Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume I Part 33

This dedication by Major Moor to his old comrade-in-arms FitzGerald would sometimes try to read aloud but would break down before he could finish it.

{308a} The Selection from his Letters, etc., published after his death, in which FitzGerald wrote a sketch of his life.

{308b} On Comparative Mythology, in the Oxford Essays for 1856.

{308c} Life's a Dream: The Great Theatre of the World. From the Spanish of Calderon.

{309} In an article on Spanish Literature in the Westminster Review for April 1851, pp. 281-323.

{311} In his 'Memoire sur la poesie philosophique et religieuse chez les Persans.' His edition of the text of Attar's poem came out in 1857, but the French translation only in 1863.

{312} In his 'Geschichte der schonen Redekunste Persiens.'

{313} Mrs. Cowell's father and mother.

{316} This Apologue FitzGerald afterwards turned into verse; but it remained an unfinished fragment. Professor Cowell has kindly filled up the gaps which were left.

A Saint there was who three score Years and ten In holy Meditation among Men Had spent, but, wis.h.i.+ng, ere he came to close With G.o.d, to meet him in complete Repose, Withdrew into the Wilderness, where he Set up his Dwelling in an aged Tree Whose hollow Trunk his Winter Shelter made, And whose green branching Arms his Summer Shade.

And like himself a Nightingale one Spring Making her Nest above his Head would sing So sweetly that her pleasant Music stole Between the Saint and his severer Soul, And made him sometimes [heedless of his] Vows Listening his little Neighbour in the Boughs.

Until one Day a sterner Music woke The sleeping Leaves, and through the Branches spoke-- 'What! is the Love between us two begun And waxing till we Two were nearly One For three score Years of Intercourse unstirr'd Of Men, now shaken by a little Bird; And such a precious Bargain, and so long A making, [put in peril] for a Song?'

{317} George Borrow, Author of The Bible in Spain, etc.

{318} Evan Banks, by Miss Williams. See Allan Cunningham's Songs of Scotland, iv. 59.

{319} Boswell's Johnson, 11 April 1776.

{320} This struck E. F. G. so much that he introduced it into Omar Khayyam, stanza x.x.xiii. Professor Cowell writes, 'I well remember shewing it to FitzGerald and reading it with him in his early Persian days at Oxford in 1855. I laughed at the quaintness; but the idea seized his imagination from the first, and, like Virgil with Ennius' rough jewels, his genius detected gold where I had seen only tinsel. He has made two grand lines out of it.'

{322} A retired clergyman who lived at Bramford.

{323a} On Comparative Mythology. Oxford Essays, 1856.

{323b} Fraser's Magazine for April 1857.

{328} M. Garcin de Ta.s.sy scrupulously observed this injunction in his Note sur les Ruba'iyat de Omar Khaiyam, which appeared in the journal Asiatique.

{337} See Letter to John Allen, 12 July 1840.

{344} Rather of the Orthodox reader by Omar himself.

{348} Hatifi's Haft Paikar, a poem on the Seven Castles of Bahram Gur, as I learn from Professor Cowell, 'each with its princess who lives in it, and tells Bahram a story.' He adds, 'We always used the name with an understood playful reference to Corporal Trim's unfinished story of the King of Bohemia and _his_ Seven Castles.'