The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I
Author: Thomas Carlyle; Ralph Waldo Emerson
Date: 2004-10-03T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Authors; Scottish -- 19th century -- Correspondence; American -- 19th century -- Correspondence; Carlyle; Thomas; 1795-1881 -- Correspondence; Emerson; Ralph Waldo; 1803-1882 -- Correspondence; Historians -- Great Britain -- Correspondence

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Title: The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I

Author: Thomas Carlyle

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Editor: Charles Eliot Norton

Release date: October 3, 2004 [eBook #13583]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13583

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THOMAS CARLYLE AND RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 1834-1872, VOL. I ***

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THOMAS CARLYLE AND RALPH WALDO EMERSON

1834-1872

VOLUME I.

"To my friend I write a letter, and from him I receive a letter. It is a spiritual gift, worthy of him to give, and of me to receive."—Emerson

"What the writer did actually mean, the thing he then thought of, the thing he then was."—Carlyle

EDITORIAL NOTE

The trust of editing the following Correspondence, committed to me several years since by the writers, has been of easy fulfilment. The whole Correspondence, so far as it is known to exist, is here printed, with the exception of a few notes of introduction, and one or two essentially duplicate letters. I cannot but hope that some of the letters now missing may hereafter come to light.

In printing, a dash has been substituted here and there for a proper name, and some passages, mostly relating to details of business transactions, have been omitted. These omissions are distinctly designated. The punctuation and orthography of the original letters have been in the main exactly followed. I have thought best to print much concerning dealings with publishers, as illustrative of the material conditions of literature during the middle of the century, as well as of the relations of the two friends. The notes in the two volumes are mine.

My best thanks and those of the readers of this Correspondence are due to Mr. Moncure D. Conway, for his energetic and successful effort to recover some of Emerson's early letters which had fallen into strange hands. —Charles Eliot Norton

Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 29, 1883

————-

NOTE TO REVISED EDITION

The hope that some of the letters missing from it when this correspondence was first published might come to light, has been fulfilled by the recovery of thirteen letters of Carlyle, and of four of Emerson. Besides these, the rough drafts of one or two of Emerson's letters, of which the copies sent have gone astray, have been found. Comparatively few gaps in the Correspondence remain to be filled.

The letters and drafts of letters now first printed are those numbered as follows:—

Vol. I.
XXXVI. Carlyle
XLI. Emerson
XLII. Carlyle
XLVI. "
XLVII. "
LXVIII. "

Vol. II.
C. Emerson
CIV. Carlyle
CV. "
CVI. "
CVII. "
CVIII. "
CIX. "
CXII. "
CXVI. "
CXLIX. Emerson
CLII. "
CLXV. "
CLXXXVI. "

Emerson's letter of 1 May, 1859 (CLXIV.), of which only fragments were printed in the former edition, is now printed complete, and the extract from his Diary accompanying it appears in the form in which it seems to have been sent to Carlyle.

—C.E.N.

December 31, 1884

—————-

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

Introduction. Emerson's early recognition of Carlyle's genius.
—His visit at Craigenputtock, in 1833.—Extracts concerning it
from letter of Carlyle, from letter of Emerson, and from English
Traits.

I. Emerson. Boston, 14 May, 1834. First acquaintance with
Carlyle's writings.—Visit to Craigenputtock.—Sartor Resartus,
its contents, its diction.—Gift of Webster's Speeches and
Sampson Reed's Growth of the Mind.

II. Carlyle. Chelsea, 12 August, 1834. Significance of
Emerson's gift and visit.—Sampson Reed.—Webster.—
Teufelsdrockh, its sorry reception.—Removal to London.—Article
on the Diamond Necklace.—Preparation for book on the French
Revolution.—Death of Coleridge.

III. Emerson. Concord, 20 November, 1834. Death of his brother
Edward.—Consolation in Carlyle's friendship.—Pleasure in
receiving stitched copy of Teufelsdrockh.—Goethe.—
Swedenborgianism.—Of himself.—Hope of Carlyle's coming to
America.—Gift of various publications.

IV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 3 February, 1835. Acknowledgments and
inquiries.—Sympathy for death of Edward Emerson.—Unitarianism.
—Emerson's position and pursuits.—Goethe.-Volume of French
Revolution finished.—Condition of literature.—Lecturing in
America.—Mrs. Austin.

V. Emerson. Concord, 12 March, 1835. Appreciation of Sartor.
—Dr. Channing.—Prospect of Carlyle's visit to America.—His
own approaching marriage.—Plan of a journal of Philosophy in
Boston.—Encouragement of Carlyle.

VI. Emerson. Concord, 30 April, 1835. Apathy of English public toward Carlyle.—Hope of his visit to America.—Lectures and lecturers in Boston.—Estimate of receipts and expenses.—Esteem of Carlyle in America.

VII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 13 May, 1835. Emerson's marriage. —Astonishing reception of Teufelsdrockh in New England. —Boston Transcendentalism.—Destruction of manuscript of first volume of French Revolution.—Result of a year's life in London.—Wordsworth.—Southey.

VIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 27 June, 1835. Visit to America questionable.—John Carlyle.—Tired out with rewriting French Revolution.—A London rout.—O'Connell.—Longfellow.—Emerson and Unitarianism.

IX. Emerson. Concord, 7 October, 1835. Mrs. Child.—Public
addresses.—Marriage.—Destruction of manuscript of French
Revolution.—Notice of Sartor in North American Review.
—Politics.—Charles Emerson.

X. Emerson. Concord, 8 April, 1836. Concern at Carlyle's silence.—American reprint of Sartor.—Carlyle's projected visit.—Lecturing in New England.

XI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 29 April, 1836. Weariness over French
Revolution.—Visit to Scotland.—Charm of London.—Letter from
James Freeman Clarke.—Article on Sartor in North American
Review.—Quatrain from Voss.

XII. Emerson. Concord, 17 September,1836. Death of Charles Emerson.—Solicitude concerning Carlyle.—Urgency to him to come to Concord.—Sends Nature to him.—Reflections.

XIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 5 November, 1836. Charles Emerson's death.—Concord.—His own condition.—French Revolution almost ended.—Character of the book.—Weariness.—London and its people.—Plans for rest.—John Sterling.—Articles on Mirabeau and the Diamond Necklace.—Mill's London Review.—Thanks for American Teufelsdrockh.—Mrs. Carlyle.—Might and Right, Canst and Shalt.—Books about Goethe.

XIV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 13 February, 1837. Teufelsdrockh in
America and England.—Nature.—Miss Martineau on Emerson.
—Mammon.—Completion of French Revolution.—Scheme of
Lecturing in London.—America fading into the background.

XV. Emerson. Concord, 31 March, 1837. Receipt of the Mirabeau and Diamond Necklace.—Their substance and style.—Proof-sheet of French Revolution.—Society in America.—Renewed invitation. —Mrs. Carlyle.—His son Waldo.—Bronson Alcott.—Second edition of Sartor.

XVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 1 June, 1837. Lectures on German Literature.—Copy of French Revolution sent.—Review of himself in Christian Examiner.—George Ripley.—Miss Martineau and her book on America.—Plans.

XVII. Emerson. Concord, 13 September, 1837. The French
Revolution.—Sale of Carlyle's books.—Lectures.

XVIII. Emerson. Concord, 2 November, 1837. Introduction given to Charles Sumner.—Reprint of French Revolution.—Lectures.

XIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 8 December, 1837. Visit to Scotland.
—Mrs. Carlyle's ill-health.—His own need of rest.—John
Sterling; his regard for Emerson.—Emerson's Oration on the
American Scholar.—Proposed collection of his own Miscellanies.

XX. Emerson. Concord, 9 February, 1838. Lectures on Human
Culture.—Carlyle's praise of his Oration.—John Sterling.
—Reprint of French Revolution.—Profits from it.—American
selection and edition of Carlyle's Miscellanies.

XXI. Emerson. Boston, 12 March, 1838. Sale of French Revolution.—Arrangements concerning American edition of Miscellanies.

XXII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 16 March, 1838. Prospect of cash from
Yankee-land.—Poverty.—American and English reprints of
Miscellanies.—Sterling's Crystals from a Cavern.—Miss
Martineau on Emerson.—Lectures.—Plans.

XXIII. Emerson. Concord, 10 May, 1838. American edition of Miscellanies.—Invitation to Concord.—His means and mode of life.—Sterling.—Miss Martineau.—Carlyle's poverty.

XXIV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 15 June, 1838. American French
Revolution.—London edition of Teufelsdrockh.—Miscellanies.
—Lectures, their money result.—Plans.—Emerson's Oration.
—Mrs. Child's Philothea.

XXV. Emerson. Boston, 30 July, 1838. Encloses bill for L50. —Miscellanies published.

XXVI. Emerson. Concord, 6 August, 1838. Publication of Miscellanies.—Two more volumes proposed.—Orations at Theological School, Cambridge, and at Dartmouth College.—Carlyle desired in America.

XXVII. Carlyle. Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, 25 September, 1838.
Visit to his Mother.—Remittance from Emerson of L50.—
Miscellanies again.—Another Course of Lectures.—Sterling.—
Miss Martineau.

XXVIII. Emerson. Concord, 17 October, 1838. Business.—Outcry against address to Divinity College.—Injury to Carlyle's repute in America from association with him.—Article in Quarterly on German Religious Writers.—Sterling.

XXIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 7 November, 1838. Emerson's letters.— Dyspepsia.—Use of money from America.—Arrangements concerning publication of Miscellanies.—Emerson's Orations.—Tempest in a washbowl concerning Divinity School Address.—John Carlyle— Postscript by Mrs. Carlyle.

XXX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 15 November, 1838. Arrangements concerning Miscellanies.—Employments, outlooks.—Concord not forgotten, but Emerson to come first to England.—John Carlyle. —Miss Martineau and her books.

XXXI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 2 December, 1838. Arrival of American
reprint of Miscellanies.—English and American bookselling.—
Proposed second edition of French Revolution.—Reading Horace
Walpole.—Sumner.—Dartmouth Oration.—Sterling.—Dwight's
German Translations.

XXXII. Emerson. Concord, 13 January, 1839. Business.—
Remittance of L100.—Lectures on Human Life.—Dr. Carlyle.

XXXIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 8 February, 1839. Acknowledgment of remittance.—Arrangements for new edition of French Revolution.—London.—Wish for quiet.—Ill-health.—Suggestion of writing on Cromwell.—Mr. Joseph Coolidge.—Divinity School Address.—Mrs. Carlyle.—Gladstone cites from Emerson in his Church and State.

XXXIV. Emerson. Concord, 15 March, 1839. Account of sales.—
Second series of Miscellanies.—Ill wind raised by Address
blown over.—Lectures.—Birth of daughter.—The Onyx Ring.
—Alcott.

XXXV. Emerson. Concord, 19 March, 1839. Need of copy to fill out second series of Miscellanies.—John S. Dwight.

XXXVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 13 April, 1839. Solicitude on account of Emerson's silence.—Gift to Mrs. Emerson.—Book business. —New edition of French Revolution.—New lectures.—Better circumstances, better health.—Arthur Buller urges a visit to America.—Milnes.—Emerson's growing popularity.

XXXVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 17 April, 1839. Nothing in manuscript
fit for Miscellanies.—Essay on Varnhagen.—Translation of
Goethe's Mahrchen.—Cruthers and Jonson.—Dwight's book.
—Lectures.—Discontent among working people.

XXXVIII. Emerson. Boston, 20 April, 1839. Proposals of publishers concerning French Revolution.—Introduction of Miss Sedgwick.

XXXIX. Emerson. Concord, 25 April, 1839. Account.—Sales of books.

XL. Emerson. Concord, 28 April, 1839. Proposals of publishers and accounts.

XLI. Emerson. Concord, 15 May, 1839. Arrangements with publishers.—Matter for completion of fourth volume of Miscellanies.—Stearns Wheelers faithful labor.—Arthur Buller's good witnessing.—Plans for Carlyle's visit to America. —Milnes.—Copy of Nature for him.

XLII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 29 May, 1839. Lectures happily over.—
Sansculottism.—Horse must be had.—Extempore speaking an art.—
Must lecture in America or write a book.—Wordsworth.—Sterling.
—Messages.

XLIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 24 June, 1839. Delay in arrival of Miscellanies.—Custom-house rapacities.—Accounts..—No longer poor.—Emerson's work.—Miss Sedgwick.—Daniel Webster.—Proposed visit to Scotland.—Sinking of the Vengeur.

XLIV. Emerson. Concord, 4 July, 1839. Proof-sheet of new edition of French Revolution received.—Gift to Mrs. Emerson of engraving of Guido's Aurora.—Publishers' accounts.—Sterling.— Occupations.—Margaret Fuller.

XLV. Emerson. Concord, 8 August, 1839. Miscellanies sent.
—Daniel Webster.—Alcott.—Thoreau.

XLVI. Carlyle. Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, 4 September, 1839.
Rusticating.—Arrival of Miscellanies.—Errata.—Reprint of
Wilhelm Meister.—Estimate of the book.—Copies of French
Revolution sent.—Eager expectation of Emerson's book.—
Sterling.—Plans.

XLVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 8 December, 1839. Long silence.—Stay in Scotland.—Chartism.—Reprint of Miscellanies.—Stearns Wheeler.—Wilhelm Meister.—Boston steamers.—Speculations about Hegira into New England.—Visitor from America who had never seen Emerson.—Miss Martineau.—Silence and speech.— Sterling.—Southey.—No longer desperately poor.

XLVIII. Emerson. Concord, 12 December, 1839. Copies of French
Revolution arrived.—Lectures on the Present Age.—Letter from
Sterling, his paper on Carlyle.—Friends.

XLIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 6 January, 1840. Chartism.—
Sterling.—Monckton Milnes, paper by him on Emerson.

L. Carlyle. Chelsea, 17 January, 1840. Export and import of books.—New editions.—Books sent to Emerson.—Cromwell as a subject for writing.—No appetite for lecturing.—Madame Necker on Emerson.

LI. Emerson. New York, 18 March, 1840. New York.—Loss of faith on entering cities.—Margaret Fuller to edit a journal.—Lectures on the Present Age.—His children.—Renewed invitation.

LII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 1 April, 1840. Count D'Orsay, his portrait of Carlyle.—Wages for books, due to Emerson.—Milnes's review.—Heraud.—Landor.—Lectures in prospect on Heroes and Hero-worship.

LIII. Emerson. Concord, 21 April, 1840. Introduction of Mr.
Grinnell.—Chartism.—Reprint of it.—At work on a book.—
Booksellers' accounts.—The Dial.—Alcott.

LIV. Emerson. Concord, 30 June, 1840. Wilhelm Meister received.—Landor.—Letter to Milnes.—Lithograph of Concord. —The Dial, No. 1.

LV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 2 July, 1840. Bibliopoliana.—Lectures about Great Men.—Lecturing in America.—Milnes and his Poems. —Controversial volume from Ripley.

LVI. Emerson. Concord, 30 August, 1840. Booksellers' accounts.
—Faith cold concerning Carlyle's coming to America.—
Transcendentalism and The Dial.—Social problems.—Character of
his writing.—Charles Sumner.

LVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 26 September, 1840. Not to go to
America for the present.—Heroes and Hero-Worship.—Journey on
horseback.—Reading on Cromwell.—Dial No. 1.—Puseyism.—Dr.
Sewell on Carlyle.—Landor.—Sterling.

LVIII. Emerson. Concord, 30 October, 1840. Booksellers' accounts.—Projects of social reform.—Studies unproductive. —Hopes to print a book of essays.

LIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 9 December, 1840. Booksellers' carelessness and accounts.—Puseyism.—Dial No. 2.—Goethe. —Miss Martineau's Hour and Man.—Working in Cromwellism.

LX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 21 February, 1841. To Mrs. Emerson.—
London transmuted by her alchemy.—Hope of seeing Concord.
—Miss Martineau.—Toussaint l'Ouverture.—Sheets of Heroes
and Hero-worship sent to Emerson.

LXI. Emerson. Concord, 28 February, 1841. Accounts.—Essays soon to appear.—Lecture on Reform.

LXII. Emerson. Boston, 30 April, 1841. Remittance of L100.— Accounts.—Piratical reprint of Heroes and Hero-worship.— Dial No. 4.

LXIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 8 May, 1841. Visit to Milnes.—To his
Mother.—Emerson's Essays.—His own condition.

LXIV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 21 May, 1841. Acknowledgment of remittance of L100.—Unauthorized American reprint of Heroes and Hero-worship.—Improvement in circumstances.—Desire for solitude.—Article on Emerson in Fraser's Magazine.

LXV. Emerson. Concord, 30 May, 1841. Accounts.—Book by Jones
Very.—Heroes and Hero-worship.—Thoreau.

LXVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 25 June, 1841. Proposed stay at Annan.
—Motives for it.—London reprint of Emerson's Essays.—Rio.

LXVII. Emerson. Concord, 31 July, 1841. London reprint of Essays.—Carlyle in his own land.—Writing an oration.

LXVIII. Carlyle. Newby, Annan, Scotland, 18 August, 1841. Speedy receipt of letter.—Stay in Scotland.—Seclusion and sadness.—Reprint of Emerson's Essays.—Shipwreck.

LXIX. Emerson. Concord, 30 October, 1841. Pleasure in English reprint of Essays.—Lectures on the Times.—Opportunities of the Lecture-room.—Accounts.

LXX. Emerson. Concord, 14 November, 1841. Remittance of L40.—
His banker.—Gambardella.—Preparation for lectures on the Times.

LXXI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 19 November, 1841. Gambardella.—
Lawrence's portrait.—Emerson's Essays in England.—Address at
Waterville College.—The Dial.—Emerson's criticism on Landor.

LXXII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 6 December, 1841. Acknowledgment of remittance of L40.—American funds.—Landor.—Emerson's Lectures.

LXXIII. Emerson. New York, 28 February, 1842. Remittance of L48.—American investments.—Death of his son.—Alcott going to England.

LXXIV. Carlyle. Templand, 28 March, 1842. Sympathy, with Emerson.—Death of Mrs. Carlyle's mother.—At Templand to settle affairs.—Life there.—A book on Cromwell begun.

LXXV. Emerson. Concord, 31 March, 1842. Bereavement.—Alcott going to England.—Editorship of Dial.—Mr. Henry Lee.— Lectures in New York.

——————————-

CORRESPONDENCE OF CARLYLE AND EMERSON

At the beginning of his "English Traits," Mr. Emerson, writing of his visit to England in 1833, when he was thirty years old, says that it was mainly the attraction of three or four writers, of whom Carlyle was one, that had led him to Europe. Carlyle's name was not then generally known, and it illustrates Emerson's mental attitude that he should have thus early recognized his genius, and felt sympathy with it.

The decade from 1820 to 1830 was a period of unusual dulness in English thought and imagination. All the great literary reputations belonged to the beginning of the century, Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, had said their say. The intellectual life of the new generation had not yet found expression. But toward the end of this time a series of articles, mostly on German literature, appearing in the Edinburgh and in the Foreign Quarterly Review, an essay on Burns, another on Voltaire, still more a paper entitled "Characteristics," displayed the hand of a master, and a spirit in full sympathy with the hitherto unexpressed tendencies and aspirations of its time, and capable of giving them expression. Here was a writer whose convictions were based upon principles, and whose words stood for realities. His power was slowly acknowledged. As yet Carlyle had received hardly a token of recognition from his contemporaries.

He was living solitary, poor, independent, in "desperate hope," at Craigenputtock. On August 24,1833, he makes entry in his Journal as follows: "I am left here the solitariest, stranded, most helpless creature that I have been for many years….. Nobody asks me to work at articles. The thing I want to write is quite other than an article… In all times there is a word which spoken to men; to the actual generation of men, would thrill their inmost soul. But the way to find that word? The way to speak it when found?" The next entry in his Journal shows that Carlyle had found the word. It is the name "Ralph Waldo Emerson," the record of Emerson's unexpected visit. "I shall never forget the visitor," wrote Mrs. Carlyle, long afterwards, "who years ago, in the Desert, descended on us, out of the clouds as it were, and made one day there look like enchantment for us, and left me weeping that it was only one day."

At the time of this memorable visit Emerson was morally not less solitary than Carlyle; he was still less known; his name had been unheard by his host in the desert. But his voice was soon to become also the voice of a leader. With temperaments sharply contrasted, with traditions, inheritances, and circumstances radically different, with views of life and of the universe widely at variance, the souls of these two young men were yet in sympathy, for their characters were based upon the same foundation of principle. In their independence and their sincerity they were alike; they were united in their faith in spiritual truth, and their reverence for it. Their modes of thought of expression were not merely dissimilar, but divergent, and yet, though parted by an ever widening cleft of difference, they knew, as Carlyle said, that beneath it "the rock-strata, miles deep, united again, and their two souls were at one"

Two days after Emerson's visit Carlyle wrote to his mother:—

"Three little happinesses have befallen us: first, a piano-tuner, procured for five shillings and sixpence, has been here, entirely reforming the piano, so that I can hear a little music now, which does me no little good. Secondly, Major Irving, of Gribton, who used at this season of the year to live and shoot at Craigenvey, came in one day to us, and after some clatter offered us a rent of five pounds for the right to shoot here, and even tabled the cash that moment, and would not pocket it again. Money easilier won never sat in my pocket; money for delivering us from a great nuisance, for now I will tell every gunner applicant, 'I cannot, sir; it is let.' Our third happiness was the arrival of a certain young unknown friend, named Emerson, from Boston, in the United States, who turned aside so far from his British, French, and Italian travels to see me here! He had an introduction from Mill, and a Frenchman (Baron d'Eichthal's nephew) whom John knew at Rome. Of course we could do no other than welcome him; the rather as he seemed to be one of the most lovable creatures in himself we had ever looked on. He stayed till next day with us, and talked and heard talk to his heart's content, and left us all really sad to part with him. Jane says it is the first journey since Noah's Deluge undertaken to Craigenputtock for such a purpose. In any case, we had a cheerful day from it, and ought to be thankful."

On the next Sunday, a week after his visit, Emerson wrote the following account of it to his friend, Mr. Alexander Ireland.

"I found him one of the most simple and frank of men, and became acquainted with him at once. We walked over several miles of hills, and talked upon all the great questions that interest us most. The comfort of meeting a man is that he speaks sincerely; that he feels himself to be so rich, that he is above the meanness of pretending to knowledge which he has not, and Carlyle does not pretend to have solved the great problems, but rather to be an observer of their solution as it goes forward in the world. I asked him at what religious development the concluding passage in his piece in the Edinburgh Review upon German literature (say five years ago), and some passages in the piece called 'Characteristics,' pointed. He replied that he was not competent to state even to himself,—he waited rather to see. My own feeling was that I had met with men of far less power who had got greater insight into religious truth. He is, as you might guess from his papers, the most catholic of philosophers; he forgives and loves everybody, and wishes each to struggle on in his own place and arrive at his own ends. But his respect for eminent men, or rather his scale of eminence, is about the reverse of the popular scale. Scott, Mackintosh, Jeffrey, Gibbon,—even Bacon, —are no heroes of his; stranger yet, he hardly admires Socrates, the glory of the Greek world; but Burns, and Samuel Johnson, and Mirabeau, he said interested him, and I suppose whoever else has given himself with all his heart to a leading instinct, and has not calculated too much. But I cannot think of sketching even his opinions, or repeating his conversations here. I will cheerfully do it when you visit me here in America. He talks finely, seems to love the broad Scotch, and I loved him very much at once. I am afraid he finds his entire solitude tedious, but I could not help congratulating him upon his treasure in his wife, and I hope he will not leave the moors; 't is so much better for a man of letters to nurse himself in seclusion than to be filed down to the common level by the compliances and imitations of city society." *

——————- * Ralph Waldo Emerson. Recollections of his Visits to England By Alexander Ireland. London, 1882, p. 58. ——————

Twenty-three years later, in his "English Traits," Emerson once more describes his visit, and tells of his impressions of Carlyle.

"From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. On my return I came from Glasgow to Dumfries, and being intent on delivering a letter which I had brought from Rome, inquired for Craigenputtock. It was a farm in Nithsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles distant. No public coach passed near it, so I took a private carriage from the inn. I found the house amid desolate heathery hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from his youth, an author who did not need to hide from his readers, and as absolute a man of the world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding on his own terms what is best in London. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed and holding his extraordinary powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor which floated everything he looked upon. His talk, playfully exalting the most familiar objects, put the companion at once into an acquaintance with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very pleasant to learn what was predestined to be a pretty mythology. Few were the objects and lonely the man, 'not a person to speak to within sixteen miles, except the minister of Dunscore'; so that books inevitably made his topics.

"He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his discourse. Blackwood's was the 'sand magazine'; Fraser's nearer approach to possibility of life was the 'mud magazine'; a piece of road near by that marked some failed enterprise was 'the grave of the last sixpence.' When too much praise of any genius annoyed him, he professed hugely to admire the talent shown by his pig. He had spent much time and contrivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure in his Pen; but pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out how to let a board down, and had foiled him. For all that, he still thought man the most plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked Nero's death, Qualis artifex pereo! better than most history. He worships a man that will manifest any truth to him. At one time he had inquired and read a good deal about America. Landor's principle was mere rebellion, and that, he feared, was the American principle. The best thing he knew of that country was, that in it a man can have meat for his labor. He had read in Stewart's book, that when he inquired in a New York hotel for the Boots, he had been shown across the street, and had found Mungo in his own house dining on roast turkey.

"We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he disparaged Socrates; and, when pressed, persisted in making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he called the splendid bridge from the old world to the new. His own reading had been multifarious. Tristram Shandy was one of his first books after Robinson Crusoe and Robertson's America, an early favorite. Rousseau's Confessions had discovered to him that he was not a dunce; and it was now ten years since he had learned German, by the advice of a man who told him he would find in that language what he wanted.

"He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great booksellers for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the eve of bankruptcy.

"He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded country, the selfish abdication by public men of all that public persons should perform. 'Government should direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish folk come wandering over these moors; my dame makes it a rule to give to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next house. But here are thousands of acres which might give them all meat, and nobody to bid these poor Irish go to the moor and till it. They burned the stacks, and so found a way to force the rich people to attend to them.'

"We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, then without his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. There we sat down and talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he has the natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls, and did not like to place himself where no step can be taken. But he was honest and true, and cognizant of the subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how every event affects all the future. 'Christ died on the tree that built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me together. Time has only a relative existence.'

"He was already turning his eyes towards London with a scholar's appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said, wonderful only from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge machine. Each keeps its own round. The baker's boy brings muffins to the window at a fixed hour every day, and that is all the Londoner knows or wishes to know on the subject. But it turned out good men. He named certain individuals, especially one man of letters, his friend, the best mind he knew, whom London had well served."

Such is the record of the beginnings of the friendship between Carlyle and Emerson. What place this friendship held in the lives of both, the following Correspondence shows.

————-

I. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, Massachusetts, 14 May, 1884

My Dear Sir,—There are some purposes we delay long to execute simply because we have them more at heart than others, and such an one has been for many weeks, I may say months, my design of writing you an epistle.

Some chance wind of Fame blew your name to me, perhaps two years ago, as the author of papers which I had already distinguished (as indeed it was very easy to do) from the mass of English periodical criticism as by far the most original and profound essays of the day,—the works of a man of Faith as well as Intellect, sportive as well as learned, and who, belonging to the despairing and deriding class of philosophers, was not ashamed to hope and to speak sincerely. Like somebody in Wilhelm Meister, I said: This person has come under obligations to me and to all whom he has enlightened. He knows not how deeply I should grieve at his fall, if, in that exposed England where genius always hears the Devil's whisper, "All these kingdoms will I give thee," his virtue also should be an initial growth put off with age. When therefore I found myself in Europe, I went to your house only to say, "Faint not,—the word you utter is heard, though in the ends of the earth and by humblest men; it works, prevails." Drawn by strong regard to one of my teachers I went to see his person, and as he might say his environment at Craigenputtock. Yet it was to fulfil my duty, finish my mission, not with much hope of gratifying him,—in the spirit of "If I love you, what is that to you?" Well, it happened to me that I was delighted with my visit, justified to myself in my respect, and many a time upon the sea in my homeward voyage I remembered with joy the favored condition of my lonely philosopher, his happiest wedlock, his fortunate temper, his steadfast simplicity, his all means of happiness;—not that I had the remotest hope that he should so far depart from his theories as to expect happiness. On my arrival at home I rehearsed to several attentive ears what I had seen and heard, and they with joy received it.

In Liverpool I wrote to Mr. Fraser to send me Magazine, and I have now received four numbers of the Sartor Resartus, for whose light thanks evermore. I am glad that one living scholar is self-centred, and will be true to himself though none ever were before; who, as Montaigne says, "puts his ear close by himself, and holds his breath and listens." And none can be offended with the self-subsistency of one so catholic and jocund. And 't is good to have a new eye inspect our mouldy social forms, our politics, and schools, and religion. I say our, for it cannot have escaped you that a lecture upon these topics written for England may be read to America. Evermore thanks for the brave stand you have made for Spiritualism in these writings. But has literature any parallel to the oddity of the vehicle chosen to convey this treasure? I delight in the contents; the form, which my defective apprehension for a joke makes me not appreciate, I leave to your merry discretion. And yet did ever wise and philanthropic author use so defying a diction? As if society were not sufficiently shy of truth without providing it beforehand with an objection to the form. Can it be that this humor proceeds from a despair of finding a contemporary audience, and so the Prophet feels at liberty to utter his message in droll sounds. Did you not tell me, Mr. Thomas Carlyle, sitting upon one of your broad hills, that it was Jesus Christ built Dunscore Kirk yonder? If you love such sequences, then admit, as you will, that no poet is sent into the world before his time; that all the departed thinkers and actors have paved your way; that (at least when you surrender yourself) nations and ages do guide your pen, yes, and common goose-quills as well as your diamond graver. Believe then that harp and ear are formed by one revolution of the wheel; that men are waiting to hear your epical song; and so be pleased to skip those excursive involved glees, and give us the simple air, without the volley of variations. At least in some of your prefaces you should give us the theory of your rhetoric. I comprehend not why you should lavish in that spendthrift style of yours celestial truths. Bacon and Plato have something too solid to say than that they can afford to be humorists. You are dispensing that which is rarest, namely, the simplest truths,—truths which lie next to consciousness, and which only the Platos and Goethes perceive. I look for the hour with impatience when the vehicle will be worthy of the spirit,—when the word will be as simple, and so as resistless, as the thought,—and, in short, when your words will be one with things. I have no hope that you will find suddenly a large audience. Says not the sarcasm, "Truth hath the plague in his house"? Yet all men are potentially (as Mr. Coleridge would say) your audience, and if you will not in very Mephistophelism repel and defy them, shall be actually;* and whatever the great or the small may say about the charm of diabolism, a true and majestic genius can afford to despise it.

—————— * This year, 1882, seventy thousand copies of a sixpenny edition of Sartor Resartus have been sold. ——————-

I venture to amuse you with this homiletic criticism because it is the sense of uncritical truth seekers, to whom you are no more than Hecuba, whose instincts assure them that there is Wisdom in this grotesque Teutonic apocalyptic strain of yours, but that 't is hence hindered in its effect. And though with all my heart I would stand well with my Poet, yet if I offend I shall quietly retreat into my Universal relations, wherefrom I affectionately espy you as a man, myself as another.

And yet before I come to the end of my letter I may repent of my temerity and unsay my charge. For are not all our circlets of will as so many little eddies rounded in by the great Circle of Necessity, and could the Truth-speaker, perhaps now the best Thinker of the Saxon race, have written otherwise? And must not we say that Drunkenness is a virtue rather than that Cato has erred?

I wish I could gratify you with any pleasing news of the regeneration, education, prospects, of man in this continent. But your philanthropy is so patient, so far-sighted, that present evils give you less solicitude. In the last six years government in the United States has been fast becoming a job, like great charities. A most unfit person in the Presidency has been doing the worst things; and the worse he grew, the more popular. Now things seem to mend. Webster, a good man and as strong as if he were a sinner, begins to find himself the centre of a great and enlarging party and his eloquence incarnated and enacted by them; yet men dare not hope that the majority shall be suddenly unseated. I send herewith a volume of Webster's that you may see his speech on Foot's Resolutions, a speech which the Americans have never done praising. I have great doubts whether the book reaches you, as I know not my agents. I shall put with it the little book of my Swedenborgian druggist,* of whom I told you. And if, which is hardly to be hoped, any good book should be thrown out of our vortex of trade and politics, I shall not fail to give it the same direction.

——————— * Observations on the Growth of the Mind, by Sampson Reed, first published in 1825. A fifth edition of this thoughtful little treatise was published in 1865. Mr. Reed was a graduate of Harvard College in 1818; he died in 1880, at the age of eighty. ———————-

I need not tell you, my dear sir, what pleasure a letter from you would give me when you have a few moments to spare to so remote a friend. If any word in my letter should provoke you to a reply, I shall rejoice in my sauciness. I am spending the summer in the country, but my address is Boston, care of Barnard, Adams, & Co. Care of O. Rich, London. Please do make my affectionate respects to Mrs. Carlyle, whose kindness I shall always gratefully remember. I depend upon her intercession to insure your writing to me. May God grant you both his best blessing.

Your friend,
R. Waldo Emerson

II. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London 12 August, 1834

My Dear Sir,—Some two weeks ago I received your kind gift from Fraser. To say that it was welcome would be saying little: is it not as a voice of affectionate remembrance, coming from beyond the Ocean waters, first decisively announcing for me that a whole New Continent exists,—that I too have part and lot there! "Not till we can think that here and there one is thinking of us, one is loving us, does this waste Earth become a peopled Garden." Among the figures I can recollect as visiting our Nithsdale hermitage,—all like Apparitions now, bringing with them airs from Heaven or else blasts from the other region,—there is perhaps not one of a more undoubtedly supernal character than yourself: so pure and still, with intents so charitable; and then vanishing too so soon into the azure Inane, as an Apparition should! Never has your Address in my Notebook met my eye but with a friendly influence. Judge if I am glad to know that there, in Infinite Space, you still hold by me.

I have read in both your books at leisure times, and now nearly finished the smaller one. He is a faithful thinker, that Swedenborgian Druggist of yours, with really deep ideas, who makes me too pause and think, were it only to consider what manner of man he must be, and what manner of thing, after all, Swedenborgianism must be. "Through the smallest window look well, and you can look out into the Infinite." Webster also I can recognize a sufficient, effectual man, whom one must wish well to, and prophesy well of. The sound of him is nowise poetic-rhythmic; it is clear, one-toned, you might say metallic, yet distinct, significant, not without melody. In his face, above all, I discern that "indignation" which, if it do not make "verses," makes useful way in the world. The higher such a man rises, the better pleased I shall be. And so here, looking over the water, let me repeat once more what I believe is already dimly the sentiment of all Englishmen, Cisoceanic and Transoceanic, that we and you are not two countries, and cannot for the life of us be; but only two parishes of one country, with such wholesome parish hospitalities, and dirty temporary parish feuds, as we see; both of which brave parishes Vivant! vivant! And among the glories of both be Yankee-doodle-doo, and the Felling of the Western Forest, proudly remembered; and for the rest, by way of parish constable, let each cheerfully take such George Washington or George Guelph as it can get, and bless Heaven! I am weary of hearing it said, "We love the Americans," "We wish well," &c., &c. What in God's name should we do else?

You thank me for Teufelsdrockh; how much more ought I to thank you for your hearty, genuine, though extravagant acknowledgment of it! Blessed is the voice that amid dispiritment, stupidity, and contradiction proclaims to us, Euge! Nothing ever was more ungenial than the soil this poor Teufelsdrockhish seed-corn has been thrown on here; none cries, Good speed to it; the sorriest nettle or hemlock seed, one would think, had been more welcome. For indeed our British periodical critics, and especially the public of Fraser's Magazine (which I believe I have now done with), exceed all speech; require not even contempt, only oblivion. Poor Teufelsdrockh!—Creature of mischance, miscalculation, and thousand-fold obstruction! Here nevertheless he is, as you see; has struggled across the Stygian marshes, and now, as a stitched pamphlet "for Friends," cannot be burnt or lost before his time. I send you one copy for your own behoof; three others you yourself can perhaps find fit readers for: as you spoke in the plural number, I thought there might be three; more would rather surprise me. From the British side of the water I have met simply one intelligent response,—clear, true, though almost enthusiastic as your own. My British Friend too is utterly a stranger, whose very name I know not, who did not print, but only write, and to an unknown third party.* Shall I say then, "In the mouth of two witnesses"? In any case, God be thanked, I am done with it; can wash my hands of it, and send it forth; sure that the Devil will get his full share of it, and not a whit more, clutch as he may. But as for you, my Transoceanic brothers, read this earnestly, for it was earnestly meant and written, and contains no voluntary falsehood of mine. For the rest, if you dislike it, say that I wrote it four years ago, and could not now so write it, and on the whole (as Fritz the Only said) "will do better another time." With regard to style and so forth, what you call your "saucy" objections are not only most intelligible to me, but welcome and instructive. You say well that I take up that attitude because I have no known public, am alone under the heavens, speaking into friendly or unfriendly space; add only, that I will not defend such attitude, that I call it questionable, tentative, and only the best that I, in these mad times, could conveniently hit upon. For you are to know, my view is that now at last we have lived to see all manner of Poetics and Rhetorics and Sermonics, and one may say generally all manner of Pulpits for addressing mankind from, as good as broken and abolished: alas, yes! if you have any earnest meaning which demands to be not only listened to, but believed and done, you cannot (at least I cannot) utter it there, but the sound sticks in my throat, as when a solemnity were felt to have become a mummery; and so one leaves the pasteboard coulisses, and three unities, and Blair's Lectures, quite behind; and feels only that there is nothing sacred, then, but the Speech of Man to believing Men! This, come what will, was, is, and forever must be sacred; and will one day, doubtless, anew environ itself with fit modes; with solemnities that are not mummeries. Meanwhile, however, is it not pitiable? For though Teufelsdrockh exclaims, "Pulpit! canst thou not make a pulpit by simply inverting the nearest tub?" yet, alas! he does not sufficiently reflect that it is still only a tub, that the most inspired utterance will come from it, inconceivable, misconceivable, to the million; questionable (not of ascertained significance) even to the few. Pity us therefore; and with your just shake of the head join a sympathetic, even a hopeful smile. Since I saw you I have been trying, am still trying, other methods, and shall surely get nearer the truth, as I honestly strive for it. Meanwhile, I know no method of much consequence, except that of believing, of being sincere: from Homer and the Bible down to the poorest Burns's Song, I find no other Art that promises to be perennial.

————- * In his Diary, July 26, 1834, Carlyle writes—"In the midst of innumerable discouragements, all men indifferent or finding fault, let me mention two small circumstances that are comfortable. The first is a letter from some nameless Irishman in Cork to another here, (Fraser read it to me without names,) actually containing a true and one of the friendliest possible recognitions of me. One mortal, then, says I am not utterly wrong. Blessings on him for it! The second is a letter I got today from Emerson, of Boston in America; sincere, not baseless, of most exaggerated estimation. Precious is man to man." Fifteen years later, in his Reminiscences of My Irish Journey, he enters, under date of July 16, 1849: "Near eleven o'clock [at night] announces himself 'Father O'Shea'! (who I thought had been dead); to my astonishment enter a little gray-haired, intelligent-and-bred-looking man, with much gesticulation, boundless loyal welcome, red with dinner and some wine, engages that we are to meet tomorrow,—and again with explosions of welcomes goes his way. This Father O'Shea, some fifteen years ago, had been, with Emerson of America, one of the two sons of Adam who encouraged poor bookseller Fraser, and didn't discourage him, to go on with Teufelsdrockh. I had often remembered him since; had not long before re-inquired his name, but understood somehow that he was dead—and now." ———————-

But now quitting theoretics, let me explain what you long to know, how it is that I date from London. Yes, my friend, it is even so: Craigenputtock now stands solitary in the wilderness, with none but an old woman and foolish grouse-destroyers in it; and we for the last ten weeks, after a fierce universal disruption, are here with our household gods. Censure not; I came to London for the best of all reasons,—to seek bread and work. So it literally stands; and so do I literally stand with the hugest, gloomiest Future before me, which in all sane moments I good-humoredly defy. A strange element this, and I as good as an Alien in it. I care not for Radicalism, for Toryism, for Church, Tithes, or the "Confusion" of useful Knowledge. Much as I can speak and hear, I am alone, alone. My brave Father, now victorious from his toil, was wont to pray in evening worship: "Might we say, We are not alone, for God is with us!" Amen! Amen!

I brought a manuscript with me of another curious sort, entitled The Diamond Necklace. Perhaps it will be printed soon as an Article, or even as a separate Booklet,—a queer production, which you shall see. Finally, I am busy, constantly studying with my whole might for a Book on the French Revolution. It is part of my creed that the Only Poetry is History, could we tell it right. This truth (if it prove one) I have not yet got to the limitations of; and shall in no way except by trying it in practice. The story of the Necklace was the first attempt at an experiment.

My sheet is nearly done; and I have still to complain of you for telling me nothing of yourself except that you are in the country. Believe that I want to know much and all. My wife too remembers you with unmixed friendliness; bids me send you her kindest wishes. Understand too that your old bed stands in a new room here, and the old welcome at the door. Surely we shall see you in London one day. Or who knows but Mahomet may go to the mountain? It occasionally rises like a mad prophetic dream in me, that I might end in the Western Woods!

From Germany I get letters, messages, and even visits; but now no tidings, no influences, of moment. Goethe's Posthumous Works are all published; and Radicalism (poor hungry, yet inevitable Radicalism!) is the order of the day. The like, and even more, from France. Gustave d'Eichthal (did you hear?) has gone over to Greece, and become some kind of Manager under King Otho.*

—————- * Gustave d'Eichthal, whose acquaintance Emerson had made at Rome, and who had given him an introduction to Carlyle, was one of a family of rich Jewish bankers at Paris. He was an ardent follower of Saint-Simon, and an associate of Enfantin. After the dispersion of the Saint-Simonians in 1832, he traveled much, and continued to devote himself to the improvement of society. —————

Continue to love me, you and my other friends; and as packets sail so swiftly, let me know it frequently. All good be with you!

Most faithfully,
T. Carlyle

Coleridge, as you doubtless hear, is gone. How great a Possibility, how small a realized Result! They are delivering Orations about him, and emitting other kinds of froth, ut mos est. What hurt can it do?

III. Emerson to Carlyle *

Concord, Mass., 20 November, 1834

My Dear Sir,—Your letter, which I received last week, made a bright light in a solitary and saddened place. I had quite recently received the news of the death of a brother** in the island of Porto Rico, whose loss to me will be a lifelong sorrow. As he passes out of sight, come to me visible as well as spiritual tokens of a fraternal friendliness which, by its own law, transcends the tedious barriers of custom and nation; and opens its way to the heart. This is a true consolation, and I thanked my jealous [Greek] for the godsend so significantly timed. It, for the moment, realizes the hope to which I have clung with both hands, through each disappointment, that I might converse with a man whose ear of faith was not stopped, and whose argument I could not predict. May I use the word, "I thank my God whenever I call you to remembrance."

————— * This letter was printed in the Athenaeum, London, June 24, 1882. It, as well as three others which appeared in the same journal, is now reprinted, through the courtesy of its editor, from the original.

** Edward Bliss Emerson, his next younger brother, "brother of the brief but blazing star," of whom Emerson wrote In Memoriam:—

"There is no record left on earth,
Save in tablets of the heart,
Of the rich, inherent worth,
Of the grace that on him shone,
Of eloquent lips, of joyful wit;
He could not frame a word unfit,
An act unworthy to be done.

On his young promise Beauty smiled,
Drew his free homage unbeguiled,
And prosperous Age held out his hand,
And richly his large future planned,
And troops of friends enjoyed the tide,—
All, all was given, and only health denied."
—————

I receive with great pleasure the wonderful Professor now that first the decent limbs of Osiris are collected.* We greet him well to Cape Cod and Boston Bay. The rigid laws of matter prohibit that the soul imprisoned within the strait edges of these types should add one syllable thereto, or we had adjured the Sage by every name of veneration to take possession by so much as a Salve! of his Western World, but he remained inexorable for any new communications.

——————- * The four copies of Sartor which Carlyle had sent were a "stitched pamphlet," with a title-page bearing the words: "Sartor Resartus: in Three Books. Reprinted for Friends, from Fraser's Magazine. London, 1834." ——————-

I feel like congratulating you upon the cold welcome which you say Teufelsdrockh* has met. As it is not earthly happy, it is marked of a high sacred sort. I like it a great deal better than ever, and before it was all published I had eaten nearly all my words of objection. But do not think it shall lack a present popularity. That it should not be known seems possible, for if a memoir of Laplace had been thrown into that muck-heap of Fraser's Magazine, who would be the wiser? But this has too much wit and imagination not to strike a class who would not care for it as a faithful mirror of this very Hour. But you know the proverb, "To be fortunate, be not too wise." The great men of the day are on a plane so low as to be thoroughly intelligible to the vulgar. Nevertheless, as God maketh the world forevermore, whatever the devils may seem to do, so the thoughts of the best minds always become the last opinion of Society. Truth is ever born in a manger, but is compensated by living till it has all souls for its kingdom. Far, far better seems to me the unpopularity of this Philosophical Poem (shall I call it?) than the adulation that followed your eminent friend Goethe. With him I am becoming better acquainted, but mine must be a qualified admiration. It is a singular piece of good-nature in you to apotheosize him. I cannot but regard it as his misfortune, with conspicuous bad influence on his genius, that velvet life he led. What incongruity for genius, whose fit ornaments and reliefs are poverty and hatred, to repose fifty years on chairs of state and what pity that his Duke did not cut off his head to save him from the mean end (forgive) of retiring from the municipal incense "to arrange tastefully his gifts and medals"! Then the Puritan in me accepts no apology for bad morals in such as he. We can tolerate vice in a splendid nature whilst that nature is battling with the brute majority in defence of some human principle. The sympathy his manhood and his misfortunes call out adopts even his faults; but genius pampered, acknowledged, crowned, can only retain our sympathy by turning the same force once expended against outward enemies now against inward, and carrying forward and planting the standard of Oromasdes so many leagues farther on into the envious Dark. Failing this, it loses its nature and becomes talent, according to the definition,—mere skill in attaining vulgar ends. A certain wonderful friend of mine said that "a false priest is the falsest of false things." But what makes the priest? A cassock? O Diogenes! Or the power (and thence the call) to teach man's duties as they flow from the Superhuman? Is not he who perceives and proclaims the Superhumanities, he who has once intelligently pronounced the words "Self-Renouncement," "Invisible Leader," "Heavenly Powers of Sorrow," and so on, forever the liege of the same?

—————— * Emerson uniformly spells this name "Teufelsdroch." ——————

Then to write luxuriously is not the same thing as to live so, but a new and worse offence. It implies an intellectual defect also, the not perceiving that the present corrupt condition of human nature (which condition this harlot muse helps to perpetuate) is a temporary or superficial state. The good word lasts forever: the impure word can only buoy itself in the gross gas that now envelops us, and will sink altogether to ground as that works itself clear in the everlasting effort of God.

May I not call it temporary? for when I ascend into the pure region of truth (or under my undermost garment, as Epictetus and Teufelsdrockh would say), I see that to abide inviolate, although all men fall away from it; yea, though the whole generation of Adam should be healed as a sore off the face of the creation. So, my friend, live Socrates and Milton, those starch Puritans, for evermore! Strange is it to me that you should not sympathize (yet so you said) with Socrates, so ironical, so true, and who "tramped in the mire with wooden shoes whenever they would force him into the clouds." I seem to see him offering the hand to you across the ages which some time you will grasp.

I am glad you like Sampson Reed, and that he has inspired some curiosity respecting his Church. Swedenborgianism, if you should be fortunate in your first meetings, has many points of attraction for you: for instance, this article, "The poetry of the Old Church is the reality of the New," which is to be literally understood, for they esteem, in common with all the Trismegisti, the Natural World as strictly the symbol or exponent of the Spiritual, and part for part; the animals to be the incarnations of certain affections; and scarce a popular expression esteemed figurative, but they affirm to be the simplest statement of fact. Then is their whole theory of social relations—both in and out of the body—most philosophical, and, though at variance with the popular theology, self-evident. It is only when they come to their descriptive theism, if I may say so, and then to their drollest heaven, and to some autocratic not moral decrees of God, that the mythus loses me. In general, too, they receive the fable instead of the moral of their Aesop. They are to me, however, deeply interesting, as a sect which I think must contribute more than all other sects to the new faith which must arise out of all.

You express a desire to know something of myself. Account me "a drop in the ocean seeking another drop," or God-ward, striving to keep so true a sphericity as to receive the due ray from every point of the concave heaven. Since my return home, I have been left very much at leisure. It were long to tell all my speculations on my profession and my doings thereon; but, possessing my liberty, I am determined to keep it, at the risk of uselessness (which risk God can very well abide), until such duties offer themselves as I can with integrity discharge. One thing I believe,—that Utterance is place enough: and should I attain through any inward revelation to a more clear perception of my assigned task, I shall embrace it with joy and praise. I shall not esteem it a low place, for instance, if I could strengthen your hands by true expressions of the hope and pleasure which your writings communicate to me and to some of my countrymen. Yet the best poem of the Poet is his own mind, and more even than in any of the works I rejoice in the promise of the workman. Now I am only reading and musing, and when I have any news to tell of myself, you shall hear them.

Now as to the welcome hint that you might come to America, it shall be to me a joyful hope. Come and found a new Academy that shall be church and school and Parnassus, as a true Poet's house should be. I dare not say that wit has better chance here than in England of winning world-wages, but it can always live, and it can scarce find competition. Indeed, indeed, you shall have the continent to yourself were it only as Crusoe was king. If you cared to read literary lectures, our people have vast curiosity, and the apparatus is very easy to set agoing. Such 'pulpit' as you pleased to erect would at least find no hindrance in the building. A friend of mine and of yours remarked, when I expressed the wish that you would come here, "that people were not here, as in England, sacramented to organized schools of opinion, but were a far more convertible audience." If at all you can think of coming here, I would send you any and all particulars of information with cheerfulest speed.

I have written a very long letter, yet have said nothing of much that I would say upon chapters of the Sartor. I must keep that, and the thoughts I had upon 'poetry in history',' for another letter, or (might it be!) for a dialogue face to face.

Let me not fail of The Diamond Necklace. I found three greedy receivers of Teufelsdrockh, who also radiate its light. For the sake of your knowing what manner of men you move, I send you two pieces writ by one of them, Frederic Henry Hedge, the article on Swedenborg and that on Phrenology. And as you like Sampson Reed, here are one or two more of his papers. Do read them. And since you study French history do not fail to look at our Yankee portrait of Lafayette. Present my best remembrances to Mrs. Carlyle, whom that stern and blessed solitude has armed and sublimed out of all reach of the littleness and unreason of London. If I thought we could win her to the American shore, I would send her the story of those godly women, the contemporaries of John Knox's daughter, who came out hither to enjoy the worship of God amidst wild men and wild beasts.

Your friend and servant,
R. Waldo Emerson

IV. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London 3 February, 1835

My Dear Sir,—I owe you a speedy answer as well as a grateful one; for, in spite of the swift ships of the Americans, our communings pass too slowly. Your letter, written in November, did not reach me till a few days ago; your Books or Papers have not yet come,—though the ever-punctual Rich, I can hope, will now soon get them for me. He showed me his way-bill or invoice, and the consignment of these friendly effects "to another gentleman," and undertook with an air of great fidelity to bring all to a right bearing. On the whole, as the Atlantic is so broad and deep, ought we not rather to esteem it a beneficent miracle that messages can arrive at all; that a little slip of paper will skim over all these weltering floods, and other inextricable confusions, and come at last, in the hand of the Twopenny Postman, safe to your lurking-place, like green leaf in the bill of Noah's Dove? Let us be grateful for mercies; let us use them while they are granted us. Time was when "they that feared the Lord spake often one to another." A friendly thought is the purest gift that man can afford to man. "Speech" also, they say, "is cheerfuler than light itself."

The date of your letter gives me unhappily no idea but that of Space and Time. As you know my whereabout, will you throw a little light on your own? I can imagine Boston, and have often seen the musket volleys on Bunker Hill; but in this new spot there is nothing for me save sky and earth, the chance of retirement, peace, and winter seclusion. Alas! I can too well fancy one other thing: the bereavement you allude to, the sorrow that will so long be painful before it can become merely sad and sacred. Brothers, especially in these days, are much to us: had one no brother, one could hardly understand what it was to have a Friend; they are the Friends whom Nature chose for us; Society and Fortune, as things now go, are scarcely compatible with Friendship, and contrive to get along, miserably enough, without it. Yet sorrow not above measure for him that is gone. He is, in very deed and truth, with God,—where you and I both are. What a thin film it is that divides the Living from the Dead! In still nights, as Jean Paul says, "the limbs of my Buried Ones touched cold on my soul, and drove away its blots, as dead hands heal eruptions of the skin." Let us turn back into Life.

That you sit there bethinking yourself, and have yet taken no course of activity, and can without inward or outward hurt so sit, is on the whole rather pleasing news to me. It is a great truth which you say, that Providence can well afford to have one sit: another great truth which you feel without saying it is that a course wherein clear faith cannot go with you may be worse than none; if clear faith go never so slightly against it, then it is certainly worse than none. To speak with perhaps ill-bred candor, I like as well to fancy you not preaching to Unitarians a Gospel after their heart. I will say farther, that you are the only man I ever met with of that persuasion whom I could unobstructedly like. The others that I have seen were all a kind of halfway-house characters, who, I thought, should, if they had not wanted courage, have ended in unbelief; in "faint possible Theism," which I like considerably worse than Atheism. Such, I could not but feel, deserve the fate they find here; the bat fate: to be killed among the rats as a bird, among the birds as a rat…. Nay, who knows but it is doubts of the like kind in your own mind that keep you for a time inactive even now? For the rest, that you have liberty to choose by your own will merely, is a great blessing: too rare for those that could use it so well; nay, often it is difficult to use. But till ill health of body or of mind warns you that the moving, not the sitting, position is essential, sit still, contented in conscience; understanding well that no man, that God only knows what we are working, and will show it one day; that such and such a one, who filled the whole Earth with his hammering and troweling, and would not let men pass for his rubbish, turns out to have built of mere coagulated froth, and vanishes with his edifice, traceless, silently, or amid hootings illimitable; while again that other still man, by the word of his mouth, by the very look of his face, was scattering influences, as seeds are scattered, "to be found flourishing as a banyan grove after a thousand years." I beg your pardon for all this preaching, if it be superfluous impute it to no miserable motive.

Your objections to Goethe are very natural, and even bring you nearer me: nevertheless, I am by no means sure that it were not your wisdom, at this moment, to set about learning the German Language, with a view towards studying him mainly! I do not assert this; but the truth of it would not surprise me. Believe me, it is impossible you can be more a Puritan than I; nay, I often feel as if I were far too much so: but John Knox himself, could he have seen the peaceable impregnable fidelity of that man's mind, and how to him also Duty was infinite,—Knox would have passed on, wondering not reproaching. But I will tell you in a word why I like Goethe: his is the only healthy mind, of any extent, that I have discovered in Europe for long generations; it was he that first convincingly proclaimed to me (convincingly, for I saw it done): Behold, even in this scandalous Sceptico-Epicurean generation, when all is gone but hunger and cant, it is still possible that Man be a Man! For which last Evangel, the confirmation and rehabilitation of all other Evangels whatsoever, how can I be too grateful? On the whole, I suspect you yet know only Goethe the Heathen (Ethnic); but you will know Goethe the Christian by and by, and like that one far better. Rich showed me a Compilation* in green cloth boards that you had beckoned across the water: pray read the fourth volume of that, and let a man of your clearness of feeling say whether that was a Parasite or a Prophet.—And then as to "misery" and the other dark ground on which you love to see genius paint itself,—alas! consider whether misery is not ill health too; also whether good fortune is not worse to bear than bad; and on the whole whether the glorious serene summer is not greater than the wildest hurricane,—as Light, the Naturalists say, is stronger a thousand times than Lightning. And so I appeal to Philip sober;—and indeed have hardly said as much about Goethe since I saw you, for nothing reigns here but twilight delusion (falser for the time than midnight darkness) on that subject, and I feel that the most suffer nothing thereby, having properly nothing or little to do with such a matter but with you, who are not "seeking recipes for happiness," but something far higher, it is not so, and therefore I have spoken and appealed; and hope the new curiosity, if I have awakened any, will do you no mischief.

—————— * Obviously Carlyle's Specimens of German Romance, of which the fourth volume was devoted to Goethe. ——————

But now as to myself; for you will grumble at a sheet of speculation sent so far: I am here still, as Rob Roy was on Glasgow Bridge, biding tryste; busy extremely, with work that will not profit me at all in some senses; suffering rather in health and nerves; and still with nothing like dawn on any quarter of my horizon. The Diamond Necklace has not been printed, but will be, were this French Revolution out; which latter, however, drags itself along in a way that would fill your benevolent heart with pity. I am for three small volumes now, and have one done. It is the dreadfulest labor (with these nerves, this liver) I ever undertook; all is so inaccurate, superficial, vague, in the numberless books I consult; and without accuracy at least, what other good is possible? Add to this that I have no hope about the thing, except only that I shall be done with it: I can reasonably expect nothing from any considerable class here, but at best to be scolded and reproached; perhaps to be left standing "on my own basis," without note or comment of any kind, save from the Bookseller, who will lose his printing. The hope I have however is sure: if life is lent me, I shall be done with the business; I will write this "History of Sansculottism," the notablest phenomenon I meet with since the time of the Crusades or earlier; after which my part is played. As for the future, I heed it little when so busy; but it often seems to me as if one thing were becoming indisputable: that I must seek another craft than literature for these years that may remain to me. Surely, I often say, if ever man had a finger-of-Providence shown him, thou hast it; literature will neither yield thee bread, nor a stomach to digest bread with: quit it in God's name, shouldst thou take spade and mattock instead. The truth is, I believe literature to be as good as dead and gone in all parts of Europe at this moment, and nothing but hungry Revolt and Radicalism appointed us for perhaps three generations; I do not see how a man can honestly live by writing in another dialect than that, in England at least; so that if you determine on not living dishonestly, it will behove you to look several things full in the face, and ascertain what is what with some distinctness. I suffer also terribly from the solitary existence I have all along had; it is becoming a kind of passion with me, to feel myself among my brothers. And then, How? Alas! I care not a doit for Radicalism, nay I feel it to be a wretched necessity, unfit for me; Conservatism being not unfit only but false for me: yet these two are the grand Categories under which all English spiritual activity that so much as thinks remuneration possible must range itself. I look around accordingly on a most wonderful vortex of things; and pray to God only, that as my day, is so my strength may be. What will come out of it is wholly uncertain: for I have possibilities too; the possibilities of London are far from exhausted yet: I have a brave brother, who invites me to come and be quiet with him in Rome; a brave friend (known to you) who opens the door of a new Western world,—and so we will stand considering and consulting, at least till the Book be over. Are all these things interesting to you? I know they are.

As for America and Lecturing, it is a thing I do sometimes turn over, but never yet with any seriousness. What your friend says of the people being more persuadable, so far, as having no Tithe-controversy, &c., &c. will go, I can most readily understand it. But apart from that, I should rather fancy America mainly a new Commercial England, with a fuller pantry,—little more or little less. The same unquenchable, almost frightfully unresting spirit of endeavor, directed (woe is me!) to the making of money, or money's worth; namely, food finer and finer, and gigmanic renown higher and higher: nay, must not your gigmanity be a purse-gigmanity, some half-shade worse than a purse-and-pedigree one? Or perhaps it is not a whit worse; only rougher, more substantial; on the whole better? At all events ours is fast becoming identical with it; for the pedigree ingredient is as near as may be gone: Gagnez de l'argent, et ne vous faites pas pendre, this is very nearly the whole Law, first Table and second. So that you see, when I set foot on American land, it will be on no Utopia; but on a conditional piece of ground where some things are to be expected and other things not. I may say, on the other hand, that Lecturing (or I would rather it were speaking) is a thing I have always had some hankering after: it seems to me I could really swim in that element, were I once thrown into it; that in fact it would develop several things in me which struggle violently for development. The great want I have towards such an enterprise is one you may guess at: want of a rubric, of a title to name my speech by. Could any one but appoint me Lecturing Professor of Teufelsdrockh's science,— "Things in general"! To discourse of Poets and Poetry in the Hazlitt style, or talk stuff about the Spirit of the Age, were most unedifying: one knows not what to call himself. However, there is no doubt that were the child born it might be christened; wherefore I will really request you to take the business into your consideration, and give me in the most rigorous sober manner you can some scheme of it. How many Discourses; what Towns; the probable Expenses, the probable net Income, the Time, &c., &c.: all that you can suppose a man wholly ignorant might want to know about it. America I should like well enough to visit, much as I should another part of my native country: it is, as you see, distinctly possible that such a thing might be; we will keep it hanging, to solace ourselves with it, till the time decide.

Have I involved you in double postage by this loquacity? or What is your American rule? I did not intend it when I began; but today my confusion of head is very great and words must be multiplied with only a given quantity of meaning.

My wife, who is just gone out to spend the day with a certain "celebrated Mrs. Austin," (called also the "celebrated Translatress of Puckler-Muskau,") charged me very specially to send you her love, her good wishes and thanks: I assure you there is no hypocrisy in that. She votes often for taking the Transatlantic scheme into contemplation; declares farther that my Book and Books must and will indisputably prosper (at some future era), and takes the world beside me—as a good wife and daughter of John Knox should. Speaking of "celebrated" persons here, let me mention that I have learned by stern experience, as children do with fire, to keep in general quite out of the way of celebrated persons, more especially celebrated women. This Mrs. Austin, who is half ruined by celebrity (of a kind), is the only woman I have seen not wholly ruined by it. Men, strong men, I have seen die of it, or go mad by it. Good fortune is far worse than bad!

Will you write with all despatch, my dear sir; fancy me a fellow-wayfarer, who cordially bids you God-speed, and would fain keep in sight of you, within sound of you.

Yours with great sincerity,
T. Carlyle

V. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 12 March, 1838

My Dear Sir,—I am glad of the opportunity of Mr. Barnard's* visit to say health and peace be with you. I esteem it the best sign that has shone in my little section of space for many days, that some thirty or more intelligent persons understand and highly appreciate the Sartor. Dr. Channing sent to me for it the other day, and I have since heard that he had read it with great interest. As soon as I go into town I shall see him and measure his love. I know his genius does not and cannot engage your attention much. He possesses the mysterious endowment of natural eloquence, whose effect, however intense, is limited, of course, to personal communication. I can see myself that his writings, without his voice, may be meagre and feeble. But please love his catholicism, that at his age can relish the Sartor, born and inveterated as he is in old books. Moreover, he lay awake all night, he told my friend last week, because he had learned in the evening that some young men proposed to issue a journal, to be called The Transcendentalist, as the organ of a spiritual philosophy. So much for our gossip of today.

————- * Mr. Henry Barnard, of Hartford, Connecticut, to whom Emerson had given a note of introduction to Carlyle. ————-

But my errand is yet to tell. Some friends here are very desirous that Mr. Fraser should send out to a bookseller here fifty or a hundred copies of the Sartor. So many we want very much; they would be sold at once. If we knew that two or three hundred would be taken up, we should reprint it now. But we think it better to satisfy the known inquirers for the book first, and when they have extended the demand for it, then to reproduce it, a naturalized Yankee. The lovers of Teufelsdrockh here are sufficiently enthusiastic. I am an icicle to them. They think England must be blind and deaf if the Professor makes no more impression there than yet appears. I, with the most affectionate wishes for Thomas Carlyle's fame, am mainly bent on securing the medicinal virtues of his book for my young neighbors. The good people think he overpraises Goethe. There I give him up to their wrath. But I bid them mark his unsleeping moral sentiment; that every other moralist occasionally nods, becomes complaisant and traditional; but this man is without interval on the side of equity and humanity! I am grieved for you, O wise friend, that you cannot put in your own contemptuous disclaimer of such puritanical pleas as are set up for you; but each creature and Levite must do after his kind.

Yet do not imagine that I will hurt you in this unseen domain of yours by any Boswellism. Every suffrage you get here is fairly your own. Nobody is coaxed to admire you, and you have won friends whom I should be proud to show you, and honorable women not a few. And cannot you renew and confirm your suggestion touching your appearance in this continent? Ah, if I could give your intimation the binding force of an oracular word!—in a few months, please God, at most, I shall have wife, house, and home wherewith and wherein to return your former hospitality. And if I could draw my prophet and his prophetess to brighten and immortalize my lodge, and make it the window through which for a summer you should look out on a field which Columbus and Berkeley and Lafayette did not scorn to sow, my sun should shine clearer and life would promise something better than peace. There is a part of ethics, or in Schleiermacher's distribution it might be physics, which possesses all attraction for me; to wit, the compensations of the Universe, the equality and the coexistence of action and reaction, that all prayers are granted, that every debt is paid. And the skill with which the great All maketh clean work as it goes along, leaves no rag, consumes its smoke,— will I hope make a chapter in your thesis.

I intimated above that we aspire to have a work on the First Philosophy in Boston. I hope, or wish rather. Those that are forward in it debate upon the name. I doubt not in the least its reception if the material that should fill it existed. Through the thickest understanding will the reason throw itself instantly into relation with the truth that is its object, whenever that appears. But how seldom is the pure loadstone produced! Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds: Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which yet they never enter, and with their hand on the door-latch they die outside. Always excepting my wonderful Professor, who among the living has thrown any memorable truths into circulation? So live and rejoice and work, my friend, and God you aid, for the profit of many more than your mortal eyes shall see. Especially seek with recruited and never-tired vision to bring back yet higher and truer report from your Mount of Communion of the Spirit that dwells there and creates all. Have you received a letter from me with a pamphlet sent in December? Fail not, I beg of you, to remember me to Mrs. Carlyle.

Can you not have some Sartors sent? Hilliard, Gray, & Co. are the best publishers in Boston. Or Mr. Rich has connections with Burdett in Boston.

Yours with respect and affection,
R. Waldo Emerson

VI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 April, 1835

My Dear Sir,—I received your letter of the 3d of February on the 20th instant, and am sorry that hitherto we have not been able to command a more mercantile promptitude in the transmission of these light sheets. If desire of a letter before it arrived, or gladness when it came, could speed its journey, I should have it the day it was written. But, being come, it makes me sad and glad by turns. I admire at the alleged state of your English reading public without comprehending it, and with a hoping scepticism touching the facts. I hear my Prophet deplore, as his predecessors did, the deaf ear and the gross heart of his people, and threaten to shut his lips; but, happily, this he cannot do, any more than could they. The word of the Lord will be spoken. But I shall not much grieve that the English people and you are not of the same mind if that apathy or antipathy can by any means be the occasion of your visiting America. The hope of this is so pleasant to me, that I have thought of little else for the week past, and having conferred with some friends on the matter, I shall try, in obedience to your request, to give you a statement of our capabilities, without indulging my penchant for the favorable side. Your picture of America is faithful enough: yet Boston contains some genuine taste for literature, and a good deal of traditional reverence for it. For a few years past, we have had, every winter, several courses of lectures, scientific, political, miscellaneous, and even some purely literary, which were well attended. Some lectures on Shakespeare were crowded; and even I found much indulgence in reading, last winter, some Biographical Lectures, which were meant for theories or portraits of Luther, Michelangelo, Milton, George Fox, Burke. These courses are really given under the auspices of Societies, as "Natural History Society," "Mechanics' Institutes," "Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," &c., &c., and the fee to the lecturer is inconsiderable, usually $20 for each lecture. But in a few instances individuals have undertaken courses of lectures, and have been well paid. Dr. Spurzheim* received probably $3,000 in the few months that he lived here. Mr. Silliman, a Professor of Yale College, has lately received something more than that for a course of fifteen or sixteen lectures on Geology. Private projects of this sort are, however, always attended with a degree of uncertainty. The favor of my townsmen is often sudden and spasmodic, and Mr. Silliman, who has had more success than ever any before him, might not find a handful of hearers another winter. But it is the opinion of many friends whose judgment I value, that a person of so many claims upon the ear and imagination of our fashionable populace as the "author of the Life of Schiller," "the reviewer of Burns's Life," the live "contributor to the Edinburgh and Foreign Reviews," nay, the "worshipful Teufelsdrockh," the "personal friend of Goethe," would, for at least one season, batter down opposition, and command all ears on whatever topic pleased him, and that, quite independently of the merit of his lectures, merely for so many names' sake.

—————- * The memory of Dr. Spurzheim has faded, but his name is still known to men of science on both sides of the Atlantic as that of the most ardent and accomplished advocate of the doctrine of Phrenology. He came to the United States in 1832 to advance the cause he had at heart, but he had been only a short time in the country when he died at Boston of a fever. ——————-

But the subject, you say, does not yet define itself. Whilst it is "gathering to a god," we who wait will only say, that we know enough here of Goethe and Schiller to have some interest in German literature. A respectable German here, Dr. Follen, has given lectures to a good class upon Schiller. I am quite sure that Goethe's name would now stimulate the curiosity of scores of persons. On English literature, a much larger class would have some preparedness. But whatever topics you might choose, I need not say you must leave under them scope for your narrative and pictorial powers; yes, and space to let out all the length of all the reins of your eloquence of moral sentiment. What "Lay Sermons" might you not preach! or methinks "Lectures on Europe" were a sea big enough for you to swim in. The only condition our adolescent ear insists upon is, that the English as it is spoken by the unlearned shall be the bridge between our teacher and our tympanum.

Income and Expenses.—All our lectures are usually delivered in the same hall, built for the purpose. It will hold 1,200 persons; 900 are thought a large assembly. The expenses of rent, lights, doorkeeper, &c. for this hall, would be $12 each lecture. The price of $3 is the least that might be demanded for a single ticket of admission to the course,—perhaps $4; $5 for a ticket admitting a gentleman and lady. So let us suppose we have 900 persons paying $3 each, or $2,700. If it should happen, as did in Prof. Silliman's case, that many more than 900 tickets were sold, it would be easy to give the course in the day and in the evening, an expedient sometimes practised to divide an audience, and because it is a great convenience to many to choose their time. If the lectures succeed in Boston, their success is insured at Salem, a town thirteen miles off, with a population of 15,000. They might, perhaps, be repeated at Cambridge, three miles from Boston, and probably at Philadelphia, thirty-six hours distant.

At New York anything literary has hitherto had no favor. The lectures might be fifteen or sixteen in number, of about an hour each. They might be delivered, one or two in each week. And if they met with sudden success, it would be easy to carry on the course simultaneously at Salem, and Cambridge, and in the city. They must be delivered in the winter.

Another plan suggested in addition to this. A gentleman here is giving a course of lectures on English literature to a private class of ladies, at $10 to each subscriber. There is no doubt, were you so disposed, you might turn to account any writings in the bottom of your portfolio, by reading lectures to such a class, or, still better, by speaking.

Expense of Living.—You may travel in this country for $4 to $4.50 a day. You may board in Boston in a "gigmanic" style for $8 per week, including all domestic expenses. Eight dollars per week is the board paid by the permanent residents at the Tremont House,—probably the best hotel in North America. There, and at the best hotels in New York, the lodger for a few days pays at the rate of $1.50 per day. Twice eight dollars would provide a gentleman and lady with board, chamber, and private parlor, at a fashionable boardinghouse. In the country, of course, the expenses are two thirds less. These are rates of expense where economy is not studied. I think the Liverpool and New York packets demand $150 of the passenger, and their accommodations are perfect. (N.B.—I set down all sums in dollars. You may commonly reckon a pound sterling worth $4.80.) "The man is certain of success," say those I talk with, "for one winter, but not afterwards." That supposes no extraordinary merit in the lectures, and only regards you in your leonine aspect. However, it was suggested that, if Mr. C. would undertake a Journal of which we have talked much, but which we have never yet produced, he would do us great service, and we feel some confidence that it could be made to secure him a support. It is that project which I mentioned to you in a letter by Mr. Barnard,—a book to be called The Transcendentalist, or The Spiritual Inquirer, or the like, and of which F.H. Hedge* was to be editor. Those who are most interested in it designed to make gratuitous contributions to its pages, until its success could be assured. Hedge is just leaving our neighborhood to be settled as a minister two hundred and fifty miles off, in Maine, and entreats that you will edit the journal. He will write, and I please myself with thinking I shall be able to write under such auspices. Then you might (though I know not the laws respecting literary property) collect some of your own writings and reprint them here. I think the Sartor would now be sure of a sale. Your Life of Schiller, and Wilhelm Meister, have been long reprinted here. At worst, if you wholly disliked us, and preferred Old England to New, you can judge of the suggestion of a knowing man, that you might see Niagara, get a new stock of health, and pay all your expenses by printing in England a book of travels in America.

—————
*Now the Rev. Dr. Hedge, late Professor of German and of
Ecclesiastical History in Harvard College.
——————

I wish you to know that we do not depend for your eclat on your being already known to rich men here. You are not. Nothing has ever been published here designating you by name. But Dr. Channing reads and respects you. That is a fact of importance to our project. Several clergymen, Messrs. Frothingham, Ripley, Francis, all of them scholars and Spiritualists, (some of them, unluckily, called Unitarian,) love you dearly, and will work heartily in your behalf. Mr. Frothing ham, a worthy and accomplished man, more like Erasmus than Luther, said to me on parting, the other day, "You cannot express in terms too extravagant my desire that he should come." George Ripley, having heard, through your letter to me, that nobody in England had responded to the Sartor, had secretly written you a most reverential letter, which, by dint of coaxing, be read to me, though he said there was but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. I prayed him, though I thought the letter did him no justice, save to his heart, to send you it or another; and he says he will. He is a very able young man, even if his letter should not show it.* He said he could, and would, bring many persons to hear you, and you should be sure of his utmost aid. Dr. Bradford, a medical man, is of good courage. Mr. Loring,** a lawyer, said,"—Invite Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle to spend a couple of months at my house," (I assured him I was too selfish for that,) "and if our people," he said, "cannot find out his worth, I will subscribe, with, others, to make him whole of any expense he shall incur in coming." Hedge promised more than he ought. There are several persons beside, known to me, who feel a warm interest in this thing. Mr. Furness, a popular and excellent minister in Philadelphia, at whose house Harriet Martineau was spending a few days, I learned the other day "was feeding Miss Martineau with the Sartor." And here some of the best women I know are warm friends of yours, and are much of Mrs. Carlyle's opinion when she says, Your books shall prosper.

—————- * Emerson's estimate of Mr. Ripley was justified as the years went on. His Life, by Mr. Octavius Frothingham,—like his father, "a worthy and accomplished, man," but more like Luther than Erasmus,—forms one of the most attractive volumes of the series of Lives of American Men of Letters.

** The late Ellis Gray Loring, a man of high character, well esteemed in his profession, and widely respected. —————

On the other hand, I make no doubt you shall be sure of some opposition. Andrews Norton, one of our best heads, once a theological professor, and a destroying critic, lives upon a rich estate at Cambridge, and frigidly excludes the Diderot paper from a Select Journal edited by him, with the remark, "Another paper of the Teufelsdrockh School." The University perhaps, and much that is conservative in literature and religion, I apprehend, will give you its cordial opposition, and what eccentricity can be collected from the Obituary Notice on Goethe, or from the Sartor, shall be mustered to demolish you. Nor yet do I feel quite certain of this. If we get a good tide with us, we shall sweep away the whole inertia, which is the whole force of these gentlemen, except Norton. That you do not like the Unitarians will never hurt you at all, if possibly you do like the Calvinists. If you have any friendly relations to your native Church, fail not to bring a letter from a Scottish Calvinist to a Calvinist here, and your fortune is made. But that were too good to happen.

Since things are so, can you not, my dear sir, finish your new work and cross the great water in September or October, and try the experiment of a winter in America? I cannot but think that if we do not make out a case strong enough to make you build your house, at least you should pitch your tent among us. The country is, as you say, worth visiting, and to give much pleasure to a few persons will be some inducement to you. I am afraid to press this matter. To me, as you can divine, it would be an unspeakable comfort; and the more, that I hope before that time so far to settle my own affairs as to have a wife and a house to receive you. Tell Mrs. Carlyle, with my affectionate regards, that some friends whom she does not yet know do hope with me to have her company for the next winter at our house, and shall not cease to hope it until you come.

I have many things to say upon the topics of your letter, but my letter is already so immeasurably long, it must stop. Long as it is, I regret I have not more facts. Dr. Channing is in New York, or I think, despite your negligence of him, I should have visited him on account of his interest in you. Could you see him you would like him. I shall write you immediately on learning anything new bearing on this business. I intended to have despatched this letter a day or two sooner, that it might go by the packet of the 1st of May from New York. Now it will go by that of the 8th, and ought to reach you in thirty days. Send me your thoughts upon it as soon as you can. I jalouse of that new book. I fear its success may mar my project.

Yours affectionately,
R. Waldo Emerson

VII. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London 13 May, 1835

Thanks, my kind friend, for the news you again send me. Good news, good new friends; nothing that is not good comes to me across these waters. As if the "Golden West" seen by Poets were no longer a mere optical phenomenon, but growing a reality, and coining itself into solid blessings! To me it seems very strange; as indeed generally this whole Existence here below more and more does.

We have seen your Barnard: a most modest, intelligent, compact, hopeful-looking man, who will not revisit you without conquests from his expedition hither. We expect to see much more of him; to instruct him, to learn of him: especially about that real-imaginary locality of "Concord," where a kindly-speaking voice lives incarnated, there is much to learn.

That you will take to yourself a wife is the cheerfulest tidings you could send us. It is in no wise meet for man to be alone; and indeed the beneficent Heavens, in creating Eve, did mercifully guard against that. May it prove blessed, this new arrangement! I delight to prophesy for you peaceful days in it; peaceful, not idle; filled rather with that best activity which is the stillest. To the future, or perhaps at this hour actual Mrs. Emerson, will you offer true wishes from two British Friends; who have not seen her with their eyes, but whose thoughts need not be strangers to the Home she will make for you. Nay, you add the most chivalrous summons: which who knows but one day we may actually stir ourselves to obey! It may hover for the present among the gentlest of our day-dreams; mild-lustrous; an impossible possibility. May all go well with you, my worthy Countryman, Kinsman, and brother Man!

This so astonishing reception of Teufelsdrockh in your New England circle seems to me not only astonishing, but questionable; not, however, to be quarreled with. I may say: If the New. England cup is dangerously sweet, there are here in Old England whole antiseptic floods of good hop-decoction; therein let it mingle; work wholesomely towards what clear benefit it can. Your young ones too, as all exaggeration is transient, and exaggerated love almost itself a blessing, will get through it without damage. As for Fraser, however, the idea of a new Edition is frightful to him; or rather ludicrous, unimaginable. Of him no man has inquired for a Sartor: in his whole wonderful world of Tory Pamphleteers, Conservative Younger-brothers, Regent-Street Loungers, Crockford Gamblers, Irish Jesuits, drunken Reporters, and miscellaneous unclean persons (whom nitre and much soap will not wash clean), not a soul has expressed the smallest wish that way. He shrieks at the idea. Accordingly I realized these four copies from [him,] all he will surrender; and can do no more. Take them with my blessing. I beg you will present one to the honorablest of those "honorable women"; say to her that her (unknown) image as she reads shall be to me a bright faultless vision, textured out of mere sunbeams; to be loved and worshiped; the best of all Transatlantic women! Do at any rate, in a more business like style, offer my respectful regards to Dr. Channing, whom certainly I could not count on for a reader, or other than a grieved condemnatory one; for I reckoned tolerance had its limits. His own faithful, long-continued striving towards what is Best, I knew and honored; that he will let me go my own way thitherward, with a God-speed from him, is surely a new honor to us both.

Finally, on behalf of the British world (which is not all contained in Fraser's shop) I should tell you that various persons, some of them in a dialect not to be doubted of, have privately expressed their recognition of this poor Rhapsody, the best the poor Clothes-Professor could produce in the circumstances; nay, I have Scottish Presbyterian Elders who read, and thank. So true is what you say about the aptitude of all natural hearts for receiving what is from the heart spoken to them. As face answereth to face! Brother, if thou wish me to believe, do thou thyself believe first: this is as true as that of the flere and dolendum; perhaps truer. Wherefore, putting all things together, cannot I feel that I have washed my hands of this business in a quite tolerable manner? Let a man be thankful; and on the whole go along, while he has strength left to go.

This Boston Transcendentalist, whatever the fate or merit of it prove to be, is surely an interesting symptom. There must be things not dreamt of, over in that Transoceanic Parish! I shall cordially wish well to this thing; and hail it as the sure forerunner of things better. The Visible becomes the Bestial when it rests not on the Invisible. Innumerable tumults of Metaphysic must be struggled through (whole generations perishing by the way), and at last Transcendentalism evolve itself (if I construe aright), as the Euthanasia of Metaphysic altogether. May it be sure, may it be speedy! Thou shalt open thy eyes, O Son of Adam; thou shalt look, and not forever jargon about laws of Optics and the making of spectacles! For myself, I rejoice very much that I seem to be flinging aside innumerable sets of spectacles (could I but lay them aside,—with gentleness!) and hope one day actually to see a thing or two. Man lives by Belief (as it was well written of old); by logic he can only at best long to live. Oh, I am dreadfully, afflicted with Logic here, and wish often (in my haste) that I had the besom of destruction to lay to it for a little!

"Why? and WHEREFORE? God wot, simply THEREFORE! Ask not WHY; 't is SITH thou hast to care for."

Since I wrote last to you, (which seems some three months ago,) there has a great mischance befallen me: the saddest, I think, of the kind called Accidents I ever had to front. By dint of continual endeavor for many weary weeks, I had got the first volume of that miserable French Revolution rather handsomely finished: from amid infinite contradictions I felt as if my head were fairly above water, and I could go on writing my poor Book, defying the Devil and the World, with a certain degree of assurance, and even of joy. A Friend borrowed this volume of Manuscript,—a kind Friend but a careless one,—to write notes on it, which he was well qualified to do. One evening about two months ago he came in on us, "distraction (literally) in his aspect"; the Manuscript, left carelessly out, had been torn up as waste paper, and all but three or four tatters was clean gone! I could not complain, or the poor man seemed as if he would have shot himself: we had to gather ourselves together, and show a smooth front to it; which happily, though difficult, was not impossible to do. I began again at the beginning; to such a wretched paralyzing torpedo of a task as my hand never found to do: at which I have worn myself these two months to the hue of saffron, to the humor of incipient desperation; and now, four days ago, perceiving well that I was like a man swimming in an element that grew ever rarer, till at last it became vacuum (think of that!) I with a new effort of self-denial sealed up all the paper fragments, and said to myself: In this mood thou makest no way, writest nothing that requires not to be erased again; lay it by for one complete week! And so it lies, under lock and key. I have digested the whole misery; I say, if thou canst never write this thing, why then never do write it: God's Universe will go along better—without it. My Belief in a special Providence grows yearly stronger, unsubduable, impregnable: however, you see all the mad increase of entanglement I have got to strive with, and will pity me in it. Bodily exhaustion (and "Diana in the shape of bile")* I will at least try to exclude from the controversy. By God's blessing, perhaps the Book shall yet be written; but I find it will not do, by sheer direct force; only by gentler side-methods. I have much else to write too: I feel often as if with one year of health and peace I could write something considerable;—the image of which sails dim and great through my head. Which year of health and peace, God, if He see meet, will give me yet; or withhold from me, as shall be for the best.

————- * This allusion to Diana as an obstruction was a favorite one with Carlyle. "Sir Hudibras, according to Butler, was about to do a dreadful homicide,—an all-important catastrophe,—and had drawn his pistol with that full intent, and would decidedly have done it, had not, says Butler, 'Diana in the shape of rust' imperatively intervened. A miracle she has occasionally wrought upon me in other shapes." So wrote Carlyle in a letter in 1874. ————-

I have dwelt and swum now for about a year in this World-Maelstrom of London; with much pain, which however has given me many thoughts, more than a counterbalance for that. Hitherto there is no outlook, but confusion, darkness, innumerable things against which a man must "set his face like a flint." Madness rules the world, as it has generally done: one cannot, unhappily, without loss, say to it, Rule then; and yet must say it.—However, in two months more I expect my good Brother from Italy (a brave fellow, who is a great comfort to me); we are then for Scotland to gather a little health, to consider ourselves a little. I must have this Book done before anything else will prosper with me.

Your American Pamphlets got to hand only a few days ago; worthy old Rich had them not originally; seemed since to have been oblivious, out of Town, perhaps unwell. I called one day, and unearthed them. Those papers you marked I have read. Genuine endeavor; which may the Heavens forward!—In this poor Country all is swallowed up in the barren Chaos of Politics: Ministries tumbled out, Ministries tumbled in; all things (a fearful substratum of "Ignorance and Hunger" weltering and heaving under them) apparently in rapid progress towards—the melting-pot. There will be news from England by and by: many things have reached their term; Destiny "with lame foot" has overtaken them, and there will be a reckoning. O blessed are you where, what jargoning soever there be at Washington, the poor man (_un_governed can govern himself) shoulders his age, and walks into the Western Woods, sure of a nourishing Earth and an overarching Sky! It is verily the Door of Hope to distracted Europe; which otherwise I should see crumbling down into blackness of darkness.—That too shall be for good.

I wish I had anything to send you besides these four poor Pamphlets; but I fear there is nothing going. Our Ex-Chancellor has been promulgating triticalities (significant as novelties, when he with his wig and lordhood utters them) against the Aristocracy; whereat the upper circles are terribly scandalized. In Literature, except a promised or obtained (but to me still unknown) volume of Wordsworth, nothing nameworthy doing.—Did I tell you that I saw Wordsworth this winter? Twice, at considerable length; with almost no disappointment. He is a natural man (which means whole immensities here and now); flows like a natural well yielding mere wholesomeness,—though, as it would not but seem to me, in small quantity, and astonishingly diluted. Franker utterance of mere garrulities and even platitudes I never heard from any man; at least never, whom I could honor for uttering them. I am thankful for Wordsworth; as in great darkness and perpetual sky-rockets and coruscations, one were for the smallest clear-burning farthing candle. Southey also I saw; a far cleverer man in speech, yet a considerably smaller man. Shovel-hatted; the shovel-hat is grown to him: one must take him as he is.

The second leaf is done; I must not venture on another. God bless you, my worthy Friend; you and her who is to be yours! My Wife bids me send heartiest wishes and regards from her too across the Sea. Perhaps we shall all meet one another some day, —if not Here, then Yonder!

Faithfully always,
T. Carlyle

VIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 27 June, 1835

My Dear Friend,—Your very kind Letter has been in my hand these four weeks,—the subject of much meditation, which has not yet cleared itself into anything like a definite practical issue. Indeed, the conditions of the case are still not wholly before me: for if the American side of it, thanks to your perspicuous minuteness, is now tolerably plain, the European side continues dubious, too dim for a decision. So much in my own position here is vague, not to be measured; then there is a Brother, coming home to me from Italy, almost daily expected now; whose ulterior resolutions cannot but be influential on mine; for we are Brothers in the old good sense, and have one heart and one interest and object, and even one purse; and Jack is a good man, for whom I daily thank Heaven, as for one of its principal mercies. He is Traveling Physician to the Countess of Clare, well entreated by her and hers; but, I think, weary of that inane element of "the English Abroad," and as good as determined to have done with it; to seek work (he sees not well how), if possible, with wages; but even almost without, or with the lowest endurable, if need be. Work and wages: the two prime necessities of man! It is pity they should ever be disjoined; yet of the two, if one must, in this mad Earth, be dispensed with, it is really wise to say at all hazards, Be it the wages then. This Brother (if the Heavens have been kind to me) must be in Paris one of these days; then here speedily; and "the House must resolve itself into a Committee"—of ways and means. Add to all this, that I myself have been and am one of the stupidest of living men; in one of my vacant, interlunar conditions, unfit for deciding on anything: were I to give you my actual view of this case, it were a view such as Satan had from the pavilion of the Anarch old. Alas! it is all too like Chaos: confusion of dense and rare: I also know what it is to drop plumb, fluttering my pennons vain,—for a series of weeks.

One point only is clear: that you, my Friend, are very friendly to me; that New England is as much my country and home as Old England. Very singular and very pleasant it is to me to feel as if I had a house of my own in that far country: so many leagues and geographical degrees of wild-weltering "unfruitful brine"; and then the hospitable hearth and the smiles of brethren awaiting one there! What with railways, steamships, printing presses, it has surely become a most monstrous "tissue," this life of ours; if evil and confusion in the one Hemisphere, then good and order in the other, a man knows not how: and so it rustles forth, immeasurable, from "that roaring Loom of Time,"—miraculous ever as of old! To Ralph Waldo Emerson, however, and those that love me as he, be thanks always, and a sure place in the sanctuary of the mind. Long shall we remember that Autumn Sunday that landed him (out of Infinite Space) on the Craigenputtock wilderness, not to leave us as he found us. My Wife says, whatever I decide on, I cannot thank you too heartily;—which really is very sound doctrine. I write to tell you so much; and that you shall hear from me again when there is more to tell.

It does seem next to certain to me that I could preach a very considerable quantity of things from that Boston Pulpit, such as it is,—were I once fairly started. If so, what an unspeakable relief were it too! Of the whole mountain of miseries one grumbles at in this life, the central and parent one, as I often say, is that you cannot utter yourself. The poor soul sits struggling, impatient, longing vehemently out towards all corners of the Universe, and cannot get its hest delivered, not even so far as the voice might do it. Imprisoned, enchanted, like the Arabian Prince with half his body marble: it is really bad work. Then comes bodily sickness; to act and react, and double the imbroglio. Till at last, I suppose, one does rise, like Eliphaz the Temanite; states that his inner man is bursting (as if filled with carbonic acid and new wine), that by the favor of Heaven he will speak a word or two. Would it were come so far,— if it be ever to come!

On the whole I think the odds are that I shall some time or other get over to you; but that for this winter I ought not to go. My London expedition is not decided hitherto; I have begun various relations and arrangements, which it were questionable to cut short so soon. That beggarly Book, were there nothing else, hampers me every way. To fling it once for all into the fire were perhaps the best; yet I grudge to do that. To finish it, on the other hand, is denied me for the present, or even so much as to work at it. What am I to do? When my Brother arrives, we go all back to Scotland for some weeks: there, in seclusion, with such calmness as I can find or create, the plan for the winter must be settled. You shall hear from me then; let us hope something more reasonable than I can write at present. For about a month I have gone to and fro utterly idle: understand that, and I need explain no more. The wearied machine refused to be urged any farther; after long spasmodic struggling comes collapse. The burning of that wretched Manuscript has really been a sore business for me. Nevertheless that too shall clear itself, and prove a favor of the Upper Powers: tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures new! This monstrous London has taught me several things during the past year; for if its Wisdom be of the most uninstructive ever heard of by that name of wisdom, its Folly abounds with lessons,—which one ought to learn. I feel (with my burnt manuscript) as if defeated in this campaign; defeated, yet not altogether disgraced. As the great Fritz said, when the battle had gone against him, "Another time we will do better."

As to Literature, Politics, and the whole multiplex aspect of existence here, expect me not to say one word. We are a singular people, in a singular condition. Not many nights ago, in one of those phenomenal assemblages named routs, whither we had gone to see the countenance of O'Connell and Company (the Tail was a Peacock's tail, with blonde muslin women and heroic Parliamentary men), one of the company, a "distinguished female" (as we call them), informed my Wife "O'Connell was the master-spirit of this age." If so, then for what we have received let us be thankful, —and enjoy it without criticism.—It often painfully seems to me as if much were coming fast to a crisis here; as if the crown-wheel had given way, and the whole horologe were rushing rapidly down, down, to its end! Wreckage is swift; rebuilding is slow and distant. Happily another than we has charge of it.

My new American Friends have come and gone. Barnard went off northward some fortnight ago, furnished with such guidance and furtherance as I could give him. Professor Longfellow went about the same time; to Sweden, then to Berlin and Germany: we saw him twice or thrice, and his ladies, with great pleasure; as one sees worthy souls from a far country, who cannot abide with you, who throw you a kind greeting as they pass. I inquired considerably about Concord, and a certain man there; one of the fair pilgrims told me several comfortable things. By the bye, how very good you are, in regard to this of Unitarianism! I declare, I am ashamed of my intolerance:—and yet you have ceased to be a Teacher of theirs, have you not? I mean to address you this time by the secular title of Esquire; as if I liked you better so. But truly, in black clothes or in white, by this style or by that, the man himself can never be other than welcome to me. You will further allow me to fancy that you are now wedded; and offer our united congratulations and kindest good wishes to that new fair Friend of ours, whom one day we shall surely know more of,—if the Fates smile.

My sheet is ending, and I must not burden you with double postage for such stuff as this. By dint of some inquiry I have learnt the law of the American Letter-carrying; and I now mention it for our mutual benefit. There are from New York to London three packets monthly (on the 1st, on the 10th, on the 20th); the masters of these carry Letters gratis for all men; and put the same into the Post-Office; there are some pence charged on the score of "Ship-letter" there, and after that, the regular postage of the country, if the Letter has to go farther. I put this, for example, into a place called North and South American Coffee-house in the City here, and pay twopence for it, and it flies. Doubtless there is some similar receiving-house with its "leather bag" somewhere in New York, and fixed days (probably the same as our days) for emptying, or rather for tying and despatching, said leather bag: if you deal with the London Packets (so long as I am here) in preference to the Liverpool ones, it will all be well. As for the next Letter, (if you write as I hope you may before hearing from me again,) pray direct it, "Care of John Mill, Esq., India House, London"; and he will forward it directly, should I even be still absent in the North.—Now will you write? and pray write something about yourself. We both love you here, and send you all good prayers. Vale faveque!

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

IX. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 7 October, 1835

My Dear Friend,—Please God I will never again sit six weeks of this short human life over a letter of yours without answering it.

—————- * The original of this letter is missing; what is printed here is from the rough draft. —————-

I received in August your letter of June, and just then hearing that a lady, a little lady with a mighty heart, Mrs. Child,* whom I scarcely know but do much respect, was about to visit England (invited thither for work's sake by the African or Abolition Society) and that she begged an introduction to you, I used the occasion to say the godsend was come, and that I would acknowledge it as soon as three then impending tasks were ended. I have now learned that Mrs. Child was detained for weeks in New York and did not sail. Only last night I received your letter written in May, with the four copies of the Sartor, which by a strange oversight have been lying weeks, probably months, in the Custom-House. On such provocation I can sit still no longer.

—————— * The excellent Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, whose romance of Philothea was published in this year, 1835.

"If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then,
'T is but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen."

says Lowell, in his Fable for Critics. —————-

The three tasks were, a literary address; a historical discourse on the two-hundredth anniversary of our little town of Concord* (my first adventure in print, which I shall send you); the third, my marriage, now happily consummated. All three, from the least to the greatest, trod so fast upon each other's heel as to leave me, who am a slow and awkward workman, no interstice big enough for a letter that should hope to convey any information. Again I waited that the Discourse might go in his new jacket to show how busy I had been, but the creeping country press has not dressed it yet. Now congratulate me, my friend, as indeed you have already done, that I live with my wife in my own house, waiting on the good future. The house is not large, but convenient and very elastic. The more hearts (specially great hearts) it holds, the better it looks and feels. I have not had so much leisure yet but that the fact of having ample space to spread my books and blotted paper is still gratifying. So know now that your rooms in America wait for you, and that my wife is making ready a closet for Mrs. Carlyle.

————— * "A Historical Discourse, delivered before the Citizens of Concord, 12th September, 1835, on the Second Centennial Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. Published by Request. Concord: G.F. Bemis, Printer. 1835." 8vo, pp. 52.—A discourse worthy of the author and of the town. It is reprinted in the eleventh volume of Emerson's Works, Boston, 1883. —————-

I could cry at the disaster that has befallen you in the loss of the book. My brother Charles says the only thing the friend could do on such an occasion was to shoot himself, and wishes to know if he have done so. Such mischance might well quicken one's curiosity to know what Oversight there is of us, and I greet you well upon your faith and the resolution issuing out of it. You have certainly found a right manly consolation, and can afford to faint and rest a month or two on the laurels of such endeavor. I trust ere this you have re-collected the entire creation out of the secret cells where, under the smiles of every Muse, it first took life. Believe, when you are weary, that you who stimulate and rejoice virtuous young men do not write a line in vain. And whatever betide us in the inexorable future, what is better than to have awaked in many men the sweet sense of beauty, and to double the courage of virtue. So do not, as you will not, let the imps from all the fens of weariness and apathy have a minute too much. To die of feeding the fires of others were sweet, since it were not death but multiplication. And yet I hold to a more orthodox immortality too.

This morning in happiest time I have a letter from George Ripley, who tells me you have written him, and that you say pretty confidently you will come next summer. Io paean! He tells me also that Alexander Everett (brother of Edward) has sent you the friendly notice that has just appeared in the North American Review, with a letter.* All which I hope you have received. I am delighted, for this man represents a clique to which I am a stranger, and which I supposed might not love you. It must be you shall succeed when Saul prophesies. Indeed, I have heard that you may hear the Sartor preached from some of our best pulpits and lecture-rooms. Don't think I speak of myself, for I cherish carefully a salutary horror at the German style, and hold off my admiration as long as ever I can. But all my importance is quite at an end. For now that Doctors of Divinity and the solemn Review itself have broke silence to praise you, I have quite lost my plume as your harbinger.

—————- * Mr. A.H. Everett's paper on Sartor Resartus was published in the North American Review for October, 1835. —————-

I read with interest what you say of the political omens in England. I could wish our country a better comprehension of its felicity. But government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world should last his day. We have had in different parts of the country mobs and moblike legislation, and even moblike judicature, which have betrayed an almost godless state of society; so that I begin to think even here it behoves every man to quit his dependency on society as much as he can, as he would learn to go without crutches that will be soon plucked away from him, and settle with himself the principles he can stand upon, happen what may. There is reading, and public lecturing too, in this country, that I could recommend as medicine to any gentleman who finds the love of life too strong in him.

If virtue and friendship have not yet become fables, do believe we keep your face for the living type. I was very glad to hear of the brother you describe, for I have one too, and know what it is to have presence in two places. Charles Chauncy Emerson is a lawyer now settled in this town, and, as I believe, no better Lord Hamlet was ever. He is our Doctor on all questions of taste, manners, or action. And one of the pure pleasures I promise myself in the months to come is to make you two gentlemen know each other.

X. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, Mass., 8 April, 1856

My Dear Friend,—I am concerned at not hearing from you. I have written you two letters, one in October, one in November, I believe, since I had any tidings of you.* Your last letter is dated 27 June, 1835. I have counted all the chances of delay and miscarriage, and still am anxious lest you are ill, or have forgotten us. I have looked at the advertising sheet of the booksellers, but it promised nothing of the History. I thought I had made the happiest truce with sorrow in having the promise of your coming,—I was to take possession of a new kingdom of virtue and friendship. Let not the new wine mourn. Speak to me out of the wide silence. Many friends inquire of me concerning you, and you must write some word immediately on receipt of this sheet.

—————— * One in August by Mrs. Child, apparently not delivered, and one, the preceding, in October. —————-

With it goes an American reprint of the Sartor. Five hundred copies only make the edition, at one dollar a copy. About one hundred and fifty copies are subscribed for. How it will be received I know not. I am not very sanguine, for I often hear and read somewhat concerning its repulsive style. Certainly, I tell them, it is very odd. Yet I read a chapter lately with great pleasure. I send you also, with Dr. Channing's regards and good wishes, a copy of his little work, lately published, on our great local question of Slavery.

You must have written me since July. I have reckoned upon your projected visit the ensuing summer or autumn, and have conjectured the starlike influences of a new spiritual element. Especially Lectures. My own experiments for one or two winters, and the readiness with which you embrace the work, have led me to think much and to expect much from this mode of addressing men. In New England the Lyceum, as we call it, is already a great institution. Beside the more elaborate courses of lectures in the cities, every country town has its weekly evening meeting, called a Lyceum, and every professional man in the place is called upon, in the course of the winter, to entertain his fellow-citizens with a discourse on whatever topic. The topics are miscellaneous as heart can wish. But in Boston, Lowell, Salem, courses are given by individuals. I see not why this is not the most flexible of all organs of opinion, from its popularity and from its newness permitting you to say what you think, without any shackles of prescription. The pulpit in our age certainly gives forth an obstructed and uncertain sound, and the faith of those in it, if men of genius, may differ so much from that of those under it, as to embarrass the conscience of the speaker, because so much is attributed to him from the fact of standing there. In the Lyceum nothing is presupposed. The orator is only responsible for what his lips articulate. Then what scope it allows! You may handle every member and relation of humanity. What could Homer, Socrates, or St. Paul say that cannot be said here? The audience is of all classes, and its character will be determined always by the name of the lecturer. Why may you not give the reins to your wit, your pathos, your philosophy, and become that good despot which the virtuous orator is?

Another thing. I am persuaded that, if a man speak well, he shall find this a well-rewarded work in New England. I have written this year ten lectures; I had written as many last year. And for reading both these and those at places whither I was invited, I have received this last winter about three hundred and fifty dollars. Had I, in lieu of receiving a lecturer's fee, myself advertised that I would deliver these in certain places, these receipts would have been greatly increased. I insert all this because my prayers for you in this country are quite of a commercial spirit. If you lose no dollar by us, I shall joyfully trust your genius and virtue for your satisfaction on all other points.

I cannot remember that there are any other mouthpieces that are specially vital at this time except Criticism and Parliamentary Debate. I think this of ours would possess in the hands of a great genius great advantages over both. But what avail any commendations of the form, until I know that the man is alive and well? If you love them that love you, write me straightway of your welfare. My wife desires to add to mine her friendliest greetings to Mrs. Carlyle and to yourself.

Yours affectionately,
R. Waldo Emerson

I ought to say that Le-Baron Russell, a worthy young man who studies Engineering, did cause the republication of Teufelsdrockh.* I trust you shall yet see a better American review of it than the North American.

—————— * This first edition of Sartor as an independent volume was published by James Munroe and Company, Boston. Emerson, at Mr. (now Dr.) Russell's request, wrote a Preface for the book. He told Dr. Russell that his brother Charles was not pleased with the Preface, thinking it "too commonplace, too much like all prefaces." —————-

XI. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London 29 April, 1836

My Dear Emerson,—Barnard is returning across the water, and must not go back without a flying salutation for you. These many weeks I have had your letter by me; these many weeks I have felt always that it deserved and demanded a grateful answer; and, alas! also that I could give it none. It is impossible for you to figure what mood I am in. One sole thought, That Book! that weary Book! occupies me continually: wreck and confusion of all kinds go tumbling and falling around me, within me; but to wreck and growth, to confusion and order, to the world at large, I turn a deaf ear; and have life only for this one thing,—which also in general I feel to be one of the pitifulest that ever man went about possessed with. Have compassion for me! It is really very miserable: but it will end. Some months more, and it is ended; and I am done with French Revolution, and with Revolution and Revolt in general; and look once more with free eyes over this Earth, where are other things than mean internecine work of that kind: things fitter for me, under the bright Sun, on this green Mother's-bosom (though the Devil does dwell in it)! For the present, really, it is like a Nessus' shirt, burning you into madness, this wretched Enterprise; nay, it is also like a kind of Panoply, rendering you invulnerable, insensible, to all other mischiefs.

I got the fatal First Volume finished (in the miserablest way, after great efforts) in October last; my head was all in a whirl; I fled to Scotland and my Mother for a month of rest. Rest is nowhere for the Son of Adam: all looked so "spectral" to me in my old-familiar Birthland; Hades itself could not have seemed stranger; Annandale also was part of the kingdom of TIME. Since November I have worked again as I could; a second volume got wrapped up and sealed out of my sight within the last three days. There is but a Third now: one pull more, and then! It seems to me, I will fly into some obscurest cranny of the world, and lie silent there for a twelvemonth. The mind is weary, the body is very sick; a little black speck dances to and fro in the left eye (part of the retina protesting against the liver, and striking work): I cannot help it; it must flutter and dance there, like a signal of distress, unanswered till I be done. My familiar friends tell me farther that the Book is all wrong, style cramp, &c., &c.: my friends, I answer, you are very right; but this also, Heaven be my witness, I cannot help.—In such sort do I live here; all this I had to write you, if I wrote at all.

For the rest I cannot say that this huge blind monster of a City is without some sort of charm for me. It leaves one alone, to go his own road unmolested. Deep in your soul you take up your protest against it, defy it, and even despise it; but need not divide yourself from it for that. Worthy individuals are glad to hear your thought, if it have any sincerity; they do not exasperate themselves or you about it; they have not even time for such a thing. Nay, in stupidity itself on a scale of this magnitude, there is an impressiveness, almost a sublimity; one thinks how, in the words of Schiller, "the very Gods fight against it in vain"; how it lies on its unfathomable foundations there, inert yet peptic; nay, eupeptic; and is a Fact in the world, let theory object as it will. Brown-stout, in quantities that would float a seventy-four, goes down the throats of men; and the roaring flood of life pours on;—over which Philosophy and Theory are but a poor shriek of remonstrance, which oftenest were wiser, perhaps, to hold its peace. I grow daily to honor Facts more and more, and Theory less and less. A Fact, it seems to me, is a great thing: a Sentence printed if not by God, then at least by the Devil;—neither Jeremy Bentham nor Lytton Bulwer had a hand in that.

There are two or three of the best souls here I have known for long: I feel less alone with them; and yet one is alone,—a stranger and a pilgrim. These friends expect mainly that the Church of England is not dead but asleep; that the leather coaches, with their gilt panels, can be peopled again with a living Aristocracy, instead of the simulacra of such. I must altogether hold my peace to this, as I do to much. Coleridge is the Father of all these. Ay de mi!

But to look across the "divine salt-sea." A letter reached me, some two months ago, from Mobile, Alabama; the writer, a kind friend of mine, signs himself James Freeman Clarke.* I have mislaid, not lost his Letter; and do not at present know his permanent address (for he seemed to be only on a visit at Mobile); but you, doubtless, do know it. Will you therefore take or even find an opportunity to tell this good Friend that it is not the wreckage of the Liverpool ship he wrote by, nor insensibility on my part, that prevents his hearing direct from me; that I see him, and love him in this Letter; and hope we shall meet one day under the Sun, shall live under it, at any rate, with many a kind thought towards one another.

————— * Now the Rev. Dr. Clarke, of Boston. —————

The North American Review you spoke of never came (I mean that copy of it with the Note in it); but another copy became rather public here, to the amusement of some. I read the article myself: surely this Reviewer, who does not want in [sense]* otherwise, is an original: either a thrice-plied quiz (Sartor's "Editor" a twice-plied one); or else opening on you a grandeur of still Dulness, rarely to be met with on earth.

——————- * The words supplied here were lost under the seal of the letter. ——————-

My friend! I must end here. Forgive me till I get done with this Book. Can you have the generosity to write, without an answer? Well, if you can_not,_ I will answer. Do not forget me. My love and my Wife's to your good Lady, to your Brother, and all friends. Tell me what you do; what your world does. As for my world, take this (which I rendered from the German Voss, a tough old-Teutonic fellow) for the best I can say of it:—

"As journeys this Earth, her eye on a Sun, through the
heavenly spaces,
And, radiant in azure, or Sunless, swallowed in tempests,
Falters not, alters not; journeying equal, sunlit or
stormgirt
So thou, Son of Earth, who hast Force,
Goal, and Time, go still onwards."

Adieu, my dear friend! Believe me ever Yours,
Thomas Carlyle

XII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, Massachusetts, 17 September, 1836

My Dear Friend,—I hope you do not measure my love by the tardiness of my messages. I have few pleasures like that of receiving your kind and eloquent letters. I should be most impatient of the long interval between one and another, but that they savor always of Eternity, and promise me a friendship and friendly inspiration not reckoned or ended by days or years. Your last letter, dated in April, found me a mourner, as did your first. I have lost out of this world my brother Charles,* of whom I have spoken to you,—the friend and companion of many years, the inmate of my house, a man of a beautiful genius, born to speak well, and whose conversation for these last years has treated every grave question of humanity, and has been my daily bread. I have put so much dependence on his gifts that we made but one man together; for I needed never to do what he could do by noble nature much better than I. He was to have been married in this month, and at the time of his sickness and sudden death I was adding apartments to my house for his permanent accommodation. I wish that you could have known him. At twenty-seven years the best life is only preparation. He built his foundation so large that it needed the full age of man to make evident the plan and proportions of his character. He postponed always a particular to a final and absolute success, so that his life was a silent appeal to the great and generous. But some time I shall see you and speak of him.

————- * Charles Chauncy Emerson,—died May 9, 1836,—whose memory still survives fresh and beautiful in the hearts of the few who remain who knew him in life. A few papers of his published in the Dial show to others what he was and what he might have become. —————-

We want but two or three friends, but these we cannot do without, and they serve us in every thought we think. I find now I must hold faster the remaining jewels of my social belt. And of you I think much and anxiously since Mrs. Channing, amidst her delight at what she calls the happiest hour of her absence, in her acquaintance with you and your family, expresses much uneasiness respecting your untempered devotion to study. I am the more disturbed by her fears, because your letters avow a self-devotion to your work, and I know there is no gentle dulness in your temperament to counteract the mischief. I fear Nature has not inlaid fat earth enough into your texture to keep the ethereal blade from whetting it through. I write to implore you to be careful of your health. You are the property of all whom you rejoice in art and soul, and you must not deal with your body as your own. O my friend, if you would come here and let me nurse you and pasture you in my nook of this long continent, I will thank God and you therefor morning and evening, and doubt not to give you, in a quarter of a year, sound eyes, round cheeks, and joyful spirits. My wife has been lately an invalid, but she loves you thoroughly, and hardly stores a barrel of flour or lays her new carpet without some hopeful reference to Mrs. Carlyle. And in good earnest, why cannot you come here forthwith, and deliver in lectures to the solid men of Boston the History of the French Revolution before it is published,—or at least whilst it is publishing in England, and before it is published here. There is no doubt of the perfect success of such a course now that the five hundred copies of the Sartor are all sold, and read with great delight by many persons.

This I suggest if you too must feel the vulgar necessity of doing; but if you will be governed by your friend, you shall come into the meadows, and rest and talk with your friend in my country pasture. If you will come here like a noble brother, you shall have your solid day undisturbed, except at the hours of eating and walking; and as I will abstain from you myself, so I will defend you from others. I entreat Mrs. Carlyle, with my affectionate remembrances, to second me in this proposition, and not suffer the wayward man to think that in these space-destroying days a prayer from Boston, Massachusetts, is any less worthy of serious and prompt granting than one from Edinburgh or Oxford.

I send you a little book I have just now published, as an entering wedge, I hope, for something more worthy and significant.* This is only a naming of topics on which I would gladly speak and gladlier hear. I am mortified to learn the ill fate of my former packet containing the Sartor and Dr. Channing's work. My mercantile friend is vexed, for he says accurate orders were given to send it as a packet, not as a letter. I shall endeavor before despatching this sheet to obtain another copy of our American edition.

—————-
* This was Nature, the first clear manifesto of Emerson's
genius.
—————-

I wish I could come to you instead of sending this sheet of paper. I think I should persuade you to get into a ship this Autumn, quit all study for a time, and follow the setting sun. I have many, many things to learn of you. How melancholy to think how much we need confession!…* Yet the great truths are always at hand, and all the tragedy of individual life is separated how thinly from that universal nature which obliterates all ranks, all evils, all individualities. How little of you is in your will! Above your will how intimately are you related to all of us! In God we meet. Therein we are, thence we descend upon Time and these infinitesimal facts of Christendom, and Trade, and England Old and New. Wake the soul now drunk with a sleep, and we overleap at a bound the obstructions, the griefs, the mistakes, of years, and the air we breathe is so vital that the Past serves to contribute nothing to the result.

—————- ** Some words appear to be lost here. —————-

I read Goethe, and now lately the posthumous volumes, with a great interest. A friend of mine who studies his life with care would gladly know what records there are of his first ten years after his settlement at Weimar, and what Books there are in Germany about him beside what Mrs. Austin has collected and Heine. Can you tell me?

Write me of your health, or else come.

Yours ever,
R.W. Emerson.

P.S.—I learn that an acquaintance is going to England, so send the packet by him.

XIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 5 November, 1836

My Dear Friend,—You are very good to write to me in my silence, in the mood you must be in. My silence you may well judge is not forgetfulness; it is a forced silence; which this kind Letter enforces into words. I write the day after your letter comes, lest the morrow bring forth something new to hinder me.

What a bereavement, my Friend, is this that has overtaken you! Such a Brother, with such a Life opening around him, like a blooming garden where he was to labor and gather, all vanished suddenly like frostwork, and hidden from your eye! It is a loss, a sore loss; which God had appointed you. I do not tell you not to mourn: I mourn with you, and could wish all mourners the spirit you have in this sorrow. Oh, I know it well! Often enough in this noisy Inanity of a vision where we still linger, I say to myself, Perhaps thy Buried Ones are not far from thee, are with thee; they are in Eternity, which is a Now and HERE! And yet Nature will have her right; Memory would feel desecrated if she could forget. Many times in the crowded din of the Living, some sight, some feature of a face, will recall to you the Loved Face; and in these turmoiling streets you see the little silent Churchyard, the green grave that lies there so silent, inexpressibly wae. O, perhaps we shall all meet YONDER, and the tears be wiped from all eyes! One thing is no Perhaps: surely we shall all meet, if it be the will of the Maker of us. If it be not His will,—then is it not better so? Silence,—since in these days we have no speech! Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, in any day.

You inquire so earnestly about my welfare; hold open still the hospitable door for me. Truly Concord, which I have sought out on the Map, seems worthy of its name: no dissonance comes to me from that side; but grief itself has acquired a harmony: in joy or grief a voice says to me, Behold there is one that loves thee; in thy loneliness, in thy darkness, see how a hospitable candle shines from far over seas, how a friendly heart watches! It is very good, and precious for me.

As for my health, be under no apprehension. I am always sick; I am sicker and worse in body and mind, a little, for the present; but it has no deep significance: it is weariness merely; and now, by the bounty of Heaven, I am as it were within sight of land. In two months more, this unblessed Book will be finished; at Newyearday we begin printing: before the end of March, the thing is out; and I am a free man! Few happinesses I have ever known will equal that, as it seems to me. And yet I ought not to call the poor Book unblessed: no, it has girdled me round like a panoply these two years; kept me invulnerable, indifferent, to innumerable things. The poorest man in London has perhaps been one of the freest: the roaring press of gigs and gigmen, with their gold blazonry and fierce gig-wheels, have little incommoded him; they going their way, he going his.—As for the results of the Book, I can rationally promise myself, on the economical, pecuniary, or otherwise worldly side, simply zero. It is a Book contradicting all rules of Formalism, that have not a Reality within them, which so few have;—testifying, the more quietly the worse, internecine war with Quacks high and low. My good Brother, who was with me out of Italy in summer, declared himself shocked, and almost terror-struck: "Jack," I answered, "innumerable men give their lives cheerfully to defend Falsehoods and Half-Falsehoods; why should not one writer give his life cheerfully to say, in plain Scotch-English, in the hearing of God and man, To me they seem false and half-false? At all events, thou seest, I cannot help it. It is the nature of the beast." So that, on the whole, I suppose there is no more unpromotable, unappointable man now living in England than I. Literature also, the miscellaneous place of refuge, seems done here, unless you will take the Devil's wages for it; which one does not incline to do. A disjectum membrum; cut off from relations with men? Verily so; and now forty years of age; and extremely dyspeptical: a hopeless-looking man. Yet full of what I call desperate-hope! One does verily stand on the Earth, a Star-dome encompassing one; seemingly accoutred and enlisted and sent to battle, with rations good, indifferent, or bad,—what can one do but in the name of Odin, Tuisco, Hertha, Horsa, and all Saxon and Hebrew Gods, fight it out?—This surely is very idle talk.

As to the Book, I do say seriously that it is a wild, savage, ruleless, very bad Book; which even you will not be able to like; much less any other man. Yet it contains strange things; sincerities drawn out of the heart of a man very strangely situated; reverent of nothing but what is reverable in all ages and places: so we will print it, and be done with it;—and try a new turn next time. What I am to do, were the thing done, you see therefore, is most uncertain. How gladly would I run to Concord! And if I were there, be sure the do-nothing arrangement is the only conceivable one for me. That my sick existence subside again, this is the first condition; that quiet vision be restored me. It is frightful what an impatience I have got for many kinds of fellow-creatures. Their jargon really hurts me like the shrieking of inarticulate creatures that ought to articulate. There is no resource but to say: Brother, thou surely art not hateful; thou art lovable, at lowest pitiable;— alas! in my case, thou art dreadfully wearisome, unedifying: go thy ways, with my blessing. There are hardly three people among these two millions, whom I care much to exchange words with, in the humor I have. Nevertheless, at bottom, it is not my purpose to quit London finally till I have as it were seen it out. In the very hugeness of the monstrous City, contradiction cancelling contradiction, one finds a sort of composure for one's self that is not to be met with elsewhere perhaps in the world: people tolerate you, were it only that they have not time to trouble themselves with you. Some individuals even love me here; there are one or two whom I have even learned to love,—though, for the present, cross circumstances have snatched them out of my orbit again mostly. Wherefore, if you ask me, What I am to do?—the answer is clear so far, "Rest myself awhile"; and all farther is as dark as Chaos. Now for resting, taking that by itself, my Brother, who has gone back to Rome with some thoughts of settling as a Physician there, presses me to come thither, and rest in Rome. On the other hand, a certain John Sterling (the best man I have found in these regions) has been driven to Bordeaux lately for his health; he will have it that I must come to him, and walk through the South of France to Dauphine, Avignon, and over the Alps next spring!* Thirdly, my Mother will have me return to Annandale, and lie quiet in her little habitation;—which I incline to think were the wisest course of all. And lastly from over the Atlantic comes my good Emerson's voice. We will settle nothing, except that all shall remain unsettled. Die Zukunft decket Schmerzen and Glucke.

——————
* In his Life of Sterling, Carlyle prints a letter from
Sterling to himself, dated Bordeaux, October 26, 1836, in which
Sterling urges him to come "in the first fine days of spring."
It must have reached him a few days before he wrote this letter
to Emerson.
————-

I ought to say, however, that about New-year's-day I will send you an Article on Mirabeau, which they have printed here (for a thing called the London Review), and some kind of Note to escort it. I think Pamphlets travel as Letters in New England, provided you leave the ends of them open: if I be mistaken, pray instruct Messrs. Barnard to refuse the thing, for it has small value. The Diamond Necklace is to be printed also, in Fraser; inconceivable hawking that poor Paper has had; till now Fraser takes it—for L50: not being able to get it for nothing. The Mirabeau was written at the passionate request of John Mill; and likewise for needful lucre. I think it is the first shilling of money I have earned by my craft these four years: where the money I have lived on has come from while I sat here scribbling gratis, amazes me to think; yet surely it has come (for I am still here), and Heaven only to thank for it, which is a great fact. As for Mill's London Review (for he is quasi-editor), I do not recommend it to you. Hide-bound Radicalism; a to me well-nigh insupportable thing! Open it not: a breath as of Sahara and the Infinite Sterile comes from every page of it. A young Radical Baronet* has laid out L3,000 on getting the world instructed in that manner: it is very curious to see.—Alas! the bottom of the sheet! Take my hurried but kindest thanks for the prospect of your second Teufelsdrockh: the first too is now in my possession; Brother John went to the Post-Office, and worked it out for a ten shillings. It is a beautiful little Book; and a Preface to it such as no kindest friend could have improved. Thank my kind Editor** very heartily from me.

————- * Sir William Molesworth. In his Autobiography Mill gives an interesting account of the founding of this Review, and his quasi-editorial relations to it. "In the beginning," he says, "it did not, as a whole, by any means represent my opinion."

** Dr. Le-Baron Russell ————-

My wife was in Scotland in summer, driven thither by ill health; she is stronger since her return, though not yet strong; she sends over to Concord her kindest wishes. If I fly to the Alps or the Ocean, her Mother and she must keep one another company, we think, till there be better news of me. You are to thank Dr. Channing also for his valued gift. I read the Discourse, and other friends of his read it, with great estimation; but the end of that black question lies beyond my ken. I suppose, as usual, Might and Right will have to make themselves synonymous in some way. CANST and SHALT, if they are very well understood, mean the same thing under this Sun of ours. Adieu, my dear Emerson. Gehab' Dich wohl! Many affectionate regards to the Lady Wife: it is far within the verge of Probabilities that I shall see her face, and eat of her bread, one day. But she must not get sick! It is a dreadful thing, sickness; really a thing which I begin frequently to think criminal—at least in myself. Nay, in myself it really is criminal; wherefore I determine to be well one day.

Good be with you and Yours.
T. Carlyle

As to Goethe and your Friend: I know not anything out of Goethe's own works (which have many notices in them) that treats specially of those ten years. Doubtless your Friend knows Jordens's Lexicon (which dates all the writings, for one thing), the Conversations-Lexicon Supplement, and such like. There is an essay by one Schubarth which has reputation; but it is critical and ethical mainly. The Letters to Zelter, and the Letters to Schiller, will do nothing for those years, but are essential to see. Perhaps in some late number of the Zeitgenossen there may be something? Blackguard Heine is worth very little; Mentzel is duller, decenter, not much wiser. A very curious Book is Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, just published. No room more!*

—————- * Concerning this letter Emerson wrote in his Diary: "January 7, 1837. Received day before yesterday a letter from Thomas Carlyle, dated 5 November;—as ever, a cordial influence. Strong he is, upright, noble, and sweet, and makes good how much of our human nature. Quite in consonance with my delight in his eloquent letters I read in Bacon this afternoon this sentence (of Letters): 'And such as are written from wise men are of all the words of men, in my judgment, the best; for they are more natural than orations, public speeches, and more advised than conferences or present speeches.'" ——————-

XIV. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, 13 February, 1837

My Dear Emerson,—You had promise of a letter to be despatched you about New-year's-day; which promise I was myself in a condition to fulfil at the time set, but delayed it, owing to delays of printers and certain "Articles" that were to go with it. Six weeks have not yet entirely brought up these laggard animals: however, I will delay no longer for them. Nay, it seems the Articles, were they never so ready, cannot go with the Letter; but must fare round by Liverpool or Portsmouth, in a separate conveyance. We will leave them to the bounty of Time.

Your little Book and the Copy of Teufelsdrockh came safely; soon after I had written. The Teufelsdrockh I instantaneously despatched to Hamburg, to a Scottish merchant there, to whom there is an allusion in the Book; who used to be my Speditor (one of the politest extant though totally a stranger) in my missions and packages to and from Weimar.* The other, former Copy, more specially yours, had already been, as I think I told you, delivered out of durance; and got itself placed in the bookshelf, as the Teufelsdrockh. George Ripley tells me you are printing another edition; much good may it do you! There is now also a kind of whisper and whimper rising here about printing one. I said to myself once, when Bookseller Fraser shrieked so loud at a certain message you sent him: "Perhaps after all they will print this poor rag of a thing into a Book, after I am dead it may be,—if so seem good to them. Either way!" As it is, we leave the poor orphan to its destiny, all the more cheerfully. Ripley says farther he has sent me a critique of it by a better hand than the North American: I expect it, but have not got it Yet.** The North American seems to say that he too sent me one. It never came to hand, nor any hint of it,—except I think once before through you. It was not at all an unfriendly review; but had an opacity, of matter-of-fact in it that filled one with amazement. Since the Irish Bishop who said there were some things in Gulliver on which he for one would keep his belief suspended, nothing equal to it, on that side, has come athwart me. However, he has made out that Teufelsdrockh is, in all human probability, a fictitious character; which is always something, for an Inquirer into Truth.—Will you, finally, thank Friend Ripley in my name, till I have time to write to him and thank him.

—————- * The allusion referred to is the following: "By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honorable courtesy, now and before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,—the bulky Weissnichtwo packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost."—Sartor Resartus, Book I. ch. xi.

** An article by the Rev. N.L. Frothingham in the Christian Examiner. —————

Your little azure-colored Nature gave me true satisfaction. I read it, and then lent it about to all my acquaintance that had a sense for such things; from whom a similar verdict always came back. You say it is the first chapter of something greater. I call it rather the Foundation and Ground-plan on which you may build whatsoever of great and true has been given you to build. It is the true Apocalypse, this when the "Open Secret" becomes revealed to a man. I rejoice much in the glad serenity of soul with which you look out on this wondrous Dwelling-place of yours and mine—with an ear for the Ewigen Melodien, which pipe in the winds round us, and utter themselves forth in all sounds and sights and things: not to be written down by gamut-machinery; but which all right writing is a kind of attempt to write down. You will see what the years will bring you. It is not one of your smallest qualities in my mind, that you can wait so quietly and let the years do their best. He that cannot keep himself quiet is of a morbid nature; and the thing he yields us will be like him in that, whatever else it be.

Miss Martineau (for I have seen her since I wrote) tells me you "are the only man in America" who has quietly set himself down on a competency to follow his own path, and do the work his own will prescribes for him. Pity that you were the only one! But be one, nevertheless; be the first, and there will come a second and a third. It is a poor country where all men are sold to Mammon, and can make nothing but Railways and Bursts of Parliamentary Eloquence! And yet your New England here too has the upper hand of our Old England, of our Old Europe: we too are sold to Mammon, soul, body, and spirit; but (mark that, I pray you, with double pity) Mammon will not pay us,—we, are "Two Million three hundred thousand in Ireland that have not potatoes enough"! I declare, in History I find nothing more tragical. I find also that it will alter; that for me as one it has altered. Me Mammon will pay or not as he finds convenient; buy me he will not.—In fine, I say, sit still at Concord, with such spirit as you are of; under the blessed skyey influences, with an open sense, with the great Book of Existence open round you: we shall see whether you too get not something blessed to read us from it.

The Paper is declining fast, and all is yet speculation. Along with these two "Articles" (to be sent by Liverpool; there are two of them, Diamond Necklace and Mirabeau), you will very probably get some stray Proofsheet—of the unutterable French Revolution! It is actually at Press; two Printers working at separate Volumes of it,—though still too slow. In not many weeks, my hands will be washed of it! You, I hope, can have little conception of the feeling with which I wrote the last word of it, one night in early January, when the clock was striking ten, and our frugal Scotch supper coming in! I did not cry; nor I did not pray but could have done both. No such spell shall get itself fixed on me for some while to come! A beggarly Distortion; that will please no mortal, not even myself; of which I know not whether the fire were not after all the due place! And yet I ought not to say so: there is a great blessing in a man's doing what he utterly can, in the case he is in. Perhaps great quantities of dross are burnt out of me by this calcination I have had; perhaps I shall be far quieter and healthier of mind and body than I have ever been since boyhood. The world, though no man had ever less empire in it, seems to me a thing lying under my feet; a mean imbroglio, which I never more shall fear, or court, or disturb myself with: welcome and welcome to go wholly its own way; I wholly clear for going mine. Through the summer months I am, somewhere or other, to rest myself, in the deepest possible sleep. The residue is vague as the wind,—unheeded as the wind. Some way it will turn out that a poor, well-meaning Son of Adam has bread growing for him too, better or worse: any way,—or even no way, if that be it,—I shall be content. There is a scheme here among Friends for my Lecturing in a thing they call Royal Institution; but it will not do there, I think. The instant two or three are gathered together under any terms, who want to learn something I can teach them,—then we will, most readily, as Burns says, "loose our tinkler jaw"; but not I think till then; were the Institution even Imperial.

America has faded considerably into the background of late: indeed, to say truth, whenever I think of myself in America, it is as in the Backwoods, with a rifle in my hand, God's sky over my head, and this accursed Lazar-house of quacks and blockheads, 'and sin and misery (now near a head) lying all behind me forevermore. A thing, you see, which is and can be at bottom but a daydream! To rest through the summer: that is my only fixed wisdom; a resolution taken; only the place where uncertain.— What a pity this poor sheet is done! I had innumerable things to tell you about people whom I have seen, about books,—Miss Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Butler, Southey, Influenza, Parliament, Literature and the Life of Man,—the whole of which must lie over till next time. Write to me; do not forget me. My Wife, who is sitting by me, in very poor health (this long while), sends "kindest remembrances," "compliments" she expressly does not send. Good be with you always, my dear Friend!

—T. Carlyle

We send our felicitation to the Mother and little Boy; which latter you had better tell us the name of.

XV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, Mass., 31 March, 1837

My Dear Friend,—Last night, I said I would write to you forthwith. This morning I received your letter of February 13th, and with it the Diamond Necklace, the Mirabeau, and the olive leaf of a proof-sheet. I write out the sum of my debt as the best acknowledgment I can make. I had already received, about New-Year's-Day, the preceding letter. It came in the midst of my washbowl-storm of a course of Lectures on the Philosophy of History. For all these gifts and pledges,—thanks. Over the finished History, joy and evergreen laurels. I embrace you with all my heart. I solace myself with the noble nature God has given you, and in you to me, and to all. I had read the Diamond Necklace three weeks ago at the Boston Athenaeum, and the Mirabeau I had just read when my copy came. But the proof-sheet was virgin gold. The Mirabeau I forebode is to establish your kingdom in England. That is genuine thunder, which nobody that wears ears can affect to mistake for the rumbling of cart-wheels. I please myself with thinking that my Angelo has blocked a Colossus which may stand in the public square to defy all competitors. To be sure, that is its least merit,—that nobody can do the like,—yet is it a gag to Cerberus. Its better merit is that it inspires self-trust, by teaching the immense resources that are in human nature; so I sent it to be read by a brave man who is poor and decried. The doctrine is indeed true and grand which you preach as by cannonade, that God made a man, and it were as well to stand by and see what is in him, and, if he act ever from his impulses, believe that he has his own checks, and, however extravagant, will keep his orbit, and return from far; a faith that draws confirmation from the sempiternal ignorance and stationariness of society, and the sempiternal growth of all the individuals.

The Diamond Necklace I read with joy, whilst I read with my own eyes. When I read with English or New-English eyes, my joy is marred by the roaring of the opposition. I doubt not the exact story is there told as it fell out, and told for the first time; but the eye of your readers, as you will easily guess, will be bewildered by the multitude of brilliant-colored hieroglyphics whereby the meaning is conveyed. And for the Gig,—the Gig,—it is fairly worn out, and such a cloud-compeller must mock that particular symbol no more.

I thought as I read this piece that your strange genius was the instant fruit of your London. It is the aroma of Babylon. Such as the great metropolis, such is this style: so vast, enormous, related to all the world, and so endless in details. I think you see as pictures every street, church, parliament-house, barrack, baker's shop, mutton-stall, forge, wharf, and ship, and whatever stands, creeps, rolls, or swims thereabouts, and make all your own. Hence your encyclopediacal allusion to all knowables, and the virtues and vices of your panoramic pages. Well, it is your own; and it is English; and every word stands for somewhat; and it cheers and fortifies me. And what more can a man ask of his writing fellow-man? Why, all things; inasmuch as a good mind creates wants at every stroke.

The proof-sheet rhymes well with Mirabeau, and has abated my fears from your own and your brother's account of the new book. I greet it well. Auspicious Babe, be born! The first good of the book is that it makes you free, and as I anxiously hope makes your body sound. A possible good is that it will cause me to see your face. But I seemed to read in Mirabeau what you intimate in your letter, that you will not come westward. Old England is to find you out, and then the New will have no charm. For me it will be the worst; for you, not. A man, a few men, cannot be to you (with your ministering eyes) that which you should travel far to find. Moreover, I observe that America looks, to those who come hither, as unromantic and unexciting as the Dutch canals. I see plainly that our Society, for the most part, is as bigoted to the respectabilities of religion and education as yours; that there is no more appetite for a revelation here than elsewhere; and the educated class are, of course, less fair-minded than others. Yet, in the moments when my eyes are open, I see that here are rich materials for the philosopher and poet, and, what is more to your purpose as an artist, that we have had in these parts no one philosopher or poet to put a sickle to the prairie wheat. I have really never believed that you would do us that crowning grace of coming hither, yet if God should be kinder to us than our belief, I meant and mean to hold you fast in my little meadows on the Musketaquid (now Concord) River, and show you (as in this country we can anywhere) an America in miniature in the April or November town meeting. Therein should you conveniently study and master the whole of our hemispherical politics reduced to a nutshell, and have a new version of Oxenstiern's little wit; and yet be consoled by seeing that here the farmers patient as their bulls of head-boards—provided for them in relation to distant national objects, by kind editors of newspapers—do yet their will, and a good will, in their own parish. If a wise man would pass by New York, and be content to sit still in this village a few months, he should get a thorough native knowledge which no foreigner has yet acquired. So I leave you with God, and if any oracle in the great Delphos should say "Go," why fly to us instantly. Come and spend a year with me, and see if I cannot respect your retirements.

I must love you for your interest in me and my way of life, and the more that we only look for good-nature in the creative class. They pay the tag of grandeur, and, attracted irresistibly to make, their living is usually weak and hapless. But you are so companionable—God has made you Man as well as Poet—that I lament the three thousand miles of mountainous water. Burns might have added a better verse to his poem, importing that one might write Iliads or Hamlets, and yet come short of Truth by infinity, as every written word must; but "the man's the gowd for a' that." And I heartily thank the Lady for her good-will. Please God she may be already well. We all grieve to know of her ill health. People who have seen her never stop with Mr. Carlyle, but count him thrice blest in her. My wife believes in nothing for her but the American voyage. I shall never cease to expect you both until you come.

My boy is five months old, he is called Waldo,—a lovely wonder that made the Universe look friendlier to me.

My Wife, one of your best lovers, sends her affectionate regards to Mrs. Carlyle, and says that she takes exception in your letters only to that sentence that she would go to Scotland if you came here. My Wife beseeches her to come and possess her new-dressed chamber. Do not cease to write whenever you can spare me an hour. A man named Bronson Alcott is great, and one of the jewels we have to show you. Good bye.

—R.W. Emerson

The second edition of Sartor is out and sells well. I learned the other day that twenty-five copies of it were ordered for England. It was very amiable of you, that word about it in Mirabeau.*

————— * This refers to Carlyle's introducing, in his paper on Mirabeau, a citation from Sartor, with the words, "We quote from a New England Book." —————

XVI. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, 1 June, 1857

My Dear Friend,—A word must go to Concord in answer to your last kind word. It reached me, that word of yours, on the morning of a most unspeakable day; the day when I, half dead with fret, agitation, and exasperation, was to address extempore an audience of London quality people on the subject of German Literature! The heart's wish of me was that I might be left in deepest oblivion, wrapped in blankets and silence, not speaking, not spoken to, for a twelvemonth to come. My Printers had only let me go, out of their Treadmill, the day before. However, all that is over now; and I am still here alive to write to you, and hope for better days.

Almost a month ago there went a copy of a Book called French Revolution, with your address on it, over to Red-Lion Square, and thence, as old Rich declared, himself now emeritus, back to one Kennet (I think) near Covent Garden; who professes to correspond with Hilliard and Company, Boston, and undertook the service. The Book is not gone yet, I understand; but Kennet engages that it shall leave Liverpool infallibly on the 5th of June. I wish you a happy reading of it, therefore: it is the only copy of my sending that has crossed the water. Ill printed (there are many errors, one or two gross ones), ill written, ill thought! But in fine it is off my hands: that is a fact worth all others. As to its reception here or elsewhere, I anticipate nothing or little. Gabble, gabble, the astonishment of the dull public brain is likely to be considerable, and its ejaculations unedifying. We will let it go its way. Beat this thing, I say always, under thy dull hoofs, O dull Public! trample it and tumble it into all sinks and kennels; if thou canst kill it, kill it in God's name: if thou canst not kill it, why then thou wilt not.

By the by, speaking of dull Publics, I ought to say that I have seen a review of myself in the Christian Examiner (I think that is it) of Boston; the author of which, if you know him, I desire you to thank on my part. For if a dull million is good, then withal a seeing unit or two is also good. This man images back a beautiful idealized Clothes-Philosopher, very satisfactory to look upon; in whose beatified features I did verily detect more similitude to what I myself meant to be, than in any or all the other criticisms I have yet seen written of me. That a man see himself reflected from the soul of his brother-man in this brotherly improved way: there surely is one of the most legitimate joys of existence. Friend Ripley took the trouble to send me this Review, in which I detected an Article of his own; there came also some Discourses of his much to be approved of; a Newspaper passage-of-fence with a Philistine of yours; and a set of Essays on Progress-of-the-species and such like by a man whom I grieved to see confusing himself with that. Progress of the species is a thing I can get no good of at all. These Books, which Miss Martineau has borrowed from me, did not arrive till three weeks ago or less. I pray you to thank Ripley for them very kindly; which at present I still have not time to do. He seems to me a good man, with good aims; with considerable natural health of mind, wherein all goodness is likely to grow better, all clearness to grow clearer. Miss Martineau laments that he does not fling himself, or not with the due impetuosity, into the Black Controversy; a thing lamentable in the extreme, when one considers what a world this is, and how perfect it would be could Mungo once get his stupid case rectified, and eat his squash as a stupid Apprentice instead of stupid Slave!

Miss Martineau's Book on America is out, here and with you. I have read it for the good Authoress's sake, whom I love much. She is one of the strangest phenomena to me. A genuine little Poetess, buckramed, swathed like a mummy into Socinian and Political-Economy formulas; and yet verily alive in the inside of that! "God has given a Prophet to every People in its own speech," say the Arabs. Even the English Unitarians were one day to have their Poet, and the best that could be said for them too was to be said. I admire this good lady's integrity, sincerity; her quick, sharp discernment to the depth it goes: her love also is great; nay, in fact it is too great: the host of illustrious obscure mortals whom she produces on you, of Preachers, Pamphleteers, Antislavers, Able Editors, and other Atlases bearing (unknown to us) the world on their shoulder, is absolutely more than enough. What they say to her Book here I do not well know. I fancy the general reception will be good, and even brilliant. I saw Mrs. Butler* last night, "in an ocean of blonde and broadcloth," one of those oceans common at present. Ach Gott! They are not of Persons, these soirdes, but of Cloth Figures.

————— * Mrs Fanny Kemble Butler. —————

I mean to retreat into Scotland very soon, to repose myself as I intended. My Wife continues here with her Mother; here at least till the weather grow too hot, or a journey to join me seem otherwise advisable for her. She is gathering strength, but continues still weak enough. I rest myself "on the sunny side of hedges" in native Annandale, one of the obscurest regions; no man shall speak to me, I will speak to no man; but have dialogues yonder with the old dumb crags, of the most unfathomable sort. Once rested, I think of returning to London for another season. Several things are beginning which I ought to see end before taking up my staff again. In this enormous Chaos the very multitude of conflicting perversions produces something more like a calm than you can elsewhere meet with. Men let you alone, which is an immense thing: they do it even because they have no time to meddle with you. London, or else the Backwoods of America, or Craigenputtock! We shall see.

I still beg the comfort of hearing from you. I am sick of soul and body, but not incurable; the loving word of a Waldo Emerson is as balm to me, medicinal now more than ever. My Wife earnestly joins me in love to the Concord Household. May a blessing be in it, on one and all! I do nowise give up the idea of sojourning there one time yet. On the contrary, it seems almost certain that I shall. Good be with you.

Yours always,
T. Carlyle*

—————- * Emerson wrote in his Diary, July 27, 1837: "A letter today from Carlyle rejoiced me. Pleasant would life be with such companions. But if you cannot have them on good mutual terms you cannot have them. If not the Deity but our wilfulness hews and shapes the new relations, their sweetness escapes, as strawberries lose their flavor by cultivation." —————

XVII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 13 September, 1837

My Dear Friend,—Such a gift as the French Revolution demanded a speedier acknowledgment. But you mountaineers that can scale Andes before breakfast for an airing have no measures for the performance of lowlanders and valetudinarians. I am ashamed to think, and will not tell, what little things have kept me silent.

The French Revolution did not reach me until three weeks ago, having had at least two long pauses by the way, as I find, since landing. Between many visits received, and some literary haranguing done, I have read two volumes and half the third and I think you a very good giant; disporting yourself with an original and vast ambition of fun: pleasure and peace not being strong enough for you, you choose to suck pain also, and teach fever and famine to dance and sing. I think you have written a wonderful book, which will last a very long time. I see that you have created a history, which the world will own to be such. You have recognized the existence of other persons than officers, and of other relations than civism. You have broken away from all books, and written a mind. It is a brave experiment, and the success is great. We have men in your story and not names merely; always men, though I may doubt sometimes whether I have the historic men. We have great facts—and selected facts—truly set down. We have always the co-presence of Humanity along with the imperfect damaged individuals. The soul's right of wonder is still left to us; and we have righteous praise and doom awarded, assuredly without cant. Yes, comfort yourself on that particular, O ungodliest divine man! thou cantest never. Finally we have not—a dull word. Never was there a style so rapid as yours,—which no reader can outrun; and so it is for the most intelligent. I suppose nothing will astonish more than the audacious wit and cheerfulness which no tragedy and no magnitude of events can overpower or daunt. Henry VIII loved a Man, and I see with joy my bard always equal to the crisis he represents. And so I thank you for your labor, and feel that your contemporaries ought to say, All hail, Brother! live forever: not only in the great Soul which thou largely inhalest, but also as a named, person in this thy definite deed.

I will tell you more of the book when I have once got it at focal distance,—if that can ever be, and muster my objections when I am sure of their ground. I insist, of course, that it might be more simple, less Gothically efflorescent. You will say no rules for the illumination of windows can apply to the Aurora borealis. However, I find refreshment when every now and then a special fact slips into the narrative couched in sharp and businesslike terms. This character-drawing in the book is certainly admirable; the lines are ploughed furrows; but there was cake and ale before, though thou be virtuous. Clarendon surely drew sharp outlines for me in Falkland, Hampden, and the rest, without defiance or sky-vaulting. I wish I could talk with you face to face for one day, and know what your uttermost frankness would say concerning the book. I feel assured of its good reception in this country. I learned last Saturday that in all eleven hundred and sixty-six copies of Sartor have been sold. I have told the publisher of that book that he must not print the History until some space has been given to people to import British copies. I have ordered Hilliard, Gray, & Co. to import twenty copies as an experiment. At the present very high rate of exchange, which makes a shilling worth thirty cents, they think, with freight and duties, the book would be too costly here for sale, but we confide in a speedy fall of Exchange; then my books shall come. I am ashamed that you should educate our young men, and that we should pirate your books. One day we will have a better law, or perhaps you will make our law yours.

I had your letter long before your book. Very good work you have done in your lifetime, and very generously you adorn and cheer this pilgrimage of mine by your love. I find my highest prayer granted in calling a just and wise man my friend. Your profuse benefaction of genius in so few years makes me feel very poor and useless. I see that I must go on trust to you and to all the brave for some longer time, hoping yet to prove one day my truth and love. There are in this country so few scholars, that the services of each studious person are needed to do what he can for the circulation of thoughts, to the end of making some counterweight to the money force, and to give such food as he may to the nigh starving youth. So I religiously read lectures every winter, and at other times whenever summoned. Last year, "the Philosophy of History," twelve lectures; and now I meditate a course on what I call "Ethics." I peddle out all the wit I can gather from Time or from Nature, and am pained at heart to see how thankfully that little is received.

Write to me, good friend, tell me if you went to Scotland,—what you do, and will do,—tell me that your wife is strong and well again as when I saw her at Craigenputtock. I desire to be affectionately remembered to her. Tell me when you will come hither. I called together a little club a week ago, who spent a day with me,—counting fifteen souls,—each one of whom warmly loves you. So if the French Revolution does not convert the "dull public" of your native Nineveh, I see not but you must shake their dust from your shoes and cross the Atlantic to a New England. Yours in love and honor.

—R. Waldo Emerson

May I trouble you with a commission when you are in the City? You mention being at the shop of Rich in Red-Lion Square. Will you say to him that he sent me some books two or three years ago without any account of prices annexed? I wrote him once myself, once through S. Burdett, bookseller, and since through C.P. Curtis, Esq., who professes to be his attorney in Boston,—three times,—to ask for this account. No answer has ever come. I wish he would send me the account, that I may settle it. If he persist in his self-denying contumacy, I think you may immortalize him as a bookseller of the gods.

I shall send you an Oration presently, delivered before a literary society here, which is now being printed.* Gladly I hear of the Carlylet—so they say—in the new Westminster.

————- * This was Emerson's famous Oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837, on "The American Scholar." In his admirable essay on Thoreau,—an essay which might serve as introduction and comment to the letters of Carlyle and Emerson during these years,—Lowell speaks of the impression made by this remarkable discourse. It "was an event without any former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be always treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded and breathless aisles, what windows clustering with eager heads, what enthusiasm of approval, what grim silence of foregone dissent! It was our Yankee version of a lecture by Abelard, our Harvard parallel to the last public appearances of Schelling."—My Study Windows, p. 197 ————-

XVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 2 November, 1837

My Dear Friend,—Mr. Charles Sumner, a lawyer of high standing for his age, and editor or one editor of a journal called The Jurist, and withal a lover of your writings, tells me he is going to Paris and thence to London, and sets out in a few days. I cannot, of course, resist his request for a letter to you, nor let pass the occasion of a greeting. Health, Joy, and Peace be with you! I hope you sit still yet, and do not hastily meditate new labors. Phidias need not be always tinkering. Sit still like an Egyptian. Somebody told me the other day that your friends here might have made a sum for the author by publishing Sartor themselves, instead of leaving it with a bookseller. Instantly I wondered why I had never such a thought before, and went straight to Boston, and have made a bargain with a bookseller to print the French Revolution. It is to be printed in two volumes of the size of our American Sartor, one thousand copies, the estimate making the cost of the book say (in dollars and cents) $1.18 a copy, and the price $2.50. The bookseller contracts with me to sell the book at a commission of twenty percent on that selling price, allowing me however to take at cost as many copies as I can find subscribers for. There is yet, I believe, no other copy in the country than mine: so I gave him the first volume, and the printing is begun. I shall take care that your friends here shall know my contract with the bookseller, and so shall give me their names. Then, if so good a book can have a tolerable sale, (almost contrary to the nature of a good book, I know,) I shall sustain with great glee the new relation of being your banker and attorney. They have had the wit in the London Examiner, I find, to praise at last; and I mean that our public shall have the entire benefit of that page. The Westminster they can read themselves. The printers think they can get the book out by Christmas. So it must be long before I can tell you what cheer. Meantime do you tell me, I entreat you, what speed it has had at home. The best, I hope, with the wise and good withal.

I have nothing to tell you and no thoughts. I have promised a course of Lectures for December, and am far from knowing what I am to say; but the way to make sure of fighting into the new continent is to burn your ships. The "tender ears," as George Fox said, of young men are always an effectual call to me ignorant to speak. I find myself so much more and freer on the platform of the lecture-room than in the pulpit, that I shall not much more use the last; and do now only in a little country chapel at the request of simple men to whom I sustain no other relation than that of preacher. But I preach in the Lecture-Room and then it tells, for there is no prescription. You may laugh, weep, reason, sing, sneer, or pray, according to your genius. It is the new pulpit, and very much in vogue with my northern countrymen. This winter, in Boston, we shall have more than ever: two or three every night of the week. When will you come and redeem your pledge? The day before yesterday my little boy was a year old,—no, the day before that,—and I cannot tell you what delight and what study I find in this little bud of God, which I heartily desire you also should see. Good, wise, kind friend, I shall see you one day. Let me hear, when you can write, that Mrs. Carlyle is well again.

—R. Waldo Emerson

XIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 8 December, 1837

My Dear Emerson,—How long it is since you last heard of me I do not very accurately know; but it is too long. A very long, ugly, inert, and unproductive chapter of my own history seems to have passed since then. Whenever I delay writing, be sure matters go not well with me; and do you in that case write to me, were it again and over again,—unweariable in pity.

I did go to Scotland, for almost three months; leaving my Wife here with her Mother. The poor Wife had fallen so weak that she gave me real terror in the spring-time, and made the Doctor look very grave indeed: she continued too weak for traveling: I was worn out as I had never in my life been. So, on the longest day of June, I got back to my Mother's cottage; threw myself down, I may say, into what we may call the "frightfulest magnetic sleep," and lay there avoiding the intercourse of men. Most wearisome had their gabble become; almost unearthly. But indeed all was unearthly in that humor. The gushing of my native brooks, the sough of the old solitary woods, the great roar of old native Solway (billowing fresh out of your Atlantic, drawn by the Moon): all this was a kind of unearthly music to me; I cannot tell you how unearthly. It did not bring me to rest; yet towards rest I do think at all events, the time had come when I behoved to quit it again. I have been here since September evidently another little "chapter" or paragraph, not altogether inert, is getting forward. But I must not speak of these things. How can I speak of them on a miserable scrap of blue paper? Looking into your kind-eyes with my eyes, I could speak: not here. Pity me, my friend, my brother; yet hope well of me: if I can (in all senses) rightly hold my peace, I think much will yet be well with me. SILENCE is the great thing I worship at present; almost the sole tenant of my Pantheon. Let a man know rightly how to hold his peace. I love to repeat to myself, "Silence is of Eternity." Ah me, I think how I could rejoice to quit these jarring discords and jargonings of Babel, and go far, far away! I do believe, if I had the smallest competence of money to get "food and warmth" with, I would shake the mud of London from my feet, and go and bury myself in some green place, and never print any syllable more. Perhaps it is better as it is.

But quitting this, we will actually speak (under favor of "Silence") one very small thing; a pleasant piece of news. There is a man here called John Sterling (Reverend John of the Church of England too), whom I love better than anybody I have met with, since a certain sky-messenger alighted to me at Craigenputtock, and vanished in the Blue again. This Sterling has written; but what is far better, he has lived, he is alive. Across several unsuitable wrappages, of Church-of-Englandism and others, my heart loves the man. He is one, and the best, of a small class extant here, who, nigh drowning in a black wreck of Infidelity (lighted up by some glare of Radicalism only, now growing dim too) and about to perish, saved themselves into a Coleridgian Shovel-hattedness, or determination to preach, to preach peace, were it only the spent echo of a peace once preached. He is still only about thirty; young; and I think will shed the shovel-hat yet perhaps. Do you ever read Blackwood? This John Sterling is the "New Contributor" whom Wilson makes such a rout about, in the November and prior month "Crystals from a Cavern," &c., which it is well worth your while to see. Well, and what then, cry you?—Why then, this John Sterling has fallen overhead in love with a certain Waldo Emerson; that is all. He saw the little Book Nature lying here; and, across a whole silva silvarum of prejudices, discerned what was in it; took it to his heart,—and indeed into his pocket; and has carried it off to Madeira with him; whither unhappily (though now with good hope and expectation) the Doctors have ordered him. This is the small piece of pleasant news, that two sky-messengers (such they were both of them to me) have met and recognized each other; and by God's blessing there shall one day be a trio of us: call you that nothing?

And so now by a direct transition I am got to the Oration. My friend! you know not what you have done for me there. It was long decades of years that I had heard nothing but the infinite jangling and jabbering, and inarticulate twittering and screeching, and my soul had sunk down sorrowful, and said there is no articulate speaking then any more, and thou art solitary among stranger-creatures? and lo, out of the West comes a clear utterance, clearly recognizable as a man's voice, and I have a kinsman and brother: God be thanked for it! I could have wept to read that speech; the clear high melody of it went tingling through my heart;—I said to my wife, "There, woman!" She read; and returned, and charges me to return for answer, "that there had been nothing met with like it since Schiller went silent." My brave Emerson! And all this has been lying silent, quite tranquil in him, these seven years, and the "vociferous platitude" dinning his ears on all sides, and he quietly answering no word; and a whole world of Thought has silently built itself in these calm depths, and, the day being come, says quite softly, as if it were a common thing, "Yes, I am here too." Miss Martineau tells me, "Some say it is inspired, some say it is mad." Exactly so; no say could be suitabler. But for you, my dear friend, I say and pray heartily: May God grant you strength; for you have a fearful work to do! Fearful I call it; and yet it is great, and the greatest. O for God's sake keep yourself still quiet! Do not hasten to write; you cannot be too slow about it. Give no ear to any man's praise or censure; know that that is not it: on the one side is as Heaven if you have strength to keep silent, and climb unseen; yet on the other side, yawning always at one's right-hand and one's left, is the frightfulest Abyss and Pandemonium! See Fenimore Cooper;—poor Cooper, he is down in it; and had a climbing faculty too. Be steady, be quiet, be in no haste; and God speed you well! My space is done.

And so adieu, for this time. You must write soon again. My copy of the Oration has never come: how is this? I could dispose of a dozen well.—They say I am to lecture again in Spring, Ay de mi! The "Book" is babbled about sufficiently in several dialects: Fraser wants to print my scattered Reviews and Articles; a pregnant sign. Teufelsdrockh to precede. The man "screamed" once at the name of it in a very musical manner. He shall not print a line; unless he give me money for it, more or less. I have had enough of printing for one while,—thrown into "magnetic sleep" by it! Farewell my brother.

—T. Carlyle

O. Rich, it seems, is in Spain. His representative assured me, some weeks since, that the Account was now sent. There is an Article on Sir W. Scott: shocking; invitissima Minerva!*

—————
*Carlyle's article on Scott published in the London and
Westminster Review, No. 12. Reprinted in his Critical and
Miscellaneous Essays.
—————

Miss Martineau charges me to send kind remembrances to you and your Lady: her words were kinder than I have room for here.—Can you not, in defect or delay of Letter, send me a Massachusetts Newspaper? I think it costs little or almost nothing now; and I shall know your hand.

XX. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 9 February, 1838

My Dear Friend,—It is ten days now—ten cold days—that your last letter has kept my heart warm, and I have not been able to write before. I have just finished—Wednesday evening—a course of lectures which I ambitiously baptized "Human Culture," and read once a week to the curious in Boston. I could write nothing else the while, for weariness of the week's stated scribbling. Now I am free as a wood-bird, and can take up the pen without fretting or fear. Your letter should, and nearly did, make me jump for joy,—fine things about our poor speech at Cambridge,— fine things from CARLYLE. Scarcely could we maintain a decorous gravity on the occasion. And then news of a friend, who is also Carlyle's friend. What has life better to offer than such tidings? You may suppose I went directly and got me Blackwood, and read the prose and the verse of John Sterling, and saw that my man had a head and a heart, and spent an hour or two very happily in spelling his biography out of his own hand;—a species of palmistry in which I have a perfect reliance. I found many incidents grave and gay and beautiful, and have determined to love him very much. In this romancing of the gentle affections we are children evermore. We forget the age of life, the barriers so thin yet so adamantean of space and circumstance; and I have had the rarest poems self-singing in my head of brave men that work and conspire in a perfect intelligence across seas and conditions—and meet at last. I heartily pray that the Sea and its vineyards may cheer with warm medicinal breath a Voyager so kind and noble.

For the Oration, I am so elated with your goodwill that I begin to fear your heart has betrayed your head this time, and so the praise is not good on Parnassus but only in friendship. I sent it diffidently (I did send it through bookselling Munroe) to you, and was not a little surprised by your generous commendations. Yet here it interested young men a good deal for an academical performance, and an edition of five hundred was disposed of in a month. A new edition is now printing, and I will send you some copies presently to give to anybody who you think will read.

I have a little budget of news myself. I hope you had my letter —sent by young Sumner—saying that we meant to print the French Revolution here for the Author's benefit. It was published on the 25th of December. It is published at my risk, the booksellers agreeing to let me have at cost all the copies I can get subscriptions for. All the rest they are to sell and to have twenty percent on the retail price for their commission. The selling price of the book is $2.50; the cost of a copy, $1.26; the bookseller's commission, 50 cts.; so that T.C. only gains 74 cts. on each copy they sell. But we have two hundred subscribers, and on each copy they buy you have $1.26, except in cases where the distant residence of subscribers makes a cost of freight. You ought to have three or four quarters of a dollar more on each copy, but we put the lowest price on the book in terror of the Philistines, and to secure its accessibleness to the economical Public. We printed one thousand copies: of these, five hundred are already sold, in six weeks; and Brown the bookseller talks, as I think, much too modestly, of getting rid of the whole edition in one year. I say six months. The printing, &c. is to be paid and a settlement made in six months from the day of publication; and I hope the settlement will be the final one. And I confide in sending you seven hundred dollars at least, as a certificate that you have so many readers in the West. Yet, I own, I shake a little at the thought of the bookseller's account. Whenever I have seen that species of document, it was strange how the hopefulest ideal dwindled away to a dwarfish actual. But you may be assured I shall on this occasion summon to the bargain all the Yankee in my constitution, and multiply and divide like a lion.

The book has the best success with the best. Young men say it is the only history they have ever read. The middle-aged and the old shake their heads, and cannot make anything of it. In short, it has the success of a book which, as people have not fashioned, has to fashion the people. It will take some time to win all, but it wins and will win. I sent a notice of it to the Christian Examiner, but the editor sent it all back to me except the first and last paragraphs; those he printed. And the editor of the North American declined giving a place to a paper from another friend of yours. But we shall see. I am glad you are to print your Miscellanies; but—forgive our Transatlantic effrontery—we are beforehand of you, and we are already selecting a couple of volumes from the same, and shall print them on the same plan as the History, and hope so to turn a penny for our friend again. I surely should not do this thing without consulting you as to the selection but that I had no choice. If I waited, the bookseller would have done it himself, and carried off the profit. I sent you (to Kennet) a copy of the French Revolution. I regret exceedingly the printer's blunder about the numbering the Books in the volumes, but he had warranted me in a literal, punctual reprint of the copy without its leaving his office, and I trusted him. I am told there are many errors. I am going to see for myself. I have filled my paper, and not yet said a word of how many things. You tell me how ill was Mrs. C., and you do not tell me that she is well again. But I see plainly that I must take speedily another sheet. I love you always.

—R.W. Emerson

XXI. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 12 March, 1838

My Dear Friend,—Here in a bookseller's shop I have secured a stool and corner to say a swift benison. Mr. Bancroft told me that the presence of English Lord Gosford in town would give me a safe conveyance of pamphlets to you, so I send some Orations of which you said so kind and cheering words. Give them to any one who will read them. I have written names in three. You have, I hope, got the letter sent nearly a month ago, giving account of our reprint of the French Revolution, and have received a copy of the same. I learn from the bookseller today that six hundred and fifty copies are sold, and the book continues to sell. So I hope that our settlement at the end of six months will be final, or nearly so.

I had nearly closed my agreement the other day with a publisher for the emission of Carlyle's Miscellanies, when just in the last hour comes word from E.G. Loring that he has an authentic catalogue from the Bard himself. Now I have that, and could wish Loring had communicated his plan to me at first, or that I had bad wit enough to have undertaken this matter long ago and conferred with you. I designed nothing for you or your friends; but merely a lucrative book for our daily market that would have yielded a pecuniary compensation to you, such as we are all bound to make, and have bought our Socrates a cloak. Loring contemplated something quite different,—a "Complete Works," etc.,—and now clamors for the same thing, and I do not know but I shall have to gratify him and others at the risk of injury to this my vulgar hope of dollars,—that innate idea of the American mind. This I shall settle in a few days. No copyright can be secured here for an English book unless it contain original matter: But my moments are going, and I can only promise to write you quickly, at home and at leisure, for I have just been reading the History again with many, many thoughts, and I revere, wonder at, and love you.

—R. Waldo Emerson

XXII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 16 March, 1838

My Dear Emerson,—Your letter through Sumner was sent by him from Paris about a month ago; the man himself has not yet made his appearance, or been heard of in these parts: he shall be very welcome to me, arrive when he will. The February letter came yesterday, by direct conveyance from Dartmouth. I answer it today rather than tomorrow; I may not for long have a day freer than this. Fronte capillata, post est occasio calva: true either in Latin or English!

You send me good news, as usual. You have been very brisk and helpful in this business of the Revolution Book, and I give you many thanks and commendations. It will be a very brave day when cash actually reaches me, no matter what the number of the coins, whether seven or seven hundred, out of Yankee-land; and strange enough, what is not unlikely, if it be the first cash I realize for that piece of work,—Angle-land continuing still _in_solvent to me! Well, it is a wide Motherland we have here, or are getting to have, from Bass's Straits all round to Columbia River, already almost circling the Globe: it must be hard with a man if somewhere or other he find not some one or other to take his part, and stand by him a little! Blessings on you, my brother: nay, your work is already twice blessed.—I believe after all, with the aid of my Scotch thrift, I shall not be absolutely thrown into the streets here, or reduced to borrow, and become the slave of somebody, for a morsel of bread. Thank God, no! Nay, of late I begin entirely to despise that whole matter, so as I never hitherto despised it: "Thou beggarliest Spectre of Beggary that hast chased me ever since I was man, come on then, in the Devil's name, let us see what is in thee! Will the Soul of a man, with Eternity within a few years of it, quail before thee?" Better, however, is my good pious Mother's version of it: "They cannot take God's Providence from thee; thou hast never wanted yet."*

————— * In his Diary, May 9, 1838, Emerson wrote: "A letter this morning from T. Carlyle. How should he be so poor? It is the most creditable poverty I know of." —————

But to go on with business; and the republication of books in that Transoceanic England, New and improved Edition of England. In January last, if I recollect right, Miss Martineau, in the name of a certain Mr. Loring, applied to me for a correct List of all my fugitive Papers; the said Mr. Loring meaning to publish them for my behoof. This List she, though not without solicitation, for I had small hope in it, did at last obtain, and send, coupled with a request from me that you should be consulted in the matter. Now it appears you had of yourself previously determined on something of the same sort, and probably are far on with the printing of your Two select volumes. I confess myself greatly better pleased with it on that footing than on another. Who Mr. Loring may be I know not, with any certainty, at first hand; but who Waldo Emerson is I do know; and more than one god from the machine is not necessary. I pray you, thank Mr. Loring for his goodness towards me (his intents are evidently charitable and not wicked); but consider yourself as in nowise bound at all by that blotted Paper he has, but do the best you can for me, consulting with him or not taking any counsel just as you see to be fittest on the spot. And so Heaven prosper you, both in your "aroused Yankee" state, and in all others;—and let us for the present consider that we have enough about Books and Guineas. I must add, however, that Fraser and I have yet made no bargain. We found, on computing, that there would be five good volumes, including Teufelsdrockh. For an edition of Seven hundred and Fifty I demanded L50 a volume, and Fraser refused: the poor man then fell dangerously ill, and there could not be a word farther said on the subject; till very lately, when it again became possible, but has not yet been put in practice. All the world cries out, Why do you publish with Fraser? "Because my soul is sick of Booksellers, and of trade, and deception, and 'need and greed' altogether; and this poor Fraser, not worse than the rest of them, has in some sort grown less hideous to me by custom." I fancy, however, either Fraser will publish these things before long; or some Samaritan here will take me to some bolder brother of the trade that will. Great Samuel Johnson assisted at the beginning of Bibliopoly; small Thomas Carlyle assists at the ending of it: both are sorrowful seasons for a man. For the rest, people here continue to receive that Revolution very much as you say they do there: I am right well quit of it; and the elderly gentlemen on both sides of the water may take comfort, they will not soon have to suffer the like again. But really England is wonderfully changed within these ten years; the old gentlemen all shrunk into nooks, some of them even voting with the young.—The American ill-printed Two and-a-half-dollars Copy shall, for Emerson's sake, be welcomest to me of all. Kennet will send it when it comes.

The Oration did arrive, with my name on it, one snowy night in January. It is off to Madeira; probably there now. I can dispose of a score of copies to good advantage. Friend Sterling has done the best of all his things in the current Blackwood,— "Crystals from a Cavern,"—which see. He writes kind things of you from Madeira, in expectation of the Speech. I will gratify him with your message; he is to be here in May; better, we hope, and in the way towards safety. Miss Martineau has given you a luminous section in her new Book about America; you are one of the American "Originals,"—the good Harriet!

And now I have but one thing to add and to repeat: Be quiet, be quiet! The fire that is in one's own stomach is enough, without foreign bellows to blow it ever and anon. My whole heart shudders at the thrice-wretched self-combustion into which I see all manner of poor paper-lanterns go up, the wind of "popularity" puffing at them, and nothing left erelong but ashes and sooty wreck. It is sad, most sad. I shun all such persons and circles, as much as possible; and pray the gods to make me a brick layer's hodbearer rather. O the "cabriolets, neatflies," and blue twaddlers of both sexes therein, that drive many a poor Mrs. Rigmarole to the Devil!*—As for me, I continue doing as nearly nothing as I can manage. I decline all invitations of society that are declinable: a London rout is one of the maddest things under the moon; a London dinner makes me sicker for a week, and I say often, It is better to be even dull than to be witty, better to be silent than to speak.

———— * This sentence is a variation on one at the beginning of the article on Scott. ————

Curious: your Course of Lectures "on Human Culture" seems to be on the very subject I am to discourse upon here in May coming; but I am to call it "on the History of Literature," and speak it, not write it. While you read this, I shall be in the agonies! Ah me! often when I think of the matter, how my one sole wish is to be left to hold my tongue, and by what bayonets of Necessity clapt to my back I am driven into that Lecture-room, and in what mood, and ordered to speak or die, I feel as if my only utterance should be a flood of tears and blubbering! But that, clearly, will not do. Then again I think it is perhaps better so; who knows? At all events, we will try what is in this Lecturing in London. If something, well; if nothing, why also well. But I do want to get out of these coils for a tune. My Brother is to be home again in May; if he go back to Italy, if our Lecturing proved productive, why might we not all set off thitherward for the winter coming? There is a dream to that effect. It would suit my wife, too: she was alarmingly weak this time twelvemonth; and I can only yet tell you that she is stronger, not strong: she has not ventured out except at midday, and rarely then, since Autumn last; she sits here patiently waiting Summer, and charges me to send you her love.—America also always lies in the background: I do believe, if I live long, I shall get to Concord one day. Your wife must love me. If the little Boy be a well-behaved fellow, he shall ride on my back yet: if not, tell him I will have nothing to do with him, the riotous little imp that he is. And so God bless you always, my dear friend! Your affectionate,

—T. Carlyle

XXIII. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 10 May, 1838

My Dear Friend,—Yesterday I had your letter of March. It quickens my purpose (always all but ripe) to write to you. If it had come earlier I should have been confirmed in my original purpose of publishing Select Miscellanies of T.C. As it is, we are far on in the printing of the first two volumes (to make 900 pages) of the papers as they stand in your list. And now I find we shall only get as far as the seventeenth or eighteenth article. I regret it, because this book will not embrace those papers I chiefly desire to provide people with, and it may be some time, in these years of bankruptcy and famine, before we shall think it prudent to publish two volumes more. But Loring is a good man, and thinks that many desire to see the sources of Nile. I, for my part, fancy that to meet the taste of the readers we should publish from the last backwards, beginning with the paper on Scott, which has had the best reception ever known. Carlyleism is becoming so fashionable that the most austere Seniors are glad to qualify their reprobation by applauding this review. I have agreed with the bookseller publishing the Miscellanies that he is to guarantee to you one dollar on every copy he sells; and you are to have the total profit on every copy subscribed for. The retail price [is] to be $2.50. The cost of the work is not yet precisely ascertained. The work will probably appear in six or seven weeks. We print one thousand copies. So whenever it is sold you shall have one thousand dollars.

————— * Printed in the Athenaeum, July 8, 1882. —————

The French Revolution continues to find friends and purchasers. It has gone to New Orleans, to Nashville, to Vicksburg. I have not been in Boston lately, but have determined that nearly or quite eight hundred copies should be gone. On the 1st of July I shall make up accounts with the booksellers, and I hope to make you the most favorable returns. I shall use the advice of Barnard, Adams, & Co. in regard to remittances.

When you publish your next book I think you must send it out to me in sheets, and let us print it here contemporaneously with the English edition. The eclat of so new a book would help the sale very much.

But a better device would be, that you should embark in the "Victoria" steamer, and come in a fortnight to New York, and in twenty-four hours more to Concord. Your study arm-chair, fireplace, and bed, long vacant, auguring expect you. Then you shall revise your proofs and dictate wit and learning to the New World. Think of it in good earnest. In aid of your friendliest purpose, I will set down some of the facts. I occupy, or improve, as we Yankees say, two acres only of God's earth; on which is my house, my kitchen-garden, my orchard of thirty young trees, my empty barn. My house is now a very good one for comfort, and abounding in room. Besides my house, I have, I believe, $22,000, whose income in ordinary years is six percent. I have no other tithe or glebe except the income of my winter lectures, which was last winter $800. Well, with this income, here at home, I am a rich man. I stay at home and go abroad at my own instance. I have food, warmth, leisure, books, friends. Go away from home, I am rich no longer. I never have a dollar to spend on a fancy. As no wise man, I suppose, ever was rich in the sense of freedom to spend, because of the inundation of claims, so neither am I, who am not wise. But at home, I am rich,—rich enough for ten brothers. My wife Lidian is an incarnation of Christianity,—I call her Asia,—and keeps my philosophy from Antinomianism; my mother, whitest, mildest, most conservative of ladies, whose only exception to her universal preference for old things is her son; my boy, a piece of love and sunshine, well worth my watching from morning to night;—these, and three domestic women, who cook and sew and run for us, make all my household. Here I sit and read and write, with very little system, and, as far as regards composition, with the most fragmentary result: paragraphs incompressible, each sentence an infinitely repellent particle.

In summer, with the aid of a neighbor, I manage my garden; and a week ago I set out on the west side of my house forty young pine trees to protect me or my son from the wind of January. The ornament of the place is the occasional presence of some ten or twelve persons, good and wise, who visit us in the course of the year.—But my story is too long already. God grant that you will come and bring that blessed wife, whose protracted illness we heartily grieve to learn, and whom a voyage and my wife's and my mother's nursing would in less than a twelvemonth restore to blooming health. My wife sends to her this message: "Come, and I will be to you a sister." What have you to do with Italy? Your genius tendeth to the New, to the West. Come and live with me a year, and if you do not like New England well enough to stay, one of these years (when the History has passed its ten editions, and been translated into as many languages) I will come and dwell with you.

I gladly hear what you say of Sterling. I am foolish enough to be delighted with being an object of kindness to a man I have never seen, and who has not seen me. I have not yet got the Blackwood for March, which I long to see, but the other three papers I have read with great satisfaction. They lie here on my table. But he must get well.

As to Miss Martineau, I know not well what to say. Meaning to do me a signal kindness (and a kindness quite out of all measure of justice) she does me a great annoyance,—to take away from me my privacy and thrust me before my time (if ever there be a time) into the arena of the gladiators to be stared at. I was ashamed to read, and am ashamed to remember. Yet, as you see her, I would not be wanting in gratitude to a gifted and generous lady who so liberally transfigures our demerits. So you shall tell her, if you please, that I read all her book with pleasure but that part, and if ever I shall travel West or South, I think she has furnished me with the eyes. Farewell, dear wise man. I think your poverty honorable above the common brightness of that thorn-crown of the great. It earns you the love of men and the praise of a thousand years. Yet I hope the angelical Beldame, all-helping, all-hated, has given you her last lessons, and, finding you so striding a proficient, will dismiss you to a hundred editions and the adoration of the booksellers.

—R.W. Emerson

I have never heard from Rich, who, you wrote, had sent his account to me. Let him direct to me at Concord.

A young engineer in Cambridge, by name McKean,* volunteers his services in correcting the proofs of the Miscellanies,—and he has your errata,—for the love of the reading. Shall we have anthracite coal or wood in your chamber? My old mother is glad you are coming.

—————- * The late Mr. Henry S. McKean, a son of Professor McKean, and a graduate of Harvard College in 1828. —————-

XXIV. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 15 June, 1838

My Dear Emerson,—Our correspondence has fallen into a raveled state; which would doubtless clear itself could I afford to wait for your next Letter, probably tumbling over the Atlantic brine about this very moment: but I cannot afford to wait; I must write straightway. Your answer to this will bring matters round again. I have had two irregular Notes of your writing, or perhaps three; two dated March, one by Mr. Bancroft's Parcel,— bringing Twelve Orations withal; then some ten days later, just in this very time, another Note by Mr. Sumner, whom I have not yet succeeded in seeing, though I have attempted it, and hope soon to do it. The Letter he forwarded me from Paris was acknowledged already, I think. And now if the Atlantic will but float me in safe that other promised Letter!

I got your American French Revolution a good while ago. It seems to me a very pretty Book indeed, wonderfully so for the money; neither does it seem what we can call incorrectly printed so far as I have seen; compared with the last Sartor it is correctness itself. Many thanks to you, my Friend, and much good may it do us all! Should there be any more reprinting, I will request you to rectify at least the three following errors, copied out of the English text indeed; nay, mark them in your own New-English copy, whether there be reprinting or not: Vol. I. p. 81, last paragraph, for September read August; Vol. II. p. 344, first line, for book of prayer read look of prayer; p. 357, for blank read black (2d paragraph, "all black "). And so basta. And let us be well content about this F.R. on both sides of the water, yours as well as mine.

"Too many cooks"! the Proverb says: it is pity if this new apparition of a Mr. Loring should spoil the broth. But I calculate you will adjust it well and smoothly between you, some way or other. How you shall adjust it, or have adjusted it, is what I am practically anxious now to learn. For you are to understand that our English Edition has come to depend partly on yours. After long higgling with the foolish Fraser, I have quitted him, quite quietly, and given "Saunders and Ottley, Conduit Street," the privilege of printing a small edition of Teufelsdrockh (Five Hundred copies), with a prospect of the "Miscellaneous Writings" soon following. Saunders and Ottley are at least more reputable persons, they are useful to me also in the business of Lecturing. Teufelsdrockh is at Press, to be out very soon; I will send you a correct copy, the only one in America I fancy. The enterprise here too is on the "half-profits" plan, which I compute generally to mean equal partition of the oyster-shells and a net result of zero. But the thing will be economically useful to me otherwise; as a publication of the "Miscellaneous" also would be; which latter, however, I confess myself extremely unwilling to undertake the trouble of for nothing. To me they are grown or fast growing obsolete, these Miscellanies, for most part; if money lie not in them, what does lie for me? Now it strikes me you will infallibly edit these things, at least as well as I, and are doing it at any rate; your printing too would seem to be cheaper than ours: I said to Saunders and Ottley, Why not have two hundred or three hundred of this American Edition struck off with "London: Saunders and Ottley, Conduit Street," on the title-page, and sent over hither in sheets at what price they have cost my friends yonder? Saunders of course threw cold water on this project, but was obliged to admit that there would be some profit in it, and that for me it would be far easier. The grand profit for me is that people would understand better what I mean, and come better about me if I lectured again, which seems the only way of getting any wages at all for me here at present. Pray meditate my project, if it be not already too late, hear what your Booksellers say about it, and understand that I will not in any case set to printing till I hear from you in answer to this.

How my sheet is filling with dull talk about mere economics! I must still add that the Lecturing I talked of, last time, is verily over now; and well over. The superfine people listened to the rough utterance with patience, with favor, increasing to the last. I sent you a Newspaper once, to indicate that it was in progress. I know not yet what the money result is; but I suppose it will enable us to exist here thriftily another year; not without hope of at worst doing the like again when the time comes. It is a great novelty in my lot; felt as a very considerable blessing; and really it has arrived, if it have arrived, in due time, for I had begun to get quite impatient of the other method. Poverty and Youth may do; Poverty and Age go badly together.—For the rest, I feel fretted to fiddle-strings; my head and heart all heated, sick,—ah me! The question as ever is: Rest. But then where? My Brother invites us to come to Rome for the winter; my poor sick Wife might perhaps profit by it; as for me, Natty Leatherstocking's lodge in the Western Wood, I think, were welcomer still. I have a great mind, too, to run off and see my Mother, by the new railways. What we shall do, whether not stay quietly here, must remain uncertain for a week or two. Write you always hither, till you hear otherwise.

The Orations were right welcome; my Madeira one, returned thence with Sterling, was circulating over the West of England. Sterling and Harriet stretched out the right hand with wreathed smiles. I have read, a second or third time. Robert Southey has got a copy, for his own behoof and that of _Lake_land: if he keep his word as to me, he may do as much for you, or more. Copies are at Cambridge; among the Oxonians too; I have with stingy discretion distributed all my copies but two. Old Rogers, a grim old Dilettante, full of sardonic sense, was heard saying, "It is German Poetry given out in American Prose." Friend Emerson ought to be content;—and has now above all things, as I said, to be in no haste. Slow fire does make sweet malt: how true, how true! Also his next work ought to be a concrete thing; not theory any longer, but deed. Let him "live it," as he says; that is the way to come to "painting of it." Geometry and the art of Design being once well over, take the brush, and andar con Dios!

Mrs. Child has sent me a Book, Philothea, and a most magnanimous epistle. I have answered as I could. The Book is beautiful, but of a hectic beauty; to me not pleasant, even fatal looking. Such things grow not in the ground, on Mother Earth's honest bosom, but in hothouses,—Sentimental-Calvinist fire traceable underneath! Bancroft also is of the hothouse partly: I have a Note to send him by Sumner; do you thank him meanwhile, and say nothing about hothouses! But, on the whole, men ought in New England, too to "swallow their formulas";* there is no freedom till then: yet hitherto I find only one man there who seems fairly on the way towards that, or arrived at that. Good speed to him. I had to send my Wife's love: she is not dangerously ill; but always feeble, and has to struggle to keep erect; the summer always improves her, and this summer too. Adieu, dear Friend; may Good always be with you and yours.

—T. Carlyle

—————- * This was the saying of the old Marquis de Mirabeau concerning his son, Il a hume toutes les formules, and is used as a text by Carlyle in his article on Mirabeau. "Of inexpressible advantage is it that a man have 'an eye instead of a pair of spectacles merely'; that, seeing through the formulas of things and even 'making away' with many a formula, he see into the thing itself, and so know it and be master of it!" —————

XXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 30 July, 1838

My Dear Sir,—I am in town today to get what money the booksellers will relinquish from their faithful gripe, and have succeeded now in obtaining a first instalment, however small. I enclose to you a bill of exchange for fifty pounds sterling, which costs here exactly $242.22, the rate of exchange being nine percent. I shall not today trouble you with any account, for my letter must be quickly ready to go by the steam-packet. An exact account has been rendered to me, which, though its present balance in our favor is less than I expected, yet, as far as I understand it, agrees well with all that has been promised: at least the balance in our favor when the edition is sold, which the booksellers assure me will assuredly be done within a year from the publication, must be seven hundred and sixty dollars, and what more Heaven and the subscribers may grant. I shall follow this letter and bill by a duplicate of the bill in the next packet.

The Miscellanies is published in two volumes, a copy of which goes to you immediately. Munroe tells me that two hundred and fifty copies of it are already sold. Writing in a bookshop, my dear friend, I have no power to say aught than that I am heartily and always,

Yours,
R. Waldo Emerson

XXVI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 6 August, 1838

My Dear Friend,—The swift ships are slow when they carry our letters. Your letter dated the 15th of June arrived here last Friday, the 3d of August. That day I was in Boston, and I have only now got the information necessary to answer it. You have probably already learned from my letter sent by the "Royal William" (enclosing a bill of exchange for L50), that our first two volumes of the Miscellanies are published. I have sent you a copy. The edition consists of one thousand copies. Of these five hundred are bound, five hundred remain in sheets. The title-pages, of course, are all printed alike; but the publishers assure me that new title-pages can be struck off at a trifling expense, with the imprint of Saunders and Ottley. The cost of a copy in sheets or "folded" (if that means somewhat more?) is eighty-nine cents; and bound is $1.15. The retail price is $2.50 a copy; and the author's profit, $1; and the bookseller's, 35 cents per copy; according to my understanding of the written contract.

Here I believe you have all the material facts. I think there is no doubt that the book will sell very well here. But if, for the reasons you suggest, you wish any part of it, you can have it as soon as ships can bring your will.

When you see your copy, you will perceive that we have printed half the matter. I should presently begin to print the remainder, inclusive of the Article on Lockhart's Scott, in two more volumes; but now I think I shall wait until I hear from you. Of those books we will print a larger edition, say twelve hundred and fifty or fifteen hundred, if you want a part of it in London. For I feel confident now that our public here is one thousand strong. Write me therefore by the steam packet your wishes.

I am sure you will like our edition. It has been most carefully corrected by two young gentlemen who successively volunteered their services, (the second when the first was called away,) and who, residing in Cambridge, where the book was printed, could easilier oversee it. They are Henry S. McBean, an engineer, and Charles Stearns Wheeler, a Divinity student,—working both for love of you. To one other gentleman I have brought you in debt, —Rev. Convers Francis* (brother of Mrs. Child), who supplied from his library all the numbers of the Foreign Review from which we printed the work. We could not have done without his books, and he is a noble-hearted man, who rejoices in you. I have sent to all three copies of the work as from you, and I shall be glad if you will remember to sanction this expressly in your next letter.

————— * This worthy man and lover of good books was, from 1842 till his death in 1863, Professor in the Divinity School of Harvard University. —————

Thanks for the letter: thanks for your friendliest seeking of friends for the poor Oration. Poor little pamphlet, to have gone so far and so high! I am ashamed. I shall however send you a couple more of the thin gentry presently, maugre all your hopes and cautions. I have written and read a kind of sermon to the Senior Class of our Cambridge Theological School a fortnight ago; and an address to the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College;* for though I hate American pleniloquence, I cannot easily say No to young men who bid me speak also. And both these are now in press. The first I hear is very offensive. I will now try to hold my tongue until next winter. But I am asked continually when you will come to Boston. Your lectures are boldly and joyfully expected by brave young men. So do not forget us: and if ever the scale-beam trembles, I beseech you, let the love of me decide for America. I will not dare to tease you on a matter of so many relations, and so important, and especially as I have written out, I believe, my requests in a letter sent two or three months ago,—but I must see you somewhere, somehow, may it please God! I grieve to hear no better news of your wife. I hoped she was sound and strong ere this, and can only hope still. My wife and I send her our hearty love.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

—————- * The Address at the Cambridge Divinity School was delivered on the 15th of July, and that at Dartmouth College on the 24th of the same month. The title of the latter was "Literary Ethics." Both are reprinted in Emerson's Miscellanies. These remarkable discourses excited deep interest and wide attention. They established Emerson's position as the leader of what was known as the Transcendental movement. They were the expressions of his inmost convictions and his matured thought. The Address at the Divinity School gave rise to a storm of controversy which did not disturb the serenity of its author. "It was," said Theodore Parker, "the noblest, the most inspiring strain I ever listened to." To others it seemed "neither good divinity nor good sense." The Address at Dartmouth College set forth the high ideals of intellectual life with an eloquence made irresistible by the character of the speaker. From this time Emerson's influence upon thought in America was acknowledged. —————

XXVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, (Annandale, Scotland) 25 September, 1838

My Dear Emerson,—There cannot any right answer be written you here and now; yet I must write such answer as I can. You said, "by steamship"; and it strikes me with a kind of remorse, on this my first day of leisure and composure, that I have delayed so long. For you must know, this is my Mother's house,—a place to me unutterable as Hades and the Land of Spectres were; likewise that my Brother is just home from Italy, and on the wing thitherward or somewhither swiftly again; in a word, that all is confusion and flutter with me here,—fit only for silence! My Wife sent me off hitherward, very sickly and unhappy, out of the London dust, several weeks ago; I lingered in Fifeshire, I was in Edinburgh, in Roxburghshire; have some calls to Cumberland, which I believe I must refuse; and prepare to creep homeward again, refreshed in health, but with a head and heart all seething and tumbling (as the wont is, in such cases), and averse to pens beyond all earthly implements. But my Brother is off for Dumfries this morning; you before all others deserve an hour of my solitude. I will abide by business; one must write about that.

Your Bill and duplicate of a Bill for L50, with the two Letters that accompanied them, you are to know then, did duly arrive at Chelsea; and the larger Letter (of the 6th of August) was forwarded to me hither some two weeks ago. I had also, long before that, one of the friendliest of Letters from you, with a clear and most inviting description of the Concord Household, its inmates and appurtenances; and the announcement, evidently authentic, that an apartment and heart's welcome was ready there for my Wife and me; that we were to come quickly, and stay for a twelvemonth. Surely no man has such friends as I. We ought to say, May the Heavens give us thankful hearts! For, in truth, there are blessings which do, like sun-gleams in wild weather, make this rough life beautiful with rainbows here and there. Indicating, I suppose, that there is a Sun, and general Heart of Goodness, behind all that;—for which, as I say again, let us be thankful evermore.

My Wife says she received your American Bill of so many pounds sterling for the Revolution Book, with a "pathetic feeling" which brought "tears" to her eyes. From beyond the waters there is a hand held out; beyond the waters too live brothers. I would only the Book were an Epic, a Dante, or undying thing, that New England might boast in after times of this feat of hers; and put stupid, poundless, and penniless Old England to the blush about it! But after all, that is no matter; the feebler the well- meant Book is, the more "pathetic" is the whole transaction: and so we will go on, fuller than ever of "desperate hope" (if you know what that is), with a feeling one would not give and could not get for several money-bags; and say or think, Long live true friends and Emersons, and (in Scotch phrase) "May ne'er waur be amang us!"—I will buy something permanent, I think, out of this L50, and call it either Ebenezer or Yankee-doodle-doo. May good be repaid you manifold, my kind Brother! may good be ever with you, my kind Friends all!

But now as to this edition of the Miscellanies (poor things), I really think my Wife is wisest, who says I ought to leave you altogether to your own resources with it, America having an art of making money out of my Books which England is unfortunately altogether without. Besides, till I once see the Two Volumes now under way, and can let a Bookseller see them, there could no bargain be made on the subject. We will let it rest there, therefore. Go on with your second Two Volumes, as if there were no England extant, according to your own good judgment. When I get to London, I will consult some of the blockheads with the Book in my hand: if we do want Two Hundred copies, you can give us them with a trifling loss. It is possible they may make some better proposal about an Edition here: that depends on the fate of Sartor here, at present trying itself; which I have not in the least ascertained. For the present, thank as is meet all friends in your world that have interested themselves for me. Alas! I have nothing to give them but thanks. Henry McKean, Charles Wheeler, Convers Francis; these Names shall, if it please Heaven, become Persons for me, one day. Well!—But I will say nothing more. That too is of the things on which all Words are poor to Silence. Good to the Good and Kind!

A Letter from me must have crossed that descriptive Concord one, on the Ocean, I think. Our correspondence is now standing on its feet. I will write to you again, whether I hear from you or not, so soon as my hand finds its cunning again in London,—so soon as I can see there what is to be done or said. All goes decidedly better, I think. My Wife was and is much healthier than last year, than in any late year. I myself get visibly quieter my preternatural Meditations in Hades, apropos of this Annandale of mine, are calm compared with those of last year. By another Course of Lectures I have a fair prospect of living for another season; nay, people call it a "new profession" I have devised for myself, and say I may live by it as many years as I like. This too is partly the fruit of my poor Book; one should not say that it was worth nothing to me even in money. Last year I fancied my Audience mainly the readers of it; drawn round me, in spite of many things, by force of it. Let us be content. I have Jesuits, Swedenborgians, old Quakeresses, omne cum Proteus, —God help me, no man ever had so confused a public!—I salute you, my dear Friend, and your hospitable circle. May blessings be on your kind household, on your kind hearts!

—T. Carlyle

A copy of the English Teufelsdrockh has lain with your name on it these two months in Chelsea; waiting an opportunity. It is worth nothing to you: a dingy, ill-managed edition; but correct or nearly correct as to printing; it is right that such should be in your hands in case of need. The New England Pamphlets will be greedily expected. More than one inquires of me, Has that Emerson of yours written nothing else? And I have lent them the little Book Nature, till it is nearly thumbed to pieces. Sterling is gone to Italy for the winter since I left town; swift as a flash! I cannot teach him the great art of sitting still; his fine qualities are really like to waste for want of that.

I read your paragraph to Miss Martineau; she received it, as she was bound, with a good grace. But I doubt, I doubt, O Ralph Waldo Emerson, thou hast not been sufficiently ecstatic about her,—thou graceless exception, confirmatory of a rule! In truth there are bores, of the first and of all lower magnitudes. Patience and shuffle the cards.

XXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 17 October, 1838

My Dear Friend,—I am quite uneasy that I do not hear from you. On the 21st of July I wrote to you and enclosed a remittance of L50 by a Bill of Exchange on Baring Brothers, drawn by Chandler, Howard, & Co., which was sent in the steamer "Royal William." On the 2d of August I received your letter of inquiry respecting our edition of the Miscellanies, and wrote a few days later in reply, that we could send you out two or three hundred copies of our first two volumes, in sheets, at eighty-nine cents per copy of two volumes, and the small additional price of the new title- page. I said also that I would wait until I heard from you before commencing the printing of the last two volumes of the Miscellanies, and, if you desired it, would print any number of copies with a title-page for London. This letter went in a steamer—he "Great Western" probably—about the 10th or 12th of August. (Perhaps I misremember the names [of the steamers], and the first should be last.) I have heard nothing from you since. I trust my letters have not miscarried. (A third was sent also by another channel inclosing a duplicate of the Bill of Exchange.) With more fervency, I trust that all goes well in the house of my friend,—and I suppose that you are absent on some salutary errand of repairs and recreation. Use, I pray you, your earliest hour in certifying me of the facts.

One word more in regard to business. I believe I expressed some surprise, in the July letter, that the booksellers should have no greater balance for us at this settlement. I have since studied the account better, and see that we shall not be disappointed in the year of obtaining at least the sum first promised,—seven hundred and sixty dollars; but the whole expense of the edition is paid out of the copies first sold, and our profits depend on the last sales. The edition is almost gone, and you shall have an account at the end of the year.

In a letter within a twelvemonth I have urged you to pay us a visit in America, and in Concord. I have believed that you would come one day, and do believe it. But if, on your part, you have been generous and affectionate enough to your friends here—or curious enough concerning our society—to wish to come, I think you must postpone, for the present, the satisfaction of your friendship and your curiosity. At this moment I would not have you here, on any account. The publication of my Address to the Divinity College (copies of which I sent you) has been the occasion of an outcry in all our leading local newspapers against my "infidelity," "pantheism," and "atheism." The writers warn all and sundry against me, and against whatever is supposed to be related to my connection of opinion, &c.; against Transcendentalism, Goethe, and Carlyle. I am heartily sorry to see this last aspect of the storm in our washbowl. For, as Carlyle is nowise guilty, and has unpopularities of his own, I do not wish to embroil him in my parish differences. You were getting to be a great favorite with us all here, and are daily a greater with the American public, but just now, in Boston, where I am known as your editor, I fear you lose by the association. Now it is indispensable to your right influence here, that you should never come before our people as one of a clique, but as a detached, that is, universally associated man; so I am happy, as I could not have thought, that you have not yielded yourself to my entreaties. Let us wait a little until this foolish clamor be overblown. My position is fortunately such as to put me quite out of the reach of any real inconvenience from the panic-strikers or the panic-struck; and, indeed, so far as this uneasiness is a necessary result of mere inaction of mind, it seems very clear to me that, if I live, my neighbors must look for a great many more shocks, and perhaps harder to bear.

The article on German Religious Writers in the last Foreign Quarterly Review suits our meridian as well as yours; as is plainly signified by the circumstance that our newspapers copy into their columns the opening tirade and no more. Who wrote that paper? And who wrote the paper on Montaigne in the Westminster? I read with great satisfaction the Poems and Thoughts of Archaeus in Blackwood. "The Sexton's Daughter" is a beautiful poem: and I recognize in them all the Soul, with joy and love. Tell me of the author's health and welfare; or, will not he love me so much as to write me a letter with his own hand? And tell me of yourself, what task of love and wisdom the Muses impose; and what happiness the good God sends to you and yours. I hope your wife has not forgotten me.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

The Miscellanies, Vols. I. and II., are a popular book. About five hundred copies have been sold. The second article on Jean Paul works with might on the inner man of young men. I hate to write you letters on business and facts like this. There are so few Friends that I think some time I shall meet you nearer, for I love you more than is fit to say. W.H. Channing has written a critique on you, which I suppose he has sent you, in the Boston Review.

XXIX. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London 7 November, 1838

My Dear Friend,—It is all right; all your Letters with their inclosures have arrived in due succession: the last, inquiring after the fate of the others, came this morning. I was in Scotland, as you partly conjecture; I wrote to you already (though not without blamable delay), from my Mother's house in Annandale, a confused scrawl, which I hope has already got to hand, and quieted your kind anxieties. I am as well as usual in health, my Wife better than usual; nothing is amiss, except my negligence and indolence, which has put you to this superfluous solicitude on my account. However, I have an additional Letter by it; you must pardon me, you must not grudge me that undeserved pleasure, the reward of evil-doing. I may well say, you are a blessing to me on this Earth; no Letter comes from you with other than good tidings,—or can come while you live there to love me.

The Bill was thrust duly into Baring's brass slit "for acceptance," on my return hither some three weeks ago; and will, no doubt, were the days of grace run, come out in the shape of Fifty Pounds Sterling; a very curious product indeed. Do you know what I think of doing with it? Dyspepsia, my constant attendant in London, is incapable of help in my case by any medicine or appliance except one only, Riding on horseback. With a good horse to whirl me over the world for two hours daily, I used to keep myself supportably well. Here, the maintenance of a Horse far transcends my means; yet it seems hard I should not for a little while be in a kind of approximate health in this Babylon where I have my bread to seek it is like swimming with a millstone round your neck,—ah me! In brief, I am about half resolved to buy myself a sharp little nag with Twenty of these Transatlantic Pounds, and ride him till the other Thirty be eaten: I will call the creature "Yankee," and kind thoughts of those far away shall be with me every time I mount him. Will not that do? My Wife says it is the best plan I have had for years, and strongly urges it on. My kind friends!

As to those copies of the Carlyle Miscellanies, I unfortunately still can say nothing, except what was said in the former (Scotch) letter, that you must proceed in the business with an eye to America and not to us. My Booksellers, Saunders and Ottley, have no money for me, no definite offer in money to make for those Two Hundred copies, of which you seem likely to make money if we simply leave them alone. I have asked these Booksellers, I have asked Fraser too: What will you give me in ready money for Two Hundred and Fifty copies of that work, sell it afterwards as you can? They answer always, We must see it first. Now the copy long ago sent me has never come to hand; I have asked for it of Kennet, but without success; I have nothing for it but to wait the winds and chances. Meanwhile Saunders and Ottley want forsooth a Sketches of German Literature in three volumes: then a Miscellanies in three volumes: that is their plan of publishing an English edition; and the outlook they hold out for me is certain trouble in this matter, and recompense entirely uncertain. I think on the whole it is extremely likely I shall apply to you for Two Hundred and Fifty copies (that is their favorite number) of these four volumes, (nay, if it be of any moment, you can bind me down to it now, and take it for sure,) but I cannot yet send you the title-page; no bookseller purchasing till "we see it first." But after all, will it suit America to print an unequal number of your two pairs of volumes? Do not the two together make one work? On the whole, consider that I shall in all likelihood want Two Hundred and Fifty copies, and consider it certain if that will serve the enterprise: we must leave it here today. I will stir in it now, however, and take no rest till in one way or other you do get a title-page from me, or some definite deliverance on the matter. O Athenians, what a trouble I give, having got your applauses!

Kennet the Bookseller gave me yesterday (on my way to "the City" with that Brother of mine, the Italian Doctor who is here at present and a great lover of yours) ten copies of your Dartmouth Oration: we read it over dinner in a chop-house in Bucklersbury, amid the clatter of some fifty stand of knives and forks; and a second time more leisurely at Chelsea here. A right brave Speech; announcing, in its own way, with emphasis of full conviction, to all whom it may concern, that great forgotten truth, Man is still man. May it awaken a pulsation under the ribs of Death! I believe the time is come for such a Gospel. They must speak it out who have it,—with what audience there may be. I have given away two copies this morning; I will take care of the rest. Go on, and speed.—And now where is the heterodox Divinity one, which awakens such "tempest in a washbowl," brings Goethe, Transcendentalism, and Carlyle into question, and on the whole evinces "what [difference] New England also makes between Pan-theism and Pot-theism"? I long to see that; I expect to congratulate you on that too. Meanwhile we will let the washbowl storm itself out; and Emerson at Concord shall recognize it for a washbowl storming, and hold on his way. As to my share in it, grieve not for half an instant. Pantheism, Pottheism, Mydoxy, Thydoxy, are nothing at all to me; a weariness the whole jargon, which I avoid speaking of, decline listening to: Live, for God's sake, with what Faith thou couldst get; leave off speaking about Faith! Thou knowest it not. Be silent, do not speak.—As to you, my friend, you are even to go on, giving still harder shocks if need be; and should I come into censure by means of you, there or here, think that I am proud of my company; that, as the boy Hazlitt said after hearing Coleridge, "I will go with that man"; or, as our wild Burns has it,

"Wi' sic as he, where'er he be,
May I be saved or damned!"

Oime! what a foolish goose of a world this is! If it were not [for] here and there an articulate-speaking man, one would be all-too lonely.

This is nothing at all like the letter I meant to write you; but I will write again, I trust, in few days, and the first paragraph shall, if possible, hold all the business. I have much to tell you, which perhaps is as well not written. O that I did see you face to face! But the time shall come, if Heaven will. Why not you come over, since I cannot? There is a room here, there is welcome here, and two friends always. It must be done one way or the other. I will take, care of your messages to Sterling. He is in Florence; he was the Author of Montaigne.* The Foreign Quarterly Reviewer of Strauss I take to be one Blackie, an Advocate in Edinburgh, a frothy, semi-confused disciple of mine and other men's; I guess this, but I have not read the Article: the man Blackie is from Aberdeen, has been roaming over Europe, and carries more sail than ballast. Brother John, spoken of above, is knocking at the door even now; he is for Italy again, we expect, in few days, on a better appointment: know that you have a third friend in him under this roof,—a man who quarrels with me all day in a small way, and loves me with the whole soul of him. My Wife demanded to have "room for one line." What she is to write I know not, except it be what she has said, holding up the pamphlet, "Is it not a noble thing? None of them all but he," &c., &c. I will write again without delay when the stray volumes arrive; before that if they linger. Commend me to all the kind household of Concord: Wife, Mother, and Son.

Ever yours,
T. Carlyle

————- * See ante, p. 184. Sterling's essay on Montaigne was his first contribution, in 1837, to the London and Westminster Review. It is reprinted in "Essays and Tales, by John Sterling, collected and edited, with a Memoir of his Life, by Julius Charles Hare," London, 1848, Vol. I. p. 129. —————

"Forgotten you?" O, no indeed! If there were nothing else to remember you by, I should never forget the Visitor, who years ago in the Desert descended on us, out of the clouds as it were, and made one day there look like enchantment for us, and left me weeping that it was only one day. When I think of America, it is of you,—neither Harriet Martineau nor any one else succeeds in giving me a more extended idea of it. When I wish to see America it is still you, and those that are yours. I read all that you write with an interest which I feel in no other writing but my Husband's,—or it were nearer the truth to say there is no other writing of living men but yours and his that I can read. God Bless you and Weib and Kind. Surely I shall some day see you all.

Your affectionate
Jane Carlyle

XXX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 15 November, 1835

Dear Emerson,—Hardly above a week ago, I wrote you in immediate answer to some friendly inquiries produced by negligence of mine: the Letter is probably tumbling on the salt waves at this hour, in the belly of the "Great Western"; or perhaps it may be still on firm land waiting, in which case this will go along with it. I had written before out of Scotland a Letter of mere acknowledgment and postponement; you must have received that before now, I imagine. Our small piece of business is now become articulate, and I will despatch it in a paragraph. Pity my stupidity that I did not put the thing on this footing long ago! It never struck me till the other day that though no copy of our Miscellanies would turn up for inspection here, and no Bookseller would bargain for a thing unseen, I myself might bargain, and leave their hesitations resting on their own basis. In fine, I have rejected all their schemes of printing Miscellaneous Works here, printing Sketches of German Literature, or printing anything whatever on the "half-profits system," which is like toilsomely scattering seed into the sea: and I settled yesterday with Fraser to give him the American sheets, and let them sell themselves, on clear principles, or remain unsold if they like. I find it infinitely the best plan, and to all appearance the profitablest as to money that could have been devised for me.

What you have to do therefore is to get Two Hundred and Fifty copies (in sheets) of the whole Four Volumes, so soon as the second two are printed, and have them, with the proper title- page, sent off hither to Fraser's address; the sooner the better. The American title-page, instead of "Boston," &c. at the bottom, will require to bear, in three lines "London: / James Fraser, 215 Regent Street, / 1839." Fraser is anxious that you should not spell him with a z; your man can look on the Magazine and beware. I suppose also you should print labels for the backs of the four volumes, to be used by the half-binder; they do the books in that way here now: but if it occasion any difficulty, never mind this; it was not spoken of to Fraser, and is my own conjecture merely; the thing can be managed in various other ways. Two Hundred and Fifty copies, then, of the entire book: there is nothing else to be attended to that you do not understand as well as I. Fraser will announce it in his Magazine: the eager, select public will wait. Probably, there is no chance before the middle of March or so? Do not hurry yourselves, or at all change your rate for us: but so soon as the work is ready in the course of Nature, the earliest conveyance to the Port of London will bring a little cargo which one will welcome with a strange feeling! I declare myself delighted with the plan; an altogether romantic kind of plan, of romance and reality: fancy me riding on Yankee withal, at the time, and considering what a curious world this is, that bakes bread for one beyond the great Ocean-stream, and how a poor man is not left after all to be trodden into the gutters, though the fight went sore against him, and he saw no backing anywhere. Allah akbar! God is great; no saying truer than that.—And so now, by the blessing of Heaven, we will talk no more of business this day.

My employments, my outlooks, condition, and history here, were a long chapter; on which I could like so well to talk with you face to face; but as for writing of them, it is a mere mockery. In these four years, so full of pain and toil, I seem to have lived four decades. By degrees, the creature gets accustomed to its element; the salamander learns to live in fire, and be of the same temperature with it. Ah me! I feel as if grown old innumerable things are become weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable. And yet perhaps I am not old, only wearied, and there is a stroke or two of work in me yet. For the rest, the fret and agitation of this Babylon wears me down: it is the most unspeakable life; of sunbeams and miry clay; a contradiction which no head can reconcile. Pain and poverty are not wholesome; but praise and flattery along with them are poison: God deliver us from that; it carries madness in the very breath of it! On the whole, I say to myself, what thing is there so good as rest? A sad case it is and a frequent one in my circle, to be entirely cherubic, all face and wings. "Mes enfans," said a French gentleman to the cherubs in the Picture, "Mes enfans, asseyez-vous?"—"Monseigneur," answer they, "il n'y a pas de quoi!" I rejoice rather in my laziness; proving that I can sit.—But, after all, ought I not to be thankful? I positively can, in some sort, exist here for the while; a thing I had been for many years ambitious of to no purpose. I shall have to lecture again in spring, Heaven knows on what; it will be a wretched fever for me; but once through it there will be board wages for another year. The wild Ishmael can hunt in this desert too, it would seem. I say, I will be thankful; and wait quietly what farther is to come, or whether anything farther. But indeed, to speak candidly, I do feel sometimes as if another Book were growing in me,—though I almost tremble to think of it. Not for this winter, O no! I will write an Article merely, or some such thing, and read trash if better be not. This, I do believe, is my horoscope for the next season: an Article on something about New-Year's-day (the Westminster Editor, a good- natured, admiring swan-goose from the North Country, will not let me rest); then Lectures; then—what? I am for some practical subject too; none of your pictures in the air, or aesthetisches Zeug (as Mullner's wife called it, Mullner of the Midnight Blade): nay, I cannot get up the steam on any such best; it is extremely irksome as well as fruitless at present. In the next Westminster Review, therefore, if you see a small scrub of a paper signed "S.P." on one Varnhagen a German, say that it is by "Simon Pure," or by "Scissars and Paste," or even by "Soaped Pig"—whom no man shall catch! Truly it is a secret which you must not mention: I was driven to it by the Swan-goose above mentioned, not Mill but another. Let this suffice for my winter's history: may the summer be more productive.

As for Concord and New England, alas! my Friend, I should but deface your Idyllion with an ugly contradiction, did I come in such mood as mine is. I am older in years than you; but in humor I am older by centuries. What a hope is in that ever young heart, cheerful, healthful as the morning! And as for me, you have no conception what a crabbed, sulky piece of sorrow and dyspepsia I am grown; and growing, if I do not draw bridle. Let me gather heart a little! I have not forgotten Concord or the West; no, it lies always beautiful in the blue of the horizon, afar off and yet attainable; it is a great possession to me; should it even never be attained. But I have got to consider lately that it is you who are coming hither first. That is the right way, is it not? New England is becoming more than ever part of Old England; why, you are nearer to us now than Yorkshire was a hundred years ago; this is literally a fact: you can come without making your will. It is one of my calculations that all Englishmen from all zones and hemispheres will, for a good while yet, resort occasionally to the Mother- Babel, and see a thing or two there. Come if you dare; I said there was a room, house-room and heart-room, constantly waiting you here, and you shall see blockheads by the million. Pickwick himself shall be visible; innocent young Dickens reserved for a questionable fate. The great Wordsworth shall talk till you yourself pronounce him to be a bore. Southey's complexion is still healthy mahogany-brown, with a fleece of white hair, and eyes that seem running at full gallop. Leigh Hunt, "man of genius in the shape of a Cockney," is my near neighbor, full of quips and cranks, with good humor and no common sense. Old Rogers with his pale head, white, bare, and cold as snow, will work on you with those large blue eyes, cruel, sorrowful, and that sardonic shelf-chin:—This is the Man, O Rogers, that wrote the German Poetry in American Prose; consider him well!—But whither am I running? My sheet is done! My Brother John returns again almost immediately to Italy. He has got appointed Traveling Doctor to a certain Duke of Buccleuch, the chief of our Scotch Dukes: an excellent position for him as far as externals go. His departure will leave me lonelier; but I must reckon it for the best: especially I must begin working. Harriet Martineau is coming hither this evening; with beautiful enthusiasm for the Blacks and others. She is writing a Novel. The first American book proved generally rather wearisome, the second not so; we have since been taught (not I) "How to observe." Suppose you and I promulgate a treatise next, "How to see"? The old plan was, to have a pair of _eyes _first of all, and then to open them: and endeavor with your whole strength to look. The good Harriet! But "God," as the Arabs say, "has given to every people a Prophet (or Poet) in its own speech": and behold now Unitarian mechanical Formalism was to have its Poetess too; and stragglings of genius were to spring up even through that like grass through a Macadam highway!—Adieu, my Friend, I wait still for your heterodox Speech; and love you always.

—T. Carlyle

An English Sartor goes off to you this day; through Kennet, to C.C. Little and J. Brown of Boston; the likeliest conveyance. It is correctly printed, and that is all. Its fate here (the fate of the publication, I mean) remains unknown; "unknown and unimportant."

XXXI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 2 December, 1838

My Dear Emerson,—Almost the very day after my last Letter went off, the long-expected two volumes of Miscellanies arrived. The heterodox pamphlet has never yet come to hand. I am now to write you again about that Miscellany concern the fourth letter, I do believe; but it is confirmatory of the foregoing three, and will be the last, we may hope.

Fraser is charmed with the look of your two volumes; declares them unsurpassable by art of his; and wishes (what is the main part of this message) that you would send his cargo in the bound state, bound and lettered as these are, with the sole difference that the leaves be not cut, or shaved on the sides, our English fashion being to have them rough. He is impatient that the Book were here; desires further that it be sent to the Port of London rather than another Port, and that it be packed in boxes "to keep the covers of the volumes safe,"—all which I doubt not the Packers and the Shippers of New England have dexterity enough to manage for the best, without desire of his. If you have printed off nothing yet, I will desire for my own behoof that Two hundred and Sixty be the number sent; I find I shall need some ten to give away: if your first sheet is printed off, let the number stand as it was. It would be an improvement if you could print our title-pages on paper a little stronger; that would stand ink, I mean: the fly leaves in the same, if you have such paper convenient; if not, not. Farther as to the matter of the title-page, it seems to me your Printer might give a bolder and a broader type to the words "Critical and Miscellaneous," and add after "Essays" with a colon (:), the line "Collected and Republished," with a colon also; then the "By," &c. "In Four Volumes, Vol. I.," &c. I mean that we want, in general, a little more ink and decisiveness: show your man the title-page of the English French Revolution, or look at it your self, and you will know. R.W.E.'s "Advertisement," friendly and good, as all his dealings are to me ward, will of course be suppressed in the English copies. I see not that with propriety I can say anything by way of substitute: silence and the New England imprint will tell the story as eloquently as there is need.

For the rest you must tell Mr. Loring, and all men who had a hand in it along with you, that I am altogether right well pleased with this edition, and find it far beyond my expectation. To my two young Friends, Henry S. McKean (be so good as write these names more indisputably for me) and Charles Stearns Wheeler, in particular, I will beg you to express emphatically my gratitude; they have stood by me with right faithfulness, and made the correctest printing; a great service had I known that there were such eyes and heads acting in behalf of me there, I would have scraped out the Editorial blotches too (notes of admiration, dashes, "We think"s, &c., &c., common in Jeffrey's time in the Edinburgh Review) and London misprints; which are almost the only deformities that remain now. It is extremely correct printing wherever I have looked, and many things are silently amended; it is the most fundamental service of all. I have not the other Articles by me at present; I think they are of themselves a little more correct; at all events there are nothing but misprints to deal with;—the Editors, by this time, had got bound up to let me alone. In the Life of Scott, fourth page of it (p. 296 of our edition), there is a sentence to be deleted. "It will tell us, say they, little new and nothing pleasing to know": out with this, for it is nonsense, and was marked for erasure in the manuscript, I dare say. I know with certainty no more at present.

Fraser is to sell the Four Volumes at Two Guineas here. On studying accurately your program of the American mercantile method, I stood amazed to contrast it with our English one. The Bookseller here admits that he could, by diligent bargaining, get up such a book for something like the same cost or a little more; but the "laws of the trade" deduct from the very front of the selling price—how much think you—forty percent and odd, when your man has only fifteen; for the mere act of vending! To cover all, they charge that enormous price. (A man, while I stood consulting with Fraser, came in and asked for Carlyle's Revolution; they showed it him, he asked the price; and exclaimed, "Guinea and a half! I can get it from America for nine shillings!" and indignantly went his way; not without reason.) There are "laws of the trade" which ought to be repealed; which I will take the liberty of contravening to all lengths by all opportunities—if I had but the power! But if this joint-stock American plan prosper, it will answer rarely. Fraser's first French Revolution, for instance, will be done, he calculates, about New-Year's-day; and a second edition wanted; mine to do with what I like. If you in America wanted more also—? I leave you to think of this.—And now enough, enough!

My Brother went from us last Tuesday; ought to be in Paris yesterday. I am yet writing nothing; feel forsaken, sad, sick, —not unhappy. In general Death seems beautiful to me; sweet and great. But Life also is beautiful, is great and divine, were it never to be joyful any more. I read Books, my wife sewing by me, with the light of a sinumbra, in a little apartment made snug against the winter; and am happiest when all men leave me alone, or nearly all,—though many men love me rather, ungrateful that I am. My present book is Horace Walpole; I get endless stuff out of it; epic, tragic, lyrical, didactic: all inarticulate indeed. An old blind Schoolmaster in Annan used to ask with endless anxiety when a new scholar was offered him, "But are ye sure he's not a Dunce?" It is really the one thing needful in a man; for indeed (if we will candidly understand it) all else is presupposed in that. Horace Walpole is no dunce, not a fibre of him is duncish.

Your Friend Sumner was here yesterday, a good while, for the first time: an ingenious, cultivated, courteous man; a little sensitive or so, and with no other fault that I discerned. He borrowed my copy of your Dartmouth business, and bound himself over to return with it soon. Some approve of that here, some condemn: my Wife and another lady call it better even than the former, I not so good. And now the Heterodox, the Heterodox, where is that? Adieu, my dear Friend. Commend me to the Concord Household; to the little Boy, to his Grandmother, and Mother, and Father; we must all meet some day,—or some no-day then (as it shall please God)! My Wife heartily greets you all.

Ever yours,
T. Carlyle

I sent your book, message, and address to Sterling; he is in Florence or Rome. Read the article Simonides by him in the London and Westminster—brilliant prose, translations—wooden? His signature is L (Pounds Sterling!).—Now you are to write soon? I always forgot to tell you, there came long since two packages evidently in your hand, marked "One printed sheet," and "one Newspaper," for which the Postman demanded about Fifteen shillings: rejected. After considerable correspondence the Newspaper was again offered me at ten pence; the sheet unattainable altogether: "No," even at tenpence. The fact is, it was wrong wrapped, that Newspaper. Leave it open at the ends, and try me again, once; I think it will come almost gratis. Steam and Iron are making all the Planet into one Village.—A Mr. Dwight wrote to me about the dedicating of some German translations: Yes. What are they or he?*—Your Sartor is off through Kennet. Could you send me two copies of the American Life of Schiller, if the thing is fit for making a present of, and easy to be got? If not, do not mind it at all.—Addio!

——————- * Mr. John S. Dwight, whose volume of Select Minor Poems from the German of Goethe and Schiller, published in 1839, was dedicated to Carlyle. It was the third volume of _Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, edited by George Ripley. Beside Mr. Dwight's own excellent versions, it contained translations by Mr. Bancroft, Dr. Hedge, Dr. Frothingham, and others. For many years Mr. Dwight rendered a notable public service as the editor of Dwight's Journal of Music,—a publication which did more than any other to raise and to maintain high the standard of musical taste and culture in America. ————-

XXXII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 13 January, 1839

My Dear Friend,—I am not now in any Condition to write a letter, having neither the facts from the booksellers which you would know touching our future plans, nor yet a satisfactory account balanced and settled of our past dealings; and lastly, no time to write what I would say,—as my poor lectures are in full course, and absorb all my wits; but as the "Royal William" will not wait, and as I have a hundred pounds to send on account of the sales of the French Revolution, I must steal a few minutes to send my salutation. I have received all your four good letters: and you are a good and generous man to write so many. Two came on the 2d and 3d of January, and the last on the 9th. If the bookselling Munroe had answered me yesterday, as he ought, I should be able to satisfy you as to the time when to expect our cargo of Miscellanies. The third and fourth volumes are now printing: 't is a fortnight since we began. You shall have two hundred and fifty copies,—I am not quite sure you can have more,—bound, and entitled, and directed as you desire, at least according to the best ability of our printer as far as the typography is concerned, and we will speed the work as fast as we can; but as we have but a single copy of Fraser's Magazine—we do not get on rapidly. The French Revolution was all sold more than a month since. We should be glad of more copies, but the bookseller thinks not of enough copies to justify a new edition yet. I should not be surprised, however, to see that some bold brother of the trade had undertaken it. Now, what does your question point at in reference to your new edition, asking "if we want more"? Could you send us out a part of your edition at American prices, and at the same time to your advantage? I wish I knew the precise answer to this question, then perhaps I could keep all pirates out of our bay.

I shall convey in two days your message to Stearns Wheeler, who is now busy in correcting the new volumes. He is now Greek Tutor in Harvard College.*—Kindest thanks to Jane Carlyle for her generous remembrances, which I will study to deserve. Has the heterodoxy arrived in Chelsea, and quite destroyed us even in the charity of our friend? I am sorry to have worried you so often about the summer letter. Now am I your debtor four times. The parish commotion, too, has long ago subsided here, and my course of Lectures on "Human Life" finds a full attendance. I wait for the coming of the Westminster, which has not quite yet arrived here, though I have seen the London advertisement. It sounds prosperously in my ear what you say of Dr. Carlyle's appointments. I was once very near the man in Rome, but did not see him. I will atone as soon as I can for this truncated epistle. You must answer it immediately, so far as to acknowledge the receipt of the enclosed bill of exchange, and soon I will send you the long promised account of the French Revolution, and also such moral account of the same as is over due.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

————- * This promising young scholar edited with English notes the first American edition of Herodotus. He went to Europe to pursue his studies, and died, greatly regretted, at Rome, of a fever, in 1848. ————-

XXXIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 8 February, 1859

My Dear Friend,—Your welcome little Letter, with the astonishing inclosure, arrived safe four days ago; right welcome, as all your Letters are, and bringing as these usually do the best news I get here. The miraculous draught of Paper I have just sent to a sure hand in Liverpool, there to lie till in due time it have ripened into a crop of a hundred gold sovereigns! On this subject, which gives room for so many thoughts, there is little that can be said, that were not an impertinence more or less. The matter grows serious to me, enjoins me to be silent and reflect. I will say, at any rate, there never came money into my hands I was so proud of; the promise of a blessing looks from the face of it; nay, it will be twice blessed. So I will ejaculate, with the Arabs, Allah akbar! and walk silent by the shore of the many-sounding Babel-tumult, meditating on much. Thanks to the mysterious all-bounteous Guide of men, and to you my true Brother, far over the sea!—For the rest, I showed Fraser this Nehemiah document, and said I hoped he would blush very deep;—which indeed the poor creature did, till I was absolutely sorry for him.

But now first as to this question, What I mean? You must know poor Fraser, a punctual but most pusillanimous mortal, has been talking louder and louder lately of a "second edition" here; whereupon, as labor-wages are not higher here than with you, and printing-work, if well bargained for, ought to be about the same price, it struck me that, as in the case of the Miscellanies, so here inversely the supply of both the New and the Old England might be profitably combined. Whether aught can come of this, now that it is got close upon us, I yet know not. Fraser has only seventy-five copies left; but when these will be done his prophecy comprehends not,—"surely within the year"! For the present I have set him to ascertain, and will otherwise ascertain for myself, what the exact cost of stereotyping the Book were, in the same letter and style as yours; it is not so much more than printing, they tell me: I should then have done with it forever and a day. You on your side, and we on ours, might have as many copies as were wanted for all time coming. This is, in these very days, under inquisition; but there are many points to be settled before the issue.

I have not yet succeeded in finding a Bookseller of any fitness, but am waiting for one always. And even had I found such a one, I mean an energetic seller that would sell on other terms than forty percent for his trouble, it were still a question whether one ought to venture on such a speculation: "quitting the old highways," as I say, "in indignation at the excessive tolls, with hope that you will arrive cheaper in the steeple-chase way!" It is clear, however, that said highways are of the corduroy sort, said tolls an anomaly that must be remedied soon; and also that in all England there is no Book in a likelier case to adventure it with than this same,—which did not sell at all for two months, as I hear, which all Booksellers got terrified for, and which has crept along mainly by its own gravitation ever since. We will consider well, we shall see. You can understand that such a thing, for your market too, is in agitation; if any pirate step in before us in the meanwhile, we cannot help it.

Thanks again for your swift attention to the Miscellanies; poor Fraser is in great haste to see them; hoping for his forty- per-cent division of the spoil. If you have not yet got to the very end with your printing, I will add a few errata; if they come too late, never mind; they are of small moment….

This foggy Babylon tumbles along as it was wont; and, as for my particular case, uses me not worse, but better, than of old. Nay, there are many in it that have a real friendliness for me. For example, the other night, a massive portmanteau of Books, sent according to my written list, from the Cambridge University Library, from certain friends there whom I have never seen; a gratifying arrival. For we have no Library here, from which we can borrow books home; and are only in these weeks striving to get one:* think of that! The worst is the sore tear and wear of this huge roaring Niagara of things on such a poor excitable set of nerves as mine. The velocity of all things, of the very word you hear on the streets, is at railway rate: joy itself is unenjoyable, to be avoided like pain; there is no wish one has so pressing as for quiet. Ah me! I often swear I will be buried at least in free breezy Scotland, out of this insane hubbub, where Fate tethers me in life! If Fate always tether me;—but if ever the smallest competence of worldly means be mine, I will fly this whirlpool as I would the Lake of Malebolge, and only visit it now and then! Yet perhaps it is the proper place after all, seeing all places are improper: who knows? Meanwhile I lead a most dyspeptic, solitary, self-shrouded life: consuming, if possible in silence, my considerable daily allotment of pain; glad when any strength is left in me for working, which is the only use I can see in myself,—too rare a case of late. The ground of my existence is black as Death; too black, when all void too but at times there paint themselves on it pictures of gold and rainbow and lightning; all the brighter for the black ground, I suppose. Withal I am very much of a fool.—Some people will have me write on Cromwell, which I have been talking about. I do read on that and English subjects, finding that I know nothing and that nobody knows anything of that: but whether anything will come of it remains to be seen. Mill, the Westminster friend, is gone in bad health to the Continent, and has left a rude Aberdeen Longear, a great admirer of mine too, with whom I conjecture I cannot act at all: so good-bye to that. The wisest of all, I do believe, were that I bought my nag Yankee and set to galloping about the elevated places here! A certain Mr. Coolidge,** a Boston man of clear iron visage and character, came down to me the other day with Sumner; he left a newspaper fragment, containing "the Socinian Pope's denunciation of Emerson."

————- * The beginning of the London Library, a most useful institution, from which books may be borrowed. It served Carlyle well in later years, and for a long time he was President of it.

** The late Mr. Joseph Coolidge. ————-

The thing denounced had not then arrived, though often asked for at Kennet's; it did not arrive till yesterday, but had lain buried in bales of I know not what. We have read it only once, and are not yet at the bottom of it. Meanwhile, as I judge, the Socinian "tempest in a washbowl" is all according to nature, and will be profitable to you, not hurtful. A man is called to let his light shine before men; but he ought to understand better and better what medium it is through, what retinas it falls on: wherefore look there. I find in this, as in the two other Speeches, that noblest self-assertion, and believing originality, which is like sacred fire, the beginning of whatsoever is to flame and work; and for young men especially one sees not what could be more vivifying. Speak, therefore, while you feel called to do it; and when you feel called. But for yourself, my friend, I prophesy it will not do always: a faculty is in you for a sort of speech which is itself action, an artistic sort. You tell us with piercing emphasis that man's soul is great; show us a great soul of a man, in some work symbolic of such: this is the seal of such a message, and you will feel by and by that you are called to this. I long to see some concrete Thing, some Event, Man's Life, American Forest, or piece of Creation, which this Emerson loves and wonders at, well Emersonized, depictured by Emerson, filled with the life of Emerson, and cast forth from him then to live by itself. If these Orations balk me of this, how profitable soever they be for others. I will not love them.—And yet, what am I saying? How do I know what is good for you, what authentically makes your own heart glad to work in it? I speak from without, the friendliest voice must speak from without; and a man's ultimate monition comes only from within. Forgive me, and love me, and write soon. A Dieu!

—T. Carlyle

My Wife, very proud of your salutation, sends a sick return of greeting. After a winter of unusual strength, she took cold the other day, and coughs again; though she will not call it serious yet. One likes none of these things. She has a brisk heart and a stout, but too weak a frame for this rough life of mine. I will not get sad about it.

One of the strangest things about these New England Orations is a fact I have heard, but not yet seen, that a certain W. Gladstone, an Oxford crack Scholar, Tory M.P., and devout Churchman of great talent and hope, has contrived to insert a piece of you (first Oration it must be) in a work of his on Church and State, which makes some figure at present! I know him for a solid, serious, silent-minded man; but how with his Coleridge Shovel-Hattism he has contrived to relate himself to you, there is the mystery. True men of all creeds, it would seem, are Brothers.

To write soon!

XXXIV. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 15 March, 1839

My Dear Friend,—I will spare you my apologies for not writing, they are so many. You have been very generous, I very promising and dilatory. I desired to send you an Account of the sales of the History, thinking that the details might be more intelligible to you than to me, and might give you some insight into literary and social, as well as bibliopolical relations. But many details of this account will not yet settle themselves into sure facts, but do dance and mystify me as one green in ledgers. Bookseller says nine hundred and ninety-one copies came from Binder, nine remaining imperfect, and so not bound. But in all my reckonings of the particulars of distribution I make either more or less than nine hundred and ninety-one copies. And some of my accounts are with private individuals at a distance, and they have their uncertainties and misrememberings also. But the facts will soon show themselves, and I count confidently on a small balance against the world to your credit.

————— * This letter appeared in the Athenaeum, July 22, 1882. —————

The Miscellanies go forward too slowly, at about the rate of seventy-two pages a week, as I understand. Of the Fraser articles and of some others we have but a single copy, (such are the tough limits of some English immortalities and editorial renowns,) but we expect the end of the printing in six weeks. The first two volumes, with title-pages, are gone to the binder— two hundred and sixty copies—with strait directions; and I presume will go to sea very soon. We shall send the last two volumes by a later ship. You will pay nothing for the books we send except freight. We shall deduct the cost of the books from the credit side of your account here. We print of the second series twelve hundred and fifty copies, with the intention of printing a second edition of the first series of five hundred, if we see fit hereafter to supply the place of the emigrating portion of the first. You express some surprise at the cheapness of our work. The publishers, I believe, generally get more profits. They grumbled a little at the face of the account on the 1st of January; so in the new contract for the new volumes I have allowed them nine cents more on each copy sold by them. So that you should receive ninety-one cents on a copy instead of one dollar. When the two hundred and fifty copies of our first two volumes are gone to you, I think they will have but about one hundred copies more to sell.

Your books are read. I hear, I think, more gratitude expressed for the Miscellanies than for the History. Young men at all our colleges study them in closets, and the Copernican is eradicating the Ptolemaic lore. I have frequent and cordial testimonies to the good working of the leaven, and continual inquiry whether the man will come hither. Speriamo.

I was a fool to tell you once you must not come if I did tell you so. I knew better at the time, and did steadily believe, as far as I was concerned, that no polemical mud, however much was thrown, could by any possibility stick to me; for I was purely an observer; had not the smallest personal or partial interest; and merely spoke to the question as a historian; and I knew whoever could see me must see that. But, at the moment, the little pamphlet made much stir and excitement in the newspapers; and the whole thousand copies were bought up. The ill wind has blown over. I advertised, as usual, my winter course of Lectures, and it prospered very well. Ten Lectures: I. Doctrine of the Soul; II. Home; III. The School; IV. Love; V. Genius; VI. The Protest; VII. Tragedy; VIII. Comedy; IX. Duty; X. Demonology. I designed to add two more, but my lungs played me false with unseasonable inflammation, so I discoursed no more on "Human Life." Now I am well again.—But, as I said, as I could not hurt myself, it was foolish to flatter myself that I could mix your cause with mine and hurt you. Nothing is more certain than that you shall have all our ears, whenever you wish for them, and free from that partial position which I deprecated. Yet I cannot regret my letter, which procured me so affectionate and magnanimous a reply.

Thanks, too, for your friendliest invitation. But I have a new reason why I should not come to England,—a blessed babe, named Ellen, almost three weeks old,—a little, fair, soft lump of contented humanity, incessantly sleeping, and with an air of incurious security that says she has come to stay, has come to be loved, which has nothing mean, and quite piques me.

Yet how gladly should I be near you for a time. The months and years make me more desirous of an unlimited conversation with you; and one day, I think, the God will grant it, after whatever way is best. I am lately taken with The Onyx Ring, which seemed to me full of knowledge, and good, bold, true drawing. Very saucy, was it not? in John Sterling to paint Collins; and what intrepid iconoclasm in this new Alcibiades to break in among your Lares and disfigure your sacred Hermes himself in Walsingham.* To me, a profane man, it was good sport to see the Olympic lover of Frederica, Lili, and so forth, lampooned. And by Alcibiades too, over whom the wrath of Pericles must pause and brood ere it falls. I delight in this Sterling, but now that I know him better I shall no longer expect him to write to me. I wish I could talk to you on the grave questions, graver than all literature, which the trifles of each day open. Our doing seems to be a gaudy screen or popinjay to divert the eye from our nondoing. I wish, too, you could know my friends here. A man named Bronson Alcott is a majestic soul, with whom conversation is possible. He is capable of truth, and gives me the same glad astonishment that he should exist which the world does.

———— * Collins and Walsingham, two characters in The Onyx Ring, are partly drawn, not very felicitously, from Carlyle and Goethe. In his Life of Sterling, Carlyle says of the story: "A tale still worth reading, in which, among the imaginary characters, various friends of Sterling's are shadowed forth not always in the truest manner." It is reprinted in the second volume of Sterling's Essays and Tales, edited by Julius Hare. ————-

As I hear not yet of your reception of the bill of exchange, which went by the "Royal William" in January, I enclose the duplicate. And now all success to the Lectures of April or May! A new Kingdom with new extravagances of power and splendor I know. Unless you can keep your own secret better in Rahel, &c., you must not give it me to keep. The London Sartor arrived in my hands March 5th, dated the 15th of November, so long is the way from Kennet to Little & Co. The book is welcome, and awakens a sort of nepotism in me,—my brother's child.

—R.W. Emerson

I rejoice in the good accounts you give me of your household; in your wife's health; in your brother's position. My wife wishes to be affectionately remembered to you and yours. And the lady must continue to love her old Transatlantic friend.

XXXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 19 March, 1839

My Dear Friend,—Only last Saturday I despatched a letter to you containing a duplicate of the bill of exchange sent in January, and all the facts I knew of our books; and now comes to me a note from Wheeler, at Cambridge, saying that the printers, on reckoning up their amount of copy, find that nowise can they make 450 pages per volume, as they have promised, for these two last of the Miscellanies. They end the third volume with page 390, and they have not but 350 or less pages for the fourth. They ask, What shall be done? Nothing is known to me but to give them Rahel, though I grudge it, for I vastly prefer to end with Scott. Rahel, I fancy, cost you no night and no morning, but was writ in that gentle after-dinner hour so friendly to good digestion. Stearns Wheeler dreams that it is possible to draw at this eleventh hour some possible manuscript out of the unedited treasures of Teufelsdrockh's cabinets. If the manuscripts were ready, all fairly copied out by foreseeing scribes in your sanctuary at Chelsea, the good goblin of steam would—with the least waiting, perhaps a few days—bring the packet to our types in time. I have little hope, almost none, from a sally so desperate on possible portfolios; but neither will I be wanting to my sanguine co-editor, your good friend. So I told him I would give you as instant notice as Mr. Rogers at the Merchants' Exchange Bar can contrive, and tell you plainly that we shall proceed to print Rahel when we come so far on; and with that paper end; unless we shall receive some contrary word from you. And if we can obtain any manuscript from you before we have actually bound our book, we will cancel our last sheets and insert it. And so may the friendly Heaven grant a speedy passage to my letter and to yours! I fear the possibility of our success is still further reduced by the season of the year, as the Lectures must shortly be on foot. Well, the best speed to them also. When I think of you as speaking and not writing them, I remember Luther's words, "He that can speak well, the same is a man."

I hope you liked John Dwight's translations of Goethe, and his notes. He is a good, susceptible, yearning soul, not so apt to create as to receive with the freest allowance, but I like his books very much.

Do think to say in a letter whether you received from me a copy of our edition of your French Revolution. I ordered a copy sent to you,—probably wrote your name in it,—but it does not appear in the bookseller's account. Farewell.

—R.W. Emerson

XXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 13 April, 1839

My Dear Emerson,—Has anything gone wrong with you? How is it that you do not write to me? These three or four weeks, I know not whether duly or not so long, I have been in daily hope of some sign from you; but none comes; not even a Newspaper,—open at the ends. The German Translator, Mr. Dwight, mentioned, at the end of a Letter I had not long ago, that you had given a brilliant course of Lectures at Boston, but had been obliged to intermit it on account of illness. Bad news indeed, that latter clause; at the same time, it was thrown in so cursorily I would not let myself be much alarmed; and since that, various New England friends have assured me here that there was nothing of great moment in it, that the business was all well over now, and you safe at Concord again. Yet how is it that I do not hear? I will tell you my guess is that those Boston Carlylean Miscellanies are to blame. The Printer is slack and lazy as Printers are; and you do not wish to write till you can send some news of him? I will hope and believe that only this is it, till I hear worse.

I sent you a Dumfries Newspaper the other week, for a sign of my existence and anxiety. A certain Mr. Ellis of Boston is this day packing up a very small memorial of me to your Wife; a poor Print rolled about a bit of wood: let her receive it graciously in defect of better. It comes under your address. Nay, properly it is my Wife's memorial to your Wife. It is to be hung up in the Concord drawing-room. The two Households, divided by wide seas, are to understand always that they are united nevertheless.

My special cause for writing this day rather than another is the old story, book business. You have brought that upon yourself, my friend; and must do the best you can with it. After all, why should not Letters be on business too? Many a kind thought, uniting man with man, in gratitude and helpfulness, is founded on business. The speaker at Dartmouth College seems to think it ought to be so. Nor do I dissent.—But the case is this, Fraser and I are just about bargaining for a second edition of the Revolution. He will print fifteen hundred for the English market, in a somewhat closer style, and sell them here at twenty- four shillings a copy. His first edition is all gone but some handful; and the man is in haste, and has taken into a mood of hope,—for he is weak and aguish, alternating from hot to cold; otherwise, I find, a very accurate creature, and deals in his unjust trade as justly as any other will. He has settled with me; his half-profits amount to some L130, which by charging me for every presentation copy he cuts down to somewhere about L110; not the lion's share in the gross produce, yet a great share compared with an expectancy no higher than zero! We continue on the same system for this second adventure; I cannot go hawking about in search of new terms; I might go farther and fare worse. And now comes your part of the affair; in which I would fain have had your counsel; but must ask your help, proceeding with my own light alone. After Fraser's fifteen hundred are printed off, the types remain standing, and I for my own behoof throw off five hundred more, designed for your market. Whether five hundred are too many or too few, I can only guess; if too many, we can retain them here and turn them to account; if too few, there is no remedy. At all events, costing me only the paper and press-work, there is surely no Pirate in the Union that can undersell us! Nay, it seems they have a drawback on our taxed paper, sufficient or nearly so to land the cargo at Boston without more charge. You see, therefore, how it is. Can you find me a Bookseller, as for yourself; he and you can fix what price the ware will carry when you see it. Meanwhile I must have his Title-page; I must have his directions (if any be needed); nay, for that matter, you might write a Preface if you liked,—though I see not what you have to say, and recommend silence rather! The book is to be in three volumes duodecimo, and we will take care it be fit to show its face in your market. A few errors of the press; and one correction (about the sinking of the Vengeur, which I find lately to be an indisputable falsehood); these are all the changes. We are to have done printing, Fraser predicts, "in two months";—say two and a half! I suppose you decipher the matter out of this plastering and smearing; and will do what is needful in it. "Great inquiry" is made for the Miscellanies, Fraser says; though he suspects it may perhaps be but one or two men inquiring often,—the dog!

I am again upon the threshold of extempore lecturing: on "the Revolutions of Modern Europe"; Protestantism, 2 lectures; Puritanism, 2; French Revolution, 2. I almost regret that I had undertaken the thing this year at all, for I am no longer driven by Poverty as heretofore. Nay, I am richer than I have been for ten years; and have a kind of prospect, for the first time this great while, of being allowed to subsist in this world for the future: a great blessing, perhaps the greatest, when it comes as a novelty! However, I thought it right to keep this Lecture business open, come what might. I care less about it than I did; it is not agony and wretched trembling to the marrow of the bone, as it was the last two times. I believe, in spite of all my perpetual indigestions and nervous woes, I am actually getting into better health; the weary heart of me is quieter; I wait in silence for the new chapter,—feeling truly that we are at the end of one period here. I count it two in my autobiography: we shall see what the third is; [if] third there be. But I am in small haste for a third. How true is that of the old Prophets, "The word of the Lord came unto" such and such a one! When it does not come, both Prophet and Prosaist ought to be thankful (after a sort), and rigorously hold their tongue.—Lord Durham's people have come over with golden reports of the Americans, and their brotherly feelings. One Arthur Buller preaches to me, with emphasis, on a quite personal topic till one explodes in laughter to hear him, the good soul: That I, namely, am the most esteemed, &c., and ought to go over and Lecture in all great towns of the Union, and make, &c., &c.! I really do begin to think of it in this interregnum that I am in. But then my Lectures must be written; but then I must become a hawker, —ach Gott!

The people are beginning to quote you here: tant pis pour eux! I have found you in two Cambridge books. A certain Mr. Richard M. Milnes, M.P., a beautiful little Tory dilettante poet and politician whom I love much, applied to me for Nature (the others he has) that he might write upon it. Somebody has stolen Nature from me, or many have thumbed it to pieces; I could not find a copy. Send me one, the first chance you have. And see Miss Martineau in the last Westminster Review:—these things you are old enough to stand? They are even of benefit? Emerson is not without a select public, the root of a select public on this side of the water too.—Popular Sumner is off to Italy, the most popular of men,—inoffensive, like a worn sixpence that has no physiognomy left. We preferred Coolidge to him in this circle; a square-cut iron man, yet with clear symptoms of a heart in him. Your people will come more and more to their maternal Babylon, will they not, by the steamers?— Adieu, my dear friend. My Wife joins me in all good prayers for you and yours.

—Thomas Carlyle

XXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 17 April, 1839

Dear Friend,—Some four days ago I wrote you a long Letter, rather expressive of anxiety about you; it will probably come to hand along with this. I had heard vaguely that you were unwell, and wondered why you did not write. Happily, that point is as good as settled now, even by your silence about it. I have, half an hour ago, received your Concord Letter of the 19th of March. The Letter you speak of there as "written last Saturday" has not yet made its appearance, but may be looked for now shortly: as there is no mention here of any mischance, except the shortcoming of Printers' copy, I infer that all else is in a tolerably correct state; I wait patiently for the "last Saturday" tidings, and will answer as to the matters of copy, in good heart, without loss of a moment.

There is nothing of the manuscript sort in Teufelsdrockh's repositories that would suit you well; nothing at all in a completed state, except a long rigmarole dissertation (in a crabbed sardonic vein) about the early history of the Teutonic Kindred, wriggling itself along not in the best style through Proverb lore, and I know not what, till it end (if my memory serve) in a kind of Essay on the Minnesingers. It was written almost ten years ago, and never contented me well. It formed part of a lucklessly projected History of German Literature, subsequent portions of which, the Nibelungen and Reinecke Fox, you have already printed. The unfortunate "Cabinet Library Editor," or whatever his title was, broke down; and I let him off,—without paying me; and this alone remains of the misventure; a thing not fit for you, nor indeed at bottom for anybody, though I have never burnt it yet. My other Manuscripts are scratchings and scrawlings;—children's infant souls weeping because they never could be born, but were left there whimpering in limine primo!

On this side, therefore, is no help. Nevertheless, it seems to me, otherwise there is. Varnhagen may be printed I think without offence, since there is need of it: if that will make up your fourth volume to a due size, why not? It is the last faint murmur one gives in Periodical Literature, and may indicate the approach of silence and slumber. I know no errors of the Press in Varnhagen: there is one thing about Jean Paul F. Richter's want of humor in his speech, which somehow I could like to have the opportunity of uttering a word on, though what word I see not very well. My notion is partly that V. overstates the thing, taking a Berlin propos de salon for a scientifically accurate record; and partly farther that the defect (if any) was creditable to Jean Paul, indicating that he talked from the abundance of the heart, not burning himself off in miserable perpetual sputter like a Town-wit, but speaking what he had to say, were it dull, were it not dull,—for his own satisfaction first of all! If you in a line or two could express at the right point something of that sort, it were well; yet on the whole, if not, then is almost no matter. Let the whole stand then as the commencement of slumber and stertorous breathing!

Varnhagen himself will not bring up your fourth volume to the right size; hardly beyond 380 pages, I should think; yet what more can be done? Do you remember Fraser's Magazine for October, 1832, and a Translation there, with Notes, of a thing called Goethe's Mahrchen? It is by me; I regard it as a most remarkable piece, well worthy of perusal, especially by all readers of mine. The printing of your third volume will of course be finished before this letter arrive; nevertheless I have a plan: that you (as might be done, I suppose, by cancelling and reprinting the concluding leaf or leaves) append the said Translated Tale, in a smaller type, to that volume. It is 21 or 22 pages of Fraser, and will perhaps bring yours up to the mark. Nay, indeed there are two other little Translations from Goethe which I reckon good, though of far less interest than the Mahrchen; I think they are in the Frasers almost immediately preceding; one of them is called Fragment from Goethe (if I remember); in his Works, it is Novelle; it treats of a visit by some princely household to a strange Mountain ruin or castle, and the catastrophe is the escape of a show-lion from its booth in the neighboring Market-Town. I have not the thing here,—alas, sinner that I am, it now strikes me that the "two other things" are this one thing, which my treacherous memory is making into two! This however you will find in the Number immediately, or not far from immediately, preceding that of the Mahrchen; along with which, in the same type with which, it would give us letter-press enough. It ought to stand before the Mahrchen: read it, and say whether it is worthy or not worthy. Will this Appendix do, then? I should really rather like the Mahrchen to be printed, and had thoughts of putting [it] at the end of the English Sartor. The other I care not for, intrinsically, but think it very beautiful in its kind.—Some rubbish of my own, in small quantity, exists here and there in Fraser; one story, entitled Cruthers and Jonson,* was written sixteen years ago, and printed somewhere early (probably the second year) in that rubbish heap, with several gross errors of the press (mares for maces was one!): it is the first thing I wrote, or among the very first;—otherwise a thing to be kept rather secret, except from the like of you! This or any other of the "original" immaturities I will not recommend as an Appendix; I hope the Mahrchen, or the Novelle and Mahrchen, will suffice. But on the whole, to thee, O Friend, and thy judgment and decision, without appeal, I leave it altogether. Say Yes, say No; do what seemeth good to thee.—Nay now, writing with the speed of light, another consideration strikes me: Why should Volume Third be interfered with if it is finished? Why will not this Appendix do, these Appendixes, to hang to the skirts of Volume Four as well? Perhaps better! the Mahrchen in any case closing the rear. I leave it all to Emerson and Stearns Wheeler, my more than kind Editors: E. knows it better than I; be his decision irrevocable.

—————-
* "Cruthers and Jonson; or, The Outskirts of Life. A True
Story." Fraser's Magazine, January, 1831.
——————

This letter is far too long, but I had not time to make it shorter.—I got your French Revolution, and have seen no other: my name is on it in your hand. I received Dwight's Book, liked it, and have answered him: a good youth, of the kind you describe; no Englishman, to my knowledge, has yet uttered as much sense about Goethe and German things. I go this day to settle with Fraser about printers and a second edition of the Revolution Book,—as specified in the other Letter: five hundred copies for America, which are to cost he computes about 2/7, and your Bookseller will bind them, and defy Piracy. My Lectures come on, this day two weeks: O Heaven! I cannot "speak"; I can only gasp and writhe and stutter, a spectacle to gods and fashionables,—being forced to it by want of money. In five weeks I shall be free, and then—! Shall it be Switzerland, shall it be Scotland, nay, shall it be America and Concord?

Ever your affectionate
T. Carlyle

All love from both of us to the Mother and Boy. My Wife is better than usual; rejoices in the promise of summer now at last visible after a spring like Greenland. Scarcity, discontent, fast ripening towards desperation, extends far and wide among our working people. God help them! In man as yet is small help. There will be work yet, before that account is liquidated; a generation or two of work! Miss Martineau is gone to Switzerland, after emitting Deerwood [sic], a Novel.* How do you like it? people ask. To which there are serious answers returnable, but few so good as none. Ah me! Lady Bulwer too has written a Novel, in satire of her Husband. I saw the Husband not long since; one of the wretchedest Phantasms, it seemed to me, I had yet fallen in with,—many, many, as they are here.

The L100 Sterling Bill came, in due time, in perfect order; and will be payable one of these days. I forget dates; but had well calculated that before the 19th of March this piece of news and my gratitude for it had reached you.

———— * Deerbrook ————

XXXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 20 April, 1839

My Dear Friend,—Learning here in town that letters may go today to the "Great Western," I seize the hour to communicate a bookseller's message. I told Brown, of C.C. Little & Co., that you think of stereotyping the History. He says that he can make it profitable to himself and to you to use your plates here in this manner (which he desires may be kept secret here, and I suppose with you also). You are to get your plates made and proved, then you are to send them out here to him, having first insured them in London, and he is to pay you a price for every copy he prints from them. As soon as he has printed a supply for our market,—and we want, he says, five hundred copies now,—he will send them back to you. I told him I thought he had better fix the price per copy to be paid by him, and I would send it to you as his offer. He is willing to do so, but not today. It was only this morning I informed him of your plan. I think in a fortnight I shall need to write again,—probably to introduce to you my countrywoman, Miss Sedgwick, the writer of affectionate New England tales and the like, who is about to go to Europe for a year or more. I will then get somewhat definite from Brown as to rates and prices. Brown thought you might better send the plates here first, as we are in immediate want of copies; and afterwards print with them in London. He is quite sure that it would be more profitable to print them in this manner than to try to import and sell here the books after being manufactured in London.

On the 30th of April we shall ship at New York the first two volumes of the Miscellanies, two hundred and sixty copies. In four weeks, the second two volumes will be finished, unless we wait for something to be added by yourself, agreeably to a suggestion of Wheeler's and mine. Two copies of Schiller's Life will go in the same box. We send them to the port of London. When these are gone, only one hundred copies remain unsold of the first two volumes (Miscellanies).

Brown said it was important that the plates should be proved correct at London by striking off impressions before they were sent hither. This is the whole of my present message. I shall have somewhat presently to reply to your last letter, received three weeks since. And may health and peace dwell with you and yours!

—R.W. Emerson

XXXIX. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 25 April, 1839

My Dear Friend,—Behold my account! A very simple thing, is it not! A very mouse, after such months, almost years, of promise! Despise it not, however; for such is my extreme dulness at figures and statements that this nothing has been a fear to me, a long time, how to extract it from the bookseller's promiscuous account with me, and from obscure records of my own. You see that it promises yet to pay you between $60 and $70 more, if Mr. Fuller (a gentleman of Providence, who procured many subscribers for us there) and Mr. Owen (who owes us also for copies subscribed for) will pay us our demand. They have both been lately reminded of their delinquency. Herrick and Noyes, you will see credited for eight copies, $18. They are booksellers who supplied eight subscribers, and charged us $2 for their trouble and some alleged damage to a copy. One copy you will see is sold to Ann Pomeroy for $3. This lady bought the copy of me, and preferred sending me $3 to sending $2.50 for so good a book. You will notice one or two other variations in the prices, in each of which I aimed to use a friend's discretion. Add lastly, that you must revise all my figures, as I am a hopeless blunderer, and quite lately made a brilliant mistake in regard to the amount of 9 multiplied by 12.

Have I asked you whether you received from me a copy of the History? I designated a copy to go, and the bookseller's boy thinks he sent one, but there is none charged in their account. The account of the Miscellanies does not prosper quite so well….

Thanks for your too friendly and generous expectations from my wit. Alas! my friend, I can do no such gay thing as you say. I do not belong to the poets, but only to a low department of literature, the reporters; suburban men. But in God we are all great, all rich, each entitled to say, All is mine. I hope the advancing season has restored health to your wife, and, if benedictions will help her, tell her we send them on every west wind. My wife and babes are well.

—R.W.E.

XL. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 28 April, 1839

My Dear Friend,—I received last night C.C. Little & Co.'s proposition in reference to the stereotyping the History. Their offer is based on my statement that you proposed to print the book in two volumes similar to ours. They say, "We should be willing to pay three hundred dollars for the use of plates for striking off five hundred copies of the two volumes, with the farther agreement that, if we wished to strike off another five hundred in nine months after the publication of the first five hundred, we should have the liberty to do so, paying the same again; that is, another three hundred dollars for the privilege of printing another five hundred copies;—the plates to be furnished us ready for use and free of expense." They add, "Should Mr. Carlyle send the plates to this country, he should be particular to ship them to this port direct." I am no judge of the liberality of this offer, as I know nothing of the expense of the plates. The men, Little and Brown, are fair in their dealings, and the most respectable book-selling firm in Boston. When you have considered the matter, I hope you will send me as early an answer as you can. For as we have no protection from pirates we must use speed.

I ought to have added to my account and statement sent by Miss Sedgwick one explanation. You will find in the account a credit of $13.75, agreed on with Little & Co., as compensation for lost subscribers. We had a little book, kept in the bookshop, into which were transferred the names of subscribers from all lists which were returned from various places. These names amounted to two hundred, more or less. When we came to settle the account, this book could not be found. They expressed much regret, and made much vain searching. Their account with me recorded only one hundred and thirty-four copies delivered to subscribers. Thus, a large number, say sixty-six, had been sold by them to our subscribers, and our half-dollar on each copy put in their pocket as commission, expressly contrary to treaty! With some ado, I mustered fifty-five names of subscribers known to me as such, not recorded on their books as having received copies, and demanded $27.50. They replied that they also had claims; that they had sent the books to distant subscribers in various States, and had charged no freight (with one or two exceptions, when the books went alone); that other booksellers had, no doubt, in many cases, sold the copies to subscribers for which I claimed the half-dollar; and lastly, which is indeed the moving reason, that they had sent twenty copies up the Mississippi to a bookseller (in Vicksburg, I think), who had made them no return. On these grounds they proposed that they should pay half my demand, and so compromise. They said, however, that, if I insisted, they would pay the whole. I was so glad to close the affair with mutual goodwill that I said with the unjust steward, write $13.75. So are we all pleased at your expense. [Greek] I think I will not give you any more historiettes,—they take too much room; but as I write this time only on business, you are welcome to this from your friend,

—R.W. Emerson

XLI. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 15 May, 1839.

My Dear Friend,—Last Saturday, 11th instant, I had your two letters of 13th and 17th April. Before now, you must have one or two notes of mine touching the stereotype plates: a proposition superseded by your new plan. I have also despatched one or two sheets lately containing accounts. Now for the new matter. I was in Boston yesterday, and saw Brown, the bookseller. He accedes gladly, to the project of five hundred American copies of the History. He says, that the duty is the same on books in sheets and books in boards; and desires, therefore, that the books may come out bound. You bind yours in cloth? Put up his in the same style as those for your market, only a little more strongly than is the custom with London books, as it will only cost a little more. He would be glad also to have his name added in the titlepage (London: Published by J. Fraser; and Boston: by C.C. Little and James Brown, 112 Washington St.), or is not this the right way? He only said he should like to have his name added. He threatens to charge me 20 percent commission. If, as he computes from your hint of 2/7, the work costs you, say, 70 cents per copy, unbound; he reckons it at a dollar, when bound; then 75 cents duty in Boston, $1.75. He thinks we cannot set a higher price on it than $3.50, because we sold our former edition for $2.50. On that price, his commissions would be 70 cents; and $1.05 per copy will to you. If when we see the book, we venture to put a higher price on it, your remainder shall be more. I confess, when I set this forth on paper, it looks as bad as your English trade,—this barefaced 20 percent; but their plea is, We guarantee the sales; we advertise; we pay you when it is sold, though we give our customers six months' credit. I have made no final bargain with the man, and perhaps before the books arrive I shall be better advised, and may get better terms from him. Meantime, give me the best advice you can; and despatch the books with all speed, and if you send six hundred, I think, we will sell them.

—————— * In the first edition of this Correspondence a portion of this letter was printed from a rough draft, such as Emerson was accustomed to make of his letters to Carlyle. I owe the original to the kindness of the editor of the Athenaeum, in the pages of which it was printed. —————-

I went to the Athenaeum, and procured the Frasers' and will print the Novelle and the Mahrchen at the end of the Fourth Volume, which has been loitering under one workman for a week or two past, awaiting this arrival. Now we will finish at once. Cruthers and Jonson I read gladly. It is indispensable to such as would see the fountains of Nile: but I incline to what seems your opinion, that it will be better in the final edition of your Works than in this present First Collection of them. I believe I could find more matter now of yours if we should be pinched again. The Cat-Raphael? and Mirabeau and Macaulay? Stearns Wheeler is very faithful in his loving labor,—has taken a world of pains with the sweetest smile. We are very fortunate in having him to friend.—For the Miscellanies once more, the two boxes containing two hundred and sixty copies of the first series went to sea in the "St. James," Captain Sebor, addressed to Mr. Fraser. (I hope rightly addressed; yet I saw a memorandum at Munroe's in which he was named John Fraser.)

Arthur Buller has my hearty thanks for his good and true witnessing. And now that our old advice is indorsed by John Bull himself, you will believe and come. Nothing can be better. As soon as the lectures are over, let the trunks be packed. Only my wife and my blessed sister dear—Elizabeth Hoar, betrothed in better times to my brother Charles,—my wife and this lovely nun do say that Mrs. Carlyle must come hither also; that it will make her strong, and lengthen her days on the earth, and cheer theirs also. Come, and make a home with me; and let us make a truth that is better than dreams. From this farm-house of mine you shall sally forth as God shall invite you, and "lecture in the great cities." You shall do it by proclamation of your own, or by the mediation of a committee, which will readily be found. Wife, mother, and sister shall nurse thy wife meantime, and you shall bring your republican laurels home so fast that she shall not sigh for the Old England. Eyes here do sparkle at the very thought. And my little placid Musketaquid River looked gayer today in the sun. In very sooth and love, my friend, I shall look for you in August. If aught that we know not must forbid your wife at present, you will still come. In October, you shall lecture in Boston; in November, in New York; in December, in Philadelphia; in January, in Washington. I can show you three or four great natures, as yet unsung by Harriet Martineau or Anna Jameson, that content the heart and provoke the mind. And for yourself, you shall be as cynical and headstrong and fantastical as you can be.

I rejoice in what you say of better health and better prospects. I was glad to hear of Milnes, whose Poems already lay on my table when your letter came. Since the little Nature book is not quite dead, I have sent you a few copies, and wish you would offer one to Mr. Milnes with my respects. I hope before a great while I may have somewhat better to send him. I am ashamed that my little books should be "quoted" as you say.

My affectionate salutations to Mrs. Carlyle, who is to sanction and enforce all I have written on the migration. In the prospect of your coming I feel it to be foolish to write. I have very much to say to you. But now only Good Bye.

—R.W. Emerson

XLII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 29 May, 1839

My Dear Emerson,—Your Letter, dated Boston, 20th April, has been here for some two weeks. Miss Sedgwick, whom it taught us to expect in "about a fortnight," has yet given no note of herself, but shall be right welcome whenever she appears. Miss Martineau's absence (she is in Switzerland this summer) will probably be a loss to the fair Pilgrim;—which of course the rest of us ought to exert ourselves to make good…. My Lectures are happily over ten days ago; with "success" enough, as it is called; the only valuable part of which is some L200, gained with great pain, but also with great brevity:—economical respite for another solar year! The people were boundlessly tolerant; my agitation beforehand was less this year, my remorse afterwards proportionally greater. There was but one moderately good Lecture, the last,—on Sausculottism, to an audience mostly Tory, and rustling with the beautifulest quality silks! Two things I find: first that I ought to have had a horse; I had only three incidental rides or gallops, hired rides; my horse Yankee is never yet purchased, but it shall be, for I cannot live, except in great pain, without a horse. It was sweet beyond measure to escape out of the dustwhirlpool here, and fly, in solitude, through the ocean of verdure and splendor, as far as Harrow and back again; and one's nerves were clear next day, and words lying in one like water in a well. But the second thing I found was, that extempore speaking, especially in the way of Lecture, is an art or craft, and requires an apprenticeship, which I have never served. Repeatedly it has come into my head that I should go to America, this very Fall, and belecture you from North to South till I learn it! Such a thing does lie in the bottom-scenes, should hard come to hard; and looks pleasant enough.—On the whole, I say sometimes, I must either begin a Book, or do it. Books are the lasting thing; Lectures are like corn ground into flour; there are loaves for today, but no wheat harvests for next year. Rudiments of a new Book (thank Heaven!) do sometimes disclose themselves in me. Festina lente. It ought to be better than the French Revolution; I mean better written. The greater part of that Book, as I read proof-sheets of it in these weeks, does nothing but disgust me. And yet it was, as nearly as was good, the utmost that lay in me. I should not like to be nearer killed with any other Book!—Books too are a triviality. Life alone is great; with its infinite spaces, its everlasting times, with its Death, with its Heaven and its Hell. Ah me!

Wordsworth is here at present; a garrulous, rather watery, not wearisome old man. There is a freshness as of brooks and mountain breezes in him; one says of him: Thou art not great, but thou art genuine; well speed thou. Sterling is home from Italy, recovered in health, indeed very well could he but sit still. He is for Clifton, near Bristol, for the next three months. I hear him speak of some sonnet or other he means to address to you: as for me he knows well that I call his verses timber toned, without true melody either in thought, phrase or sound. The good John! Did you ever see such a vacant turnip-lantern as that Walsingham Goethe? Iconoclast Collins strikes his wooden shoe through him, and passes on, saying almost nothing.—My space is done! I greet the little maidkin, and bid her welcome to this unutterable world. Commend her, poor little thing, to her little Brother, to her Mother and Father;— Nature, I suppose, has sent her strong letters of recommendation, without our help, to them all. Where I shall be in six weeks is not very certain; likeliest in Scotland, whither our whole household, servant and all, is pressingly invited, where they have provided horses and gigs. Letters sent hither will still find me, or lie waiting for me, safe: but perhaps the speediest address will be "Care of Fraser, 215 Regent Street." My Brother wants me to the Tyrol and Vienna; but I think I shall not go. Adieu, dear friend. It is a great treasure to me that I have you in this world. My Wife salutes you all.—

Yours ever and ever,
T. Carlyle

XLIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 24 June, 1833

Dear Friend,—Two Letters from you were brought hither by Miss Sedgwick last week. The series of post Letters is a little embroiled in my head; but I have a conviction that all hitherto due have arrived; that up to the date of my last despatch (a Proof-sheet and a Letter), which ought to be getting into your hands in these very days, our correspondence is clear. That Letter and Proof-sheet, two separate pieces, were sent to Liverpool some three weeks ago, to be despatched by the first conveyance thence; as I say, they are probably in Boston about this time. The Proof-sheet was one of the forty-seven such which the new French Revolution is to consist of: with this, as with a correct sample, you were to act upon some Boston Bookseller, and make a bargain for me,—or at least report that none was to be made. A bad bargain will content me now, my hopes are not at all high.

For the present, I am to announce on the part of Bookseller Fraser that the First Portion of our celebrated Miscellanies have been hovering about on these coasts for several weeks, have lain safe "in the River" for some two weeks, and ought at last to be safe in Fraser's shop today or else to morrow. I will ask there, and verify, before this Letter go. The reason of these "two weeks in the river" is that the packages were addressed "John Fraser, London," and the people had tried all the Frasers in London before they attempted the right individual, James, of 215 Regent Street. Of course, the like mistake in the second case will be avoided. A Letter, put ashore at Falmouth, and properly addressed, but without any signature, had first of all announced that the thing was at the door, and so with this "John Fraser," it has been knocking ever since, finding difficult admission. In the present instance, such delay has done no ill, for Fraser will not sell till the Second Portion come; and with this the mistake will be avoided. What has shocked poor James much more is a circumstance which your Boston Booksellers have no power to avoid: the "enormousness" of the charges in our Port here! He sends me the account of them last Saturday, with eyes— such as drew Priam's curtains: L31 and odd silver, whereof L28 as duty on Books at L5 per cwt. is charged by the rapacious Custom-house alone! What help, O James? I answer: we cannot bombard the British Custom-house, and sack it, and explode it; we must yield, and pay it the money; thankful for what is still left.—On the whole, one has to learn by trying. This notable finance-expedient, of printing in the one country what is to be sold in the other, did not take Vandalic custom-houses into view, which nevertheless do seem to exist. We must persist in it for the present reciprocal pair of times, having started in it for these: but on future occasions always, we can ask the past; and see whether it be not better to let each side of the water stand on its own basis.

As for your "accounts," my Friend, I find them clear as day, verifiable to the uttermost farthing. You are a good man to conquer your horror of arithmetic; and, like hydrophobic Peter of Russia making himself a sailor, become an Accountant for my sake. But now will you forgive me if I never do verify this same account, or look at it more in this world except as a memento of affection, its arithmetical ciphers so many hierograms, really sacred to me! A reflection I cannot but make is that at bottom this money was all yours; not a penny of it belonged to me by any law except that of helpful Friendship. I feel as if I could not examine it without a kind of crime. For the rest, you may rejoice to think that, thanks to you and the Books, and to Heaven over all, I am for the present no longer poor; but have a reasonable prospect of existing, which, as I calculate, is literally the most that money can do for a man. Not for these twelve years, never since I had a house to maintain with money, have I had as much money in my possession as even now. Allah kerim! We will hope all that is good on that side. And herewith enough of it.

You tell me you are but "a reporter": I like you for thinking so. And you will never know that it is not true, till you have tried. Meanwhile, far be it from me to urge you to a trial before your time come. Ah, it will come, and soon enough; much better, perhaps, if it never came!—A man has "such a baptism to be baptized withal," no easy baptism; and is "straitened till it be accomplished." As for me I honor peace before all things; the silence of a great soul is to me greater than anything it will ever say, it ever can say. Be tranquil, my friend; utter no word till you cannot help it;—and think yourself a "reporter," till you find (not with any great joy) that you are not altogether that!

We have not yet seen Miss Sedgwick: your Letters with her card were sent hither by post we went up next day, but she was out; no meeting could be arranged earlier than tomorrow evening, when we look for her here. Her reception, I have no doubt, will be abundantly flattering in this England. American Notabilities are daily becoming notabler among us; the ties of the two Parishes, Mother and Daughter, getting closer and closer knit. Indissoluble ties:—I reckon that this huge smoky Wen may, for some centuries yet, be the best Mycale for our Saxon Panionium, a yearly meeting-place of "All the Saxons," from beyond the Atlantic, from the Antipodes, or wherever the restless wanderers dwell and toil. After centuries, if Boston, if New York, have become the most convenient "All-Saxondom," we will right cheerfully go thither to hold such festival, and leave the Wen.— Not many days ago I saw at breakfast the notabest of all your Notabilities, Daniel Webster. He is a magnificent specimen; you might say to all the world, This is your Yankee Englishman, such Limbs we make in Yankeeland! As a Logic-fencer, Advocate, or Parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous crag-like face; the dull black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to be blown; the mastiff-mouth, accurately closed:—I have not traced as much of silent Berserkir-rage, that I remember of, in any other man. "I guess I should not like to be your nigger!"— Webster is not loquacious, but he is pertinent, conclusive; a dignified, perfectly bred man, though not English in breeding: a man worthy of the best reception from us; and meeting such, I understand. He did not speak much with me that morning, but seemed not at all to dislike me: I meditate whether it is fit or not fit that I should seek out his residence, and leave my card too, before I go? Probably not; for the man is political, seemingly altogether; has been at the Queen's levee, &c., &c.: it is simply as a mastiff-mouthed man that he is interesting to me, and not otherwise at all.

In about seven days hence we go to Scotland till the July heats be over. That is our resolution after all. Our address there, probably till the end of August, is "Templand, Thornhill, Dumfries, N. B.,"—the residence of my Mother-in-law, within a day's drive of my Mother's. Any Letter of yours sent by the old constant address (Cheyne Row, Chelsea) will still find me there; but the other, for that time, will be a day or two shorter. We all go, servant and all. I am bent on writing something; but have no faith that I shall be able. I must try. There is a thing of mine in Fraser for July, of no account, about the "sinking of the Vengeur" as you will see. The French Revolution printing is not to stop; two thirds of it are done; at this present rate, it ought to finish, and the whole be ready, within three weeks hence. A Letter will be here from you about that time, I think: I will print no title-page for the Five Hundred till it do come. "Published by Fraser and Little" would, I suppose, be unobjectionable, though Fraser is the most nervous of creatures: but why put him in at all, since these Five hundred copies are wholly Little's and yours? Adieu, my Friend. Our blessings are with you and your house. My wife grows better with the hot weather; I, always worse.

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

I say not a word about America or Lecturing at present; because
I mean to consider it intently in Scotland, and there to decide.
My Brother is to be at Ischl (not far from Salzburg) during
Summer: he was anxious to have me there, and I to have gone;
but—but—Adieu.

Fraser's Shop. Books not yet come, but known to be safe, and expected soon. Nay, the dexterous Fraser has argued away L15 of the duty, he says! All is right therefore. N.B. he says you are to send the second Portion in sheets, the weight will be less. This if it be still time.—Basta.

—T.C.

XLIV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 4 July, 1839

I hear tonight, O excellent man! that, unless I send a letter to Boston tomorrow with the peep of day, it will miss the Liverpool steamer, which sails earlier than I dreamed of. O foolish Steamer! I am not ready to write. The facts are not yet ripe, though on the turn of the blush. Couldst not wait a little? Hurry is for slaves;—and Aristotle, if I rightly remember only that little from my college lesson, affirmed that the high-minded man never walked fast. O foolish Steamer! wait but a week, and we will style thee Megalopsyche, and hang thee by the Argo in the stars. Meantime I will not deny the dear and admirable man the fragments of intelligence I have. Be it known unto you then, Thomas Carlyle, that I received yesterday morning your letter by the "Liverpool" with great contentment of heart and mind, in all respects, saving that the American Hegira, so often predicted on your side and prayed on ours, is treated with a most unbecoming levity and oblivion; and, moreover, that you do not seem to have received all the letters I seem to have sent. With the letter came the proof-sheet safe, and shall be presently exhibited to Little and Brown. You must have already the result of our first colloquy on that matter. I can now bring the thing nearer to certainty. But you must print their names as before advised on the title-page.

Nearly four weeks ago Ellis sent me the noble Italian print for my wife.* She is in Boston at this time, and I believe will be glad that I have written without her aid or word this time, for she was so deeply pleased with the gift that she said she never could write to you. It came timely to me at least. It is a right morning thought, full of health and flowing genius, and I rejoice in it. It is fitly framed and tomorrow is to be hung in the parlor.

———— * Morghen's engraving of Guido's Aurora. ————

Our Munroe's press, you must believe, was of Aristotle's category of the high-minded and slow. Chiding would do no good. They still said, "We have but one copy, and so but one hand at work"! At last, on the 1st of July, the book appeared in the market, but does not come from the binder fast enough to supply the instant demand; and therefore your two hundred and sixty copies cannot part from New York until the 20th of July. They will be on board the London packet which sails on that day. The publisher has his instructions to bind the volumes to match the old ones. Our year since the publication of the Vols. I. and II. is just complete, and I have set the man on the account, but doubt if I get it before twelve or fourteen days. All the edition is gone except forty copies, he told me; and asked me if I would not begin to print a small edition of this First Series, five hundred, as we have five hundred of the new Series too many, with that view. But I am now so old a fox that I suspend majestically my answer until I have his account. For on the 21st of July I am to pay $462 for the paper of this new book: and by and by the printer's bill,—whose amount I do not yet know; and it is better to be "slow and high-minded" a little more, since we have been so much, and not go deeper into these men's debt until we have tasted somewhat of their credit. We are to get, as you know, by contract, near a thousand dollars from these first two volumes; yet a month ago I was forced to borrow two hundred dollars for you on interest, such advances had the account required. But the coming account will enlighten us all.

I am very happy in the "success" of the London lectures. I have no word to add tonight, only that Sterling is not timber-toned, that I love his poetry, that I admire his prose with reservations here and there. What he knows he writes manly and well. Now and then he puts in a pasteboard man; but all our readers here take Blackwood for his sake, and lately seek him in vain. I am getting on with some studies of mine prosperously for me, have got three essays nearly done, and who knows but in the autumn I shall have a book? Meantime my little boy and maid, my mother and wife, are well, and the two ladies send to you and yours affectionate regards,—they would fain say urgent invitations. My mother sends tonight, my wife always.

I shall send you presently a copy of a translation published here of Eckermann, by Margaret Fuller, a friend of mine and of yours, for the sake of its preface mainly. She is a most accomplished lady, and her culture belongs rather to Europe than to America. Good bye.

—R.W. Emerson

XLV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 8 August, 1839

Dear Friend,—This day came the letter dated 24 June, with "steam packet" written by you on the outside, but no paddles wheeled it through the sea. It is forty-five days old, and too old to do its errand even had it come twenty days sooner—so far as printer and bookbinder are concerned. I am truly grieved for the mischance of the John Fraser, and will duly lecture the sinning bookseller. I noticed the misnomer in a letter of his New York correspondent, and, I believe, mentioned to you in a letter my fear of such a mischance. I am more sorry for the costliness of this adventure to you, though in a gracious note to me you cut down the fine one half. The new books, tardily printed, were tardily bound and tardily put to sea on the packet ship "Ontario," which left New York for London on the 1st of August. At least this was the promise of Munroe & Co. I stood over the boxes in which they were packing them in the latter days of July. I hope they have not gone to John again, but you must keep an eye to both names….

I cannot tell you how glad I am that you have seen my brave Senator, and seen him as I see him. All my days I have wished that he should go to England, and never more than when I listened two or three times to debates in the House of Commons. We send out usually mean persons as public agents, mere partisans, for whom I can only hope that no man with eyes will meet them; and now those thirsty eyes, those portrait-eating, portrait-painting eyes of thine, those fatal perceptions, have fallen full on the great forehead which I followed about all my young days, from court-house to senate-chamber, from caucus to street. He has his own sins no doubt, is no saint, is a prodigal. He has drunk this rum of Party too so long, that his strong head is soaked, sometimes even like the soft sponges, but the "man's a man for a' that." Better, he is a great boy,—as wilful, as nonchalant and good-humored. But you must hear him speak, not a show speech which he never does well, but with cause he can strike a stroke like a smith. I owe to him a hundred fine hours and two or three moments of Eloquence. His voice in a great house is admirable. I am sorry if you decided not to visit him. He loves a man, too. I do not know him, but my brother Edward read law with him, and loved him, and afterwards in sick and unfortunate days received the steadiest kindness from him.

Well, I am glad you are to think in earnest in Scotland of our Cisatlantic claims. We shall have more rights over the wise and brave, I believe before many years or months. We shall have more men and a better cause than has yet moved on our stagnant waters. I think our Church, so called, must presently vanish. There is a universal timidity, conformity, and rage; and on the other hand the most resolute realism in the young. The man Alcott bides his time. I have a young poet in this village named Thoreau, who writes the truest verses. I pine to show you my treasures; and tell your wife, we have women who deserve to know her.

—R.W. Emerson

The Yankees read and study the new volumes of Miscellanies even more than the old. The "Sam Johnson" and "Scott" are great favorites. Stearns Wheeler corrected proofs affectionately to the last. Truth and Health be with you alway!

XLVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, 4 September, 1839

Dear Emerson,—A cheerful and right welcome Letter of yours, dated 4th July, reached me here, duly forwarded, some three weeks ago; I delayed answering till there could some definite statement, as to bales of literature shipped or landed, or other matter of business forwarded a stage, be made. I am here, with my Wife, rusticating again, these two months; amid diluvian rains, Chartism, Teetotalism, deficient harvest, and general complaint and confusion; which not being able to mend, all that I can do is to heed them as little as possible. "What care I for the house? I am only a lodger." On the whole, I have sat under the wing of Saint Swithin; uncheery, sluggish, murky, as the wettest of his Days;—hoping always, nevertheless, that blue sky, figurative and real, does exist, and will demonstrate itself by and by. I have been the stupidest and laziest of men. I could not write even to you, till some palpable call told me I must.

Yesternight, however, there arrives a despatch from Fraser, apprising me that the American Miscellanies, second cargo, are announced from Portsmouth, and "will probably be in the River tomorrow"; where accordingly they in all likelihood now are, a fair landing and good welcome to them! Fraser "knows not whether they are bound or not"; but will soon know. The first cargo, of which I have a specimen here, contented him extremely; only there was one fatality, the cloth of the binding was multiplex, party-colored, some sets done in green, others in red, blue, perhaps skyblue! Now if the second cargo were not multiplex, party-colored, nay multiplex, in exact concordance with the first, as seemed almost impossible—?—Alas, in that case, one could not well predict the issue!—Seriously, it is a most handsome Book you have made; and I have nothing to return but thanks and again thanks. By the bye, if you do print a small second edition of the First Portion, I might have had a small set of errata ready: but where are they? The Book only came into my hand here a few days ago; and I have been whipt from post to pillar without will of my own, without energy to form a will! The only glaring error I recollect at this moment is one somewhere in the second article on Jean Paul: "Osion" (I think, or some such thing) instead of "Orson": it is not an original American error, but copied from the English; if the Printer get his eye upon it, let him rectify; if not, not, I deserve to have it stand against me there. Fraser's joy, should the Books prove either unbound or multiplex in the right way, will be great and unalloyed; he calculates on selling all the copies very soon. He has begun reprinting Goethe's Wilhelm Meister too, the Apprenticeship and Travels under one; and hopes to remunerate himself for that by and by: whether there will then remain any small peculium for me is but uncertain; meanwhile I correct the press, nothing doubting. One of these I call my best Translation, the other my worst; I have read that latter, the Apprenticeship, again in these weeks; not without surprise, disappointment, nay, aversion here and there, yet on the whole with ever new esteem. I find I can pardon all things in a man except purblindness, falseness of vision,—for, indeed, does not that presuppose every other kind of falseness?

But let me hasten to say that the French Revolution, five hundred strong for the New England market, is also, as Fraser advises, "to go to sea in three days." It is bound in red cloth, gilt; a pretty book, James says; which he will sell for twenty-five shillings here;—nay, the London brotherhood have "subscribed" for one hundred and eighty at once, which he considers great work. I directed him to consign to Little and Brown in Boston, the property of the thing yours, with such phraseology and formalities as they use in those cases. I paid him for it yesterday (to save discount) L95; that is the whole cost to me, twenty or thirty pounds more than was once calculated on. Do the best with it you can, my friend; and never mind the result. If the thing fail, as is likely enough, we will simply quit that transport trade, and my experience must be paid for. The Title-page was "Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown," then in a second line and smaller type, "London James Fraser"; to which arrangement James made not the slightest objection, or indeed rather seemed to like it.—So much for trade matters: is it not enough? I declare I blush sometimes, and wonder where the good Emerson gets all his patience. We shall be through the affair one day, and find something better to speak about than dollars and pounds. And yet, as you will say, why not even of dollars? Ah, there are leaden-worded [bills] of exchange I have seen which have had an almost sacred character to me! Pauca verba.

Doubt not your new utterances are eagerly waited for here; above all things the "Book" is what I want to see. You might have told me what it was about. We shall see by and by. A man that has discerned somewhat, and knows it for himself, let him speak it out, and thank Heaven. I pray that they do not confuse you by praises; their blame will do no harm at all. Praise is sweet to all men; and yet alas, alas, if the light of one's own heart go out, bedimmed with poor vapors and sickly false glitterings and flashings, what profit is it! Happier in darkness, in all manner of mere outward darkness, misfortune and neglect, "so that thou canst endure,"—which however one cannot to all lengths. God speed you, my Brother! I hope all good things of you; and wonder whether like Phoebus Apollo you are destined to be a youth forever.—Sterling will be right glad to hear your praises; not unmerited, for he is a man among millions that John of mine, though his perpetual mobility wears me out at times. Did he ever write to you? His latest speculation was that he should and would; but I fancy it is among the clouds again. I hear from him the other day, out of Welsh villages where he passed his boyhood, &c., all in a flow of "lyrical recognition," hope, faith, and sanguine unrest; I have even some thoughts of returning by Bristol (in a week or so, that must be), and seeing him. The dog has been reviewing me, he says, and it is coming out in the next Westminster! He hates terribly my doctrine of "Silence." As to America and lecturing, I cannot in this torpid condition venture to say one word. Really it is not impossible; and yet lecturing is a thing I shall never grow to like; still less lionizing, Martineau-ing: Ach Gott! My Wife sends a thousand regards; she will never get across the ocean, you must come to her; she was almost dead crossing from Liverpool hither, and declares she will never go to sea for any purpose whatsoever again. Never till next time! My good old Mother is here, my Brother John (home with his Duke from Italy); all send blessings and affection to you and yours. Adieu till I get to London.

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

XLVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 8 December, 1839

My Dear Emerson,—What a time since we have written to one another! was it you that defalcated? Alas, I fear it was myself; I have had a feeling these nine or ten weeks that you were expecting to hear from me; that I absolutely could not write. Your kind gift of Fuller's Eckermann* was handed in to our Hackney coach, in Regent Street, as we wended homewards from the railway and Scotland, on perhaps the 8th of September last; a welcome memorial of distant friends and doings: nay, perhaps there was a Letter two weeks prior to that:—I am a great sinner! But the truth is, I could not write; and now I can and do it!

————— * "Conversations with Goethe. Translated from the German of Eckermann. By S.M. Fuller." Boston, 1839. This was the fourth volume in the series of "Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature," edited by George Ripley. The book has a characteristic Preface by Miss Fuller, in which she speaks of Carlyle as "the only competent English critic" of Goethe. —————

Our sojourn in Scotland was stagnant, sad; but tranquil, well let alone,—an indispensable blessing to a poor creature fretted to fiddle-strings, as I grow to be in this Babylon, take it as I will. We had eight weeks of desolate rain; with about eight days bright as diamonds intercalated in that black monotony of bad weather. The old Hills are the same; the old Streams go gushing along as in past years, in past ages; but he that looks on them is no longer the same: and the old Friends, where are they? I walk silent through my old haunts in that country; sunk usually in inexpressible reflections, in an immeasurable chaos of musings and mopings that cannot be reflected or articulated. The only work I had on hand was one that would not prosper with me: an Article for the Quarterly Review on the state of the Working Classes here. The thoughts were familiar to me, old, many years old; but the utterance of them, in what spoken dialect to utter them! The Quarterly Review was not an eligible vehicle, and yet the eligiblest; of Whigs, abandoned to Dilettantism and withered sceptical conventionality, there was no hope at all; the London-and-Westminster Radicals, wedded to their Benthamee Formulas, and tremulous at their own shadows, expressly rejected my proposal many months ago: Tories alone remained; Tories I often think have more stuff in them, in spite of their blindness, than any other class we have;—Walter Scott's sympathy with his fellow creatures, what is it compared with Sydney Smith's, with a Poor Law Commissioner's! Well: this thing would not prosper with me in Scotland at all; nor here at all, where nevertheless I had to persist writing; writing and burning, and cursing my destiny, and then again writing. Finally the thing came out, as an Essay on Chartism; was shown to Lockhart, according to agreement; was praised by him, but was also found unsuitable by him; suitable to explode a whole fleet of Quarterlies into sky-rockets in these times! And now Fraser publishes it himself, with some additions, as a little Volume; and it will go forth in a week or two on its own footing; and England will see what she has to say to it, whether something or nothing; and one man, as usual, is right glad that he has nothing more to do with it. This is the reason why I could not write. I mean to send you the Proof-sheets of this thing, to do with as you see cause; there will be but some five or six, I think. It is probable my New England brothers may approve some portions of it; may be curious to see it reprinted; you ought to say Yes or No in regard to that. I think I will send all the sheets together; or at farthest, at two times.

Fraser, when we returned hither, had already received his Miscellanies; had about despatched his five hundred French Revolutions, insured and so, forth, consigned, I suppose, to your protection and the proper booksellers; probably they have got over from New York into your neighborhood before now. Much good may they do you! The Miscellanies, with their variegated binding, proved to be in perfect order; and are now all sold; with much regret from poor James that we had not a thousand more of them! This thousand he now sets about providing by his own industry, poor man; I am revising the American copy in these days; the printer is to proceed forthwith. I admire the good Stearns Wheeler as I proceed; I write to him my thanks by this post, and send him by Kennet a copy of Goethe's Meister, for symbol of acknowledgment. Another copy goes off for you, to the care of Little and Company. Fraser has got it out two weeks ago; a respectable enough book, now that the version is corrected somewhat. Tell me whether you dislike it less; what you do think of it? By the by, have you not learned to read German now? I rather think you have. It is three months spent well, if ever months were, for a thinking Englishman of this age.—I hope Kennet will use more despatch than he sometimes does. Thank Heaven for these Boston Steamers they project! May the Nereids and Poseidon favor them! They will bring us a thousand miles nearer, at one step; by and by we shall be of one parish after all.

During Autumn I speculated often about a Hegira into New England this very year: but alas! my horror of Lecturing continues great; and what else is there for me to do there? These several years I have had no wish so pressing as to hold my peace. I begin again to feel some use in articulate speech; perhaps I shall one day have something that I want to utter even in your side of the water. We shall see. Patience, and shuffle the cards.—I saw no more of Webster; did not even learn well where he was, till lately I noticed in the Newspapers that he had gone home again. A certain Mr. Brown (I think) brought me a letter from you, not long since; I forwarded him to Cambridge and Scotland: a modest inoffensive man. He said he had never personally met with Emerson. My Wife recalled to him the story of the Scotch Traveler on the top of Vesuvius: "Never saw so beautiful a scene in the world!"—"Nor I," replied a stranger standing there, "except once; on the top of Dunmiot, in the Ochil Hills in Scotland."—"Good Heavens! That is a part of my Estate, and I was never there! I will go thither." Yes, do!—We have seen no other Transoceanic that I remember. We expect your Book soon! We know the subject of your Winter Lectures too; at least Miss Martineau thinks she does, and makes us think so. Heaven speed the work! Heaven send my good Emerson a clear utterance, in all right ways, of the nobleness that dwells in him! He knows what silence means; let him know speech also, in its season the two are like canvas and pigment, like darkness and light-image painted thereon; the one is essential to the other, not possible without the other.

Poor Miss Martineau is in Newcastle-on-Tyne this winter; sick, painfully not dangerously; with a surgical brother-in-law. Her meagre didacticalities afflict me no more; but also her blithe friendly presence cheers me no more. We wish she were back. This silence, I calculate, forced silence, will do her much good. If I were a Legislator, I would order every man, once a week or so, to lock his lips together, and utter no vocable at all for four-and-twenty hours: it would do him an immense benefit, poor fellow. Such racket, and cackle of mere hearsay and sincere-cant, grows at last entirely deafening, enough to drive one mad, —like the voice of mere infinite rookeries answering your voice! Silence, silence! Sterling sent you a Letter from Clifton, which I set under way here, having added the address. He is not well again, the good Sterling; talks of Madeira this season again: but I hope otherwise. You of course read his sublime "article"? I tell him it was—a thing untellable!

Mr. Southey has fallen, it seems, into a mournful condition: oblivion, mute hebetation, loss of all faculty. He suffered greatly, nursing his former wife in her insanity, for years till her relief by death; suffered, worked, and made no moan; the brunt of the task over, he sank into collapse in the hands of a new wife he had just wedded. What a lot for him; for her especially! The most excitable but most methodic man I have ever seen. [Greek] that is a word that awaits us all.—I have my brother here at present; though talking of Lisbon with his Buccleuchs. My Wife seems better than of late winters. I actually had a Horse, nay actually have it, though it has gone to the country till the mud abate again! It did me perceptible good; I mean to try it farther. I am no longer so desperately poor as I have been for twelve years back; sentence of starvation or beggary seems revoked at last, a blessedness really very considerable. Thanks, thanks! We send a thousand regards to the two little ones, to the two mothers. Valete nostrum memores.

—T. Carlyle

XLVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 12 December, 1839

My Dear Friend,—Not until the 29th of November did the five hundred copies of the French Revolution arrive in Boston. Fraser unhappily sent them to New York, whence they came not without long delays. They came in perfectly good order, not in the pretty red you told us of, but in a sober green;—not so handsome and salable a back, our booksellers said, as their own; but in every other respect a good book. The duties at the New York Custom House on these and a quantity of other books sent by Fraser amounted to $400.36, whereof, I understand, the French Revolution pays for its share $243. No bill has been brought us for freight, so we conclude that you have paid it. I confided the book very much to the conscience and discretion of Little and Brown, and after some ciphering they settle to sell it at $3.75 per copy, wherefrom you are to get the cost of the book, and (say) $1.10 per copy profit, and no more. The booksellers eat the rest. The book is rather too dear for our market of cheap manufactures, and therefore we are obliged to give the booksellers a good percentage to get it off at all: for we stand in daily danger of a cheap edition from some rival neighbor. I hope to give you good news of its sale soon, although I have been assured today that no book sells, the times are so bad. Brown had disposed of fifty or sixty copies to the trade, and twelve at retail. He doubted not to sell them all in six months….

Several persons have asked me to get some copies of the German Romance sent over here for sale. Last week a gentleman desired me to say he wanted four copies, and today I have been charged to procure another. I think, if you will send me by Little and Brown, through Longman, six copies, we can find an immediate market.

It gives me great joy to write to my friend once more, slow as you may think me to use the privilege. For a good while I dared believe you were coming hither, and why should I write?—and now for weeks I have been absorbed in my foolish lectures, of which only two are yet delivered and ended. There should be eight more; subject, "The Present Age." Out of these follies I remember you with glad heart. Lately I had Sterling's letter, which, since I have read his article on you, I am determined to answer speedily. I delighted in the spirit of that paper, loving you so well and accusing you so conscientiously. What does he at Clifton? If you communicate with him, tell him I thank him for his letter, and hold him dear. I am very happy lately in adding one or two new friends to my little circle, and you may be sure every friend of mine is a friend of yours. So when you come here you shall not be lonely. A new person is always to me a great event, and will not let me sleep.—I believe I was not wise to volunteer myself to this fever fit of lecturing again. I ought to have written instead in silence and serenity. Yet I work better under this base necessity, and then I have a certain delight (base also?) in speaking to a multitude. But my joy in friends, those sacred people, is my consolation for the mishaps of the adventure, and they for the most part come to me from this publication of myself.—After ten or twelve weeks I think I shall address myself earnestly to writing, and give some form to my formless scripture.

I beg you will write to me and tell me what you do, and give me good news of your wife and your brother. Can they not see the necessity of your coming to look after your American interests? My wife and mother love both you and them. A young man of New York told me the other day he was about getting you an invitation from an Association in that city to give them a course of lectures on such terms as would at least make you whole in the expenses of coming thither. We could easily do that in Boston.

—R.W. Emerson

What manner of person is Heraud? Do you read Landor, or know him, O seeing man? Farewell!

XLIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 6 January, 1840

My Dear Emerson,—It is you, I surely think, that are in my debt now;* nevertheless I must fling you another word: may it cross one from you coming hither—as near the Lizard Point as it likes!

————- * The preceding letter had not yet arrived. ————-

Some four sheets making a Pamphlet called Chartism addressed to you at Concord are, I suppose, snorting along through the waters this morning, part of the Cargo of the "British Queen." At least I gave them to Mr. Brown (your unseen friend) about ten days ago, who promised to dispose of them; the "British Queen," he said, was the earliest chance. The Pamphlet itself (or rather booklet, for Fraser has gilt it, &c., and asks five shillings for it as a Book) is out since then; radicals and others yelping considerably in a discordant manner about it; I have nothing other to say to you about it than what I said last time, that the sheets were yours to do with as you saw good,—to burn if you reckoned that fittest. It is not entirely a Political Pamphlet; nay, there are one or two things in it which my American Friends specially may like: but the interests discussed are altogether English, and cannot be considered as likely to concern New-Englishmen very much. However, it will probably be itself in your hand before this sheet, and you will have determined what is fit.

A copy of Wilhelm Meister, two copies, one for Stearns Wheeler, are probably in some of the "Line Ships" at this time too: good voyage to them! The French Revolutions were all shipped, invoiced, &c.; they have, I will suppose, arrived safe, as we shall hear by and by. What freightages, landings, and embarkments! For only two days ago I sent you off, through Kennet, another Book: John Sterling's Poems, which he has collected into a volume. Poor John has overworked himself again, or the climate without fault on his side has proved too hard for him: he sails for Madeira again next week! His Doctors tell me there is no intrinsic danger; but they judge the measure safe as one of precaution. It is very mortifying he had nestled himself down at Clifton, thinking he might now hope to continue there; and lo! he has to fly again.—Did you get his letter? The address to him now will be, for three months to come, "Edward Sterling, Esq., South Place, Knightsbridge, London," his Father's designation.

Farther I must not omit to say that Richard Monckton Milnes purposes, through the strength of Heaven, to review you! In the next Number of the London and Westminster, the courageous youth will do this feat, if they let him. Nay, he has already done it, the Paper being actually written he employed me last week in negotiating with the Editors about it; and their answer was, "Send us the Paper, it promises very well." We shall see whether it comes out or not; keeping silence till then. Milnes is a Tory Member of Parliament; think of that! For the rest, he describes his religion in these terms: "I profess to be a Crypto-Catholic." Conceive the man! A most bland-smiling, semi- quizzical, affectionate, high-bred, Italianized little man, who has long olive-blond hair, a dimple, next to no chin, and flings his arm round your neck when he addresses you in public society! Let us hear now what he will say, of the American Vates.*

————- * The end of this letter has been cut off. ————-

L. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 17 January, 1840

Dear Emerson,—Your Letter of the 12th of December, greatly, to my satisfaction, has arrived; the struggling Steamship, in spite of all hurricanes, has brought it safe across the waters to me. I find it good to write you a word in return straightway; though I think there are already two, or perhaps even three, messages of mine to you flying about unacknowledged somewhere under the moon; nay, the last of them perhaps may go by the same packet as this, —having been forwarded, as this will be, to Liverpool, after the "British Queen" sailed from London.

Your account of the French Revolution packages, and prognosis of what Little and Brown will do with them, is altogether as it should be. I apprised Fraser instantly of his invoiceless Books, &c.; he answers, that order has been taken in that long since, "instructions" sent, and, I conclude, arrangements for bills least of all forgotten. I mentioned what share of the duty was his; and that your men meant to draw on him for it. That is all right. As to the French Revolution, I agree with your Booksellers altogether about it; the American Edition actually pleases myself better for looking at; nor do I know that this new English one has much superiority for use: it is despicably printed, I fear, so far as false spellings and other slovenlinesses can go. Fraser "finds the people like it"; credat Judaeus;—as for me, I have told him I will not print any more with that man, but with some other man. Curious enough, the price Little and Brown have fixed upon was the price I remember guessing at beforehand, and the result they propose to realize for me corresponds closely with my prophecy too. Thanks, a thousand thanks, for all the trouble you never grudge to take. We shall get ourselves handsomely out of this export and import speculation; and know, taught at a rather cheap rate, not to embark in the like again.

There went off a Wilhelm Meister for you, and a letter to announce it, several weeks ago; that was message first. Your traveling neighbor, Brown, took charge of a Pamphlet named Chartism, to be put into the "British Queen's" Letter-bag (where I hope, and doubt not, he did put it, though I have seen nothing of him since); that and a letter in reference to it was message second. Thirdly, I sent off a volume of Poems by Sterling, likewise announced in that letter. And now this that I actually write is the fourth (it turns out to be) and last of all the messages. Let us take Arithmetic along with us in all things.—Of Chartism I have nothing farther to say, except that Fraser is striking off another One Thousand copies to be called Second Edition; and that the people accuse me, not of being an incendiary and speculative Sansculotte threatening to become practical, but of being a Tory,—thank Heaven. The Miscellanies are at press; at two presses; to be out, as Hope asseverates, in March: five volumes, without Chartism; with Hoffmann and Tieck from German Romance, stuck in somewhere as Appendix; with some other trifles stuck in elsewhere, chiefly as Appendix; and no essential change from the Boston Edition. Fraser, "overwhelmed with business," does not yet send me his net result of those Two Hundred and Fifty Copies sold off some time ago; so soon as he does, you shall hear of it for your satisfaction.—As to German Romance, tell my friends that it has been out of print these ten years; procurable, of late not without difficulty, only in the Old-Bookshops. The comfort is that the best part of it stands in the new Wilhelm Meister: Fraser and I had some thought of adding Tieck's and Richter's parts, had they suited for a volume; the rest may without detriment to anybody perish.

Such press-correctings and arrangings waste my time here, not in the agreeablest way. I begin, though in as sulky a state of health as ever, to look again towards some new kind of work. I have often thought of Cromwell and Puritans; but do not see how the subject can be presented still alive. A subject dead is not worth presenting. Meanwhile I read rubbish of Books; Eichhorn, Grimm, &c.; very considerable rubbish; one grain in the cart load worth pocketing. It is pity I have no appetite for lecturing! Many applications have been made to me here;—none more touching to me than one, the day before yesterday, by a fine, innocent-looking Scotch lad, in the name of himself and certain other Booksellers' shopmen eastward in the City! I cannot get them out of my head. Poor fellows! they have nobody to say an honest word to them, in this articulate-speaking world, and they apply to me.—For you, good friend, I account you luckier; I do verily: lecture there what innumerable things you have got to say on "The Present Age";—yet withal do not forget to write either, for that is the lasting plan after all. I have a curious Note, sent me for inspection the other day; it is addressed to a Scotch Mr. Erskine (famed among the saints here) by a Madame Necker, Madame de Stael's kinswoman, to whom he, the said Mr. Erskine, had lent your first Pamphlet at Geneva. She regards you with a certain love, yet a shuddering love. She says, "Cela sent l'Americain qui apres avoir abattu les forets a coup de hache, croit qu'on doit de meme conquerir le monde intellectuel"! What R.M. Milnes will say of you we hope also to see.—I know both Heraud and Landor; but alas, what room is here! Another sheet with less of "Arithmetic" in it will soon be allowed me. Adieu, dear friend.

Yours, ever and ever,
T. Carlyle

LI. Emerson to Carlyle*

New York, 18 March, 1840

My Dear Friend,—I have just seen the steamer "British Queen" enter the harbor from sea, and here lies the "Great Western," to sail tomorrow. I will not resist hints so broad upon my long procrastinations. You shall have at least a tardy acknowledgment that I received in January your letter of December, which I should have answered at once had it not found me absorbed in writing foolish lectures which were then in high tide. I had written you, a little earlier, tidings of the receipt of your French Revolution. Your letter was very welcome, as all your letters are. I have since seen tidings of the Essay on Chartism in an English periodical, but have not yet got my proof-sheets. They are probably still rolling somewhere outside of this port, for all our packetships have had the longest passages: only one has come in for many a week. We will be as patient as we can.

———— * This letter appeared in the Athenaeum, for July 22, 1882 ————

I am here on a visit to my brother, who is a lawyer in this city, and lives at Staten Island, at a distance of half an hour's sail. The city has such immense natural advantages and such capabilities of boundless growth, and such varied and ever increasing accommodations and appliances for eye and ear, for memory and wit, for locomotion and lavation, and all manner of delectation, that I see that the poor fellows that live here do get some compensation for the sale of their souls. And how they multiply! They estimate the population today at 350,000, and forty years ago, it is said, there were but 20,000. But I always seem to suffer some loss of faith on entering cities. They are great conspiracies; the parties are all maskers, who have taken mutual oaths of silence not to betray each other's secret and each to keep the other's madness in countenance. You can scarce drive any craft here that does not seem a subornation of the treason. I believe in the spade and an acre of good ground. Whoso cuts a straight path to his own bread, by the help of God in the sun and rain and sprouting of the grain, seems to me an universal workman. He solves the problem of life, not for one, but for all men of sound body. I wish I may one day send you word, or, better, show you the fact, that I live by my hands without loss of memory or of hope. And yet I am of such a puny constitution, as far as concerns bodily labor, that perhaps I never shall. We will see.

Did I tell you that we hope shortly to send you some American verses and prose of good intent? My vivacious friend Margaret Fuller is to edit a journal whose first number she promises for the 1st of July next, which I think will be written with a good will if written at all. I saw some poetical fragments which charmed me,—if only the writer consents to give them to the public.

I believe I have yet little to tell you of myself. I ended in the middle of February my ten lectures on the Present Age. They are attended by four hundred and fifty to five hundred people, and the young people are so attentive; and out of the hall ask me so many questions, that I assume all the airs of Age and Sapience. I am very happy in the sympathy and society of from six to a dozen persons, who teach me to hope and expect everything from my countrymen. We shall have many Richmonds in the field presently. I turn my face homeward to-morrow, and this summer I mean to resume my endeavor to make some presentable book of Essays out of my mountain of manuscript, were it only for the sake of clearance. I left my wife, and boy, and girl,—the softest, gracefulest little maiden alive, creeping like a turtle with head erect all about the house,—well at home a week ago. The boy has two deep blue wells for eyes, into which I gladly peer when I am tired. Ellen, they say, has no such depth of orb, but I believe I love her better than ever I did the boy. I brought my mother with me here to spend the summer with William Emerson and his wife and ruddy boy of four years. All these persons love and honour you in proportion to their knowledge and years.

My letter will find you, I suppose, meditating new lectures for your London disciples. May love and truth inspire them! I can see easily that my predictions are coming to pass, and that. having waited until your Fame wag in the floodtide, we shall not now see you at all on western shores. Our saintly Dr. T—-, I am told, had a letter within a year from Lord Byron's daughter, informing the good man of the appearance of a certain wonderful genius in London named Thomas Carlyle, and all his astonishing workings on her own and her friends' brains, and him the very monster whom the Doctor had been honoring with his best dread and consternation these five years. But do come in one of Mr. Cunard's ships as soon as the booksellers have made you rich. If they fail to do so, come and read lectures which the Yankees will pay for. Give my love and hope and perpetual remembrance to your wife, and my wife's also, who bears her in her kindest heart, and who resolves every now and then to write to her, that she may thank her for the beautiful Guido.

You told me to send you no more accounts. But I certainly shall, as our financial relations are grown more complex, and I wish at least to relieve myself of this unwonted burden of booksellers' accounts and long delays, by sharing them. I have had one of their estimates by me a year, waiting to send. Farewell.

—R.W.E.

LII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 1 April, 1840

My Dear Emerson,—A Letter has been due to you from me, if not by palpable law of reciprocity, yet by other law and right, for some week or two. I meant to write, so soon as Fraser and I had got a settlement effected. The traveling Sumner being about to return into your neighborhood, I gladly accept his offer to take a message to you. I wish I had anything beyond a dull Letter to send! But unless, as my Wife suggests, I go and get you a D'Orsay Portrait of myself, I see not what there is! Do you read German or not? I now and then fall in with a curious German volume, not perhaps so easily accessible in the Western world. Tell me. Or do you ever mean to learn it? I decidedly wish you would.—As to the D'Orsay Portrait, it is a real curiosity: Count D'Orsay the emperor of European Dandies portraying the Prophet of spiritual Sansculottism! He came rolling down hither one day, many months ago, in his sun-chariot, to the bedazzlement of all bystanders; found me in dusty gray-plaid dressing-gown, grim as the spirit of Presbyterianism (my Wife said), and contrived to get along well enough with me. I found him a man worth talking to, once and away; a man of decided natural gifts; every utterance of his containing in it a wild caricature likeness of some object or other; a dashing man, who might, some twenty years sooner born, have become one of Bonaparte's Marshals, and is, alas,—Count D'Orsay! The Portrait he dashed off in some twenty minutes (I was dining there, to meet Landor); we have not chanced to meet together since, and I refuse to undergo any more eight-o'clock dinners for such an object.—Now if I do not send you the Portrait, after all?

Fraser's account of the Miscellanies stood legibly extended over large spaces of paper, and was in several senses amazing to look upon. I trouble you only with the result. Two Hundred and forty-eight copies (for there were some one or two "imperfect"): all these he had sold, at two guineas each; and sold swiftly, for I recollect in December, or perhaps November, he told me he was "holding back," not to run entirely out. Well, of the L500 and odd so realized for these Books, the portion that belonged to me was L239,—the L261 had been the expense of handing the ware to Emerson over the counter, and drawing in the coin for it! "Rules of the Trade";—it is a Trade, one would surmise, in which the Devil has a large interest. However,—not to spend an instant polluting one's eyesight with that side of it,—let me feel joyfully, with thanks to Heaven and America, that I do receive such a sum in the shape of wages, by decidedly the noblest method in which wages could come to a man. Without Friendship, without Ralph Waldo Emerson, there had been no sixpence of that money here. Thanks, and again thanks. This earth is not an unmingled ball of Mud, after all. Sunbeams visit it;—mud and sunbeams are the stuff it has from of old consisted of.—I hasten away from the Ledger, with the mere good- news that James is altogether content with the "progress" of all these Books, including even the well-abused Chartism Book. We are just on the point of finishing our English reprint of the Miscellanies; of which I hope to send you a copy before long.

And now why do not you write to me? Your Lectures must be done long ago. Or are you perhaps writing a Book? I shall be right glad to hear of that; and withal to hear that you do not hurry yourself, but strive with deliberate energy to produce what in you is best. Certainly, I think, a right Book does lie in the man! It is to be remembered also always that the true value is determined by what we do not write! There is nothing truer than that now all but forgotten truth; it is eternally true. He whom it concerns can consider it.—You have doubtless seen Milnes's review of you. I know not that you will find it to strike direct upon the secret of Emerson, to hit the nail on the head, anywhere at all; I rather think not. But it is gently, not unlovingly done;—and lays the first plank of a kind of pulpit for you here and throughout all Saxondom: a thing rather to be thankful for. It on the whole surpassed my expectations. Milnes tells me he is sending you a copy and a Note, by Sumner. He is really a pretty little robin-redbreast of a man.

You asked me about Landor and Heraud. Before my paper entirely vanish, let me put down a word about them. Heraud is a loquacious scribacious little man, of middle age, of parboiled greasy aspect, whom Leigh Hunt describes as "wavering in the most astonishing manner between being Something and Nothing." To me he is chiefly remarkable as being still—with his entirely enormous vanity and very small stock of faculty—out of Bedlam. He picked up a notion or two from Coleridge many years ago; and has ever since been rattling them in his head, like peas in an empty bladder, and calling on the world to "List the Music of the spheres." He escapes assassination, as I calculate, chiefly by being the cheerfulest best-natured little creature extant.—You cannot kill him he laughs so softly, even when he is like killing you. John Mill said, "I forgive him freely for interpreting the Universe, now when I find he cannot pronounce the h's!" Really this is no caricature; you have not seen the match of Heraud in your days. I mentioned to him once that Novalis had said, "The highest problem of Authorship is the writing of a Bible."— "That is precisely what I am doing!" answered the aspiring, unaspirating.*—Of Landor I have not got much benefit either. We met first, some four years ago, on Cheyne Walk here: a tall, broad, burly man, with gray hair, and large, fierce-rolling eyes; of the most restless, impetuous vivacity, not to be held in by the most perfect breeding,—expressing itself in high-colored superlatives, indeed in reckless exaggeration, now and then in a dry sharp laugh not of sport but of mockery; a wild man, whom no extent of culture had been able to tame! His intellectual faculty seemed to me to be weak in proportion to his violence of temper: the judgment he gives about anything is more apt to be wrong than right,—as the inward whirlwind shows him this side or the other of the object; and sides of an object are all that he sees. He is not an original man; in most cases one but sighs over the spectacle of common place torn to rags. I find him painful as a writer; like a soul ever promising to take wing into the Aether, yet never doing it, ever splashing webfooted in the terrene mud, and only splashing the worse the more he strives! Two new tragedies of his that I read lately are the fatalest stuff I have seen for long: not an ingot; ah no, a distracted coil of wire-drawings salable in no market. Poor Landor has left his Wife (who is said to be a fool) in Italy, with his children, who would not quit her; but it seems he has honestly surrendered all his money to her, except a bare annuity for furnished lodgings; and now lives at Bath, a solitary sexagenarian, in that manner. He visits London in May; but says always it would kill him soon: alas, I can well believe that! They say he has a kind heart; nor does it seem unlikely: a perfectly honest heart, free and fearless, dwelling amid such hallucinations, excitations, tempestuous confusions, I can see he has. Enough of him! Me he likes well enough, more thanks to him; but two hours of such speech as his leave me giddy and undone. I have seen some other Lions, and Lion's-providers; but consider them a worthless species.—When will you write, then? Consider my frightful outlook with a Course of Lectures to give "On Heroes and Hero-worship,"—from Odin to Robert Burns! My Wife salutes you all. Good be in the Concord Household!

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

———— * There is an account of Heraud by an admirer in the Dial for October, 1842, p. 241. It contrasts curiously and instructively with Carlyle's sketch. ————

LIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 21 April, 1840

My Dear Friend,—Three weeks ago I received a letter from you following another in the week before, which I should have immediately acknowledged but that I was promised a private opportunity for the 25th of April, by which time I promised myself to send you sheets of accounts. I had also written you from New York about the middle of March. But now I suppose Mr. Grinnell—a hospitable, humane, modest gentleman in Providence, R.I., a merchant, much beloved by all his townspeople, and, though no scholar, yet very fond of silently listening to such— is packing his trunk to go to England. He offered to carry any letters for me, and as at his house during my visit to Providence I was eagerly catechised by all comers concerning Thomas Carlyle, I thought it behoved me to offer him for his brethren, sisters, and companions' sake, the joy of seeing the living face of that wonderful man. Let him see thy face and pass on his way. I who cannot see it, nor hear the voice that comes forth of it, must even betake me to this paper to repay the best I can the love of the Scottish man, and in the hope to deserve more.

Your letter announces Wilhelm Meister, Sterling's Poems, and Chartism. I am very rich, or am to be. But Kennet is no Mercury. Wilhelm and Sterling have not yet made their appearance, though diligently inquired after by Stearns Wheeler and me. Little and Brown now correspond with Longman, not with Kennet. But they will come soon, perhaps are already arrived.

Chartism arrived at Concord by mail not until one of the last days of March, though dated by you, I think, the 21st of December. I returned home on the 3d of April, and found it waiting. All that is therein said is well and strongly said, and as the words are barbed and feathered the memory of men cannot choose but carry them whithersoever men go. And yet I thought the book itself instructed me to look for more. We seemed to have a right to an answer less concise to a question so grave and humane, and put with energy and eloquence. I mean that whatever probabilities or possibilities of solution occurred should have been opened to us in some detail. But now it stands as a preliminary word, and you will one day, when the fact itself is riper; write the Second Lesson; or those whom you have influenced will. I read the book twice hastily through, and sent it directly to press, fearing to be forestalled, for the London book was in Boston already. Little and Brown are to print it. Their estimate is:—

Printing page for page with copy ……. $63.35
Paper ……………………………….44.00
Binding ……………………………. 90.00
Total ……………………………… $197.35

Costing say twenty cents per copy for one thousand copies bound. The book to sell for fifty cents: the Bookseller's commission twenty percent on the Retail price. The author's profit fifteen cents per copy. They intend, if a cheap edition is published,— no unlikely event,—to stitch the book as pamphlet, and sell it at thirty-eight cents. I expect it from the press in a few days. I shall not on this sheet break into the other accounts, as I am expecting hourly from Munroe's clerk an entire account of R.W.E. with T.C., of which I have furnished him with all the facts I had, and he is to write it out in the manner of his craft. I did not give it to him until I had made some unsuccessful experiments myself.

I am here at work now for a fortnight to spin some single cord out of my thousand and one strands of every color and texture that lie raveled around me in old snarls. We need to be possessed with a mountainous conviction of the value of our advice to our contemporaries, if we will take such pains to find what that is. But no, it is the pleasure of the spinning that betrays poor spinners into the loss of so much good time. I shall work with the more diligence on this book to-be of mine, that you inform me again and again that my penny tracts are still extant; nay, that, beside friendly men, learned and poetic men read and even review them. I am like Scholasticus of the Greek Primer, who was ashamed to bring out so small a dead child before such grand people. Pygmalion shall try if he cannot fashion a better, certainly a bigger.—I am sad to hear that Sterling sails again for his health. I am ungrateful not to have written to him, as his letter was very welcome to me. I will not promise again until I do it. I received a note last week forwarded by Mr. Hume from New York, and instantly replied to greet the good messenger to our Babylonian city, and sent him letters to a few friends of mine there. But my brother writes me that he had left New York for Washington when he went to seek him at his lodgings. I hope he will come northward presently, and let us see his face.

22 April.—Last evening came true the promised account drawn up by Munroe's clerk, Chapman. I have studied it with more zeal than success. An account seems an ingenious way of burying facts: it asks wit equal to his who hid them to find them. I am far as yet from being master of this statement, yet, as I have promised it so long, I will send it now, and study a copy of it at my leisure. It is intended to begin where the last account I sent you, viz. of French Revolution, ended, with a balance of $9.53 in your favor…. I send you also a paper which Munroe drew up a long time ago by way of satisfying me that, so far as the first and second volumes [of the Miscellanies] were concerned, the result had accorded with the promise that you should have $1,000 profit from the edition. We prosper marvelously on paper, but the realized benefit loiters. Will you now set some friend of yours in Fraser's shop at work on this paper, and see if this statement is true and transparent. I trust the Munroe firm,— chiefly Nichols, the clerical partner,—and yet it is a duty to understand one's own affair. When I ask, at each six months' reckoning, why we should always be in debt to them, they still remind me of new and newer printing, and promise correspondent profits at last. By sending you this account I make it entirely an affair between you and them. You will have all the facts which any of us know. I am only concerned as having advanced the sums which are charged in the account for the payment of paper and printing, and which promise to liquidate themselves soon, for Munroe declares he shall have $550 to pay me in a few days. For the benefit of all parties bid your clerk sift them. One word more and I have done with this matter, which shall not be weary if it comes to good,—the account of the London five hundred French Revolution is not yet six months old, and so does not come in. Neither does that of the second edition of the first and second volumes of the Miscellanies, for the same reason. They will come in due time. I have very good hope that my friend Margaret Fuller's Journal—after many false baptisms now saying it will be called The Dial, and which is to appear in July— will give you a better knowledge of our young people than any you have had. I will see that it goes to you when the sun first shines on its face. You asked me if I read German, and I forget if I have answered. I have contrived to read almost every volume of Goethe, and I have fifty-five, but I have read nothing else: but I have not now looked even into Goethe for a long time. There is no great need that I should discourse to you on books, least of all on his books; but in a lecture on Literature, in my course last winter, I blurted all my nonsense on that subject, and who knows but Margaret Fuller may be glad to print it and send it to you? I know not.

A Bronson Alcott, who is a great man if he cannot write well, has come to Concord with his wife and three children and taken a cottage and an acre of ground to get his living by the help of God and his own spade. I see that some of the Education people in England have a school called "Alcott House" after my friend. At home here he is despised and rejected of men as much as was ever Pestalozzi. But the creature thinks and talks, and I am glad and proud of my neighbor. He is interested more than need is in the Editor Heraud. So do not fail to tell me of him. Of Landor I would gladly know your knowledge. And now I think I will release your eyes.

Yours always,
R.W. Emerson

LIV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 June, 1840

My Dear Carlyle,—Since I wrote a couple of letters to you,—I know not exactly when, but in near succession many weeks ago,— there has come to me Wilhelm Meister in three volumes, goodly to see, good to read,—indeed quite irresistible;—for though I thought I knew it all, I began at the beginning and read to the end of the Apprenticeship, and no doubt shall despatch the Travels, on the earliest holiday. My conclusions and inferences therefrom I will spare you now, since I appended them to a piece I had been copying fairly for Margaret Fuller's Dial,—"Thoughts on Modern Literature," and which is the substance of a lecture in my last winter's course. But I learn that my paper is crowded out of the first Number, and is not to appear until October. I will not reckon the accidents that threaten the ghost of an article through three months of pre- existence! Meantime, I rest your glad debtor for the good book. With it came Sterling's Poems, which, in the interim, I have acknowledged in a letter to him. Sumner has since brought me a gay letter from yourself, concerning, in part, Landor and Heraud; in which as I know justice is not done to the one I suppose it is not done to the other. But Heraud I give up freely to your tender mercies: I have no wish to save him. Landor can be shorn of all that is false and foolish, and yet leave a great deal for me to admire. Many years ago I have read a hundred fine memorable things in the Imaginary Conversations, though I know well the faults of that book, and the Pericles and Aspasia within two years has given me delight. I was introduced to the man Landor when I was in Florence, and he was very kind to me in answering a multitude of questions. His speech, I remember, was below his writing. I love the rich variety of his mind, his proud taste, his penetrating glances, and the poetic loftiness of his sentiment, which rises now and then to the meridian, though with the flight, I own, rather of a rocket than an orb, and terminated sometimes by a sudden tumble. I suspect you of very short and dashing reading in his books; and yet I should think you would like him,—both of you such glorious haters of cant. Forgive me, I have put you two together twenty times in my thought as the only writers who have the old briskness and vivacity. But you must leave me to my bad taste and my perverse and whimsical combinations.

I have written to Mr. Milnes who sent me by Sumner a copy of his article with a note. I addressed my letter to him at "London,"— no more. Will it ever reach him? I told him that if I should print more he would find me worse than ever with my rash, unwhipped generalization. For my journals, which I dot here at home day by day, are full of disjointed dreams, audacities, unsystematic irresponsible lampoons of systems, and all manner of rambling reveries, the poor drupes and berries I find in my basket after endless and aimless rambles in woods and pastures. I ask constantly of all men whether life may not be poetic as well as stupid?

I shall try and persuade Mr. Calvert, who has sent to me for a letter to you, to find room in his trunk for a poor lithograph portrait of our Concord "Battle-field," so called, and village, that you may see the faint effigy of the fields and houses in which we walk and love you. The view includes my Grandfather's house (under the trees near the Monument), in which I lived for a time until I married and bought my present house, which is not in the scope of this drawing. I will roll up two of them, and, as Sterling seems to be more nomadic than you, I beg you will send him also this particle of foreign parts.

With this, or presently after it, I shall send a copy of the Dial. It is not yet much; indeed, though no copy has come to me, I know it is far short of what it should be, for they have suffered puffs and dulness to creep in for the sake of the complement of pages; but it is better than anything we had; and I have some poetry communicated to me for the next number which I wish Sterling and Milnes to see. In this number what say you to the Elegy written by a youth who grew up in this town and lives near me,—Henry Thoreau? A criticism on Persius is his also. From the papers of my brother Charles, I gave them the fragments on Homer, Shakespeare, Burke: and my brother Edward wrote the little Farewell, when last he left his home. The Address of the Editors to the Readers is all the prose that is mine, and whether they have printed a few verses for me I do not know. I am daily expecting an account for you from Little and Brown. They promised it at this time. It will speedily follow this sheet, if it do not accompany it. But I am determined, if I can, to send one letter which is not on business. Send me some word of the Lectures. I have yet seen only the initial notices. Surely you will send me some time the D'Orsay portrait. Sumner thinks Mrs. Carlyle was very well when he saw her last, which makes me glad.—I wish you both to love me, as I am affectionately Yours,

—R.W. Emerson

LV. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 2 July, 1840

My Dear Emerson,—Surely I am a sinful man to neglect so long making any acknowledgment of the benevolent and beneficent Arithmetic you sent me! It is many weeks, perhaps it is months, since the worthy citizen—your Host as I understood you in some of your Northern States—stept in here, one mild evening, with his mild honest face and manners; presented me your Bookseller Accounts; talked for half an hour, and then went his way into France. Much has come and gone since then; Letters of yours, beautiful Disciples of yours:—I pray you forgive me! I have been lecturing; I have been sick; I have been beaten about in all ways. Nay, at bottom, it was only three days ago that I got the Bibliopoliana back from Fraser; to whom, as you recommended, I, totally inadequate like yourself to understand such things, had straightway handed them for examination. I always put off writing till Fraser should have spoken. I did not urge him, or he would have spoken any day: there is my sin.

Fraser declares the Accounts to be made out in the most beautiful manner; intelligible to any human capacity; correct so far as he sees, and promising to yield by and by a beautiful return of money. A precious crop, which we must not cut in the blade; mere time will ripen it into yellow nutritive ears yet. So he thinks. The only point on which I heard him make any criticism was on what he called, if I remember, "the number of Copies delivered,"—that is to say, delivered by the Printer and Binder as actually available for sale. The edition being of a Thousand, there have only 984 come bodily forth; 16 are "waste." Our Printers, it appears, are in the habit of adding one for every fifty beforehand, whereby the waste is usually made good, and more; so that in One Thousand there will usually be some dozen called "Author's copies" over and above. Fraser supposes your Printers have a different custom. That is all. The rest is apparently every-way right; is to be received with faith; with faith, charity, and even hope,—and packed into the bottom of one's drawer, never to be looked at more except on the outside, as a memorial of one of the best and helpfulest of men! In that capacity it shall lie there.

My Lectures were in May, about Great Men. The misery of it was hardly equal to that of former years, yet still was very hateful. I had got to a certain feeling of superiority over my audience; as if I had something to tell them, and would tell it them. At times I felt as if I could, in the end, learn to speak. The beautiful people listened with boundless tolerance, eager attention. I meant to tell them, among other things, that man was still alive, Nature not dead or like to die; that all true men continued true to this hour,—Odin himself true, and the Grand Lama of Thibet himself not wholly a lie. The Lecture on Mahomet ("the Hero as Prophet") astonished my worthy friends beyond measure. It seems then this Mahomet was not a quack? Not a bit of him! That he is a better Christian, with his "bastard Christianity," than the most of us shovel-hatted? I guess than almost any of you!—Not so much as Oliver Cromwell ("the Hero as King") would I allow to have been a Quack. All quacks I asserted to be and to have been Nothing, chaff that would not grow: my poor Mahomet "was wheat with barn sweepings"; Nature had tolerantly hidden the barn sweepings; and as to the wheat, behold she had said Yes to it, and it was growing!—On the whole, I fear I did little but confuse my esteemed audience: I was amazed, after all their reading of me, to be understood so ill;— gratified nevertheless to see how the rudest speech of a man's heart goes into men's hearts, and is the welcomest thing there. Withal I regretted that I had not six months of preaching, whereby to learn to preach, and explain things fully! In the fire of the moment I had all but decided on setting out for America this autumn, and preaching far and wide like a very lion there. Quit your paper formulas, my brethren,—equivalent to old wooden idols, _un_divine as they: in the name of God, understand that you are alive, and that God is alive! Did the Upholsterer make this Universe? Were you created by the Tailor? I tell you, and conjure you to believe me literally, No, a thousand times No! Thus did I mean to preach, on "Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic"; in America too. Alas! the fire of determination died away again: all that I did resolve upon was to write these Lectures down, and in some way promulgate them farther. Two of them accordingly are actually written; the Third to be begun on Monday: it is my chief work here, ever since the end of May. Whether I go to preach them a second time extempore in America rests once more with the Destinies. It is a shame to talk so much about a thing, and have it still hang in nubibus: but I was, and perhaps am, really nearer doing it than I had ever before been. A month or two now, I suppose, will bring us back to the old nonentity again. Is there, at bottom, in the world or out of it, anything one would like so well, with one's whole heart well, as PEACE? Is lecturing and noise the way to get at that? Popular lecturer! Popular writer! If they would undertake in Chancery, or Heaven's Chancery, to make a wise man Mahomet Second and Greater, "Mahomet of Saxondom," not reviewed only, but worshiped for twelve centuries by all Bulldom, Yankee- doodle-doodom, Felondom New Zealand, under the Tropics and in part of Flanders,—would he not rather answer: Thank you; but in a few years I shall be dead, twelve Centuries will have become Eternity; part of Flanders Immensity: we will sit still here if you please, and consider what quieter thing we can do! Enough of this.

Richard Milnes had a Letter from you, one morning lately, when I met him at old Rogers's. He is brisk as ever; his kindly Dilettantism looking sometimes as if it would grow a sort of Earnest by and by. He has a new volume of Poems out: I advised him to try Prose; he admitted that Poetry would not be generally read again in these ages,—but pleaded, "It was so convenient for veiling commonplace!" The honest little heart!—We did not know what to make of the bright Miss —- here; she fell in love with my wife;—the contrary, I doubt, with me: my hard realism jarred upon her beautiful rose-pink dreams. Is not all that very morbid,—unworthy the children of Odin, not to speak of Luther, Knox, and the other Brave? I can do nothing with vapors, but wish them condensed. Kennet had a copy of the English Miscellanies for you a good many weeks ago: indeed, it was just a day or two before your advice to try Green henceforth. Has the Meister ever arrived? I received a Controversial Volume from Mr. Ripley: pray thank him very kindly. Somebody borrowed the Book from me; I have not yet read it. I did read a Pamphlet which seems now to have been made part of it. Norton* surely is a chimera; but what has the whole business they are jarring about become? As healthy worshiping Paganism is to Seneca and Company, so is healthy worshiping Christianity to—I had rather not work the sum!—Send me some swift news of yourself, dear Emerson. We salute you and yours, in all heartiness of brotherhood.

Yours ever and always—
T. Carlyle

————- * Professor Andrews Norton. The controversy was that occasioned by Professor Norton's Discourse on "The Latest Form of Infidelity." ————-

LVI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 August, 1840

My Dear Carlyle,—I fear, nay I know, that when I wrote last to you, about the 1st of July, I promised to follow my sheet immediately with a bookseller's account. The bookseller did presently after render his account, but on its face appeared the fact—which with many and by me unanswerable reasons they supported—that the balance thereon credited to you was not payable until the 1st of October. The account is footed "Net sales of French Revolution to 1 July, 1840, due October 1, $249.77." Let us hope then that we shall get, not only a new page of statement, but also some small payment in money a month hence. Having no better story to tell, I told nothing.

But I will not let the second of the Cunard boats leave Boston without a word to you. Since I wrote by Calvert came your letter describing your lectures and their success: very welcome news, for a good London newspaper, which I consulted, promised reports, but gave none. I have heard so oft of your projected trip to America, that my ear would now be dull, and my faith cold, but that I wish it so much. My friend, your audience still waits for you here willing and eager, and greatly larger no doubt than it would have been when the matter was first debated.

Our community begin to stand in some terror of Transcendentalism, and the Dial, poor little thing, whose first number contains scarce anything considerable or even visible, is just now honored by attacks from almost every newspaper and magazine; which at least betrays the irritability and the instincts of the good public. But they would hardly be able to fasten on so huge a man as you are any party badge. We must all hear you for ourselves. But beside my own hunger to see and know you, and to hear you speak at ease and at large under my own roof, I have a growing desire to present you to three or four friends, and them to you. Almost all my life has been passed alone. Within three or four years I have been drawing nearer to a few men and women whose love gives me in these days more happiness than I can write of. How gladly I would bring your Jovial light upon this friendly constellation, and make you too know my distant riches! We have our own problems to solve also, and a good deal of movement and tendency emerging into sight every day in church and state, in social modes and in letters. I sometimes fancy our cipher is larger and easier to read than that of your English society.

You will naturally ask me if I try my hand at the history of all this,—I who have leisure, and write. No, not in the near and practical way in which they seem to invite. I incline to write philosophy, poetry, possibility,—anything but history. And yet this phantom of the next age limns himself sometimes so large and plain that every feature is apprehensible, and challenges a painter. I can brag little of my diligence or achievement this summer. I dot evermore in my endless journal, a line on every knowable in nature; but the arrangement loiters long, and I get a brick kiln instead of a house.—Consider, however, that all summer I see a good deal of company,—so near as my fields are to the city. But next winter I think to omit lectures, and write more faithfully. Hope for me that I shall get a book ready to send you by New-Year's-day.

Sumner came to see me the other day. I was glad to learn all the little that he knew of you and yours. I do not wonder you set so lightly by my talkative countryman. He has brought nothing home but names, dates, and prefaces. At Cambridge last week I saw Brown for the first time. I had little opportunity to learn what he knew. Mr. Hume has never yet shown his face here. He sent me his Poems from New York, and then went South, and I know no more of him.

My Mother and Wife send you kind regards and best wishes,—to you and all your house. Tell your wife that I hate to hear that she cannot sail the seas. Perhaps now she is stronger she will be a better sailor. For the sake of America will she not try the trip to Leith again? It is only twelve days from Liverpool to Boston. Love, truth, and power abide with you always!

—R.W.E.

LVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 26 September, 1840

My Dear Emerson,—Two Letters of yours are here, the latest of them for above a week: I am a great sinner not to have answered sooner. My way of life has been a thing of petty confusions, uncertainties; I did not till a short while ago see any definite highway, through the multitude of byelanes that opened out on me, even for the next few months. Partly I was busy; partly too, as my wont is, I was half asleep:—perhaps you do not know the combination of these two predicables in one and the same unfortunate human subject! Seeing my course now for a little, I must speak.

According to your prognosis, it becomes at length manifest that I do not go to America for the present. Alas, no! It was but a dream of the fancy; projected, like the French shoemaker's fairy shoes, "in a moment of enthusiasm." The nervous flutter of May Lecturing has subsided into stagnancy; into the feeling that, of all things in the world, public speaking is the hatefulest for me; that I ought devoutly to thank Heaven there is no absolute compulsion laid on me at present to speak! My notion in general was but an absurd one: I fancied I might go across the sea, open my lips wide; go raging and lecturing over the Union like a very lion (too like a frothy mountebank) for several months;—till I had gained, say a thousand pounds; therewith to retire to some small, quiet cottage by the shore of the sea, at least three hundred miles from this, and sit silent there for ten years to come, or forever and a day perhaps! That was my poor little day dream;—incapable of being realized. It appears, I have to stay here, in this brick Babylon; tugging at my chains, which will not break for me: the less I tug, the better. Ah me! On the whole, I have written down my last course of lectures, and shall probably print them; and you, with the aid of proof-sheets, may again print them; that will be the easiest way of lecturing to America! It is truly very weak to speak about that matter so often and long, that matter of coming to you; and never to come. Frey ist das Herz, as Goethe says, doch ist der Fuss gebunden. After innumerable projects, and invitations towards all the four winds, for this summer, I have ended about a week ago by—simply going nowhither, not even to see my dear aged Mother, but sitting still here under the Autumn sky such as I have it; in these vacant streets I am lonelier than elsewhere, have more chance for composure than elsewhere! With Sterne's starling I repeat to myself, "I can't get out."—Well, hang it, stay in then; and let people alone of it!

I have parted with my horse; after an experiment of seven or eight months, most assiduously prosecuted, I came to the conclusion that, though it did me some good, there was not enough of good to warrant such equestrianism: so I plunged out, into green England, in the end of July, for a whole week of riding, an explosion of riding, therewith to end the business, and send off my poor quadruped for sale. I rode over Surrey,— with a leather valise behind me and a mackintosh before; very singular to see: over Sussex, down to Pevensey where the Norman Bastard landed; I saw Julius Hare (whose Guesses at Truth you perhaps know), saw Saint Dunstan's stithy and hammer, at Mayfield, and the very tongs with which he took the Devil by the nose;—finally I got home again, a right wearied man; sent my horse off to be sold, as I say; and finished the writing of my Lectures on Heroes. This is all the rustication I have had, or am like to have. I am now over head and ears in Cromwellian Books; studying, for perhaps the fourth time in my life, to see if it be possible to get any credible face-to-face acquaintance with our English Puritan period; or whether it must be left forever a mere hearsay and echo to one. Books equal in dulness were at no epoch of the world penned by unassisted man. Nevertheless, courage! I have got, within the last twelve months, actually, as it were, to see that this Cromwell was one of the greatest souls ever born of the English kin; a great amorphous semi-articulate Baresark; very interesting to me. I grope in the dark vacuity of Baxters, Neales; thankful for here a glimpse and there a glimpse. This is to be my reading for some time.

The Dial No. 1 came duly: of course I read it with interest; it is an utterance of what is purest, youngest in your land; pure, ethereal, as the voices of the Morning! And yet—you know me—for me it is too ethereal, speculative, theoretic: all theory becomes more and more confessedly inadequate, untrue, unsatisfactory, almost a kind of mockery to me! I will have all things condense themselves, take shape and body, if they are to have my sympathy. I have a body myself; in the brown leaf, sport of the Autumn winds, I find what mocks all prophesyings, even Hebrew ones,—Royal Societies, and Scientific Associations eating venison at Glasgow, not once reckoned in! Nevertheless go on with this, my Brothers. The world has many most strange utterances of a prophetic nature in it at the present time; and this surely is worth listening to among the rest. Do you know English Puseyism? Good Heavens! in the whole circle of History is there the parallel of that,—a true worship rising at this hour of the day for Bands and the Shovel-hat? Distraction surely, incipience of the "final deliration" enters upon the poor old English Formulism that has called itself for some two centuries a Church. No likelier symptom of its being soon about to leave the world has come to light in my time. As if King Macready should quit Covent-Garden, go down to St. Stephen's, and insist on saying, Le roi le veut!—I read last night the wonderfulest article to that effect, in the shape of a criticism on myself, in the Quarterly Review. It seems to be by one Sewell, an Oxford doctor of note, one of the chief men among the Pusey-and-Newman Corporation. A good man, and with good notions, whom I have noted for some years back. He finds me a very worthy fellow; "true, most true,"—except where I part from Puseyism, and reckon the shovel-hat to be an old bit of felt; then I am false, most false. As the Turks say, Allah akbar!

I forget altogether what I said of Landor; but I hope I did not put him in the Heraud category: a cockney windbag is one thing; a scholar and bred man, though incontinent, explosive, half-true, is another. He has not been in town, this year; Milnes describes him as eating greatly at Bath, and perhaps even cooking! Milnes did get your Letter: I told you? Sterling has the Concord landscape; mine is to go upon the wall here, and remind me of many things. Sterling is busy writing; he is to make Falmouth do, this winter, and try to dispense with Italy. He cannot away with my doctrine of Silence; the good John. My Wife has been better than usual all summer; she begins to shiver again as winter draws nigh. Adieu, dear Emerson. Good be with you and yours. I must be far gone when I cease to love you. "The stars are above us, the graves are under us." Adieu.

—T. Carlyle

LVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 October, 1840

My Dear Friend,—My hope is that you may live until this creeping bookseller's balance shall incline at last to your side. My rude ciphering, based on the last account of this kind which I sent you in April from J. Munroe & Co., had convinced me that I was to be in debt to you at this time L40 or more; so that I actually bought L40 the day before the "Caledonia" sailed to send you; but on giving my new accounts to J.M. & Co., to bring the statement up to this time, they astonished me with the above written result. I professed absolute incredulity, but Nichols* labored to show me the rise and progress of all my blunders. Please to send the account with the last to your Fraser, and have it sifted. That I paid, a few weeks since, $481.34, and again, $28.12, for printing and paper respectively, is true.—C.C. Little & Co. acknowledge the sale of 82 more copies of the London Edition French Revolution since the 187 copies of July 1; but these they do not get paid for until January 1, and we it seems must wait as long. We will see if the New-Year's-day will bring us more pence.

————- * Partner in the firm of J. Munroe & Co. ————-

I received by the "Acadia" a letter from you, which I acknowledge now, lest I should not answer it more at large on another sheet, which I think to do. If you do not despair of American booksellers send the new proofs of the Lectures when they are in type to me by John Green, 121 Newgate Street (I believe), to the care of J. Munroe & Co. He sends a box to Munroe by every steamer. I sent a Dial, No. 2, for you, to Green. Kennet, I hear, has failed. I hope he did not give his creditors my Miscellanies, which you told me were there. I shall be glad if you will draw Cromwell, though if I should choose it would be Carlyle. You will not feel that you have done your work until those devouring eyes and that portraying hand have achieved England in the Nineteenth Century. Perhaps you cannot do it until you have made your American visit. I assure you the view of Britain is excellent from New England.

We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new Community in his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to live cleanly. George Ripley is talking up a colony of agriculturists and scholars, with whom he threatens to take the field and the book.* One man renounces the use of animal food; and another of coin; and another of domestic hired service; and another of the State; and on the whole we have a commendable share of reason and hope.

—————- * Preliminary to the experiment of Brook Farm, in 1841. —————-

I am ashamed to tell you, though it seems most due, anything of my own studies, they seem so desultory, idle, and unproductive. I still hope to print a book of essays this winter, but it cannot be very large. I write myself into letters, the last few months, to three or four dear and beautiful persons, my country-men and women here. I lit my candle at both ends, but will now be colder and scholastic. I mean to write no lectures this winter. I hear gladly of your wife's better health; and a letter of Jane Tuckerman's, which I saw, gave the happiest tidings of her. We do not despair of seeing her yet in Concord, since it is now but twelve and a half days to you.

I had a letter from Sterling, which I will answer. In all love and good hope for you and yours, your affectionate

—R.W. Emerson

LIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 9 December, 1840

Dear Emerson,—My answer on this occasion has been delayed above two weeks by a rigorous, searching investigation into the procedure of the hapless Book-conveyer, Kennet, in reference to that copy of the Miscellanies. I was deceived by hopes of a conclusive response from day to day; not till yesterday did any come. My first step, taken long ago, was to address a new copy of the Book, not to you, luckless man, but to Lydia Emerson, the fortunate wife; this copy Green now has lying by him, waiting for the January Steamer (we sail only once a month in this season); before the New Year has got out of infancy the Lady will be graciously pleased to make a few inches of room on her bookshelves for this celebrated performance. And now as to Kennet, take the brief outcome of some dozen visitations, judicial interrogatories, searches of documents, and other piercing work on the part of methodic Fraser, attended with demurrers, pleadings, false denials, false affirmings, on the part of innocent chaotic Kennet: namely, that the said Kennet, so urged, did in the end of the last week, fish up from his repositories your very identical Book directed to Munroe's care, duly booked and engaged for, in May last, but left to repose itself in the Covent-Garden crypts ever since without disturbance from gods or men! Fraser has brought back the Book, and you have lost it;—and the Library of my native village in Scotland is to get it; and not Kennet any more in this world, but Green ever henceforth is to be our Book Carrier. There is a history. Green, it seems, addresses also to Munroe; but the thing, I suppose, will now shift for itself without watching.

As to the bibliopolic Accounts, my Friend! we will trust them, with a faith known only in the purer ages of Roman Catholicism,— when Papacy had indeed become a Dubiety, but was not yet a Quackery and Falsehood, was a thing as true as it could manage to be! That really may be the fact of this too. In any case what signifies it much? Money were still useful; but it is not now so indispensable. Booksellers by their knavery or their fidelity cannot kill us or cure us. Of the truth of Waldo Emerson's heart to me, there is, God be thanked for it, no doubt at all.

My Hero-Lectures lie still in Manuscript. Fraser offers no amount of cash adequate to be an outward motive; and inwardly there is as yet none altogether clear, though I rather feel of late as if it were clearing. To fly in the teeth of English Puseyism, and risk such shrill welcome as I am pretty sure of, is questionable: yet at bottom why not? Dost thou not as entirely reject this new Distraction of a Puseyism as man can reject a thing,—and couldst utterly abjure it, and even abhor it,—were the shadow of a cobweb ever likely to become momentous, the cobweb itself being beheaded, with axe and block on Tower Hill, two centuries ago? I think it were as well to tell Puseyism that it has something of good, but also much of bad and even worst. We shall see. If I print the thing, we shall surely take in America again; either by stereotype or in some other way. Fear not that!—Do you attend at all to this new Laudism of ours? It spreads far and wide among our Clergy in these days; a most notable symptom, very cheering to me many ways; whether or not one of the fatalest our poor Church of England has ever exhibited, and betokening swifter ruin to it than any other, I do not inquire. Thank God, men do discover at last that there is still a God present in their affairs, and must be, or their affairs are of the Devil, naught, and worthy of being sent to the Devil! This once given, I find that all is given; daily History, in Kingdom and in Parish, is an experimentum crucis to show what is the Devil's and what not. But on the whole are we not the formalest people ever created under this Sun? Cased and overgrown with Formulas, like very lobsters with their shells, from birth upwards; so that in the man we see only his breeches, and believe and swear that wherever a pair of old breeches are there is a man! I declare I could both laugh and cry. These poor good men, merciful, zealous, with many sympathies and thoughts, there do they vehemently appeal to me, Et tu, Brute? Brother, wilt thou too insist on the breeches being old,—not ply a needle among us here?—To the naked Caliban, gigantic, for whom such breeches would not be a glove, who is stalking and groping there in search of new breeches and accoutrements, sure to get them, and to tread into nonentity whoever hinders him in the search,—they are blind as if they had no eyes. Sartorial men; ninth-parts of a man:—enough of them.

The second Number of the Dial has also arrived some days ago. I like it decidedly better than the first; in fact, it is right well worth being put on paper, and sent circulating;—I find only, as before that it is still too much of a soul for circulating as it should. I wish you could in future contrive to mark at the end of each Article who writes it, or give me some general key for knowing. I recognize Emerson readily; the rest are of [Greek] for most part. But it is all good and very good as a soul; wants only a body, which want means a great deal! Your Paper on Literature is incomparably the worthiest thing hitherto; a thing I read with delight. Speak out, my brave Emerson; there are many good men that listen! Even what you say of Goethe gratifies me; it is one of the few things yet spoken of him from personal insight, the sole kind of things that should be spoken! You call him actual, not ideal; there is truth in that too; and yet at bottom is not the whole truth rather this: The actual well-seen is the ideal? The actual, what really is and exists: the past, the present, the future no less, do all lie there! Ah yes! one day you will find that this sunny-looking, courtly Goethe held veiled in him a Prophetic sorrow deep as Dante's,—all the nobler to me and to you, that he could so hold it. I believe this; no man can see as he sees, that has not suffered and striven as man seldom did.— Apropos of this, Have you got Miss Martineau's Hour and Man? How curious it were to have the real History of the Negro Toussaint, and his black Sansculottism in Saint Domingo,—the most atrocious form Sansculottism could or can assume! This of a "black Wilberforce-Washington," as Sterling calls it, is decidedly something. Adieu, dear Emerson: time presses, paper is done. Commend me to your good wife, your good Mother, and love me as well as you can. Peace and health under clear winter skies be with you all.

—T. Carlyle

My Wife rebukes me sharply that I have "forgot her love." She is much better this winter than of old.

Having mentioned Sterling I should say that he is at Torquay
(Devonshire) for the winter, meditating new publication of Poems.
I work still in Cromwellism; all but desperate of any feasible
issue worth naming. I "enjoy bad health" too, considerably!

LX. Carlyle to Mrs. Emerson

Chelsea, London, 21 February, 1841

Dear Mrs. Emerson,—Your Husband's Letter shall have answer when some moment of leisure is granted me; he will wait till then, and must. But the beautiful utterance which you send over to me; melodious as the voice of flutes, of Aeolian Harps borne on the rude winds so far,—this must have answer, some word or growl of answer, be there leisure or none! The "Acadia," it seems, is to return from Liverpool the day after tomorrow. I shove my paper-whirlpools aside for a little, and grumble in pleased response.

You are an enthusiast; make Arabian Nights out of dull foggy London Days; with your beautiful female imagination, shape burnished copper Castles out of London Fog! It is very beautiful of you;—nay, it is not foolish either, it is wise. I have a guess what of truth there may be in that; and you the fair Alchemist, are you not all the richer and better that you know the essential gold, and will not have it called pewter or spelter, though in the shops it is only such? I honor such Alchemy, and love it; and have myself done something in that kind. Long may the talent abide with you; long may I abide to have it exercised on me! Except the Annandale Farm where my good Mother still lives, there is no House in all this world which I should be gladder to see than the one at Concord. It seems to stand as only over the hill, in the next Parish to me, familiar from boyhood. Alas! and wide-waste Atlantics roll between; and I cannot walk over of an evening!—I never give up the hope of getting thither some time. Were I a little richer, were I a little healthier; were I this and that—!—One has no Fortunatus' "Time-annihilating" or even "Space-annihilating Hat": it were a thing worth having in this world.

My Wife unites with me in all kindest acknowledgments: she is getting stronger these last two years; but is still such a sailor as the Island hardly parallels: had she the Space- annihilating Hat, she too were soon with you. Your message shall reach Miss Martineau; my Dame will send it in her first Letter. The good Harriet is not well; but keeps a very courageous heart. She lives by the shore of the beautiful blue Northumbrian Sea; a "many-sounding" solitude which I often envy her. She writes unweariedly, has many friends visiting her. You saw her Toussaint l'Ouverture: how she has made such a beautiful "black Washington," or "Washington-Christ-Macready," as I have heard some call it, of a rough-handed, hard-headed, semi- articulate gabbling Negro; and of the horriblest phasis that "Sansculottism" can exhibit, of a Black Sansculottism, a musical Opera or Oratorio in pink stockings! It is very beautiful. Beautiful as a child's heart,—and in so shrewd a head as that. She is now writing express Children's-Tales, which I calculate I shall find more perfect.

Some ten days ago there went from me to Liverpool, perhaps there will arrive at Concord by this very "Acadia," a bundle of Printed Sheets directed to your Husband: pray apprise the man of that. They are sheets of a Volume called Lectures on Heroes; the Concord Hero gets them without direction or advice of any kind. I have got some four sheets more ready for him here; shall perhaps send them too, along with this. Some four again more will complete the thing. I know not what he will make of it;— perhaps wry faces at it?

Adieu, dear Mrs. Emerson. We salute you from this house. May all good which the Heavens grant to a kind heart, and the good which they never refuse to one such, abide with you always. I commend myself to your and Emerson's good Mother, to the mischievous Boys and—all the Household. Peace and fair Spring- weather be there!

Yours with great regard,
T. Carlyle

LXI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 28 February, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,—Behold Mr. George Nichols's new digest and exegesis of his October accounts. The letter seems to me the most intelligible of the two papers, but I have long been that man's victim, semi-annually, and never dare to make head against his figures. You are a brave man, and out of the ring of his enchantments, and withal have magicians of your own who can give spell for spell, and read his incantations backward. I entreat you to set them on the work, and convict his figures if you can. He has really taken pains, and is quite proud of his establishment of his accounts. In a month it will be April, and be will have a new one to fender. Little and Brown also in April promise a payment on French Revolution,—and I suppose something is due from Chartism. We will hope that a Bill of Exchange will yet cross from us to you, before our booksellers fail.

I hoped before this to have reached my last proofsheet, but shall have two or three more yet. In a fortnight or three weeks my little raft will be afloat.* Expect nothing more of my powers of construction,—no shipbuilding, no clipper, smack, nor skiff even, only boards and logs tied together. I read to some Mechanics' Apprentices a long lecture on Reform, one evening, a little while ago. They asked me to print it, but Margaret Fuller asked it also, and I preferred the Dial, which shall have the dubious sermon, and I will send it to you in that.—You see the bookseller reverendizes me notwithstanding your laudable perseverance to adorn me with profane titles, on the one hand, and the growing habit of the majority of my correspondents to clip my name of all titles on the other. I desire that you and your wife will keep your kindness for

—R. W. Emerson

————— * The first series of Essays. —————

LXII. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 30 April, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,—Above you have a bill of exchange for one hundred pounds sterling drawn by T.W. Ward & Co. on the Messrs. Barings, payable at sight. Let us hope it is but the first of a long series. I have vainly endeavored to get your account to be rendered by Munroe & Co. to the date of the 1st of April. It was conditionally promised for the day of the last steamer (15 April). It is not ready for that which sails tomorrow and carries this. Little & Co. acknowledge a debt of $607.90 due to you 1st of April, and just now paid me; and regret that their sales have been so slow, which they attribute to the dulness of all trade among us for the last two years. You shall have the particulars of their account from Munroe's statement of the account between you and me. Munroe & Co. have a long apology for not rendering their own account; their book keeper left them at a critical moment, they were without one six weeks, &c.;—but they add, if we could give you it, to what use, since we should be utterly unable to make you any payment at this time? To what use, surely? I am too much used to similar statements from our booksellers and others in the last few years to be much surprised; nor do I doubt their readiness or their power to pay all their debts at last; but a great deal of mutual concession and accommodation has been the familiar resort of our tradesmen now for a good while, a vice which they are all fain to lay at the doors of the Government, whilst it belongs in the first instance, no doubt, to the rashness of the individual traders. These men I believe to be prudent, honest, and solvent, and that we shall get all our debt from them at last. They are not reckoned as rich as Little and Brown. By the next steamer they think they can promise to have their account ready. I am sorry to find that we have been driven from the market by the New York Pirates in the affair of the Six Lectures.* The book was received from London and for sale in New York and Boston before my last sheets arrived by the "Columbia." Appleton in New York braved us and printed it, and furthermore told us that he intends to print in future everything of yours that shall be printed in London,—complaining in rude terms of the monopoly your publishers here exercise, and the small commissions they allow to the trade, &c., &c. Munroe showed me the letter, which certainly was not an amiable one. In this distress, then, I beg you, when you have more histories and lectures to print, to have the manuscript copied by a scrivener before you print at home, and send it out to me, and I will keep all Appletons and Corsairs whatsoever out of the lists. Not only these men made a book (of which, by the by, Munroe sends you by this steamer a copy, which you will find at John Green's, Newgate Street), but the New York newspapers print the book in chapters, and you circulate for six cents per newspaper at the corners of all streets in New York and Boston; gaining in fame what you lose in coin.—The book is a good book, and goes to make men brave and happy. I bear glad witness to its cheering and arming quality.

————- * "Heroes and Hero-Worship." ————-

I have put into Munroe's box which goes to Green a Dial No. 4 also, which I could heartily wish were a better book. But Margaret Fuller, who is a noble woman, is not in sufficiently vigorous health to do this editing work as she would and should, and there is no other who can and will.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

LXIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 8 May, 1841

My Dear Emerson,—Your last letter found me on the southern border of Yorkshire, whither Richard Milnes had persuaded me with him, for the time they call "Easter Holidays" here. I was to shake off the remnants of an ugly Influenza which still hung about me; my little portmanteau, unexpectedly driven in again by perverse accidents, had stood packed, its cowardly owner, the worst of all travelers, standing dubious the while, for two weeks or more; Milnes offering to take me as under his cloak, I went with Milnes. The mild, cordial, though something dilettante nature of the man distinguishes him for me among men, as men go. For ten days I rode or sauntered among Yorkshire fields and knolls; the sight of the young Spring, new to me these seven years, was beautiful, or better than beauty. Solitude itself, the great Silence of the Earth, was as balm to this weary, sick heart of mine; not Dragons of Wantley (so they call Lord Wharncliffe, the wooden Tory man), not babbling itinerant Barrister people, fox-hunting Aristocracy, nor Yeomanry Captains cultivating milk-white mustachios, nor the perpetual racket, and "dinner at eight o'clock," could altogether countervail the fact that green Earth was around one and unadulterated sky overhead, and the voice of waters and birds,—not the foolish speech of Cockneys at all times!—On the last morning, as Richard and I drove off towards the railway, your Letter came in, just in time; and Richard, who loves you well, hearing from whom it was, asked with such an air to see it that I could not refuse him. We parted at the "station," flying each his several way on the wings of Steam; and have not yet met again. I went over to Leeds, staid two days with its steeple-chimneys and smoke-volcano still in view; then hurried over to native Annandale, to see my aged excellent Mother yet again in this world while she is spared to me. My birth-land is always as the Cave of Trophonius to me; I return from it with a haste to which the speed of Steam is slow, —with no smile on my face; avoiding all speech with men! It is not yet eight-and-forty hours since I got back; your Letter is among the first I answer, even with a line; your new Book—But we will not yet speak of that….

My Friend, I thank you for this Volume of yours; not for the copy alone which you send to me, but for writing and printing such a Book. Euge! say I, from afar. The voice of one crying in the desert;—it is once more the voice of a man. Ah me! I feel as if in the wide world there were still but this one voice that responded intelligently to my own; as if the rest were all hearsays, melodious or unmelodious echoes; as if this alone were true and alive. My blessing on you, good Ralph Waldo! I read the Book all yesterday; my Wife scarcely yet done with telling me her news. It has rebuked me, it has aroused and comforted me. Objections of all kinds I might make, how many objections to superficies and detail, to a dialect of thought and speech as yet imperfect enough, a hundred-fold too narrow for the Infinitude it strives to speak: but what were all that? It is an Infinitude, the real vision and belief of one, seen face to face: a "voice of the heart of Nature" is here once more. This is the one fact for me, which absorbs all others whatsoever. Persist, persist; you have much to say and to do. These voices of yours which I likened to unembodied souls, and censure sometimes for having no body,—how can they have a body? They are light-rays darting upwards in the East; they will yet make much and much to have a body! You are a new era, my man, in your new huge country: God give you strength, and speaking and silent faculty, to do such a work as seems possible now for you! And if the Devil will be pleased to set all the Popularities against you and evermore against you,—perhaps that is of all things the very kindest any Angel could do.

Of myself I have nothing good to report. Years of sick idleness and barrenness have grown wearisome to me. I do nothing. I waver and hover, and painfully speculate even now as to health, and where I shall spend the summer out of London! I am a very poor fellow;—but hope to grow better by and by. Then this alluvies of foul lazy stuff that has long swum over me may perhaps yield the better harvest. Esperons!—Hail to all of you from both of us.

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

LXIV. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 21 May, 1841

My Dear Emerson,—About a week ago I wrote to you, after too long a silence. Since that there has another Letter come, with a Draft of L100 in it, and other comfortable items not pecuniary; a line in acknowledgment of the money is again very clearly among my duties. Yesterday, on my first expedition up to Town, I gave the Paper to Fraser; who is to present the result to me in the shape of cash tomorrow. Thanks, and again thanks. This L100, I think, nearly clears off for me the outlay of the second French Revolution; an ill-printed, ill-conditioned publication, the prime cost of which, once all lying saved from the Atlantic whirlpools and hard and fast in my own hand, it was not perhaps well done to venture thitherward again. To the new trouble of my friends withal! We will now let the rest of the game play itself out as it can; and my friends, and my one friend, must not take more trouble than their own kind feelings towards me will reward.

The Books, the Dial No. 4, and Appleton's pirated Lectures, are still expected from Green. In a day or two he will send them: if not, we will jog him into wakefulness, and remind him of the Parcels Delivery Company, which carries luggage of all kinds, like mere letters, many times a day, over all corners of our Babylon. In this, in the universal British Penny Post, and a thing or two of that sort, men begin to take advantage of their crowded ever-whirling condition in these days, which brings such enormous disadvantages along with it _un_sought for.— Bibliopolist Appleton does not seem to be a "Hero,"—except after his own fashion. He is one of those of whom the Scotch say, "Thou wouldst do little for God if the Devil were dead!" The Devil is unhappily dead, in that international bibliopolic province, and little hope of his reviving for some time; whereupon this is what Squire Appleton does. My respects to him even in the Bedouin department, I like to see a complete man, a clear decisive Bedouin.

For the rest, there is one man who ought to be apprised that I can now stand robbery a little better; that I am no longer so very poor as I once was. In Fraser himself there do now lie vestiges of money! I feel it a great relief to see, for a year or two at least, the despicable bugbear of Beggary driven out of my sight; for which small mercy, at any rate, be the Heavens thanked. Fraser himself, for these two editions, One thousand copies each, of the Lectures and Sartor, pays me down on the nail L150; consider that miracle! Of the other Books which he is selling on a joint-stock basis, the poor man likewise promises something, though as yet, ever since New-Year's-day, I cannot learn what, owing to a grievous sickness of his,—for which otherwise I cannot but be sorry, poor Fraser within the Cockney limits being really a worthy, accurate, and rather friendly creature. So you see me here provided with bread and water for a season,—it is but for a season one needs either water or bread, —and rejoice with me accordingly. It is the one useful, nay, I will say the one innoxious, result of all this trumpeting, reviewing, and dinner-invitationing; from which I feel it indispensable to withdraw myself more and more resolutely, and altogether count it as a thing not there. Solitude is what I long and pray for. In the babble of men my own soul goes all to babble: like soil you were forever screening, tumbling over with shovels and riddles; in which soil no fruit can grow! My trust in Heaven is, I shall yet get away "to some cottage by the sea-shore"; far enough from all the mad and mad making things that dance round me here, which I shall then look on only as a theatrical phantasmagory, with an eye only to the meaning that lies hidden in it. You, friend Emerson, are to be a Farmer, you say, and dig Earth for your living? Well; I envy you that as much as any other of your blessednesses. Meanwhile, I sit shrunk together here in a small dressing-closet, aloft in the back part of the house, excluding all cackle and cockneys; and, looking out over the similitude of a May grove (with little brick in it, and only the minarets of Westminster and gilt cross of St. Paul's visible in the distance, and the enormous roar of London softened into an enormous hum), endeavor to await what will betide. I am busy with Luther in one Marheinecke's very long- winded Book. I think of innumerable things; steal out westward at sunset among the Kensington lanes; would this May weather last, I might be as well here as in any attainable place. But June comes; the rabid dogs get muzzles; all is brown-parched, dusty, suffocating, desperate, and I shall have to run! Enough of all that. On my paper there comes, or promises to come, as yet simply nothing at all. Patience;—and yet who can be patient?

Had you the happiness to see yourself not long ago, in Fraser's Magazine, classed nominatim by an emphatic earnest man, not without a kind of splay-footed strength and sincerity,—among the chief Heresiarchs of the—world? Perfectly right. Fraser was very anxious to know what I thought of the Paper,—"by an entirely unknown man in the country." I counseled "that there was something in him, which he ought to improve by holding his peace for the next five years."

Adieu, dear Emerson; there is not a scrap more of Paper. All copies of your Essays are out at use; with what result we shall perhaps see. As for me I love the Book and man, and their noble rustic herohood and manhood:—one voice as of a living man amid such jabberings of galvanized corpses: Ach Gott!

Yours evermore,
T. Carlyle

LXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 80 May, 1841

My Dear Friend,—In my letter written to you on the 1st of May (enclosing a bill of exchange of L100 sterling, which, I hope, arrived safely) I believe I promised to send you by the next steamer an account for April. But the false tardy Munroe & Co. did not send it to me until one day too late. Here it is, as they render it, compiled from Little and Brown's statement and their own. I have never yet heard whether you have received their Analysis or explanation of the last abstract they drew up of the mutual claims between the great houses of T.C. and R.W.E., and I am impatient to know whether you have caused it to be examined, and whether it was satisfactory. This new one is based on that, and if that was incorrect, this must be also. I am daily looking for some letter from you, which is perhaps near at hand. If you have not written, write me exactly and immediately on this subject, I entreat you. You will see that in this sheet I am charged with a debt to you of $184.29. I shall tomorrow morning pay to Mr. James Brown (of Little and Brown), who should be the bearer of this letter, $185.00, which sum he will pay you in its equivalent of English coin. I give Mr. Brown an introductory letter to you, and you must not let slip the opportunity to make the man explain his own accounts, if any darkness hang on them. In due time, perhaps, we can send you Munroe, and Nichols also, and so all your factors shall render direct account of themselves to you. I believe I shall also make Brown the bearer of a little book written some time since by a young friend of mine in a very peculiar frame of mind,—thought by most persons to be mad,—and of the publication of which I took the charge.* Mr. Very requested me to send you a copy.—I had a letter from Sterling, lately, which rejoiced me in all but the dark picture it gave of his health. I earnestly wish good news of him. When you see him, show him these poems, and ask him if they have not a grandeur.

————- * Essays and Poems, by Jones Very,—a little volume, the work of an exquisite spirit. Some of the poems it contains are as if written by a George Herbert who had studied Shakespeare, read Wordsworth, and lived in America. ————-

When I wrote last, I believe all the sheets of the Six Lectures had not come to me. They all arrived safely, although the last package not until our American pirated copy was just out of press in New York. My private reading was not less happy for this robbery whereby the eager public were supplied. Odin was all new to me; and Mahomet, for the most part; and it was all good to read, abounding in truth and nobleness. Yet, as I read these pages, I dream that your audience in London are less prepared to hear, than is our New England one. I judge only from the tone. I think I know many persons here who accept thoughts of this vein so readily now, that, if you were speaking on this shore, you would not feel that emphasis you use to be necessary. I have been feeble and almost sick during all the spring, and have been in Boston but once or twice, and know nothing of the reception the book meets from the Catholic Carlylian Church. One reader and friend of yours dwells now in my house, and, as I hope, for a twelvemonth to come,—Henry Thoreau,—a poet whom you may one day be proud of;—a noble, manly youth, full of melodies and inventions. We work together day by day in my garden, and I grow well and strong. My mother, my wife, my boy and girl, are all in usual health, and according to their several ability salute you and yours. Do not cease to tell me of the health of your wife and of the learned and friendly physician.

Yours,
R.W. Emerson

LXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 25 June, 1841

Dear Emerson,—Now that there begins again to be some program possible of my future motions for some time, I hastily despatch you some needful outline of the same.

After infinite confused uncertainty, I learn yesternight that there has been a kind of country-house got for us, at a place called Annan, on the north shore of the Solway Frith, in my native County of Dumfries. You passed through the little Burgh, I suppose, in your way homeward from Craigenputtock: it stands about midway, on the great road, between Dumfries and Carlisle. It is the place where I got my schooling;—consider what a _preter_natural significance such a scene has now got for me! It is within eight miles of my aged Mother's dwelling-place; within riding distance, in fact, of almost all the Kindred I have in the world.—The house, which is built since my time, and was never yet seen by me, is said to be a reasonable kind of house. We get it for a small sum in proportion to its value (thanks to kind accident); the three hundred miles of travel, very hateful to me, will at least entirely obliterate all traces of this Dust- Babel; the place too being naturally almost ugly, as far as a green leafy place in sight of sea and mountains can be so nicknamed, the whole gang of picturesque Tourists, Cockney friends of Nature, &c., &c., who penetrate now by steam, in shoals every autumn, into the very centre of the Scotch Highlands, will be safe over the horizon! In short, we are all bound thitherward in few days; must cobble up some kind of gypsy establishment; and bless Heaven for solitude, for the sight of green fields, heathy moors; for a silent sky over one's head, and air to breathe which does not consist of coal-smoke, finely powdered flint, and other beautiful etceteras of that kind among others! God knows I have need enough to be left altogether alone for some considerable while (forever, as it at present seems to me), to get my inner world, and my poor bodily nerves, both all torn to pieces, set in order a little again! After much vain reluctance therefore; disregarding many considerations,— disregarding finance in the front of these,—I am off; and calculate on staying till I am heartily sated with country, till at least the last gleam of summer weather has departed. My way of life has all along hitherto been a resolute staying at home: I find now, however, that I must alter my habits, cost what it may; that I cannot live all the year round in London, under pain of dying or going rabid;—that I must, in fact, learn to travel, as others do, and be hanged to me! Wherefore, in brief, my Friend, our address for the next two or three months is "Newington Lodge, Annan, Scotland,"—where a letter from Emerson will be a right pleasant visitor! Faustum sit.

My second piece of news, not less interesting I hope, is that Emerson's Essays, the Book so called, is to be reprinted here; nay, I think, is even now at press,—in the hands of that invaluable Printer, Robson, who did the Miscellanies. Fraser undertakes it, "on half-profits";—T. Carlyle writing a Preface,*—which accordingly he did (in rather sullen humor,—not with you!) last night and the foregoing days. Robson will stand by the text to the very utmost; and I also am to read the Proof sheets. The edition is of Seven Hundred and Fifty; which Fraser thinks he will sell. With what joy shall I then sack up the small Ten Pounds Sterling perhaps of "Half-Profits," and remit them to the man Emerson; saying: There, Man! Tit for tat, the reciprocity not all on one side!—I ought to say, moreover, that this was a volunteer scheme of Fraser's; the risk is all his, the origin of it was with him: I advised him to have it reviewed, as being a really noteworthy Book; "Write you a Preface," said he, "and I will reprint it";—to which, after due delay and meditation; I consented. Let me add only, on this subject, the story of a certain Rio,** a French Breton, with long, distracted, black hair. He found your Book at Richard Milnes's, a borrowed copy, and could not borrow it; whereupon he appeals passionately to me; carries off my Wife's copy, this distracted Rio; and is to "read it four times" during this current autumn, at Quimperle, in his native Celtdom! The man withal is a Catholic, eats fish on Friday;—a great lion here when he visits us; one of the naivest men in the world: concerning whom nevertheless, among fashionables, there is a controversy, "Whether he is an Angel, or partially a Windbag and Humbug?" Such is the lot of loveliness in the World! A truer man I never saw; how _wind_less, how windy, I will not compute at present. Me he likes greatly (in spite of my unspeakable contempt for his fish on Friday); likes,—but withal is apt to bore.

—————
* The greater part of this interesting Preface is reprinted in
Mr. George Willis Cooke's excellent book on the Life, Writings,
and Philosophy of Emerson, Boston, 1881, p. 109.

** The author of a book once much admired, De 'l'Art Chretien. In a later work entitled Epilogue a l'Art Chretien, but actually a sort of autobiography, written in the naivest spirit of personal conceit and pious sentimentalism, M. Rio gives an exceedingly entertaining account of his intercourse with Carlyle. —————

Enough, dear Emerson; and more than enough for a day so hurried. Our Island is all in a ferment electioneering: Tories to come in;—perhaps not to come in; at all events not to stay long, without altering their figure much! I sometimes ask myself rather earnestly, What is the duty of a citizen? To be as I have been hitherto, a pacific Alien? That is the easiest, with my humor!—Our brave Dame here, just rallying for the remove, sends loving salutations. Good be with you all always. Adieu, dear Emerson.

—T. Carlyle

Appleton's Book of Hero-Worship has come; for which pray thank Mr. Munroe for me: it is smart on the surface; but printed altogether scandalously!

LXVII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 31 July, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,—Eight days ago—when I had gone to Nantasket Beach, to sit by the sea and inhale its air and refresh this puny body of mine—came to me your letter, all bounteous as all your letters are, generous to a fault, generous to the shaming of me, cold, fastidious, ebbing person that I am. Already in a former letter you had said too much good of my poor little arid book,— which is as sand to my eyes,—and now in this you tell me it shall be printed in London, and graced with a preface from the man of men. I can only say that I heartily wish the book were better, and I must try and deserve so much favor from the kind gods by a bolder and truer living in the months to come; such as may perchance one day relax and invigorate this cramp hand of mine, and teach it to draw some grand and adequate strokes, which other men may find their own account and not their good-nature in repeating. Yet I think I shall never be killed by my ambition. I behold my failures and shortcomings there in writing, wherein it would give me much joy to thrive, with an equanimity which my worst enemy might be glad to see. And yet it is not that I am occupied with better things. One could well leave to others the record, who was absorbed in the life. But I have done nothing. I think the branch of the "tree of life" which headed to a bud in me, curtailed me somehow of a drop or two of sap, and so dwarfed all my florets and drupes. Yet as I tell you I am very easy in my mind, and never dream of suicide. My whole philosophy—which is very real—teaches acquiescence and optimism. Only when I see how much work is to be done, what room for a poet—for any spiritualist—in this great, intelligent, sensual, and avaricious America, I lament my fumbling fingers and stammering tongue. I have sometimes fancied I was to catch sympathetic activity from contact with noble persons; that you would come and see me; that I should form stricter habits of love and conversation with some men and women here who are already dear to me,—and at some rate get off the numb palsy, and feel the new blood sting and tingle in my fingers' ends. Well, sure I am that the right word will be spoken though I cut out my tongue. Thanks, too, to your munificent Fraser for his liberal intention to divide the profits of the Essays. I wish, for the encouragement of such a bookseller, there were to be profits to divide. But I have no faith in your public for their heed to a mere book like mine. There are things I should like to say to them, in a lecture-room or in a "steeple house," if I were there. Seven hundred and fifty copies! Ah no!

And so my dear brother has quitted the roaring city, and gone back in peace to his own land,—not the man he left it, but richer every way, chiefly in the sense of having done something valiantly and well, which the land, and the lands, and all that wide elastic English race in all their dispersion, will know and thank him for. The holy gifts of nature and solitude be showered upon you! Do you not believe that the fields and woods have their proper virtue, and that there are good and great things which will not be spoken in the city? I give you joy in your new and rightful home, and the same greetings to Jane Carlyle! with thanks and hopes and loves to you both.

—R.W. Emerson

As usual at this season of the year, I, incorrigible spouting Yankee, am writing an oration to deliver to the boys in one of our little country colleges, nine days hence.* You will say I do not deserve the aid of any Muse. O but if you knew how natural it is to me to run to these places! Besides, I always am lured on by the hope of saying something which shall stick by the good boys. I hope Brown did not fail to find you, with thirty-eight sovereigns (I believe) which he should carry you.

—————
* "The Method of Nature. An Address to the Society of the
Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, August 11, 1841."
—————

LXVIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Newby, Annan, Scotland, 18 August, 1841

My Dear Emerson,—Two days ago your Letter, direct from Liverpool, reached me here; only fifteen days after date on the other side of the Ocean: one of the swiftest messengers that have yet come from you. Steamers have been known to come, they say, in nine days. By and by we shall visibly be, what I always say we virtually are, members of neighboring Parishes; paying continual visits to one another. What is to hinder huge London from being to universal Saxondom what small Mycale was to the Tribes of Greece,—a place to hold your [Greek] in? A meeting of All the English ought to be as good as one of All the Ionians; —and as Homeric "equal ships" are to Bristol steamers, so, or somewhat so, may New York and New Holland be to Ephesus and Crete, with their distances, relations, and etceteras!—Few things on this Earth look to me greater than the Future of that Family of Men.

It is some two months since I got into this region; my Wife followed me with her maid and equipments some five weeks ago. Newington Lodge, when I came to inspect it with eyes, proved to be too rough an undertaking: upholsterers, expense and confusion,—the Cynic snarled, "Give me a whole Tub rather! I want nothing but shelter from the elements, and to be let alone of all men." After a little groping, this little furnished cottage, close by the beach of the Solway Frith, was got hold of: here we have been, in absolute seclusion, for a month,—no company but the corn-fields and the everlasting sands and brine; mountains, and thousand-voiced memories on all hands, sending their regards to one, from the distance. Daily (sometimes even nightly!) I have swashed about in the sea; I have been perfectly idle, at least inarticulate; I fancy I feel myself considerably sounder of body and of mind. Deeply do I agree with you in the great unfathomable meaning of a colloquy with the dumb Ocean, with the dumb Earth, and their eloquence! A Legislator would prescribe some weeks of that annually as a religious duty for all mortals, if he could. A Legislator will prescribe it for himself, since he can! You too have been at Nantasket; my Friend, this great rough purple sea-flood that roars under my little garret-window here, this too comes from Nantasket and farther,—swung hitherward by the Moon and the Sun.

It cannot be said that I feel "happy" here, which means joyful;— as far as possible from that. The Cave of Trophonius could not be grimmer for one than this old Land of Graves. But it is a sadness worth any hundred "happinesses." N'en parlons plus. By the way, have you ever clearly remarked withal what a despicable function "view-hunting" is. Analogous to "philanthropy," "pleasures of virtue," &c., &c. I for my part, in these singular circumstances, often find an honestly ugly country the preferable one. Black eternal peat-bog, or these waste-howling sands with mews and seagulls: you meet at least no Cockney to exclaim, "How charming it is!"

One of the last things I did in London was to pocket Bookseller Brown's L38: a very honest-looking man, that Brown; whom I was sorry I could not manage to welcome better. You asked in that Letter about some other item of business,—Munroe's or Brown's account to acknowledge?—something or other that I was to do: I only remember vaguely that it seemed to me I had as good as done it. Your Letter is not here now, but at Chelsea.

Three sheets of the Essays lay waiting me at my Mother's, for correction; needing as good as none. The type and shape is the same as that of late Lectures on Heroes. Robson the Printer, who is a very punctual intelligent man, a scholar withal, undertook to be himself the corrector of the other sheets. I hope you will find them "exactly conformable to the text, minus mere Typographical blunders and the more salient American spellings (labor for labour, &c.)." The Book is perhaps just getting itself subscribed in these very days. It should have been out before now: but poor Fraser is in the country, dangerously ill, which perhaps retards it a little; and the season, at any rate, is at the very dullest. By the first conveyance I will send a certain Lady two copies of it. Little danger but the Edition will sell; Fraser knows his own Trade well enough, and is as much a "desperado" as poor Attila Schmelzle was! Poor James, I wish he were well again; but really at times I am very anxious about him.—The Book will sell; will be liked and disliked. Harriet Martineau, whom I saw in passing hitherward, writes with her accustomed enthusiasm about it. Richard Milnes too is very warm. John Sterling scolds and kisses it (as the manner of the man is), and concludes by inquiring, whether there is any procurable Likeness of Emerson? Emerson himself can answer. There ought to be.

—Good Heavens! Here came my Wife, all in tears, pointing out to me a poor ship, just tumbled over on a sand-bank on the Cumberland coast; men still said to be alive on it,—a Belfast steamer doing all it can to get in contact with it! Moments are precious (say the people on the beach), the flood runs ten miles an hour. Thank God, the steamer's boat is out: "eleven men," says a person with a glass, "are saved: it is an American timber-ship, coming up without a Pilot." And now—in ten minutes more—there lies the melancholy mass alone among the waters, wreck-boats all hastening towards it, like birds of prey; the poor Canadians all up and away towards Annan. What an end for my Letter, which nevertheless must end! Adieu, dear Emerson. Address to Chelsea next time. I can say no more.

Yours ever,
T.C.

LXIX. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 October, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,—I was in Boston yesterday, and found at Munroe's your promised packet of the two London Books. They are very handsome,—that for my wife is beautiful,—and I am not so old or so cold but that I can feel the hope and the pleasure that lie in this gift. It seems I am to speak in England—great England—fortified by the good word of one whose word is fame. Well, it is a lasting joy to be indebted to the wise and generous; and I am well contented that my little boat should swim, whilst it can, beside your great galleys, nor will I allow my discontent with the great faults of the book, which the rich English dress cannot hide, to spoil my joy in this fine little romance of friendship and hope. I am determined—so help me all Muses—to send you something better another day.

But no more printing for me at present. I have just decided to go to Boston once more, with a course of lectures, which I will perhaps baptize "On the Times," by way of making once again the experiment whether I cannot, not only speak the truth, but speak it truly, or in proportion. I fancy I need more than another to speak, with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders; somebody asked me "if I built of medals." Besides, I am always haunted with brave dreams of what might be accomplished in the lecture-room,—so free and so unpretending a platform,—a Delos not yet made fast. I imagine an eloquence of infinite variety,—rich as conversation can be, with anecdote, joke, tragedy, epics and pindarics, argument and confession. I should love myself wonderfully better if I could arm myself to go, as you go, with the word in the heart and not in a paper.

When I was in Boston I saw the booksellers, the children of Tantalus,—no, but they who trust in them are. This time, Little and Brown render us their credit account to T.C. $366 (I think it was), payable in three months from 1 October. They had sold all the London French Revolutions but fifteen copies. May we all live until 1 January. J. Munroe & Co. acknowledge about $180 due and now rightfully payable to T.C., but, unhappily, not yet paid. By the help of brokers, I will send that sum more or less in some English Currency, by the next steamship, which sails in about a fortnight, and will address it, as you last bade me, to Chelsea.

What news, my dear friend, from your study? what designs ripened or executed? what thoughts? what hopes? you can say nothing of yourself that will not greatly interest us all. Harriet Martineau, whose sicknesses may it please God to heal! wrote me a kind, cheerful letter, and the most agreeable notice of your health and spirit on a visit at her house. My little boy is five years old today, and almost old enough to send you his love.

With kindest greetings to Jane Carlyle, I am her and your friend,

—R.W.E.

LXX. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 14 November, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,—Above, you have a bill of exchange for forty pounds sterling, with which sum you must credit the Munroe account. The bill, I must not fail to notice, is drawn by a lover of yours who expresses great satisfaction in doing us this courtesy; and courtesy I must think it when he gives me a bill at sight, whilst of all other merchants I have got only one payable at some remote day. —— is a beautiful and noble youth, of a most subtle and magnetic nature, made for an artist, a painter, and in his art has made admirable sketches, but his criticism, I fancy, was too keen for his poetry (shall I say?); he sacrificed to Despair, and threw away his pencil. For the present, he buys and sells. I wrote you some sort of letter a fortnight ago, promising to send a paper like this. The hour when this should be despatched finds me by chance very busy with little affairs. I sent you by an Italian, Signor Gambardella,*— who took a letter to you with good intent to persuade you to sit to him for your portrait,—a Dial, and some copies of an oration I printed lately. If you should have any opportunity to send one of them to Harriet Martineau, my debts to her are great, and I wish to acknowledge her abounding kindness by a letter, as I must. I am now in the rage of preparation for my Lectures "On the Times;" which begin in a fortnight. There shall be eight, but I cannot yet accurately divide the topics. If it were eighty, I could better. In fear lest this sheet should not safely and timely reach its man, I must now write some duplicate.

Farewell, dear friend.
R.W. Emerson

———— * Spiridione Gambardella was born at Naples. He was a refugee from Italy, having escaped, the story was, on board an American man-of-war. He had been educated as a public singer, but he had a facile genius, and turned readily to painting as a means of livelihood. He painted some excellent portraits in Boston, between 1835 and 1840, among them one of Dr. Channing, and one of Dr. Follen; both of these were engraved. He had some success for a time as a portrait-painter in London. —————

LXXI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 19 November, 1841

Dear Emerson,—Since that going down of the American Timber-ship on one of the Banks of the Solway under my window, I do not remember that you have heard a word of me. I only added that the men were all saved, and the beach all in agitation, certain women not far from hysterics;—and there ended. I did design to send you some announcement of our return hither; but fear there is no chance that I did it! About ten days ago the Signor Gambardella arrived, with a Note and Books from you: and here now is your Letter of October 30th; which, arriving at a moment when I have a little leisure, draws forth an answer almost instantly.

The Signor Gambardella, whom we are to see a second time tonight or tomorrow, amuses and interests us not a little. His face is the very image of the Classic God Pan's; with horns, and cloven feet, we feel that he would make a perfect wood-god;—really, some of Poussin's Satyrs are almost portraits of this brave Gambardella. I will warrant him a right glowing mass of Southern-Italian vitality,—full of laughter, wild insight, caricature, and every sort of energy and joyous savagery: a most profitable element to get introduced (in moderate quantity), I should say, into the general current of your Puritan blood over in New England there! Gambardella has behaved with magnanimity in that matter of the Portrait: I have already sat, to men in the like case, some four times, and Gambardella knows it is a dreadful weariness; I directed him, accordingly, to my last painter, one Laurence, a man of real parts, whom I wished Gambardella to know,—and whom I wished to know Gambardella withal, that he might tell me whether there was any probability of a good picture by him in case one did decide on encountering the weariness. Well: Gambardella returns with a magnanimous report that Laurence's picture far transcends any capability of his; that whoever in America or elsewhere will have a likeness of the said individual must apply to Laurence, not to Gambardella,—which latter artist heroically throws down his brush, and says, Be it far from me! The brave Gambardella! if I can get him this night to dilate a little farther on his Visit to the Community of Shakers, and the things he saw and felt there, it will be a most true benefit to me. Inextinguishable laughter seemed to me to lie in Gambardella's vision of that Phenomenon,— the sight and the seer, but we broke out too loud all at once, and he was afraid to continue.—Alas! there is almost no laughter going in the world at present. True laughter is as rare as any other truth,—the sham of it frequent and detestable, like all other shams. I know nothing wholesomer; but it is rarer even than Christmas, which comes but once a year, and does always come once.

Your satisfactions and reflections at sight of your English Book are such as I too am very thankful for. I understand them well. May worse guest never visit the Drawing-room at Concord than that bound Book. Tell the good Wife to rejoice in it: she has all the pleasure;—to her poor Husband it will be increase of pain withal: nay, let us call it increase of valiant labor and endeavor; no evil for a man, if he be fit for it! A man must learn to digest praise too, and not be poisoned with it: some of it is wholesome to the system under certain circumstances; the most of it a healthy system will learn by and by to throw into the slop-basin, harmlessly, without any trial to digest it. A thinker, I take it, in the long run finds that essentially he must ever be and continue alone;—alone: "silent, rest over him the stars, and under him the graves"! The clatter of the world, be it a friendly, be it a hostile world, shall not intermeddle with him much. The Book of Essays, however, does decidedly "speak to England," in its way, in these months; and even makes what one may call a kind of appropriate "sensation" here. Reviews of it are many, in all notes of the gamut;—of small value mostly; as you might see by the two Newspaper specimens I sent you. (Did you get those two Newspapers?) The worst enemy admits that there are piercing radiances of perverse insight in it; the highest friends, some few, go to a very high point indeed. Newspapers are busy with extracts;—much complaining that it is "abstruse," neological, hard to get the meaning of. All which is very proper. Still better,—though poor Fraser, alas, is dead, (poor Fraser!), and no help could come from industries of the Bookshop, and Books indeed it seems were never selling worse than of late months,—I learn that the "sale of the Essays goes very steadily forward," and will wind itself handsomely up in due time, we may believe! So Emerson henceforth has a real Public in Old England as well as New. And finally, my Friend, do not disturb yourself about turning better, &c., &c.; write as it is given you, and not till it be given you, and never mind it a whit.

The new Adelphi piece seems to me, as a piece of Composition, the best written of them all. People cry over it: "Whitherward? What, What?" In fact, I do again desiderate some concretion of these beautiful abstracta. It seems to me they will never be right otherwise; that otherwise they are but as prophecies yet, not fulfilments.

The Dial too, it is all spirit-like, aeriform, aurora-borealis like. Will no Angel body himself out of that; no stalwart Yankee man, with color in the cheeks of him, and a coat on his back! These things I say: and yet, very true, you alone can decide what practical meaning is in them. Write you always as it is given you,_ be it in the solid, in the aeriform, or whatsoever way. There is no other rule given among men.—I have sent the criticism on Landor* to an Editorial Friend of L.'s, by whom I expect it will be put into the Newspapers here, for the benefit of Walter Savage; he is not often so well praised among us, and deserves a little good praise.

———— * From the Dial for October, 1841. ————

You propose again to send me Moneys,—surprising man! I am glad also to hear that that beggarly misprinted French Revolution is nearly out among you. I only hope farther your Booksellers will have an eye on that rascal Appleton, and not let him reprint and deface, if more copies of the Book turn out to be wanted. Adieu, dear Emerson! Good speed to you at Boston, and in all true things. I hope to write soon again.

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

LXXII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 6 December, 1841

Dear Emerson,—Though I wrote to you very lately, and am in great haste today, I must lose no time in announcing that the Letter with the L40 draught came to hand some mornings ago; and now, this same morning, a second Letter round by Dumfriesshire, which had been sent as a duplicate, or substitute in case of accident, for the former. It is all right, my friend ——'s paper has got itself changed into forty gold sovereigns, and lies here waiting use; thanks, many thanks! Sums of that kind come always upon me like manna out of the sky; surely they, more emphatically than any others, are the gift of Heaven. Let us receive, use, and be thankful. I am not so poor now at all; Heaven be praised: indeed, I do not know, now and then when I reflect on it, whether being rich were not a considerably harder problem. With the wealth of Rothschild what farther good thing could one get,—if not perhaps some but to live in, under free skies, in the country, with a horse to ride and have a little less pain on? Angulus ille ridet!—I will add, for practical purposes in the future, that it is in general of little or no moment whether an American Bill be at sight or after a great many days; that the paper can wait as conveniently here as the cash can,—if your New England House and Baring of Old England will forbear bankruptcy in the mean while. By the bye, will you tell me some time or other in what American funds it is that your funded money, you once gave me note of, now lies? I too am creditor to America,— State of Illinois or some such State: one thousand dollars of mine, which some years ago I had no use for, now lies there, paying I suppose for canals, in a very obstructed condition! My Brother here is continually telling me that I shall lose it all, —which is not so bad; but lose it all by my own unreason,—which is very bad. It struck me I would ask where Emerson's money lies, and lay mine there too, let it live or perish as it likes!

Your Adelphi went straightway off to Miss Martineau with a message. Richard Milnes has another; John Sterling is to have a third,—had certain other parties seen it first. For the man Emerson is become a person to be seen in these times. I also gave a Morning-Chronicle Editor your brave eulogy on Landor, with instructions that it were well worth publishing there, for Landor's and others' sake. Landor deserves more praise than he gets at present; the world too, what is far more, should hear of him oftener than it does. A brave man after his kind,—though considerably "flamed on from the Hell beneath." He speaks notable things; and at lowest and worst has the faculty too of holding his peace.

The "Lectures on the Times" are even now in progress? Good speed to the Speaker, to the Speech. Your Country is luckier than most at this time; it has still real Preaching; the tongue of man is not, whensoever it begins wagging, entirely sure to emit babblement, twaddlement, sincere—cant, and other noises which awaken the passionate wish for silence! That must alter everywhere the human tongue is no wooden watchman's-rattle or other obsolete implement; it continues forever new and useful, nay indispensable.

As for me and my doings—Ay de mi!*

———- * The signature has been cut off. ———-

LXXIII. Emerson to Carlyle

New York, 28 February, 1842

My Dear Friend,—I enclose a bill of exchange for forty-eight pounds sterling, payable by Baring Brothers & Co. after sixty days from the 25th of February.

This Sum is part of a payment from Little and Brown on account of sales of your London French Revolution and of Chartism. As another part of their payment they asked me if they might not draw on the estate of James Fraser for a balance due from his house to them, and pay you so. I, perhaps unwisely, consented to make the proffer to you, with the distinct stipulation, however, that if it should not prove perfectly agreeable to you, and exactly as available as another form of money, you should instantly return it to me, and they shall pay me the amount, $41.57, or L8 12s. 5d. in cash. My mercantile friend, Abel Adams, did not admire my wisdom in accepting this bill of Little and Brown; so I told them I should probably bring it back to them, and if there is a shadow of inconvenience in it you will send it back to me by the next steamer. For they have no claims on us. I decide not to enclose the Little and Brown bill in this sheet,—but to let it accompany this letter in the same packet.

I grieve to hear that you have bought any of our wretched Southern Stocks. In New England all Southern and Southwestern debt is usually regarded as hopeless, unless the debtor is personally known. Massachusetts stock is in the best credit of any public stock. Ward told me that it would be safest for you to keep your Illinois stock, although he could say nothing very good of it.

Our city banks in Boston are in better credit than the banks in any other city here, yet one in which a large part of my own property is invested has failed, for the two last half-years, to pay any dividend, and I am a poor man until next April, when, I hope, it will not fail me again. If you wish to invest money here, my friend Abel Adams, who is the principal partner in one of our best houses, Barnard, Adams, & Co., will know how to give you the best assistance and action the case admits.

My dear friend, you should have had this letter and these messages by the last steamer; but when it sailed, my son, a perfect little boy of five years and three months, had ended his earthly life.* You can never sympathize with me; you can never know how much of me such a young child can take away. A few weeks ago I accounted myself a very rich man, and now the poorest of all. What would it avail to tell you anecdotes of a sweet and wonderful boy, such as we solace and sadden ourselves with at home every morning and evening? From a perfect health and as happy a life and as happy influences as ever child enjoyed, he was hurried out of my arms in three short days by Scarlatina.—We have two babes yet,—one girl of three years, and one girl of three months and a week, but a promise like that Boy's I shall never see. How often I have pleased myself that one day I should send to you this Morning Star of mine, and stay at home so gladly behind such a representative. I dare not fathom the Invisible and Untold to inquire what relations to my Departed ones I yet sustain. Lidian, the poor Lidian, moans at home by day and by night. You too will grieve for us, afar. I believe I have two letters from you since I wrote last. I shall write again soon, for Bronson Alcott will probably go to London in about a month, and him I shall surely send to you, hoping to atone by his great nature for many smaller one, that have craved to see you. Give me early advice of receiving these Bills of Exchange.

————- * The memory of this Boy, "born for the future, to the future lost;" is enshrined in the heart of every lover of childhood and of poetry by his father's impassioned Threnody. —————-

Tell Jane Carlyle our sorrowing story with much love, and with all good hope for her health and happiness. Tell us when you write, with as much particularity as you can, how it stands with you, and all your household; with the Doctor, and the friends; what you do, and propose to do, and whether you will yet come to America, one good day?

Yours with love,
R. Waldo Emerson

LXXIV. Carlyle to Emerson

Templand, Thornhill, Dumfries, Scotland 28 March, 1842

My Dear Friend,—This is heavy news that you send me; the heaviest outward bereavement that can befall a man has overtaken you. Your calm tone of deep, quiet sorrow, coming in on the rear of poor trivial worldly businesses, all punctually despatched and recorded too, as if the Higher and Highest had not been busy with you, tells me a sad tale. What can we say in these cases? There is nothing to be said,—nothing but what the wild son of Ishmael, and every thinking heart, from of old have learned to say: God is great! He is terrible and stern; but we know also He is good. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Your bright little Boy, chief of your possessions here below, is rapt away from you; but of very truth he is with God, even as we that yet live are,—and surely in the way that was best for him, and for you, and for all of us.—Poor Lidian Emerson, poor Mother! To her I have no word. Such poignant unspeakable grief, I believe, visits no creature as that of a Mother bereft of her child. The poor sparrow in the bush affects one with pity, mourning for its young; how much more the human soul of one's Friend! I cannot bid her be of comfort; for there is as yet no comfort. May good Influences watch over her, bring her some assuagement. As the Hebrew David said, "We shall go to him, he will not return to us."

I also am here in a house rendered vacant and sacred by Death. A sore calamity has fallen on us, or rather has fallen on my poor Wife (for what am I but like a spectator in comparison?): she has lost unexpectedly her good Mother, her sole surviving Parent, and almost only relative of much value that was left to her. The manner too was almost tragic. We had heard of illness here, but only of commonplace illness, and had no alarm. The Doctor himself, specially applied to, made answer as if there was no danger: his poor Patient, in whose character the like of that intimately lay, had rigorously charged him to do so: her poor Daughter was far off, confined to her room by illness of her own; why alarm her, make her wretched? The danger itself did seem over; the Doctor accordingly obeyed. Our first intimation of alarm was despatched on the very day which proved the final one. My poor Wife, casting sickness behind her, got instantly ready, set off by the first railway train: traveling all night, on the morrow morning at her Uncle's door in Liverpool she is met by tidings that all is already ended. She broke down there; she is now home again at Chelsea, a cheery, amiable younger Jane Welsh to nurse her: the tone of her Letters is still full of disconsolateness. I had to proceed hither, and have to stay here till this establishment can be abolished, and all the sad wrecks of it in some seemly manner swept away. It is above three weeks that I have been here; not till eight days ago could I so much as manage to command solitude, to be left altogether alone. I lead a strange life; full of sadness, of solemnity, not without a kind of blessedness. I say it is right and fitting that one be left entirely alone now and then, alone with one's own griefs and sins, with the mysterious ancient Earth round one, the everlasting Heaven over one, and what one can make of these. Poor rustic businesses, subletting of Farms, disposal of houses, household goods: these strangely intervene, like matter upon spirit, every day;—wholesome this too perhaps. It is many years since I have stood so in close contact face to face with the reality of Earth, with its haggard ugliness, its divine beauty, its depths of Death and of Life. Yesterday, one of, the stillest Sundays, I sat long by the side of the swift river Nith; sauntered among woods all vocal only with rooks and pairing birds.* The hills are often white with snow-powder, black brief spring-tempests rush fiercely down from them, and then again the sky looks forth with a pale pure brightness,—like Eternity from behind Time. The Sky, when one thinks of it, is always blue, pure changeless azure; rains and tempests are only for the little dwellings where men abide. Let us think of this too. Think of this, thou sorrowing Mother! Thy Boy has escaped many showers.

————- * "Templand has a very fine situation; old Walter's walk, at the south end of the house, was one of the most picturesque and pretty to be found in the world. Nith valley (river half a mile off, winding through green holms, now in its border of clean shingle, now lost in pleasant woods and rushes) lay patent to the South. "Carlyle's Reminiscences," Vol. II. p. 137. ————-

In some three weeks I shall probably be back at Chelsea. Write thitherward so soon as you have opportunity; I will write again before long, even if I do not hear from you. The moneys, &c. are all safe here as you describe: if Fraser's' Executors make any demur, your Bookseller shall soon hear of it.

I had begun to write some Book on Cromwell: I have often begun, but know not how to set about it; the most unutterable of all subjects I ever felt much meaning to lie in. There is risk yet that, with the loss of still farther labor, I may have to abandon it;—and then the great dumb Oliver may lie unspoken forever; gathered to the mighty Silent of the Earth; for, I think, there will hardly ever live another man that will believe in him and his Puritanism as I do. To him small matter.

Adieu, my good kind Friend, ever dear to me, dearer now in sorrow. My Wife when she hears of your affliction will send a true thought over to you also. The poor Lidian!—John Sterling is driven off again, setting out I think this very day for Gibraltar, Malta, and Naples. Farewell, and better days to us.

Your affectionate
T. Carlyle

LXXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 81 March, 1842

My Dear Carlyle,—I wrote you a letter from my brother's office in New York nearly a month ago to tell you how hardly it had fared with me here at home, that the eye of my home was plucked out when that little innocent boy departed in his beauty and perfection from my sight. Well, I have come back hither to my work and my play, but he comes not back, and I must simply suffer it. Doubtless the day will come which will resolve this, as everything gets resolved, into light, but not yet.

I write now to tell you of a piece of life. I wish you to know that there is shortly coming to you a man by the name of Bronson Alcott. If you have heard his name before, forget what you have heard. Especially if you have ever read anything to which this name was attached, be sure to forget that; and, inasmuch as in you lies, permit this stranger when he arrives at your gate to make a new and primary impression. I do not wish to bespeak any courtesies or good or bad opinion concerning him. You may love him, or hate him, or apathetically pass by him, as your genius shall dictate; only I entreat this, that you do not let him go quite out of your reach until you are sure you have seen him and know for certain the nature of the man. And so I leave contentedly my pilgrim to his fate.

I should tell you that my friend Margaret Fuller, who has edited our little Dial with such dubious approbation on the part of you and other men, has suddenly decided a few days ago that she will edit it no more. The second volume was just closing; shall it live for a third year? You should know that, if its interior and spiritual life has been ill fed, its outward and bibliopolic existence has been worse managed. Its publishers failed, its short list of subscribers became shorter, and it has never paid its laborious editor, who has been very generous of her time and labor, the smallest remuneration. Unhappily, to me alone could the question be put whether the little aspiring starveling should be reprieved for another year. I had not the cruelty to kill it, and so must answer with my own proper care and nursing for its new life. Perhaps it is a great folly in me who have little adroitness in turning off work to assume this sure vexation, but the Dial has certain charms to me as an opportunity, which I grudge to destroy. Lately at New York I found it to be to a certain class of men and women, though few, an object of tenderness and religion. You cannot believe it?

Mr. Lee,* who brings you this letter, is the son of one of the best men in Massachusetts, a man whose name is a proverb among merchants for his probity, for his sense and his information. The son, who bears his father's name, is a favorite among all the young people for his sense and spirit, and has lived always with good people.

————- * Mr. Henry Lee. ————

I have read at New York six out of eight lectures on the Times which I read this winter in Boston. I found a very intelligent and friendly audience. The penny papers reported my lectures, somewhat to my chagrin when I tried to read them; many persons came and talked with me, and I felt when I came away that New York is open to me henceforward whenever my Boston parish is not large enough. This summer, I must try to set in order a few more chapters from these rambling lectures, one on "The Poet" and one on "Character" at least. And now will you not tell me what you read and write? Is it Cromwell still? For I supposed from the Westminster piece that the laborer must be in that quarter.

I send herewith a new Dial, No. 8, and the last of this dispensation. I hope you have received every number. They have been sent in order. I have written no line in this Number. I send a letter for Sterling, as I do not know whether his address is still at Falmouth. Is he now a preacher? By the "Acadia" you should have received a letter of exchange on the Barings, and another on James Fraser's estate.

With constant good hope for yourself and for your wife, I am your friend,

—R.W. Emerson

End of Vol. I.

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Table of Contents

- EDITORIAL NOTE

- NOTE TO REVISED EDITION

- CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

- CORRESPONDENCE OF CARLYLE AND EMERSON

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