My dear Cowell,
I only posted my last long letter four days ago: and how far shall I get with this? Like the other, I keep it in Sir W. Ouseley, and note down a bit now and then. When the time for the Mail comes, the sheet shall go whether full or not. I had a letter from your Mother telling me she had heard from you—all well—but the Heats increasing. I suppose the Crocuses we see even in these poor little Gardens hereabout would wither in a Glance of your Sun. Now the black Trees in the Regent’s Park opposite are beginning to show green Buds; and Men come by with great Baskets of Flowers; Primroses, Hepaticas, Crocuses, great Daisies, etc., calling as they go, ‘Growing, Growing, Growing! All the Glory going!’ So my wife says she has heard them call: some old Street cry, no doubt, of which we have so few now remaining. It will almost make you smell them all the way from Calcutta. ‘All the Glory going!’ What has put me upon beginning with this Sheet so soon is, that, (having done my Will for the present with the Mantic—one reason being that I am afraid to meddle more with N. Newton’s tender MS., and another reason that I now lay by what I have sketched out so as to happen on it again one day with fresh eyes)—I say, this
being shelved, I took up old Hafiz again, and began with him where I left off in November at Brighton. And this morning came to an ode we did together this time two years ago when you were at Spiers’ in Oxford. . . . How it brought all back to me! Oriel opposite, and the Militia in Broad Street, and the old Canary-coloured Sofa and the Cocoa or Tea on the Table! . . .
I should think Bramford begins to look pretty about this time, hey, Mr. Cowell? And Mrs. Cowell? There is a house there constantly advertised to let in the Papers. I think that one by the Mill; not the pleasant place where Trygæus [322] looked forth on the Rail! ‘The Days are gone when Beauty bright, etc.’ . . .
Spedding has been once here in near three months. His Bacon keeps coming out: his part, the Letters, etc., of Bacon, is not come yet; so it remains to be seen what he will do then: but I can’t help thinking he has let the Pot boil too long. Well, here is a great deal written to-day: and I shall shut up the Sheet in Ouseley again. March 30. Another reason for thinking the máhi which supports the world to be only a myth of the simple Fish genus is that the stage next above him is Gau, the Bull, as the Symbol of Earth. It seems to me one sees this as it were pictured in those Assyrian Sculptures; just some waving lines and a fish to represent Water, etc. And it hooks
on, I think, to Max Müller’s Theory in that Essay [323a] of his. Saturday, April 4. Why, we are creeping toward another Post day! another 25th when the ‘Viâ Marseilles’ Letters go off! And I now renew this great Sheet, because in returning to old Hafiz two or three days ago, I happened on a line which you will confer with a Tetrastich of Omar’s. . . . Donne has got the Licenser’s Post; given him in the handsomest way by Lord Bredalbane to whom the Queen as handsomely committed it. The said Donne has written an Article on Calderon in Fraser, [323b] in which he says very handsome things of me, but is not accurate in what he says. I suppose it was he wrote an Article in the Saturday Review some months ago to the same effect; but I have not asked him. I find people like that Calderon book. By the bye again, what is the passage I am to write out for you from the Volume you gave me, the old Bramford Volume, ‘E. B. Cowell, Bramford, Aug. 20, 1849?’ Tell me, and I will write it in my best style: I have the Volume here in my room, and was looking into it only last night; at that end of the Mágico which we read together at Elmsett! I don’t know if I could translate it now that the ‘æstus’ caught from your sympathy is gone! . . . April 5. In looking into the ‘Secreto Agravio’ I see an Oriental superstition, which was likely enough however to
be a poetical fancy of any nation: I mean, the Sun turning Stone to Ruby, etc. Enter Don Luis: ‘Soy mercador, y trato en los Diamantes, que hoy son Piedras, y rayos fueron antes de Sol, que perficiona é ilumina rústico Grano en la abrasada Mina.’ The Partridge in the Mantic tells something of the same; he digs up and swallows Rubies which turn his Blood to Fire inside him and sparkle out of his Eyes and Bill. This volume of Calderon is marked by the Days on which you finished several Plays, all at Bramford! Wednesday, April 8. I have been reading the ‘Mágico’ over and remembering other days; I saw us sitting at other tables reading it. Also I am looking over old Æschylus—Agamemnon—with Blackie’s Translation. . . . Is it in Hafiz we have met the Proverb (about pregnant Night) which Clytemnestra also makes her Entry with [264, 5]? ευαyyελος μεν, ωσπερ η παροιμια, εως yενοιτο μητρος ευφρονης παρα. I think one sees that the Oriental borrowed this Fancy, which smacks of the Grecian Personification of Mother Night. What an Epitaph for a Warrior are those two Greek words by which the Chorus express all that returns to Mycenæ of the living Hero who went forth [435]—τευχη και σποδος!
Well; and I have had a Note from Garcin de Tassy whom I had asked if he knew of any Copy of Omar Khayyám in all the Paris Libraries: he writes ‘I have made, by means of a Friend, etc.’ But I shall enclose his Note to amuse you. Now what
I mean to do is, in return for his politeness to me, to copy out as well as I can the Tetrastichs as you copied them for me, and send them as a Present to De Tassy. Perhaps he will edit them. I should not wish him to do so if there were any chance of your ever doing it; but I don’t think you will help on the old Pantheist, and De Tassy really, after what he is doing for the Mantic, deserves to make the acquaintance of this remarkable little Fellow. Indeed I think you will be pleased that I should do this. Now for some more Æschylus. Friday, April 17. I have been for the last five days with my Brother at Twickenham; during which time I really copied out Omar Khayyám, in a way! and shall to-day post it as a ‘cadeau’ to Garcin de Tassy in return for his Courtesy to me. I am afraid, a bad return: for my MS. is but badly written and it would perhaps more plague than profit an English ‘savant’ to have such a present made him. But a Frenchman gets over all this very lightly. Garcin de Tassy tells me he has printed four thousand lines of the Mantic. And here is April running away and it will soon be time to post you another Letter! When I once get into the Country I shall have less to write you about than now; and that, you see, is not much.
Tuesday, April 21. Yours and your wife’s dear good Letters put into my hand as I sit in the sunshine in a little Balcony outside the Windows