Dear Emerson,--By the clearest law I am bound to write you a word
today, were my haste even greater than it is. The last American
fleet or ship, about the middle of last month, brought me a Draft
for Thirty Pounds; which I converted into ready cash, and have
here,--and am now your grateful debtor for, as of old. There
seems to be no end to those Boston Booksellers! I think the well
is dry; and straightway it begins to run again. Thanks to you:
--it is, I dare say, a thing you too are grateful for. We will
recognize it among the good things of this rather indifferent
world.--By the way, if that good Clark _like_ his business, let
him go on with it; but if not, stop him, poor fellow! It is to
me a matter of really small moment whether those Booksellers'
accounts be ever audited in this world, or left over to the
General Day of Audit. I myself shudder at the sight of such
things; and make my bargain here so always as to have no trade
with them, but to be _netto_ from the first. Why should I
plague poor Clark with them, if it be any plague to him? The
Booksellers will never _know_ but we examine them! The very
terror of Clark's name will be as the bark of chained Mastiff,--
and no need for actual biting! Have due pity on the man.
Your English volume of _Essays,_ as Chapman probably informs you
by this Post, was advertised yesterday, "with a Preface from me."
That is hardly accurate, that latter clause. My "Preface"
consists only of a certificate that the Book is correctly
printed, and sent forth by a Publisher of your appointment, whom
therefore all readers of yours ought to regard accordingly.
Nothing more. There proves, I believe, no visible real vestige
of a copyright obtainable here; only Chapman asserts that he
_has_ obtained one, and that he will take all contraveners into
Chancery,--which has a terrible sound; and indeed the Act he
founds on is of so distracted, inextricable a character, it may
mean anything and all things, and no Sergeant Talfourd whom we
could consult durst take upon him to say that it meant almost
anything whatever. The sound of "Chancery," the stereotype
character of this volume, and its cheap price, may perhaps deter
pirates,--who are but a weak body in this country as yet. I
judged it right to help in that; and impertinent, at this stage
of affairs, to go any farther. The Book is very fairly printed,
onward. at least to the Essay _New England Politics,_ where my
"perfect-copy" of the sheets as yet stops. I did not read any of
the Proofs except two; finding it quite superfluous, and a sad
waste of time to the hurried Chapman himself. I have found yet
but one error, and that a very correctable one, "narvest" for
"harvest";--no other that I recollect at present.
The work itself falling on me by driblets has not the right
chance yet--not till I get it in the bound state, and read it all
at once--to produce its due impression on me. But I will say
already of it, It is a _sermon_ to me, as all your other
deliberate utterances are; a real _word,_ which I feel to be
such,--alas, almost or altogether the one such, in a world all
full of jargons, hearsays, echoes, and vain noises, which cannot
pass with me for _words!_ This is a praise far beyond any
"literary" one; literary praises are not worth repeating in
comparison. For the rest, I have to object still (what you will
call objecting against the Law of Nature) that we find you a
Speaker indeed, but as it were a _Soliloquizer_ on the eternal
mountain-tops only, in vast solitudes where men and their affairs
lie all hushed in a very dim remoteness; and only the man and
the stars and the earth are visible,--whom, so fine a fellow
seems he, we could perpetually punch into, and say, "Why won't
you come and help us then? We have terrible need of one man like
you down among us! It is cold and vacant up there; nothing
paintable but rainbows and emotions; come down, and you shall do
life-pictures, passions, facts,--which _transcend_ all thought,
and leave it stuttering and stammering! To which he answers that
he won't, can't, and doesn't want to (as the Cockneys have it):
and so I leave him, and say, "You Western Gymnosophist! Well, we
can afford one man for that too. But--!--By the bye, I ought to
say, the sentences are very _brief;_ and did not, in my sheet
reading, always entirely cohere for me. Pure genuine Saxon;
strong and simple; of a clearness, of a beauty--But they did
not, sometimes, rightly stick to their foregoers and their
followers: the paragraph not as a beaten ingot, but as a
beautiful square _bag of duck-shot_ held together by canvas! I
will try them again, with the Book deliberately before me.--There
are also one or two utterances about "Jesus," "immortality," and
so forth, which will produce wide-eyes here and there. I do not
say it was wrong to utter them; a man obeys his own Daemon in
these cases as his supreme law. I dare say you are a little
bored occasionally with "Jesus," &c.,--as I confess I myself am,
when I discern what a beggarly Twaddle they have made of all
that, what a greasy Cataplasm to lay to their own poltrooneries;-
-and an impatient person may exclaim with Voltaire, in serious
moments: "_Au nom de Dieu, ne me parlez plus de cet homme-la!_
I have had enough of him;--I tell you I am alive too!"
Well, I have scribbled at a great rate; regardless of Time's
flight!--My Wife thanks many times for M. Fuller's Book. I sent
by Mr. James a small Packet of _your_ letters--which will make
you sad to look at them! Adieu, dear friend.
--T. Carlyle