Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume II Part 5

Maria C[harlesworth] was staying with my Brother at Boulge in the Autumn, and sent a very kind message to me; I now am sorry I did not see her; but I keep out of the way of the _Company_ at Boulge, though I am glad to see my Brother here. So I wish I had asked her to take the Trouble to come and see me in my Den. Alas! if ever you do come back, you will have to come and see me; for I really go nowhere now. Frederic Tennyson came to me for a few Days, and talked of you two: he was looking very well; and was grand and kind as before. I hear little of Alfred. Spedding's Bacon seems to hang fire; they say he is disheartened at the little Interest, and less Conviction, that his two first volumes carried; Thompson told me they had only convinced _him_ the other way; and that _Ellis_ had long given up Bacon's Defence before he died.

Now my sheet is filled on the strength of my own Gla.s.s of Porter--all at a heat. So Good Bye: ever yours, E. F. G.

_To S. Laurence_.

MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.

_April_ 23/64.

DEAR LAURENCE,

I only got home last Night, from Wilts.h.i.+re, where I had been to see Miss Crabbe, daughter of the old Vicar whom you remember. I found your two Letters: and then your Box. When I had unscrewed the last Screw, it was as if a Coffin's Lid were raised; there was the Dead Man. {55} I took him up to my Bedroom; and when morning came, he was there--reading; alive, and yet dead. I am perfectly satisfied with it on the whole; indeed, could only have suggested a very, very, slight alteration, if any. . .

As I pa.s.sed through London, I saw that wonderful Collection of Rubbish, the late Bishop of Ely's Pictures; but I fell desperately in Love with a Sir Joshua, a young Lady in white with a blue Sash, and a sweet blue Sky over her sweet, n.o.ble, Head; far above Gainsboro' in its Air and Expression. I see in the Papers that it went for 165 pounds; which, if I thought well to give so much for any Picture, I could almost have given, by some means, for such a delightful Work.

MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.

_April_ 27/64.

DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I will send back the Gainsboro' copy {56a} at once; I think the Original must be one of the happiest of the Painter's; while he had Vand.y.k.e in his Eye, with whom he was to go to Heaven. {56b} I will not argue how far he was superior to Reynolds in Colour; but in the Air of Dignity and Gentility (in the better Sense) he was surely inferior; it must be so, from the Difference of Character in the two men. Madame D'Arblay (Miss Burney) relates how one day when she was dining with Sir Joshua at Richmond, she chanced to see him looking at her in a peculiar way; she said to him, 'I know what you are thinking about.' 'Ay,' he said, 'you may come and sit to me now whenever you please.' They had often met; but he at last caught _the_ phase of her which was best; but I don't think it ever went to Canvas. I don't think Gainsboro' could have painted the lovely portrait at the Bishop of Ely's, slight as it was; Sir Joshua was by much the finer Gentleman; indeed Gainsboro' was a Scamp.

In the summer of 1864 FitzGerald bought a small farmhouse in the outskirts of Woodbridge, which he afterwards converted into Little Grange.

_To George Crabbe_.

WOODBRIDGE: _July_ 31/64.

MY DEAR GEORGE,

I returned yesterday from a Ten Days' Cruise to the Suss.e.x Coast: which was pleasant enough. To-morrow I talk of Lowestoft and Yarmouth.

. . . Read Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua, something of a very different order [from the 'Dean's English'], deeply interesting; pathetic, eloquent, and, I think, sincere: sincere, in not being conscious of all the steps he took in reaching his present Place.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.

_Aug._ 31, [1864].

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I hope you don't think I have forgotten you. Your visit gave me a sad sort of Pleasure, dashed with the Memory of other Days; I now see so few People, and those all of the common sort, with whom I never talk of our old Subjects; so I get in some measure unfitted for such converse, and am almost saddened with the remembrance of an old contrast when it comes. And there is something besides; a Shadow of Death: but I won't talk of such things: only believe I don't forget you, nor wish to be forgotten by you. Indeed, your kindness touched me.

I have been reading Juvenal with Translation, etc., in my Boat. Nearly the best things seem to me what one may call Epistles, rather than Satires: VIII. To Ponticus: XI. To Persicus: and XII. XIII. and XIV to several others: and, in these, leaving out the directly satirical Parts.

Satires III and X, like Horace's Poems, are prost.i.tuted by Parliamentary and vulgar use, and should lie by for a while. One sees Lucretius, I think, in many parts; but Juvenal can't rise to Lucretius, who is, after all, the true sublime Satirist of poor Man, and of something deeper than his Corruptions and Vices: and he looks on all, too, with 'a Countenance more in Sorrow than in Anger.' By the way, I want you to tell me the name and t.i.tle of that Essay on Lucretius {58} which you said was enlarged and reprinted by the Author from the original Cambridge and Oxford Essays. I want much to get it.

There is a fine Pa.s.sage in Juvenal's 6th Satire on Women: beginning line 634, 'Fingimus haec, etc.' to 650: but (as I think) leaving out lines 639, 640; because one _can_ understand without them, and they jingle sadly with their one vowel ending. I mention this because it occurs in a Satire which, from its Subject, you may perhaps have little cared for.

Another Book I have had is Wesley's Journal, which I used to read, but gave away my Copy--to you? or Robert Groome {59a} was it? If you don't know it, do know it; it is curious to think of this Diary of his running almost coevally with Walpole's Letter-Diary; the two men born and dying too within a few years of one another, and with such different Lives to record. And it is remarkable to read pure, unaffected, and undying, English, while Addison and Johnson are tainted with a Style, which all the world imitated! Remember me to all. Ever yours E. F. G.

'Sed genus humanum d.a.m.nat caligo Futuri'--a Lucretian line from Juvenal.

{59b}

MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.

_Nov._ 11/64.

MY DEAR COWELL,

Let me hear of you whenever you have something to tell of yourself: or indeed whenever you have a few spare minutes, and happen, to think--of me. I don't forget you: and 'out of sight' is not 'out of mind' with you, and three or four more in the World. I hope you see Donne at times: and you must look out for old Spedding, that melancholy Ruin of the 19th Century, with his half-white-washed Bacon. Perhaps you will see another Ruin--the Author of Enoch Arden. Compare that with the Spontaneous _Go_ of Palace of Art, Mort d'Arthur, Gardener's Daughter, Locksley Hall, Will Waterproof, Sleeping Palace, Talking Oak, and indeed, one may say, all the two volumes of 1842. As to Maud, I think it the best Poem, as a whole, after 1842.

To come down to very little, from once great, Things--I don't know if it's your coming home, or my being better this Winter, or what: but I have caught up a long ago begun Version of my dear old _Magico_, and have so recast it that scarce a Plank remains of the original! Pretty impudence: and yet all done to conciliate English, or modern, Sympathy.

This I sha'n't publish: so say (pray!) nothing of it at all--remember--only I shall print some Copies for you and one or two more: and you and Elizabeth will like it a great deal too much. There is really very great Skill in the Adaptation, and Remodelling of it. By the bye, would you translate _Demonio_, _Lucifer_, or _Satan_? One of the two I take. I cut out all the precioso very ingeniously: and give all the Mountain-moving, etc., in the second Act without Stage direction, so as it may seem to pa.s.s only in the dazzled Eyes, or Fantasy, of Cyprian. All this is really a very difficult Job to me; not worth the Candle, I dare say: only that you two will be pleased. I also increase the religious Element in the Drama; and make Cyprian outwit the Devil more cleverly than he now does; for the Devil was certainly too clever to be caught in his own Art. _That_ was very good Fun for an Autodafe Audience, however.

But please say nothing of this to any one. I should like to take up the Vida es Sueno too in the same manner; but these plays are more difficult than all the others put together: and I have no spur now.

How would you translate Pliny's 'Quisquis est Deus, et quac.u.mque in parte, totus est Sensus, totus Visus, totus Auditus, totus Animae, totus Animi, totus Sui?' {61}

This Pa.s.sage is alluded to by Calderon; but, in the manner of our old Playwrights, I quote it in the Latin and translate. I want to know by you if I have done it sufficiently; and I don't send you mine, in order that you may send me your Version freely.

Now, Good Bye: I suppose it's this rainy Day that draws out this, with several other Letters, that had waited some while to be written.

Yours ever E. F. G.

_To R. C. Trench_.

MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.

_February_ 25/65.

MY DEAR LORD,

Edward Cowell's return to England {62a} set him and me talking of old Studies together, left off since he went to India. And I took up three sketched out Dramas, two of Calderon, {62b} and have licked the two Calderons into some sort of shape of my own, without referring to the Original. One of them goes by this Post to your Grace; and when I tell you the other is no other than your own 'Life's a Dream,' you won't wonder at my sending the present one on Trial, both done as they are in the same lawless, perhaps impudent, way. I know you would not care who did these things, so long as they were well done; but one doesn't wish to meddle, and in so free-and-easy a way, with a Great Man's Masterpieces, and utterly fail: especially when two much better men have been before one. One excuse is, that Sh.e.l.ley and Dr. Trench only took parts of these plays, not caring surely--who can?--for the underplot and buffoonery which stands most in the way of the tragic Dramas. Yet I think it is as a whole, that is, the whole main Story, that these Plays are capital; and therefore I have tried to present that whole, leaving out the rest, or nearly so; and altogether the Thing has become so altered one way or another that I am afraid of it now it's done, and only send you one Play (the other indeed is not done printing: neither to be published), which will be enough if it is an absurd Attempt. For the Vida is not so good even, I doubt: dealing more in the Heroics, etc.

I tell Donne he is too partial a Friend; so is Cowell: Spedding, I think, wouldn't care. So, as you were very kind about the other Plays, and love Calderon (which I doubt argues against me), I send you _my_ Magician.

You will not mind if I blunder in addressing you; in which I steered a middle course between the modes Donne told me; and so, probably, come to the Ground!

_To John Allen_.

MARKET HILL: IPSWICH. {63} _April_ 10/65.

MY DEAR ALLEN,

I was much obliged to you for your former Letters; and now send you the second Play. This I don't suppose you'll like as well as the first: perhaps not at all; it is rather 'Ercles vein' I doubt. I wish to know however from you what you do think of it; because if it seem to you at all preposterous, I shall not send it to some others: but leave them with the first, which really does please those I wished it to please, with its fine Story and Moral. If you like what I now send, I will send you a Copy of Both st.i.tched together, and another copy to your Cousin: and indeed to any one else you think might be pleased with it.

I am indulging in the expensive amus.e.m.e.nt of Building, though not on a very large scale. It _is_ very pleasant, certainly, to see one's little Gables and Chimnies mount into Air and occupy a Place in the Landscape.

There is a duller Memoir than the 'Lady of Quality,' Miss Lucy Aitken's Letters, etc. You will find the Private Life of an Eastern Queen a good little Book. I have now got Carlyle's two last volumes of Frederick: of which I have only read the latter Part; I don't know whether I can read through the Wars and Battles, which are said to be very fine.