Sartor Resartus | Page 6

or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of the
whole Enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid mass.
Cautiously yet courageously, through the twopenny post, application to
the famed redoubtable OLIVER YORKE was now made: an interview,
interviews with that singular man have taken place; with more of
assurance on our side, with less of satire (at least of open satire) on his,
than we anticipated; for the rest, with such issue as is now visible. As to
those same "patriotic Libraries," the Hofrath's counsel could only be
viewed with silent amazement; but with his offer of Documents we
joyfully and almost instantaneously closed. Thus, too, in the sure
expectation of these, we already see our task begun; and this our Sartor
Resartus, which is properly a "Life and Opinions of Herr
Teufelsdrockh," hourly advancing.
Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such title and
vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British
reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented
him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation
he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared
from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and

directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who or
what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even
insignificant:* it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of
Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits: whoso hath ears, let
him hear.
*With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or muffler;
and, we have reason to think, under a feigned name!--O. Y.
On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give warning: namely,
that he is animated with a true though perhaps a feeble attachment to
the Institutions of our Ancestors; and minded to defend these,
according to ability, at all hazards; nay, it was partly with a view to
such defence that he engaged in this undertaking. To stem, or if that be
impossible, profitably to divert the current of Innovation, such a
Volume as Teufelsdrockh's, if cunningly planted down, were no
despicable pile, or floodgate, in the logical wear.
For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any personal connection of
ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heuschrecke or this Philosophy of Clothes,
can pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate.
Powerless, we venture to promise, are those private Compliments
themselves. Grateful they may well be; as generous illusions of
friendship; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and
suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of
Philosophic Eloquence, though with baser accompaniments, the present
Editor revelled in that feast of reason, never since vouchsafed him in so
full measure! But what then? _Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas_;
Teufelsdrockh is our friend, Truth is our divinity. In our historical and
critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to all the world; have feud
or favor with no one,--save indeed the Devil, with whom, as with the
Prince of Lies and Darkness, we do at all times wage internecine war.
This assurance, at an epoch when puffery and quackery have reached a
height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even English Editors,
like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their door-lintels No cheating
here,--we thought it good to premise.

CHAPTER III.
REMINISCENCES.

To the Author's private circle the appearance of this singular Work on
Clothes must have occasioned little less surprise than it has to the rest
of the world. For ourselves, at least, few things have been more
unexpected. Professor Teufelsdrockh, at the period of our acquaintance
with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life: a man
devoted to the higher Philosophies, indeed; yet more likely, if he
published at all, to publish a refutation of Hegel and Bardili, both of
whom, strangely enough, he included under a common ban; than to
descend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy Forum, with an
Argument that cannot but exasperate and divide. Not, that we can
remember, was the Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between
us. If through the high, silent, meditative Transcendentalism of our
Friend we detected any practical tendency whatever, it was at most
Political, and towards a certain prospective, and for the present quite
speculative, Radicalism; as indeed some correspondence, on his part,
with Herr Oken of Jena was now and then suspected; though his special
contributions to the Isis could never be more than surmised at. But, at
all events, nothing Moral, still less anything Didactico-Religious, was
looked for from him.
Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hearing; which
indeed, with the Night they were uttered in,