d
they are certainly much in the right in so doing. The sterling merits of
the Persian original are preserved with striking fidelity in the English
version of the poem, which, for the rest, has gone far to prove that the
acceptableness among us of Oriental poetry may depend very largely on
the skill with which it is transplanted into our language. The
translator of the _Rubaiyat_ is Mr. Edward FitzGerald, of Woodbridge in
Suffolk. Mr. FitzGerald's ancient family one may learn all about from
Burke's _Landed Gentry_, and that he was born in 1809, and that he
married Lucy, daughter of Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. He was
educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where among his contemporaries
and friends were the present poet-laureate and Mr. Spedding, the editor
of Bacon. The _London Catalogue_ names three works as by Mr. FitzGerald.
These, as we find from inspection of the works themselves, are as
follows: 1. _Euphranor, a Dialogue on Youth,_ 1851 (it reached a second
edition, increased by an _Appendix_, in 1855); 2. _Polonius: A
Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances_, 1852; 3. _Six Dramas of
Calderon_, 1853. These dramas are translations, in prose and verse, of
_The Painter of his Own Dishonor, Keep your Own Secret, Gil Perez the
Gallician, Three Judgments at a Blow, The Mayor of Zalamea_, and _Beware
of Smooth Water_. In none of these volumes, however, except the last is
there any indication of its authorship but there Mr. FitzGerald's name
is given in full. The date of his metrical translation of _Salaman and
Absal_, from the Persian, we are not at this moment, able to specify.
Add, as printed by him, but not published, two other small volumes of
translations--one, of the _Agamemnon_ of AEschylus; and the other, of two
of Calderon's plays, _Life is a Dream_ and _The Wonderful Magician_.
Finally, we have to mention an unprinted verse-translation, _The Bird
Parliament_, from the Persian _Mantiq-ut-tair_ by Attar. Mr. Allibone
knows nothing of Mr. FitzGerald, and he is similarly passed over in
silence by the compiler of _Men of the Time._ Everything that he has
produced is uniformly distinguished by marked ability; and, such being
the case, his indifference to fame, in this age of ambition for literary
celebrity, is a phenomenon which deserves to be emphasized.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The French Humorists from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century.
By Walter Besant, M.A.
Boston: Roberts Brothers.