will you write,
then? Consider my frightful outlook with a Course of Lectures to
give "On Heroes and Hero-worship,"--from Odin to Robert Burns!
My Wife salutes you all. Good be in the Concord Household!
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
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* There is an account of Heraud by an admirer in the _Dial_ for
October, 1842, p. 241. It contrasts curiously and instructively
with Carlyle's sketch.
--------
LIII. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 21 April, 1840
My Dear Friend,--Three weeks ago I received a letter from you
following another in the week before, which I should have
immediately acknowledged but that I was promised a private
opportunity for the 25th of April, by which time I promised
myself to send you sheets of accounts. I had also written you
from New York about the middle of March. But now I suppose Mr.
Grinnell--a hospitable, humane, modest gentleman in Providence,
R.I., a merchant, much beloved by all his townspeople, and,
though no scholar, yet very fond of silently listening to such--
is packing his trunk to go to England. He offered to carry any
letters for me, and as at his house during my visit to Providence
I was eagerly catechised by all comers concerning Thomas Carlyle,
I thought it behoved me to offer him for his brethren, sisters,
and companions' sake, the joy of seeing the living face of that
wonderful man. Let him see thy face and pass on his way. I who
cannot see it, nor hear the voice that comes forth of it, must
even betake me to this paper to repay the best I can the love of
the Scottish man, and in the hope to deserve more.
Your letter announces _Wilhelm Meister,_ Sterling's _Poems,_ and
_Chartism._ I am very rich, or am to be. But Kennet is no
Mercury. _Wilhelm_ and _Sterling_ have not yet made their
appearance, though diligently inquired after by Stearns Wheeler
and me. Little and Brown now correspond with Longman, not with
Kennet. But they will come soon, perhaps are already arrived.
_Chartism_ arrived at Concord by mail not until one of the last
days of March, though dated by you, I think, the 21st of
December. I returned home on the 3d of April, and found it
waiting. All that is therein said is well and strongly said, and
as the words are barbed and feathered the memory of men cannot
choose but carry them whithersoever men go. And yet I thought
the book itself instructed me to look for more. We seemed to
have a right to an answer less concise to a q
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