My Dear Carlyle,--Eight days ago--when I had gone to Nantasket
Beach, to sit by the sea and inhale its air and refresh this puny
body of mine--came to me your letter, all bounteous as all your
letters are, generous to a fault, generous to the shaming of me,
cold, fastidious, ebbing person that I am. Already in a former
letter you had said too much good of my poor little arid book,--
which is as sand to my eyes,--and now in this you tell me it
shall be printed in London, and graced with a preface from the
man of men. I can only say that I heartily wish the book were
better, and I must try and deserve so much favor from the kind
gods by a bolder and truer living in the months to come; such as
may perchance one day relax and invigorate this cramp hand of
mine, and teach it to draw some grand and adequate strokes, which
other men may find their own account and not their good-nature in
repeating. Yet I think I shall never be killed by my ambition.
I behold my failures and shortcomings there in writing, wherein
it would give me much joy to thrive, with an equanimity which my
worst enemy might be glad to see. And yet it is not that I am
occupied with better things. One could well leave to others the
record, who was absorbed in the life. But I have done nothing.
I think the branch of the "tree of life" which headed to a bud in
me, curtailed me somehow of a drop or two of sap, and so dwarfed
all my florets and drupes. Yet as I tell you I am very easy in
my mind, and never dream of suicide. My whole philosophy--which
is very real--teaches acquiescence and optimism. Only when I see
how much work is to be done, what room for a poet--for any
spiritualist--in this great, intelligent, sensual, and avaricious
America, I lament my fumbling fingers and stammering tongue. I
have sometimes fancied I was to catch sympathetic activity from
contact with noble persons; that you would come and see me;
that I should form stricter habits of love and conversation with
some men and women here who are already dear to me,--and at some
rate get off the numb palsy, and feel the new blood sting and
tingle in my fingers' ends. Well, sure I am that the right word
will be spoken though I cut out my tongue. Thanks, too, to your
munificent Fraser for his liberal intention to divide the profits
of the _Essays._ I wish, for the encouragement of such a
bookseller, there were to be profits to divide. But I have no
faith in your public for their heed to a mere book like mine.
There are things I should like to say to them, in a lecture-room
or in a "steeple house," if I were there. Seven hundred and
fifty copies! Ah no!
And so my dear brother has quitted the roaring city, and gone
back in peace to his own land,--not the man he left it, but
richer every way, chiefly in the sense of having done something
valiantly and well, which the land, and the lands, and all that
wide elastic English race in all their dispersion, will know and
thank him for. The holy gifts of nature and solitude be showered
upon you! Do you not believe that the fields and woods have
their proper virtue, and that there are good and great things
which will not be spoken in the city? I give you joy in your new
and rightful home, and the same greetings to Jane Carlyle! with
thanks and hopes and loves to you both.
--R.W. Emerson
As usual at this season of the year, I, incorrigible spouting
Yankee, am writing an oration to deliver to the boys in one of
our little country colleges, nine days hence.* You will say I do
not deserve the aid of any Muse. O but if you knew how natural
it is to me to run to these places! Besides, I always am lured
on by the hope of saying something which shall stick by the good
boys. I hope Brown did not fail to find you, with thirty-eight
sovereigns (I believe) which he should carry you.
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* "The Method of Nature. An Address to the Society of the
Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, August 11, 1841."
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