Volume I Part 6 (1/2)

DEAR BARTON,

. . . I have brought down here with me Sydney Smith's Works, now first collected: you will delight in them: I shall bring them to Suffolk when I come: and it will not be long, I dare say, before I come, as there is to be rather a large meeting of us at Boulge this August. I have got the fidgets in my right arm and hand (how the inconvenience redoubles as one mentions it)--do you know what the fidgets are?--a true ailment, though perhaps not a dangerous one. Here I am again in the land of old Bunyan--better still in the land of the more perennial Ouse, making many a fantastic winding and going much out of his direct way to fertilize and adorn. Fuller supposes that he lingers thus in the pleasant fields of Bedfords.h.i.+re, being in no hurry to enter the more barren fens of Lincolns.h.i.+re. So he says. This house is just on the edge of the town: a garden on one side skirted by the public road which again is skirted by a row of such Poplars as only the Ouse knows how to rear--and pleasantly they rustle now--and the room in which I write is quite cool and opens into a greenhouse which opens into said garden: and it's all deuced pleasant. For in half an hour I shall seek my Piscator, {61a} and we shall go to a Village {61b} two miles off and fish, and have tea in a pot- house, and so walk home. For all which idle ease I think I must be d.a.m.ned. I begin to have dreadful suspicions that this fruitless way of life is not looked upon with satisfaction by the open eyes above. One really ought to dip for a little misery: perhaps however all this ease is only intended to turn sour by and bye, and so to poison one by the very nature of self-indulgence. Perhaps again as idleness is so very great a trial of virtue, the idle man who keeps himself tolerably chaste, etc., may deserve the highest reward; the more idle, the more deserving. Really I don't jest: but I don't propound these things as certain.

There is a fair review of Sh.e.l.ley in the new Edinburgh: saying the truth on many points where the truth was not easily enunciated, as I believe.

Now, dear sir, I have said all I have to say: and Carlyle says, you know, it is dangerous to attempt to say more. So farewell for the present: if you like to write soon, direct to the Post Office, Bedford: if not, I shall soon be at Woodbridge to antic.i.p.ate the use of your pen.

HALVERSTOWN, {62} _Sunday_, Oct. 20, [1839].

MY DEAR SIR,

I am very glad that you lifted yourself at last from your mahogany desk, and took such a trip as you describe in your last letter. I don't think you could have made a better in the same given s.p.a.ce of time. It is some years since I have seen the Castle at Windsor, except from Eton. The view from the Terrace is the n.o.blest I know of, taking it with all its a.s.sociations together. Gray's Ode rises up into the mind as one looks around--does it not?--a sure proof that, however people may condemn certain conceits and expressions in the poem, the spirit of it is genuine. 'Ye distant spires, ye antique towers'--very large and n.o.ble, like the air that breathes upon one as one looks down along the view. My brother John told me he thought the Waterloo gallery very fine: the portraits by Sir Thomas almost as fine as Vand.y.k.e. You saw them, of course. You say nothing of having seen the National Gallery in London: indeed I rather fear it is closed these two months. This is a great loss to you: the Rubens landscape you would never have forgot. Thank you for the picture of my dear old Bredfield which you have secured for me: it is most welcome. Poor Nursey once made me a very pretty oil sketch of it: but I gave it to Mr. Jenney. By all means have it engraved for the pocket book: it is well worthy. Some of the tall ash trees about it used to be visible at sea: but I think their topmost branches are decayed now.

This circ.u.mstance I put in, because it will tell in your verse ill.u.s.tration of the view. From the road before the lawn, people used plainly to see the topmasts of the men-of war lying in Hollesley bay during the war. I like the idea of this: the old English house holding up its enquiring chimneys and weather c.o.c.ks (there is great physiognomy in weatherc.o.c.ks) toward the far-off sea, and the s.h.i.+ps upon it. How well I remember when we used all to be in the Nursery, and from the window see the hounds come across the lawn, my Father and Mr. Jenney in their hunting caps, etc., with their long whips--all Daguerreotyped into the mind's eye now--and that is all. Perhaps you are not civilised enough to know what Daguerreotype is: no more do I well. We were all going on here as merrily as possible till this day week, when my Piscator got an order from his Father to go home direct!) So go he would the day after. I wanted to go also: but they would have me stay here ten days more. So I stay: I suppose I shall be in London toward the end of this week however: and then it will not be long before I pay you a visit. . . .

I have gone through Homer's Iliad--sorry to have finished it. The accounts of the Zoolu people, with Dingarn their king, etc., {64} give one a very good idea of the Homeric heroes, who were great brutes: but superior to the G.o.ds who governed them: which also has been the case with most nations. It is a lucky thing that G.o.d made Man, and that Man has not to make G.o.d: we should fare badly, judging by the specimens already produced--Frankenstein Monster G.o.ds, formed out of the worst and rottenest sc.r.a.ps of humanity--gigantic--and to turn destructively upon their Creators--

'But be ye of good cheer! I have overcome the world--'

So speaks a gentle voice.

I found here a Number of Tait's Magazine for August last, containing a paper on Southey, Wordsworth, etc., by De Quincey. Incomplete and disproportioned like his other papers: but containing two n.o.ble pa.s.sages: one, on certain years of his own Life when Opium shut him out from the world; the other, on Southey's style: in which he tells a truth which is obvious, directly it is told. Tait seems to be very well worth a s.h.i.+lling a month: that is the price of him, I see. You have bought Carlyle's Miscellanies, have you not? I long to get them: but one must wait till they are out of print before the Dublin booksellers shall have heard of them. Now here is really a very long letter, and what is more, written with a pen of my own mending--more consolatory to me than to you.

Mr. Macnish's inscription {65} for Milton is--

His lofty spirit was the home Of inspirations high, A mighty temple whose great dome Was hidden in the sky.

Who Mr. Macnish is, I don't know. Didn't he write some Essays on Drunkenness once? or on Dreams?

Farewell for the present, my dear Sir. We shall soon shake hands again.

Ever yours,

E. FITZGERALD.

_To John Allen_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, [4 _April_, 1840]

MY DEAR ALLEN,

. . . The country is now showing symptoms of greenness and warmth.

Yesterday I walked (not a common thing for me) eleven miles; partly over a heath, covered with furze bushes just come out into bloom, whose odour the fresh wind blew into my face. Such a day it was, only not so warm as when you and I used to sit on those rocks overlooking the sea at Tenby, just eight years ago. I am afraid you are growing too good a Christian for me, Master Allen, if you know what I mean by that. Don't be alarmed however. I have just read the first number of d.i.c.kens' new work {66a}: it does not promise much, I think.

Love to all Coram Street. {66b}

_To Frederic Tennyson_.

THE CORPORATE TOWN OF BEDFORD, _June_ 7, 1840.

DEAR FREDERIC,

Your letter dated from the Eternal City on the 15th of May reached me here two days ago. Perhaps you have by this time left Naples to which you bid me direct: or will have left it by the time my letter gets there.

. . . Our letters are dated from two very different kinds of places: but perhaps equally well suited to the genius of the two men. For I am becoming more hebete every hour: and have not even the ambition to go up to London all this spring to see the Exhibitions, etc. I live in general quietly at my brother-in-law's in Norfolk {67} and I look with tolerable composure on vegetating there for some time to come, and in due time handing out my eldest nieces to waltz, etc., at the County b.a.l.l.s. People affect to talk of this kind of life as very beautiful and philosophical: but I don't: men ought to have an ambition to stir, and travel, and fill their heads and senses: but so it is. Enough of what is now generally called the subjective style of writing. This word has made considerable progress in England during the year you have been away, so that people begin to fancy they understand what it means. I have been striving at it, because it is a very _sine qua non_ condition in a book which I have just been reading, Eastlake's translation of Goethe's Theory of Colours.