Long before this time you ought to have received from John Chapman a copy of Emerson’s Poems, so called, which he was directed to send you.  Poor man, you need not open them.  I know all you can say.  I printed them, not because I was deceived into a belief that they were poems, but because of the softness or hardness of heart of many friends here who have made it a point to have them circulated.* Once having set out to print, I obeyed the solicitations of John Chapman, of an ill-omened street in London, to send him the book in manuscript, for the better securing of copyright.  In printing them here I have corrected the most unpardonable negligences, which negligences must be all stereotyped under his fair London covers and gilt paper to the eyes of any curious London reader; from which recollection I strive to turn away.

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* In the rough draft the following sentence comes in here “I
reckon myself a good beginning of a poet, very urgent and decided
in my bent, and in some coming millennium I shall yet sing.”
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Little and Brown have just rendered me an account, by which it appears that we are not quite so well off as was thought last summer, when they said they had sold at auction the balance of your books which had been lying unsold.  It seems now that the books supposed to be sold were not all taken, and are returned to them; one hundred Chartism, sixty-three Past and Present. Yet we are to have some eighty-three dollars ($83.68), which you shall probably have by the next steamer.

Yours affectionately,
                 R.W.  Emerson

CXVIII.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 2 March, 1847

Dear Emerson,—­The Steamer goes tomorrow; I must, though in a very dim condition, have a little word for you conveyed by it.  In the miscellaneous maw of that strange Steamer shall lie, among other things, a friendly word!

Your very kind Letter lay waiting me here, some ten days ago; doubly welcome, after so long a silence.  We had been in Hampshire, with the Barings, where we were last year;—­some four weeks or more; totally idle:  our winter had been, and indeed still is, unusually severe; my Wife’s health in consequence was sadly deranged; but this idleness, these Isle-of-Wight sea-breezes, have brought matters well round again; so we cannot grudge the visit or the idleness, which otherwise too might have its uses.  Alas, at this time my normal state is to be altogether idle, to look out upon a very lonely universe, full of grim sorrow, full of splendor too; and not to know at all, for the moment, on what side I am to attack it again!—­I read your Book of Poems all faithfully, at Bay House (our Hampshire quarters); where the obstinate people,—­with whom you are otherwise, in prose, a first favorite,—­foolishly refused to let me read aloud; foolishly, for