The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I | Page 9

else?
You thank me for _Teufelsdrockh;_ how much more ought I to thank you for your hearty,
genuine, though extravagant acknowledgment of it! Blessed is the voice that amid
dispiritment, stupidity, and contradiction proclaims to us, _Euge!_ Nothing ever was
more ungenial than the soil this poor Teufelsdrockhish seed-corn has been thrown on
here; none cries, Good speed to it; the sorriest nettle or hemlock seed, one would think,
had been more welcome. For indeed our British periodical critics, and especially the
public of _Fraser's_ Magazine (which I believe I have now done with), exceed all speech;
require not even contempt, only oblivion. Poor Teufelsdrockh!--Creature of mischance,
miscalculation, and thousand-fold obstruction! Here nevertheless he is, as you see; has
struggled across the Stygian marshes, and now, as a stitched pamphlet "for Friends,"
cannot be burnt or lost before his time. I send you one copy for your own behoof; three
others you yourself can perhaps find fit readers for: as you spoke in the plural number, I
thought there might be three; more would rather surprise me. From the British side of the
water I have met simply one intelligent response,--clear, true, though almost enthusiastic
as your own. My British Friend too is utterly a stranger, whose very name I know not,
who did not print, but only write, and to an unknown third party.* Shall I say then, "In
the mouth of two witnesses"? In any case, God be thanked, I am done with it; can wash
my hands of it, and send it forth; sure that the Devil will get his full share of it, and not a
whit more, clutch as he may. But as for you, my Transoceanic brothers, read this
earnestly, for it was earnestly meant and written, and contains no voluntary falsehood of
mine. For the rest, if you dislike it, say that I wrote it four years ago, and could not now
so write it, and on the whole (as Fritz the Only said) "will do better another time." With
regard to style and so forth, what you call your "saucy" objections are not only most
intelligible to me, but welcome and instructive. You say well that I take up that attitude
because I have no known public, am alone under the heavens, speaking into friendly or
unfriendly space; add only, that I will not defend such attitude, that I call it questionable,
tentative, and only the best that I, in these mad times, could conveniently hit upon. For
you are to know, my view is that now at last we have lived to see all manner of Poetics

and Rhetorics and Sermonics, and one may say generally all manner of Pulpits for
addressing mankind from, as good as broken and abolished: alas, yes! if you have any
earnest meaning which demands to be not only listened to, but believed and _done,_ you
cannot (at least I cannot) utter it _there,_ but the sound sticks in my throat, as when a
solemnity were felt to have become a mummery; and so one leaves the pasteboard
coulisses, and three unities, and Blair's Lectures, quite behind; and feels only that there is
_nothing sacred,_ then, but the Speech of Man to believing Men! This, come what will,
was, is, and forever must be _sacred;_ and will one day, doubtless, anew environ itself
with fit modes; with solemnities that are not mummeries. Meanwhile, however, is it not
pitiable? For though Teufelsdrockh exclaims, "Pulpit! canst thou not make a pulpit by
simply _inverting the nearest tub?_" yet, alas! he does not sufficiently reflect that it is
still only a tub, that the most inspired utterance will come from _it,_ inconceivable,
misconceivable, to the million; questionable (not of ascertained significance) even to the
few. Pity us therefore; and with your just shake of the head join a sympathetic, even a
hopeful smile. Since I saw you I have been trying, am still trying, other methods, and
shall surely get nearer the truth, as I honestly strive for it. Meanwhile, I know no method
of much consequence, except that of _believing,_ of being _sincere:_ from Homer and
the Bible down to the poorest Burns's Song, I find no other Art that promises to be
perennial.
--------- * In his Diary, July 26, 1834, Carlyle writes--"In the midst of innumerable
discouragements, all men indifferent or finding fault, let me mention two small
circumstances that are comfortable. The first is a letter from some nameless Irishman in
Cork to another here, (Fraser read it to me without names,) actually containing a true and
one of the friendliest possible recognitions of me. One mortal, then, says I am not utterly
wrong. Blessings on him for it! The second is a letter I got today from Emerson, of
Boston in America; sincere, not baseless,