e. His
translation of Calderon, due to obedience to the guiding impulse of
Professor Cowell, showed him to the world as a master of the rarest of
arts, that of conveying to an English audience the lights and shades of
a poem first fashioned in a foreign tongue.

At the bidding of the same mentor, he, later, turned his attention to
Persian, the first fruits of his toil being an anonymous version, in
Miltonic verse, of the 'Salaman and Absal' of Jami. Soon after, the
treasure-house of the Bodleian library yielded up to him the pearl of
his literary endeavour, the verses of "Omar Khayyam," a pearl whose
dazzling charm previously had been revealed to but few, and that through
the medium of a version published in Paris by Monsieur Nicolas.

FitzGerald's hasty and ill-advised union with Lucy, daughter of Bernard
Barton, the Quaker poet and friend of Lamb, was but short-lived, and
demands no comment. They agreed to part.

In later life, most summers found the poet on board his yacht "The
Scandal" (so-called as being the staple product of the neighbourhood) in
company with 'Posh' as he dubbed Fletcher, the fisherman of Aldeburgh,
whose correspondence with FitzGerald has lately been given to the world.

To the end he loved the sea, his books, his roses and his friends, and
that end came to him, when on a visit with his friend Crabbe, with all
the kindliness of sudden death, on the 14th June, 1883.

Besides the works already mentioned, FitzGerald was the author of
"Euphranor" [1851], a Platonic Dialogue on Youth; "Polonius": a
Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances [1852]; and translations of
the "Agamemnon" of AEschylus [1865]; and the "Oedipus Tyrannus" and
"Oedipus Coloneus" of Sophocles. Of these translations the "Agamemnon"
probably ranks next to the Rubaiyat in merit. To the six dramas of
Calderon, issued in 1853, there were added two more in 1865. Of these
plays, "Vida es Sueno" and "El Magico Prodigioso" possess especial
merit.

His "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" was first issued anonymously on January
15th, 1859, but it caused no great stir, and, half-forgotten, was
reintroduced to the notice of the literary world in the following year
by Rossetti, and, in this connection, it is curious to note to what a
large extent Rossetti played the part of a literary Lucina. FitzGerald,
Blake and Wells are all indebted to him for timely aid in the
reanimation of offspring, that seemed doomed to survive but for a short
time