Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume II Part 25

I was curious to know what an American, and of your Quality, would say of Crabbe. The manner and topics (Whig, Tory, etc.) are almost obsolete in this country, though I remember them well: how then must they appear to you and yours? The 'Ceremoniousness' you speak of is overdone for Crabbe's time: he overdid it in his familiar intercourse, so as to disappoint everybody who expected 'Nature's sternest Poet,' etc.; but he was all the while observing. I know not why he persists in his Thee and Thou, which certainly Country Squires did not talk of, except for an occasional Joke, at the time his Poem dates from, 1819: and I warned my Readers in that stillborn Preface to change that form into simple 'You.'

If this Book leaves a melancholy impression on you, what then would all his others? Leslie Stephen says his Humour is heavy (Qy is not his Tragedy?), and wonders how Miss Austen could admire him as it appears she did; and you discern a relation between her and him. I find plenty of grave humour in this Book: in the Spinster, the Bachelor, the Widow, etc.

All which I pointed out (in the still-born) to L. S. . . . He says too that Crabbe is 'incapable of Epigram,' which also you do not agree in; Epigrams more of Humour than Wit; sometimes only hinted, as in those two last lines of that disagreeable, and rather incomprehensible Sir Owen Dale. I think he will do in the land of Cervantes still.

When my Copy of Tennyson's Lover's Tale comes home I will send it to you.

. . . As to Gray--Ah, to think of that little Elegy inscribed among the Stars, while ---, --- & Co., are blazing away with their Fireworks here below. I always think that there is more Genius in most of the three volume Novels than in Gray: but by the most exquisite Taste, and indefatigable lubrication, he made of his own few thoughts, and many of other men's, a something which we all love to keep ever about us. {270} I do not think his scarcity of work was from Design: he had but a little to say, I believe, and took his time to say it. . . .

Only think of old Carlyle, who was very feeble indeed during the winter, having read through all Shakespeare to himself during these latter Spring months. So his Niece writes me. I do not hear of his doing the like by his Goethe.

I had another shot at your Hawthorne, a Man of fifty times Gray's Genius, but I could not take to him. Painfully microscopic and elaborate on dismal subjects, I still thought: but I am quite ready to admit that (as in Goethe's case) the fault lies in me. I think I have a good feeling for such things; but 'non omnia possumus, etc.;' some Screw loose. 'C'est egal.' That is a serviceable word for so much.

Now have I any more that turns up for this wonderful Letter? I should put it in, for I do think it might amuse you in Madrid. But nothing does turn up this Evening. Tea, and a Walk on our River bank, and then, what do you think? An hour's reading (to me) of a very celebrated Murder which I remember just thirty years ago at Norwich: then 'Ten minutes'

Refreshment'; and then, Nicholas Nickleby! Then one Pipe: and then to Bed. Yours sincerely,

E. F. G.

This Letter shall sleep a night too before Travelling. Next Morning.

Revenons a notre Crabbe. 'Principles and Pew' very bad. 'The Flowers, etc., cut by busy hands, etc.,' are, or were, common on the leaden roofs of old Houses, Churches, etc. I made him stop at 'Till the Does ventured on our Solitude,' {271} without adding '_We were so still_!'--which is quite 'de trop.' You will see by the enclosed prefatory Notice what I have done in the matter, as little as I could in doing what was to be done. My own Copy is full of improvements. Yes, for any Poetaster may improve three-fourths of the careless old Fellow's Verse: but it would puzzle a Poet to improve the better part. I think that Crabbe differs from Pope in this thing for one: that he aims at Truth, not at Wit, in his Epigram. How almost graceful he can sometimes be too!

What we beheld in Love's perspective Gla.s.s Has pa.s.s'd away--one Sigh! and let it pa.s.s. {272}

LOWESTOFT. _August_ 20/79.

MY DEAR SIR,

Mr. Norton wrote me that you had been detained in Spain by Mrs. Lowell's severe, nay, dangerous, illness; a very great affliction to you. I venture a bit of a Letter, which you are not to answer, even by a word; no, not even read further than now you have got, unless a better day has dawned on you, and unless you feel wholly at liberty to write. I should be very glad to hear, in ever so few words, that your anxiety was over.

I do not think I shall make a long letter of this; for I do not think of much that can amuse you in the least, even if you should be open to such sort of amus.e.m.e.nt as I could give you. I am come here to be a month with my friend Cowell; he and I are reading the Second Part of Don Quixote together, as we used to read together thirty years ago; he always the Teacher, and I the Pupil, although he is quite unaware of that Relation between us; indeed, rather reverses it. It so happens that he is not so well acquainted with this Second Part as with the First; indeed not so well with the Story of it as I, but then he is so much a better Scholar in all ways that he lights up pa.s.sages of the Book in a way that is all new to me. Some of the strange words reminded me again of his wish for a Spanish Dictionary in the style of Littre's French: he would a.s.suredly be the Man to do it, but he has his Sanskrit Professors.h.i.+p to mind.

There is a Book rather worth reading called 'On Foot through Spain'; {273} meaning, as much of Spain as extends from St. Sebastian on the Bay of Biscay to Barcelona on the Mediterranean; with a good deal of Cervantesque Ventas, Carreteros, etc., in it. There is an account of the Obsequies of PAU PI (Basque?) on the last Day of Carnival at Saragossa, which reminded me of the 'Cortes de Muerte,' etc. Hawthorne (whose admirable Italian Journal I brought with me here) says that originally the Italian Carnival ended with somewhat of the same Burlesque Ceremonial, but was thought to mimic too Graciosoly that of the Church. I believe the Moccoli, etc., are a remainder of it.

'Eso alla se ha de entender, respondio Sancho, con los _que nacieron en las malvas_' (II. c. 4), made my Master jump at once to Job x.x.x. 4.

I cannot but suppose that you are gradually gathering materials for some Essay on Spanish Literature, and it is a rare Quality in these days to be in no hurry about such work, but to wait till one can do it thoroughly; as is the case with you. I suppose you know Lope: of whom I have read, and now shall read, nothing: even Cowell, who has read some, is not much interested in him. He delights in Calderon, of whom he has one thick Volume here, and still finds many obscure pa.s.sages to clear up. He was telling me of one about Madrid, {274} which (as you are now there) I must quote by way of filling up this Second Sheet of Letter. But, to do this, I must wait till I have been with him for our morning's reading, so as I may give it you Chapter and Verse.

P.S. Here is my Professor's MS. note for you, which I told him I wanted to send. We have been reading Chapters 14-15 of Don Quixote, Second Part. Do you know why Carrasco finds an _Algebrista_ for his hurts? Why the Moorish _Aljebro_ = the setting of Fractions, etc. So said my dear Pundit at once. Ah! you would like to be with us, for the sake of him, rather than of yours sincerely E. F. G.

_To C. E. Norton_.

LOWESTOFT. _Sept._ 3/79.

MY DEAR NORTON,

I must write you a few lines, on my knee (not, on my knees, however), in return for your kind letter. As to my thinking you could be 'importunate' in asking again for my two Sophocles Abstracts, you must know that such importunity cannot but be grateful. I am only rather ashamed that you should have to repeat it. I laid the Plays by after looking them over some months ago, meaning to wait till another year to clear up some parts, if not all. Thus do my little works arrive at such form as they result in, good or bad; so as, however I may be blamed for the liberties I take with the Great, I cannot be accused of over haste in doing so, though blamed I may be for rashness in meddling with them at all. Anyhow, I would not send you any but a fair MS. if I sent MS. at all; and may perhaps print it in a small way, not to publish, but so as to ensure a final Revision, such as will also be more fitting for you to read. It is positively the last of my Works! having been by me these dozen years, I believe, occasionally looked at. So much for that.

Now, you would like to be here along with me and my delightful Cowell, when we read the Second Part of Don Quixote together of a morning. This we have been doing for three weeks; and shall continue to do for some ten days more, I suppose: and then he will be returning to his Cambridge. If we read very continuously we should be almost through the Book by this time: but, as you may imagine we play as well as work; some pa.s.sage in the dear Book leads Cowell off into Sanskrit, Persian, or Goody Two Shoes, for all comes within the compa.s.s of his Memory and Application.

Job came in to the help of Sancho a few days ago: and the Duenna Rodriguez' age brought up a story Cowell recollected of an old Lady who persisted in remaining at 50; till being told (by his Mother) that she could not be elected to a Charity because of not being 64, she said 'She thought she could manage it'; and the Professor shakes with Laughter not loud but deep, from the centre. . . .

Pray read in our Athenaeum some letters of Severn's about Keats, full of Love and intelligent Admiration, all the better for coming straight from the heart without any style at all. If I thought that Mr. Lowell would not find these Athenaeums somewhere in Madrid, I would send them to him, as I would also to you in a like predicament. . . .

This letter has run on further than I expected: and I am now going to see Sancho off to his Island, under convoy of my Professor.

_To S. Laurence_.

11 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT.

_Septr._ 22/79.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

Your letter found me here this morning: here, where I have now been near six weeks, for a month of which Edward Cowell and his Wife were my neighbours; and we had two or three hours of Don Quixote's company of a morning, and only ourselves for company at night. They are gone, however; and I might have gone to my own home also, but that some Nephews and Nieces wished to see a little more of me; and I thought also that Lowestoft would be more amusing than Woodbridge to a young London Clerk, a Nephew of the Cowells, who comes to me for a short Holyday, when he can get away from his Desk. But early in October I shall be back at my old routine, stale enough. I think that, as a general rule, people should die at 70.

Yes: though Edwards was comparatively a Friend of late growth--he, and his brave wife--they encountered me down in my own country here, and we somehow suited one another; and I feel sad thinking of the pleasant days at Dunwich, which the Tide now rolling up here will soon reach. {277} . . .

I am here re-reading Forster's Life of d.i.c.kens, which seems to me a very good Book, though people say, I believe, there is too much Forster in it.

At any rate, there is enough to show the wonderful Daemonic d.i.c.kens: as pure an instance of Genius as ever lived; and, it seems to me, a Man I can love also.

_Sentence from a Letter written to Prof. Norton Feb._ 22/80.

'I cannot yet get the 2nd Part (Coloneus) to fit as I wish to the first: finding (what I never doubted) that nothing is less true than Goethe's saying that these two Plays and Antigone must be read in Sequence, as a Trilogy.'

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 4, 1880.

MY DEAR NORTON,

Herewith you will receive, I suppose, Part I. of OEdipus, which I found on my return here after a week's absence. I really hope you will like it, after taking the trouble more than once to ask for it: only (according to my laudable rule of Give or Take in such cases) say no more of it to me than to point out anything amendable: for which, you see, I leave a wide margin, for my own behoof as well as my reader's. And again I will say that I wish you would keep it wholly to yourself: and, above all, not let a word about it cross the Atlantic. I will not send a Copy even to Professor Goodwin, to whom you can show yours, if he should happen to mention the subject; nor will I send one to Mrs. Kemble, the only other whom I had thought of. In short, you, my dear Sir, are the only Depository of this precious Doc.u.ment, which I would have you keep as though it were very precious indeed.

You will see at once that it is not even a Paraphrase, but an Adaptation, of the Original: not as more adapted to an Athenian Audience 400 years B.C. but to a merely English Reader 1800 years A.D. Some dropt st.i.tches in the Story, not considered by the old Genius of those days, I have, I think, 'taken up,' as any little Dramatist of these Days can do: though the fundamental absurdity of the Plot (equal to Tom Jones according to Coleridge!) remains; namely, that OEdipus, after so many years reigning in Thebes as to have a Family about him, should apparently never have heard of Laius' murder till the Play begins. One acceptable thing I have done, I think, omitting very much rhetorical fuss about the poor man's Fatality, which I leave for the Action itself to discover; as also a good deal of that rhetorical Scolding, which, I think, becomes tiresome even in its Greek: as the Scene between OEdipus and Creon after Tiresias: and equally unreasonable. The Choruses which I believe are thought fine by Scholars, I have left to old Potter to supply, as I was hopeless of making anything of them; pasting, you see, his 'Finale' over that which I had tried.

I believe that I must leave Part II. for the present, being rather wearied with the present stupendous Effort, at AEtat. 71. If I live another year, and am still free from the ills incident to my Time, I will make an end of it, and of all my Doings in that way.

_To Charles Keene_. {280a}

_Friday_.

MY DEAR KEENE,

. . . Beckford's Hunting is an old friend of mine: excellently written; such a relief (like Wesley and the religious men) to the Essayist style of the time. Do not fail to read the capital Squire's Letter in recommendation of a Stable-man, dated from Great Addington, Northants, 1734: of which some little is omitted after Edition I.; which edition has also a Letter from Beckford's Huntsman about a wicked 'Daufter,' wholly omitted. This first Edition is a pretty small 4to 1781, with a Frontispiece by Cipriani! . . .

If you come down this Spring, but not before May, I will show you some of these things in a Book {280b} I have, which I might call 'Half Hours with the Worst Authors,' and very fine things by them. It would be the very best Book of the sort ever published, if published; but no one would think so but myself, and perhaps you, and half a dozen more. If my Eyes hold out I will copy a delightful bit by way of return for your Ballad.

_To C. E. Norton_.

_May_ 1, 1880.

MY DEAR NORTON,

I must thank you for the Crabbe Review {281} you sent me, though, had it been your own writing, I should probably not tell you how very good I think it. I am somewhat disappointed that Mr. Woodberry dismisses Crabbe's 'Trials at Humour' as summarily as Mr. Leslie Stephen does; it was mainly for the Humour's sake that I made my little work: Humour so evident to me in so many of the Tales (and Conversations), and which I meant to try and get a hearing for in the short Preface I had written in case the Book had been published. I thought these Tales showed the 'stern Painter' softened by his Grand Climacteric, removed from the gloom and sadness of his early a.s.sociations, and looking to the Follies rather than to the Vices of Men, and treating them often in something of a Moliere way, only with some pathetic humour mixt, so as these Tales were almost the only one of his Works which left an agreeable impression behind them. But if so good a Judge as Mr. Woodberry does not see all this, I certainly could not have persuaded John Bull to see it: and perhaps am wrong myself in seeing what is not there. I doubt not that Mr. Woodberry is quite right in what he says of Crabbe not having Imagination to draw that Soul from Nature of which he enumerates the phenomena: but he at any rate does so enumerate and select them as to suggest something more to his Reader, something more than mere catalogue could suggest. He may go yet further in such a description, as that other Autumnal one in 'Delay has Danger,' beginning--