Chapter II: Part 2

You must know that the cheap press has, within a few months, made a total change in our book markets. Every English book of any name or credit is instantly converted into a newspaper or coarse pamphlet, and hawked by a hundred boys in the streets of all of our cities for 25, 18, or 12 cents; Dickens's Notes for 12 cents, _Blackwood's Magazine_ for 18 cents, and so on. Three or four great New York and Philadelphia printing-houses do this work, with hot competition. One prints Bulwer's novel yesterday, for 35 cents; and already, in twenty-four hours, another has a coarser edition of it for 18 cents, in all thoroughfares.--What to do with my sealed parcel of manuscripts and proofs? No bookseller would in these perilous circumstances offer a dollar for my precious parcel. I inquired of the lawyers whether I could not by a copyright protect my edition from piracy until an English copy arrived, and so secure a sale of a few weeks. They said, no; yet advised the taking a certificate of copyright, that we might try the case if we wished. After much consulting and balancing for a few hours, I decided to print, as heretofore, on our own account, an edition, but cheap, to make the temptation less, to retail at seventy-five cents. I print fifteen hundred copies, and announce to the public that it is your edition, and all good men must buy this. I have written to the great Reprinters, namely to Park Benjamin, and to the Harpers, of New York, to request their forbearance; and have engaged Little and Brown to publish, because, I think, they have something more of weight with Booksellers, and are a little less likely to be invaded than Munroe. If we sell a thousand copies at seventy-five cents, it will only yield you about two hundred dollars; if we should be invaded, we can then afford to sell the other five hundred copies at twenty-five cents, without loss. In thus doing, I involve you in some risk; but it was the best course that occurred.--Hitherto, the _Miscellanies_ have not been reprinted in the cheap forms; and in the last year, James Munroe & Co. have sold few copies; all books but the cheapest being unsold in the hard times; something has however accrued to your credit there. J.M. & Co. fear that, if the new book is pirated at New York and the pirate prospers, instantly the _Miscellanies_ will be plundered. We will hope better, or at least exult in that which remains, to wit, a Worth unplunderable, yet infinitely communicable.

I have hardly space left to say what I would concerning the _Dial._ I heartily hoped I had done with it, when lately our poor, good, publishing Miss Peabody,... wrote me that its subscription would not pay its expenses (we all writing for love). But certain friends are very unwilling it should die, and I a little unwilling, though very unwilling to be the life of it, as editor. And now that you are safely through your book, and before the greater Sequel rushes to its conclusion, send me, I pray you, that short chapter which hovers yet in the limbo of contingency, in solid letters and points. Let it be, if that is readiest, a criticism on the _Dial,_ and this too Elysian race, not blood, and yet not ichor.--Let Jane Carlyle be on my part, and, watchful of his hours, urge the poet in the golden one. I think to send you a duplicate of the last number of the _Dial_ by Mr. Mann,* who with his bride (sister of the above-mentioned Miss Peabody) is going to London and so to Prussia. He is little known to me, but greatly valued as a philanthropist in this State. I must go to work a little more methodically this summer, and let something grow to a tree in my wide straggling shrubbery. With your letters came a letter from Sterling, who was too noble to allude to his books and manuscript sent hither, and which Russell all this time has delayed to print; I know not why, but discouraged, I suppose, in these times by booksellers. I must know precisely, and write presently to J.S.

Farewell.
R.W. Emerson**

----------- * The late Horace Mann.

** The following passages from Emerson's Diary relating to _Past and Present_ seem to have been written a few days after the preceding letter:--"How many things this book of Carlyle gives us to think! It is a brave grappling with the problem of the times, no luxurious holding aloof, as is the custom of men of letters, who are usually bachelors and not husbands in the state, but Literature here has thrown off his gown and descended into the open lists. The gods are come among us in the likeness of men. An honest Iliad of English woes. Who is he that can trust himself in the fray? Only such as cannot be familiarized, but nearest seen and touched is not seen and touched, but remains inviolate, inaccessible, because a higher interest, the politics of a higher sphere, bring him here and environ him, as the Ambassador carries his country with him. Love protects him from profanation. What a book this in its relation to English privileged estates! How shall Queen Victoria read this? how the Primate and Bishops of England? how the Lords? how the Colleges? how the rich? and how the poor? Here is a book as full of treason as an egg is full of meat, and every lord and lordship and high form and ceremony of English conservatism tossed like a football into the air, and kept in the air with merciless rebounds and kicks, and yet not a word in the book is punishable by statute. The wit has eluded all official zeal, and yet these dire jokes, these cunning thrusts,--this flaming sword of cherubim waved high in air illuminates the whole horizon and shows to the eyes of the Universe every wound it inflicts. Worst of all for the party attacked, it bereaves them beforehand of all sympathy by anticipating the plea of poetic and humane conservation and impressing the reader with the conviction that Carlyle himself has the truest love for everything old and excellent, and a genuine respect for the basis of truth in those whom he exposes. Gulliver among the Lilliputians...

"Carlyle must write thus or nohow, like a drunken man who can run, but cannot walk. What a man's book is that! no prudences, no compromises, but a thorough independence. A masterly criticism on the times. Fault perhaps the excess of importance given to the circumstance of today. The poet is here for this, to dwarf and destroy all merely temporary circumstance, and to glorify the perpetual circumstance of men, e.g. dwarf British Debt and raise Nature and social life.

"But everything must be done well once; even bulletins and almanacs must have one excellent and immortal bulletin and almanac. So let Carlyle's be the immortal newspaper." ----------

LXXXIV. Carlyle to Emerson

27 August, 1843

Dear Emerson,--The bearer of this is Mr. Macready, our celebrated Actor, now on a journey to America, who wishes to know you. In the pauses of a feverish occupation which he strives honestly to make a noble one, this Artist, become once more a man, would like well to meet here and there a true American man. He loves Heroes as few do; and can recognize them, you will find, whether they have on the _Cothurnus_ or not. I recommend him to you; bid you forward him as you have opportunity, in this department of his pilgrimage.

Mr. Macready's deserts to the English Drama are notable here to all the world; but his dignified, generous, and every-way honorable deportment in private life is known fully, I believe, only to a few friends. I have often said, looking at him as a manager of great London theatres, "This Man, presiding over the unstablest, most chaotic province of English things, is the one public man among us who has dared to take his stand on what he understood to be _the truth,_ and expect victory from that: he puts to shame our Bishops and Archbishops." It is literally so.

With continued kind wishes, yours as of old.
T. Carlyle

LXXXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 October, 1843

My Dear Friend,--I seize the occasion of having this morsel of paper for twenty-five pounds sterling from the booksellers to send you, (and which fail not to find enclosed, as clerks say,) to inquire whether you still exist in Chelsea, London, and what is the reason that my generous correspondent has become dumb for weary months. I must go far back to resume my thread. I think in April last I received your Manuscript, &c. of the Book, which I forthwith proceeded to print, after some perplexing debate with the booksellers, as I fully informed you in my letter of April or beginning of May. Since that time I have had no line or word from you. I must think that my letter did not reach you, or that you have written what has never come to me. I assure myself that no harm has befallen you, not only because you do not live in a corner, and what chances in your dwelling will come at least to my ears, but because I have read with great pleasure the story of Dr. Francia,* which gave the best report of your health and vivacity.

---------- * Carlyle's article on Dr. Francia in the _Foreign Quarterly Review,_ No. 62. Reprinted in his _Miscellanies._ ----------

I wrote you in April or May an account of the new state of things which the cheap press has wrought in our book market, and specially what difficulties it put in the way of our edition of _Past and Present._ For a few weeks I believed that the letters I had written to the principal New York and Philadelphia booksellers, and the Preface, had succeeded in repelling the pirates. But in the fourth or fifth week appeared a mean edition in New York, published by one Collyer (an unknown person and supposed to be a mask of some other bookseller), sold for twelve and one half cents, and of this wretched copy several thousands were sold, whilst our seventy-five cents edition went off slower. There was no remedy, and we must be content that there was no expense from our edition, which before September had paid all its cost, and since that time has been earning a little, I believe. I am not fairly entitled to an account of the book from the publishers until the 1st of January.... I have never yet done what I have thought this other last week seriously to do, namely, to charge the good and faithful E.P. Clark, a man of accounts as he is a cashier in a bank, with the total auditing and analyzing of these accounts of yours. My hesitation has grown from the imperfect materials which I have to offer him to make up so long a story. But he is a good man, and, do you know it? a Carlylese of that intensity that I have often heard he has collected a sort of album of several volumes, containing illustrations of every kind, historical, critical, &c., to the _Sartor._ I must go to Boston and challenge him. Once when I asked him, he seemed willing to assume it. No more of accounts tonight.

I send you by this ship a volume of translations from Dante, by Doctor Parsons of Boston, a practising dentist and the son of a dentist. It is his gift to you. Lately went Henry James to you with a letter from me. He is a fine companion from his intelligence, valor, and worth, and is and has been a very beneficent person as I learn. He carried a volume of poems from my friend and nearest neighbor, W. Ellery Channing, whereof give me, I pray you, the best opinion you can. I am determined he shall be a poet, and you must find him such.* I have too many things to tell you to begin at the end of this sheet, which after all this waiting I have been compelled to scribble in a corner, with company waiting for me. Send me instant word of yourself if you love me, and of those whom you love, and so God keep you and yours.

--R. Waldo Emerson

---------- * In the second number of the _Dial,_ in October, 1840, Emerson had published, under the title of "New Poetry," an article warmly commending Mr. Channing's then unpublished poems. ----------

LXXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 31 October, 1843

My Dear Emerson,--It is a long weary time since I have had the satisfaction of the smallest dialogue with you. The blame is all my own; the reasons would be difficult to give,--alas, they are properly no-reasons, children not of _Something,_ but of mere Idleness, Confusion, Inaction, Inarticulation, of _Nothing_ in short! Let us leave them there, and profit by the hour which yet is.

I ran away from London into Bristol and, South Wales, when the heats grew violent, at the end of June. South Wales, North Wales, Lancashire, Scotland: I roved about everywhere seeking some Jacob's-pillow on which to lay my head, and dream of things heavenly;--yes, that at bottom was my modest prayer, though I disguised it from myself and the result was, I could find no pillow at all; but sank into ever meaner restlessness, blacker and blacker biliary gloom, and returned in the beginning of September thoroughly eclipsed and worn out, probably the weariest of all men living under the sky. Sure enough I have a fatal talent of converting all Nature into Preternaturalism for myself: a truly horrible Phantasm-Reality it is to me; what of heavenly radiances it has, blended in close neighborhood, in intimate union, with the hideousness of Death and Chaos;--a very ghastly business indeed! On the whole, it is better to hold one's peace about it. I flung myself down on sofas here,--for my little Wife had trimmed up our little dwelling-place into quite glorious order in my absence, and I had only to lie down: there, in reading books, and other make-believe employments, I could at least keep silence, which was an infinite relief. Nay, gradually, as indeed I anticipated, the black vortexes and deluges have subsided; and now that it is past, I begin to feel myself better for my travels after all. For one thing, articulate speech having returned to me,--you see what use I make of it.

On the table of the London Library, voted in by some unknown benefactor whom I found afterwards to be Richard Milnes, there lay one thing highly gratifying to me: the last two Numbers of the _Dial._ It is to be one of our Periodicals henceforth; the current Number lies on the Table till the next arrive; then the former goes to the Binder; we have already, in a bound volume, all of it that Emerson has had the editing of. This is right. Nay, in Edinburgh, and indeed wherever ingenuous inquisitive minds were met with, I have to report that the said Emerson could number a select and most loving public; select, and I should say fast growing: for good and indifferent reasons it may behove the man to assure himself of this. Farther, to the horror of poor Nickerson (Bookseller Fraser's Successor), a certain scoundrel interloper here has reprinted _Emerson's Essays_ on grayish paper, to be sold at two shillings,--distracting Nickerson with the fear of change! I was glad at this, if also angry: it indicates several things. Nickerson has taken his measures, will reduce the price of his remaining copies; indeed, he informs me the best part of his edition was already sold, and he has even some color of money due from England to Emerson through me! With pride enough will I transmit this mournful, noble peculium: and after that, as I perceive, such chivalrous international doings must cease between us. _Past and Present,_ some one told me, was, in spite of all your precautions, straightway sent forth in modest gray, and your benevolent speculation ruined. Here too, you see, it is the same. Such chivalries, therefore, are now impossible; for myself I say, "Well, let them cease; thank God they once were, the Memory of that can never cease with us!"

In this last Number of the _Dial_ which by the bye your Bookseller never forwarded to me, I found one little Essay, a criticism on myself,* which, if it should do me mischief, may the gods forgive you for! It is considerably the most dangerous thing I have read for some years. A decided likeness of myself recognizable in it, as in the celestial mirror of a friend's heart; but so enlarged, exaggerated, all _transfigured,_--the most delicious, the most dangerous thing! Well, I suppose I must try to assimilate it also, to turn it also to good, if I be able. Eulogies, dyslogies, in which one finds no features of one's own natural face, are easily dealt with; easily left unread, as stuff for lighting fires, such is the insipidity, the wearisome _non_entity of pabulum like that: but here is another sort of matter! "The beautifulest piece of criticism I have read for many a day," says every one that speaks of it. May the gods forgive you!--I have purchased a copy for three shillings, and sent it to my Mother: one of the _indubitablest_ benefits I could think of in regard to it.

--------- * A criticism by Emerson of _Past and Present,_ in the _Dial_ for July, 1843. It embodies a great part of the extract from Emerson's Diary given in a preceding note, and is well worth reading in full for its appreciation of Carlyle's powers and defects. ---------

There have been two friends of yours here in these very days: Dr. Russell, just returning from Paris; Mr. Parker, just bound thither.* We have seen them rather oftener than common, Sterling being in town withal. They are the best figures of strangers we have had for a long time; possessions, both of them, to fall in with in this pilgrimage of life. Russell carries friendliness in his eyes, a most courteous, modest, intelligent man; an English intelligence too, as I read, the best of it lying unspoken, not as a logic but as an instinct. Parker is a most hardy, compact, clever little fellow, full of decisive utterance, with humor and good humor; whom I like much. They shine like suns, these two, amid multitudes of watery comets and tenebrific constellations, too sorrowful without such admixture on occasion!

------------ * Dr. Le Baron Russell; Theodore Parker. ------------

As for myself, dear Emerson, you must ask me no questions till-- alas, till I know not when! After four weary years of the most unreadable reading, the painfulest poking and delving, I have come at last to the conclusion--that I must write a Book on Cromwell; that there is no rest for me till I do it. This point fixed, another is not less fixed hitherto, That a Book on Cromwell is _impossible._ Literally so: you would weep for me if you saw how, between these two adamantine certainties, I am whirled and tumbled. God only knows what will become of me in the business. Patience, Patience!

By the bye, do you know a "Massachusetts Historical Society," and a James Bowdoin, seemingly of Boston? In "Vol. II. third series" of their _Collections,_ lately I met with a disappointment almost ludicrous. Bowdoin, in a kind of dancing, embarrassed style, gives long-winded, painfully minute account of certain precious volumes, containing "Notes of the Long Parliament," which now stand in the New York Library; poises them in his assaying balance, speculates, prophesies, inquires concerning them: to me it was like news of the lost Decades of Livy. Good Heavens, it soon became manifest that these precious Volumes are nothing whatever but a wretched broken old dead manuscript copy of part of our printed _Commons Journals!_ printed since 1745, and known to all barbers! If the Historical Society desired it, any Member of Parliament could procure them the whole stock, _Lords and Commons,_ a wheelbarrowful or more, with no cost but the carriage. Every Member has the right to demand a copy, and few do it, few will let such a mass cross their door-threshold! This of Bowdoin's is a platitude of some magnitude.--Adieu, dear Emerson. Rest not, haste not; you have work to do.

--T. Carlyle

LXXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 17 November, 1843

Dear Emerson,--About this time probably you will be reading a Letter I hurried off for you by Dr. Russell in the last steamer; and your friendly anxieties will partly be set at rest. Had I kept silence so very long? I knew it was a long while; but my vague remorse had kept no date! It behoves me now to write again without delay; to certify with all distinctness that I have safely received your Letter of the 30th October, safely the Bill for L25 it contained;--that you are a brave, friendly man, of most serene, beneficient way of life; and that I--God help me!--

By all means appoint this Mr. Clark to the honorary office of Account-keeper--if he will accept it! By Parker's list of questions from him, and by earlier reminiscences recalled on that occasion, I can discern that he is a man of lynx eyesight, of an all-investigating curiosity: if he will accept this sublime appointment, it will be the clearest case of elective affinity. Accounts to you must be horrible; as they are to me: indeed, I seldom read beyond the _last_ line of them, if I can find the last; and one of the insupportabilities of Bookseller Accounts is that nobody but a wizard, or regular adept in such matters, can tell where the last line, and final net result of the whole accursed babblement, is to be found! By all means solicit Clark;--at all events, do you give it up, I pray you, and let the Booksellers do their own wise way. It really is not material; let the poor fellows have length of halter. Every new Bill from America comes to me like a kind of heavenly miracle; a reaping where I never sowed, and did not expect to reap: the quantity of it is a thing I can never bring in question.--For your English account with Nickerson I can yet say nothing more; perhaps about Newyear's-day the poor man will enable me to say something. I hear however that the Pirate has sold off, or nearly so, his Two-shillings edition of the _Essays,_ and is preparing to print another; this, directly in the teeth of Cash and double-entry book-keeping, I take to be good news.

James is a very good fellow, better and better as we see him more. Something shy and skittish in the man; but a brave heart intrinsically, with sound, earnest sense, with plenty of insight and even humor. He confirms an observation of mine, which indeed I find is hundreds of years old, that a stammering man is never a worthless one. Physiology can tell you why. It is an excess of delicacy, excess of sensibility to the presence of his fellow-creature, that makes him stammer. Hammond l'Estrange says, "Who ever heard of a stammering man that was a fool?" Really there is something in that.--James is now off to the Isle of Wight; will see Sterling at Ventnor there; see whether such an Isle or France will suit better for a winter residence.

W.E. Channing's _Poems_ are also a kind gift from you. I have read the pieces _you had cut up for me:_ worthy indeed of reading! That Poem _on Death_ is the utterance of a valiant, noble heart, which in rhyme or prose I shall expect more news of by and by. But at bottom "Poetry" is a most suspicious affair for me at present! You cannot fancy the oceans of Twaddle that human Creatures emit upon me, in these times; as if, when the lines had a jingle in them, a Nothing could be Something, and the point were gained! It is becoming a horror to me,--as all speech without meaning more and more is. I said to Richard Milnes, "Now in honesty what is the use of putting your accusative _before_ the verb, and otherwise entangling the syntax; if there really is an image of any object, thought, or thing within you, for God's sake let me have it the _shortest_ way, and I will so cheerfully excuse the _omission_ of the jingle at the end: cannot I do without that!"--Milnes answered, "Ah, my dear fellow, it is because we have no thought, or almost none; a little thought goes a great way when you put it into rhyme!" Let a man try to the very uttermost to _speak_ what he means, before _singing_ is had recourse to. Singing, in our curt English speech, contrived expressly and almost exclusively for "despatch of business," is terribly difficult. Alfred Tennyson, alone of our time, has proved it to be possible in some measure. If Channing will persist in melting such obdurate speech into music he shall have my true wishes,--my augury that it will take an enormous _heat_ from him!--Another Channing,* whom I once saw here, sends me a Progress-of-the-Species Periodical from New York. _Ach Gott!_ These people and their affairs seem all "melting" rapidly enough, into thaw-slush or one knows not what. Considerable madness is visible in them. _Stare super antiquas vias:_ "No," they say, "we cannot stand, or walk, or do any good whatever there; by God's blessing, we will fly,--will not you!-- here goes!" And their _flight,_ it is as the flight of the unwinged,--of oxen endeavoring to fly with the "wings" of an ox! By such flying, universally practised, the "ancient ways" are really like to become very deep before long. In short, I am terribly sick of all that;--and wish it would stay at home at Fruitland, or where there is good pasture for it. Friend Emerson, alone of all voices, out of America, has sphere-music in him for me,--alone of them all hitherto; and is a prophecy and sure dayspring in the East; immeasurably cheering to me. God long prosper him; keep him duly apart from that bottomless hubbub which is not, at all cheering! And so ends my Litany for this day.

-------- * The Reverend William Henry Channing. --------

The Cromwell business, though I punch daily at it with all manner of levers, remains immovable as Ailsa Crag. Heaven alone knows what I shall do with it. I see and say to myself, It is heroical; Troy Town was probably not a more heroic business; and this belongs to thee, to thy own people,--must it be dead forever?--Perhaps yes,--and kill me too into the bargain. Really I think it very shocking that we run to Greece, to Italy, to &c., &c., and leave all at home lying buried as a nonentity. Were I absolute Sovereign and Chief Pontiff here, there should be a study of the Old _English_ ages first of all. I will pit Odin against any Jupiter of them; find Sea-kings that would have given Jason a Roland for his Oliver! We are, as you sometimes say, a book-ridden people,--a phantom-ridden people.--All this small household is well; salutes you and yours with love old and new. Accept this hasty messenger; accept my friendliest farewell, dear Emerson.

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

LXXXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 31 December, 1843

My Dear Friend,--I have had two good letters from you, and it is fully my turn to write, so you shall have a token on this latest day of the year. I rejoice in this good will you bear to so many friends of mine,--if they will go to you, you must thank yourself. Best when you are mutually contented. I wished lately I might serve Mr. Macready, who sent me your letter.--I called on him and introduced him to Sam G. Ward, my friend and the best man in the city, and, besides all his personal merits, a master of all the offices of hospitality. Ward was to keep himself informed of Macready's times, and bring me to him when there was opportunity. But he stayed but a few days in Boston, and, Ward said, was in very good hands, and promised to see us when he returns by and by. I saw him in Hamlet, but should much prefer to see him as Macready.

I must try to entice Mr. Macready out here into my pines and alder bushes. Just now the moon is shining on snow-drifts, four, five, and six feet high, but, before his return, they will melt; and already this my not native but ancestral village, which I came to live in nearly ten years ago because it was the quietest of farming towns, and off the road, is found to lie on the directest line of road from Boston to Montreal, a railroad is a-building through our secretest woodlands, and, tomorrow morning, our people go to Boston in two hours instead of three, and, next June, in one. This petty revolution in our country matters was very odious to me when it began, but it is hard to resist the joy of all one's neighbors, and I must be contented to be carted like a chattel in the cars and be glad to see the forest fall. This rushing on your journey is plainly a capital invention for our spacious America, but it is more dignified and man-like to walk barefoot.--But do you not see that we are getting to be neighbors? a day from London to Liverpool; twelve or eleven to Boston; and an hour to Concord; and you have owed me a visit these ten years.

I mean to send with your January _Dial_ a copy of the number for Sterling, as it contains a review of his tragedy and poems, by Margaret Fuller. I have not yet seen the article, and the lady affirms that it is very bad, as she was ill all the time she was writing; but I hope and believe better. She, Margaret Fuller, is an admirable person, whose writing gives feeble account of her. But I was to say that I shall send this _Dial_ for J.S. to your care, as I know not the way to the Isle of Wight.

Enclosed in this letter I send a bill of exchange for L32 8s. 2d. payable by Baring & Co. It happens to represent an exact balance on Munroe's books, and that slow mortal should have paid it before. I have not yet got to Clark, I who am a slow mortal, but have my eye fixed on him. Remember me and mine with kindest salutations to your wife and brother.

Ever yours,
R.W. Emerson

LXXXIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 31 January, 1844

Dear Emerson, Some ten days ago came your Letter with a new Draft of L32 and odd money in it: all safe; the Draft now gone into the City to ripen into gold and silver, the Letter to be acknowledged by some hasty response now and here. America, I say to myself looking at these money drafts, is a strange place; the highest comes out of it and the lowest! Sydney Smith is singing dolefully about doleful American repudiation, "_dis_owning of the soft impeachment"; and here on the other hand is an American man, in virtue of whom America has become definable withal as a place from which fall heavenly manna-showers upon certain men, at certain seasons of history, when perhaps manna-showers were not the unneedfulest things!--We will take the good and the evil, here as elsewhere, and heartily bless Heaven.

But now for the Draft at the top of this leaf. One Colman,* a kind of Agricultural Missionary, much in vogue here at present, has given it me; it is Emerson's, the net produce hitherto (all but two cents) of _Emerson's Essays._ I enclose farther the Bookseller's hieroglyph papers; unintelligible as all such are; but sent over to you for scrutiny by the expert. I gather only that there are some Five Hundred and odd of the dear-priced edition sold, some Two Hundred and odd still to sell, which the Bookseller says are (in spite of pirates) slowly selling; and that the half profit upon the whole adventure up to this date has been L24 15s. 11d. sterling,--equal, as I am taught, at $4.88 per pound sterling, to $121.02, for which, all but the cents, here is a draft on Boston, payable at sight. Pray have yourself straightway _paid;_ that if there be any mistake or delay I may rectify it while time yet is.--I add, for the intelligence of the Bookseller-Papers, that Fraser, with whom the bargain originally stood, was succeeded by Nickerson; these are the names of the parties. And so, dear Friend; accept this munificent sum of Money; and expect a blessing with it if good wishes from the heart of man can give one. So much for that.

--------- * The Reverend Henry Colman. ---------

Did you receive a Dumfries Newspaper with a criticism in it? The author is one Gilfillan, a young Dissenting Minister in Dundee; a person of great talent, ingenuousness, enthusiasm, and other virtues; whose position as a Preacher of bare old Calvinism under penalty of death sometimes makes me tremble for him. He has written in that same Newspaper about all the notablest men of his time; Godwin, Corn-law Elliott and I know not all whom: if he publish the Book, I will take care to send it you.* I saw the man for the first time last autumn, at Dumfries; as I said, his being a Calvinist Dissenting Minister, economically fixed, and spiritually with such germinations in him, forces me to be very reserved to him.

----------- * The sketches were published the next year in a volume under the title of _The Gallery of Literary Portraits._ -----------

John Sterling's _Dial_ shall be forwarded to Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, whenever it arrives. He was here, as probably I told you, about two months ago, the old unresting brilliantly radiating man. He is now much richer in money than he was, and poorer by the loss of a good Mother and good Wife: I understand he is building himself a brave house, and also busy writing a poem. He flings too much "sheet-lightning" and unrest into me when we meet in these low moods of mine; and yet one always longs for him back again: "No doing with him or without him," the dog!

My thrice unfortunate Book on Cromwell,--it is a real descent to Hades, to Golgotha and Chaos! I feel oftenest as if it were possibler to die one's self than to bring it into life. Besides, my health is in general altogether despicable, my "spirits" equal to those of the ninth part of a dyspeptic tailor! One needs to be able to go on in all kinds of spirits, in climate sunny or sunless, or it will never do. The planet Earth, says Voss,--take four hexameters from Voss:

Journeys this Earth, her eye on a Sun, through the heavenly spaces; Joyous in radiance, or joyless by fits and swallowed in tempests; Falters not, alters not, equal advancing, home at the due hour: So thou, weather-proof, constant, may, equal with day, March!

I have not a moment more tonight;--and besides am inclined to write unprofitables if I persist. Adieu, my friend; all blessings be with you always.

Yours ever truly,
T. Carlyle

XC. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 29 February, 1844

My Dear Carlyle,--I received by the last steamer your letter, and its prefixed order for one hundred and twenty-one dollars, which order I sent to Ward, who turned it at once into money. Thanks, dear friend, for your care and activity, which have brought me this pleasing and most unlooked for result. And I beg you, if you know any family representative of Mr. Fraser, to express my sense of obligation to that departed man. I feel a kindness not without some wonder for those good-natured five hundred Englishmen who could buy and read my miscellany. I shall not fail to send them a new collection, which I hope they will like better. My faith in the Writers, as an organic class, increases daily, and in the possibility to a faithful man of arriving at statements for which he shall not feel responsible, but which shall be parallel with nature. Yet without any effort I fancy I make progress also in the doctrine of Indifferency, and am certain and content that the truth can very well spare me, and have itself spoken by another without leaving it or me the worse. Enough if we have learned that music exists, that it is proper to us, and that we cannot go forth of it. Our pipes, however shrill and squeaking, certify this our faith in Tune, and the eternal Amelioration may one day reach our ears and instruments. It is a poor second thought, this literary activity.

Perhaps I am not made obnoxious to much suffering, but I have had happy hours enough in gazing from afar at the splendors of the Intellectual Law, to overpay me for any pains I know. Existence may go on to be better, and, if it have such insights, it never can be bad. You sometimes charge me with I know not what sky- blue, sky-void idealism. As far as it is a partiality, I fear I may be more deeply infected than you think me. I have very joyful dreams which I cannot bring to paper, much less to any approach to practice, and I blame myself not at all for my reveries, but that they have not yet got possession of my house and barn. But I shall not lose my love for books. I only worship Eternal Buddh in the retirements and intermissions of Brahma.--But I must not egotize and generalize to the end of my sheet, as I have a message or two to declare.

I enclose a bill of exchange on the Barings for thirty-six pounds; which is the sum of two recent payments of Munroe and of Little and Brown, whereof I do not despair you shall yet have some account in booksellers' figures. I have got so far with Clark as to have his consent to audit the accounts when I shall get energy and time enough to compile them out of my ridiculous Journal. Munroe begs me to say what possibly I have already asked for him, that, when the _History of Cromwell_ is ready to be seen of men, you will have an entire copy of the Manuscript taken, and sent over to us. Then will he print a cheap edition such as no one will undersell, and secure such a share of profit to the author as the cheap press allows. Perhaps only thirty or forty pounds would make it worth while to take the trouble. A valued friend of mine wishes to know who wrote (perhaps three years ago) a series of metaphysical articles in _Blackwood_ on Consciousness. Can you remember and tell me? And now I commend you to the good God, you and your History, and the true kind wife who is always good to the eager Yankees, and am yours heartily,

--R.W. Emerson

XCI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 8 April, 1844

Dear Emerson,--Till within five minutes of the limit of my time, I had forgotten that this was the 3d of the Month; that I had a Letter to write acknowledging even money! Take the acknowledgment, given in all haste, not without a gratitude that will last longer: the Thirty-six pounds and odd shillings came safe in your Letter, a new unlooked-for Gift. America, I think, is like an amiable family teapot; you think it is all out long since, and lo, the valuable implement yields you another cup, and another! Many thanks to you, who are the heart of America to me.

Republishing for one's friend's sake, I find on consulting my Bookseller, is out here; we have Pirates waiting for every American thing of mark, as you have for every British; to the tender mercies of these, on both sides, I fancy the business must be committed. They do good too; as all does, even carrion: they send you _faster_ abroad, if the world have any use for you;--oftenest it only thinks it has. Your _Essays,_ the Pirated _Essays,_ make an ugly yellow tatter of a Pamphlet, price 1s. 6d.; but the edition is all sold, I understand: and even Nickerson has not entirely ceased to sell. The same Pirate who pounced upon you made an attempt the other day on my poor _Life of Schiller,_ but I put the due spoke in his wheel. They have sent me Lowell's _Poems;_ they are bringing out Jean Paul's Life, &c., &c.; the hungry _Canaille._ It is strange that men should feel themselves so entirely at liberty to steal, simply because there is no gallows to hang them for doing it. Your new Book will be eagerly waited for by that class of persons; and also by another class which is daily increasing here.

The only other thing I am "not to forget" is that of the _Essay on Consciousness_ in _Blackwood._ The writer of those Papers is one Ferrier, a Nephew of the Edinburgh Miss Ferrier who wrote _Marriage_ and some other Novels; Nephew also of Professor Wilson (Christopher North), and married to one of his daughters. A man of perhaps five-and-thirty; I remember him in boyhood, while he was boarded with an Annandale Clergyman; I have seen him since manhood, and liked him well: a solid, square-visaged, dark kind of man, more like your Theodore Parker than any mutual specimen I can recollect.

He got the usual education of an Edinburgh Advocate; but found no practice at the Bar, nor sought any with due anxiety, I believe; addicted himself to logical meditations;--became, the other year, Professor of Universal History, or some such thing, in the Edinburgh University, and lectures with hardly any audience: a certain _young_ public wanted me to be that Professor there, but I knew better,--Is this enough about Ferrier?

I will not add another word; the time being _past,_ irretrievable except by half-running!

Write us your Book; and be well and happy always!*

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

XCII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 5 August, 1844

Dear Emerson,--There had been a long time without direct news from you, till four days ago your Letter arrived. This day I understand to be the ultimate limit of the American Mail; yesterday, had it not been Sunday, would have been the limit: I write a line, therefore, though in very great haste.

Poor Sterling, even I now begin to fear, is in a very bad way. He had two successive attacks of spitting of blood, some three months ago or more; the second attack of such violence, and his previous condition then so weak, that the Doctor as good as gave up hope,--the poor Patient himself had from the first given it up. Our poor Friend has had so many attacks of that nature, and so rapidly always rallied from them, I gave no ear to these sinister prognostics; but now that I see the summer influences passing over him without visible improvement, and our good weather looking towards a close without so much strength added as will authorize even a new voyage to Madeira;--I too am at last joining in the general discouragement; all the sadder to me that I shut it out so long. Sir James Clark, our best-accredited Physician for such diseases, declares that Life, for certain months, may linger, with great pain; but that recovery is not to be expected. Great part of the lungs, it appears, is totally unserviceable for respiration; from the remainder, especially in times of coughing, it is with the greatest difficulty that breath enough is obtained. Our poor Patient passes the night in a sitting posture; cannot lie down: that fact sticks with me ever since I heard it! He is very weak, very pale; still "writes a great deal daily"; but does not wish to see anybody; declines to "see even Carlyle," who offered to go to him. His only Brother, Anthony Sterling, a hardy soldier, lately withdrawn from the Army, and settled in this quarter, whom we often communicate with, is about going down to the Isle of Wight this week: he saw John four days ago, and brings nothing but bad news,--of which indeed this removal of his to the neighborhood of the scene is a practical testimony. The old Father, a Widower for the last two years, and very lonely and dispirited, seems getting feebler and feebler: he was here yesterday: a pathetic kind of spectacle to us. Alas, alas! But what can be said? I say Nothing; I have written only one Note to Sterling: I feel it probable that I shall never see him more,--nor his like again in this world. His disease, as I have from of old construed it, is a burning of him up by his own fire. The restless vehemence of the man, struggling in all ways these many years to find a legitimate outlet, and finding, except for transitory, unsatisfactory coruscations, none, has undermined its Clay Prison in the weakest point (which proves to be the lungs), and will make outlet _there._ My poor Sterling! It is an old tragedy; and very stern whenever it repeats itself of new.

Today I get answer about Alfred Tennyson: all is right on that side. Moxon informs me that the Russell Books and Letter arrived duly, and were duly forwarded and safely received; nay, farther, that Tennyson is now in Town, and means to come and see me. Of this latter result I shall be very glad: Alfred is one of the few British or Foreign Figures (a not increasing number I think!) who are and remain beautiful to me;--a true human soul, or some authentic approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say, Brother!--However, I doubt he will not come; he often skips me, in these brief visits to Town; skips everybody indeed; being a man solitary and sad, as certain men are, dwelling in an element of gloom,--carrying a bit of Chaos about him, in short, which he is manufacturing into Cosmos!

Alfred is the son of a Lincolnshire Gentleman Farmer, I think; indeed, you see in his verses that he is a native of "moated granges," and green, fat pastures, not of mountains and their torrents and storms. He had his breeding at Cambridge, as if for the Law or Church; being master of a small annuity on his Father's decease, he preferred clubbing with his Mother and some Sisters, to live unpromoted and write Poems. In this way he lives still, now here, now there; the family always within reach of London, never in it; he himself making rare and brief visits, lodging in some old comrade's rooms. I think he must be under forty, not much under it. One of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair; bright-laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;--smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,--fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech, and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe!--We shall see what he will grow to. He is often unwell; very chaotic,--his way is through Chaos and the Bottomless and Pathless; not handy for making out many miles upon. (O Paper!)

I trust there is now joy in place of pain in the House at Concord, and a certain Mother grateful again to the Supreme Powers! We are all in our customary health here, or nearly so; my Wife has been in Lancashire, among her kindred there, for a month lately: our swollen City is getting empty and still; we think of trying an Autumn _here_ this time.--Get your Book ready; there are readers ready for it! And be busy and victorious!

Ever Yours,
T. Carlyle

My _History_ is frightful! If I live, it is like to be completed; but whether I shall live, and not rather be buried alive, broken-hearted, in the Serbonian Quagmires of English Stupidity, and so sleep beside Cromwell, often seems uncertain. Erebus has no uglier, brutaler element. Let us say nothing of it. Let us do it, or leave it to the Devils. _Ay de mi!_

XCIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 1 September, 1844

My Dear Carlyle,--I have just learned that in an hour Mr. Wilmer's mail-bag for London, by the "Acadia," closes, and I will not lose the occasion of sending you a hasty line: though I had designed to write you from home on sundry matters, which now must wait. I send by this steamer some sheets, to the bookseller John Chapman,--proofsheets of my new book of Essays. Chapman wrote to me by the last steamer, urging me to send him some manuscript that had not yet been published in America, and he thought he could make an advantage from printing it, and even, in some conditions, procure a copyright, and he would publish for me on the plan of half-profits. The request was so timely, since I was not only printing a book, but also a pamphlet (an Address to citizens of some thirteen towns who celebrated in Concord the negro Emancipation on 1st August last), that I came to town yesterday, and hastened the printers, and have now sent him proofs of all the Address, and of more than half the book. If you can give Chapman any counsel, or save me from any nonsense by enjoining on him careful correction, you shall.

I looked eagerly for a letter from you by the last steamer, to give me exact tidings of Sterling. None came; but I received a short note from Sterling himself, which intimated that he had but a few more days to live. It is gloomy news. I beg you will write me everything you can relate of him, by the next mail. If you can learn from his friends whether the packet of his Manuscripts and printed papers, returned by Russell and sent by me through Harnden's Express to Ventnor, arrived safely, it would be a satisfaction.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

XCIV. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 29 September, 1844

Dear Emerson,--There should a Letter have come for you by that Steamer; for I wrote one duly, and posted it in good time myself: I will hope therefore it was but some delay of some subaltern official, such as I am told occasionally chances, and that you got the Letter after all in a day or two. It would give you notice, more or less, up to its date, of all the points you had inquired about there is now little to be added; except concerning the main point, That the catastrophe has arrived there as we foresaw, and all is ended.

John Sterling died at his house in Ventnor on the night of Wednesday, 18th September, about eleven o'clock; unexpectedly at last, and to appearance without pain. His Sister-in-law, Mrs. Maurice; had gone down to him from this place about a week before; other friends were waiting as it were in view of him; but he wished generally to be alone, to continue to the last setting his house and his heart more and more in order for the Great Journey. For about a fortnight back he had ceased to have himself formally dressed; had sat only in his dressing-gown, but I believe was still daily wheeled into his Library, and sat very calmly sorting and working there. He sent me two Notes, and various messages, and gifts of little keepsakes to my Wife and myself: the Notes were brief, stern and loving; altogether noble; never to be forgotten in this world. His Brother Anthony, who had been in the Isle of Wight within call for several weeks, had now come up to Town again; but, after about a week, decided that he would run down again, and look. He arrived on the Wednesday night, about nine o'clock; found no visible change; the brave Patient calm as ever, ready to speak as ever, --to say, in direct words which he would often do, or indirectly as his whole speech and conduct did, "God is Great." Anthony and he talked for a while, then took leave for the night; in few minutes more, Anthony was summoned to the bedside, and at eleven o'clock, as I said, the curtain dropt, and it was all ended.--_Euge!_