have asked for it of Kennet, but without success; I have nothing
for it but to wait the winds and chances. Meanwhile Saunders and
Ottley want forsooth a _Sketches of German Literature_ in three
volumes: then a _Miscellanies_ in three volumes: that is their
plan of publishing an English edition; and the outlook they hold
out for me is certain trouble in this matter, and recompense
entirely uncertain. I think on the whole it is extremely likely
I shall apply to you for Two Hundred and Fifty copies (that is
their favorite number) of these four volumes, (nay, if it be of
any moment, you can bind me down to it _now,_ and take it for
sure,) but I cannot yet send you the title-page; no bookseller
purchasing till "we see it first." But after all, will it suit
America to print an _unequal_ number of your two pairs of
volumes? Do not the two together make one work? On the whole,
consider that I shall in all likelihood want Two Hundred and
Fifty copies, and consider it certain if that will serve the
enterprise: we must leave it here today. I will stir in it
now, however, and take no rest till in one way or other you do
get a title-page from me, or some definite deliverance on the
matter. O Athenians, what a trouble I _give,_ having _got_
your applauses!
Kennet the Bookseller gave me yesterday (on my way to "the City"
with that Brother of mine, the Italian Doctor who is here at
present and a great lover of yours) ten copies of your Dartmouth
Oration: we read it over dinner in a chop-house in Bucklersbury,
amid the clatter of some fifty stand of knives and forks; and a
second time more leisurely at Chelsea here. A right brave
Speech; announcing, in its own way, with emphasis of full
conviction, to all whom it may concern, that great forgotten
truth, _Man is still man._ May it awaken a pulsation under the
ribs of Death! I believe the time is come for such a Gospel.
They must speak it out who have it,--with what audience there may
be. I have given away two copies this morning; I will take care
of the rest. Go on, and speed.--And now where is the heterodox
Divinity one, which awakens such "tempest in a washbowl," brings
Goethe, Transcendentalism, and Carlyle into question, and on the
whole evinces "what [difference] New England also makes between
_Pan_-theism and _Pot_-theism"? I long to see that; I expect to
congratulate you on that too. Meanwhile we will let the washbowl
storm itself out; and Emerson at Concord shall recognize it for
a washbowl storming, and hold on his way. As to my share in it,
grieve not for half an instant. Pantheism, Pottheism, Mydoxy,
Thydoxy, are nothing at all to me; a weariness the whole jargon,
which I avoid speaking of, decline listening to: _Live,_ for
God's sake, with what Faith thou couldst get; leave off
_speaking_ about Faith! Thou knowest it not. Be _silent,_ do
not speak.--As to you, my friend, you are even to go on, giving
still harder shocks if need be; and should I come into censure
by means of you, there or here, think that I am proud of my
company; that, as the boy Hazlitt said after hearing Coleridge,
"I will go with that man"; or, as our wild Burns has it,
"Wi' sic as he, where'er he be,
May I be saved or damned!"
Oime! what a foolish goose of a world this is! If it were not
[for] here and there an articulate-speaking man, one would be
all-too lonely.
This is nothing at all like the letter I meant to write you; but
I will write again, I trust, in few days, and the first paragraph
shall, if possible, hold all the business. I have much to tell
you, which perhaps is as well not written. O that I did see you
face to face! But the time shall come, if Heaven will. Why not
you come over, since I cannot? There is a room here, there is
welcome here, and two friends always. It must be done one way or
the other. I will take, care of your messages to Sterling. He
is in Florence; he was the Author of _Montaigne._* The _Foreign
Quarterly_ Reviewer of _Strauss_ I take to be one Blackie, an
Advocate in Edinburgh, a frothy, semi-confused disciple of mine
and other men's; I guess this, but I have not read the Article:
the man Blackie is from Aberdeen, has been roaming over Europe,
and carries more sail than ballast. Brother John, spoken of
above, is knocking at the door even now; he is for Italy again,
we expect, in few days, on a better appointment: know that you
have a third friend in him under this roof,--a man who quarrels
with me all day in a small way, and loves me with the whole soul
of him. My Wife demanded to have "room for one line." What she
is to write I know not, except it be what she has said, holding
up the pamphlet, "Is it not a noble thing? None of them all but
he," &c., &c. I will write again without delay when the stray
volumes arrive; before that if they linger. Commend me to all
the kind household of Concord: Wife, Mother, and Son.
Ever yours,
T. Carlyle
---------
* See _ante,_ p. 184. Sterling's essay on Montaigne was his
first contribution, in 1837, to the _London and Westminster
Review._ It is reprinted in "Essays and Tales, by John Sterling,
collected and edited, with a Memoir of his Life, by Julius
Charles Hare," London, 1848, Vol. I. p. 129.
----------
_"Forgotten you?"_ O, no indeed! If there were nothing else to
remember you by, I should never forget the Visitor, who years ago
in the Desert descended on us, out of the clouds as it were, and
made one day there look like enchantment for us, and left me
weeping that it was only _one_ day. When I think of America, it
is of you,--neither Harriet Martineau nor any one else succeeds
in giving me a more extended idea of it. When I wish to see
America it is still you, and those that are yours. I read all
that you write with an interest which I feel in no other writing
but my Husband's,--or it were nearer the truth to say there is no
other writing of living men but yours and his that I _can_ read.
God Bless you and Weib and Kind. Surely I shall some day see you
all.
Your affectionate
Jane Carlyle
XXX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 15 November, 1835
Dear Emerson,--Hardly above a week ago, I wrote you in immediate
answer to some friendly inquiries produced by negligence of mine:
the Letter is probably tumbling on the salt waves at this hour,
in the belly of the "Great Western"; or perhaps it may be still
on firm land waiting, in which case this will go along with it.
I had written before out of Scotland a Letter of mere
acknowledgment and postponement; you must have received that
before now, I imagine. Our small piece of business is now become
articulate, and I will despatch it in a paragraph. Pity my
stupidity that I did not put the thing on this footing long ago!
It never struck me till the other day that though no copy of our
_Miscellanies_ would turn up for inspection here, and no
Bookseller would bargain for a thing unseen, I myself might
bargain, and leave their hesitations resting on their own
basis. In fine, I have rejected all their schemes of printing
_Miscellaneous Works_ here, printing _Sketches of German
Literature,_ or printing anything whatever on the "half-profits
system," which is like toilsomely scattering seed into the sea:
and I settled yesterday with Fraser to give him the American
sheets, and let them sell _themselves,_ on clear principles, or
remain unsold if they like. I find it infinitely the best plan,
and to all appearance the profitablest as to money that could
have been devised for me.
What you have to do therefore is to get Two Hundred and Fifty
copies (_in sheets_) of the whole Four Volumes, so soon as the
second two are printed, and have them, with the proper title-
page, sent off hither to Fraser's address; the sooner the
better. The American title-page, instead of "Boston," &c. at the
bottom, will require to bear, in three lines "London: / James
Fraser, 215 Regent Street, / 1839." Fraser is anxious that you
should not spell him with a z; your man can look on the Magazine
and beware. I suppose also you should print _labels_ for the
backs of the four volumes, to be used by the _half_-binder; they
do the books in that way here now: but if it occasion any
difficulty, never mind this; it was not spoken of to Fraser, and
is my own conjecture merely; the thing can be managed in various
other ways. Two Hundred and Fifty copies, then, of the entire
book: there is nothing else to be attended to that you do not
understand as well as I. Fraser will announce it in his
Magazine: the eager, select public will wait. Probably, there
is no chance before the middle of March or so? Do not hurry
yourselves, or at all change your rate for _us:_ but so soon as
the work is ready in the course of Nature, the earliest
conveyance to the Port of London will bring a little cargo which
one will welcome with a strange feeling! I declare myself
delighted with the plan; an altogether romantic kind of plan, of
romance and reality: fancy me riding on _Yankee_ withal, at the
time, and considering what a curious world this is, that bakes
bread for one beyond the great Ocean-stream, and how a poor man
is not left after all to be trodden into the gutters, though the
fight went sore against him, and he saw no backing anywhere.
_Allah akbar!_ God is great; no saying truer than that.--And so
now, by the blessing of Heaven, we will talk no more of business
this day.
My employments, my outlooks, condition, and history here, were a
long chapter; on which I could like so well to talk with you
face to face; but as for writing of them, it is a mere mockery.
In these four years, so full of pain and toil, I seem to have
lived four decades. By degrees, the creature gets accustomed to
its element; the salamander learns to live in fire, and be
of the same temperature with it. Ah me! I feel as if grown
old innumerable things are become weary, flat, stale, and
unprofitable. And yet perhaps I am not old, only wearied, and
there is a stroke or two of work in me yet. For the rest, the
fret and agitation of this Babylon wears me down: it is the most
unspeakable life; of sunbeams and miry clay; a contradiction
which no head can reconcile. Pain and poverty are not wholesome;
but praise and flattery along with them are poison: God deliver
us from that; it carries madness in the very breath of it! On
the whole, I say to myself, what thing is there so good as
_rest?_ A sad case it is and a frequent one in my circle, to be
entirely cherubic, _all_ face and wings. "Mes enfans," said a
French gentleman to the cherubs in the Picture, "Mes enfans,
asseyez-vous?"--"Monseigneur," answer they, "il n'y a pas de
quoi!" I rejoice rather in my laziness; proving that I _can_
sit.--But, after all, ought I not to be thankful? I positively
can, in some sort, exist here for the while; a thing I had been
for many years ambitious of to no purpose. I shall have to
lecture again in spring, Heaven knows on what; it will be a
wretched fever for me; but once through it there will be board
wages for another year. The wild Ishmael can hunt in _this_
desert too, it would seem. I say, I will be thankful; and wait
quietly what farther is to come, or whether anything farther.
But indeed, to speak candidly, I do feel sometimes as if another
Book were growing in me,--though I almost tremble to think of it.
Not for this winter, O no! I will write an Article merely, or
some such thing, and read trash if better be not. This, I do
believe, is my horoscope for the next season: an Article on
something about New-Year's-day (the Westminster Editor, a good-
natured, admiring swan-goose from the North Country, will not let
me rest); then Lectures; then--what? I am for some practical
subject too; none of your pictures in the air, or _aesthetisches
Zeug_ (as Mullner's wife called it, Mullner of the _Midnight
Blade_): nay, I cannot get up the steam on any such best; it is
extremely irksome as well as fruitless at present. In the next
_Westminster Review,_ therefore, if you see a small scrub of a
paper signed "S.P." on one Varnhagen a German, say that it is by
"Simon Pure," or by "Scissars and Paste," or even by "Soaped
Pig"--whom no man shall _catch!_ Truly it is a secret which you
must not mention: I was driven to it by the Swan-goose above
mentioned, not Mill but another. Let this suffice for my
winter's history: may the summer be more productive.
As for Concord and New England, alas! my Friend, I should but
deface your Idyllion with an ugly contradiction, did I come in
such mood as mine is. I am older in years than you; but in
humor I am older by centuries. What a hope is in that ever young
heart, cheerful, healthful as the morning! And as for me, you
have no conception what a crabbed, sulky piece of sorrow and
dyspepsia I am grown; and growing, if I do not draw bridle. Let
me gather heart a little! I have not forgotten Concord or the
West; no, it lies always beautiful in the blue of the horizon,
afar off and yet attainable; it is a great possession to me;
should it even never be attained. But I have got to consider
lately that it is you who are coming hither first. That is the
right way, is it not? New England is becoming more than ever
part of Old England; why, you are nearer to us now than
Yorkshire was a hundred years ago; this is literally a fact:
you can come _without_ making your will. It is one of my
calculations that all Englishmen from all zones and hemispheres
will, for a good while yet, resort occasionally to the Mother-
Babel, and see a thing or two there. Come if you dare; I said
there was a room, house-room and heart-room, constantly waiting
you here, and you shall see blockheads by the million.
_Pickwick_ himself shall be visible; innocent young Dickens
reserved for a questionable fate. The great Wordsworth shall
talk till you yourself pronounce him to be a bore. Southey's
complexion is still healthy mahogany-brown, with a fleece of
white hair, and eyes that seem running at full gallop. Leigh
Hunt, "man of genius in the shape of a Cockney," is my near
neighbor, full of quips and cranks, with good humor and no common
sense. Old Rogers with his pale head, white, bare, and cold as
snow, will work on you with those large blue eyes, cruel,
sorrowful, and that sardonic shelf-chin:--This is the Man, O
Rogers, that wrote the German Poetry in American Prose; consider
him well!--But whither am I running? My sheet is done! My
Brother John returns again almost immediately to Italy. He has
got appointed Traveling Doctor to a certain Duke of Buccleuch,
the chief of our Scotch Dukes: an excellent position for him as
far as externals go. His departure will leave me lonelier; but
I must reckon it for the best: especially I must begin working.
Harriet Martineau is coming hither this evening; with beautiful
enthusiasm for the Blacks and others. She is writing a Novel.
The first American book proved generally rather wearisome, the
second not so; we have since been taught (not I) "How to
observe." Suppose you and I promulgate a treatise next, "How to
see"? The old plan was, to have a pair of _eyes _first of all,
and then to open them: and endeavor with your whole strength to
_look._ The good Harriet! But "God," as the Arabs say, "has
given to every people a Prophet (or Poet) in its own speech":
and behold now Unitarian mechanical Formalism was to have its
Poetess too; and stragglings of genius were to spring up even
through that like grass through a Macadam highway!--Adieu, my
Friend, I wait still for your heterodox Speech; and love
you always.
--T. Carlyle
An English _Sartor_ goes off to you this day; through Kennet, to
C.C. Little and J. Brown of Boston; the likeliest conveyance.
It is correctly printed, and that is all. Its fate here (the
fate of the publication, I mean) remains unknown; "unknown
and unimportant."
XXXI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 2 December, 1838
My Dear Emerson,--Almost the very day after my last Letter went
off, the long-expected two volumes of _Miscellanies_ arrived.
The heterodox pamphlet has never yet come to hand. I am now to
write you again about that _Miscellany_ concern the fourth
letter, I do believe; but it is confirmatory of the foregoing
three, and will be the last, we may hope.
Fraser is charmed with the look of your two volumes; declares
them unsurpassable by art of his; and wishes (what is the main
part of this message) that you would send his cargo in the
_bound_ state, bound and lettered as these are, with the sole
difference that the leaves be _not_ cut, or shaved on the sides,
our English fashion being to have them _rough._ He is impatient
that the Book were here; desires further that it be sent to the
Port of London rather than another Port, and that it be packed in
_boxes_ "to keep the covers of the volumes safe,"--all which I
doubt not the Packers and the Shippers of New England have
dexterity enough to manage for the best, without desire of his.
If you have printed off nothing yet, I will desire for my own
behoof that Two hundred and _Sixty_ be the number sent; I find I
shall need some ten to give away: if your first sheet is printed
off, let the number stand as it was. It would be an improvement
if you could print our title-pages on paper a little stronger;
that would stand ink, I mean: the fly leaves in the same, if you
have such paper convenient; if not, not. Farther as to the
matter of the title-page, it seems to me your Printer might
give a bolder and a broader type to the words "Critical and
Miscellaneous," and add after "Essays" with a colon (:), the
line "Collected and Republished," with a colon also; then the
"By," &c. "In Four Volumes, Vol. I.," &c. I mean that we want,
in general, a little more ink and decisiveness: show your man
the title-page of the English _French Revolution,_ or look at it
your self, and you will know. R.W.E.'s "Advertisement," friendly
and good, as all his dealings are to me ward, will of course be
suppressed in the English copies. I see not that with propriety
I can say anything by way of substitute: silence and the New
England _imprint_ will tell the story as eloquently as there
is need.
For the rest you must tell Mr. Loring, and all men who had a hand
in it along with you, that I am altogether right well pleased
with this edition, and find it far beyond my expectation. To my
two young Friends, Henry S. McKean (be so good as write these
names more indisputably for me) and Charles Stearns Wheeler, in
particular, I will beg you to express emphatically my gratitude;
they have stood by me with right faithfulness, and made the
correctest printing; a _great_ service had I known that there
were such eyes and heads acting in behalf of me there, I would
have scraped out the Editorial blotches too (notes of admiration,
dashes, "We think"s, &c., &c., common in Jeffrey's time in the
_Edinburgh Review_) and London misprints; which are almost the
only deformities that remain now. It is _extremely_ correct
printing wherever I have looked, and many things are silently
amended; it is the most fundamental service of all. I have not
the other _Articles_ by me at present; I think they are of
themselves a little more correct; at all events there are
nothing but _misprints_ to deal with;--the Editors, by this time,
had got bound up to let me alone. In the _Life of Scott,_ fourth
page of it (p. 296 of our edition), there is a sentence to be
deleted. "It will tell us, say they, little new and nothing
pleasing to know": out with this, for it is nonsense, and was
marked for erasure in the manuscript, I dare say. I know with
certainty no more at present.
Fraser is to sell the Four Volumes at Two Guineas here. On
studying accurately your program of the American mercantile
method, I stood amazed to contrast it with our English one. The
Bookseller here admits that he could, by diligent bargaining, get
up such a book for something like the same cost or a _little_
more; but the "laws of the trade" deduct from the very front of
the selling price--how much think you--_forty percent_ and odd,
when your man has only _fifteen;_ for the mere act of vending!
To cover all, they charge that enormous price. (A man, while I
stood consulting with Fraser, came in and asked for Carlyle's
_Revolution;_ they showed it him, he asked the price; and
exclaimed, "Guinea and a half! I can get it from America for
nine shillings!" and indignantly went his way; not without
reason.) There are "laws of the trade" which ought to be
_repealed;_ which I will take the liberty of contravening to all
lengths by all opportunities--if I had but the power! But if
this joint-stock American plan prosper, it will answer rarely.
Fraser's first _French Revolution,_ for instance, will be done,
he calculates, about New-Year's-day; and a second edition
wanted; mine to do with what I like. If you in America
wanted more also--? I leave you to think of this.--And now
enough, enough!
My Brother went from us last Tuesday; ought to be in Paris
yesterday. I am yet writing nothing; feel forsaken, sad, sick,
--not unhappy. In general Death seems beautiful to me; sweet and
great. But Life also is beautiful, is great and divine, were it
never to be joyful any more. I read Books, my wife sewing by me,
with the light of a sinumbra, in a little apartment made snug
against the winter; and am happiest when all men leave me alone,
or nearly all,--though many men love me rather, ungrateful that I
am. My present book is _Horace Walpole;_ I get endless stuff
out of it; epic, tragic, lyrical, didactic: all inarticulate
indeed. An old blind Schoolmaster in Annan used to ask with
endless anxiety when a new scholar was offered him, "But are ye
sure _he's not a Dunce?_" It is really the one thing needful in
a man; for indeed (if we will candidly understand it) all else
is presupposed in that. Horace Walpole is no dunce, not a fibre
of him is duncish.
Your Friend Sumner was here yesterday, a good while, for the
first time: an ingenious, cultivated, courteous man; a little
sensitive or so, and with no other fault that I discerned. He
