My Dear Emerson,--How long it is since you last heard of me I do
not very accurately know; but it is too long. A very long,
ugly, inert, and unproductive chapter of my own history seems to
have passed since then. Whenever I delay writing, be sure
matters go not well with me; and do you in that case write to
me, were it again and over again,--unweariable in pity.
I did go to Scotland, for almost three months; leaving my Wife
here with her Mother. The poor Wife had fallen so weak that she
gave me real terror in the spring-time, and made the Doctor look
very grave indeed: she continued too weak for traveling: I was
worn out as I had never in my life been. So, on the longest day
of June, I got back to my Mother's cottage; threw myself down, I
may say, into what we may call the "frightfulest _magnetic
sleep,_" and lay there avoiding the intercourse of men. Most
wearisome had their gabble become; almost unearthly. But indeed
all was unearthly in that humor. The gushing of my native
brooks, the _sough_ of the old solitary woods, the great roar of
old native Solway (billowing fresh out of your Atlantic, drawn by
the Moon): all this was a kind of unearthly music to me; I
cannot tell you how unearthly. It did not bring me to rest; yet
_towards_ rest I do think at all events, the time had come when I
behoved to quit it again. I have been here since September
evidently another little "chapter" or paragraph, _not_ altogether
inert, is getting forward. But I must not speak of these things.
How can I speak of them on a miserable scrap of blue paper?
Looking into your kind-eyes with my eyes, I could speak: not
here. Pity me, my friend, my brother; yet hope well of me: if
I can (in all senses) _rightly hold my peace,_ I think much will
yet be well with me. SILENCE is the great thing I worship at
present; almost the sole tenant of my Pantheon. Let a man know
rightly how to hold his peace. I love to repeat to myself,
"Silence is of Eternity." Ah me, I think how I could rejoice to
quit these jarring discords and jargonings of Babel, and go far,
far away! I do believe, if I had the smallest competence of
money to get "food and warmth" with, I would shake the mud of
London from my feet, and go and bury myself in some green place,
and never print any syllable more. Perhaps it is better as
it is.
But quitting this, we will actually speak (under favor of
"Silence") one very small thing; a pleasant piece of news.
There is a man here called John Sterling (_Reverend_ John of the
Church of England too), whom I love better than anybody I have
met with, since a certain sky-messenger alighted to me at
Craigenputtock, and vanished in the Blue again. This Sterling
has written; but what is far better, he has lived, he is alive.
Across several unsuitable wrappages, of Church-of-Englandism and
others, my heart loves the man. He is one, and the best, of a
small class extant here, who, nigh drowning in a black wreck of
Infidelity (lighted up by some glare of Radicalism only, now
growing _dim_ too) and about to perish, saved themselves into a
Coleridgian Shovel-hattedness, or determination to _preach,_ to
preach peace, were it only the spent _echo_ of a peace once
preached. He is still only about thirty; young; and I think
will shed the shovel-hat yet perhaps. Do you ever read
_Blackwood?_ This John Sterling is the "New Contributor" whom
Wilson makes such a rout about, in the November and prior month
"Crystals from a Cavern," &c., which it is well worth your while
to see. Well, and what then, cry you?--Why then, this John
Sterling has fallen overhead in love with a certain Waldo
Emerson; that is all. He saw the little Book _Nature_ lying
here; and, across a whole _silva silvarum_ of prejudices,
discerned what was in it; took it to his heart,--and indeed into
his pocket; and has carried it off to Madeira with him; whither
unhappily (though now with good hope and expectation) the Doctors
have ordered him. This is the small piece of pleasant news, that
two sky-messengers (such they were both of them to me) have met
and recognized each other; and by God's blessing there shall one
day be a trio of us: call you that nothing?
And so now by a direct transition I am got to the _Oration._ My
friend! you know not what you have done for me there. It was
long decades of years that I had heard nothing but the infinite
jangling and jabbering, and inarticulate twittering and
screeching, and my soul had sunk down sorrowful, and said there
is no articulate speaking then any more, and thou art solitary
among stranger-creatures? and lo, out of the West comes a clear
utterance, clearly recognizable as a _man's_ voice, and I _have_
a kinsman and brother: God be thanked for it! I could have
_wept_ to read that speech; the clear high melody of it went
tingling through my heart;--I said to my wife, "There, woman!"
She read; and returned, and charges me to return for answer,
"that there had been nothing met with like it since Schiller went
silent." My brave Emerson! And all this has been lying silent,
quite tranquil in him, these seven years, and the "vociferous
platitude" dinning his ears on all sides, and he quietly
answering no word; and a whole world of Thought has silently
built itself in these calm depths, and, the day being come, says
quite softly, as if it were a common thing, "Yes, I _am_ here
too." Miss Martineau tells me, "Some say it is inspired, some
say it is mad." Exactly so; no say could be suitabler. But for
you, my dear friend, I say and pray heartily: May God grant you
strength; for you have a _fearful_ work to do! Fearful I call
it; and yet it is great, and the greatest. O for God's sake
_keep yourself still quiet!_ Do not hasten to write; you cannot
be too slow about it. Give no ear to any man's praise or
censure; know that that is _not_ it: on the one side is as
Heaven if you have strength to keep silent, and climb unseen;
yet on the other side, yawning always at one's right-hand and
one's left, is the frightfulest Abyss and Pandemonium! See
Fenimore Cooper;--poor Cooper, he is _down in it;_ and had a
climbing faculty too. Be steady, be quiet, be in no haste; and
God speed you well! My space is done.
And so adieu, for this time. You must write soon again. My copy
of the _Oration_ has never come: how is this? I could dispose
of a dozen well.--They say I am to lecture again in Spring, _Ay
de mi!_ The "Book" is babbled about sufficiently in several
dialects: Fraser wants to print my scattered Reviews and Articles;
a pregnant sign. Teufelsdrockh to precede. The man "screamed" once
at the name of it in a very musical manner. He shall not print a
line; unless he give me money for it, more or less. I have had
enough of printing for one while,--thrown into "magnetic sleep"
by it! Farewell my brother.
--T. Carlyle
O. Rich, it seems, is in Spain. His representative assured me,
some weeks since, that the Account was now sent. There is an
Article on Sir W. Scott: shocking; invitissima Minerva!*
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*Carlyle's article on Scott published in the _London and
Westminster Review,_ No. 12. Reprinted in his _Critical and
Miscellaneous Essays._
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Miss Martineau charges me to send kind remembrances to you and
your Lady: her words were kinder than I have room for here.--Can
you not, in defect or delay of Letter, send me a Massachusetts
Newspaper? I think it costs little or almost nothing now; and I
shall know your hand.