My Dear Friend,--Only last Saturday I despatched a letter to you
containing a duplicate of the bill of exchange sent in January,
and all the facts I knew of our books; and now comes to me a
note from Wheeler, at Cambridge, saying that the printers, on
reckoning up their amount of copy, find that nowise can they make
450 pages per volume, as they have promised, for these two last
of the _Miscellanies._ They end the third volume with page 390,
and they have not but 350 or less pages for the fourth. They
ask, What shall be done? Nothing is known to me but to give them
_Rahel,_ though I grudge it, for I vastly prefer to end with
_Scott._ _Rahel,_ I fancy, cost you no night and no morning,
but was writ in that gentle after-dinner hour so friendly to good
digestion. Stearns Wheeler dreams that it is possible to draw at
this eleventh hour some possible manuscript out of the unedited
treasures of Teufelsdrockh's cabinets. If the manuscripts were
ready, all fairly copied out by foreseeing scribes in your
sanctuary at Chelsea, the good goblin of steam would--with the
least waiting, perhaps a few days--bring the packet to our types
in time. I have little hope, almost none, from a sally so
desperate on possible portfolios; but neither will I be wanting
to my sanguine co-editor, your good friend. So I told him I
would give you as instant notice as Mr. Rogers at the Merchants'
Exchange Bar can contrive, and tell you plainly that we shall
proceed to print _Rahel_ when we come so far on; and with that
paper end; unless we shall receive some contrary word from you.
And if we can obtain any manuscript from you before we have
actually bound our book, we will cancel our last sheets and
insert it. And so may the friendly Heaven grant a speedy passage
to my letter and to yours! I fear the possibility of our success
is still further reduced by the season of the year, as the
Lectures must shortly be on foot. Well, the best speed to them
also. When I think of you as speaking and not writing them, I
remember Luther's words, "He that can speak well, the same is
a man."
I hope you liked John Dwight's translations of Goethe, and his
notes. He is a good, susceptible, yearning soul, not so apt to
create as to receive with the freest allowance, but I like his
books very much.
Do think to say in a letter whether you received _from me_ a copy
of our edition of your _French Revolution._ I ordered a copy
sent to you,--probably wrote your name in it,--but it does not
appear in the bookseller's account. Farewell.
--R.W. Emerson