About the same time that FitzGerald went to Boulge, George Crabbe, the Poet’s eldest son and biographer, was appointed to the Vicarage of the adjoining parish of Bredfield, and a friendship sprang up between them which was only terminated by Mr. Crabbe’s death in 1857.

To John Allen.

I have just read Southey’s Life of Cowper; that is to say, the first Volume.  It is not a book to be read by every man at the fall of the leaf.  It is a fearful book.  Have you read it?  Southey hits hard at Newton in the dark; which will give offence to many people: but I perfectly agree with him.  At the same time, I think that Newton was a man of great power.  Did you ever read his life by himself?  Pray do, if you have not.  His journal to his wife, written at sea, contains some of the most beautiful things I ever read: fine feeling in very fine English. . . .

I have consulted my friend John Allen concerning your ancestor’s sermons: he says that the book is scarce. . . .  I think that you should be possessed of him by all means, considering that you are his descendant.  Allen read much of him at the Museum, and has always spoken very highly of him.  As to doctrine, I believe Jeremy Taylor has never been quite blameless; but then he wrote many folios instead of Donne’s one: and I cannot help agreeing with Bayle that one of the disadvantages of much writing is, that a man is likely to contradict himself.  If he does not positively do so, he may seem to do so, by using different expressions for the same thing, which expressions many readers may construe diversely: and this is especially likely to be the case with so copious and metaphorical a writer as Jeremy.

According to the principles contained in page 1 of this letter I will tell you that I thought the second volume of Southey [42] rather dull.  But then I have only read it once; and I think that one is naturally impatient of all matter that does not absolutely touch Cowper: I mean, at the first reading; when one wants to know all about him.  I dare say that afterwards I shall relish all the other relative matter, and contemporary history, which seems indeed well done.  I am glad that you are so content with the book.  We were all talking the other night of Basil Montagu’s new Life of Bacon—have you read it?  It is said to be very elaborate and tedious.  A good life of Bacon is much wanted.  But perhaps it is as difficult to find a proper historian for him as for anyone that ever lived.  But enough of grave matters.  I have been very little to the Play: Vandenhoff’s Iago I did not see: for indeed what I saw of him in other characters did not constrain me to the theatre to see his Iago. . .

Spedding is just now furnishing chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields: so that we may look on him as a fixture in London.  He and I went to dine with Tennant at Blackheath last Thursday: there we met Edgeworth, who has got a large house at Eltham, and is lying in wait for pupils: I am afraid he will not find many.  We passed a very delightful evening.  Tennant is making interest for a school at Cambridge: [43a] but I do not know if he is likely to succeed.  And now I have told all the news I know, except that I hear that Sterling [43b] is very ill with an attack on his chest, which keeps him from preaching: and that Trench has been in London.  Neither of these men do I know, but I hear of them.

To John Allen.

[Geldestone Hall],
January 1, 1837.

Dear Allen,

A merry new year to you and yours.  How have you been since I saw you? . . .

If you can find an old copy of Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying cheap and clean at the same time, pray buy it for me.  It is for my old friend Mrs. Schutz: and she would not allow me to give it her: so that I give you her directions. . . .

I am very deep in my Aristophanes, and find the Edition I bought quite sufficient for my wants.  One requires a translation of him less than of any of the Greeks I have read, because his construction is so clear and beautiful.  Only his long words, and local allusions, make him difficult, so far as I have seen.  He has made me laugh heartily, and wonder: but as to your calling him greater than Aeschylus or Sophocles, I do not agree with you.  I have read nothing else.  What a nice quiet speech Charles Kemble made on quitting the stage: almost the best I can remember on such an occasion.  Did Spedding hear him?  My dear Allen, I should often wish to see you and him of an evening as heretofore at this season in London: but I don’t see any likelihood of my coming till February at nearest.  We live here the usual quiet country life: and now that the snow is so deep we are rather at a loss for exercise.  It is very hard work toiling along the roads, and besides so blinding to the eyes.  I take a spade, and scuppet [44] away the snow from the footpaths. . . .

Write to me at Boulge Hall, Woodbridge; for I think that the snows will be passable, and my sisters arrived there, before you write.  There’s an insinuation for you.  Make my remembrances to Mrs. Allen: and believe me

Another letter in so short a time will surprise you.  My old Lady will be glad of a new edition of Jeremy Taylor, beside the old one.  I remember you once gave me a very nice large duodecimo one: are these to be had, and cheap?  It must have a good type, to suit old eyes.  When you are possessed of these and the other books I begged you to ask for (except the Bacon which is for myself) do me one favour more: which is to book them per Coach at the White Horse, Piccadilly, directed to Mrs. Schutz, Gillingham Hall, Beccles.  I should not have troubled you again, but that she, poor lady, is anxious to possess the books soon, as she never looks forward to living through a year: and she finds that Jeremy Taylor sounds a good note of preparation for that last hour which she looks upon as drawing nigh.  I myself think she will live much longer: as she is wonderfully healthy for her time of life—seventy-six. [45]  Sometimes I talk to her about you: and she loves you by report.  You never grudge any trouble for your friends: but as this is a little act of kindness for an old and noble lady, I shall apologize no more for it.  I will pay you all you disburse when I come to London.

Boulge Hall, Woodbridge.
[1837.]

I am reading Plutarch’s Lives, which is one of the most delightful books I ever read.  He must have been a Gentleman.  My Aristophanes is nearly drained: that is, for the present first reading: for he will never be dry, apply as often as I may.  My sisters are reading to me Lyell’s Geology of an Evening: there is an admirable chapter illustrative of human error and prejudice retarding the truth, which will apply to all sciences, I believe: and, if people would consider it, would be more valuable than the geological knowledge, though that is very valuable, I am sure.  You see my reading is so small that I can soon enumerate all my books: and here you have them. . . .

Have you done with my Doctor?  If you have, will you send him to me here: Boulge Hall, Woodbridge, per Shannon Coach?  You may book it at the Boar and Castle, Oxford Street, close by Hanway Passage.  This is not far out of your beat.  Perhaps I should not have sent for this book (it is Bernard Barton the Quaker who asks to read it) but that it gives me an excuse also to talk a little to you.  Ah! I wish you were here to walk with me now that the warm weather is come at last.  Things have been delayed but to be more welcome, and to burst forth twice as thick and beautiful.  This is boasting however, and counting of the chickens before they are hatched: the East winds may again plunge us back into winter: but the sunshine of this morning fills one’s pores with jollity, as if one had taken laughing gas.  Then my house is getting on: the books are up in the bookshelves and do my heart good: then Stothard’s Canterbury Pilgrims are over the fireplace: Shakespeare in a recess: how I wish you were here for a day or two!  My sister is very well and cheerful and we have kept house very pleasantly together.  My brother John’s wife is, I fear, declining very fast: it is very probable that I shall have to go and see her before long: though this is a visit I should gladly be spared.  They say that her mind is in a very beautiful state of peacefulness.  She may rally in the summer: but the odds are much against her.  We shall lose a perfect Lady, in the complete sense of the word, when she dies.

Mrs. Schutz is much delighted with the books you got for her: and still enquires if you hurt your health in searching.  This she does in all simplicity and kindness.  She has been very ill all the winter: but I see by a letter I have just had from her that her mind is still cheerful and the same.  The mens sana in corpore sano of old age is most to be wondered at.

To Bernard Barton. [50a]

London, April, 1838.

Dear Sir,

John, [50b] who is going down into Suffolk, will I hope take this letter and despatch it to you properly.  I write more on account of this opportunity than of anything I have to say: for I am very heavy indeed with a kind of Influenza, which has blocked up most of my senses, and put a wet blanket over my brains.  This state of head has not been improved by trying to get through a new book much in fashion—Carlyle’s French Revolution—written in a German style.  An Englishman writes of French Revolutions in a German style.  People say the book is very deep: but it appears to me that the meaning seems deep from lying under mystical language.  There is no repose, nor equable movement in it: all cut up into short sentences half reflective, half narrative; so that one labours through it as vessels do through what is called a short sea—small, contrary going waves caused by shallows, and straits, and meeting tides, etc.  I like to sail before the wind over the surface of an even-rolling eloquence, like that of Bacon or the Opium Eater.  There is also pleasant fresh water sailing with such writers as Addison; is there any pond-sailing in literature? that is, drowsy, slow, and of small compass?  Perhaps we may say, some Sermons.  But this is only conjecture.  Certainly Jeremy Taylor rolls along as majestically as any of them.  We have had Alfred Tennyson here; very droll, and very wayward: and much sitting up of nights till two and three in the morning with pipes in our mouths: at which good hour we would get Alfred to give us some of his magic music, which he does between growling and smoking; and so to bed.  All this has not cured my Influenza as you may imagine: but these hours shall be remembered long after the Influenza is forgotten.

Now I must finish my letter: and a very stupid one it is.  Here is a sentence of Warburton’s that, I think, is very wittily expressed: though why I put it in here is not very discoverable.  ‘The Church, like the Ark of Noah, is worth saving: not for the sake of the unclean beasts that almost filled it, and probably made most noise and clamour in it, but for the little corner of rationality, that was as much distressed by the stink within, as by the tempest without.’  Is it not good?  It is out of his letters: [52] and the best thing in them.  It is also the best thing in mine.

With kind remembrances to Miss Barton, believe me, Yours very affectionately

E. FitzGerald.

[London, 8 June, 1838.]

Dear Sir,

I have just come home after accompanying my Father and Lusia to their starting place in the City: they are off for Suffolk for some days.  I should have written to you by them: but I only just now found your letter on the mantelpiece: there it has lain some days during which I have been ruralising in Bedfordshire.  Delicious has it been there: such weather, such meadows, to enjoy: and the Ouse still wandering along at his ease through pretty villages and vales of his own beautifying.  I am much in love with Bedfordshire: it beats our part of the world: and I am sure you would like it.  But here I am come back to London for another three weeks I suppose. . . .

I should much like to see your Platonic Brother.  By your account he must have a very perfect mental organization: or, phrenologically speaking, he must be fully and equally furnished with the bumps of ideality and causality: which, as Bacon would say, are the two extreme poles on which the perfect ‘sound and roundabout’ intellect is balanced.  A great deficiency of the causality bump causes me to break short in a long discussion which I meant to have favoured you with on this subject.  I hope to meet your Brother one of these days: and to learn much from him.  ‘Guesses at Truth’ I know very well: the two Brothers are the Hares: one a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; the other Author of some Sermons which I think you had from me this winter.  ‘The Guesses’ are well worth reading; nay, buying: very ingenious, with a good deal of pedantry and onesidedness (do you know this German word?), which, I believe, chiefly comes from the Trinity Fellow, who was a great pedant.  I have just read Mrs. Austin’s Characteristics of Goethe: which I will bring for you when I come.  It is well worth knowing something of the mind of certainly a great man, and who has had more effect on his age than any one else.  There is something almost fearful in the energy of his intellect.  I wish indeed you were in London to see all these pictures: I am sure their greatness would not diminish your pleasure in your own small collection.  Why should it?  There is as genuine a feeling of Nature in one of Nursey’s sketches as in the Rubenses and Claudes here: and if that is evident, and serves to cherish and rekindle one’s own sympathy with the world about one, the great end is accomplished.  I do not know very much of Salvator: is he not rather a melodramatic painter?  No doubt, very fine in his way.  But Claude and the two Poussins are the great ideal painters of Landscape.  Nature looks more stedfast in them than in other painters: all is wrought up into a quietude and harmony that seem eternal.  This is also one of the mysterious charms in the Holy Families of Raffaelle and of the early painters before him: the faces of the Madonnas are beyond the discomposure of passion, and their very draperies betoken an Elysian atmosphere where wind never blew.  The best painter of the unideal Christ is, I think, Rembrandt: as one may see in his picture at the National Gallery, and that most wonderful one of our Saviour and the Disciples at Emmaus in the Louvre: there they sit at supper as they might have sat.  Rubens and the Venetian Painters did neither one thing nor the other: their Holy figures are neither ideal nor real: and it is incongruous to see one of Rubens’ brawny boors dressed up in the ideal red and blue drapery with which the early Italians clothed their figures of Christ.  But enough of all this.  I have seen Trench’s Sabbation, and like it much: how do you like those centuries of couplets, which are a German fashion?  They are very much in the style of Quarles’ Emblems, and other pithy epigrams of that time: only doubtless more artistically polished: perhaps profounder.  There were some of the same kind in Blackwood some months ago.  My paper is out: and I must again say Good Bye.

. . . When I left town I went into Bedfordshire and loitered about there and in Northamptonshire till ten days ago: when I came to join my sisters at this watering place on the Suffolk coast.  I have been spending a very pleasant time; but the worst of it is that the happier I am with Browne the sorrier I am to leave him.  To put off this most evil day I have brought him out of Bedfordshire here: and here we are together in a pleasant lodging looking out upon the sea, teaching a great black dog to fetch and carry, playing with our neighbour’s children, doing the first five propositions of Euclid (which I am teaching him!), shooting gulls on the shore, going out in boats, etc.  All this must have an end: and as usual my pleasure in his stay is proportionably darkened by the anticipation of his going, and go he must in a very few days.  Well, Carlyle told us that we are not to expect to be so happy.  I have thought once or twice how equally happy I was with you by the seaside at Tenby.  You and Browne (though in rather different ways) have certainly made me more happy than any men living.  Sometimes I behave very ill to him, and am much ashamed of myself: but enough of this.

. . . I am reading Pindar now and then: I don’t much care about him I must say: though I suppose he is the very best writer in the Poet Laureate style: that is, writing on occasion for so much money.  I see great merits doubtless—a concise and simple way of saying great things, etc., but the subjects are not interesting enough to me.  I suppose a good poet could have celebrated Dutch Sam [57] as having been descended from King William the Third just as well as Pindar glorifies his boxers with the mythical histories of the Æacidæ, Heraclidæ, etc. . . .

To Frederic Tennyson.

Geldestone Hall, Beccles,
[April 10, 1839.]

My dear Tennyson,

I see in the last Atlas a notice of the first Concert of the Società Armonica—there were you to be found of course seated in black velvet waistcoat (for I hope you remember these are dress concerts) on one of the benches, grumbling at most of the music.  You had a long symphony of Beethoven’s in B flat—I forget how it goes, but doubtless there was much good in it.  The overture to Egmont is also a fine thing.  The Atlas (which is the best weekly critic of Music and all other things that I know of) gives great κυδος to the Società Armonica: especially this season, as the Directors seem determined to replace Donizetti and Mercadante by Mozart and Rossini, in the vocal department.  A good change doubtless.  I hear no music now: except that for the last week I have been staying with Spring Rice’s mother in-law Mrs. Frere, [58] one of the finest judges of Music I know.  She was a very fine singer: but her voice fails now.  We used to look over the score of Don Giovanni together, and many a mystery and mastery of composition did she shew me in it.  Now then there is enough of Music.  I wish you would write me a letter, which you can do now and then if you will take it into your head, and let me know how you and my dear old Morton are, and whether you dine and smoke together as heretofore.  If you won’t write, tell him to do so: or make up a letter between you.  What new pictures are there to be seen?  Have you settled yet whether spirit can exist separately from matter?  Are you convinced of the truth of Murphy’s Almanac this year?  Have you learned any more Astronomy?  I live on in a very seedy way, reading occasionally in books which every one else has gone through at school: and what I do read is just in the same way as ladies work: to pass the time away.  For little remains in my head.  I dare say you think it very absurd that an idle man like me should poke about here in the country, when I might be in London seeing my friends: but such is the humour of the beast.  But it is not always to be the case: I shall see your good physiognomy one of these days, and smoke one of your cigars, and listen to Morton saying fine and wild things, ‘startling the dull ear of night’ with paradoxes that perhaps are truisms in the world where spirits exist independent of matter.  You two men have made great commotion in my mind, and left your marks upon it, I can tell you: more than most of the books I read.  What is Alfred about, and where is he?  Present my homage to him.  Don’t you rather rejoice in the pickle the King of the French finds himself in?  I don’t know why, but I have a sneaking dislike of the old knave.  How he must pine to summon up Talleyrand’s Ghost, and what a Ghost it must be, wherever it is!

Some one from this house is going to London: and I will try and write you some lines now in half an hour before dinner: I am going out for the evening to my old lady who teaches me the names of the stars, and other chaste information. [59]  You see, Master John Allen, that if I do not come to London (and I have no thought of going yet) and you will not write, there is likely to be an end of our communication: not by the way that I am never to go to London again: but not just yet.  Here I live with tolerable content: perhaps with as much as most people arrive at, and what if one were properly grateful one would perhaps call perfect happiness.  Here is a glorious sunshiny day: all the morning I read about Nero in Tacitus lying at full length on a bench in the garden: a nightingale singing, and some red anemones eyeing the sun manfully not far off.  A funny mixture all this: Nero, and the delicacy of Spring: all very human however.  Then at half past one lunch on Cambridge cream cheese: then a ride over hill and dale: then spudding up some weeds from the grass: and then coming in, I sit down to write to you, my sister winding red worsted from the back of a chair, and the most delightful little girl in the world chattering incessantly.  So runs the world away.  You think I live in Epicurean ease: but this happens to be a jolly day: one isn’t always well, or tolerably good, the weather is not always clear, nor nightingales singing, nor Tacitus full of pleasant atrocity.  But such as life is, I believe I have got hold of a good end of it. . . .  Give my love to Thackeray from your upper window across the street. [60a]  So he has lost a little child: and moreover has been sorry to do so.  Well, good-bye my dear John Allen: Auld Lang Syne.  My kind regards to your Lady.

Down to the vale this water steers,
   How merrily it goes:
’T will murmur on a thousand years,
   And flow as now it flows. [60b]

E. F. G.

Geldestone Hall, Beccles.

To Bernard Barton.

. . . I have brought down here with me Sydney Smith’s Works, now first collected: you will delight in them: I shall bring them to Suffolk when I come: and it will not be long, I dare say, before I come, as there is to be rather a large meeting of us at Boulge this August.  I have got the fidgets in my right arm and hand (how the inconvenience redoubles as one mentions it)—do you know what the fidgets are?—a true ailment, though perhaps not a dangerous one.  Here I am again in the land of old Bunyan—better still in the land of the more perennial Ouse, making many a fantastic winding and going much out of his direct way to fertilize and adorn.  Fuller supposes that he lingers thus in the pleasant fields of Bedfordshire, being in no hurry to enter the more barren fens of Lincolnshire.  So he says.  This house is just on the edge of the town: a garden on one side skirted by the public road which again is skirted by a row of such Poplars as only the Ouse knows how to rear—and pleasantly they rustle now—and the room in which I write is quite cool and opens into a greenhouse which opens into said garden: and it’s all deuced pleasant.  For in half an hour I shall seek my Piscator, [61a] and we shall go to a Village [61b] two miles off and fish, and have tea in a pot-house, and so walk home.  For all which idle ease I think I must be damned.  I begin to have dreadful suspicions that this fruitless way of life is not looked upon with satisfaction by the open eyes above.  One really ought to dip for a little misery: perhaps however all this ease is only intended to turn sour by and bye, and so to poison one by the very nature of self-indulgence.  Perhaps again as idleness is so very great a trial of virtue, the idle man who keeps himself tolerably chaste, etc., may deserve the highest reward; the more idle, the more deserving.  Really I don’t jest: but I don’t propound these things as certain.

Halverstown, [62] Sunday, Oct. 20, [1839].

My dear Sir,

I am very glad that you lifted yourself at last from your mahogany desk, and took such a trip as you describe in your last letter.  I don’t think you could have made a better in the same given space of time.  It is some years since I have seen the Castle at Windsor, except from Eton.  The view from the Terrace is the noblest I know of, taking it with all its associations together.  Gray’s Ode rises up into the mind as one looks around—does it not?—a sure proof that, however people may condemn certain conceits and expressions in the poem, the spirit of it is genuine.  ‘Ye distant spires, ye antique towers’—very large and noble, like the air that breathes upon one as one looks down along the view.  My brother John told me he thought the Waterloo gallery very fine: the portraits by Sir Thomas almost as fine as Vandyke.  You saw them, of course.  You say nothing of having seen the National Gallery in London: indeed I rather fear it is closed these two months.  This is a great loss to you: the Rubens landscape you would never have forgot.  Thank you for the picture of my dear old Bredfield which you have secured for me: it is most welcome.  Poor Nursey once made me a very pretty oil sketch of it: but I gave it to Mr. Jenney.  By all means have it engraved for the pocket book: it is well worthy.  Some of the tall ash trees about it used to be visible at sea: but I think their topmost branches are decayed now.  This circumstance I put in, because it will tell in your verse illustration of the view.  From the road before the lawn, people used plainly to see the topmasts of the men-of war lying in Hollesley bay during the war.  I like the idea of this: the old English house holding up its enquiring chimneys and weather cocks (there is great physiognomy in weathercocks) toward the far-off sea, and the ships upon it.  How well I remember when we used all to be in the Nursery, and from the window see the hounds come across the lawn, my Father and Mr. Jenney in their hunting caps, etc., with their long whips—all Daguerreotyped into the mind’s eye now—and that is all.  Perhaps you are not civilised enough to know what Daguerreotype is: no more do I well.  We were all going on here as merrily as possible till this day week, when my Piscator got an order from his Father to go home direct!)  So go he would the day after.  I wanted to go also: but they would have me stay here ten days more.  So I stay: I suppose I shall be in London toward the end of this week however: and then it will not be long before I pay you a visit. . . .

I have gone through Homer’s Iliad—sorry to have finished it.  The accounts of the Zoolu people, with Dingarn their king, etc., [64] give one a very good idea of the Homeric heroes, who were great brutes: but superior to the Gods who governed them: which also has been the case with most nations.  It is a lucky thing that God made Man, and that Man has not to make God: we should fare badly, judging by the specimens already produced—Frankenstein Monster Gods, formed out of the worst and rottenest scraps of humanity—gigantic—and to turn destructively upon their Creators—

‘But be ye of good cheer!  I have overcome the world—’

So speaks a gentle voice.

I found here a Number of Tait’s Magazine for August last, containing a paper on Southey, Wordsworth, etc., by De Quincey.  Incomplete and disproportioned like his other papers: but containing two noble passages: one, on certain years of his own Life when Opium shut him out from the world; the other, on Southey’s style: in which he tells a truth which is obvious, directly it is told.  Tait seems to be very well worth a shilling a month: that is the price of him, I see.  You have bought Carlyle’s Miscellanies, have you not?  I long to get them: but one must wait till they are out of print before the Dublin booksellers shall have heard of them.  Now here is really a very long letter, and what is more, written with a pen of my own mending—more consolatory to me than to you.  Mr. Macnish’s inscription [65] for Milton is—

His lofty spirit was the home
   Of inspirations high,
A mighty temple whose great dome
   Was hidden in the sky.

Who Mr. Macnish is, I don’t know.  Didn’t he write some Essays on Drunkenness once? or on Dreams?

Farewell for the present, my dear Sir.  We shall soon shake hands again.  Ever yours,

. . . The country is now showing symptoms of greenness and warmth.  Yesterday I walked (not a common thing for me) eleven miles; partly over a heath, covered with furze bushes just come out into bloom, whose odour the fresh wind blew into my face.  Such a day it was, only not so warm as when you and I used to sit on those rocks overlooking the sea at Tenby, just eight years ago.  I am afraid you are growing too good a Christian for me, Master Allen, if you know what I mean by that.  Don’t be alarmed however.  I have just read the first number of Dickens’ new work [66a]: it does not promise much, I think.

Love to all Coram Street. [66b]

To Frederic Tennyson.

The Corporate Town of Bedford,
June 7, 1840.

Dear Frederic,

Your letter dated from the Eternal City on the 15th of May reached me here two days ago.  Perhaps you have by this time left Naples to which you bid me direct: or will have left it by the time my letter gets there. . . .  Our letters are dated from two very different kinds of places: but perhaps equally well suited to the genius of the two men.  For I am becoming more hebete every hour: and have not even the ambition to go up to London all this spring to see the Exhibitions, etc.  I live in general quietly at my brother-in-law’s in Norfolk [67] and I look with tolerable composure on vegetating there for some time to come, and in due time handing out my eldest nieces to waltz, etc., at the County Balls.  People affect to talk of this kind of life as very beautiful and philosophical: but I don’t: men ought to have an ambition to stir, and travel, and fill their heads and senses: but so it is.  Enough of what is now generally called the subjective style of writing.  This word has made considerable progress in England during the year you have been away, so that people begin to fancy they understand what it means.  I have been striving at it, because it is a very sine qua non condition in a book which I have just been reading, Eastlake’s translation of Goethe’s Theory of Colours.  I recommend it to you, when you can get hold of it.  Come back to England quick and read my copy.  Goethe is all in opposition to Newton: and reduces the primitive colours to two.  Whewell, I believe, does not patronise it: but it is certainly very Baconically put together.  While you are wandering among ruins, waterfalls, and temples, and contemplating them as you sit in your lodgings, I poke about with a book and a colour-box by the side of the river Ouse—quiet scenery enough—and make horrible sketches.  The best thing to me in Italy would be that you are there.  But I hope you will soon come home and install yourself again in Mornington Crescent.  I have just come from Leamington: while there, I met Alfred by chance: we made two or three pleasant excursions together: to Stratford upon Avon and Kenilworth, etc.  Don’t these names sound very thin amid your warm southern nomenclature?  But I’ll be bound you would be pleased to exchange all your fine burnt up places for a look at a Warwickshire pasture every now and then during these hot days. . . .

The sun shines very bright, and there is a kind of bustle in these clean streets, because there is to be a grand True Blue dinner in the town Hall.  Not that I am going: in an hour or two I shall be out in the fields rambling alone.  I read Burnet’s History—ex pede Herculem.  Well, say as you will, there is not, and never was, such a country as Old England—never were there such a Gentry as the English.  They will be the distinguishing mark and glory of England in History, as the Arts were of Greece, and War of Rome.  I am sure no travel would carry me to any land so beautiful, as the good sense, justice, and liberality of my good countrymen make this.  And I cling the closer to it, because I feel that we are going down the hill, and shall perhaps live ourselves to talk of all this independence as a thing that has been.  To none of which you assent perhaps.  At all events, my paper is done, and it is time to have done with this solemn letter.  I can see you sitting at a window that looks out on the bay of Naples, and Vesuvius with a faint smoke in the distance: a half-naked man under you cutting up watermelons, etc.  Haven’t I seen it all in Annuals, and in the Ballet of Massaniello long ago?

I wrote a good bit of a letter to you three weeks ago: but, being non-plussed suddenly, tore it up.  Lusia says she has had a letter from Mrs. Allen, telling how you had a troublesome and even dangerous passage to Tenby: but that there you arrived at last.  And there I suppose you are.  The veteris vestigia flammæ, or old pleasant recollections of our being together at that place make me begin another sheet to you.  I am almost convicted in my own mind of ingratitude for not having travelled long ago to Pembrokeshire, to show my most kind friends of Freestone that I remember their kindness, and that they made my stay so pleasant as to make me wish to test their hospitality again.  Nothing but my besetting indolence (the strongest thing about me) could have prevented my doing this.  I should like much to see Mr. and Mrs. Allen again, and Carew Castle, and walk along the old road traversed by you and me several times between Freestone and Tenby.  Does old Penelly Top stand where it did, faintly discernible in these rainy skies?  Do you sit ever upon that rock that juts out by Tenby harbour, where you and I sat one day seven years ago, and quoted G. Herbert?  Lusia tells me also that nice Mary Allen is to be married to your brother—Charles, I think.  She is really one of the pleasantest remembrances of womanhood I have.  I suppose she sits still in an upper room, with an old turnip of a watch (tell her I remember this) on the table beside her as she reads wholesome books.  As I write, I remember different parts of the house and the garden, and the fields about.  Is it absolutely that Mary Allen that is to become Mrs. Charles Allen?  Pray write, and let me hear of this from yourself.  Another thing also: are you to become our Rector in Sussex?  This is another of Lusia’s scandals.  I rather hope it is true: but not quite.  Lusia is pretty well: better, I think, than when she first came down from London. . . .  She makes herself tolerably happy down here: and wishes to exert herself: which is the highest wish a FitzGerald can form.  I go on as usual, and in a way that needs no explanation to you: reading a little, drawing a little, playing a little, smoking a little, etc.  I have got hold of Herodotus now: the most interesting of all Historians.  But I find the disadvantage of being so ill-grounded and bad a scholar: I can get at the broad sense: but all the delicacies (in which so much of the beauty and character of an author lie) escape me sadly.  The more I read, the more I feel this.  But what does it all signify?  Time goes on, and we get older; and whether my idleness comprehends the distinctions of the 1st and 2nd Aorist will not be noted much in the Book of Life, either on this or the other side of the leaf.  Here is a letter written on this Sunday Night, July 12, 1840.  And it shall go to-morrow.  My kind remembrances to Mrs. Allen: and (I beg you to transmit them) to all my fore-known friends at Freestone.  And believe me yours now as I have been and hope to be ever affectionately,

Many thanks for your kind long letter.  It brought me back to the green before the house at Freestone, and the old schoolroom in it.  I have always felt within myself that if ever I did go again to Freestone, I should puzzle myself and every one else by bringing back old associations among existing things: I should have felt awkward.  The place remains quite whole in my mind: Anne Allen’s damask cheek forming part of the colouring therein.  I remember a little well somewhere in the woods about a mile from the house: and those faint reports of explosions from towards Milford, etc., which we used to hear when we all walked out together.  You are to thank Mary Allen for her kind wishes: and tell her she need not doubt that I wish her all good things.  I enclose you as you see a little drawing of a Suffolk farm house close here: copied from a sketch of poor Mr. Nursey.  If you think it worth giving to Mary Allen, do: it seems, and perhaps is, very namby-pamby to send this: but she and I used to talk of drawings together: and this will let her know that I go on just the same as I did eight years ago.  N.B.  It is not intended as a nuptial present.

Now, you need not answer this letter: as you have done remarkably well already.  I am living (did I tell you this before?) at a little cottage close by the lawn gates, where I have my books, a barrel of beer which I tap myself (can you tap a barrel of beer?), and an old woman to do for me.  I have also just concocted two gallons of Tar water under the directions of Bishop Berkeley: it is to be bottled off this very day after a careful skimming: and then drunk by those who can and will.  It is to be tried first on my old woman: if she survives, I am to begin: and it will then gradually spread into the Parish, through England, Europe, etc., ‘as the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake.’  Good people here are much scandalized at Thirlwall’s being made a Bishop: Isabella [73a] brought home a report from a clergyman that Thirlwall had so bad a character at Trinity that many would not associate with him.  I do not think however that I would have made him Bishop: I am all for good and not great Bishops.  Old Evans [73b] would have done better.  I am become an Oxford High Church Divine after Newman: whose sermons are the best that ever were written in my judgment.  Cecil I have read: and liked for his good sense.  Is the croft at Tenby still green: and does Mary Allen take a turn on it in a riding habit as of old?  And I remember a ravine on the horn of the bay opposite the town where the sea rushes up.  I mean as you go on past the croft.  I can walk there as in a dream.  I see Thackeray’s book [73c] announced as about to be published, and I hear Spedding has written a Review of Carlyle’s Revolution in the Edinburgh.  I don’t know a book more certain to evaporate away from posterity than that, except it be supported by his other works.  Parts may perhaps be found two hundred years hence and translated into Erse by some inverted Macpherson.  ‘These things seem strange,’ says Herodotus, [73d] yενοιτο δ' αν παν εν τω μακρω χρονω.  Herodotus makes few general assertions: so when he does make them, they tell.  I could talk more to you, but my paper is out.  John Allen, I rejoice in you.

I went a week ago to see Luton, Lord Bute’s place; filled with very fine pictures, of which I have dreamt since.  It is the gallery in England that I most wish to see again: but I by no means say it is the most valuable.  A great many pictures seemed to me misnamed—especially Correggio has to answer for some he never painted.

To Samuel Laurence. [75]

Boulge Hall, Woodbridge,
Nov. 9/40.

Dear Laurence,

. . . We have had much rain which has hindered the sporting part of our company: but has not made much difference to me.  One or two sunshiny days have made me say within myself, ‘how felicitously and at once would Laurence hit off an outline in this clear atmosphere.’  For this fresh sunlight is not a mere dead medium of light, but is so much vital champagne both to sitter and to artist.  London will become worse as it becomes bigger, which it does every hour.

I have just concluded, with all the throes of imprudent pleasure, the purchase of a large picture by Constable, of which, if I can continue in the mood, I will enclose you a sketch.  It is very good: but how you and Morton would abuse it!  Yet this, being a sketch, escapes some of Constable’s faults, and might escape some of your censures.  The trees are not splashed with that white sky-mud, which (according to Constable’s theory) the Earth scatters up with her wheels in travelling so briskly round the sun; and there is a dash and felicity in the execution that gives one a thrill of good digestion in one’s room, and the thought of which makes one inclined to jump over the children’s heads in the streets.  But if you could see my great enormous Venetian Picture you would be extonished.  Does the thought ever strike you, when looking at pictures in a house, that you are to run and jump at one, and go right through it into some behind-scene world on the other side, as Harlequins do?  A steady portrait especially invites one to do so: the quietude of it ironically tempts one to outrage it: one feels it would close again over the panel, like water, as if nothing had happened.  That portrait of Spedding, for instance, which Laurence has given me: not swords, nor cannon, nor all the Bulls of Bashan butting at it, could, I feel sure, discompose that venerable forehead.  No wonder that no hair can grow at such an altitude: no wonder his view of Bacon’s virtue is so rarefied that the common consciences of men cannot endure it.  Thackeray and I occasionally amuse ourselves with the idea of Spedding’s forehead: we find it somehow or other in all things, just peering out of all things: you see it in a milestone, Thackeray says.  He also draws the forehead rising with a sober light over Mont Blanc, and reflected in the lake of Geneva.  We have great laughing over this.  The forehead is at present in Pembrokeshire, I believe: or Glamorganshire: or Monmouthshire: it is hard to say which.  It has gone to spend its Christmas there.

To W. H. Thompson. [79a]

[18th Feb. 1841.]
* Boulge Hall, Woodbridge.

* Doesn’t this name express heavy clay? [79b]

My dear Thompson,

I wish you would write to me ten lines to say how you are.  You are, I suppose, at Cambridge: and I am buried (with all my fine parts, what a shame) here: so that I hear of nobody—except that Spedding and I abuse each other about Shakespeare occasionally: a subject on which you must know that he has lost his conscience, if ever he had any.  For what did Dr. Allen . . . say when he felt Spedding’s head?  Why, that all his bumps were so tempered that there was no merit in his sobriety—then what would have been the use of a Conscience to him?  q. e. d.

Since I saw you, I have entered into a decidedly agricultural course of conduct: read books about composts, etc.  I walk about in the fields also where the people are at work, and the more dirt accumulates on my shoes, the more I think I know.  Is not this all funny?  Gibbon might elegantly compare my retirement from the cares and splendours of the world to that of Diocletian.  Have you read Thackeray’s little book—the second Funeral of Napoleon?  If not, pray do; and buy it, and ask others to buy it: as each copy sold puts 7½d. in T.’s pocket: which is very empty just now, I take it.  I think this book is the best thing he has done.  What an account there is of the Emperor Nicholas in Kemble’s last Review, [80a] the last sentence of it (which can be by no other man in Europe but Jack himself) has been meat and drink to me for a fortnight.  The electric eel at the Adelaide Gallery is nothing to it.  Then Edgeworth fires away about the Odes of Pindar, [80b] and Donne is very æsthetic about Mr. Hallam’s Book. [80c]  What is the meaning of ‘exegetical’?  Till I know that, how can I understand the Review?

Pray remember me kindly to Blakesley, Heath, and such other potentates as I knew in the days before they ‘assumed the purple.’  I am reading Gibbon, and see nothing but this d---d colour before my eyes.  It changes occasionally to bright yellow, which is (is it?) the Imperial colour in China, and also the antithesis to purple (vide Coleridge and Eastlake’s Goethe)—even as the Eastern and Western Dynasties are antithetical, and yet, by the law of extremes, potentially the same (vide Coleridge, etc.)  Is this æsthetic? is this exegetical?  How glad I shall be if you can assure me that it is.  But, nonsense apart and begged-pardon-for, pray write me a line to say how you are, directing to this pretty place.  ‘The soil is in general a moist and retentive clay: with a subsoil or pan of an adhesive silicious brick formation: adapted to the growth of wheat, beans, and clover—requiring however a summer fallow (as is generally stipulated in the lease) every fourth year, etc.’  This is not an unpleasing style on Agricultural subjects—nor an uncommon one.

I was very glad indeed to get a letter from you this morning.  You here may judge, by the very nature of things, that I lose no time in answering it.  I did not receive your Sicilian letter: and have been for a year and half quite ignorant of what part of the world you were in.  I supposed you were alive: though I don’t quite know why.  De non existentibus et non apparentibus eadem est ratio.  I heard from Morton three months ago: he was then at Venice: very tired of it: but lying on such luxurious sofas that he could not make up his mind to move from them.  He wanted to meet you: or at all events to hear of you.  I wrote to him, but could tell him nothing.  I have also seen Alfred once or twice since you have gone: he is to be found in certain conjunctions of the stars at No. 8 Charlotte Street. . . .  All our other friends are in statu quo: Spedding residing calmly in Lincoln’s Inn Fields: at the Colonial all day: at the play and smoking at night: occasionally to be found in the Edinburgh Review.  Pollock and the Lawyer tribe travel to and fro between their chambers in the Temple and Westminster Hall: occasionally varying their travels, when the Chancellor chooses, to the Courts in Lincoln’s Inn.  As to me, I am fixed here where your letter found me: very rarely going to London: and staying there but a short time when I do go.  You, Morton, Spedding, Thackeray, and Alfred, were my chief solace there: and only Spedding is now to be found.  Thackeray lives in Paris.

From this you may judge that I have no such sights to tell of as you have.  Neither do mortaletti ever go off at Boulge: which is perhaps not to be regretted.  Day follows day with unvaried movement: there is the same level meadow with geese upon it always lying before my eyes: the same pollard oaks: with now and then the butcher or the washerwoman trundling by in their carts.  As you have lived in Lincolnshire I will not further describe Suffolk.  No new books (except a perfectly insane one of Carlyle, [82] who is becoming very obnoxious now that he is become popular), nor new pictures, no music.  A game at picquet of two hours duration closes each day.  But for that I might say with Titus—perdidi diem.  Oh Lord! all this is not told you that you may admire my philosophic quietude, etc.; pray don’t think that.  I should travel like you if I had the eyes to see that you have: but, as Goethe says, the eye can but see what it brings with it the power of seeing.  If anything I had seen in my short travels had given me any new ideas worth having I should travel more: as it is, I see your Italian lakes and cities in the Picturesque Annuals as well as I should in the reality.  You have a more energetic, stirring, acquisitive, and capacious soul.  I mean all this seriously, believe me: but I won’t say any more about it.  Morton also is a capital traveller: I wish he would keep notes of what he sees, and publish them one day.

I must however tell you that I am becoming a Farmer!  Can you believe in this?  I hope we shall both live to laugh over it together.  When do you mean to come back?  Pray do not let so long a time elapse again without writing to me: never mind a long letter: write something to say you are alive and where.  Rome certainly is nearer England than Naples: so perhaps you are coming back.  Bring Morton back with you.  I will then go to London and we will smoke together and be as merry as sandboys.  We will all sit under the calm shadow of Spedding’s forehead.  People talk of a war with America.  Poor dear old England! she makes a gallant shew in her old age.  If Englishmen are to travel, I am glad that such as you are abroad—good specimens of Englishmen: with the proper fierté about them.  The greater part are poor wretches that go to see oranges growing, and hear Bellini for eighteen-pence.  I hope the English are as proud and disagreeable as ever.  What an odd thing that the Italians like such martial demonstrations as you describe—not at all odd, probably—their spirit begins and goes off in noise and smoke.  It is like all other grand aspirations.  So ---’s Epics crepitate in Sonnets.  All I ask of you is to write no Sonnets on what you see or hear—no sonnets can sound well after Daddy Wordsworth, ---, etc., who have now succeeded in quite spoiling one’s pleasure in Milton’s—and they are heavy things.  The words ‘subjective and objective’ are getting into general use now, and Donne has begun with æsthetics and exegetical in Kemble’s review.  Kemble himself has written an article on the Emperor Nicholas which must crush him.  If you could read it, no salvos of mortalletti could ever startle you again.  And now my paper is almost covered: and I must say Good bye to you.  This is Sunday March 21—a fine sunny blowing day.  We shall dine at one o’clock—an hour hence—go to Church—then walk—have tea at six, and pass rather a dull evening, because of no picquet.  You will be sauntering in St. Peter’s perhaps, or standing on the Capitol while the sun sets.  I should like to see Rome after all.  Livy’s lies (as the æsthetics prove them to be) do at least animate one so far—how far?—so far as to wish, and not to do, having perfect power to do.

. . . I had a long letter from Morton the other day—he is still luxuriating at Venice.  Also a letter from Frederic Tennyson, who has been in Sicily, etc., and is much distracted between enjoyment of those climates and annoyance from Fleas.  These two men are to be at Rome together soon: so if any one wants to go to Rome, now is a good time.  I wish I was there.  F. Tennyson says that he and a party of Englishmen fought a cricket match with the crew of the Bellerophon on the Parthenopæan hills (query about the correctness of this—I quote from memory), and sacked the sailors by 90 runs.  Is not this pleasant?—the notion of good English blood striving in worn out Italy—I like that such men as Frederic should be abroad: so strong, haughty and passionate.  They keep up the English character abroad. . . .  Have you read poor Carlyle’s raving book about heroes?  Of course you have, or I would ask you to buy my copy.  I don’t like to live with it in the house.  It smoulders.  He ought to be laughed at a little.  But it is pleasant to retire to the Tale of a Tub, Tristram Shandy, and Horace Walpole, after being tossed on his canvas waves.  This is blasphemy.  Dibdin Pitt of the Coburg could enact one of his heroes. . . .