SKETCH OF CARLYLE

LETTER TO R. W. EMERSON

From 'Memoirs': Paris, ----, 1846

I enjoyed the time extremely [in London]. I find myself much in my
element in European society. It does not indeed come up to my ideal,
but so many of the incumbrances are cleared away that used to weary me
in America, that I can enjoy a freer play of faculty, and feel, if not
like a bird in the air, at least as easy as a fish in water....

Of the people I saw in London, you will wish me to speak first of the
Carlyles. Mr. Carlyle came to see me at once, and appointed an evening
to be passed at their house. That first time I was delighted with him.
He was in a very sweet humor,--full of wit and pathos, without being
overbearing or oppressive. I was quite carried away with the rich flow
of his discourse; and the hearty, noble earnestness of his personal
being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing, before I
wearied of it. I admired his Scotch, his way of singing his great full
sentences, so that each one was like the stanza of a narrative ballad.
He let me talk, now and then, enough to free my lungs and change my
position, so that I did not get tired. That evening he talked of the
present state of things in England, giving light, witty sketches of
the men of the day, fanatics and others, and some sweet, homely
stories he told of things he had known of the Scotch peasantry. Of you
he spoke with hearty kindness; and he told with beautiful feeling a
story of some poor farmer or artisan in the country, who on Sunday
lays aside the cark and care of that dirty English world, and sits
reading the 'Essays' and looking upon the sea....

The second time, Mr. Carlyle had a dinner party, at which was a witty,
French, flippant sort of a man, named Lewes, author of a 'History of
Philosophy,' and now writing a life of Goethe, a task for which he
must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him.
But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt
Carlyle a little,--of which one was glad, for that night he was in his
acrid mood; and though much more brilliant than on the former evening,
grew wearisome to me, who disclaimed and rejected almost everything he
said....

Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings,
his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced
with steady eyes. He does not converse, only harangues. It is the
usual misfortune of such marke