* * * * *
That the feelings here expressed were fully reciprocated by FitzGerald is clear from the following words of a letter written by him to Thackeray to tell him of a provision he had made in his will.
‘You see you can owe me no thanks for giving what I can no longer use “when I go down to the pit,” and it would be some satisfaction to me, and some diminution of the shame I felt on reading your letter, if “after many days” your generous and constant friendship bore some sort of fruit, if not to yourself to those you are naturally anxious about.’
I have not been able to ascertain the exact time at which FitzGerald began his Spanish studies; but it must have been long before this, for in 1853 the first-fruits of them appeared in the ‘Six Dramas from
Calderon freely translated by Edward FitzGerald,’ the only book to which he ever put his name. It was probably in 1853 that he took up Persian, in which, as in Spanish, his friend Cowell was his guide.
To G. Crabbe.
Boulge, July 22/53.
My dear George,
Your account of the Doctor’s warnings to your Cousin in your first note delighted me greatly: as it did your Father to whom I read it last night. For, on coming home from Aldbro’ (where I had been for a day) I found to my great surprise your Father smoking in my room, with a bottle of Port (which he had brought with him!). The mystery was then solved; that, after his own dinner, Mr. --- was announced, and your Father dreading lest he should stay all the Evening declared he had most important business, first at Woodbridge, then, on second thoughts, with me; and so decamped.
Now as to your second letter which I found also on my return: I am very glad you like the plays [282] and am encouraged to hope that other persons who are not biassed by pedantic prejudices or spites might like them too. But I fully expect that (as I told you, I think) the London press, etc., will either sink them, or condemn them as on too