and asked of "Posh" and his "governor."

Not a jolly boatman of middle age in the harbour but knew of both. "D'ye
mean Joe Fletcher, master?" said one of them. "What--old Posh? Why yes!
Alive an' kickin', and go a shrimpin' when the weather serve. He live up
in Chapel Street. Number tew. He lodge theer."

So up I went to Chapel Street, one of those streets in the old North Town
of Lowestoft which have seen better days. A wizened, bent, white-haired
old lady answered my knock, after a preliminary inspection from a third-
floor window of my appearance. This, I learnt afterwards, was old Mrs.
Capps, with whom Posh had lodged since the death of his wife, fourteen
years previously.

"You'll find him down at the new basin," said the old lady. "He's mostly
there this time o' day."

But there was no Posh at the new basin. Half a dozen weather-beaten
shrimpers (in their brown jumpers, and with the fringe of hair running
beneath the chin from ear to ear--that hirsute ornament so dear to East
Anglian fishermen) were lounging about the wharf, or mending the small-
meshed trawl-nets wherein they draw what spoil they may from the depleted
roads.

All were grizzled, most were over seventy if wrinkled skin and white hair
may be taken as signs of age. And all knew Posh, and (oh! shame to the
"educated classes!") all remembered Edward FitzGerald. The poet, the
lovable, cultured gentleman they knew nothing of. Had they known of his
incomparable paraphrase of the Persian poet, of his scholarship, his
intimacy with Thackeray, Tennyson, Carlyle, the famous Thompson, Master
of Trinity, they would have recked nothing at all. But they remembered
FitzGerald, who has been called by their superiors an eccentric, miserly
hermit. They remembered him, I say, as a man whose heart was in the
right place, as a man who never turned a deaf ear to a tale of trouble.

"Ah!" said one of them. "He was a _good_ gennleman, was old Fitz." (They
all spoke of him as "old Fitz." They thought of him as a "mate"--as one
who knew the sea and her moods, and would put up with her vagaries even
as they must do. His shade in their memories was the shade of a friend,
and a friend whom they respected and loved.) "That was a good day for
Posh when he come acrost him. Posh! I reckon you'll find him at Bill
Harrison's if he bain't on the market."

"Posh" was no fancy name of the poet's for Joseph Fletcher, but the
actual proper cognomen by which th