Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume II Part 9

Ever yours, E. F. G.

_To F. Tennyson_.

WOODBRIDGE: _Jan._ 29/67.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

Let me hear from you one Day. I would send you my MS. Book of Morton's Letters: but I scarce know if the Post would carry it to you; though not so very big: and I am still less sure that you would ever return it to me. And what odds if you didn't? It might as well die in your Possession as in mine.

In answer to my yearly Letter to Alfred and Co. I heard (from Mrs.) that they were about to leave Freshwater, frightened away by Hero-wors.h.i.+ppers, etc., and were going to a Solitude called Greyshott Hall, Haslemere; which, I am told, is in Hants. Whether they go to settle there I don't know. Lucretius' Death is thought to be too free-spoken for Publication, I believe; not so much in a religious, as an amatory, point of View. I should believe Lucretius more likely to have expedited his Departure because of Weariness of Life and Despair of the System, than because of any Love-philtre. I wrote also my yearly Letter to Carlyle, begging my compliments to his Wife: who, he replies, died, in a very tragical way, last April. I have since heard that the Papers reported all the Circ.u.mstances. So, if one lives so much out of the World as I do, it seems better to give up that Ghost altogether. Old Spedding has written a Pamphlet about 'Authors and Publishers'; showing up, or striving to show up, the Publishers' system. He adduces his own Edition of Bacon as a sample of their mismanagement, in respect of too bulky Volumes, etc.

But, as he says, Macaulay and Alison are still bulkier; yet they sell.

The truth is that a solemnly-inaugurated new Edition of all Bacon was not wanted. The Philosophy is surely superseded; not a Wilderness of Speddings can give men a new interest in the Politics and Letters. The Essays will no doubt always be in request, like Shakespeare. But I am perhaps not a proper Judge of these high matters. How should I? who have just, to my great sorrow, finished 'The Woman in White' for the third time, once every last three Winters. I wish Sir Percival Clyde's Death were a little less of the minor Theatre sort; then I would swallow all the rest as a wonderful Caricature, better than so many a sober Portrait.

I really think of having a Herring-lugger I am building named 'Marian Halcombe,' the brave Girl in the Story. Yes, a Herring-lugger; which is to pay for the money she costs unless she goes to the Bottom: and which meanwhile amuses me to consult about with my Sea-folks. I go to Lowestoft now and then, by way of salutary Change: and there smoke a Pipe every night with a delightful Chap, who is to be Captain. I have been, up to this time, better than for the last two winters: but feel a Worm in my head now and then, for all that. You will say, only a Maggot. Well; we shall see. When I go to Lowestoft, I take Montaigne with me; very comfortable Company. One of his Consolations for _The Stone_ is, that it makes one less unwilling to part with Life. Oh, you think that it didn't need much Wisdom to suggest that? Please yourself, Ma'am. January, just gone! February, only twenty-eight Days: then March with Light till six p.m.: then April with a blush of Green on the Whitethorn hedge: then May, Cuckoos, Nightingales, etc.; then June, s.h.i.+p launched, and nothing but s.h.i.+p till November, which is only just gone. The Story of our Lives from Year to Year. This is a poor letter: but I won't set The Worm fretting.

Let me hear how you are: and don't be two months before you do so.

_To W. B. Donne_.

WOODBRIDGE: _Febr._ 15 [1867].

MY DEAR DONNE,

I came home yesterday from a week's Stay at Lowestoft. As to the Athenaeum, {91} I would bet that the last Sentence was tacked on by the Editor: for it in some measure contradicts the earlier part of the Article.

When your letter was put into my hands, I happened to be reading Montaigne, L. II. Ch. 8, De l'Art de Conferer, where at the end he refers to Tacitus; the only Book, he says, he had read consecutively for an hour together for ten years. He does not say very much: but the Remarks of such a Man are worth many Cartloads of German Theory of Character, I think: their Philology I don't meddle with. I know that Cowell has discovered they are all wrong in their Sanskrit. Montaigne never doubts Tacitus' facts: but doubts his Inferences; well, if I were sure of his Facts, I would leave others to draw their Inferences. I mean, if I were Commentator, certainly: and I think if I were Historian too. Nothing is more wonderful to me than seeing such Men as Spedding, Carlyle, and I suppose Froude, straining Fact to Theory as they do, while a scatter-headed Paddy like myself can keep clear. But then so does the Mob of Readers. Well, but I believe in the Vox Populi of two hundred Years: still more, of two thousand. And, whether we be right or wrong, we prevail: so, however much wiser are the Builders of Theory, their Labour is but lost who build: they can't reason away Richard's Hump, nor Cromwell's Ambition, nor Henry's Love of a new Wife, nor Tiberius'

beastliness. Of course, they had all their Gleams of Goodness: but we of the Mob, if we have any Theory at all, have that which all Mankind have seen and felt, and know as surely as Day-light; that Power will tempt and spoil the Best.

Well, but what is all this Lecture to you for? Why, I think you rather turn to the re-actionary Party about these old Heroes. So I say, however right you may be, leave us, the many-headed, if not the wise-headed, to go our way, only making the Text of Tacitus as clear for us to flounder about in as you can. That, anyhow, must be the first Thing. Something of the manners and customs of the Times we want also: some Lights from other contemporary Authors also: and then, 'Gentlemen, you will now consider your Verdict, and please yourselves.'

Can't you act on Spedding's Advice and have your Prolegomena separate, if considerable in size? I don't doubt its Goodness: but you know how, when one wants to take a Volume of an Author on Travel, s.h.i.+p-board, etc., how angry one is with the Life, Commentary, etc., which takes up half the first volume. This we don't complain of in George III. because he is not a Cla.s.sic, and your Athenaeum Critic admits that yours is the best Part of the Business by far.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

'_Scandal_'; LOWESTOFT, _June_ 17 [1867].

MY DEAR COWELL,

I wrote to Elizabeth, I think, to congratulate you both on the result of the Election: I have since had your Letter: you will not want me to repeat what, without my ever having written or said, you will know that I feel. I wrote to Thompson on the subject, and have had a very kind Letter from him.

Now you will live at Cambridge among the Learned; but, I repeat, you would rather live among the Ignorant. However, your Path is cut out for you: and, to be sure, it is a more useful and proper one for you than the cool sequestered one which one might like to travel.

I am here in my little s.h.i.+p--cool and sequestered enough, to be sure--with no Company but my Crew of Two, and my other--Captain of the Lugger now a- building: a Fellow I never tire of studying--If he _should_ turn out knave, I shall have done with all Faith in my own Judgment: and if he should go to the Bottom of the Sea in the Lugger--I sha'n't cry for the Lugger.

Well, but I have other Company too--Don Quixote--the 4th Part: where those Sn.o.bs, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess--(how vulgar Great Folks then, as now!) make a Fool and b.u.t.t of him. Cervantes should have had more respect for his own Creation: but, I suppose, finding that all the Great Sn.o.bs could only _laugh_ at the earlier part, he thought he had better humour them.

This very morning I read the very verses you admired to me twenty years ago--

Ven muerte tan escondida, etc.

They are quoted ironically in Part IV. Lib. VII. Ch. 38.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

WOODBRIDGE: _Oct._ 12 [1867].

MY DEAR COWELL,

When you have leisure you will let me know of your being settled at Cambridge? I also want to have your exact Address because I want to send you the Dryden and Crabbe's Life I promised you. At present you are busy with your Inaugural Address, I suppose; beside that you feel scarce at home yet in your new Quarters.

Mr. Allenby told me on Wednesday that Mrs. Charlesworth was really up again, and even got to Cambridge. Please to remember me to her, and to all your Party.

My s.h.i.+p is still afloat: but I have scarce used her during the last cold weather. I was indeed almost made ill sleeping two nights in that cold Cabin. I may, however, run to Lowestoft and back; but by the end of next week I suppose she (the s.h.i.+p) will be laid up in the Mud; my Men will have eaten the Michaelmas Goose which I always regale them with on shutting up shop; and I may come home to my Fire here to read 'The Woman in White' and play at Patience:--which (I mean the Game at Cards so called) I now do by myself for an hour or two every night. Perhaps old Montaigne may drop in to chat with and comfort me: but Sophocles, Don Quixote, and Boccaccio--I think I must leave them with their Halo of Sea and Suns.h.i.+ne about them. I have, however, found the second volume of Sophocles; and may perhaps return to look for Ajax and Deianeira.

Adieu: E. F. G.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.

_October_ 28 [1867],

Now, MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I have put on a new Goose-quill Nib, on purpose to write my best MS. to you. But the new Nib has very little to say for me: the old Story: dodging about in my s.h.i.+p for these last five months: indeed during all that time not having lain, I believe, for three consecutive Nights in Christian Sheets. But now all that is over: this very day is my little s.h.i.+p being dismantled, and to-morrow will she go up to her middle in mud, and here am I anch.o.r.ed to my old Desk for the Winter; and beginning, as usual, by writing to my Friends, to tell them what little there is to tell of myself, and asking them to tell what they can of themselves in return. I shall even fire a shot at old Spedding; who would not answer my last Letters at all: innocent as they were, I am sure: and asking definite Questions, which he once told me he required if I wanted any Answer. I suppose he is now in c.u.mberland. What _is_ become of Bacon?

Are you one of the Converted, who go the whole Hog?

Thompson--no, I mean the Master of Trinity--has replied to my half-yearly Enquiries in a very kind Letter. He tells me that my friend Edward Cowell has pleased all the Audience he had with an inaugural Lecture about Sanskrit. {97a} Also, that there is such an Article in the Quarterly about the Talmud {97b} as has not been seen (so fine an Article, I mean) for years. I have had Don Quixote, Boccaccio, and my dear Sophocles (once more) for company on board: the first of these so delightful, that I got to love the very Dictionary in which I had to look out the words: yes, and often the same words over and over again. The Book really seemed to me the most delightful of all Books: Boccaccio, delightful too, but millions of miles behind; in fact, a whole Planet away.

_To W. A. Wright_.

MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.

_Dec._ 11 [1867].

DEAR SIR,

When Robert Groome was with me a month ago, I was speaking to him of having found some Bacon in Montaigne: and R. G. told me that you had observed the same, and were indeed collecting some instances; I think, quotations from Seneca, so employed as to prove that Bacon had them from the Frenchman. It has been the fas.h.i.+on of late to scoff at Seneca; whom such men as Bacon and Montaigne quoted: perhaps not Seneca's own, but cribbed from some Greek which would have been admired by those who scoff at the Latin.

I had not noticed this Seneca coincidence: but I had observed a few pa.s.sages of Montaigne's own, which seemed to me to have got into Bacon's Essays. I dare say I couldn't light upon all these now; but, having been turning over Essai 9, Lib. III. De la Vanite, I find one sentence which comes to the point: 'Car parfois c'est bien choisir de ne choisir pas.'

In the same Essay is a piece of King Lear, perhaps; 'De ce mesme papier ou il vient d'escrire l'arrest de condemnation contre un Adultere, le Juge en desrobe un lopin pour en faire un poulet a la femme de son compaignon.' One doesn't talk of such things as of plagiarisms, of course; as if Bacon and Shakespeare couldn't have said much better things themselves; only for the pleasure of tracing where they read, and what they were struck by. I see that 'L'Appet.i.t vient en mangeant' is in the same Essay.

If I light some other day on the other pa.s.sages, I will take the liberty of telling you. You see I have already taken the liberty of writing to a man, not unknown to me in several ways, but with whom I have not the pleasure of being acquainted personally. Perhaps I may have that pleasure one of these days; we are both connected with the same town of Beccles, and may come together. I hope so.

But I have also another reason for writing to you. Your 'Master' wrote me word the other day, among other things, that you as well as he wished for my own n.o.ble works in your Library. I quite understand that this is on the ground of my being a Trinity man. But then one should have done something worthy of ever so little a niche in Trinity Library; and that I do know is not my case. I have several times told the Master what I think, and know, of my small Escapades in print; nice little things, some of them, which may interest a few people (mostly friends, or through friends) for a few years. But I am always a little ashamed of having made my leisure and idleness the means of putting myself forward in print, when really so many much better people keep silent, having other work to do. This is, I know, my sincere feeling on the subject. However, as I think some of the Translations I have done are all I can dare to show, and as it would be making too much fuss to wait for any further asking on the subject, I will send them if you think good one of these days all done up together; the Spanish, at least, which are, I think, all of a size. Will you tell the Master so if you happen to see him and mention the subject? Allow me to end by writing myself yours sincerely,

EDWARD FITZGERALD.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT.

_Dec._ 28 [1867].