The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-03-20
HERE INCIDENCE AND GENIUS
WENT OUT HAND IN HAND
Gerald
lator of Omar and Has Done 1t Remarkably Well.
1 HIS biography is a little too long,
but otherwise it ia welcome as por-

This biography is a little too long,
Z but otherwise tits welcome as por-
traying with a good deal Of "atmos-
phere" a man about whom levers OF
English literature must always be glad
to receive information. There is plenty
Of information in these volumes. some
of 1t new and most Of it put together
in very agreeable fashion. Mr.. Wright
has talked with Fitz Gerald's friends,
has visited many Of the scenes IN MS
life, and has accumulated certain
number of unpublished letters He mas
obtained many opposite illustrations
for his book, and throughout he mas
endeavored to give us a clearer idea
Of his hero's career by exhibiting SO
far as possible the circumstances un-
der which it was developed. BY the
time we have finished with the work
we feel that we have learned to know
Fitz Gerald a little better than before.
Mr. Wright is wisely at pains to de-
scribe F'itz Gerald's family. 1--WE F1tz
Geralds are all mad" the famous
translator once said, speaking of his
brother, 'rbut John is the maddest of
the family, for he does not know It,.
The father of the brothers was a Mr..
John Purcell, who married his cousin
and on the death Of her father took the
Fitz Gerald name and arms. She was
a handsome, determined woman, and,
''as became a daughter of the Fitz Ger
aids of Kildare" eccentric. He was
merely Mrs. Fitz Gerald's husband"
Mr. Wright speaks Of the subject of
his volume as having derived his force
1ar1+
mammal" This is hardly happy.
Had Fitz Gerald force Of character?
We should say that that was just what
he lacked. We see far less Of him in
his stately mother than we see in the
elder Fitz Gerald, of whom Mr.. Wright
says that "for doing nothing he was
peculiarly adapted" Our Fitz Gerald
seems to have been destined to indo-
lence from his birth. Nevertheless, 1t
it pleasant to derive from the earlier
pages of this biography an impression
of nature not quite so cloisterlike as
the one with which writer's on the sub
ject have generally preferred to make
us acquainted. Edward F'itz Gerald
appears to have had from the start
gift for making friends, and If these
were found, when he was a boy, large
ly among people older than himself
he seems to have been not only preco-
cious, but a very human young crea-
ture, with a taste for just such COM
panions as lad would naturally
choose.
Abiding to his youthful days on the
Suffolk coast, his biogTapher says
1.-THE boy loved to mingle with the
sailors and to hear their creepy tales
of smugglers and valued caves stock
ed with tea and tobacco and tubs of
spirits" His mother often took him
to London and there made him IA
miliar with chief source Of her own
happiness in life, the theater. Alto
gether he had a delightful boyhood.
Sent to King Edward Wis school, at
Bury Saint Edmunds, he not only
formed valuable friendships there, but
was in every way so happy that, as
Mr.. Wright says, he looked back with
pleasure to that period Of his existence,
"and often revisited his old haunts"
at Bury. Even then he had his little
idiosyncrasies. Some years earlier
when he was living in France with his
parents, famous murder of the day
touched his imagination, and when,
during his stay at Bury, the murder of
William Weare by John Thurtell oc-
Cured, he was prodigiously interested
in all the news of the affair that was
spread abroad.
Following him from school to the
university, Mr.. Wright paints him as
one Of the LATEST men who ever stud
led at Cambridge. Gradually he be-
comes indolent, and devotes more at
tention to desultory reading, music and
painting than to systematic study.
He was not the sort Of man to
win honors at a university. He studied
the classics, not because they were to
advance him, but out of sheer love for
them. Virgil is to him living man;
he gathers real crocuses with Sophie
cles at Colonus." He gathered GRO
cuses down to the day of his death
incidentally, as he strolled through
life, he visited, and talked, and smok-
himself that very little else was worth
doing. How did he ever manage to
produce the books that were ultimately
put to his credit, to say nothing Of his
voluminous correspondence? That
F'itz Gerald was without ambition"
says Mr.. Wright, 'fs, as We shall show,
a myth, and very foolish one" This
promise Is not fulfilled. We must con-
tinue to marvel at Fitz Gerald's lit
erary activities, and to regard them
as coming under the head Of miracu
lous accidents. The one myth that this
biographer does explode is that which
assumes Fitz Gerald to have always
been a solitary man. On the contrary,
he seems to have always loved COM
pany-provided 1t was the right sort.
Here is a yignette of him at an early