LXV.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 80 May, 1841

My Dear Friend,—­In my letter written to you on the 1st of May (enclosing a bill of exchange of L100 sterling, which, I hope, arrived safely) I believe I promised to send you by the next steamer an account for April.  But the false tardy Munroe & Co. did not send it to me until one day too late.  Here it is, as they render it, compiled from Little and Brown’s statement and their own.  I have never yet heard whether you have received their Analysis or explanation of the last abstract they drew up of the mutual claims between the great houses of T.C. and R.W.E., and I am impatient to know whether you have caused it to be examined, and whether it was satisfactory.  This new one is based on that, and if that was incorrect, this must be also.  I am daily looking for some letter from you, which is perhaps near at hand.  If you have not written, write me exactly and immediately on this subject, I entreat you.  You will see that in this sheet I am charged with a debt to you of $184.29.  I shall tomorrow morning pay to Mr. James Brown (of Little and Brown), who should be the bearer of this letter, $185.00, which sum he will pay you in its equivalent of English coin.  I give Mr. Brown an introductory letter to you, and you must not let slip the opportunity to make the man explain his own accounts, if any darkness hang on them.  In due time, perhaps, we can send you Munroe, and Nichols also, and so all your factors shall render direct account of themselves to you.  I believe I shall also make Brown the bearer of a little book written some time since by a young friend of mine in a very peculiar frame of mind,—­thought by most persons to be mad,—­and of the publication of which I took the charge.* Mr. Very requested me to send you a copy.—­I had a letter from Sterling, lately, which rejoiced me in all but the dark picture it gave of his health.  I earnestly wish good news of him.  When you see him, show him these poems, and ask him if they have not a grandeur.

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* Essays and Poems, by Jones Very,—­a little volume, the work
of an exquisite spirit.   Some of the poems it contains are as if
written by a George Herbert who had studied Shakespeare, read
Wordsworth, and lived in America.
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When I wrote last, I believe all the sheets of the Six Lectures had not come to me.  They all arrived safely, although the last package not until our American pirated copy was just out of press in New York.  My private reading was not less happy for this robbery whereby the eager public were supplied.  Odin was all new to me; and Mahomet, for the most part; and it was all good to read, abounding in truth and nobleness.  Yet, as I read these pages, I dream that your audience in London are less prepared to hear, than is our New England one.  I judge only from the tone.  I think I know many persons here