When I was sailing about the Isle of Wight, Dorsetshire, etc., I read my dear old Sophocles again (sometimes omitting the nonsense-verse Choruses) and thought how much I should have liked to have them commented along in one of your Lectures. All that is now over with you: but you will look into the Text now and then. I have now got Munro's Lucretius on board again. Why is it that I never can take up with Horace--so sensible, elegant, agreeable, and sometimes even grand? Some one gave me the July Number of the Cornhill to read the 'Loss of the London' in; and very well worth reading it is. But there is also the Beginning of a Story that I am sure must be by Annie Thackeray--capital and wonderful. I forget the name. Now I won't finish this Second Sheet--all with such Scraps as the foregoing. But do believe how sincerely and truly I wish you well in your new Venture. And so I will shut up, my dear Thompson, for the present. No man can have more reason to wish you a good Return for your long generous Kindness than your old Friend, E. F. G. _To E. B. Cowell_. WOODBRIDGE: _August_ 13/66. MY DEAR COWELL, I think you have given me up as a bad Job: and I can't blame you. I have been expecting to hear of you in these parts: though, had it been so, I doubt if I should have been here to meet you. For the last six weeks I have scarce been at home; what with sailing to the Isle of Wight, Norfolk Coast, staying at Lowestoft, etc. And now I am just off again to the latter place, having only returned here on Saturday. Nor can I say when I shall be back here for any long while: the Kerriches are at Lowestoft; and I have yet one or two more Sea-trips to make before October consigns me once more to Cold, Indoor Solitude, Melancholy, and Illhealth. My Companion on board has been Sophocles, as he was three years ago, I find. I am even now going to hunt up some one-volume Virgil to take with me. Horace I never can care about, in spite of his Good Sense, Elegance, and occasional Force. He never made my Eyes wet as Virgil does. When I was about Cromer Coast, I was reading Windham's Diary: well worth reading, as one of the most honest; but with little else in it than that. You would scarcely guess from it that he was a man of any Genius, as yet I suppose he was. Somehow I fancy you must be travelling abroad! Else surely I should have heard something of you. Well: I must anyhow enclose this Letter, or direct it, to your Mother's or Brother's at Ipswich. Do let me hear of yourself and Elizabeth, and believe that I do not forget you, nor cease to be Yours very sincerely EDWARD FITZGERALD. LOWESTOFT: _August_ 19/66. MY DEAR COWELL,