My Dear Carlyle,--'T is a sad apology that I have to offer for
delays which no apology can retrieve. I received your first
letter with pure joy, but in the midst of extreme inefficiency.
I had suddenly yielded to a proposition of Fields & Co. to
manufacture a book for a given day. The book was planned, and
going on passably, when it was found better to divide the matter,
and separate, and postpone the purely literary portion (criticism
chiefly), and therefore to modify and swell the elected part.
The attempt proved more difficult than I had believed, for I only
write by spasms, and these ever more rare,--and daemons that have
no ears. Meantime the publication day was announced, and the
printer at the door. Then came your letter in the shortening
days. When I drudged to keep my word, _invita Minerva._
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* This letter is printed from an imperfect rough draft.
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I could not write in my book, and I could not write a letter.
Tomorrow and many morrows made things worse, for we have
indifferent health in the house, and, as it chanced, unusual
strain of affairs,--which always come when they should not. For
one thing--I have just sold a house which I once built opposite
my own. But I will leave the bad month, which I hope will not
match itself in my lifetime. Only 't is pathetic and remorseful
to me that any purpose of yours, especially, a purpose so
inspired, should find me imbecile.
Heartily I delight in your proposed disposition of the books. It
has every charm of surprise, and nobleness, and large affection.
The act will deeply gratify a multitude of good men, who will see
in it your real sympathy with the welfare of the country. I hate
that there should be a moment of delay in the completing of your
provisions,--and that I of all men should be the cause! Norton's
letter is perfect on his part, and needs no addition, I believe,
from me. You had not in your first letter named _Cambridge,_ and
I had been meditating that he would probably have divided your
attention between Harvard and the Boston Public Library,--now the
richest in the country, at first founded by the gifts of Joshua
Bates (of London), and since enriched by the city and private
donors, Theodore Parker among them. But after conversation with
two or three friends, I had decided that Harvard College was the
right beneficiary, as being the mother real or adoptive of a
great number of your lovers and readers in America, and because a
College is a seat of sentiment and cosmical relations. The
Library is outgrown by other libraries in the Country, counts
only 119,000 bound volumes in 1868; the several departments of
Divinity, Law, Medicine, and Natural Science in the University
having special libraries, that together add some 40,000 more.
The College is newly active (with its new President Eliot, a
cousin of Norton's) and expansive in all directions. And the
Library will be relieved through subscriptions now being
collected among the Alumni with the special purpose of securing
to it an adequate fund for annual increase.
I shall then write to Norton at once that I concur with him in
the destination of the books to Harvard College, and approve
entirely his advices in regard to details. And so soon as you
send me the Catalogue I shall, if you permit, communicate your
design to President Eliot and the Corporation.
One thing I shall add to the Catalogue now or later (perhaps only
by bequest), your own prized gift to me, in 1848, of Wood's
_Athenae Oxonienses,_ which I have lately had rebound, and in
which every pen and pencil mark of yours is notable.
The stately books of the New Edition have duly come from the
unforgetting friend. I have _Sartor, Schiller, French
Revolution,_ 3 vols., _Miscellanies,_ Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,--ten
volumes in all, excellently printed and dressed, and full of
memories and electricity.
I have much to say, but of things not opportune at this moment,
and in spite of my long contumacy dare believe that I shall
quickly write again my proper letter to my friend, whose every
word I watchfully read and remember.