Chapter IX: Part 9

I had received in July, forwarded by Stanley, on his flight through Boston, the fourth Volume of _Friedrich,_ and it was my best reading in the summer, and for weeks my only reading: One fact was paramount in all the good I drew from it, that whomsoever many years had used and worn, they had not yet broken any fibre of your force:--a pure joy to me, who abhor the inroads which time makes on me and on my friends. To live too long is the capital misfortune, and I sometimes think, if we shall not parry it by better art of living, we shall learn to include in our morals some bolder control of the facts. I read once, that Jacobi declared that he had some thoughts which--if he should entertain them--would put him to death: and perhaps we have weapons in our intellectual armory that are to save us from disgrace and impertinent relation to the world we live in. But this book will excuse you from any unseemly haste to make up your accounts, nay, holds you to fulfil your career with all amplitude and calmness. I found joy and pride in it, and discerned a golden chain of continuity not often seen in the works of men, apprising me that one good head and great heart remained in England,--immovable, superior to his own eccentricities and perversities, nay, wearing these, I can well believe, as a jaunty coat or red cockade to defy or mislead idlers, for the better securing his own peace, and the very ends which the idlers fancy he resists. England's lease of power is good during his days.

I have in these last years lamented that you had not made the visit to America, which in earlier years you projected or favored. It would have made it impossible that your name should be cited for one moment on the side of the enemies of mankind. Ten days' residence in this country would have made you the organ of the sanity of England and of Europe to us and to them, and have shown you the necessities and aspirations which struggle up in our Free States, which, as yet, have no organ to others, and are ill and unsteadily articulated here. In our today's division of Republican and Democrat, it is certain that the American nationality lies in the Republican party (mixed and multiform though that party be); and I hold it not less certain, that, viewing all the nationalities of the world, the battle for Humanity is, at this hour, in America. A few days here would show you the disgusting composition of the Party which within the Union resists the national action. Take from it the wild Irish element, imported in the last twenty-five year's into this country, and led by Romish Priests, who sympathize, of course, with despotism, and you would bereave it of all its numerical strength. A man intelligent and virtuous is not to be found on that side. Ah! how gladly I would enlist you, with your thunderbolt, on our part! How gladly enlist the wise, thoughtful, efficient pens and voices of England! We want England and Europe to hold our people stanch to their best tendency. Are English of this day incapable of a great sentiment? Can they not leave caviling at petty failures, and bad manners, and at the dunce part (always the largest part in human affairs), and leap to the suggestions and finger-pointings of the gods, which, above the understanding, feed the hopes and guide the wills of men? This war has been conducted over the heads of all the actors in it; and the foolish terrors, "What shall we do with the negro?" "The entire black population is coming North to be fed," &c., have strangely ended in the fact that the black refuses to leave his climate; gets his living and the living of his employers there, as he has always done; is the natural ally and soldier of the Republic, in that climate; now takes the place of two hundred thousand white soldiers; and will be, as the conquest of the country proceeds, its garrison, till peace, without slavery, returns. Slaveholders in London have filled English ears with their wishes and perhaps beliefs; and our people, generals, and politicians have carried the like, at first, to the war, until corrected by irresistible experience. I shall always respect War hereafter. The cost of life, the dreary havoc of comfort and time, are overpaid by the vistas it opens of Eternal Life, Eternal Law, reconstructing and uplifting Society, --breaks up the old horizon, and we see through the rifts a wider. The dismal Malthus, the dismal DeBow, have had their night.

Our Census of 1860, and the War, are poems, which will, in the next age, inspire a genius like your own. I hate to write you a newspaper, but, in these times, 't is wonderful what sublime lessons I have once and again read on the Bulletin-boards in the streets. Everybody has been wrong in his guess, except good women, who never despair of an Ideal right.

I thank you for sending to me so gracious a gentleman as Mr. Stanley, who interested us in every manner, by his elegance, his accurate information of that we wished to know, and his surprising acquaintance with the camp and military politics on our frontier. I regretted that I could see him so little. He has used his time to the best purpose, and I should gladly have learned all his adventures from so competent a witness. Forgive this long writing, and keep the old kindness which I prize above words. My kindest salutations to the dear invalid!

--R.W. Emerson

CLXXII. Carlyle to Emerson

Cummertrees, Annan, Scotland, 14 June, 1865

Dear Emerson,--Though my hand is shaking (as you sadly notice) I determine to write you a little Note today. What a severance there has been these many sad years past!--In the first days of February I ended my weary Book; a totally worn-out man, got to shore again after far the ugliest sea he had ever swam in. In April or the end of March, when the book was published, I duly handed out a Copy for Concord and you; it was to be sent by mail; but, as my Publisher (a _new_ Chapman, very unlike the _old_) discloses to me lately an incredible negligence on such points, it is quite possible the dog may _not,_ for a long while, have put it in the Post-Office (though he faithfully charged me the postage of it, and was paid), and that the poor waif may never yet have reached you! Patience: it will come soon enough,--there are two thick volumes, and they will stand you a great deal of reading; stiff rather than "light."

Since February last, I have been sauntering about in Devonshire, in Chelsea, hither, thither; idle as a dry bone, in fact, a creature sinking into deeper and deeper _collapse,_ after twelve years of such mulish pulling and pushing; creature now good for nothing seemingly, and much indifferent to being so in permanence, if that be the arrangement come upon by the Powers that made us. Some three or four weeks ago, I came rolling down hither, into this old nook of my Birthland, to see poor old Annandale again with eyes, and the poor remnants of kindred and loved ones still left me there; I was not at first very lucky (lost sleep, &c.); but am now doing better, pretty much got adjusted to my new element, new to me since about six years past,--the longest absence I ever had from it before. My Work was getting desperate at that time; and I silently said to myself, "We won't return till _it_ is done, or _you_ are done, my man!"

This is my eldest living sister's house; one of the most rustic Farmhouses in the world, but abounding in all that is needful to me, especially in the truest, _silently_-active affection, the humble generosity of which is itself medicine and balm. The place is airy, on dry waving knolls cheerfully (with such _water_ as I never drank elsewhere, except at Malvern) all round me are the Mountains, Cheviot and Galloway (three to fifteen miles off), Cumberland and Yorkshire (say forty and fifty, with the Solway brine and sands intervening). I live in total solitude, sauntering moodily in thin checkered woods, galloping about, once daily, by old lanes and roads, oftenest latterly on the wide expanses of Solway shore (when the tide is _out!_) where I see bright busy Cottages far off, houses over even in Cumberland, and the beautifulest amphitheatre of eternal Hills,--but meet no living creature; and have endless thoughts as loving and as sad and sombre as I like. My youngest Brother (whom on the whole I like best, a rustic man, the express image of my Father in his ways of living and thinking) is within ten miles of me; Brother John "the Doctor" has come down to Dumfries to a sister (twelve miles off), and runs over to me by rail now and then in few minutes. I have Books; but can hardly be troubled with them. Pitiful temporary babble and balderdash, in comparison to what the Silences can say to one. Enough of all that: you perceive me sufficiently at this point of my Pilgrimage, as withdrawn to _Hades_ for the time being; intending a month's walk there, till the muddy semi-solutions settle into sediment according to what laws they have, and there be perhaps a partial restoration of clearness. I have to go deeper into Scotland by and by, perhaps to try _sailing,_ which generally agrees with me; but till the end of September I hope there will be no London farther. My poor Wife, who is again poorly since I left (and has had frightful sufferings, last year especially) will probably join me in this region before I leave it. And see here, This is authentically the way we figure in the eye of the Sun; and something like what your spectacles, could they reach across the Ocean into these nooks, would teach you of us. There are three Photographs which I reckon fairly _like;_ _these_ are properly what I had to send you today,--little thinking that so much surplusage would accumulate about them; to which I now at once put an end. Your friend Conway,* who is a boundless admirer of yours, used to come our way regularly now and then; and we always liked him well. A man of most gentlemanly, ingenious ways; turn of thought always loyal and manly, though tending to be rather _winged_ than solidly ambulatory. He talked of coming to Scotland too; but it seems uncertain whether we shall meet. He is clearly rather a favorite among the London people,--and tries to explain America to them; I know not if with any success. As for me, I have entirely lost count and reckoning of your enormous element, and its enormous affairs and procedures for some time past; and can only wish (which no man more heartily does) that all may issue in as blessed a way as you hope. Fat--(if you know and his fat commonplace at all) amused me much by a thing he had heard of yours in some lecture a year or two ago. "The American Eagle is a mighty bird; but what is he to the American Peacock." At which all the audience had exploded into laughter. Very good. Adieu, old Friend.

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

--------- * Mr. Moncure D. Conway. ---------

CLXXIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 7 January, 1866

Dear Carlyle,--Is it too late to send a letter to your door to claim an old right to enter, and to scatter all your convictions that I had passed under the earth? You had not to learn what a sluggish pen mine is. Of course, the sluggishness grows on me, and even such a trumpet at my gate as a letter from you heralding-in noble books, whilst it gives me joy, cannot heal the paralysis. Yet your letter deeply interested me, with the account of your rest so well earned. You had fought your great battle, and might roll in the grass, or ride your pony, or shout to the Cumberland or Scotland echoes, with largest leave of men and gods. My lethargies have not dulled my delight in good books. I read these in the bright days of our new peace, which added a lustre to every genial work. Now first we had a right to read, for the very bookworms were driven out of doors whilst the war lasted. I found in the book no trace of age, which your letter so impressively claimed. In the book, the hand does not shake, the mind is ubiquitous. The treatment is so spontaneous, self-respecting, defiant,--liberties with your hero as if he were your client, or your son, and you were proud of him, and yet can check and chide him, and even put him in the corner when he is not a good boy, freedoms with kings, and reputations, and nations, yes, and with principles too,--that each reader, I suppose, feels complimented by the confidences with which he is honored by this free-tongued, masterful Hermes.--Who knows what the [Greek] will say next? This humor of telling the story in a gale,--bantering, scoffing, at the hero, at the enemy, at the learned reporters,--is a perpetual flattery to the admiring student,--the author abusing the whole world as mad dunces,--all but you and I, reader! Ellery Channing borrowed my Volumes V. and VI., worked slowly through them,--midway came to me for Volumes I., II., III., IV., which he had long already read, and at last returned all with this word, "If you write to Mr. Carlyle, you may say to him, that I _have_ read these books, and they have made it impossible for me to read any other books but his."

'T is a good proof of their penetrative force, the influence on the new Stirling, who writes "The Secret of Hegel." He is quite as much a student of Carlyle to learn treatment, as of Hegel for his matter, and plays the same game on his essence-dividing German, which he has learned of you on _Friedrich._ I have read a good deal in this book of Stirling's, and have not done with it.

One or two errata I noticed in the last volumes of _Friedrich,_ though the books are now lent, and I cannot indicate the pages. Fort Pulaski, which is near Savannah, is set down as near Charleston. Charleston, South Carolina, your printer has twice called Charlestown, which is the name of the town in Massachusetts in which Bunker Hill stands.--Bancroft told me that the letters of Montcalm are spurious. We always write and say Ticonderoga.

I am sorry that Jonathan looks so unamiable seen from your island. Yet I have too much respect for the writing profession to complain of it. It is a necessity of rhetoric that there should be shades, and, I suppose, geography and government always determine, even for the greatest wits, where they shall lay their shadows. But I have always 'the belief that a trip across the sea would have abated your despair of us. The world is laid out here in large lots, and the swing of natural laws is shared by the population, as it is not--or not as much--in your feudal Europe. My countrymen do not content me, but they are susceptible of inspirations. In the war it was humanity that showed itself to advantage,--the leaders were prompted and corrected by the intuitions of the people, they still demanding the more generous and decisive measure, and giving their sons and their estates as we had no example before. In this heat, they had sharper perceptions of policy, of the ways and means and the life of nations, and on every side we read or heard fate-words, in private letters, in railway cars, or in the journals. We were proud of the people and believed they would not go down from this height. But Peace came, and every one ran back into his shop again, and can hardly be won to patriotism more, even to the point of chasing away the thieves that are stealing not only the public gold, but the newly won rights of the slave, and the new muzzles we had contrived to keep the planter from sucking his blood.

Very welcome to me were the photographs,--your own, and Jane Carlyle's. Hers, now seen here for the first time, was closely scanned, and confirmed the better accounts that had come of her improved health. Your earlier tidings of her had not been encouraging. I recognized still erect the wise, friendly presence first seen at Craigenputtock. Of your own--the hatted head is good, but more can be read in the head leaning on the hand, and the one in a cloak.

At the end of much writing, I have little to tell you of myself. I am a bad subject for autobiography. As I adjourn letters, so I adjourn my best tasks.... My wife joins me in very kind regards to Mrs. Carlyle. Use your old magnanimity to me, and punish my stony ingratitudes by new letters from time to time.

Ever affectionately and gratefully yours,
R.W. Emerson

CLXXIV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 16 May, 1866

My Dear Carlyle,--I have just been shown a private letter from Moncure Conway to one of his friends here, giving some tidings of your sad return to an empty home. We had the first news last week. And so it is. The stroke long threatened has fallen at last, in the mildest form to its victim, and relieved to you by long and repeated reprieves. I must think her fortunate also in this gentle departure, as she had been in her serene and honored career. We would not for ourselves count covetously the descending steps after we have passed the top of the mount, or grudge to spare some of the days of decay. And you will have the peace of knowing her safe, and no longer a victim. I have found myself recalling an old verse which one utters to the parting soul,--

"For thou hast passed all chance of human life,
And not again to thee shall beauty die."

It is thirty-three years in July, I believe, since I first saw her, and her conversation and faultless manners gave assurance of a good and happy future. As I have not witnessed any decline, I can hardly believe in any, and still recall vividly the youthful wife, and her blithe account of her letters and homages from Goethe, and the details she gave of her intended visit to Weimar, and its disappointment. Her goodness to me and to my friends was ever perfect, and all Americans have agreed in her praise. Elizabeth Hoar remembers her with entire sympathy and regard.

I could heartily wish to see you for an hour in these lonely days. Your friends, I know, will approach you as tenderly as friends can; and I can believe that labor--all whose precious secrets you know--will prove a consoler,--though it cannot quite avail, for she was the rest that rewarded labor. It is good that you are strong, and built for endurance. Nor will you shun to consult the awful oracles which in these hours of tenderness are sometimes vouchsafed. If to any, to you.

I rejoice that she stayed to enjoy the knowledge of your good day at Edinburgh, which is a leaf we would not spare from your book of life. It was a right manly speech to be so made, and is a voucher of unbroken strength,--and the surroundings, as I learn, were all the happiest,--with no hint of change.

I pray you bear in mind your own counsels. Long years you must still achieve, and, I hope, neither grief nor weariness will let you "join the dim choir of the bards that have been," until you have written the book I wish and wait for,--the sincerest confessions of your best hours.

My wife prays to be remembered to you with sympathy and affection.

Ever yours faithfully,
R.W. Emerson

CLXXV. Carlyle to Emerson

Mentone, France, Alpes Maritimes 27 January, 1867

My Dear Emerson,--It is along time since I last wrote to you; and a long distance in space and in fortune,--from the shores of the Solway in summer 1865, to this niche of the Alps and Mediterranean today, after what has befallen me in the interim. A longer interval, I think, and surely by far a sadder, than ever occurred between us before, since we first met in the Scotch moors, some five and thirty years ago. You have written me various Notes, too, and Letters, all good and cheering to me,-- almost the only truly human speech I have heard from anybody living;--and still my stony silence could not be broken; not till now, though often looking forward to it, could I resolve on such a thing. You will think me far gone, and much bankrupt in hope and heart;--and indeed I am; as good as without hope and without fear; a gloomily serious, silent, and sad old man; gazing into the final chasm of things, in mute dialogue with "Death, Judgment, and Eternity" (dialogue _mute_ on _both_ sides!), not caring to discourse with poor articulate-speaking fellow creatures on their sorts of topics. It is right of me; and yet also it is not right. I often feel that I had better be dead than thus indifferent, contemptuous, disgusted with the world and its roaring nonsense, which I have no thought farther of lifting a finger to help, and only try to keep out of the way of, and shut my door against. But the truth is, I was nearly killed by that hideous Book on Friedrich,--twelve years in continuous wrestle with the nightmares and the subterranean hydras;--nearly _killed,_ and had often thought I should be altogether, and must die leaving the monster not so much as finished! This is one truth, not so evident to any friend or onlooker as it is to myself: and then there is another, known to myself alone, as it were; and of which I am best not to speak to others, or to speak to them no farther. By the calamity of April last, I lost my little all in this world; and have no soul left who can make any corner of this world into a _home_ for me any more. Bright, heroic, tender, true and noble was that lost treasure of my heart, who faithfully accompanied me in all the rocky ways and climbings; and I am forever poor without her. She was snatched from me in a moment,--as by a death from the gods. Very beautiful her death was; radiantly beautiful (to those who understand it) had all her life been _quid plura?_ I should be among the dullest and stupidest, if I were not among the saddest of all men. But not a word more on all this.

All summer last, my one solacement in the form of work was writing, and sorting of old documents and recollections; summoning out again into clearness old scenes that had now closed on me without return. Sad, and in a sense sacred; it was like a kind of _worship;_ the only _devout_ time I had had for a great while past. These things I have half or wholly the intention to burn out of the way before I myself die:--but such continues still mainly my employment,--so many hours every forenoon; what I call the "work" of my day;--to me, if to no other, it is useful; to reduce matters to writing means that you shall know them, see them in their origins and sequences, in their essential lineaments, considerably better than you ever did before. To set about writing my own _Life_ would be no less than horrible to me; and shall of a certainty never be done. The common impious vulgar of this earth, what has it to do with my life or me? Let dignified oblivion, silence, and the vacant azure of Eternity swallow _me;_ for my share of it, that, verily, is the handsomest, or one handsome way, of settling my poor account with the _canaille_ of mankind extant and to come. "Immortal glory," is not that a beautiful thing, in the Shakespeare Clubs and Literary Gazettes of our improved Epoch?--I did not leave London, except for fourteen days in August, to a fine and high old Lady- friend's in Kent; where, riding about the woods and by the sea- beaches and chalk cliffs, in utter silence, I felt sadder than ever, though a little less _miserably_ so, than in the intrusive babblements of London, which I could not quite lock out of doors. We read, at first, Tennyson's _Idyls,_ with profound recognition of the finely elaborated execution, and also of the inward perfection of _vacancy,_--and, to say truth, with considerable impatience at being treated so very like infants, though the lollipops were so superlative. We gladly changed for one Emerson's _English Traits;_ and read that, with increasing and ever increasing satisfaction every evening; blessing Heaven that there were still Books for grown-up people too! That truly is a Book all full of thoughts like winged arrows (thanks to the Bowyer from us both):--my Lady-friend's name is Miss Davenport Bromley; it was at Wooton, in her Grandfather's House, in Staffordshire, that Rousseau took shelter in 1760; and one hundred and six years later she was reading Emerson to me with a recognition that would have pleased the man, had he seen it.

About that same time my health and humors being evidently so, the Dowager Lady Ashburton (not the high Lady you saw, but a Successor of Mackenzie-Highland type), who wanders mostly about the Continent since her widowhood, for the sake of a child's health, began pressing and inviting me to spend the blade months of Winter here in her Villa with her;--all friends warmly seconding and urging; by one of whom I was at last snatched off, as if by the hair of the head, (in spite of my violent No, no!) on the eve of Christmas last, and have been here ever since,-- really with improved omens. The place is beautiful as a very picture, the climate superlative (today a sun and sky like very June); the _hospitality_ of usage beyond example. It is likely I shall be here another six weeks, or longer. If you please to write me, the address is on the margin; and I will answer. Adieu.

--T. Carlyle

CLXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 18 November, 1869

Dear Emerson,--It is near three years since I last wrote to you; from Mentone, under the Ligurian Olive and Orange trees, and their sombre foreign shadows, and still more sombre suggestings and promptings; the saddest, probably, of all living men. That you made no answer I know right well means only, "Alas, what can I say to him of consolatory that he does not himself know!" Far from a fault, or perhaps even a mistake on your part;--nor have I felt it otherwise. Sure enough, among the lights that have gone out for me, and are still going, one after one, under the inexorable Decree, in this now dusky and lonely world, I count with frequent regret that our Correspondence (not by absolute hest of Fate) should have fallen extinct, or into such abeyance: but I interpret it as you see; and my love and brotherhood to you remain alive, and will while I myself do. Enough of this. By lucky chance, as you perceive, you are again to get one written Letter from me, and I a reply from you, before the final Silence come. The case is this.

For many years back, a thought, which I used to check again as fond and silly, has been occasionally present to me,--Of testifying my gratitude to New England (New England, acting mainly through one of her Sons called Waldo Emerson), _by bequeathing to it my poor Falstaf Regiment, latterly two Falstaf Regiments of Books,_ those I purchased and used in writing _Cromwell,_ and ditto those on _Friedrich the Great._ "This could be done," I often said to myself; "this _could_ perhaps; and this would be a real satisfaction to me. But who then would march through Coventry with such a set!" The extreme insignificance of the Gift, this and nothing else, always gave me pause.

Last Summer, I was lucky enough to meet with your friend C.E. Norton, and renew many old Massachusetts recollections, in free talk with [him]....; to him I spoke of the affair; candidly describing it, especially the above questionable feature of it, so far as I could; and his answer, then, and more deliberately afterwards, was so hopeful, hearty, and decisive, that--in effect it has decided me; and I am this day writing to him that such is the poor fact, and that I need farther instructions on it so soon as you two have taken counsel together.

To say more about the infinitesimally small value of the Books would be superfluous: nay, in truth, many or most of them are not without intrinsic value, one or two are even excellent as Books; and all of them, it may perhaps be said, have a kind of _symbolic_ or _biographic_ value; and testify (a thing not useless) _on what slender commissariat stores_ considerable campaigns, twelve years long or so, may be carried on in this world. Perhaps you already knew of me, what the _Cromwell_ and _Friedrich_ collection might itself intimate, that much _buying_ of Books was never a habit of mine,--far the reverse, even to this day!

Well, my Friend, you will have a meeting with Norton so soon as handy; and let me know what is next to be done. And that, in your official capacity, is all I have to say to you at present.

Unofficially there were much,--much that is mournful, but perhaps also something that is good and blessed, and though the saddest, also the highest, the lovingest and best; as beseems Time's sunset, now coming nigh. At present I will say only that, in bodily health, I am not to be called Ill, for a man who will be seventy-four next month; nor, on the spiritual side, has anything been laid upon me that is quite beyond my strength. More miserable I have often been; though as solitary, soft of heart, and sad, of course never.

Publisher Chapman, when I question him whether you for certain _get_ your Monthly Volume of what they call "The Library Edition," assures me that "it is beyond doubt":--I confess I should still like to be _better_ assured. If all is _right,_ you should, by the time this Letter arrives, be receiving or have received your thirteenth Volume, last of the _Miscellanies._ Adieu, my Friend.

Ever truly yours,
T. Carlyle

CLXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 4 January, 1870

Dear Emerson,--A month ago or more I wrote, by the same post, to you and to Norton about those Books for Harvard College; and in late days have been expecting your joint answer. From Norton yesternight I receive what is here copied for your perusal; it has come round by Florence as you see, and given me real pleasure and instruction. From you, who are possibly also away from home, I have yet nothing; but expect now soon to have a few words. There did arrive, one evening lately, your two pretty _volumes_ of _Collected Works,_ a pleasant salutation from you--which set me upon reading again what I thought I knew well before:--but the Letter is still to come.

Norton's hints are such a complete instruction to me that I see my way straight through the business, and might, by Note of "Bequest" and memorandum for the Barings, finish it in half an hour: nevertheless I will wait for your Letter, and punctually do nothing till your directions too are before me. Pray write, therefore; all is lying ready here. Since you heard last, I have got two Catalogues made out, approximately correct; one is to lie here till the Bequest be executed; the other I thought of sending to you against the day? This is my own invention in regard to the affair since I wrote last. Approve of it, and you shall have your copy by Book-post at once. "_Approximately_ correct"; absolutely I cannot get it to be. But I need not doubt the Pious Purpose will be piously and even sacredly fulfilled;--and your Catalogue will be a kind of evidence that it is. Adieu, dear Emerson, till your Letter come.

Yours ever,
Thomas Carlyle

CLXXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 23 January, 1870*

My Dear Carlyle,--'T is a sad apology that I have to offer for delays which no apology can retrieve. I received your first letter with pure joy, but in the midst of extreme inefficiency. I had suddenly yielded to a proposition of Fields & Co. to manufacture a book for a given day. The book was planned, and going on passably, when it was found better to divide the matter, and separate, and postpone the purely literary portion (criticism chiefly), and therefore to modify and swell the elected part. The attempt proved more difficult than I had believed, for I only write by spasms, and these ever more rare,--and daemons that have no ears. Meantime the publication day was announced, and the printer at the door. Then came your letter in the shortening days. When I drudged to keep my word, _invita Minerva._

--------- * This letter is printed from an imperfect rough draft. ---------

I could not write in my book, and I could not write a letter. Tomorrow and many morrows made things worse, for we have indifferent health in the house, and, as it chanced, unusual strain of affairs,--which always come when they should not. For one thing--I have just sold a house which I once built opposite my own. But I will leave the bad month, which I hope will not match itself in my lifetime. Only 't is pathetic and remorseful to me that any purpose of yours, especially, a purpose so inspired, should find me imbecile.

Heartily I delight in your proposed disposition of the books. It has every charm of surprise, and nobleness, and large affection. The act will deeply gratify a multitude of good men, who will see in it your real sympathy with the welfare of the country. I hate that there should be a moment of delay in the completing of your provisions,--and that I of all men should be the cause! Norton's letter is perfect on his part, and needs no addition, I believe, from me. You had not in your first letter named _Cambridge,_ and I had been meditating that he would probably have divided your attention between Harvard and the Boston Public Library,--now the richest in the country, at first founded by the gifts of Joshua Bates (of London), and since enriched by the city and private donors, Theodore Parker among them. But after conversation with two or three friends, I had decided that Harvard College was the right beneficiary, as being the mother real or adoptive of a great number of your lovers and readers in America, and because a College is a seat of sentiment and cosmical relations. The Library is outgrown by other libraries in the Country, counts only 119,000 bound volumes in 1868; the several departments of Divinity, Law, Medicine, and Natural Science in the University having special libraries, that together add some 40,000 more. The College is newly active (with its new President Eliot, a cousin of Norton's) and expansive in all directions. And the Library will be relieved through subscriptions now being collected among the Alumni with the special purpose of securing to it an adequate fund for annual increase.

I shall then write to Norton at once that I concur with him in the destination of the books to Harvard College, and approve entirely his advices in regard to details. And so soon as you send me the Catalogue I shall, if you permit, communicate your design to President Eliot and the Corporation.

One thing I shall add to the Catalogue now or later (perhaps only by bequest), your own prized gift to me, in 1848, of Wood's _Athenae Oxonienses,_ which I have lately had rebound, and in which every pen and pencil mark of yours is notable.

The stately books of the New Edition have duly come from the unforgetting friend. I have _Sartor, Schiller, French Revolution,_ 3 vols., _Miscellanies,_ Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,--ten volumes in all, excellently printed and dressed, and full of memories and electricity.

I have much to say, but of things not opportune at this moment, and in spite of my long contumacy dare believe that I shall quickly write again my proper letter to my friend, whose every word I watchfully read and remember.

CLXXIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Melchet Court, Romsey, 14 February, 1870

Dear Emerson,--Three days ago I at last received your Letter; with very great pleasure and thankfulness, as you may suppose. Indeed, it is quite strangely interesting to see face to face my old Emerson again, not a feature of him changed, whom I have known all the best part of my life.

I am very glad, withal, to find that you agree completely with Norton and myself in regard to that small Harvard matter.

This is not Chelsea, as you perceive, this is a hospitable mansion in Hampshire; but I expect to be in Chelsea within about a week; once there, I shall immediately despatch to you one of the three Catalogues I have, with a more deliberate letter than I at present have the means of writing or dictating.

Yours ever truly,
T. Carlyle

CLXXX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 24 February, 1870

Dear Emerson,--At length I have got home from those sumptuous tumults ("Melchet Court" is the Dowager Lady Ashburton's House, whose late Husband, an estimable friend of mine, and _half American,_ you may remember here); and I devote to ending of our small Harvard Business, small enough, but true and kindly,--the first quiet hour I have.

Your Copy of the Catalogue, which accompanies by Book-Post of today, is the correctest I could manage to get done; all the Books mentioned in it I believe to be now here (and indeed, except five or six _tiny_ articles, have _seen_ them all, in one or other of the three rooms where my Books now stand, and where I believe the insignificant trifle of "tinies" to be): all these I can expect will be punctually attended to when the time comes, and proceeded with according to Norton's scheme and yours;--and if any more "tinies," which I could not even remember, should turn up (which I hardly think there will), these also will _class_ themselves (as _Cromwelliana_ or _Fredericana_), and be faith fully sent on with the others. For benefit of my _Survivors_ and _Representatives_ here, I retain an exact _Copy_ of the Catalogue now put into your keeping; so that everything may fall out square between them and you when the Time shall arrive.

I mean to conform in every particular to the plan sketched out by Norton and you,--unless, in your next Letter, you have something other or farther to advise:--and so soon as I hear from you that Harvard accepts my poor widow's mite of a _Bequest,_ I will proceed to put it down in due form, and so finish this small matter, which for long years has hovered in my thoughts as a thing I should like to do. And so enough for this time.

I meant to write a longish Letter, touching on many other points,--though you see I am reduced to _pencil,_ and "write" with such difficulty (never yet could learn to "dictate," though my little Niece here is promptitude itself, and is so swift and legible,--useful here as a cheerful rushlight in this now sombre element, sombre, sad, but also beautiful and tenderly solemn more and more, in which she bears me company, good little "Mary"!). But, in bar of all such purposes, Publisher Chapman has come in, with Cromwell Engravings and their hindrances, with money accounts, &c., &c.; and has not even left me a moment of time, were nothing else needed!

Vol. XIV. (_Cromwell,_ I.) ought to be at Concord about as soon as this. In our Newspapers I notice your Book announced, "half of the Essays new,"--which I hope to get _quam primum,_ and illuminate some evenings with,--_so_ as nothing else can, in my present common mood.

Adieu, dear old Friend. I am and remain yours always,

--T. Carlyle

CLXXXI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 21 March, 1870

My Dear Carlyle,--On receiving your letter and catalogue I wrote out a little history of the benefaction and carried it last Tuesday to President Eliot at Cambridge, who was heartily gratified, and saw everything rightly, and expressed an anxiety (most becoming in my eyes after my odious shortcomings) that there should be no moment of delay on our part. "The Corporation would not meet again for a fortnight:--but he would not wait,-- would call a special meeting this week to make the communication to them." He did so: the meeting was held on Saturday and I have received this (Monday) morning from him enclosed letter and record.

It is very amiable and noble in you to have kept this surprise for us in your older days. Did you mean to show us that you could not be old, but immortally young? and having kept us all murmuring at your satires and sharp homilies, will now melt us with this manly and heart-warming embrace? Nobody could predict and none could better it. And you shall even go your own gait henceforward with a blessing from us all, and a trust exceptional and unique. I do not longer hesitate to talk to such good men as I see of this gift, and it has in every ear a gladdening effect. People like to see character in a gift, and from rare character the gift is more precious. I wish it may be twice blest in continuing to give you the comfort it will give us.

I think I must mend myself by reclaiming my old right to send you letters. I doubt not I shall have much to tell you, could I overcome the hesitation to attempt a reasonable letter when one is driven to write so many sheets of mere routine as sixty-six (nearly sixty-seven) years enforce. I shall have to prate of my daughters;--Edith Forbes, with her two children at Milton; Ellen Emerson at home, herself a godsend to this house day by day; and my son Edward studying medicine in Boston,--whom I have ever meant and still mean to send that he may see your face when that professional curriculum winds up.

I manage to read a few books and look into more. Herman Grimm sent me lately a good one, Goethe's _Unterhaltungen_ with Muller,--which set me on Varnhagen and others. My wife sends old regards, and her joy in this occasion.

Yours ever,
R.W. Emerson

P.S. Mr. Eliot took my rough counting of Volumes as correct. When he sends me back the catalogue, I will make it exact.--I sent you last week a little book by book-post.

CLXXXII. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 24 March, 1870

My Dear Emerson,--The day before yesterday, I heard incidentally of an unfortunate Mail Steamer, bound for America, which had lost its screw or some essential part of it; and so had, instead of carrying its Letters forward to America, been drifting about like a helpless log on the shores of Ireland till some three days ago, when its Letters and Passengers were taken out, and actually forwarded, thither. By industrious calculation, it appears probable to us here that my Letter to you may have been tumbling about in that helpless Steamer, instead of getting to Concord; where, if so, said Letter cannot now arrive till the lingering of it have created some astonishment there.

I hastily write this, however, to say that a Letter was duly forwarded a few days after yours [of January 23] arrived,-- enclosing the _Harvard Catalogue,_ with all necessary _et ceteras;_ indorsing all your proposals; and signifying that the matter should be authentically completed the instant I should hear from you again. I may add now that the thing is essentially completed,--all signed and put on paper, or all but a word or two, which, for form's sake, waits the actual arrival of your Letter.

I have never yet received your Book;* and, if it linger only a few days more, mean to provide myself with a copy such as the Sampson and Low people have on sale everywhere.

I had from Norton, the other day, a very kind and friendly Letter.

This is all of essential that I had to say. I write in utmost haste. But am always, dear Emerson,

Yours sincerely,
T. Carlyle

-------- * "Society and Solitude." --------

CLXXXIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 6 April, 1870

Dear Emerson,--The day before yesterday your welcome Letter came to hand, with the welcome news in it; yesterday I put into my poor Document here the few words still needed; locked everything into its still repository (your Letter, President Eliot's, Norton's, &c., &c.); and walked out into the sunshine, piously thankful that a poor little whim, which had long lain fondly in my heart, had realized itself with an emphasis I could never hope, and was become (thanks to generous enthusiasm on New England's part) a beautiful little fact, lying done there, so far as I had to do with it. Truly your account of matters threw a glow of _life_ into my thoughts which is very rare there now; altogether a gratifying little Transaction to me,--and I must add a surprising, for the enthusiasm of good-will is evidently great, and the occasion is almost infinitesimally small! Well, well; it is all finished off and completed,--(you can tell Mr. Eliot, with many thanks from me, that I did introduce the proper style, "President and Fellows," &c., and have forgotten nothing of what he said, or of what he _did_);--and so we will say only, _Faustum sit,_ as our last word on the subject;--and to me it will be, for some days yet, under these vernal skies, something that is itself connected with THE SPRING in a still higher sense; a little white and red-lipped bit of _Daisy_ pure and poor, scattered into TIME's Seedfield, and struggling above ground there, uttering _its_ bit of prophecy withal, among the ox-hoofs and big jungles that are everywhere about and not prophetic of much!--

One thing only I regret, that you _have_ spoken of the affair! For God's sake don't; and those kindly people to whom you have,- -swear them to silence for love of me! The poor little _Daisy_kin will get into the Newspapers, and become the nastiest of Cabbages:--silence, silence, I beg of you to the utmost stretch of your power! Or is the case already irremediable? I will hope not. Talk about such things, especially Penny Editor's talk, is like vile coal-smoke filling your poor little world; silence alone is azure, and has a _sky_ to it.--But, enough now.

The "little Book" never came; and, I doubt, never will: it is a fate that seems to await three fourths of the Books that attempt to reach me by the American Post; owing to some _informality in wrapping_ (I have heard);--it never gave me any notable _regret_ till now. However, I had already bought myself an English copy, rather gaudy little volume (probably intended for the _railways,_ as if _it_ were a Book to be read there), but perfectly printed, ready to be read anywhere by the open eye and earnest mind;-- which I read here, accordingly, with great attention, clear assent for most part, and admiring recognition. It seems to me you are all your old self here, and something _more._ A calm insight, piercing to the very centre; a beautiful sympathy, a beautiful _epic_ humor; a soul peaceably irrefragable in this loud-jangling world, of which it sees the ugliness, but _notices_ only the huge new _opulences_ (still so anarchic); knows the electric telegraph, with all its vulgar botherations and impertinences, accurately for what it is, and ditto ditto the oldest eternal Theologies of men. All this belongs to the Highest Class of thought (you may depend upon it); and again seemed to me as, in several respects, the one perfectly Human Voice I had heard among my fellow-creatures for a long time. And then the "style," the treatment and expression,--yes, it is inimitable, best--Emersonian throughout. Such brevity, simplicity, softness, homely grace; with such a penetrating meaning, _soft_ enough, but irresistible, going down to the depths and up to the heights, as _silent electricity_ goes. You have done _very well;_ and many will know it ever better by degrees.--Only one thing farther I will note: How you go as if altogether on the "Over-Soul," the Ideal, the Perfect or Universal and Eternal in this life of ours; and take so little heed of the frightful quantities of _friction_ and perverse impediment there everywhere are; the reflections upon which in my own poor life made me now and then very sad, as I read you. Ah me, ah me; what a vista it is, mournful, beautiful, _unfathomable_ as Eternity itself, these last fifty years of Time to me.--

Let me not forget to thank you for that _fourth_ page of your Note; I should say it was almost the most interesting of all. News from yourself at first hand; a momentary glimpse into the actual Household at Concord, face to face, as in years of old! True, I get vague news of you from time to time; but what are these in comparison?--If you _will,_ at the eleventh hour, turn over a new leaf, and write me Letters again,--but I doubt _you won't._ And yet were it not worth while, think you? [Greek]-- will be here _anon._--My kindest regards to your wife. Adieu, my ever-kind Old Friend.

Yours faithfully always,
T. Carlyle

CLXXXIV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 17 June, 1870

My Dear Carlyle,--Two* unanswered letters filled and fragrant and potent with goodness will not let me procrastinate another minute, or I shall sink and deserve to sink into my dormouse condition. You are of the Anakim, and know nothing of the debility and postponement of the blonde constitution. Well, if you shame us by your reservoir inexhaustible of force, you indemnify and cheer some of us, or one of us, by charges of electricity.

-------- * One seems to be missing. --------

Your letter of April came, as ever-more than ever, if possible-- full of kindness, and making much of our small doings and writings, and seemed to drive me to instant acknowledgment; but the oppressive engagement of writing and reading eighteen lectures on Philosophy to a class of graduates in the College, and these in six successive weeks, was a task a little more formidable in prospect and in practice than any foregoing one. Of course, it made me a prisoner, took away all rights of friendship, honor, and justice, and held me to such frantic devotion to my work as must spoil that also.

Well, it is now ended, and has no shining side but this one, that materials are collected and a possibility shown me how a repetition of the course next year--which is appointed--will enable me partly out of these materials, and partly by large rejection of these, and by large addition to them, to construct a fair report of what I have read and thought on the subject. I doubt the experts in Philosophy will not praise my discourses;-- but the topics give me room for my guesses, criticism, admirations and experiences with the accepted masters, and also the lessons I have learned from the hidden great. I have the fancy that a realist is a good corrector of formalism, no matter how incapable of syllogism or continuous linked statement. To great results of thought and morals the steps are not many, and it is not the masters who spin the ostentatious continuity.

I am glad to hear that the last sent book from me arrived safely. You were too tender and generous in your first notice of it, I fear. But with whatever deductions for your partiality, I know well the unique value of Carlyle's praise. Many things crowd to be said on this little paper. Though I could see no harm in the making known the bequest of books to Cambridge,--no harm, but sincere pleasure, and honor of the donor from all good men,--yet on receipt of your letter touching that, I went back to President Eliot, and told him your opinion on newspapers. He said it was necessarily communicated to the seven persons composing the Corporation, but otherwise he had been very cautious, and it would not go into print.

You are sending me a book, and Chapman's Homer it is? Are you bound by your Arabian bounty to a largess whenever you think of your friend? And you decry the book too. 'T-is long since I read it, or in it, but the apotheosis of Homer, in the dedication to Prince Henry, "Thousands of years attending," &c., is one of my lasting inspirations. The book has not arrived yet, as the letter always travels faster, but shall be watched and received and announced.