s the wise; but 'de mortuis nil nisi bonum'
especially applies in such cases.--I remain, dear sir, yours
sincerely,

E. B. COWELL.

There is one short letter from FitzGerald to Borrow in Dr. Aldis
Wright's _FitzGerald Letters_. It is dated June 1857 and from it we
learn that FitzGerald lent Borrow the Calcutta manuscript of _Omar
Khayyam_, upon which he based his own immortal translation, and from a
letter to W. H. Thompson in 1861 we learn that Cowell, who had inspired
the writing of FitzGerald's _Omar Khayyam_, Donne and Borrow were the
only three friends to whom he had sent copies of his 'peccadilloes in
verse' as he calls his remarkable translation,[214] and this two years
after it was published. A letter, dated July 6, 1857,[215] asks for the
return of FitzGerald's copy of the Ouseley manuscript of _Omar Khayyam_,
Borrow having clearly already returned the Calcutta manuscript. This
letter concludes on a pathetic note:

My old Parson Crabbe is bowing down under epileptic fits, or
something like, and I believe his brave old white head will
soon sink into the village church sward. Why, _our_ time seems
coming. Make way, gentlemen!

Borrow comes more than once into the story of FitzGerald's great
translation of _Omar Khayyam_, which in our day has caused so great a
sensation, and deserves all the enthusiasm that it has excited as the

'... golden Eastern lay,
Than which I know no version done
In English more divinely well,'

to quote Tennyson's famous eulogy. Cowell, to his after regret, for he
had none of FitzGerald's _dolce far niente_ paganism, had sent
FitzGerald from Calcutta, where he was, the manuscript of Omar Khayyam's
_Rubaiyat_ in Persian, and FitzGerald was captured by it. Two years
later, as we know, he produced the translation, which was so much more
than a translation. 'Omar breathes a sort of consolation to me,' he
wrote to Cowell. 'Borrow is greatly delighted with your MS. of Omar
which I showed him,' he says in another letter to Cowell (June 23,
1857), 'delighted at the terseness so unusual in Oriental verse.'[216]

The next two letters by FitzGerald from my Borrow Papers are of the year
1859, the year of the first publication of the _Rubaiyat_:

To George Borrow, Esq.

10 MARINE PARADE, LOWESTOFT.

MY DEAR BORROW,--I have come here with three nieces to give them sea air
and change. They are all perfectly quiet, s