Some one (not you) sent me your Moosehead Journal: but I told Mr. Norton
I should tell you, if I wrote, that I did not like the Style of it at
all; all 'too clever by half.' Do you not say so yourself after
Cervantes, Scott, Montaigne, etc.? I don't know I ought to say all this
to you: but you can well afford to be told it by one of far more
authority than yours most sincerely,

E. FITZGERALD.

_To W. A. Wright_.

WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 3/78.

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

. . . You may infer that I have been reading--yes, and with great
Interest, however little Scholarship--your Fellow-Collegian's new Book of
Notes, etc. {238} And just as I had done my best with his Catullus, came
to hand the Love-Letters of a kindred Spirit, Keats; whose peevish
Jealousy might, two thousand years ago, have made him as bitter and
indecent against his friend Armitage Brown, as Catullus against Caesar.
But in him too Malice was not stronger than Love, any more than in
Catullus; not only of the Lesbia-Brawne, but of the Fraternal, kind.
Keats sighs after 'Poor Tom' as well as he whose 'Frater ave atque vale'
continues sighing down to these times. (I hope I don't misquote, more
Hibernorum.)

That is a fine Figure of old Caesar entertaining his Lampooner at the
Feast. And I have often thought what a pretty picture, for Millais to
do, of the Child Keats keeping guard outside his sick Mother's Chamber
with a drawn Sword. If Catullus, however, were only _Fescennining_, his
'Malice' was not against Caesar, but against the Nemesis that might else
be revenged on him--eh? But I don't understand how Suetonius, or those
he wrote for, could have forgotten, though for party purposes they may
have ignored, the nature and humour of that _Fescennine_ which is known
to Scholars two thousand years after. How very learned, and probably all
wrong, have I become, since becoming interested in this Book!

WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 21 [1878].

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

. . . The Enclosed only adds a little to the little Paper of _Data_:
{239} you may care to add so much in better MS. than mine to the leaves I
sent you. Those leaves were more intended for such an Edition of the
Letters in batches, as now edited; and, as many of them are private
right, _so_ edited they must continue for some time, I suppose.

An odd coincidence happened only yesterday about them. I was looking to
Lamb's Letter to Manning of Feb. 26, 1808, where he extols Braham, the
Singer, who (he say