By the way, there is a new—and the best—edition [47b] of Him coming out: edited by two men (Fellows) of Cambridge.  Just the Text, with the various readings of Folio and Quartos: scarce any notes: but suggestions of Alteration from Pope, Theobald, Coleridge, etc., and—Spedding; who (as I told him twenty years ago) should have done the work these men are doing.  He also says they are well doing about half what is wanted to be done.  He should—for he could—have done all; and one Frontispiece Portrait would have served for Author and Editor.

Come—here is a long Letter—and (as I read it over) with more Go than usually attends my old Pen now.  Let it inspire you to answer: never mind the Birds:—which really suggests to me one of Dante’s beautiful lines which made me cry the other Day at Sea.

Mentre che gli occhi per la fronda verde
   Ficcava io così, come far suole
Chi dietro all’ uccellin la vita perde,
   Lo più che Padre mi dicea, etc. [48a]

To W. B. Donne.

Market hill, Woodbridge.
October 4/63.

My dear Donne,

Very rude of me not to have acknowledged your Tauchnitz [48b] before: but I have been almost living in my Ship ever since: and I supposed also that you were abroad in Norfolk.  I pitied you undergoing those dreadful Oratorios: I never heard one that was not tiresome, and in part ludicrous.  Such subjects are scarce fitted for Catgut.  Even Magnus Handel—even Messiah.  He (Handel) was a good old Pagan at heart, and (till he had to yield to the fashionable Piety of England) stuck to Opera, and Cantatas, such as Acis and Galatea, Milton’s Penseroso, Alexander’s Feast, etc., where he could revel and plunge and frolic without being tied down to Orthodoxy.  And these are (to my mind) his really great works: these, and his Coronation Anthems, where Human Pomp is to be accompanied and illustrated

Now for Tauchnitz; somehow, that which you sent me is not the thing: I don’t like it half so well as my little Tauchnitz stereotype Sophocles of 1827.  The Euripides you send bears date 1846: and is certainly not so clear to my eyes as 1827.  Never mind: don’t trouble yourself further: I shall light upon what I want one of these Days.  It is wonderful how The Sea brought up this Appetite for Greek: it likes to be called Θαλασσα and ποντος better than the wretched word ‘Sea,’ I am sure: and the Greeks (especially Æschylus—after Homer) are full of Seafaring Sounds and Allusions.  I think the Murmur of the Ægean (if that is their Sea) wrought itself into their Language.  How is it the Islandic (which I read is our Mother Tongue) was not more Poluphloisboi-ic?

Sophocles has almost shaken my Allegiance to Æschylus.  Oh, those two Œdipuses! but then that Agamemnon!  Well: one shall be the Handel and ’tother the Haydn; one the Michel Angelo, and ’tother the Raffaelle, of Tragedy.  As to the famous Prometheus, I think, as I always thought, it is somewhat over-rated for Sublimity; I can’t see much in the far famed Conception of the Hero’s Character: and I doubt (rest wanting).

To S. Laurence.

Market hill: Woodbridge.
Jan. 7/64.

Dear Laurence,

. . . I want to know about your two Portraits of Thackeray: the first one (which I think Smith and Elder have) I know by the Print: I want to know about one you last did (some two years ago?) whether you think it as good and characteristic: and also who has it.  Frederic Tennyson sent me a Photograph of W. M. T. old, white, massive, and melancholy, sitting in his Library.

I am surprized almost to find how much I am thinking of him: so little as I had seen him for the last ten years; not once for the last five.  I had been told—by you, for one—that he was spoiled.  I am glad therefore that I have scarce seen him since he was ‘old Thackeray.’  I keep reading his Newcomes of nights, and as it were hear him saying so much in it; and it seems to me as if he might be coming up my Stairs, and about to come (singing) into my Room, as in old Charlotte Street, etc., thirty years ago. [50]

To George Crabbe.

Market hill: Woodbridge.
Jan. 12/64.

My dear George,

. . . Have we exchanged a word about Thackeray since his Death?  I am quite surprised to see how I sit moping about him: to be sure, I keep reading his Books.  Oh, the Newcomes are fine!  And now I have got hold of Pendennis, and seem to like that much more than when I first read it.  I keep hearing him say so much of it; and really think I shall hear his Step up the Stairs to this Lodging as in old Charlotte Street thirty years ago.  Really, a great Figure has sunk under Earth.

To W. H. Thompson.

Market hill: Woodbridge.
Jan. 23/64.

My dear Thompson,

You see I return with your other troubles of Term time.  Only when you have ten spare minutes let me know how you are, etc. . . .  I have almost wondered at myself how much occupied I have been thinking of Thackeray; so little as I had seen of him for the last ten years, and my Interest in him a little gone from hearing he had become somewhat spoiled: which also some of his later writings hinted to me of themselves.  But his Letters, and former works, bring me back the old Thackeray. . . .  I had never read Pendennis and the Newcomes since their first appearance till this last month.  They are wonderful; Fielding’s seems to me coarse work in comparison.  I have indeed been thinking of little this last month but of these Books and their Author.  Of his Letters to me I have only kept some Dozen, just to mark the different Epochs of our Acquaintance.

To E. B. Cowell.

Market hill: Woodbridge.
Jan. 31/64.

My dear Cowell,

I have only Today got your Letter: have been walking out by myself in the Seckford Almshouse Garden till 9 p.m. in a sharp Frost—with Orion stalking over the South before me—(do you know him in India?  I forget) have come in—drunk a glass of Porter; and am minded to answer you before I get to Bed.  Perhaps the Porter will leave me stranded, however, before I get to the End of my Letter.

Before this reaches you—probably before I write it—you will have heard of Thackeray’s sudden Death.  It was told me as I was walking alone in those same Seckford Gardens on Christmas-day Night; by a Corn-merchant—one George Manby—(do you remember him?) who came on purpose to tell me—and to wish me in other respects a Happy Christmas.  I have thought little else than of W. M. T. ever since—what with reading over his Books, and the few Letters I had kept of his; and thinking over our five and thirty years’ Acquaintance as I sit alone by my Fire these long Nights.  I had seen very little of him for these last ten years; nothing for the last five; he did not care to write; and people told me he was become a little spoiled: by London praise, and some consequent Egotism.  But he was a very fine Fellow.  His Books are wonderful: Pendennis; Vanity Fair; and the Newcomes; to which compared Fielding’s seems to me coarse work.  I don’t know yet how his two daughters are left provided for; the Papers say well.  He had built and furnished a fine House at 7 or 8000 £ cost; which is as good a Property for them to let or sell as any other, I suppose; and the Copyright of his Books must also be a good Property: always supposing he had not encumbered all these by anticipation.

I was not at all well myself for three months; but either the Doctor’s Stuff, or the sharp clear weather, or both, have set me up pretty much as I was before.  I have nothing to tell, as usual, of People or Places; for I have scarce stirred from this Place since my little Ship was laid up in the middle of October.  Donne writes sometimes; I see an article of his about the Antonines advertised in the present Edinburgh; but that you know is out of my Line.  His second son, Mowbray, is lately married to a Daughter (I don’t know which) of Mrs. Salmon’s; widow of a former Rector here, whom your Elizabeth will remember all about, I dare say.

This time ten years I was lodging at Oxford, reading Persian with you.  I doubt I shall never do so again; I am too lazy to turn Dictionaries over now; and indeed had some while ceased to expect much to turn up from them.  You are quite right, as a Scholar, to work out the Mine; but you admit that nothing is likely to come out of such Value as from the Greek, Latin, and English, which we have ready to our hands.  Did I tell you how pleased I had been with Sophocles and Æschylus in my Boat this Summer?

I dare say you are quite right about my ‘Birds’: indeed I think I had always told you that my Version was of no public use; I only wanted a few Copies for private use; and I wanted you to add a short Account, and a few Notes; in which I am shy of trusting my own Irish Accuracy.  But you have plenty of better work, and this is quite as well left.

Miss Ingelow’s second volume isn’t half so good as her first, to my thinking; more ambitious, with a twang of Tennyson.  I can’t add to the List you have sent of Elizabeth’s Poems.

Maria C[harlesworth] was staying with my Brother at Boulge in the Autumn, and sent a very kind message to me; I now am sorry I did not see her; but I keep out of the way of the Company at Boulge, though I am glad to see my Brother here.  So I wish I had asked her to take the Trouble to come and see me in my Den.  Alas! if ever you do come back, you will have to come and see me; for I really go nowhere now.  Frederic Tennyson came to me for a few Days, and talked of you two: he was looking very well; and was grand and kind as before.  I hear little of Alfred.  Spedding’s Bacon seems to hang fire; they say he is disheartened at the little Interest, and less Conviction, that his two first volumes carried; Thompson told me they had only convinced him the other way; and that Ellis had long given up Bacon’s Defence before he died.

Now my sheet is filled on the strength of my own Glass of Porter—all at a heat.  So Good Bye: ever yours, E. F. G.

To S. Laurence.

Market hill: Woodbridge.
April 23/64.

Dear Laurence,

I only got home last Night, from Wiltshire, where I had been to see Miss Crabbe, daughter of the old Vicar whom you remember.  I found your two Letters: and then your Box.  When I had unscrewed the last Screw, it was as if a Coffin’s Lid were raised; there was the Dead Man. [55]  I took him up to my Bedroom; and when morning came, he was there—reading; alive, and yet dead.  I am perfectly satisfied with it on the whole; indeed, could only have suggested a very, very, slight alteration, if any. . .

As I passed through London, I saw that wonderful Collection of Rubbish, the late Bishop of Ely’s Pictures; but I fell desperately in Love with a Sir Joshua, a young Lady in white with a blue Sash, and a sweet blue Sky over her sweet, noble, Head; far above Gainsboro’ in its Air and Expression.  I see in the Papers that it went for £165; which, if I thought well to give so much for any Picture, I could almost have given, by some means, for such a delightful Work.

Market hill, Woodbridge.
April 27/64.

Dear Laurence,

. . . I will send back the Gainsboro’ copy [56a] at once; I think the Original must be one of the happiest of the Painter’s; while he had Vandyke in his Eye, with whom he was to go to Heaven. [56b]  I will not argue how far he was superior to Reynolds in Colour; but in the Air of Dignity and Gentility (in the better Sense) he was surely inferior; it must be so, from the Difference of Character in the two men.  Madame D’Arblay (Miss Burney) relates how one day when she was dining with Sir Joshua at Richmond, she chanced to see him looking at her in a peculiar way; she said to him, ‘I know what you are thinking about.’  ‘Ay,’ he said, ‘you may come and sit to me now whenever you please.’  They had often met; but he at last caught the phase of her which was best; but I don’t think it ever went to Canvas.  I don’t think Gainsboro’ could have painted the lovely portrait at the Bishop of Ely’s, slight as it was; Sir Joshua was by much the finer Gentleman; indeed Gainsboro’ was a Scamp.

* * * * *

In the summer of 1864 FitzGerald bought a small farmhouse in the outskirts of Woodbridge, which he afterwards converted into Little Grange.

To George Crabbe.

Woodbridge: July 31/64.

My dear George,

I returned yesterday from a Ten Days’ Cruise to the Sussex Coast: which was pleasant enough.  To-morrow I talk of Lowestoft and Yarmouth.

. . . Read Newman’s Apologia pro Vitâ Suâ, something of a very different order [from the ‘Dean’s English’], deeply interesting; pathetic, eloquent, and, I think, sincere: sincere, in not being conscious of all the steps he took in reaching his present Place.

To E. B. Cowell.

Market hill: Woodbridge.
Aug. 31, [1864].

My dear Cowell,

. . . I hope you don’t think I have forgotten you.  Your visit gave me a sad sort of Pleasure, dashed with the Memory of other Days; I now see so few People, and those all of the common sort, with whom I never talk of our old Subjects; so I get in some measure unfitted for such converse, and am almost saddened with the remembrance of an old contrast when it comes.  And there is something besides; a Shadow of Death: but I won’t talk of such things: only believe I don’t forget you, nor wish to be forgotten by you.  Indeed, your kindness touched me.

I have been reading Juvenal with Translation, etc., in my Boat.  Nearly the best things seem to me what one may call Epistles, rather than Satires: viii.  To Ponticus: xi.  To Persicus: and xii. xiii. and xiv to several others: and, in these, leaving out the directly satirical Parts.  Satires iii and x, like Horace’s Poems, are prostituted by Parliamentary and vulgar use, and should lie by for a while.  One sees Lucretius, I think, in many parts; but Juvenal can’t rise to Lucretius, who is, after all, the true sublime Satirist of poor Man, and of something deeper than his Corruptions and Vices: and he looks on all, too, with ‘a Countenance more in Sorrow than in Anger.’  By the way, I want you to tell me the name and Title of that Essay on Lucretius [58] which you said was enlarged and reprinted by the Author from the original Cambridge and Oxford Essays.  I want much to get it.

There is a fine Passage in Juvenal’s 6th Satire on Women: beginning line 634, ‘Fingimus hæc, etc.’ to 650: but (as I think) leaving out lines 639, 640; because one can understand without them, and they jingle sadly with their one vowel ending.  I mention this because it occurs in a Satire which, from its Subject, you may perhaps have little cared for.

Another Book I have had is Wesley’s Journal, which I used to read, but gave away my Copy—to you? or Robert Groome [59a] was it?  If you don’t know it, do know it; it is curious to think of this Diary of his running almost coevally with Walpole’s Letter-Diary; the two men born and dying too within a few years of one another, and with such different Lives to record.  And it is remarkable to read pure, unaffected, and undying, English, while Addison and Johnson are tainted with a Style, which all the world imitated!  Remember me to all.  Ever yours E. F. G.

‘Sed genus humanum damnat caligo Futuri’—a Lucretian line from Juvenal. [59b]

Market hill: Woodbridge.
Nov. 11/64.

My dear Cowell,

Let me hear of you whenever you have something to tell of yourself: or indeed whenever you have a few spare minutes, and happen, to think—of me.  I don’t forget you: and ‘out of sight’ is not ‘out of mind’ with you, and three or four more in the World.  I hope you see Donne at times: and you must look out for old Spedding, that melancholy Ruin of the 19th Century, with his half-white-washed Bacon.  Perhaps you will see another Ruin—the Author of Enoch Arden.  Compare that with the Spontaneous Go of Palace of Art, Mort d’Arthur, Gardener’s Daughter, Locksley Hall, Will Waterproof, Sleeping Palace, Talking Oak, and indeed, one may say, all the two volumes of 1842.  As to Maud, I think it the best Poem, as a whole, after 1842.

To come down to very little, from once great, Things—I don’t know if it’s your coming home, or my being better this Winter, or what: but I have caught up a long ago begun Version of my dear old Mágico, and have so recast it that scarce a Plank remains of the original!  Pretty impudence: and yet all done to conciliate English, or modern, Sympathy.  This I sha’n’t publish: so say (pray!) nothing of it at all—remember—only I shall print some Copies for you and one or two more: and you and Elizabeth will like it a great deal too much.  There is really very great Skill in the Adaptation, and Remodelling of it.  By the bye, would you translate Demonio, Lucifer, or Satan?  One of the two I take.  I cut out all the precioso very ingeniously: and give all the Mountain-moving, etc., in the second Act without Stage direction, so as it may seem to pass only in the dazzled Eyes, or Fantasy, of Cyprian.  All this is really a very difficult Job to me; not worth the Candle, I dare say: only that you two will be pleased.  I also increase the religious Element in the Drama; and make Cyprian outwit the Devil more cleverly than he now does; for the Devil was certainly too clever to be caught in his own Art.  That was very good Fun for an Autodafé Audience, however.

But please say nothing of this to any one.  I should like to take up the Vida es Sueño too in the same manner; but these plays are more difficult than all the others put together: and I have no spur now.

How would you translate Pliny’s ‘Quisquis est Deus, et quacumque in parte, totus est Sensûs, totus Visûs, totus Auditûs, totus Animæ, totus Animi, totus Sui?’ [61]

This Passage is alluded to by Calderon; but, in the manner of our old Playwrights, I quote it in the Latin and translate.  I want to know by you if I have done it sufficiently; and I don’t send you mine, in order that you may send me your Version freely.

Now, Good Bye: I suppose it’s this rainy Day that draws out this, with several other Letters, that had waited some while to be written.

Yours ever E. F. G.

To R. C. Trench.

Market hill: Woodbridge.
February 25/65.

My dear Lord,

Edward Cowell’s return to England [62a] set him and me talking of old Studies together, left off since he went to India.  And I took up three sketched out Dramas, two of Calderon, [62b] and have licked the two Calderons into some sort of shape of my own, without referring to the Original.  One of them goes by this Post to your Grace; and when I tell you the other is no other than your own ‘Life’s a Dream,’ you won’t wonder at my sending the present one on Trial, both done as they are in the same lawless, perhaps impudent, way.  I know you would not care who did these things, so long as they were well done; but one doesn’t wish to meddle, and in so free-and-easy a way, with a Great Man’s Masterpieces, and utterly fail: especially when two much better men have been before one.  One excuse is, that Shelley and Dr. Trench only took parts of these plays, not caring surely—who can?—for the underplot and buffoonery which stands most in the way of the tragic Dramas.  Yet I think it is as a whole, that is, the whole main Story, that these Plays are capital; and therefore I have tried to present that whole, leaving out the rest, or nearly so; and altogether the Thing has become so altered one way or another that I am afraid of it now it’s done, and only send you one Play (the other indeed is not done printing: neither to be published), which will be enough if it is an absurd Attempt.  For the Vida is not so good even, I doubt: dealing more in the Heroics, etc.

I tell Donne he is too partial a Friend; so is Cowell: Spedding, I think, wouldn’t care.  So, as you were very kind about the other Plays, and love Calderon (which I doubt argues against me), I send you my Magician.

You will not mind if I blunder in addressing you; in which I steered a middle course between the modes Donne told me; and so, probably, come to the Ground!

To John Allen.

Market hill: Ipswich. [63]
April 10/65.

My dear Allen,

I was much obliged to you for your former Letters; and now send you the second Play.  This I don’t suppose you’ll like as well as the first: perhaps not at all; it is rather ‘Ercles vein’ I doubt.  I wish to know however from you what you do think of it; because if it seem to you at all preposterous, I shall not send it to some others: but leave them with the first, which really does please those I wished it to please, with its fine Story and Moral.  If you like what I now send, I will send you a Copy of Both stitched together, and another copy to your Cousin: and indeed to any one else you think might be pleased with it.

I am indulging in the expensive amusement of Building, though not on a very large scale.  It is very pleasant, certainly, to see one’s little Gables and Chimnies mount into Air and occupy a Place in the Landscape.

There is a duller Memoir than the ‘Lady of Quality,’ Miss Lucy Aitken’s Letters, etc.  You will find the Private Life of an Eastern Queen a good little Book.  I have now got Carlyle’s two last volumes of Frederick: of which I have only read the latter Part; I don’t know whether I can read through the Wars and Battles, which are said to be very fine.

The piece of Literature I really could benefit Posterity with, I do believe, is an edition of that wonderful and aggravating Clarissa Harlowe; and this I would effect with a pair of Scissors only.  It would not be a bit too long as it is, if it were all equally good; but pedantry comes in, and might, I think, be cleared away, leaving the remainder one of the great, original, Works of the World! in this Line.  Lovelace is the wonderful character, for Wit: and there is some grand Tragedy too.  And nobody reads it!  Ever yours,

E. F. G.

To Mrs. Cowell.

[1865].

My dear Lady,

I answer you thus directly because I would stick in a Bit of a Letter from Thompson of Cambridge: which relates to a question I asked him weeks ago, as I told E. B. C. I would.

You must not think I was in a hurry to have my Play praised: I was really fearful of its being bombastic.  You are so enthusiastic in your old and kind Regards and Memories that I can scarce rely on you for a cool Judgment in the matter.  But I gather from E. B. C. that he was not struck with what I doubted: and I am very glad, at any rate, that you are very well pleased, both of you.

E. B. C. is quite right about obscurity of Phrase: which is inexcusable unless where the Passion of the Speakers makes such utterance natural.  This is very often not the case in the Plays, I know: and the Language, as he says, becomes obscure from elaborate Brevity.

What you tell of the Music in the Air at your Father’s Death—Oh, how Frederic Tennyson would open all his Eyes at this!  For he lives in a World of Spirits—Swedenborg’s World, which you would not approve; which I cannot sympathize with: but yet I admire the Titanic old Soul so resolutely blind to the Philosophy of the Day.

Oh, I think England would be much better for E. B. C. and you: but I can’t say anything against what he thinks the Duty chalked out for him.  I don’t believe the English Rule will hold in India: but, meanwhile, a good Man may think he must do what Good he can there, come what may of it.  There is also Good to be done in England!

The Wind is still very ‘stingy’ though the Sun shines, and though it blows from the West.  So we are all better at our homes for the present.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

To W. B. Donne.

Ramsgate: August 27, [1865].

My dear Donne,

Your letter found me here, where I have been a week cruising about with my old Brother Peter.  To morrow we leave—for Calais, as we propose; just to touch French Soil, and drink a Bottle of French Wine in the old Town: then home again to Woodbridge as fast as we may.  For thither goes William Airy, partly in hopes of meeting me: he says he is much shaken by the dangerous illness he had this last Spring: and thinks, truly enough, that our chances of meeting in this World sensibly diminish.

You must not talk of my kindness to you at Lowestoft: when all the good is on your side, going out of your way to see me.  Really it makes me ashamed.

Together with your Letter, I found a very kind one from Mrs. Kemble, who took the trouble to write only to tell me how well she liked the Plays.  I know that Good Nature would not affect her Judgment (which I very honestly think too favourable), but it was Good Nature made her write to tell me.

Don’t forget to sound Murray at some good opportunity about a Selection from Crabbe.  Of course he won’t let me do it, though I could do it better than any he would be likely to employ: for you know I rely on my Appreciation of what others do, not on what I can do myself.

The ‘Parcel’ you write of has not been sent me here: but I shall find it when I return, and will write to you again.  I puzzle my Brains to remember what the ‘Conscript’ is.

I have been reading, and reducing to one volume from two (more meo), a trashy Book, ‘Bernard’s Recollections of the Stage,’ with some good recollections of the Old Actors, up to Macklin and Garrick.  But, of all people’s, one can’t trust Actors’ Stories.  In ‘Lethe,’ where your Garrick figures in Sir Geoffrey, also figured Woodward, as ‘The Fine Gentleman’; so I think, at least, is the Title of a very capital mezzotint I have of him in Character,

Oh! famous is your Story of Lord Chatham and the Bishops; [68] be sure you set it afloat again in print.

You don’t tell me if Trench be recovered: but I shall conclude from your Silence that, at any rate, he is not now seriously ill.

Now I hear my good Brother come in from Morning Mass, and we shall have Breakfast.  He is really capital to sail about with.  I read your letter yesterday while sitting out on a Bench with her—his Wife—a brave Woman, of the O’Dowd sort; and she wanted to know all about you and yours.  We like Ramsgate very much: genial air: pleasant Country: good Harbour, Piers, etc.: and the Company, though overflowing, not showy, nor vulgar: but seemingly come to make the most of a Holiday.  I am surprized how little of the Cockney, in its worse aspect, is to be seen.

To E. B. Cowell.

Market hill: Woodbridge.
Septr. 5/65.

My dear Cowell,

Let me hear of you: I don’t forget, though I don’t see, you.  Nor am I so wrapt up in my Ship as not to have many a day on which I should be very glad to dispense with her and have you over here: but I can’t well make sure what day: sometimes I ask one man to go, sometimes another, and so all is cut up.  Besides I was away six weeks in all at Lowestoft; then a fortnight at Ramsgate, Dover, Calais, etc.  When the apple ερευθεται ακρω επ οσδω [69a]—then my Ship will be laid up, and one more Summer of mine departed, and then I hope you will come over to talk over many things.

Read Lady Duff Gordon’s Letters from Egypt: which you won’t like, because of some latitude in Religious thought, and also because of some vulgar slang, such as Schoolboys, and American Women use, and it is now the bad fashion for even English Ladies to adopt.  But the Book is worth reading notwithstanding this, and making allowance for a Lady or Gentleman seeing all rose-colour in a new Pet or Plaything.  On sending the Book back to the Library this morning I quote out of it something about Oriental Poetry which you may know well enough but I was not so conscious of.  In a Love-song where the Lover declines a Physician for the wound which the Wind (Love) has caused, he says ‘For only he who has hurt can cure me.’   ‘N.B. The masculine pronoun is always used instead of the feminine in Poetry, out of decorum: sometimes even in conversation.’ [69b]  (It being as forbidden to talk of women as to see them, etc.)

I was very pleased with Calais, which remains the ‘vieille France’ of my Childhood.

Donne came to see me for a Day at Lowestoft, the same ‘vieil Donne’ also of my Boyhood.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

To John Allen.

Markethill: Woodbridge.
Nov. 1/65.

My dear Allen,

Let me hear how you and yours are: it is now a long [time] since we exchanged Letters.  G. Crabbe wrote me you were corresponding with a very different person: the Editor of the Times.  I never see that nor any other Paper but the good old Athenæum.  G. Crabbe also said you were at the Norwich Congress.  Then why didn’t you come here?  He said the Bishop of Oxford, whom he had never met before, met him at Lord Walsingham’s, and shook him so cordially by the hand, and pressed him so for a visit to Oxford, that he (G. C.) rather thought he (Sam) deserved the Epithet usually added to his Name.  Perhaps, however, the Bishop did feel for a Grandson of the Poet.

I have no more to tell you of myself this past Summer than for so many Summers past.  Only sailing about, Lowestoft, Ramsgate, Dover, Calais, etc.  I was very pleased indeed with Calais; just as I remember it forty years ago except for the Soldiers’ Uniform.

Duncan wrote me not a very cheerful Letter some while ago: he was unwell, of Cold and rheumatism, I think.  Of other Friends I know nothing: but am going to write my annual Letters to them.  What a State of things to come to!  How one used to wonder, hearing our predecessors talk in that way, something!  But I don’t think our successors wonder if we talk so; for they seem to begin Life with indifference, instead of ending it.

My house is not yet finished: two rooms have taken about five months: which is not slow for Woodbridge.  To day I have been catching Cold in looking at some Trees planted—‘factura Nepotibus umbram.’

Now this precious Letter can’t go to-night for want of Envelope; and in half an hour two Merchants are coming to eat Oysters and drink Burton ale.  I would rather be alone, and smoke my own pipe in peace over one of Trollope’s delightful Novels, ‘Can you forgive her?’

Now, my dear Allen, here is enough of me, for your sake as well as mine.  But let me hear something from you.  All good Remembrances to the Wife and those of your Children who remember yours ever, E. F. G.

[Woodbridge]
Decr. 3/65.

My dear Allen,

I enclose you two prints which may amuse you to look at and keep.

I have a wonderful Museum of such scraps of Portrait; about once a year a Man sends me a Portfolio of such things.  But my chief Article is Murderers; and I am now having a Newgate Calendar from London.  I don’t ever wish to see and hear these things tried; but, when they are in print, I like to sit in Court then, and see the Judges, Counsel, Prisoners, Crowd: hear the Lawyers’ Objections, the Murmur in the Court, etc.

The Charge is prepared; the Lawyers are met,
The Judges are rang’d, a terrible show.

De Soyres came here the other Day, and we were talking of you; he said you had invited Newman to your house.  A brave thing, if you did.  I think his Apology very noble; and himself quite honest, so far as he can see himself.  The Passage in No. 7 of the Apology where he describes the State of the World as wholly irreflective of its Creator unless you turn—to Popery—is very grand.

Now I probably sha’n’t write to you again before Christmas: so let me wish you and Mrs. Allen and your Family a Happy time of it.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

I was very disappointed in Miss Berry’s Correspondence; one sees a Woman of Sense, Taste, Good Breeding, and I suppose, Good Looks; but what more, to make three great Volumes of!  Compare her with Trench’s Mother.  And with all her perpetual travels to improve health and spirits (which lasted perfectly well to near ninety) one would have been more interested if there were one single intimation of caring about any Body but herself, helping one poor Person, etc.

I don’t know if she or Mrs. Delany is dullest.

To W. H. Thompson.

Woodbridge: March 15/66.

My dear Thompson,

To-day’s Post brings me a Letter from Robert Groome, which tells me (on ‘Times’ authority) that you are Master of Trinity.  Judging by your last Letter, I suppose this was unexpected by yourself: I have no means of knowing whether it was expected by others beside those who voted you to the Honour.  For I had heard nothing further of the whole matter, even of Whewell’s accident, than you yourself told me.  Well, at our time of Life, any very vehement Congratulations are, I suppose, irrelevant on both sides.  But I am very sure I do congratulate you heartily, if you are yourself gratified.  Whether you are glad of the Post itself or not, you must, I think, be gratified with the Confidence in your Scholarship and Character which has made your Society elect you.  And so far one may unreservedly congratulate you. . . .

To-day I was looking at the Carpenters, etc., carrying away Chips, etc., of a Tree I had cut down: and, coming home, read—

δρυος πεσουσης πας ανηρ ξυλευεται [74]—

Whose Line?—Certainly not of

Yours ever sincerely, E. F. G.

To John Allen.

Market hill: Woodbridge,
March 19 [1866].

My dear Allen,

You shall hear a very little about me; and you shall tell me a very little about yourself?  I forget when I last wrote to you, or heard from you: I suppose, about the end of Autumn.  Here have I been ever since, without stirring further than Ipswich: and seeing nobody you know except R. Groome once.  He wrote me the other day to announce that Thompson was Master of Trinity; an Honour quite unexpected by Thompson himself, I conclude, seeing that he himself had written to me only a Fortnight before, telling me of Whewell’s Disaster, and sincerely hoping for his Recovery, from a Dread of a new King Log or King Stork, he said.  He also said something of coming here at Easter: which now, I suppose, he won’t be able to do.  I have written to congratulate him in a sober way on his Honours; for, at our Time of Life, I think exultation would be unseasonable on either side.  He will make a magnanimous Master, I believe; doing all the Honours of his Station well, if he have health.

Spedding wrote me a kind long Letter some while ago.  Duncan tells me Cameron has had a slight Paralysis.  Death seems to rise like a Wall against one now whichever way one looks.  When I read Boswell and other Memoirs now, what presses on me most is—All these people who talked and acted so busily are gone.  It is said that when Talma advanced upon the Stage his Thought on facing the Audience was, that they were all soon to be Nothing.

I bought Croker’s Boswell; which I find good to refer to, but not to read; so hashed up it is with interpolations.  Besides, one feels somehow that a bad Fellow like Croker mars the Good Company he introduces.  One should stop with Malone, who was a good Gentleman: only rather too loyal to Johnson, and so unjust to any who dared hint a fault in him.  Yet they were right.  Madame D’Arblay, who was also so vext with Mrs. Piozzi, admits that she had a hard time with Johnson in his last two years; so irritable and violent he became that she says People would not ask him when they invited all the rest of the Party.

Why, my Paper is done, talking about these dead and gone whom you and I have only known in Print; and yet as well so as most we know in person.  I really find my Society in such Books; all the People seem humming about me.  But now let me hear of you, Allen: and of Wife and Family.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

To W. H. Thompson.

Market hill, Woodbridge.
[March, 1866.]

My dear Thompson,

I should write ‘My dear Master’ but I don’t know if you are yet installed.  However, I suppose my Letter, so addressed, will find you and not the Old Lion now stalking in the Shades. . . .

In burning up a heap of old Letters, which one’s Executors and Heirs would make little of, I came upon several of Morton’s from Italy: so good in Parts that I have copied those Parts into a Blank Book.  When he was in his money Troubles I did the same from many other of his Letters, and Thackeray asked Blackwood to give ten pounds for them for his Magazine.  But we heard no more of them.

I have the usual Story to tell of myself: middling well: still here, pottering about my House, in which I expect an invalid Niece; and preparing for my Ship in June.  William Airy talks of coming to me soon.  I am daily expecting the Death of a Sister in law, a right good Creature, who I thought would outlive me a dozen years, and should rejoice if she could.  Things look serious about one.  If one only could escape easily and at once!  For I think the Fun is over: but that should not be.  May you flourish in your high Place, my dear Master (now I say) for this long while.

[June, 1866.]

My dear Thompson,

I won’t say that I should have gone to Ely under any Circumstances, though it is the last Place I have been to stay at with a Friend: three years ago!  And all my Stays there were very pleasant indeed: and I do not the less thank you for all your Constancy and Kindness.  But one is got down yet deeper in one’s Way of Life: of which enough has been said.

William Airy was to have come here about this time: and him I am obliged to put off because another old Fellow Collegian, Duncan, [77] who has scarce stirred from his Dorsetshire Parsonage these twenty years, was seized with a Passion to see me just once more, he says: and he is now with me: a Hypochondriack Man, nervous, and restless, with a vast deal of uncouth Humour. . . .

My Ship is afloat, with a new Irish Ensign; but I have scarce been about with her yet owing to ‘Mr. Wesley’s Troubles.’ [78a]

Only yesterday I took down my little Tauchnitz Sophocles to carry to Sea with me; and made Duncan here read—

οποια χρηζει ρηyνυτω· τουμον δ' εyω, [78b] etc.

and began to blubber a little at

ω φίλτατ' Αιyέως παι, μονοις ου yίyνεται, etc.

in the other Great Play. [78c]  The Elgin Marbles, and something more, began to pass before my Eyes.

I believe I write all this knowing you are at Ely: where I suppose you are more at Leisure than on your Throne in Trinity.  But no doubt your Tyranny follows you there too; post Equitem and all.

To E. B. Cowell.

Woodbridge: Friday
[June, 1866].

My dear Cowell,

I got your new Address from your Brother a Fortnight ago.  You don’t write to me for the very good reason that you have so much to do: I don’t write to you because I have nothing to do, and so nothing to tell you of.  My idle reading all goes down to a few Memoirs and such things: I am not got down to Miss Braddon and Mrs. Wood yet, and I believe never shall: not that I think this a merit: for it would show more Elasticity of Mind to find out and make something out of the Genius in them.  But it is too late for me to try and retrace the ‘Salle des pas perdus’ of years; I have not been very well, and more and more ‘smell the Mould above the Rose’ as Hood wrote of himself.  But I don’t want to talk of this.

You are very good to talk of sparing a Day for me when you come down.  I will be sure to be at home any Day, or Days, next week.  I can give you Bed and Board as you know: and a Boat Sail on the River if you like.  Why I don’t go over to you I have written and spoken of enough—all I can, if not satisfactorily: only don’t think it is indolence, Neglect, or Distaste for you, or any of yours. . . .

I haven’t, I think, taken in your Sanskrit morsel as yet, for I am called about this morning on some Furniture Errands: and yet I want to post this Letter To-day that you may have it this week.

I still think I shall take a Tauchnitz Sophocles with me to Sea, once more to read the two Œdipuses, and Philoctetes; perhaps more carefully than before; perhaps not!  It is stupid not to get up those three noble Pieces as well as one can.

I have not yet done my house: and, when I write of Furniture, it is because I want to get so much ready as will suffice for an Invalid Niece who wishes to come with her Maid by the End of June, or the Beginning of July.  Your old opposite Neighbour Mason is my Apollo in these matters: I find him a very clever Fellow, and so well inclined to me that every one else says he can scarce make money of what he sells me.  He has humour too.

I think you and Elizabeth should one day come and stay in this new House, which will be really very pleasant.  As far as I am concerned, I sha’n’t have much to do with it, I believe; but some one will inherit, and—sell it!

I want you to choose a Lot of my Things to be bequeathed you: Books, Pictures, Furniture.  You mustn’t think I prematurely deck myself in Sables for my own Funeral; but it happens that I sent the rough Draft of a Will to my Lawyer only three days ago.

My Brother John so much wants a Copy of Elizabeth’s Verses to my Sister Isabella in other Days.

This time twenty years you were going to me at Boulge Cottage: this time ten years you were preparing for India.

Adieu, Love to the Lady.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

To W. H. Thompson.

Lowestoft: July 27 [1866].

My dear Thompson,

Your welcome Letter was forwarded to me here To day.

I feel sure that the Lady I once saw at the Deanery is all you say; and you believe of me, as I believe of myself, that I don’t deal in Compliment, unless under very strong Compulsion.  I suppose, as Master of Trinity you could not do otherwise than marry, and so keep due State and Hospitality there: and I do think you could not have found one fitter to share, and do, the honours.  And if (as I also suppose) there is Love, or Liking, or strong Sympathy, or what not? why, all looks well.  Be it so!

I had not heard of Spedding’s entering into genteel House-keeping till your Letter told me of it.  I suppose he will be a willing Victim to his Kinsfolk.

A clerical Brother in law of mine has lost his own whole Fortune in four of these Companies which have gone to smash.  Nor his own only.  For, having, when he married my Sister, insisted on having half her Income tied to him by Settlement, that half lies under Peril from the ‘Calls’ made upon him as Shareholder.

At Genus Humanum damnat Caligo Futuri.

So I, trusting in my Builder’s Honesty, have a Bill sent in about one third bigger than it should be.

All which rather amuses me, on the whole, though I spit out a Word now and then: and indeed am getting a Surveyor to overhaul the Builder: a hopeless Process, I believe all the while.

Meanwhile, I go about in my little Ship, where I do think I have two honest Fellows to deal with.

We have just been boarding a Woodbridge Vessel that we met in these Roads, and drinking a Bottle of Blackstrap round with the Crew.

With me just at present is my Brother Peter, for whose Wife (a capital Irishwoman, of the Mrs. O’Dowd Type) my Paper is edged with Black.  No one could be a better Husband than he; no one more attentive and anxious during her last Illness, more than a year long; and, now all is over, I never saw him in better Health or Spirits.  Men are not inconsolable for elderly Wives; as Sir Walter Scott, who was not given to caustic Aphorisms, observed long ago.

When I was sailing about the Isle of Wight, Dorsetshire, etc., I read my dear old Sophocles again (sometimes omitting the nonsense-verse Choruses) and thought how much I should have liked to have them commented along in one of your Lectures.  All that is now over with you: but you will look into the Text now and then.  I have now got Munro’s Lucretius on board again.  Why is it that I never can take up with Horace—so sensible, elegant, agreeable, and sometimes even grand?

Some one gave me the July Number of the Cornhill to read the ‘Loss of the London’ in; and very well worth reading it is.  But there is also the Beginning of a Story that I am sure must be by Annie Thackeray—capital and wonderful.  I forget the name.

Now I won’t finish this Second Sheet—all with such Scraps as the foregoing.  But do believe how sincerely and truly I wish you well in your new Venture.  And so I will shut up, my dear Thompson, for the present.  No man can have more reason to wish you a good Return for your long generous Kindness than your old Friend,

E. F. G.

To E. B. Cowell.

Woodbridge: August 13/66.

My dear Cowell,

I think you have given me up as a bad Job: and I can’t blame you.  I have been expecting to hear of you in these parts: though, had it been so, I doubt if I should have been here to meet you.  For the last six weeks I have scarce been at home; what with sailing to the Isle of Wight, Norfolk Coast, staying at Lowestoft, etc.  And now I am just off again to the latter place, having only returned here on Saturday.  Nor can I say when I shall be back here for any long while: the Kerriches are at Lowestoft; and I have yet one or two more Sea-trips to make before October consigns me once more to Cold, Indoor Solitude, Melancholy, and Illhealth.

My Companion on board has been Sophocles, as he was three years ago, I find.  I am even now going to hunt up some one-volume Virgil to take with me.  Horace I never can care about, in spite of his Good Sense, Elegance, and occasional Force.  He never made my Eyes wet as Virgil does.

When I was about Cromer Coast, I was reading Windham’s Diary: well worth reading, as one of the most honest; but with little else in it than that.  You would scarcely guess from it that he was a man of any Genius, as yet I suppose he was.

Somehow I fancy you must be travelling abroad!  Else surely I should have heard something of you.  Well: I must anyhow enclose this Letter, or direct it, to your Mother’s or Brother’s at Ipswich.  Do let me hear of yourself and Elizabeth, and believe that I do not forget you, nor cease to be

Yours very sincerely
Edward FitzGerald.

Lowestoft: August 19/66.

My dear Cowell,

I don’t wish you to think I am in Woodbridge all this while since your Note came.  It was forwarded to me here, where I have been since I wrote to you a week ago.  The fact is, I had promised to return on finding that the Kerriches were to be here.  So, here I am: living on board my little Ship: sometimes taking them out for a Sail: sometimes accompanying them in a walk.  In other respects, I am very fond of this Place, which I have known and frequented these forty years; till the last three years in company with my Sister Kerrich, who has helped to endear it to me.  I believe I shall be here, off and on, some while longer; as my Brother Peter (who has lately lost a capital Wife) is coming to sail about with me.  Should I be at Woodbridge for some days I will let you know.

Do you see ‘Squire Allenby,’ as the folks at Felixtow Ferry call him?  If so, ask him why he doesn’t sometimes sail here with his ship; he would like it, I fancy: and everybody seems to like him.

Only yesterday I finished reading the Electra.  Before that, Ajax; which is well worth re-reading too.  I am sorry to find I have only Antigone left of all the precious Seven; a lucid Constellation indeed!  I suppose I must try Euripides after this; some few of his Plays.

This time ten years—a month ago—we were all lounging about in the hayfield before your Mother’s House at Rushmere.  I do not forget these things: nor cease to remember them with a sincere, sad, and affectionate interest: the very sincerity of which prevents me from attempting to recreate them.  This I wish you and yours, who have been so kind to me, to believe.

I am going to run again to the Coast of Norfolk—as far as Wells—to wander about Holkham, if the Weather permit.  We have had too much Wind and Wet to make such excursions agreeable: for, when one reached the Places by Sea, the Rain prevented one’s going about on Shore to look about.  But now that there has been rather a better look-out of Weather for the last few Days, and that—

δεινωντ' αημα πνευματων εκοίμισε
στένοντα ποντον— [86]

I shall try again for two or three Days.  How do you translate δεινων here?

Ever yours, E. F. G.

Lowestoft still!  Septr. 4 [1866].

My dear Cowell,

Still here, you see!  Till the end of last week I had my Kerrich people here; I am now expecting my Brother Peter again: he has lately lost his capital Wife, and flies about between Ireland and England for Company and Diversion of Thought.  I am also expecting Mowbray Donne over from Yarmouth this week.

I wonder if you ever would come over here, and either Bed and Board in my little Ship, or on Shore?  Anyhow, do write me a line to tell me about yourself—yourselves—and do not think I am indifferent to you.

I have been reading Euripides (in my way) but, as heretofore do not take greatly to him.  He is always prosy, whereas (except in the matter of funeral Lamentations, Condolence, etc., which I suppose the Greek Audience expected—as I suppose they also expected the little sententious truism at the end of every Speech), except in these respects, Sophocles always goes ahead, and makes his Dialogue act in driving on the Play.  He always makes the most of his Story too: Euripides not often.  A remarkable instance of this is in his Heraclidæ (one of the better Plays, I think), where Macaria is to be sacrificed for the common good: but one hears no more of her: and a fine opportunity is lost when Jocasta [87a] insults Eurystheus whom they have conquered, and is never told that that Conquest is at the cost of her Grand-daughter’s Life—a piece of Irony which Sophocles would not have forgotten, I think.  I have not yet read over Rhesus, Hippolytus, Medea, Ion, or the Iphigenias; altogether, the Phœnissæ is the best of those I have read; the interview between Jocasta and her two sons, before the Battle, very good.  There is really Humour and Comedy in the Servant’s Account of Hercules’ conviviality in Admetus’ House of Mourning.  I thought the story of the Bacchæ poorly told: but some good descriptive passages.

In the midst of Euripides, I was seized with a Passion to return to Sophocles, and read the two Œdipuses again.  Oh, how immeasurably superior!  In dramatic Construction, Dialogue, and all!  How can they call Euripides τραyικωτατος, [87b] putting a few passages of his against whole Dramas of the other, who also can show sentence for sentence more moving than any Euripides wrote.

But I want to read these Plays once with some very accurate Guide, oral or printed.  I mean Sophocles; I don’t care to be accurate with the other.  Can you recommend any Edition—not too German?  I should write to Thompson about it; but I suppose he is busy with Marriage coming on.  I mean, the present Master of Trinity, who is engaged to the widow of Dean Peacock; a very capital Lady to preside as Queen of Trinity Lodge.

I have also been visiting dear old Virgil; his Georgics, and the 6th and 8th Books of the Æneid.  I could now take them up and read them both again.  Pray look at lines 407-415 of Book VIII—the poor Matron kindling her early fire—so Georgic! so Virgilian! so unsuited, or disproportionate, to the Thing it illustrates.

Here is a long Letter—of the old Sort, I suppose.  All these Books come back to me with Summer and the Sea: in another Month all will be gone together!—I look with Terror toward Winter, though I have not to encounter one, at any rate, of the three Giants which old Mrs. Bloomfield said were coming upon her—Winter, Want, and Sickness. [88]

Pray remember me, in spite of all practical Forgetfulness, to Wife and Friends.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

To F. Tennyson.

Woodbridge: Jan. 29/67.

My dear Frederic,

Let me hear from you one Day.  I would send you my MS. Book of Morton’s Letters: but I scarce know if the Post would carry it to you; though not so very big: and I am still less sure that you would ever return it to me.  And what odds if you didn’t?  It might as well die in your Possession as in mine.

In answer to my yearly Letter to Alfred and Co. I heard (from Mrs.) that they were about to leave Freshwater, frightened away by Hero-worshippers, etc., and were going to a Solitude called Greyshott Hall, Haslemere; which, I am told, is in Hants.  Whether they go to settle there I don’t know.  Lucretius’ Death is thought to be too free-spoken for Publication, I believe; not so much in a religious, as an amatory, point of View.  I should believe Lucretius more likely to have expedited his Departure because of Weariness of Life and Despair of the System, than because of any Love-philtre.  I wrote also my yearly Letter to Carlyle, begging my compliments to his Wife: who, he replies, died, in a very tragical way, last April.  I have since heard that the Papers reported all the Circumstances.  So, if one lives so much out of the World as I do, it seems better to give up that Ghost altogether.  Old Spedding has written a Pamphlet about ‘Authors and Publishers’; showing up, or striving to show up, the Publishers’ system.  He adduces his own Edition of Bacon as a sample of their mismanagement, in respect of too bulky Volumes, etc.  But, as he says, Macaulay and Alison are still bulkier; yet they sell.  The truth is that a solemnly-inaugurated new Edition of all Bacon was not wanted.  The Philosophy is surely superseded; not a Wilderness of Speddings can give men a new interest in the Politics and Letters.  The Essays will no doubt always be in request, like Shakespeare.  But I am perhaps not a proper Judge of these high matters.  How should I? who have just, to my great sorrow, finished ‘The Woman in White’ for the third time, once every last three Winters.  I wish Sir Percival Clyde’s Death were a little less of the minor Theatre sort; then I would swallow all the rest as a wonderful Caricature, better than so many a sober Portrait.  I really think of having a Herring-lugger I am building named ‘Marian Halcombe,’ the brave Girl in the Story.  Yes, a Herring-lugger; which is to pay for the money she costs unless she goes to the Bottom: and which meanwhile amuses me to consult about with my Sea-folks.  I go to Lowestoft now and then, by way of salutary Change: and there smoke a Pipe every night with a delightful Chap, who is to be Captain.  I have been, up to this time, better than for the last two winters: but feel a Worm in my head now and then, for all that.  You will say, only a Maggot.  Well; we shall see.  When I go to Lowestoft, I take Montaigne with me; very comfortable Company.  One of his Consolations for The Stone is, that it makes one less unwilling to part with Life.  Oh, you think that it didn’t need much Wisdom to suggest that?  Please yourself, Ma’am.  January, just gone!  February, only twenty-eight Days: then March with Light till six p.m.: then April with a blush of Green on the Whitethorn hedge: then May, Cuckoos, Nightingales, etc.; then June, Ship launched, and nothing but Ship till November, which is only just gone.  The Story of our Lives from Year to Year.  This is a poor letter: but I won’t set The Worm fretting.  Let me hear how you are: and don’t be two months before you do so.

To W. B. Donne.

Woodbridge: Febr. 15 [1867].

My dear Donne,

I came home yesterday from a week’s Stay at Lowestoft.  As to the Athenæum, [91] I would bet that the last Sentence was tacked on by the Editor: for it in some measure contradicts the earlier part of the Article.

When your letter was put into my hands, I happened to be reading Montaigne, L. ii. Ch. 8, De l’Art de Conferer, where at the end he refers to Tacitus; the only Book, he says, he had read consecutively for an hour together for ten years.  He does not say very much: but the Remarks of such a Man are worth many Cartloads of German Theory of Character, I think: their Philology I don’t meddle with.  I know that Cowell has discovered they are all wrong in their Sanskrit.  Montaigne never doubts Tacitus’ facts: but doubts his Inferences; well, if I were sure of his Facts, I would leave others to draw their Inferences.  I mean, if I were Commentator, certainly: and I think if I were Historian too.  Nothing is more wonderful to me than seeing such Men as Spedding, Carlyle, and I suppose Froude, straining Fact to Theory as they do, while a scatter-headed Paddy like myself can keep clear.  But then so does the Mob of Readers.  Well, but I believe in the Vox Populi of two hundred Years: still more, of two thousand.  And, whether we be right or wrong, we prevail: so, however much wiser are the Builders of Theory, their Labour is but lost who build: they can’t reason away Richard’s Hump, nor Cromwell’s Ambition, nor Henry’s Love of a new Wife, nor Tiberius’ beastliness.  Of course, they had all their Gleams of Goodness: but we of the Mob, if we have any Theory at all, have that which all Mankind have seen and felt, and know as surely as Day-light; that Power will tempt and spoil the Best.

Well, but what is all this Lecture to you for?  Why, I think you rather turn to the re-actionary Party about these old Heroes.  So I say, however right you may be, leave us, the many-headed, if not the wise-headed, to go our way, only making the Text of Tacitus as clear for us to flounder about in as you can.  That, anyhow, must be the first Thing.  Something of the manners and customs of the Times we want also: some Lights from other contemporary Authors also: and then, ‘Gentlemen, you will now consider your Verdict, and please yourselves.’