Sartor Resartus · Thomas Carlyle
APPENDIX.
This questionable little Book was undoubtedly written among the mountain solitudes, in 1831; but, owing to impediments natural and accidental, could not, for seven years more, appear as a Volume in England;--and had at last to clip itself in pieces, and be content to struggle out, bit by bit, in some courageous _Magazine_ that offered. Whereby now, to certain idly curious readers, and even to myself till I make study, the insignificant but at last irritating question, What its real history and chronology are, is, if not insoluble, considerably involved in haze. To the first English Edition, 1838, which an American, or two American had now opened the way for, there was slightingly prefixed, under the title, "_Testimonies of Authors_," some straggle of real documents, which, now that I find it again, sets the matter into clear light and sequence:--and shall here, for removal of idle stumbling-blocks and nugatory guessings from the path of every reader, be reprinted as it stood. (_Author's Note, of_ 1868.)
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.