CURRENT LITERATVRE.
Two Suffolk Friends. By Francis Hindes Groome. (Blackwood and Sons.)—This little volume is a reprint, with additions, of two lively papers from Blackwood's Magazine, and the "two Suffolk friends" are Archdeacon Groome and Edward Fitzgerald. The link between them, so far as this narrative goes, is of the slenderest kind. Mr. Groome modestly describes his account of Fitzgerald as a patchwork article, but slight though it be, it throws a little fresh light on a man whose eccentric character MIS singularly attractive. Mr. Groome says truly that Fitzgerald's letters "will take a high place in literature on their own merits, quite apart from the interest that attaches to the translator of 'Omar R hayygin,' to the friend of Thackeray, Tennyson, and Carlyle." No man ever cared less for what are generally recognised as comforts than Fitzgerald. For years he lived in chilly and damp lodgings instead of occupying his own house, and he was always careless as to dress. "I can see him now," Mr. Groome writes, " walking down into Woodbridge with an old Inverness cape, double-breasted flowered satin waistcoat, slippers on feet, a handkerchief very likely tied over his hat. Yet one always recognised in him the Hidalgo. Never was there a more perfect gentleman." "We are all mad," he said to his family, but with this difference,—I know that I am." His melancholy temperament showed itself in his anticipation of the speedy fall of England. He would not even give his vote, and advised others to follow his example, leaving "the rotten old ship to go to pieces of itself." It is said to have been difficult to get him to do anything. "First he would be delighted with the idea, and next he would raise up a hundred objections ; then, may be, he would again, and finally he wouldn't." His defects as a man of action did not lessen his capacity for winning friends, and few men living such a retired life have been so deeply loved as Thackeray's "dear old Fitz." Of the late Archdeacon of Suffolk, well known for his interest in Suffolk lore, his son has several good stories to relate, which are racy of the soil. His grandfather owned the ' Unity ' lugger, in which Crabbe went up to London,—a poet, according to the Archdeacon, not always honoured in his own country, for if ever Crabbe was mentioned in the hearing of his two aunts, they would smooth their black mittens and remark, "We never thought much of Mr. Crabbe." The good ladies' estimate of a poet may be capped by that of John Grout, a "mighty horsedealer," who, on being told by Fitzgerald, that Woodbridge should feel itself honoured by a visit from Tennyson, replied, " Dessay ; anyhow, he didn't fare to know much about hosses when I showed him over my stables.' An agreeable hour may be spent over these pages.
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