oved to Paris, occupying the house in
which Robespierre had once lived, and here FitzGerald had for his
drillmaster one of Napoleon's Old Guard. Even at this early period the
vivacious humour which afterwards characterized him appears to have shewn
itself, for his father writing to some friends in England speaks of
little Edward keeping the whole family in good spirits by his unfailing
fun and droll speeches. The dramatic circumstances of the assassination
of M. Fualdes, a magistrate at Rodez, in 1817, and the remarkable trial
which followed, fastened themselves on FitzGerald's memory, and he was
familiar with all the details which he had heard spoken of when quite a
child in Paris. In 1821 he was sent to King Edward the Sixth's School at
Bury St. Edmunds, where his two elder brothers were already under the
charge of Dr. Malkin, who, like himself in after life, was a great
admirer of Crabbe. Among his schoolfellows were James Spedding and his
elder brother, W. B. Donne, J. M. Kemble, and William Airy the brother of
Sir George Airy, formerly Astronomer-Royal. I have often heard him say
that the best piece of declamation he had ever listened to was Kemble's
recitation of Hotspur's speech, beginning 'My liege, I did deny no
prisoners,' on a prize day at Bury. When he left for Cambridge in 1826
the Speddings were at the head of the School. He was entered at Trinity
on 6th February 1826 under Mr. (afterwards Dean) Peacock and went into
residence in due course in the following October, living in lodgings at
Mrs. Perry's (now Oakley's), No. 19 King's Parade. James Spedding did
not come up till the year following, and his greatest friends in later
life, John Allen, afterwards Archdeacon of Salop, W. M. Thackeray, and W.
H. Thompson, afterwards Master of Trinity, were his juniors at the
University by two years. The three Tennysons were also his
contemporaries, but it does not appear that he knew them till after he
had left Cambridge. Indeed, in a letter to Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (Miss
Thackeray), written in 1882, he says of the Laureate, 'I can tell you
nothing of his College days; for I did not know him till they were over,
though I had seen him two or three times before. I remember him well--a
sort of Hyperion.'

FitzGerald was unambitious of University distinctions and was not in the
technical sense a reading man, but he passed through his course in a
leisurely manner, amusing himself with music and drawing and poetr