[155] An old woman at Wherstead in whom FitzGerald took great interest. She died early in March 1844, at the age of 84.
[157] The Rector of Boulge.
[159] His parrot.
[161] W. Cookson, M.D, of Lincoln died 12 April 1844.
[166] Note by E. F. G.—Also, bottle-brown: in general all bottled things are not so fresh coloured as before they were put in. A gherkin loses considerably in freshness. The great triumph of a housekeeper is when her guests say, ‘Why, are these really bottled gooseberries! They look like fresh, etc.’
[174a] The MS. of this has been preserved.
[174b] To the Rev. Francis de Soyres.
[181] On the 26th of October, Carlyle wrote to FitzGerald:
‘One day we had Alfred Tennyson here; an unforgettable day. He staid with us till late; forgot his stick: we dismissed him with Macpherson’s Farewell. Macpherson (see Burns) was a Highland robber; he played that Tune, of his own composition, on his way to the gallows; asked, “If in all that crowd the Macpherson had any clansman?” holding up the fiddle that he might bequeath it to some one. “Any kinsman, any soul that wished him well?” Nothing answered, nothing durst answer. He crushed the fiddle under his foot, and sprang off. The Tune is rough as hemp, but strong as a lion. I never hear it without something of emotion,—poor Macpherson; tho’ the Artist hates to play it. Alfred’s dark face grew darker, and I saw his lip slightly quivering!’
[185] By James Montgomery: ‘Friends’ in his Miscellaneous Poems (Works, ii. 298, ed. 1836).
[189] Miss Cooke.
[190] Great aunt of W. B. Donne.
[196] At Keysoe Vicarage
[197] See letter to Allen, August 1842.
[198] At the Norwich Festival.
[201] James White, author of The Earl of Gowrie, etc.
[202] A Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo.
[203] See the Memoir of Bernard Barton by E. F. G. prefixed to the posthumous volume of selections from his Poems and Letters, p. xxvi.
[204a] Address to the members of the Norwich Athenæum, October 17th, 1845.
[204b] Now Professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge.
[205a] Professor Cowell explains to me that this refers to a passage of Ausonius in his poem on the Moselle. It occurs in the description of the bank scenery as reflected in the river (194, 5):
Tota natant crispis juga motibus et tremit absens
Pampinus, et vitreis vindemia turget in undis.
FitzGerald used to admire the break in the line after absens.
[205b] A reminiscence of Shelley’s Evening, as this was of a line in Wordsworth’s Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a picture of Peele Castle in a storm.
[205c] The short pasticcio of the battle referred to in the letter to Barton, 22 Sept. 1842.
[209] Trinity Church, Bedford.
[210a] On King’s Parade.
[210b] Mrs. Perry.
[211a] F. B. Edgeworth died 12th Oct. 1846.
[211b] Euphranor.
[213] The Rev. J. T. Nottidge of Ipswich died 21 Jan. 1847.
[220] [The last two words are crossed out.—W. A. W.]
[222] Francis Duncan, rector of West Chelborough.
[225] Morris Moore’s letters on the Abuses of the National Gallery were addressed to The Times at the end of 1846 and the beginning of 1847 with the signature ‘Verax.’ They were collected and published in a pamphlet by Pickering in 1847.
[227] See Carlyle’s Cromwell (ed. i), i. 193.
[230a] Pliny, Ep. iii. 21.
[230b] In a subsequent letter, written when this was supposed to be lost, he says, ‘I liked all your quotations, and wish to read Busbequius; whose name would become an owl.’
[231] Lord Hatherley.
[232] In the People’s Journal, ed. Saunders, iv. 355-358.
[233] iv. 104.
[235] 26 Feb. 1848.
[238] Dombey and Son.
[240] Hellenica, ii. i. 25.
[241] Evenings with a Reviewer.
[242] A lithograph of the portrait by Laurence.
[243] Bernard Barton died 19 Feb. 1849.
[247] Grandson of the poet, afterwards Rector of Merton, near Walton, Norfolk.
[251] No one but FitzGerald in humorous self-depreciation would apply such an epithet to this delightful piece of biography.
[252a] Selections from the Poems and Letters of Bernard Barton.
[252b] Of course this is not intended to be taken quite seriously. It is to be remembered that FitzGerald also said of them, ‘There are many verses whose melody will linger in the ear, and many images that will abide in the memory. Such surely are those of men’s hearts brightening up at Christmas “like a fire new-stirred”—of the stream that leaps along over the pebbles “like happy hearts by holiday made light”—of the solitary tomb showing from afar “like a lamb in the meadow,” etc.’
[254a] Diogenes and his Lantern.
[254b] Old Lady Lambert.
[261] E. B. Cowell.
[262a] The Rev. George Crabbe, son of the Poet, and Vicar of Bredfield.
[262b] Bramford, near Ipswich.
[265] Charles Childs.
[266] Containing an article by Spedding on Euphranor.
[267a] The Cowells had gone to live in Oxford.
[267b] Euphranor.
[268] Azaël the Prodigal, adapted from Scribe and Auber’s L’Enfant Prodigue.
[272] On the English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century
[273] To Polonius.
[274] To visit his friend John Allen.
[275] Esmond.
[282] Six Dramas from Calderon.
[283a] Chief Justice.
[283b] Baron Parke, afterwards Lord Wensleydale.
[284] This conjecture was correct. See p. 307.
[285a] The Gardener and the Nightingale in Sir W. Jones’s Persian Grammar.
[285b] Vicarage.
[287a] Farlingay Hall, sometimes called Farthing Cake Hall.
[287b] Mrs. De Soyres.
[291] Not Harry, but Franklin Lushington in Points of War.
[292a] It was in the autumn of 1791.
[292b] From Cowley’s translation of Anacreon.
[292c] P. 148.
[302a] This with a wider margin, or in some other way distinguishable from the rest of the inscription.
[302b] Some volumes of which C. had brought down to Suffolk, being then engaged with his Frederick II. MS. note by FitzGerald.
[304] Salámán and Absál.
[307] In another letter written about the same time he says, ‘The letter to Major Price at the beginning is worth any Money, and almost any Love!’ This dedication by Major Moor to his old comrade-in-arms FitzGerald would sometimes try to read aloud but would break down before he could finish it.
[308a] The Selection from his Letters, etc., published after his death, in which FitzGerald wrote a sketch of his life.
[308b] On Comparative Mythology, in the Oxford Essays for 1856.
[308c] Life’s a Dream: The Great Theatre of the World. From the Spanish of Calderon.
[309] In an article on Spanish Literature in the Westminster Review for April 1851, pp. 281-323.
[311] In his ‘Mémoire sur la poésie philosophique et religieuse chez les Persans.’ His edition of the text of Attár’s poem came out in 1857, but the French translation only in 1863.
[312] In his ‘Geschichte der schönen Redekünste Persiens.’
[313] Mrs. Cowell’s father and mother.
[316] This Apologue FitzGerald afterwards turned into verse; but it remained an unfinished fragment. Professor Cowell has kindly filled up the gaps which were left.
A Saint there was who three score Years and ten
In holy Meditation among Men
Had spent, but, wishing, ere he came to close
With God, to meet him in complete Repose,
Withdrew into the Wilderness, where he
Set up his Dwelling in an agèd Tree
Whose hollow Trunk his Winter Shelter made,
And whose green branching Arms his Summer Shade.
And like himself a Nightingale one Spring
Making her Nest above his Head would sing
So sweetly that her pleasant Music stole
Between the Saint and his severer Soul,
And made him sometimes [heedless of his] Vows
Listening his little Neighbour in the Boughs.
Until one Day a sterner Music woke
The sleeping Leaves, and through the Branches spoke—
‘What! is the Love between us two begun
And waxing till we Two were nearly One
For three score Years of Intercourse unstirr’d
Of Men, now shaken by a little Bird;
And such a precious Bargain, and so long
A making, [put in peril] for a Song?’
[317] George Borrow, Author of The Bible in Spain, etc.
[318] Evan Banks, by Miss Williams. See Allan Cunningham’s Songs of Scotland, iv. 59.
[319] Boswell’s Johnson, 11 April 1776.
[320] This struck E. F. G. so much that he introduced it into Omar Khayyám, stanza xxxiii. Professor Cowell writes, ‘I well remember shewing it to FitzGerald and reading it with him in his early Persian days at Oxford in 1855. I laughed at the quaintness; but the idea seized his imagination from the first, and, like Virgil with Ennius’ rough jewels, his genius detected gold where I had seen only tinsel. He has made two grand lines out of it.’
[322] A retired clergyman who lived at Bramford.
[323a] On Comparative Mythology. Oxford Essays, 1856.
[323b] Fraser’s Magazine for April 1857.
[328] M. Garcin de Tassy scrupulously observed this injunction in his Note sur les Rubâ’iyât de Omar Khaïyâm, which appeared in the journal Asiatique.
[337] See Letter to John Allen, 12 July 1840.
[344] Rather of the Orthodox reader by Omar himself.
[348] Hatifi’s Haft Paikar, a poem on the Seven Castles of Bahrám Gúr, as I learn from Professor Cowell, ‘each with its princess who lives in it, and tells Bahrám a story.’ He adds, ‘We always used the name with an understood playful reference to Corporal Trim’s unfinished story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles.’