lestone--but a short walk from
you: and I am to find myself there in a few days. So I shall
perhaps tell you more of my thoughts ere long. Now I shall
finish this large Sheet with a Tetrastich of one Omar Khayyam
who was an Epicurean Infidel some 500 years ago:

[Persian][209]

and am yours very truly,
EDWARD FITZGERALD.

In a letter to Cowell about the same time--June 5, 1857--FitzGerald
writes that he is about to set out for Gorleston, Great Yarmouth:

Within hail almost lives George Borrow, who has lately
published, and given me, two new volumes of Lavengro called
_Romany Rye_, with some excellent things, and some very bad (as
I have made bold to write to him--how shall I face him!) You
would not like the book at all I think.[210]

It was Cowell, it will be remembered, who introduced FitzGerald to the
Persian poet Omar, and afterwards regretted the act. The first edition
of _The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_ appeared two years later, in 1859.
Edward Byles Cowell was born in Ipswich in 1826, and he was educated at
the Ipswich Grammar School. It was in the library attached to the
Ipswich Library Institution that Cowell commenced the study of Oriental
languages. In 1842 he entered the business of his father and grandfather
as a merchant and maltster. When only twenty years of age he commenced
his friendship with Edward FitzGerald, and their correspondence may be
found in Dr. Aldis Wright's _FitzGerald Correspondence_. In 1850 he left
his brother to carry on the business and entered himself at Magdalen
Hall, Oxford, where he passed six years. At intervals he read Greek with
FitzGerald and, later, Persian. FitzGerald commenced to learn this last
language, which was to bring him fame, when he was forty-four years of
age. In 1856 Cowell was appointed to a Professorship of English History
at Calcutta, and from there he sent FitzGerald a copy of the manuscript
of _Omar Khayyam_, afterwards lent by FitzGerald to Borrow. Much earlier
than this--in 1853--FitzGerald had written to Borrow:

At Ipswich, indeed, is a man whom you would like to know, I
think, and who would like to know you; one Edward Cowell: a
great scholar, if I may judge.... Should you go to Ipswich do
look for him! a great deal more worth looking for (I speak with
no sham modesty, I am sure) than yours,--E. F. G.[211]

Twenty-six years afterwards--in 1879