hat so delighted his friend FitzGerald; full, too, of the
delicacies of rich thought and feeling. He used to lament in his later
years that he had not kept a diary as a young man. Alas that his Boswell
came too late to do more than snatch at a few of his memories.

There is a little Suffolk town on the salt tidewater of the Deben, some
ten miles from the sea. Its roofs of warm red tile are clustered on the
hill-slopes that run down toward the river; a massive, gray church tower
and a great windmill are conspicuous landmarks. Broad barges and shabby
schooners, with ruddy and amber sails, lie at anchor or drop down the
river with the tide, bearing the simple sailormen of Mr. W.W. Jacobs's
stories. In the old days before the railway it was a considerable port
and a town of thriving commerce. But now--well, it is little heard of in
the annals of the world.

Yet Woodbridge, unknown to the tourist, has had her pilgrims, too, and
her nook in literature. It was there that George Crabbe of Aldeburgh was
apprenticed to a local surgeon and wrote his first poem, unhappily
entitled "Inebriety." There lived Bernard Barton, "the Quaker poet," a
versifier of a very mild sort, but immortal by reason of his friendships
with greater men. Addressed to Bernard Barton, in a plain, neat hand,
came scores of letters to Woodbridge in the eighteen-twenties, letters
now famous, which found their way up Church Street to Alexander's Bank.
They were from no less a man than Charles Lamb. Also I have always
thought it very much to Woodbridge's credit that a certain Woodbridgian
named Pulham was a fellow-clerk of Lamb's at the East India House.
Perhaps Mr. Pulham introduced Lamb and Barton to each other. And as
birthplace and home of Edward FitzGerald, Woodbridge drew such visitors
as Carlyle and Tennyson, who came to seek out the immortal recluse. In
the years following FitzGerald's death many a student of books, some all
the way from America, found his way into John Loder's shop to gossip
about "Old Fitz." In 1893 a few devoted members of the Omar Khayyam Club
of London pilgrimaged to Woodbridge to plant by the grave at Boulge
(please pronounce "Bowidge") a rosetree that had been raised from seed
brought from the bush that sheds its petals over the dust of the
tent-maker at Naishapur. In 1909 Woodbridge and Ipswich celebrated the
FitzGerald centennial. And Rupert Brooke's father was (I believe) a
schoolboy at Woodbridge; alas that another of England'