Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume I Part 27

MY DEAR LADY,

. . . If you see Trench's new Book about Calderon {308c} you will see he has dealt very handsomely with me. He does not approve the Principle I went on; and what has he made of his own! I say this with every reason, as you will see, to praise him for his good word. He seems to me wrong about his 'asonantes,' which were much better _un_-a.s.sonanted as Cowell did his Specimens. {309} With Trench the Language has to be forced to secure the shadow of a Rhyme which is no pleasure to the Ear. So it seems to me on a hasty Look.

Mr. Cowell was appointed Professor of History at the Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1856, and went out to India by the Cape in August, greatly to FitzGerald's regret. 'Your talk of going to India,' he wrote, 'makes my Heart hang really heavy at my side.'

_To E. B. Cowell_.

31 GT PORTLAND ST. LONDON.

_Jan._ 22/57.

MY DEAREST COWELL,

As usual I blunder. I have been taking for granted all this while that of course we could not write to you till you had written to us! Else how several times I could have written! could have sent you some Lines of Hafiz or Jami or Nizami that I thought wanted Comment of some kind: so as the Atlantic should have been no greater Bar between us than the two hours rail to Oxford. And now I have forgot many things, or have left the Books scattered in divers places; or, if I had all here, 'twould be too much to send. So I must e'en take up with what the present Hour turns up.

It was only yesterday I heard from your Brother of a Letter from you, telling of your safe Arrival; of the Dark Faces about you at your Calcutta Caravanserai! Methinks how I should like to be there! Perhaps should not, though, were the Journey only half its length! Write to me one day. . . .

I have now been five weeks alone at my old Lodgings in London where you came this time last year! My wife in Norfolk. She came up yesterday; and we have taken Lodgings for two months in the Regent's Park. And I positively stay behind here in the old Place on purpose to write to you in the same condition you knew me in and I you! I believe there are new Channels fretted in my Cheeks with many unmanly Tears since then, 'remembering the Days that are no more,' in which you two are so mixt up.

Well, well; I have no news to tell you. Public Matters you know I don't meddle with; and I have seen scarce any Friends even while in London here. Carlyle but once; Thackeray not once; Spedding and Donne pretty often. Spedding's first volume of Bacon is out; some seven hundred pages; and the Reviews already begin to think it over-commentaried. How interested would you be in it! and from you I should get a good Judgment, which perhaps I can't make for myself. I hear Tennyson goes on with King Arthur; but I have not seen or heard from him for a long long while.

Oddly enough, as I finished the last sentence, Thackeray was announced; he came in looking gray, grand, and good-humoured; and I held up this Letter and told him whom it was written to and he sends his Love! He goes Lecturing all over England; has fifty pounds for each Lecture: and says he is ashamed of the Fortune he is making. But he deserves it.

And now for my poor Studies. I have read really very little except Persian since you went: and yet, from want of Eyes, not very much of that. I have gone carefully over two-thirds of Hafiz again with Dictionary and Von Hammer: and gone on with Jami and Nizami. But my great Performance all lies in the last five weeks since I have been alone here; when I wrote to Napoleon Newton to ask him to lend me his MS. of Attar's Mantic uttair; and, with the help of Garcin de Ta.s.sy {311} have nearly made out about two-thirds of it. For it has greatly interested me, though I confess it is always an old Story. The Germans make a Fuss about the Sufi Doctrine; but, as far as I understand, it is not very abstruse Pantheism, and always the same. One becomes as wearied of the _man-i_ and _du-i_ in their Philosophy as of the _bulbul_, etc., in their Songs. Attar's Doctrine seems to me only Jami and Jelaleddin (of whom I have poked out a little from the MS. you bought for me), but his Mantic has, like Salaman, the advantage of having a Story to hang all upon; and some of his ill.u.s.trative Stories are very agreeable: better than any of the others I have seen. He has not so much Fancy or Imagination as Jami, nor I dare say, so much depth as Jelaleddin; but his touch is lighter. I mean to make a Poetic Abstract of the Mantic, I think: neither De Ta.s.sy nor Von Hammer {312} gives these Stories which are by far the best part, though there are so many childish and silly ones. Shah Mahmud figures in the best. I am very pleased at having got on so well with this MS.

though I doubt at more cost of Eyesight than it is worth. I have exchanged several Letters with Mr. Newton, though by various mischances we have not yet met; he has however introduced me to Mr. Dowson of the Asiatic, with whom, or with a certain Seyd Abdullah recommended by Allen, I mean (I think) to read a little. No need of this had you remained behind! Oh! how I should like to read the Mantic with you! It is very easy in the main. But I believe I shall never see you again; I really do believe that. And my Paper is gradually overcome as I write this: and I must say Good Bye. Good Bye, my dear dear Friends! I dare not meddle with Mr. and Mrs. Charlesworth. {313} Thackeray coming in overset me, with one thing and another. Farewell. Write to me; direct--whither? For till I see better how we get on I dare fix on no place to live or die in.

Direct to me at Crabbe's, Bredfield, till you hear further.

24 PORTLAND TERRACE, REGENT'S PARK.

Sat.u.r.day _January_ 23 [? 24] 1857.

MY DEAR E. B. C.,

I must write you a second Letter (which will reach you, I suppose, by the same Post as that which I posted on Thursday Jan. 22) to tell you that not half an hour after I had posted that first Letter, arrived yours! And now, to make the Coincidence stranger, your Brother Charles, who is now with us for two days, tells me that very Thursday Jan. 24 (? 22) is your Birthday! I am extremely obliged to you for your long, kind, and interesting Letter: yes, yes: I should have liked to be on the Voyage with you, and to be among the Dark People with you even now. Your Brother Charles, who came up yesterday, brought us up your Home Letter, and read it to us last night after Tea to our great Satisfaction. I believe that in my already posted Letter I have told you much that you enquire about in yours received half an hour after: of my poor Studies at all events. This morning I have been taking the Physiognomy of the 19th Birds. . . . There are, as I wrote you, very pleasant stories. One, of a Shah returning to his Capital, and his People dressing out a Welcome for him, and bringing out Presents of Gold, Jewels, etc., all which he rides past without any Notice, till, coming to the Prison, the Prisoners, by way of their Welcome, toss before him the b.l.o.o.d.y Heads and Limbs of old and recent Execution. At which the Shah for the first time stops his Horse--smiles--casts Largess among the Prisoners, etc. And when asked why he neglected all the Jewels, etc., and stopped with satisfaction at such a grim welcome as the Prisoners threw him, he says, 'The Jewels, etc., were but empty Ostentation--but those b.l.o.o.d.y Limbs prove that my Law has been executed, without which none of those Heads and Carcases would have parted Company, etc.' De Ta.s.sy notices a very agreeable Story of Mahmud and the Lad fishing: and I find another as pleasant about Mahmud consorting 'incog:' with a Bath-Stove-Keeper, who is so good a Fellow that, at last, Mahmud, making himself known, tells the Poor Man to ask what he will--a Crown, if he likes. But the poor Fellow says, 'All I ask is that the Shah will come now and then to me as I am, and here where I am; here, in this poor Place, which he has made ill.u.s.trious with his Presence, and a better Throne to me with Him, than the Throne of Both Worlds without Him, etc.' You observed perhaps in De Ta.s.sy's Summary that he notices an Eastern Form of William Tell's Apple? A Sultan doats on a beautiful Slave, who yet is seen daily to pine away under all the Shah's Favour, and being askt why, replies, 'Because every day the Shah, who is a famous Marksman with the Bow, shoots at an Apple laid on my Head, and always. .h.i.ts it; and when all the Court cries "Lo! the Fortune of the King!" He also asks me why I turn pale under the Trial, he being such a Marksman, and his Mark an Apple set on the Head he most doats upon?' I am going to transcribe on the next Page a rough draft of a Version of another Story, because all this will amuse you, I think. I couldn't help running some of these Apologues into Verse as I read them: but they are in a very rough state as yet, and so perhaps may continue, for to correct is _the_ Bore.

When Yusuf from his Father's House was torn, His Father's Heart was utterly forlorn; And, like a Pipe with but one note, his Tongue Still nothing but the name of Yusuf rung.

Then down from Heaven's Branches came the Bird Of Heaven, and said 'G.o.d wearies of that Word.

Hast thou not else to do, and else to say?'

So Yacub's Lips were sealed from that Day.

But one Night in a Vision, far away His Darling in some alien Home he saw, And stretch'd his Arms forth; and between the Awe Of G.o.d's Displeasure, and the bitter Pa.s.s Of Love and Anguish, sigh'd forth an _Alas_!

And stopp'd--But when he woke The Angel came, And said, 'Oh, faint of purpose! Though the Name Of that Beloved were not uttered by Thy Lips, it hung sequester'd in that Sigh.'

You see this is very imperfect, and I am not always quite certain of always getting the right Sow by the Ear; but it is pretty anyhow. In this, as in several other Stories, one sees the fierce vindictive Character of the Eastern Divinity and Religion: a 'jealous G.o.d' indeed!

So there is another Story of a poor Hermit, who retires into the Wilderness to be alone with G.o.d, and lives in a Tree; and there in the Branches a little Bird has a Nest, and sings so sweetly that the poor old Man's Heart is drawn to it in spite of Himself; till a Voice from Heaven calls to Him--'What are you about? You have bought _Me_ with your Prayers, etc., and I _You_ by some Largess of my Grace: and is this Bargain to be cancelled by the Piping of a little Bird?' {316} So I construe at least right or wrong. . . .

Monday Jan. 25 [? 26]. Like your Journal, you see, I spread my Letter over more than a Day. On Sat.u.r.day Night your Brother and I went to hear Thackeray lecture on George III.--very agreeable to me, though I did not think highly of the Lecture. . . . I should like to see Nizami's Shirin, though I have not yet seen enough to care for in Nizami. Get me a MS. if you can get a fair one; as also one of Attar's Birds; of which however Garcin de Ta.s.sy gives hint of publishing a Text. There might be a good Book made of about half the Text of the Original; for the Repet.i.tions are many, and the stories so many of them not wanted. What a nice Book too would be the Text of some of the best Apologues in Jami, Jelaleddin, Attar, etc., with literal Translations! . . .

I was with Borrow {317} a week ago at Donne's, and also at Yarmouth three months ago: he is well, but not yet agreed with Murray. He read me a long Translation he had made from the Turkish: which I could not admire, and his Taste becomes stranger than ever.

24 PORTLAND TERRACE, REGENT'S PARK.

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . March 12. You see I leave this Letter like an unfinished Picture; giving it a touch every now and then. Meanwhile it lies in a volume of Sir W. Ouseley's Travels. Meanwhile also I keep putting into shape some of that Mantic which however would never do to publish. For this reason; that anything like a literal Translation would be, I think, unreadable; and what I have done for amus.e.m.e.nt is not only so unliteral, but I doubt _unoriental_, in its form and expression, as would destroy the value of the Original without replacing it with anything worth reading of my own.

It has amused me however to reduce the Ma.s.s into something of an Artistic Shape. There are lots of Pa.s.sages which--how should I like to talk them over with you! Shall we ever meet again? I think not; or not in such plight, both of us, as will make Meeting what it used to be. Only to-day I have been opening dear old Salaman: the original Copy we bought and began this time three years ago at Oxford; with all my scratches of Query and Explanation in it, and the Notes from you among the Leaves. How often I think with Sorrow of my many Harshnesses and Impatiences! which are yet more of manner than Intention. My wife is sick of hearing me sing in a doleful voice the old Glee of 'When shall we Three Meet again?'

Especially the Stanza, 'Though in foreign Lands we sigh, Parcht beneath a hostile Sky, etc.' How often too I think of the grand Song written by some Scotch Lady, {318} which I sing to myself for you on Ganges Banks!

Slow spreads the Gloom my Soul desires, The Sun from India's Sh.o.r.e retires: To _Orwell's_ Bank, with temperate ray-- Home of my Youth!--he leads the Day: Oh Banks to me for ever dear, Oh Stream whose Murmur meets my Ear; Oh all my Hopes of Bliss abide Where Orwell mingles with the Tide.

The Music has come to me for these Words, little good otherwise than expressive: but there is no use sending it to India. To India! It seems to me it would be easy to get into the first great Ship and never see Land again till I saw the Mouth of the Ganges! and there live what remains of my shabby Life.

But there is no good in all such Talk. I never write to you about Politics in which you know I little meddle. . . . March 20. Why, see how the Time goes! And here has my Letter been lying in Sir W. Ouseley for the last ten days, I suppose. To-day I have been writing twenty pages of a metrical Sketch of the Mantic, for such uses as I told you of.

It is an amus.e.m.e.nt to me to take what Liberties I like with these Persians, who (as I think) are not Poets enough to frighten one from such excursions, and who really do want a little Art to shape them. I don't speak of Jelaleddin whom I know so little of (enough to show me that he is no great Artist, however), nor of Hafiz, whose _best_ is untranslatable because he is the best Musician of Words. Old Johnson {319} said the Poets were the best Preservers of a Language: for People must go to the Original to relish them. I am sure that what Tennyson said to you is true: that Hafiz is the most Eastern--or, he should have said, most _Persian_--of the Persians. He is the best representative of their character, whether his Saki and Wine be real or mystical. Their Religion and Philosophy is soon seen through, and always seems to me _cuckooed_ over like a borrowed thing, which people, once having got, don't know how to parade enough. To be sure, their Roses and Nightingales are repeated enough; but Hafiz and old Omar Khayyam ring like true Metal. The Philosophy of the Latter is, alas!, one that never fails in the World. 'To-day is ours, etc.'

While I think of it, why is the Sea {320} (in that Apologue of Attar once quoted by Falconer) supposed to have lost G.o.d? Did the Persians agree with something I remember in Plato about the Sea and all in it being of an inferior Nature, in spite of Homer's 'divine Ocean, etc.' And here I come to the end of my sheet, which you will hardly get through, I think.

I scarce dare to think of reading it over. But I will try.

24 PORTLAND TERRACE, REGENT'S PARK.

_March_ 29, [1857].

MY DEAR COWELL,

I only posted my last long letter four days ago: and how far shall I get with this? Like the other, I keep it in Sir W. Ouseley, and note down a bit now and then. When the time for the Mail comes, the sheet shall go whether full or not. I had a letter from your Mother telling me she had heard from you--all well--but the Heats increasing. I suppose the Crocuses we see even in these poor little Gardens hereabout would wither in a Glance of your Sun. Now the black Trees in the Regent's Park opposite are beginning to show green Buds; and Men come by with great Baskets of Flowers; Primroses, Hepaticas, Crocuses, great Daisies, etc., calling as they go, 'Growing, Growing, Growing! All the Glory going!' So my wife says she has heard them call: some old Street cry, no doubt, of which we have so few now remaining. It will almost make you smell them all the way from Calcutta. 'All the Glory going!' What has put me upon beginning with this Sheet so soon is, that, (having done my Will for the present with the Mantic--one reason being that I am afraid to meddle more with N. Newton's tender MS., and another reason that I now lay by what I have sketched out so as to happen on it again one day with fresh eyes)--I say, this being shelved, I took up old Hafiz again, and began with him where I left off in November at Brighton. And this morning came to an ode we did together this time two years ago when you were at Spiers' in Oxford. . . . How it brought all back to me! Oriel opposite, and the Militia in Broad Street, and the old Canary-coloured Sofa and the Cocoa or Tea on the Table! . . .

I should think Bramford begins to look pretty about this time, hey, Mr.

Cowell? And Mrs. Cowell? There is a house there constantly advertised to let in the Papers. I think that one by the Mill; not the pleasant place where _Trygaeus_ {322} looked forth on the Rail! 'The Days are gone when Beauty bright, etc.' . . .

Spedding has been once here in near three months. His Bacon keeps coming out: his part, the Letters, etc., of Bacon, is not come yet; so it remains to be seen what he will do then: but I can't help thinking he has let the Pot boil too long. Well, here is a great deal written to-day: and I shall shut up the Sheet in Ouseley again. March 30. Another reason for thinking the _mahi_ which supports the world to be only a _myth_ of the simple Fish genus is that the stage next above him is _Gau_, the Bull, as the Symbol of _Earth_. It seems to me one sees this as it were pictured in those a.s.syrian Sculptures; just some waving lines and a fish to represent Water, etc. And it hooks on, I think, to Max Muller's Theory in that Essay {323a} of his. Sat.u.r.day, April 4. Why, we are creeping toward another Post day! another 25th when the 'Via Ma.r.s.eilles' Letters go off! And I now renew this great Sheet, because in returning to old Hafiz two or three days ago, I happened on a line which you will confer with a Tetrastich of Omar's. . . . Donne has got the Licenser's Post; given him in the handsomest way by Lord Bredalbane to whom the Queen as handsomely committed it. The said Donne has written an Article on Calderon in Fraser, {323b} in which he says very handsome things of me, but is not accurate in what he says. I suppose it was he wrote an Article in the Sat.u.r.day Review some months ago to the same effect; but I have not asked him. I find people like that Calderon book.

By the bye again, what is the pa.s.sage I am to write out for you from the Volume you gave me, the old Bramford Volume, 'E. B. Cowell, Bramford, Aug. 20, 1849?' Tell me, and I will write it in my best style: I have the Volume here in my room, and was looking into it only last night; at that end of the Magico which we read together at Elmsett! I don't know if I could translate it now that the '_aestus'_ caught from your sympathy is gone! . . . April 5. In looking into the 'Secreto Agravio' I see an Oriental superst.i.tion, which was likely enough however to be a poetical fancy of any nation: I mean, the Sun turning Stone to Ruby, etc. Enter Don Luis: 'Soy mercador, y trato en los Diamantes, que hoy son Piedras, y rayos fueron antes de Sol, que perficiona e ilumina rustico Grano en la abrasada Mina.' The Partridge in the Mantic tells something of the same; he digs up and swallows Rubies which turn his Blood to Fire inside him and sparkle out of his Eyes and Bill. This volume of Calderon is marked by the Days on which you finished several Plays, all at Bramford!

Wednesday, April 8. I have been reading the 'Magico' over and remembering other days; I saw us sitting at other tables reading it. Also I am looking over old AEschylus--Agamemnon--with Blackie's Translation. .

. . Is it in Hafiz we have met the Proverb (about _pregnant_ Night) which Clytemnestra also makes her Entry with [264, 5]? [Greek ttext]. I think one sees that the Oriental borrowed this Fancy, which smacks of the Grecian Personification of Mother Night. What an Epitaph for a Warrior are those two Greek words by which the Chorus express all that returns to Mycenae of the living Hero who went forth [435]--[Greek text]!

Well; and I have had a Note from Garcin de Ta.s.sy whom I had asked if he knew of any Copy of Omar Khayyam in all the Paris Libraries: he writes 'I have made, by means of a Friend, etc.' But I shall enclose his Note to amuse you. Now what I mean to do is, in return for his politeness to me, to copy out as well as I can the Tetrastichs as you copied them for me, and send them as a Present to De Ta.s.sy. Perhaps he will edit them. I should not wish him to do so if there were any chance of your ever doing it; but I don't think you will help on the old Pantheist, and De Ta.s.sy really, after what he is doing for the Mantic, deserves to make the acquaintance of this remarkable little Fellow. Indeed I think you will be pleased that I should do this. Now for some more AEschylus. Friday, April 17. I have been for the last five days with my Brother at Twickenham; during which time I really copied out Omar Khayyam, in a way!

and shall to-day post it as a '_cadeau'_ to Garcin de Ta.s.sy in return for his Courtesy to me. I am afraid, a bad return: for my MS. is but badly written and it would perhaps more plague than profit an English 'savant'

to have such a present made him. But a Frenchman gets over all this very lightly. Garcin de Ta.s.sy tells me he has printed four thousand lines of the Mantic. And here is April running away and it will soon be time to post you another Letter! When I once get into the Country I shall have less to write you about than now; and that, you see, is not much.

Tuesday, April 21. Yours and your wife's dear good Letters put into my hand as I sit in the sunshine in a little Balcony outside the Windows looking upon the quite green hedge side of the Regent's Park. For Green it is thus early, and such weather as I never remember before at this Season. Well, your Letters, I say, were put into my hand as I was there looking into AEschylus under an Umbrella, and waiting for Breakfast. My wife cried a good deal over your wife's Letter, I think, I think so. Ah me! I would not as yet read it, for I was already sad; but I shall answer hers to me which I did read indeed with many thoughts: perhaps I can write this post; at least I will clear off this letter to you, my dear Cowell.

E. F. G.

_April_ 21.

MY DEAR LADY, I have told E. B. C. at the close of my long letter to him how his and yours were put into my hand this morning. Well, as in telling him that I finished that sheet of Paper, I will e'en take one sc.r.a.p more to thank you; and (since you have, I believe, some confidences together) some things I have yet got to say to him shall be addressed to you; and you can exercise your own Discretion as to telling him. One thing tell him however, which my overflowing Sheet had not room for, and was the very thing that most needed telling: viz. that he, a busy man, must not feel bound to write me as long Letters in return. Who knows how long I shall keep up any thing like to my own mark; for I daily grow worse with the Letter-pen: and, beside his other employments, the Sun of India will '_belaze'_ him (I doubt if the word be in Johnson). But 'vogue la Galere' while the wind blows! Again you may give him the enclosed instead of a former Letter from the same G. de T. For is it not odd he should not have time to read a dozen of those 150 Tetrastichs? I pointed out such a dozen to him of the best, and told him if he liked them I would try and get the rest better written for him than I could write. I had also told him that the whole thing came from E. B. C. and I now write to tell him I have no sort of intention of writing a paper in the Journal Asiatique, nor I suppose E. B. C. neither. G. de Ta.s.sy is very civil to me however. How much I might say about your Letter to me!

you will hardly comprehend how it is I almost turn my Eyes from it in this Answer, and dally with other matter. You make me sad with old Memories; yet, I don't mean quite disagreeably sad, but enough to make me shrink recurring to them. I don't know whether to be comforted or not when _you_ talk of India as a Land of Exile--. . .

Wednesday, April 22. Now this morning comes a second Letter from Garcin de Ta.s.sy saying that his first note about Omar Khayyam was 'in haste': that he has read some of the Tetrastichs which he finds not very difficult; some difficulties which are probably errors of the 'copist'; and he proposes his writing an Article in the Journal Asiatique on it in which he will 'honourably mention' E. B. C. and E. F. G. I now write to deprecate all this: {328} putting it on the ground (and a fair one) that we do not yet know enough of the matter: that I do not wish E. B. C. to be made answerable for errors which E. F. G. (the '_copist'_) may have made: and that E. F. G. neither merits nor desires any honourable mention as a Persian Scholar: being none. Tell E. B. C. that I have used his name with all caution, referring De Ta.s.sy to Vararuchi, etc. But these Frenchmen are so self-content and superficial, one never knows how they will take up anything. To turn to other matters--we are talking of leaving this place almost directly. . . . I often wonder if I shall ever see you both again! Well, for the present, Adieu, Adieu, Adieu!

LONDON, _May_ 7/57.