Emerson - Thoreau Letters (I-VI) The Dial Period
by Henry D. Thoreau
However, there are two or three things in it, as well as names. One of the books of Herodotus is discovered to be out of place. He says something about having sent to Lowell, by the last steamer, a budget of literary news, which he will have communicated to you ere this. Mr. Alcott has a letter from Heraud, and a book written by him, — the Life of Savonarola, — which he wishes to’ have republished here. Mr. Lane will write a notice of it. (The latter says that what is in the New York post office may be directed to Mr. Alcott.) Miss [Elizabeth] Peabody has sent a “Notice to the readers of the Dial,” which is not good.
Mr. Chapin lectured this evening, and so rhetorically that I forgot my duty and heard very little. I find myself better than I have been, and am meditating some other method of paying debts than by lectures and writing, — which will only do to talk about. If anything of that “other” sort should come to your ears in New York, will you remember it for me? Excuse this scrawl, which I have written over the embers in the dining-room. I hope that you live on good terms with yourself and the gods.
Yours in haste, HENRY.
Mr. Lane and his lucubrations proved to be tough subjects, and the next letter has more to say about them and the Dial. He had undertaken to do justice to Mr. Alcott and his books, as may still be read in the pages of that April number of the Transcendentalist quarterly.
VI. THOREAU TO EMERSON.
CONCORD, February 20, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND, — I have read Mr. Lane’s review, and can say, speaking for this world and for fallen man, that “it is good for us.” As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails; but if I go and read elsewhere, I say it is good, — far better than any notice Mr. Alcott has received, or is likely to receive from another quarter. It is at any rate “the other side,” which Boston needs to hear. I do not send it to you, because time is precious, and because I think you would accept it, af ter all. After speaking briefly of the fate of Goethe and Carlyle in their own countries, he says, “To Emerson in his own circle is but slowly accorded a worthy response; and Alcott, almost utterly neglected,” etc. I will strike out what relates to yourself, and, correcting some verbal faults, send the rest to the printer with Lane’s initials.
The catalogue needs amendment, I think. It wants completeness now. It should consist of such books only as they would tell Mr. [F. H.] Hedge and [Theodore] Parker they had got; omitting the Bible, the classics, and much besides, — for there the incompleteness begins. But you will be here in season for this.
It is frequently easy to make Mr. Lane more universal and attractive; to write, for instance, “universal ends” instead of “the universal end,” just as we pull open the petals of a flower with our fingers where they are confined by its own sweets. Also he had better not say “books designed too. This is that abominable dialect. He has just given me a notice of George Bradford’s Fénelon for the Record of the Months, and speaks of extras of the Review and Catalogue, if they are printed, — even a hundred, or thereabouts. How shall this be arranged? Also he wishes to use some manuscripts of his which are in your possession, if you do not. Can I get them?
I think of no news to tell you. It is a serene summer day here, all above the snow.