LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD (continued 5)

When my Copy of Tennyson’s Lover’s Tale comes home I will send it to you. . . . As to Gray—Ah, to think of that little Elegy inscribed among the Stars, while ---, --- & Co., are blazing away with their Fireworks here below. I always think that there is more Genius in most of the three volume Novels than in Gray: but by the most exquisite Taste, and indefatigable lubrication, he made of his own few thoughts, and many of other men’s, a something which we all love to keep ever about us. [270] 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. . . .

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 elaborate 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 égal.’ 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 Norwich: then ‘Ten minutes’ Refreshment’; and then, Nicholas Nickleby! Then one Pipe: and then to Bed. Yours sincerely,

E. F. G.

This Letter shall sleep a night too before Travelling. Next Morning. Revenons à notre Crabbe. ‘Principles and Pew’ very bad. ‘The Flowers, 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,’ [271] 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 Poetaster 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 pass’d away—one Sigh! and let it pass. [272]

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 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 reminded me again of his wish for a Spanish Dictionary in the style of Littré’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’; [273] 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. Hawthorne (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 allá se ha de entender, respondió Sancho, con los que naciéron 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, [274] 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 Don Quixote, 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 dear Pundit at once. Ah! you would like to be with us, for the sake of him, rather than of yours sincerely E. F. G.

To C. E. Norton.

Lowestoft. Sept. 3/79.

My dear Norton,

I must write you a few lines, on my knee (not, on my knees, however), 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 meddling 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 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 returning to his Cambridge. If we read very continuously we should be almost 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 50; 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. . . .

Pray read in our Athenæum some letters of Severn’s 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 Athenæums somewhere in Madrid, I would send them to him, as I would also to you in a like predicament. . . .

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.

To S. Laurence.

11 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft. Septr. 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 October I shall be back at my old routine, stale enough. I think that, as a general rule, people should die at 70.

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. [277] . . .

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 Dæmonic Dickens: as pure an instance of Genius as ever lived; and, it seems to me, a Man I can love also.

Sentence from a Letter written to Prof. Norton Feb. 22/80.

‘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.’

To C. E. Norton.

Woodbridge. March 4, 1880.

My dear Norton,

Herewith you will receive, I suppose, Part I. of Œdipus, 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. 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 Adaptation, 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 Œdipus, 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 between Œdipus and Creon after Tiresias: and equally unreasonable. The Choruses which I believe are thought fine by Scholars, I have left to old Potter 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 Ætat. 71. If I live another year, and am still free from the ills incident to my Time, I will make an end of it, and of all my Doings in that way.

To Charles Keene. [280a]

Friday.

My dear Keene,

. . . Beckford’s Hunting 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 recommendation of a Stable-man, 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 4to 1781, with a Frontispiece by Cipriani! . . .

If you come down this Spring, but not before May, I will show you some of these things in a Book [280b] I have, which I might call ‘Half Hours with the Worst Authors,’ 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.

To C. E. Norton.

May 1, 1880.

My dear Norton,

I must thank you for the Crabbe Review [281] you sent me, 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. Leslie 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 Conversations), 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 Climacteric, removed from the gloom and sadness of his early associations, and looking to the Follies rather than to the Vices of Men, and treating them often in something of a Molière 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 look’d with many a sigh, On the red Light that fill’d 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, [282] and contrasts with those of other more imaginative Poets, would not a more imaginative 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—

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.’

οίη περ φυλλων yενεη—

This Dramatic Picture touches me more than Mr. Arnold.

One thing more I will say, that I do not know where old Wordsworth condemned Crabbe as un-poetical (except in the truly ‘priggish’ 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 editing 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 since, including Wordsworth’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. [283]

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 bestow’d On injured merit—

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.

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. 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 nothing, unless to find fault, with what is sent to one in this Book Line. And so to be done by.

To Lord Houghton. [285a]

Woodbridge. May 10th 1880. [285b]

Dear Lord Houghton,

I think I have sent you a yearly 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’ in you. Just a very few words will suffice, and I daresay 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 upon a military career in so far 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 Buonaparte, which was hung on a gibbet, and guns and pistols were discharged 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 Regiment deserved most credit for écraséing the Imperial Guard. [286] 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.

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, 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 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, assonant 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.’

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.

To Charles Keene.

Woodbridge. Sunday.

My dear Keene,

Your Letter reached me yesterday when I was just finishing my Sévigné; I mean, reading it over. I have plenty of Notes for an Introductory Argument and List of Dramatis Personæ, 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., if not revolted by the eternal, though quite sincere, fuss about her Daughter, which the Eye gradually learns to skim over, and get to the fun. I felt a pang when arriving at—

Ci git Marie de Rabutin-Chantal Marquise de Sévigné Décédée le 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.’ 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, [290] 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.

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 acknowledgement 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: 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. 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: 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. ‘Violà 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 melancholy 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 to-day 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.

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 Sévigné about from her Rue St. Catherine over the Seine to the Faubourg St. Germain 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. [293] My two Nieces are with me, so that I leave all the house to them, except my one Room downstairs, which serves for Parlour, Bedroom and all. 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 beginning of Lord Houghton’s Life.

Also, for any Painter you know of what they call the ‘Genre’ School:

Sévigné and the ‘de Villars’ looking through the keyhole at Mignard painting Madame de Fontevrauld (Rochechouart) while the Abbé Têtu 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.

To C. E. Norton.

Woodbridge. Nov. 3, 1880.

My dear Norton,

. . . With all your knowledge, and all the use you can make of it, I wonder 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 Œdipus, if I can prepare him for the Printer; a rather hard business to me now, when turned of seventy, and reminded 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.

. . . 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.

To Miss Anna Biddell.

Nov. 30, 1880.

One day I went into the Abbey at 3½ p.m. 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 everywhere 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: excellent instrumentation, but not one new or melodious idea through the whole.

To W. H. Thompson.

Littlegrange: Woodbridge. Decr. 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 Information in London that he is 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 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 know 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 Fred 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, 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: 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.

To C. E. Norton.

Woodbridge. February 20, 1881.

My dear Norton,

. . . 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.’

To Mrs. Kemble.

[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 that 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 porte 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 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 Post-card 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 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 these ‘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 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, ‘an excellent 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.

To C. E. Norton.

Woodbridge. March 13, [1881].

My dear Norton,

I send you along with this Letter Part II. of Œdipus, with some corrections or suggestions which I have been obliged to make in Pencil, 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 Representation, they could only look on me as a Blasphemer. . . .

It seems almost wrong or unreasonable of me to be talking thus of myself and my little Doings, when not only Carlyle has departed from us, but one, not so illustrious in Genius, but certainly not less wise, my dear old Friend of sixty years, James Spedding: [302] 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 Character which could not be cleared, did this Spedding sacrifice forty years which he might well have given to accomplish much greater 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; a 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. 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.

To S. Laurence.

March 13/81.

My dear Laurence,

It was very very good of you to think of writing to me at all on this occasion: [303] 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 Westminster 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 Paraffin 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.

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 Miss Anna Biddell.

March 1881.

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. . . .

I did not know that I should feel Spedding’s Loss as I do, after an interval of more than twenty years [since] 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, etc.’

To Mrs. Kemble.

[20 March, 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 so 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. ‘Voilà bien longtemps de ça!’ 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 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 Wordsworth 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 associate 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, Miss Bristowe, 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.

To W. F. Pollock.

[1881.]

My dear Pollock,

Thank you for your kind Letter; which I forwarded, with its enclosure, 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. 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 penitential glorification: what of others, just enough in general: but in neither case to be made public, and so immediately after his Decease. . . . 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. . . .

Dear old Jem! His Loss makes one’s Life more dreary, and ‘en revanche’ the end of it less regretful.

To Mrs. Alfred Tennyson. [308a]

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 wishful 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. [308b] 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 Reminiscences. 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 personality 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, and do all the World good. [309] . . .

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?

To Mrs. Kemble.

[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. Elsewhere 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 walk without any wrapper; and I dare to fancy we have turned the corner of Winter at last. People talk of changed Seasons: only yesterday I was reading in my dear old Sévigné, 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 shew 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 old 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 égaré 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: [311] better than has yet been written, or (I believe) is likely to be written by any one else. . . . 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 Humanité!’ 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 the Story that when Ducis was wretched his Mother would lay his head on her Bosom—‘Ah, mon homme! mon pauvre homme!’ . . .

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. May 8, [1881].

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) roaming through buttercup meadows all the way to Warwick; unless those meadows are all built over since I was there some forty years ago. . . .

I am got back to my Sévigné! who somehow returns to me in Spring; fresh as the Flowers. These latter have done but badly this Spring: cut off or withered by the Cold: and now parched up by this blazing Sun and dry Wind.

From another Letter in the same year.

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. [313] 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.

To Miss S. F. Spedding.

Little Grange, Woodbridge. 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.

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’Arthur’s, 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 Play when, as you tell me, you had so much other work on your hands. Any how, do not trouble yourself to write more. If you think my Version 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 Collegiate Honours whenever you care so to do.

Your account of your Harvard original in the Atlantic Monthly 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 ‘Neville’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, 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 Sea-coast. The inland Verdure suits my Eyes better than glowing 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. I think one can surely see there that Carlyle might become somewhat crazed, whether by intense meditation or Dyspepsy or both: especially as one sees that his dear good Mother was so afflicted. But how beautiful is the Story of that home, and the Company 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 [317] I once wrote on the matter, thirty years ago and more, which I really think of putting 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 overdone 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 Œdipus, 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.

Woodbridge. Jan. 18/82.

My dear Norton,

At last I took heart, and Eyes, to return to the Œdipus 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. . . .

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. . . .

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 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. . . .

To Mrs. Kemble.

[Jan. 1882.]

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 1806, extremely interesting to me, though I do not understand, and generally skip, the more purely Æsthetic Parts: 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 Fortunes 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 company 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.’ Nevertheless, the Boy took great Interest in the Play, and I like to encourage him in Shakespeare rather than in the Negro Melodists.

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 purpose of acknowledging the revised Œdipus 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, 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, coævally old, Friend, [322] who has been gradually declining in Body and Mind for the last three years.

Yours always sincerely Littlegrange.

To W. A. Wright.

Friday [24 February 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 Woodbridge Life. I have not lost my Cold—nor all its bronchial symptoms; but may do so—as I get a little older.

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 declined, 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 ‘Pompous.’ Charles’ ‘plump bass’ is good. [323]

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? I 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. himself not then so savage as after his Wife’s death. From Froude no mercy of reticence can be expected.

You left here Rabisha [324a] and Groome’s Book of Tracts [324b]: 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’?

To H. Schütz Wilson.

[1 March, 1882.]

My dear Sir,

I must thank you sincerely for your thoughts about Salámán, 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: Jámí tells of what everybody knows, under cover of a not very skilful Allegory. I have undoubtedly improved the whole by boiling it down to 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 reprinted. 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 have the old Sinner alone. Therefore it is that I write 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 with the Public whom you write for.

Thus ‘liberavi animam meam’ 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, Christian and Surname, by a man who left College just when I went there. [326] . . . 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.

To C. E. Norton.

March 7, [1882].

My 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. 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, δε, etc., particles. I think I shall send a Copy to Professor Goodwin. This is nearly all that I have to send across the Atlantic to-day, which reminds me that I have just been quoting (in a little thing [327] I may send you),

The fleecy Star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic Seas.

What a Line!

. . . 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 undergraduate: and he took a little fancy to me, I think.

To Hallam Tennyson. [328]

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 askt 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. 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. I 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 its 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 of that dear old Fellow, my old Friend.

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 voilà 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 Cherry-stone.’ Having which opinion myself, I more than ever deprecate any word of praise from any to whom I 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. . . .

And now here is enough written. And yet I will enclose some pretty Verses, [330a] some twenty years old, which I sent to ‘Temple Bar,’ which repaid me (as I deserved) with a dozen copies. And I am always truly yours

Littlegrange the Laird.

Longfellow and Emerson! [330b]

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 anticipated) 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 Episode, or separate Item, in your Book, though not for Froude’s; I should also think the Letters about that Squire business 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 controversy 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 despatches genuine, though (as Critics pointed out) partially misquoted by a scatter-brained fellow, ignorant of the subject, and of the Writer.

To Mrs. Kemble.

[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 ‘premiers 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. . . .

The Carlyle ‘Reminiscences’ had long indisposed me from taking up the Biography. But when I began, and as I went on with that, I 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 earnings 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 sufferings seems to me rather because of Blindness than Neglect; and I think his Biographer has been a little too hard upon him on the Score of selfish disregard of her.

Aldeburgh. 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 (Postmaster General, I am told) married a daughter of one Newson Garrett of this Place, who is also Father of your Doctor Anderson. Well, the Professor (who was utterly blinded by the Discharge of his Father’s Gun some twenty or five and twenty 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. . . . 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 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.’

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 Sévigné; for I never saw the glimmer of its waters myself. . . .

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 Marigold 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 Green-house; having been sent me when ‘haut comme ça,’ 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.

To W. F. Pollock.

Woodbridge. October 20/82.

My dear Pollock,

Pray let me hear how you and yours are after your Summer Holyday. I have been no further for mine than Aldeburgh, an hour’s Rail distance 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 reminder every now and then, and, I suppose, will come out of his Closet, or Chest, when Winter sets in. . . .

When I was at Aldeburgh, Professor Fawcett . . . 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 should never 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.