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T. Carlyle
I will apprise Sterling before long: he is at Falmouth, and well; urging me much to start a Periodical here!
Gambardella promises to become a real Painter; there is a glow of real fire in the wild southern man: next to no articulate intellect or the like, but of inarticulate much, or I mistake. He has tried to paint me for you; but cannot, he says!
--------- * “Life of Jean Paul Frederic Richter. Compiled from various Sources. Together with his Autobiography. Translated from the German.” In Two Volumes. Boston, 1842. This book, which is one of the best in English concerning Jean Paul, was the work of the late Mrs. Thomas (Eliza Buckminster) Lee.
** In the Dial, for January, 1842, is an article by Miss Fuller on “Bettine Brentano and Gunderode,”—a decided weariness. The Canoness Gunderode was a friend of Bettine’s, older and not much wiser than herself. ---------
LXXXI. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 11 March, 1848
Dear Emerson,—I know not whose turn it is to write; though a suspicion has long attended me that it was yours, and above all an indisputable wish that you would do it: but this present is a cursory line, all on business,—and as usual all on business of my own.
I have finished a Book, and just set the Printer to it; one solid volume (rather bigger than one of the French Revolution Volumes, as I compute); it is a somewhat fiery and questionable “Tract for the Times,” not by a Puseyite, which the terrible aspect of things here has forced from me,—I know not whether as preliminary to Oliver or not; but it had gradually grown to be the preliminary of anything possible for me: so there it is written; and I am a very sick, but withal a comparatively very free man. The Title of the thing is to be Past and Present: it is divided into Four Books, “Book I. Proem,” “Book II. The Ancient Monk,” “Book III. The Modern Worker,” and “Book IV. Horoscope” (or some such thing):—the size of it I guessed at above.
The practical business, accordingly, is: How to cut out that New York scoundrel, who fancies that because there is no gallows it is permitted to steal? I have a distinct desire to do that;— altogether apart from the money to be gained thereby. A friend’s goodness ought not to be frustrated by a scoundrel destitute of gallows.—You told me long since how to do the operation; and here, according to the best way I had of fitting your scheme into my materials, is my way of attempting it.
