[1875.]
My dear Cowell,
. . . I told Elizabeth, I think, all I had to write about Arthur C. I had a letter from him a few days ago, hoping to see me in London, where I thought I might be going about this time, and where I would not go without giving him notice to meet me, poor lad. As yet however I cannot screw my Courage to go up: I have no Curiosity about what is to be seen or heard there; my Day is done. I have not been very well all this Summer, and fancy that I begin to ‘smell the Ground,’ as Sailors say of the Ship that slackens speed as the Water shallows under her. I can’t say I have much care for long Life: but still less for long Death: I mean a lingering one.
Did you ever read Madame de Sévigné? I never did till this summer, rather repelled by her perpetual harping on her Daughter. But it is all genuine, and the same intense Feeling expressed in a hundred natural yet graceful ways: and beside all this such good Sense, good Feeling, Humour, Love of Books and Country Life, as makes her certainly the Queen of all Letter writers.
Little
Grange, Woodbridge, Suffolk.
(Post Mark Dec. 8.) Dec. 9/75.
My dear Sir,
Mr. Carlyle’s Niece has sent me a Card from you, asking for a Copy of an Agamemnon: taken—I must not say, translated—from Æschylus. It was not meant for Greek Scholars, like yourself, but for those who do not know the original, which it very much misrepresents. I think it is my friend Mrs. Kemble who has made it a little known on your wide Continent. As you have taken the trouble to enquire for it all across the Atlantic, beside giving me reason before to confide in your friendly reception of it, I post you one along with this letter. I can fancy you might find some to be interested in it who do not know the original: more interested than in more faithful Translations of more ability. But there I will leave it: only begging that you will not make any trouble of acknowledging so small a Gift.
Some eighty of Carlyle’s Friends and Admirers have been presenting him with a Gold Medal of himself, and an Address of Congratulation on his 80th Birthday. I should not have supposed that either Medal or Address would be much to his Taste: but, as more important People than myself joined in the Thing, I did not think it became me to demur. But I shall not the less write him my half-yearly Letter of Good Hopes and Good Wishes. He seems to have been well and happy in our pretty County of Kent during the Summer.
Believe me, with Thanks for the Interest you have taken in my Libretti, yours sincerely, E. FitzGerald.
P.S. I am doing an odd thing in bethinking me of sending you two Calderon Plays, which my friend Mrs. Kemble has spoken of also in your Country. So you might one day hear of them: and, if you liked what came before, wish to see them. So here they are, for better or worse; and, at any rate, one Note of Thanks (which I doubt you will feel bound to write) will do for both, and you can read as little as you please of either. All these things have been done partly as an amusement in a lonely life: partly to give some sort of idea of the originals to friends who knew them not: and printed, because (like many others, I suppose) I can only dress my best when seeing myself in Type, in the same way as I can scarce read others unless in such a form. I suppose there was some Vanity in it all: but really, if I had that strong, I might have done (considering what little I can do) like Crabbe’s Bachelor—
I might have made a Book, but that my Pride
In the not making was more gratified. [187]
Do you read more of Crabbe than we his Countrymen?
To Miss Aitken. [188a]
Woodbridge. Dec. 9/75.
Dear Miss Aitken,
It is a fact that the night before last I thought I would write my half-yearly Enquiry about your Uncle: and at Noon came your Note. I judge from it that he is well. I think he will thrash me (as Bentley said [188b]) even now.
I must say I scarce knew what to do when asked to join in that Birthday Address. I did not know whether it would be agreeable to your Uncle: and of course I could not ask him. So I asked Spedding and Pollock, and found they were of the Party: so it did not become me to hesitate. I hope we were not all amiss.
But as to Agamemnon the King: I shall certainly send Mr. Norton a Copy, as he has taken the trouble to send across the Atlantic for it. But as to Mr. Carlyle, ‘c’est une autre affaire.’ It was not meant for any Greek Scholar, and only for a few not Greek, who I thought would be interested, as they have been, in my curious Version. Among these was Mrs. Kemble, who I suppose it is has praised it in a way that somehow gains ground in America. But your Uncle—a few years ago he would have been perhaps a little irritated with it; and now would not, I feel sure, care to spend his Eyes over its sixty or seventy pages. He would even now think—but in Pity now—how much better one might have spent one’s time (though not very much was spent) than in such Dilettanteism. So tell him not quite to break his heart if I don’t put him to the Trial: but still believe me his, and, if you will allow me, yours sincerely,
E. FitzGerald.
Fragment of a Letter to Miss Biddell.
Dec. 1875.
Thank you for the paragraph about Shelley. Somehow I don’t believe the Story, [189] in spite of Trelawney’s Authority. Let them produce the Confessor who is reported to tell the Story; otherwise one does not need any more than such a Squall as we have late had in these Seas, and yet more sudden, I believe, in those, to account for the Disaster.
I believe I told you that my Captain Newson and his Nephew, my trusty Jack, went in the Snow to the Norfolk Coast, by Cromer, to find Newson’s Boy. They found him, what remained of him, in a Barn there: brought him home through the Snow by Rail thus far: and through the Snow by Boat to Felixstow, where he is to lie among his Brothers and Sisters, to the Peace of his Father’s Heart.
Woodbridge. Dec. 30/75.
My dear Laurence,
. . . I cannot get on with Books about the Daily Life which I find rather insufferable in practice about me. I never could read Miss Austen, nor (later) the famous George Eliot. Give me People, Places, and Things, which I don’t and can’t see; Antiquaries, Jeanie Deans, Dalgettys, etc. . . . As to Thackeray’s, they are terrible; I really look at them on the shelf, and am half afraid to touch them. He, you know, could go deeper into the Springs of Common Action than these Ladies: wonderful he is, but not Delightful, which one thirsts for as one gets old and dry.
To C. E. Norton.
Little Grange, Woodbridge. Jan. 23/76.
My dear Sir,
. . . I suppose you may see one of the Carlyle Medallions: and you can judge better of the Likeness than I, who have not been to Chelsea, and hardly out of Suffolk, these fifteen years and more. I dare say it is like him: but his Profile is not his best phase. In two notes dictated by him since that Business he has not adverted to it: I think he must be a little ashamed of it, though it would not do to say so in return, I suppose. And yet I think he might have declined the Honours of a Life of ‘Heroism.’ I have no doubt he would have played a Brave Man’s Part if called on; but, meanwhile, he has only sat pretty comfortably at Chelsea, scolding all the world for not being Heroic, and not always very precise in telling them how. He has, however, been so far heroic, as to be always independent, whether of Wealth, Rank, and Coteries of all sorts: nay, apt to fly in the face of some who courted him. I suppose he is changed, or subdued, at eighty: but up to the last ten years he seemed to me just the same as when I first knew him five and thirty years ago. What a Fortune he might have made by showing himself about as a Lecturer, as Thackeray and Dickens did; I don’t mean they did it for Vanity: but to make money: and that to spend generously. Carlyle did indeed lecture near forty years ago before he was a Lion to be shown, and when he had but few Readers. I heard his ‘Heroes’ which now seems to me one of his best Books. He looked very handsome then, with his black hair, fine Eyes, and a sort of crucified Expression.
I know of course (in Books) several of those you name in your Letter: Longfellow, whom I may say I love, and so (I see) can’t call him Mister: and Emerson whom I admire, for I don’t feel that I know the Philosopher so well as the Poet: and Mr. Lowell’s ‘Among my Books’ is among mine. I also have always much liked, I think rather loved, O. W. Holmes. I scarce know why I could never take to that man of true Genius, Hawthorne. There is a little of my Confession of Faith about your Countrymen, and I should say mine, if I were not more Irish than English.
[Woodbridge. Feb. 7/76.]
My dear Sir,
I will not look on the Book you have sent me as any Return for the Booklet I sent you, but as a free and kindly Gift. I really don’t know that you could have sent me a better. I have read it with more continuous attention and gratification than I now usually feel, and always (as Lamb suggested) well disposed to say Grace after reading.
Seeing what Mr. Lowell has done for Dante, Rousseau, etc., one does not wish him to be limited in his Subjects: but I do wish he would do for English Writers what Ste. Beuve has done for French. Mr. Lowell so far goes along with him as to give so much of each Writer’s Life as may illustrate his Writings; he has more Humour (in which alone I fancy S. B. somewhat wanting), more extensive Reading, I suppose; and a power of metaphorical Illustration which (if I may say so) seems to me to want only a little reserve in its use: as was the case perhaps with Hazlitt. But Mr. Lowell is not biassed by Hazlitt’s—(by anybody’s, so far as I see)—party or personal prejudices; and altogether seems to me the man most fitted to do this Good Work, where it has not (as with Carlyle’s Johnson) been done, for good and all, before. Of course, one only wants the Great Men, in their kind: Chaucer, Pope (Dryden being done [193]), and perhaps some of the ‘minora sidera’ clustered together, as Hazlitt has done them. Perhaps all this will come forth in some future Series even now gathering in Mr. Lowell’s Head. However that may be, this present Series will make me return to some whom I have not lately looked up. Dante’s face I have not seen these ten years: only his Back on my Book Shelf. What Mr. Lowell says of him recalled to me what Tennyson said to me some thirty-five or forty years ago. We were stopping before a shop in Regent Street where were two Figures of Dante and Goethe. I (I suppose) said, ‘What is there in old Dante’s Face that is missing in Goethe’s?’ And Tennyson (whose Profile then had certainly a remarkable likeness to Dante’s) said: ‘The Divine.’ Then Milton; I don’t think I’ve read him these forty years; the whole Scheme of the Poem, and certain Parts of it, looming as grand as anything in my Memory; but I never could read ten lines together without stumbling at some Pedantry that tipped me at once out of Paradise, or even Hell, into the Schoolroom, worse than either. Tennyson again used to say that the two grandest of all Similes were those of the Ships hanging in the Air, and ‘the Gunpowder one,’ which he used slowly and grimly to enact, in the Days that are no more. He certainly then thought Milton the sublimest of all the Gang; his Diction modelled on Virgil, as perhaps Dante’s.
Spenser I never could get on with, and (spite of Mr. Lowell’s good word) shall still content myself with such delightful Quotations from him as one lights upon here and there: the last from Mr. Lowell.
Then, old ‘Daddy Wordsworth,’ as he was sometimes called, I am afraid, from my Christening, he is now, I suppose, passing under the Eclipse consequent on the Glory which followed his obscure Rise. I remember fifty years ago at our Cambridge, when the Battle was fighting for him by the Few against the Many of us who only laughed at ‘Louisa in the Shade,’ etc. His Brother was then Master of Trinity College; like all Wordsworths (unless the drowned Sailor) pompous and priggish. He used to drawl out the Chapel responses so that we called him the ‘Mēēserable Sinner’ and his brother the ‘Meeserable Poet.’ Poor fun enough: but I never can forgive the Lakers all who first despised, and then patronized ‘Walter Scott,’ as they loftily called him: and He, dear, noble, Fellow, thought they were quite justified. Well, your Emerson has done him far more Justice than his own Countryman Carlyle, who won’t allow him to be a Hero in any way, but sets up such a cantankerous narrow-minded Bigot as John Knox in his stead. I did go to worship at Abbotsford, as to Stratford on Avon: and saw that it was good to have so done. If you, if Mr. Lowell, have not lately read it, pray read Lockhart’s account of his Journey to Douglas Dale on (I think) July 18 or 19, 1831. It is a piece of Tragedy, even to the muttering Thunder, like the Lammermuir, which does not look very small beside Peter Bell and Co.
My dear Sir, this is a desperate Letter; and that last Sentence will lead to another dirty little Story about my Daddy: to which you must listen or I should feel like the Fine Lady in one of Vanbrugh’s Plays, ‘Oh my God, that you won’t listen to a Woman of Quality when her Heart is bursting with Malice!’ And perhaps you on the other Side of the Great Water may be amused with a little of your old Granny’s Gossip.
Well then: about 1826, or 7, Professor Airy (now our Astronomer Royal) and his Brother William called on the Daddy at Rydal. In the course of Conversation Daddy mentioned that sometimes when genteel Parties came to visit him, he contrived to slip out of the room, and down the garden walk to where ‘The Party’s’ travelling Carriage stood. This Carriage he would look into to see what Books they carried with them: and he observed it was generally ‘Walter Scott’s.’ It was Airy’s Brother (a very veracious man, and an Admirer of Wordsworth, but, to be sure, more of Sir Walter) who told me this. It is this conceit that diminishes Wordsworth’s stature among us, in spite of the mountain Mists he lived among. Also, a little stinginess; not like Sir Walter in that! I remember Hartley Coleridge telling us at Ambleside how Professor Wilson and some one else (H. C. himself perhaps) stole a Leg of Mutton from Wordsworth’s Larder for the fun of the Thing.
Here then is a long Letter of old world Gossip from the old Home. I hope it won’t tire you out: it need not, you know.
P.S. By way of something better from the old World, I post you Hazlitt’s own Copy of his English Poets, with a few of his marks for another Edition in it. If you like to keep it, pray do: if you like better to give it to Hazlitt’s successor, Mr. Lowell, do that from yourself.
To Mrs. Cowell.
12 Marine
Terrace, Lowestoft.
April 8/76.
. . . If you go to Brittany you must go to my dear Sévigné’s ‘Rochers.’ If I had the ‘Go’ in me, I should get there this Summer too: as to Abbotsford and Stratford. She has been my Companion here; quite alive in the Room with me. I sometimes lament I did not know her before: but perhaps such an Acquaintance comes in best to cheer one toward the End.
To C. E. Norton.
Little
Grange, Woodbridge.
June 10 [196], [1876].
My dear Sir,
I don’t know that I should trouble you so soon again—(only, don’t trouble yourself to answer for form’s sake only)—but that there is a good deal of Wordsworth in the late Memoir of Haydon by his Son. All this you might like to see; as also Mr. Lowell. And do you, or he, know of some dozen very good Letters of Wordsworth’s addressed to a Mr. Gillies who published them in what he calls the Life of a Literary Veteran some thirty years ago, [197] I think? This Book, of scarce any value except for those few Letters, and a few Notices of Sir Walter Scott, all good, is now not very common, I think. If you or Mr. Lowell would like to have a Copy, I can send you one, through Quaritch, if not per Post: I have the Letters separately bound up from another Copy of long ago. There is also a favorable account of a meeting between Wordsworth and Foscolo in an otherwise rather valueless Memoir of Bewick the Painter. I tell you of all this Wordsworth, because you have, I think, a more religious regard for him than we on this side the water: he is not so much honoured in his own Country, I mean, his Poetry. I, for one, feel all his lofty aspiration, and occasional Inspiration, but I cannot say that, on the whole, he makes much of it; his little pastoral pieces seem to me his best: less than a Quarter of him. But I may be wrong.
I am very much obliged to you for wishing me to see Mr. Ticknor’s Life, etc. I hope to make sure of that through our Briareus-handed Mudie; and have marked the Book for my next Order. For I suppose that it finds its way to English Publishers, or Librarians. I remember his Spanish Literature coming out, and being for a long time in the hands of my friend Professor Cowell, who taught me what I know of Spanish. Only a week ago I began my dear Don Quixote over again; as welcome and fresh as the Flowers of May. The Second Part is my favorite, in spite of what Lamb and Coleridge (I think) say; when, as old Hallam says, Cervantes has fallen in Love with the Hero whom he began by ridiculing. When this Letter is done I shall get out into my Garden with him, Sunday though it be.
We have also Memoirs of Godwin, very dry, I think; indeed with very little worth reading, except two or three Letters of dear Charles Lamb, ‘Saint Charles,’ as Thackeray once called him, while looking at one of his half-mad Letters, and remember[ing] his Devotion to that quite mad Sister. I must say I think his Letters infinitely better than his Essays; and Patmore says his Conversation, when just enough animated by Gin and Water, was better than either: which I believe too. Procter said he was far beyond the Coleridges, Wordsworths, Southeys, etc. And I am afraid I believe that also.
I am afraid too this is a long letter nearly [all] about my own Likes and Dislikes. ‘The Great Twalmley’s.’ [198] But I began only thinking about Wordsworth. Pray do believe that I do not wish you to write unless you care to answer on that score. And now for the Garden and the Don: always in a common old Spanish Edition. Their coarse prints always make him look more of the Gentleman than the better Artists of other Countries have hitherto done.
Carlyle, I hear, is pretty well, though somewhat shrunk: scolding away at Darwin, The Turk, etc.
Little
Grange, Woodbridge,
Septr. 10/76.
My dear Sir,
When your Letter reached me a few days ago I looked up Gillies: and found the Wordsworth Letters so good, kindly, sincere, and modest, that I thought you and Mr. Lowell should have the Volume they are in at once. So it travels by Post along with this Letter. The other two volumes shall go one day in some parcel of Quaritch’s if he will do me that Courtesy; but there is, I think, little you would care for, unless a little more of ‘Walter Scott’s’ generosity and kindness to Gillies in the midst of his own Ruin; a stretch of Goodness that Wordsworth would not, I think, have reached. However, these Letters of his make me think I ought to feel more filially to my Daddy: I must dip myself again in Mr. Lowell’s excellent Account of him with a more reverent Spirit. Do you remember the fine Picture that Haydon gives of him sitting with his grey head in the free Benches of some London Church? [199] I wonder that more of such Letters as these to Gillies are not preserved or produced; perhaps Mr. Lowell will make use of them on some future occasion; some new Edition, perhaps, of his last volume. I can assure you and him that I read that volume with that Interest and Pleasure that made me sure I should often return to it: as indeed I did more than once till—lent out to three several Friends! It is now in the hands of a very civilized, well-lettered, and agreeable Archdeacon, [200] of this District.
I bought Mr. Ticknor’s Memoirs in an Edition published, I hope with due Licence, by Sampson Low. What a just, sincere, kindly, modest Man he too! With more shrewd perception of the many fine folks he mixed with than he cared to indulge in or set down on Paper, I fancy: judging from some sketchy touches of Macaulay, Talfourd, Bulwer, etc. His account of his Lord Fitzwilliam’s is surely very creditable to English Nobility. Macaulay’s Memoirs were less interesting to me; though I quite believe in him as a brave, honest, affectionate man, as well (of course) as a very powerful one. It is wonderful how he, Hallam and Mackintosh could roar and bawl at one another over such Questions as Which is the Greatest Poet? Which is the greatest Work of that Greatest Poet? etc., like Boys at some Debating Society.
You can imagine the little dull Country town on whose Border I live; our one merit is an Estuary that brings up Tidings of the Sea twice in the twenty-four hours, and on which I sail in my Boat whenever I can.
I must add a P.S. to say that having written my half-yearly Letter to Carlyle, just to ask how he was, etc., I hear from his Niece that he has been to his own Dumfries, has driven a great deal about the Country: but has returned to Chelsea very weak, she says, though not in any way ill. He has even ceased to care about Books; but, since his Return, has begun to interest himself in them a little again. In short, his own Chelsea is the best Place for him.
Another reason for this other half Sheet is—that—Yes! I wish very much for your Translation of the Vita Nuova, which I did read in a slovenly (slovenly with Dante!) way twenty or thirty years ago, but which I did not at all understand. I should know much more about it now with you and Mr. Lowell.
I could without ‘roaring’ persuade you about Don Quixote, I think; if I were to roar over the Atlantic as to ‘Which is the best of the Two Parts’ in the style of Macaulay & Co. ‘Oh for a Pot of Ale, etc.,’ rather than such Alarums. Better dull Woodbridge! What bothered me in London was—all the Clever People going wrong with such clever Reasons for so doing which I couldn’t confute. I will send an original Omar if I find one.
Woodbridge. October 5/76.
My dear Cowell,
. . . I bought Clemencin’s Quixote after all: but have looked little into him as yet, as I had finished my last Reading of the Don before he came . . . I fear his Notes are more than one wants about errors, or inaccuracies of Style, etc. Cervantes had some of the noble carelessness of Shakespeare, Scott, etc., as about Sancho’s stolen Dicky. [202] But why should Clemencin, and his Predecessors, decide that Cervantes changed the title of his second Part from ‘Hidalgo’ to ‘Caballero’ from negligence? Why should he not have intended the change for reasons of his own? Anyhow, they should have printed the Title as he printed it, and pointed out what they thought the oversight in a Note. This makes one think they may have altered other things also: which perhaps I shall see when I begin another Reading: which (if I live) won’t be very far off. I think I almost inspired Alfred Tennyson (who suddenly came here a Fortnight ago) to begin on the Spanish. Yes: A. T. called one day, after near twenty years’ separation, and we were in a moment as if we had been together all that while. He had his son Hallam with him: whom I liked much: unaffected and unpretentious: so attentive to his Father, with a humorous sense of his Character as well as a loving and respectful. It was good to see them together. We went one day down the Orwell and back again by Steamer: but the weather was not very propitious. Altogether, I think we were all pleased with our meeting.
To C. E. Norton.
Woodbridge. Novr. 8/76.
My dear Sir,
‘Vita Nuova’ reached me safe, and ‘siempre verde,’ untarnished by its Voyage. I am afraid I liked your account of it more than itself: I mean, I was more interested: I suppose it is too mystical for me. So I felt when I tried to read it in the original twenty years ago: and I fear I must despair of relishing it as I ought now I have your Version of it, which, it seems to me, must be so good. I don’t think you needed to bring in Rossetti, still less Theodore Martin, to bear Witness, or to put your Work in any other Light than its own.
After once more going through my Don Quixote (‘siempre verde’ too, if ever Book was), I returned to another of the Evergreens, Boccaccio, which I found by a Pencil mark at the Volume’s end I had last read on board the little Ship I then had, nine years ago. And I have shut out the accursed ‘Eastern Question’ by reading the Stories, as the ‘lieta Brigata’ shut out the Plague by telling them. Perhaps Mr. Lowell will give us Boccaccio one day, and Cervantes? And many more, whom Ste. Beuve has left to be done by him. I fancy Boccaccio must be read in his Italian, as Cervantes in his Spanish: the Language fitting either ‘like a Glove’ as we say. Boccaccio’s Humour in his Country People, Friars, Scolds, etc., is capital: as well, of course, as the easy Grace and Tenderness of other Parts. One thinks that no one who had well read him and Don Quixote would ever write with a strain again, as is the curse of nearly all modern Literature. I know that ‘Easy Writing is d---d hard Reading.’ Of course the Man must be a Man of Genius to take his Ease: but, if he be, let him take it. I suppose that such as Dante, and Milton, and my Daddy, took it far from easy: well, they dwell apart in the Empyrean; but for Human Delight, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Boccaccio, and Scott!
Tennyson (a Man of Genius, who, I think, has crippled his growth by over-elaboration) came suddenly upon me here six weeks ago: and, many years as it was since we had met, there seemed not a Day’s Interval between. He looked very well; and very happy; having with him his eldest Son, a very nice Fellow, who took all care of ‘Papa,’ as I was glad to hear him say, not ‘Governor’ as the Phrase now is. One Evening he was in a Stew because of some nasty Paragraph in a Newspaper about his not allowing Mr. Longfellow to quote from his Poems. And he wrote a Note to Mr. L. at once in this room, and his Son carried it off to the Post that same Night, just in time. So my House is so far become a Palace, being the Place of a Despatch from one Poet to the other, all over that Atlantic!
We never had the trees in Leaf so long as this Year: they are only just rusty before my window, this Nov. 8. So I thought they would die of mere Old Age: but last night came a Frost, which will hasten their End. I suppose yours have been dying in all their Glory as usual.
You must understand that this Letter is to acknowledge the Vita Nuova (which, by the by, I think ought to be the Title on the Title page as well as outside), so do not feel obliged to reply, but believe me yours truly,
E. F. G.
To Miss Anna Biddell.
Woodbridge.
Saturday, Nov. 76.
. . . You spoke once of even trying Walpole’s Letters; capital as they are to me, I can’t be sure they would much interest, even if they did not rather disgust, you: the Man and his Times are such as you might not care for at all, though there are such men as his, and such Times too, in the world about us now. If you will have the Book on your return home, I will send you a three-volume Collection of his Letters: that is, not a Third part of all his collected Letters: but perhaps the best part, and quite enough for a Beginning. I can scarce imagine better Christmas fare: but I can’t, I say, guess how you would relish it. N.B. It is not gross or coarse: but you would not like the man, so satirical, selfish, and frivolous, you would think. But I think I could show you that he had a very loving Heart for a few, and a very firm, just, understanding under all his Wit and Fun. Even Carlyle has admitted that he was about the clearest-sighted Man of his time.
To John Allen.
Lowestoft. Decr. 9/76.
My dear Allen,
It was stupid of me not to tell you that I did not want Contemporary back. It had been sent me by Tennyson or his son Hallam (for I can’t distinguish their MS. now), that I might see that A. S. Battle fragment: [206] which is remarkable in its way, I doubt not. I see by the Athenæum that A. T. is bringing out another Poem—another Drama, I think—as indeed he hinted to me during his flying visit to Woodbridge. He should rest on his Oars, or ship them for good now, I think: and I was audacious to tell him as much. But he has so many Worshippers who tell him otherwise. I think he might have stopped after 1842, leaving Princesses, Ardens, Idylls, etc., all unborn; all except The Northern Farmer, which makes me cry. . . .
I dare say there are many as good, if not better, Arctic accounts than ‘Under the Northern Lights,’ but it was pleasant as read out to me by the rather intelligent Lad who now serves me with Eyes for two hours of a Night at Woodbridge. . . . I am, you see at old Quarters: but am soon returning to Woodbridge to make some Christmas Arrangements. Will Peace and Good Will be our Song this year? Pray that it be so.
To Miss Thackeray.
Little
Grange, Woodbridge.
Decr. 12, 1876.
Dear Annie Thackeray,
Messrs. Smith and Elder very politely gave me leave to print, and may be publish, three Stanzas of your Father’s ‘Ho, pretty Page,’ adapted (under proper direction) to an old Cambridge Tune, which he and I have sung together, tho’ not to these fine Words, as you may guess. I asked this of Messrs. Smith and Elder, because I thought they had the Copyright. But I did not mean to publish them unless with your Approval: only to print a few Copies for friends. And I will stop even that, if you don’t choose. Please to tell me in half a dozen words as directly as you can.
The Words, you know, are so delightful (stanzas one, two, and the last), and the old Tune of ‘Troll, troll, the bonny brown Bowl’ so pretty, and (with some addition) so appropriate, I think, that I fancied others beside Friends might like to have them together. But, if you don’t approve, the whole thing shall be quashed. Which I ought to have asked before: but I thought your Publishers’ sanction might include yours. Please, I say, to say Yes or No as soon as you can.
I have been reading the two Series of ‘Hours in a Library’ with real delight. Some of them I had read before in Cornhill, but all together now: delighted, I say, to find all I can so heartily concur and believe in put into a shape that I could not have wrought out for myself. I think I could have suggested a very little about Crabbe, in whom I am very much up: and one word about Clarissa. [208] But God send me many more Hours in a Library in which I may shut myself up from this accursed East among other things.
To C. E. Norton.
Little
Grange, Woodbridge.
Dec. 22/76.
[Post mark Dec. 21.]
My dear Sir,
. . . In the last Atlantic Monthly was, as you know, an Ode by Mr. Lowell; lofty in Thought and Expression: too uniformly lofty, I think, for Ode. Do you, would Mr. Lowell, agree? I should not say so, did I not admire the work very much. You are very good to speak of sending me his new Volume: but why should you? My old Athenæum will tell me of it here, and I will be sure to get it.
You see --- has come out with another Heroic Poem! And the Athenæum talks of it as a Great Work, etc., with (it seems to me) the false Gallop in all the Quotations. It seems to me strange that ---, ---, and ---, should go on pouring out Poem after Poem, as if such haste could prosper with any but First-rate Men: and I suppose they hardly reckon themselves with the very First. I feel sure that Gray’s Elegy, pieced and patched together so laboriously, by a Man of almost as little Genius as abundant Taste, will outlive all these hasty Abortions. And yet there are plenty of faults in that Elegy too, resulting from the very Elaboration which yet makes it live. So I think.
I have been reading with real satisfaction, and delight, Mr. L. Stephen’s Hours in a Library: only, as I have told his Sister in law, I should have liked to put in a word or two for Crabbe. I think I could furnish L. S. with many Epigrams, of a very subtle sort, from Crabbe: and several paragraphs, if not pages, of comic humour as light as Molière. Both which L. S. seems to doubt in what he calls ‘our excellent Crabbe,’ who was not so ‘excellent’ (in the goody sense) as L. S. seems to intimate. But then Crabbe is my Great Gun. He will outlive ---, --- and Co. in spite of his Carelessness. So think I again.
His Son, Vicar of a Parish near here, and very like the Father in face, was a great Friend of mine. He detested Poetry (sc. verse), and I believe had never read his Father through till some twenty years ago when I lent him the Book. Yet I used to tell him he threw out sparks now and then. As one day when we were talking of some Squires who cut down Trees (which all magnanimous Men respect and love), my old Vicar cried out ‘How scandalously they misuse the Globe!’ He was a very noble, courageous, generous Man, and worshipped his Father in his way. I always thought I could hear this Son in that fine passage which closes the Tales of the Hall, when the Elder Brother surprises the Younger by the gift of that House and Domain which are to keep them close Neighbours for ever.
Here on that lawn your Boys and Girls shall run,
And gambol, when the daily task is done;
From yonder Window shall their Mother view
The happy tribe, and smile at all they do:
While you, more gravely hiding your Delight,
Shall cry—‘O, childish!’—and enjoy the Sight.
By way of pendant to this, pray read the concluding lines of the long, ill-told, Story of ‘Smugglers and Poachers.’ Or shall I fill up my Letter with them? This is a sad Picture to match that sunny one.
As men may children at their sports behold,
And smile to see them, tho’ unmoved and cold,
Smile at the recollected Games, and then
Depart, and mix in the Affairs of men;
So Rachel looks upon the World, and sees
It can no longer pain, no longer please:
But just detain the passing Thought; just cause
A little smile of Pity, or Applause—
And then the recollected Soul repairs
Her slumbering Hope, and heeds her own Affairs.
I wish some American Publisher would publish my Edition of Tales of the Hall, edited by means of Scissors and Paste, with a few words of plain Prose to bridge over whole tracts of bad Verse; not meaning to improve the original, but to seduce hasty Readers to study it.
What a Letter, my dear Sir! But you encourage me to tattle over the Atlantic by your not feeling bound to answer. You are a busy man, and I quite an idle one, but yours sincerely,
E. FitzGerald.
Carlyle’s Niece writes me that he is ‘fairly well.’
Ecce iterum! That mention of Crabbe reminds me of meeting two American Gentlemen at an Inn in Lichfield, some thirty years ago. One of them was unwell, or feeble, and the other tended him very tenderly: and both were very gentlemanly and well-read. They had come to see the English Cathedrals, and spoke together (it was in the common Room) of Places and Names I knew very well. So that I took the Liberty of telling them something of some matters they were speaking of. Among others, this very Crabbe: and I told them, if ever they came Suffolk way, I would introduce them to the Poet’s son. I suppose I gave them my Address: but I had to go away next morning before they were down: and never heard of them again.
I sometimes wonder if this eternal Crabbe is relished in America (I am not looking to my Edition, which would be a hopeless loss anywhere): he certainly is little read in his own Country. And I fancy America likes more abstract matter than Crabbe’s homespun. Excuse Ætat. 68.
Yes, ‘Gillies arise! etc.’ But I remember one who used to say he never got farther with another of the Daddy’s Sonnets than—
Clarkson! It was an obstinate hill to climb, etc.
English Sonnets, like English Terza Rima, want, I think, the double rhyme.
To S. Laurence.
Woodbridge. Jan. 15/77.
My dear Laurence,
Then I sent you the Greek instead of the Persian whom you asked for? The two are the same size and binding: so of course I sent the wrong one. But I will send the right one directly: and you need not make a trouble of acknowledging it: I know you will thank me, and I think you will feel a sort of ‘triste Plaisir’ in it, as others beside myself have felt. It is a desperate sort of thing, unfortunately at the bottom of all thinking men’s minds; but made Music of. . . . I shall soon be going to old ugly Lowestoft again to be with Nephews and Nieces. The Great Man . . . is yet there: commanding a Crew of those who prefer being his Men to having command of their own. And they are right; for the man is Royal, tho’ with the faults of ancient Vikings. . . . His Glory is somewhat marred; but he looks every inch a King in his Lugger now. At home (when he is there, and not at the Tavern) he sits among his Dogs, Cats, Birds, etc., always with a great Dog following abroad, and aboard. This is altogether the Greatest Man I have known.
To C. E. Norton.
Woodbridge. February 1/77.
My dear Sir,
I really only write now to prevent your doing so in acknowledgment of Thackeray’s Song [213] which I sent you, and you perhaps knew the handwriting of the Address. Pray don’t write about such a thing, so soon after the very kind Letter I have just had from you. Why I sent you the Song I can hardly tell, not knowing if you care for Thackeray or Music: but that must be as it is; only, do not, pray, write expressly about it.
The Song is what it pretends to be: the words speak for themselves; very beautiful, I think: the Tune is one which Thackeray and I knew at College, belonging to some rather free Cavalier words,
Troll, troll, the bonny brown Bowl,
with four bars interpolated to let in the Page. I have so sung it (without a Voice) to myself these dozen years, since his Death, and so I have got the words decently arranged, in case others should like them as well as myself. Voilà tout!
I thought, after I had written my last, that I ought not to have said anything of an American Publisher of Crabbe, as it might (as it has done) set you on thinking how to provide one for me. I spoke of America, knowing that no one in England would do such a thing, and not knowing if Crabbe were more read in your Country than in his own. Some years ago I got some one to ask Murray if he would publish a Selection from all Crabbe’s Poems: as has been done of Wordsworth and others. But Murray (to whom Crabbe’s collected Works have always been a loss) would not meddle. . . . You shall one day see my ‘Tales of the Hall,’ when I can get it decently arranged, and written out (what is to be written), and then you shall judge of what chance it has of success. I want neither any profit, whether of money, or reputation: I only want to have Crabbe read more than he is. Women and young People never will like him, I think: but I believe every thinking man will like him more as he grows older; see if this be not so with yourself and your friends. Your Mother’s Recollection of him is, I am sure, the just one: Crabbe never showed himself in Company, unless to a very close and experienced observer: his Company manner was exactly the reverse of his Books: almost, as Moore says, ‘doucereux’; the apologetic politeness of the old School over-done, as by one who was not born to it. But Campbell observed his ‘shrewd Vigilance’ awake under all his ‘politesse,’ and John Murray said that Crabbe said uncommon things in so common a way that they escaped recognition. It appears, I think, that he not only said, but wrote, such things: even to such Readers as Mr. Stephen; who can see very little Humour, and no Epigram, in him. I will engage to find plenty of both. I think Mr. Stephen could hardly have read the later Books: viz., Tales of the Hall, and the Posthumous Poems: which, though careless and incomplete, contain Crabbe’s most mature Self, I think. Enough of him for the present: and altogether enough, unless I wish to become a ‘seccatore’ by my repeated, long, letters. . . .
Mr. Lowell was good enough to send me his Odes, and I have written to acknowledge them with many thanks and a few observations, not meant to instruct such a Man, but just to show that I had read with Attention, as I did. I think I had much the same to say of them as I said to you: and so I won’t say it again. I think it is a mistake to rely on the reading, or recitation, for an Effect which ought to speak for itself in any capable Reader’s Head. Tennyson, with the grand Voice he had (I fancy it is somewhat weakened now) could make sonorous music of such a beginning to an Ode as
Bury the Great Duke!
The Thought is simple and massy enough: but where is a Vowel? Dryden opened better:
’Twās at the rōyal Feast o’er Persia won.
But Mr. Lowell’s Odes, which do not fail in the Vowel, are noble in Thought, with a good Organ roll in the music, which perhaps he thinks more fitted to Subject and occasion.
To Mrs. Cowell.
12 Marine
Terrace, Lowestoft.
March 11/77.
. . . I scarce like your taking any pains about my Works, whether in Verse, Prose, or Music. I never see any Paper but my old Athenæum, which, by the way, now tells me of some Lady’s Edition of Omar which is to discover all my Errors and Perversions. So this will very likely turn the little Wind that blew my little Skiff on. Or the Critic who incautiously helped that may avenge himself on Agamemnon King, as he pleases. If the Pall Mall Critic knew Greek, I am rather surprised he should have vouchsafed even so much praise as the words you quoted. But I certainly have found that those few whom I meant it for, not Greek scholars, have been more interested in it than I expected. Not you, I think, who, though you judge only too favourably of all I do, are not fond of such Subjects.
I have here two Volumes of my dear Sévigné’s Letters lately discovered at Dijon; and I am writing out for my own use a Dictionary of the Dramatis Persons figuring in her Correspondence, whom I am always forgetting and confounding.
* * * * *
In May 1877 his old boatman West died and FitzGerald wrote to Professor Cowell, ‘I have not had heart to go on our river since the death of my old Companion West, with whom I had traversed reach after reach for these dozen years. I am almost as averse to them now as Peter Grimes. [217] So now I content myself with the River Side.’
To W. A. Wright.
Little
Grange, Woodbridge.
June 23/77.
My dear Wright,
. . . I have been regaling myself, in my unscholarly way, with Mr. Munro’s admirable Lucretius. Surely, it must be one of the most admirable Editions of a Classic ever made! I don’t understand the Latin punctuation, but I dare say there is good reason for it. The English Translation reads very fine to me: I think I should have thought so independent of the original: all except the dry theoretic System, which I must say I do all but skip in the Latin. Yet I venerate the earnestness of the man, and the power with which he makes some music even from his hardest Atoms; a very different Didactic from Virgil, whose Georgics, quoad Georgics, are what every man, woman, and child, must have known; but, his Teaching apart, no one loves him better than I do. I forget if Lucretius is in Dante: he should have been the Guide thro’ Hell: but perhaps he was too deep in it to get out for a Holiday. That is a very noble Poussin Landscape, v. 1370-8 ‘Inque dies magis, etc.’
I had always observed that mournful ‘Nequicquam’ which comes to throw cold water on us after a little glow of Hope. When Tennyson went with me to Harwich, I was pointing out an old Collier rolling by to the tune of
Trudit agens magnam magno molimine navem. [iv. 902.]
That word ‘Magnus’ rules in Lucretius as much as ‘Nequicquam.’ I was rejoiced to meet Tennyson quoted in the notes too, and my old Montaigne who discourses so on the text of
Pascit amore avidos inhians in te, Dea, visus. [i. 36.]
Ask Mr. Munro, when he reprints, to quote old Montaigne’s Version of
Nam veræ voces tum demum, etc. [iii. 57.]
‘A ce dernier rolle de la Mort, et de nous, il n’y a plus que feindre, il faut parler Français; il faut montrer ce qu’il y a de bon et de net dans le fond du pot.’ [219a] And tell him (damn my impudence!) I don’t like my old Fathers ‘dancing’ under the yellow and ferruginous awnings. [219b] . . .
There is a coincidence with Bacon in verses 1026-9 of Book ii. (Lucretius, I mean).
To John Allen.
My dear Archdeacon,
I have little else to send you in reply to your letter (which I believe however was in reply to one of mine) except the enclosed from Notes and Queries: which I think you will like to read, and to return to me.
I think I will send you (when I can lay hand on it) two volumes of some one’s Memorials of Wesley’s Family: which you can look over, if you do not read, and return to me also. I wonder at your writing to me that I gave you his Journal so long as thirty years ago. I scarce knew that I was so constant in my Affections: and yet I think I do not change in literary cases. Pray read Southey’s Life of him again: it does not tell all, I think, which might be told of Wesley’s own character from his own Mouth: but then it errs on the right side: it does not presumptuously guess at Qualities and Motives which are not to be found in Wesley: unlike Carlyle and the modern Historians, Southey, I think, cannot be wrong by keeping so much within the bounds of Conjecture: Conjecture about any other Man’s Soul and Motives!
To FitzEdward Hall. [220a]
Woodbridge: June 24 [1877].
My dear Sir,
I have run through your Ability [220b] again, since I sent it to Wright: but as I before said (I believe) am not a competent Critic. I know that I coincide (unless I misconstrue) with your Canons laid down at pp. 162, etc. I am for all words that are smooth, or strong, (as the meaning requires) which have proved their worth by general admission into the Language. ‘Reliable’ is, what ‘trustworthy’ is not, good current coin for general use, though ‘trustworthy’ may be good too for occasional emphasis.
I remember old Hudson Gurney cavilling a little at ‘realize’ as I innocently used the word in a Memoir of my old Bernard Barton near thirty years ago: this word I have also seen branded as American; let America furnish us with more such words; better than what our ‘old English’ pedants supply, with their ‘Fore-word’ for ‘Preface,’ ‘Folk-lore,’ and other such conglomerate consonants. Odd, that a Lawyer (Sugden) should have lubricated ‘Hand-book’ by a sort of Persian process into ‘Handy-book’!
I remember, years ago, thinking I must rebel against English by using ‘impitiable’ for ‘incapable of Pity.’ Yet I suppose that, according to Alford & Co., I was justified, though ‘pitiable’ is, I think always used of the thing pitied, not the Pitier. But I should defer to customary usage rather than to any particular whim of my own; only that it happened to come handy at the time, and I did not, and do not, much care.
But is not usage against your use of ‘imitable’ at p. 100, meaning what ought not, not what cannot, be imitated? ‘Non imitabile fulmen,’ etc., and, negatively, ‘inimitable’?
‘Vengeable’ with its host of Authorities surprised, and gratified, me.
Johnson, you say (p. 34) called ‘uncomeatable’ a low corrupt word: rather, as you well say, ‘a permissible colloquialism.’ Yes; like old Johnson’s own ‘Clubable’ by which he designated some Good sociable Fellow.
‘Party’ has good Authority (from Shakespeare himself, as we know), and is a handy word we ought not to dismiss: better than the d---d ‘Individual’ which should only be used in philosophic or scientific discrimination. Still, Crabbe, in his fine Opium-inspired ‘World of Dreams’ should not recall his beloved as ‘that dear Party.’
Other adjectives beside those that ‘exit in able’ are cavilled at. ‘Fadeless’; what is ‘a Fade’? Why not ‘unfading’? Yet there is a difference between what has not as yet faded, and what cannot fade. And I shall become very ‘tiresome,’ though I don’t know of any ‘tire’ but of a Waggon wheel; and remain yours truly.
E. FitzGerald.
To C. E. Norton.
Woodbridge. August 21/77.
My dear Sir,
You have doubtless heard from Mr. Lowell since he got to Spain: he may have mentioned that unaccomplished visit to me which he was to have undertaken at your Desire. I doubt the two letters I wrote to be given him in London (through Quaritch) did not reach him: only the first which said my house was full of Nieces, so as I must lodge him (as I did our Laureate) at the Inn: but the second Letter was to say that I had Houseroom, and would meet him at the Train any day and hour. He wrote to me the day before he left for Paris to say that he had never intended to do more than just run down for the Day, shake hands, and away! That I had an Instinct against: that one half-day’s meeting of two Septuagenarians (I believe), to see one another’s face for that once, ‘But here, upon that Bank and Shoal of Time and’ then, ‘jump the Life to come’ as well as the Life before. No: I say I am glad he did not do that: but I had my house all ready to entertain him as best I could; and had even planned a little Visit to our neighbouring Coast, where are the Village remains of a once large Town devoured by the Sea: and, yet undevoured (except by Henry VIII.), the grey walls of a Grey Friars’ Priory, beside which they used to walk, under such Sunsets as illumine them still. This pathetic Ruin, still remaining by the Sea, would (I feel sure) have been more to one from the New Atlantis than all London can show: but I should have liked better had Mr. Lowell seen it on returning to America, rather than going to Spain, where the yet older and more splendid Moors would soon have effaced the memory of our poor Dunwich. If you have a Map of England, look for it on the Eastern Coast. If Mr. Lowell should return this way, and return in the proper Season for such cold Climate as ours, he shall see it: and so shall you, if you will, under like conditions; including a reasonable and available degree of Health in myself to do the honours. . . .
I live down in such a Corner of this little Country that I see scarce any one but my Woodbridge Fellow-townsmen, and learn but little from such Friends as could tell me of the World beyond. But the English do not generally love Letter writing: and very few of us like it the more as we get older. So I have but little to say that deserves an Answer from you: but please to write me a little: a word about Mr. Lowell, whom you have doubtless heard from. [One politeness I had prepared for him here was, to show him some sentences in his Books which I did not like!] Which also leads me to say that some one sent me a number of your American ‘Nation’ with a Review of my redoubtable Agamemnon: written by a superior hand, and, I think, quite discriminating in its distribution of Blame and Praise: though I will not say the Praise was not more than deserved; but it was where deserved, I think.
To J. R. Lowell. [224]
Woodbridge. August 26/77.
My dear Sir,
I ought scarce to trouble you amid your diplomatic cares and dignities. But I will, so far as to say I hope you had my second letter before you left London: saying that my house was emptied of Nieces, and I was ready to receive you for as long as you would. Indeed, I chiefly flinched at the thought of your taking the trouble to come down only for a Day: which means, less than half a Day: a sort of meeting that seems a mockery in the lives of two men, one of whom I know by Register to be close on Seventy. I do indeed deprecate any one coming down out of his way: but, if he come, I would rather he did so for such time as would allow of some palpable Acquaintance. And I meant to take you to no other sight than the bare grey walls of an old Grey Friars’ Priory near the Sea; and I proposed to make myself further agreeable by showing you three or two passages in your Books that I do not like amid all the rest which I like so much: and had even meant to give you a very small thirty year old Dialogue of my own, which one of your ‘Study Windows’ reminded me of. All this I meant; and, any how, wrote to say that I and my house were ready. And there is enough of the matter. You are busied with other and greater things. Nor must you think yourself called on to answer this letter at all.
When you were to start for Spain, I was thinking what a hot time of it you would have there: in Madrid too, I suppose, worst of all, I have heard. But you have Titian and Velasquez to refresh you. Cervantes too is not far. We have here (some two or three years old) a Book ‘Untrodden Spain’; unaffectedly and pleasantly written by some Clergyman, Rose, who lived chiefly among the mining folk. But there is a Chapter in Vol. 2 entitled ‘[El] Pajaro,’ and giving account of a day’s sport with [Pedro the Barber] who carries a Decoy Bird, which is as another Chapter to Don Quixote. Ah! I look at him on my Shelf, and know that I can take him down when I will, and that I shall do so many a time before 1878 if I live. . . .
Tell me something of the Spanish Drama, Lope, or Calderon. I think you could get one acted by Virtue of your Office.
Woodbridge. [October, 1877.]
My dear Sir—(which I will exchange for your own name if you will set me Example).
You see I write to you; but do not expect any answer from the midst of all your Business. But I have lately been re-reading—(at that same old Dunwich, too)—those Essays of yours on which you wished to see my ‘Adversaria.’ These are too few and insignificant to specify by Letter: when you return to English-speaking World, you shall, if you please, see my Copy, or Copies, marked with a Query at such places as I stumbled at. Were not the whole so really admirable, both in Thought and Diction, I should not stumble at such Straws; such Straws as you can easily blow away if you should ever care to do so. Only, pray understand (what I really mean) that, in all my remarks, I do not pretend to the level of an original Writer like yourself: only as a Reader of Taste, which is a very different thing you know, however useful now and then in the Service of Genius. I am accredited with the Aphorism, ‘Taste is the Feminine of Genius.’ However that may be, I have some confidence in my own. And, as I have read these Essays of yours more than once and again, and with increasing Satisfaction, so I believe will other men long after me; not as Literary Essays only, but comprehending very much beside of Human and Divine, all treated with such a very full and universal Faculty, both in Thought and Word, that I really do not know where to match in any work of the kind. I could make comparisons with the best: but I don’t like comparisons. But I think your Work will last, as I think of very few Books indeed. You are yet two good years from sixty (Mr. Norton tells me), and have yet at least a dozen more of Dryden’s later harvest: pray make good use of it: Cervantes, at any rate, I think to live to read, though one of your great merits is, not being in a hurry: and so your work completes itself. But I nearer seventy than you sixty. . . .
You should get Dryden’s Prefaces published separately in America, with your own remarks on them, and also Johnson’s very fine praise: in which he praises Dryden for those unexpected turns in which he himself is so deficient. But pray love old Johnson, a little more than I think you do. We have, you may know, a rather clumsy Edition of this Dryden Prose in four 8vo volumes by Malone; the first volume all Life and a few Letters. I have bought some three or four Copies of this work, more or less worse for wear, to give away: one extra Copy, much the worse for wear, on a back shelf now, waiting its destination. No English Publisher, I suppose, would do this work, unless under some great name: perhaps under yours, if your own Country were not the fitter place. As in the case of your Essays, I don’t pretend to say which is finest: but I think that to me Dryden’s Prose, quoad Prose, is the finest Style of all. So Gray, I believe, thought: that man of Taste, very far removed, perhaps as far as feminine from masculine, from the Man he admired.
Your Wordsworth should introduce any future Edition of him, as I think some of Ste. Beuve’s Essays do some of his men. He rarely, you know, gets beyond French.
Now, as I see my Paper draws short, I turn from your Works to those of ‘The Great Twalmley,’ viz.: the Dialogue I mentioned, and you ask for. I really got it out: but, on reading it again after many years, was so much disappointed even in the little I expected that I won’t send it to you, or any one more. It is only eighty 12 mo pages, and about twenty too long, and the rest over-pointed (Oh Cervantes!), and all somewhat antiquated. But the Form of it is pretty: and the little Narrative part: and one day I may strike out, etc., and make you a present of a pretty Toy. But it won’t do now.
I have at last bid Adieu to poor old Dunwich: the Robin singing in the Ivy that hangs on those old Priory walls. A month ago I wrote to ask Carlyle’s Niece about her Uncle, and telling her of this Priory, and how her Uncle would once have called me Dilettante; all which she read him; he only said ‘Poor, Poor old Priory!’ She says he is very well, and abusing V. Hugo’s ‘Misérables.’ I have been reading his Cromwell, and not abusing it. You tell all the Truth about him.
To C. E. Norton.
Woodbridge. October 28/77.
My dear Sir (‘Norton’ I will write in my next if you will anticipate me by a reciprocal Familiarity).
I wish I had some English Life, Woodbridge, or other, to send you: but Woodbridge, I sometimes say, is as Pompeii, in that respect; and I know little of the World beyond but what a stray Newspaper tells me. So I must get back to my Friends on the Shelf.
Thence I lately took down Mr. Lowell’s (I have proposed to un-mister him too), Lowell’s Essays, and carried them with me to that old Dunwich, which I suppose I shall see no more this year. Robin Redbreast—have you him?—was piping in the Ivy along the Walls; and, under them, Blackberries ripening from stems which those old Grey Friars picked from. And I had the Essays abroad, and within doors; and marked with a Query some words, or sentences, which I stumbled at: which I should not have stumbled at had all the rest not been such capital Reading. I really believe I know not, on the whole, any such Essays, of that kind: and that a very comprehensive kind, both in Subject, and Treatment. I think he settles many Questions that every one discusses: and on which a Final Verdict is what we now want. I believe the Books will endure: and that is why I want a few blemishes, as I presume to think them, removed: and the Author is to see my Pencil marks, when he returns to England, or to her ‘Gigantic Daughter of the West.’ I hope he will live to write many more such Books: Cervantes, first of all!
I have also been reading Carlyle’s Cromwell: which I think will last also, and so carry along with it many of his more perishable tirades. I don’t know indeed if his is the Final Verdict on Oliver: or on so many of the subordinate Characters whom he sketches in so confidently. A shrewd Man is he; but it is not so easy to judge of men by a few stray hints of them in Books. A quaint instance of this Carlyle himself supplied me with, in his total misapprehension of his hitherto unseen Correspondent ‘Squire,’ who burned the Cromwell Diary. I was the intelligent Friend who interviewed Squire; as unlike as might be in Age, Person, and Character, to the Man Carlyle had prefigured from his Letters. One day I will send you the little Correspondence between T. C. and his intelligent Friend, as rather a Curiosity in Historical Acumen.