for I should only set you
against him; and you will see all without my telling you and not be
bored. So least said soonest mended, and I make my bow once more and
remain your

"Humble Reader,
"E. FG."

Too much has been made by certain writers, with more credulity than
discretion, of some personal characteristics of a great-hearted man. My
purpose in tendering this sketch to the lovers of FitzGerald is to show
that in many ways he has been calumniated. The man who could write the
letters to his humble friend, which are here printed; the man who could
show such consistent tenderness and delicacy of spirit to his fisherman
partner, and could permit the enthusiasm of his affection to blind him to
the truth, was no sulky misanthrope; but a man whose heart, whose
intensely human heart, was so great as to preponderate over his
magnificent intellect. Edward FitzGerald was a great poet, and a great
philosopher. He was a still greater man.

Therefore, my readers, if, during the perusal of these few letters, you
"in your . . . errand reach the spot"--whether it be at Woodbridge,
Lowestoft, or in that supper-room in town "Where he made one"--". . .
turn down an empty glass" to his memory.

For there is no _Saki_ to do it, either here or with the houris.

JAMES BLYTH

INTRODUCTION

Towards the end of the summer of 1906 I received a letter from Mr. F. A.
Mumby, of the _Daily Graphic_, asking me if I knew if Joseph Fletcher,
the "Posh" of the "FitzGerald" letters, was still alive. All about me
were veterans of eighty, ay, and ninety! hale and garrulous as any
longshoreman needs be. But it had never occurred to me before that
possibly the man who was Edward FitzGerald's "Image of the Mould that Man
was originally cast in," the east coast fisherman for whom the great
translator considered no praise to be too high, might be within easy
reach.

My first discovery was that to most of the good people of Lowestoft the
name of the man who had honoured the town by his preference was unknown.
A solicitor in good practice, a man who is by way of being an author
himself, asked me (when I named FitzGerald to him) if I meant that
FitzGerald who had, he believed, made a lot of money out of salt! A
schoolmaster had never heard of either FitzGerald or Omar.

It was plain that the educated classes of Lowestoft could help me in my
search but little. So I went down to the harbour basins and the fish
wharves,