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From The Fortnightly Review.
EDWARD FITZGERALD.

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,

Where once I tarried for a while, Glance at the wheeling orb of change,

carefully an unsuspected individuality of great force and charm. The learned and accomplished vice-master of Trinity has fulfilled his task in a manner almost too He leaves FitzGerald to speak modest.

to us without a commentary from the pages of his matchless translations and from the leaves of his scarcely less delightful letters.

FOUR years have passed since a great stimulus to curiosity about the translator of "Omar Khayyam" was given by the double inscription, prologue and epilogue, aze atque vale, in which Lord Tennyson put forth his "Tiresias to the world under the shadow of the name of Edward FitzGerald. The curtain was for a moEdward Purcell was born in a Jacobean ment drawn from the personality of one of mansion near Woodbridge, in Suffolk, on the most recluse and sequestered of mod- the 31st of March, 1809. His father had ern men of letters, and we saw, with the married a Miss FitzGerald, and on the eyes of the poet laureate, one of the ear-death of her father in 1818, he assumed liést and one of the most interesting of his the name and arms of FitzGerald. The associates: poet's early childhood was spent in France, but at the age of thirteen he went to a school at Bury St. Edmunds, where the Speddings, W. B. Donne, and J. M. Kemble were among his schoolfellows. In 1826 he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1828 he formed the friendship of two freshmen, slightly younger than himself, who were to be his intimates for life, W. M. Thackeray and W. H. Thompson, lately master of Trinity. He saw Lord Tennyson about this time, although he did not make his acquaintance until they left college; but half a century later he retained a clear recollection of the appearance of the poet laureate as an undergraduate: "I remember him well, a sort of Hyperion." It is consistent with all that we learn of the shy fidelity of FitzGerald that almost all the friendships of his life were formed before he was

And greet it with a kindly' smile;

Whom yet I see as there you sit

Beneath your sheltering garden-tree,
And watch your doves about you flit,
And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee,
Or on your head their rosy feet,

As if they knew your diet spares
Whatever moved in that full sheet

Let down to Peter at his prayers; Who feed on milk and meal and grass.

This dedication, as we now learn, had been written a week before FitzGerald's death, in June, 1883, when the intimacy of the two poets had lasted for nearly fifty years. Other friends, scarcely less dear or less admired, had already preceded FitzGerald to the grave. Thackeray, a little before the end, in reply to his daugh- one-and-twenty. As early as 1830 he ter's inquiry which of his old friends he had loved most, had answered, "Why, dear old Fitz, to be sure." Carlyle growled at the comparative rarity of "your friendly human letters," and a few more James Spedding, Thompson of Trinity, Crabbe, Bernard Barton, had tempted his woodland spirit from its haunts. But few indeed among the living can boast of having enjoyed even a slight personal acquaintanceship with Edward FitzGerald, and almost his only intimate friend now left is the editor of the "Letters and Literary Remains" (Macmillan & Co.: 3 vols.), which are just appearing, and which must reveal even to those who have placed FitzGerald's genius highest and studied him most

warns Thackeray not to invite him to meet anybody; "I cannot stand seeing new faces in the polite circles;" and while the rest of the companionship, each in his own way, turned to conquer the world, FitzGerald remained obstinately and successfully obscure. In 1831 he was nearly caught, for a very delicate and fantastic lyric, published anonymously in the Athenæum, attracted remark and was generally attributed to Charles Lamb. FitzGerald took a farmhouse on the battle-field of Naseby, and paid no heed to the outstretched hands of the Sirens. He was in easy circumstances and adopted no profession. The seat of his family, and his own main residence until 1835, was Whin

Alfred Tennyson stayed with me at Ambleside. Spedding was forced to go home, till the last two days of my stay here. I will say no more of Tennyson than that the more I have seen of him, the more cause I have

stead Lodge, a house beautifully placed on the west bank of the Orwell, about two miles from Ipswich. Thence they removed to a less attractive mansion, Boulge, near Woodbridge, in the same county, close to the place of his birth, and there Fitzgerald resided until his death. His grumpinesses were so droll, that I was always

life was extremely simple, devoted to country cares, and with no duties much more severe than were involved in the fit pruning of roses, and in the politics of the circumjacent hamlet. Nor, at first, did he give promise of being more than an admirer, a contemplator, even in the fairy world of literature. We get charming glimpses of his sympathetic nature in some of the early letters. On the 7th of December, 1832, he says:

to think him great. His
little humors and
laughing and was often put in mind (strange
to say) of my little unknown friend, Undine.
I must however say, further, that I felt what
Charles Lamb describes, a sense of depres
sion at times from the overshadowing of a
so much more lofty intellect than my own:
this (though it may seem vain to say so) I
never experienced before, though I have often
been with much greater intellects: but I could
not be mistaken in the universality of his
mind; and perhaps I have received some

benefit in the now more distinct consciousness
of my dwarfishness.

His time, when the roses were not being pruned, and when he was not making dis

The news of this week is that Thackeray has come but is going to leave again for Devonshire directly. He came very opportunely to divert my Blue Devils: notwithstand-creet journeys in uneventful directions, ing, we do not see very much of each other: was divided between music, which greatly and he has now so many friends (especially occupied his younger thought, and literathe Bullers) that he has no such wish for my ture, which slowly, but more and more society. He is as full of good humor and exclusively, engaged his attention. His kindness as ever. The next news is that a loneliness, and the high standard by which new volume of Tennyson is out, containing in his remote seclusion he measured all nothing more than you have in MS. except contemporary publications, gives an interone or two things not worth having. est to his expressions with regard to new books, an interest which centres around himself more, perhaps, than around the work criticised. For instance, he says,

...

I have been poring over Wordsworth lately, which has had much effect in bettering my Blue Devils for his philosophy does not ab jure melancholy, but puts a pleasant countenance upon it, and connects it with humanity.

It is very well, if the sensibility that makes us fearful of ourselves is diverted to become a cause of sympathy and interest with nature and mankind: and this I think Wordsworth tends to do. I think I told you of Shakespeare's sonnets before: I cannot tell you

what sweetness I find in them.

So by Shakespeare's sonnets roasted, and Words-
worth's poems basted,

My heart will be well toasted, and excellently tasted.
This beautiful couplet must delight you,

think.

I

In June, 1834, Thackery was illustrating "my Undine" (possibly a translation of Fouqué's romance) " in about fourteen little colored drawings, very nicely." What has become of this treasure? In May, 1835, some of the friends were together in the Lakes, and we get, incidentally, a pleasant glimpse of the most illustrious of them:

in April, 1838, to the Quaker poet, Bernard Barton, who was his neighbor at Woodbridge, and who eventually became his father-in-law:

I am very heavy indeed with a kind of influenza, which has blocked up most of my senses, and put a wet blanket over my brains. This state of head has not been improved by trying to get through a new book much in fashion-Carlyle's "French Revolution" written in a German style. An Englishman writes of French Revolutions in a German style! People say the book is very deep; but it appears to me that the meaning seems deep from lying under mystical language. There is no repose, nor equable movement in it all cut up into short sentences half reflective, half narrative; so that one labors through it as vessels do through what is called a short sea-small, contrary-going waves caused by shallows, and straits, and meeting tides, etc. I like to sail before the wind over the surface of an even-rolling eloquence, like

that of Bacon or the Opium-Eater. There is also pleasant fresh-water sailing with such writers as Addison. Is there any pond-sailing in literature? that is, drowsy, slow, and of small compass? Perhaps we may say, some Sermons. But this is only conjecture. Certainly Jeremy Taylor rolls along as majestically as any of them. We have had Alfred Tennyson here, very droll and very wayward, and much sitting up of nights till two and three in the morning, with pipes in our mouths: at which good hour we would get Alfred to give us some of his magic music, which he does between growling and smoking,

and so to bed.

human bones together in the Naseby battlefield. Here is a scrap from a letter of Carlyle to FitzGerald, dated October 16, 1844:

One day we had Alfred Tennyson here; an unforgettable day. He stayed with us till late; forgot his stick: we dismissed him with Macpherson's Farewell." Macpherson (see Burns) was a Highland robber; he played that Tune, of his own composition, on his way to the gallows; asked, "If in all that crowd the Macpherson had any clansman?" holding up the fiddle that he might bequeath it to some one. Any kinsman, any soul that wished him well?" Nothing answered, nothing durst answer.

He crushed the fiddle under his foot, and sprang off. The Tune is rough as hemp, but strong as a lion. I never hear it without something of emotion-poor Macpherson; though the artist hates to play it. Alfred's dark face grew darker, and I saw his lip slightly quivering.

Few poets have been able to prepare for their life's work by so long and so dreamy a novitiate. In 1839 FitzGerald gives Bernard Barton a more than commonly full account of his daily life. He goes with a fellow-fisherman, "my piscator," two miles off to fish, and has tea in a pothouse, and so walks home. "For all The life that slipped away at Woodwhich idle ease," he says, "I think I must bridge in a reverie so graceful and so be damned." Or else upon glorious sun-roseate was not undisturbed from time to shiny days he lies at full length in his time by voices from the outer world calling garden reading Tacitus, with the nightin-it to action; but through a long series of gale singing and some red anemones years the appeal was resolutely put by. flaunting themselves in the sun. "A funny mixture all this; Nero, and the delicacy of spring; all very human, however. Then, at half past one, lunch on Cambridge cream cheese; then a ride over hill and dale; then spudding up some weeds from the grass; and then, coming in, I sit down to write to you." No wonder that Carlyle, groaning in London under the weight of his work and his indigestion, would gird playfully at the "peaceable man at Woodbridge, with his "innocent far uiente life." FitzGerald, on his part, was by no means blind to the seamy side of the loud Carlylean existence, but wished it were calmer, and retired to his Horace" unless a man can do better he had best Walpole and his "Tale of a Tub" with fresh gusto after being tossed, as he called it, on Carlyle's canvas waves. After an unusual burst of Chelsea eloquence, FitzGerald proposes a retreat; "We will all sit under the calm shadow of Spedding's forehead." Carlyle, meanwhile, after growing better acquainted with FitzGerald, to whom Thackeray had first pre sented him, became even more attached to him, and, visiting him, they scraped for

When almost all his friends were writers
it could not be but that FitzGerald was
conscious of a tendency to write, and there
are signs in his correspondence of an oc-
casional yielding to the tendency. But
in all these early years he was never
harassed by what he describes as
"the
strong inward call, the cruel-sweet pangs
of parturition," which he observed, with
the curiosity of a physician, in the spirits
of Tennyson and Thackeray. He knew
very well that he had the power, if he
chose, to pour out volume after volume,
like others of the mob of gentlemen who
write with ease; but his belief was that

not do at all." It is in 1847 that we find him, as a lucky discovery of Mr. Aldis Wright's informs us, plunging for the first time, though with the cryptic anonymity which he would continue to observe, into print. When Singer published his edition of Selden's "Table Talk" in that year, the illustrative matter was contributed by a gentleman whom the editor was not permitted to name. Mr. Aldis Wright has found the originals of these notes in Fitz