Letters of Edward FitzGerald

By Edward FitzGerald

Letters of Edward FitzGerald

In compliance with a very generally expressed wish that the Letters of Edward FitzGerald should be separated from his Literary Remains, they are now issued with some additions to their number which have not before appeared. It was no part of my plan to form a complete collection of his letters, but rather to let the story of his life be told in such of them as gave an indication of his character and pursuits. It would have been easy to increase the number considerably had I printed all that I possess, but it seemed better to create the desire for more than to incur the reproach of having given more than enough.

In endeavouring to carry out these last wishes of my friend I thought that of the many who know him only as a translator some would be glad to have a picture of him as he appeared to the small circle of his intimate acquaintances. The mere narrative of the life of a man of leisure and literary tastes would have contained too few incidents to be of general interest, and it appeared to me best to let him be his own biographer, telling his own story and revealing his own character in his letters. Fortunately there are many of these, and I have endeavoured to give . ixsuch a selection from them as would serve this purpose, adding a few words here and there to connect them and explain what was not sufficiently evident. As the letters begin from the time that he left College and continue with shorter or longer intervals till the day before his death, it was only necessary to introduce them by a short sketch of his early life in order to
Persian Literature

A certain amount of romantic interest has always attached to Persia. With a continuous history stretching back into those dawn-days of history in which fancy loves to play, the mention of its name brings to our minds the vision of things beautiful and artistic, the memory of great deeds and days of chivalry. We seem almost to smell the fragrance of the rose-gardens of Tus and of Shiraz, and to hear the knight-errants tell of war and of love. There are other Oriental civilizations, whose coming and going have not been in vain for the world; they have done their little bit of apportioned work in the universe, and have done it well. India and Arabia have had their great poets and their great heroes, yet they have remained well-nigh unknown to the men and women of our latter day, even to those whose world is that of letters. But the names of Firdusi, Sa'di, Omar Khayyбm, Jami, and Hбfiz, have a place in our own temples of fame. They have won their way into the book-stalls and stand upon our shelves, side by side with the other books which mould our life and shape our character.

Some reason there must be for the special favor which we show to these products of Persian genius, and for the hold which they have upon us. We need not go far to find it. The under-current forces, which determine our own civilization of to-day, are in a general way the same forces which were at play during the heyday of Persian literary production. We owe to the Hellenic spirit, which at various times has found its way into our midst, our love for the beautiful in art and in literature. We owe to the Semitic, which has been inbreathed into us by religious forms and beliefs, the tone of our better life, the moral level to which we aspire. The same two forces were at work in Persia. Even while that country was purely Irбnian, it was always open to Semitic influences. The welding together of the two civilizations is the true signature of Persian history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lighthouse Books for Translation and Publishing
• Release date: Aug 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780599459526