“How I lived?” writes he once:  “Friend, hast thou considered the ’rugged all-nourishing Earth,’ as Sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the house-top, much more her darling, man?  While thou stirrest and livest, thou hast a probability of victual.  My breakfast of tea has been cooked by a Tartar woman, with water of the Amur, who wiped her earthen kettle with a horse-tail.  I have roasted wild eggs in the sand of Sahara; I have awakened in Paris Estrapades and Vienna Malzleins, with no prospect of breakfast beyond elemental liquid.  That I had my Living to seek saved me from Dying,—­by suicide.  In our busy Europe, is there not an everlasting demand for Intellect, in the chemical, mechanical, political, religious, educational, commercial departments?  In Pagan countries, cannot one write Fetishes?  Living!  Little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive Soul; how, as with its little finger, it can create provision enough for the body (of a Philosopher); and then, as with both hands, create quite other than provision; namely, spectres to torment itself withal.”

Poor Teufelsdrockh!  Flying with Hunger always parallel to him; and a whole Infernal Chase in his rear; so that the countenance of Hunger is comparatively a friend’s!  Thus must he, in the temper of ancient Cain, or of the modern Wandering Jew,—­save only that he feels himself not guilty and but suffering the pains of guilt,—­wend to and fro with aimless speed.  Thus must he, over the whole surface of the Earth (by footprints), write his Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh; even as the great Goethe, in passionate words, had to write his Sorrows of Werter, before the spirit freed herself, and he could become a Man.  Vain truly is the hope of your swiftest Runner to escape “from his own Shadow”!  Nevertheless, in these sick days, when the Born of Heaven first descries himself (about the age of twenty) in a world such as ours, richer than usual in two things, in Truths grown obsolete, and Trades grown obsolete,—­what can the fool think but that it is all a Den of Lies, wherein whoso will not speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle and despair?  Whereby it happens that, for your nobler minds, the publishing of some such Work of Art, in one or the other dialect, becomes almost a necessity.  For what is it properly but an Altercation with the Devil, before you begin honestly Fighting him?  Your Byron publishes his Sorrows of Lord George, in verse and in prose, and copiously otherwise:  your Bonaparte represents his Sorrows of Napoleon Opera, in an all-too stupendous style; with music of cannon-volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are the fires of Conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of embattled Hosts and the sound of falling Cities.—­Happier is he who, like our Clothes-Philosopher, can write such matter, since it must be written, on the insensible Earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also survive the writing thereof!