Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume I Part 20

As to your friend Pliny, I don't think that Time can use his usual irony on that saying about Martial. {230a} Pliny evidently only suggests that 'at non erunt aeterna quae scripsit' as a question of his correspondent; to which he himself replies 'Non erunt _forta.s.se_.' Your Greek quotations are very graceful. I should like to read Busbequius. {230b} Do _you_ think Tacitus _affected_ in style, as people now say he is?

In the Notes to his edition of Selden's Table Talk, published in 1847, Mr. Singer says, 'Part of the following Ill.u.s.trations were kindly communicated to the Editor by a gentleman to whom his best thanks are due, and whom it would have afforded him great pleasure to be allowed to name.' It might have been said with truth that the 'greater part' of the ill.u.s.trations were contributed by the same anonymous benefactor, who was, I have very little doubt, FitzGerald himself. I have in my possession a copy of the Table Talk which he gave me about 1871 or 1872, with annotations in his own handwriting, and these are almost literally reproduced in the Notes to Singer's Edition. Of this copy FitzGerald wrote to me, 'What notes I have appended are worth nothing, I suspect; though I remember that the advice of the present Chancellor {231} was asked in some cases.'

_To E. B. Cowell_.

GELDESTONE, _Jan_. 13/48.

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I suppose you have seen Carlyle's thirty-five Cromwell letters in Fraser. I see the Athenaeum is picking holes with them too: and I certainly had a misgiving that Squire of Yarmouth must have pieced out the erosions of 'the vermin' by one or two hotheaded guesses of his own.

But I am sure, both from the general matter of the letters, and from Squire's own bodily presence, that he did not forge them. Carlyle has made a bungle of the whole business; and is fairly twitted by the Athenaeum for talking so loud about his veneration for Cromwell, etc., and yet not stirring himself to travel a hundred miles to see and save such memorials as he talks of.

BOULGE, _Wednesday_.

[_Jan._ 25, 1848.]

MY DEAR COWELL,

I liked your paper on the Mesnavi {232} very much; both your criticism and your Mosaic legend. That I may not seem to give you careless and undistinguis.h.i.+ng praise, I will tell you that I could not quite hook on the latter part of Moses to the former; did you leave out any necessary link of the chain in the hiatus you made? or is the inconsequence only in my brains? So much for the legend: and I must reprehend you for one tiny bit of c.o.c.kney about Memory's rosary at the end of your article, which, but for that, I liked so much.

So judges Fitz-Dennis; who, you must know by this time, has the judgment of Moliere's old woman, and the captiousness of Dennis. Ten years ago I might have been vext to see you striding along in Sanscrit and Persian so fast; reading so much; remembering all; writing about it so well. But now I am glad to see any man do any thing well; and I know that it is my vocation to stand and wait, and know within myself whether it is done well.

I have just finished, all but the last three chapters, the fourth Book of Thucydides, and it is now no task to me to go on. This fourth book is the most interesting I have read; containing all that blockade of Pylos; that first great thumping of the Athenians at Oropus, after which they for ever dreaded the Theban troops. And it came upon me 'come stella in ciel,' when, in the account of the taking of Amphipolis, {233} Thucydides, [Greek text], comes with seven s.h.i.+ps to the rescue! Fancy old Hallam sticking to his gun at a Martello tower! This was the way to write well; and this was the way to make literature respectable. Oh, Alfred Tennyson, could you but have the luck to be put to such employment! No man would do it better; a more heroic figure to head the defenders of his country could not be.

_To S. Laurence_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, [30 _Jan_. 1848.]

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

How are you--how are you getting on? A voice from the tombs thus addresses you; respect the dead, and answer. Barton is well; that is, I left him well on Friday: but he was just going off to attend a Quaker's funeral in the snow: whether he has survived that, I don't know.

To-morrow is his Birth-day: and I am going (if he be alive) to help him to celebrate it. His portrait has been hung (under my directions) over the mantel-piece in his sitting room, with a broad margin of some red stuff behind it, to set it off. You may turn up your nose at all this; but let me tell you it is considered one of the happiest contrivances ever adopted in Woodbridge. Nineteen people out of twenty like the portrait much; the twentieth, you may be sure, is a man of no taste at all.

I hear you were for a long time in c.u.mberland. Did you paint a waterfall--or old Wordsworth--or Skiddaw, or any of the beauties? Did you see anything so inviting to the pencil as the river Deben? When are you coming to see us again? Churchyard relies on your coming; but then he is a very sanguine man, and, though a lawyer, wonderfully confident in the promises of men. How are all your family? You see I have asked you some questions; so you must answer them; and believe me yours truly,

E. FITZGERALD.

_To John Allen_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, _March_ 2/48.

MY DEAR ALLEN,

. . . Every year I have less and less desire to go to London: and now you are not there I have one reason the less for going there. I want to settle myself in some town--for good--for life! A pleasant country town, a cathedral town perhaps! What sort of a place is Lichfield?

I say nothing about French Revolutions, which are too big for a little letter. I think we shall all be in a war before the year; I know not how else the French can keep peace at home but by quarrelling abroad. But 'come what come may.'

My old friend Major Moor died rather suddenly last Sat.u.r.day: {235} and this next Sat.u.r.day is to be buried in the Church to which he used to take me when I was a boy. He has not left a better man behind him.

BOULGE, _Friday_.

MY DEAR ALLEN,

. . . I suppose by a 'Minster Pool' in Lichfield you mean a select coterie of Prebends, Canons, etc. These would never trouble me. I should much prefer the society of the Doctor, the Lawyer (if tolerably honest) and the singing men. I love a small Cathedral town; and the dignified respectability of the Church potentates is a part of the pleasure. I sometimes think of Salisbury: and have altogether long had an idea of settling at forty years old. Perhaps it will be at Woodbridge, after all!

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE, _May_ 4, 1848.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

When you talk of two idle men not taking the trouble to keep up a little intercourse by letters, you do not, in conscience, reflect upon me; who, you know, am very active in answering almost by return of post. It is some six months since you must have got my last letter, full of most instructive advice concerning my namesake; of whom, and of which, you say nothing. How much has he borrowed of you? Is he now living on the top of your hospitable roof? Do you think him the most ill-used of men? I see great advertis.e.m.e.nts in the papers about your great Grimsby Railway.

. . . Does it pay? does it pay all but you? who live only on the fine promises of the lawyers and directors engaged in it? You know England has had a famous winter of it for commercial troubles: my family has not escaped the agitation: I even now doubt if I must not give up my daily two-pennyworth of cream and take to milk: and give up my Spectator and Athenaeum. I don't trouble myself much about all this: for, unless the kingdom goes to pieces by national bankruptcy, I shall probably have enough to live on: and, luckily, every year I want less. What do you think of my not going up to London this year; to see exhibitions, to hear operas, and so on? Indeed I do not think I shall go: and I have no great desire to go. I hear of nothing new in any way worth going up for. I have never yet heard the famous Jenny Lind, whom all the world raves about. Spedding is especially mad about her, I understand: and, after that, is it not best for weaker vessels to keep out of her way? Night after night is that bald head seen in one particular position in the Opera house, in a stall; the miserable man has forgot Bacon and philosophy, and goes after strange women. There is no doubt this lady is a wonderful singer; but I will not go into hot crowds till another Pasta comes; I have heard no one since her worth being crushed for. And to perform in one's head one of Handel's choruses is better than most of the Exeter Hall performances. I went to hear Mendelssohn's Elijah last spring: and found it wasn't at all worth the trouble. Though very good music it is not original: Haydn much better. I think the day of Oratorios is gone, like the day for painting Holy Families, etc. But we cannot get tired of what has been done in Oratorios more than we can get tired of Raffaelle. Mendelssohn is really original and beautiful in _romantic_ music: witness his Midsummer Night's Dream, and Fingal's Cave.

I had a note from Alfred three months ago. He was then in London: but is now in Ireland, I think, adding to his new poem, the Princess. Have you seen it? I am considered a great heretic for abusing it; it seems to me a wretched waste of power at a time of life when a man ought to be doing his best; and I almost feel hopeless about Alfred now. I mean, about his doing what he was born to do. . . . On the other hand, Thackeray is progressing greatly in his line: he publishes a Novel in numbers--Vanity Fair--which began dull, I thought: but gets better every number, and has some very fine things indeed in it. He is become a great man I am told: goes to Holland House, and Devons.h.i.+re House: and for some reason or other, will not write a word to me. But I am sure this is not because he is asked to Holland House. d.i.c.kens has fallen off in his last novel, {238} just completed; but there are wonderful things in it too. Do you ever get a glimpse of any of these things?

As to public affairs, they are so wonderful that one does not know where to begin. If England maintains her own this year, she must have the elements of long lasting in her. I think People begin to wish we had no more to do with Ireland: but the Whigs will never listen to a doctrine which was never heard of in Holland House. I am glad Italy is free: and surely there is nothing for her now but a Republic. It is well to stand by old kings who have done well by us: but it is too late in the day to _begin_ Royalty.

If anything could tempt me so far as Italy, it would certainly be your presence in Florence. But I boggle about going twenty miles, and _cui bono_? deadens me more and more.

July 2. All that precedes was written six weeks ago, when I was obliged to go up to London on business. . . . I saw Alfred, and the rest of the scavans. Thackeray is a great man: goes to Devons.h.i.+re House, etc.: and _his_ book (which is capital) is read by the Great: and will, I hope, do them good. I heard but little music: the glorious Acis and Galatea; and the redoubtable Jenny Lind, for the first time. I was disappointed in her: but am told this is all my fault. As to naming her in the same Olympiad with great old Pasta, I am sure that is ridiculous. The Exhibition is like most others you have seen; worse perhaps. There is an 'Aaron' and a 'John the Baptist' by Etty far worse than the Saracen's Head on Ludgate Hill. Moore is turned Picture dealer: and that high Roman virtue in which he indulged is likely to suffer a Picture-dealer's change, I think. Carlyle writes in the Examiner about Ireland: raves and foams, but has nothing to propose. Spedding prospers with Bacon. Alfred seemed to me in fair plight: much dining out: and his last Poem is well liked I believe. Morton is still at Lisbon, I believe also: but I have not written to him, nor heard from him. And now, my dear Frederic, I must shut up. Do not neglect to write to me sometimes. Alfred said you ought to be in England about your Grimsby Land.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

[? 1848.]

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I do not know that I praised Xenophon's imagination in recording such things as Alcibiades at Lampsacus; {240} all I meant to say was that the history was not dull which does record such facts, if it be for the imagination of others to quicken them. . . . As to Sophocles, I will not give up my old t.i.tan. Is there not an infusion of Xenophon in Sophocles, as compared to AEschylus,--a dilution? Sophocles is doubtless the better artist, the more complete; but are we to expect anything but glimpses and ruins of the divinest? Sophocles is a pure Greek temple; but AEschylus is a rugged mountain, lashed by seas, and riven by thunderbolts: and which is the most wonderful, and appalling? Or if one will have AEschylus too a work of man, I say he is like a Gothic Cathedral, which the Germans say did arise from the genius of man aspiring up to the immeasurable, and reaching after the infinite in complexity and gloom, according as Christianity elevated and widened men's minds. A dozen lines of AEschylus have a more Almighty power on me than all Sophocles' plays; though I would perhaps rather save Sophocles, as the consummation of Greek art, than AEschylus' twelve lines, if it came to a choice which must be lost.

Besides these AEschyluses _trouble_ us with their grandeur and gloom; but Sophocles is always soothing, complete, and satisfactory.

_To W. B. Donne_.

BOULGE, _Decr_. 27, [1848.]

MY DEAR DONNE,

You have sent me two or three kind messages through Barton. I hear you come into Suffolk the middle of January. My movements are as yet uncertain; the lawyers may call me back to London very suddenly: but should I be here at the time of your advent, you must really contrive to come here, to this Cottage, for a day or two. I have yet beds, tables, and chairs for two: I think Gurdon is also looking out for you.

I only returned home a few days ago, to spend Christmas with Barton: whose turkey I accordingly partook of. He seems only pretty well: is altered during the last year: less spirits, less strength; but quite amiable still.

I saw many of my friends in London, Carlyle and Tennyson among them; but most and best of all, Spedding. I have stolen his n.o.ble book {241} away from him; n.o.ble, in spite (I believe, but am not sure) of some _adikology_ in the second volume: some special pleadings for his idol: amica Veritas, sed magis, etc. But I suppose you will think this the intolerance of a weak stomach.

I also went to plays and concerts which I could scarce afford: but I thought I would have a Carnival before entering on a year of reductions.

I have been trying to hurry on, and bully, Lawyers: have done a very little good with much trouble; and cannot manage to fret much though I am told there is great cause for fretting.

Farewell for the present: come and see me if we be near Woodbridge at the same time: remember me to all who do remember me: and believe me yours as ever,