But Mr. Lowell's Odes, which do not fail in the Vowel, are noble in Thought, with a good Organ roll in the music, which perhaps he thinks more fitted to Subject and occasion. _To Mrs. Cowell_. 12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT. _March_ 11/77. . . . I scarce like your taking any pains about my Works, whether in Verse, Prose, or Music. I never see any Paper but my old Athenaeum, which, by the way, now tells me of some Lady's Edition of Omar which is to discover all my Errors and Perversions. So this will very likely turn the little Wind that blew my little Skiff on. Or the Critic who incautiously helped that may avenge himself on Agamemnon King, as he pleases. If the Pall Mall Critic knew Greek, I am rather surprised he should have vouchsafed even so much praise as the words you quoted. But I certainly have found that those few whom I meant it for, not Greek scholars, have been more interested in it than I expected. Not you, I think, who, though you judge only too favourably of all I do, are not fond of such Subjects. I have here two Volumes of my dear Sevigne's Letters lately discovered at Dijon; and I am writing out for my own use a Dictionary of the Dramatis Persons figuring in her Correspondence, whom I am always forgetting and confounding. * * * * * In May 1877 his old boatman West died and FitzGerald wrote to Professor Cowell, 'I have not had heart to go on our river since the death of my old Companion West, with whom I had traversed reach after reach for these dozen years. I am almost as averse to them now as Peter Grimes. {217} So now I content myself with the River Side.' _To W. A. Wright_. LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. _June_ 23/77. MY DEAR WRIGHT, . . . I have been regaling myself, in my unscholarly way, with Mr. Munro's admirable Lucretius. Surely, it must be one of the most admirable Editions of a Classic ever made! I don't understand the Latin punctuation, but I dare say there is good reason for it. The English Translation reads very fine to me: I think I should have thought so independent of the original: all except the dry theoretic System, which I must say I do all but skip in the Latin. Yet I venerate the earnestness of the man, and the power with which he makes some music even from his hardest Atoms; a very different Didactic from Virgil, whose Georgics, _quoad_ Georgics, are what every man, woman, and child, must have known; but, his Teaching apart, no one loves him better than I do. I forget if Lucretius is in Dante: he should have been the Guide thro' Hell: but perhaps he was too deep in it to get out for a Holiday. That is a very noble Poussin Landscape, v. 1370-8 'Inque dies magis, etc.' I had always observed that mournful '_Nequicquam_' which comes to throw cold water on us after a little glow of Hope. When Tennyson went with me to Harwich, I was pointing out an old Collier rolling by to the tune of Trudit agens magnam magno molimine navem. [iv. 902.]