Dear Emerson,--My answer on this occasion has been delayed above
two weeks by a rigorous, searching investigation into the
procedure of the hapless Book-conveyer, Kennet, in reference to
that copy of the _Miscellanies._ I was deceived by hopes of a
conclusive response from day to day; not till yesterday did any
come. My first step, taken long ago, was to address a new copy
of the Book, not to you, luckless man, but to _Lydia_ Emerson,
the fortunate wife; this copy Green now has lying by him,
waiting for the January Steamer (we sail only once a month in
this season); before the New Year has got out of infancy the
Lady will be graciously pleased to make a few inches of room on
her bookshelves for this celebrated performance. And now as to
Kennet, take the brief outcome of some dozen visitations,
judicial interrogatories, searches of documents, and other
piercing work on the part of methodic Fraser, attended with
demurrers, pleadings, false denials, false affirmings, on the
part of innocent chaotic Kennet: namely, that the said Kennet,
so urged, did in the end of the last week, fish up from his
repositories your very identical Book directed to Munroe's care,
duly booked and engaged for, in May last, but left to repose
itself in the Covent-Garden crypts ever since without disturbance
from gods or men! Fraser has brought back the Book, and you have
lost it;--and the Library of my native village in Scotland is to
get it; and not Kennet any more in this world, but Green ever
henceforth is to be our Book Carrier. There is a history.
Green, it seems, addresses also to Munroe; but the thing, I
suppose, will now shift for itself without watching.
As to the bibliopolic Accounts, my Friend! we will trust them,
with a faith known only in the purer ages of Roman Catholicism,--
when Papacy had indeed become a Dubiety, but was not yet a
Quackery and Falsehood, was a thing _as_ true as it could manage
to be! That really may be the fact of this too. In any case
what signifies it much? Money were still useful; but it is not
now so indispensable. Booksellers by their knavery or their
fidelity cannot kill us or cure us. Of the truth of Waldo
Emerson's heart to me, there is, God be thanked for it, no doubt
at all.
My Hero-Lectures lie still in Manuscript. Fraser offers no
amount of cash adequate to be an outward motive; and inwardly
there is as yet none altogether clear, though I rather feel of
late as if it were clearing. To fly in the teeth of English
Puseyism, and risk such shrill welcome as I am pretty sure of, is
questionable: yet at bottom why not? Dost thou not as entirely
reject this new Distraction of a Puseyism as man can reject a
thing,--and couldst utterly abjure it, and even abhor it,--were
the shadow of a cobweb ever likely to become momentous, the
cobweb itself being _beheaded,_ with axe and block on Tower Hill,
two centuries ago? I think it were as well to _tell_ Puseyism
that it has something of good, but also much of bad and even
worst. We shall see. If I print the thing, we shall surely take
in America again; either by stereotype or in some other way.
Fear not that!--Do you attend at all to this new _Laudism_ of
ours? It spreads far and wide among our Clergy in these days; a
most notable symptom, very cheering to me many ways; whether or
not one of the fatalest our poor Church of England has ever
exhibited, and betokening swifter ruin to it than any other, I do
not inquire. Thank God, men do discover at last that there is
still a God present in their affairs, and must be, or their
affairs are of the Devil, naught, and worthy of being sent to the
Devil! This once given, I find that all is given; daily
History, in Kingdom and in Parish, is an _experimentum crucis_ to
show what is the Devil's and what not. But on the whole are we
not the _formalest_ people ever created under this Sun? Cased
and overgrown with Formulas, like very lobsters with their
shells, from birth upwards; so that in the man we see only his
breeches, and believe and swear that wherever a pair of old
breeches are there is a man! I declare I could both laugh and
cry. These poor good men, merciful, zealous, with many
sympathies and thoughts, there do they vehemently appeal to me,
_Et tu, Brute?_ Brother, wilt thou too insist on the breeches
being old,--not ply a needle among us here?--To the naked
Caliban, gigantic, for whom such breeches would not be a glove,
who is stalking and groping there in search of new breeches and
accoutrements, sure to get them, and to tread into nonentity
whoever hinders him in the search,--they are blind as if they had
no eyes. Sartorial men; ninth-parts of a man:--enough of them.
The second Number of the _Dial_ has also arrived some days ago.
I like it decidedly better than the first; in fact, it is right
well worth being put on paper, and sent circulating;--I find
only, as before that it is still too much of a soul for
circulating as it should. I wish you could in future contrive to
mark at the end of each Article who writes it, or give me some
general key for knowing. I recognize Emerson readily; the rest
are of [Greek] for most part. But it is all good and very good
as a _soul;_ wants only a body, which want means a great deal!
Your Paper on Literature is incomparably the worthiest thing
hitherto; a thing I read with delight. Speak out, my brave
Emerson; there are many good men that listen! Even what you
say of Goethe gratifies me; it is one of the few things yet
spoken of him from personal insight, the sole kind of things that
should be spoken! You call him _actual,_ not _ideal;_ there is
truth in that too; and yet at bottom is not the whole truth
rather this: The actual well-seen _is_ the ideal? The _actual,_
what really is and exists: the past, the present, the future no
less, do all lie there! Ah yes! one day you will find that this
sunny-looking, courtly Goethe held veiled in him a Prophetic
sorrow deep as Dante's,--all the nobler to me and to you, that he
_could_ so hold it. I believe this; no man can _see_ as he
sees, that has not suffered and striven as man seldom did.--
Apropos of _this,_ Have you got Miss Martineau's _Hour and Man?_
How curious it were to have the real History of the Negro
Toussaint, and his _black_ Sansculottism in Saint Domingo,--the
most atrocious form Sansculottism could or can assume! This of a
"black Wilberforce-Washington," as Sterling calls it, is
decidedly something. Adieu, dear Emerson: time presses, paper
is done. Commend me to your good wife, your good Mother, and
love me as well as you can. Peace and health under clear winter
skies be with you all.
--T. Carlyle
My Wife rebukes me sharply that I have "forgot her love." She is
much better this winter than of old.
Having mentioned Sterling I should say that he is at Torquay
(Devonshire) for the winter, meditating new publication of Poems.
I work still in Cromwellism; all but desperate of any feasible
issue worth naming. I "enjoy bad health" too, considerably!