My Dear Carlyle,--Here in Boston for the day, though in no fit
place for writing, you shall have, since the steamer goes
tomorrow, a hasty answer to at least one of your questions....
You tell me heavy news of your friends, and of those who were
friendly to me for your sake. And I have found farther
particulars concerning them in the newspapers. Buller I have
known by name ever since he was in America with Lord Durham, and
I well remember his face and figure at Mr. Baring's. Even
England cannot spare an accomplished man.
Since I had your letter, and, I believe, by the same steamer,
your brother's _Dante,_* complete within and without, has come to
me, most welcome. I heartily thank him. 'T is a most
workmanlike book, bearing every mark of honest value. I thank
him for myself, and I thank him, in advance, for our people, who
are sure to learn their debt to him, in the coming months and
years. I sent the book, after short examination, the same day,
to New York, to the Harpers, lest their edition should come out
without Prolegomena. But they answered, the next day, that they
had already received directly the same matter;--yet have not up
to this time returned my book. For the Indian corn,--I have been
to see Dr. Charles T. Jackson (my wife's brother, and our best
chemist, inventor of etherization), who tells me that the reason
your meal is bitter is, that all the corn sent to you from us is
kiln-dried here, usually at a heat of three hundred degrees,
which effectually kills the starch or diastase (?) which would
otherwise become sugar. This drying is thought necessary to
prevent the corn from becoming musty in the contingency of a long
voyage. He says, if it should go in the steamer, it would arrive
sound without previous drying. I think I will try that
experiment, shortly on a box or a barrel of our Concord maize, as
Lidian Emerson confidently engages to send you accurate recipes
for johnny-cake, mush, and hominy.
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* The _Inferno_ of Dante, a translation in prose by John Carlyle;
an excellent piece of work, still in demand.
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Why did you not send me word of Clough's hexameter poem, which I
have now received and read with much joy.* But no, you will
never forgive him his metres. He is a stout, solid, reliable man
and friend,--I knew well; but this fine poem has taken me by
surprise. I cannot find that your journals have yet discovered
its existence. With kindest remembrances to Jane Carlyle, and
new thanks to John Carlyle, your friend,
--R.W. Emerson
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* "The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich."
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