My Dear Carlyle,--It is a pleasure to set your name once more at
the head of a sheet. It signifies how much gladness, how much
wealth of being, that the good, wise, man-cheering, man-helping
friend, though unseen, lives there yonder, just out of sight.
Your star burns there just below our eastern horizon, and fills
the lower and upper air with splendid and splendescent auroras.
By some refraction which new lenses or else steamships shall
operate, shall I not yet one day see again the disk of benign
Phosphorus? It is a solid joy to me, that whilst you work for
all, you work for me and with me, even if I have little to write,
and seldom write your name.
Since I last wrote to you, I found it needful, if only for the
household's sake, to set some new lectures in order, and go to
new congregations of men. I live so much alone, shrinking almost
cowardly from the contact of worldly and public men, that I need
more than others to quit home sometimes, and roll with the river
of travelers, and live in hotels. I went to Baltimore, where I
had an invitation, and read two lectures on New England. On my
return, I stopped at Philadelphia, and, my Course being now grown
to four lectures, read them there. At New York, my snowball was
larger, and I read five lectures on New England. 1. Religion;
2. Trade; 3. Genius, Manners and Customs; 4. Recent literary
and spiritual influences from abroad; 5. Domestic spiritual
history.--Perhaps I have not quite done with them yet, but may
make them the block of a new and somewhat larger structure for
Boston, next winter. The newspaper reports of them in New York
were such offensive misstatements, that I could not send you, as
I wished, a sketch. Between my two speeches at Baltimore, I went
to Washington, thirty-seven miles, and spent four days. The two
poles of an enormous political battery, galvanic coil on coil,
self-increased by series on series of plates from Mexico to
Canada, and from the sea westward to the Rocky Mountains, here
meet and play, and make the air electric and violent. Yet one
feels how little, more than how much, man is represented there.
I think, in the higher societies of the Universe, it will turn
out that the angels are molecules, as the devils were always
Titans, since the dulness of the world needs such mountainous
demonstration, and the virtue is so modest and concentrating.
But I must not delay to acknowledge the arrival of your Book. It
came ten or eleven days ago, in the "Britannia," with the three
letters of different dates announcing it.--I have read the
superfluous hundred pages of manuscript, and find it only too
popular. Beside its abundance of brilliant points and proverbs,
there is a deep, steady tide taking in, either by hope or by
fear, all the great classes of society,--and the philosophic
minority also, by the powerful lights which are shed on the
phenomenon. It is true contemporary history, which other books
are not, and you have fairly set solid London city aloft, afloat
in bright mirage in the air. I quarrel only with the popular
assumption, which is perhaps a condition of the Humor itself,
that the state of society is a new state, and was not the same
thing in the days of Rabelais and of Aristophanes, as of Carlyle.
Orators always allow something to masses, out of love to their
own art, whilst austere philosophy will only know the particles.
This were of no importance, if the historian did not so come to
mix himself in some manner with his erring and grieving nations,
and so saddens the picture; for health is always private and
original, and its essence is in its unmixableness.--But this
Book, with all its affluence of wit, of insight, and of daring
hints, is born for a longevity which I will not now compute.--In
one respect, as I hinted above, it is only too good, so sure of
success, I mean, that you are no longer secure of any respect to
your property in our freebooting America.
You must know that the cheap press has, within a few months, made
a total change in our book markets. Every English book of any
name or credit is instantly converted into a newspaper or coarse
pamphlet, and hawked by a hundred boys in the streets of all of
our cities for 25, 18, or 12 cents; Dickens's Notes for 12
cents, _Blackwood's Magazine_ for 18 cents, and so on. Three or
four great New York and Philadelphia printing-houses do this
work, with hot competition. One prints Bulwer's novel yesterday,
for 35 cents; and already, in twenty-four hours, another has a
coarser edition of it for 18 cents, in all thoroughfares.--What
to do with my sealed parcel of manuscripts and proofs? No
bookseller would in these perilous circumstances offer a dollar
for my precious parcel. I inquired of the lawyers whether I
could not by a copyright protect my edition from piracy until an
English copy arrived, and so secure a sale of a few weeks. They
said, no; yet advised the taking a certificate of copyright,
that we might try the case if we wished. After much consulting
and balancing for a few hours, I decided to print, as heretofore,
on our own account, an edition, but cheap, to make the temptation
less, to retail at seventy-five cents. I print fifteen hundred
copies, and announce to the public that it is your edition, and
all good men must buy this. I have written to the great
Reprinters, namely to Park Benjamin, and to the Harpers, of New
York, to request their forbearance; and have engaged Little and
Brown to publish, because, I think, they have something more of
weight with Booksellers, and are a little less likely to be
invaded than Munroe. If we sell a thousand copies at seventy-five
cents, it will only yield you about two hundred dollars; if we
should be invaded, we can then afford to sell the other five
hundred copies at twenty-five cents, without loss. In thus
doing, I involve you in some risk; but it was the best course
that occurred.--Hitherto, the _Miscellanies_ have not been
reprinted in the cheap forms; and in the last year, James Munroe
& Co. have sold few copies; all books but the cheapest being
unsold in the hard times; something has however accrued to your
credit there. J.M. & Co. fear that, if the new book is pirated
at New York and the pirate prospers, instantly the _Miscellanies_
will be plundered. We will hope better, or at least exult
in that which remains, to wit, a Worth unplunderable, yet
infinitely communicable.
I have hardly space left to say what I would concerning the
_Dial._ I heartily hoped I had done with it, when lately our
poor, good, publishing Miss Peabody,... wrote me that its
subscription would not pay its expenses (we all writing for
love). But certain friends are very unwilling it should die, and
I a little unwilling, though very unwilling to be the life of it,
as editor. And now that you are safely through your book, and
before the greater Sequel rushes to its conclusion, send me, I
pray you, that short chapter which hovers yet in the limbo of
contingency, in solid letters and points. Let it be, if that is
readiest, a criticism on the _Dial,_ and this too Elysian race,
not blood, and yet not ichor.--Let Jane Carlyle be on my part,
and, watchful of his hours, urge the poet in the golden one. I
think to send you a duplicate of the last number of the _Dial_ by
Mr. Mann,* who with his bride (sister of the above-mentioned Miss
Peabody) is going to London and so to Prussia. He is little
known to me, but greatly valued as a philanthropist in this
State. I must go to work a little more methodically this summer,
and let something grow to a tree in my wide straggling shrubbery.
With your letters came a letter from Sterling, who was too noble
to allude to his books and manuscript sent hither, and which
Russell all this time has delayed to print; I know not why, but
discouraged, I suppose, in these times by booksellers. I must
know precisely, and write presently to J.S.
Farewell.
R.W. Emerson**
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* The late Horace Mann.
** The following passages from Emerson's Diary relating to _Past
and Present_ seem to have been written a few days after the
preceding letter:--"How many things this book of Carlyle gives us
to think! It is a brave grappling with the problem of the times,
no luxurious holding aloof, as is the custom of men of letters,
who are usually bachelors and not husbands in the state, but
Literature here has thrown off his gown and descended into the
open lists. The gods are come among us in the likeness of men.
An honest Iliad of English woes. Who is he that can trust
himself in the fray? Only such as cannot be familiarized, but
nearest seen and touched is not seen and touched, but remains
inviolate, inaccessible, because a higher interest, the politics
of a higher sphere, bring him here and environ him, as the
Ambassador carries his country with him. Love protects him from
profanation. What a book this in its relation to English
privileged estates! How shall Queen Victoria read this? how the
Primate and Bishops of England? how the Lords? how the Colleges?
how the rich? and how the poor? Here is a book as full of
treason as an egg is full of meat, and every lord and lordship
and high form and ceremony of English conservatism tossed like a
football into the air, and kept in the air with merciless
rebounds and kicks, and yet not a word in the book is punishable
by statute. The wit has eluded all official zeal, and yet these
dire jokes, these cunning thrusts,--this flaming sword of
cherubim waved high in air illuminates the whole horizon and
shows to the eyes of the Universe every wound it inflicts. Worst
of all for the party attacked, it bereaves them beforehand of
all sympathy by anticipating the plea of poetic and humane
conservation and impressing the reader with the conviction that
Carlyle himself has the truest love for everything old and
excellent, and a genuine respect for the basis of truth in those
whom he exposes. Gulliver among the Lilliputians...
"Carlyle must write thus or nohow, like a drunken man who can
run, but cannot walk. What a man's book is that! no prudences,
no compromises, but a thorough independence. A masterly
criticism on the times. Fault perhaps the excess of importance
given to the circumstance of today. The poet is here for this,
to dwarf and destroy all merely temporary circumstance, and to
glorify the perpetual circumstance of men, e.g. dwarf British
Debt and raise Nature and social life.
"But everything must be done well once; even bulletins and
almanacs must have one excellent and immortal bulletin and
almanac. So let Carlyle's be the immortal newspaper."
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