some _stepping-stones_ in 'Dear Charles
Lamb'--drawn up for my own use in reading his Letters, and printed, you
see, for my Friends--one of my best Works; though not exact about Book
Dates, which indeed one does not care for.

"The Paper is meant to paste in as Flyleaf before any Volume of the
Letters, as now printed. But it is not a 'Venerable' Book, I doubt.
Daddy Wordsworth said, indeed, 'Charles Lamb is a good man if ever good
man was'--as I had wished to quote at the End of my Paper, but could not
find the printed passage."

* * * * *

The poem turned up in a MS. book of my father's, while this article was
writing. It is a version of the "Lucius AEmilius Paullus," already
published by Mr Aldis Wright, in vol. ii. p. 483 of the 'Remains,' but
the two differ so widely that lovers of FitzGerald will be glad to have
it. Here, then, it is:--

A PARAPHRASE BY EDWARD FITZGERALD OF THE SPEECH OF PAULLUS AEMILIUS IN
LIVY, lib. xlv. c. 41.

"How prosperously I have served the State,
And how in the Midsummer of Success
A double Thunderbolt from heav'n has struck
On mine own roof, Rome needs not to be told,
Who has so lately witness'd through her Streets,
Together, moving with unequal March,
My Triumph and the Funeral of my Sons.
Yet bear with me if in a few brief words,
And no invidious Spirit, I compare
With the full measure of the general Joy
My private Destitution. When the Fleet
Was all equipp'd, 'twas at the break of day
That I weigh'd anchor from Brundusium;
Before the day went down, with all my Ships
I made Corcyra; thence, upon the fifth,
To Delphi; where to the presiding God
A lustratory Sacrifice I made,
As for myself, so for the Fleet and Army.
Thence in five days I reach'd the Roman camp;
Took the command; re-organis'd the War;
And, for King Perseus would not forth to fight,
And for his camp's strength could not forth be forced,
I slipped between his Outposts by the woods
At Petra, thence I follow'd him, when he
Fight me must needs, I fought and routed him,
Into the all-constraining Arms of Rome
Reduced all Macedonia.
And this grave War that, growing year by year,
Four Consuls each to each made over worse
Than from his predecessor he took up,
In fifteen days victoriously I closed.
With that the Flood of Fortune, setting in
Roll'd wave on wave upon us. Macedon
Once fall'n, her States and Cities all gave in,
The royal Treasure dropt into my Hands;
And then the King himself, he and his