The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II | Page 5

by Brown (Little and
Brown?); which Bill the said Executors having refused for I know not
what reason, I returned it to Brown with note of the dishonor done it,
and so the sum still stands on his Books in our favor. Fraser's people
are not now my Booksellers, except in the matter of your Essays and a
second edition of _Sartor;_ the other Books I got transferred to a
certain pair of people named "Chapman and Hall, 186 Strand"; which
operation, though (I understand) it was transacted with great and
vehement reluctance on the part of the Fraser people, yet produced no
quarrel between them and me, and they still forward parcels, &c., and
are full of civility when I see them:--so that whether this had any effect
or none in their treatment of Brown and his Bill I never knew; nor
indeed, having as you explained it no concern with Brown's and their
affairs, did I ever happen to inquire. I avoid all Booksellers; see them
rarely, the blockheads; study never to think of them at all. Book-sales,
reputation, profit, &c., &c.; all this at present is really of the nature of
an encumbrance to me; which I study, not without success, to sweep
almost altogether out of my head. One good is still possible to me in
Life, one only: To screw a little more work out of myself, my miserable,
despicable, yet living, acting, and so far imperial and celestial _self;_
and this, God knows, is difficulty enough without any foreign one!
You ask after _Cromwell:_ ask not of him; he is like to drive me mad.
There he lies, shining clear enough to me, nay glowing, or painfully
burning; but far down; sunk under two hundred years of Cant, Oblivion,
Unbelief, and Triviality of every kind: through all which, and to the top
of all which, what mortal industry or energy will avail to raise him! A
thousand times I have rued that my poor activity ever took that
direction. The likelihood still is that I may abandon the task undone. I
have bored through the dreariest mountains of rubbish; I have visited
Naseby Field, and how many other unintelligible fields and places; I
have &c., &c.:--alas, what a talent have I for getting into the Impossible!
Meanwhile my studies still proceed; I even take a ghoulish kind of
pleasure in raking through these old bone-houses and burial-aisles now;
I have the strangest fellowship with that huge Genius of DEATH
(universal president there), and catch sometimes, through some chink
or other, glimpses into blessed ulterior regions,--blessed, but as yet

altogether _silent._ There is no use of writing of things past, unless
they can be made in fact things present: not yesterday at all, but simply
today and what it holds of fulfilment and of promises is _ours:_ the
dead ought to bury their dead, ought they not? In short, I am very
unfortunate, and deserve your prayers,--in a quiet kind of way! If you
lose tidings of me altogether, and never hear of me more,--consider
simply that I have gone to my natal element, that the Mud Nymphs
have sucked me in; as they have done several in their time!
Sterling was here about the time your Letters to him came: your
American reprint of his pieces was naturally gratifying him much.* He
seems getting yearly more restless; necessitated to find an outlet for
himself, unable as yet to do it well. I think he will now write Review
articles for a while; which craft is really, perhaps, the one he is fittest
for hitherto. I love Sterling: a radiant creature; but very
restless;--incapable either of rest or of effectual motion: aurora borealis
and sheet lightning; which if it could but concentrate itself, as I [say]
always--!--We had much talk; but, on the whole, even his talk is not
much better for me than silence at present. _Me miserum!_
-------- * "The Poetical Works of John Sterling," Philadelphia, 1842.
--------
Directly about the time of Sterling's departure came Alcott, some two
weeks after I had heard of his arrival on these shores. He has been
twice here, at considerable length; the second time, all night. He is a
genial, innocent, simple-hearted man, of much natural intelligence and
goodness, with an air of rusticity, veracity, and dignity withal, which in
many ways appeals to one. The good Alcott: with his long, lean face
and figure, with his gray worn temples and mild radiant eyes; all bent
on saving the world by a return to acorns and the golden age; he comes
before one like a kind of venerable Don Quixote, whom nobody can
even laugh at without loving!....
My poor Wife is still weak, overshadowed with sorrow: her loss is
great, the loss almost as of the