t
And plant on shoulder, hand and knee,
Or on your head their rosy feet,
As if they knew your diet spares
Whatever moved in that full sheet
Let down to Peter at his prayers;

* * * * *

But none can say
That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought,
Who reads your golden Eastern lay,
Than which I know no version done
In English more divinely well;
A planet equal to the sun;
Which cast it, that large infidel
Your Omar: and your Omar drew
Full-handed plaudits from our best
In modern letters....

_Alfred, Lord Tennyson._

LIFE OF EDWARD FITZGERALD.

Edward FitzGerald was born in the year 1809, at Bredfield House, near
Woodbridge, Suffolk, being the third son of John Purcell, who,
subsequently to his marriage with a Miss FitzGerald, assumed the name
and arms proper to his wife's family.

St. Germain and Paris were in turn the home of his earlier years, but in
1821, he was sent to the Grammar School at Bury St. Edmunds. During his
stay in that ancient foundation he was the fellow pupil of James
Spedding and J. M. Kemble. From there he went in 1826 to Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he made the acquaintance of W. M. Thackeray
and others of only less note. His school and college friendships were
destined to prove lasting, as were, also, all those he was yet to form.

One of FitzGerald's chief characteristics was what might almost be
called a genius for friendship. He did not, indeed, wear his heart upon
his sleeve, but ties once formed were never unloosed by any failure in
charitable and tender affection on his part. Never, throughout a lengthy
life, did irritability and erratic petulance (displayed 'tis true, at
times by the translator of "that large infidel"), darken the eyes of
those he honoured with his friendship to the simple and whole-hearted
genuineness of the man.

From Oxford, FitzGerald retired to the 'suburb grange' at Woodbridge,
referred to by Tennyson. Here, narrowing his bodily wants to within the
limits of a Pythagorean fare, he led a life of a truly simple type
surrounded by books and roses, and, as ever, by a few firm friends.
Annual visits to London in the months of Spring kept alive the alliances
of earlier days, and secured for him yet other intimates, notably the
Tennyson brothers.

Amongst the languages, Spanish seems to have been his earlier lov