about him not to be beloved. Ah! I think how interested he would have been with all this Persian: and how we should have disputed over parts and expressions over a glass of his Shiraz wine (for he had some) in his snug Parlour, or in his Cornfields when the Sun fell upon the latest Gleaners! He is dead, and you will go where he lived, to be dead to me!
Remember to take poor Barton’s little Book [308a] with you to India; better than many a better Book to you there!
I got a glimpse of Professor Müller’s Essay [308b]—full of fine things; but I hardly gather it up into a good whole, which is very likely my fault; from hasty perusal, ignorance, or other Incapacity. Perhaps, on the other hand, he found the Subject too great for his Space; and so has left it disproportioned, which the German is not inapt to do. But one may be well thankful for such admirable fragments, perhaps left so in the very honesty that is above rounding them into a specious Theory which will not hold.
[1856.]
My dear Lady,
. . . If you see Trench’s new Book about Calderon [308c] you will see he has dealt very handsomely
with me. He does not approve the Principle I went on; and what has he made of his own! I say this with every reason, as you will see, to praise him for his good word. He seems to me wrong about his ‘asonantes,’ which were much better un-assonanted as Cowell did his Specimens. [309] With Trench the Language has to be forced to secure the shadow of a Rhyme which is no pleasure to the Ear. So it seems to me on a hasty Look.
* * * * *
Mr. Cowell was appointed Professor of History at the Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1856, and went out to India by the Cape in August, greatly to FitzGerald’s regret. ‘Your talk of going to India,’ he wrote, ‘makes my Heart hang really heavy at my side.’
To E. B. Cowell.