One or
two words missing in the copy are inserted from the rough draft,
which, as usual, varies in minor points from the letter as sent.
two words missing in the copy are inserted from the rough draft,
which, as usual, varies in minor points from the letter as sent.
Thomas Carlyle
Joseph Long-
worth of Cincinnati are going abroad on their trav-
els. Possibly, the name is not quite unknown to
you. Their father, Nicholas Longworth, is one of
the founders of the city of Cincinnati, a bigger
town than Boston, where he is a huge land lord and
planter, and patron of sculptors and painters. And
his family are most favorably known to all dwellers
and strangers, in the Ohio Valley, as people who
have well used their great wealth. His chief merit
is to have introduced a systematic culture of the
wine-grape and wine manufacture, by the import-
ing and settlement of German planters in that
region, and the trade is thriving to the general
benefit. His son Joseph is a well-bred gentleman
of literary tastes, whose position and good heart
make him largely hospitable. His wife is a very
attractive and excellent woman, and they are good
r
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? 296 Enerson to Carlyle.
friends of mine. It seems I have at some former
time told her that, when she went to England, she
should see you. And they are going abroad, soon,
for the first time. If you are in London, you must
be seen of them.
But I hailed even this need of taxing once more
your often taxed courtesy, as a means to break up
my long contumacy to-you-ward. Please let not the
wires be rusted out, so that we cannot weld them
again, and let me feel the subtle fluid streaming
strong. Tell me what is become of Frederic,
for whose appearance I have watched every week
for months? I am better ready for him, since one
or two books about Voltaire, Maupertuis, and com-
pany, fell in my way.
Yet that book will not come which I most wish to
read, namely, the culled results, the quintessence of
private conviction, a liber veritatis, a few sentences,
hints of the final moral you drew from so much
penetrating inquest into past and present men. All
writing is necessitated to be exoteric, and written
to a human should instead of to the terrible is.
And I say this to you, because you are the truest
and bravest of writers. Every writer is a skater,
who must go partly where he would, and partly
where the skates carry him; or a sailor, who can
' ' "an-kill!
_ - . _. . _'_-. '_. _. :_. . . __ . . 5 . I
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 297
only land where sails can be safely blown. The
variations to be allowed for in the surveyor's com-
pass are nothing like so large as those that must
be allowed for in every book. And a friendship of
old gentlemen who have got rid of many illusions,
survived their ambition, and blushes, and passion
for euphony, and surface harmonies, and tender-
ness for their accidental literary stores, but have
kept all their curiosity and awe touching the prob-
lems of man and fate and the Cause of causes, --a
friendship of old gentlemen of this fortune is look-
ing more comely and profitable than anything I
have read of love. Such a dream flatters my inca-
pacities for conversation, for we can all play at
monosyllables, who cannot attempt the gay pictorial
panoramic styles.
So, if ever I hear that you have betrayed the
first symptom of age, that your back is bent a
twentieth of an inch from the perpendicular,I shall
hasten to believe you are shearing your prodigal
overgrowths, and are calling in your troops to the
citadel, and I may come in the first steamer to drop
in of evenings and hear the central monosyllables.
Be good now again, and send me quickly-
though it be the shortest autograph certificate of 1
1 The end of this letter is lost.
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? 293 Carlyle to Emerson.
CLXIII.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
_ CHELSEA, 2 June, 1858.
DEAR EmERson,--Glad indeed I am to hear of
you on any terms, on any subject. For the last
eighteen months I have pretty much ceased all hu-
man correspondence,--writing no Note that was
not in a sense wrung from me; my one society the
Nightmares (Prussian and other) all that while :---
but often and often the image of you, and the
thoughts of old days between us, has risen sad
upon me; and I have waited to get loose from the
Nightmares to appeal to you again,--to edacious
Time and you. Most likely in a couple of weeks
you would have heard from me again at any rate. --
Your friends shall be welcome to me; no friend of
yours can be other at any time. Nor in fact did
anybody ever sent by you prove other than pleasant
in this house, so pray no apologies on that small
score. -- If only these Cincinnati Patricians can
find me here when they come? For I am ofi to
the deepest solitudes discoverable (native Scotland
probably) so soon as I can shake the final tag-
rags of Printer people off me;--" surely within
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 299
three weeks now! " I say to myself. But I shall
be back, too, if all prosper; and your Longworths
will be back; and Madam will stand to her point, I
hope.
That book on Friedrich of Prussia--first half
of it, two swoln unlovely volumes, which treat
mainly of his Father, &c. , and leave him at his ac-
cession -- is just getting out of my hands. One
packet more of Proofs, and I have done with it, --
thanks to all the gods! No job approaching in
ugliness to it was ever cut out for me; nor had
I any motive to go on, except the sad negative one,
" Shall we be beaten in our old days, then ? "-- But
it has thoroughly humbled me,--trampled me
down into the mud, there to wrestle with the ac-
cumulated stupidities of Mankind, German, English,
French, and other, for all have borne a hand in
these sad centuries ;--and here I emerge at last,
not killed, but almost as good. Seek not to look at
the Book, --nay in fact it is " not to be published
till September" (so the man of affairs settles with
me yesterday, "owing to the political &c. , to the
season," &c. ) ; my only stipulation was that in ten
days I should be utterly out of it,--not to hear of
it again till the Day of Judgment, and if possible
not even then ! In fact it is a bad book, poor, mis-
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? 300 Carlyle to Emerson.
shapen, feeble, nearly worthless (thanks to past
generations and to me); and my one excuse is,
I could not make it better, all the world having
played such a game with it. Well, well ! -- --How
true is that that you say about the skater ; and the
rider too depending on his vehicles, on his roads,
on his et ceteras! Dismally true have I a thou-
sand times felt it, in these late operations; never in
any so much. And in short the business of writing
has altogether become contemptible to me; and I
am become confirmed in the notion that nobody
ought to write,--unless sheer Fate force him to
do it;--and then he ought (if not of the mounte-
bank genus) to beg to be shot rather. That is de-
liberately my opinion,--or far nearer it than you
will believe.
Once or twice I caught some tone of you in some
American Magazine ; utterances highly noteworthy
to me; in a sense, the only thing that is speech at
all among my fellow-creatures in this time. For
the years that remain, I suppose we must continue
to grumble out some occasional utterance of that
kind: what can we do at this late stage? But in
the real " Model Republic," it would have been dif-
ferent with two good boys of this kind! --
Though shattered and trampled down to an im-
Q
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 301
mense degree, I do not think any bones are broken
yet,--though age truly is here, and you may en-
gage your berth in the steamer whenever you like.
In a few months I expect to be sensibly improved ;
but my poor Wife suffers sadly the last two winters;
and I am much distressed by that item of our af-
fairs. " Adieu, dear Emerson: I have lost many
things; let me not lose you till I must in some
way!
Yours ever,
T. CARLYLE.
P. S. If you read the Newspapers (which I care-
fully abstain from doing) they will babble to you
about Dickens's " Separation from Wife," &c. , &c. ;
fact of Separation I believe is true; but all the rest
is mere lies and nonsense. No crime or misde-
meanor specifiable on either side; unhappy to-
gether, these good many years past, and they at
length end it. ----Sulzer said, "Men are by na-
ture good. " "Ach, mein lieber Sulzer, Er kennt
nicht diese verdammte Race," ejaculated Fritz, at
hearing such an axiom.
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? 301 * Carlyle to Emerson.
_ CLXIII. *
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CnELsEA, LONDON, 9 April, 1859.
DEAR EMERsON,--Long months ago there was
sent off for you a copy of Friedrich of Prussia,
two big red volumes (for which Chapman the
Publisher had found some "safe, swift " vehicle) ;
and now I have reason to fear they are still loiter-
ing somewhere, or at least have long loitered:
sorrow on them! This is to say: If you have not
yet got them, address a line to " Saml. F. Flower,
Esq", Librarian of Antiquarian Society, Worcester,
Mass. " forty miles from you, they say), and that
will at dnce bring them. In the Devil's name! I
never in my life was so near choked; swimming in
this mother of Dead Dogs, and a long spell of it
still ahead! I profoundly pity myself (if no one
else does). You shall hear of me again if I sur-
vive,--but really that is getting beyond a joke
with me, and I ought to hold my peace (even to
you), and swim what I can.
Your little touch of Human Speech on Burnsl
1 Emerson's fine speech was made at the celebration of the
Burns Centenary, Boston, January 25, 1859. See his Miscellanies
(Works, vol. xi. ), p. 363.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 3Q1**
was charming; had got into the papers here (and
been clipt out by me) before your copy came,
and has gone far and wide since. Newberg was
to give it me in German, from the Allgemeine
Zeitung, but lost the leaf. Adieu, my Friend ; very
dear to me, tho' dumb.
T. CARLYLE (in
such haste as seldom was)}
1 The preceding letter was discovered in 1893, in e little package
of letters put aside by Mr. Emerson and marked " Autographs. "
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? 302 Emerson to Carlyle.
OLXIV.
EMERSON ro CARLYLE. 1
Concoan, 1 May. 1859.
DEAR CA. RLYLE,-- Some three weeks ago came
to me a note from Mr. Haven of Worcester, an-
nouncing the arrival there of " King Friedrich,"
and, after a fortnight, the good book came to my
door. A week later, your letter arrived. I was
heartily glad to get the crimson Book itself. I
had looked for it with the first ships. As it came
not, I had made up my mind to that hap also. It
was quite fair: I had disentitled myself. He, the
true friend, had every right to punish me for my
sluggish contumacy, -- backsliding, too, after peni-
tence. So I read with resignation our blue Ameri-
can reprint, and I enclose to you a leaf from my
journal at the time, which leaf I read afterwards in
one of my lectures at the Music Hall in Boston.
But the book came from the man himself. He did
not punish me. He is loyal, but royal as well, and,
1 This letter and the Extract from the Diary are printed from a
copy of the original supplied to me by the kindness of Mr. Alexan-
der lreland, who first printed a portion of the letter in his " Ralph
Waldo Emerson, a Biographical Sketch," London, 1882.
One or
two words missing in the copy are inserted from the rough draft,
which, as usual, varies in minor points from the letter as sent.
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 30 3
I have always noted, has a whim for dealing en
grand monarque. The book came, with its irresist-
ible inscription, so that I am all tenderness and all
but tears. The book too is sovereignly written. I
think you the true inventor of the stereoscope, as
having exhibited that art in style, long before we
had heard of it in drawing.
The letter came also. Every child of mine knows
from far that handwriting, and brings it home with
speed. I read without alarm the pathetical hints
of your sad plight in the German labyrinth. I
know too well what invitations and assurance
brought you in there, to fear any lack of guides
to bring you out. More presence of mind and easy
change from the microscopic to the telescopic view
does not exist. I await peacefully your issue from
your pretended afflictions.
What to tell you of my coop and byre? Ah!
you are a very poor fellow, and must be left with
your glory. You hug yourself on missing the illu-
sion of children, and must be pitied as having one
glittering toy the less. I am a victim all my days
to certain graces of form and behavior, and can
never come into equilibrium. Now I am fooled by
my own young people, and grow old contented.
The heedless children suddenly take the keenest
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? 304 Emerson to Carlyle.
--\ _
hold on life, and foolish papas cling to the world
on their account, as never on their own. Out of
sympathy, we make believe to value the prizes of
their ambition and hope. My two girls, pupils
once or now of Agassiz, are good, healthy, appre-
hensive, decided yoimg people, who love life. My
boy divides his time between Cicero and cricket,
knows his boat, the birds, and Walter Scott--
verse and prose, through and through,--and will
go to College next year. Sam Ward and I tickled
each other the other day, in looking over a very
good company of young people, by finding in the
new comers a marked improvement on their par-
ents. There, I flatter myself, I see some emerging
of our people from the prison of their politics. The
insolvency of slavery shows and stares, and we
shall perhaps live to see that putrid Black-vomit
extirpated by mere dying and planting.
I am so glad to find myself speaking once more
to you, that I mean to persist in the practice. Be
as glad as you have been. You and I shall not
know each other on this platform as long as we
have known. A correspondence even of twenty-
five years should not be disused unless through
some fatal event. Life is too short, and, with all
our poetry and morals, too indigent to allow such
- . 1-r~ . . _ ___
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 305
sacrifices. Eyes so old and wary, and which have
learned to look on so much, are gathering an
hourly harvest,--and I cannot spare what on
noble terms is ofiered me.
With congratulations to Jane Carlyle on the
grandeur of the Book,
Yours afiectionately,
R. W. EMERS0N.
EXTRACT FROM DIARY. 1
HERE has come into the country, three or four
months ago, a History of Frederick, infinitely the
wittiest book that ever was written,--a book that
one would think the English people would rise up
in mass and thank the author for, by cordial ac-
clamation, and signify, by crowning him with oak-
leaves, their joy that such a head existed among
them, and sympathizing and much-reading Amer-
ica would make a new treaty or send a Minister
Extraordinary to offer congratulation of honoring
delight to England, in acknowledgment of this
donation,--a book holding so many memorable
and heroic facts, working directly on practice;
with new heroes, things unvoiced before;--the
1 In the first edition, this extract was printed from the original
Diary ; it is now printed according to the copy sent abroad.
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? 306 Emerson to Carlyle.
German Plutarch (now that we have exhausted the
Greek and Roman and British Plutarchs), with a
range, too, of thought and wisdom so large and so
elastic, not so much applying as inosculating to
every need and sensibility of man, that we do not
read a stereotype page, rather we see the eyes of
the writer looking into ours, mark his behavior,
humming, chuckling, with under-tones and trumpet-
tones and shrugs, and long-commanding glances,
stereoscoping every figure that passes, and every
hill, river, road, hummock, and pebble in the long
perspective. With its wonderful new system of
mnemonics, whereby great and insignificant men
are ineffaceably ticketed and marked and modelled
in memory by what they were, had, and did; and
withal a book that is a Judgment Day, for its
moral verdict on the men and nations and manners
of modern times.
And this book makes no noise; I have hardly
seen a notice of it in any newspaper or journal, and
you. would think there was no such book. I am
not aware that Mr. Buchanan has sent a special
messenger to Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea, or that
Mr. Dallas has been instructed to assure Mr. Car-
lyle of his distinguished consideration. ' But the
secret wits and hearts of men take note of it, not
the less surely. They have said nothing lately in
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 307
praise of the air, or of fire, or of the blessing of
love, and yet, I suppose, they are sensible of these,
and not less of this book, which is like these.
-ii
CLXV.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
Conconn, 16 April, 1860.
MY DEAR CARLYLE, -- Can booksellers break the
seal which the gods do not, and put me in com-
munication again with the loyalest of men? On
the ground of Mr. Wight's honest proposal to give
you a benefit from his edition,1 I, though unwilling,
allowed him to copy the Daguerre of your head.
The publishers ask also some expression of your
good will to their work. . . . .
I commend you to the gods who love and up-
hold you, and who do not like to make their great
gifts vain, but teach us that the best life-insurance
is a great task. I hold you to be one of those to
whom all is permitted, and who carry the laws
in their hand. Continue to be good to your old
friends. 'T is no matter whether they write to
1 Mr. O. W. Wight of New York, an upright " able editor," who
had just made arrangements for the publication of a very satisfac-
tory edition of Carlyle's Miscellaneous Essays.
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? 308 Carlyle to Bnerson.
you or not. If not, they save your time. When
Friedrich is once despatched to gods and men,
there was once some talk that you should come
to America! You shall have an ovation such,
and on such sincerity, as none have had. Ever
affectionately yours,
R. W. Emaeson.
I do not know Mr. Wight, but he sends his open
letter, which I fear is already old, for me to write
in: and I will not keep it, lest it lose another
steamer.
GLXVI.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CHELSEA, Lennon, 30 April, 1860.
DEAR EMERSON,--It is a special favor of Heaven
to me that I hear of you again by this accident;
and am made to answer a word de Prqfundis. It
is constantly among the fairest of the few hopes
that remain for me on the other side of this Stygian
Abyss of a Friedrich (should I ever get through it
alive) that I shall then begin writing to you again,
who knows if not see you in the body before quite
taking wing! For I feel always, what I have some-
times written, that there is (in a sense) but one
completely human voice to me in' the world; and
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? Garlyle to Emerson. 309
that you are it, and have been,-- thanks to you,
whether you speak or not ! Let me say also, while
I am at it, that the few words you sent me about
those first Two volumes are present with me in the
far more frightful darknesses of these last Two; and
indeed are often almost my one encouragement.
That is a fact, and not exaggerated, though you
think it is. I read some criticisms of my wretched
Book, and hundreds of others I in the gross refused
to read; they were in praise, they were in blame;
but not one of them looked into the eyes of the
object, and in genuine human fashion responded to
its human strivings, and recognized it, -- completely
right, though with generous exaggeration! That
was well done, I can tell you: a human voice, far
out in the waste deeps, among the inarticulate sea-
krakens and obscene monsters, loud-roaring, in-
expressibly ugly, dooming you as if to eternal
solitude by way of wages,--" hath exceeding much
refreshment in it," as my friend Oliver used to say.
Having not one spare moment at present, I will
answer to you only the whole contents of that let-
ter; you in your charity will convey to Mr. Wight
what portion belongs to him. Wight, if you have
a chance of him, is worth knowing; a genuine bit
of metal, too thin and ringing for my tastes (ham-
mered, in fact, upon the Yankee anvils), but recog-
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? 31o Carlyle to Emerson.
' ". '"''__ "*1
nizably of steel and with a keen fire-edge. Pray
signify to him that he _has done a thing agreeable
to me, and that it will be pleasant if I find it will
not hurt him. Profit to me out of it, except to
keep his own soul clear and sound (to his own
sense, as it always will be to mine), is perfectly
indifferent; and on the whole I thank him heartily
for showing me a chivalrous human brother, in-
stead of the usual vulturous, malodorous, and much
avoidable phenomenon, in Transatlantic Bibliopoly!
This is accurately true; and so far as his pub-
lisher and he can extract encouragement from this,
in the face of vested interests which I cannot judge
of, it is theirs without reserve. . . . .
Adieu, my friend; I have not written so much in
the Letter way, not, I think, since you last heard of
me. In my despair it often seems as if I should
never write more; but be sunk here, and perish
miserably in the most undoable, least worthy, most
disgusting and heart-breaking of all the labors I
ever had. But perhaps also not, not quite. In
which case
Yours ever truly at any rate,
T. CARLYLE.
No time to re-read. I suppose you can de-
cipher.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 31 1
CLXVII.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CHELSEA, 29 January, 1861.
DEAR EMERSON,--The sight of my hand-writing
will, I know, be welcome again. Though I literally
do not write the smallest Note once in a month, or
converse with anything but Prussian Nightmares
of a hideous [nature], and with my Horse (who
is human in comparison), and with my poor Wife
(who is altogether human, and heroically cheerful
to me, in her poor weak state),--I must use the
five minutes, which have fallen to me to-day, in
acknowledgment, due by all laws terrestrial and
celestial, of the last Bookl that has come from
you.
I read it a great while ago, mostly in sheets, and
again read it in the finely printed form,--I can
tell you, if you do not already guess, with a satis-
faction given me by the Books of no other living
mortal. I predicted to your English Bookseller a
great sale even, reckoning it the best of all your
Books. What the sale was or is I nowhere learned;
but the basis of my prophecy remains like the
1 "The Conduct of Life. "
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? 3 1 2 Carlyle to Emerson.
worth of Cincinnati are going abroad on their trav-
els. Possibly, the name is not quite unknown to
you. Their father, Nicholas Longworth, is one of
the founders of the city of Cincinnati, a bigger
town than Boston, where he is a huge land lord and
planter, and patron of sculptors and painters. And
his family are most favorably known to all dwellers
and strangers, in the Ohio Valley, as people who
have well used their great wealth. His chief merit
is to have introduced a systematic culture of the
wine-grape and wine manufacture, by the import-
ing and settlement of German planters in that
region, and the trade is thriving to the general
benefit. His son Joseph is a well-bred gentleman
of literary tastes, whose position and good heart
make him largely hospitable. His wife is a very
attractive and excellent woman, and they are good
r
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? 296 Enerson to Carlyle.
friends of mine. It seems I have at some former
time told her that, when she went to England, she
should see you. And they are going abroad, soon,
for the first time. If you are in London, you must
be seen of them.
But I hailed even this need of taxing once more
your often taxed courtesy, as a means to break up
my long contumacy to-you-ward. Please let not the
wires be rusted out, so that we cannot weld them
again, and let me feel the subtle fluid streaming
strong. Tell me what is become of Frederic,
for whose appearance I have watched every week
for months? I am better ready for him, since one
or two books about Voltaire, Maupertuis, and com-
pany, fell in my way.
Yet that book will not come which I most wish to
read, namely, the culled results, the quintessence of
private conviction, a liber veritatis, a few sentences,
hints of the final moral you drew from so much
penetrating inquest into past and present men. All
writing is necessitated to be exoteric, and written
to a human should instead of to the terrible is.
And I say this to you, because you are the truest
and bravest of writers. Every writer is a skater,
who must go partly where he would, and partly
where the skates carry him; or a sailor, who can
' ' "an-kill!
_ - . _. . _'_-. '_. _. :_. . . __ . . 5 . I
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 297
only land where sails can be safely blown. The
variations to be allowed for in the surveyor's com-
pass are nothing like so large as those that must
be allowed for in every book. And a friendship of
old gentlemen who have got rid of many illusions,
survived their ambition, and blushes, and passion
for euphony, and surface harmonies, and tender-
ness for their accidental literary stores, but have
kept all their curiosity and awe touching the prob-
lems of man and fate and the Cause of causes, --a
friendship of old gentlemen of this fortune is look-
ing more comely and profitable than anything I
have read of love. Such a dream flatters my inca-
pacities for conversation, for we can all play at
monosyllables, who cannot attempt the gay pictorial
panoramic styles.
So, if ever I hear that you have betrayed the
first symptom of age, that your back is bent a
twentieth of an inch from the perpendicular,I shall
hasten to believe you are shearing your prodigal
overgrowths, and are calling in your troops to the
citadel, and I may come in the first steamer to drop
in of evenings and hear the central monosyllables.
Be good now again, and send me quickly-
though it be the shortest autograph certificate of 1
1 The end of this letter is lost.
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? 293 Carlyle to Emerson.
CLXIII.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
_ CHELSEA, 2 June, 1858.
DEAR EmERson,--Glad indeed I am to hear of
you on any terms, on any subject. For the last
eighteen months I have pretty much ceased all hu-
man correspondence,--writing no Note that was
not in a sense wrung from me; my one society the
Nightmares (Prussian and other) all that while :---
but often and often the image of you, and the
thoughts of old days between us, has risen sad
upon me; and I have waited to get loose from the
Nightmares to appeal to you again,--to edacious
Time and you. Most likely in a couple of weeks
you would have heard from me again at any rate. --
Your friends shall be welcome to me; no friend of
yours can be other at any time. Nor in fact did
anybody ever sent by you prove other than pleasant
in this house, so pray no apologies on that small
score. -- If only these Cincinnati Patricians can
find me here when they come? For I am ofi to
the deepest solitudes discoverable (native Scotland
probably) so soon as I can shake the final tag-
rags of Printer people off me;--" surely within
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 299
three weeks now! " I say to myself. But I shall
be back, too, if all prosper; and your Longworths
will be back; and Madam will stand to her point, I
hope.
That book on Friedrich of Prussia--first half
of it, two swoln unlovely volumes, which treat
mainly of his Father, &c. , and leave him at his ac-
cession -- is just getting out of my hands. One
packet more of Proofs, and I have done with it, --
thanks to all the gods! No job approaching in
ugliness to it was ever cut out for me; nor had
I any motive to go on, except the sad negative one,
" Shall we be beaten in our old days, then ? "-- But
it has thoroughly humbled me,--trampled me
down into the mud, there to wrestle with the ac-
cumulated stupidities of Mankind, German, English,
French, and other, for all have borne a hand in
these sad centuries ;--and here I emerge at last,
not killed, but almost as good. Seek not to look at
the Book, --nay in fact it is " not to be published
till September" (so the man of affairs settles with
me yesterday, "owing to the political &c. , to the
season," &c. ) ; my only stipulation was that in ten
days I should be utterly out of it,--not to hear of
it again till the Day of Judgment, and if possible
not even then ! In fact it is a bad book, poor, mis-
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? 300 Carlyle to Emerson.
shapen, feeble, nearly worthless (thanks to past
generations and to me); and my one excuse is,
I could not make it better, all the world having
played such a game with it. Well, well ! -- --How
true is that that you say about the skater ; and the
rider too depending on his vehicles, on his roads,
on his et ceteras! Dismally true have I a thou-
sand times felt it, in these late operations; never in
any so much. And in short the business of writing
has altogether become contemptible to me; and I
am become confirmed in the notion that nobody
ought to write,--unless sheer Fate force him to
do it;--and then he ought (if not of the mounte-
bank genus) to beg to be shot rather. That is de-
liberately my opinion,--or far nearer it than you
will believe.
Once or twice I caught some tone of you in some
American Magazine ; utterances highly noteworthy
to me; in a sense, the only thing that is speech at
all among my fellow-creatures in this time. For
the years that remain, I suppose we must continue
to grumble out some occasional utterance of that
kind: what can we do at this late stage? But in
the real " Model Republic," it would have been dif-
ferent with two good boys of this kind! --
Though shattered and trampled down to an im-
Q
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 301
mense degree, I do not think any bones are broken
yet,--though age truly is here, and you may en-
gage your berth in the steamer whenever you like.
In a few months I expect to be sensibly improved ;
but my poor Wife suffers sadly the last two winters;
and I am much distressed by that item of our af-
fairs. " Adieu, dear Emerson: I have lost many
things; let me not lose you till I must in some
way!
Yours ever,
T. CARLYLE.
P. S. If you read the Newspapers (which I care-
fully abstain from doing) they will babble to you
about Dickens's " Separation from Wife," &c. , &c. ;
fact of Separation I believe is true; but all the rest
is mere lies and nonsense. No crime or misde-
meanor specifiable on either side; unhappy to-
gether, these good many years past, and they at
length end it. ----Sulzer said, "Men are by na-
ture good. " "Ach, mein lieber Sulzer, Er kennt
nicht diese verdammte Race," ejaculated Fritz, at
hearing such an axiom.
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? 301 * Carlyle to Emerson.
_ CLXIII. *
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CnELsEA, LONDON, 9 April, 1859.
DEAR EMERsON,--Long months ago there was
sent off for you a copy of Friedrich of Prussia,
two big red volumes (for which Chapman the
Publisher had found some "safe, swift " vehicle) ;
and now I have reason to fear they are still loiter-
ing somewhere, or at least have long loitered:
sorrow on them! This is to say: If you have not
yet got them, address a line to " Saml. F. Flower,
Esq", Librarian of Antiquarian Society, Worcester,
Mass. " forty miles from you, they say), and that
will at dnce bring them. In the Devil's name! I
never in my life was so near choked; swimming in
this mother of Dead Dogs, and a long spell of it
still ahead! I profoundly pity myself (if no one
else does). You shall hear of me again if I sur-
vive,--but really that is getting beyond a joke
with me, and I ought to hold my peace (even to
you), and swim what I can.
Your little touch of Human Speech on Burnsl
1 Emerson's fine speech was made at the celebration of the
Burns Centenary, Boston, January 25, 1859. See his Miscellanies
(Works, vol. xi. ), p. 363.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 3Q1**
was charming; had got into the papers here (and
been clipt out by me) before your copy came,
and has gone far and wide since. Newberg was
to give it me in German, from the Allgemeine
Zeitung, but lost the leaf. Adieu, my Friend ; very
dear to me, tho' dumb.
T. CARLYLE (in
such haste as seldom was)}
1 The preceding letter was discovered in 1893, in e little package
of letters put aside by Mr. Emerson and marked " Autographs. "
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? 302 Emerson to Carlyle.
OLXIV.
EMERSON ro CARLYLE. 1
Concoan, 1 May. 1859.
DEAR CA. RLYLE,-- Some three weeks ago came
to me a note from Mr. Haven of Worcester, an-
nouncing the arrival there of " King Friedrich,"
and, after a fortnight, the good book came to my
door. A week later, your letter arrived. I was
heartily glad to get the crimson Book itself. I
had looked for it with the first ships. As it came
not, I had made up my mind to that hap also. It
was quite fair: I had disentitled myself. He, the
true friend, had every right to punish me for my
sluggish contumacy, -- backsliding, too, after peni-
tence. So I read with resignation our blue Ameri-
can reprint, and I enclose to you a leaf from my
journal at the time, which leaf I read afterwards in
one of my lectures at the Music Hall in Boston.
But the book came from the man himself. He did
not punish me. He is loyal, but royal as well, and,
1 This letter and the Extract from the Diary are printed from a
copy of the original supplied to me by the kindness of Mr. Alexan-
der lreland, who first printed a portion of the letter in his " Ralph
Waldo Emerson, a Biographical Sketch," London, 1882.
One or
two words missing in the copy are inserted from the rough draft,
which, as usual, varies in minor points from the letter as sent.
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 30 3
I have always noted, has a whim for dealing en
grand monarque. The book came, with its irresist-
ible inscription, so that I am all tenderness and all
but tears. The book too is sovereignly written. I
think you the true inventor of the stereoscope, as
having exhibited that art in style, long before we
had heard of it in drawing.
The letter came also. Every child of mine knows
from far that handwriting, and brings it home with
speed. I read without alarm the pathetical hints
of your sad plight in the German labyrinth. I
know too well what invitations and assurance
brought you in there, to fear any lack of guides
to bring you out. More presence of mind and easy
change from the microscopic to the telescopic view
does not exist. I await peacefully your issue from
your pretended afflictions.
What to tell you of my coop and byre? Ah!
you are a very poor fellow, and must be left with
your glory. You hug yourself on missing the illu-
sion of children, and must be pitied as having one
glittering toy the less. I am a victim all my days
to certain graces of form and behavior, and can
never come into equilibrium. Now I am fooled by
my own young people, and grow old contented.
The heedless children suddenly take the keenest
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? 304 Emerson to Carlyle.
--\ _
hold on life, and foolish papas cling to the world
on their account, as never on their own. Out of
sympathy, we make believe to value the prizes of
their ambition and hope. My two girls, pupils
once or now of Agassiz, are good, healthy, appre-
hensive, decided yoimg people, who love life. My
boy divides his time between Cicero and cricket,
knows his boat, the birds, and Walter Scott--
verse and prose, through and through,--and will
go to College next year. Sam Ward and I tickled
each other the other day, in looking over a very
good company of young people, by finding in the
new comers a marked improvement on their par-
ents. There, I flatter myself, I see some emerging
of our people from the prison of their politics. The
insolvency of slavery shows and stares, and we
shall perhaps live to see that putrid Black-vomit
extirpated by mere dying and planting.
I am so glad to find myself speaking once more
to you, that I mean to persist in the practice. Be
as glad as you have been. You and I shall not
know each other on this platform as long as we
have known. A correspondence even of twenty-
five years should not be disused unless through
some fatal event. Life is too short, and, with all
our poetry and morals, too indigent to allow such
- . 1-r~ . . _ ___
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 305
sacrifices. Eyes so old and wary, and which have
learned to look on so much, are gathering an
hourly harvest,--and I cannot spare what on
noble terms is ofiered me.
With congratulations to Jane Carlyle on the
grandeur of the Book,
Yours afiectionately,
R. W. EMERS0N.
EXTRACT FROM DIARY. 1
HERE has come into the country, three or four
months ago, a History of Frederick, infinitely the
wittiest book that ever was written,--a book that
one would think the English people would rise up
in mass and thank the author for, by cordial ac-
clamation, and signify, by crowning him with oak-
leaves, their joy that such a head existed among
them, and sympathizing and much-reading Amer-
ica would make a new treaty or send a Minister
Extraordinary to offer congratulation of honoring
delight to England, in acknowledgment of this
donation,--a book holding so many memorable
and heroic facts, working directly on practice;
with new heroes, things unvoiced before;--the
1 In the first edition, this extract was printed from the original
Diary ; it is now printed according to the copy sent abroad.
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? 306 Emerson to Carlyle.
German Plutarch (now that we have exhausted the
Greek and Roman and British Plutarchs), with a
range, too, of thought and wisdom so large and so
elastic, not so much applying as inosculating to
every need and sensibility of man, that we do not
read a stereotype page, rather we see the eyes of
the writer looking into ours, mark his behavior,
humming, chuckling, with under-tones and trumpet-
tones and shrugs, and long-commanding glances,
stereoscoping every figure that passes, and every
hill, river, road, hummock, and pebble in the long
perspective. With its wonderful new system of
mnemonics, whereby great and insignificant men
are ineffaceably ticketed and marked and modelled
in memory by what they were, had, and did; and
withal a book that is a Judgment Day, for its
moral verdict on the men and nations and manners
of modern times.
And this book makes no noise; I have hardly
seen a notice of it in any newspaper or journal, and
you. would think there was no such book. I am
not aware that Mr. Buchanan has sent a special
messenger to Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea, or that
Mr. Dallas has been instructed to assure Mr. Car-
lyle of his distinguished consideration. ' But the
secret wits and hearts of men take note of it, not
the less surely. They have said nothing lately in
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? Emerson to Carlyle. 307
praise of the air, or of fire, or of the blessing of
love, and yet, I suppose, they are sensible of these,
and not less of this book, which is like these.
-ii
CLXV.
EMERSON TO CARLYLE.
Conconn, 16 April, 1860.
MY DEAR CARLYLE, -- Can booksellers break the
seal which the gods do not, and put me in com-
munication again with the loyalest of men? On
the ground of Mr. Wight's honest proposal to give
you a benefit from his edition,1 I, though unwilling,
allowed him to copy the Daguerre of your head.
The publishers ask also some expression of your
good will to their work. . . . .
I commend you to the gods who love and up-
hold you, and who do not like to make their great
gifts vain, but teach us that the best life-insurance
is a great task. I hold you to be one of those to
whom all is permitted, and who carry the laws
in their hand. Continue to be good to your old
friends. 'T is no matter whether they write to
1 Mr. O. W. Wight of New York, an upright " able editor," who
had just made arrangements for the publication of a very satisfac-
tory edition of Carlyle's Miscellaneous Essays.
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? 308 Carlyle to Bnerson.
you or not. If not, they save your time. When
Friedrich is once despatched to gods and men,
there was once some talk that you should come
to America! You shall have an ovation such,
and on such sincerity, as none have had. Ever
affectionately yours,
R. W. Emaeson.
I do not know Mr. Wight, but he sends his open
letter, which I fear is already old, for me to write
in: and I will not keep it, lest it lose another
steamer.
GLXVI.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CHELSEA, Lennon, 30 April, 1860.
DEAR EMERSON,--It is a special favor of Heaven
to me that I hear of you again by this accident;
and am made to answer a word de Prqfundis. It
is constantly among the fairest of the few hopes
that remain for me on the other side of this Stygian
Abyss of a Friedrich (should I ever get through it
alive) that I shall then begin writing to you again,
who knows if not see you in the body before quite
taking wing! For I feel always, what I have some-
times written, that there is (in a sense) but one
completely human voice to me in' the world; and
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? Garlyle to Emerson. 309
that you are it, and have been,-- thanks to you,
whether you speak or not ! Let me say also, while
I am at it, that the few words you sent me about
those first Two volumes are present with me in the
far more frightful darknesses of these last Two; and
indeed are often almost my one encouragement.
That is a fact, and not exaggerated, though you
think it is. I read some criticisms of my wretched
Book, and hundreds of others I in the gross refused
to read; they were in praise, they were in blame;
but not one of them looked into the eyes of the
object, and in genuine human fashion responded to
its human strivings, and recognized it, -- completely
right, though with generous exaggeration! That
was well done, I can tell you: a human voice, far
out in the waste deeps, among the inarticulate sea-
krakens and obscene monsters, loud-roaring, in-
expressibly ugly, dooming you as if to eternal
solitude by way of wages,--" hath exceeding much
refreshment in it," as my friend Oliver used to say.
Having not one spare moment at present, I will
answer to you only the whole contents of that let-
ter; you in your charity will convey to Mr. Wight
what portion belongs to him. Wight, if you have
a chance of him, is worth knowing; a genuine bit
of metal, too thin and ringing for my tastes (ham-
mered, in fact, upon the Yankee anvils), but recog-
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? 31o Carlyle to Emerson.
' ". '"''__ "*1
nizably of steel and with a keen fire-edge. Pray
signify to him that he _has done a thing agreeable
to me, and that it will be pleasant if I find it will
not hurt him. Profit to me out of it, except to
keep his own soul clear and sound (to his own
sense, as it always will be to mine), is perfectly
indifferent; and on the whole I thank him heartily
for showing me a chivalrous human brother, in-
stead of the usual vulturous, malodorous, and much
avoidable phenomenon, in Transatlantic Bibliopoly!
This is accurately true; and so far as his pub-
lisher and he can extract encouragement from this,
in the face of vested interests which I cannot judge
of, it is theirs without reserve. . . . .
Adieu, my friend; I have not written so much in
the Letter way, not, I think, since you last heard of
me. In my despair it often seems as if I should
never write more; but be sunk here, and perish
miserably in the most undoable, least worthy, most
disgusting and heart-breaking of all the labors I
ever had. But perhaps also not, not quite. In
which case
Yours ever truly at any rate,
T. CARLYLE.
No time to re-read. I suppose you can de-
cipher.
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? Carlyle to Emerson. 31 1
CLXVII.
CARLYLE TO EMERSON.
CHELSEA, 29 January, 1861.
DEAR EMERSON,--The sight of my hand-writing
will, I know, be welcome again. Though I literally
do not write the smallest Note once in a month, or
converse with anything but Prussian Nightmares
of a hideous [nature], and with my Horse (who
is human in comparison), and with my poor Wife
(who is altogether human, and heroically cheerful
to me, in her poor weak state),--I must use the
five minutes, which have fallen to me to-day, in
acknowledgment, due by all laws terrestrial and
celestial, of the last Bookl that has come from
you.
I read it a great while ago, mostly in sheets, and
again read it in the finely printed form,--I can
tell you, if you do not already guess, with a satis-
faction given me by the Books of no other living
mortal. I predicted to your English Bookseller a
great sale even, reckoning it the best of all your
Books. What the sale was or is I nowhere learned;
but the basis of my prophecy remains like the
1 "The Conduct of Life. "
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? 3 1 2 Carlyle to Emerson.
