I do not the less abide by my own prepossession. Yes, Wright came here on Thursday; and is this Day—Sunday— while I write—4 P.M.—gone off to a Captain Brooke's whom you may have heard him mention, to see some of his Books, take a Cup Tea, and be home before Nightfall. He came with a Cold and is not yet rid of it: but is otherwise well and altogether agreeable and amiable. Last

April 1881 Night he read two Acts of the Two Noble Kinsmen: in which he cannot detect Shakespeare: but I thought he might very well be there, and yet did not care whether he were or not. I do not know which is the portion of the Play which the good Judges award him. We see the Germans have seceded from the Furnivall Club which I think you all of you should have done long ago. Such is my Imperence: who am nevertheless yours and Mrs. Thompson's always Littlegrange Of course this Letter is to be left unanswered. 1 The

Spedding portrait by Samuel Laurence.

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge] [ April, 1881 ] My dear Lady, This present Letter calls for no answer—except just that which perhaps you cannot make it. If you have that copy of Plays revised by John the Great1 which I sent, or brought, you, I wish you would cause your Maid to pack it in brown Paper, and send it by Rail duly directed to me. I have a wish to show it to Aldis Wright, who takes an Interest in your Family, as in your Prophet. If you have already dismissed the Book elsewhere—not much liking, I think, the stuff which J.K. spent so much trouble on, I shall not be surprised, nor at all aggrieved: and there is not much for A. W. to profit by unless in seeing what pains your noble Uncle took with his Calling. It has been what we call down here "smurring" rather than raining, all day long: and I think that Flower and Herb already show their gratitude. My Blackbird (I think it is the same I have tried to keep alive during the Winter) seems also to have "wetted his Whistle," and what they call the "Cuckoo's mate," with a rather harsh scissor note, announces that his Partner may be on the wing to these Latitudes. You will hear of him at Mr. W. Shakespeare's, it may be. There must be Violets, white and blue, somewhere about where he lies, I think. They are generally found in a Churchyard, where also (the Hunters used to say) a Hare: for the same reason of comparative security, I suppose.

May 1881 I am very glad you agree with me about Mrs. Oliphant. That one paper of hers makes me wish to read her Books. You must somehow, or somewhile, let me know your Address in Leamington, unless a Letter addressed to Cavendish Square will find you there. Always and truly yours Little G. 1 Some 30 plays, as altered by him for stage production, were published by John Phillip Kemble in the course of his career. EFG appears to have acquired a volume of Restoration and 17th-century texts bound as a single volume.

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] May 8, [1881] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

You will not break your Law,1 though you have done so once—to tell me of Spedding—But now you will not—nor let me know your Address—so I must direct to you at a venture: to Marshall Thomp­ son's, whither I suppose you will return awhile, even if you be not already there. I think, however, that you are not there yet. If still at Leamington, you look upon a sight which I used to like well; that is, the blue Avon (as in this weather it will be) running through butter­ cup meadows all the way to Warwick—unless those Meadows are all built over since I was there some forty years ago. Aldis Wright stayed with me a whole week at Easter: and we did very well. Much Shakespeare—especially concerning that curious Question about the Quarto and Folio Hamlets which people are now trying to solve by Action as well as by Discussion. Then we had The Two Noble Kinsmen—which Tennyson and other Judges were assured has much of W. S. in it. Which parts I forget, or never heard: but it seemed to me that a great deal of the Play might be his, though not of his best: but Wright could find him nowhere. Miss Crabbe sent me a Letter from Carlyle's Niece, cut out from some Newspaper, about her Uncle's MS. Memoir, and his written words concerning it. Even if Froude's explanation of the matter be correct, he ought to have still taken any hesitation on Carlyle's part as sufficient proof that the MS. were best left unpublisht: or, at any rate,

May 1881 great part of it.2 If you be in London, you will be wearied enough with hearing about this. I am got back to my—Sevigne!—who somehow returns to me in Spring: fresh as the Flowers. These latter have done but badly this Spring, cut oil or withered by the Cold: and now parched up by this blazing Sun and dry Wind. If you get my letter, pray answer it and tell me how you are: and ever believe me yours Littlegrange. 1 To 2See

write only in response to a letter. letter to Norton, March 13, n.l.

To Anna BiddeIl [May 14, 1881] My dear Lady: Miss Crabbe had sent me Mary Carlyle's first Letter: Archdeacon Groome (who looked in here two or three days ago) told me of Froude's Reply: Mr. Loder told me of yet another rejoinder from each: and now you have sent me all. You should have told me also what your opinion on the whole matter was, so far as this Corre­ spondence has gone: for, whatever you say of my Wisdom (oh dear!) I rely very much more [on others] in such a case. But I thank you much for what you have sent me: and shall thank you more if you tell me what you think of the matter. By the by—I don't know why you should speak of your obligation to me, as if one of us were about to die! Apropos of which, I might have delayed writing what I now do till tomorrow—Sunday (which somehow seems my fated Day for Cor­ respondence) but that I have just heard from Mrs. Howe—who brought in a Cauliflower for Dinner—that Mr. Gissing died, either last night or early this morning. Mr. Marshall, whom I chanced to meet yesterday, told me that he was then unconscious. He is well out of "the scrape of Life" as I believe Mr. Kinglake called it: and I am (till that happy consummation) your sincere Solomon Little G. Mrs. Edwards goes about the 20th to see the Paris Salon and Mr. Fantin.1 1 Fantin Latour, an intimate friend who had painted a portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Edwards. Edwards had a wide acquaintance among French artists.

May 1881

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] May [14,1881] My dear Lady,

If I did not write (as doubtless I ought) to acknowledge the Playbook, I really believe that I thought you would have felt bound to answer my acknowledgment! It came all right, thank you: and A. Wright looked it over: and it has been lying ready to be returned to you whenever you should be returned to London. I assure you that I wish you to keep it, unless it be rather unacceptable than otherwise; I never thought you would endure the Plays themselves; only that you might be interested in your brave Uncle's patient and, I think, just, revision of them. This was all I cared for: and wished to show to A. W. as being interested in all that concerns so noble an Interpreter of his Shakespeare as your Uncle was. If you do not care—or wish—to have the Book again, tell me of some one you would wish to have it: had I wished, I should have told you so at once: but I now give away even what I might have wished for to those who are in any way more likely to be more interested in them than myself, or are likely to have a few more years of life to make what they may of them. I do not think that A. W. is one of such: he thought (as you may do) of so much pains wasted on such sorry stuff. So far from disagreeing with you about Shakespeare emendations, etc., I have always been of the same mind: quite content with what pleased myself, and, as to the elder Dramatists, always thinking they would be better all annihilated after some Selections made from them, as C. Lamb did. Mowbray Donne wrote to me a fortnight or so since that his Father was "pretty well," but weak in the knees. Three days ago came in Archdeacon Groome, who told me that a Friend of Mowbray's had just heard from him that his Father had symptoms of dropsy about the Feet and Ankles. I have not, however, written to ask: and, not having done so, perhaps ought not to sadden you with what may be an inaccu­ rate report. But one knows that, sooner or later, some such end must come; and that, in the meanwhile, Donne's Life is but little preferable to that which promises the speedier end to it. We are all drying up here with hot Sun and cold Wind; my Waterpot won't keep Polyanthus and Anemone from perishing. I should have thought the nightly Frosts and Winds would have done for Fruit as well as Flower: but I am told it is not so as yet: and I hope for an

May 1881 honest mess of Gooseberry Fool yet. In the meanwhile, "Ce sera Ie mois de Mai tant qu'il plaira a Dieu," and I am always your ancient Little G.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [May, 1881 ] My dear Wright,

I was at Ipswich today and Mason showed me what he reads to be: two gold "Sovereigns": 1. James I 2. Charles I, and 3. A half Noble of Henry V. All, he says, in fine condition: and all three to be had for £.3, or £3.3. I say "he says"—for though he showed them to me, I scarce looked at them: having no Spectacles: so far as I saw, they seemed what he says. Also, a really (as I think) curious old Enamel—about the size of the remainder of the page, as I think: dull blue enamel, with figures of the age perhaps of Holbein, or Diirer, or some such folks: in some sort uncouth, but really full of Expression.1 I thought it possible Mr. King2 might like to know of these things. If not, no harm done. Yours E.FG. 1 enclose Mason's own "Catalogue." 1A notation, undoubtedly copied from the catalogue of William Mason, Ips­ wich antique dealer, reads: "Very ancient Limoges Enamel, The Death of the Virgins, from the Herby Collection, £9.9.0, now £ 4." The note is not in EFG's handwriting. 2 Charles W. King, Fellow of Trinity College, collector of and writer on antique gems and coins. His collection of ancient engraved stones and gems is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

May 1881

To C. Ε. Norton Woodbridge May 17/81 My dear Norton, Two of our Letters crossed on the Atlantic; then came another very kind one from you asking me to go—over the Atlantic! to see you at what I doubt not is a very pleasant home of your own. To that last of yours I have thought more than once that I ought to have replied be­ fore: but I always meant to acknowledge it when you should write (as I knew you would) to tell me about Oedipus, etc. Well; a note from you a month ago, I think—to say that he had reached you, and that you would write a week after: so I again delayed. But, as no Letter has come since, I will write to tell you so, in case your Letter may have gone astray; and to thank you indeed for your Invitation— better late than never. Pray do understand—as I know you will—that I am in no sort of hurry for your report of the Play: I have always felt you would like it only too well, granting that you can approve of its inroad on the origi­ nal Form: I am only curious to know what you—a Scholar—make of that, and of the audacious Preface which pretends to excuse it. That Preface may be very wrong; and that is why I wish to hear from you about it; and that is why I did not print your name in full when addressing it to you. But pray remember that my motive in writing now is to tell you that, if you have already written to me on the subject, your Letter has not come to hand: lest you might [think] that I had neglected it if it had come. And, if you have not yet written, I want you not to write till per­ fectly at your leisure and convenience. Oh, I hope nothing has hap­ pened in your household, or to yourself, to interfere with your kindly intentions! If there be any such hindrance, pray do not think of writing on any such matter. Ever yours sincerely The Laird of Littlegrange

May 1881

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [May 24,1881] My dear Wright, F. Pollock (I suppose) sent me the Spedding Paper, and I bid Coutts put £3.3 to the Subscription List directly.1 Charles Keene proposes coming here from Friday till Monday: which I tell him to do by all means, if he finds it convenient and agreeable. If you should find so too, why not take a Return Ticket (as he will till Monday, when the House must be left to Broom and Dustpan to be ready for Nieces who come on June 2—which is Thurs­ day week, I believe. Even now Baucis and Philemon are at work: but we shall manage well enough, and could stow you away somewhere, and provide Baufling sufficient beside. I cannot help hoping that Mr. King did not find the Coins worth much more than Mason asked me for them. Perhaps I ought to have advised him to ask some adept about them before I told another what he offered them to me at. Perhaps they are not worth much more than the old gold which he valued them at. I do not know however but that he is content with the Bargain: and, anyhow, is not the man to think twice of the matter. I wrote to Merivale to say that Morton should be forwarded to him when your Master had done with him.2 And perhaps neither will care for him half as much as I do. But always remember me to your Head, and believe me yours always Littlegrangee ° "Why, Sir, what Foppery is this?" 1

A donation for a Spedding medallion. See letter to F. Tennyson, [June 12]. EFG's transcript of Savile Morton's letters. See letter to Barton, April 24, 1844, n.3. 2

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Tuesday [May 24, 1881] My dear Mrs. Kemble, I must write you a word of "God Speed" before you go: before even you go to London to prepare for going: for, if I wait till then, you will

May 1881 be all bother with preparations, and leave-takings; and nevertheless feel yourself bound to answer. Pray do not, even if (as I suppose) still at Leamington; for you will still have plenty to think about with Daughter and Children. I do not propose to go to London to shake hands before you go off: for, as I say, you will have enough of that without me—and my blue Spectacles, which I can only discard as yet when looking on the Grass and young Leaves. I duly sent your Book to Henry Kemble,1 as you desired: and re­ ceived a very polite Note from him in acknowledgment. And now my house is being pulled about my Ears by preparations for my Nieces next week. And, instead of my leaving the coast clear to Broom and Dust-pan, I believe that Charles Keene will be here from Friday to Monday. As he has long talked of coming, I do not like to put him off now he has really proposed to come, and we shall scramble on somehow. And I will get a Carriage and take him a long Drive into the Country where it is greenest. He is a very good fellow, and has lately lost his Mother, to whom he was a very pious Son; a man who can reverence, although a Droll in Punch. You will believe that I wish you all well among your Mountains. George Crabbe has been (for Health's sake) in Italy these last two months, and wrote me his last Note from the Lago Maggiore. My Sister Jane Wilkinson talks of coming over to England this Summer: but I think her courage will fail her when the time comes. If ever you should go to, or near, Florence, she would be sincerely glad to see you, and to talk over other Days. She is not at all obtrusively religious: and I think must have settled abroad to escape some of the old Associations in which she took so much part, to but little advantage to herself or others. You know that I cannot write to you when you are abroad unless you tell me whither I am to direct. And you probably will not do that: but I do not, and shall [not] cease to be yours always and truly E.FG. 1 Fanny's nephew, son of her youngest brother, Henry, and the last of the Kemble dynasty in the English theater; he died in 1907. Sir Charles Tennyson remarked to the editors that Kemble was "excellent in comic parts." See letter to Blakesley, [Feb. 1, 1882]. "Your Book" is the John Kemble volume mentioned in the last April letter to Fanny.

May 1881

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [May 31,1881 ] My dear Wright,

Thank you for telling me of Laurence's Bequest. So like the Be­ queathed1 Who had for some while given up advising Laurence (he wrote me), but this gives a good proof that he had not ceased his Interest in him. I know of no other portrait of AT by SL except that which I bought of him some forty years ago, and gave to Mrs. T. as being one that she might be glad of—young, and beardless. It was the only one of AT that I ever cared to have; though it failed (as Laurence and most other Painters do fail) in the mouth: which AT said was "blubber-lipt." C. Keene came here on Friday and stayed till Monday; very pleas­ ant, quaint, and good-hearted. He is now reading St. Simon carefully all through; and wants much a copy of Cotgrave, which he saw here. Do you know of one? He is a great reader of Froissart: but in Loi'd Berners' Translation. Crabbe is his only modern Poet, and he won't look at my Abstract: which I admire him for. He thinks of fitting up the Phallus for a Residence. I see no more of Furnivall in the Athenaeum; but I suppose the Business scarcely sleeps. How comes the Master only to "remember" Morton? He was not a man to forget, though he might not be one to wish to remember.2 We broil here: but I get to the river-side, where a Breeze blows from the Sea. And am always yours E.FG. George Crabbe was to be home on the 27th. But I have not yet heard of his arrival. 1 Spedding. 2 See Morton's Biographical Profile. He and Thompson were contemporary Apostles.

June 1881

To Frederick Tennyson [Woodbridge] [,June 12, 1881 ] My dear Frederick, You may like to know that a Subscription is being raised among Spedding's Friends to erect a medallion Tablet to his Memory in Trinity Chapel. I think most people give £,1.1. No one allowed to give more than £3.3. Subscriptions received at Coutts. Mind: I do not advise, or ask, you to subscribe: but I think you may like to be ap­ prized of what is being done, and then you can do as you please. You might be sorry if no one told you before too late. I have nothing to say of myself other than what I have said before. Here I have been—here I am—only the better for having Verdure to rest my Eyes upon; which I am obliged to commit them to as much as possible. I had two Visitors at Easter: and one a Fortnight ago: the latter C. Keene, Caricaturist in Punch—not a "Comic man" out of it: a man who can wonder and revere, and read such Folios as I cannot more than look at. Fond of old English Music as of Ditto Books; and playing on the Bagpipes. I have as yet made no plans for Seaside or for Elsewhere this Sum­ mer. Our Coast is so much mere Sand and Pebbles that my Eyes are not so well off there as with my own little Trees. But it is well to make some little Change: and perhaps some Kinsfolk may draw me to the Seashore before Summer is gone—how lately come! Do let me hear how you are—you, and yours, whom you never tell me about: and believe me always your old E.FG.

To Herman Biddell [Woodbridge ] [June 20, 1881] My dear Biddell, If you can throw any light on the Question asked by Wright in p. 1 of the enclosed, pray do so—throwing your light direct on W. Aldis Wright, Esq. Trinity College Cambridge

June 1881 who will be very glad to improve the little he saw of you here at Easter. As to my Hero of the Bull,1 whom Wright may have heard of as communicating with Dukes and Princes, you know that he is not likely to help us in the matter. I suppose that "sur-reined,"2 if correctly represented by the old Printer, is a Norman word, as so many concerning Horses and Hunting, etc. Your Sister Anna said she was going to London—today, I think. Yours sincerely Littlegrange 1 John Grout, proprietor of the Bull Inn on Market Hill, functioned also as a horse dealer with a Continental as well as a domestic clientele. 2 Editors of Shakespeare define the term variously as "over-ridden" and "over­ worked" (Henry V, III.5.19).

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [June 23, 1881 ] My dear Wright,

Here is H. Biddell's reply to your Enquiry.11 suppose not an impos­ sible solution: both words of the compound being French. I see in Kitchin's Bracket (but not in Cotgrave) "sur-mener, to over-drive" which comes oddly near to the meaning wanted. I wrote to Merivale some two months ago that he should have Morton when your Master had done with him. I have not heard from Ely since: and probably the Dean would not care much for the Letters: but if they can be easily transmitted to him, and he will safely send them back, they will do him no harm. I should be sorry to lose them. I wrote to Mrs. Kemble and to Frederick Tennyson about Spedding; thinking they might not know, and might be glad to know, of the Memorial. F.T. is glad to be told, etc. So I doubt not is Mrs. K. if my Letter reached her—at Lucerne. I can imagine how pleasant Cambridge now is and should like to be there, which seems worse, considering how easily I might do as I liked. But so it is. Perhaps when you come this way you will tell me more about it, as well as other matters. I have not seen Annie T.'s Sevigne,2 though I bid Loder get it for

June 1881 me long ago. No doubt it is very clever and pleasant. I dip into mine now and then, and should make a pretty Job of it if Eyes would permit. And am ever yours LittleG. A.W. (a la FurnivaII) I will write and ask EIy3 if he wishes for Morton. 1 Herman Biddell's letter, dated June 22, a response to EFG's note of the 20th, reads in part: "There is no such expression in use among horse-men in this county as 'surreined.' The meaning I take to be having had too much rein—'given his head too much'—'over ridden.' . . . But I never hear 'sur-reined' used, and I think I must have heard nearly all that is ever said to or about horses in this neighbour­ hood." 2 Sevigne, 1881; a small volume included in Mrs. Margaret Oliphant's Foreign Classics for English Readers. 3 Charles Merivale, Dean of Ely.

To J. R. Lowell Woodbridge June 29,1881 Oh, my dear Sir, come if you will some future day when, if you care to see my ancient Self at all, you can see somewhat more of it than in that hurried Handshake of Welcome and Adieu! It would really weigh upon me—the idea of your coming all this way, with so little time as you have to spare, only for such a purpose. I do think you will be somewhat relieved yourself to find you are not called on to do that which you have twice proposed. I think it was not my fault that you did not come two years ago, when I suppose I said the same as now, and I know had made my little preparation to entertain you, were it but for a Day and a Night. I won't say any more, nor of the favour—really "favour" from a Man like yourself (I don't mean "Excellency" at all) to me; you would only repudiate it if I did; but others would think that I was throwing away a good chance. I know not if I should not be mentioned in our Ipswich Journal as having entertained you, as I was when Tennyson came to me as a Guest—and I put him up at an Inn. That indeed would be avoided if you now only came for two or three hours: but I would much rather have it the other way: and more still if I had my house empty (as in a month it will be) to receive you.

July 1881 You say—and I wholly believe—that you will understand all this: as I very much wish you to do, and to believe me still yours sincerely E.FG. I suppose you received Tennyson's Poem. I do not know the proper Style of addressing my Letters to you; but I think you do not care for that.

To Miss S. F. Spedding1 (Fragment) Little Granse, Woodbridae July/81

. . . As I am so very little known to yourself, or your Mother, I did not choose to trouble you with any of my own feelings about your Uncle's Death. But I am not sorry to take this opportunity of saying, and, I know, truly, there was no one I loved and honoured more; that, though I had not seen him for more than twenty years, I was always thinking of him all the while: always feeling that I could apply to him for a wise word I needed for myself; always knowing that I might light upon some wiser word than any one else's in some Review, etc., and now always thinking I have lost all that. I say that I have not known, no, nor heard of, any mortal so prepared to step unchanged into the better world we are promised—Intellect, and Heart, and such an outer Man to them as I remember. 1 One

of Spedding's nieces.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [July, 1881] My dear Wright,

Thank you for your two Letters of Information about J.S., both of which I dispatcht to Miss Spedding: leaving her to apply to Macmillan as she saw good. And now—I am going to George Crabbe's at Merton some time next [week]: depending on his and his Sisters' movements and con-

July 1881 venience. And—what do [you] think? I think of taking Cambridge in my way, so as I may see the old Place, untenanted, once more— for the last time, I believe. This I had thought of before Cowell came over, as he did on Saturday: he will be at Scrope:1 you, perhaps in Trinity: and I will not shirk you this time. My only contrition is, that I shall be going when the Master is gone: this will not break his heart: but he has often askt me out of old Kindliness; and now I propose to go when he is away. But he will not misunderstand me, I hope. Well then—if you are up, I shall look for you: I shall take a cup of Coffee, and a Glass of Audit2 at your rooms, if you be disengaged and alone: perhaps take an Evening Stroll in your walks: perhaps a Pipe— one Clean Pipe—afterwards; beside (of course) seeing Cowell, etc. I have asked him about an Inn nearer to him or to Trinity; for Hoops, Bulls, and Eagles are all changed; and am yours always LittleG. Laurence has sent me a fine Photo of Spedding, which I dare say satisfies you and those who wish for him later than my Portrait. Laurence is commissioned to paint Thackeray for Reform Club. 1 Cowell's 2 Audit

residence, 10 Scroope Terrace, Trumpington Road. ale, brewed at Trinity and taped on Audit Day.

To W. A. Wright Merton Monday [July, 1881] My dear Wright, I send back Whewell1 by Train—not having read very much of it, but not denying there may be much worthy reading in it. I saw enough to prove (what I suppose before) that he was a fine fellow, head and heart also. I suppose that I shall be here till Thursday, when Miss Crabbe and her Sister will be departing, I believe. You may imagine that we have all been warm enough here; crops, however, looking all fine, only the "green" wanting rain. They had none of that which fell upon us in your Gardens last Wednesday. George did not write to press you hither inasmuch as one of his Servants had to be replaced by a new one at the End of last week. He will be sincerely glad to see you at any time. He seems to me

July 1881 better than he was last year; his Southern Tour being to be praised for it, he says. My two Days in Cambridge were very pleasant to me, with your Company and the Professor's. To whom give my Love, if you light upon him. I shall go home from this place direct, so far as at present I know: and will send you the Talfourds, etc., directly I get there. Ever yours LittleG. 1 The Life and Correspondence of William Whetvell was published by Mrs. Stair Douglas in 1881.

To E. B. Cowell Woodbridge July 30/81 My dear Cowell,

Along with this Letter I post you a very pretty little Elzevir Edition of Pliny's Letters: which I think you may like to put in your pocket when you go to the Lakes. I had meant to tell you how gratified I was with the great kindness and hospitality which both you and Elizabeth showed me at Cam­ bridge. I liked being there very much; I always knew that I should do so: but I have forborne going there when Thompson has asked me in term time and therefore do not like going when he is away. My excuse must be that I took Cambridge on my route to Norfolk. I also felt somehow at home in Wright's Rooms:1 as I told him yesterday when he called to take his early dinner on his way to Beccles. I shall hear of you perhaps before you go to the Lakes: and perhaps also while you are there. Anyhow I am always yours and Elizabeth's sincerely, Littlegrange 1 EFG

spent two days in Nevile's Court as Wright's guest.

August 1881

To Miss S. F. Spedding (Fragment) Woodbridge July 31, [1881 ] . . . I rejoice to hear of a Collection, or Reprint, of his stray works. . . . I used to say he wrote "Virgilian Prose." One only of his I did not care for; but that, I doubt not, was because of the subject, not of the treatment: his own printed Report of a Speech he made in what was called the "Quinquaginta Club" Debating Society (not the Union) at Cambridge about the year 1831. This Speech his Father got him to recall and recompose in Print; wishing always that his Son should turn his faculties to such public Topics rather than to the Poets, of whom he had seen enough in Cumberland not to have much regard for: Shelley, for one, at one time stalking about the mountains, with Pistols, and other such Vagaries. I do not think he was much an Admirer of Wordsworth (I don't know about Southey), and I well remember that when I was at Merehouse (as Miss Bristowe would have us call it) with A. Tennyson in 1835, Mr. Spedding grudged his Son's giving up much time and thought to consultations about Morte d'Arthurs, Lords of Burleigh, etc., which were then in MS. He more than once questioned me, who was sometimes present at the Meetings: "Well, Mr. F., and what is it? Mr. Tennyson reads, and Jem criticizes —is that it?" etc. This, while I might be playing Chess with dear Mrs. Spedding, in May, while the Daffodils were dancing outside the Hall door.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge August 5/81 My dear Norton, I am sorry that you felt bound to write me so fully about the Play1 when, as you tell me, you had so much other works on your hands. Anyhow, do not trouble yourself to write more. If you think my Ver­ sion does as well, or better, without any introduction, why, tear that out; all, except (if you like the Verse well enough to adopt it) the first sentence of Dedication to yourself: adding your full name and Col­ legiate Honours whenever you care so to do.

August 1881 Your account of your Harvard original in the Atlantic Monthly2 was quite well fitted for its purpose: a general account of it for the general reader, without going into particulars which only the Scholar would appreciate. I believe I told you that thirty years ago at least I advised our Trinity's Master—then only Greek Professor—to do the like with one of the Greek Tragedies, in what they call their Senate-house, well fitted for such a purpose. But our Cambridge is too well fed, and slow to stir; and I not important enough to set it a-going. By the way, I have been there for two days; not having seen the place for those same thirty years, except in passing through some ten years ago to Naseby Field, for the purpose of doing Carlyle's will in setting up a memorial Stone with his Inscription upon it. But the present owners of the Place would not consent: and so that simple thing came to nothing. Well, I went again, as I say, to Cambridge a month ago; not in my way to Naseby, but to my friend George Crabbe's (Grandson of my Poet) in Norfolk. I went because it was Vacation time, and no one I knew up except Cowell and Aldis Wright. Cowell, married, lives in pleasant lodging with trees before and behind, on the skirts of the town; Wright, in "Nevile's Court," one side of which is the Library, all of Wren's design, and (I think) very good. I felt at home in the rooms there, walled with Books, large, and cool: and I was lionized over some things new to me,3 and some that I was glad to see again. Now I am back again, without any design to move—not even to my old haunts on our neighbouring Seacoast. The inland Verdure suits my Eyes better than glaring sand and pebble: and I suppose that every year I grow less and less desirous of moving. I will scarce touch upon the Carlyle Chapter: except to say that I am sorry Froude printed the Reminiscences—at any rate, printed them before the Life which he has begun so excellently in the "Nineteenth Century" for July.41 think one can surely see there that Carlyle might become somewhat crazed, whether by intense meditation or Dyspepsy or both: especially as one now sees that his dear good Mother was so afflicted. But how beautiful is the Story of that home, and the Com­ pany of Lads travelling on foot to Edinburgh; and the monies which he sends home for the paternal farm: and the butter and cheese which the Farm returns to him. Ah! it is from such training that strength comes, not from luxurious fare, easy chairs, cigars, Pall Mall Clubs, etc. It has all made me think of a very little Dialogue I once wrote on the matter5—thirty years ago and more—which I really think of put-

August 1881

ting into shape again: and, if I do, will send it to you, by way of picture of what our Cambridge was in what I think were better days than now. I see the little tract is over done and in some respects in bad taste as it is. Now, do not ask for this, nor mention it as if it were of any importance whatsoever: it is not: but, if pruned, etc., just a pretty thing, which your Cambridge shall see if I can return to it. By the by, I had meant to send you an emendation of a passage in my Tyrannus which you found fault with. I mean where Oedipus, after putting out his eyes, talks of seeing those in Hades he does not wish to see. I knew it was not Greek: but I thought that a note would be necessary to explain what the Greek was: and I confess I do not care enough for their Mythology for that. But, if you please, the passage (as I remember it) might run: Eyes, etc., Which, having seen such things, henceforth, he said, Should never by the light of day behold Those whom he loved, nor in the after-dark Of Hades, those he loathed, to look upon. All this has run me into a third screed, you see: a word we used at School, only calling it "screet"—"I say, do lend me a screet of paper," meaning, a quarter of a foolscap sheet. Do tell me, when you write, a word about Mr. Lowell, who will not tell me of himself, or indeed of anything else. I fear he will have no more to do with me: which I am indeed sorry for, after he had so kindly written to me from time to time up to last year. I do not even know if he is yet Minister to England. I wish you would give my kind, and quite sincere, remembrances to Professor Goodwin, and believe me always yours Littlegrange 1

The Oedipus translation. Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus had been performed by Harvard undergraduates in May. Norton's essay, "The Greek Play at Harvard" (July, 1881, pp. 106-10), is a commentary on Sophocles, not a review of the production. 3 Wright had taken EFG sight-seeing. The term "to lionize" originated in the practice of viewing lions kept in the Tower of London in Elizabethan days. 4 "The Early Life of Thomas Carlyle" (pp. 1-42), a biographical essay cover­ ing the first 26 years of Carlyle's life. 5 Euphranor. 2

August 1881

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge August 20, [1881 ] My dear Wright, As you did not annotate to your Parne-Creighton slip that it was to be returned to you, I have kept, and keep it, you see, till further orders.1 It is a touching old thing of the Past: your part of the work, as always, all that it should be. I was at old Beccles during the last two or three days, when you were at Somerleyton—from Wednesday till Saturday of last week— at the old King's Head: whence I radiated to Geldestone and Lowes­ toft in the day-time; sitting with my dear old Crowfoot2 in the eve­ nings. I had wanted to see over old Geldestone haunts, not seen these dozen years; as also some of those about old Beccles, which I love too for its quaint irregularity, grand Church Tower, and Market-place, on which I sat looking when my reading Eyes were tired. I went to your house: but all Blinds were down, so that I knew you were not within; and even the Garden gate padlocked, so that I could not ask about you. "Voila qui est fait" so far as Beccles is concerned. That is, for the present: for I shall feel myself drawn thither again, I think, before this Autumn is gone. At Crowfoot's was his Son John the Ecclesiastic—nay, the Canon, I believe, of Lincoln: with rather a cut-and-dry canonical manner, I thought. He is one of Kit Wordsworth's3 "coadjuteurs" I think: and so could tell me nothing of Blakesley, who is not, I also believe. As you do not mention the Master in your Letter, I conclude that he had not returned to Cambridge when you passed through. As to that beautiful Photo of J.S.,4 I am sure there would be no use writing to Mrs. Ritchie about it if Mr. Woolner ,cannot get at its whereabouts. Mowbray Donne and Wife are coming here next week; and a Niece or two on the 31st. That time last year you and I were at Merton. I have not heard from G.C. since I was last there. C. Keene is, I suppose, home from Scotland: indeed Mrs. Edwards wrote me that he was. But why do you say nothing of James Parry? I have got the "Roade Murder" but I fancy shall not care for it. Yours always E.FG. 1Wright contributed to Notes and Queries (Aug. 13, 1881, pp. 121-23) recol­ lections of Trinity College recorded by Robert Creighton, Professor of Greek,

August 1881 1662-74, among documents collected by Thomas Parne, eighteenth-century Uni­ versity Librarian. 2 William E. Crowfoot, Beccles physician. 3 Christopher Wordsworth, nephew of the poet, Bishop of Lincoln, 1868-85. Joseph W. Blakesley, Dean of Lincoln, with whom EFG corresponded. 4 Spedding.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [August 23,1881] My dear Wright, I think I must have told you before now how Spedding dealt with me on some such occasion as Mr. Ricketts tells of. No doubt, other people have a like story to tell: nothing ever does, or (I am persuaded) ever will, come out but to show that dear man as near as practically may be to perfection. I think Pollock might be as likely as anyone to tell one about the Cameron Photo: but he is probably out for his holyday now. Where did our Master get his? He is now at Cambridge, I suppose, and will tell you. In the meanwhile I rejoice to hear from you that he has returned all the better for his German Tour: please to give him my Love and Duty, as well as all due regard to Mrs. Thompson, who I am very glad to hear is all the better also. In the last Academy (August 20) is a very fine piece of Kentish Kit by Drayton, which one might fancy struck up the tune of Master Tennyson's "Light Brigade."1 But probably he never heard of it. Do you set right the word "sting"—which must be "stong" whether Perfect, or Noun. I have told Keene, who reads all the Polyolbion, to get the "Kentish Garland," which perhaps I shall get for myself. Mowbray Donne and his Wife came yesterday to stay here, and the rain falls as if the World were drowned. Robert Groome comes tomor­ row to meet him in some Ark or other. I noticed the (now) old fashioned Dahlias in front of your House: I suppose as in your Father's Days. It is very good to remember him as you do. And I am yours always LittleG.* x "What

foppery is this, Sir?" Dr. Johnson

September 1881 1Michael Drayton's (1563-1631) spirited "Ballad of Agincourt" beginning, "Fair stood the wind for France." Polyolbion, Drayton's miscellany recording the beauties, legends, and topography of England.

To W. A. Wright (Fragment) [Woodbridge] [August 26,1881]

. . . I am sorry the Master should ask about my Cambridge Visit. You know what I mean. If he lived in "rooms," within, or without, College, "Ce seroit une autre affaire," only I wish him to know that, in this instance, I simply took Cambridge on my way, as it were, to Norfolk. All this would seem to be making oneself of much importance, but— you know what I mean. You know too that I did call at Sidney,1 as I should have done at Trinity Lodge, but, etc. Do not let [the] Master believe that I am ungrateful to him. Mowbray Donne and his Wife have been staying with me: tomorrow comes down my Italian Sister to Boulge (Malebolge?)2 and I await her visits here. In September I shall go to meet an old Dear of mine at Aldbro, where we both were Children more than sixty years ago: and I am yours always The young Lochinvar Made de Coulanges and her maid were ill of the same fever, and— treatment. "Un lavement—un lavement; une Saignee—une Saignee; un Seigneur—un Seigneur," etc.3 1

Sidney Sussex College. One of the circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno. 3 Quoted from Madame de Sevigne's letter to her daughter, Madame de Grignan, dated Sept. 25, 1676. The passage actually concludes, "Notre-Seigneur, Notre-Seigneur." 2

To Frederick Tennyson [Woodbridge] [September, 1881] My dear Frederick,

As I was smoking my one Pipe after my Reader's Departure last night I reflected that it was long since I had heard from you: and,

September 1881 as you generally wait for me to begin, I really thought of doing so today. But Today brings your very kind Letter: so, for once, you have anticipated me—all the kinder of you. I have been less away from [home] this Summer than any that I can remember: in fact, only for ten days, two of which were spent at Cambridge, where no one was "up" except the Cowells whom you remember: and Aldis Wright, Bursar of Trinity and a learned Editor of several old English Classics: Shakespeare among them: a sound, sensible, Editor, dealing not at all in German—or other—Aesthetics. He "keeps" in old "Neville's Court," and I felt rather at home again in his rooms. Then I went on to G. Crabbe's (my Poet's Grandson) in Norfolk for a week. Since then a Sister of mine who has lived in Florence for the last twenty years, has been over here, along with two of my Nieces: and went away homeward (viz., to Italy) a week ago. I suppose that she and I shall never meet again: she will not return here, and I could only say at parting that my going to Florence was "not impossible." She is some three years older than I, and likely to outlive me. I cer­ tainly believe that if ever I cross the seas again, it will be—to Jersey: but probably I shall only think of that till too late to do it. And these last Visits are sad things: I even think it may be better not to see old Friends again after any long interval and with the likelihood of seeing them for a last time. Mrs. Kemble told me that when she and Spedding met across a Dinner-table after many years, neither knew the other: but I do not hear from others that, at any rate, he looked so old as she thought. I do not hear what progress they make with the subscription for the Memorial Tablet in Trinity Chapel: but Woolner the Sculptor has selected the place, and also the portrait from which to model his Relief—a very beautiful Photo by Mrs. Cameron, which I cannot get. I was surprized to see the interstitial space in Trinity College quite occupied with busts of People of our time: even Jack Kemble was among them. I always think one should wait fifty or a hundred years before erecting such monuments—even in the case of Alfred who has assuredly the best Title to be so commemorated, and of whose fame for more than a hundred years I do not doubt. I hear nothing from him—nor he from me—for the reason that Mrs. AT had the trouble of answering any letter I wrote. Some Athenaeum stated that he had another Play on the stocks. I dare say that you do not trouble yourself about the Carlyle Question; and I am tired enough of reading, hearing, and perhaps talking of it. As to my Eyes—they are not so well as they were before last winter's

September 1881 discomfiture, but on the other hand not so much worse as I expected. Their best Solace is in the green of Grass and Trees: when that is passed, they must close themselves half the day over the Fire. I have a sharp little Reader for two hours of a night: we have just finished Mark Twain's "Tramp Abroad" which is sufficiently amusing. Here I have old Miss Braddon's penny Abridgement of Sir Walter's Novels which I shall make the Boy try on me: whatever their effect on those who know the originals. I respect the old Girl for trying to popularize them, both in respect of size and price. Most novelists, I believe, think them obsolete. I think they will survive those who think so. Now, my dear Frederick, I have written quite enough for us both, I believe. Your Expressions of regard—of affection—touch me very much indeed: I can answer with truth that I entertain the same feel­ ings for you: being, as you say, "Your affectionate old Friend" E.FG.

To Frederick Spalding Woodbridge Sunday [September 11,1881 ] Dear Spalding, Unless any Candidate for the Essex Asylum turns up nearer to Woodbridge than Beccles, I have engaged my Vote to Crowfoot for some poor Body there. Nothing, I think, has occurred at Woodbridge of any consequence except the Revelation of Lady Burdett-Coutts1 and her Husband. I did not see either. Miss Bland told me there was some communication between them and Sheppard for the hiring of Ash for shooting: but what has resulted from it I do not know—nor care. I think the Baroness must be an old Fool. On Monday, 19, I am going to G. Crabbe's at Merton to meet Aldis Wright. Mrs. Edwards was here yesterday: well, I believe, though sincerely inconsolable as yet, and disfiguring herself with such a cata­ falque of weeds as any Hypocrite might wear. Remember me always to Mrs. Spalding, whom I have a sincere respect for. That young Deck, I was told, married a Miss Hayward here some while ago. Yours truly E.FG.

September 1881 That "William Pitt" Bailey2 I should like to buy of you at what experts in such matters may call a right price; that I might present it to Trinity College, or the British Museum. It can be of no use to myself at my time of Life. 1 Liberal philanthropist; granddaughter of Thomas Coutts, founder of Coutts Bank, and inheritor of his estate. She had recently married, for the first time, at the age of 67. 2 Spalding had offered to return to EFG a 1730 folio copy of Nathan Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum that EFG had givep to him in 1874. The title page bears the autograph of William Pitt, the Elder. The book creates a problem: see letters to Quaritch and Wright of July and August, 1882.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [September 15, 1881 ] My dear Wright, I did not understand why you returned me those Lamb books before if Mr. Ainger had any need of them.1 He is welcome to them for as long as he pleases: I will bring them with me to Merton on Monday. George Crabbe appoints me a Train by which I am to leave Norwich at 4/20 P.M. and meet you at Roudham, so as to be at Watton at 6/7: so as he may take us up there (Watton) to Merton. Charles Keene was to be with me on Saturday, and may go with me to Merton on Monday, as G.C. has asked him:2 or, if his time be precious, he may travel from London to Watton by the same Train as you from Cambridge: and you will instinctively know one another if you get out at Roudham before The Interpreter arrive. I was not sure of all these movements of mine till yesterday. But my Italian Sister slipped away very nicely without wishing me to accom­ pany her to London for a last Adieu: and my two Nieces, Lusia and Annie, who have been with her here, go away on Saturday. Thank your Master for his very kind Letter. Yours ever E.FG. 1 Books from EFG's library among materials he had collected and liberally annotated, obviously with the intention of writing a biography of Lamb. Alfred Ainger published Charles Lamb in the English Men of Letters series in 1882, the first of his biographical and editorial works on Lamb. 2 Keene spent Saturday and Sunday at Little Grange and on Monday, the 19th,

September 1881 the two men went to Merton. "We had to change five times in getting there by rail, and had to wait four hours in Norwich," Keene reported to a friend. "The parson and Wright used to retire about 10 P.M.," he added, "but FitzGerald and I sat and smoked in the greenhouse for a couple of hours more. He is a capital companion" (George S. Layard, The Life and Letters of Charles Samuel Keene, 1892, pp. 326-27).

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [September 26, 1881] My dear Wright,

Thank you for the Photo which came this morning. I will send Mr. Ainger the Lambs. Charles Keene left me this Noon—just when the weather cleared. He indulged himself in Sausage and Marmalade while he was here, and, I think, has almost persuaded Loder to try to do likewise. Last night he was about two hours looking over your Cambridge Shake­ speare for "Some Jay of Italy whose Mother was her painting" (I think were the words). I could not tell him where the words were, nor what they meant:1 but said that I would ask you: which he said was too trivial a Question—long ago solved—he supposed—for such an Editor. Yesterday (Sunday) we went a long walk (for me) across the River, and by what is supposed to be a Roman Camp on the brow of the hill. Yes—it seems a long while since we were at Merton. Now, I suppose, all my little Excursions are over for 1881, unless a day or two at Aldbro, where I hope to meet my old Mar)' Lynn.2 And I am always yours LittleG. 1

"Some strumpet who owed her beauty to cosmetics" (Cymheline, III.4.51-52). Of Wickham Market, Suffolk, who spent summer holidays at the seaside vil­ lage where the two friends had played together on the beach in childhood. 2

October 1881

To W. A. Wright [Woodhridge ] [October 6, 1881] My dear Wright, There is an interesting—you must judge if reasonable—article on the two Quarto Hamlets, by R. G. White in this month's Atlantic. I suppose you can see this at Cambridge—if not, I will send it to you. After Charles Keene left me—that is, on Monday week—I went for a week to the White Lion at Aldboro, to walk, talk, and sup, with my old friend Mary Lynn: once a very beautiful Girl, now a gray, rheu­ matic, old Lady, but with her fine Soul in her Face still. We had plenty to say, of Old and New. Yesterday I sent oft my three Volumes of Lamb, along with a Note, to Mr. Ainger. I see that Furnivall goes on with his new Shakespeare—viz, R. Browning.1 Have you any news of what is doing with the W. S. to which we belonged. Yours always LittleG. 1 The inauguration meeting of the Browning Society, one of six such societies initiated by F. J. Furnivall, was held October 28, 1881.

To E. B. Cowell [Woodbridge ] [October 10, 1881] My dear Cowell, I did not answer your two last Letters because of my not being certain of your Address. When you went to Durham, I supposed you would have left Whitby for good, and when I had got another Letter from Whitby (enclosing the very pretty Photo) I thought it would be as well to wait till you were returned to Cambridge, as your Letter said you were soon to do. Now then I want you and Elizabeth to do me a little Service—viz., to take some notice of John Kerrich,1 brother of those you know, who goes to Trinity Hall this October: may be there now. He is as blameless a Lad as I know, and as deserving, on account of having earned him almost sufficient at Beccles School to take him to College, with the

October 1881 purpose, I believe, of becoming a Clergyman. He is said to have good abilities, of which I can only judge by his School success: for he scarcely says more than "Yes" and "No" to me: a better alternative than much tongue, you know. So, I do not say you will find him enter­ taining, though I am told he can be lively with those he knows well: but your Professorship may deceive him, though you could not—nor Elizabeth, who, relying on the character which I conscientiously give, may even make a HERO of him. NB also—that, shy and quiet as he is, he is active, I am told, at Cricket and other such things which, you know, I set some store by. It will be a very great thing for him to know some Lady's Society, as well as some such Professor's as E.B.C. who has so much of the Boy in him—as my old Crabbe said after but one meeting with you at Harwich, when I suppose you did not say twenty words. But the fine old Boy saw that. Anyhow, I think—I make sure—you will do what I ask you for other sakes than the Boy's own. I have also asked Wright to countenance him: which I dare say he will do: but his Countenance cannot do what your double-faced ditto may. 1 do not know if I should have construed your Firdusi without re­ ferring to the Dictionary. I ought not to have forgotten the beautiful "Sitareh." I see in Academy or Athenaeum that one Mr. Shinfield (?)2 is about to publish a Version of our old Omar: and am always yours and Elizabeth's E.FG. 1John Dalzell Kerrich (1863-1944), EFG's grand-nephew, took his degree in 1884 and became a school administrator, first in Jamaica, subsequently in Trans­ vaal. For data relating to the Kerrich family the editors are indebted to his sister, the late Mary Eleanor FitzGerald Kerrich, formerly of Beccles, and his sons, Brigadier Walter A. Kerrich of Ringsfield, near Beccles and Geldestone, and John Edward Kerrich, Professor Emeritus of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannes­ burg, South Africa. Miss Kerrich edited EFG's Dictionary of Madame de Sevigne, published in 1914. 2 Edward H. Whinfield, The Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, 1882, translations of 253 of Omar's verses. In 1883 he published the Persian text of 500 quatrains with translations on facing pages.

October 1881

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [ October 10, 1881 ] My dear Wright, Herewith I post you the Atlantic—which my Boy (who would not follow the advice given to the Welsh one) scrambled through to me last night in a half broken Voice. I certainly had wondered on first looking the Paper over that R. G. White had bilked the Change of Names difficulty: but for that, he seems to me (as last Speaker) to make out a good case: and we suppose that W. S., who was manifestly delicate in his choice of names, thought well to change them into what they are now when he came to vindicate his authorship in 1604. At any rate, it is easier for common mortals to imagine that, than the re-construction of the whole Play. But I suppose the Question remains to be solved. I want you to do me the favour to take some notice of young John Kerrich just gone, or going, to Trinity Hall. A very good nice Lad: very diligent, as his success at Beccles School proved: much liked, I am told, by the Master there: and since invited to Trinity Hall Lodge by the Master there. But for the Lad's own exertions he would not have got to College at all. I am told that he has good Abilities, as indeed his aforesaid success partly proves: but he is shy—I am told not deficient in Spirit with his Companions—whether at Cricket or Book. Do me the favour, if you please; I have asked Cowell and Wife to do the same. I dare not ask your Master but am yours and his always LittleG.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [October, 13,1881J 1 My dear Wright, Very good of you to tell me of the Master so soon after your arrival at Cambridge. Unless I hear from you to the contrary in the course of the week I will send your letter on to R. Groome: but, without Silence for Consent, I do not like to do so. Will you please to notify to the Revd W. Blore that I shall be glad to be one of the Three Guinea Subscribers,2 and am much obliged to

October 1881 whosoever gave me the opportunity of doing so. If my name as a Subscriber must be put down at all, of course it will only be among the general List which will include outsiders, as well as all you Grandees of the College. Herman Biddell called here with a Brace of Pheasants and no Chair broken. He made good use of the Charles Keene "feterin" among his shooting Party at Parham; and would be very glad to meet you here, or receive you at his, whenever you come this way again. He was not well, whether in Mind or Body, when he met you here at Easter: otherwise, you would have got something worth hearing out of him— and I—saved a Chair. Tam o' Shanter was duly found where you left him, and will keep till you call for him. Yours always Littlegrange I hear nothing of E. Woodcock. Mr. Spalding would sell his W. Pitt Bailey3 to Cambridge or British Museum, taking your Advice first. As you seemed unable to value such a Book, I shall advise him to apply to the British Museum and you can let us know any day if you pick up anything on the Subject. 1 The conjectured date is supported by the letter to Thompson which follows and also by a remark, attributed to a French visitor, on Britain's autumn weather: "In October, the Englishman he shoot the pheasant; in November he shoot himself." 2 For the Spedding medallion to be placed in Trinity College Chapel. E. W. Blore, Vice Master of Trinity, 1880-85. 3The copy of Nathan Bailey's dictionary. See letter to Spalding [Sept. 11], P.S. and note.

To W. H. Thompson Woodbridge Oct. 13, [1881 ]

My dear Master, On returning here yesterday I found your Paper (No. 1) and this morning received Ditto No. 2 bidding me return the former. This I do at once, you see; and at the same time take the opportunity of thanking you for that which I am to retain. I should scarce say more than thanks even had I read it: as I shall have done "ere Set of Sun" for such, as

November 1881 you may know, is my rule with "presentation" Copies, always wishing and asking to be dealt with in the same way when my turn comes. Only, if I find a fault—that is, fancy one—you shall hear of it! I was thinking of writing to you when Wright's right royal Present of the Spedding Photo made me turn to him instead, asking him to tell you, with my Love, what my honest intention had been. A letter I found from him yesterday awaiting me like yours, tells me that he had only seen you for a moment since you both returned to Cam­ bridge; so now I deliver my Message for myself. You and he have so much business to write about that I do not like to apply to either of you for an ordinary letter; but I wish one of you—when next he writes —would tell me how Merivale and Blakesley fare. I used to write some twice a Year to Ely, but fancied the Dean did not care to have to answer; and so more than a Year has gone by, and one is half afraid to ask one's Contemporaries—"how they are?" Something of the same with regard to Blakesley: who, at the beginning of the year, did tell me that he was somewhat ailing. Pray remember me kindly at Sidney when you next happen on Master or Mistress; I need scarcely ask you to do the same to Mrs. Thompson: nor to repeat that I am as ever yours E.FG.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Oct r /81

Can you get me the "Correspondence de S.A.R. La Duchesse D'Orleans, Mere du Regent," translated (I think) from the German into French. E.FG.

To Alfred Tennyson Woodbridge NoV 18, 1881 My dear old Alfred,

I suppose that scarce a day passes without my thinking of you— in some shape—your own, or some Talking Oak, or other. I have told

November 1881 you why I do not write to you; because of Mrs. Tennyson's having to reply, which I do not like troubling her to do. My neighbour Edward Moor brought me down a kind Remembrance from you and your "Love" I think it was—from the home of his Brother-in-law, Lord Hatherley, last Spring or Summer—I forget which, for how one con­ fuses Time among other things now! But my confusing the time does not confuse my sense of the Kindness of the Word you sent. I can return it heartily—yes, were it the "Love," which I think it was, as told to me. If I were at Freshwater, or you were here, I should rattle on as in the old Days. I wonder when all that rattle will be silenced: I do not mean, absolutely by Death, but by some preliminary that will make me grin on the wrong side of the mouth. I sometimes think such levity is unbecoming at 72-3. This Letter does not look much like it: but yet it would come up, I believe, if I met you—which many would think doubly unbecoming. Enough of it. I have nothing to tell you of myself: have not been away from home for more than a fortnight in all the year; and no further than Norfolk. Almost my only Visitor is Aldis Wright, who comes on his road to and fro between Cambridge and Beccles: and he tells me of some of the notable people whom otherwise I only know from Athenaeum and Academy. The latter oracle tells me much of a "Browning Society"1 got up by Mr. Furnivall, who, I suppose, is losing hold of his Shakespeare Society after his Blackguardly Escapades: so now his New Shakespeare is to be Mr. Browning. Would you co-operate, as B. does, with any Fur­ nivall who set up an AT Society? I must say I hope you withdrew your Name from the New Shakespeare Society under such management: I have not heard you have done so, but I rather surmise this from Furnivall's setting up Robert. All this seems as if I too had a Spite: not any personal one, certainly; but even our dear old Spedding re­ volted against Furnivall: and Robert should not abet with him— especially for Self glorification. Enough of that also. I think it must be very Spring weather in Wight: perhaps even that little purple-eyed Campanula-like, but not Campanula, flower looking up at one through the herbage on your Down as I saw it in 1854. I remember sending it in a letter to my old Crabbe, who was not the Poet, but the Son of the Poet, whom nobody thinks a Poet now, I believe, except yourself, and (with due interval be it said) your ancient E.FG.

November 1881

I came to an end there because of the elegant turn of the Sentence. But I meant to send my kindest Regards to Mrs. Tennyson—as I will to HalIam if he will spare her the trouble of writing me a few lines now and then, to tell me of you and her. 1

Academy, Nov. 5, 1881, p. 351.

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] [November, 1881] My dear Lady, I was not quite sure, from your letter, whether you had received mine directed to you in the Cavendish Square Hotel:—where your Nephew told me you were to be found. It is no matter otherwise than that I wish you to know that I had not only enquired if you were returned from abroad, but ,had written whither I was told you were to be found. Of which enough. I am sorry you are gone again to Westminster,1 to which I cannot reconcile myself as to our old London. Even Bloomsbury recalls to me the pink May which used to be seen in those old Squares—sixty years ago. But "enfin, voila qui est fait." You know where that comes from. I have not lately been in company with my old dear: Annie Thack­ eray's Book2 is a pretty thing for Ladies in a Rail carriage; but my old Girl is scarce half herself in it. And there are many inaccuracies, I think. Mais enfin, voila, etc. Athenaeum and Academy advertise your Sequel to Records.31 need not tell you that I look forward to it. I wish you would insert that capi­ tal Paper on Dramatic and Theatrical from the Cornhill.4 It might indeed very properly, as I thought, have found a place in the Records. Mowbray Donne wrote me a month ago that his Father was very feeble: one cannot expect but that he will continue to become more and more so. I should run up to London to see him, if I thought my doing so would be any real comfort to him: but that only his Family can be to him: and I think he may as little wish to exhibit his Decay to an old Friend, who so long knew him in a far other condition, as his friend might wish to see him so altered. This is what I judge from my own feelings. I have only just got my Garden laid up for the winter, and planted

November 1881 some trees in lieu of those which that last gale blew down. I hear that Kensington Gardens suffered greatly: how was it with your Green Park, on which you now look down from such a height, and, I suppose, through a London Fog? Ever yours Little G. 1 She had returned to her former address, Queen Anne's Mansions, adjacent to St. James's Park. 2 Sevtgne. 3 Records of Later Life, published 1882, sequel to Records of a Girlhood. 4 "On the Stage," Cornhill Magazine, Dec., 1863.

To Hallam Tennyson [Woodbridge ] Nov. 30, [1881]

Thank you very much for your letter. I know that you have plenty to do in that way: but I will look to you for a few lines of reply to my half-yearly enquiries. I expect no more; and you will not have to write what little I ask for many years to come. I used to require the same from Carlyle's niece when he grew unable to write, and, latterly, to dictate for himself. Now he is gone, I wrote about a fortnight ago for a word about herself: for she had always been very kind in answering me before. In her reply it "came into her head," she says, to tell me how she happened to see our Spedding about half-an-hour before you know what, walking briskly toward Piccadilly, looking cold, and wearing a cape such as her uncle used. When you speak of having lately returned from Newstead, and Sher­ wood (whither you had gone to gather local colour for "The For­ esters"), I suppose you mean before the leaves had fallen from the trees; or were you content with the gnarled trunks? The gale of a month ago (which blew down four of my few trees) played the deuce even with the foliage of the oak which generally hangs on for months longer: but it may not have been in merry Sherwood as hereabout. And you did not go to old Lincolnshire? Aldis Wright, who went on Bursar business to Horncastle, went also to Somersby, not on business, and sent me a large photo of the Rectory,1 but it looked to me new and hard: not half so good in my eyes as the feeble lithograph which your father (I suppose) gave me years ago.

November 1881 I think he must have been good-humouredly amused at Lord Selborne's adjudicating the palm between me and Mr. Morshead2 (in our translations of Agamemnon). I did not know he had that great work to lend: till I remembered my poor Donne writing me something about it. I say "my poor Donne" because he is now in a very helpless state of mind and body; so much so that he scarce seems conscious of any but his own family's society (so Mrs. Kemble writes me), other­ wise I should go up to see him. Thompson, Trinity's Master, is also in a very feeble state of body. All this is rather for your father than for you: and not very cheerful matter either for him or me. But tell him (a propos of the Greek) that, when I saw his version of your "Battle of Brunanburh,"3 I said to myself, and afterwards to others, "There's the way to render Aeschylus' Chorus at last!" unless indeed it might overpower any blank verse dialogue. When I said in my printed word of apology, that such a work was for a poet to do, I was not thinking of Mr. Browning. But the poet must follow his own will and genius. Annie Thackeray's paper on Mrs. Barbauld4 is very pretty, as also her book on Sevigne, but of the latter she gives little more than one side as probably best suited to the purpose of her book. How can she say, however, that there is more of the laughable than of the humorous in those letters? Well, you have had enough of mine at any rate. I need not say that I am right glad that your father is well, and your mother fairly so. You are, I take for granted, "all right" as the fashion is now to say. Of myself I need not complain, though not quite, as Sevigne some­ where says, so well that "I cannot think what God means to do with me. I am yours sincerely, The Laird of Littlegrange 1 Tennyson's

birthplace. Edmund D. A. Morshead had recently published The House of Atreus, a verse translation of Aeschylus's Oresteian trilogy. 3 Tennyson's "Battle of Brunanburh," published 1880, was based on Hallam's prose translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem. 4 Mrs. [Anne] Barbauld," Cornhill Magazine, Nov., 1881, pp. 581-603. 2

December 1881 To Ε. Β. Cowell [Woodbridge] [December, 1881] My dear Cowell, I am very much obliged to you and Elizabeth for inviting my Nephew: and all his Family will thank you too. As you say nothing of Master Thompson I conclude that he has pretty well recovered from an Illness which Wright told me of a month or more ago. I should like to see the Westminster Play very much—as also many things to be seen and heard in London: but not Enough, it seems, to draw me thither. I am sure (from some little I read of Plautus) that I should relish him more than Terence: but my Eyes are scarcely good enough for such Dictionary and Annotation as would be necessary to make me understand him, even in my own incomplete way. I suppose that Mr. Whinfield sent you his Omar, as he did to me. If not, I will send it to you, if you like. In one respect you will certainly approve of it, as being much more faithful to the original. I wrote to Carlyle's married Niece, who had for some years an­ swered my half yearly letters of Enquiry about him. Her husband, she says,, has bought a School at Wimbledon whither they are to remove from Chelsea next Spring. He had been a Schoolmaster for some years, and as she says, likes the work. And she mentions what came into her head as she wrote that she happened to see dear Spedding walking along Piccadilly, or toward it, just half an hour before he was run over: walking fast, and looking cold, with a Cape on such as her Uncle wore. I have also a letter from HalIam Tennyson, telling me of a little Expedition that he and his Father made to Stratford on Avon and Sherwood Forest, which latter they found the most old English place they knew. But I will enclose the Letter in spite of its saying some­ thing about myself; you will understand that it is not AT but another who speaks: I did not know that AT had the Book spoken of, and do not suppose but that he is goodhumouredly amused at Lord Selborne's adjudicating the palm between Mr. Morshead and myself. I do not want the Letter again. I think you would find a great deal to like in Ford's1 "Gatherings in Spain"—a book distinct from his Handbook. There is much about our Don Quixote: Proverbs that make me long to resort to him again: and

December 1881 some curious Derivations of Spanish words which remind me [of] the want of such a Dictionary as you spoke of. I do not know if Ford is exact in his Derivations, which are "bien trouve" enough for me and my Reader: and he certainly quotes much of pertinent lore from Mar­ tial and the Romans who left their Customs as well as Language in scarce-altered Spain. I will send you the Book for your Christmas holiday reading if you like. Always Elizabeth's and yours Littlegrange 1 Richard Ford, Gatherings from Spain, 1846; Handbook for Travelers in Spain, 1845.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge Dec r 14/81 My dear Norton, I hope you have not thought that I have forgotten your last kind letter, nor those Oedipus suggestions which you took the trouble to note for me. No such thing: the Letter has been in my desk ever since it came, only waiting till I should summon courage to look again into the Play which is associated with the recollection of bad Eyes em­ ployed upon it a year ago. Those Eyes have (to my own wonder considering my years) got better by divers means: or, I have become more used to their diminisht strength; and three days ago I brought up your Notes again, and have pretty nearly, I think, made use of all. I do not like to trouble you with written references to page and line: but will send you another printed copy: corrected in pencil: for (by some Printer's oversight) the Paper, I see, will not yet (and now, I suppose, never will) bear Ink upon it. In one or two cases, I have left unaltered some of the obscurity you pointed out: as I rather fancy that a little in that way is not unbecom­ ing where Passion speaks, as with Oedipus: or Knavery, as where Creon and Polynices. But I may be very wrong in so thinking. Enough of Oedipus. A week ago the Spanish Ambassador (whose name I now forget) sent me a fine bronze Profile Medal of Calderon from the Spanish Royal Academy, by way of recognition of my Translations.1 I do think

December 1881 this must have been at the suggestion of Mr. Lowell; but I do not like to trouble him with telling him so. Not knowing how to address Ambassadors, I began my Letter of Thanks—"May it please your Ex­ cellency!" thinking it best to err on the safe side, especially with a Spanish Grandee. Now then for myself—I have been no farther all the summer than to the neighbouring County of Norfolk—and that only for ten days, on a visit to my most amiable friend, the Grandson of my forgotten Poet, Crabbe. I spent two days at our Cambridge by the way, and felt rather at home in College once more. But all this I may have told you: for I must surely have written to you since July when that great Progress came off. I cannot read much, and my Reader is not up to much besides Chambers' Magazine, your Scribner, and a Novel now and again. I am becoming very much interested in a Translation of Letters that passed between Goethe and Schiller from the year 1794 to 1805. I do not read all about the "Horen," "Xenien," etc., but find plenty to pick up from the Correspondence of two such men,2 so freely and sincerely inter­ changed. I dare say you have known the Book long ago. Tennyson's Son wrote me that he and his Father had been Visiting Stratford on Avon and Sherwood Forest: which latter they found, as your Washington Irving had left them to expect, the most genuine piece of Old England they knew of. The Gales which have blown from your Quarter, did me damage in Tree, Pale, and even Wall, small as my possession is in all. Had you much damage done—in your own neighbourhood or over your Coun­ try generally: as you may know was the case over England. Whether you have anything particular to tell me on this score, pray tell me something of yourself, and those whom I know somewhat of among your Friends. I should be glad to hear of Mr. and Mrs. Lowell: and I beg you to give my very kind remembrances to Professor Goodwin. And, finally, always believe me yours very sincerely Littlegrange 1 Si* Dramas of Calderon, 1853. The award had been granted during the cere­ monies to commemorate the bi-centennial of Calderon's death, May 22-29. There is little likelihood that Lowell initiated the honor, as EFG conjectured. 2 Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe, Goethe's edition of the Briefwechsel translated by L. D. Schmitz, 1877-79. Die Horen, a journal founded by Schiller, a venture in which Goethe collaborated. Xenien, satiric epigrams by the two men directed at antagonistic critics.

December 1881

To W. H. Thompson [Woodbridge] [December, 1881 ] My dear Master, I had a pleasant letter from Hallam Tennyson, dated from Aldworth and telling me that he and his Father had not long returned from a trip to Stratford on Avon, and Sherwood Forest: which latter they found, as Washington Irving had led them to expect, the most original piece of Old England yet to be found. I suppose they went before the fall of the Leaf, if not before that October Gale1 which made such havoc with the foliage hereabout, withering up even that of the Oak, so as to dispose it to a much earlier fall than usual. Perhaps, however, the Midlands were not so visited by it as we were: I lost three or four of my few trees; and the succeeding Gale of last Saturday blew down palings and Walls for me. So Repairs will swallow up my Rents; which is at least as bad as getting no rent at all. If you want to know what my Rent-roll is likely to be your Bursar can tell you. He tells me that he has been much worried this last term with Busi­ ness of all sorts—Reversionary as well as other. I am about to tell him that if he likes to spend his Christmas here, as his last letter hinted, I shall be very glad of his company, and can promise him Quiet at any rate. If you see him before my letter reaches him, you will perhaps tell him what he is to expect. I do not think I can manage another letter today, being myself liquifying with a Cold, which I caught in carrying a Telegram through the Rain and Cold on Thursday. This telegram was to announce to his People that R. Groome who was to have returned home that day (after a Day's Visit here) was lying in Bed with one of his worst Headaches—"Tigers" he calls them. Yester­ day, however, he was himself again and went off homeward: while I remain here, wondering that Hamlet should have needed to wish that his flesh should thaw and dissolve,2 etc. My condition reminds me of what a Sister of mine said to me when she was under such an infliction—"I don't know whether I am more knave or Fool!" Whichever this Letter smacks most of, you know that I do not wish you to answer it: but, with all Regards to Mrs. Thompson, to believe me yours Littlegrange Tell Wright that I am now going to sit down to Rabisha's Cookery Book,3 often referred to in that Country Life Book which I gave him,

December 1881 and which I hope to master before Christmas Festivities begin. Does he know what a "Bisk" of meat is? A "Jegget" of mutton he may guess. My book has lost its Title page but dates, I believe, 1682. 1 The Annual Register reported the storm (Oct. 14, 1881) as a cyclone causing incalculable damage in England and cutting off all telegraph communication between London and the Continent. 2 Hamlet, 1.2.130. "Resolve," archaic form of dissolve. 3 The diction, rather than the recipes, kindled EFG's interest in William Rabisha's Whole Body of Cookery Dissected, 1661.

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] [ December, 1881 ] My dear Mrs. Kemble, I will write to you before 1881 is gone, carrying Christmas along with him. A dismal Festivity it always seems to me—I dare say not much merrier to you. I think you will tell me where, and with whom, you pass it. My own company are to be, Aldis Wright, with whom Shakespeare, etc., a London Clerk, may be—that is, if he can get sufficient Holyday—and one or two Guests for the Day. I forget if I wrote to you since I had a letter from Hallam Tennyson, telling me of a Visit that he and his Father had been making to Warwickshire and Sherwood. The best news was that A.T. was "walk­ ing and working as usual." Why, what is become of your Sequel?11 see no more advertisement of it in Athenaeum and Academy—unless it appears in the last, which I have not conned over. Somehow I think it not impossible—or even unlikely—that you—may—have—withdrawn—for some reason of your own. You see that I speak with hestitation—meaning no offence— and only hoping for my own, and other sakes that I am all astray. We are reading Nigel,2 which I had not expected to care for: but so far as I got—four first Chapters—makes me long for Night to hear more. That return of Richie to his Master, and dear George Heriot's visit just after! Oh, Sir Walter is not done for yet by Austens and Eliots. If one of his Merits were not his clear Daylight, one thinks, there ought to be Societies to keep his Lamp trimmed as well as— Mr. Browning. He is The Newest Shakespeare Society of Mr. Furnivall. The Air is so mild, though windy, that I can even sit abroad in the

December 1881 Sunshine. I scarce dare ask about Donne; neither you, nor Mowbray— I dare say I shall hear from the latter before Christmas. What you wrote convinced me there was no use in going up only to see him— or little else—so painful to oneself and so little cheering to him! I do think that he is best among his own. But I do not forget him—"No!"—as the Spaniards say. Nor you, dear Mrs. Kemble, being your ancient Friend (with a new name) LXTTLEGRANGE!

What would you say of the Oedipus, not of Sophocles, but of Dryden and Nat Lee, in which your uncle acted! P.S. You did not mention anything about your Family, so I conclude that all is well with them, both in England and America. I wish you would just remember me to Mr. H. Aide, who was very courteous to me when I met him in your room. This extra Paper is, you see, to serve instead of crossing my Letter. 1 2

Records of Later Life. Scott, The Fortunes of Nigel.

To Frederick Tennyson [Woodbridge] [December, 1881] My dear old Frederick,

I must not let Christmas and the Old Year pass away without a loving word from me. You know that I have but little more to say: for I [have] seen and heard less all this Year than any year before, I think: and have at present little new to report of my own personal Condition. Let me hear at least as much, and as well, of yourself. I wrote to Alfred a month or so ago: and was answered (for a wonder) by Hallam—from Aldworth—telling me that all were pretty well—his Father "walking and working as usual." They (Hallam and he) had not long before been a trip to Stratford-on-Avon and Sher­ wood Forest: finding the latter such a piece of Old England as Wash­ ington Irving had described. I suppose they went there before that October Gale half stript the Trees, even the Oaks, for which Sherwood is celebrated. Perhaps, however, the Gale did not rage there as here­ about it did: blowing down four of the best of my few trees. And another Gale about a month ago blew down paling, and even Wall,

December 1881 for me. You can tell me how it fared with you in Jersey, from over which the Wind came. Do you see what is doing for—and b y —your friend Browning for his Glorification? Societies formed to discuss, and explain him, as Dante or Shakespeare—and he himself aiding and abetting. An Article in Scribner's1 gives an account of his early Life, from data supplied by himself. Surely no Tennyson would—could—do the like of all this. I always said he must be a Cockney: and I now find he is Camberwellborn and worships Nobility (as Mrs. Kemble and others tell me) and thrives by Coteries and Clubs. It once was the Pastoral Cockney, It now is the Cockney Profound. I and my Housekeeper are preparing for Christmas—a very trouble­ some and generally lugubrious time. Aldis Wright, Trinity Bursar, comes to pass it with me—very good Company in all respects, and not the less in one, that he reads aloud well, and likes so to do. His Master (our old friend Thompson) became ill last Year with what was be­ lieved to be "Blight's Disease"—of the Kidney, I think—a Disease not generally curable, I believe. He did recover, however, though not sufficiently to regain his former health: more liable to Colds, less active, etc. Latterly he has been unwell again—I know not if from Bright, etc.—but is now once more again more of his former Self. I suppose that you in Jersey have had no Winter yet: for even here thrushes pipe a little, anemones make a pale show, and I can sit in my indoor clothing on a Bench without, so long as the Sun shines. I can read but little, and count on my Boy's coming at Night, to read Sir Walter Scott, or some Travel or Biography, that amuses him as well as me. We are now beginning The Fortunes of Nigel, which I had not expected to care for, and shall possibly weary of before it ends: but the outset is nothing less than delightful to me. I think that Miss Austen, George Eliot and Co. have not yet quite extinguished him, even in his later lights. Now, my dear old Friend, I will shut up Shop before Christmas. Ah! I sincerely wish you were here; and I do remain what for so many years I have been Your AflFectionate Old Fitz 1 "The Early Writings of Robert Browning" by Edmund Gosse. Scribner s Monthly, published in New York, had recently been acquired by the Century

December 1881 Publishing Co. and appeared as Century Magazine in November, 1881. Gosse's essay, biographical, not critical, was published in the December issue, pp. 189200. EFG's ascription of the article to "Scribner's" indicates that Frederick Warne & Co., the London publishers of the periodical, still retained the old name in December. The Monthly is sometimes confused with Scribner's Magazine, first published in 1887.

To Herman Biddell Woodbridge Wednesday [December 28,1881 ] My dear Biddell, As I was walking alone today I was crossed by an Idea that, tomor­ row being Market here, you might perchance be coming to Woodbridge, and, if I told you that Aldis Wright was here (as he is) you might come on therefore, and lunch or Dinner—at half past one P.M. —have a Chat, and so go home before Dark. But I believe I should not have remembered to write this to you, had not a brace of Pheasants [come] from you, which reminded me of my better Intentions. There­ fore it is that I scrawl these lines by candlelight. Also to say that A. Wright will be with me, I believe, till New Year's Day: so that any day would suit us from now till then. Only you might have to put up with cold fare—though not cold Welcome—if you took us unaware. But always the same hour: about half past one—and I always Yours E.FG.

To Blanche Donne [Woodbridge ] [Late December, 1881 ] My dear Blanche, Thank you—and your Father for whom this Letter is intended as well as for yourself—for all your kind wishes and Remembrances. You do not doubt, either of you, I am sure, that I heartily reciprocate them. My Xmas Company has consisted of Aldis Wright and Arthur Charlesworth, with an occasional Day-visitor, such as Brooke, who is

January 1882 young as ever, and rides a black Charger, and makes himself happy and agreeable enough when he comes. R. Groome was to have come over for a Day but had one of his terrible headaches ("Tigers," he calls them) and so was obliged to keep at home. Aldis Wright, who is my Guest for a week, brought his Books with him: Hebrew Commen­ taries for the Revision of the Bible; Robert of Gloucester (whoever he may be) and his inseparable Shakespeare, of whom he communi­ cates some to me. But, as now is Holyday time, he gives but an hour or two of a Morning to his Studies; then we dine at one: walk a little of an afternoon; then comes Tea: and at 8 P.M. comes my Reader, who reads us the Fortunes of Nigel and Experiences of an Edinburgh Detective, which latter Wright pronounces to be humbug. The Xmas week has been mainly rather "muggy" weather: and I have had some Cold and Cough which held me mainly within doors. But (excepting two days) no Cold weather to speak of: and, for some long while, thrushes have piped a little, and some Spring Flowers have offered to blow. Today the Sun shines so comfortably that Wright is going to quit his Books and lounge with a Cigar on my upper Fieldwalk. And I am yours and dear Father's ever the same E.FG.

To J. W. Blakesley Little Grange, Woodbridge [January 1,1882] My dear Dean, I think my annual letter of Enquiry concerning you is somewhat [late] this year: but you will not the less, I dare say, write me a reply, telling me first what you have to tell about yourself: I hope I need not add that I wish all you tell me to be well. Of myself I have even less than usual to say: not having been away from home more than a fortnight in all 1881, and then, no further than my friend George Crabbe's in Norfolk. And no one you know has travelled hither to me, except Aldis Wright, who has just left me after spending Christmas here—and Mowbray Donne and Wife, who came for a few days in September. He told me then, and has written to [me] since, about his Father— all on the decline, as you know. Mrs. Kemble wrote me some weeks ago that he scarce seemed to comprehend what she said to him, and that

January 1882 her Visits were more distressing to herself than productive of pleasure to him. Therefore I have not gone up to London to see him. A Christ­ mas letter from Blanche tells me that he is pretty well at present: and that Laurence (the Painter) goes to see him pretty often. I am writing to Mowbray's Wife to ascertain if my going up would be of any— however temporary—pleasure to her Father: I have no other call to London—which, from continued disuse, I do not love now. Perhaps this Letter of mine will be forwarded to you thither: for I think you go to live there some time in the Winter. If so, perhaps you will tell me what you would advise in the matter. By a slight detour on my road to Norfolk in July, I spent two days in Cambridge, where no one I knew was up except Wright and Cowell. I had not stayed in the place for thirty years, and much was new, and some things interesting to me. Wright has just told me that his Master was going on favourably after an Illness which took him two months back. As also his Portrait, which some of his College had got up a Subscription for—painted by one Herkomer.1 Now, my dear Blakesley, you see my sheet is filled, and you would not probably care that I should begin another. But please to let me hear from you: and believe me yours always sincerely E. FitzGerald 1 Hubert von Herkomer, of Bavarian birth, taken to England as a child. His portrait of Thompson hangs in the Hall at Trinity.

To Mrs. William MacOubrey1 Woodbridge Jan. 5/82 My dear Madam, I waited to thank you (as now I do) for your kind present of the Book, till I should hear from Aldis Wright whether he would under­ take to look over Mr. Borrow's Books and MSS. This day I have a reply from him—quite laid up with a Cold— insomuch that he does not answer the Question which I gave him to answer—whether he would undertake to do the thing: but in a way that leads me to suppose that he would, when he shall be in his Beccles house, or at Somerleyton Rectory, again.2 If he cannot under­ take the responsibility, I have asked him to suggest some one whom

January 1882 he knows to be fittest to the task—next to himself: for certainly I know no one so fitted for it as himself. The task is a delicate one: for those who want advice in such matters are apt to be dissatisfied with the valuation which a stranger may make. But, in such a case also you are not bound to accept the Valuer's Verdict, or Opinion, or Advice. In the meanwhile, there is, I suppose, no immediate hurry: and you may rely on my doing what I can in the matter. Yours faithfully Edward FitzGerald 1

Henrietta Clarke MacOubrey, George Borrow's stepdaughter. Wright was a frequent guest of Charles J. Steward, Rector of Somerleyton, near Lowestoft. 2

To Frederick Spalding (Fragment) Woodbridge Jan. 12, '82

. . . The Aconite, which Mr. Churchyard used to call "New Year's Gift," has been out in my Garden for this fortnight past. Thrushes (and, I think, Blackbirds) try to sing a little: and half yesterday I was sitting, with no more apparel than in my rooms, on my Quarter-deck.

To Charles Donne [Wood-bridge] [January, 1882] My dear Charles,

Thank you for your letter: if too late for very New Year quite in time to assure me of your constant Good Wishes. I think I shall run up to London next week for the sole purpose of seeing—or, offering to see—your Father: though I shall also look for Mrs. Kemble in that gloomy abode of hers—as I think it. I wonder that all who remember London sixty years ago do not return to the old Haunts: even her Father's and Uncle's Great Russell Street. But she says that her Children will have her at Queen Anne's.

January 1882 As to your Father—I had written to Edith1 to consult Mowbray as to whether they thought that a Visit from me would be really agree­ able. I know it always was so up to the last year: but I cannot be sure of its being so (however regardful he is for me) now when he is so little capable of any Effort, and (as I fancy would be in my own case) maybe wish to have his own Family only about him. Edith, however, told him that I purposed a visit to him: and he of course felt bound to say he should like to see me—if (as after a pause he said) he were well enough. Unless I hear that he is less well, however, I shall run up, only desiring Blanche to tell me truly and exactly the state of his health, and Inclination. Blakesley (to whom I write an Annual Letter) tells me in his reply that he shall be in London by the beginning of February and that he anticipates a rubber of an Evening at Weymouth Street. "Ainsi soit il!" I have just looked over a good Article by B. in the Academy, on Thirlwall's Letters—of which I shall get if I can, the second Half:2 not wanting at all to see his Early Letters. Aldis Wright who spent his Christmas week here is very busy enquiring who the Candler of Ipswich could be with whom T. was early acquainted. Wright has also been hunting up the Veritable History of Margaret Catchpole;3 and Brooke of Ufford, who met him here—as he had done several times before—was able to supply some genuine Letters from that Heroine written from Australia to which she was transported. R. Groome also could tell something of her: and old Mason much more—about a Lady [in] whom I cannot feel the slightest Interest, great as my Sympathy is with Great Criminals. But Wright likes to unravel any Story: he was, he says, born to be a Detective. Miss Glyn I only saw once, I think: at the Standard,4 in Webster's Duchess of Malfy. Good enough, but leaving no impression of original­ ity. Pollock tells me that Irving is to play Romeo to Miss Terry's Juliet: I suppose the World will continue to find him as great as in Hamlet. I enclose you a Woodbridge Playbill, intending to send my Reader Boy to Macbeth. We are now in the midst of the Fortunes of Nigel which I am (contrary to expectation) delighted with. Sir Walter is not yet killed off by Austens and George Eliots, I do believe. And so—with kind Compliments to Wife, I am sincerely yours E.FG. 1 Edith was Mowbray Donne's wife, and Blanche was W. B. Donne's unmar­ ried daughter. 2 Connop Thirlwall, Bishop of St. David's, whose Letters to a Friend, Dean Arthur Stanley, ed., 1881, was reviewed by J. W. Blakesley in The Academy,

January 1882 Jan. 14, 1882. The first half of the correspondence (implied by EFG) is another volume, Letters, Literary and Theological, J.J.S. Perowne and L. Stokes, eds., also 1881. See letter to Norton, March 7, 1882. 3 See letter to Barton, Feb. 8, 1846, n.l. 4 Isabel Glynn. The Royal Standard Theater in Shoreditch.

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] [January, 1882] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

This week I was to have been in London—for the purpose of seeing —or offering to see—our dear Donne. For, when they told him of my offer, he said he should indeed like it much—"if he were well enough." Anyhow, I can but try, only making him previously understand that he is not to make any effort in the case. He is, they tell me, pleased with any such mark of remembrance and regard from his old Friends. And I should have offered to go before now, had I not judged from your last account of him that he was better left with his Family, for his own sake, as well [as] for that of his Friends. However, as I said, I should have gone up on Trial even now, but that I have myself been, and am yet, suffering with some sort of Cold (I think, from some indi­ cations, Bronchial) which would ill enable me to be of any use if I got to London. I can't get warm, in spite of Fires, and closed doors, so must wait, at any rate, to see what another week will do for me. I shall, of course, make my way to Queen Anne's, where I should expect to find you still busy with your Proof-sheets, which I am very glad to hear of as going on. What could have put it into my head even to think otherwise? Well, more unlikely things might have happened —even with Medes and Persians. I do not think you will be offended at my vain surmises. I see my poor little Aconites—"New Year's Gifts"—still surviving in the Garden-plot before my window; "still surviving," I say, because of their having been out for near a month agone. I believe that Messrs. Daffodil, Crocus and Snowdrop are putting in appearance above ground: but (old Coward) I have not put my own old Nose out of doors to look for them. I read (Eyes permitting) the Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller (translated) from 1798 to 18061—extremely interesting to me, though I do not understand—and generally skip—the more purely

January 1882 Aesthetic Part: which is the Part of Hamlet, I suppose. But, in other respects, two such men so freely discussing together their own, and each other's, works interest me greatly. At Night, we have The For­ tunes of Nigel; a little of it—and not every night: for the reason that I do not wish to eat my Cake too soon. The last night but one I sent my Reader to see Macbeth played by a little "Shakespearian" com­ pany at a Lecture Hall here. He brought me one new Reading— suggested, I doubt not, by himself, from a remembrance of Macbeth's tyrannical ways: "Hang out our Gallows on the outward walls."2 Nev­ ertheless, the Boy took great Interest in the Play; and I like to encour­ age him in Shakespeare, rather than in the Negro Melodists. Such a long Letter as I have written (and, I doubt, ill written) really calls for Apology from me, busy as you may be with those Proofs. But still believe me sincerely yours Though Laird of Littlegrange 1 Correctly, 2

1794 to 1805. For Gallows, read "banners."

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge Jan. 18/82 My dear Norton, At last I took heart—and Eyes—to return to the Oedipus of this time last year; and have left none of your objections unattended to, if not all complied with. Not but that you may be quite as right in objecting as I in leaving things as they were: but, as I believe I said (right or wrong) a little obscurity seems to me not amiss in certain places, provided enough is left clear, I mean in matter of Grammar, etc. But I see that you have good reason to object in other cases: and, on looking at the Play again, I also discover more—too many perhaps to have heart or Eyes to devote to their rectification. The Paper on which the second Part is printed will not endure Ink, which also daunts me: nevertheless, I send you a Copy pencilled, rather than references and alterations written by way of Letter: I hope the least trouble to you of either Alternative. You will see that I have amended—or altered—all that overdose of "consecration" in the second page, as you desired. You will see there is a poor try of Chorus (not old Potter, but young

January 1882 Potter) at the end of Part I—and there should be a kind of pendant to it at the close of Part II to the effect that the Man is not to be called unfortunate who finishes as Oedipus did. Some day the pendant may come to me:1 but I cannot now begin to compose what is not much worth reading when done. I scarcely know what I have written, but I know it must be bad MS —all which I ought in good manners to rectify, or re-write. I think you in America think more of Calligraphy than we here do: a really polite accomplishment, I always maintain: and yet "deteriora sequor." But you know that my eyes are not very active: and now my hand is less than usually so, possessed as I am with a Devil of a Chill (in spite, or in consequence, of warm wet weather) attended with something of Bronchitis, I think. But for this I should even now be in London, for the sole purpose of seeing—or offering to see—a very dear Friend of my own age, and almost of as long intimacy, who has been failing in Body and Mind for the last three years. He has, however, some pious Children to care for him, and more Friends than he can admit, and I shall go up for a few days, and take my chance, when I can. I forget if I told you in my last of my surprising communication with the Spanish Ambassador who sent me the Calderon medal— I doubt not at Mr. Lowell's instance. But I think I must have told you. Cowell came over to see me here on Monday—he, to whom a Medal is far more due than to me—always reading, and teaching, Calderon at Cambridge now (as he did to me thirty years ago) in spite of all his Sanskrit Duties. I wish I could send him to you across the Atlantic, as easily as Arbuthnot once bid Pope "toss Johnny Gay" to him over the Thames. Cowell is greatly delighted with Ford's Gatherings in Spain, a Supplement to his Spanish Handbook, and in which he finds, as I did, a supplement to Don Quixote also. If you have not read, and cannot find, the Book, I will toss it over the Atlantic to you—a clean new Copy, if that be yet procurable, or my own second-hand one in default of a new. I think I have almost persuaded Aldis Wright to begin on Cervantes, in spite of Hebrew Bible Revisions, old English Literature (Robert of Gloucester) Shakespeare and College Bursarship, all of which he does so well, and would soon master, and enjoy, the Spanish—as much at least as I do. I find the Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller from 1790 to 18052 (translated by Dora Schmitz) extremely worth reading—in part, at least: for I do not understand, nor try to understand, all the Aesthetic. But, two such men so freely commenting on one another's work is very interesting.

January 1882 And now you have had enough of reading, as I of writing, this Letter. Once more I sincerely ask you to pardon its errors of all kinds, and to believe truly yours Littlegrange 1 For EFG's abortive effort to provide choruses when he sent "Oedipus at Athens" to Norton the previous March, see n.5 of his "preliminary Letter," which follows that of March 13, 1881. The second pendant "came to" EFG within a week and was enclosed with the letter of January 25. Aldis Wright inserted the chorus for Part II in the text of The Downfall and Death of King Oedipus for the Letters and Literary Remains but ignored that written for Part I. 2 Correct to 1794 to 1805.

From Fanny Kemble Queen Anne's Mansions Sunday 23d [January, 1882] My dear Edward Fitzgerald, I went yesterday to see our friend Donne. I had been three times before without succeeding in doing so and on one occasion Blanche dismissed me from the door with such an account of him that I did not expect ever to see him again. Yesterday however I saw him and sat some time with him and though I jabbered like a Jay while I was sitting by him I came out of the room crying and unable to speak. He looked better and less feeble than the last time I saw him but the mind the memory and the faculty of speech are alike gone—and it is painful beyond words to me to see him as he now is—God have mercy on us all!—to die may be bad—but to live thus seems to me worse— but his children are good and kind to him and Blanche devoted. I am sure it would give him as much pleasure as he is now capable of to see you again—but you must nevertheless not expose yourself to this weather for the sake of seeing him because I do not think that he remembers or thinks much of those he does not see. I am sorry to hear of your bronchial trouble and beg you to be careful about it—in spite of the extraordinary mildness of the winter—the catahraal [sic] affec­ tions seem to me have been unusually severe and persistent. I have myself struggled in vain with cough and cold and bronchial trouble for upwards of a month and have been under Doctor's discipline for it with but very partial amendment. I have been reading Bishop Thirlwall's letters and find them too learned and therefore dry and dull.1

January 1882 I had thought to find some traces of his friendly intimacy with my brother in his correspondence but have been disappointed in that respect as in the general interest of the book. I am now going to read Sir Charles Lyell's life.2 Come to London always affectionately yours Fanny Kemble. 1

The Perowne-Stokes volume, Letters, Literary and Theological. Life, Letters, and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, edited by his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lyell, 2 vols., 1881. 2

To J. W. Blakesley [Woodbridge] Jan. 23, [1882] My dear Blakesley,

I was to have gone last week to London for the sole purpose of seeing—or offering to see—Donne. But I was caught, like yourself, by a sort of Bronchial attack: and am not yet so "compos" as to make me available in London for the two other Visits, beside in Weymouth St., which I now ever pay there. One of these Visits is to Mrs. Kemble, whose Letter I take the Liberty of enclosing to you, and do not want back. As also one from Blanche, which arrived by this same Post. Would you send them on to Merivale? He called on Mrs. Kemble—why will not you? Through a certain crust of Dramatic, or Theatrical, manner (of which she is totally unconscious) as true, good, brave, and head-and heart-noble, Woman as breathes. And I am sincerely yours E.FG. I want you to believe that I feel very much your constantly kind remembrance of me.

January 1882

To Η. S. Wilson Little Grange, Woodbridge Jan 23, [1882]1 My dear Sir, Indeed I do not forget you, nor the good you did old Omar; I sup­ pose, hastening a new Edition—and (so far as I am concerned) a final one. I would send it to you if I thought you had not enough of it. I think it scarcely differs from that which you appraised. I will not otherwise be ungrateful in such return as I can make for the little favour you ask of me. Along with this Letter to you, I post your own to Mrs. Kemble; telling her that I know you by inter­ change of Book and Letter, etc., but that I do not know of Mr. T.,2 whom perhaps she does know somewhat of, whether from having seen him "in Character"; or she may if she pleases ask about him from her Nephew H. Kemble. For she goes but little to the Play, and concerns herself not at all with its Representatives. She lives not in Cheltenham, but always (except when out on visits) in London. . . . I never saw her Father in Mercutio. But all whom I have seen in the Character err'd "a ΓAnglaise (?)" in accentuating it too much by voice and action—as in the Queen Mab passage—whereas it should surely be done with a graceful lightness of speech and action, as a Gentleman, not an Actor, would do it. So it always seemed to me with Jacques' "Ages of Man" and many other such descriptive passages. And I am yours truly, E. FitzGerald 1 Wilson, reading "23" as 28, misdated the letter in the Athenaeum, Nov. 16, 1889. 2 See following letter to Fanny Kemble.

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] [January 23, 1882] My dear Lady, The same Post which brought me your very kind Letter, brought me also the enclosed. The writer of it—Mr. Schiitz Wilson—a Litterateur general—I be­ lieve—wrote up Omar Khayyam some years ago, and, I dare say, somewhat hastened another (and so far as I am concerned) final Edi-

January 1882 tion. Of his Mr. Terriss1 I did not know even by name, till Mr. Wilson told me. So now you can judge and act as you see fit in the matter. If Terriss and Schutz W. fail in knowing your London "habitat," you see that the former makes amends in proposing to go so far as Cheltenham to ask advice of you. Our poor dear Donne would have been so glad, and so busy, in telling what he could in the matter—if only in hope of keeping up your Father's Tradition. 1 am ashamed to advert to my own little ailments, while you, I doubt not, are enduring worse. I should have gone to London last week had I believed that a week earlier or later mattered; as things are, I will not reckon on going before next week. I want to be well enough to "cut about" and see the three friends whom I want to see —yourself among the number. Blakesley (Lincoln's Dean) goes to stay in London next week, and hopes to play Whist in Weymouth Street. Kegan Paul, etc., publish dear Spedding's "Evenings,"2 etc., and never was Book more worth reading—and buying. I think I understand your weariness in bringing out your Book: but many will be the Gain­ ers:—among them yours always LittleG. 1William Terriss (pseudonym of William C. J. Lewin), a member of Henry Irving's company at the Lyceum Theater. Selected to play Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, to open in March, Terriss sought information from Fanny about her father's performances in the part, one of Charles Kemble's greatest roles. "I never saw, and shall never see again, anything in comedy acting so superlatively fine as his Mercutio," wrote an actor who played Romeo in a production with Kemble, then 65 years of age. Subsequent letters indicate that Terriss did not confer with Fanny. A contemporary critic described his performance as "utterly con­ ventional." 2 Evenings with a Reviewer, printed privately in 1848; recently published in two volumes with a biographical preface by George S. Venables, barrister, jour­ nalist, and Spedding's friend since Cambridge days.

To Blanche Donne [Woodbridge ] Tuesday [January 24, 1882] My dear Blanche,

I dare say that I make more than enough of my Cold: I have not been "laid up," but laid in, all last week: and Today first got into the first Sunshine we have seen, and felt [better] ever since.

January 1882 I wish, however, to be well enough to get about freely in London when I do get there, and shall not now talk of going till next week, the rather, because of Fanny Kerrich offering me a Visit on Thursday. And I do take for granted, according to your word, that a week earlier or later is not likely to matter much in the case. But I think you had better say nothing to your Father of my pro­ posal to visit him: and shall rely on your telling me exactly when I do get to London: 1st At what time of day it is best to pay my Visit. 2nd For how long; or, finally, when the time comes whether it will be well to visit [at] all. All which tell me without any reserve: knowing that there is but one Person—and that, your Father—who is to be thought of in the case. Cowell came over from Ipswich yesterday week (Monday) to spend his Afternoon with me. Elizabeth had a Cold, and so did not accompany him. And I am always yours E.FG.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge Jan. 25/82 My dear Norton, I forgot in my last letter to beg you not to write for the mere pur­ pose of acknowledging the revised Oedipus who was to travel along with it. You know that I am glad to hear from you at any time when you are at leisure—not otherwise—and I shall take for granted that you think my alterations are improvements, so far as they go. And that is enough. I herewith enclose you a sort of Choral Epilogue for the second Part,1 which you can stick in or not as you will. I cannot say much for it: but it came together in my head after last writing to you, while I was pacing up and down a Landing-place in my house, to which I have been confined for the last ten days by a Bronchial Cold. But for which I should have been last week in London for the purpose of seeing a very dear old—coasvally old—Friend, who has been gradually declining in Body and Mind for the last three years. A week earlier or

January 1882 later makes but little difference to him in respect of my Visit: but I want to go as soon as I am fit to stir about in London when I shall get there: and this I hope to do next week. We have had almost uninterrupted Fog here for the last Fortnight; and Today the Sun can hardly get his head through. Some one told me, I think, that you had been having the same warm weather as we. Let me hear that it has not disagreed with you as with so many of us it has. I sent my Boy-readpr to see Macbeth done by a small Company at our Lecture Hall. He was much impressed—especially when the Tyrant roared out: Hang out our Gallows on the outward Walls There is a curious "concatenation," you see: and a new Reading for Mr. Furnivall: and I am yours always sincerely Littlegrange 1

See January 18 letter, n.l.

To H. Schiitz Wilson Little grange, Woodbridge [January 26, 1882] My dear Sir, I think I can not do better than quote Mrs. Kemble's own words on the Subject of your Friend's proposed visit to her; and then he can decide on what to do. (NB I had told her that Mr. Terriss had sup­ posed she lived at Cheltenham.) "It is so perfectly easy for anyone in'London to obtain my Address that I think I may leave the future Mercutio to do so at his leisure or pleasure." The Address is simply Queen Anne's Mansions, West­ minster. I think I have some Copies of Omar—the Third, or Fourth—I forget which—and will send you one when I find it—which I can never hope to do by looking for it. I think it only improves on former Editions by being shorter: but it is accompanied by another Persian Poem which, I believe, hangs upon it rather as a dead weight. But the Man who taught me both wished to have "Soloman and Absolom" (as the Printers called it) revived: and then did not like the new as well as the old. And yet, like Omar, it is much shorter. I can manage but little Reading, for my Eyes fell ill this time last

January 1882 year, and are not likely to recover much after 73. A Boy comes to read to me of a night for two hours—his Blunders amusing me as much as the Book he reads, which is generally some Memoir or Travel. Yours truly E. FitzGerald

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge [January 26,1882] My dear Mrs. Kemble, I have quoted, and sent to Mr. Schiitz Wilson, just thus much of your Letter, leaving his Friend to judge whether it is sufficiently en­ couraging to invite him to call on you. I suppose it is: but I thought safest to give your ipsissima verba. "It is so perfectly easy for any one in London to obtain my Address, that I think I may leave the future Mercutio to do so at his leisure or pleasure." I dare say you are pretty much indifferent whether he ventures or not; if he does, I can only hope that he is a Gentleman, and if he be so, I do not think you will be sorry to help him in trying to keep up your Father's traditionary excellence in the part, and to save Mr. Terriss— to save Mercutio—from the contagion of Mr. Irving's treatment of Shakespeare—so far as I have seen of it—which is simply two acts of Hamlet. As I told you, I know nothing—even hitherto heard nothing of Mr. Terriss. His friend, S. Wilson, I have never seen neither; I am told he is somewhat self-conceited and bore-ish—so I hope he will not accom­ pany his Friend. And I hope you will think I have done fairly well in my share of the Business. Fanny Kerrich, my Niece, and a capital Woman, comes to me today, not more for the purpose of seeing myself, than my Brother's Widow who lives alone in a dismal place three miles off. I am still wheezy, and want to get in order so as to visit my few friends in London next week. You see there is no occasion for you to answer this: for, even if I have done amiss, it is past recall; and I am none the less ancient Friend LittleG.!

February 1882

To J. W. Blakesley [Woodbridge ] [February, 1882] My dear Blakesley, Now you will have too much of me. But (mind) this Letter calls for no answer (not that I should have too much of you) for it is simply to assure you that I am certain that a Visit from you to Mrs. Kemble (you ascend by a Lift to a 7th Heaven in "Queen Anne's Man­ sions, Westminster) will please, and, as she will say—and feel— honour her more than you can believe. So she said and felt last year after Merivale's calling on her—not a whit more known to her than you. The certain attraction to her is—the having known ]ack—whose vagaries you see from her Book that she acknowledges; but he was her Brother, and she sticks to him—as she did to her scamp of a Brother Henry, whose illegitimate Son she maintained, and sent to School, and who, in defiance of her hopes, has taken to the Stage as an "eccentric Comedian," but whom she clings to still.1 Though I knew her and her Family when she was only "A young Lady"—and somewhile afterward as a Mrs. Butler, I had not seen her for more than twenty years—even when I had to go to London where she was—till two years ago, when her Sister Sartoris died, and she begged me to go, as one who had known that Sister, etc. So I went, and we talked—of anything else. But this I say to show you her "specialite" of Loyalty to her Family, and all who ever knew them. And you have somewhat else than re­ membrance of Jack to interest her. She will feel gratified—and more "honoured" even than you would yourself wish. Anyhow, pray go and see her. I never much admired her as Actress or Reader—which is not far aloof from her own opinion of her merits—on the Stage, at any rate. As you might read in a capital Paper she wrote some dozen years ago in some Magazine concerning the difference between the Dramatic and the Theatrical. I do not think she was gifted with either Quality in any special Degree. But she is a noble Woman as her Records show, and as all who know her know—and as I wish you to know her also. Jack's recitation of Hotspur and Alexander's Feast at Bury School some fifty-five years ago was by far the finest piece of Declamation that I have ever heard. He was then very handsome, with a Profile such as I remember on Coins of Alexander—if such coins there are—and, in spite of new Swallow-tail Coat, etc.—up he sprang at our Doctor

February 1882

Malkin's Signal, and—there was Hotspur! And the only good I could recognize in Mrs. Kemble's Readings (I did not hear her Hotspur) was the Heroic Speeches such as the Lords in King John—or Theseus in Midsummer Night's Dream—because she was the Soul she had to represent. Voila a long tirade. For compensation, I will give you my Boyreader's critique on Macbeth which I sent him to see enacted by a small troupe at our Lecture Hall. It was very grand, and when the Tyrant came out and roared, "Hang out our gallows on the outward walls"—that was stunnin' indeed. The same dear Boy in reading me Captain Gronow's Memoirs, quoted a propos of Lady Holland, "Her Ladyship had lately become rather abominably protuberant." I asked Mudie for Vol. Ill of Miss Berry, which you recommended; but they could only let me have the whole set; and I had read Vol. I and II.2 Now I am to have Caroline Fox2—and Thirlwall—only the Stanley Volume of the Latter: taking my cue from your Notice of it in Academy. And so I remain yours E.FG. 1 Harry, as Fanny called her nephew Henry, the actor, was a frequent com­ panion at Queen Anne's Mansions and sometimes joined his aunt when she traveled on the Continent. Another nephew, Henry Charles, was John M. Kemble's son. 2 EFG had cared little for the portion of Extracts from the Journals and Cor­ respondence of Miss [Mary] Berry, which he had read upon publication. See letter to Allen, Dec. 3, 1865. Memories of Old Friends, extracts from the journals and letters of Caroline Fox (1819-71), edited by H. N. Pym, 1881.

To E. B. Cowell [Woodbridge ] [c. February 3,1882] My dear Cowell, Chesterton,1 and the road toward it, looked very pleasant on the Map you sent me—and I thank you much for taking the trouble to make it for me. Now, if you have the Volume of Wordsworth's Prelude not too fine to travel by Post, or Rail, I wish you would send it to me. I asked

February 1882 Wright to do so some months ago, but, as he did not answer that part of my Letter, I conclude that he is too wary to trust his Book to such a Travel—if he have it. I get abroad now though I feel as if I could soon get wheezy again. If all go well, I believe I shall go to London at the beginning of next week—to see Donne, who (Blanche tells me) is pretty well now, and goes out in a Bath Chair. I should Kke to know that you are well of your Cold, and up to the Business of Lecturing. But mind—I do not wish you to write about that, nor about "The Prelude"; whether you send it or not, I shall know you have good reason, and am always Elizabeth's and yours Littlegrange 1

Now part of Cambridge, the site of Three Tuns Inn, setting of EFG's

Euphranor.

To Blanche Donne [Woodbridge] Friday, February 10, [1882] My dear Blanche, I took a little Lodging which Mrs. Edwards found me from Monday last; preferring to be there rather than at an Inn for the few days I proposed to remain in London. But on Sunday I somehow became wheezy and sore-throaty and chilled all over; and so have thought it better to keep at home for the present. Therefore I will say no more now than that I will go to London directly I feel that I can get about there; and will apprize you of my going directly that I arrive. Blakesley wrote me that he should be in London last Monday also: and, in case he also were not detained at Lincoln, you have doubtless seen him in Weymouth St. before now. He very kindly gives me his Address: but he has with him Ladies (Daughters) to whom I am not known and you know that I now go nowhere but to the very few old Friends who may wish to see me. Not but I believe that he wishes also, for he says so. But—but—he has those about him to whom I am strange. Pray do give him some idea of this when you see him: and assure him of my sincere gratitude for his long-enduring Bemembrance and Begard.

February 1882 This Letter of mine needs no answer—but believe that I shall get to see you as soon as I can: and that I am always Truly yours E.FG.

To H. S. Wilson Little Grange: Woodbridge Thursday [February 23,1882] My dear Sir,— I post you along with this Letter a copy of old Omar and his rather heavy Companion "Solomon and Absalom." When I had strung it up I reflected that, in giving it to you, I ought to have added a word of thanks for having helped it to appear in its fourth Edition.1 But, as I hope you will understand this, I have not unstrung my Bow again to say so. In return, pray follow my rule whether on receiving, or giving, any such present: which is, simply to acknowledge its coming to hand (as one feels bound to do) without a word as to the contents. Yours truly, E. FitzGerald 1 By

his review of the Rubdtydt in The Contemporary Review, March, 1876.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] Friday [February 24,1882] My dear Wright, I went to London this day week: saw my poor Donne (rather better than I had expected to find him—but all declining) three times: and came home—glad to come home!—on Monday. Mrs. Kemble, Edwards (Keene at the latter Lady's) and my old Nursey friends, all I saw beside, in the human way, save Streetfarers, Cabmen, etc. The Shops seemed all stale to me: the only Exhibition I went to (Old Masters) ditto. So I suppose that I have lost my Appetite for all but dull Wood­ bridge Life. I have not lost my Cold—nor all its bronchial symptoms; but may do so—as I get a little older.

February 1882 Tennyson was in London, I heard: but in some grand Locality of Eaton Square—so I did not venture down to him. But a day scarcely passes without my thinking of him, in one way or other. Browning told Mrs. Kemble he knew there was "a grotesque side" to his Society, etc., but he could not refuse the kind solicitations of his Friends, Furnivall and Co. Mrs. K. had been asked to join: but declines because of her somewhat admiring him; nay, much admiring what he might have done. I enclose a note from Keene which appeals to you: I suppose that his "fastous" means "festuous," or what is now called in Music "pom­ pous." Charles' "plump bass" is good. You had a bad cold when last you wrote: so you can tell me, if you please, that you have shaken it off, as your Seniors cannot so easily do. Let me know, of course, how the Master is, and give him my Love. Does he know of Musurus Pasha's Translation of Dante's Inferno into Modern Greek?11 was so much interested in it from the Academy that I bought; and, so far as I have seen through uncut leaves, do not repent of having done so. The Academy also announced that an MS account of Carlyle's visit to Ireland in 1849 was in Froude's hands for the Press. As T.C. stayed some—if not the greater part of his time—there at the country house of my Uncle's Widow, I can only hope that he did not jot down much to offend her surviving Children. Perhaps not: for they were, and are, all of them (Mother dead) quite unpretending people, and T.C. him­ self not then so savage as after his Wife's death.2 From Froude no mercy of reticence can be expected. You left here Rabisha and Groome's Book of Tracts: unless you will be coming this way before long, I will send them to you. You did not say whether you would undertake to look over Borrow's Books and MSS, and I write his Step-daughter to that effect. But I hope you will find it not inconvenient or unpleasant so to do: and am yours always Littlegrange My Boy went to Macbeth at our Lecture Hall. What do you say to his reading "Hang out our Gallows on the outward Walls"? 1 Published 1882; reviewed in the Academy, Feb. 11, pp. 96-97. In a critique in the Saturday Review of the same date, Frederick Pollock states that although the diction is not that of modern Greek, "the pronunciation and accentuation" are those of the language "as now spoken." See April letter to Goodwin. 2 Carlyle was a charge of members of the Purcell family, EFG's paternal rela-

February 1882 tives, in Dublin and Halverstown, County Kildare, July 3-10. The Purcells fared satisfactorily in Reminiscences of My Irish Journey in 1849, published later in the year. The book is actually a rough diary written in Carlyle's early fractured rhetoric.

To H. S. Wilson [Woodbridge] [February, 1882] My dear Sir,

I must thank you sincerely for your thoughts about Salaman, in which I recognize a good will toward the Translator, as well as liking for his work. Of course your praise could not but help that on: but I scarce think that it is of a kind to profit so far by any review as to make it worth the expense of Time and Talent you might bestow upon it. In Omar's case it was different: he sang, in an acceptable way it seems, of what all men feel in their hearts, but had not had exprest in verse before: Jami tells of what everybody knows, under cover of a not very skilful Allegory. I have undoubtedly improved the whole by boiling it down about a Quarter of its original size; and there are many pretty things in it, though the blank Verse is too Miltonic for Oriental style. All this considered, why did I ever meddle with it? Why, it was the first Persian Poem I read, with my friend Edward Cowell, near on forty years ago: and I was so well pleased with it then (and now think it almost the best of the Persian Poems I have read or heard about), that I published my Version of it in 1856 (I think) with Parker of the Strand. When Parker disappeared, my unsold Copies, many more than of the sold, were returned to me; some of which, if not all, I gave to little Quaritch, who, I believe, trumpeted them off to some little profit: and I thought no more of them. But some six or seven years ago that Sheikh of mine, Edward Cowell, who liked the Version better than any one else, wished it to be re­ printed. So I took it in hand, boiled it down to three-fourths of what it originally was, and (as you see) clapt it on the back of Omar, where I still believed it would hang somewhat of a dead weight; but that was Quaritch's look-out, not mine. I have never heard of any notice taken of it, but just now from you: and I believe that, say what you would, people would rather the old Sinner alone. Therefore it is that I write

February 1882 all this to you. I doubt not that any of your Editors would accept an Article from you on the Subject, but I believe also they would much prefer one on many another Subject: and so probably will the Public whom you write for. Thus "liberavi animam meam"1 for your behoof, as I am rightly bound to do in return for your Goodwill to me. As to the publication of my name, I believe I could well dispense with it, were it other and better than it is. But I have some unpleasant associations with it: not the least of them being that it was borne, Chris­ tian and Surname, by a man who left College just when I went there. . . .2 What has become of him I know not: but he, among other causes, has made me dislike my name, and made me sign myself (half in fun, of course), to my friends, as now I do to you, sincerely yours (The Laird of) Littlegrange, where I date from. 1 "I

have delivered my soul." Marlborough Fitzgerald.

2 Edward

To H. S. Wilson [Woodbridge ] [February, 1882] My dear Sir,— You must entirely please yourself about Salaman: he cannot derive anything but good from what you are pleased to say in his favour: but I still think you might find a subject much fitter to interest your Read­ ers, and therefore to benefit the work'that does so. Might you satisfy your kind intentions by some by-way notice of S. in some Article otherwise devoted? I do not say that the little Book is not interesting in many respects, but I do not think it is of a kind to interest British readers, though it has interested me—and, it appears, you, among them. One thing I will note, though it may not affect your present liking, or your present purpose:—the Generation of Salaman in the original is effected by quite material, gross, and childish means; which certainly could (as I have altered it) have been managed through the Sage's magic EfiBcacy as well as other miracles wrought by him in the Story. I wonder Jami did not see this: but one cannot account for the childish

March 1882 short-comings of even the best Oriental Imagination. That is, of course, if little I be right. Oh, yes! As to your Vexations, The Spanish (rather childish also) say of them they prove they are cowards by coming in a host upon one: and one of their Proverbs runs—"Welcome, Misfortune, if you come alone." Yours truly, E.FG.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge [c. March 1,1882] My dear Lady, It is very kind of you to break through your rule of Correspondence, that you may tell me how it was with you that last Evening. I was aware of no "stupidity" on your side: I only saw that you were what you called "a little tired, and unwell." Had I known how much, I should of course have left you with a farewell shake of hands at once. And in so far I must blame you. But I blame myself for rattling on, not only then, but always, I fear, in a manner that you tell me (and I thank you for telling me) runs into occasional impertinence—which no length of acquaintance can excuse, especially to a Lady. You will think that here is more than enough of this. But pray do you also say no more about it. I know that you regard me very kindly, as I am sure that I do you, all the while. And now I have something to say upon something of a like account; about that Mr. Schiitz Wilson, who solicited an Introduction to you for his Mercutio, and then proposed to you to avail himself of it. That I thought he had better have waited for, rather than himself proposed; and I warned you that I had been told of his being somewhat of a "prosateur" at his Club. You, however, would not decline his visit, and would encourage him, or not, as you saw fit. And now the man has heaped coals of fire on my head. Not content with having formerly appraised that Omar in a way that, I dare say, advanced him to another Edition; he (S.W.) now writes me that he feels moved to write in favour of another Persian who now accompa­ nies Omar in his last Avatar! I have told him plainly that he had better not employ time and talent on what I do not think he will ever per-

March 1882 suade the Public to care about—but he thinks he will. He may very likely cool upon it: but in the meanwhile, such are his good Intentions, not only to the little Poem, but, I believe, to myself also—personally unknown as we are to one another. Therefore, my dear Lady, though I cannot retract what I told you on such authority as I had,—neverthe­ less, as you were so far prejudiced in his favour because of such service as he formerly was to me, I feel bound to tell you of this fresh offer on his part: so that, as you were not unwilling to receive him on trial before, you may not be less favourably disposed toward him now; in case he should call—which I doubt not he will do; though be pleased to understand that I have no more encouraged him to do so now than at first I did. What a long Story!—I still chirp a little in my throat; but go my ways abroad by Night as well as by Day: even sitting out, as only last night I did. The S.W. wind that is so mild, yet sweeps down my garden in a way that makes havoc of Crocus and Snowdrop; Messrs. Daffodil and Hyacinth stand up better against it. I hear that Lord Houghton has been partly paralysed: but is up again. Thompson, Master of Trinity, had a very slight attack of it some months ago; I was told Venables had been ill, but I know not of what, nor how much; and all these my contemporaries; and I, at any rate, still yours as ever E.FG.

To W. F. Pollock [Woodbridge ] [c. March 1,1882] My dear φρεΒερικος Πολλοκο?,1

"It is a fact" (Gurlyle) that I have been purposing to write to you for the last week: for the reason given in line 1 of this letter. I was so much interested in what I saw of Musurus Pasha in the Academy that I have bought his Dante: and there read as above: glad to read it, and what follows your name.2 Well merited. Your Version always seemed to me the best, though I still love some of Cary3—now ridiculed, I believe. As to those who try to follow Dante's verse without his double rhyme—"no go," and might be worse if they did follow it. I have not yet read much of the Pasha (eyes not permitting much Greek type), but I am afraid that I shall like modern Greek, stript of μιν and Se,

March 1882 better than Classic—for Dantesque uses, at any rate. If pronounced as we—and not modern Greeks themselves—pronounce the Language, it must be—the finest of all? Your Walter's letter I will answer to himself—I fear very unsatis­ factorily to him and to you. I positively know not where, or how, to begin any Records of WMT, such fragments as I do remember (except what have already been published by others) being what you yourself know as well as I—pieces of random Verse, Fun, etc., much of which I would not make public Gossip. I can only revert to what I first promised: that I will answer as well as I can any questions put to me; or look over, and annotate, any proof sent me, as I did in Mr. Trollope's case. MS I have not eyes for. I almost wish your Son had not under­ taken the job for Scribner, remembering Annie's telling me what her Father said not long before his Death. "When I drop let there be nothing written of me." Mr. Trollope (unto whom I wish you would make my respects) wrote his Book under Annie's eyes (who misin­ formed him in many ways), and, as your Walter is a Gentleman as well as Mr. T., I will do all for him I did for the other; and positively I can do no more. Only that I can lend him, or you, the two Sir R. de Coverley drawings WMT made when studying Painting in Paris— about 1834?—more characteristic of the French School of that day than of himself; but still specimens of what he could do in a graver way than Caricature. I gave Tennyson a very graceful pen-and-ink illustration by him of the Lord of Burleigh4 (probably lost long ago), and when Annie and her Publishers proposed a volume of his Draw­ ings some years ago, I advised them to show what he could do in another way than Caricature, of which no better specimens could be found than what [were] already published. But of course I was not listened to. This is all I can say, I think, on the matter; and, having written so much, I think I may as well ask you to show it to Walter by way of answer to him: though I shall write word to him that, had I taken him first, he would have had to deal vice versa with you. I saw and heard nothing of Public presentation, except just a turn through old Masters—which I seemed to have seen the like of many times before. But the tall figure of some English Soldier with a Halberd (I know not by whom), a Murillo Spanish Boy and Old Woman, and three Children by Hogarth remain in my memory. I wished to have heard a Wagner Opera: but I was only three nights in London, and they were otherwise occupied. Tennyson was, I heard, in London, but in too grand Quarters for me. I still hope that you believe that my

March 1882 not going to Montagu Square arises from no forgetfulness of the kind and pleasant welcome I ever found there and that I am as ever yours and Miladi's E.FG. "Frederick Pollock." In the preface to his Divine Comedy in Greek, the translator acknowledged the merits of Pollock's 1854 edition and stated that, for the most part, his notes were taken from Pollock's work. 3 Henry F. Cary, whose blank-verse translation, first published in 1814, has been the most popular English version of the classic. 4 Reproduced in the Tennyson Memoir, II, 104. 1

2

To Frederick Tennyson [Woodbridge] [March 5, 1882] My dear Frederick, A fortnight ago I was in London for three days: mainly to see my dear old Schoolfellow W. Donne, declining in Body and Mind: glad to see me, I believe. Two visits I paid to Mrs. Kemble: who told me that Alfred was in Town—in, or about, Eaton Square, I think: but, as she said not a word of Hallam's Engagement, I presume that it was not then settled, or, at any rate, not reported. For Mrs. K., though [she] does not see more of Alfred than a visit or two in the course of the year, lives among those who hear all about him. I had meant to hear some one opera of Wagner then playing at my old Opera House: but my three nights came and went without my doing so. I dare say I should not have stay'd out half—but then I could never do more with the finest Oratorio—but I should have heard The Music of the Future—sure to interest one in its orchestral expres­ sion, and if no Melody, none previously expected by me. How pretty of the severe old Contrapuntist Cherubini saying to some one who complained of Bellini's meagre accompaniments—"They are all and just what is wanted for his beautiful simple Airs." So when another found fault with Rossini's descent from fejy \"^ψ=\ to the Major SLjHr=Ep he said he only wished he himself could have hit on such an irregularity. (I am speaking of the 3rd and 4th lines of the Prayer in Moise, but I quote from Memory.) I have not yet quite lost my Cold, and you know how one used to hear that so it was with Old Age: and now we find it so. I was told

March 1882 that some Paper had reported that Lord Houghton had some attack of Paralysis at Athens. He had written to me some weeks ago that Thomp­ son, Master of Trinity, had had a slight attack of the same. So I heard from other quarters, but I also hear [he] is what they call recovered of it. Now the Sun shows his honest face I get more abroad, and have been sitting out under his blessed rays this very day, which People tell me is quite indiscreet. But I do not find the breath from Heaven direct nearly so trying as through a Keyhole. What do you think of the "Browning Society," of which here is a sample cut from the last Academy?1 Imagine a Man abetting all this! Mrs. Kemble says he does not abet, and admits there is a "grotesque side to it." But he supplied a Mr. Gosse with particulars of his early Life and Inspirations for an Ameri­ can Magazine2—which I will send you if I can find it. Born at Camberwell. I always said it could not be far from Bow Bells.3 I go on reading Memoirs, etc., as also Tait's Magazine, and the like —partly—mostly—through my Boy's Eyes. We have not yet done Nigel. Admirable in parts—bad in others—but I expect leaving the impression of a wonderful Creation on the whole. Now, my dear old Friend Frederick, I have not told you much in these two note-sheets. But I am, you see, drawing to the end of them, and have written enough for the present; and am now and always yours E.FG. 1

The report reads in part: Browning Society (Friday, Feb. 24) Mr. J. T. Nettleship read a paper on "Fifine at the Fair." . . . In the synopsis Mr. Nettleship gave the division of the poem into three heads—(1) What ought to be a married man's relations to other women than his wife; (2) what his relations to the world generally; (3) the use of these two relations towards achieving the highest form of love between husband and wife. The outcome of the whole Mr. Nettleship took to be that, from the lowest to the highest, each created being has its own individual perfection and a chance of dis­ playing it. . . . At the close of the discussion, the chairman dwelt strongly on the personal element in the poem; he thought that he could not dissociate it from the fact that Browning was united to perhaps the greatest woman who ever lived (The Academy—March 4, 1882, p. 161). 2 Scribners Monthly, Dec., 1881. See letter to F. Tennyson, Dec., 1881, n.l. 3 Cockney—one born within sound of the bells of St. Mary-Ie-Bow church.

March 1882

To C. Ε. Norton March 7, [1882] Mij dear Norton,

You will receive by Post a Volume of Translation of Dante's Inferno by Musurus Pasha into Modern Greek. I was so much interested in a quotation from it in our "Academy" that I bought it for myself, and subsequently thought that a copy might be acceptable to you, loving both Greek and Dante as you do.1 Had not I bidden the London Publishers to send it direct to you, I should have written your name and my own on the fly-leaf. But you can do [this] for us both. I have not as yet read much of it: for my Eyes are impatient of the Greek letter; but the Language comes out before me as the worthiest representative of the Italian: provided it be pronounced as we have learned to pronounce it, not as the modern Greek Man is said to do. I always maintain that a Language is apt to sound better from a Foreigner, who idealises the pronunciation. As to the structure of the language, I doubt that I may prefer the modern to the ancient because of being cleared of many μεν, Se, etc., particles. I think I shall send a Copy to Professor Goodwin. This is nearly all that I have to send across the Atlantic today, which reminds me that I have just been quoting (in a little thing I may send you), The fleecy Star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic Seas.2 What a Line! I still chirp a little in my throat. I forget if I told you how I had been three days in London to see my poor Friend: and no one else except Mrs. Kemble who is busy completing her new Book. It is, I think, worth your while to look at Dean Stanley's Volume of Bishop Thirlwall's Letters; nay, even Dean Perowne's earlier Volume, if but to show how the pedantic Boy grew into the large-hearted Man, and even Bishop: but, from the first, always sincere, just, and not pretentious. I remember him at Cambridge—he, Fellow and Tutor, and I under­ graduate: and he took a little fancy to me, I think. What can you think of the Browning Societies which flourish in America as in England, I believe. He told Mrs. Kemble that he was aware there was "a grotesque side to the thing": but he could not throw cold water on kind importunity, etc. I think Tennyson would—

March 1882 and very likely, may have done so in a like case. But he writes in a way that does not stand in need of Explanation. Yours always LittleG. 1 Norton had published a translation of the Vita Nuova in 1867 and initiated the founding of the Cambridge Dante Society in 1881. 2 Lines in Paradise Lost describing Satan's first view of creation:

Round he surveys . . . from eastern point Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas. Ill, 555-60 EFG included the lines when revising a passage relating to Tennyson for the 1882 Euphranor.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [March 30, 1882] My dear Wright, I much thank you—for yesterday's Letter, and Burns' verses; also for writing to Mr. Ainger about John DeSoyres, to such good effect; and for your Librarian's Letter acknowledging my little Present: for which Letter you must thank him! I know that I said that a word of acknowledgment was due for any such present: but I am ashamed at the grand Manifesto that Mr. Sinker has sent me. I should have been glad to supply Mr. Ainger with any EIia Notes; but I do not believe that I have one.1 He will annotate Roast Pig, of course, with that Letter to the Farmer who sent him a Sucker. The Athenaeum fancying that Carlyle's dislike of Lamb was owing to jealousy of a Brother Humourist!2 I have been quite surprized to find that Easter is so close at hand. You will be coming into these parts at the time, I suppose, and you know you will be welcome to this house in your way elsewhere: or to Lowestoft in case I should be there, which is just not impossible. I shall ask Arthur Charlesworth to either place. Charles Keene talked of coming for two or three days this Spring to meet Robert Groome: but as R.G. cannot be here at Easter, CK will perhaps defer till later. If you come, I advise you for your own sake to come from Holy Friday,

March 1882 etc., till the sacred days are past; with me more profanely than else­ where, you know. But if you come let me know as soon as you can: for we have to prepare. Yours LittleG. 1 EFG had sent three of his annotated books on Lamb to Alfred Ainger the previous October. He seems to refer here to specific information relating to Lamb's essays. 2 The reviewer of Ainger's Charles Lamb, 1882, had stated in the March 25 issue that "Carlyle's animosity against Lamb was simply that of a rival joker." The comment was prompted by one of Carlyle's many curt and caustic pen portraits of contemporaries.

To Fanny Kemble Little Grange, Woodbridge March 31, [1882] Dear Mrs. Kemble, It is not yet full Moon—but it is my 74th Birthday:1 and you are the only one whom I write to on that great occasion. A good Lady near here told me she meant to pay me a visit of congratulation: and I begged her to stay at home, and neither say, nor write, anything about it. I do not know that [I] have much to say to you now that I am inspired; but it occurred to me that you might be going away some­ where for Easter, and so I would try to get a word from you concerning yourself before you left London. The Book? "Ready immediately"2 advertised Bentley near a fort­ night ago: to-morrow's Academy or Athenaeum will perhaps be talk­ ing of it to-morrow: of all which you will not read a word, I "guess." I think you will get out of London for Easter, if but to get out of the way. Or are you too indifferent even for that? Satiated as you may have been with notices and records of Carlyle, do, nevertheless, look at Wylie's Book about him:3 if only for a Scotch Schoolboy's account of a Visit to him not long before he died, and also the words of his Bequest of Craigenputtoch to some Collegiate Foundation. Wylie (of whom I did not read all, or half) is a Wor­ shipper, but not a blind one. He says that Scotland is to be known as the "Land of Carlyle" from henceforward. One used to hear of the "Land of Burns"—then, I think, "of Scott."

April 1882 There is already a flush of Green, not only on the hedges, but on some of the trees; all things forwarder, I think, by six weeks than last year. Here is a Day for entering on seventy-four! But I do think, notwithstanding, that I am not much the better for it. The Cold I had before Christmas, returns, or lurks about me: and I cannot resolve on my usual out-of-door liberty. Enough of that. I suppose that I shall have some Company at Easter; my poor London Clerk, if he can find no more amusing place to go to for his short Holyday; probably Aldis Wright, who always comes into these parts at these Seasons—his "Nazione" being Beccles. Perhaps also a learned Nephew of mine— John De Soyres—now Professor of some History at Queens College, London, may look in. Did my Patron, Mr. Schiitz Wilson, ever call on you, up to this time? I dare say, not; for he may suppose you still out of London. And, though I have had a little correspondence with him since, I have not said a word about your return—nor about yourself. I saw in my Athenaeum or Academy that Mercutio did as usual.4 Have you seen the Play? I conclude (from not hearing otherwise from Mowbray) that his Father is much as when I saw him. I do not know if the Papers have reported anything more of Lord Houghton, and I have not heard of him from my few correspondents. But pray do you tell me a word about Mrs. Kemble; and beg her to believe me ever the same E.FG. 1

True, by EFG's chronology wherein the date of birth is the first birthday. Records of Later Life, 3 vols. 3 W. H. Wylie, Thomas Carlyle, the Man and His Books, 1881. 4 See letter to Fanny, Jan. 23, n.l. 2

To W. W. Goodwin [Woodbridge] April, 1882 Dear Professor Goodwin,

I ought to have sent a bit of Letter with the Dante I sent you—such at least would, I believe, have been the proper way. But you will excuse me, I know. Your kind acknowledgment reached me here while Aldis Wright was looking into his own parcel of Letters, just before

April 1882 going to breakfast: and we commented with satisfaction on its con­ tents. It was a pleasure to me that you did not revolt at the Pasha's Greek, which I am afraid I had preferred to the Classical, in respect of its going more direct to its purpose than when encumbered with expletive particles, as I take leave to think them. You hear somewhat more of all this when you go to Athens, which surely would be a good and agreeable step for you to take. Aldis Wright will probably be at Cambridge, or not far from it, in June, when you speak of revisiting England, and will be very glad if it should so fall out. He is just now employed in revising Ezekiel, and reading over some terrible dull Commentaries on Shakespeare's Henry VI, with a view to a new Edi­ tion of the "Cambridge Shakespeare." I was told of Mr. Longfellow's Death,1 and understand the sorrow you must feel for the loss of so amiable a Man. 1

March 24.

To Frederick Spalding [Woodbridge ] [April 11, 1882] Dear Spalding,

Thank you for your Birthday Greeting—a Ceremony which, I never­ theless think, is almost better forgotten at my time of life. But it is an old, and kindly, Custom. I do not quite shake off my Cold, and shall, I suppose, be more liable to it hereafter. But what wonderful weather! I see the little trees opposite my window perceptibly greener every morning. Mr. Woods persists in delaying to send the seeds of Annuals: but I am going to send for them today. My Hyacinths have been gay, though not so fine as last year: and I have some respectable single red Anemones—always favourites of mine. Aldis Wright has been spending his Easter here: and goes on to Beccles, where he is to examine and report on the Books and MSS of the late George Borrow at Oulton. I rather expect my erratic Nephew, John DeSoyres, here today. Neither I nor Wright went to the "Sports" in which I hear that young Phillips came well off. Remember me kindly to Mrs. Spalding and believe me yours, E.FG.

April 1882

To Η. S. WUson [Woodbridge] [Mid-April, 1882] My dear Sir, I am sorry that you have had your trouble in my behalf in vain: especially as I shall probably fare less well under Mr. Morley's other Contributor's hands than under yours.1 One comfort is that you have so much the pen of a ready writer that the Article has taken but little time—I wonder at your speed. Now, I will in return make a very small offer of service—which will probably be unavailable by you. Along with your Letter, I found on my table this morning an old Copy of a once very celebrated Book which I have looked for in Catalogues these thirty years, "Melmoth the Wanderer," by Charles Maturin2—a fable of Faust-like Diablerie, which had its effect on me and others more than fifty years ago: whether with any good reason, I have not yet begun to try. But one who fell with me then was Thackeray, when we both had just left College: and (as you may see in a Letter from him which Lewes introduced into his Life of Goethe) W.M.T. as early as 1830-1, when just returned from Weimar, was re­ minded of Melmoth's Eyes (q.v.) by those of old Goethe. After W.M.T.'s death I mentioned this to his Publishers, Smith & Elder, and asked them if it might not be worth their while to reprint this Melmoth in a shilling Railway Vol., with W.M.T.'s notice of it. S.&.E. or their Foreman of course politely said they would think of it, and of course did so no more. The upshot of this long Story is, that if you should feel a curiosity about the Book, or think it likely that something could be made of it, I will send it up unread to you: and am, with all thanks for your good offices, Yours truly, E.FG. 1

Wilson had proposed a review of Salaman and Absdl upon receiving the poem late in February. When John Morley, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, re­ jected the critique in favor of the "other contributor," Wilson sent it to Tinsley s Magazine where it was published in January, 1883. 2See letter to F. Tennyson, Feb. 6, 1845, n.12.

April 1882 To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge] [April, 1882] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

I scarce think, judging by my old Recorder the Moon, that it is a month since I last wrote to you. But not far off, neither. Be that as it may, just now I feel inclined to tell you that I lately heard from Hallam Tennyson by way of acknowledgment of the Programme of a Recital of his Father's verse at Ipswich, by a quondam Tailor there. This, as you may imagine, I did for fun, such as it was. But Hallam replies, without much reference to the Reading: but to tell me how his Father had a fit of Gout in his hand while he was in London: and therefore it was that he had not called on you as he had intended. Think of my dear old Fellow with the Gouti In consequence of which he was forbidden his daily allowance of Port (if I read Hallam's scrawl aright), which, therefore, the Old Boy had stuck to like a fine Fellow with a constancy which few modern Britons can boast of. This re­ minded me that when I was on my last visit to him, Isle of Wight, 1854, he stuck to his Port (I do not mean too much) and asked me, who might be drinking Sherry, if I did not see that his was "the best Beast of the two." So he has remained true to his old Will Waterproof Colours1—and so he was prevented from calling on you—his hand, Hallam says, swelled up like "a great Sponge." Ah, if he did not live on a somewhat large scale, with perpetual Visitors, I might go once more to see him. Now, you will, I know, answer me (unless your hand be like his!) and then you will tell me how you are, and how your Party whom you were expecting at Leamington when last you wrote. I take for granted they arrived safe, in spite of the Wind that a little alarmed you at the time of your writing. And now, in another month, you will be starting to meet your American Family in Switzerland, if the Scheme you told me of still hold—with them, I mean. So, by the Moon's law, I shall write to you once again before you leave, and you—will once more answer! I shall say thus much of myself, that I do not shake off the Cold and Cough that I have had, off and on, these four months: I certainly feel as if some of the internal timbers were shaken; which is not to be wondered at, norcomplained of. Tell me how you fare; and believe me Your sincere as ancient Littlegrange.

May 1882 I now fancy that it must be Bentley who delays your Book, till Ballantine & Co. have blown over.2 1 "Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue," an early poem; a delightful blend of reminiscence, fantasy, and fun. 2 Serjeant William Ballentine's Experiences of a Barrister's Life, published in March.

To W. A. Wright Lowestoft May 7/82 My dear Wright, I wrote exactly as you bid me to Mr. Spalding on May 2: and I now enclose you his Answer. I fancy that he assumes that I am still a Member of the Society. When I hear further from him, or Secretary, I will let you know, and then you will direct me further. I came here last Tuesday, and shall return home tomorrow or the day after. On Thursday I spent five hours with my dear old Crowfoot who will set out on Wednesday next with Sister and Daughter [for] the South Coast for a month. He has for two months felt his Heart weakened, not pained: and believes it is the "Beginning of the End" —which I do not gainsay, and which he is quite resigned to, if so it is to be. I too am taking some medicine which, whatever effect it has on me, leaves an indelible mark on Mahogany: for (of course) I spilled a lot on my Landlady's Chiffonier, and found her this morning rubbing at the Damned Spot with Turpentine, and in vain. I have not been to see Mrs. Micawber,1 nor shall I do so, if only for fear of calling her so, now that I have gotten the notion into my head. A Post Card from Mrs. Edwards this morning received tells me that "Old Joe," our Landlord at Dunwich died in a few minutes of a broken blood vessel a few days ago. What! Another Contemporary! The enclosed has been returned to me by the Master, who may, or may not, have shown it to you. Anyway—I do not want it back. Yours always—no, temporarily 9 Marine Terrace Lowestoft 1

Mrs Macoubrey, Borrow's stepdaughter.

May 1882

To W. A. Wright 9 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft May 9, [1882] My dear Wright, The enclosed will, I hope, relieve you from any further trouble in this S.S.1 matter. Surely there must have been a Division in the Camp, with this change of Officers. I was to have gone home today; but Worthington wishes me to stay, at any rate, till the week's end, by which time he thinks to remove what he calls "a Crepitation" in one lung, by help of the Medicine which proved its power on the mahogany. Yesterday came a Cabinet­ maker who was for more than half an hour employed in restoring that to its sound and pristine health or such as I hope my Landlady will be satisfied with. A card from G. Crabbe dated Madrid is forwarded to me this morning; and I am to reply by way of Post Restante, Paris. Of course, Pictures fine at Madrid, and the weather detestable: Cathedral at Burgos, etc., what one knew very well before. He says he is glad to have seen that much of Spain, in despite of many inconveniences. Yours, One of the Assassins 1

Of the New Shakspere Society, previously referred to as "S.S."

To Anne Thackeray Ritchie Little Grange, Woodbridge May 17/82 My dear Annie Tfi Ritchie, (You see what I was beginning to write.) You know there is no use in sorrowing for past affliction, or hoping for better things—no use in talking of it, at any rate: for one takes for granted that one's friends are sorry and hopeful for us without our telling them so, and one cannot mend matters, past or to come, with all our wishes. So, I, believing that you believe in mine, I will say no more on that head. As to the direct object of your Letter—some little Record from me of my dear old Alfred. I can tell you nothing of his College Days; for I did not know him till they were over, though I had seen him two or three times before.

May 1882 I remember him well—a sort of Hyperion with a long pipe in his mouth (but don't quote that—not worth the quoting, to be sure). And when I think of my after intimacy with him—why, I shouldn't know where to begin, or how to go on! It is like, about your Father. I was asked lately to furnish something in the same way about him to one who would have made no bad use of it, who wanted to draw up some Notice of him for an American Review, or Magazine. But I replied that I could not meddle further than correcting any errors I could see in any article that he would send me. Since which I have heard no more of it. This was all I could do for Mr. Trollope, who indeed scarcely asked for more. Indeed, I advised my last Enquirer to leave the matter alone altogether: believing that quite as much had been already published about your Father as he would have wished—nay, and more—remembering always what you told me of his desiring that no Biography of him should be written. Alfred T., it appears, is not so scrupulous; but, for the reason I gave at first, I could not sit down to record what I remember, though I doubt not I could rake up much that would interest an American Public. But then might he like what one recorded, supposing one did record? And yet, at the same time, I am actually about to send Hallam something I have printed about his Father—though not for publica­ tion; and not even for the Friends it is intended for, if he forbids. As it is all meant to be in his honour I cannot ask him if he approves: but only, if he forbids. (How italic I become!) If he does not forbid, he can shew you—or I will send you—what I have done. It is a "rechauffee" of a forty year old little thing— "rechaufiFeed" partly for the purpose of leaving my last little tribute to him—the dear, grand, old Boy! But he must be asked.1 And Hallam must tell me, yes or no: nay, as Hallam has plenty of other Cor­ respondence to attend to, I shall accept his Silence (as I shall tell him) if not for Consent, at any rate, not for Prohibition and—dispense my little tract accordingly. "Voila!" et "parlons d'autres chose." You know who often says so—especially when having to talk of Self. By the way, why do you write that Charles Sevigne had "disgraced himself?" I know of nothing further than that when he came home "clopin— clopant" (is it?) from the Wars, the King spoke of him and some of his Comrades as liking to dally in Paris when they should be off to the Wars again: and poor Charles did go off—in a litter. And I have just room to write myself always yours E.FG.

May 1882 I suppose "Young Street" means your old Young Street in Kensing­ ton.2 1 Anne quoted passages from the 1882 Euphranor in "Alfred Tennyson," pub­ lished in Harper's Magazine, Dec., 1883, six months after EFG's death. Her reminiscences of Tennyson are factually unreliable. 2 Thackeray was living in Young Street when he died in 1863.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [May 22,1882] My dear Wright,

I am glad the notice of that Landscape Annual came timely to you: I should say, hope that it does so. As also with Wesley. I admire your loyalty to your Uncle's Work and Memory. "Pietas et prisca fides."1 I do not yet know who succeeds old Joe as Mace-bearer at Dunwich: but no doubt you are already sufficiently known there to make sure of his good offices, should you need them. (Here begins a Pen cut by my Reader with that infernal Machine.) The "Prelude"2 will be very welcome anyway; perhaps you will be coming this way yourself ere long, and can bring it, or make the Professor do so if he persists in going to Lowestoft during these N.E. winds. I want the Poem—the Cumberland part of it—for my dear old Spedding; and had wanted a passage in it for myself. Anyhow, and anyway, I shall be very glad of it. I thought it well to offer Froude the sight of Carlyle's Naseby and Squire Letters—saying that I supposed they would be of no use to him except for a transitory mention: and saying nothing of his own share in the Business up to this time. Indeed, I have not yet read his two new Volumes,3 which I have from Mudie. Froude wrote me back a very civil letter, which, having to write to your Master, I have enclosed to him, with injunctions to pass it on to you. For, though, as I tell you, I did not even advert to Reminiscences, Biographies, etc., there is an air of quasi-ApoZogy for what he has done, and an explana­ tion of what he yet means to do. I suppose he has written as much and more to more considerable people than myself; but thus much he has done to me very civilly. C. Keene comes here on Thursday—"as he purposes"—and I hope

May 1882 R. Groome will come over to meet him on Whitmonday. If you be this way coming, I can give you all but Bed: and am always yours LittleG. What do you think of the two enclosed paragraphs from two con­ secutive Athenaeums? Keep them for me if you do not send them. There seems to me a good bit about Hebenon in last Academy,4 by a practical, not aesthetical Doctor. 1

"Devotion and old-time loyalty" Aeneid 6.878. long autobiographical poem tracing "the growth of a poet's mind." s Thomas Carlyle. "A History . . . of His Life, 1795-1835," 2 vols., 1882. 4 The digest of a paper read to the New Shakspere Society by R. W. Harrison, a physician, in which "the juice of cursed hebenon," used to murder Hamlet's father (1.5.61-62), is identified as a poison extracted from the yew (Academy, May 20, 1882, p. 364). 2 Wordsworth's

To Hallam Tennyson Woodbridge May 28, [1882] My dear Hallam, I believe I ought to be ashamed of reviving the little thing which accompanies this Letter. My excuse must be that I have often been asked for a copy when I had no more to give; and a visit to Cambridge last Summer, to the old familiar places, if not faces, made me take it up once more and turn it into what you now see.1 I should certainly not send a copy to you, or yours, but for what relates to your Father in it. He did not object, so far as I know, to what I said of him, though not by name, in a former Edition; but there is more of him in this, though still not by name, nor, as you see, intended for publication. All of this you can read to him, if you please, at pp. 25 and 56.21 do not ask him to say that he approves of what is said, or meant to be said, in his honour; and I only ask you to tell me if he disapproves of it going any further. I owed you a letter in return for the kind one you sent me; and, if I do not hear from you to the contrary, I shall take silence, if not for consent, at least not for prohibition. I really did and do wish my first, which is also my last, little work to record, for a few years at least, my love and admiration for that dear old Fellow, my old Friend.

May 1882 Ah, if you, all of you, were living out of the reach of many guests, at Locksley Hall even,31 might answer your kind invitations in person. I tell my dear old Frederick that, if ever I cross the Seas again, it will be to visit him, but I am not the less grateful to you and yours for your thought of me, being ever yours and theirs E.FG.4 1 The revised Euphranor page proof, it appears, for he sent a bound copy later. Visits to Cambridge during the late 1840's had originally spurred EFG to write the dialogue first published in 1851; second edition, 1855. See the para­ graph on CarIyIe in the letter to Norton, Aug. 5, 1881. 2 In Letters and Literary Remains, VI, 208-09, a new passage beginning, "Nevertheless, I have heard tell"; and pp. 246-47, "As unremembered it might have been," an 1855 passage altered and expanded. 3 The setting of Tennyson's well-known poem. This paragraph was deleted by Wright. 4 The original of this letter was not found. It is taken from three sources: a faulty longhand copy among the Tennyson MS letters; the Tennyson Memoir, II, 272-73, also faulty; and from the part of the letter which Wright published, IV, 260. Wright obviously saw the original, for he has transcribed differently.

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge] Whitmonday [May 29, 1882] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

Not full moon yet, but Whitsun the 29th of May, and you told me of your expecting to be in Switzerland. And when once you get there, it is all over with full moons as far as my correspondence with you is concerned. I heard from Mowbray that his Father had been all but lost to him; but had partially recovered. Not for long, I suppose: nor need I hope; and this is all I will say to you on this subject. I have now Charles Keene staying Whitsuntide with me,1 and was to have had Archdeacon Groome to meet him; but he is worn out with Archidiaconal Charges, and so cannot come. But C.K. and I have been out in Carriage to the Sea, and no visitor, nor host, could wish for finer weather. But this of our dear Donne over-clouds me a little, as I doubt not it does you. Mowbray was to have come down for three days just now to a Friend five miles off: but of course—you know.

June 1882 Somehow I am at a loss to write to you on such airy topics as usual. Therefore, I shall simply ask you to let me know, in as few lines as you care to write, when you leave England: and to believe me, wher­ ever you go, Your sincere Ancient E.FG. 1

From May 25 to June 2.

To Horace Basham Little Grange: Woodbridge June 3, [1882] Dear Horace Basham, I enclose what I hope amounts to 2s. a week for James Fisher till New Year, 1883. I think it will not be long before I am over at Aldbro' again: And am yours always E.FG. Please to Endorse Card "Received." H.B.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] Sunday [June 4,1882] My dear Wright, I asked your Master (as I believe I told you) to hand over to you Froude's letter.1 If he has done so, please to return it to me. I have sent such Carlyle papers as I have, to use or not as he pleases. Charles Keene came here on Thursday before Whitsun; and left me two days ago. We went by carriage on several days to Aldeburgh (where he saw what remains of the ancient Dane dug up on Snape heath),2 to Orford, and to Shingle Street—which is no misnomer. Robert Groome was to have come to us on Whit-monday: but, besides being over-charged, his Daughter turned ill of Measles, so we lost his good company. But Charles Keene was happy enough with his pipe, of Tobacco, and musical:3 and the great Captain4 came to discuss a

June 1882 new American Book of 500 octavo pages on Waterloo which he had lent me, and thought rather indispensable for a Student in that matter. To me—non-military (as the Author also is)—it told nothing that I had not understood better elsewhere: and was certainly stuffed with Foot­ notes from Thiers, Hugo, Byron, and Scott, etc., to at least onethird more than was needful, even to the Soldier. My two Lowestoft Nieces come here tomorrow. I hear no more of Cowell's moving to Lowestoft for the fortnight of Sea breeze he pro­ posed. G. Crabbe is back in England and invites me to meet his Sisters at Merton on the 12th. Ever yours E.FG. My dear Donne was given over by the Doctor some ten days ago; but has since rallied—to go through the trial again! My neighbour Miss Bland tells me she read something in the Paper about the Spedding Medallion. 1

Of May 19. an Anglo-Saxon ship-burial tumulus near Aldeburgh opened in 1862. First assumed to be of Danish origin, it has subsequently been dated mid-seventh century, thus being earlier than the craft of the Norse invasions by more than a century. 3 Playing bagpipes was among Keene's many and diverse avocations. "Keene has a theory that we open our mouths too much," EFG told Archdeacon Groome, "but whether he bottles up his wind to play the bagpipes, or whether he plays the bagpipes to get rid of his bottled-up wind, I do not know." 4 F. C. Brooke of Ufford. 2 In

To Hallam Tennyson [Woodbridge ] [June, 1882] My dear Hallam,

I must write once more to thank you and yours for your renewed invitation. Ah, I do not know if I should go were there no impediments in the way: but just now there are. My Nieces are just come to me for their yearly visit: and I have to leave them for a week on Thursday for the one visit which I have made for some years—to meet my old Friends the Misses Crabbes (my Poet's Grand-daughters) at their Brother's in Norfolk. If they would but come to my house here, as I have repeatedly asked them to do, I should not go for the one Visit

June 1882 elsewhere: but they won't come so near to their Father's old Vicarage which they had to leave thirty years ago: and so I must look for them at their Brother's. I have already taken advantage of your Father's license to send Copies of my "petite brochure" to six persons who had wished for it. Will you tell your Mother that I shall one day send her one bound— in Green? For, if your Father does not disapprove, I rely upon it that she will be pleased. And I have had the page relating to him reprinted with its written corrections, so as to read glibly. And this will be an end of my KttIe Authorship.1 I have just finished Miss Caroline Fox's Book: a good as well as accomplished Woman. She talks of your Father's "grey eyes" after being some time in his Company: and of Thackeray's "sparkling" ditto! Come: Paddy as I am, I am more accurate than that: and, I am sure, yours, and all all yours, Sincerely E.FG. I sent a Copy to Anne Ritchie who asked me if I could help her with some recollections of your Father, which I knew not how to set about. Frederick looks on me as too scoffing for his Brain waves, etc. N.B. You see this letter calls for no reply. 1 Friends of Tennyson recorded that he admired and praised Euphranor. The dialogue, Platonic in form, successfully maintains the qualities of discourse, banter, and dispassionate debate.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge June 9/82 My dear Norton, I told you, I think—but I scarce know when—that I would send you a very little Tract of mine written forty years ago; and reformed into its present shape in consequence of copies being askt for when I had none to give. So a few days at Cambridge last Summer, among the old places, though not faces, set me off. "Et voila qui est fait," and posted to you along with this Letter, together with a Copy for Professor Goodwin. The first and last of my little Works: and I do think a pretty specimen of "chisell'd Cherrystone." Having which opinion myself, I more than ever deprecate any word of praise from any to whom I

June 1882 send it. Nay, I even assume beforehand that you will like it too: and Professor Goodwin also (so do not let him write): as my little tribute to my own old Cambridge sent to you in your new. I think I shall send it to Mr. Lowell too. So you see that I need no compliment—no, nor even acknowledgment of it. But did you receive the Musurus Pasha Dante I sent you? Which I ask not by way of complaint in case you received, and did not acknowl­ edge—for one knows how many things may fall out to prevent any such ceremony! I simply want you to know, if it did not reach you, that send it I did. Enough of all my contributions whether of self—or Dante! So far at least you are convinced. For I sent all my Carlyle Letters and Papers (which you saw) to Froude whom I had never seen—or corresponded with; leaving him to use them or not as he saw good. His answer was very courteous, and, I think, rather curious;1 telling me that all his object is to execute Carlyle's request, and bequest, in editing Mrs. C's Letters, prepared by C. himself for publication, and toward which Froude's preliminary volumes are meant as an Introduction; that when that is accomplisht, he will add a Volume of personal Recollections of C. since he knew him in later years. "Et voila tout." That had he (Froude) been left unincumbered, he should have preferred "attempt­ ing" a general Biography of the Man, "leaving his domestic history untouched except on the outside." But, as it is, F. can only leave "materials" for some other to work up. He says moreover that he by no means sought the task, which indeed was not welcome to him, when he looked through the papers committed to him, and saw "what a difficult task it was." But C. wished him to undertake it, etc. All this looks somewhat like a vindication; and, being written to me, who had said not one word on the subject, I suppose has been written also to more considerable and influential persons than myself. All this I think will interest you. I read C's Irish [Journey] in your "Century,"2 and am rather relieved to find some Irish Cousins of mine, to whom I gave him a letter of Introduction, let off easily enough.3 What an unique figure in Literary History will T.C. stand! Somewhat of a Sphinx, I think. And now here is enough written. And yet I will enclose some pretty Verses, some twenty years old, which I sent to "Temple Bar,"4 which repaid me (as I deserved) with a dozen copies. And I am always truly yours Littlegrange the Laird Longfellow and Emerson!5

June 1882 1

See Froude's letter, May 19. Reminiscences of My Irish Journey in 1849, published by Froude later in 1882, had appeared in the Century Magazine, May-July, as "Carlyle in Ireland." 3 See letter from Carlyle, July 10, 1849. 4 "Virgil's Garden," April, 1882, p. 597; Letters and Literary Remains, VII, 329-31. 5 Longfellow died March 24, Emerson, April 27. 2

To Frederick Tennyson [Woodbridge] [June 15,1882] My dear Frederick, As I am the more letter-writing, I believe, of us two, you ought to have had a word from me before yours reached me two days ago. But, as you guess, I have but little to tell you. Tomorrow I am going for my single yearly visit abroad: to G. Crabbe's in Norfolk, where I annually meet his Sisters, whom I cannot persuade to come and visit me here. They do not like coming so near to their Father's (not the Poet, but the Poet's son) Vicarage some two and a half miles off here. So I must go to them: for they like to see their Father's old friend. With this letter I shall post you a paper on our dear old Rossini cut out from Temple Bar.1 And this you shall return to me, if you please —to be bound up perhaps with other such papers (which I then call "My Works") by some Niece perhaps, when "the Author" has van­ ished. Many such works have I made: but I do not expect to complete another Octavo: which takes some time accumulating. You have heard more of Wagner than I: who, indeed, have heard but one piece (not the March) from Tannhauser, played by the Brass Band on Lowestoft Pier. But the Master of the Band—a German, and skilful Musician—is dead, and his John Bull successor is probably not equal to such elaborate and complicated Music: and I do not know if I could Ksten to him of an Evening as formerly, my bronchial Cold never out of call when Colds or Damp are abroad. Heu quantum mutatus, etc.2 But few have less reason to complain. As you say nothing of the rheumatic affection you told me of before, I hope you are doing tolerably well, according to our time of life. Your Nephew Hallam, who has been very kindly inviting me to Farringford, tells me that you have been sending them some Books of a mystical Nature. He supposes that you have sent a Copy to me; I quite understand that you would have done so had you not known me to be

June 1882 too much of a Sceptic in such matters—or, say rather, too incapable of them. Think of Alfred with the Gout: his hand swelled up like a great Sponge. And so the "Port" had to be discontinued. This, however, was some months ago; and, as I hear nothing about it now, I suppose that his hand has subsided, and all right with him again. I suppose also that he and Hallam will ere long be setting off on some Excursion. We have had Winds and Winds, though not so high as in your S.W. from which they blow. I heard that some May gales had stript the young leaves off in the Wight: and even about Brighton there was the strange sight of new Birds' nests built up among leafless branches. Our leafage was not so forward; and the Wind had somewhat ex­ hausted itself, I suppose, before it reached us. And I am, my dear Frederick, As ever yours E.FG. 1

"Rossini," June, 1882, pp. 176-92. how changedl"

2 "Alas,

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge June 22182 Dear Sir,

On returning home yesterday I found your packet of Don Antonio de Trueba:1 and the Enclosed Bill which you doubtless understand, but I do not. Please to let me know what it amounts to in Pounds Shillings and Pence: and believe me yours, E. FitzGerald 1

Antonio de Trueba (1819-89), Spanish novelist.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge June 24, [1882] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

You wrote me-that you had bidden Blanche to let you know about her Father: and this I conclude that she, or some of her family have done. Nevertheless, I will make assurance doubly sure by enclosing

June 1882 you the letters I received from Mowbray, according to their dates: and will send them—for once—through Coutts, in hopes that he may find you, as you will not allow me to do without his help. Of that Death1 I say nothing: as you may expect of me, and as I should expect of you also; if I may say so. I have been to pay my annual Visit to George Crabbe and his Sisters in Norfolk. And here is warm weather come to us at last (as not unusual after the Longest day), and I have almost parted with my Bronchial Cold—though, as in the old Loving Device of the open Scissors, "To meet again." I can only wonder it is no worse with me, considering how my contemporaries have been afflicted. I am now reading Froude's Carlyle, which seems to me well done. Insomuch, that I sent him all the Letters I had kept of Carlyle's, to use or not as he pleased, etc. I do not think they will be needed among the thousand others he has: especially as he tells me that his sole commission is, to edit Mrs. Carlyle's Letters, for which what he has already done is preparatory: and when this is completed, he will add a Volume of personal Recollections of C. himself. Froude's Letter to me is a curious one: a sort of vindication (it seems to me) of himself— quite uncalled for by me, who did not say one word on the subject. The job, he says, was forced upon him: "a hard problem"—No doubt —But he might have left the Reminiscences unpublisht, except what related to Mrs. C.—in spite of Carlyle's oral injunction which reversed his written. Enough of all this! Why will you not "initiate" a letter when you are settled for a while among your Mountains? Oh, ye Medes and Persians!2 This may be impertinent of me: but I am ever yours sincerely E.FG. I see your Book advertised as "ready." 1 2

W. B. Donne had died June 20. Mrs. Kemble's rules of correspondence. See letter of July 4, [1871], n.2.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge June 25, [1882] My dear Wright, I went to Merton on Friday week: met George's two Sisters there: and returned home on the Wensday following. George still goes on

June 1882 rummaging Walsingham MSS:1 I do not know that he has discovered any of much interest: but you will, I hope, know about all this from himself before the year is over. He looked well, and was well pleased with his Spanish journey. I do not know if I wrote you of my accompanying Keene to Ipswich on his way to London: of our finding at Mason's shop that he was ill at his "River-view" House, which we could not get into. Since that he has been growing worse and worse—paralysis—and a note from his Daughter sent me from Mrs. Edwards this morning says that he is sinking.2 Paralysis has been much at work with my friends this year: I wonder that (up to the present time) I have myself only to complain of that Bronchial Cold which still gives intimations that it will return in its Season. Cowell came over Yesterday from Ipswich (where Elizabeth also was) and spent a pleasant Afternoon. He came partly to settle about a Fortnight at Lowestoft. But I cannot go with him, as I have Nieces here who will indeed be leaving me before another fortnight is out, I dare say: but I also wish to be here when my poor Nursey Friends— viz, Marietta and Mrs. Kettle, who have lately lost Cora—come into the neighborhood, and may come to me. So Cowell will return to Cambridge on Thursday: and early in the week after will go to Llandudlo3 (?) for a Fortnight: then back to Cambridge, for hard work, he says: and in the later part of August go for his principal Holyday—whether to Cumberland, or Wales again. He tells me that he saw your Master at some Ceremony looking much better. I suppose that he is gone from Cambridge by this time. C. Keene has had his ten remaining teeth-stumps taken out—in one minute4—under the influence of some anaesthetic; and he is now abid­ ing the Time of a new set of "Dominoes," he calls them, and making "more or less mendacious Excuses" for declining Invitations to Dinner. But you will see by the enclosed (if you care to decypher it) that he is not unoccupied in other respects. I do not want it back. You must, I think, have got over a good deal of work since Vacation began. And soon coming into Suffolk? You know I shall be very glad to see you here at any time, but cannot give you a Bed in my house. Always yours Littlegrange 1 Merton was a seat of the Walsingham family, one member of which, Francis, was a major diplomat and statesman under Queen Elizabeth. 2 William Mason, antique dealer, died the following day. 3 Llandudno.

June 1882 4 Keene probably reported to EFG as he had to another friend in a letter of June 9: "By-the-by, I've stepped suddenly into age! Having put it off for years. . . . I've given in and been to a dentist. . . . He comfortably suffocated me for about a minute, and when I came to I found myself without a tusk in my jaws. About nine or ten there were, I believe. . . . It was a match against time, and he had won!" (Life and Letters of Keene, pp. 333-34).

To Frederick Spalding [Woodbridge] Thursday [June 29,1882] Dear Spalding, I am much obliged to you for offering me the Bailey back again:1 but, in the first place, I could not think of such a thing in any case: and secondly this is the case of a Thing I should not keep, but (as I believe I told you) give it to Cambridge, or British Museum. I wish you to sell it for the best Price you can get for it; as surely the Money must be of some consideration to you, and you must have other things to remember me by. Therefore by no means send or bring the Book here—unless it be to take Aldis Wright's advice about its worth: I do not know of his coming at present, but will, if you choose, let you know when I hear of such a thing. In the meanwhile I wish you to ask any other competent Judge on the Subject: and, above all, to question the Librarian of the British Museum; stating all the particulars, and offering to send the Book for Inspection. Friday After writing what is above I doubted whether I ought to advise you to sell anything that formerly belonged to you. I have asked . . . ,2 who thinks that such Property, if not purposely retained to sell, may be sold after this lapse of Time, for your own behoof. Excuse my saying and doing this: it was a Case of Conscience—which I must leave you to settle. Yours E.FG. 1

See letter to Quaritch immediately following that to Wright, [July 1], A name blotted out; beyond question that of George Moor, EFG's friend and solicitor. The Friday addendum clearly suggests that Spalding's business venture at Melton had ended in bankruptcy when it was closed in 1876. However, no report of such an action was found in files of the Ipswich Journal. 2

July 1882

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [July 1, 1882] Charles Keene sends me a Sotheby & Co. Catalogue of the Sale of Books once belonging to Revd Mr. Collett of Hawstead containing many Prints of Places, etc., among which your Mr. Heigham may figure. Sale from July 14 to 17. I would send you the Catalogue: but C.K. wants it back: I know not if he can send you another. He would bid for you if he happened to be there at the time. 239 King's Road, Chelsea. Littlegrange

To Bernard Quaritch [Woodbridge] [July, 1882] My dear Sir, A friend of mine to whom money is now more valuable than Books wants to sell a Folio Copy of Bailey s Dictionary 1730 on the Title page of which is the Autograph of "W. Pitt." In this Autograph the value of the Book relies: and for that it is remarkable, inasmuch as it is recorded by Charles Butler quoted in Timbs Anecdote Biography p. 7 that "Lord C. had twice read it from beginning to end" and Lord Holland tells the same story to T. Moore1—in his Diary, July 25, 1819. Whether in either of these Books or elsewhere, it is said that Bailey was one of the two Books—Bailey and Spenser's Fairy Queen—that he had drawn his command of good vernacular English; his reading not having been very extensive while he was the "terrible Cornet" of Dragoons. This it is which makes Book and Autograph of peculiar value, and I wish you could give the owner a fair price for it. Yours truly, E. FitzGerald You will see that the Book was given by me to the present owner:2 and he, as I said, wants money more than Books now, and I wish him to sell my present. 1WilIiam

Pitt, The Elder, Lord Chatham (1708-78). Charles Butler (1750-

July 1882 1832), jurist, friend of Thomas Moore (1799-1852), Irish poet. Henry R. Fox Holland, third Baron (1773-1840). 2 Spalding had offered to return the gift to EFG the previous September.

To W. F. Pollock OW Take your Time\

Woodbridge [July, 1882]

My dear Pollock,

I should have written to you before this, but that I am always afraid lest my letters, which have nothing to tell should seem written mainly for the purpose of getting something told me by others who live in the World, and have plenty to do without having to write to me about it. So, I take it very kind of you to volunteer a Letter, and am very glad to see your MS again. And you too have been out of sorts in this Year that somehow hits us Supra-Septuagenaries? Dear Donne was stricken long before: Blakesley, who very kindly wrote me two letters about him, told me that he himself had been consulting some London Surgeon, who had done him good; I should have been glad to hear that Lord Houghton was better, as Thompson, I am told, has lately been. For myself, I have not thrown off the bronchial Cold which attacked me before Xmas; liable, I find, to catch Cold and begin wheezing even in this Summer weather—such as it is—and doubtless destined to fall ill of it again, when Winter comes again. All this seems a doleful topic to talk of in a half-yearly letter; I judge that you have been suffering rather from languor than from any specific disease; and (in spite of the proverbial benevolence of Friends) I can sincerely say that I hope so. Mowbray Donne sent me a "Saturday" with that Article on Donne— much like others of the sort.1 Blanche will, I suppose, live either [with] Valentia or Mowbray. She may well console herself with all her pious care of her Father. I hope that neither you, nor your Walter, attributed my inactivity about Thackeray, etc., to Indolence, or want of Will. I had to make the same Apology to Annie Ritchie, who, some two months ago, asked me to supply her with some recollections of our Laureate, of whom she was asked to write a Paper in some American Magazine—I suppose the same Magazine as Walter's. I told her, I should not know where

July 1882 to begin—or how—and, as to any question of fact (in which she is not very accurate) the Poet, and his Son, were alive to give her better information than I could do. She seemed to write in great distress about some—"Margaret," I think—who had died—a Daughter of Mrs. Brookfield?—and her Letter seemed to me bewildered. I have bought, but have not yet half read, Mrs. Kemble's new Book;2 which I find—as she fore-warned me I should—far less interesting than its predecessor. Except for financial reasons, I think she had better have said no more—so far as I have gone. The Book which has really, and deeply, interested me—and quite against Expectation—is Froude's Carlyle Biography;3 which has (quite contrary to expectation also) not only made me honour Carlyle more, but even love him, which I had never taken into account before. Had not those "Reminiscences"4 preceded the Biography, I believe others—Critics and Public—would have been of my mind. But those Reminiscences—half madly set down, and (unless with a financial pur­ pose) quite inexcusably published by Froude, have poisoned all— for a time. In the Biography, Froude seems to me to treat his man with Candour and Justice: even a little too severe in attributing to systematic Selfishness what seems to me rather unreflecting neglect, Carlyle's relations to his Wife, whom so far as we read, he loved. Of his Love for his own Family, his Generosity to them, and his own sturdy refusal of help from others, one cannot doubt. This is a long rigmarole about what you know as well as I, if not better. However, the upshot of the Biography on me was, that I offered Froude such letters as I had of Carlyle's, though I said they would probably be of no use to him. Nor can they, according to the scheme of his Book: which is simply, he says, to carry out Carlyle's own desire—viz, the publication of her letters. Insomuch that these two Volumes already published, are supposed (though I do not quite see why) to be a necessary preliminary to that purpose. Which when completed, Froude says that he shall add a Volume of his own per­ sonal Intercourse with T.C. in later years, and so make an end. Froude's Answer was curious to me: I had not said one word about Reminiscences or Biography: but he writes something like a vindica­ tion of his method of proceeding (though not specifying either Book) saying that the office was never welcome to him: was indeed forced upon him. As he volunteered so much to me, I cannot doubt that he must have said as much, and more, to others whose opinion was far more worth conciliating, both on private and public grounds. You did not expect such a "Hearing" from me in reply to your

July 1882 Letter. As you do not say anything of Lady Pollock's health, I will assume that she is well; please to give her my kind Regards; and do you believe me yours of old, E.FG. P.S. I have not seen Woolner's J.S.5 1

W. B. Donne obituary, The Saturday Review, July 1, 1882, pp. 12-14. Records of Later Life, 3 vols., 1882. 3 This paragraph and a portion of that following, dated "Woodbridge. [1882]," are included in Letters and Literary Remains, IV, 284. 4See letter to Norton, March 13, 1881, n.l. 5The marble medallion of Spedding executed for the ante-chapel at Trinity. 2

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge July 13/82 My dear Norton,

Here is a speedy reply to your kind Letter. For I wish to say at once that when Froude has done what he wants with my Carlyle Papers, you shall have them to do the like. He thought (as I antici­ pated) that he could use but two or three of the Letters, as you will also guess from the scheme and compass of his Biography, as given in the Letter which I enclose along with this; but, as I bade him use what he saw good, and keep the Papers as long as convenient to him, I cannot as yet ask him how much, nor how long. When I think I may properly do so, I will: and shall be very glad that you should have them under like conditions. You know that they chiefly concern Naseby, which might do for an Episodic, or separate item, in your Book, though not for Froude's; I should also think the Letters about that Squire business1 would be well to clear somewhat up: but that can scarcely be done unless by vindicating Squire's honesty at the expense of his sanity: and, as I have no reason to suppose but he is yet alive, I know not how this can be decently done. Froude says he cannot see his way into the truth further than Carlyle's printed Article on the subject goes: but I think Carlyle must have told him his conviction (whatever it was) some time during their long acquaintance. Perhaps, however, he was too sick of what he thought an unimportant contro­ versy to endure any more talk about it. I am convinced, as from the first, that Squire's Story was true; and the fragments of Cromwell's

July 1882 despatches genuine, though (as Critics pointed out) partially mis­ quoted by a scatter-brained fellow, ignorant of the subject, and of the Writer.2 Now, as to Froude himself. His English History and other such works I never read, but am told they are one-sided, etc., and I have even been disposed to believe in Hobhouse's Portrait of Henry VIII3 than in what I am told of Froude's. But I suppose that Hume and many other Historians ride their Hobbies as obstinately. His publication of Carlyle's "Reminiscences" I could not, and do not, understand. But as little can I understand your ill opinion of what has yet appeared of the "Biography." Had I thought as you do, I should never have opened any communication with him. But, so far from detecting an Iago at work to undermine his General, Froude seems to me to speak of him as he was, nothing extenuating nor setting down (nor hinting) aught in malice;4 and Carlyle, with all his native humours, acquired Indi­ gestions, etc., which as his Mother said made him "Gey ill to live with" stands out to me a much greater and better man than I had thought him before. So that, in my case, at any rate, Iago bungled terribly if he meant to insinuate otherwise, while he is quoting from Carlyle's own Papers what proves him to be so devoted to his Family, so independ­ ent of Circumstances, etc., and (as Froude vouches for him) so gen­ erous and Charitable to others when he had the means. As to his harsh usage of his Wife—there, I think, Froude may be (though quite honestly) too hard on him, in not seeing that Carlyle (as with many men) did not see all she had to complain of, whether in hard work, or ill health; and therefore was not so blameable as Froude thinks. But Froude is a cleverer man than I; and, I again say, I cannot understand his maliciously insisting on that point, when exalting him so in others. Yes, I must say again that, whatever Froude may have intended, I not only admire Carlyle more than I did—which was very much—but that I love him now—which scarce entered into my account before. I think you must reconsider your Verdict, Norton. And I must finish my Letter, with all my former sincere assurances of regard. Please to keep Froude's Letter to yourself: and one day return it to Yours always Littlegrange the Great P.S. "Assos"5 only just come; thank you, thank you! Very inviting it looks, and I shall fall to forthwith. P.S. 2. Oh yes: the Carlyle Photo duly came, thank you again: much better than the Engraving from it in Froude's Biography. Neverthe-

July 1882 less, I, who began to know T.C. six years before this Photo taken, re­ member him always by others after done. I want to subscribe to a Statue by Boehm (?) for the Chelsea Embankment.6 1

See letter to Carlyle, June 29, 1847. deleted the remainder of the letter. 3Henry Hobhouse (1776-1854), archivist, superintended the publication of the State Papers of Henry VIII. 4 As Othello requested after murdering Desdemona. 5 See July 18 letter. 6 A life-sized bronze, seated, by J. E. Boehm, set up at the foot of Cheyne Row within a year. 2Wright

To Charles Donne Woodbridge July 14, [1882] My dear Charles,

Thank you for your kind Letter. I hope and believe that you are sufficiently convinced of my Love for your Father—of more than sixty years' growth—to need no words on my part to convince you how deeply I feel his Loss now. I mean the Loss of him as he was till the last two years, during which I saw him so certainly declining, that, although he remained, as remain he could not help, the same most amiable man that ever I knew, yet it became painful to see failing in a way that I knew must go on from worse to worse till Life could not be prayed for on his own account. And now the End is come—scarcely to be lamented; and, were it, scarcely to be made a matter of Con­ dolence with his Family who know their own Sorrow to be beyond the reach of even his most intimate Friends. I had a good letter from Blanche a few days ago; written from Southwell. I shall one day hear where she determines on settling permanently. Meanwhile she has all the consolation that a Daughter can derive from the consciousness of having done all to her Father that a pious Daughter could do. I will say but little of myself to you. You know my usual routine of Life, which has certainly not been more varied this Year than for so many Years gone by. I have been my one Annual Visit—to G. Crabbe's in Norfolk, to meet his Sisters: and my two elder Nieces have been, and yet are with me for their annual Visit here. The bronchial Cold I caught before Christmas has hung upon me more or less almost

July 1882 ever since; though sleeping, doubtless not dead, during the Summer weather of which we have not had very much; and doubtless to revive when the colder Season comes again. Please to remember me to your Wife, and believe me yours always E.FG.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge July 18 [1882] My dear Norton, I think that I neglected in my last to thank your Archaeological Committee for the "Assos"—which indeed came to hand only the morning on which my letter was inditing.1 I know not how otherwise to present my thanks than through you, the President of the Society: and therefore I trouble you with this Note to beg you not to neglect conveying my thanks to them. The Report must surely be an excellent one in all Respects: re­ search, report, illustration, and typography: it has interested me, who am not Archaeological and I am going to send it this very day to Aldis Wright and E. Cowell of our Cambridge, and both of them up in spite of Vacation time: Cowell at some abstruse Sanscrit: and Wright (now that Bible Revision is for a time dormant) more agree­ ably employed in editing Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: toward which I am sending him one of dear Spedding's delightful Papers on the Subject; and "Assos" is to travel along with it. When you write—and that only when agreeable to yourself in all respects—pray tell me a word about Mr. Lowell of whom I hear nothing lately. And believe me always yours Littlegrange 1 A report by J. T. Clarke of the Archeological Institute of America on his excavations at Assos, or Assus, site of a Greek city 30 miles south of Troy on the coast overlooking Lesbos.

July 1882

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [July, 1882] My dear Wright,

I shall be very glad to send you what I have of my dear James Spedding. In one Volume of my Works1 is his (I suppose) first Letter about Division of Acts in Twelfth Night addressed to S. Urban:2 and reprinted afterwards, with an additional paragraph for the New Shake­ speare Society. This latter I also have in another work: but so also have you, I suppose. Is it then the dear man's Paper on Miss Terry's Viola you want?—which is in the former work. A Post Card will suffice to tell me: and I will send off either, or both, the Volumes at once. Did not I then tell you that Mason died—of Paralysis, not long after I called with Keene at his house near two months ago? Loder, who has looked in here this Morning, tells me that he knows nothing further of his Affairs than that the Villa he bought to live in a year ago is advertized for Sale. Loder was suggesting that it might be well if poor Spalding could stop the gap for a while by being employed by the Widow in disposing of Mason's wares; unless the Widow means to keep on the Shop. Spalding has no Capital to undertake the Business himself: even were it otherwise advisable he should do so. As to the Bailey, I believed that I explained to you all I had to say on the Subject. I could not offer Spalding a Price till he had heard from some good Authority what it might be worth: the British Museum would not buy at all: and Quaritch offered £,1, which I did not recom­ mend S. to accept—of course. I cannot allow him to give it to your Library in my name; and I know not what to offer him after what has passed. My Nieces leave me tomorrow, and I believe I shall have to run somewhere for a week while some house painting goes on next week. Perhaps, Aldbro. Cowell, who expects to be in Cambridge very soon, wrote me from Llanberis and enclosed me a beautiful leaf of the Sweet Gale, or Bog Myrtle—which do not sound identical. Ever yours E.FG. P.S. On second thought, it seems to me that I may as well send you the two Volumes by Rail: accompanied by an Archaeological Report

August 1882 sent to me at the Instance of Norton, I suppose. I am no Judge of such matters, but the thing seems to me well done: certainly as to conscien­ tious research, Report, Illustration, and Typography. You and Cowell (to whom please to transmit when you have seen enough of it) will, I hope, like also. I shall also enclose your "Prelude" if it packs in prettily with the rest. If not, you shall take it when next you come this way. Here is "Much Ado" about TweKth Night: but the result will save your writing again—unless (as not improbable) the Paper you want is not in the Parcel I send. 1 His "Works" were articles from periodicals and portions of books bound "without being encumbered by the Bulk of the Volume." Many such books were in his library. 2 The "Sylvanus Urban" referred to was John Mitford, editor of The Gentle­ man's Magazine, 1834-50.

To Fanny Kemble [ Aldehurgh] [August, 1882] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

I have let the Full Moon go by, and very well she looked, too— over the Sea by which I am now staying. Not at Lowestoft: but at the old extinguished Borough of Aldeburgh, to which—as to other "pre­ miers Amours," I revert—where more than sixty years ago I first saw, and first felt, the Sea—where I have lodged in half the houses since; and where I have a sort of traditional acquaintance with half the population. "Clare Cottage" is where I write from; two little rooms— enough for me—a poor civil Woman pleased to have me in them— oh, yes,—and a little spare Bedroom in which I stow a poor Clerk,1 with his Legs out of the window from his bed—like a Heron's from his nest—but rather more horizontally. We dash about in Boats whether Sail or Oar—to which latter I leave him for his own good Exercise. Poor fellow, he would have liked to tug at that, or rough-ride a horse, from Boyhood: but must be made Clerk in a London Lawyer's OfiBce: and so I am glad to get him down for a HoIyday when he can get one, poor Fellow! The Carlyle "Reminiscences" had long indisposed me from taking up the Biography. But when I began, and as I went on with that, I

August 1882 found it one of the most interesting of Books: and the result is that I not only admire and respect Carlyle more than ever I did: but even love him, which I never thought of before. For he loved his Family, as well as for so long helped to maintain them out of very slender earn­ ings of his own; and, so far as these two Volumes show me, he loved his Wife also, while he put her to the work which he had been used to see his own Mother and Sisters fulfil, and which was suitable to the way of Life which he had been used to. His indifference to her suffer­ ings seems to me rather because of Blindness than Neglect; and I think his Biographer has been even a little too hard upon him on the score of Selfish disregard of her. Indeed Mr. Norton wrote to me that he looked on Froude as something of an Iago toward his Hero in respect of all he has done for him. The publication of the Reminis­ cences is indeed a mystery to me: for I should [have] thought that, even in a mercantile point of view, it would indispose others, as me it did, to the Biography. But Iago must have bungled in his work so far as I, for one, am concerned, if the result is such as I find it—or unless I am very obtuse indeed. So I tell Mr. Norton; who is about to edit Carlyle's Letters to Emerson, and whom I should not like to see going to his work with such an "Animus" toward his Fellow-Editor. Yours always, E.FG. Faites, s'il vous plait, mes petits Compliments a Madame Wister. 1 Arthur

Charlesworth.

To Frederick Spalding Clare Cottage, Aldeburgh [August 13,1882] Dear Spalding,

Perhaps the best way to settle the old Bailey business is for me to give you £,5 for the Book, which I think it is worth, and which I will send you when I get home to my Cheque book. I am not the less mindful of your constant desire that I should take it back as a Gift. When C. Keene left me at the end of May, I accompanied him to Ipswich. We called at Mason's Shop, where his Man told us he had been somewhat unwell for two or three days, and had not come down from Riverview. Then CK and I toiled up to R.V. and could not open

August 1882 the garden gate, nor find a Bell for the House Door. Therefore I sup­ posed that Mason did not care to be teased with Visitors, and so we came away. I wrote to Mason to tell him of this: and he replied (chiefly by his Daughter's hand) that the outer Gate had a habit of sticking, and that, albeit somewhat indisposed, he should have been pleased to see us. He was in fact (though he did not know it) para­ lyzed at the time; and very soon after sank under repeated attacks. I wrote to Mrs. Mason a fortnight after his Death, not to condole, but to express my opinion of his Worth; and that I should miss him— as I do. This year has made strange inroad on my friends, and chiefly in the paralytic way; three of them beside Mason, though not, like him, to Death. So I wonder to find myself with—for the present—but a halfsuspended Bronchitis to complain of; and am yours and Mrs. Spaldings, Truly E.FG.

To W. A. Wright Clare Cottage, Aldeburgh August 13, [1882] My dear Wright, Mr. Spalding has again written to me about Bailey—wishing me if I will not accept the Book as a Gift, to take it at Quaritch's offer of £-1. I have written him to settle the Business by my giving him £,5 which I think the Book is worth, and which will do no harm either to him, or to me. Thus, we may suppose the Business somehow settled: and it will only remain for you to present the Book in my Name to Trinity Library. As, of course, the whole value of the Book consists in the Chatham Signature; and the special value of that in the fact of the Special Value which Lord C. attached to the Book; as being one of the Books he read right through, more than once, and so laid in a good store of good vernacular English. This is asserted by Charles Butler, and was also told (perhaps from the same Authority Butler quoted) by the late Lord Holland to Moore—as may be seen on referring to the Index to Moore's Diary. I think I gave Mr. Spalding some references to this effect, which (I also think) he stuck in at the end of the Volume. You

August 1882 would do what is to be done in this way better than any one, and I hope you will think it worth doing at some odd moment of leisure. Crowfoot writes me you have bought houses in his Blyburgh Street, so you keep a hold on old Beccles still: which is well to do.1 I address to Cambridge though I suppose you are Holyday making elsewhere: and am as always yours E.FG. P.S. John Allen (the Archdeacon) writes me that two or three months ago he had a slight attack of Paralysis—the fourth of my Friends attacked in the same way this year: though but one of them fell under it: Poor Mason. I have not liked to write of this to the Master: and you will judge if it be well or not to mention it to him whether by word or in Letter. Pollock wrote me word lately that he had been suffering—not from Paralysis—but unaccountable languor. What has been the matter with Venables whom the Master talks of in his Letter to you? I really won­ der to find myself—at present, oh Nemesis!—with nothing worse than Bronchitis, which yet gives me occasional hints that it means to return when Cold sets in. 1 Wright

was a native of Beccles.

To W. A. Wright Clare Cottage, Aldeburgh August 16, [1882] My dear Wright, An absurd imbroglio this old Bailey Business on all three sides. You will understand that I had not heard from Spalding of your having bought the Book till just the Day after I sent him my offer, and sent you my last letter (which I suppose may reach you today) to tell you of it. If you can touch here on your way from Beccles—as I hope you will—(Bed as well as Board ready) we can settle the matter in a very few words: if not, another Letter must do it. I return you G. White's1 Letter immediately, you see, that I may run no danger of mislaying it. Very modestly he writes; and I am glad that he acknowledges so fully the worth of your Shakespeare services. When you say the "New Shakespeare Society" has "done its work," does that mean that it is dying out? I saw that Furnivall advertized

August 1882 Shakespeare's Songs to be sung; "more" Browning's at next Year's Meetings: is that the Swan's Song? Browning is indeed Furnivall's "New Shakespeare," etc. But all this does not require answer. Let me know of your coming just the Day before you come, if possible, that all may be as ready as it may be. My hostess can cook a Chicken nicely enough—and a Sole —though perhaps not both for the same Dinner. Tomorrow I am ex­ pecting good John Loder till Saturday. Yours E.FG. I have heard nothing more from Mrs. MacOubrey than the Letter which I last sent you. 1 R.

G. White, American editor of Shakespeare.

To W. A. Wright 2, Clare Cottage, Aldeburgh August 28, [1882] My dear Wright,

You can let me know from Rydal what we forgot to settle here: viz, what you wish done about Bailey whether you to take it (as to first Bidder due) at what you gave: or I at what I offered: or, as a joint concern—to be presented to the Library.1 Last night it blew a Hurrico, and a Schooner at Anchor in the Bay sprung a leak: and two rockets from a Mortar close by woke us up, and eight Aldbro men are gone off with the leaky Ship to Lowestoft. Yet the Schooner's Crew were all taken safe off: and, had the young American Lady been on board, perhaps no accident had happened. Yours E.FG. 1 The 1730 folio edition of Nathan Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum with William Pitt's signature on the title page is in Trinity College library. The library's "Donation Book" records it as a gift of Aldis Wright, September 28, 1882.

September 1882

To Fanny Kemble Aldehurgh Sept. 1, [1882] My dear Mrs. Kemble,

Still by the Sea—from which I saw The Harvest Moon rise for her three nights' Fullness. And to-day is so wet that I shall try and pay you my plenilunal due—not much to your satisfaction; for the Wet really gets into one's Brain and Spirits, and I have as little to write of as ever any Full Moon ever brought me. And yet, if I accomplish my letter, and "take it to the Barber's," where I sadly want to go, and, after being wrought on by him, post my letter—why, you will, by your Laws, be obliged to answer it. Perhaps you may have a little to tell me of yourself in requital for the very little you have to hear of me. I have made a new Acquaintance here. Professor Fawcett (Post­ master General, I am told) married a Daughter of one Newson Garrett of this Place, who is also Father of your Doctor Anderson.1 Well, the Professor (who was utterly blinded by the Discharge of his Father's Gun some twenty or twenty-five years ago) came to this Lodging to call on Aldis Wright; and, when Wright was gone, called on me, and also came and smoked a Pipe one night here. A thoroughly unaffected, unpretending, man; so modest indeed that I was ashamed afterwards to think how I had harangued him all the Evening, instead of getting him to instruct me. But I would not ask him about his Parliamentary Shop: and I should not have understood his Political Economy: and I believe he was very glad to be talked to instead, about some of those he knew, and some whom I had known. And, as we were both in Crabbe's Borough, we talked of him: the Professor, who had never read a word, I believe, about him, or of him, was pleased to hear a little; and I advised him to buy the Life written by Crabbe's Son; and I would give him my Abstract of the Tales of the Hall, by way of giving him a taste of the Poet's self. Yes; you must read Froude's Carlyle above all things, and tell me if you do not feel as I do about it. Professor Norton persists in it that I am proof against Froude's invidious insinuations simply because of my having previously known Carlyle. But how is it that I did not know that Carlyle was so good, grand, and even loveable, till I read the Letters which Froude now edits? I regret that I did not know what the Book tells us while Carlyle was alive; that I might have loved him as well as admired him. But Carlyle never spoke of himself in that

September 1882 way: I never heard him advert to his Works and his Fame, except one day he happened to mention "About the time when Men began to talk of me." 1 do not know if I told you in my last that (as you foretold me would be the case) I did not find your later Records so interesting as the earlier. Not from any falling off of the recorder, but of the material. The two dates of this Letter arise from my having written this second half-sheet so badly that I resolved to write it over again—I scarce know whether for better or worse.21 go home this week, expect­ ing Charles Keene at Woodbridge for a week. Please to believe me (with Compliments to Mrs. Wister) Yours sincerely always E.FG. 1Henry Fawcett (1833-84), who, despite blindness resulting from a hunting accident two years after taking his degree at Cambridge, became Professor of Political Economy at the University, a prominent M.P., and, from 1880 until his death, Postmaster General. He initiated many new practices of the postal system. After her marriage to Professor Fawcett, Millicent Garrett of Aldeburgh pub­ lished works of her own on economics. She was active in the movement for Women's suffrage from its beginning and became president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She was leader of the Suffragists, who engaged in non-violent agitation in contrast to the militant Suffragettes led by Emily Pankhurst. Her sister, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first Englishwoman to be admitted to the practice of medicine, founded the Hospital for Women in London, which now bears her name. She also engaged in the suffrage movement, and both sisters were active in the campaign for higher education for women. 2 EFG here inserted, "Monday, Sept. 5;" however, Monday was the 4th.

To Anne Thackeray Ritchie1 [ Aldeburgh] [September, 1882] My dear Annie Ritchie, Pray quote anything you please, provided with Alfred's permission,2 and no Compliment to the Author. I do not think my "fanfaron" about him, however true, will be of any such service as you suppose. Strangers usually take all that as the flourish of a friendly admirer: and would rather have some facts— such as that, perhaps, of his words about the RafFaelle, and the little Hallam (I suppose it was in 1852, at Seaford near Brighton) which

September 1882 you might, if you choose, reduce from Dialogue into the simple fact, submitted to his authority and approval. I can swear that he said the word substantially to me at the time, though not in his exact Words (about the RafFaelle, I mean: about young Hallam's worship of the Bedpost, I can swear absolutely: and can now hear and see him as he said it. So do not let him pretend to gainsay, or modify, that whether he may choose to have it quoted or not. Ah, I have often thought that I might have done some good service if I had kept to him, and followed him, and noted the fine, true things which fall from his Lips—on every subject, practical or aesthetic, as they call it. Bayard Taylor in some Essays lately published quotes your Father saying that "Tennyson was the wisest man he knew." Which, by the way, would tell more in America than all I could write, or say. Your finding it hard to make an Article about AT will excuse my inability to help you as you asked. I did not know (as in the case of your Father also) where or how to begin—or go on without a beginning. Ever yours E.FG. Your Letter found me at Aldeburgh on our Coast, where I come to hear my old Sea talk to me as more than sixty years ago, and to get a Blow out on his back. 1 The following text corrects the violently altered version of the letter tran­ scribed by Anne for her "Tennyson and Thackeray," Tennyson and His Friends, p. 253. EFG attributed Anne's elastic approach to accuracy to Hibernian ancestry. 2 From the recently printed Euphranor. See letter to Anne, May 17, 1882.

To Frederick Tennyson [Aldeburgh ] September 9/82 My dear Frederick, Pray let me hear of you. I have not dated this letter from where I am, and have been for the last six weeks—viz., Aldeburgh—Crabbe's old "Borough," by the Sea—because I am to be home at Woodbridge in two days. Crabbe's old Borough; and an Ancient Man (aged ninetysix) who served on board the Unity Sloop which took him to London when he went to seek his Fortune there:1 and did eventually find it,

September 1882 in Burke. I have known the Place from a Child: well remembering my first terror at being ruthlessly ducked into the Wave that came like a devouring Monster under the awning of the Bathing Machine—a Machine whose Inside I hate to this Day. The Borough has but little to recommend it, and is so far more agreeable to Mark Tapley2 as it attracts but few, and those very quiet, Visitors. Yesterday a Man came up to me whom I had not seen for fifty years: I did not recognise him when he told me his name. I walk about, and sit about, and get about in Boats, and (having no Reader here) get to bed (after a Pipe) sometimes before Ten o'clock. Bronchitis occasionally reminds me that I am not forgotten by him; but, on the contrary, that he will most probably take up his Quarters—and most probably, for good—when Winter sets in. So I rather dread returning to the home where I had so many months of him this year: but it would be all the same if I remained here, or went anywhere, but to those far-away places whither I would scarce be at the trouble of going. Cui bono? I am better off than many—if not most—of my contemporaries; and there is not much [worth] living for after seventy-four. I have read but very little lately, partly because the last Box from Mudie's did not contain much to interest me; and partly because the glare of Sea and Shingle, unrelieved by a stripe of Green, indisposes my Eyes to Book-work. Well now, in spite of this, I have written you a longish letter such as it is; and you must send me one to read, all about yourself, if you please. And believe me always yours E.FG. 1 The "Ancient Man" had served on the Unity subsequent to Crabbe's 1780 passage to London. EFG would have known that the sailor's birth succeeded the voyage by six years. 2 The ever-cheerful character in Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit.

To Frederick Tennyson Lowestoft Sept r 23, [1882] My dear Frederick,

I always thought—and I believe said to you—that your Poems, those you now write of, Isles of Greece,1 etc., were full of very fine things which none but a true Poet could write. But I also thought they wanted Variety in more ways than one for a long Poem. This was, and is, my

October 1882 Opinion, who may not be a proper Judge of the Epical, if I be of the shorter styles of Poetry. You have now Festus Bailey,2 who has written what is thought a fine long Poem himself, thinking very differently from me concerning yours; I know not the worth of the other Judges you speak of; but I dare say they are at least as worthy of attention as I can pretend to be. I shall only be too glad if the Public, or such part of it as is worth your addressing, reverses all my Judgment as these few have already done. As to publishing under your name—there I do not venture an opin­ ion either way. So you see that I have little to say in answer to your Question but what you already knew. I am here for a week, partly because my old Housekeeper is ill, and also because I wanted to see my Nieces here and a very dear old Contemporary nearby who is gradually failing under Heart disease. This has been such a Year of havoc among my Coevals that I only wonder I have as yet no more than the Skeleton (just now in the Closet) of Bronchitis there alarming me. And ever yours E.FG. 1A

bulky volume of idylls in blank verse not published until 1890. J. Bailey, author of Festus, a long philosophical treatment of the Faust legend. 2 Phillip

To Bernard Quaritch Little Grange, Woodbridge October, [1882] My dear Sir,

Will you put your name as Publisher to a little Volume of "Readings in Crabbe" (of whom you probably never heard) and Edited by me, and charge yourself with some fifty copies to sell—of which fifty Copies you may perhaps sell about twenty-five if you will bestow on them the usual Publisher's care, at the usual Publisher's remuneration. If you agree to undertake this very lucrative business, I will have the Title page with your name as Publisher, and my own under the name of my dwelling place,1 and Yours sincerely, "Littlegrange"

October 1882 I shall be glad to hear of your being well, during a year that has proved very vindictive to many of my friends, and has settled Bron­ chitis on myself. And pray how does Omar do?2 1 That 2

is, credit the work to "Littlegrange," a proposal he abandoned. The sale of the Rubdiydt-Salaman volume had been sluggish.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge Oct. 17, [1882] My dear Mrs. Kemble, I suppose that you are returned from the Loire by this time; but as I am not sure that you have returned to the "Hotel des Deux Mondes," whence you dated your last, I make bold once more to trouble Coutts with adding your Address to my Letter. I think I shall have it from yourself not long after. I shall like to hear a word about my old France, dear to me from childish associations; and in particular of the Loire endeared to me by Sevigne—for I never saw the glimmer of its Waters myself. If you were in England I should send you an account of a tour there, written by a Lady in 1833—written in the good old way of Ladies' writing, without any of the smartness, and not too much of the "graphic" of later times. Did you look at Les Rochers, which, I have read, is not to be looked into by the present owner? Now for my "Story, God bless you," etc., you may guess where none is to be told. Only, my old Housekeeper here has been bedded for this last month, an illness which has caused her great pain, and at one time seemed about to make an End of her. So it may do still; but for the last few days she has suffered less pain, and so we—hope. This has caused much trouble in my little household, as you may imagine—as well on our own account, as on hers. Mowbray Donne wrote me that his Edith had been seriously—I know not if dangerously—ill; and he himself much out of sorts, having never yet (he says, and I believe) recovered from his Father's death. Blanche, for the present, is quartered at Friends' and Kinsfolk's houses. Aldis Wright has sent me a Photograph, copied from Mrs. Cameron's original, of James Spedding—so fine that I know not whether I feel more pleasure or pain in looking at it. When you return to England, you shall see it somehow. I have had a letter or two from Annie Ritchie, who is busy writing

October 1882 various Articles for Magazines. One concerning Miss Edgeworth1 in the Cornhill is pleasant reading. She tells me that Tennyson is at Aidworth (his Hampshire house, you know), and a notice in Athenaeum or Academy tells that he is about to produce "a Pastoral Drama" at one of the smaller Theatres!2 You may have seen—but more probably have not seen—how Mr. Irving and Co. have brought out "Much Ado" with all eclat. It seems to me (but I believe it seems so every year) that our trees keep their leaves very long; I suppose because of no severe frosts or winds up to this time. And my garden still shows some Geranium, Salvia, Nasturtium, Great Convolvulus, and that grand African Mari­ gold whose Colour is so comfortable to us Spanish-like Paddies. I have also a dear Oleander which even now has a score of blossoms on it, and touches the top of my little Greenhouse—having been sent me when "haut comme ga," as Marquis Somebody used to say in the days of Louis XIV. Don't you love the Oleander? So clean in its leaves and stem, as so beautiful in its flower; loving to stand in water, which it drinks up so fast. I rather worship mine. Here is pretty matter to get Coutts to further on to Paris—to Mrs. KembIe in Paris. And I have written it all in my best MS with a pen that has been held with its nib in water for more than a fortnight— Charles Keene's recipe for keeping Pens in condition—Oleander-like. Please to make my Compliments to Mrs. Wister—my good wishes to the young Musician;3 and pray do you believe me your sincere as ever—in spite of his new name— Littlegrange 1

"Miss Edgeworth," Oct.-Nov. issues of the Cornhill. The Promise of May, a melodramatic rustic tragedy, opened at the Globe Theater November 11 and, criticized severely by reviewers and patrons alike, closed in five weeks. 3 Owen Wister, Fanny Kemble's grandson who studied piano before beginning his career as author. 2

To W. F. Pollock Woodbridge October 20182 My dear Pollock, Pray let me hear how you and yours are after your Summer Holyday. I have been no further for mine that Aldeburgh, an hour's Rail distance

October 1882 from here: there I got out boating, etc., and I think became the more hearty in consequence: but my Bosom friend Bronchitis puts in a re­ minder every now and then, and, I suppose, will come out of his Closet—or Chest—when Winter sets in. Up to this time we have had but little Cold, though plenty of wet: I fancy that I never remember the leaves so green and thick on the trees as this year. I suppose because of no severe Frost or Gale up till now. My Garden yet shows some Geranium, Salvia; golden Marigold (delight of my Eyes) and even Phlox: insomuch that my Barber has just carried off a posy for his sick Wife. In talking of which, my good old Housekeeper has been at Death's door—partly owing to her not having called for the Doctor in good time—and even now after five weeks lying in bed, there continues, though, I am told, mending. Mowbray Donne wrote me lately that his Wife had been seriously ill; himself "out of sorts" ever since his Father's Death. If I never remember the leaves so long on the trees, I certainly never remember so much Sickness among those I know as this year. Therefore, again I say, pray let me hear of yourself and yours. When I was at Aldeburgh, Professor Fawcett1 (who married an Aldeburgh man's Daughter, and Sister of She Doctor Garrett Ander­ son) came to see Aldis Wright who was with me there for a Day. When Wright was gone, the Professor came to smoke a Pipe (in his case a Cigar) with me. What a brave, unpretending Fellow! I should never have guessed that a notable man in any way. "Brave" too, I say, because of his cheerful Blindness—for which I fear I never should have forgiven my Father and his Gun. To see him stalking along the Beach, regardless of Pebble and Boulder, though with some one by his side to prevent his going quite to Sea. He was on the Eve of starting for Scotland—to fish—in the dear Tweed, I think, though he scarce seemed to know much of Sir Walter. "Philippa!" he called out to a Daughter of about sixteen, "Do you like Sir Walter Scott?" "I don't care about him much." "Dickens?" "No, not much." "Whom then? Thackeray—George Eliot?" "Yes." For which I reproved her, liking such Books at her time of Life. Then the Professor, though so much at Aldeburgh, scarce knew of Crabbe; and so, I have sent him (as I promised) the Vote's Life by his Son, and My Readings by way of a taste of his Quality. By the way, you and two others whose Judgment I could alike rely on, told me that my Readings wanted some Introduction if meant for Publication. So I dropped the whole concern. But quite lately it was

October 1882 "borne in upon me" to whisk up a little Preface, and let little Quaritch try to sell some twenty Copies of the 200 I had left entombed in the brown paper they came from the Printers in some years ago. I might as well get rid of them somehow, I thought. "Et voila." I will send you the "Fore-word" that you may not have to ask for it out of cour­ tesy: and, by the same token, say nothing about it when received. It is not meant for you, and the likes of you; but for those who—will never read it, nor what it is meant to recommend. I suppose you are well pleased with "Much Ado" which, as other fine things now, I am content to read of in Athenaeum and Academy. One of those two announced that my old Alfred was about to bring out some "Pastoral Drama" at some smaller Theatre. Now—for the third time I say it—let me hear of you; and remember me duly to Lady Pollock, and always believe me your sincere old Littlegrange 1 See

letter to Fanny Kemble, Sept. 1, n.l.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Oct. 28, [1882] My dear Wright,

I think it is very kind of you to wish for some account of my old Mrs. Howe. After many a "Better" and "Worse," she is now so far on the better side of account that she is allowed by the Doctor to get up for a while, and is thus far not the worse for it. I cannot tell you of Mitford's Auction:1 but, as he was reputed to have a valuable Library, I should think some record of the Sale could be found in some London Quarter—Quaritch? One particular thing Mitford had, viz, a Copy of Thomson's Seasons annoted with suggestions by Pope, to whom the Book was submitted by the Author; and Mitford, I think I remember, said that nearly all the suggestions were adopted in the subsequent Edition. But Mitford was not very exact—nor I. Anyhow, you may find his account of the matter somewhere in the Gentleman's Magazine during his Reign over it—about twenty years—from perhaps 1842. I enclose you, among other scraps which I turned up lately (rudi­ ments of some future Work), a reference to Gray which may be of use to Mr. Gosse,2 who might look over the Gentleman's Magazine

November 1882 Index (if there be one) for Mitford's Notices of Gray during the period I mention. The word about Oldershaw will perhaps interest you, as also that quaint remembrance of Broome.3 As I have noted, I can't tell where the Selden scrap was quoted from; but it bears his undoubted mark. Perhaps it is in his Table-talk!3 I am rather proud of having bitten Professor Fawcett with my Crabbe monomania. I have not received the Revise of my little Preface—Printers busy with more important work, I doubt not; and I —and the Public—can afford to wait. Yours always Littlegrange 1 am delighting in Mozley's Oriel.4 1John Mitford of Benhall, Suffolk (d. 1859); editor of The Gentlemen's Maga­ zine, 1834-50, and the works of Thomas Gray. 2 Edmund Gosse published an edition of Gray in 1884. 3 EFG filled numerous commonplace books with notes gleaned while reading. See April, 1846, letter to William Pickering about John Selden's Table-talk. 4 Reminiscences, Chiefly of Oriel and the Oxford Movement, 1882, by Thomas Mozley, journalist, divine and Tractarian; a pupil and, later, a friend of Cardinal Newman.

To Horace Basham Woodbridge Nov r 1/82 Dear Horace,

I wrote to Miss Lynn on Sunday to ask about any Subscriptions for Life Boat Service, etc. A letter from her tells me the Subscription was closed on Saturday. I did not wish—and do not wish—to be out of it, and therefore enclose £1 Post order. If it be too late to be used for the purpose now, keep it by you for another occasion or till James Fisher want it at Year's end. As I hope you are after Sprats, do not trouble yourself to write. I shall be over at Aldbro yet for a day or two if Miss Lynn remain. Yours always E.FG.

November 1882

To Blanche Donne Woodbridge Nov r 1, [1882] My dear Blanche, One of the loyal Donnes, who never forget a Friend! I was very glad to hear from you, and shall always be glad to reply whenever you care to write. As to the Photo—I had it not before: but I must say that I do not like it half as well as a smaller sized whole figure, sitting, done (I suppose) some dozen years ago.1 Not but that what you send me must be very like, since you who were so constantly with him, think so: and you naturally cling to the last record you have of him. But I like to remember him as he appears in the Photo that I speak of; and therefore I return you what you sent me, as you may want to bestow it on some one who may prize the latest likeness of him as you do. But I do not thank you the less for giving me the preference. I heard from Mowbray some while ago that Edith had been very ill, and he himself not very well. But a later letter from Edith tells me they are both better. I was about to reply to her letter when yours reached me; and, as you do not give me your exact address, I will now ask her to supply the deficiency for me. You say something of going to Lincoln: which, I suppose, implies to the Dean thereof.2 If so, do not forget to remember me most kindly to him. He also was not well at the beginning of this year; and I should certainly have written to himself for better information on the subject ere now, but that I fear to trouble busy men with the trouble of answering my letters, especially if they should have nothing very comfortable to tell of themselves. But I infer, from your going on a visit to him, that he is none the worse than we of his age expect to be. I wheeze a little still, and know that wheezing will come to coughing, etc., when Winter sets in. And do you believe me your sincere old friend E.FG. 1 The later photograph is reproduced in W. B. Donne and His Friends, p. 338; EFG's preference, A FitzGerald Friendship, p. 1. 2 J. W. Blakesley, an intimate friend of Donne since Cambridge days.

November 1882

To Samuel Laurence Little Grange, Woodbridge Nov. 8/82 My dear Laurence,

It is long since I have heard from you: which means, long since I have written to you. But do not impute this to as long forgetfulness on my part. My days and years go on one so like another: I see and hear no new thing or person; and to tell you that I go for a month or a week to our barren coast, which is all the travel I have to tell of, you can imagine all that as easily as my stay at home, with the old Pictures about me, and often the old Books to read. I went indeed to London last February for the sole purpose of seeing our Donne: and glad am I to have done so as I heard it gave him a little pleasure. That is a closed Book now. His Death was not unexpected, and even not to be deprecated, as you know; but I certainly never remember a year of such havock among my friends as this: if not by Death itself, by Death's preliminary work and warning. . . . I wonder to find myself no worse dealt with than by Bronchitis, bad enough, which came upon me last Christmas, hung upon me all Spring, Summer, and Autumn; and though comparatively dormant for the last three wet weeks (perhaps from repeated doses of Sea Air) gives occasional Signs that it is not dead, but, on the contrary, will revive with Winter. Let me hear at least how you have been, and how are; I shall not grudge your being all well. Aldis Wright has sent me a very fine Photo of Spedding done from one of Mrs. Cameron's of which a copy is at Trinity Lodge. It is so fine that I scarce know if it gives me more pleasure or pain to look at it. Insomuch that I keep it in a drawer, not yet able to make up my mind to have it framed and so hung up before me. My good old Housekeeper has been (along with so many more) very ill, bedded for five or six weeks; only now able to get about again. I have this morning been scolding her for sending away a woman who came to do her work, without consulting me beforehand: she makes out that the woman wanted to go: I find the woman is very ready to return. "These are my troubles, Mr. Wesley," as a Gentleman said to him when the Footman had put too much coal on the fire.

November 1882

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge] [November, 1882] My dear Mrs. Kemble, You must be homeward-bound by this time, I think: but I hope my letter won't light upon you just when you are leaving Paris, or just arriving in London—perhaps about to see Mrs. Wister off to America from Liverpool. But you will know very well how to set my letter aside till some better opportunity. May Mrs. Wister fare well upon her Voyage over the Atlantic, and find all well when she reaches her home. I have been again—twice or thrice—to Aldeburgh, when my con­ temporary old Beauty Mary Lynn was staying there; and pleasant Evenings enough we had, talking of other days, and she reading to me some of her Mudie Books, finishing with a nice little Supper, and some hot grog (for me) which I carried back to the fire, and set on the carpet.1 She read me (for one thing) "Marjorie Fleming"2 from a Volume of Dr. Brown's Papers—read it as well as she could for laugh­ ing—"idiotically," she said—but all the better to my mind. She had been very dismal all day, she said. Pray get some one to read you "Marjorie"—which I say, because (as I found) it agrees with one best in that way. If only for dear Sir Walter's sake, who doated on the Child; and would not let his Twelfth Night be celebrated till she came through the Snow in a Sedan Chair, where (once in the warm Hall) he called all his Company down to see her nestling before he carried her upstairs in his arms. A very pretty picture. My old Mary said that Mr. Anstey's "Vice Versa" made her and a friend, to whom she read it, laugh idiotically too:3 but I could not laugh over it alone, very clever as it is. And here is enough of me and Mary. Devrient's Theory of Shakespeare's Sonnets (which you wrote me of) I cannot pretend to judge of: what he said of the Englishwomen, to whom the Imogens, Desdemonas, etc., were acceptable, seems to me well said. I named it to Aldis Wright in a letter, but what he thinks on the subject—surely no otherwise than Mrs. Kemble—I have not yet heard. My dear old Alfred's Pastoral troubles me a little— that he should have exposed himself to ridicule in his later days. Yet I feel sure that his aim is a noble one; and there was a good notice in the Academy saying there was much that was fine in the Play— nay, that a whole good Play might yet be made of it by some better Playwright's practical Skill.

November 1882 And here is the end of my paper, before I have said something else that I had to say. But you have enough for the present from your ancient E. F.G.—who has been busy arranging some "post mortem" papers. 1 Fanny twice rebuked him for placing his glass of wine on the floor, a practice that came, he responded, "of one's living so long either with no Company, or with only free and easy." 2 Marjorie Fleming, A Sketch, originally published, 1863, by John Brown, physician of Edinburgh. Marjorie, a favorite of Sir Walter Scott, was a writing prodigy who died in 1811 at the age of eight. Engaging humor is a quality of Brown's essays. 3 F . Anstey, pseudonym for Thomas Anstey Guthrie ( 1 8 5 6 - 1 9 3 3 ) , Punch humorist and author of farcical novels. Vice Versa, "or a Lesson to Fathers," 1882, was his most popular work.

To Alfred Smith Woodbridge Monday [November 20, 1882] Dear Alfred Smith,

I desired that your man John should thank you for me for the Fowls you took the trouble to find for me. I had then scarce surveyed them shut up as they were. Today, they come abroad, and I see the Cock is a very fine handsome fellow indeed, and the hens very genteel: and one of them laid an Egg, I am told, before she had been here a few hours, and so has given us an earnest of future assiduity in her way. So altogether I will thank you by word of pen as well as message by mouth: and am, with kind remembrances to Mrs. Smith, Yours truly E.FG.

To E. B. Cowell [Woodbridge ] Saturday Noon [November 25, 1882] My dear Cowell,

This letter of mine will not reach you till Monday, but I will not delay writing to thank you for your great kindness in inviting me, and

November 1882 also because I would leave you free (as soon as I can) to invite some one else who may avail himself of your hospitality.1 For indeed I can­ not—say "will not" if you please: but all "will not" it is not—certainly, so far as you, and Elizabeth, and your House, are concerned, as you may judge by the past. But I wish Ajax all success; and shall be glad to read of it in Athenaeum or Academy. Annie Thackeray Ritchie writes me from Aldworth, where the Alfreds are all well and jocund in spite of the failure of the "Promise of May." I never doubted of there being a noble Design, and many fine things, in it; but I wish nevertheless that A.T. would not have tried the Stage, even if he persists in trying other modes of Publica­ tion. I almost wish he was burthened with no bigger volume to Pos­ terity than (as Dickens says) Gray has managed to find his way there with. There was an Article by Wedmore in the Academy on the Play,2 written with consideration, discrimination (I believe), and respect for the old Dear who will go on—like some of Aristophanes' Elders. Christmas is again almost at hand: perhaps you and Wife will be once more within sight of me. To both Love and Thanks: so explicit the Aristophanic Littlegrange 1 The

Cowells had invited EFG to visit them and attend a University produc­ tion of Ajax by Sophocles. 2 Frederick Wedmore, The Academy, Nov. 18, pp. 370-71.

To John Stidolph Little Grange Sunday [November 26, 1882] Dear Sir,

Thank you for the Ballad,1 which, both in Words and Music, is one of a sort familiar to English Song. That jump to and from the minim G above line at the word "Squires"

Squire's Son must be awkward because of the ugly word attached to it. For this you are not answerable. Your accompaniment seems to me quite appro­ priate: it can scarce be too simple for a simple Melody, such as most

December 1882 national Airs: such as even Mozart's which are nearest to them: the best being generally the simplest, and turning on the simple Tonic Dominant and Subdominant with an occasional suspended Cadence on the relative Minors. In fact, the first Airs carry their harmony intrinsically along with them: needing neither words, nor Accompani­ ment; and that is, I think, the real test of a Tune. Yours E.FG. 1

"The BailiiFs Daughter of Islington," Percy's Reliques.

To Alfred Tennyson Woodbridge Dec r 15/82 Summon Hallam 1 My dear Alfred, I send you the enclosed simply because you are referred to in the last page. I can swear to your having said what I attribute to you— 'twas at Freshwater in 1854.2 Nor do I believe you would disavow it now, or ever, but you may not care to have me talk of it in print. If so, let me know and I will quash the passage; if otherwise I shall take Silence as Consent. The little Story of this Preface coming thus after the Book it refers to, is simply thus—that when I printed the Book nobody to whom I gave it thought any Public would care for it; so I left it unpublished. Then some friends thought it wanted some Preface to explain its raison d'etre; and after all this interval, I thought I might give my poor [book] that little chance; and so here is the Preface. It will make no difference in your opinion of Crabbe, or of my presentation of him: so, as I said, you have simply to say if you object to my naming you. I doubt that Annie Ritchie will not advance her own good work in the matter of AT by quoting what she proposes to quote from me. Had it a grand Name to second it—whether in Literature or the Peerage! But, as it is, it will be set down to the enthusiasm of a gushing—and probably, youthful—Adorer, true, as I, and not I alone, know it to be. Dear old Frederick wrote me two or three months ago that some one—I forget who—had shown his later and unpublished Poems— "The Isles of Greece" and some other—to Festus Bailey, who strongly

December 1882 advised Publication. What did I think, etc.?31 could only say what he recalled to me as having said when he sent them to me—that, while I thought the Poems were full of that which none but A Poet could write, they laboured under a certain Monotony of Thought and Versi­ fication, which had (to my thinking) affected his "Days and Hours" and was yet more noticeable in a longer poem; but Festus Bailey was a far greater Authority than I, etc. Since which I have not heard from Frederick, but mean to write him shortly. As he told me all this without bidding me keep it to myself, I tell it to you. Here is already a long enough Letter, my dear old Alfred ("Mas­ ter," I believe I ought to call you, as the Cockneys do). By the way, I herewith paste in Furnivall's quotation from the American "Nation" concerning Browning and Furnivall's own "Argal."4 I cut the piece out because I have always said the same of Camberwell Bob:5 in fact—"La Nation—c'est Moi."6 Well, "My Master," you need not reply to all this, nor make Hallam do so (unless with the Veto afore-named) for you know that Annie Ritchie told me from Aldworth that you were all well, and so I shall presume that you all yet are at Freshwater. For there I suppose you keep your Christmas Court; and thither I direct my letter: and am, there or elsewhere, and now and always yours, with love and good wishes to all who bear your name— Yours, I sav, my dear old Messmate at Bertolini's,7 E.FG. [Clipping enclosed:] The Nation, we regret to learn, does not appreciate Mr. Browning. Commenting upon Prof. Corson's paper before the Browning Society on "Browning's Idea of Personality" (which has now been published separately), it says:— "But the attempt to present Browning as a great teacher can have but little effect; if he be such, it is only for the few, for his defects of expression make his philosophy a sealed volume even to the cultivated. If he be a great thinker, he has failed to convey the truth through beauty as a poet ought." After this, who shall say that our Browning Society has not justified its existence? 1 To

decipher the handwriting. copy, possibly a proof, of the "Introduction to Readings in Crabbe" in­ cluded in the copies bearing Quaritch's imprint. For the passage referred to, see Letters and Literary Remains, VII, 365. 2A

December 1882 3

See letter to Frederick Tennyson, Sept. 23. A clumsy piece of reasoning. 5 Browning was born in Camberwell. 6 Modern scholars believe Louis XIV was too astute to declare, "L'etat, c'est moi." See EFG on Niebuhr and legends, letter to Donne, Dec. 30, 1839. 7 A restaurant near Leicester Square frequented during their years of com­ panionship in London. 4

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge Dec. 20, [1882] My dear Norton, Here is Christmas come again and I am going through the annual exercise of Turkey-sending, "Bose^giving,1 etc., and tomorrow am expecting Aldis Wright and another to spend Xmas week with me. Wright, who is a capital Reader, will bring his Shakespeare, and find something from among my worthless Medley of Books, and we shall make as merry as we can. I have not forgotten your interest in those Naseby Letters of Carlyle, nor the use which you thought they might be made of. Toward the end of August I wrote to Froude, and told him that when he had seen and done what he wanted [with] them, I wished to send them to you. But from that time to this I have had no answer from him. Perhaps he was holyday-making abroad when my letter went to his London Quarters; whether he have returned to them yet (if he had left) I know not. I did not see his name quoted among those of the Guests who celebrated the unveiling of Carlyle's Statue erected on the Chelsea Embankment; but I do see it among the Contributors to Longman's new Monthly. If I do not hear from him by next year, I shall write again. I did not know of the Carlyle being set up2 till I read an account of its being unveiled. Had I known before, I should undoubtedly have subscribed; and even wrote a note to Lord Houghton (who, I read, was at the Ceremony) to ask him if the Subscription was made up. He replied: and neither I, nor better adepts at MS could decypher what he wrote: always very illegible, and, of course, the worse from such Illness as he suffered last year. Then C. Keene promised to find out what I wanted to know from some one of the Statue Committee: but he has not yet let me know further. And when are your Carlyle-Emerson Letters coming out? This is

December 1882 not by [way] of reminding you to send me a Copy; you will believe me when I say that I would much rather you let me buy it here. For indeed you send me many such good Presents, and I may as well help my little to encourage the Publisher, or Agent, here. You may have read somewhere of an "Ajax" at our Cambridge over here. Thirty years ago did I tell the Greek Professor (now Master of Trinity), "Have a Greek Tragedy in (what you call) your Senatehouse." But I was not sufficiently important to stir up the "Dons." Cowell invited me to see and hear "Ajax"—but I remained here, con­ tent to snuff at it from the Athenaeum of England, not of Attica. And on the very day that Ajax fretted his hour on the stage, my two old Housekeepers were celebrating their Fiftieth—or Golden—wedding over a Bottle of Port wine in the adjoining room, though in that hap­ pier Catastrophe I did not further join. Now, to end with myself—I have hitherto escaped any severe as­ sault from my "Bosom-Enemy," Bronchitis, though he occasionally intimates that he is all safe in his Closet, and will reappear with the Butterflies, I dare say. "Dici Beatus"3 let no one in this Country boast till May be over. What you put off, and what you put on, Never change till May be gone, says an old Suffolk Proverb concerning our Clothing. Five of my friendly Contemporaries have been struck with Paralysis during this 1882; and here am I with only—Bronchitis to complain of. Now then, turning to my last page, I beg you to tell me of yourself, and yours. And believe me always Sincerely yours The Laird of Littlegrange What of Mr. Lowell—of whom I dare say I should know if I looked into the Newspapers. I will, by the by, send you a little Introduction I made to those "Crabbe Beadings" (which, I was told wanted something of the sort, if ever published) when I hear from Tennyson that he is not averse to my quoting his words about my old Poet. It is quite a neat little piece; so you need say no more of it—especially if it does not reach you. 1 Probably

"beef-giving." statue on the Chelsea Embankment. 3 "To be called Blessed."

2 The

January 1883

To Frederick Tennyson Woodbridge Jan. 14/83 My dear Frederick, It is long since I heard from you—or wrote to you, I doubt. But here is my letter; let me have one from you in return. You have to tell me how you fare in health (I spare all Wishesl) and you have to tell me what you have done, or decided on doing, about the publication of your Poems. I think it was concerning them that we last exchanged a Letter. Some six weeks ago (I think) I had a letter from Annie Ritchie (Thackeray) dated "Aldworth" where she was staying with Alfred and his Party—all well, and all merry, she said, in spite of the "fiasco" of Alfred's Pastoral Drama. "Que Diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?" Now you will like a little about my little Self. Well, I have been reminded two or three times of my "Bosom Enemy" Bronchitis whom I have managed to keep under, however, by dint of some Care, and Aconite. But the "Ides of March" are yet to come. How has the Tempus been with you in Jersey? Here more wet than Cold: as productive of Illness, I believe. I still pace up and down Garden and Road more than once a day—and night too—fairly well wrapt up: when people say one ought to keep indoors. But I can scarce use myself as yet to forego the fresh Air, which I do not believe is as likely to wound as does a draught through door—or key-hole—indoors. Aldis Wright was my Guest here for Christmas week, and we did very well together, inasmuch as he is independently occupied with Bible Revision, Shakespeare Editions, and I know not what else of literary work, beside his Collegiate Bursarship. Now, my dear old Frederick, tell me as much of yourself as I have told of your ancient and sincere old Friend E.FG.

To H. S. Wilson Woodhridge Jan. 20/83 My dear Sir, I am afraid, on finding Tinsley 1 by post this morning—afraid lest you should think that I had neglected to order it for myself before.

February 1883 Oh no! I had ordered, and had received it, a few days after I—or you —wrote on the subject—nearly three weeks ago, I think. But, if I think that scarce any recognition except Thanks is the better way in such cases—still more so do I think so where oneself is the subject of the Writer's praise. And therefore I shall only say again that I thank you very sincerely for taking the trouble to write an Article which is so very much more devoted to displaying my work, than your own in commenting (except in the way of praise) upon it: comment on the Sufi subject of the Poem offering so fair a field for the Reviewer to enlarge on, and of which you show yourself so capable of writing, in such remarks as you have allowed yourself space to make on the subject. I only stumble on the frequent repetition of my name, which (as I may have told you) is for certain reasons distasteful to me. All this I write between the receipt of your Tinsley and the going of our earlier post; for I do not wish you to suppose for an hour longer than necessary that I have been, or am, unmindful of your kindness. I may shortly send you a "broacher"2 (as hereabouts we call it) wherein I have done for an Original Poet what you have done for a Translator: on my own condition that you shall just say "Thank you" and no more to yours sincerely obliged— Littlegrange! 1

Tinsley's Magazine for January containing a review of Salaman and Absal by Wilson, pp. 39-46. 2 Readings in Crabbe.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] [February 7, 1883] Here's a Dose for you—to be taken at Intervals. My dear Wright, I must thank you for that search you made for W. B.'s Grave1 on that dismal wet day; for I think you could only have done so from some regard to me. Yes, you found the Stone, sure enough; but the Aetat. should be 43, I think. Some ten days before he was laid under it I was by his Bedside, where he lay (as for three months he had lain) broken in half almost; yet he looked at me with his old discrimination and said, "I suppose you have scarce ever been with a

February 1883 dying person before?" He had rare intuition into Men, Matters, and even into Matters of Art: though Thackeray would call him "Little Browne"—which I told him he was not justified in doing. They are equal now. The enclosed will tell you that I wrote to Mrs. A. Carlyle, and I will say that I am gratified by her reply. You will see too that I asked about the Chelsea Statue, and the Chelsea Rector's account of the matter. I do not want either letter back. Had I known that she medi­ tated an Edition of her Uncle's letters, I should have offered those I have to her in the first instance; though I know not if she would have found more to use in them than Froude is likely to find. He never answered what I wrote to him about Norton in August. As Macmillan is sufficiently interested in Lamb to offer £50 or £,60 for Hazlitt's Portrait, why won't you set him on finding out that Wageman—which surely he could do among some of the Paternoster Row Moxons, or their Successors? I find by my 1849 Edition of Talfourd that that same Hazlitt's Portrait furnished the Frontispiece to the first Edition, or Editions, and (as I now remember) it bespoke a glance of that wild-fire in Lamb's Eyes which Procter and De Quincey speak of, and which has disappeared from the Copy in Procter's Recollections. Why was it changed for Wageman's in after Editions of Talfourd's Book?2 When you next come here (Easter?) you must read Mary Lamb's Letters, which let one more behind the Scenes of their domestic Life than any other Book—in a way that might easily be misunderstood by a hasty, or unfriendly, reader. But not by you—who must one day edit (as you won't) the Life, with the help of such "Works" of Scissors and Paste as I shall commit to you.3 Cowell wrote to me he was coming to Ipswich: but I did not expect him here, nor offer to go to him there, knowing how much occupied he would be with kinsfolk and Masterships. Groome and his Gypsy Son called here a fortnight ago: the latter unobtrusive, and attentive to his Father. Groome wished for a word from me! to Leslie Stephen!!—whom I never spoke to, wrote to, or (for what I know) ever saw—about employing Frank in the new Dictionary!!! I told him that you had been speaking of it here as of a work set out upon wrong lines; but I did not advise him to apply to you in the matter of Frank: saying that I thought Frank's best way would be to send L.S. some sample of previous work in that way.4 Yours eternally (as you may believe by these presents) E.FG.

February 1883 1

William Kenworthy Browne's at Goldington, near Bedford. Carew Hazlitt, Thomas Noon Talfourd, and Bryan Procter (Barry Corn­ wall), all Lamb editors and/or biographers. The Moxon publishing business had been bought by Ward, Lock, and Tyler in 1871. 3 For EFG's "Works" on Lamb, see letter to Donne, March 14, 1878, n.l. 4 Francis H. Groome became a contributor to The Dictionary of National Biography, founded in 1882 with Leslie Stephen as first editor. 2J.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge February 18/83 My dear Sir, As you consented to undertake the very unprofitable charge of pub­ lishing my Crabbe—I send you up some forty-seven Copies1 which, with all due deductions for Museums, etc., I honestly think you will scarce get rid of. You will judge if there be any good in sending Copies to Athe­ naeums, and Academies, etc., who will only quite overlook, or give a paragraph to bid others do so. Advertizing is, I think, out of the question. So if you are willing to do me—or much rather my old Poet —a good turn, you can do little more than let a copy or two lie on your Counter, perhaps also saying a word to one or two of your Customers about our Existence. For, as to our merits, you are too busy a man to look into them. As usual I do not put my illustrious name on the Title page: but I don't care who knows it—for no one is likely to publish it. I wish you would give a copy to the Gentleman who did me so much service in revising my other "Broachers" (as we say hereabout) while in the course of printing. I was never told his name or I would send him a Copy direct, bidding him, as my rule is, simply say "Thank you" and no more. And so I will bid you farewell for the present, being Yours truly, The Laird of Littlegrange P.S. About the price—I suppose it may be 3s.6.? Certainly not more: less if you think better. 1 Forty-seven is the "official" figure for the number of copies bound by Fox at Woodbridge and sent to Quaritch. EFG's references to the number vary.

February 1883 The title page carries the date "1882." It is evident that copy for the page and preface had been prepared before the end of that year, but binding was not completed until February.

To H. S. Wilson Woodbridge February 19, [1883] My dear Sir,— You will see, if you get the Book which is to be posted along with this letter,1 that I have been doing for an Original Poet what you so kindly did for a Translator. I should not wonder, Reader as you are, that you know no more of my old Crabbe than his ugly name; I cannot expect that you have cared much for him even on further acquaint­ ance, so completely has he drifted away from modern Forms of Poetry. And as for general Readers: I tell Quaritch, who consents to publish, that if he sells two dozen Copies it will be as much as I expect. So there was no great use in my making the Book at all:—but I had it at heart to get some two dozen or so to believe that my old Crabbe was worth something more than utter Death and oblivion. "Voila qui est fait," as Made de Sevigne says. "Parlons d'autres choses." I might chat as she does, had I other things to talk of: but they are not plentiful down here, and I know scarce anything of the outer world. My Reader told me Wagner was dead; not one of whose works I have ever heard. So he is all "Crabbe" to me. I feel occasional inti­ mations that my "Bosom-enemy" Bronchitis is smouldering within: and will, I suppose, break out when March winds blow. But, before I come to the end of my paper, let me charge you to do by me as I do by you and all others in the like case. If you acknowl­ edge the receipt of my Book at all (which is not necessary) just say "Thank you," AND NO MORE. Yours sincerely, E. Fitz-Littlegrange. 1 EFG's

Readings in Crabbe.

February 1883

To Leslie Stephen Little Grange, Woodbridge February 20/83 Dear Mr. Stephen, I send you the little Book which should accompany this letter simply because I have ventured to differ in one respect with what you have written of my old Poet.1 You are not likely to alter your opinion by what I say, nor to mind my saying it; and I shall probably not get twenty of the Public to agree with one or other. But I make my little Effort to recall my old Crabbe to Memory, and (as you may see if you care to do so) I can adduce some better Advocates than myself in favour of my Client. Pray believe that, busied as you are, I do not wish you to acknowl­ edge even the Book I send you. But, if you think proper to acknowl­ edge it at all, pray let it be with a simple "thank you," which I always maintain is the best course in these cases, whether for Giver or Receptor. And believe me Faithfully yours, Edward FitzGerald Can you not find an Hour in your Library to spare for dear James Spedding's Miscellaneous Essays—so overlooked, or overblundered, by Reviewers?2 1 The primary objective of EFG's selections was to convince readers that Crabbe possessed humor. (See letter to Norton, May 1, 1880.) In his essay on Crabbe (Hours in a Library) Stephen had remarked, "The more humourous of these performances may be briefly dismissed. Crabbe possesses the faculty, but . . . his hand is a little heavy." 2 Reviews and Discussions, "not related to Bacon," 1879.

To Anna Biddell [Woodbridge ] [February 20, 1883J Dear Miss Biddell, You really think a great deal too much of what I can tell, or do, for you—except perhaps in the matter of Tennyson about whom I am

February 1883 glad to tell you all that is good. But your regard for me (which I am sure you would not express if you did not feel) is very valuable and comfortable to me, however well it may be deserved. I do not remember what I said to you about my Death—something about my Will, I believe, in connection with G. Rowe.1 I do not want to make a Martyr of myself before my time, but certainly one should set one's house in order when one is on the verge of 75—an Age which none of my Family have over-stepped except my Sister Jane Wilkinson, who keeps herself as yet evergreen among the olive trees of Florence. Why, only a fortnight ago when I was talking to Mrs. Howe about some provision I had made for her in the Will aforesaid—she had one trouble on her mind, she said—namely, that, in case of "anything happening suddenly" to me, what should she do with noone of my Family in the house to see that all was duly safe in it? I told her, as you may imagine, that she herself, and old True-penny, her husband, were as good as any, or all, of "the Family" in such a Dilemma. I have told the Churchyards to take a Carriage and go over to the Ipswich Pictures, as last year they did. But they must choose their own Day and Hour. Now I must say again—and I hope you will believe me sincere— that I am very grateful for your thinking of me and writing to say so. And so, without further Compliment (which I should be at no loss for) I will say Farewell for the present for your now ancient Friend Littlegrange What is the price of that queer little picture of four uniform houses under a Crag, next the floor?2 1 G. J. Rowe, former Ipswich artist who, during later indigent years, had been befriended by EFG. 2 At the Ipswich art exhibition previously mentioned.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge Feb. 21, [1883] My dear Wright,

Probably the enclosed papers have found their way to Cambridge, and to more influential Quarters than any in Woodbridge. Neverthe-

February 1883 less, my sending them to you will do no harm; and you may, if you please, show them, or mention the cause they advocate to others—a good cause, I think, and especially as regards you Collegiates who so much solace yourselves among the Lakes in Vacation Time. I never, however, solicit others to subscribe in purse, person, or influence; and, so far as this present business is concerned, have but small Interest of my own in the matter. For I shall never see those Lakes again. But I will send my £1 out of regard to the Lakes themselves, and the pleasure they give to so many and also out of worshipful remembrance of Wordsworth, and dear Spedding, as also to follow suit with my old Alfred with whom I was at Spedding's near fifty years ago, and whose name, you see, heads the list of Antagonists. I do not quite understand what money is to do when names of sufficient Authority appeal to an "uncorruptible" Parliament, except as regards the expenses of Printing Circulars, etc. But I send my £1 inasmuch as my name is not quite so efficacious. I shall write a line to Cowell (who tells me he has been sofa-ridden with Bumbago) to tell him of the case, inasmuch as he profits by the Lake District; but I send you the papers because you live in a wider Circle than he; and am Ever yours The Littlegrange No news here—not even a Mouse stirring. What of that Wordsworth Shakespeare? What I read of it in the Academy might almost daunt a true man from bestowing his time and wits on the subject.1 1 Shakespeare's text is severely Bowdlerized in Shakespeare's Historical Plays, 3 vols., 1883, edited by Bishop Charles Wordsworth; reviewed in the Academy, Feb. 10, 1883, pp. 90-91. The Bishop was a son of Christopher, former Master of Trinity, and nephew of the poet.

To E. B. Cowell [Woodbridge] [February 21, 1883] My dear Cowell, I may as well enclose you a lithograph letter sent me together with some explanatory Papers, which I have sent to Wright because of his living among a larger set of persons interested than I suppose you do. I do not ask you, or him, or any one, to subscribe by name or purse:

February 1883 but you may do so if you choose, being one of the many who enjoy the Lakes from time to time. For my part (who shall never see them again) I send my £.1 which is worth more than else I can offer in the way of other influence; and this I do out of regard to the Country itself which I saw near fifty years ago in company with dear Spedding, and Tennyson, and in respectful memory of Wordsworth and Southey. One of the papers I have sent to Wright shows Tennyson's name at the head of the Defense Committee: and next to him the Duke of Westminster. I wish that your name, and Wright's, could be seen on the list; which is contradicting what I said at the beginning of my letter. Whether you join in the cause or not, you can name it to some of those about you. And thus I have said my say on that score. I have had lumbago before now—very troublesome, but one can see a speedy end of it with a little care. Do not let your Cough run into Bronchitis, concerning which much more care is necessary, with a much more uncertain result. Stack's "Six Months in Persia"1 is the Book's name. That Persian Play seemed only a copy of some poor English farces. Ever yours E.FG. 1 By

Edward Stack, 2 vols., 1882.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Feb.22/83 My dear Sir, Pray give a Copy to Mr. Ruskin if you think good. I once had a little correspondence with him about Omar;1 but I never trouble any but intimate friends with presents of my Booklets; and them only on express condition that they will say no more than simply "Thank you" in return. To have to say more is an odious tax on the Receiver when once the Book is published: it is all fair to ask their opinion before. I shall be obliged to you to send a Copy to the Librarian of the London Library, Mr. Harrison. I expect no more than you of my Sale; but I have made my little shot at bringing up my old Poet (worth all the living ones except

February 1883 Tennyson) out of Oblivion; and I reckon your consenting to publish and keep in hand a few Copies on the chance of a Customer as an act of gratitude to one you have had something to do with these thirty years and more. Perhaps the best way would have been to give all the Copies away at once; and yet that would look a silly thing too. Let the Book take its chance, and Believe me yours truly The Laird of Littlegrange 1 See text following the second letter of April, 1873, to Fanny Kemble and let­ ters from CarlyIe and Ruskin immediately following that passage.

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Feb. 23, [1883] My dear Sir, It has been hinted to me that my Crabbe is not very carefully "got up." I see that I ought to have shown it to you before I availed myself of your permission to put your name on the Title page. Unless you regret having anything to do with it, you can, if you please, insert a slip to intimate that the Editor, and not the Publisher, is responsible for its imperfections. The clothing (by my friend Fox) seems to me tidy enough: I suppose the MS correction on the last page of the Preface, and the stuck-in paragraph at the end of the Volume, is the discreditable thing.1 I hasten to write this directly I am told of it—in a letter—but half an hour ago—and before I hear from you of the receipt of the Book, which went off on Tuesday. You must act as you think due to yourself, and believe me yours, E.FG. It was Mr. S. Wilson (to whom I sent a Copy) who told me he thought the Book somewhat marred in appearance by MS correction, and in pasted addition.2 1 The six lines quoted in the letter to Norton, December 22, 1876, concluded the Readings as originally printed. EFG printed the additional ten lines which •follow in the Norton letter and distributed them to friends subsequent to 1879 because "the two passages had for many years run together in my memory."

February 1883 He pasted this "pendant" on the last page of the copies sent to Quaritch, as he had previously requested friends to do. 2 EFG added the postscript at the head of his letter. As printed in the Quaritch correspondence (p. 86), the notation appears to be part of the February 22 letter.

To H. S. Wilson Woodbridge: Thursday [February 23, 1883] My dear Sir, I must say at once that I myself, and not Quaritch, am responsible for the getting up of the Book. He only undertook to publish: and perhaps I ought to have let him see the Book before he allowed his name to be on the Title page. I write to him by this same post1 to tell him that, unless he repudiates the Book altogether, he can, if he pleases, insert a slip to say the Editor and not Publisher is responsible for any shortcomings. Thank you for simply thanking me as I asked. Surely this is the best way in such cases, both for Giver and Receiver. If one asks for an Opinion before publication, well and good: but, when once launched, one should leave one's Friends to their own opinions—and the Public (viz., my thirty possible purchasers) to theirs. I tell Quaritch it is not worth advertizing, or even (I believe) sending to the Reviews. I would not mind the expense if I thought I could much the more draw notice to my old Poet. This note is my first trial of a new Steel pen, which I find not so good as my old "Waverleys." Yours sincerely, Littlegrange, which name I was minded to put on my Title page—but—let it go without. 1 The

Quaritch letter, preceding, is dated February 23, a Friday.

February 1883

To Η. S. Wilson [Woodbridge] [February, 1883] My dear Sir,— Quaritch no doubt sent you the Crabbe out of regard to the help you have given himself and me in our Persian adventures. Pray do what you will with it; only providing that no hint is given to any recipient that a notice of any sort is asked for from him; that is all: my illustrious Fitz-Omar name he is welcome to. 1 When I first published Omar under Quaritch's name—twenty-three years ago—I advertized it in one or two Papers, though he told me then in his crude way there was no use in so doing; and this, though I had given him most of the Copies: which (with all Advertisement) he either sold at Id. apiece, or consigned to waste paper. And when I wrote to him a few days [ago] not to advertize Crabbe, he has not advised the contrary, and therefore I suppose he is of the same mind as he was twenty-three years ago. The name of "Crabbe" would only remind people of the "Rejected Addresses"2 unless with such a name as that of M. Arnold, or Gosse, or some of the known Critics for Editor. I have sent the Book to Leslie Stephen (whom I do not per­ sonally know) simply because I have ventured to dispute his Judg­ ment of Crabbe in my Preface. But I have told him, as I told yourself, to say no more than "Thank you" if he acknowledges the Book at all; which very likely he won't, busy man as he is, and perhaps none the more inclined by what I have said of him, though I do mean what I have said as to his general excellence as an Essay-writer on all such subjects. His first wife was, you know, a Daughter of my old Friend Thackeray, but I had left London before that marriage came on the carpet. I really take it kindly of Quaritch to be troubled at all with a Book which can bring him in no profit; and this too in spite of those blem­ ishes of my own making in the getting-up. I wrote to him the day I had your letter observing on them: and I bid him either abjure the Book, or slip in a notice that he was not accountable for its disfigurements. He replies, however, that he does not complain in that respect—and so we put to Sea. I answer your kind Letter at once, you see, to save you all farther trouble, and am your much obliged LittleGrange 1

EFG had sent Wilson a copy of the Readings from Woodbridge. Wilson, it is

February 1883 clear, had asked permission to give to a friend a second copy he had received, and to identify the author. 2 "Pope in worsted stockings," Horace Smith's quip in his preface to "The Theatre," the Crabbe parody in Rejected Addresses.

To Leslie Stephen Woodbridge Feb r 26/83 Dear Mr. Stephen, "It is a fact," as Carlyle used to say, that when Aldis Wright was about to write to you from here, I was half minded to bid him put in a word from me on the score of former Thackeray associations. But I refrained out of the same feeling which you say had deterred you from sending some such message to me. And now it is because of those same Thackeray associations that I wrote to you direct when I sent you the Crabbe in which I had questioned your Judgment. I knew you would not resent my having done so—too much above my reach for that; but, for that very reason I thought, still less likely to be influenced by anything I could say in defence of my own position. To be sure, the Cardinal comes to my rescue—but not on the score of Humour, which I maintain—in the quotation you have been so very good as to write out for me1— pathetic as the notes of the Violin which some one says are from time to time to be heard from within his room in the Birmingham Oratory. You did not, I think, suppose that what I hinted of the Aesthetic Criticism referred to any of yours, which proves itself everywhere to be of a far broader and robuster sort, original, and independent of all such contemporary coterie jargon. For that reason—by no means the only one in your case—I value the writings of Lowell and Bagehot. But here is enough of all this, which you must not take as Compli­ ment in return for Compliment, but the quite sincere opinion of yours very sincerely, Edward FitzGerald 1 From Cardinal Newman's Addresses to the Catholics of Dublin, quoted by EFG in a revision of his preface to the Readings, Letters and Literary Remains, VII, 366-67.

March 1883

To Bernard Quaritch Woodbridge Feb. 27/83 Dear Sir, Please send a Copy to the writer of the enclosed.1 I am sorry to trouble you; but I can say there will be no more such applications. If any others of the same sort do come to yourself give them the Book, and trust—but do not ask—anyone not to kill us with this arrow plucked from our own wing. Yours truly, The Laird of Littlegrange 1 A request from a Mr. CIaydon of the Pall Mall Gazette requesting a review copy of Readings in Crabbe. See letter to Leslie Stephen, April 9.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge March 6, [1883] My dear Mrs. Kemble, I have asked more than one person for tidings of you for the last two months: and only yesterday heard from M. Donne that he had seen you at the Address to which I shall direct this letter. I wrote to you about mid-November, desiring Coutts to forward my letter: in which I said that if you were in no mood to write during the time of Mrs. Wister's departure for America (which you had told me was to be November end) you were not to trouble yourself at all. Since which time I have really not known whether you had not gone off to America too. Anyhow, I thought better to wait till I had some token of your "whereabout," if nothing more. And now Mowbray tells me that much, and I will venture another Letter to you after so long an interval. You must always follow your own inclination as to answering me—not by any means make a "Duty" of it. As usual I have nothing to say of myself but what you have heard from me for years. Only that my (now one year old) friend Bronchitis has thus far done but little more than to keep me aware that he has not quitted me, nor even thinks of so doing. Nay, this very day, when the Snow which held off all winter is now coming down under stress of N.E. wind, I feel my friend stirring somewhat within.

March 1883 Enough of that and of myself. Mowbray gives me a very good re­ port of you—Absit Nemesis for my daring to write it!—And you have got back to something of our old London Quarters, which I always look to as better than the new. And do you go to even a Play, in the old Quarters also? Wright, who was with me at Christmas, was taken by Macmillan to see "Much Ado," and found, all except Scenery, etc. (which was too good) so bad that he vowed he would never go to see Sh. "at any of your Courts" again. Irving without any Humour, Miss Terry with simply Animal Spirits, etc. However, Wright did intend once more to try—Comedy of Errors, at some theatre; but how he liked it—I may hear if he comes to me at Easter. Now this is enough—is it not?—for a letter: but I am as always Sincerely yours, E.FG. Carlyle and Emerson Correspondence has come to me from Profes­ sor Norton this morning.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge March 7/83 My dear Norton,

I wrote to you some little while before Christmas, praying you, among other things, not to put yourself to the trouble of sending me your Emerson-Carlyle Correspondence, inasmuch as I could easily get it over here; and, by way of answer, your two Volumes reached me yesterday, safe and sound from over the Atlantic.1 I had not time (a strange accident with me) to acknowledge the receipt of them yester­ day: but make all speed to do so, with all gratitude, today. As you are simply the Editor of the Book, I may tell you something of my thoughts on it by and by. I doubt not that I shall find Emerson's Letters the more interesting, because the newer, to me. The Portrait at the head of Vol. II assures me that one will find only what is good in them. Another thing I surely said in that fore-said Letter of mine: viz., that so long aga as August I wrote to Mr. Froude; that, when he had made what use he would of my Carlyle Letters, I wished to send them to you. But I have had no reply from him. I suppose he has

March 1883 been very busy with Mrs. Carlyle's Letters which I see advertized in the Press: and he would not probably know what he might want of my store till he had the other off his hands. He might have spared time to say that much, I think. He has published a fourth Series of Essays, I see: whereof one is concerning Cardinal Newman which I shall get a sight of sooner or later. I was glad to find from Mozley's Oriel Reminiscences that Newman had been an admirer of my old Crabbe: and Mr. L. Stephen has very kindly written out for me a passage from some late work, or Lecture, of Newman's own, in which he says that, after fifty years, he read "Richard's Story of his Boyhood," in the Tales of the Hall, with the same delight as on its first appear­ ance, and he considers that a Poem which thus pleases in Age as it pleased in Youth must be called (in the "accidental" sense of the word, logically speaking) "Classical." I owe this Courtesy on Mr. Stephen's part to my having sent him a little Preface to my Crabbe, in which I contested Mr. S.'s judgment as to Crabbe's Humour: and I did not choose to publish this without apprizing him, whom I know so far as he is connected with the Thackerays. He replied very kindly, and sent me the Newman quota­ tion I tell you of. The Crabbe is the same I sent you some years ago: left in sheets, except the few Copies I sent to friends. And now I have tacked to it a little Introduction, and sent forty copies to lie on Quaritch's Counter: for I do not suppose they will get further. And no great harm done if they stay where they are, except to Quaritch in regard of house-room; and I really believe he only consents on account of some twenty years' dealings with me. "Enough of that," as I just saw in one of your Carlyle pages. One day you must write, and tell me how you and yours have fared through this winter. It has been a very mild—even a warm—one over here; and I for my part have not yet had much to complain of in point of health thus far; no, not even though winter has come at last in Snow and Storm for the last three days. I do not know if we are yet come to the worst, so terrible a Gale has been predicted, I am told, for the middle of March. Yesterday morning I distinctly heard the sea moan­ ing some dozen miles away; and today—why, the enclosed little scrap, enclosed to me, will tell you what it was about—on my very old Crabbe's shore. It (the Sea) will assuredly cut off his old Borough from the Slaughden River-quay where he went to work, and whence he sailed in the "Unity" Smack (one of whose Crew is still alive)2 on his first adventure to London. But all this can but little interest you,

March 1883 considering that we in England (except some few in this Eastern corner of it) scarce know more of Crabbe and his whereabout than by name. Farewell for the present, then; and pray believe me sincerely yours (after now some dozen years' acquaintance by letter) The Littlegrange [The enclosure, a news clipping] ALDEBURGH. The Storm. On Tuesday evening the tide ran over the Promenade, in many places the river and sea meeting. The cattle are all sent inland, and all the houses at Slaughden are evacuated. Published in Boston, 1883. 2 See letter to F. Tennyson, Sept. 9, 1882.

1

To Leslie Stephen [Woodbridge ] [March 9, 1883] Dear Mr. Stephen, Will you be so good as to note on the enclosed Card: 1st Whence the Quotation you have sent me is taken. 2nd Whether you give me leave to quote it in case of need? You see that very few words will answer my first Query; and a simple "Yes" or "No" the second: and I shall repent of having asked at all if my doing so causes you any further trouble, busy as you are. But I will add a word (also needing no answer), viz., that my little Crabbe was printed some five years ago1 without any Introduction; and the few Friends I sent it to said no Public would care for it, and so I let it lie by me. Then some said that it wanted at any rate some sort of Introduction, if not for Crabbe's sake, yet for my way of dealing with him. And so I ran up a little thing of the sort and sent little Quaritch some forty Copies of the Book on a forlorn hope, but not without first sending a Copy to you, on whom I had fallen foul in the said Preface—for which I hope you are not much the worse and remain Sincerely yours E. FitzGerald ι See letter to Stephen, Feb. 26, n.l.

March 1883

To Herman Biddell Woodbridge March 11/83 My dear Herman, I agree with you that the Athenaeum you have quoted for me is a nasty—probably, as you say—spiteful piece of Criticism, in spite of the praise which it allows. Your Johnson s Dictionary would, I doubt not, tell you that "gird" is to hit or strike: and thence, metaphorically, by word, as well as by deed—to taunt—as we also talk of "having a fling" at any one. In this sense it is used by Shakespeare and other Authors as old, or older yet. I do fancy that Heaven, though still overcast, promises better things today; and am as always Sincerely yours The Laird of Littlegrange

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] Sunday [March 18,1883] My dear Wright, All will be ready for you on Thursday, so far as I can foresee. Arthur Charlesworth is going (unless my advice can prevail him to go to some livelier place) with a Friend to stay at our Bull Inn, where I can see nothing for them but John Grout's horses, and Billiard Table: and Captain Moor shut up in his Chamber with Gout. Herman Biddell called here a week ago, and will be glad to come over and meet you. The Captain1 also shall come, this week, or next. I do not yet know if Keene comes or not; I would almost rather he delayed as the tender Ash delays "till the Season shall allow" of get­ ting better abroad. You are independent of all this; and I do not know but that he is also. So he must please himself. I had a letter from George Crabbe some days ago telling me he was going on well, but not yet (viz, then) allowed out of his Chamber by the Doctor. As soon as he finds a Curate he will be off to the Riviera. He spoke of a letter "tres interessante" from Monsr Wright, which he may have answered ere this. I meant to have sent you his: but of course tore it up first.

March 1883 Those Carlyle Words are in his and Emerson's Correspondence,2 sent to me by Norton who edited the Book and should have known better (as I shall one day tell him) than to print all he did: you can judge of the Book for yourself when you come here. And believe me always yours The Littlegrange 1

F. C. Brooke of Ufford. letters to Cowell and Pollock immediately following.

2 See

To E. B. Cowell [Woodbridge ] Easter Monday [March 26, 1883] My dear Cowell, I was very glad to have a letter from you; and so pleasant and interesting a letter withal. Wright, who has been here since Thursday, had not known that you read Cuneiform and was proportionately interested in the Cyrus Legend. He has brought Bevision and other work along with him, and is altogether, or nearly, independent of Company; and I, for my part, am compelled to be churlish of mine where most he likes it: that is, in walking. He is here reading the Emerson-Carlyle Correspondence which Pro­ fessor Norton, the Editor, sent me. You will, I think, be interested in it, chiefly perhaps on Emerson's account, who shows himself so de­ voted a friend; Carlyle also is at his amiablest. Some three or four things in his Letters should, I think, have been omitted: Mistakes (as I think) from insufficient acquaintance on Carlyle's part; such as that Tennyson (whom he looks on as a "Son of Heaven" too) is of a "gloomy" turn of mind "like myself"—viz., T.C.; that Thackeray's appetite was "enormous" which I never saw, though he liked good fare. Then friendly, useful, and clever Milnes is called a "Bobinredbreast" of a man, etc. Such words [are] very well in a private letter but not to be published by an Editor, especially when Lord Houghton [is] alive. Last Evening Wright read to me nearly all "The Diamond Neck­ lace"1—somewhat overdone, we thought, though overdone by Genius. The Essay would have been finished but for the Entrance of Arthur and his friend, young Mr. Edwards, son of one of Arthur's "Masters." I had asked Arthur to come here for his Holyday: but he did not like

March 1883 to leave his Friend who wanted to share the Holyday with him, so they went to the Bull Inn, and look in on me. The Friend is a very gentlemanly young fellow, and they seem much attached to one an­ other. On Friday they walked to Felixstow; and yesterday, after dining here at noon, all round by the heaths over the River. Today they will go, I suppose, to witness some "Athletic Sports" held at Woodbridge; and probably look in here again in the Evening to say Good Bye before returning to London tomorrow. Wright and I have seen the Athenaeum, and (as you may anticipate so far as I am concerned) agree with you. Not only no good line, but (as seems to me in so much of Browning) nothing to be called a "Poem" in Conception, or Execution.2 Are we then all wrong, and Athenaeum and Academies, and Furnival B. Societies all right? We must leave that Question to Time; and I think he will not take long in deciding. As I think that a Letter may amuse you a little during your Holyday, I write, you see, rather more at large than usual; and I should perhaps run on further but that I find I cannot write very legibly: whether my hand or its implement be in fault.3 So, now I will come to an end. Wright bids me add from him that he "wishes you were here," before retiring to a Cigar in another room. You may believe that I wish so too; and that I am yours and Elizabeth's always Littlegrange 1 Carlyle's essay on intrigue in the court of Louis XVI and the theft of a diamond necklace from a firm of Paris jewellers by an adventuress who posed as an agent negotiating purchase of the necklace by Marie Antoinette. The orna­ ment, reported to have contained more than 500 diamonds, was valued, accord­ ing to Carlyle, at between 80 and 90 thousand pounds. 2 Jocoseria, published in March. 3 His hand, no doubt. The script is almost illegible.

To W. F. Pollock [Woodbridge] [March 26, 1883] My dear Pollock, I should not wait for a letter from you but that I do not like too often to trouble you for an answer—you a busy man, and I so much the reverse.

March 1883 As you tell me—I am glad to find—a fair report of your own health —so I can give you the same of mine. I had expected the March winds, etc., would awake my Bronchitis of last year; but it has not been so—not as yet—which I add lest Nemesis should be looking over my Shoulder. As you say nothing of Lady Pollock, I will assume that she too is at least as well as you and I. Professor Norton sent me his Carlyle-Emerson—all to the credit of all parties, I think. I must tell the Professor that in my opinion he should have omitted some personal observations which are all fair in a private letter; as about Tennyson being of a "gloomy" turn (which you know is not so), Thackeray's "enormous appetite," ditto; and such mention of Richard Milnes as a "Robin Redbreast," etc.; which may be less untrue, though not more proper to be published of a clever, useful, and amiable man, now living. Aldis Wright, who is here for Easter week, is how reading the Book, with sufficient satisfaction to propose to himself another trial of Emer­ son's books, which he did not get on with at first. The other night he read me Gurlyle's "Diamond Necklace"—which assuredly darkens the subject with many words. I wondered that he had not somewhat more cleared himself of that by 1837—especially considering that he had previously written his Johnsons, Voltaires, etc., among the Essays which perhaps may be counted his best things. I changed "Temple Bar" for "Cornhill" some months ago, but do not know if I have not gone farther to fare worse. I shall most likely get a look at the new Life of Mozart you tell me of—if made Eng­ lish of. Wright is in another room with a packet of Letters; expecting also proof sheets of some Revised Habakkuk by the noon post. I will ask him if he has a word for you. Yes; he begs me to say that he is, as am I, yours sincerely E.FG.

To Leslie Stephen [Woodbridge ] [March, 1883] Dear Mr. Stephen, (I have not known you long enough to dispense with the "Mister," though your kindness and family associations tempt me so to do.)

March 1883 All I know of the Picture is that I bought it more than twenty years ago from a poor dealer named Sharp, in Great Russell Street, for a few Pounds. He called it Major Andre, by Sir Joshua Reynolds: which I did not much attend to from his "dixit," but liked the Picture of whomsoever, or by whomsoever it might be; at the same time think­ ing, from what I had read and seen, that the man might have been told, or had imagined aright. The portrait might not appear to be a likely one of a man who ventured, and lost, his life on a dangerous service, but I had read (whether in Miss Seward1 or elsewhere) that he was (as in the picture) somewhat of a "petit maitre" in Accomplish­ ments; and I lit upon a print of him (from some old Magazine, I fancy) carrying out the "doucereux" look which one might have ex­ pected from such accounts of him, and decidedly resembling the Por­ trait which you now possess, although not done from it. This print I sent either to Thackeray or Annie, who (the latter I mean) has doubt­ less lost and forgotten it long ago. As to the Picture itself, it was standing on a sofa in my lodging— in 1857, I am nearly sure—when Thackeray called in his Brougham;2 he was then about his Virginians, and I told him he had better carry off the Picture as being, or pretending to be, the Portrait of one con­ nected with the Times and Places he was writing about. Thackeray, who, as you know, had a shrewd Intuition as to the likelihood of Subject as well as of Painting, carried it off with him, and that is all I can tell you. If it be by Sir Joshua (as I think it is), it would be an early work, before he handled his Brush so freely as afterwards; but, as I say, I think I see him there. I do not know if Andre's Life cor­ responds with my notion of Sir Joshua's era of Art. But all this you could very easily find, if you do not already know, as probably you do, long ago. I am, at any rate, very glad you like the Picture, be it by whom, and of whom, it may. Why would Professor Norton publish such confidential utterances of Carlyle to his friend Emerson as that Thackeray had "an enormous appetite," that Tennyson was ever a "gloomy" soul, etc.—untrue of both men; or about Milnes' being a "Robin Redbreast" little man— not so untrue perhaps but best left unpublished of so kindly and clever a man during his Life. The "Age of Chivalry seems gone for­ ever" so far as Biography is concerned. And I am sincerely yours E.FG. P.S. In spite of this long, ill-written Letter, I must add a word of Thanks to you for your invitation. I have not indeed been in London

April 1883 for more than a day or two in the year for more than twenty years past: and then only for Business, or to see some ancient Contem­ poraries who really wanted a look. The Business is, I hope, all over: and William Donne, the old Friend who cared most for a look at me, died last year. The others will do very well without that now, ready as I know they would be to receive me kindly. So I know not when— if ever—I shall be in London again; still less whether, if I did, I should venture to knock at your Door, quite relying as I do on your friendly disposition toward me. 1 Probably in Letters of Anna Seward, A. Constable, ed., 6 vols., Edinburgh, 1811. Major John Andre, executed in New York as a spy in 1780, was a friend of Miss Seward's. 2 See letter to Cowell, January 22, 1857.

To Leslie Stephen Woodbridge April 9/83 My dear Mr. Stephen,

Last week a Pall Mall Gazette containing a Notice of my Crabbe was sent me. The reference to Newman, and the kindly praise make me think that you might have written it: and yet I could scarce expect—scarce wish—that you should have devoted any of your busy time to such an office. Besides, Mr. Claydon (connected, I suppose, with the Gazette) had previously sent to ask me for a Copy—for Reviewal. So I scarce knew what to do: but on the whole I think there will be no harm in writing, to thank you, if you wrote, or had any hand in the Article; and even if not, I know you will not be sorry to hear of it.1 Professor Norton (to whom as to Mr. Lowell I had sent the un­ prefaced volume) has lately sent me a quotation from a letter of Clough's urging Mr. Child of Boston to publish an Edition of Crabbe: valuable if for nothing else (though much else there was) as an account of English people and manners at the time he writes in— and which Mr. Clough says he remembers somewhat himself. It was this which made me send my "Broacher" (as we call it here) to Lowell and Norton: for'I thought that, as not seldom the case, Americans might take more interest in such a matter than English people do. But I do not think they cared much; Lowell (then in Spain) seemed

April 1883 more struck by the old-fashioned Address between the characters than anything else; and some friend of Norton's reviewed the Book (though unpublished) in the Atlantic Monthly, beginning "We have done with Crabbe," and proceeding to give reasons—and some very good ones—why.2 I fear the Pall Mall critic is right when he says that when an Author who once was famous has fallen into obscurity—nay, oblivion—it is scarce possible to lift him out again, by "All the king's horses and all the king's men"—that is, by much stronger powers than mine. Nevertheless, if Quaritch should sell off his forty copies during my life, I will (if compos) cancel some irrelevancy of my own in the Preface, and substitute Newman and Clough3 (whom I never read, though Carlyle once ordered me so to do). I would enclose you what Mr. Norton has copied for me from Clough; but you would have to return it; and I really do not like you to have any more trouble in the matter. But am sincerely yours E. FitzGerald Yet, if you can easily lay hand on my old Friend George Crabbe's Life of his Father the Poet, do read his account of a family Travel from Leicestershire to Suffolk, and the visit they paid there to your friend Mr. Tovell.4 You will find it some dozen pages on in Chapter VI —a real Dutch Interior, done with something of the Father's pencil— but quite unintentionally so; my old George rather hating Poetry— as he called Verse—except Shakespeare, Young's Night Thoughts, and Thomson's Seasons; and never having read his Father's from the time of editing it in 1834 till drawn to them by me a dozen years after.5 Not but what he loved and admired his father in every shape but that. 1

Leslie Stephen had written the review. In "A Neglected Poet" by G. E. Woodberry, Atlantic Monthly, May, 1880, pp. 624-29, a general essay on Crabbe containing neither comment nor clue to identify it as a critique of the Readings. 3 Two hundred copies of the revised preface were being printed when EFG died in June. The balance of the 350 copies privately printed in 1879 formed Quaritch's 1883 edition of the Readings. 4 John Tovell, yeoman of Parham, Suffolk, uncle of the poet's wife. 5 The statement corrects EFG's contradictory remark in his letter to Norton, Dec. 22, 1876. 2

April 1883

To Anna Biddell [Woodbridge] [April 10,1883] Dear Miss Biddell,

Your Froude reached me quite safely, as I might have written before now to tell you; but I thought you would have been off to Bourne­ mouth, whither you wrote me you were going. By this time I suppose that you are home again; and so I write to you that I will send your Book in company with the Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence (which is mine) if you wish to read it. Very good reading it is on both sides, I think, only that, had I been Editor, I should have left out three or four things concerning living and dead people, which are either not exact, or might give pain. Now you see that Mrs. Carlyle's Letters are published, in which your friend Froude comes under the Athe­ naeums' Lash;1 certainly, if what they say be true, I cannot make him out whether in this instance any more than in that of the Reminis­ cences. Miss Lynn sent me the Life of Lord Hatherley,2 which is much what I should have expected, and might quite as well have been let alone. All in your Froude about Oxford and Newman I enjoyed well: as also a Paper upon that Cagliostro of the Second Century;3 which Aldis Wright read to me out of doors at Easter. These late hot Suns and Cold Winds have somewhat re-awakened my dormant Bronchitis; one does not know how to deal with them together. We were very glad to see Herman here one day—I think the day before you were to start Southwards. Let me hear that you en­ joyed yourself, and believe me ever yours Littlegrange Annie Kerrich enquired much after you in a letter I had from her a fortnight ago. 1 Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, J. A. Froude, ed., 3 vols., 1883, reviewed in The Athenaeum, April 7, pp. 435-37. 2 A Memoir of the Right Honorable William Page Wood, Baron Hatherley, W.R.W. Stephens, ed., 2 vols., 1883. See letter to Pollock, Feb. 2, 1869. s EFG alludes to "Letters on the Oxford Counter-Revolution" and "A Cagliostro of the Second Century" in J. A. Froude's 1883 series of Short Studies on Great Subjects.

April 1883

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge April 12, [1883] My dear Mrs. Kemble, I do not think you will be sorry that more than a Moon has waxed and waned since last I wrote to you. For you have seen long enough how little I had to tell, and that nevertheless you were bound to answer. But all such Apologies are stale: you will believe, I hope, that I remain as I was in regard to you, as I shall believe that you are the same toward me. Mowbray Donne has told me two months ago that he could not get over the Remembrance of last May;1 and that, acting on Body as well as Mind, aged him, I suppose, as you saw. Mowbray is one of the most loyal men toward Kinsman and Friend. Now for my own little Budget of News. I got through those Sunless East winds well enough: better than I am feeling now they both work together. I think the Wind will rule till Midsummer: "Enfin tant qu'il plaira a Dieu." Aldis Wright was with me for Easter, and we went on our usual way, together or apart. Professor Norton had sent me his Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, which we conned over together, and liked well on either side. Carlyle should not have said (and still less Norton printed) that Tennyson was a "gloomy" Soul, nor Thack­ eray "of inordinate Appetite," neither of which sayings is true: nor written of Lord Houghton as a "Robin Redbreast" of a man. I shall wait very patiently till Mudie sends me Jane Carlyle—where I am told there is a word of not unkindly toleration of me; which, if one be named at all, one may be thankful for.2 Here are two Questions to be submitted to Mrs. Kemble by Messrs. Aldis Wright and Littlegrange—viz., What she understands by— (1.) "The Raven himself is hoarse," etc. (2.) "But this eternal Blazon must not be," etc.3 Mrs. Kemble (who will answer my letter) can tell me how she fares in health and well-being; yes, and if she has seen, or heard, anything of Alfred Tennyson, who is generally to be heard of in London at this time of year. And pray let Mrs. Kemble believe in the Writer of these poor lines as her ancient, and loyal, Subject E.FG. The raven himself is hoarse, etc.

April 1883 "Lady Macbeth compares the Messenger, hoarse for lack of Breath, to a raven whose croaking was held to be prophetic of Disaster. This we think the natural interpretation of the words, though it is rejected by some Commentators."—Clark and Wright's Clarendon Press Shake­ speare. " 'Eternal Blazon' = revelation of Eternity. It may be, however, that Sh. uses 'eternal' for 'infernal' here, as in Julius Caesar I. 2, 160: 'The eternal Devil'; and Othello IV. 2, 130: 'Some eternal villain.' 'Blazon' is an heraldic term, meaning, Description of armorial bearings,* hence used for description generally; as in Much Ado II. 1, 307. The verb 'blazon' occurs in Cymbeline IV. 2, 170."—Ibid. Thus have I written out in my very best hand: as I will take care to do in future; for I think it very bad manners to puzzle anyone— and especially a Lady—with that which is a trouble to read; and I really had no idea that I have been so guilty of doing so to Mrs. Kemble. Also I beg leave to say that nothing in Mowbray's letter set me off writing again to Mrs. Kemble, except her Address, which I knew not till he gave it to me, and I remain her very humble obedient Servant, The Laird of Littlegrange— of which I enclose a side view done by a Woodbridge Artisan for his own amusement. So that Mrs. Kemble may be made acquainted with the "habitat" of the Flower—which is about to make an Omelette for its Sunday Dinner. N.B.—The "Raven" is not he that reports the news to Miladi M., but "one of my fellows Who almost dead for breath, etc." * Not, as E.FG. had thought, the Bearings themselves. 1

His father's fatal illness. an interpolated passage giving an account of his visit to EFG in August, 1855, Carlyle described "the good Fitz" as "a familiar of mine ever since the old battle of Naseby inquiries. . . . a solitary, shy, kindhearted man" (Mrs. Carlyle's Letters and Memorials, II, 249). 3 "The Raven . . . ," Macbeth, 1.5.39; "eternal blazon," Hamlet, 1.5.21. 2 In

April 1883

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [April, 1883] My dear Wright,

I rather think you see Maggs, but I nevertheless send you the en­ closed, for sake of Cinthio:1 which, if you have it not already, may be worth your getting. Mrs. Kemble takes the Raven for the Raven: with "eternal" in the sense which you take it in. But I have sent her your Notes on both from your Clarendon Edition, so as (if possible) not to misrepresent your words. And we shall see what she will say by and by. A Card from G. Crabbe told me that he had reached Hyeres after three nights at Paris, Lyons and Marseilles; the weather not warm, and himself feeling much as when he left home. This week he expects to be, for a week, at Mentone; whence, if strong enough, toward North­ ern Italy. I would have sent you his Post Card, but that it went off at once to Crowfoot. Keene has consulted his Doctor, who, after a general manipulation, found "distention" in divers parts, and gave him Cathartics which made him seedy. He had, however, walked a mile at a leisurely pace afterwards. Mrs. Edwards will not be easy about him till she has seen his Doctor; she did not believe that Teeth and Smoke (and, I say, Sweetmeat) had to do with his Ailment though she put it off so to him. He tells me he has knocked off half his Tobacco, though not so bidden by his Doctor. I have bought him some old Keys found at Dunwich: I do not think of any great antiquity: but my Boy says that some of them are of hammered Iron. John Howe is supposed to mend a little: the poor Postman's Wife to grow worse; I have grumbled a little for all the Week past: but am yours always The Laird of L. 1 Beyond doubt a copy of Hecatommithi, a 16th-century collection of tales by Giambatista Cinthio, was listed in a catalogue of Uriah Maggs, a London used book dealer. The work was Shakespeare's source for Othello and Measure for Measure.

April 1883

To Hallam Tennyson April 19,1883 My dear Hallam, It is now some six months since I heard of you all, from Annie Ritchie, I think. So be a good boy and write me just enough to tell me how it fares with mother, and father, all your party. Of myself I will tell you that I got through what should have been winter well enough; yes, and even through the March that was winter; but, since sun and wind (east wind) combined, I have been somewhat croaky again. By the way, do you understand by Lady Macbeth's raven the bird himself, or (as I had always supposed) the messenger who had but breath to deliver his message, as Aldis Wright interprets? and may old Hamlet's1 (does papa remember my "Gimlet Prince of Dunkirk?") "eternal Blazon" mean not so much of the Eternal as of the Infernal world, as Wright thinks possible from the use of the word in other places by "Williams," "the divine Villiams," as in the case of Iago, an "eternal" willain.2 I fear I had never even thought of the word but as meaning "long-winded," which however I do not propose to the commentators. This, among other things, Wright and I talked about when he was with me here at Easter, which reminds me of a crow (not a raven) I have to pick with your father. For Wright had heard from someone that he, the Laureate, had added to his wreath one of the very grandest lines in all blank verse, A Mister Wilkinson, a clergyman of which I was the author while speaking of my brother-in-law,3 but which the paltry poet took up as it fell from my inspired lips and has adopted for his own. You see that bronchitis, ever flourishing his dart over me, fails to make me graver, that is at least while referring to my dear old com­ rade, whom I should call "master," and with whom (in spite, perhaps because, of his being rather a "gloomy" soul sometimes, as Carlyle wrote to Emerson) I always did talk more nonsense than to anyone, I believe. Pray heaven I may not be trifling unseasonably with him now, that is, when he or his may not be in the proper mood for it. Write me word of this, dear Hallam, and believe me in sober earnest, Yours and all yours as ever at 75,4 E. FitzGerald

April 1883 1

The ghost of Hamlet's father. lago's wife, attributes Othello's suspicions and jealous passion to the practices of "some eternal villain" (IV.2.130). lago's name is transcribed as "Fags" in the Tennyson Memoir (11,276), the source for the text of this letter. The MS is missing. EFG's handwriting, often difficult to decipher, naturally be­ came more difficult in his later years. 3 In the course of their visit to Spedding and the Lake Country, April, 1835. "Why Fitz," Tennyson had remarked, "that's a verse, and a very bad one too." 4 Again, EFG's customary reasoning that, having reached his 75th year, he was 75 years of age. His closing remark accounts for a chronological error in Tennyson's dedicatory prologue to EFG for his poem "Tiresias": 2 Emilia,

But we old friends are still alive And I am nearing seventy-four While you have touched at seventy-five Both men were born in 1809—EFG, March 31; Tennyson, August 6.

To Frances Kerrich1 Little Grange, Woodbridge April, 1883 My dear Fanny, You will find that I have left you in my Will £.600 apart from what­ ever share you may receive of my Residuary Property. And this £,600 I wish you to share with Elizabeth, investing £,300 each in such way as you may be best advised. Beside another reason I have for doing this, I wish to give you the means of continuing certain little pensions and payments which I have made during my life in this neighbourhood, and which you can con­ tinue better than any one else, inasmuch as you know some of the People, and well know the Howes here, who can tell you about all. Through them also you can pay what is to be paid to the several persons in question; whether half yearly, monthly, or weekly, as seems best for them and most convenient to you. But I especially desire that you will not—either of you—engage in any other such Charities, as if on my account, here, or elsewhere. As I said, I have another reason for leaving you and Elizabeth this Sum of Money purposely for your own use, only deducting the allow­ ances hereafter specified as they fall due. The Howes are amply pro­ vided for by my Will. And I specially enjoin you not to heed—or answer—any applications from Emilius Calogan (to whom I have left £25 yearly, as my

May 1883 Brother John has done) nor indeed to attend to any Applications from any Quarter on the strength of any previous eleemosynary claim on me. Your affectionate Uncle Edward FitzGerald Two Shillings a week to 1. James Fisher the elder. Fisherman of Aldeburgh. 2. The same to an old Mr. Newson (not my Captain) of Woodbridge—known to Ellen Churchyard. One shilling per week to 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Mrs. Banyard (Mrs. Howe's Sister) Mrs. Skinner (George Howe's Mother in law) Mrs. Butters of Castle Street (known to Ellen Churchyard) Mrs. Darcy of Felixstow. Mr. Skoulding, paralytic, in Castle Street.

I wish also that you would look to Thomas Newson (my old Cap­ tain) if he fall into want from failing, or lost, Eyesight, insufficient Pension, etc. And also help Mrs. Pitt if needful. Edward FitzGerald 1

His eldest niece.

To W. A. Wright Woodbridge May 1/83 My dear Wright, I do not suppose it likely that any of my works should be reprinted after my Death. Possibly the three Plays from the Greek, and Calderon's Magico: which have a certain merit in the Form they are cast into, and also in the Versification. However this may be, I venture to commit to you this Box contain­ ing Copies of all that I have corrected in the way that I would have them appear, if any of them ever should be resuscitated. The C. Lamb papers are only materials for you, or any one else, to use at pleasure.

May 1883 The Crabbe volume would, I think, serve for an almost sufiBcient Selection from him;1 and some such "Selection" will have to be made, I believe, if he is to be resuscitated. Two of the Poems—["Silford Hall; or] The Happy Day" and "The Family of Love"2—seem to me to have needed some such abridgement as the "Tales of the Hall," for which I have done little more than hastily to sketch the Plan. For all the other Poems, simple Extracts from them will suffice: with a short notice concerning their Dates of Composition, etc., at the Beginning. My poor old Lowestoft Sea-slang may amuse yourself to look over perhaps. And so, asking your pardon for inflicting this Box upon you I am ever sincerely yours E.FG. 1 Selections from Crabbe's complete works. See letter to Cowell, April 10, 1869, n.3. 2 Both, stories from Posthumous Tales.

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge] [May 3,1883] My dear Wright, The enclosed (not wanted back) will tell you about George Crabbe, who seems to me not to have profited as yet so much as he had pre­ viously done from a change to the South. The causes of this are ob­ vious; he went too late, and the Season has hitherto been against him. I beg him to remain abroad till over June, for I am convinced these East Winds, which only began with March, will continue till Midsum­ mer; but he may not be provided with a Curate. Yesterday I had to go to London, and after transacting what I spe­ cially went up for, cabbed it to Chelsea, to look for Charles Keene, about whose condition I was not confident. After a Fortnight's Doctorage, however, including more Physic (Calomel and Nux Vomica, etc.), as he had not undergone for all his Life before, he said he felt decidedly better (for which of course I stopt his Mouth), was able to walk; and did walk with me (not a quarter of a mile off) to see Carlyle's house and Statue, and was none the worse. He purposes coming here next week if he go on improving, and also get forward enough

May 1883 with his Comic Business. I shall try for Robert Groome to meet him, and Loder is a Rock of Ages to rely on. Cheyne Row was sad enough to look on again after near thirty years.1 Most of the houses to be let; and his—upon which so much of trouble, and even Life, had been wasted—among them. The Statue seemed to me very good, though looking small because (I think) of not being backed and set off with anything but higher, and dingier, houses. I am reading Jane Carlyle with his "Elucidations"—deeply interesting both in their several ways; but whether such Lifelong Suffering on one Side, and Repentance at having overlooked it on the other, be quite proper for the public Eye, is another Question. But— Brave old Carlyle! A Fortnight ago I wrote to Hallam Tennyson for a word about his Father and Household, of whom I had not heard for six months. All fairly well now; but old Alfred had not ventured to London for fear of his last year's "Gout," which his Doctor told him might again be brought to the surface by London Fogs that check perspiration. And Hallam's Letter (which I would enclose you but for a bit of Confidence in it) makes me take this Second Sheet to say—that, I having told him of my croaking a little of late from Cold, etc., took occasion to ask about Lady Macbeth's "Raven": to which he answers (with Father's concurrence, I suppose), "Surely, it is the Bird, not the Messenger." "The 'Eternal Blazon' we think other world Blazon.'" But A.T. yields to me—unwillingly—the glory of A Mister Wilkinson, etc. Hallam says too that Venables, who seems in high force, is about to take up cudgels in the Fortnightly for Gurlyle versus Froude.2 Some day this may amuse the Master, to whom my Love and Duty. Merivale wrote me "mero motu"3 a very kind Remembrancer, which I was not slow to acknowledge. I fancy your time for Habakkuk is almost—if not quite—come; so you must not trouble yourself to write to me, with that "Eternal Blazon" to unroll; but believe me yours the same E.FG. George's Letter not to be found (of course) when wanted for enclosure. But thus much I can faithfully report from it— That he first went to Hyeres—then to Mentone—weather not warm enough to sit abroad in, and he not up to walking, though better in health. Now, I suppose, at Florence: in a week after which to Venice;

May 1883 after which to begin moving slowly homeward so as to reach Merton at the End of May. I wish, as I tell him, that he could manage to remain abroad till Midsummer; up to which time I believe these cold Winds will blow. His Sister thinks he will scarce be strong enough to resume his Duties when he does get back. I doubt (as does Crowfoot) that he has not thriven as well on this year's Southing as for several past years.4 1

EFG had last visited the Carlyles mid-June, 1859. was more impartial than EFG indicates. See letter to Wright, May 29, n.l. 3 "Of his own free will." i Crabbe of Merton died August 9, 1884. 2 VenabIes

To Mrs. Edwards [Woodbridge ] [May 5,1883] My dear Mrs. Edwards,

Had you been at home on Wednesday when I called, I might (if you had axed me) have stayed all ijight in London. I was not indeed at all sure that you would be back from Paris on Wednesday: but still I fancied your letter had spoken of Tuesday as the day of your return. But do not give yourself the trouble of writing a line about all that. I got back to Woodbridge at 9¾ instead of 8¾—having to go round by Bishop's Stortford because of some breakdown near Chelmsford. If you have seen C.K. since my return, he will perhaps have told you how my first Visit was to him; partly because the short—and sweet —business I was called to London upon—came off in his Direction: besides, I was not sure of you, and I did want to know about his health, etc. He seemed to be persuaded that his Pains had indeed pro­ ceeded from Indigestion, of which (as I always said in his, so in dear Edwards' case) Smoking was a minor cause; and he seemed to feel that of those Pains he was relieved in part, insomuch that he had been about to agree on this present week for a visit here. It would have been as convenient for me here as any other week had the weather still continued cold, and the Verdure still delayed; and I advised him, for his own sake, to wait till next week, when there must be more green on the Earth if no better wind in the Sky. As I have not heard from [him] since my return, I presume that he thinks so too; not but

May 1883 three days warning will suffice to have all ready for him here if he chooses to come sooner: and, sooner or later, he will always be welcome. I am reading Jane Carlyle's Letters—which constantly remind me of Ruth Edwards—much such a woman, though not with such a Husband to deal with. Not that I join at all in throwing all the blame on poor T.C.: he has done bravely too in publishing what will tell so of himself in the World's Eye; though, whether such revelation of Man and Wife be proper for Publication is another question. I think that half her Letters, and all of his remorseful comments summed up in a Preface, would have been for the better. I looked at their house in Cheyne Row with Sadness: as also at his Statue close by. Ever yours E.FG.

To Anna Biddell Woodbridge May 9/83 Dear Miss Biddell, This day week I was called up to London on a disagreeable Busi­ ness. It was got over sooner than I anticipated, however; insomuch that I had time to cab it to Chelsea: where I wanted first to see C. Keene who has been ill and whom I was glad to find better and secondly to see Carlyle's old house in Cheyne [Row], and his Statue lately put up on the Embankment hard by. Very melancholy as regards the house: that which she had spent so much trouble, and Life, all deserted and neglected, and—"To let." The Statue very good, I thought, though looking somewhat small for the place it is in, and wanting some better Background than dingy houses to set it. There are indeed young trees planted on either side; but, for a full face View, there is another poor old Row behind him. I am just finishing Mrs. C. Letters—enough to break one's heart, both for her sake, and his. In one respect it even raises him in my Esteem, that he should insist on publishing what he must have [known] the World could turn against himself; but whether such domestic Tragedy as her lifelong sufferings, and his "post mortem" remorse should be laid bare to the Public is another question. What do you say? Anyhow, I am persuaded that a Selection from her Let-

May 1883 ters, and a Preface of Repentance from him (instead of all those scattered Ejaculations) would have been better. She reminds me always of Mrs. Edwards, though perhaps of a higher—certainly of a more cultivated Intellect; and assuredly of a more difficult husband to deal with. Which brings me back to Mrs. E. whom (after my Chelsea doings) I went to look for. But she was not to be home from Paris (whither she had gone for two or three days; and, though I might have spent a night in London in order to pass an Evening with her, I did not care to do so without; and so got in time for the 5 Down Train: and, there having been some Breakdown on the Rail since my early coming up, we had to go round by Bishop's Stortford and Braintree, and did not arrive at Woodbridge till two hours after due. And so began and ended my London Expedition. I am expecting C. Keene here next week, and shall write to Herman to come and meet him. Let me have a word about yourself, and be­ lieve me always yours The Littlegrange

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge ] [May, 1883] My dear Lady,

I conclude (from what you wrote me in your last letter) that you are at Leamington by this time; and I will venture to ask a word of you before you go off to Switzerland, and I shall have to rely on Coutts & Co. for further Correspondence between us. I am not sure of your present Address, even should you be at Leamington—not sure—but yet I think my letter will find you—and, if it do not—why, then you will be saved the necessity of answering it. I had written to Mowbray Donne to ask about himself and his Wife: and herewith I enclose his Answer—very sad, and very manly. You shall return it if you please; for I set some store by it. Now I am reading—have almost finished—Jane Carlyle's Letters. I dare say you have already heard them more than enough discussed in London; and therefore I will only say that it is at any rate fine of old Carlyle to have laid himself so easily open to public Rebuke, though whether such Revelations are fit for Publicity is another ques-

May 1883 tion. At any rate, it seems to me that half her letters, and all his ejacu­ lations of Remorse summed up in a Preface, would have done better. There is an Article by brave Mrs. Oliphant in this month's Contem­ porary Review1 (or Magazine) well worth reading on the subject; with such a Challenge to Froude as might almost be actionable in Law. We must "hear both sides," and wait for the Volume which [is] to crown all his Labours in this Cause. I think your Leamington Country is more in Leaf than ours "downEast:" which only just begins to "stand in a mist of green." By the by, I lately heard from Hallam Tennyson that all his Party were well enough; not having been to London this Spring because Alfred's Doc­ tor had warned him against London Fogs, which suppress Perspira­ tion, and bring up Gout. Which is the best piece of news in my Letter; and I am Yours always and a Day E.FG. P.S. I do not enclose Mowbray's letter, as I had intended to do, for fear of my own not finding you. 1 Mrs. M.O.W. Oliphant, "Mrs. Carlyle," May, 1883, pp. 609-28. Mrs. Oliphant's strictures included the statement that, by the death of her husband, Mrs. Carlyle had been "deprived . . . of her last bulwark against that Nemesis known amongst men by the name of Froude."

To Fanny Kemble [Woodbridge] [May, 1883] My dear Lady, Stupid me! And now, after a little hunt, I find poor Mowbray's Letter, which I had made sure of having sent you. But I should not now send it if I did not implore you not to write in case you thought fit to return it; which indeed I did ask you to do; but now I would rather it remained with you, who will acknowledge all the true and brave in it as well as I—yes, it may be laid, if you please, even among those of your own which you tell me Mowbray's Father saved up for you. If you return it, let it be without a word of your own: and pray do not misunderstand me when I say that. You will hear of me (if Coutts be true) when you are among your Mountains again; and, if you do hear of me, I know you will—for you must—reply.

May 1883 At last some feeling of Spring—a month before Midsummer. And next week I am expecting my grave Friend Charles Keene, of Punch, to come here for a week—bringing with him his Bagpipes, and an ancient Viol, and a Book of Strathspeys and Madrigals; and our Archdeacon will come to meet him, and to talk over ancient Music and Books: and we shall all three drive out past the green hedges, and heaths with their furze in blossom—and I wish—yes, I do—that you were of the Party. I love all Southey, and all that he does; and love that Correspond­ ence of his with Caroline Bowles.1 We (Boy and I) have been reading an account of Zetland, which makes me thirst for "The Pirate" again —tiresome, I know, more than half of it—but what a Vision it leaves behind! Now, Madam, you cannot pretend that you have to jump at any meaning through my M.S. I am sure it is legible enough,2 and that I am ever yours E.FG. You write just across the Address you date from; but I jump at that which I shall direct this Letter by. 1 The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, Edward Dowden, ed., Dublin, 1881. 2 The script in EFG's late letters is often feeble.

To C. E. Norton Woodbridge May 12/83 My dear Norton, Your Emerson-Carlyle of course interested me very much, as I be­ lieve a large public also. I had most to Ieam of Emerson, and that all good: but Carlyle also came out in somewhat of a new light to me. Now we have him in his Jane's Letters, as we had seen something of him before in the Reminiscences: but a yet more tragic Story; so tragic that I know not if it ought not to have been withheld from the Public—assuredly, it seems to me, ought to have been but half of the whole that now is. But I do not the less recognize Carlyle for more admirable than before—if for no other reason than his thus furnishing the world with weapons against himself—which the World in general

May 1883 is glad to turn against him. The whole affair, however, of Wife, Hus­ band, and Editor is too long to be gone into in a letter to you who know all about it as well as I—better than I, very likely. Only, before you heap more coals on Froude's head, read the enclosed from him, and wait to hear what he will say for himself when he comes to that issue. This letter is in answer to one of mine of about a month ago, en­ quiring whether he ever had one that I wrote him last August: and repeating what I had then written: namely, that, as soon as he had seen and used what he wanted of my Carlyle Letters, etc., I wanted to send them to you, if you still think you can turn them to account. And, by way of finishing what I have to say on Carlyle for the pres­ ent, I will tell you that I had to go up to our huge, hideous, London a week ago, on disagreeable business; which Business, however, I got over in time for me to run to Chelsea before I returned home at Evening. I wanted to see the Statue on the Chelsea Embankment which I had not yet seen: and the old No. 5 of Cheyne Row, which I had not seen for twenty-five years. The Statue I thought very good, though looking somewhat small and ill set-off by its dingy surround­ ings. And No. 5 (now 24)—which had cost her so much of her Life, one may say, to make habitable for him—now all neglected, unswept, ungarnished, uninhabited "TO LET"| I cannot get it out of my head, the tarnished Scene of the Tragedy (one must call it) there enacted. Well, I was glad to get away from it, and the London of which it was a small part, and get down here to my own dull home, and by no means sorry not to be a Genius at such a Cost. "Parlons d'autres choses." I got our Woodbridge Bookseller to enquire for your Mr. Child's Ballad-book;1 but could only hear, and indeed be shown a specimen, of a large Quarto Edition, de luxe, I believe, and would not meddle with that. I do not love any unwieldy Book—even a Dictionary—and I believe that I am contented enough with such Knowledge as I have of the old Ballads in many a handy Edition. Not but I admire Mr. Child for such an undertaking as his; but I think his Book will be more for Great Libraries, Public or Private, than for my scanty Shelves at my age of seventy-five. I have already given away to Friends all that I had of any rarity or value, especially if over octavo. By the way there was one good observation, I think, in Mrs. Oliphant's superficial, or hasty, History of English 18th Century Litera­ ture, viz., that when the Beatties, Blacks, and other recognized Poets

May 1883

of the Day were all writing in a "classical" way, and tried to persuade Burns to do the like, it was certain Old Ladies who wrote so many of the Ballads, which, many of them, have passed as ancient—"Sir Patrick Spence" for one, I think. Our Spring flowers have been almost all spoilt by Winter weather, and the Trees before my window only just now beginning to Stand in a mist of Green, as Tennyson sings. Let us hope their Verdure, late arrayed, will last the longer. I continue pretty well, with occasional reminders from Bronchitis, who is my established Brownie. And I am yours always sincerely The Littlegrange 1

Francis J. Child's English and Scottish Ballads, the original title of the work.

To Fanny Kemble Woodbridge May 27/83 My dear Mrs. Kemble, I feel minded to write you a word of Farewell1 before you start off for Switzerland: but I do not think it will be very welcome to you if, as usual, you feel bound to answer it on the Eve of your Departure. Why not let me hear from you when you are settled for a few days somewhere among your Mountains? I was lately obliged to run to London on a disagreeable errand: which, however, got itself over soon after midday; when I got into a Cab to Chelsea, for the purpose of seeing Carlyle's Statue on the Embankment, and to take a last look at his old House in Cheyne Row. The Statue very good, I thought, though looking somewhat small for want of a good Background to set it off: but the old House! Shut up— neglected—"To Let"—was sad enough to me. I got back to Woodbridge before night. Since then I have had Charles Keene (who has not been well) stay­ ing with me here for ten days.2 He is a very good Guest, inasmuch as he entertains himself with Books, and Birds'-nests, and an ancient Viol which he has brought down here: as also a Bagpipe (his favourite instrument), only leaving the "Bag" behind: he having to supply its functions from his own lungs. But he will leave me to-morrow or next

May 1883 day; and with June will come my two Nieces from Lowestoft: and then the Longest Day will come, and we shall begin declining toward Winter again, after so shortly escaping from it. This very morning I receive The Diary of John Ward, Vicar of Stratford on Avon from 1648 to 16793—with some notices of W.S. which you know all about. And I am as ever Sincerely yours Littlegrange. Is not this Letter legible enough? 1 And

so it proved to be. The letter is FitzGerald's last to Fanny Kemble. was EFG's guest from May 18 to 28. 3 Charles Severn, ed., 1839. 2 Keene

To W. A. Wright [Woodbridge ] May 29/83 My dear Wright, Keene returned to London yesterday after nearly a fortnight's visit here—I know not if much the better for it. Better he undoubtedly is than two months ago: but still cannot walk at all far, or fast, without the recurrence of so much pain about the Chest as brings him up short. This naturally saddened him a little, for neither he—nor, as yet, his Doctor—knows if Indigestion be the cause; anyhow, it was time for him to return to London and consult again; beside that he had his own professional work to attend to. As he could not walk much, I wished to take him out a-driving; but the weather was cold for several days after his arrival: and then so hot, and the roads so dusty, that we had not much pleasure by Carriage. I suppose that my Nieces will be coming next week, or the week after—for two months. George Crabbe sent me a Card from Aix-IesBains last week: having turned his face homeward where [he] is to be in two or three days hence. I had hoped he would protract his stay abroad till Midsummer: but he cannot find a Curate for so long: and has a Confirmation coming on; and, should the Weather continue to hold as now it is, he will fare as well in Norfolk as in Italy. I forget if I told you that near a month ago I had to run to London, and managed to get to Chelsea just to see Carlyle's old deserted house

May 1883 and Statue. My heart had wanned toward him even more after read­ ing his Wife's Letters, and his helpless commentaries: a really mag­ nanimous thing of him to do, though whether a proper Revelation to the Public, I am not so sure of. What a Tragedy! Mrs. Oliphant has (you may have seen) an onslaught on Froude; and Venables (I am told by Hallam Tennyson) is taking up the Cudgel to defend him in the Fortnightly.1 Meanwhile Froude will sum up his own case when all these have spoken, whether for, or against, him. And I remain yours as before E.FG. Mowbray Donne's Wife is afflicted with Cancer, which may let her live for two years, but cannot be cured. "For this, and all thy 'mercies'," etc. 1 "Carlyle

in Society and at Home," Fortnightly Review, May, 1883, pp. 622-42. Venables, temperate in appraising Froude's work, nevertheless concluded, "The mischief which has been done, though it can neither be revoked nor repaired, may perhaps be in some small degree mitigated by a protest from one who knew" both Carlyles.

To Frederick Tennyson Little Grange, Woodbridge May 31/83 My dear Frederick,

It is time that I should hear something, though it be as little as I have to tell of myself. I have managed to tide over the Cold Spring with only such occasional warnings from my "Brownie" Bronchitis as suffice to assure me that he had not dislodged, and may—and will— make himself felt on due provocation. Even for the last week, when all has been sunshine, there is yet a touch of East in the wind that calls for a little precaution when one loiters about in the Garden, which is now beginning to look gay, while the Trees seem all in leaf as rich as long delayed. A month ago I was obliged to run to London on a disagreeable Business, which, however, left me time for one not quite so sad before I got home in the Evening. This latter Business was my jumping into Cab, and running to Chelsea: just to see Carlyle's Statue (which I had never seen) on the Thames Embankment there: and, once more

May 1883 —and for a last time—to see his old House hard by. The Statue (set­ ting ) I thought very good, but wanting some better Background to set it off. The old house (which I had not seen for twenty-five years) deserted, neglected, and "To Let." I do not know if you read any of his posthumous publications, or the controversies they have given rise to; except the "Reminiscences" (which it is doubtful if he meant for publication). What he has left for his Executor to publish has raised him in my Esteem, which does not seem the general Opinion, though I doubt if all his Wife's Letters reveal should have been brought before the public Eye. I heard some weeks ago from your Nephew Hallam that his Father had not up to that time paid his usual Visit to London for fear of the Fogs bringing up his last year's Gout by suppression of perspiration. Now write me a few lines to tell me about yourself, and believe me always and warmly yours E.FG.

To W. F. Pollock Woodbridge May 31 / 83 My dear Pollock, Now—on the threshold of Midsummer—I shall call on you for a word about yourself, and selves; after which I may leave you unchal­ lenged till Midsummer has declined into Autumn, during which time you will, I suppose, have made an Excursion, abroad or at home; and we shall all be preparing for another winter—whether we are all to live through it or not—a consideration that occasionally crosses me Aetat 75. I have got pretty well—very well—I may say over this late stubborn Spring; and now take my pleasure in the Sunshine and abundant Verdure about us, and I shall probably get no farther from home all the year than to some one of my old familiar seafaring towns. One further excursion, however, have I already made: no less than to London—and back—in a day. Thither I was obliged to go on a disagreeable Business: which I got over by 2 P.M.: took a Cab to Chelsea to see old Carlyle's Statue which I had never seen: and his old house which I had not seen for over twenty-five years. Statue seemed to me very good, but wanting some better background to set

June 1883 it off: but the poor old house, which had cost poor Mrs. C. so much of her very Life (one may say) deserted, neglected—"Το Let." It was very sad to me, for his sake as well as for hers; for all that he has caused to be published (whether wisely or not) to his own reproof has endeared him to me rather than otherwise and indeed, made me run as I did to see what I might of him once more. I heard last year from Mowbray Donne that his Wife was ill; and now, how ill! His letters to me on the subject are very touching indeed —so manly on his side, telling of such fortitude on hers. One of my neighbours hereabout has just returned from being with them—a very old friend of theirs—and he writes to me about them both with a kind of reverential love: do not tell me of this; for I think I have heard the worst—and best—of it. Blakesley has been somewhat seriously ill (I hear also) in London —of my familiar friend Bronchitis: which, though keeping quiet enough of late, occasionally reminds me that it can—and no doubt, will—awake at provocation. I heard from Hallam, Tennyson had not been to London this Spring for fear of last year's Gout, which the Doctor told him the London Fog, by checking perspiration, might bring on. Perhaps, now that Fogs are over, he may be among you now. And I am, with kind regards to Lady Pollock, yours as always E.FG.

To F. C. Brooke Woodbridge: June 4 [1883] My dear Brooke: Old Cotgrave, I see, gives the same account of "Allodial"1 as the two Authorities you have sent me, and for which I thank you. I think I told you that "Magnus Troil" in Sir W. Scott's Shetland "Pirate" is an "Udaller" which S. I believe defines to the same effect. As I told you also, the word is in Halderson's Icelandic Dictionary, "0dal: Allodium, praedium, haeditarium," etc. Have you any Book concerning Shetland, and Shetlanders?2 Scott refers to one by "Edmonstone"3 which I think had scarce more than a North Country Circulation. I lately bought a rather pretty illustrated account of the Island, published by "Douglas and Edmonstone," Edin­ burgh. This I will send for you to look at—if no more than the "Gays."4 Were I twenty—or even ten—years younger, I think I should go to

June 1883 that "Ultima Thule" before it is quite civilized. There is one very curious piece of (I doubt not) pagan ceremonial as to the mode of a Bride coming forth to her Bridegroom; last page but one—61 of the Book. I hear from Miss Crabbe that Mr. Tovell's house was the "Parham Lodge" bought (with its land, I suppose) from our Crabbe, to whom the Property descended through the Poet's Wife; and by Corrance replaced by the new House, etc.5 Miss Crabbe says there was some kind of moat, now probably filled up for garden, etc., and also the black and white marbled Hall: the sitting rooms spacious enough: the Bedrooms small and low. Probably Miss Crabbe saw the old place herself before it was pulled down—or the Property sold, as I think I remember its being. Anyhow, she is a very accurate Authority. As to "Bouter" our good old man may have mis-heard, or mis-writ­ ten, the word. Yet I think that Doughty had'something to tell of it from some Martlesham Farmer. Yours truly E.FG. P.S. On looking into my Forby—which I might as well have done before—I find the word "Bouter" added by myself in MS. "Mr. Gobbett, a Farmer" (or Martlesham, I think) "told Mr. Doughty—and the other Farmers agreed—that it (the Bouter) was properly a Boulter table: viz, a sort of Meal-hutch with a machine inside to boult the meal for household use; and a Top, or Cover that (when not otherwise employed) might serve as a table for Servants, or some superfluous Guest." Bouter for Boulter, as Cowt for Colt: cowd for cold—perhaps. 1 "Allodial and "udal," terms applied to property held under the old, native form of freehold in Shetland and Orkney. An owner of such property was called a udaller. 2 Charles Keene was responsible for EFG's curiosity about Shetland. Shortly after his visit to EFG late in May, 1882, Keene wrote to a friend, "He [EFG] knows you from me and is much interested in your idea of a ballad opera. He believes it might be well done with W. Scott's Pirate and I've persuaded him to draw up his plot, which he seems to have concocted. Two acts; only one girl, Minna or Brenda; the witch, a contralto; the men, a tenor and bass, and the pirates (chorus) not to appear until second act. The scenery would be good too. This is what I remember of his talk of it, but will send you his sketch, which he promises" (Life of Keene, 334-35). Three notebooks containing EFG's preliminary work on the operetta were among his papers when he died. The manuscript includes descriptions of settings, stage directions, segments of dialogue with suggestions for lyrics interspersed,

June 1883 all in the process of composition. Among his sheet music manuscripts at Trinity College Library are scores for two songs in the novel to which EFG gave the titles, "Farewell to Northmaven" and "Cleveland's Farewell," with the notation that they required "revision." 3 Arthur Edmonstone, View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands, 2 vols., 1809. 4 Illustrations. The book is unidentified. 5 The Lodge, the poet's residence, 1792-96, was replaced by Parham New Hall.

To F. C. Brooke [Woodbridge ] Tuesday [June 12, 1883] My dear Brooke: Thank you for all the Information you send me: of "Allodial." I think I now know enough; as also concerning "Bouter" which I shall reserve for Wright, who some dozen years ago was enquiring about the matter. What remains to be known about Parham I shall hear at George Crabbe's, whither I go to meet his Sisters tomorrow. When I return— in about a week's time, I suppose—I may ask you for Barry's Orkney:1 though it is Zetland that I am chiefly interested in. Meanwhile, I will send you Vol. I of Baroness Bloomfield's Recollec­ tions,2 etc.; Fox minor3 shall carry it down to his den this Evening. Miss Bland is busy with Vol. II—which you shall have when she has done with it. Yours always E.FG. 1 George

Barry, The History of the Orkney Islands, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1805. Georgiana Bloomfield, Reminiscences of Court and Diplomatic Life, 2 vols., 1883. 3 His reader, son of the bookbinder. 2

To Samuel Laurence Woodbridge Tuesday [June 12,1883] My dear Laurence, It is very kind of you to remember one who does so little to remind you of himself. Your drawing of Allen always seemed to me excellent,

June 1883 for which reason it was that I thought his Wife should have it, as being the Record of her husband in his younger days. So of the por­ trait of Tennyson which I gave his Wife. Not that I did not value them myself, but because I did value them, as the most agreeable Portraits I knew of the two men; and, for that very reason, presented them to those whom they were naturally dearer to than even to myself. I have never liked any Portrait of Tennyson since he grew a Beard; Allen, I suppose, has kept out of that. If I do not write, it is because I have absolutely nothing to tell you that you have not known for the last twenty years. Here I live still, reading, and being read to, part of my time; walking abroad three or four times a day, or night, in spite of wakening a Bronchitis, which has lodged like the household "Brownie" within; pottering about my Garden (as I have just been doing) and snipping off dead Roses like Miss Tox; and now and then a visit to the neighbouring Seaside, and a splash to Sea in one of the Boats. I never see a new Picture, nor hear a note of Music except when I drum out some old Tune in Winter on an Organ, which might almost be carried about the Streets with a handle to turn, and a Monkey on the top of it. So I go on, living a life far too comfortable as compared with that of better, and wiser men: but ever expecting a reverse in health such as my seventy-five years are subject to. What a tragedy is that of Edith Donne! So brisk, bright, good, a little woman, who seemed made to live! And now the Doctors allot her but two years longer at most, and her friends think that a year will see the End! and poor Mowbray, tender, true, and brave! His letters to me are quite fine in telling about it. Mrs. Kemble wrote me word some two or three months ago that he was looking very old: no wonder. I am told that she keeps up her Spirits the better of the two. Ah, Providence might have spared "pauvre et triste Humanite" that Trial, together with a few others which (one would think) would have made no difference to its Supremacy. "Voila ma petite protesta­ tion respectueuse a la Providence," as Madame de Sevigne says. Tomorrow I am going (for my one annual Visit) to G. Crabbe's, where I am to meet his Sisters, and talk over old Bredfield Vicarage days. Two of my eight Nieces are now with me here in my house, for a two months' visit, I suppose and hope. And I think this is all I have to tell you of Yours ever sincerely E.FG.

Epilogue

George Crabbe to John Loder Merton, Watton, Norfolk June 14, 1883 Dear Mr. Loder,

You will be grieved to hear of the sad news that has perhaps already reached you. Edwd FitzGerald died suddenly this morning. He came to pay his usual visit last evening, and went to bed at 10 looking we thought tired and rather ill. He was heard moving at 6 this morning. At S to 8 I went to ask how he was and getting no answer went in and found him as if sleeping peacefully but quite dead. No doubt disease of the heart was the cause of death. I propose to send him to Woodbridge on Saty and the funeral will be I suppose on Tuesday. I know you will grieve at the loss of so kind a friend. I have asked one of his London friends to write a little account of him for the Ipswich Journal. Believe me Yours siny Geo Crabbe Crabbe wrote other friends, "Our dear friend died . . . without pain or sorrow of parting. Just the death he would have wished." Keene, after getting the news, wrote Aldis Wright, "When I was with him three weeks ago, he seemed as well and happy as ever I have known him; we did not walk much but as I was an invalid he could beat me at this exercise. What a loss to those who enjoyed his society! I shall remember and mourne him deeply." On Tuesday, June 19, FitzGerald was buried in the little churchyard at Boulge. Spalding recorded in his diary: Tuesday at 3 P.M. walked to Boulge Churchyard to be present at the Burial of my dear Friend and Master Edward FitzGerald—a small gathering of his old and loved Friends were there to see him laid in an earth grave and a plain oak coffin at the West end of the Church between the Mausoleum, built by his brother John Purcell FitzGerald, and a spreading Yew tree. Many Birds were singing in the Park Trees and everything was quiet, orderly, and solemn just as He would have wished it. Spalding identified some of the "old and dear friends" who attended the service, among them Edward Cowell, Aldis Wright, Archdeacon

Epilogue Groome, Mowbray Donne, George Moor, Herman Biddell, Dr. Jones, Edmund and Walter Kerrich, Colonel and Mrs. Barlow, Captain Brooke, the Reverend E. Doughty, F. Whisstock, etc., and some "old Farmers who knew and respected him when he lived several years ago at Boulge Cottage close by the Park." The stone on his grave in Boulge churchyard bears the Biblical verse of his own selection: It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves.

Alfred Tennyson to W. F. Pollock1 June 17,1883 Farringford, Freshwater Isle of Wight

Dear old Fitz—I had no truer friend—he was one of the kindliest of men and I have never known one of so fine and delicate a wit. I had written a poem to him within the last week—a dedication— which he will never see. There are now left to me only two or three of my old college com­ panions, and who goes next? Thanks for writing to me, and thanks to Mr. Crabbe for telling you to write. Yours ever A. Tennyson (To Sir F. Pollock) The poem Tennyson had written to FitzGerald was the prologue to "Tiresias," in which he recalled his visit to Little Grange and paid tribute to FitzGerald's Rubdiydt. Before he published the poem, Ten­ nyson added an epilogue: "One height and one far-shining fire!" And while I fancied that my friend For this brief idyll would require A less diffuse and opulent end, And would defend his judgment well, If I should deem it over nice— The tolling of his funeral bell Broke on my Pagan Paradise,

Epilogue And mixt the dream of classic times, And all the phantoms of the dream, With present grief, and made the rhymes, That miss'd his living welcome, seem Like would-be guests an hour too late, Who down the highway moving on With easy laughter find the gate Is bolted, and the master gone. Gone into darkness, that full light Of friendship! past, in sleep, away By night, into the deeper night! The deeper night? A clearer day Than our poor twilight dawn on earth— If night, what barren toil to be! What life, so maim'd by night, were worth Our living out? Not mine to me Remembering all the golden hours Now silent, and so many dead, And him the last; and laying flowers, This wreath, above his honor'd head, And praying that, when I from hence Shall fade with him into the unknown, My close of earth's experience May prove as peaceful as his own. 1

W. F. Pollock MS in Pollock's hand in Morgan Library.

Appendices

APPENDIX I

It is impossible to date exactly the following letter, highly prized by the recipient, the Reverend George Hilton, and later by his family. He was a classmate of FitzGerald's at Trinity and his name appears frequently in John Allen's diary as one of their group. He lacked the tact and understanding that John Allen possessed in dealing with FitzGerald and trying to "make him steady in his views on religion." The letter was written in the 1830's in Cambridge where FitzGerald continued to keep rooms for some years after he took his degree. Hilton was successively Curate of Selling, Kent, Vicar of Sheldwich, N. Faversham, and, in 1835, Rector of Badlesmere and Leaveland. There was violent controversy in the University as well as in Par­ liament over admission of dissenters. "We hear of nothing else here . . . every tongue is wagging," FitzGerald reported, and "that I may not be wholly out of tune for controversy, and unfit for the world I live in, I have begun polemics (if that is the name)." Soon after FitzGerald's death, Hilton gave a copy of the letter to Mowbray Donne1 who was visiting his brother in N. Faversham and told him "the little breach was never again opened but time and distance parted" them (Trinity College MS). The original letter was sent to the editors by Hilton's great-niece, Ethel Armitage of Canter­ bury, who described it "a charming, friendly letter, showing Fitz­ Gerald's sensitivity, one that I am glad to possess." The epigram seems not to have survived. FitzGerald had definite opinions on most ques­ tions, but he soon learned that actively engaging in "polemics" was distasteful to him. 1 Mowbray Donne's MS letter, Oct. 14, 1883, in Trinity College Library, identi­ fies Mintry as "a Faversham man—connected, I believe, with Powder Works there (now Hall's)" and Whittaker as one known to Archdeacon Groome. Mintry was probably introduced to FitzGerald and his group at Cambridge by Hilton, also "a Faversham man."

Appendices

To George Hilton [Cambridge] [1830s ?] My dear Hilton, All is right again. Now have the truth. An epigram is never written to wound another, but to please one's self by tossing off four lines. It is never written to wound another, because one never could hope to persuade by it. Thus my epigram is quite an affair of my own vanity, and has nothing to do with you at all. You may also know, it was not long premeditated, as I put it at your door a minute almost after leaving you: and fearing that it might hurt you, crept softly up your passage an hour afterwards, but found you had taken it in. Airy and I quarrelled regularly once a week: which purged our bosoms from nasty sediments. I believe that I would go to the Anti­ podes for Airy. "De te fabula narratur." Let me say, in the end, that this affair has not been disagreeable to me, because it has brought a conclusion which leaves me better than I was before. Cough need not keep you from breakfasting here. I do not break­ fast till ten: only Mintry and Whittaker are to come—so you may sleep upon the sofa if you like. Yours very truly Edwd. FitzGerald P.S. Though I began with joking, I look upon your kindness as no joke—believe this that it is not lost upon me.

APPENDIX II

Some Recollections of A. Tennyson's talk from 1835 to 1855 [Many more were in a Note Book which I have lost—EFG]1 Left to Hallam for his use 1835 [Resting on our oars one calm day on Windermere, whither we had gone for a week from dear Spedding's Mirehouse at the end of May 1835—resting on our oars, and looking into the lake quite unruffled and clear—he quoted from the lines he had lately read us from the MS. of Morte d'Arthur about the lonely Lady of the Lake and Excalibur—] "Nine days she wrought it, sitting all alone Upon the hidden bases of the Hills—" "Not bad that, Fitz, is it?" [One summer Day looking from Richmond Star and Garter] "I love those woods that go triumphing down the River." "Somehow Water is the element which I love best of all the Four." "Some one says that nothing strikes one more on returning from the Continent than the look of our English country town. Houses not so big, nor such rows of them as abroad; but each house, little or big, distinct from one another. Each, each Man's Castle, built according to his own means and fancy, and so indicating the Englishman's indi­ vidual Humour." "I have been two days abroad—no further than Boulogne this time; but I am struck as always on returning from France with the look of Good Sense in the London people." "The French and their Language are neither Southern nor Northern —both an anomaly in Europe." [Standing before a Madonna by Murillo at the Dulwich Gallery— her Eyes fixed on you] "Yes—but they seem to look at something beyond—beyond the Ac­ tual into Abstraction. I have seen that in a human Face." [I, EFG, have

Appendices seen it in his. Some American spoke of the same in Wordsworth. I suppose it may be so with all Poets.]

1850 "When I was sitting by the Banks of Doon—I don't know why—I wasn't in the least spoony—not thinking of Burns but of the lapsing of the Ages—when all of a sudden I gave way—in a passion of Tears." "I one day hurled a great iron Bar over a haystack. Two Bumpkins who stood by said there was no one in the two parishes who could do it. I was then about twenty-five." [He could carry his Mother's pony round the Dinner table. EFG] "The Sea at Mablethorpe is the grandest I know, except perhaps at Land's End." (That is, as he afterwards explained to me in a letter.) "Thackeray is the better Artist, Dickens the stronger (What he said, I think, was "the more affluent.") Genius. He, like Hogarth, has the moral Sublime sometimes: but not the Ideal Sublime. Perhaps I seem talking nonsense; I mean, Hogarth could not conceive an Apollo or a Jupiter." (or Sigismunda. EFG)—"I think Hogarth greater than Dickens." [Looking at an Engraving of the Sistine Madonna in which only She and the Child, I think, were represented.] "Perhaps finer than the whole Composition in so far as one's Eyes are more concentrated on the subject. The Child seems to me the furthest result of human Art. His Attitude is that of a Man—his countenance a Jupiter's—perhaps rather too much so." [He afterwards said (1852) that his own little Boy (Hallam, I sup­ pose) explained the expression of Raffaelle's. He thought he had known Raffaelle before he went to Italy—but not Michael Angelo— not only Statues and Frescoes, but some Picture (I think) of a Madonna] "dragging a Ton of a Child over her Shoulder."

[Seaford: December 27-8, 1852] "Babes Delight at being moved to and from anything: that is amusement to them. What a Life of Wonder—Every object new. This morning he worshipp'd the Bed-post when a gleam of Sunshine lighted on it." "I am afraid of him. It is a Man. Babes have an Expression of Grandeur that children lose. I used to think the old Painters overdid the Expression and Dignity of their Infant Christs: but I see they did not."

Appendices "I was struck at the Duke's (Wellington's) Funeral—with the look of sober Manhood and Humanity in the British Soldiers. The French are like panthers." [Of Laurence's chalk drawing of the first Lord Monteagle's head— "rather diplomatic than inhuman"—he said in fun—EFG]

[Brighton, 1852-53] "The finest Sea I have seen is at Valentia. [Ireland] Without any Wind, and seemingly without a Wave, but the momentum of the Atlantic behind it, it dashes up into foam—blue Diamond it looked like —all along the rocks—like Ghosts playing at Hide and Seek." [At some other time on the same subject] "When I was in Cornwall it had blown a storm of Wind and rain for days—all of a sudden fell into perfect calm; I was a little inland of the Cliffs, when, after a space of perfect silence, a long roll of Thunder—from some wave rushing into a Cavern I suppose—came up from the Distance and died away. I never felt Silence like that." "This" (looking from Brighton Pier) "is not a grand Sea: only an angry curt Sea. It seems to shriek as it recoils with its pebbles along the beach." "The Earth has Light of her own—so has Venus—perhaps all the other Planets—Electrical Light, or what we call Aurora. The light edge of the dark hemisphere of the Moon—the 'old Moon in the new Moon's Arms'—is our Polar Light reflected." (But has she no Light of her own?) "Nay, they say she has no Atmosphere at all." [I do not remember when this was said, nor whether I have exactly set it down; therefore must not make A.T. answerable for what he did not say, or for what after-Discovery may have caused him to unsay. He had as powerful a Brain for Physics as for the Ideal. I remember his noticing that the forward-bending horns of some built-up Mammal in the British Museum would never force its way through Jungle, etc., and I observed on an after Visit that they had been altered accordingly.] "Sometimes I think Shakespeare's Sonnets finer than his Plays— which is of course absurd. For it is the knowledge of the Plays that makes the Sonnets so fine." Do you think the Artist ever feels satisfied with his Song? "Not with the Whole, I think: but perhaps the expression of parts." [Standing one day with him looking at two busts—one of Dante, the other of Goethe, in a London Shop, I asked, "What is wanting to make Goethe's as fine as the other's?] "The Divine."

Appendices [Taking up and reading some number of Pendennis at my lodging.] "It's delicious—it's so mature." [Of Richardson's Clarissa, etc.] "I love those great, still, Books." "What is it in Dryden? I always feel that he is greater than his Works." [Though he thought much of Theodore and Honoria, and quoted emphatically— More than a mile immerst within the Wood.] "Two of the finest similes in poetry are Milton's—that of the Fleet hanging in the Air (Paradise Lost) and the Gunpowder-like 'So started up in his foul shape the Fiend'." [Which latter A.T. used to enact with grim humour, from the crouching of the Toad to the Explosion. N.B. He used in earlier days to do the Sun coming out from a cloud, and returning into one again, with a gradual opening and shutting of Eyes and Lips, etc. And—with a great fluffing up of his hair into full wig, and elevation of Cravat and Collar, George the Fourth in as comical and wonderful a way.] "I could not read through Palmerin of England, nor Amadis of Gaul, or any of those old Romances—not even Morte d'Arthur, though with so many fine things in it—but all strung together without Art." [Old Hallam had been speaking of Shakespeare as the Greatest of Men, etc.] A.T. "Well he was the Man one would have wished to introduce to another Planet as a sample of our kind." [Apropos of physical Stature—A.T. had been noticing how small Guizot looked beside old Hallam.] "I was skating one day at full swing and came clash against another man of my own Stature who was going at the same. We both fell asunder—got up—and laughed. Had we been short men we might have resented." [One day at Richmond Star and Garter] "I love those woods that go triumphing down to the River." "Water is somehow the Element I love best of all the Four." [I blamed some one for swearing at the Servant girl in a lodging.] "I don't know if women don't like it from Men: they think it shows Vigour." (Not that he ever did so himself.) "There is a want of central Dignity about him—he excuses himself, etc." "Most Great Men write terse hands." [Of some dogmatic Summary] "That is the quick decision of a Mind that sees half the Truth." "I like those old Variorum Classics—all the Notes make the Text look precious." 1 EFG enclosed most of his expository comments in brackets, some in paren­ theses.

APPENDIX III

Meadows in Spring Alfred Ainger, while preparing his edition of Lamb's works and correspondence, sought the aid of FitzGerald's editor to clear up the mystery of the dual appearance of the poem. "Mr. Aldis Wright thus tells the story," Ainger reported. " 'In the year 1873 Edward FitzGerald told a correspondent of mine that when he was a lad, or rather more than a lad, he sent some verses to Hone, which were afterwards copied into the Athenaeum of the time. These were ascribed to Charles Lamb, who wrote to say he did not write them—he wished he had.' "l Nothing in FitzGerald's correspondence with Hone or the Athe­ naeum could serve to identify the author; so Ainger must first have learned from Wright that FitzGerald wrote the poem. However, Wright's account of the matter fails to correspond to the facts. He must have observed that FitzGerald's letter to the Athenaeum (later published by Wright) absolved the editor of any charge of "copying" the verses from the Every Day Book. The correspondent to whom Wright referred was Frederick Spalding, a Woodbridge merchant whom FitzGerald had befriended. In his diary Spalding recorded digests of conversations with FitzGeraId. An entry for November 20, 1873, reads, "Tonight at Supper speaking of Hone's 'Every day book' Mr. FitzGerald said, "When a Lad, or rather more than a Lad, I sent some rather pretty verses to Hone, which were afterwards copied into the Athenaeum of the time and ascribed to Charles Lamb. Lamb wrote to say he did not write them, he wished he had'" (Spalding Diary). Spalding's note reads as though FitzGerald were absolving himself of responsibility for publication in the Athenaeum, which would have been most unlike him. He was more apt to make comic capital of his "Irish blunders," as he would call them, than to attempt to conceal them. One suspects the words, "copied into the Athenaeum," to be Spalding's interpretation of "printed later in the Athenaeum." The statement, "Lamb wrote to say he did not write them," doubt­ less refers to Lamb's letter to Moxon. No letter to the Athenaeum denying authorship appears in Lamb's published correspondence; and it is extremely doubtful that he could have been moved to respond to so veiled an allusion as that made by the editor. The passage would have been familiar to FitzGerald, for it appears in all editions

Appendices of Lamb's correspondence; and all published before 1873 were in FitzGerald's library. These and other volumes pertaining to Lamb, liberally annotated, notebooks containing data on Lamb's life, and comments in FitzGerald's correspondence clearly indicate that he con­ sidered writing a biography of Elia, whom he had long and deeply admired. FitzGerald's delightful memoir of his and Lamb's friend Ber­ nard Barton,2 written with candor and humor in a style that resembles an old companion's recollections "across the walnuts and the wine" attests to the loss resulting from FitzGerald's failure to persevere in his intention. The only direct issue of his labor was a calendar of significant dates in Lamb's life which FitzGerald printed as a pamphlet in 1878 and distributed among his friends to aid them in reading the correspondence.3 In 1881, through Aldis Wright, FitzGerald sent his "Lamb's books" to Alfred Ainger, who was then preparing his edition of Lamb's works and letters. One point in Lamb's letter to Moxon should be noted. Elia's memory tricked him in ascribing "The Last Man" to "Montgomery," for neither poet of the name wrote under that title. Thomas Campbell (17771844) published "The Last Man" in the New Monthly Magazine in September, 1823, and Lamb's friend, Thomas Hood (1759-1845), also published a poem, "The Last Man," in Whims and Oddities, 1826; but his treatment of the subject is so macabre that Lamb could not have confused those lines with any others. Ainger suggests and Lucas af­ firms that Lamb wrote "The Last Man" in error for James Mont­ gomery's "The Common Lot," which Ainger states was "a favorite with him."4 1

Ainger, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 353. Letters and Literary Remains, VII, 379-411. 3 Ibid., 426-31. 4 Ainger, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 353; Lucas, Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, III, 320. 2

Cumulative Index for Volumes I-IV

Abbe Paris, I: 103, 109n. Abbott, Edwin Α., Ill: 687. IV: 55, 60 A'Beckett, Gilbert, III: 402n. Abelard, I: 670 Abii Tamman [Habib ibn Aus] (Humasa), II: 220, 221n., 222, 223 Ackerman, Rudolph, III: 67, 68n. Adair, Hugh, III: 103 Adams, Adolphe-CharIes, III: 594, 596 Adams, Henry, 1: 50. IV: 125n. Adams, Η. M., I: xxxi Addison, Joseph, II: 530, 553, 554n. Ill: 96, 614η. IV: 147, 237, 491 Adelung, Johann Cristoph, II: 216 Adolphus, John, III: 341, 342 Aeschylus, I: 601, 613, 614. II: 133, 267, 272, 341, 342n„ 350, 351n., 462-65, 499, 500, 510, 544n., 602, 607. Ill: 107, 108n., 110, 113, 117, 128, 137, 139, 142, 143, 190, 217, 326, 327n., 390, 620, 622, 629, 630, 631, 634, 636, 637, 638, 647, 652, 653, 666, 669, 670, 671, 677, 678, 684, 686, 689, 690, 691, 692, 694, 695, 700, 717, 723, 724. IV: 3, 4, 8, 13, 17, 31, 34, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 55n„ 58, 62, 67n., 70, 85, 86n„ 87, 92, 129, 150, 162, 171, 208n., 236, 277, 338, 339n„ 360, 386, 395, 403, 405, 406, 459, 578 Aide, Charles Hamilton, IV: 383, 465 Aikin, Lucy, II: 549 Ainger, Alfred, I: 102η. IV: 449, 450, 451, 495, 496n., 609 Ainsworth, Harrison, I: 531, 534 Airy, George, III: 278, 656, 657η. Airy, William, I: xxxix, xxlii, xlix, liii, 8; biog. profile, 18-19; 258, 259n., 334, 335n., 484n„ 508, 545n., 581n.,

582. II: 55, 409, 410n., 485, 494-95, 528, 558, 578, 582, 586. Ill: 29, 51, 161, 175, 202, 230, 270, 278, 514, 568, 656, 657η. IV: 603 Aitken, Mary (Mrs. Alexander Carlyle), III: 63On., 631, 635, 687, 699, 700. IV: 35, 80, 93, 228, 229, 271, 272, 280, 284, 378, 392, 398, 401, 404, 414, 418, 427, 428, 458, 460, 550; letter to, III: 630 Alabama, II: 479, 480n. Alarcon, Juan Ruiz, IV: 156, 157n. Albery, F.F.D., IV: lln. AIdeburgh Festival, I: 12 AIeman, Mateo, IV: 381, 382n. Alexander, Frederick, II: 470 Alexander, J. B., I: 443, 444n.; letter to, I: 443 Alford, Henry, I: 95η., 155η. II: 505n., 527, 528n. Alison, Archibald, III: 7, 8n. Allen, Anne, I: 143η. II: 346n. Allen, Bird, I: 18, 19, 299, 300n., 302 Allen, Charles, I: 253 Allen, Mrs. Charles [Mary Allen], I: 253, 254η. II: 315; letters to, II: 295, 342, 345, 360, 373 Allen, James, I: 149, 150n. Allen, John, I: xxxviii, xlii, xliii, 2; biog. profile, 19-20; 45, 183, 217, 386, 452, 471, 490, 553, 587; letters to, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 87, 90, 91, 93, 96, 111, 112, 113, 115, 117, 121, 126, 130, 132, 134, 135, 142, 146, 148, 150, 152, 156, 162, 165, 167, 175, 178, 189, 192, 206, 215, 224, 246, 253, 254, 334, 336, 382, 420, 447, 500, 501, 507, 582, 584, 588, 596, 598, 608, 627, 635, 648, 658, 662, 671,

Index Allen, John (cont.) 684. II: 199, 200, 361, 363, 497, 577; letters to, 6, 16, 81, 237, 531, 548, 550, 565, 568, 575; letter from, 5. Ill: 96; letters to, 480, 726. IV: 23, 185n., 380, 412, 415, 527, 593; letter to, 55 Allen, Joshua, I: 628, 648 Allen, Margaret, II: 346n. Allen, Dr. Matthew, I: 258, 259n„ 268, 269n., 270, 271n„ 279, 287, 288n„ 331n., 387, 402, 403n., 474, 478, 479 Allen, Robert, II: 423, 429 Allen, William, I: 115n., 304, 628 Allenby, Hynman and Family, I: 427, 428, 429, 433. II: 564, 595. Ill: 22, 44, 210n., 347, 383, 591, 637, 720. IV: 52, 58 Allingham, William, II: 117 Allington, Sir Gyles, I: 370, 372n. Anderson, Dr. Elizabeth Garrett, IV: 529, 530n., 536 Andre, Major John, II: 523. IV: 569, 570n. Angelo, Henry, II: 379 Anstey, F., pseud., see Thomas Anstey Guthrie Arberry, A. J., I: xxxi, Ix. II: 130n., 216n„ 275n. IV: 200n. Arbiithnot, John, IV: 474 Ariosto, Ludovico, IV: 168 Aristophanes, I: 186, 190, 191n., 192, 207, 248, 249n., 488, 489n„ 638. II: 602, 604. Ill: 273, 274n„ 347. IV: 406, 543 Aristotle, I: 638. II: 43 Arkwright, Richard, I: 578. Ill: 626n. Arkwright, Mrs. Robert, III: 625, 626n. Arnold, Matthew, II: 407, 408n. IV: 276 Arnold, Thomas, I: 339, 340, 342, 348, 383, 461, 462n., 465, 467, 468n„ 512, 513n„ 610. II: 237, 238n. Ill: 244, 353 Arnott, W. G., I: xxxii, 462n. II: 358 Ashburton [Baring William Bingham], 2nd Baron, I: 48, 60, 452n., 692n. II: 71, 193n., 211, 212n. Ashburton, Lady, IV: 404

Ashby, George, I: 370, 372n. Athanasius Gasker, see Clarke, Edward William Athenaeus, I: 192, 193n. Attar [Farid al-Din] (Mantic ut-tair, Pendnameh), II: 139, 141n., 246, 248, 249, 252, 253, 254, 255, 304, 305, 306n„ 318, 322, 334, 335, 465, 466, 467n„ 401, 510. Ill: 74, 75n., 540, 54In. IV: 206 Auber, Daniel Francois, I: 252, 304, 305n. Aubrey, John, II: 336, 352 Ausonius, Decimus Magnus, I: 539n. Austen, Jane, III: 260, 593, 642. IV: 223, 464, 466 Austin, Alfred, III: 218, 219n. Austin, Sarah, I: 213, 214n. II: 242, 354, 560n. Austin, Stephen, II: 195, 247n., 256, 257n„ 325, 326n. Bachaumont, Louis de, II: 378, 379n. Bacon, Sir Edmund, I: 24In. Bacon, Francis, I: 60-61, 117, 121, 124n„ 133, 211, 248, 424, 513, 533n„ 619. II: 97, 562. Ill: 7, 189, 292, 430. IV: 67, 71, 76, 131, 244n., 249, 283, 404 Bagehot, Walter, IV: 284, 560 Bailey, Nathan, III: 323. IV: 449, 454, 515, 516, 523, 525, 526, 527, 528n. Bailey, Phillip, I: 549. Ill: 145, 724. IV: 533, 544, 545 Baily, Francis, I: 226, 228n. Baker, George, I: 378 Balfe, Michael William, I: 456, 457n. Ballentine, Serjeant William, IV: 501n. Bamford, Samuel, I: 578 Bantok, George, I: 12, HOn. Barbauld, Mrs. Anne, IV: 459 Baretti, Giuseppe, III: 717, 718n. Barham, R.H.D., III: 324, 325n. IV: 128n. Baring, Mrs. Henry, II: 593 Barlow, Frederick, II: 27, 242, 243, 333, 334n., 338, 480, 496. Ill: 562. IV: 598 Barlow, Mrs. Frederick, III: 563

612

Index Barnard, William, III, 199, 200n., 203, 271, 272n„ 468, 469n. Barne, Frederick, II: 480 Barnes, William, IV: 145n. Barrow, Isaac, I: 121, 124n., 163, 383. IV: 243, 244n. Barry Cornwall, see Bryan W. Procter Barry, George, IV: 593 Barry, Spranger, IV: 283n. Bartleman, James, III: 625, 626n. Bartley, George, III: 569, 574n. Barton, Bernard, I: xxx, xxxv, xxxvi, xlii, 2; biog. profile, 20-22; 412-14, 478, 492, 493n., 562, 568, 571, 595, 629, 631, 632, 633, 635; letters to, 211, 213, 225, 229, 235, 238, 242, 245, 257, 260, 262, 263, 276, 279, 283, 285, 289, 291, 293, 294, 298, 300, 302, 306, 307, 309, 311, 312, 313, 314, 316, 340, 351, 380, 385, 387, 395, 400, 406, 418, 430, 431, 434, 436, 437, 438, 444, 450, 451, 453, 461, 462, 469, 471, 472, 474, 484, 487, 489, 490, 492, 502, 503, 509, 515, 516, 517, 523, 524, 525, 526, 530, 533, 544, 546, 553, 557, 560, 571, 573, 576, 579, 582, 587, 589, 590, 593, 598, 599, 606, 614, 615, 618, 620, 621, 622, 624. II: 225. Ill: 80, 531. IV: 16, 50, 296 Basham, Arthur, III: letter to, 508 Basham, Horace, II: 583. Ill: 444n.; letters to, 444, 513, 532, 619. Basselin, Olivier, I: 655, 670. II: 87, 273. Ill: 411, 413, 706. IV: 266 Bateman, Kate Josephine, II: 513, 514n. Ill: 357, 358n., 362, 390 Baxter, Richard, I: 580, 58In. Bayle, Pierre, I: 179, 180 Bayley, Frederick, W.N.B., I: 265, 266n.

Bayne, Alicia, III: 342n. Beale, Mary, II: 514, 515n. Beaumont, George Howland, 1: 422, 443η. IV: letters to, 355, 364, 385, 507, 53« Beaumont, Thomas Wentworth, I: 454 Beauty Bob, I: 469, 470n. Beck, Dr. Henry, II: 278, 283

Beckford, Peter, IV: 300 Beckford, William (Vathek), II: 127, 129n. "Becky," see Becky and Emily Green Bedford, Duke of [Russell, Francis Charles Hastings], II: 324 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1: 287, 304, 318, 319n., 320n„ 494. II: 56, 108, 128, III: 609. IV: 312, 358 Bell, George J„ IV: lOOn. Bellamy, Emma, III: 543n. Belmore, George, III: 378n. Bendall, Jones, III: 27 Bendall, Offwood, II: 521, 522n. Bendish, Mary, I: 381, 382n., 506, 507n. Bentley, George, IV: 501n. Bentley, Richard, III: 630 Beranger, Pierre Jean, I: 196, 205n., 206n. Ill: 403, 404n„ 409, 410, 411, 413, 425. IV: 266 Berkeley, George, I: 255 Berlioz, Louis Hector, III: 594, 596, 597 Bernard, John, II: 559. Ill: 83, 84n. Bernard, Thomas Dehany, II: 383, 385n. Berners, Henry Denny, 1: 506-07, 525 Berners, Baron [Henry William Wilson], 10th Baron, I: 525 Berners, William, I: 381, 382n. Berry, Mary, II: 568, 569η. IV: 483 Berry, Mr. and Mrs. Sharman, II: 380, 381n„ 426, 481, 538, 548, 579, 581, 591, 594, 599, 611. Ill: 12, 16, 52, 98, 100, 190, 202, 237, 325, 470, 472, 475, 476, 574n. Bertolini's, IV: 545, 546n. Besenval, Pierre J.V., II: 457 Betts, Thomas, II: 27 Bewick, Thomas, III: 326, 681, 682n. Bexfield, William R., II: 72 Beyle, Henri, III: 713. IV: 6, 68, 69n. Biddell, Anna, I: liii. II: 72. Ill: 446, 485, 488, 489, 537, 557, 562, 585, 605; letters to, 328, 333, 345, 358, 370, 397, 449, 511, 539, 545, 547, 581, 620, 640, 648, 693, 704, 705, 722, 734. IV: 25, 26, 32, 44, 154,

Index Biddell, Anna (cont.) 256, 299n., 321, 345, 382, 436; letters to, 3, 8, 104, 190, 299, 376, 416, 428, 553, 572, 582 Biddell, Arthur, I: 611 Biddell, George, IV: 382 Biddell, Herman, I: xxx, 7. II: 611; letters to, 485, 502, 570. Ill: 158, 648; letters to, 29, 72, 84, 103, 157, 165, 201, 205, 213, 348, 400, 446, 495, 605. IV: 299, 322n., 398, 399, 417, 436, 454, 565, 572, 583, 598; letters to, 44, 156, 256, 321, 382, 435, 467, 565 Biddell, William, IV: 299, 310 Bidpay, Fables of [Persian, Anwar-iSuhayli, Lights of Canopus] II: 136, 138n. Biela's comet, I: 107, HOn. Bingham, Peregrine, II: 383, 385n., 446 Binning, Robert, II: 325, 326n., 335n. Bishop, Sir Henry Rowley, II: 59n.; letter to, 57 Bizet, Alexandre (Georges), IV: 376 Blackie, John Stuart, I: 267 Blair, Robert, I: 152 Blake, William, I: 140, 141n., 152, 184, 185n. Ill: 391 Blakesley, J. W„ I: 95n„ 241n., 268, 275, 276n., 477. II: 597, 600, 605, 608; letter to, 606. Ill: 503, 512, 514, 590. IV: 207, 244, 245n., 433n., 444, 445n., 455, 471, 478, 484, 517, 539, 591; letters to, 384, 468, 476, 482 Blandy, Mary, III: 359, 360n. Bleeck, A. H., II: 406 Blessington, Marguerite, Countess of, IV: 377 Bletsoe, I: 215, 217n. Blochmann, Henry F., Ill: 676n. Blomfield, Charles James, I: 97n. II: 7, 8n. Bloomfield, Georgiana, Lady, IV: 593 Bloomfield, Robert, II: 372, 597n. Blore, E. W. IV: 453, 454n. Blunt, Lady Anne, IV: 256

Blyth, James, I: xxxv. II: 367. Ill: 235n. Boaden, James, III: 83, 84n. Bobus, I: 538 Boccaccio, Giovanni, III: 23, 51, 56, 715, 716, 717, 718, 719, 720. IV: 98, 280n., 284, 294, 302 Bodham, Mrs. Anne Donne, I: 36, 177n„ 487, 522n. Boehm, J. E„ IV: 521 Bogle, George, IV: 26n. Bohn, Henry, I: 57 Boileau, Sir John, III: 20 Boiteau, Paul, III: 404n. Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, 1st Viscount, I: 104 Bonington, Richard, III: 613, 614 Booth, Mr. and Mrs. Ballington (Maud Charlesworth), IV: 246, 247n. Booth, George F. Bell, I: 501n. Borrow, George, I: xlvi, Ivi. biog. profile, 24-25, 38. II: 251, 272, 392, 393n., 473, 597; letters to, 94, 96, 240, 276, 284, 290, 321, 339. Ill: 80, 502, 544n.; letter to, 543. IV: 217, 254, 306, 308n., 469, 486, 498 Boswell, James, I: 544-45. II: 576. Ill: 96, 534, 536, 639, 640n. IV: 149, 280 Bosworth, Joseph, III: 160, 161n. Bothe, Friedrich H., II: 597, 598n., 600. Ill: 678 Boufflers, Stanislaus Jean, II: 399, 400n. Boulge Cottage, I: 2 Boult, Benjamin, II: 437 Bouterwek, Friedrich, II: 91, 92n. Bouverie, William Pleydell (Lord Radnor), III: 403 Bowdler, Thomas, III: 314, 660. IV: 368 Bower, Harold Elyott, I: 52 Bowie, John, III: 718n. IV: 12, 13n., 341 Bowles, Caroline, IV: 585 Bowles, William L. Bowles, III: 569, 570, 574n. Bowman, William, III: 167 Bowring, Sir John, I: 21. II: 272, 275n. 614

Index Bowyer, William, III: 630n. IV: 86, 87n. Boxall, William, III: 16, 265, 378 Boyes, J. F„ II: 541, 542n. Bradbeer, Benjamin, III: 161, 162n. Braddon, Mary Elizabeth, II: 584, 585n. Braham, John, III: 610. IV: 110, 380, 381n. Brambilla, Marietta, I: 494, 496n. Ill: 357, 358n. Brandon, Raphael, III: 103 Brantome, Pierre de Bourdelles,' III: 573, 574n. Brawne, Fanny, III: 343n. IV: 97, 99, 102, 119 Bredalbane, Lord, II: 264, 266 Breitmann, Hans, pseud., see C. G. Leland Bridges, John, I: 355 Bright, John, I: 578 Bright, Mynore, IV: 341 Brightwell, D. B„ III: 189 Brindley, James, I: 578 Briscoe, A. Daly, M.D., I: xxxii Brooke, Cooper, III: 263 Brooke, Francis Capper, I: 415, 561, 629, 63On., 644. II: 26, 27, 43, 44n„ 48, 383, 401n., 410, 475. Ill: 262, 283, 284n„ 287, 291, 466, 676, 697. IV: 71, 91, 181, 266, 270, 274, 300, 301, 303, 306, 308, 315, 317, 320, 329, 338, 347, 352, 380, 389, 425, 467, 468, 471, 507, 508n., 565, 566n., 598; letters to, 351, 591, 593 Brookfield, Jane (Mrs. W. H.), II: 610, 611n. Ill: 641. IV: 518 Brookfield, William Henry, I: 169, 170n„ 296, 297n„ 506 Brotherton, Augustus, I: 455, 456n. Brotherton, Mary, III: 163, 165n. Brougham, Henry Peter, Baron, I: 248, 249n„ 305. II: 587. IV: 120, 121n. Brougham, Wilfred, II: 439, 440n„ 524-25 Broughton, Rhoda, IV: 8 Brown, Charles Armitage, IV: 103, 104n„ 106, 252n. Brown, John, IV: 541, 542n.

Browne, Charles Farrar (pseud., Artemus Ward), IV: 154 Browne, E. G., II: 213n., 307n. Browne, Elliott Kenworthy, IV: 381, 382n. Browne, Joseph, I: 311, 312n., 313, 334 Browne, Mary Anne, I: 486 Browne, Sir Thomas, I: 117, 120n., 351, 435n. Browne, William, IV: 110, 11 In. Browne, William Kenworthy, I: xxxviii, xxxix, xxlii, xlvi, xlviii, 3, 4, 26-27, 215, 217, 217n., 225, 230, 231n., 244, 245n„ 258, 262, 262n., 336, 386, 430, 447, 467, 469n., 499, 505, 506, 508, 530, 534-35. II: 229, 23132, 243, 296, 304, 314, 327, 328, 329, 330, 333, 334, 335, 336, 342, 371, 515, 523. Ill: 148. IV: 264, 265n., 290, 382n„ 549, 551n. Browne, Mrs. William Kenworthy [Elizabeth Elliott], I: 430n. II: 339, 342, 371, 372, 374, 521-22; letters to, 433, 440, 542, 556. Ill: 308n.; letters to, 40, 319 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (Mrs. Robert), I: 486, 543, 544n. II: 31-32, 407, 408n. Browning, Robert, I: 46, 543, 544n. II: 408n., 613. Ill: 99, 106, 111, 114, 115n„ 137, 138, 139, 145,148, 150, 174, 183, 318, 319n., 383, 396, 424, 426, 427, 448n., 458, 474, 487, 628, 646, 724, 730. IV: 87, 88n., 121, 128, 138, 150, 162, 163n., 182, 183n., 223, 328, 451, 456, 459, 464, 466, 486, 545, 546n., 567 Brydges, Sir Samuel Egerton, I: 281, 282n., 612, 613n., 680 Buchon, J.A.C., III: 574n. Buckland, William, I: 248, 249n. Buckstone, John, I: 651, 652n. Ill: 459n. Buller, Charles and Arthur, I: 126, 128n. Bultmann, Rudolf, I: xxxiii Bulwer, Henry Lytton, III: 248, 327 615

Index Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 1st Baron Lytton, I: 249n„ 496, 497n., 550, 551n., 691. Ill: 218, 219n„ 398. IV: 3, 4n. Bunbury, Sir Henry Edward, 1: 600, 682, 683n. Ill: 265 Bunn, Alfred, I: 456, 457n. Ill: 217 Bunnet, Fanny Elizabeth, II: 462 Bunyan, John, I: 230, 580 Burdett-Coutts, Lady, IV: 448, 449n. Burford, Robert, I: 480n. Burgess, W. J., letter to, 187 Burgoyne, Roger, I: 520, 522n. Burke, Edmund, II: 593. Ill: 10, 116, 123, 124n. Burne-Jones, Edward, I: xlix, 53, 54. II: 417. Ill: 414-16, 421 Burnet, Gilbert, I: 251, 252n. Burnet, John, I: 412 Burney, Charles, II: 442 Burns, Robert, I: 26, 444, 445n. Ill: 409, 410, 411, 425, 453, 508. IV: 495, 605 Burton, Richard, II: 221. Ill: 694, 695n. Burton, Robert, I: 383. IV: 86, 87n. Busbequius [Augier Ghislain de Busbecq], I: 567 Bute, Lord, II: 484 Butler, Charles, IV: 516, 517n., 526 Butler, Mrs. E. W., I: 209, 210n. Butler, Henry Montagu, II: 133 Butler, Pierce, I: 43. II: 68n. Ill: 618n. Butler, Mrs. Pierce, see Kemble, Frances Ann Byron, George Gordon, 6th Baron, I: 12, 105, 158, 159n„ 168, 612. II: 108n„ 401, 425, 540, 541n. Ill: 381, 382, 463, 569, 574n„ 640n., 676. IV: 127, 128, 393n. Cade, Alfred, I: lii. Ill: 399n., 404 Cadell, Jessie, I: lv. IV: 24, 46, 225 Caesar, Gaius Julius, IV: 106 Cahoon, Herbert, I: xxxiii Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, I: 561, 676, 678n„ 689. II: 31, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 73, 78, 79, 80,

85, 88, 92-95, 97, 101, 103, 105, 106, 112, 115, 130, 153, 226, 257, 266, 267, 268n., 318-19, 341, 342n., 415, 465, 467n., 533, 536, 540, 542, 543, 544, 545-51, 554. Ill: 87, 107, 108n., 190, 212n., 267, 268, 269, 275, 405, 465n., 482, 557, 565, 567, 576, 622, 629, 631, 632n., 651, 672, 675, 692n. IV: 32, 72, 103, 120, 156, 157, 167, 168, 184, 185, 200, 205, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 259, 263, 267, 314, 324, 325, 326, 329, 412, 419, 420n„ 461, 462n., 474, 578, 579 Calogan, Emilius, IV: 577 Calprenede, Gauthier de la, IV: 336 Cameron, Jonathan Heniy Lovett, I: 86, 87n„ 95n. II: 576 Cameron, Mrs. Julia, IV: 422, 423n., 445, 447, 534 Camoens, Luis de, 1: 457n. Campbell, Lord John, II: 97 Campbell, Thomas, I: 312. IV: 609 Campion, J. S., IV: 248, 249n., 263 Cana, William, II: 49, 50n. Canaletto, I: 216, 217n. Capell, Edward, III: 566, 567n., 573n. IV: 125 Cardan, Girolamo, I: 680 Carew, Thomas, I: 118, 121n. Carlile, Richard, I: 243, 244n. Carlisle, Lord [George W. F.], II: 179, 227. Ill: 313 Carlyle, Alexander, III: 630n. Carlyle, Dr. John Aitken, II: 213 Carlyle, Thomas, I: xxix, xxx, xl, xli, liii, lv; biog. profile, 27-29; 46, 49, 50, 53, 54, 93n„ 209, 210n„ 234, 236, 238n., 239, 240n„ 243, 244n„ 255, 256n., 276, 326, 339 (Naseby, 339-49), 351, 360-80, 387, 388n„ 400, 401n., 403, 417n., 418n., 426, 431, 433, 458n„ 472, 478, 485, 497, 499, 503, 534, 536, 538n., 553, 559, 592, 607, 621, 624, 651, 652, 656, 668, 669n„ 676, 677, 691 (Mirehouse); letters to, 341, 352, 357, 364, 369, 374, 378, 392, 397, 398, 429, 517, 520, 534, 556, 563, 580, 616

Index 645; letters from, 347, 356, 361, 367, 373, 379, 393, 416, 421, 426, 448, 457, 482, 483, 488, 498, 505, 506, 518, 529, 537, 542, 577, 642, 646, 690. II: 40, 41n., 44, 56, 83, 171-75, 215, 324, 325n., 442, 447, 549, 614; letters to, 100, 149, 170, 172, 178, 181, 185, 186, 335, 414, 441, 442, 566; letters from, 173, 177, 182, 239. Ill: 6, 69, 70n„ 111, 163, 174, 280, 281n., 291, 310, 314, 315, 318, 347, 351, 358, 365, 373, 387, 414-19, 421, 423, 424, 429, 431, 442, 456, 458, 466, 474, 481, 494, 503, 505, 520, 524, 526, 545, 546, 547, 551, 558, 560, 575, 576n., 582, 583, 592, 593, 602, 604, 606, 623« 625, 638, 641, 643, 650, 651, 655, 656, 660, 661, 663, 670, 700, 703, 712, 714, 722; letters to, 158, 244, 246, 258, 305, 313, 352, 354, 369, 417, 439, 441, 500, 501, 508, 520, 531, 597, 635, 639, 687; letters from, 116, 353, 415, 440, 522; letter to C. E. Norton, 418. IV: 32, 33, 35, 55, 78, 80, 84, 97, 98, 102, 103, 116, 119, 127, 128n., 132, 133, 134, 137, 138, 139, 149, 151, 217, 221, 224, 227, 231, 232, 271, 284, 293, 344n., 350, 378, 382, 383, 392n„ 393, 394, 398, 399, 401, 403, 404, 405n., 411, 412, 413, 415, 416, 417, 418, 421, 422, 424, 427, 442, 443n., 447, 486, 495, 496, 497n., 507, 510, 511n„ 513, 518, 519, 520, 521, 524, 529, 546, 550, 557n„ 560, 562, 566, 567, 568, 569, 572, 574n., 580, 582, 585, 586, 587, 588, 589, 590 Carlyle, Mrs. Thomas (Jane Welsh), I: 1, 28, 63, 399n. Ill: 6, 458. IV: 416, 418, 510, 513, 518, 525, 563, 572, 573, 580, 582, 583, 584, 585, 589, 590, 591 Carmichael-Smyth, Major Henry, I: 68, 89n„ 205 Carmichael-Smyth, James, I: 145n. Caroline, Queen, III: 319n. Cary, Henry, IV: 168, 490, 492n. Castro, Thomas, III: 294

Catchpole, Margaret, IV: 471, 472n. Catullus, Gaius Valerius, III: 14, 20, 26, 29. IV: 96, 99, 102, 103, 106, 109, 118 Causton, William, I: 589, 590η. II: 20, 384, 385n., 426, 475 Cavendish, Charles, I: 418n. Cawley, William, II: 160, 161n. Cecil, Richard, 1: 255, 256n. Cenci, Count Francesco, IV: 104 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, II: 115, 116, 605. Ill: 26, 29, 36, 37, 43, 51, 56, 98, 99, 138, 183, 267, 270, 275, 476, 479, 481, 482, 498, 502, 555, 679, 681, 683, 688, 689, 696, 698, 699n., 700, 706, 707, 708, 709, 711, 718, 719 Chafy, William L., I: 86, 87 Chalmers, Alexander, III: 11. IV: 86, 87n. Chalmers, Thomas, I: 176, 178n., 323, 324n. Chalon, Alfred Edward, I: 438, 439n., 446, 447n. Chambers, Robert, I: 469, 470n., 471 Chantrey, Sir Francis, III: 579, 580n. Chaplin, Mrs., I: 428n. Chapman, George, III: 142, 143n. Chappell, William, II: 369 Chapsal, Charles Pierre, III: 489 Chardin, Sir John, II: 148, 159, 203, 206, 207, 208, 210, 222 Charlesworth, Arthur, II: 583. Ill: 293, 316, 363, 369, 428, 429, 445, 466, 485, 486, 537, 540, 585, 587, 588, 591, 592, 600, 633, 638, 647, 667, 704, 711, 720 Charlesworth, Charles Henry, II: 105, 247-50 Charlesworth, Elizabeth, see Mrs. Ε. B. Cowell Charlesworth, Jack, III: 711 Charlesworth, John, I: 31, 382n., 460n. II: 231, 247, 569; letter to, 381 Charlesworth, Mrs. John, I: 270n., 426n.; letters to, 269, 426, 427, 428, 432, 433, 440, 459, 460. II: 231, 247; letter to, 13. Ill: 48, 136, 137; letter to, 43

Index Charlesworth, Maria, I: 638n. II: 16, 230, 23In., 323, 510, 551. Ill: 44, 591, 667, 688. IV: 372, 379 Charlesworth, Mrs. Samuel, III: 301 "Charmian," see Jane Cox Charnock, R. S., II: 357 Charnwood, Lady, III: 613n. Charron, Pierre, III: 483, 484n. Chateaubriand, Francois Rene, III: 527, 529 Chatham, Lord, II: 559, 560n. Chatterton, Thomas, II: 369n. Chaucer, Goeffrey, I: 117. II: 338, 373, 374, 375, 547, 655, 710. IV: 139 Chelard, H. A., Ill: 606, 607n„ 608 Chenery, Thomas, III: 82, 83 Cherubini, Maria Luigi C.Z.S., 250, 251, 432 Childs, Charles, I: xlii, xliii. II: 28, 35, 100, 101n., 193, 212, 536. Ill: 5, 65, 68, 73, 390, 391n„ 736 Child, Francis J., IV: 586, 587n. Childs, John, I: xlii, xliii, 346, 634, 690. II: 28, 100, lOln. Ill: 410 Chodzko, Alexander, II: 466, 468n. Chorley, John, II: 116n. Ill: 331, 332n„ 455, 456n„ 515, 555 Christopher North [John Wilson], I: 126, 129n., 485. Ill: 338, 454, 543, 556n. IV: 43 Churchyard, Charles, II: 617 Churchyard, Ellen, I: 307. Ill: 489, 511, 693; letter to, 332. IV: 60, 79, 105, 194, 310, 578 Churchyard, Thomas, I: 1, 2; biog. profile, 29-30; 291, 293n., 325, 406, 412, 431, 436, 437, 489, 534. II: 178, 179n„ 193, 224, 338, 528, 579, 583n., 617. Ill: 16, 245, 246n„ 407, 534, 547, 649, 667. IV: 343, 470, 554 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, III: 45, 46 Cinthio, Giambatista, IV: 575 Cipriani, Giovanni, IV: 300 Clark, William G., I: 165, 575, 576, 583n., 661n. IV: 574 Clarke, Edward William [Athanasius Gasker], 219, 220, 221, 265n., 266n., 322. Ill: 229, 230, 286, 287n„ 379, 380. IV: 287, 288n.

Clarke, Isaac, II: 30, 31n„ 612. Ill: 70 Clarke, J. T„ IV: 522n. Claude le Lorraine, Claude Gelee, 214, 215n„ 296, 297n. Claypole, Elizabeth (Mrs. John), I: 618, 619n. Clemencin, Diego, III: 696, 697n., 706, 708,711. IV: 12, 13 Clifden, Lord (Henry Agar-Ellis), II: 179. Ill: 313, 315 Clive, Kitty, III: 243, 244n., 603 Clough, Arthur Hugh, IV: 570, 571 Clough, Miss, I: 320, 32In., 322 Cobb, Robert, II: 322 Cobbett, William, I: 81, 500, 501n. II: 348n. Ill: 387 Cobbold, G„ II: 62 Cobbold, Richard, I: 497, 524n. Ill: 379 Cobbold, Robert Knipe, II: 49, 50n. Cobden, Richard, I: 519 Cobham family, IV: 306 Cochrane, John, II: 68n. Coleridge, Hartley, I: xxxviii, 46, 60, 161, 261. Ill: 656. IV: 360 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, I: 44, 159, 160n., 237n. Ill: 679. IV: 27, 28, 414 Collier, John Payne, III: 462n., 568 Collier, Robert, III: 319n. Collins, Wilkie, II: 382, 383n., 608. Ill: 9, 56, 62, 260, 333 Colnaghi, I: 289 Cologan, Emilius, II: 583 Colomb, R„ III: 713n. Colvin, Sidney, III: 366, 367n. Combe, George, I: 448 Commines, Phillippe de, IV: 306, 307n. Compton, Henry, I: 334n. Compton, S.J.A., Lord Northampton, I: 334, 337, 526, 527n„ 637 Congreve, William, III: 458 Coningham, William, I: 438 Conington, John, III: 555, 556n. Constable, Archibald, III: 492, 493n., 53 In. Constable, John, I: 277, 284, 290, 291n., 295, 296, 299, 300, 301, 302, 307, 325, 431, 442, 492. II: 516. IV: 26 618

Index Constable, Thomas, III: 492, 493n.; letters to, 492, 494, 530 Contat, Louise, III: 395, 396n. Cook, Captain James, II: 352, 353n., 377, 378n., 429, 443 Cooke, Mrs. J., I: 481n. Cooke, Thomas Simpson, I: 304, 305n. Cookson, W., I: 426, 427n., 429, 432, 433 Cooper, Abraham, II: 570 Cooper, E. R., IV: 64n. Cooper, John, mate on the Scandal, II: 364-67, 557, 591, 604 Cooper, Samuel, I: 507n. Cooper, Mrs. Winifred, III: 228n. Corneille, Pierre, III: 500, 578, 579, 593, 612 Corrance, Frederick, II: 27. Ill: 16, 103. IV: 331, 592 Cotgrave, Randle, III: 4. IV: 19, 20, 338, 341, 434, 436, 591 Cotman, John Sell, II: 445, 446n. Ill: 68, 407, 408 Coulanges, Mme de, IV: 446 Coulanges, Philippe, IV: 83, 85, 146 Coutts, Thomas, IV: 449n. Covarrubias y Horozco, Sebastian, IV: 13 Cowell, Charles, II: 310, 341, 371, 569. Ill: 248, 320, 467, 673 Cowell, Mrs. Charles, II: 263, 411; letters to, 263, 266, 416. Ill: 470, 471 Cowell, Edward Byles, I: xix, xxx, xxxi, xli, xlii, xliii, xliv, xlv, xlvi, 1, li, Iv, 3, 30-32; biog. profile, 475, 477n., 584n., 593, 644n„ 685-89; letters to, 475, 488, 496, 498, 512, 538, 539, 540, 546, 551, 552, 558, 561, 565, 567, 568, 583, 591, 594, 597, 600, 601, 607, 610, 611, 613, 617, 622, 623, 625, 628, 631, 636, 637, 638, 639, 644, 647, 652, 655, 660, 664, 666, 669, 672, 673, 674, 675, 678, 679, 680, 681, 683, 685, 688, 689, 693, 694. II: 12, 100, 109, 115, 123, 149, 151, 152n„ 194, 202, 213, 216, 236, 519n., 527, 543, 548, 572, 585, 606; letters to, 8, 13, 15, 22, 23, 25, 31, 37, 39, 40, 48, 50, 62,

64, 66, 67, 69, 91, 92, 104, 110, 114, 115, 116, 118, 120, 125, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 139, 142, 147, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 161, 163, 165, 167, 168, 169, 171, 180, 184, 188, 189, 191, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 212, 213, 216, 221, 222, 223, 227, 228, 234, 244, 247, 256, 257, 264, 270, 278, 285, 292, 297, 300, 304, 306, 315, 317, 322, 324, 334, 377, 400, 415, 446, 465, 491, 509, 518, 529, 530, 532, 534, 536, 539, 542, 545, 547, 548, 551, 560, 562, 567, 569, 571, 572, 577, 584, 585, 592, 594, 595, 604, 606; letters to, "Mr. and Mrs. Cowell," 39, 62, 83, 85, 98, 236. Ill: 19, 24, 25, 35, 47, 56, 57, 236, 239, 242, 244, 261, 300, 301, 302, 304, 364, 371, 396, 491, 502, 537, 538, 588, 602, 623, 633, 646, 647n., 684, 689, 697; letters to, 6, 14, 20, 21, 23, 26, 28, 32, 36, 45, 48, 53, 54, 55, 59, 60, 63, 64, 67, 68, 73, 78, 82, 87, 93, 95, 97, 98, 101, 107, 110, 113, 117, 120, 127, 130, 137, 139, 142, 167, 189, 221, 228, 231, 239, 240, 252, 261, 263, 275, 297, 300, 315, 320, 326, 333, 335, 347, 356, 360, 363, 376, 383, 393, 394, 406, 427, 428, 438, 444, 445, 466, 467, 470, 471, 476, 477, 483, 486, 491, 540, 546, 550, 592, 600, 633, 638, 645, 682, 700, 710, 724. IV: 74, 94, 95, 96, 152, 159, 160, 165, 185, 204, 211-12, 222, 230, 231, 236, 237, 242, 243, 244, 246, 247, 248, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 259, 263, 266, 267, 274, 287, 308, 309, 310, 312, 314, 315, 330, 344, 345, 346, 349, 350, 356, 359, 366, 379, 380, 386, 439, 442, 447, 453, 469, 474, 479, 487, 514, 522, 523, 524, 543n., 547, 550, 555, 597; letters to, 12, 23, 31, 51, 53, 72, 115, 133, 156, 159, 170, 183, 200, 205, 225, 238, 257, 302, 341, 343, 359, 366, 419, 440, 451, 460, 483, 542, 555, 566

Index Cowell, Mrs. Edward ByIes (Elizabeth CharIesworth), I: xli, xlii, 3; biog. profile, 31-32; 172, 174n., 179, 269, 426n., 440, 584n., 667, 685-89, 695; letters to, 618, 683; to both, 680. II; 4, 8, 9, 11, 13-16, 18, 20-25, 28, 41, 45, 76-78, 219, 220n., 547n., 564, 585; letters to, 4, 11, 14, 18, 20, 24, 28, 39, 41, 42, 43, 54, 60, 64, 72, 80, 81, 82, 85, 87, 90, 97, 99, 102, 105, 107, 119, 139, 160, 223, 224, 225, 226, 230, 233, 269, 310, 340, 370, 546, 549, 551, 554; letters to, "Mr. and Mrs. Cowell," 39, 62, 83, 85, 98, 236. Ill: 143, 241, 275, 539, 540, 592, 645, 684n.; letters to, 22, 31, 35, 65, 79, 172, 182, 241, 248, 256, 265, 266, 279, 283, 287, 292, 310, 327, 368, 374, 404, 479, 484, 485, 488, 489, 491, 537, 588, 591, 636, 646, 666, 668, 720. IV: 23, 115, 240, 266, 308, 309, 356, 372, 379, 440, 447, 452, 453, 479, 514; letters to, 10, 16, 40, 58, 160, 240 Cowell, Samuel, III: 139, 140n., 600 Cowley, Abraham, IV: 179 Cowper, William, I: 105, 175, 177n., 180, 195, 196η., 463η. II: 368. IV: 168 Cox, David, III: 348n. Cox, Jane, III: 345η. IV: 121n. Crabbe, Anna, II: 474; letter to, 474 Crabbe, Arma Maria Crowfoot, II: 516, 528 Crabbe, Caroline, I: 1, Ivi, 35, 675. II: 142, 300, 316, 317n., 319, 478, 507, 515, 582; letter to, 383, III: 82, 125, 321, 322n„ 475, 635. IV: 41, 56, 81, 88, 220, 281, 335, 342, 345, 427, 428, 439, 508, 511, 513, 581, 592, 594; letter to, 331 Crabbe, George, I: biog. profile, 35-36. II: 374, 413, 528, 559, 562. Ill: 54, 60, 80, 92, 94, 101, 126, 133, 137, 138n„ 164, 182, 433, 434, 445, 448, 452, 454, 457, 460, 478, 482, 491, 516, 520, 522, 526, 529, 538, 542, 547, 549, 550, 551, 554, 558, 559, 632, 701, 727, 728, 730, 731, 732.

IV: 5, 6, 30, 33, 36, 39, 40, 51, 53, 54n., 93, 94n„ 104, 106, 122, 128, 138, 151, 152, 153, 155, 158, 161, 162, 163, 166, 169, 170, 171, 174, 177n., 181, 182, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 194, 195, 196, 201, 204, 206, 209, 210, 212, 213, 214, 216, 218, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 244, 251, 259, 268, 269, 272, 298, 307, 311, 313, 319, 320, 322, 325, 327, 328, 329, 383, 401, 434, 529, 533, 536, 544, 545n., 547, 549, 551, 552, 553, 556, 557, 559, 560n., 563, 564, 570, 571, 579, 593n. Crabbe, George, of Bredfield, I: xxxviii, xlvii, 2, 4, 8; biog. profile, 32-34; 260n., 412-14, 461, 478, 491, 503, 526, 541, 542n„ 561, 576, 624, 630, 651, 652n., 653, 654, 695, 697; letters to, 413, 653, 656. II: 33, 49, 53, 63, 64n., 72, 84n., 93, 132, 149, 179, 278, 291, 292-93, 299, 300n., 397; letters to, 231, 277. Ill: 475, 544, 730, 732. IV: 236, 307, 456, 571 Crabbe, George, of Merton, I: xxix, xl, xliii, xlv, xlvi, xlix, Iv, Ivi, 10; biog. profile, 34-35; 42, 414; letter to, 649. II: 32, 39, 40, 119, 120n„ 121, 23132, 511, 538, 565, 582, 610, 616; letters to, 231, 277. Ill: 152, 293, 432, 556, 704, 705, 710; letters to, 16, 39, 408, 450, 469, 506, 509, 510, 518, 521, 529, 562, 585, 587, 603, 610, 643, 657, 667, 673, 735. IV: 66, 71, 140, 141, 155, 220, 258, 325, 331, 332, 333, 334, 339, 342, 345, 346, 352, 356, 357, 359, 360, 383, 398, 412n., 433, 434, 438, 439, 442, 444, 447, 448, 449, 462, 468, 502, 508, 511, 521, 565, 575, 579, 580, 581n., 588, 593, 594, 598; letters to, 56, 60; letter from, George Crabbe to John Loder, 597 Crabbe, Mrs. George [Emily Louisa Crabbe], II: 32, 40, 119, 120n., 121 Crabbe, Mary, I: 1, Ivi, 35, 675. II:

Index 300, 319, 478, 507; letters to, 321. IV: 41, 81, 220n., 335, 342, 439, 508, 511, 513, 594 Crabbe, Sofy, II: 72, 317 Cranwell, James, III: 542, 543n. Crawhall, Joseph, I: 12 Creech, Thomas, II: 26 Creighton, Robert, IV: 444 Creswick, Harry Richardson, I: xxxi Croker, J. W., I: 350n., 544, 545n. II: 565. Ill: 238n. Crome, John, I: 325, 326n„ 406, 489, 490n., 502. II: 446, 471, 475, 506, 508, 514, 516, 528. Ill: 400, 408 Cromwell, Oliver, I: 337, 340, 354, 359, 364, 375, 376, 380n., 387, 395n., 398, 399, 400, 401n„ 403, 416, 421, 422n., 426, 449, 453, 482, 499, 505, 506n., 509, 563-65. II: 186, 336. Ill: 376, 494, 639, 698 Crosse, Andrew, I: 470n. Crowfoot, John Henchman, II: 567. Ill: 31, 32n., 99. IV: 444 Crowfoot, John R., Ill: 562 Crowfoot, Mary S., I: 4Iln. Crowfoot, William E„ II: 377, 436; letters to, 376, 434, 536, 548. Ill: letters to, 76, 92, 99, 246, 596. IV: 444, 448, 501, 527; letters to, 186, 208 Crowfoot, William M., Ill: 31, 32n. Cruikshank, George, I: 495n. II: 616, 617n. Ill: 614 Cullingford, Joseph, II: 593, 594n. Cullingham, Elizabeth, I: 280 Cullum, Sir John, II: 385, 387n. Cumming, John, III: 123 Cunningham, Allan, I: 302, 303n. Cunningham, Francis, I: 280 Cunningham, Peter, I: 109n. Cust, Arthur, IV: 24 Cuyp, Albert, I: 259, 334, 542n. Daguerre, Louis J. M., I: 235, 237n. Dallas, E. S„ III: 102n. Dampier, William, II: 386-87, 428, 429n., 443, 444, 708 Dando, I: 208, 209n. Daniel, Peter, IV: 332, 333

Dante Alighieri, I: 163, 233, 287, 288n., 289, 336, 399, 622. II: 491, 493, 494. Ill: 385, 443, 655, 703, 714, 718, 719. IV: 49, 168, 466, 486, 490, 494, 510, 606 D'Arblay, Mme [Frances Burney], II: 576 Darwin, Charles, II: 355. Ill: 284, 431. IV: 412 Dauban, Charles Aime, III: 521 d'Aubigne, Theodore Agrippa, I: 287, 288n. D'Avenant, Sir William, I: 158, 159n. Ill: 562, 567, 573n. Davey, D. E„ I: 343, 457, 458n., 519 David, Jacques Louis, I: 200, 206n. David, M. Felicien, I: 494, 496n. Davillier, Jean Charles, III: 621n. Dawson, Nancy, II: 369 Deas, George B., I: 500n. Deighton, J., I: 81 Delf, William, I: 541, 542n. de Mariana, Juan, III: 267, 268n. Denner, Balthazar, III: 458, 459n. Dennis, John, I: 557, 594 de Ochoa, Eugenio, III: 268, 269 De Quincey, Thomas, I: 159, 236, 237n., 470, 510. Ill: 333, 626. IV: 119, 120, 149, 185, 550 Dering, Edward, IV: 143n. de Sacy, Silvestre, II: 136, 137, 138, 139, 143 de Soyres, Francis and Andalusia (Andalusia FitzGerald), I: xlv, 18, 117, 119n., 188n., 245, 246n., 299, 300n., 420, 450, 451n„ 573, 659, 684. II: 5, 6, 16, 17, 19, 130, 233, 315, 563, 568, 582, 587, 589. Ill: 249, 250n. IV: 217, 278, 280, 304 de Soyres, John, I: 41 In. IV: 236, 238, 239, 315, 356, 379, 380, 495, 497, 498 de Soyres, Leopold, II: 17, 610n. de Soyres, Madeleine, I: xxx, 654 de Tassy, Gardin, II: 206, 246, 252, 256, 257n„ 267, 268, 269, 285, 286, 290, 291, 297, 298n., 304, 305, 306n„ 543. Ill: 73, 74, 75n„ 266, 321, 327, 328n. 621

Index Deutsch, Emanuel, III: 57n. de Vega Carpio, Lope Felix, III: 267, 268n. de Vere, Aubrey, I: 340, 528, 643 de Vere, Edmond, II: 35 Deville, I: 161 D'Ewes, Sir Symonds, I: 417, 418n., 460 de Wilde, Samuel, II: 461. Ill: 83, 84. IV: 316, 317n., 396 d'Herbelot, Barthelemi, II: 202, 254, 255n„ 307. IV: 209 Dibden, Charles, I: 244, 245n. Dibden, Thomas Frognall, I: 397. Ill: 4n„ 135, 136n. Dickens, Charles, I: 46, 247, 248, 249n„ 383, 388, 531, 548, 664. II: 487, 489n„ 499, 543. Ill: 177, 178n., 384, 386, 387, 388, 403, 406, 447, 495, 500, 502, 503, 512, 515, 555, 575, 593, 646, 651, 662. IV: 30, 33, 38, 183, 189, 195, 197, 203, 222, 226, 227, 230, 259, 260, 267, 279, 281, 286, 288, 292n., 370, 536, 605 Dickens, Mary, IV: 281n. Dickins, Bruce, I: 141n., 454n. Diderot, Denis, I: 105 Digby, Kenelm Henry, I: 246, 247n. Dilke, C. W., Ill: 114, 115n. Disraeli, Benjamin, I: 450, 451n., 482η. II: 261. Ill: 328, 673. IV: 8, 9, 10n., 125, 126, 309 D'Israeli, Isaac, I: 401, 402n. Ditton, Humphrey, III: 219 Dix, John, II: 369n. Dix family, Dunwich, IV: 61, 66, 140, 141, 142 Dixon, William Hepworth, II: 381, 382n., 400, 438, 447, 469, 470n., 525. Ill: 127 Dobson, William, I: 318, 319n. Dodsley, Robert, IV: 286 Dodsworth, William, II: 7, 8n. Dole, Ν. H„ II: 263n. Donaldson, John William, I: 573, 609n., 644, 688. II: 392, 409. Ill: 326, 327n. Donizetti, Gaetano, III: 254 Donne, Blanche, I: 180, 181η. II: 123.

Ill: 435, 504, 691; letters to, 553, 623. IV: 34, 469, 471, 475, 476, 521; letters to, 153, 209, 244, 467, 478, 484, 539 Donne, Charles, I: liv, 8, 36, 38, 454, 478, 682, 683η. II: 4, 29, 46, 265, 437, 438n., 500, 559, 578, 584, 642; letters to, 33, 47, 52. Ill: 691. IV: 48; letters to, 172, 470, 521 Donne, Mrs. Charles (Mildred Kemble), I: 45. II: 437, 438n. Ill: 671, 672n. Donne, Mrs. Edward, II: 122, 123n., 341 Donne, Frederick, I: 38. II: 83, 319, 321, 324, 344, 356, 357n. Ill: 76, 249, 357, 504, 553 Donne, John, I: 180, 182n., 195, 196n., 206, 208n. Donne, Mowbray, I: liii, 8, 38. II: 29, 255, 265, 344, 356, 391, 394, 493, 500, 510, 513, 596. Ill: 42, 47, 239, 242, 310, 359, 412, 427, 433, 434, 438, 452, 458, 503, 534, 542, 553, 575, 583, 618, 619, 624, 642, 660, 669, 703, 725; letters to, 50, 75, 134, 149. IV: 269, 303, 364, 394, 400, 402, 444, 445, 446, 468, 471, 573, 583, 584, 589, 594, 598, 603 Donne, Mrs. Mowbray, III: 134, 135n., 364, 427, 725. IV: 291, 444, 445, 446, 468, 471, 534, 539, 587, 591, 594 Donne, Valentia, I: liv. II: 123. Ill: 305, 310, 420, 553, 575, 623, 691. IV: 9, 26, 30, 38, 40, 209, 269, 375, 517; letters to, 22, 25 Donne, William Bodham, I: xxx, xxxvi, xxxvii, xxxix, xli, xlii, xliii, xliv, xlv, xlix, liii, lvi, 1, 8; hiog. profile, 3638; 268, 269n., 279, 280n„ 324, 327, 450, 525, 536, 685-89; letters to, 137, 139, 144, 154, 157, 180, 183, 194, 233, 240, 444, 453, 477, 485, 510, 522, 526, 536, 547, 572, 585, 609, 616, 626, 629, 632, 633, 634, 650, 660, 662, 682, 688. II: 19, 46, 47n., 48, 68, 73, 102, 123, 158, 159n„ 255, 264, 266, 272, 311, 341, 356,

Index 357η., 412, 459, 466, 467η., 543, 560, 577, 578, 582, 584, 602; letters to, 3, 29, 32, 46, 63, 73, 78, 244, 328, 356, 392, 393, 409, 437, 461, 462, 468, 469, 473, 481, 483, 496, 498, 503, 526, 540, 558, 601; letter from, 148. Ill: 9, 64, 87, 88, 160, 257, 296, 305, 310, 318, 32425, 331, 332n., 420, 435, 438n„ 450, 451, 452, 453n., 455, 458, 462, 478, 490, 497, 503, 504, 505, 509, 510, 511, 512, 529, 542, 544, 558, 559, 575, 583, 610, 618, 641, 664n„ 665, 691, 704, 706; letters to, 9, 12, 17, 19, 46, 81, 83, 104, 115, 135, 175, 180, 206, 216, 217, 243, 260, 280, 302, 328, 341, 401, 433, 437, 442, 449, 464, 465, 499, 502, 514, 525, 534, 554, 560, 662, 6θ6, 701, 725. IV: 34, 48, 163, 164, 210, 291, 302, 311, 341, 347, 354, 364, 365, 369, 370, 372, 375, 378, 384, 391, 394, 401, 402, 429, 457, 465, 468, 469, 470, 472, 475, 476, 478, 479, 484, 485, 492, 506, 508, 512, 513, 517, 519n., 521, 539, 540, 570; letters to, 9, 21, 24, 26, 34, 65, 91, 107, 132 Donne, Mrs. William Bodham (Catharine Hewitt), I: 37, 180, 181n„ 195 Donnegan, James, II: 463 Dore, Gustave, III: 166, 620, 621, 633, 649 Dorla, III: 590, 591η. IV: 144, 145n., 365 D'Orleans, S.A.R. La Duchesse, IV: 455 D'Orsay, Alfred G. G., Count, IV: 377 d'Osuna, Due, IV: 156, 168 Doudan, Ximenes, IV: 85, 97, 112, 126 Doughty, Ernest G., II: 521, 582; letter to, 476. Ill: 21, 530, 643, 693. IV: 61, 592, 598 Doughty, Frederick Goodwin, II: 445, 446n., 475, 476 Doughty, !Catherine, III: 329n. Douglas, Mrs. Stair, IV: 440n. Dove, Benjamin, II: 445, 538, 555,

556, 561, 579, 580, 587, 589, 590, 592, 594. Ill: 27, 92 Downer, Alan, I: 298n. Dowson, John, II: 246, 247n. Drayton, Michael, III: 483. IV: 376n., 445, 446n. Drew, Herriot Stanbanks, II: 33, 34n., 49, 53, 102, 300, 302n., 399, 494, 495n. Drummond, M., I: 278n. Drury, Robert, I: 226, 228n. Dryden, John, II: 386, 387n„ 389-90, 444. Ill: 19, 96, 286, 290, 562, 655, 716. IV: 7, 80, 139, 184, 185, 187, 200, 237, 238, 257, 259, 274, 280, 328, 396, 465, 607 Ducis, Jean Francois, II: 137, 138n. IV: 425 DufF Gordon, Lady, II: 560 Duffy, Gavan, I: 399n., 544n. Dughet, Gaspar, I: 215n. Duncan, Alexander, I: 86, 87. II: 33, 41, 42n. Duncan, Francis, I: xlviii, 1, 8, 86, 88, 90, 9ln„ 94, 95n., 572, 573n„ 574. II: 337, 339n., 565, 586n., 587. Ill: 46 Diirer, Albrecht, II: 238 Dutch Sam, I: 216, 217n. Dutt, William Α., Ill: 194 Dysart, Lady, III: 265 Eagles, John, III: 634 East Anglian Notes and Queries, II: 352, 571; letters to, 352, 357, 358, 404. Ill: letters to, 112, 176 Eastlake, Sir Charles, I: 173, 174n., 250, 252n„ 268, 575, 576η. II: 471, 472n. Eastwick, Ε. B., II: 114, 119, 131, 154, 192 Eckermann, Johann, IV: 255, 256n., 257 Edge, William, I: 473 Edgeworth, Francis B., I: xli, 158, 159n„ 167n„ 168, 169n., 181, 182n„ 184, 266, 268, 269n„ 285, 286n„ 395, 396n„ 547n. Ill: 602 Edgeworth, Mrs. Francis B., 285, 547

Index Edgeworth, Maria, I: xxxix, 284, 285, 396. IV: 535 Edmonstone, Arthur, IV: 593n. Edwards, Edwin, I: lii, Iv, 8, 41. Ill: 79n., 268, 310, 350, 378, 379, 383, 420, 421, 432, 696, 705. IV: 8, 44, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 71, 74, 76, 77, 78, 90, 93, 140, 141, 143, 146, 149, 166, 169, 187n., 190, 191, 197, 204, 207, 208, 230, 237, 247, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259, 262, 267, 321, 338, 339n., 365, 402, 428n. Edwards, Mrs. Edwin, III: 451, 496, 540, 649, 663, 705, 725, 734. IV: 64, 71, 77,107, 124, 131, 134, 136, 140, 141, 142, 144, 149, 154, 156, 204, 207, 208, 230, 237, 247, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259, 263, 264, 270, 271, 273, 274, 278, 279, 283, 284, 295, 302, 338, 346, 365, 368, 372, 375, 376, 377, 378, 402, 428, 444, 448, 484, 485, 501, 514, 575, 582, 583; letters to, 258, 261, 581 Edwards, Matilda Betham, IV: 39, 40n. Edwin, John, III: 84 Egan, Pierce, IV: 217 Egerton, Francis Henry, I: 178n. Eliason, Edward, I: 297, 298n. Eliot, George, II: 396. Ill: 350, 351, 456n„ 473, 642. IV: 144, 149, 284, 464, 466, 536 "Elizabeth, Poor," I: 514, 528, 555 Ellacombe, Η. N., IV: 239, 240n. Elliot, Sir Gilbert, III: 609n. Elliotson, Dr. John, II: 320, 321n. Elliott, Ebenezer, I: 12, 663, 664 Elliott, Robert, 1: 388, 508, 509n. Ellis, Robert Leslie, II: 89, 510, 511n. Ill: 5, 7 Elliston, Robert, I: 208, 210n., 388 Elm, Mostafa, I: xxxii Emerson, Ralph Waldo, I: 19, 49, 50, 662. Ill: 434, 447, 651, 656. IV: 234, 510, 511n., 546, 562, 566, 568, 572, 576, 585 Emery, William, IV: 252, 253n. Erasmus, Desiderius, III: 482 Espinasse, Francis, I: 50 Ethe, Hermann, IV: 46

Etheridge, Benjamin, II: 460 Etty, William, I: 173, 174n., 605 Euripides, II: 595, 596, 602. Ill: 341, 342η. IV: 406 Evans, Robert W., I: 255, 256n. Evelyn, John, 117, 119n. Faiers, Mrs., I: 193, 414, 415, 431, 438, 461, 515, 544, 559, 567, 599, 600, 620. II: 62, 115, 469, 508 Fair, James G., IV: 114 Fairfax, Thomas, 3rd Baron, I: 349, 350n„ 368, 378, 379 Falconer, Forbes, II: 159, 206n., 215n., 262 Falstaff, Sir John, IV: 29 Fane, Sarah Sophie (Lady Jersey), II: 187 Fantin-Latour, Henri, III: 269η. IV: 428 Farish, George, I: 165 Farmer, Richard, IV: 86, 87n., 180 Farren, William, I: 121n., 454, 661 Fatio, Alfred Morel, IV: 156, 157, 168 Faucit, Helen (Lady Martin), I: 184, 185n., 277 Fawcett, Henry, IV: 529, 530n. Fawcett, Mrs. Henry (Millicent Garrett), IV: 529, 530n., 536 Feaks, John, I: 79 Fechter, Charles Α., II: 393, 412 Fell, John, II: 447, 448n. Ferguson, James, IV: 39, 40n. Field, Samuel Pryer, II: 109, 110η. Fielding, Henry, III: 260 Fields, J. T., Ill: 646η. IV: 228n. Firdusi, Abul Kasim Mansur (SMhnameh, Book of Kings), II: 110, Illn., 119, 120n., 597, 600. Ill: 524. IV: 452 Fisher, David Jr., II: 461, 497 Fishers, James and sons Ted and Walter, II: 394, 396, 447, 448, 616. Ill: 445n., 508, 619. IV: 65, 282, 364, 385, 507, 538, 578 FitzGerald, Edward, I: hiog. profile, 1-13; Works: "Meadows in Spring," xxxviii, 5, 98, 99, 100, 101; Euphranor or Phidippus, xliv, xlv,

Index Ivi, 5, 551, 552n., 554n., 559, 689, 690, 694. II: 3, 8, 9, 10, 26, 39, 49, 123, 125, 158, 168, 175, 330. Ill: 95, 96, 97, 120, 182, 184, 212n., 220, 559, 560, 717. IV: 17, 80, 120, 326n., 442, 443, 495, 504, 506n., 509, 531. Polonius, I: xliii, 5. II: 38n., 48, 50, 359, 360n. Ill: 212n„ 405, 611, 612. "Bredfield Hall," I: 237η. II: 15. Translation of Beranger, I: 196-206. "On Anne Allen," I: 143n. Proposed "Vocab­ ulary of Rural English," II: 319. Petrarch sonnet, I: 664-65, 670, 678. Memoir of Bernard Barton, I: 648, 651, 657. Notes and Queries, I: xlviii, xlix, li. Two Generals, III: 93, 94n., 96, 97n., 102n., 143, 167, 172, 464, 465. Sea Words, I: li. Ill: 112-13, 121, 124, 125, 168, 176, 180, 196, 266. IV: 351, 352n., 579. Paullus, I: 601-03. Percival Stockdale and Baldock Black Horse, IV: 280, 281, 282, 290, 291n. For FitzGerald's Persian writings and studies, see: Attar (Mantic ut-tair); Jami (Saldmdn and Absdl); Omar Khayyam (Rubdiydt); also Hafiz, Firdusi, Hatifi, JellaIeddin Riimi, etc. For Greek and other translations and studies, see Aeschy­ lus, Sophocles, Calderon, Cervantes, etc. For Readings in Crabbe, see George Crabbe. Homes, 1: 6; Boulge Cottage, 2, 193; Little Grange, 7. II: Little Grange, 520, 521, 525, 535, 536, 545, 549, 555, 561, 565, 580, 587, 592, 593, 617. Little Grange, III: 86, 88, 92, 100 ,IOln., 191, 192, 204, 205, 308, 310, 311n„ 474, 475, 490. Boating, II: 364-67; Waveney, I: 6. II: 364, 397, 39Θ, 483; Scandal, I: 6, 9. II: 365, 477, 478n., 479, 480, 482, 483, 484, 487, 496, 498, 501, 524, 563-64, 587, 588n., 602. Ill: 56, 57, 104, 107, 147, 153, 160, 186, 187, 193, 221, 287-88, 289,

290, 296, 299; Whisper, I: 6. II: 365; Criterion, II: 365, 440; Meum and Tuum, III: 71, 72, 75, 77, 78, 89, 90n„ 91, 92n., 93, 94, 98, 99, 100, 122, 153, 158, 172, 173, 174, 178, 186, 193, 194, 197, 199, 200, 220, 230n., 468n. Henrietta, III: 15, 16n„ 193, 208n., 211n., 212n„ 299, 468n. For FitzGerald's captains and mates, see Tom Newson, Ted West, Jack Howe, Alfred Hurrell, Jack Smith, John Cooper and Posh Fletcher. Marriage, II: 237-42; scrapbooks of murderers and rogues, 468, 469n.; music, II: 20, 89, 128 FitzGerald family profile, I: 13-18 FitzGerald, Mrs. Edward (Lucy Barton), I: xlvii, 8; biog. profile, 22-24; 431, 462, 542, 632n., 667, 668n.; letters to, 568, 587. II: 23742, 243, 244, 245, 260, 277, 278n., 334, 539, 542, 556, 617 FitzGerald, Lord Edward, I: 107, 110η. FitzGerald, Edward Marlborough, I: 603, 605n. Ill: 652η. IV: 488 FitzGerald, Gerald, xxx FitzGerald, Gerald, II: 379, 383. Ill: 76, 408, 553, 563, 736. IV: 60, 90, 172, 345, 347 FitzGerald, John, I: xxxvii, xlii, 4; biog. profile, 13-14; 92, 93n., 95n., 209, 372, 398, 403, 491, 553, 582, 585, 609, 612, 613n., 615, 616, 635, 636, 671, 684. II: 57. Ill: 632. IV: 193 FitzGerald, Mrs. John, I: xxxvii, xlii, 4; biog. profile, 14-15; 96n., 193, 209, 308, 372, 403, 553, 582, 636, 650, 652, 659. II: 63, 155. Ill: 331, 548, 617, 652, 663, 665, 672. IV: 105, 196, 299, 304, 376, 377, 379 FitzGerald, John, I: xxxvii, lv, 1, 15, 79, 335n., 398, 400, 401n„ 421, 636. II: 176, 349, 350n„ 379, 383, 453, 459, 485, 496, 497-98, 508, 569. Ill: 298, 409, 472, 652, 654, 665. IV: 193, 196, 208, 210, 211, 212, 214, 217, 227, 597

Index FitzGerald, Mrs. John (Augusta Jane Lisle), I: 167, 169n., 207, 308, 309n. FitzGerald, Mrs. John (Hester Haddon), I: 400, 401n., 428. IV: 196 FitzGerald, Maurice, I: 15. II: 383. Ill: 19, 43. IV: 60, 90 FitzGerald, Percy, III: 297, 305, 379, 708. IV: 19, 2On., 21, 108 FitzGerald, Peter, I: xl, xlii, xliii, Iiii, 1, 16, 284, 396n„ 624, 646. II: 53, 112, 324n„ 432, 528, 529, 557, 558, 559, 561, 578, 586, 590, 594, 595, 599. Ill: 76, 361, 362, 363, 367, 408, 509, 552, 553, 558, 563 FitzGerald, Mrs. Peter, III: 31 Fitzgerald, William Thomas, II: 108n. Ill: 133, 134n. Fitzharding, Wilham (Colonel Berkeley), 351, 352n. FitzMaurice, Henry Petty, I: 263, 264n. Flaxman, John, I: 479, 481n. Fletcher, Jemmy, III: 226, 282, 283, 284, 513, 532 Fletcher, Joseph (Posh), I: xxx, xxxv, 1, li. II: 367, 573-74, 579, 580, 581, 599, 600n„ 601, 603, 604, 605, 611, 612, 616. Ill: 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 18, 22, 30, 3In., 32, 66, 74, 77, 89, 99, 100, 125, 128, 129, 132, 145, 146, 155, 158, 160, 161, 181, 182, 186, 191, 192, 193, 197, 204, 206, 221, 233, 234, 235n„ 237, 238, 239, 246, 252, 256, 263, 264, 281, 283, 293, 315, 375, 399, 471, 480, 557, 670, 714, 715; letters to, 4, 15, 30, 32, 34, 38, 41, 47, 49, 52, 58, 71, 73, 77, 84, 86, 89, 90, 91, 95, 102, 104, 144, 149, 153, 161, 190, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 207, 208, 209, 211, 214, 215, 225, 271, 276, 280, 282, 299, 468, 472. IV: 3, 33 Fletcher, Joseph Sr., II: 573-74. Ill: 58, 468, 471 Fletcher, Phineas, I: 118, 121n., 122, 123, 142 Florio, John, III: 387. IV: 130, 180 Fonblanque, Albany, III: 543. IV: 45

Fontevrauld, Mme de (Rochechouart), IV: 330 Foote, Maria, III: 351, 352n., 423, 528 Forby, Robert, I: 51, 188. II: 385, 405, 460. Ill: 112, 113n., 129, 131, 132, 489, 496, 497. IV: 67n., 258, 592 Ford, Richard, IV: 460, 461n. Forman, H. Buxton, IV: 97n., 129n., 136, 229, 362; letter to, 129 Forster, John, I: 698n. Ill: 123, 124n„ 173, 174n„ 384, 387, 403, 502, 503, 661, 662n„ 664η. IV: 259, 260, 279, 281, 287, 288, 289 Forster, William Edward, I: 642, 644n. Foscolo, Ugo, III: 681, 682n. Fouque, Friedrich, Baron de la Motte, I: 135n. Ill: 234 Fox, Caroline, IV: 483, 509 Fox, Charles, III: 733. IV: 220n. Fox, Charles James, 459, 460n., 462, 463, 472 Fradelle, Henry Joseph, I: 437 Francis, John, I: 326, 327n. Franklin, Sir John, II: 38. Ill: 727n. Fraser, James Baillie, II: 208, 209n. Frederick the Great, II: 442, 443n. Frere, Philip, II: 37, 38n., 86, 187, 359 Frere, William, I: 48 Frere, Mrs. William, I: xl, 62, 222, 223n., 265n., 387, 388η. II: 38, 121, 187, 240, 479, 519. Ill: 608, 610, 624. IV: 311, 377 Frith, William P., II: 485, 486n. Froissart, Jean, IV: 306, 308n., 434 Frost, Gardner, III: 140, 141, 277 Frost, Mrs., I: 629, 630n. Froude, James Α., I: 46. II: 377. Ill: 354, 355, 643. IV: 145, 382, 383, 395, 398, 404, 405n., 411, 412, 414, 415, 417, 418, 423, 428, 442, 486, 504, 507, 510, 511n„ 513, 518, 519, 520, 525, 529, 546, 550, 562, 572, 580, 584, 586, 589 Fualdes, Antoine, II: 571, 572. Ill: 617, 626, 627η. IV: 324 Fulcher, George W., I: 237n. Fuller, Daniel, III: 3n„ 38 Fuller, Hester Thackeray (Mrs. Richard B.), I: xxxii, xxxvi

Index Fuller, Thomas, II: 81. II: 237, 238n. Funajoli, Gladys, I: xxxi Funajoli, Mary, II: 583, 616. IV: 357, 365, 366, 367, 368, 372 Furby, A. M., Ill: 524 Furness, Horace Howard, III: 252, 253n., 257, 547, 549, 551, 558, 582, 654n.; letter to, 253. IV: 375, 376, 378, 383 Furnivall, F. J., Ill: 461, 462n. IV: 130, 136, 283n., 297, 324, 335, 360, 362, 380, 392, 393n., 398, 399, 412, 422, 434, 451, 456, 464, 480, 486, 545 Fuseli, Henry, IV: 124, 125n., 136 Fyt, John, I: 618 Gainsborough, I: 292, 293n., 306, 412. II: 446, 471, 508, 509n„ 518, 528. Ill: 400, 403 Gaisford, Thomas, II: 575 Galignanis, II: 103, 104n. Galland, Antoine, III: 419 Ganz, Charles, III: 194, 235n. Garden, Francis, III: 274 Gardiner, Allen F., I: 236, 237n. Gardiner, William, III: 152 Gardner, S. R., Ill: 221n. Garrett, Newson, III: 12, 213. IV: 579 Garrett, Mrs. Newson, III: 80. IV: 536 Garrick, David, II: 461, 513, 559. Ill: 136-37, 297. IV: 20n. Gascoigne, George, II: 375 Gautier, Theophile, IV: 276 Gay, John, III: 219n. IV: 217, 474 Gay, Marie Sophie, III: 395, 396n. Geddes, W. D., IV: 146n. Geldart, Joseph, I: 450, 451n., 454, 485, 586, 627 Gervinus, Georg G., Ill: 413 Gherardescha, Ugolini della, III: 398, 400 Gibbon, Edward, I: 265, 267, 268 Gibson, Thomas, II: 454, 456n. Gilbert, W. S„ III: 250n., 252n„ 397, 402n. Gilfillan, George, I: 559, 560n. Gillies, Robert P., Ill: 680, 682n., 702, 703n„ 730, 732

Gillman, Dr. James, I: 321 Gillott, Joseph, III: 348 Gilpin, Sawrey, III: 400, 401n. Ginger, I: 461. II: 21, 22n„ 62 Giorgione, I: 546 Giovanni, Ser, IV: 315n. Gissing, John, II: 503, 504n., 451. IV: 428 Gladstone, William E., Ill: 170, 402n. IV: 9, 10n„ 145, 146n„ 309n. Gladwin, Francis, II: 141n. Glyde, John, II: 178, 179, 184 Glyn, Isabel, III: 653, 654n. IV: 471, 472n. Godwin, William, III: 679, 681, 682n. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, I: 213, 214n„ 250, 673, 674n. Ill: 47, 392, 413, 655, 724. IV: 15, 18, 137, 149, 168, 213, 224, 232, 255, 256n., 285n., 294, 406, 462, 472, 474, 499, 606 Golding, Arthur, III: 565 Goldsmith, Oliver, I: 170, 586, 668n. Ill: 123, 124n. Goldstucker, Theodor, III: 361 Good, Daniel, I: 324, 325n. Goodwill, Jasper, III: 359, 360n. Goodwin, Harry, I: xxxii Goodwin, W. W., II: 263n. IV: 130n„ 162, 270, 287, 293, 294, 298, 314, 343, 344, 346, 348, 349, 350, 352, 359, 362, 381, 404, 443, 462, 494, 510; letters to, 129, 149, 276, 350, 497 Gordon, George Hamilton, II: 125, 126n. Gordon, John Watson, II: 432, 433n. Gordon, Lt. Col. Thomas E., Ill: 675, 676n„ 683 Gorham, George, I: 659, 660n., 695 Gosse, Edmund, IV: 276n., 466, 493, 537, 538n„ 559 Gough-Calthorpe, George, I: 586 Gowing, Henry, III: 91, 92 Graham, James, 1st Marquis and 5th Earl of Montrose, I: 152 Gramont, Comte de Philibert de, I: 226, 228n. Granvile, Mary, II: 427 Graun, Karl Heinrich, II: 442 627

Index Gray, Mrs. John, III: 666 Gray, Thomas, I: 235, 237n., 260. II: 486n„ 646. Ill: 730. IV: 134, 223, 224, 227, 246, 254, 285, 286, 537, 538 Greathurst, I: 538, 650. II: 430; letter from Magnus Harper to Greathurst, 430 Greatorex, Thomas, III: 609 Green, Emily and Becky, II: 556, 580, 594, 613. Ill: 27, 49, 73, 208, 231, 297, 510. IV: 310 Green, Thomas, II: 431, 461, 462n., 473, 481. Ill: 291, 334, 380 Greenacre, James, II: 466, 467n. Greville, Charles C. F., Ill: 543, 555, 556n., 560, 649 Grier, R. M., IV: 412n. Griffin, Gerald, I: 285, 286n. Grignan, Frangoise-Marguerite, Comtesse de, III: 593, 594n. IV: 446n. Grimm, Friedrich, II: 566, 567n. Grimm, Jacob, I: 44 Grimshaw, T. S., I: 633, 634n. Grimwood, Thomas, III: 27, 149, 288 Grisi, Giulia, I: 494, 496n. II: 57n. Ill: 357 Gronow, Rees Howell, IV: 268, 483 Groome, Francis Hindes, I: xxxv, liv, 39. IV: 20, 21, 23, 135n„ 372, 373n., 381n., 550, 551n. Groome, John Hindes, I: 681-82 Groome, Robert Hindes, I: xxxv, xliii, li, lvi, 2, 8; biog. profile, 38-39; 558n., 596, 598, 672. II: 34, 53, 64, 366, 469, 506, 538, 539, 569, 571, 574, 575; letter to, 612. Ill: 6, 19, 80, 110, 118, 136, 140, 296, 466, 475, 497, 499, 552, 609, 702, 703n„ 726; letter to, 552; letter from, 496. IV: 12, 20, 23, 90, 91, 134, 135n„ 137, 152, 167, 235, 340, 353, 375, 379, 402, 410, 411, 429, 445, 453, 463, 468, 471, 486, 495, 505, 506, 507, 508, 550, 580, 598; letters to, 109, 135 Grosart, A. B., Ill: 323n. Grote, George, I: 46. IV: 146n. Grout, John, I: 8. II: 458, 470. Ill: 226, 708. IV: 436, 565

Guizot, Frangois, IV: 607 Gully, James Manby, II: 420, 422n. Gurdon, John, I: 239n. Gurdon, T. Brampton, I: 573, 626, 627n. Gurney, Hudson, I: 23, 648, 649n. II: 125, 243, 274, 539. IV: 50 Guthrie, Thomas Anstey (pseud., F. Anstey), IV: 541, 542n. Hafiz (Ahams-ed-Din Muhammad), I: 538, first mention of Persian literature. II: 50, 119, 123, 125, 131, 133, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141n„ 143, 148, 150, 151, 153, 154, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172, 180, 181, 187, 194, 213, 227, 239, 245, 246, 261, 264, 370, 415. Ill: 429, 477, 480, 724 Haggerty, Owen, IV: 271 Hakluyt, Richard, II: 346, 347n„ 351, 358, 466. Ill: 364 Halcrow, Arthur, I: xxxi Haldorsen [Halldorssen, Bjorn], III: 124, 125, 175, 209. IV: 591 Hall, Edward, I: 157 Hall, FitzEdward, I: liii; biog. profile, 39-40. Ill: 551, 648; letter to, 622; letter to W. A. Wright, 552. IV: 27, 29, 50, 51n.; letters to, 28, 43, 45, 50, 87, 235 Hallam, Arthur, I: 64, 95n., 129n., 478, 486, 657, 658n. Hallam, Henry, I: 268, 269n„ 520, 522n., 595. Ill: 615, 616n„ 679, 681, 698. IV: 370 Halliburton, T. C., IV: 278 Halliday, Andrew, III: 653, 654n. Halliwell (afterward Halliwell-Phillips), James Orchard, II: 375, 386. Ill: 323. IV: 390 Hamerton, Philip G., IV: 54 Hampden, Renn Dickson, Bishop of Hereford, I: 589, 594n. Handel, George Frederick,I: 131, 132n., 223n., 303, 304, 317, 318, 319n„ 424, 425n„ 442, 472, 514, 604, 697. II: 36, 128, 499. Ill: 609, 610, 625. IV: 316 Hanmer, Sir John, I: 239, 240n.

628

Index Hannay, James, II: 505 Hannay, Neilson C., I: xxxvi Hardy, Thomas, IV: 146, 147n. Hare, A. J., Ill: 481 Hare, Augustus William, I: 116, 213, 214n. Ill: 374n. Hare, Mrs. Augustus William (Maria), III: 374 Hare, Julius, I: 116n., 213, 214n. II: 41n. Ill: 374. IV: 355, 356, 357, 367 Hargreaves, John, III: 30, 31n. Harland, Sir Robert, I: 125n. Harley, J. P., I: 121n. Harlow, George Henry, I: 475. Ill: 624, 626n. Harness, William, I: 323, 324n. Ill: 305, 349 Harrington, James, I: 384 Harrington, Sir John, IV: 168 Harrison, R. W., IV: 505n. Harrison, William, IV: 306, 307n. Hartcup, William, II: 545 Harvey, John, II: 478 Harvey, William, I: 159, 160n. Hassan al Sabbah (founder of the Assassins), II: 307n., 315 Hatherley, Lord, see William Page Wood Hatifi, II: 271, 275n„ 277, 318, 320n., 321, 322, 323n. Hawkins, F. W., Ill: 135, 136n. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, III: 349. IV: 120, 213, 214, 224, 226, 233, 234, 239, 241, 242, 248, 251, 293, 294n„ 316, 359 Hawthorne, Mrs. Nathaniel (Sophia Peabody), III: 350n., 385, 651 Haxey Hood, II: 443, 444n. Haydn, Franz Joseph, I: 317, 604. II: 98, 499, 502. Ill: 608-09. IV: 68 Haydon, B. R„ II: 452. Ill: 425, 426n., 680, 682n„ 698, 702. IV: 272, 354 Haydon, F. W., Ill: 680, 682n. Haynes, Robert, I: xxxiii Hayward, Abraham, III: 413, 498. IV: 18, 284, 285n. Hayward, Richard, II: 589. Ill: 214 Hayley, William, I: 337, 338n. Hazlitt, J. Carew, IV: 550, 551n.

Hazlitt, William, I: 117, 120n. Ill: 135, 533, 655, 657. IV: 217 Heath, Douglas, I: 86, 87n., 131, 146, 159, 249n., 268. Ill: 510 Heath, James, I: 373, 374n. Heber, Reginald, I: 79 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, IV: 32, 33 Heighway, O.W.T., II: 209n. Heine, Heinrich, III: 396, 690. IV: 31, 32n„ 34, 35 Heirs and Executors, III: letter to, 234 Helps, Sir Arthur, I: 321. Ill: 555, 556n., 575 Helvetius, Claude Arien, I: 105 Hemans, Felicia, I: 21. IV: 153 Henderson, Emily, III: 341n. Henderson, John, III: 568, 574n. Henniker-Major, John, III: 103 Heraclidae, I: 216, 217n. Heraud, John Abraham, I: 523, 524n. Herbert, George, I: 114, 115n., 134, 253 Herbert, Henry H. M. (Lord Carnarvon), IV: 162, 163n., 194, 207, 236 Herbert, Henry William, I: 399, 480, 482n. Herkomer, Hubert von, IV: 469 Herodotus, I: 253, 255, 256n., 611, 617. II: 597, 600, 605, 607, 608, 611 Heron Allen, Edward, II: 308n. Hervey, Frederick William, 5th Earl of Bristol, I: 611, 613n. II: 68 Hervey, John (Baron Hervey), III: 237 Hewlett, Henry G„ III: 456 Higginson, Thomas W., IV: 44n. Hiller, Ferdinand, III: 268, 269n. Hilton, George, letter to, IV: Appendix I, 603 Hinchliff, Thomas W„ III: 231n., 232n., 339, 340n., 580, 634n., 695; letter to, 580 Hindley, John H„ II: 169 Hir et Ranjhan (Legende du Penjab), II: 256 Hitch, William, I: 580, 581n. Hobbes, Thomas, I: 591, 592n. Hobhouse, Henry, IV: 520, 521n. Hockley, Mary, II: 107, 551

629

Index Hockley, Major Thomas Henry, I: 611, 636, 680. II: 26, 118, 120, 228, 301, 379 Hockley, W. B„ I: 326, 327n., 551, 552n. II: 37 Hogarth, William, I: 337, 338n. II: 353, 354n., 485. IV: 491, 605 Hogg, James, I: 12 Holbein, Hans, I: 299, 300n. Ill: 482 Holder, L. A., I: 546n. Holder, William, III: 460, 462, 463 Holinshed, Raphael, III: 710. IV: 307n. Holl, Francis, II: 512 Holland, Henry R. Fox, 3rd Baron, IV: 517n„ 526 Holland, Philemon, II: 356, 357n., 534, 536 Hollond, A. H., I: xxxi Holloway, John, IV: 271 Holman, Joseph, III: 578, 579n. Holmes, Edward, I: 511, 512n„ 514. II: 598 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, I: 57. Ill: 248n„ 500, 651 Homer, I: 236, 476, 566, 584, 610. II: 604. Ill: 238, 321. IV: 4, 145, 146n., 316 Hone, William, I: 98, 99n„ 100, 102; letter to, 100. Ill: 440n. IV: 608 Hood, Thomas, III: 564, 625, 642. IV: 18, 21, 609 Hook, Theodore, I: 424. Ill: 227, 228n. Hooker, Richard, I: 121, 124n. Hopkins, John, IV: 308, 309n. Hoppner, John, III: 461 Horace, I: 240, 241n., 332, 337, 338n„ 435n. II: 590, 593. Ill: 165, 192n., 335n., 342, 646 Horton, Priscilla, I: 220, 221n. Houghton, Lord, see Richard Monckton Milnes Howe, George, II: 581 Howe, Grace, III: 666 Howe, Jack, II: 364-67, 454, 591. Ill: 34, 49, 52, 58, 144, 255, 256n„ 262, 263, 276, 277, 281, 289, 299, 666 Howe, Mary and John, I: 415. II: 583. Ill: 205, 206n., 213, 546, 557, 734.

IV: 65, 194, 261, 310, 428, 466, 533, 534, 536, 537, 540, 547, 554, 577 Howe, M. A. de Wolfe, III: 248n. Howitt, William and Mary, I: 21 Hudson, Thomas, I: 277, 278n. Hughes, Thomas, I: HOn. II: 348 Hughes, Thomas W„ III: 322 Hugo, F. Victor, III: 696. IV: 75, 76 Hugo, Victor, III: 366, 385, 396, 618, 628. IV: 84, 117, 121, 394 Hullah, John Pyke, I: 631 Hume, David, I: 103, 104, 105, 108, 109n„ HOn. Hunt, Holman, II: 380, 381n., 382, 388, 432, 433n. Ill: 391, 458, 459n., 473, 474n., 479 Hunt, Joseph, IV: 217 Hunt, Leigh, I: 246, 463, 559. Ill: 145, 345n„ 448n. Hunt, William Henry, I: 173, 175n. Hurd, Richard, I: 212n. Ill: 64, 65n. IV: 281 Hurrell, Alfred, II: 396 Hurst-Bannister, M., I: 115n. Hussey, Frank, I: xxxii. II: 365-66. Ill: 194n. IV: 50n. Hutchison, Sidney C., I: 175n. Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, I: 248, 249n., 375, 377n. Hyde, Thomas, III: 70n. Ingelow, Jean, II: 492, 494n., 510. Ill: 66 Ingleby, Clement M., IV: 381, 382n. Inglis, H. D., IV: 246, 249 Irenaeus, Saint, I: 176, 178n. Irving, Edward, IV: 423 Irving, Henry, III: 377, 378n., 543n., 582, 583, 584, 624, 632, 633n., 660, 663, 679. IV: 18, 21, 190, 191, 197, 312, 471, 478, 481, 535, 562 Iskander, 160-63 Jackson, Fred H., I: xxxii Jackson, Stephen, I: 7. II: 4, 34, 62, 63 Jackson, Zachariah, III: 334, 335n. James, Henry, IV: 293, 294n. Jami [Abd-us-rahman], II: 125, 129, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137,139, 140,

630

Index 142, 143, 150, 152, 153, 154, 157, 158, 159, 160, 189, 192, 193, 194, 197n„ 199, 201, 202, 203, 206, 209, 211, 212, 216-20, 221, 222, 227, 228, 230, 246, 256, 260, 305, 322, 415. Ill: 14, 20, 50, 139, 143, 198, 199n„ 372, 576, 599, 601, 622, 283, 684, 689, 691n., 701, 723. IV: 67n., 68, 73, 74, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 170, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178n., 183, 184, 191, 192, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201n„ 204, 205, 206, 212, 216, 219, 220, 225, 238, 241, 242, 243, 244, 275, 351, 352n„ 480, 485, 487, 488, 489, 499n„ 549n. Jamieson, John, III: 389, 390 Japp, A. H. (pseud., H. A. Page), IV: 114 Jarvis, Charles, III: 275, 276n., 679, 696, 698, 707 Jean, Philip, III: 664 Jebb, Richard, IV: 343, 344, 350 Jefferson, Joe, III: 624 Jeffrey, Francis, III: 494, 495n. Jeffries, Alfred, II: 611 Jenkin, Fleeming, IV: lOOn. Jenny, Squire, I: xliv, 235, 237n., 293, 294, 555. II: 30, 62, 397. Ill: 331, 332n. Jephson, John M., II: 362 Jenny, Isaac, IV; 224n. Jerrold, Douglas, I: 466, 468n. II: 52, 150, 151n., 538 Jersey, Lady, see Fane, Sarah Sophia Jervis, Sir John, II: 95 Jesse, Emily, I: 304, 305n. Jewsbury, Maria Jane, I: 486, 487n. Jocelyn, IV: 344, 345, 350 Johnson, Catharine B., I: xxxii, xxxvi Johnson, Francis, II: 133, 261, 262n., 271, 288 Johnson, John, I: 36, 510 Johnson, Robert, III: 271, 272n. Johnson, Samuel, I: 337, 338n., 545. II: 389, 398, 513, 530, 593. Ill: 96, 536, 568. IV: 565 Jones, Henry Bence, II: 515 Jones, Inigo, I: 334n. Ill: 312

Jones, Richard, I: 294, 295n., 599, 659, 660n. II: 508, 539. IV: 194, 598 Jones, Sir William, I: xliv. II: 110, llln., 114, 115, 115n., 116, 118, 119, 131, 140, 208 Jonson, Benjamin, III: 364, 548, 549, 567, 696 Joubert, Joseph, II: 573 Jowett, Benjamin, III: 59, 67, 285, 309 Jullien, Louis, I: 511, 514, 658 Juvenal, I: 207, 208n„ 675. II: 463, 464, 529, 530, 532. Ill: 99 Kant, Immanuel, I: 158 Kauffmann, Angelica, III: 533, 534n., 538, 550 Kean, Charles, I: xliv. II: 73, 78, 80, 124. Ill: 135, 136n., 180, 185, 285, 515, 516. IV: 396 Kean, Edmund, IV: 47 Keats, John, I: 50, 612, 613n., 639n., 658. Ill: 221, 342, 344, 345n„ 481, 487, 488n„ 489, 595. IV: 96, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103, 104, 106, 110, llln., 112, 113, 118, 119, 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 200n„ 229, 251, 252n., 253, 272, 330 Keeley, Robert and Mary Ann, I: 376, 377n„ 651, 652n. Keene, Charles, I: liv, lvi, lvii, 8, 9, 12; biog. profile, 40-42. IV: 71, 75, 76, 134, 136, 140, 141, 290n., 295, 323n., 343n„ 356, 366n., 376, 433, 434, 435, 444, 449, 450, 451, 454, 485, 486, 495, 504, 506, 507, 508, 514, 515n„ 516, 523, 525, 530, 535, 546, 575, 579, 581, 582, 583, 585, 587, 588, 592, 597; letters to, 300, 306, 330, 336, 342 Keil, Juan Jorge, II: 64n„ 91. Ill: 269. IV: 249 Kelly, Sir Fitzroy, II: 150 Kelly, John, II: 330, 332 Kelly, Michael, IV: 203 Kemble, Charles, I: 42, 143n., 184, 185n., 187, 188n. Ill: 285, 351, 352n., 499, 526, 528. IV: 477 Kemble, Mrs. Charles, II: 461. Ill: 548, 625, 652, 658, 663. IV: 203 631

Index Kemble, Frances Ann ["Fanny," Mrs. Pierce Butler], I: xliv, 9, 38; biog. profile, 42-45; 108, Illn., 327, 328n. II: 67, 68n., 72, 149, 340, 405, 406n., 504, 525, 526n„ 559. Ill: 17, 19, 76, 115, 116, 175, 217, 243, 260, 360n., 390, 422, 442, 456, 499, 517, 525, 534, 551, 553, 555, 578, 579, 582, 583n„ 585, 620, 621, 630, 631, 641, 661, 663, 700; letters to, 295, 304, 306, 331, 349, 351, 367, 409, 412, 420, 421, 424, 441, 452, 455, 478, 490, 497, 503, 511, 515, 528, 547, 557, 559, 574, 577, 582, 589, 594, 607, 617, 624, 632, 640, 652, 658, 664, 670, 679, 690, 707, 714, 728. IV: 21, 34, 38, 47, 95, 98, 100, 105, 133, 145, 164, 240, 244, 263, 264, 287, 289, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 298, 301, 302, 313, 317, 328n., 365, 370, 372, 375, 376, 378, 402, 422, 436, 470, 476, 477, 479, 480, 482, 483, 485, 486, 492, 493, 494, 518, 575; letters to, 11, 18, 29, 41, 47, 99, 116,142, 195, 209, 216, 242, 255, 260, 262, 264, 269, 271, 273, 277, 283, 288, 291, 303, 305, 311, 315, 327, 339, 347, 354, 363, 368, 374, 377, 383, 387, 391, 394, 395, 400, 413, 423, 426, 427, 429, 432, 457, 464, 472, 477, 481, 489, 496, 500, 506, 512, 524, 529, 534, 541, 561, 573, 583, 584, 587; letter from, 475 Kemble, Henry, I: 45, 89n. Ill: 528, 529n., 652, 680η. IV: 433, 477, 483 Kemble, Henry Charles, IV: 483n. Kemble, John Charles, and Sarah [Mrs. Siddons], I: 42. Ill: 499n., 515, 516, 624, 626. IV: 305, 316, 363, 396, 426, 427, 429, 433n. Kemble, John Mitchell, I: xxx, lvi, 1, 18; biog. ρτοββ, 42-45; 88, 89n., 130, 131n., 140, 141n., 145, 146n„ 184, 195, 208, 210n., 454. II: 46, 47n., 211, 264, 265, 268n., 274, 511, 729. IV: IOln., 164, 242, 243n., 264, 447, 482 Kemble, Mrs. John, I: 195, 196n.

Kenealy, Edward Vaughan, III: 435, 436n., 470 Kennedy, Benjamin H., IV: 162, 163n. Kennedy, James Shaw, IV: 301, 302n. Kerney, Michael, III: 677, 686, 689 Kerrich, Annie, III: 265, 266n., 267, 273, 279, 287, 374, 477, 479, 480, 484, 485, 486, 488, 489, 491, 492, 734. IV: 4, 10, 16, 18, 26, 32, 58, 59, 348, 361, 401, 449, 572 Kerrich, Edmund, I: liv. II: 550, 572, 583n. Ill: 75, 88, 132, 247, 502, 543, 554, 556, 561, 562n„ 563, 588, 673, 676, 736. IV: 26, 30, 60, 65, 207, 237, 258, 287, 288, 310, 354, 398 Kerrich, Edmund FitzGerald, I: xxxi Kerrich, Elizabeth, III: 293, 297, 298, 363, 374, 420, 446, 477, 581, 673, 688, 694. IV: 58, 59, 331, 577 Kerrich, Emily, III: 374, 720 Kerrich, Frances, III: 293, 297, 298, 363, 374, 479, 485, 581, 673, 688, 694. IV: 58, 59, 331, 372, 481; letter to, 577 Kerrich, John, I: 17, 79n., 189, 240, 241n., 398n., 454, 478, 558, 572, 585, 636. II: 483, 495, 515. Ill: 180, 279, 637 Kerrich, Mrs. John (Eleanor FitzGerald), I: xxxvii, xlix, 2, 558, 572. II: 340, 388, 478, 480, 492, 557, 580, 594. Ill: 614. IV: 11, 261 Kerrich, John Dalzell, I: xxxi. IV: 451, 452, 453, 460 Kerrich, John Edward, I: xxxi. IV: 452n. Kerrich, Lusia, III: 102, 273, 275-76, 284, 294, 298, 374, 518, 537, 541, 545, 556, 593, 621, 633, 637, 646, 669, 689, 694, 720, 734. IV: 4, 10, 16, 25, 58, 59, 170, 449 Kerrich, Mary Eleanor FitzGerald, I: xxx, 79n., 477. IV: 337, 452n, Kerrich, Olivia, I: xxx Kerrich, Brigadier Walter, I: xxxi. Kerrich, Walter, II: 495, 603, 613. IV: 598 Kerslake, 132 Kett, Henry, I: 226, 228n.

Index Kettle, Mr., II: 507. Ill: 400 King, Charles W„ IV: 430, 432 King Edward VI Grammar School, I: xxxvii King, Thomas, II: 462 Kinglake, Alexander W., I: 480, 482n. Ill: 213. IV: 428 Kitchen, George, I: 686, 687. II: 168, 228 Kitchiner, William, III: 626, 627n. Kneller, Sir Godfrey, I: 317, 319n. Knight, Charles, II: 150, 151n. Ill: 426n. IV: 86, 87n. Knowles, James Sheridan, III: 252n., 360n. Knowles, Sir James Thomas, III: 254. IV: lOn. Knox, John, III: 501, 505, 520, 656. IV: 134, 137, 139 Kyd, Thomas, III: 549n. Kyrle, John Y„ I: 578 Lablache, Luigi, I: 494, 496n. La Fontaine, Jean de, III: 541, 549, 555, 559, 560, 579, 612 Lamb, Charles, I: Iiv, 5, 21, 102, 15758, 159, 395, 396n„ 612, 613n. Ill: 548, 549, 575, 615, 676, 679, 681, 683, 708. IV: 19, 20, 21, 24, 28, 37, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 120, 122, 136, 146, 181, 185, 346, 429, 449, 450, 451, 495, 496n., 550, 578 Lamb, Mary, IV: 550, 551n., 608, 609 Lambe, William, I: 144, 146n. Landor, Walter Savage, I: xlv, 552. II: 125, 126n„ 127, 224, 319, 320n. Ill: 173, 174n. Landseer, Sir Edwin, III: 29 Landseer, Thomas, III, 682n. Langles, Chardin's editor, II: 208 Lardner, Dionysius, I: 248, 249n. Larken, William P., II: 494, 495n. Latimer, Hugh, IV: 144, 145n„ 146, 147n. Laurence, Samuel, I: xxx, xxxvi, xl, 1, 8, 27; biog, profile, 45-48; 64, 218n„ 292, 296, 297n., 322, 323n., 339, 342, 412n., 507, 509, 568, 619, 627, 682; letters to, 217,261, 289, 325, 328, 334,

360, 390, 404, 411, 438, 445, 561, 570, 595, 630. II: 71, 126, 340, 351, 452, 453, 472, 478, 498, 504, 505n., 507, 508, 512, 513, 516, 523, 537, 608, 640, 641, 644; letters to, 504, 516, 518. Ill: 16, 17n„ 148, 206, 213, 218, 230, 233, 245n„ 290-91, 306n„ 353n„ 397, 446, 447, 460, 716; letters to, 184, 191, 204, 235, 482, 503, 642. IV: 3, 132, 133, 140, 216, 400, 402, 411, 415, 418, 422, 426n., 434, 439, 606; letters to, 3, 259, 402, 540, 593 Lawrence, John, I: 48, 562 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, I: 235, 475. Ill: 608. IV: 299, 304, 379, 396 Layard, A. H., I: 629, 630 Layard, George S., IV: 450n. Leathes, Hill M„ III: 156, 157, 299. IV: 53 Lee, Nathaniel, IV: 465 Leech, John, II: 485, 486n., 537, 538n. Leeke, William, IV: 317, 324, 336, 337 Lehmann, In a Persian Garden, I: 12 Leigh, James W„ III: 297n„ 423. IV: 391 Leigh, Mrs. James W. (Frances Butler), III: 296, 297n., 421n., 425. IV: 269, 283, 378, 394 Leigh, Pierce Butler, IV: 269, 270n. Leighton, Sir Frederick, IV: 326 Leland, C. G., Ill: 551n. IV: 252, 253n. Lely, Sir Peter, I: 337, 338n. II: 514 Lempriere, John, II: 463. Ill: 175 Le Sage, Alain Rene, III: 540, 546, 549, 555, 559, 560, 579 Leslie, John H., Ill: 650n. L'Estrange, A. G., Ill: 305 Lever, Charles, IV: 147, 148n. Lewes, Georg Henry, II: 92n., 114, 353, 354n„ 541, 542n. IV: 499 Lewin, William C. J., see William Terriss, pseud. Lewis, Cornewall, IV: 148 Lewis, George, III: 4 Lewis, John Henry, I: 173, 174n. Lewis, Leopold, III: 583n. Lewis, Lady Theresa, II: 509n. Leybourne, Charles, III: 62, 63n.

633

Index Lind, Jenny, I: 575, 576n„ 586, 605, 606. II: 124, 190, 191η. IV: 39n. Ling, Louisa [Stannard], II: 450-51; letter to, 450 Ling, William, I: xliv. II: 356, 450, 451; letter to, 451 Ling, Mrs. William (Anna Smith), I: xliv. II: 39, 40n„ 64, 72, 73n„ 88, 139, 371; letters to, 236, 241, 302, 303, 310, 312, 375 Linnell, John, I: 436 Liston, John, I: 184, 185n., 349, 350n. IV: 377 Littre, Maximilian Paul Emile, IV: 248 Livesey, Joseph, I: 426 Livy, Titus Livius, 1: 324. Ill: 96, 464 Lloyd, Charles, I: 632 Locke, John, I: 44, 540 Lockhart, John G., I: 21, 234, 350. Ill: 448n., 495, 501, 520, 656, 714, 715 Loder, John, Sr., I: liii, 7, 432, 517. II: 541 Loder, John, II: 350n., 581, 583; letter to, 349. Ill: 464, 472, 584, 611, 649, 674, 701. IV: 28, 64, 71,107, 108, 154, 310, 393, 398, 401, 418, 450, 523, 528, 580; letter to, 63 Loder, Violet, I: xxxii Longfellow, H. W., I: lv. Ill: 651, 719. IV: 89, 235, 49β, 510, 511n. Longus, I: 552n. Longworth, G. Α., I: 534, 535 Lonsdale, John, I: 19, 584, 585n. Lorrain, Claude, I: 639n. Louis Philippe, IV: 321 Love, I: 287, 355 Lover, Samuel, II: 500 Low, David, I: xxxii Lowell, James Russell, I: liv, 9; biog. profile, 46-47; 54. Ill: 389, 476, 651, 653, 655, 657n„ 680, 681, 702, 709, 710, 718, 720, 728, 729, 730. IV: 6, 7, 10, 12, 31, 32, 36, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 65, 69, 70, 77, 84, 85, 97, 99, 102, 112, 116, 118, 121n., 127, 138, 139, 148, 151, 153, 156, 184, 213, 225, 226n., 227, 228, 229,

234, 235, 237, 247, 251, 277, 287, 291, 293, 301, 302, 303, 313, 316, 343, 348, 349, 350, 361, 363n., 381, 443, 462, 474, 522, 547, 560, 570; letters to, 71, 79, 102, 119, 125, 152, 167, 213, 222, 226, 247, 358, 362, 412, 437; letter from, 62 Lucas, Ε. V., I: 102n„ 406η. IV: 609 Lucas, Frank Laurence, xxxi Lucretius, I: 600, 601, 607, 612, 695. II: 26, 529, 530, 539, 543, 587, 590, 609. Ill: 6, 8, 75, 292. IV: 48, 49, 52, 96, 102, 231 Lumsden, Mrs. Henry Thomas, I: 447 Lushington, Edmund Law, I: 155n., 456η., 474n. Ill: 389η. IV: 122, 123, 124, 125 Lushington, Franklin, I: 548. II: 129n., 136, 362. Ill: 388, 586, 587n. Lushington, Henry, I: 319, 320η. II: 129, 348 Lutf 'Ali beg Adhar (Atash Kadah), II: 306, 307. Ill: 70n. Luther, Martin, II: 40, 41n. Lyell, Sir Charles, I: 192, 193n., 435n. IV: 476 Lyly, John, I: 123, 125n. Lynn, Mary, II: 380, 381n. Ill: 118n. IV: 56, 331, 348, 446, 451, 538, 541, 572; letter to, 117 Lytton, Edward G.E.L., Baron Lytton, 358 Lytton, E. R. Bulwer Lytton (Owen Meredith, pseud.), Ill: 706, 723 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1st Baron, I: 248, 249η. II: 195. Ill: 7, 8n„ 222, 431, 514, 615, 616n„ 686, 687, 694, 695n., 698, 702. IV: 33, 243, 283, 420 MacCarthy, Denis Florence, II: 113, 114, 124, 153, 268n. Ill: 405, 406n„ 651 Macfarren, George, I: 481n. MacGahan, J. Α., Ill: 727n. Mackay, Charles, II: 58, 59n. Mackintosh, Sir James, III: 615, 616n., 698 Macklin, Charles, III: 589, 590n.

Index MacLaren, Charles, III: 494, 495n. Maclaren, Malcolm, I: xxxii Maclean, Mr. ["Gama"], II: 61, 72, 86, 87n. Maclise, Daniel, I: 322, 323n., 390. Ill: 614. IV: 334 MacNaghten, Sir William Hay, II: 214, 215n. Macnish, Robert, I: 236, 238n. MacOubrey, Henrietta Clarke, IV: 470, 486, 501n., 528; letter to, 469 Macpherson, Hugh, I: 453, 454n. Macpherson, James, I: 255, 256n. Macpherson, James, outlaw, I: 457, 458n. Macpherson, William, I: 131, 132n. Macquoid, K. S„ IV: 51, 52n„ 60 Macready, William, I: 56, 121n., 139, 141n., 145, 146n„ 182n., 184, 185n., 195, 196n„ 220, 22In., 303, 304, 305n., 652n. II: 95. Ill: 251, 252n., 386, 423, 424, 455, 491, 497, 512, 515, 516, 517, 525, 526, 528, 543, 549, 560, 561, 575, 577, 578, 579, 581, 583, 584, 616, 653, 661, 662, 663, 665, 694. IV: 76 Madden, James, II: 118, 119n., 256, 257n., 271 Maggs, Uriah, IV: 575 Magnus Harper, II: 428, 429n., 430 Magnusson, Erikr, III: 599, 601, 606, 607 Mahabarata, II: 84 Maida, III: 506 Mainwaring, John, I: 187, 188n., 251, 384 Malcolm, Sir John, II: 140, 141n„ 143, 144, 160n., 586 Malibran, Maria, IV: 88, 89n. Malkin, Arthur, I: 98n., 139, 141n., 145, 146n. Ill: 396, 443, 680. IV: 7n„ 101, 401 Malkin, Benjamin Heath, I: 36. Ill: 94, 133. IV: 401, 483 Malone, Edmund, II: 576. IV: 80, 8 In., 184, 185n. Manby, George, II: 437, 469, 470, 473, 475, 487, 489n., 503, 507, 509, 521,

561, 579, 581, 598, 600n., 613. Ill: 33, 37, 89, 588. IV: 156 Mandeville, Sir John, III: 565 Manning, Charles, IV: 26 Manning, Thomas, IV: 21, 24, 25n., 26, 37, 48, 65, 110 Manning, William, IV: 25n. Mansell, J.W.S., I: 372n. Manzoni, Alessandro, IV: 120, 12 In. Markham, Charles L., IV: 26n. Marlow, Christopher, III: 696 Marochetti, Carlo, II: 537-38 Marot, Clement, III: 411 Mars-Boutet, Anne, III: 396n. IV: 396 Marshall, James Garth, I: 577, 578n., 692n. Marshall, Mary Alice, II: 86, 87n. Martial, I: 566, 567n. IV: 461 Martin, Richard, I: 94 Martin, Theodore, 111:718, 719n. IV: 305n. Martin, William [Peter Parley], I: 7. II: 379, 381n„ 384, 410, 539 Martineau, Miss F. of Bracondale, II: 242 Martineau, Harriet, I: 463. IV: 33, 38, 44, 45n. Martinus Scriblerus, III: 568, 573n. Marvell, Andrew, III: 322, 323n. Mason, James, II: 422n. Mason, William, II: 508, 509n. Ill: 312n„ 467, 557. IV: 64, 272, 430, 432, 471, 514, 523, 525, 526, 527 Mason, Mrs. William, IV: 525, 526 Massillon, Jean Baptiste, I: 88, 89n. Masson, David, III: 623, 624, 625, 628, 636, 660 Mastin, John, I: 348n., 366, 370 Mathews, Charles James, I: 124, 125n. IV: 291, 292n, Mathews, Lucia Elizabeth (Madame Vestris), 251, 355 Matthews, Timothy R., I: 335, 336, 430n„ 432, 509 Maturin, Charles R., I: 480, 482n. IV: 499 Maul, S. W„ II: 287 Maupertuis, Pierre L. M. de, IV: 291

635

Index Maurice, F. D., I: 46, 383, 649, 671, 672n. Maynard, Guy, I: 29 Maynard, Walter, pseud., Thomas W. Beale, III: 609n. Mazzinghi, Thomas John, I: 112, 113, 117, 122, 130, 133, 135, 163 Mazzini, Giuseppe, I: 643, 644n. Meller, Thomas William, 1: 435, 525, 624, 625η. II: 383, 385n., 550. Ill: 32, 80, 274 Melville, Henry, III: 366, 367, 456, 458 Menage, Gilles, II: 362 Menander, I: 335 Mendelssohn, I: 456, 472n., 479, 481n., 494, 604. II: 513-14. Ill: 254. IV: 276 Meninsky, Franciscus, 240, 251 Meredith, George, II: 417 Merivale, Charles, I: xliii, 2; biog. pro­ file, 48-49; 60, 550, 551n., 677, 693, 694n„ 696. II: 4, 36, 510, 511n. Ill: 170, 207n., 302, 303η. IV: 17, 90, 92, 94, 99, 164, 167, 244, 245, 291, 363, 364, 365, 367, 379, 384, 394, 432, 437n., 455, 476, 482, 580; letter to, 163 Merivale, Mrs. Charles, IV: 393, 421, 424 Metastasio (Pietro Bonaventura Trapassi), IV: 68, 69, 82 Meyer, Agnes (Mrs. Eugene), I: xxxiii Meyerbeer, Giacomo, I: 298η. II: 56, 57n., 98 Michelangelo Buonarroti, 605 Mill, James, I: 44 Millais, Sir John Everett, III: 286, 361, 504, 506. IV: 35, 98, 106, 330 Millhouser, Milton, I: 470n. Mills, Thomas, I: 293, 294n., 446, 447n. Mills, Mrs. Thomas, I: 446 Milnes, Richard Monckton (Lord Houghton), I: biog. profile, 49-50; 238, 239n„ 273, 274n„ 312, 350, 480, 482n., 528, 637; letters to, 392, 637. II: 566n. Ill: 342, 343, 344n., 462, 481, 488n., 490, 525, 549, 550n„ 640n., 643; letters to, 344, 487. IV:

118n„ 119, 121n„ 123n., 124, 125, 126, 128, 272, 330, 347, 419, 490, 493, 497, 517, 546, 566, 568, 569, 573; letters to, 118, 122, 232, 236, 323 Milton, John, I: Illn., 124, 139, 163, 222, 224n„ 478n„ 569, 592, 628n. II: 222, 492. Ill: 106, 520, 573n., 624, 655, 719. IV: 90, 139, 231, 301, 304, 316, 494, 495n., 607 Milward, Richard, I: 532, 533n. Mirkhond, III: 69 Mitford, John, I: 21, 632. II: 293, 295n., 431, 492. IV: 523, 524n„ 537, 538 Mitford, Mary Russell, I: 232, 233n. Ill: 180, 18 In. Mole, Comte Louis, I: 224n. Moliere, III: 53, 395, 487, 528, 593, 612, 730. IV: 346 Molina, Tirso da, pseud., see Gabriel Tellez Monkhouse, John, II: 199, 228, 229n., 265 Monkhouse, William, II: 229, 327, 522; letter from, 327 Monmerque, L. J., Ill: 597n. Montagu, Basil, I: 163, 164n., 181, 182n., 188n., 423. IV: 424, 425n. Montagu, Edward, I: 422n. Montagu, George, 6th Duke of Man­ chester, I: 482, 485, 488 Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, II: 498, 499. Ill: 7, 9, 13, 15, 21, 48, 51, 111, 118, 121, 238, 377, 386, 395, 483, 541, 544, 551, 555, 573, 593, 638, 665, 666, 670, 671, 715. IV: 49, 50n., 104, 130, 131, 180, 221, 346, 413, 415 Monteagle, Lord (Thomas SpringRice), IV: 616 Monteith, Robert, 231, 232n. Montesquieu, Charles Louis de secondat de, IV: 58 Montgomery, James, I: 101, 467-68, 469η. II: 369η. IV: 609 Montgomery, Robert, I: 101, 430, 431n. IV: 609 Moon, Amy, III: 225

Index Moon, George Washington, II: 527, 528n. Moor, A. P., IV: letter to, 15 Moor, Major Edward, I: xlii; biog. pro­ file, 50-51; 284, 285, 395, 400, 435, 436, 437, 560, 596. II: 224, 385, 386, 397, 405, 588. Ill: 112, 113n„ 126, 129, 181, 182n., 436n., 489, 497. IV: 67n„ 324, 456 Moor, George P., II: 520n., 521, 529, 544, 591, 592, 593, 594, 599; letter to, 582. Ill: 12, 27, 70, 193, 320, 470. IV: 16n„ 78, 515n., 598 Moore, Edward, III: 579n. Moore, Morris, I: 388, 392, 409, 453, 465, 524, 546, 575, 576n., 579, 605, 606, 671. Ill: 264, 612, 613n. Moore, Thomas, I: 231, 233n., 464. II: 12, 58, 59n„ 117, 479, 480n„ 487, 489n. Ill: 326, 355. IV: 6, 7n„ 358, 517n„ 526 Morier, James, II: 398 Morison, I: 437 Morison, James, I: 117, 120n. Morland, George, I: 490, 491n., 492 Morley, John, IV: 499 Morris, William, II: 417. Ill: 139, 140n„ 219, 221, 223, 259, 261, 383, 724, 730. IV: 274, 275n. Morshead, Edmund, IV: 459, 460 Morton, Pierce, I: 52 Morton, Savile, I: xliv; biog. profile, 5153; 66, 222, 223n„ 250, 251, 281, 282n„ 408, 444, 447, 455, 465, 545, 535. II: 71, 72n„ 75, 578, 588, 607. Ill: 8, 15, 216, 218, 359, 360, 379, 392, 393, 448, 605, 619. IV: 35, 36n., 70, 98, 99n„ 150, 151, 432, 434, 436 Moscheles, Ignaz, I: 317, 319n. Mosheim, Johann Lorenz von, I: 176, 177n. Mossop, Henry, IV: 283 Moulton, Benjamin, II: 579, 580n. Moxon, Edward, I: xl, 102, 239, 240n., 27In., 312n„ 536, 537n., 543, 548. II: 190, 320, 32In. IV: 108, 608, 609 Mozart, Wolfgang, I: 222, 317, 494, 514. II: 56, 513. Ill: 249, 250, 268,

269n„ 402, 403, 595, 605, 609. IV: 68, 88, 153, 544, 568 Mozley, Thomas, IV: 538n., 563 Mrichchakati, or The Toy Cart, I: 626 Mudie, Charles Edward, II: 324, 325n. Ill: 324 Miiller, Friedrich Max, I: 672. II: 169, 222, 223, 224n., 225, 266, 311, 403, 537. Ill: 19, 28, 29, 31, 316, 429, 430 Munro, H.A.J., II: 543, 587, 590. IV: 48, 49, 52, 96,102, 106, 109, 118, 185, 231, 246, 254, 266, 285, 286, 301, 368, 398, 419, 422 Munro, Sir Thomas, IV: 240 Murillo, Bartolomeo Esteban, IV: 604 Murphy, Patrick, I: 222, 223n. Murray, John, I: 25. II: 559, 562. Ill: 495, 549. IV: 5, 6, 39, 157, 158n., 236, 251 Murton, R. J., I: 278n. Mushell, III: 299 Musset, Alfred de, IV: 112, 114, 117, 121 Musurus Pasha, IV: 490, 492n., 494, 498, 510 Nakhshabi, Muhammad Khudawant, II: 141n. Nail, John G., I: 51. II: 694n. Ill: 112, 113n., 160, 161n. Napier, Sir Charles, II: 301, 302n., 353, 355. Ill: 96, 465n., 683, 688. IV: 44 Napier, Sir William F. P., IV: 44 Napoleon, Louis, II: 76, 78n., 355, 359. Ill: 397, 398n. Naseby, I: xxix, 27-28, 339-49, 351, 352, 353, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401n„ 417, 418n., 449, 488, 489, 490n„ 517-19, 520-21, 529. II: 177-179, 183, 226, 227, 441. Ill: 313, 314n„ 315, 318, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 358, 365, 368, 373, 375, 417, 424, 428, 429, 431, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 444, 446, 474,

Index Naseby (cont.) 494, 500, 592, 598; letters to Naseby Trustees, 373, 375 Nasmyth, Alexander, III: 70, 71n. Neff, Emery, I: 240n. Nelson, John, III: 96 Nettleship, John T., Ill: 99. IV: 493n. Nevins, Richard, IV: lln. Newby, 166, 168, 169n., 174, 179, 265 Newman, Cardinal John Henry, I: 26, 255, 256n„ 276, 277n„ 500, 501n. II: 7, 527, 568. IV: 23, 538n., 560, 563, 570, 571, 572 Newson, Harry, III: 263, 277 Newson, Tom, II: 364-67, 557, 573, 581, 588, 598-99, 600n., 601, 603, 605. Ill: 12, 30, 32, 34, 39, 49, 52, 58, 73, 90, 95, 98, 140, 141, 142, 144, 150, 153, 154, 155, 157, 191, 201, 209, 226, 255, 276, 277, 281, 284, 288, 289, 300, 570, 640. IV: 52, 578 Newton, Sir Isaac, I: 250, 252n. Ill: 292. IV: 243, 244n., 420 Newton, John, I: 176, 177n. Newton, John Frank, I: 138, 144, 145, 146n. Newton, Napoleon, II: 246, 251, 256, 264, 271, 273 Nicholas I of Russia, I: 104, 109n., 266, 267n., 268 Nichols, John, I: 364, 366n., 378, 379 Nicholson, Brinsley, IV: 422 Nicholson, R. A., II: 255n. Nicolas, J. B., Ill: 50, 53, 55, 59, 60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 67, 69, 73, 336, 347, 632n. IV: 13 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, I: 240, 241n. II: 60. IV: 546 Niebuhr, Karsten, II: 466, 467n. Nilsson, Christine, III: 233, 234n. Nizam-al-Mulk, II: 307, 315 Nizami of Ganja, II: 163, 189, 190n., 222, 245, 246, 307 Noel, Baptist Wriothesley, I: 589 Nonnus, I: 552n. Northcote, James, I: 300, 302. Ill: 533 Norton, Caroline, I: 107, HOn. Norton, Charles Eliot, I: liv, Iv, 9, 47, 53-54. II: 336. Ill: 257, 414-15, 421, 638

423, 629, 630, 653, 660, 670, 704n., 728; letters to, 418, 631, 650, 654, 680, 702, 718, 730. IV: lln., 62, 99, 101, 103, 115, 119, 152, 167, 217, 226, 235, 247, 277, 302, 312n., 320, 350, 359, 366, 367, 386, 390, 391, 396, 410n, 413, 415n„ 443, 495n„ 524, 525, 529, 550, 557n., 566, 568, 569, 570, 571, 573; letters to, 5, 35, 69, 83, 96, 97, 102, 111, 116, 137, 150, 162, 211, 228, 229, 233, 250, 293, 297, 313, 318, 349, 370, 397, 403, 405, 431, 441, 461, 473, 479, 494, 509, 519, 522, 546, 562, 585 Notes and Queries, letters to, II: 367, 369, 370, 374, 378, 385, 389, 398, 401 Nottidge, John Thomas, I: 554, 629 Nunez, Hernan, III: 717, 718n. Nursey, Marietta (Mrs. Kettle), II: 244n„ 582, 615; letter to, 615. Ill: 70, 399, 404, 557n.; letter to, 70 Nursey family, IV: 64, 402, 514 Nursey, Perry, I: Ivi, hiog. profile, 5556; 213, 214n., 235, 237n., 255, 306, 307n„ 447. II: 615. Ill: 70, 71, 324, 332, 378, 408, 611 O'Connell, Daniel, I: 249n., 284, 393, 543 Odger, George, III: 306 Offenbach, Jacques, IV: 373 Okey, John, I: 373, 374n. Oliphant, Margaret, IV: 422, 423, 424, 427, 437n., 584, 586, 589 Ollendorf, H. G., II: 152 Omar Khayyam, II: 307, 315; Rubaiyat, EFG's studies and writings of, 222, 223n., 234, 235, 236n., 252, 257, 262, 267, 269, 271, 273, 275, 276n„ 278, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 293, 305, 306, 307, 318, 325, 330, 331, 332, 334, 336, 337, 416, 418, 419, 432, 433n. Ill: 20, 40, 50, 53, 54, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 67n, 69, 73, 75, 81, 82, 87, 198, 199n., 253, 335, 336, 337, 339, 342, 343, 345, 347, 356, 357n., 361, 363, 370, 371, 372, 377, 389, 390, 413, 414-19, 429,

Index 465n., 551, 576, 580, 597, 599, 601, 606, 620, 621, 622, 632n., 634, 63637, 648, 651, 652, 663, 664, 667, 675, 676n„ 683, 684, 691n., 692n„ 695, 704, 706, 723, 724 O'Neill, Eliza (Lady Becher), III: 578, 580n. Orger, Anne, I: 184, 185n. Origen, I: 176, 178n. Ormsby, John, II: 417 Orsini, Felice, II: 309n. Ill: 465n. Orton, Arthur, III: 295, 330, 474n. Osgood, James, I: Iiv. IV: 92, 93, 94, 165, 166 O'Shaughnessy, Arthur W., I l l : 321 Ostade, Adrian and Isaac van, III: 400 Otter, William, I: 19, 183, 185n„ 259, 260n. Otway, Thomas, IV: 272n. Oude MS, II: 305, 306n. Ouseley, Sir Gore, II: 139, 141n„ 143, 159, 192, 195 Ouseley, Sir William, II: 129, 130n„ 139-40, 141n„ 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 159, 234-36, 253, 254, 260 Ovid, III: 19, 565n. Owen, Robert, I: 117, 120n„ 144, 145n. Oxenford, John, IV: 256n. Paddon, Thomas, I: 184, 185n., 526, 527n. Page, H. A., pseud., Alexander Hay Japp, IV: 120 Paisiello, Giovanni, III: 260 Paley, Frederick A., II: 464. 468, 469n. Ill: 326, 327n. IV: 115, 130, 405 Paley, William, I: 44, 103, 109n., 653, 695 Palgrave, Francis Turner, II: 126, 413, 414n. Ill: 97n„ 396, 397n. Palmer, E. H„ III: 107, 108n., 241, 256, 257n., 261, 551n. Palmer, Roundell (Lord Selborne), IV: 459, 460 Palmer, William, IV: 230 Parke, James, Baron Wensleydale, II: 95 Parker, J. W., I: xlviii. II: 149, 156,

161, 203, 291, 292n„ 293-94. I l l : 95, 97n. Parne, Thomas, IV: 444, 445n. Parr, Samuel, III: 5, 6n., 7. IV: 281 Parsons, William, II: 462 Pascal, Blaise, IV: 379, 380 Pasifull, Ablett, III: 38, 58, 89, 90n., 149, 209, 280, 299; letters to, 140, 141, 255, 262, 276, 281, 288 Pasifull, Robert, III: 255, 282 Pasta, Judith, I: 494. Ill: 233, 355, 357, 358n. IV: 47, 311, 376, 377 Patmore, Coventry, III: 173. IV: 25n. Patmore, Peter G., I l l : 681, 682n. Patti, Adelina, IV: 38, 39n. Paul, C. K„ III: 682n. Paullus, Lucius Aemilius, I: 601-03 Payne, John, IV: 129 Payne, John Howard, III: 180, 181n., 185 Peacock, George, I: xl, 136. II: 348, 590 Peacock, Thomas Love, I: 45, 232, 233n., 318, 320n. I l l : 549, 550n., 560 Pearson, John, III: 347 Peel, Mrs. C. S., I: HOn. Peel, Sir Robert, I: 21, 394, 395n., 482n., 515, 526, 527n. Pepys, Lady Charlotte, II: 410 Pepys, Samuel, I: 485. II: 108. IV: 93, 95, 97, 115, 341 Percival, Ablett, see Pasifull, Ablett Percy, Thomas, I: 91, 92n. IV: 544n. Perowne, J.J.S., IV: 472n., 476n. Perry, Bliss, I: xxxiii Perry, Jane, I: 79, 81, 111, 546 Perry, T. S., I: liv. I l l : 618n., 629; letter to, 621. IV: 44n. Persian, first Persian script, II: 83 Peter Parley, see William Martin Petrarch, I: 664, 665, 670, 678 Petrus, II: 402 Pharamond, III: 321 Phelps, Robert, I: xliv. II: 86. III: 83, 88, 603. IV: 231n., 301, 446, 455 Philips, John, I: 677, 678n. Phillips, Elizabeth, III: 522. IV: 100

639

Index Phillips, Thomas, III: 460. IV: 39, 40, 216, 217, 251 Phillpotts, Henry, I: 471, 472n., 589, 659, 660n. Philoctetes, I: 617 Phipson, Richard, II: 592 Pickering, William, I: 531-33. II: 3, 81, 93, 121, 124. IV: 326 Pickersgill, Edward, IV: 331, 332 Pickersgill, Henry W„ II: 528, 529n. Ill: 460, 478. IV: 39, 40, 189, 216, 217, 235n. Pigott, Edward F. S., Ill: 512 Pindar, I: 266, 268, 269n. Piotrowski, Rufin, II: 481 Piozzi, Hester Lynch, I: 508, 509n. II: 576. Ill: 461, 498 Piron, II: 378, 379n. Pitt, George Dibden, I: 276 Pitt, William, II: 438. Ill: 265. IV: 516n., 526, 528 Pitt, William, the younger, III: 460n., 462n. Planch