Dear Emerson...... You are a born _enthusiast,_ as quiet as you
are; and it will continue so, at intervals, to the end. I
admire your sly low-voiced sarcasm too;--in short, I love the
sternly-gentle close-buttoned man very well, as I have always
done, and intend to continue doing!--Pray observe therefore, and
lay it to heart as a practical fact, that you are bound to
persevere in writing to me from time to time; and will never get
it given up, how sulky soever you grow, while we both remain in
this world. Do not I very well understand all that you say about
"apathized moods," &c.? The gloom of approaching old age
(approaching, nay arriving with some of us) is very considerable
upon a man; and on the whole one contrives to take the very
ugliest view, now and then, of all beautifulest things; and to
shut one's lips with a kind of grim defiance, a kind of imperial
sorrow which is almost like felicity,--so completely and
composedly wretched, one is equal to the very gods! These too
are necessary, moods to a man. But the Earth withal is verdant,
sun-beshone; and the Son of Adam has his place on it, and his
tasks and recompenses in it, to the close;--as one remembers by
and by, too. On the whole, I am infinitely solitary; but not
more heavy laden than I have all along been, perhaps rather less
so; I could fancy even old age to be beautiful, and to have a
real divineness: for the rest, I say always, I cannot part with
you, however it go; and so, in brief, you must get into the way
of holding yourself obliged as formerly to a kind of _dialogue_
with me; and speak, on paper since not otherwise, the oftenest
you can. Let that be a point settled.
I am not _writing_ on Frederic the Great; nor at all practically
contemplating to do so. But, being in a reading mood after those
furious _Pamphlets_ (which have procured me showers of abuse from
all the extensive genus Stupid in this country, and not done me
any other mischief, but perhaps good), and not being capable of
reading except in a train and _about_ some object of interest to
me,--I took to reading, near a year ago, about Frederick, as I
had twice in my life done before; and have, in a loose way,
tumbled up an immense quantity of shot rubbish on that field, and
still continue. Not with much decisive approach to Frederick's
_self,_ I am still afraid! The man looks brilliant and noble to
me; but how _love_ him, or the sad wreck he lived and worked in?
I do not even yet _see_ him clearly; and to try making others
see him--?--Yet Voltaire and he _are_ the celestial element of
the poor Eighteenth Century; poor souls. I confess also to a
real love for Frederick's dumb followers: the Prussian
_Soldiery._--I often say to myself, "Were not _here_ the real
priests and virtuous martyrs of that loud-babbling rotten
generation!" And so it goes on; when to end, or in what to end,
God knows.
Adieu, dear Emerson. A blockhead (by mistake) has been let in,
and has consumed all my time. Good be ever with you and yours.
--T. Carlyle