114 FitzGerald's Version of Calderon t I 9°5 



Lawrence wept and said it would cause her death as well as mine, 

 but it all went off well. I lay all day long enjoying the fresh air 

 and the sun, and paid a little visit on my way back to the tomb 

 of Sheykh Obeyd, where Salem, my Egyptian servant, has been saying 

 prayers ever since I have been ill to the saint, and I stopped at the 

 tomb to recite a fat ha. 



" 10th Jan. — I have been taken out every day to the tent and it 

 has done me good. My illness has been very unfortunate. Suliman's 

 three young children have sickened of the smallpox and the youngest 

 has died. If I had been well I should have gone out to him, for he 

 must be in want of provisions, though he has the milk of his goats. 

 Smallpox is the one thing that terrifies the Bedouins, and they fly from 

 it, a visitation in the natural world before which all are powerless. 

 I sat yesterday for an hour with the Mufti in his garden. There was 

 with him one Mohammed Bey Talaat Harb, a very intelligent man who 

 is writing a history of the Arabs from Mohammed to the present day. 

 The fall of Port Arthur is universally rejoiced in here as a triumph 

 of East against West. It appears now that 48,000, not 5,000, Russians 

 surrendered. The Khedive has made overtures of peace lately to 

 Mohammed Abdu. 



" 12th Jan. — I have been reading FitzGerald's translations from 

 Calderon which are rather poor stuff, more Calderon's fault than 

 FitzGerald's, only two of the plays were worth translating, ' The 

 Mayor of Zalamea ' and the merry little comedietta at the end of 

 the volume which reminds me pleasantly if not very closely of the 

 Madrid of my youth, forty years ago. The rest of the plays are 

 dull, with little of wit or passion. FitzGerald's blank verse, too, 

 though good in its way, makes heavy reading; perhaps it would be 

 better on the stage, but why does he misaccentuate the names of 

 his characters, scanning " Alvaro " as " Alvaro," " Huan " as " Iuan," 

 " Otanez " as " Otahez," " Guillen " as " Guillen," " San ^ucar " 

 as " San Lucar," and so on. It seems trouble thrown away to trans- 

 late and be so very slipshod. 



"21st Jan. — Mohammed Abdu has gone to the Soudan to look 

 after various matters connected with Mohammedan interests. 



" 25th Jan. — A short desert journey with Neville to visit Suliman 

 and take him provisions. We found Suliman's other wife watching 

 for us on the hill-top and presently we came upon his two little tents 

 pitched in a hollow near the high gravel ridge three or four miles east 

 of the Nahiadeyn, a nice little spot, the scene of the tragedy of A'ida's 

 death. We found her poor black shirt cast away at some distance from 

 the tent, doubtless on account of the infection, and the camp had a 

 squalid look in the lonely wilderness, the flocks being away at pasture 

 and the rain of two nights ago had run through both tents, round 



