Letters of Edward FitzGerald | Page 8

Letters, further than that I really do want
to hear you are well, and where you are, and what doing, from time to
time. I have absolutely nothing to tell about myself, not having moved
from this place since I last wrote, unless to our Sea coast at Aldbro',
whither I run, or sail, from time to time to idle with the Sailors in their
Boats or on their Beach. I love their childish ways: but they too
degenerate. As to reading, my Studies have lain chiefly in some back
Volumes of the New Monthly Magazine and some French Memoirs.
Trench was good enough to send me a little unpublished Journal by his
Mother: a very pretty thing indeed. I suppose he did this in return for
one or two Papers on Oriental Literature which Cowell had sent me
from India, and which I thought might interest Trench. I am very glad
to hear old Spedding is really getting his Share of Bacon into Print: I
doubt if it will be half as good as the 'Evenings,' where Spedding was in
the Passion which is wanted to fill his Sail for any longer Voyage.

I have not seen his Paper on English Hexameters {25} which you tell
me of: but I will now contrive to do so. I, however, believe in them:
and I think the ever-recurring attempts that way show there is some
ground for such belief. To be sure, the Philosopher's Stone, and the
Quadrature of the Circle, have had at least as many Followers. . . .
It was finding some Bits of Letters and Poems of old Alfred's that made
me wish to restore those I gave you to the number, as marking a
by-gone time to me. That they will not so much do to you, who did not
happen to save them from the Fire when the Volumes of 1842 were
printing. But I would waive that if you found it good or possible to lay
them up in Trinity Library in the Closet with Milton's! Otherwise, I
would still look at them now and then for the few years I suppose I
have to live. . . .
This is a terribly long Letter: but, if it be legible sufficiently, will
perhaps do as if I were spinning it in talk under the walls of the
Cathedral. I dare not now even talk of going any visits: I can truly say I
wish you could drop in here some Summer Day and take a Float with
me on our dull River, which does lead to THE SEA some ten miles
off. . .
You must think I have become very nautical, by all this: haul away at
ropes, swear, dance Hornpipes, etc. But it is not so: I simply sit in Boat
or Vessel as in a moving Chair, dispensing a little Grog and Shag to
those who do the work.
To E. B. Cowell.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE. December 7/61.
MY DEAR COWELL,
. . . I shall look directly for the passages in Omar and Hafiz which you
refer to and clear up, though I scarce ever see the Persian Character
now. I suppose you would think it a dangerous thing to edit Omar: else,
who so proper? Nay, are you not the only Man to do it? And he
certainly is worth good re-editing. I thought him from the first the most

remarkable of the Persian Poets: and you keep finding out in him
Evidences of logical Fancy which I had not dreamed of. I dare say
these logical Riddles are not his best: but they are yet evidences of a
Strength of mind which our Persian Friends rarely exhibit, I think. I
always said about Cowley, Donne, etc., whom Johnson calls the
metaphysical Poets, that their very Quibbles of Fancy showed a power
of Logic which could follow Fancy through such remote Analogies.
This is the case with Calderon's Conceits also. I doubt I have given but
a very one-sided version of Omar: but what I do only comes up as a
Bubble to the Surface, and breaks: whereas you, with exact Scholarship,
might make a lasting impression of such an Author. So I say of
Jelaluddin, whom you need not edit in Persian, perhaps, unless in
selections, which would be very good work: but you should certainly
translate for us some such selections exactly in the way in which you
did that apologue of Azrael. {27} I don't know the value of the Indian
Philosophy, etc., which you tell me is a fitter exercise for the Reason:
but I am sure that you should give us some of the Persian I now speak
of, which you can do all so easily to yourself; yes, as a holiday
recreation, you say, to