My Dear Carlyle,—­I received from you through Mr. Chapman, just before Christmas, the last rich instalment of your Library Edition; viz.  Vols.  IV.-X. Life of Friedrich; Vols.  L-III. Translations from German; one volume General Index; eleven volumes in all,—­and now my stately collection is perfect.  Perfect too is your Victory.  But I clatter my chains with joy, as I did forty years ago, at your earliest gifts.  Happy man you should be, to whom the Heaven has allowed such masterly completion.  You shall wear your crown at the Pan-Saxon Games with no equal or approaching competitor in sight,—­well earned by genius and exhaustive labor, and with nations for your pupils and praisers.  I count it my eminent happiness to have been so nearly your contemporary, and your friend,—­permitted to detect by its rare light the new star almost before the Easterners had seen it, and to have found no disappointment, but joyful confirmation rather, in coming close to its orb.  Rest, rest, now for a time; I pray you, and be thankful.  Meantime, I know well all your perversities, and give them a wide berth.  They seriously annoy a great many worthy readers, nations of readers sometimes,—­but I heap them all as style, and read them as I read Rabelais’s gigantic humors which astonish in order to force attention, and by and by are seen to be the rhetoric of a highly virtuous gentleman who swears. I have been quite too busy with fast succeeding jobs (I may well call them), in the last year, to have read much in these proud books; but I begin to see daylight coming through my fogs, and I have not lost in the least my appetite for reading,—­resolve, with my old Harvard professor, “to retire and read the Authors.”

I am impatient to deserve your grand Volumes by reading in them with all the haughty airs that belong to seventy years which I shall count if I live till May, 1873.  Meantime I see well that you have lost none of your power, and I wish that you would let in some good Eckermann to dine with you day by day, and competent to report your opinions,—­for you can speak as well as you can write, and what the world to come should know...

Affectionately,
             R.W.  Emerson

CXCI.  Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 2 April, 1872

Dear Emerson,—­I am covered with confusion, astonishment, and shame to think of my long silence.  You wrote me two beautiful letters; none friendlier, brighter, wiser could come to me from any quarter of the world; and I have not answered even by a sign.  Promptly and punctually my poor heart did answer; but to do it outwardly,—­as if there had lain some enchantment on me,—­ was beyond my power.  The one thing I can say in excuse or explanation is, that ever since Summer last, I have been in an unusually dyspeptic, peaking, pining, and dispirited condition; and have no right hand of my own for writing, nor, for several months, had any other that was altogether agreeable to me.  But in fine I don’t believe you lay any blame or anger on me at all; and I will say no more about it, but only try to repent and do better next time.