"Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a peasant saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of earth, like a light shining in great darkness."
Sartor Resartus has long taken its place among the greatest prose works of the nineteenth century, and it is a strange commentary on this mandate to us all to "produce, produce!" to find that for eleven years Carlyle could find no publisher who would give it in book form to the world!
It is a solemn reflection to think that there may be many books of eloquence and splendour that have never seen the light of publicity. Publishers concern themselves less with what is finely written than with what will best sell; and in their defence it may be acceded that some of the masterpieces of literature have at their first appearance before the world fallen dead from the press.
The first edition of FitzGerald's Omar Khayyám, issued at one shilling, was totally unrecognised, and copies of it might have been bought for twopence in the trays and boxes of trash on the pavement outside old bookshops!
But if once a work is published, time will with almost irresistible force place it ultimately in the station it deserves in the literature of the world.
Instant acceptance not seldom preludes final rejection. In the middle of the last century Martin Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy garnished every drawing-room table; and now, where is it?
Your loving old
G.P.
P.S.—Do not look for the passage on Marie Antoinette in the French Revolution, for you will not find it there, but in the "Essay of the Diamond Necklace."