Teufelsdroeckh without something of his personality, was it not to
insure both of entire misapprehension? Now for Biography, had it been
otherwise admissible, there were no adequate documents, no hope of
obtaining such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special despair.
Thus did the Editor see himself, for the while, shut out from all
public utterance of these extraordinary Doctrines, and constrained to
revolve them, not without disquietude, in the dark depths of his own
mind.

So had it lasted for some months; and now the Volume on Clothes, read
and again read, was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the
personality of its Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of
all that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic;
whereby the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed
discontent,--when altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from Herr
Hofrath Heuschrecke, our Professor's chief friend and associate in
Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously corresponded. The
Hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on
the 'agitation and attention' which the Philosophy of Clothes was
exciting in its own German Republic of Letters; on the deep
significance and tendency of his Friend's Volume; and then, at length,
with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of conveying
'some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and through England to
the distant West': a work on Professor Teufelsdroeckh 'were undoubtedly
welcome to the _Family_, the _National_, or any other of those
patriotic _Libraries_, at present the glory of British Literature';
might work revolutions in Thought; and so forth;--in conclusion,
intimating not obscurely, that should the present Editor feel disposed
to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdroeckh, he, Hofrath Heuschrecke,
had it in his power to furnish the requisite Documents.

As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporating, but
would not crystallise, instantly when the wire or other fixed
substance is introduced, crystallisation commences, and rapidly
proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind
and this offer of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution and
discontinuity; like united itself with like in definite arrangement:
and soon either in actual vision and possession, or in fixed
reasonable hope, the image of the whole Enterprise had shaped itself,
so to speak, into a solid mass. Cauti