Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume II Part 22

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 'Miserables.' 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 antic.i.p.ate 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. .h.i.therto 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 Ac.u.men.

I, Dryasdust, want to know if the Moon, the 'Harvest' Moon, too, really 'waded through the Clouds' on the night before Dunbar Battle. She makes so good a Figure in the Scene that I wish the Almanack to authorize her Presence. Carlyle is, I believe, generally accurate in these as in sublunary matters, but I had just found him writing of Orion looking down on Paris on August 9, when Orion is hardly up before Sunrise. . . .

And you have been so near where once I lived as Wherstead! in which Parish my Family resided from about 1822 to 1835, at a large Square House on the hill opposite to the Vicarage. I know no more of Mr. Zincke than his Books, which are very good, I think: there is a bit concerning Hodge the English Labourer's inward thoughts as he works in a ditch through a Winter's Day, that is--a piece of Shakespeare. It is one of my few recital pieces: and I was quoting it the other day to two People, who wondered they had never observed it in the Book it came from, which is 'Egypt under the Pharaohs,' {231} I think.

WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 14/78.

MY DEAR SIR,

It is so long since I have heard from you that, in spite of knowing how inopportunely an idle Letter may reach any one amid any sorrows, or much business, I venture one, you see: but whether it be a trouble to lead or not, do not feel bound to answer it except in the fewest words, in case you are any way indisposed. You have--a family: you had an aged Mother, when last I heard from you: room enough for anxieties and sorrows!

I had your printed Report on Olympia, which I do not pretend to be a Judge [of]. I lent it to one who thinks he returned it, but certainly did not: and I wanted to lend it to another much more competent Judge, very much interested in the Subject, Edward Cowell, a Brother Professor of yours at our Cambridge: the most learned man there, I believe, and the most amiable and delightful, I believe, also. He came here to see me a month ago: and I had one more search for the Pamphlet which I knew was no longer 'penes me,' which he much wished to see. Will you send me another Copy for him: if not to 'Professor Cowell, Cambridge, England' direct?

I have been rubbing up a little Latin from some Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus, by H. Munro, who edited Lucretius so capitally that even German Scholars, I am told, accept it with a respect which they accord to very few English. Do you know it in America? If not, do. The Text and capital English prose Translation in vol. I; and Notes in vol.

II: all admirable, it seems to me, though I do not understand his English Punctuation. I do not follow all Lucretius' Atoms, etc.: but other parts are as fine to me as any Poet has done. Catullus I have never taken much to: though some of him too is as fine as anything else in its way, I think. So I have read through this Book of Munro's, only 240 pages, not commenting on the best of the Poems, but on those which most needed Elucidation; which are many of them the least interesting, and even most disagreeable. Like your Olympia, I don't understand much: but what I do understand is so good that I feel sure the rest (and that is the larger and perhaps more important part) is as good for those it is intended for.

Just as I shut up Catullus, I opened Keats' Love Letters just published; and really felt no shock of change between the one Poet and the other.

This Book will doubtless have been in America long before my Letter reaches it. Mr. Lowell, who justly writes (in his Keats) that there is much in a Name, will wish Keats' mistress went by some other than 'f.a.n.n.y Brawne,' which I cannot digest.

And Mr. Lowell himself? I do not like to write to him amid his diplomatic avocations; if I did, I should perhaps tell him that I did not like the style of his 'Moosehead Journal,' which has been sent me by I know not whom. I hope he is getting on with his Cervantes; which I know I shall like, if it be at all of the same Complexion as his other two Volumes, which I still think are best of their kind.

WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 20/78.

MY DEAR NORTON!

If Packet follows Packet duly, you will have received ere this a letter I wrote you, and posted, a few hours before yours reached me. You will have seen that I guessed at some Shadow as of Illness in your household: no wonderful conjecture in this World in any case; still less where a Life of eighty years is concerned. It is in vain to wish well: but I wish the best.

Your mention of your Mother reminded me of another Eighty years that I had forgotten to tell you of--Carlyle. I wrote to enquire about him of his Niece a month ago: he had been very poorly, she said, but was himself again; only going in Carriage, not on foot, for his daily Exercise: wrapt up in furry Dressing-gown, and wondering that any one else complained of Cold. He kept on reading a.s.siduously, sometimes till past midnight, in spite of all endeavours to get him to bed. 'Qu'est ce que cela fait si je m'amuse?' as old Voltaire said on like occasions.

I have got down the Doudan {234} you recommended me: but have not yet begun with him. Pepys' Diary and Sir Walter, read to me for two hours of a night, have made those two hours almost the best of the twenty-four for all these winter months. That Eve of Preston Battle, with the old Baron's Prayers to his Troop! He is tiresome afterwards, I know, with his Bootjack. But Sir Walter for ever! What a fine Picture would that make of Evan Dhu's entrance into Tully Veolan Breakfast Hall, with a message from his Chief; he standing erect in his Tartan, while the Baron keeps his State, and pretty Rose at the Table. There is a subject for one of your Artists. Another very pretty one (I thought the other Day) would be that of the child Keats keeping guard with a drawn sword at his sick Mother's Chamber door. Millais might do it over here: but I don't know him. . . .

I will send you Carlyle's Squire correspondence, which you will keep to yourself and Lowell: you being Carlyle's personal friend as well as myself. Not that there is anything that should not be further divulged: but one must respect private Letters. Carlyle's proves a droll instance of even so shrewd a man wholly mistaking a man's character from his Letters: had now that Letter been two hundred years old! and no intelligent Friend to set C. right by ocular Demonstration.

_To J. R. Lowell_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE.

_February_ 28/78.

MY DEAR SIR,

I ventured to send you Keats' Love Letters to Miss--_Brawne_! a name in which there is much, as you say of his, and other names. . . . Well, I thought you might--must--wish to see these Letters, and, may be, not get them so readily in Spain. So I made bold. The Letters, I doubt not, are genuine: whether rightly or wrongly published I can't say: only I, for one, am glad of them. I had just been hammering out some Notes on Catullus, by our Cambridge Munro, Editor of Lucretius, which you ought to have; English Notes to both, and the Prose Version of Lucretius quite readable by itself. Well, when Keats came, I scarce felt a change from Catullus: both such fiery Souls as wore out their Bodies early; and I can even imagine Keats writing such filthy Libels against any one he had a spite against, even Armitage Brown, had Keats lived two thousand years ago. . . .

I had a kind letter lately from Mr. Norton: and have just posted him some Carlyle letters about that Squire business. If you return to America before very long you will find them there. How long is your official Stay in Spain? Limited, or Unlimited? By the bye of Carlyle, I heard from his Niece some weeks ago that he had been poorly: but when she wrote, himself again: only taking his daily walk in a Carriage, and sitting up till past Midnight with his Books, in spite of Warnings to Bed. As old Voltaire said to his Niece on like occasion, 'Qu'est ce que cela fait si je m'amuse?' I have from Mudie a sensible dull Book of Letters from a Miss Wynn: with this one good thing in it. She has been to visit Carlyle in 1845: he has just been to visit Bishop Thirlwall in Wales, and duly attended Morning Chapel, as a Bishop's Guest should. 'It was very well done; it was like so many Souls pouring in through all the Doors to offer their orisons to G.o.d who sent them on Earth. We were no longer Men, and had nothing to do with Men's usages; and, after it was over, all those Souls seemed to disperse again silent into s.p.a.ce. And not till we all met afterward in the common Room, came the Human Greetings and Civilities.' {237} This is, I think, a little piece worth sending to Madrid; I am sure, the best I have to offer.

I have had read to me of nights some of Sir Walter's Scotch Novels; Waverley, Rob, Midlothian, now the Antiquary: eking them out as charily as I may. For I feel, in parting with each, as parting with an old Friend whom I may never see again. Plenty of dull, and even some bad, I know: but parts so admirable, and the Whole so delightful. It is wonderful how he sows the seed of his Story from the very beginning, and in what seems barren ground: but all comes up in due course, and there is the whole beautiful Story at last. I think all this Fore-cast is to be read in Scott's shrewd, humorous, Face: as one sees it in Chantrey's Bust; and as he seems meditating on his Edinburgh Monument. I feel a wish to see that, and Abbotsford again; taking a look at Dunbar by the way: but I suppose I shall get no further than Dunwich.

Some one (not you) sent me your Moosehead Journal: but I told Mr. Norton I should tell you, if I wrote, that I did not like the Style of it at all; all 'too clever by half.' Do you not say so yourself after Cervantes, Scott, Montaigne, etc.? I don't know I ought to say all this to you: but you can well afford to be told it by one of far more authority than yours most sincerely,

E. FITZGERALD.

_To W. A. Wright_.

WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 3/78.

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

. . . You may infer that I have been reading--yes, and with great Interest, however little Scholarship--your Fellow-Collegian's new Book of Notes, etc. {238} And just as I had done my best with his Catullus, came to hand the Love-Letters of a kindred Spirit, Keats; whose peevish Jealousy might, two thousand years ago, have made him as bitter and indecent against his friend Armitage Brown, as Catullus against Caesar.

But in him too Malice was not stronger than Love, any more than in Catullus; not only of the Lesbia-Brawne, but of the Fraternal, kind.

Keats sighs after 'Poor Tom' as well as he whose 'Frater ave atque vale'

continues sighing down to these times. (I hope I don't misquote, more Hibernorum.)

That is a fine Figure of old Caesar entertaining his Lampooner at the Feast. And I have often thought what a pretty picture, for Millais to do, of the Child Keats keeping guard outside his sick Mother's Chamber with a drawn Sword. If Catullus, however, were only _Fescennining_, his 'Malice' was not against Caesar, but against the Nemesis that might else be revenged on him--eh? But I don't understand how Suetonius, or those he wrote for, could have forgotten, though for party purposes they may have ignored, the nature and humour of that _Fescennine_ which is known to Scholars two thousand years after. How very learned, and probably all wrong, have I become, since becoming interested in this Book!

WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 21 [1878].

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

. . . The Enclosed only adds a little to the little Paper of _Data_: {239} you may care to add so much in better MS. than mine to the leaves I sent you. Those leaves were more intended for such an Edition of the Letters in batches, as now edited; and, as many of them are private right, _so_ edited they must continue for some time, I suppose.

An odd coincidence happened only yesterday about them. I was looking to Lamb's Letter to Manning of Feb. 26, 1808, where he extols Braham, the Singer, who (he says) led his Spirit 'as the Boys follow Tom the Piper.'

I had not thought who Tom was: rather acquiesced in some idea of the 'pied Piper of Hamelin'; and, not half an hour after, chancing to take down Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, {240a} found Tom against the Maypole, with a ring of Dancers about him. I suppose Tom survived in '_Folk lore_' . . . till dear Lamb's time: but how he, a c.o.c.kney, knew of it, I don't know.

I was looking for Keats (when I happened on Browne) to find the pa.s.sage you quote {240b}: but (of course) I could not find the Book I wanted. Nor can I construe him any more than so much of Shakespeare: whether from the negligent hurry of both (Johnson says Shakespeare often contented himself with a halfborn expression), or from some Printer's error. The meaning is clear enough to me, if I conjecture the context right; and more so to you, I dare say. The pa.s.sage is one of those bad ones, except the first line, which he afterwards repeated, mutatis mutandis,

The leaves That _tremble_ round a Nightingale, {240c}