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

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 316 pages of information about The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I.

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

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 316 pages of information about The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I.
I regret exceedingly the printer’s blunder about the numbering the Books in the volumes, but he had warranted me in a literal, punctual reprint of the copy without its leaving his office, and I trusted him.  I am told there are many errors.  I am going to see for myself.  I have filled my paper, and not yet said a word of how many things.  You tell me how ill was Mrs. C., and you do not tell me that she is well again.  But I see plainly that I must take speedily another sheet.  I love you always.

—­R.W.  Emerson

XXI.  Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 12 March, 1838

My Dear Friend,—­Here in a bookseller’s shop I have secured a stool and corner to say a swift benison.  Mr. Bancroft told me that the presence of English Lord Gosford in town would give me a safe conveyance of pamphlets to you, so I send some Orations of which you said so kind and cheering words.  Give them to any one who will read them.  I have written names in three.  You have, I hope, got the letter sent nearly a month ago, giving account of our reprint of the French Revolution, and have received a copy of the same.  I learn from the bookseller today that six hundred and fifty copies are sold, and the book continues to sell.  So I hope that our settlement at the end of six months will be final, or nearly so.

I had nearly closed my agreement the other day with a publisher for the emission of Carlyle’s Miscellanies, when just in the last hour comes word from E.G.  Loring that he has an authentic catalogue from the Bard himself.  Now I have that, and could wish Loring had communicated his plan to me at first, or that I had bad wit enough to have undertaken this matter long ago and conferred with you.  I designed nothing for you or your friends; but merely a lucrative book for our daily market that would have yielded a pecuniary compensation to you, such as we are all bound to make, and have bought our Socrates a cloak.  Loring contemplated something quite different,—­a “Complete Works,” etc.,—­and now clamors for the same thing, and I do not know but I shall have to gratify him and others at the risk of injury to this my vulgar hope of dollars,—­that innate idea of the American mind.  This I shall settle in a few days.  No copyright can be secured here for an English book unless it contain original matter:  But my moments are going, and I can only promise to write you quickly, at home and at leisure, for I have just been reading the History again with many, many thoughts, and I revere, wonder at, and love you.

—­R.  Waldo Emerson

XXII.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 16 March, 1838

My Dear Emerson,—­Your letter through Sumner was sent by him from Paris about a month ago; the man himself has not yet made his appearance, or been heard of in these parts:  he shall be very welcome to me, arrive when he will.  The February letter came yesterday, by direct conveyance from Dartmouth.  I answer it today rather than tomorrow; I may not for long have a day freer than this. Fronte capillata, post est occasio calva: true either in Latin or English!

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The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.