Heaven, I am as it were within sight
of land. In two months more, this unblessed Book will be
_finished;_ at Newyearday we begin printing: before the end of
March, the thing is out; and I am a free man! Few happinesses I
have ever known will equal that, as it seems to me. And yet I
ought not to call the poor Book unblessed: no, it has girdled me
round like a panoply these two years; kept me invulnerable,
indifferent, to innumerable things. The poorest man in London
has perhaps been one of the freest: the roaring press of gigs
and gigmen, with their gold blazonry and fierce gig-wheels, have
little incommoded him; they going their way, he going his.--As
for the results of the Book, I can rationally promise myself, on
the economical, pecuniary, or otherwise worldly side, simply
_zero._ It is a Book contradicting all rules of Formalism, that
have not a Reality within them, which so few have;--testifying,
the more quietly the worse, internecine war with Quacks high and
low. My good Brother, who was with me out of Italy in summer,
declared himself shocked, and almost terror-struck: "Jack," I
answered, "innumerable men give their lives cheerfully to defend
Falsehoods and Half-Falsehoods; why should not one writer give
his life cheerfully to say, in plain Scotch-English, in the
hearing of God and man, To me they seem false and half-false? At
all events, thou seest, I cannot help it. It is the nature of
the beast." So that, on the whole, I suppose there is no more
unpromotable, unappointable man now living in England than I.
Literature also, the miscellaneous place of refuge, seems done
here, unless you will take the Devil's wages for it; which one
does not incline to do. A _disjectum membrum;_ cut off from
relations with men? Verily so; and now forty years of age; and
extremely dyspeptical: a hopeless-looking man. Yet full of what
I call desperate-hope! One does verily stand on the Earth, a
Star-dome encompassing one; seemingly accoutred and enlisted and
sent to battle, with rations good, indifferent, or bad,--what can
one do but in the name of Odin, Tuisco, Hertha, Horsa, and
all Saxon and Hebrew Gods, fight it out?--This surely is very
idle talk.

As to the Book, I do say seriously that it is a wild, savage,
ruleless, very bad Book; which even you will not be able to
like; much less any other man. Yet it contains strange things;
sincerities drawn out of the heart of a man very strangely
sit