is letters are among the best in
literature. Borrow wrote four books that will live, but had publishers
been amenable he would have published forty, and all as unsaleable as
the major part of FitzGerald's translations. Both men were Suffolk
squires, and yet delighted more in the company of a class other than
their own, FitzGerald of boatmen, Borrow of gypsies; both were counted
eccentrics in their respective villages. Perhaps alone among the great
Victorian authors they lived to be old without receiving in their lives
any popular recognition of their great literary achievements. But
FitzGerald had a more cultivated mind than Borrow. He loved literature
and literary men whilst Borrow did not. His criticism of books is of the
best, and his friendships with bookmen are among the most interesting in
literary history. 'A solitary, shy, kind-hearted man,' was the verdict
upon him of the frequently censorious Carlyle. When Anne Thackeray asked
her father which of his friends he had loved best, he answered 'Dear old
Fitz, to be sure,' and Tennyson would have said the same. Borrow had
none of these gifts as a letter-writer and no genius for friendship. The
charm of his style, so indisputable in his best work, is absent from his
letters; and his friends were alienated one after another. Borrow's
undisciplined intellect and narrow upbringing were a curse to him, from
the point of view of his own personal happiness, although they helped
him to achieve exactly the work for which he was best fitted. Borrow's
acquaintance with FitzGerald was commenced by the latter, who, in July
1853, sent from Boulge Hall, Suffolk, to Oulton Hall, in the same
county, his recently published volume _Six Dramas of Calderon_. He
apologises for making so free with 'a great man; but, as usual, I shall
feel least fear before a man like yourself who both do fine things in
your own language and are deep read in those of others.' He also refers
to 'our common friend Donne,' so that it is probable that they had met
at Donne's house.[206] The next letter, also published by Dr. Knapp,
that FitzGerald writes to Borrow is dated from his home in Great
Portland Street in 1856. He presents his friend with a Turkish
Dictionary, and announces his coming marriage to Miss Barton, 'Our
united ages amount to 96!--a dangerous experiment on both sides'--as it
proved. The first reference to Borrow in the FitzGerald _Letters_ issued
by his authorised publishers is addressed to Pr