CONCORD, March 8, 1848.
DEAR SIR,--Mr. Emerson's address is as yet, "R. W. Emerson, care of
Alexander Ireland, Esq., Examiner Office, Manchester, England." We had
a letter from him on Monday, dated at Manchester, February 10, and he
was then preparing to go to Edinburgh the next day, where he was to
lecture. He thought that he should get through his northern journeying
by the 25th of February, and go to London to spend March and April,
and if he did not go to Paris in May, then come home. He has been
eminently successful, though the papers this side of the water have
been so silent about his adventures.
My book,[40] fortunately, did not find a publisher ready to undertake
it, and you can imagine the effect of delay on an author's estimate of
his own work. However, I like it well enough to mend it, and shall
look at it again directly when I have dispatched some other things.
I have been writing lectures for our own Lyceum this winter, mainly
for my own pleasure and advantage. I esteem it a rare happiness to be
able to _write_ anything, but there (if I ever get there) my concern
for it is apt to end. Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest
and trustworthy publishers that we know. I can sympathize, perhaps,
with the barberry bush, whose business it is solely to _ripen_ its
fruit (though that may not be to sweeten it) and to protect it with
thorns, so that it holds on all winter, even, unless some hungry crows
come to pluck it. But I see that I must get a few dollars together
presently to manure my roots. Is your journal able to pay anything,
provided it likes an article well enough? I do not promise one. At any
rate, I mean always to spend only words enough to purchase silence
with; and I have found that this, which is so valuable, though many
writers do not prize it, does not cost much, after all.
I have not obtained any more of the mice which I told you were so
numerous in my cellar, as my house was removed immediately after I
saw you, and I have been living in the village since.
However, if I should happen to meet with anything rare, I will forward
it to you. I thank you for your kind offers, and will avail myself of
them so far as to ask if you can anywhere borrow for me for a short
time the copy of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ containing a notice of
Mr. Emerson. I should like well to read it, and to read it to Mrs.
Emerson and others. If this book is not easy to be obtained, do not by
any means trouble yourself about it.