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.
poorer by the loss of a good Mother and good Wife:
I understand he is building himself.
Thomas Carlyle
----w-Q------__-.
__.
_-____.
__,_.
________ __
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? 48 Carlyle to Emerson.
which indeed I find is hundreds of years old, that a
stammering man is never a worthless one. Physi-
ology 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 ofl' 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 afiair 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 Some-
thing, 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 accusa-
tive before the verb, and otherwise entangling the
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 49
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: can-
not 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 ex-
clusively for " despatch of business," is terribly
difiicult. Alfred Tennyson, alone of our time, has
proved it to be possible in some measure. If Chan-
ning 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,1 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
oias : " No," they say, " we cannot stand, or walk,
or do any good whatever there ; by God's blessing,
1 The Reverend William Henry Channing.
voL. 11. 4
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? 50 Carlyle to Emerson.
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 pralctised, 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. --
--My 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 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 busi-
ness; 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
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 5 1
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 T0 CARLYLE.
CONCORD, 31 December, 1843.
MY nmn 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 con-
tented. I wished lately I might serve Mr. Mac-
ready, who sent me your letter. --I called on him
and introduced him to Sam G. Ward, my friend
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? 52 Emerson to Carlyle.
and the best man in the city, and, besides all his
personal merits, a master of all the oflices of hos-
pitality. 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 vil-
lage, which I came to live in nearly ten years ago
because it was the quietest of farming towns, and
ofi 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, to-
morrow 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
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? Enerson to Uarlyle. 5 3
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 aflirms 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 ? 32 8s. 2d. payable by Baring & Go. It hap-
pens 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. Re-
member me and mine with kindest salutations to
your wife and brother.
Ever yours,
R. W. EMERSON.
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? 54 Carlyle lo Emerson.
LXXXIX.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CHELSEA, 31 January, 1844.
DEAR EMERsoN,-- Some ten days ago came your
Letter with a new Draft of ? 32 and odd money
in it: all safe; the Draft now gone into the City
to ripen into gold and silver, the Letter to be ac-
knowledged 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 un-
needfulest 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,
1 The Reverend Henry Colman.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 55
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 Hun-
dred and odd of the dear-priced edition sold, some
Two Hundred and odd still to sell, which the Book-
seller says are (in spite of pirates) slowly selling ;--
and that the half profit upon the whole adventure
up to this date has been ? 24 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 your-
self 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.
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
.
.
V' .
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? 56 Carlyle to Emerson.
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 Dis-
senting Minister, economically fixed, and spiritu-
ally with such germinations in him, forces me to
be very reserved to him.
John Sterling's Dial shall be forwarded to Vent-
nor 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!
1 The sketches were published the next year in a volume under
the title of The Gallery 0fLilerary Portraits.
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? Carlyle to Enerson. 57
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 hexam-
eters from Voss : --
Journeys this Earth, her eye on a Sun, through the heavenly
spaces;
Joyous in radiance, or joyless by fits and swallowed in tem-
Falterspriztf lalters not, equal advancing, home at the due hour:
So thou, weather-proof, constant, may, equal with day, March !
I have not a moment more to-night ; -- and
besides am inclined to write unprofitables if I per-
sist. Adieu, my friend; all blessings be with you
always.
Yours ever truly,
T. ' CARLYLE.
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? 58 Emerson to Carlyle.
X0.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
Conconn, 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 ex-
press my sense of obligation to that departed
man. I feel a kindness not without some won-
der for those good-natured five hundred English-
men 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 arriv-
ing at statements for which he shall not feel re-
sponsible, but which shall be parallel with nature.
Yet without any effort I fancy I make progress
also in the doctrine of Indifferency, and am cer-
tain and content that the truth can very well
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 59
Q
spare me, and have itself spoken by another with-
out 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 Intel-
lectual 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 some-
times 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.
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? 60 Emerson to Carlyle.
I enclose a bill of exchange on the Barings for
thirty-six pounds; which is the sum of two re-
cent 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 edi-
tion 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 val-
ued 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. Emnnson.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 61
XCI.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
Cnnnsus, 3 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 acknowl-
edgment, 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 mer-
cies 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,
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? 62 Carlyle to Emerson.
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 I/lfe
of Schiller, but I put the due spoke in his wheel.
They have sent me L'owell's Poems; they are
bringing out Jean Paul's Life, &c. , &c. ; the hungry
Canaille. It is strange that men should feel them-
selves 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.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 63
He got the usual education of an Edinburgh Advo-
cate; 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 ! 1
XCII.
CARLYLE T0 EMERSON.
CHELSEA, 5 August, 1844.
Dam 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; yester-
day, had it not been Sunday, would have been the
1 The signature has been cut ofl'.
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? 64 Carlyle to Emerson.
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 previ-
ous 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 visi-
ble 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 discourage-
ment; all the sadder to me that I shut it out so
long. Sir James Clark, our best-accredited Physi-
cian for such diseases, declares that Life, for cer-
tain 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 res-
piration; from the remainder, especially in times
of coughing, it is with the greatest difficulty that
breath enough is obtained. Our poor Patient passes
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 65
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 set-
tled 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 re-
moval 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 dis-
spirited, 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
von. n. 5
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? 66 Carlyle to Emerson.
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. '
To-day 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 in-
deed; being a man solitary and sad, as certain
men are, dwelling in an element of gloom,--car-
rying 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
I
J
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 67
annuity on his Father's decease, he preferred club-
bing with his Mother and some Sisters, to live I111-
promoted 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.
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? 48 Carlyle to Emerson.
which indeed I find is hundreds of years old, that a
stammering man is never a worthless one. Physi-
ology 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 ofl' 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 afiair 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 Some-
thing, 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 accusa-
tive before the verb, and otherwise entangling the
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 49
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: can-
not 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 ex-
clusively for " despatch of business," is terribly
difiicult. Alfred Tennyson, alone of our time, has
proved it to be possible in some measure. If Chan-
ning 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,1 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
oias : " No," they say, " we cannot stand, or walk,
or do any good whatever there ; by God's blessing,
1 The Reverend William Henry Channing.
voL. 11. 4
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? 50 Carlyle to Emerson.
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 pralctised, 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. --
--My 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 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 busi-
ness; 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
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 5 1
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 T0 CARLYLE.
CONCORD, 31 December, 1843.
MY nmn 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 con-
tented. I wished lately I might serve Mr. Mac-
ready, who sent me your letter. --I called on him
and introduced him to Sam G. Ward, my friend
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? 52 Emerson to Carlyle.
and the best man in the city, and, besides all his
personal merits, a master of all the oflices of hos-
pitality. 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 vil-
lage, which I came to live in nearly ten years ago
because it was the quietest of farming towns, and
ofi 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, to-
morrow 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
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? Enerson to Uarlyle. 5 3
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 aflirms 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 ? 32 8s. 2d. payable by Baring & Go. It hap-
pens 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. Re-
member me and mine with kindest salutations to
your wife and brother.
Ever yours,
R. W. EMERSON.
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? 54 Carlyle lo Emerson.
LXXXIX.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CHELSEA, 31 January, 1844.
DEAR EMERsoN,-- Some ten days ago came your
Letter with a new Draft of ? 32 and odd money
in it: all safe; the Draft now gone into the City
to ripen into gold and silver, the Letter to be ac-
knowledged 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 un-
needfulest 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,
1 The Reverend Henry Colman.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 55
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 Hun-
dred and odd of the dear-priced edition sold, some
Two Hundred and odd still to sell, which the Book-
seller says are (in spite of pirates) slowly selling ;--
and that the half profit upon the whole adventure
up to this date has been ? 24 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 your-
self 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.
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
.
.
V' .
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? 56 Carlyle to Emerson.
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 Dis-
senting Minister, economically fixed, and spiritu-
ally with such germinations in him, forces me to
be very reserved to him.
John Sterling's Dial shall be forwarded to Vent-
nor 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!
1 The sketches were published the next year in a volume under
the title of The Gallery 0fLilerary Portraits.
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? Carlyle to Enerson. 57
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 hexam-
eters from Voss : --
Journeys this Earth, her eye on a Sun, through the heavenly
spaces;
Joyous in radiance, or joyless by fits and swallowed in tem-
Falterspriztf lalters not, equal advancing, home at the due hour:
So thou, weather-proof, constant, may, equal with day, March !
I have not a moment more to-night ; -- and
besides am inclined to write unprofitables if I per-
sist. Adieu, my friend; all blessings be with you
always.
Yours ever truly,
T. ' CARLYLE.
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? 58 Emerson to Carlyle.
X0.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
Conconn, 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 ex-
press my sense of obligation to that departed
man. I feel a kindness not without some won-
der for those good-natured five hundred English-
men 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 arriv-
ing at statements for which he shall not feel re-
sponsible, but which shall be parallel with nature.
Yet without any effort I fancy I make progress
also in the doctrine of Indifferency, and am cer-
tain and content that the truth can very well
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 59
Q
spare me, and have itself spoken by another with-
out 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 Intel-
lectual 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 some-
times 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.
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? 60 Emerson to Carlyle.
I enclose a bill of exchange on the Barings for
thirty-six pounds; which is the sum of two re-
cent 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 edi-
tion 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 val-
ued 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. Emnnson.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 61
XCI.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
Cnnnsus, 3 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 acknowl-
edgment, 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 mer-
cies 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,
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? 62 Carlyle to Emerson.
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 I/lfe
of Schiller, but I put the due spoke in his wheel.
They have sent me L'owell's Poems; they are
bringing out Jean Paul's Life, &c. , &c. ; the hungry
Canaille. It is strange that men should feel them-
selves 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.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 63
He got the usual education of an Edinburgh Advo-
cate; 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 ! 1
XCII.
CARLYLE T0 EMERSON.
CHELSEA, 5 August, 1844.
Dam 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; yester-
day, had it not been Sunday, would have been the
1 The signature has been cut ofl'.
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? 64 Carlyle to Emerson.
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 previ-
ous 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 visi-
ble 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 discourage-
ment; all the sadder to me that I shut it out so
long. Sir James Clark, our best-accredited Physi-
cian for such diseases, declares that Life, for cer-
tain 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 res-
piration; from the remainder, especially in times
of coughing, it is with the greatest difficulty that
breath enough is obtained. Our poor Patient passes
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 65
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 set-
tled 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 re-
moval 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 dis-
spirited, 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
von. n. 5
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? 66 Carlyle to Emerson.
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. '
To-day 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 in-
deed; being a man solitary and sad, as certain
men are, dwelling in an element of gloom,--car-
rying 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
I
J
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:12 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/pst. 000028736530 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? Carlyle to Emerson. 67
annuity on his Father's decease, he preferred club-
bing with his Mother and some Sisters, to live I111-
promoted 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.
