down to the last he was always perfectly careless as to dress. I can see him now, walking down into Woodbridge, with an old Inverness cape, slippers on feet, and a handkerchief, very likely, tied over his hat. Yet one always recognised in him the Hidalgo. Never was there a more perfect gentleman. His courtesy came out even in his rebukes. A lady one day was sitting in a Woodbridge shop, gossiping to a friend about the eccentricities of the Squire of Boulge, when a gentleman, who was sitting with his back to them, turned round, and, gravely bowing, gravely said, "Madam, he is my brother." They were eccentric, certainly, the FitzGeralds. FitzGerald himself remarked of the family: "We are all mad, but with this difference-I know that I am." And of that same brother he once wrote to my father :

"LOWESTOFT: Dec. 2,06.

"MY DEAR GROOME.-' At least for what I know' (as old Isaac Clarke used to say), I shall be at home next week as well as this. How could you expect my Brother 3 times! You, as well as others, should really (for his Benefit, as well as your own) either leave it all to Chance, or appoint one Day, and then decline any further Negotiation. This would really spare poor John an immense deal of (in sober Truth) "Taking the Lord's Name in vain.' I mean his eternal D. V., which, translated. only means, If I happen to be in the Humour.' You must know that the feeling of being bound to an Engagement is the very thing that makes him wish to break it. Spedding once told me this was rather my case. I believe it, and am therefore shy of ever making an engagement. O si sic omnia!Yours truly, E. F. G."

Many odd tales were current in Woodbridge about FitzGerald himself. How once, for example, he sailed over to Holland, meaning to

look upon Paul Potter's "Bull," but how, on arriving there, he found a favourable homeward breeze, and so sailed home. How, too, he took a ticket for Edinburgh, but at Newcastle found a train on the point of starting for London, and, thinking it a pity to lose the chance, returned thereby. Both stories must be myths, for we learn from his letters that in 1861 he really did spend two days in Holland, and in 1874 other two in Scotland. Still, I fancy both stories emanated from FitzGerald, for all Woodbridge united could not have hit upon Paul Potter's "Bull."

Except in February 1867, when he was strongly opposed to Lord Rendlesham's election, he took no active part in politics. "Don't write politics-I agree with you beforehand," is a postscript (1852) to Frederic Tennyson; and in a letter from Mr William Bodham Donne to my father occurs this passage: "E. F. G. informs me that he gave his landlord instructions in case any one called about his vote to say that Mr F. would not vote, advised every one to do the same, and let the rotten matter bust itself." So it certainly stands in the letter, which bears date 29th October 1868; but, according to Mr Mowbray Donne, "the phrase was rather: 'Let the rotten old ship go to pieces of itself.' least," he adds, “so I have always heard it; and this suggests that once there was a galleon worth preserving, but that he would not patch up the old craft. He may have said both, of course." Anyhow, rightly or wrongly, FitzGerald was sorrowfully convinced that England's best day was over, and that he, that any one, was powerless to arrest the inevitable doom. "I am quite assured that

At

this Country is dying, as other Countries die, as Trees die, atop first. The lower limbs are making all haste to follow." He wrote thus in 1861, when the local squire archy refused to interest itself in the "manuring and skrimmaging" of the newly established rifle corps. And here are some more vaticinations of evil :

"I have long felt about England as you do, and even made up my mind to it, so as to sit comparatively, if ignobly, easy on that score. Sometimes I envy those who are so old that the Curtain will probably fall on them before it does on their Country. If one could save the Race, what a Cause it would be! not for one's own glory as a member of it, nor even for its glory as a Nation: but because it is the only spot in Europe where Freedom keeps her place. Had I Alfred's voice, I would not have mumbled for years over In Memoriam and The Princess, but sung

such strains as would have revived the Mapabaroudxous tropas to guard the territory they had won.'

The curtain has fallen six years now on FitzGerald,-it is fortyeight years since he wrote those words: God send their dark forebodings may prove false ! But they clouded his life, and were partly the cause why, Ajax-like, he loitered in his tent.

His thoughts on religion he kept to himself. A letter of June 1885 from the late Master of Trinity to my father opens thus :

"MY DEAR ARCHDEACON,-I ought to have thanked you ere this for your letter, and the enclosed hymn, which we much admire, and cannot but be touched by. The more perhaps as our dear dead friend seems to have felt its pathos. I have more to repent of than he had. Two of the purest-living men among my intimates, FitzGerald and Spedding, were prisoners in Doubting Castle all their lives, or at least the last half of them. This is to me a great problem,—not

A former rector of Woodbridge, now many years dead, once called on FitzGerald to express his regret that he never saw him at church. "Sir," said FitzGerald, "you might have conceived that a man has not come to my years of life without thinking much of these things. I believe I may say that I have reflected on them fully as much as yourself. You need not repeat this visit." Certain it is

that FitzGerald's was a most reverent mind, and I know that the text on his grave was of his own choosing-"It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves.". Still, no less certain does it seem to me that his version of the 'Rubáiyát' is an utterance of his soul's deepest doubts, and that hereafter it will come to be recognised as the highest expression of Agnos

ticism:

Major Moor, David Hume, ona the Royal George. - In a review of Burton's Life of Hume, p. 354 of the Gentleman's Magazine, April 1849, is the following quotation from the book, and the following note upon it: "Page 452. Major M, with whom I dined yesterday, said that he had frequently met David Hume at their military mess in Scotland, and in other parties. That he was very polite and pleasant, though thoughtful in company, generally reclining his head upon his hand, as if in study; from which he would suddenly recover," &c. [Note by the Editor, John Mitford of Benhall.] We merely add that Major M- was Major Moor, author of the Hindoo Pantheon, a very learned and amiable person.'

"A very odd blunder for one distinguished Suffolk man to make of another, and so near a neighbour. For David Hume died in 1776, when Major Moor was about seven years old; by this token that (as he has told me) he saw the masts of the ROYAL GEORGE slope under water as she went down in 1782, while he was on board the transport that was to carry him to India, a cadet of thirteen years old.

"Nearly sixty years after this, Major Moor (as I also heard him relate) was among the usual company going over the Royal Palaces-Windwhen the cicerone sor, I think pointed out a fragment of the Royal

“Limb.—I find this word, whose derivation has troubled Suffolk vocabularies, quoted in its Suffolk sense from Tate Wilkinson, in 'Temple Bar Magazine' for January 1876. Mrs Whitean actress somewhere in the Shires

she may have derived from Suffolk, however-addresses her daughter, Mrs Burden, in these words: 'I'll tell you what, Maam, if you contradict me, I'll fell you at my feet, and trample over your corse, Maam, for you're a limb, Maam, your father on his deathbed told me you were a limb.' (N.B.-Perhaps Mr White it was who derived from us.) And again when poor Mrs Burden asks what is meant by a parenthesis, her mother exclaims, 'Oh, what an infernal limb of an actress you'll make, not to know the meaning of prentice, plural of apprentices!' Such is Tate's story if correctly quoted by 'Temple Bar. Not long ago I heard at Aldbro', 'My Mother is a limb for salt pork.'

The Suffolk dialect was ever a pet hobby of FitzGerald's. For years he was meditating a new Words,' but the question never edition of Major Moor's 'Suffolk

was settled whether words of his own collecting were to be incor

porated in the body of the work or relegated to an appendix. So the notion remained a notion. Much to our loss, for myself I prefer his 'Sea-Words and Phrases along the Suffolk Coast' (in the soarce East Anglian,' 1868-69) to half his translations. For this "poor old Lowestoft sea-slang," 23 FitzGerald slightingly calls it, illustrates both his strong love of the sea and his own quaint lovable self. One turns over its pages idly, and lights on dozens of entries cuch as these :

"BARK.-The surf bark from the Nor'ard;' or, as was otherwise said to me, 'The sea aint lost his woice from the Nor'ard yet,'-a sign, by the way, that the wind is to come from that quarter. A poetical word such as those whose business is with the sea are apt to use. Listening one night to the sea Some way inland, a sailor said to me, 'Yes, sir, the sea roar for the loss of the wind;' which a landsman properly interpreted as meaning only that the sea made itself heard when the wind had subsided."

1

I am

"BRUSILE. A compound of Bustle and Rustle, I suppose. Why, the old girl brustle along like a Hedge-sparrow!' said of a round-bowed vessel sputing through the water. told that, comparing little with great, the figure is not out of the way. Otherwise, what should these ignorant seameu know of Hedge-sparrows? Some of them do, however; fond of birds, as of other pets-Children, cats, small dogs-anything in short cousiderably under the size of-a Bullock -and accustomed to birds nesting over your cliff and about your lanes from childhood. A little while ago a party of Beechmen must needs have a day's frolic at the old sport; marched bodily into a neighbouring farmer's domain, ransacked the hedges, climbed the trees, coming down pretty figures, I was told, (in plainer language) with guernsey and breeches torn fore and aft; the farmer after them in a tearing rage, calling for his gun-They were Pirates-They were the Press-gang!' and the boys in Blue going on with their game

laughing. When they had got their fill of it, they adjourned to Oulton Boar for Half a pint'; by-and by in came the raging fariner for a like purpose; at first growling aloof; theu warming towards the good fellows, till-he joined their company, andinsisted on paying their shot.'

"CARDS.-Though often carried on board to pass away the time at Allfours, Don, or Sir-wiser (q.v.), nevertheless regarded with some suspicion when business does not go right. A friend of mine vowed that, if his illluck continued, over the cards should go; and over they went. Opinions differ as to swearing. One Captain strictly forbade it on board his lugger; but he also continuing to get no fish, called out, 'Swear away, lads, and see what that'll do.' Perhaps he only meant as Ménage's French Bishop did; who going one day to Court, his carriage stuck fast in a slough. The Coachman swore; the Bishop, putting his head out of the window, bid him not do that; the Coachman declared that unless he did, his horses would never get the carriage out of the mud. Well then, says the Bishop, just for this once then.""

"EGG-BOUND. - Probably an inland word; but it was only from one of the beach I heard it. He had a pair of-what does the reader think Turtle-doves in his net-loft, looking down so drolly-the delicate creatures -from their wicker cage on the rough work below, that 1 wondered what business they had there. But this truculent Salwager assured me seriously that he had 'doated on them,' and promised me the first pair they should hatch. For a long while they had no family, so long neutral' indeed as to cause grave doubts whether they were a pair at all. But at last one of them began to show signs of cradle-making, picking at some hay stuffed into the wicker-bars to encourage them; and I was told that she was manifestly egg-bound.'

"NEW MOON.-When first seen, be sure to turn your money over in your pocket by way of making it grow there; provided always that you see her face to face, not through a glass (window)-for, in that case, the charni works the wrong way. '1 see the little dear this evening, and give my

money a twister; there wasn't much. but I roused her about.' Where 'her' means the Money, not the Moon. Every one knows of what gender all that is amiable becomes in the Sailor's eyes. his Ship. of course-the 'Old Dear' the Old Girl' the 'Oid Beauty,' &c. I don't think the Sea is so familiarly addrest: she is almost too strong-minded, capricious, and terrible a Virago, and-he is wedded to her for better or worse. Yet I have heard the Weather (to whose instigation so much of that Sen's ill-humours are due) spoken of by one coming up the hatchway, 'Let's see how she look now.' The Moon is, of course, a Woman too; and as with the German, and, I believe, the ancient Oriental people, the blessed Sun himself a fair hot Wench in a flame-colour'd taffeta,' and so she rises, she sets, and she crosses the Line. So the Timepiece that measures the hours of day and night. A Friend's Watch going wrong of late, I advised Regulating; but was gravely answer'd that She was a foreigner, and he did not like meddling with her.' The same poor ignorant was looking with me one evening at your fine old church [Lowestoft] which sadly wanted regulating too lying all along indeed like a huge stranded Ship, with one whole side battered open to the ribs, through which 'the Sea-wind sang shrill, chill'; and he did not like seeing her so distress'd'; remembering boyish days, and her good old Vicar (of course I mean the former one: pious, charitable, venerable Francis Cunningham), and looking to lie under her walls, among his own people-'if not,' as he said, somewhere else.' Some months after, seeing the Church with her southern side restored to the sun, the same speaker cried, 'Well done, Old Girl! Up, and crow again !'"

FitzGerald's hesitancy about Major Moor's book was typical of the man. I am assured by Mr John Loder of Woodbridge, who knew him well, that it was inordinately difficult to get him to do anything. First he would be delighted with the idea, and next he would raise up a hundred objec

tions; then, maybe, he would again, and finally he wouldn't. The wonder then is, not that he published so little, but that he published so much; and to whom the credit thereof was largely due is indicated in this passage from a letter of Mr W. B. Donne's, of date 25th March 1876 ::

"I am so delighted at the glory E. F. G. has gained by his translation of the Rubaiyát of Omar Khayyám. The 'Contemporary Review' and the 'Spectator' newspaper! It is full time that Fitz should be disinterred, and exhibited to the world as one of the most gifted of Britons. And that little Hebrew deserves a piece of plate or a statue for the way he has thrust the Rubáiyát to the front."

There is no understanding FitzGerald till one fully realises that vulgar ambition had absolutely no place in his nature. Your ass in

the lion's skin nowadays is the ass who fain would be lionised; and the modern version of the parable of the talents is too often the man who, untalented, tries to palm off Brummagem counterfeits. FitzGerald's fear was not that he would write worse than half his compeers, but that he might write as ill. "This visionary inactivity," he tells John Allen, "is better than the mischievous activity of so many I see about me." He applied Malthus's teaching to literature, and was content so long as he pleased the Tennysons, some halfdozen other friends, and himself, than whom no critic ever was more fastidious. And when one thinks of all the "great poems" that were published during his lifetime, and read and praised (more praised than read perhaps), and then forgotten, one wonders if, after all, he was so wholly wrong in that he read for profit and scribbled for amusement,-that he communed with his own heart and was still.