Read Ebook: Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes. Vol. 2 by FitzGerald Edward Wright William Aldis Editor

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es: but you do not give me any great desire to put that to the test.

Max Muller's Darwin Paper reminded me of an Observation in Bacon's Sylva; that Apes and Monkeys, with Organs of Speech so much like Man's have never been taught to speak an Articulate word: whereas Parrots and Starlings, with organs so unlike Man's, are easily taught to do so. Do you know if Darwin, or any of his Followers, or Antagonists, advert to this?

I have been a wonderful Journey--for me--even to Naseby in Northamptonshire; to authenticate the spot where I dug up some bones of those slain there, for Gurlyle thirty years ago. We are to put up a Stone there to record the fact, if we can get leave of the present Owners of the Field; a permission, one would think, easy enough to obtain; but I have been more than a Year trying to obtain it, notwithstanding; and do not know that I am nearer the point after all. The Owner is a Minor: and three Trustees must sanction the thing for him; and these three Trustees are all great People, all living in different parts of England; and, I suppose, forgetful of such a little matter, though their Estate-agent, and Lawyer, represented it to them long ago.

I stayed at Cambridge some three hours on my way, so as to look at some of the Old, and New, Buildings, which I had not seen these dozen years and more. The Hall of Trinity looked to me very fine; and Sir Joshua's Duke of Gloucester the most beautiful thing in it. I looked into the Chapel, where they were at work: the Roof seemed to me being overdone: and Roubiliac's Newton is now nowhere, between the Statues of Bacon and Barrow which are executed on a larger scale. And what does Spedding say to Macaulay in that Company? I never saw Cambridge so empty, but not the less pleasant.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

What do you think of a French saying quoted by Heine, that when 'Le bon Dieu' gets rather bored in Heaven, he opens the windows, and takes a look at the Boulevards? Heine's account of the Cholera in France is wonderful.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I am wondering in what Idiom you will one day answer my last. Meanwhile, I have to thank you for Lady Pollock's Article on American Literature: which I like, as all of hers. Only, I cannot understand her Admiration of Emerson's 'Humble Bee'; which, without her Comment, I should have taken for a Burlesque on Barry Cornwall, or some of that London School. Surely, that 'Animated Torrid Zone' without which 'All is Martyrdom,' etc., is rather out of Proportion. I wish she had been able to tell us that ten copies of Crabbe sold in America for one in England: rather than Philip of Artevelde. Perhaps Crabbe does too. What do you and Miladi think of these two Lines of his which returned to me the other day? Talking of poor Vagrants, etc.,

Whom Law condemns, and Justice with a Sigh Pursuing, shakes her Sword, and passes by.

There are heaps of such things lying hid in the tangle of Crabbe's careless verse; and yet such things, you know, are not the best of him, the distressing Old Man! Who would expect such a Prettyness as this of him?

As of fair Virgins dancing in a round, Each binds the others, and herself is bound--

E. F. G.

MY DEAR DONNE,

There being a change of servants in Market Hill, Woodbridge, I came here for a week, bringing Tacitus in my Pocket. You know I don't pretend to judge of History: I can only say that you tell the Story of Tacitus' own Life, and of what he has to tell of others, very readably indeed to my Thinking: and so far I think my Thinking is to be relied on. Some of the Translations from T. by your other hands read so well also that I have wished to get at the original. But I really want an Edition such as you promised to begin upon. Thirty years ago I thought I could make out these Latins and Greeks sufficiently well for my own purpose; I do not think so now; and want good help of other men's Scholarship, and also of better Eyes than my own.

I am not sure if you were ever at this place: I fancy you once were. It is duller even than it used to be: because of even the Fishing having almost died away. But the Sea and the Shore remain the same; as to Nero, in that famous passage I remember you pointed out to me: not quite so sad to me as to him, but not very lively. I have brought a volume or two of Walpole's Letters by way of amusement. I wish you were here; and I will wait here if you care to come. Might not the Sea Air do you good?

MY DEAR CARLYLE,

Enclosed is the Naseby Lawyer's answer on behalf of the Naseby Trustees. I think it will seem marvellous in your Eyes, as it does in mine.

I say, I do not suppose any good will come of this second Application. The Trouble is nothing to me; but I will not trouble this Lawyer, Agent, etc., till I hear from you that you wish me to do so. I suppose you are now away from Chelsea; I hope among your own old places in the North. For I think, and I find, that as one grows old one returns to one's old haunts. However, my letter will reach you sooner or later, I dare say: and, if one may judge from what has passed, there will be no hurry in any future Decision of the 'Three Incomprehensibles.'

I have nothing to tell of myself; having been nowhere but to that Naseby. I am among my old haunts: so have not to travel. But I shall be very glad to hear that you are the better for having done so; and remain your ancient Bedesman,

E. F. G.

DEAR FITZGERALD,

Good be ever with you, dear FitzGerald, I am and remain Yours truly T. CARLYLE.

. . . What do you think I am reading? Voltaire's 'Pucelle': the Epic he was fitted for. It is poor in Invention, I think: but wonderful for easy Wit, and the Verse much more agreeable to me than the regularly rhymed Alexandrines. I think Byron was indebted to it in his Vision of Judgment, and Juan: his best works. There are fine things too: as when Grisbourdon suddenly slain tells his Story to the Devils in Hell where he unexpectedly makes his Appearance,

Et tout l'Enfer en rit d'assez bon coeur.

This is nearer the Sublime, I fancy, than anything in the Henriade. And one Canto ends:

J'ai dans mon temps possede des maitresses, Et j'aime encore a retrouver mon coeur--

is very pretty in the old Sinner. . . .

I am engaged in preparing to depart from these dear Rooms where I have been thirteen years, and don't know yet where I am going.

MY DEAR ALLEN,

They now sell at the Railway Stalls Milnes' Life of Keats for half a crown, as well worth the money as any Book. I would send you a Copy if you liked: as I bought three or four to give away.

You may see that I have changed my Address: obliged to leave the Lodging where I had been thirteen years: and to come here to my own house, while another Lodging is getting ready, which I doubt I shall not inhabit, as it will entail Housekeeping on me. But I like to keep my house for my Nieces: it is not my fault they do not make it their home.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I am not very solicitous about the Likeness as I might be of some dear Friend; but I was willing to have a Portrait of the Poet whom I am afraid I read more than any other of late and with whose Family I am kindly connected. The other Portrait, which you wanted to see, and I hope have not seen, is by Phillips; and just represents what I least wanted, Crabbe's company look; whereas Pickersgill represents the Thinker. So I fancy, at least.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I am going out on a few days' visit. . . . And, once out, I meditate a run to Edinburgh, only to see where Sir Walter Scott lived and wrote about. But as I have meditated this great Enterprize for these thirty years, it may perhaps now end again in meditation only. . . .

I am just finishing Forster's Dickens: very good, I think: only, he has no very nice perception of Character, I think, or chooses not to let his readers into it. But there is enough to show that Dickens was a very noble fellow as well as a very wonderful one. . . . I, for one, worship Dickens, in spite of Carlyle and the Critics: and wish to see his Gadshill as I wished to see Shakespeare's Stratford and Scott's Abbotsford. One must love the Man for that.

But I did get to Abbotsford, and was rejoiced to find it was not at all Cockney, not a Castle, but only in the half-castellated style of heaps of other houses in Scotland; the Grounds simply and broadly laid out before the windows, down to a field, down to the Tweed, with the woods which he left so little, now well aloft and flourishing, and I was glad. I could not find my way to Maida's Grave in the Garden, with its false Quantity,

Ad januam Domini, etc.

which the Whigs and Critics taunted Scott with, and Lockhart had done it. 'You know I don't care a curse about what I write'; nor about what was imputed to him. In this, surely like Shakespeare: as also in other respects. I will worship him, in spite of Gurlyle, who sent me an ugly Autotype of Knox whom I was to worship instead.

Then I went to see Jedburgh Abbey, in a half ruined corner of which he lies entombed--Lockhart beside him--a beautiful place, with his own Tweed still running close by, and his Eildon Hills looking on. The man who drove me about showed me a hill which Sir Walter was very fond of visiting, from which he could see over the Border, etc. This hill is between Abbotsford and Jedburgh: and when his Coach horses, who drew his Hearse, got there, to that hill, they could scarce be got on.

My mission to Scotland was done; but some civil pleasant people, whom I met at Abbotsford, made me go with them to the Trossachs, Katrine, Lomond, etc., which I did not care at all about; but it only took a day. After which, I came in a day to London, rather glad to be in my old flat land again, with a sight of my old Sea as we came along.

And in London I went to see my dear old Donne, because of wishing to assure myself, with my own eyes, of his condition; and I can safely say he looked better than before his Illness, near two years ago. He had a healthy colour; was erect, alert, and with his old humour, and interest in our old topics. . . .

I looked in at the Academy, as poor a show as ever I had seen, I thought; only Millais attracted me: a Boy with a red Sash: and that old Seaman with his half-dreaming Eyes while the Lassie reads to him. I had no Catalogue: and so thought the Book was--The Bible--to which she was drawing his thoughts, while the sea-breeze through the open Window whispered of his old Life to him. But I was told afterwards that it was some account of a N. W. Passage she was reading. The Roll Call I could not see, for a three deep file of worshippers before it: I only saw the 'hairy Cap' as Thackeray in his Ballad, and I supposed one would see all in a Print as well as in the Picture. But the Photo of Miss Thompson herself gives me a very favourable impression of her. It really looks, in face and dress, like some of Sir Joshua's Women. . . .

Another Miss Austen! Of course under Spedding's Auspices, the Father of Evil.

On 17 July 1883, shortly after FitzGerald's death, the late Master of Trinity wrote to me from Harrogate, 'As regards FitzGerald's letters, I have preserved a good many, which I will look through when we return to College. I have a long letter from Carlyle to him, which F. gave me. It is a Carlylesque etude on Spedding, written from dictation by his niece, but signed by the man himself in a breaking hand. The thing is to my mind more characteristic of T. Carlyle than of James Spedding--that "victorious man" as C. calls him. He seems unaware of one distinguishing feature of J. S.'s mind--its subtlety of perception--and the excellence of his English style escapes his critic, whose notices on that subject by the bye would not necessarily command assent.'

DEAR FITZGERALD,

Thanks for your kind little Letter. I am very glad to learn that you are so cheerful and well, entering the winter under such favourable omens. I lingered in Scotland, latterly against my will, for about six weeks: the scenes there never can cease to be impressive to me; indeed as natural in late visits they are far too impressive, and I have to wander there like a solitary ghost among the graves of those that are gone from me, sad, sad, and I always think while there, ought not this visit to be the last?

Adieu, dear F. I wish you a right quiet and healthy winter, and beg to be kept in memory as now probably your oldest friend.

Ever faithfully yours, dear F., T. CARLYLE.

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