I have company sometimes, but generally prefer solitude, and a dialogue with the trees and clouds.  Alas, the speech of men, especially the witty-speech of men, is oftentimes afflictive to me:  “in the wide Earth,” I say sometimes with a sigh, “there is none but Emerson that responds to me with a voice wholly human!” All “Literature” too is become I cannot tell you how contemptible to me.  On the whole, one’s blessedness is to do as Oliver:  Work while the sun is up; work well as if Eternities depended on it; and then sleep,—­if under the guano-mountains of Human Stupor, if handsomely forgotten all at once, that latter is the handsome thing!  I have often thought what W. Shakespeare would say, were he to sit one night in a “Shakespeare Society,” and listen to the empty twaddle and other long-eared melody about him there!—­Adieu, my Friend.  I fear I have forgotten many things:  at all events, I have forgotten the inexorable flight of the minutes, which are numbered out to me at present.

Ever yours,
        T. Carlyle

I think I recognize the Inspector of Wild-beasts, in the little Boston Newspaper you send!* A small hatchet-faced, gray-eyed, good-humored Inspector, who came with a Translated Lafontaine; and took his survey not without satisfaction?  Comfortable too how rapidly he fathomed the animal, having just poked him up a little. Ach Gott! Man is forever interesting to men;—­and all men, even Hatchet-faces, are globular and complete!

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* This probably refers to a letter of Mr. Elizur Wright’s,
describing a visit to Carlyle.
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CIX.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 30 April, 1846

Dear Emerson,—­Here is the Photograph going off for you by Bookseller Munroe of Boston; the Sheets of Cromwell, all the second and part of the last volume, are to go direct to New York:  both Parcels by the Putnam conveyance.  For Putnam has been here since I wrote, making large confirmations of what you conveyed to me; and large Proposals of an ulterior scope,—­which will involve you in new trouble for me.  But it is trouble you will not grudge, inasmuch as it promises to have some issue of moment; at all events the negotiation is laid entirely into your hands:  therefore I must with all despatch explain to you the essentials of it, that you may know what Wiley says when he writes to you from New York.

Mr. Putnam, really a very intelligent, modest, and reputable-looking little fellow, got at last to sight of me about a week ago;—­explained with much earnestness how the whole origin of the mistake about the First Edition of Cromwell had lain with Chapman, my own Bookseller (which in fact I had already perceived to be the case); and farther set forth, what was much more important, that he and his Partner were, and had been, ready and desirous to make good said mistake, in the amplest, most