You make me happy with your loving thoughts and meanings towards me. I have always thanked the good star which made us early neighbors, in some sort, in time and space. And the beam is twice warmed by your vigorous good-will, which has steadily kept clear, kind eyes on me.
———— * From an imperfect rough draft. ————
It is good to be born in good air and outlook, and not less with a civilization, that is, with one poet still living in the world. O yes, and I feel all the solemnity and vital cheer of the benefit.—If only the mountains of water and of land and the steeper mountains of blighted and apathized moods would permit a word to pass now and then. It is very fine for you to tax yourself with all those incompatibilities. I like that Thor should make comets and thunder, as well as Iduna apples, or Heimdal his rainbow bridge, and your wrath and satire has all too much realism in it, than that we can flatter ourselves by disposing of you as partial and heated. Nor is it your fault that you do a hero's work, nor do we love you less if we cannot help you in it. Pity me, O strong man! I am of a puny constitution half made up, and as I from childhood knew,—not a poet but a lover of poetry, and poets, and merely serving as writer, &c. in this empty America, before the arrival of the poets. You must not misconstrue my silences, but thank me for them all, as a true homage to your diligence which I love to defend…
She* had such reverence and love for Landor that I do not know but at any moment in her natural life she would have sunk in the sea, for an ode from him; and now this most propitious cake is offered to her Manes. The loss of the notes of Browning and of Mazzini, which you confirm, astonishes me.
————- * Margaret Fuller. The break in continuity is in the rough draft. ————-
CL. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 25 June, 1852
Dear Emerson…… You are a born enthusiast, as quiet as you are; and it will continue so, at intervals, to the end. I admire your sly low-voiced sarcasm too;—in short, I love the sternly-gentle close-buttoned man very well, as I have always done, and intend to continue doing!—Pray observe therefore, and lay it to heart as a practical fact, that you are bound to persevere in writing to me from time to time; and will never get it given up, how sulky soever you grow, while we both remain in this world. Do not I very well understand all that you say about "apathized moods," &c.? The gloom of approaching old age (approaching, nay arriving with some of us) is very considerable upon a man; and on the whole one contrives to take the very ugliest view, now and then, of all beautifulest things; and to shut one's lips with a kind of grim defiance, a kind of imperial sorrow which is almost like felicity,—so completely and composedly wretched, one is equal to the very gods! These too are necessary, moods to a man. But the Earth withal is verdant, sun-beshone; and the Son of Adam has his place on it, and his tasks and recompenses in it, to the close;—as one remembers by and by, too. On the whole, I am infinitely solitary; but not more heavy laden than I have all along been, perhaps rather less so; I could fancy even old age to be beautiful, and to have a real divineness: for the rest, I say always, I cannot part with you, however it go; and so, in brief, you must get into the way of holding yourself obliged as formerly to a kind of dialogue with me; and speak, on paper since not otherwise, the oftenest you can. Let that be a point settled.
I am not writing on Frederic the Great; nor at all practically contemplating to do so. But, being in a reading mood after those furious Pamphlets (which have procured me showers of abuse from all the extensive genus Stupid in this country, and not done me any other mischief, but perhaps good), and not being capable of reading except in a train and about some object of interest to me,—I took to reading, near a year ago, about Frederick, as I had twice in my life done before; and have, in a loose way, tumbled up an immense quantity of shot rubbish on that field, and still continue. Not with much decisive approach to Frederick's self, I am still afraid! The man looks brilliant and noble to me; but how love him, or the sad wreck he lived and worked in? I do not even yet see him clearly; and to try making others see him—?—Yet Voltaire and he are the celestial element of the poor Eighteenth Century; poor souls. I confess also to a real love for Frederick's dumb followers: the Prussian Soldiery.—I often say to myself, "Were not here the real priests and virtuous martyrs of that loud-babbling rotten generation!" And so it goes on; when to end, or in what to end, God knows.
Adieu, dear Emerson. A blockhead (by mistake) has been let in, and has consumed all my time. Good be ever with you and yours.