l evidence alone, in
identifying these verses with those which FitzGerald had written, as he
said, when a lad, or little more than a lad, and sent to the Athenaeum,
but all question has been set at rest by the discovery of a copy in a
common-place book belonging to the late Archdeacon Allen, with the
heading 'E. F. G.,' and the date 'Naseby, Spring, 1831.' This copy
differs slightly from those in the Year Book and in the Athenaeum, and in
place of the tenth stanza it has,

So winter passeth
Like a long sleep
From falling autumn
To primrose-peep.

But although at this time he appears to have written nothing more himself
he was not unmindful of what was done by others, for in May 1831 he
writes to Allen, 'I have bought A. Tennyson's poems. How good Mariana
is!' And again a year later, after a night-ride on the coach to London,
'I forgot to tell you that when I came up in the mail, and fell a dozing
in the morning, the sights of the pages in crimson and the funerals which
the Lady of Shalott saw and wove, floated before me: really, the poem has
taken lodging in my poor head.'

The correspondence will now for the most part tell its own story, and
with it all that is to be told of FitzGerald's life.

In October and November 1831 he was for three weeks in town with
Thackeray, and in the following summer was thinking of joining him at
Havre when he wrote to his friend Allen.

[SOUTHAMPTON]
_July_ 31, _Tuesday_ [1832.]

MY DEAR ALLEN,

. . . And now I will tell you of a pilgrimage I made that put me in mind
of you much. I went to Salisbury to see the Cathedral, but more to walk
to Bemerton, George Herbert's village. It is about a mile and half from
Salisbury alongside a pleasant stream with old-fashioned watermills
beside: through fields very fertile. When I got to Bemerton I scarcely
knew what to do with myself. It is a very pretty village with the Church
and Parsonage much as Herbert must have left it. But there is no
memorial of him either in or outside the walls of the church: though
there have been Bishops and Deans and I know not what all so close at
hand at Salisbury. This is a great shame indeed. I would gladly put up
a plain stone if I could get the Rector's leave. I was very sorry to see
no tablet of any kind. The people in the Cottages had heard of a very
pious man named Herbert, and had read his books--but they don't know
where he lies. I have drawn the church and village: t