The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I LIV. Emerson to Carlyle
by John Stuart Mill
Concord, 30 June, 1840
My Dear Carlyle,--Since I wrote a couple of letters to you,--I
know not exactly when, but in near succession many weeks ago,--
there has come to me Wilhelm Meister in three volumes, goodly
to see, good to read,--indeed quite irresistible;--for though I
thought I knew it all, I began at the beginning and read to the
end of the Apprenticeship, and no doubt shall despatch the
Travels, on the earliest holiday. My conclusions and
inferences therefrom I will spare you now, since I appended them
to a piece I had been copying fairly for Margaret Fuller's
Dial,--"Thoughts on Modern Literature," and which is the
substance of a lecture in my last winter's course. But I learn
that my paper is crowded out of the first Number, and is not to
appear until October. I will not reckon the accidents that
threaten the ghost of an article through three months of pre-
existence! Meantime, I rest your glad debtor for the good book.
With it came Sterling's Poems, which, in the interim, I have
acknowledged in a letter to him. Sumner has since brought me a
gay letter from yourself, concerning, in part, Landor and Heraud;
in which as I know justice is not done to the one I suppose it is
not done to the other. But Heraud I give up freely to your
tender mercies: I have no wish to save him. Landor can be shorn
of all that is false and foolish, and yet leave a great deal for
me to admire. Many years ago I have read a hundred fine
memorable things in the Imaginary Conversations, though I know
well the faults of that book, and the Pericles and Aspasia
within two years has given me delight. I was introduced to the
man Landor when I was in Florence, and he was very kind to me in
answering a multitude of questions. His speech, I remember, was
below his writing. I love the rich variety of his mind, his
proud taste, his penetrating glances, and the poetic loftiness of
his sentiment, which rises now and then to the meridian, though
with the flight, I own, rather of a rocket than an orb, and
terminated sometimes by a sudden tumble. I suspect you of very
short and dashing reading in his books; and yet I should think
you would like him,--both of you such glorious haters of cant.
Forgive me, I have put you two together twenty times in my
thought as the only writers who have the old briskness and
vivacity. But you must leave me to my bad taste and my perverse
and whimsical combinations.
I have written to Mr. Milnes who sent me by Sumner a copy of his
article with a note. I addressed my letter to him at "London,"--
no more. Will it ever reach him? I told him that if I should
print more he would find me worse than ever with my rash,
unwhipped generalization. For my journals, which I dot here at
home day by day, are full of disjointed dreams, audacities,
unsystematic irresponsible lampoons of systems, and all manner of
rambling reveries, the poor drupes and berries I find in my
basket after endless and aimless rambles in woods and pastures.
I ask constantly of all men whether life may not be poetic as
well as stupid?
I shall try and persuade Mr. Calvert, who has sent to me for a
letter to you, to find room in his trunk for a poor lithograph
portrait of our Concord "Battle-field," so called, and village,
that you may see the faint effigy of the fields and houses in
which we walk and love you. The view includes my Grandfather's
house (under the trees near the Monument), in which I lived for a
time until I married and bought my present house, which is not in
the scope of this drawing. I will roll up two of them, and, as
Sterling seems to be more nomadic than you, I beg you will send
him also this particle of foreign parts.
With this, or presently after it, I shall send a copy of the
Dial. It is not yet much; indeed, though no copy has come to
me, I know it is far short of what it should be, for they have
suffered puffs and dulness to creep in for the sake of the
complement of pages; but it is better than anything we had; and
I have some poetry communicated to me for the next number which I
wish Sterling and Milnes to see. In this number what say you to
the Elegy written by a youth who grew up in this town and lives
near me,--Henry Thoreau? A criticism on Persius is his also.
From the papers of my brother Charles, I gave them the fragments
on Homer, Shakespeare, Burke: and my brother Edward wrote the
little Farewell, when last he left his home. The Address of
the Editors to the Readers is all the prose that is mine, and
whether they have printed a few verses for me I do not know. I
am daily expecting an account for you from Little and Brown.
They promised it at this time. It will speedily follow this
sheet, if it do not accompany it. But I am determined, if I
can, to send one letter which is not on business. Send me
some word of the Lectures. I have yet seen only the initial
notices. Surely you will send me some time the D'Orsay portrait.
Sumner thinks Mrs. Carlyle was very well when he saw her last,
which makes me glad.--I wish you both to love me, as I am
affectionately Yours,
