Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume II Part 20

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE.

_Decr._ 12, 1876.

DEAR ANNIE THACKERAY,

Messrs. Smith and Elder very politely gave me leave to print, and may be publish, three Stanzas of your Father's 'Ho, pretty Page,' adapted (under proper direction) to an old Cambridge Tune, which he and I have sung together, tho' not to these fine Words, as you may guess. I asked this of Messrs. Smith and Elder, because I thought they had the Copyright. But I did not mean to publish them unless with your Approval: only to print a few Copies for friends. And I will stop even that, if you don't choose.

Please to tell me in half a dozen words as directly as you can.

The Words, you know, are so delightful (stanzas one, two, and the last), and the old Tune of 'Troll, troll, the bonny brown Bowl' so pretty, and (with some addition) so appropriate, I think, that I fancied others beside Friends might like to have them together. But, if you don't approve, the whole thing shall be quashed. Which I ought to have asked before: but I thought your Publishers' sanction might include yours.

Please, I say, to say Yes or No as soon as you can.

I have been reading the two Series of 'Hours in a Library' with real delight. Some of them I had read before in Cornhill, but all together now: delighted, I say, to find all I can so heartily concur and believe in put into a shape that I could not have wrought out for myself. I think I could have suggested a very little about Crabbe, in whom I am very much up: and one word about Clarissa. {208} But G.o.d send me many more Hours in a Library in which I may shut myself up from this accursed East among other things.

_To C. E. Norton_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE.

_Dec._ 22/76.

[Post mark _Dec._ 21.]

MY DEAR SIR,

. . . In the last Atlantic Monthly was, as you know, an Ode by Mr.

Lowell; lofty in Thought and Expression: too uniformly lofty, I think, for Ode. Do you, would Mr. Lowell, agree? I should not say so, did I not admire the work very much. You are very good to speak of sending me his new Volume: but why should you? My old Athenaeum will tell me of it here, and I will be sure to get it.

You see --- has come out with another Heroic Poem! And the Athenaeum talks of it as a Great Work, etc., with (it seems to me) the false Gallop in all the Quotations. It seems to me strange that ---, ---, and ---, should go on pouring out Poem after Poem, as if such haste could prosper with any but First-rate Men: and I suppose they hardly reckon themselves with the very First. I feel sure that Gray's Elegy, pieced and patched together so laboriously, by a Man of almost as little Genius as abundant Taste, will outlive all these hasty Abortions. And yet there are plenty of faults in that Elegy too, resulting from the very Elaboration which yet makes it live. So I think.

I have been reading with real satisfaction, and delight, Mr. L. Stephen's Hours in a Library: only, as I have told his Sister in law, I should have liked to put in a word or two for Crabbe. I think I could furnish L. S.

with many Epigrams, of a very subtle sort, from Crabbe: and several paragraphs, if not pages, of comic humour as light as Moliere. Both which L. S. seems to doubt in what he calls 'our excellent Crabbe,' who was not so 'excellent' (in the goody sense) as L. S. seems to intimate.

But then Crabbe is my Great Gun. He will outlive ---, --- and Co. in spite of his Carelessness. So think I again.

His Son, Vicar of a Parish near here, and very like the Father in face, was a great Friend of mine. He detested Poetry (sc. verse), and I believe had never read his Father through till some twenty years ago when I lent him the Book. Yet I used to tell him he threw out sparks now and then. As one day when we were talking of some Squires who cut down Trees (which all magnanimous Men respect and love), my old Vicar cried out 'How _scan_dalously they misuse the Globe!' He was a very n.o.ble, courageous, generous Man, and wors.h.i.+pped his Father in his way. I always thought I could hear this Son in that fine pa.s.sage which closes the Tales of the Hall, when the Elder Brother surprises the Younger by the gift of that House and Domain which are to keep them close Neighbours for ever.

Here on that lawn your Boys and Girls shall run, And gambol, when the daily task is done; From yonder Window shall their Mother view The happy tribe, and smile at all they do: While you, more gravely hiding your Delight, _Shall cry_--'_O_, _childish_!'--_and enjoy the Sight_.

By way of pendant to this, pray read the concluding lines of the long, ill-told, Story of 'Smugglers and Poachers.' Or shall I fill up my Letter with them? This is a sad Picture to match that sunny one.

As men may children at their sports behold, And smile to see them, tho' unmoved and cold, Smile at the recollected Games, and then Depart, and mix in the Affairs of men; So Rachel looks upon the World, and sees It can no longer pain, no longer please: But just detain the pa.s.sing Thought; just cause A little smile of Pity, or Applause-- And then the recollected Soul repairs Her slumbering Hope, and heeds her own Affairs.

I wish some American Publisher would publish my Edition of Tales of the Hall, edited by means of Scissors and Paste, with a few words of plain Prose to bridge over whole tracts of bad Verse; not meaning to improve the original, but to seduce hasty Readers to study it.

What a Letter, my dear Sir! But you encourage me to tattle over the Atlantic by your not feeling bound to answer. You are a busy man, and I quite an idle one, but yours sincerely,

E. FITZGERALD.

Carlyle's Niece writes me that he is 'fairly well.'

Ecce iterum! That mention of Crabbe reminds me of meeting two American Gentlemen at an Inn in Lichfield, some thirty years ago. One of them was unwell, or feeble, and the other tended him very tenderly: and both were very gentlemanly and well-read. They had come to see the English Cathedrals, and spoke together (it was in the common Room) of Places and Names I knew very well. So that I took the Liberty of telling them something of some matters they were speaking of. Among others, this very Crabbe: and I told them, if ever they came Suffolk way, I would introduce them to the Poet's son. I suppose I gave them my Address: but I had to go away next morning before they were down: and never heard of them again.

I sometimes wonder if this eternal Crabbe is relished in America (I am not looking to my Edition, which would be a hopeless loss anywhere): he certainly is little read in his own Country. And I fancy America likes more abstract matter than Crabbe's homespun. Excuse AEtat. 68.

Yes, 'Gillies arise! etc.' But I remember one who used to say he never got farther with another of the Daddy's Sonnets than--

Clarkson! It was an obstinate hill to climb, etc.

English Sonnets, like English Terza Rima, want, I think, the double rhyme.

_To S. Laurence_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Jan._ 15/77.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

Then I sent you the Greek instead of the Persian whom you asked for? The two are the same size and binding: so of course I sent the wrong one. But I will send the right one directly: and you need not make a trouble of acknowledging it: I know you will thank me, and I think you will feel a sort of 'triste Plaisir' in it, as others beside myself have felt. It is a desperate sort of thing, unfortunately at the bottom of all thinking men's minds; but made Music of. . . . I shall soon be going to old ugly Lowestoft again to be with Nephews and Nieces. The Great Man . . . is yet there: commanding a Crew of those who prefer being his Men to having command of their own. And they are right; for the man is Royal, tho'

with the faults of ancient Vikings. . . . His Glory is somewhat marred; but he looks every inch a King in his Lugger now. At home (when he is there, and not at the Tavern) he sits among his Dogs, Cats, Birds, etc., always with a great Dog following abroad, and aboard. This is altogether the Greatest Man I have known.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 1/77.

MY DEAR SIR,

I really only write now to prevent your doing so in acknowledgment of Thackeray's Song {213} which I sent you, and you perhaps knew the handwriting of the Address. Pray don't write about such a thing, so soon after the very kind Letter I have just had from you. Why I sent you the Song I can hardly tell, not knowing if you care for Thackeray or Music: but that must be as it is; only, do not, pray, write expressly about it.

The Song is what it pretends to be: the words speak for themselves; very beautiful, I think: the Tune is one which Thackeray and I knew at College, belonging to some rather free Cavalier words,

Troll, troll, the bonny brown Bowl,

with four bars interpolated to let in the Page. I have so sung it (without a Voice) to myself these dozen years, since his Death, and so I have got the words decently arranged, in case others should like them as well as myself. Voila tout!

I thought, after I had written my last, that I ought not to have said anything of an American Publisher of Crabbe, as it might (as it has done) set you on thinking how to provide one for me. I spoke of America, knowing that no one in England would do such a thing, and not knowing if Crabbe were more read in your Country than in his own. Some years ago I got some one to ask Murray if he would publish a Selection from all Crabbe's Poems: as has been done of Wordsworth and others. But Murray (to whom Crabbe's collected Works have always been a loss) would not meddle. . . . You shall one day see my 'Tales of the Hall,' when I can get it decently arranged, and written out (what is to be written), and then you shall judge of what chance it has of success. I want neither any profit, whether of money, or reputation: I only want to have Crabbe read more than he is. Women and young People never will like him, I think: but I believe every thinking man will like him more as he grows older; see if this be not so with yourself and your friends. Your Mother's Recollection of him is, I am sure, the just one: Crabbe never showed himself in Company, unless to a very close and experienced observer: his Company manner was exactly the reverse of his Books: almost, as Moore says, '_doucereux_'; the apologetic politeness of the old School over-done, as by one who was not born to it. But Campbell observed his 'shrewd Vigilance' awake under all his 'politesse,' and John Murray said that Crabbe said uncommon things in so common a way that they escaped recognition. It appears, I think, that he not only said, but wrote, such things: even to such Readers as Mr. Stephen; who can see very little Humour, and no Epigram, in him. I will engage to find plenty of both. I think Mr. Stephen could hardly have read the later Books: viz., Tales of the Hall, and the Posthumous Poems: which, though careless and incomplete, contain Crabbe's most mature Self, I think. Enough of him for the present: and altogether enough, unless I wish to become a 'seccatore' by my repeated, long, letters. . . .

Mr. Lowell was good enough to send me his Odes, and I have written to acknowledge them with many thanks and a few observations, not meant to instruct such a Man, but just to show that I had read with Attention, as I did. I think I had much the same to say of them as I said to you: and so I won't say it again. I think it is a mistake to rely on the reading, or recitation, for an Effect which ought to speak for itself in any capable Reader's Head. Tennyson, with the grand Voice he had (I fancy it is somewhat weakened now) could make sonorous music of such a beginning to an Ode as

Bury the Great Duke!

The Thought is simple and ma.s.sy enough: but where is a Vowel? Dryden opened better:

'Twas at the royal Feast o'er Persia won.

But Mr. Lowell's Odes, which do not fail in the Vowel, are n.o.ble in Thought, with a good Organ roll in the music, which perhaps he thinks more fitted to Subject and occasion.

_To Mrs. Cowell_.

12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT.

_March_ 11/77.

. . . I scarce like your taking any pains about my Works, whether in Verse, Prose, or Music. I never see any Paper but my old Athenaeum, which, by the way, now tells me of some Lady's Edition of Omar which is to discover all my Errors and Perversions. So this will very likely turn the little Wind that blew my little Skiff on. Or the Critic who incautiously helped that may avenge himself on Agamemnon King, as he pleases. If the Pall Mall Critic knew Greek, I am rather surprised he should have vouchsafed even so much praise as the words you quoted. But I certainly have found that those few whom I meant it for, not Greek scholars, have been more interested in it than I expected. Not you, I think, who, though you judge only too favourably of all I do, are not fond of such Subjects.

I have here two Volumes of my dear Sevigne's Letters lately discovered at Dijon; and I am writing out for my own use a Dictionary of the Dramatis Persons figuring in her Correspondence, whom I am always forgetting and confounding.