My Dear Friend,--Here in a bookseller's shop I have secured a
stool and corner to say a swift benison. Mr. Bancroft told me
that the presence of English Lord Gosford in town would give me a
safe conveyance of pamphlets to you, so I send some _Orations_ of
which you said so kind and cheering words. Give them to any one
who will read them. I have written names in three. You have, I
hope, got the letter sent nearly a month ago, giving account of
our reprint of the _French Revolution,_ and have received a copy
of the same. I learn from the bookseller today that six hundred
and fifty copies are sold, and the book continues to sell. So I
hope that our settlement at the end of six months will be final,
or nearly so.
I had nearly closed my agreement the other day with a publisher
for the emission of _Carlyle's Miscellanies,_ when just in the
last hour comes word from E.G. Loring that he has an authentic
catalogue from the Bard himself. Now I have that, and could wish
Loring had communicated his plan to me at first, or that I had
bad wit enough to have undertaken this matter long ago and
conferred with you. I designed nothing for you or your friends;
but merely a lucrative book for our daily market that would have
yielded a pecuniary compensation to you, such as we are all bound
to make, and have bought our Socrates a cloak. Loring
contemplated something quite different,--a "Complete Works,"
etc.,--and now clamors for the same thing, and I do not know but
I shall have to gratify him and others at the risk of injury to
this my vulgar hope of dollars,--that innate idea of the American
mind. This I shall settle in a few days. No copyright can be
secured here for an English book unless it contain original
matter: But my moments are going, and I can only promise to
write you quickly, at home and at leisure, for I have just been
reading the _History_ again with many, many thoughts, and I
revere, wonder at, and love you.
--R. Waldo Emerson