t reluctance on the part of the
Fraser people, yet produced no _quarrel_ between them and me, and
they still forward parcels, &c., and are full of civility when I
see them:--so that whether this had any effect or none in their
treatment of Brown and his Bill I never knew; nor indeed, having
as you explained it no concern with Brown's and their affairs,
did I ever happen to inquire. I avoid all Booksellers; see them
rarely, the blockheads; study never to think of them at all.
Book-sales, reputation, profit, &c., &c.; all this at present is
really of the nature of an encumbrance to me; which I study, not
without success, to sweep almost altogether out of my head. One
good is still possible to me in Life, one only: To screw a
little more work out of myself, my miserable, despicable, yet
living, acting, and so far imperial and celestial _self;_ and
this, God knows, is difficulty enough without any foreign one!

You ask after _Cromwell:_ ask not of him; he is like to drive
me mad. There he lies, shining clear enough to me, nay glowing,
or painfully burning; but far down; sunk under two hundred
years of Cant, Oblivion, Unbelief, and Triviality of every kind:
through all which, and to the top of all which, what mortal
industry or energy will avail to raise him! A thousand times I
have rued that my poor activity ever took that direction. The
likelihood still is that I may abandon the task undone. I have
bored through the dreariest mountains of rubbish; I have visited
Naseby Field, and how many other unintelligible fields and
places; I have &c., &c.:--alas, what a talent have I for getting
into the Impossible! Meanwhile my studies still proceed; I even
take a ghoulish kind of pleasure in raking through these old
bone-houses and burial-aisles now; I have the strangest
fellowship with that huge Genius of DEATH (universal president
there), and catch sometimes, through some chink or other,
glimpses into blessed _ulterior_ regions,--blessed, but as yet
altogether _silent._ There is no use of writing of things past,
unless they can be made in fact things present: not yesterday at
all, but simply today and what it holds of fulfilment and of
promises is _ours:_ the dead ought to bury their dead, ought
they not? In short, I am very unfortunate, and deserve your
prayers,--in a quiet kind of way! If you lose tidings of me
altogether, and never hear of me more,--consider simply that I
have gone to my natal elem