ow smoke the Pipe nor drink the Grog. 'These are my
Troubles, Mr. Wesley;' {110} but I am still the Master's and Mistress'
loyal Servant,

EDWARD FITZGERALD.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

WOODBRIDGE: Tuesday,
[28 _Dec._ 1869.]

MY DEAR COWELL,

Your Letter to day was a real pleasure--nay, a comfort--to me. For I had
begun to think that, for whatever reason, you had dropt me; and I know
not one of all my friends whom I could less afford to lose.

You anticipate rightly all I think of the new Idylls. {111} I had bought
the Book at Lowestoft: and when I returned here for Christmas found that
A. T.'s Publisher had sent me a Copy. As I suppose this was done by A.
T.'s order, I have written to acknowledge the Gift, and to tell him
something, if not all, of what I think of them. I do not tell him that I
think his hand weakened; but I tell him (what is very true) that, though
the main Myth of King Arthur's Dynasty in Britain has a certain Grandeur
in my Eyes, the several legendary fragments of it never did much interest
me; excepting the _Morte_, which I suppose most interested him also, as
he took it up first of all. I am not sure if such a Romance as Arthur's
is not best told in the artless old English in which it was told to
Arthur's artless successors four hundred years ago; or dished up anew in
something of a Ballad Style like his own Lady of Shalott, rather than
elaborated into a modern Epic form. I never cared, however, for _any_
chivalric Epic; neither Tasso, nor Spenser, nor even Ariosto, whose Epic
has a sort of Ballad-humour in it; Don Quixote is the only one of all
this sort I have ever cared for.

I certainly wish that Alfred had devoted his diminished powers to
translating Sophocles, or AEschylus, as I fancy a Poet should do--_one_
work, at any rate--of his great Predecessors. But Pegasus won't be
harnessed.

From which I descend to my own humble feet. I will send you some copies
of Calderon when I have uncloseted and corrected them. As to Agamemnon,
I bound up a Copy of him in the other Translations I sent to Trinity
Library--not very wisely, I doubt; but I thought the Book would just be
put up on its shelf, and I had given all I was asked for, or ever could
be asked for. The Master, however, wrote me that it came to his Eyes,
and I dare say he thought I had best have let AEschylus alone. My
Version was not intended for those who know the Original; but, by hook or
by crook, to interest some who do n