critical, &c., to the _Sartor._ I must go to
Boston and challenge him. Once when I asked him, he seemed
willing to assume it. No more of accounts tonight.

I send you by this ship a volume of translations from Dante, by
Doctor Parsons of Boston, a practising dentist and the son of a
dentist. It is his gift to you. Lately went Henry James to
you with a letter from me. He is a fine companion from his
intelligence, valor, and worth, and is and has been a very
beneficent person as I learn. He carried a volume of poems from
my friend and nearest neighbor, W. Ellery Channing, whereof give
me, I pray you, the best opinion you can. I am determined he
shall be a poet, and you must find him such.* I have too many
things to tell you to begin at the end of this sheet, which after
all this waiting I have been compelled to scribble in a corner,
with company waiting for me. Send me instant word of yourself
if you love me, and of those whom you love, and so God keep you
and yours.

--R. Waldo Emerson

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* In the second number of the _Dial,_ in October, 1840, Emerson
had published, under the title of "New Poetry," an article warmly
commending Mr. Channing's then unpublished poems.
----------

LXXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 31 October, 1843

My Dear Emerson,--It is a long weary time since I have had the
satisfaction of the smallest dialogue with you. The blame is all
my own; the reasons would be difficult to give,--alas, they are
properly no-reasons, children not of _Something,_ but of mere
Idleness, Confusion, Inaction, Inarticulation, of _Nothing_ in
short! Let us leave them there, and profit by the hour which
yet is.

I ran away from London into Bristol and, South Wales, when the
heats grew violent, at the end of June. South Wales, North
Wales, Lancashire, Scotland: I roved about everywhere seeking
some Jacob's-pillow on which to lay my head, and dream of things
heavenly;--yes, that at bottom was my modest prayer, though I
disguised it from myself and the result was, I could find no
pillow at all; but sank into ever meaner restlessness, blacker
and blacker biliary gloom, and returned in the beginning of
September thoroughly eclipsed and worn out, probably the weariest
of all men living under the sky. Sure enough I have a fatal
talent of converting all Nature into Preternaturalism for myself:
a truly horrible Phantasm-Reality it is to me; what