My Dear Friend,--Such a gift as the _French Revolution_ demanded
a speedier acknowledgment. But you mountaineers that can scale
Andes before breakfast for an airing have no measures for the
performance of lowlanders and valetudinarians. I am ashamed to
think, and will not tell, what little things have kept me silent.
The _French Revolution_ did not reach me until three weeks ago,
having had at least two long pauses by the way, as I find, since
landing. Between many visits received, and some literary
haranguing done, I have read two volumes and half the third and I
think you a very good giant; disporting yourself with an
original and vast ambition of fun: pleasure and peace not being
strong enough for you, you choose to suck pain also, and teach
fever and famine to dance and sing. I think you have written a
wonderful book, which will last a very long time. I see that you
have created a history, which the world will own to be such. You
have recognized the existence of other persons than officers, and
of other relations than civism. You have broken away from all
books, and written a mind. It is a brave experiment, and the
success is great. We have men in your story and not names
merely; always men, though I may doubt sometimes whether I have
the historic men. We have great facts--and selected facts--truly
set down. We have always the co-presence of Humanity along with
the imperfect damaged individuals. The soul's right of wonder is
still left to us; and we have righteous praise and doom awarded,
assuredly without cant. Yes, comfort yourself on that
particular, O ungodliest divine man! thou cantest never. Finally
we have not--a dull word. Never was there a style so rapid as
yours,--which no reader can outrun; and so it is for the most
intelligent. I suppose nothing will astonish more than the
audacious wit and cheerfulness which no tragedy and no magnitude
of events can overpower or daunt. Henry VIII loved a Man, and I
see with joy my bard always equal to the crisis he represents.
And so I thank you for your labor, and feel that your
contemporaries ought to say, All hail, Brother! live forever:
not only in the great Soul which thou largely inhalest, but also
as a named, person in this thy definite deed.
I will tell you more of the book when I have once got it at focal
distance,--if that can ever be, and muster my objections when I
am sure of their ground. I insist, of course, that it might be
more simple, less Gothically efflorescent. You will say no rules
for the illumination of windows can apply to the Aurora borealis.
However, I find refreshment when every now and then a special
fact slips into the narrative couched in sharp and businesslike
terms. This character-drawing in the book is certainly
admirable; the lines are ploughed furrows; but there was cake
and ale before, though thou be virtuous. Clarendon surely drew
sharp outlines for me in Falkland, Hampden, and the rest, without
defiance or sky-vaulting. I wish I could talk with you face to
face for one day, and know what your uttermost frankness would
say concerning the book. I feel assured of its good reception in
this country. I learned last Saturday that in all eleven hundred
and sixty-six copies of _Sartor_ have been sold. I have told the
publisher of that book that he must not print the _History_ until
some space has been given to people to import British copies. I
have ordered Hilliard, Gray, & Co. to import twenty copies as an
experiment. At the present very high rate of exchange, which
makes a shilling worth thirty cents, they think, with freight and
duties, the book would be too costly here for sale, but we
confide in a speedy fall of Exchange; then my books shall come.
I am ashamed that you should educate our young men, and that we
should pirate your books. One day we will have a better law, or
perhaps you will make our law yours.
I had your letter long before your book. Very good work you have
done in your lifetime, and very generously you adorn and cheer
this pilgrimage of mine by your love. I find my highest prayer
granted in calling a just and wise man my friend. Your profuse
benefaction of genius in so few years makes me feel very poor and
useless. I see that I must go on trust to you and to all the
brave for some longer time, hoping yet to prove one day my truth
and love. There are in this country so few scholars, that the
services of each studious person are needed to do what he can
for the circulation of thoughts, to the end of making some
counterweight to the money force, and to give such food as he may
to the nigh starving youth. So I religiously read lectures every
winter, and at other times whenever summoned. Last year, "the
Philosophy of History," twelve lectures; and now I meditate a
course on what I call "Ethics." I peddle out all the wit I can
gather from Time or from Nature, and am pained at heart to see
how thankfully that little is received.
Write to me, good friend, tell me if you went to Scotland,--what
you do, and will do,--tell me that your wife is strong and well
again as when I saw her at Craigenputtock. I desire to be
affectionately remembered to her. Tell me when you will come
hither. I called together a little club a week ago, who spent a
day with me,--counting fifteen souls,--each one of whom warmly
loves you. So if the _French Revolution_ does not convert the
"dull public" of your native Nineveh, I see not but you must
shake their dust from your shoes and cross the Atlantic to a New
England. Yours in love and honor.
--R. Waldo Emerson
May I trouble you with a commission when you are in the City?
You mention being at the shop of Rich in Red-Lion Square. Will
you say to him that he sent me some books two or three years ago
without any account of prices annexed? I wrote him once myself,
once through S. Burdett, bookseller, and since through C.P.
Curtis, Esq., who professes to be his attorney in Boston,--three
times,--to ask for this account. No answer has ever come. I
wish he would send me the account, that I may settle it. If he
persist in his self-denying contumacy, I think you may
immortalize him as a bookseller of the gods.
I shall send you an Oration presently, delivered before a
literary society here, which is now being printed.* Gladly I
hear of the Carlylet--so they say--in the new Westminster.
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* This was Emerson's famous Oration before the Phi Beta Kappa
Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837, on "The American
Scholar." In his admirable essay on Thoreau,--an essay which
might serve as introduction and comment to the letters of Carlyle
and Emerson during these years,--Lowell speaks of the impression
made by this remarkable discourse. It "was an event without any
former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be always
treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and its
inspiration. What crowded and breathless aisles, what windows
clustering with eager heads, what enthusiasm of approval, what
grim silence of foregone dissent! It was our Yankee version of a
lecture by Abelard, our Harvard parallel to the last public
appearances of Schelling."--_My Study Windows,_ p. 197
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