t pain; and I am told that his last murmured words were
_my_ name--thrice repeated. A more amiable Gentleman did not live,
with something _helpless_ about him--what the Irish call an "Innocent
man"--which mixed up Compassion with Regard, and made it perhaps
stronger. . . .

Many odd tales were current in Woodbridge about FitzGerald himself. How
once, for example, he sailed over to Holland, meaning to look upon Paul
Potter's "Bull," but how, on arriving there, he found a favourable
homeward breeze, and so sailed home. How, too, he took a ticket for
Edinburgh, but at Newcastle found a train on the point of starting for
London, and, thinking it a pity to lose the chance, returned thereby.
Both stories must be myths, for we learn from his letters that in 1861 he
really did spend two days in Holland, and in 1874 other two in Scotland.
Still, I fancy both stories emanated from FitzGerald, for all Woodbridge
united could not have hit upon Paul Potter's "Bull."

Except in February 1867, when he was strongly opposed to Lord
Rendlesham's election, he took no active part in politics. "Don't write
politics--I agree with you beforehand," is a postscript (1852) to
Frederic Tennyson; and in a letter from Mr William Bodham Donne to my
father occurs this passage: "E. F. G. informs me that he gave his
landlord instructions in case any one called about his vote to say that
Mr F. would _not_ vote, advised every one to do the same, and let the
rotten matter bust itself." So it certainly stands in the letter, which
bears date 29th October 1868; but, according to Mr Mowbray Donne, "the
phrase was rather: 'Let the rotten old ship go to pieces of itself.' At
least," he adds, "so I have always heard it; and this suggests that once
there was a galleon worth preserving, but that he would not patch up the
old craft. He may have said both, of course." Anyhow, rightly or
wrongly, FitzGerald was sorrowfully convinced that England's best day was
over, and that he, that any one, was powerless to arrest the inevitable
doom. "I am quite assured that this Country is dying, as other Countries
die, as Trees die, atop first. The lower limbs are making all haste to
follow." He wrote thus in 1861, when the local squirearchy refused to
interest itself in the "_manuring_ and _skrimmaging_" of the newly
established rifle corps. And here are some more vaticinations of evil:--

"I have long felt about England as you do, and even made up m