New-York tribune., 1902-03-08
EDWARD FITZGERALD.
FURTHER GLIMPsEs OF THE FAMOUS
ENGLISH HERMIT.

MORE LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD.
l2mo. PIP. 2s5. The Macmillan Company
In one of the new letters reproduced in TINS
volume. FitzGerald refers 10 the kind tnings
that some Americans have been saying eooot
his work to his friend Wright, and remarks
IF 1 were ten years younger should reaily De
disauieted by such overestimation as must MAKE
me ridiculous here 1t is very odd we won
Car what he would say IL he were TO know the
ehings that are said and written ABOUT MIN
nowadays. His words we fancy, would De
sharp to say the least. There is nothing more
characteristic Of him than the passage just
quoted. These the letters OF modest man,
if ever there was one. Yet, with those self-re-
vealing touches of which he was surely uncon-
scious FITZGERALD is portrayed for us in the
present volume, in its predecessors, at iul
length and the modesty in him which is so
charming is accented by that originality and
independence of mind which, quite as much as
his sweet nature and his flashes of genius
make him of the most interesting hgures
in epistolary literature
Here is the same iAdolent and gentle friend
we have learned so we'll to love- the wise, witty
and incurably self-centred hermit who was ever
faithful to those whom he had once made up his
mind TO like but could not be drawn, except
upon the rarest occasions. away from his rural
solitude His library was, indeed, dukedom
enough for him, and his flowers or his small
sailboat provided all the additional companion
ship that he craved. Yet in some paradoxical
fashion FitzGerald seems TO have had. when he
chose 10 exercise IT, peculiar faculty for social
intercourse. The good comrade, well as the
dilettante of pleasure, is certainly obvious in
passage like the following, from letter to
Frederic Tennyson:
was in London only for ten days this spring;
and those ten days not in the thick OF the sea
CO Th1n
eny news. The most pleasurable remembrance
I had Of my stay in town was the last day
spent there; having long ramble in the streets
with Speeding looking at Books and Pictures;
then walk with him and Carlyle across the
Park TO Chelsea, where we dropped that Latter
Day Prophet at his house; then getting upon
steamer smoked down to Westminster; dlned
at a chophouse by the Bridge: and then went TO
Astley's: old Speeding being cutie as WISE
about the Horsemanship as about Bacon ana
shakespeare. We parted at midnight in Covent
Garden: and this whole pleasant day has left
q taste on my palate like Of Plato's lighter,
easier. and more picturesque dialogues.
The aIlusion in the closing sentence of this
fragment will not obscure the essential sim
piicity which characterized FitzGeralds mind
and nature No ever referred to Plato with
less pedantry than he. One of the peasantest
elements in a perusal of his letters is ones con-
sciousness Of his common sense, Of his whole
some and humorous way of looking at life and
at literature He reads review with deal
about A1sthetics in it, and exclaims to his cor
respondent, "Oh, Pollock let you and 1 and
SPEEDING stand out against these damnable
German humbugs. You lawyers pretty
safe, I think: so is SPEEDING constitutionally
and I will not TO let my unfurnished
head any such foreigneering customers-who
never pay for their lodging" He liked scholar
ship, he liked enthusiasm, but he loathed dull
pedagogue an unintelligent enthusiast. He
had. indeed that lucidity Of mind which is
characteristic Of the poet who knows the diff
ference between inspiration and casual impulse,
and was singularly cool and deliberate in his
judgments. One often thinks in reading FitZ-
Gerald, OF what Keats somewhere says about
being willing jump Etna for any public good,
but hating a mawkish popularity He was as
capable anybody Of appreciating a fine thing,
but he had patience with "mawkish
rhapsody over anything So, when he hears
that Tennyson has come back from Switzer-
land rather disappointed" he says that
he is glad Of It, and asks, How could
such herds Of gaping idiots come back
chanted if there much worth going
TO see?'-a remark the impatience OF which
easily understand, as we can the added
words, Suffolk turnips seem to classical
compared TO all that sort Of thing" For his
own part mo sights :ecompense the often
doing and doing up Of carpet bag" and
can read in that whimsical declaration, not
simply the strain Of laziness in him, but the
and then Of sightseeing and mental gymnastics
and goes back with a delicious sense Of comfort
TO q merely natural and effortless enjoyment
Of the ordinary pleasures of life. "She is a
graceful lady" he writes of Lady Tennyson
"but l think that she and other aesthetic and
hysterical Ladies have hurt A T. who quoad
Artist. would have done better TO remain single
in Lincolnshire married jolly Woman who
would have laughed and cried without any
reason why" He is inimitable whenever he
falls foul Of Browning quotes with relish Car
lyles Characterization of one of the poets pub
locations among the absurdest books
written by a gifted Man." and growls with ex-
asperation because many people go on be-
lauding what he is quite certain is far from
being true poetry. He pleads with Pollock in
this wise:
Why don't some of you step out into the
Newspapers and Magazines, and tell the Truth
of the Case? Why does not Venables? Stephen?
Pollock? I I would If 1 could: but 1
have not the faculty. I only say, II do not
like you. Dr. Fell" but there I stop-knowing
/ am right.
He snnelt Cockneydom IN the whole dreary
Browning business, and there is a note Of good
natured triumph in the latter half of passage
in which he writes TO Frederic Tennyson about
the cult and its dongs.
What do you think Of the Browning Society"
OF which here is sample cut from the last
Academy?
browning Society FRIDAY, Feb 24).
Peter Bayne, Esq. in the Chair Mr.. j. T.
Nettleship read paper on 'Fffne at the Fair"
etc.
Imagine Man abetting all this! Mrs
Kemble says he does not abet, and admits there
IS q "grotesQue side TO It," But he supplied a
Mr.. Gosse with particulars Of his early Life and