noddling their heads as they sang

O the pleasures of the plains!"

'These old _creeters_ being, as he said, the sopranos who had sung first
as girls, when George the Third was king.

'He was a great lover of our old English composers, specially of Shield.
Handel, he said, has a scroll in his marble hand in the Abbey on which
are written the first bars of

I know that my Redeemer liveth;

and Shield should hold a like scroll, only on it should be written the
first bars of

A flaxen-headed ploughboy.

'He was fond of telling a story of Handel, which I, at least, have never
seen in print. When Handel was blind he composed his "Samson," in which
there is that most touching of all songs, specially to any one whose
powers of sight are waning--"Total Eclipse." Mr. Beard was the great
tenor singer of the day, who was to sing this song. Handel sent for him,
"Mr. Beard," he said, "I cannot sing it as it should be sung, but I can
tell you how it ought to be sung." And then he sang it, with what
strange pathos need not be told. Beard stood listening, and when it was
finished said, with tears in his eyes, "But Mr. Handel, I can never sing
it like that." And so he would tell the story with tears in his voice,
such as those best remember, who ever heard him read some piece of his
dear old Crabbe, and break down in the reading.'

With this I will conclude, and I have only now to express my sincere
thanks to all who have entrusted me with letters addressed to themselves
or to those whom they represent. It has been my endeavour to justify
their confidence by discretion. To Messrs. Richard Bentley and Son I am
indebted for permission to reprint Virgil's Garden from the Temple Bar
Magazine. {0a}

The portrait is from a photograph by Cade and White of Ipswich taken in
1873.

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
20 May, 1889.

LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD

Edward FitzGerald was born at Bredfield House in Suffolk, an old Jacobean
mansion about two miles from Woodbridge, on the 31st of March, 1809. He
was the third son of John Purcell, who married his cousin Mary Frances
FitzGerald, and upon the death of her father in 1818 took the name and
arms of FitzGerald. In 1816 Mr. Purcell went to France, and for a time
settled with his family at St. Germains. FitzGerald in later life would
often speak of the royal hunting parties which he remembered seeing in
the forest. They afterwards rem