The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I · Thomas Carlyle
XLIV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 4 July, 1839 I hear tonight, O excellent man! that, unless I send a letter to Boston tomorrow with the peep of day, it will miss the Liverpool steamer, which sails earlier than I dreamed of. O foolish Steamer! I am not ready to write. The facts are not yet ripe, though on the turn of the blush. Couldst not wait a little? Hurry is for slaves;--and Aristotle, if I rightly remember only that little from my college lesson, affirmed that the high-minded man never walked fast. O foolish Steamer! wait but a week, and we will style thee Megalopsyche, and hang thee by the Argo in the stars. Meantime I will not deny the dear and admirable man the fragments of intelligence I have. Be it known unto you then, Thomas Carlyle, that I received yesterday morning your letter by the "Liverpool" with great contentment of heart and mind, in all respects, saving that the American Hegira, so often predicted on your side and prayed on ours, is treated with a most unbecoming levity and oblivion; and, moreover, that you do not seem to have received all the letters I seem to have sent. With the letter came the proof-sheet safe, and shall be presently exhibited to Little and Brown. You must have already the result of our first colloquy on that matter. I can now bring the thing nearer to certainty. But you must print their names as before advised on the title-page.
Nearly four weeks ago Ellis sent me the noble Italian print for my wife.* She is in Boston at this time, and I believe will be glad that I have written without her aid or word this time, for she was so deeply pleased with the gift that she said she never could write to you. It came timely to me at least. It is a right morning thought, full of health and flowing genius, and I rejoice in it. It is fitly framed and tomorrow is to be hung in the parlor. -------- * Morghen's engraving of Guido's Aurora. -------- Our Munroe's press, you must believe, was of Aristotle's category of the high-minded and slow. Chiding would do no good. They still said, "We have but one copy, and so but one hand at work"! At last, on the 1st of July, the book appeared in the market, but does not come from the binder fast enough to supply the instant demand; and therefore your two hundred and sixty copies cannot part from New York until the 20th of July. They will be on board the London packet which sails on that day. The publisher has his instructions to bind the volumes to match the old ones. Our year since the publication of the Vols. I. and II. is just complete, and I have set the man on the account, but doubt if I get it before twelve or fourteen days. All the edition is gone except forty copies, he told me; and asked me if I would not begin to print a small edition of this First Series, five hundred, as we have five hundred of the new Series too many, with that view. But I am now so old a fox that I suspend majestically my answer until I have his account. For on the 21st of July I am to pay $462 for the paper of this new book: and by and by the printer's bill,--whose amount I do not yet know; and it is better to be "slow and high-minded" a little more, since we have been so much, and not go deeper into these men's debt until we have tasted somewhat of their credit. We are to get, as you know, by contract, near a thousand dollars from these first two volumes; yet a month ago I was forced to borrow two hundred dollars for you on interest, such advances had the account required. But the coming account will enlighten us all.
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