he little woodcut
of it in Walton's Lives is very like. I thought I must have passed along
the spot in the road where he assisted the man with the fallen horse: and
to shew the benefit of good examples, I was serviceable that very evening
in the town to some people coming in a cart: for the driver was drunk and
driving furiously home from the races, and I believe would have fallen
out, but that some folks, amongst whom I was one, stopped the cart. This
long history is now at an end. I wanted John Allen much to be with me. I
noticed the little window into which Herbert's friend looked, and saw him
kneeling so long before the altar, when he was first ordained.

* * * * *

In the summer and autumn of this year FitzGerald spent some weeks at
Tenby and was a good deal with Allen to whom he wrote on his return to
London.

LONDON, _Nov_. 21, 1832.

MY DEAR ALLEN,

I suppose it must seem strange to you that I should like writing letters:
and indeed I don't know that I do like it in general. However, here I
see no companions, so I am pleased to talk to my old friend John Allen:
which indeed keeps alive my humanity very much. . . . I have been about
to divers Bookshops and have bought several books--a Bacon's Essays,
Evelyn's Sylva, Browne's Religio Medici, Hazlitt's Poets, etc. The
latter I bought to add to my Paradise, which however has stood still of
late. I mean to write out Carew's verses in this letter for you, and
your Paradise. As to the Religio, I have read it again: and keep my
opinion of it: except admiring the eloquence, and beauty of the notions,
more. But the arguments are not more convincing. Nevertheless, it is a
very fine piece of English: which is, I believe, all that you contend
for. Hazlitt's Poets is the best selection I have ever seen. I have
read some Chaucer too, which I like. In short I have been reading a good
deal since I have been here: but not much in the way of knowledge.

. . . As I lay in bed this morning, half dozing, I walked in imagination
all the way from Tenby to Freestone by the road I know so well: by the
water-mill, by Gumfreston, Ivy tower, and through the gates, and the long
road that leads to Carew.

Now for the poet Carew:

1.

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose:
For in your beauty's orient deep,
The flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

2.

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the da