To Thomas Archer Hirst¹

Dear Tom.

Your note from the weighing machine² reached me this morning. I give you credit for always writing to please yourself as I do at present blessed be the Gods. There you spun like a magnetic bodkin³ on a diamond pivot and pointed at length with your pole hitherward. Don’t you see you dog, though you take pains to deny it that this inconscious avowal is infinitely flattering to me. I wish I had the physical education of Jemmy in my hands, I would extirpate that Rheumatism, root and branch and send him in 6 months home to his father as strong and handsome as I am myself. I’m glad to find your weekly meeting in a healthy condition; there are pretty experiences to be gathered from such contact; your analysis of character proves its reaction upon yourself. This I shall read with much interest. I have read Sartor Resartus⁴ but wont say a word about it till I have more time. I must read Social Aspects⁵ when I go to Halifax, and I can then compare my own convictions with those of the Leader. Originality is all humbug! – I like it myself but I know when I like it – when I’m idle and want excitement, and at such a time a glass of Stumpcross ale and a cigar would supply its place.

‘______ Why should I roam

Who cannot circumnavigate the sea

Of thoughts and things at home’⁶

You see I have been reading Emerson. What a superlative jingle of nonsense those poems are to some people –– to those for instance who have made Pope and Scott their ideal. It requires a wonderful abandonment to get into them. His voice reaches me sometimes dull and feeble as if from the bottom of a mine – I listen and the tones heighten till at length they become strong as the rumble of an earthquake. Emerson has had his own trials, if not how could he write thus.

But man crouches and blushes Absconds and conceals He creepeth and peepeth He palters and steals Infirm melancholy Jealous glancing around An oaf an accomplice He poisons the ground.7

and there the fine antithesis ‘Erect as a sunbeam Upspringeth the palm The elephant browses Undaunted and calm’8

There is a deep apprehensiveness in Each and all. I suppose everybody must have felt the truth of it. I felt it yesterday ‘see’ said a friend ‘that beautiful tuft of brown grass’. Had the surrounding hazels and ferns been away. were the tuft for instance set erect upon his carpet it would not have been beautiful

The essence of the problem I conceive lies in the line, ‘These temples grew as grows the grass’⁹ one is the primal utterance of the universal soul and the other a secondary utterance through man as instrument. Emerson is a pantheist in the highest sense and so is Carlyle. I dropped an hour ago upon a very significant passage in the Sartor. ‘Is there no god then, but at best an absentee god sitting idle ever since the first Sabbath at the outside of his Universe and seeing it go?’¹⁰ At the ‘outside’ of his universe. I imagine Carlyle’s entire creed is folded in this Sentence. And here the difference between his faith, and that of Paley’s is very distinct. According to the latter god bears the same relation to the Universe that a clockmaker does to the clock.¹¹ He is an omnipotent mechanic detached from his work. With Carlyle the universe is the blood and bones of Jehovah¹² – he climbs in the sap of trees and falls in Cataracts. The theist of Paley’s class is I believe intrinsically the same is the atheist. It is impossible to decide which has the best grounds for his belief.

The same power of observation is evinced in Rhea¹³

‘Thou shalt seem in each reply A vixen to his altered eye.’14 that’s a bare fact.

I like such passages as the following in the Wo[r]ld Soul.¹⁵ The same is true as regards men also. I have found it.

‘For Gods delight in Gods

And thrust the weak aside

To him who scorns the charities

Their arms fly open wide’.¹⁶

‘Gay’¹⁷ appears to be a favourite character of Emerson’s ‘The winds are always favourable to the good seaman’.¹⁸ He loves to exhibit this mastery over circumstance, and detect law where others would cry out chance. I remember once Prof Waitz¹⁹ said to me that Goethe was one of those lucky fellows with whom everything prospered. I question whether Emerson would subscribe to the term ‘luck’ ‘The Rhodosa.’²⁰ This is an exquisite piece. As monkeys jibber among leaves so do the mass of men among facts. the origin of the foliage is unknown to the one. the origin of the fact unknown to the other. Emerson sits placidly where the trunk and the earth meet and sees unity of bough and twigs. Living in the primeval element he can trace its outgoings and thus reconciles puzzles. As before ‘These temples grew as grows the grass’²¹ so here

‘I never thought to ask; I never knew

But in my simple ignorance suppose

The selfsame power that brought me there brought you.’²²

exquisite!

In §3 of Woodnotes²³ M^r Smith has changed ‘mouse’ into ‘moose’. I think Emerson meant mouse. There is a great beauty and force, and truth, and trust, in that part which ends in

‘For ever nature faithful is

To such as trust her faithfulness’²⁴

The second part of Woodnotes²⁵ is magnificent I cant select it is all so good. the leading ideas appear to be

‘The primal mind

That flows in streams and breathes in wind’.²⁶

and the metamorphosis of the same

‘I, that today am a pine

Yesterday was a bundle of grass’²⁷

‘Halteth never in one shape

But for ever doth escape’.²⁸

I can never believe Emerson unhappy. The fluidity of his philosophy guards him against disappointment. Nature cant trick him. Indeed he appears to have resigned himself heart and soul to her, and finds pleasure in her methods.

Thats a splendid passage marked by Smith in ‘Monadnoc’.²⁹ Emerson’s hope and prediction is here

‘I await the bard and sage

Who in large thoughts like fair pearl-seed

Shall string Monadnoc like a bead’.³⁰

But the finest poetry in the book I think is to be found at page 87.³¹ He tosses the earth as an Indian flings his boomerang. Perhaps I deem it so because a similar thought made a profound impression on me in my passage from Rotterdam.³² It is partly expressed in a scrap I sent to the Chronicle last week³³ and which if it [suits] them will appear on Saturday.

That’s a fine piece marked by Smith in the Ode to Channing³⁴

Things are in the saddle

And ride Mankind³⁵

You remember that fine old song:-

If she be not fair for me

What care I how fair she be.³⁶

The same sentiment is in ‘Give all to love,’³⁷ most beautifully expressed, read the three last verses. when I’m an old man I’ll tell you an anecdote which in some measure illustrates Emerson’s advice. but I know I bore you. Ill copy this and have done.

Leave all for love

Yet hear me yet

One word more my heart beloved

One pulse more of firm endeavour

Keep thee today

Tomorrow for ever

Free as an Arab

Of thy beloved

Cling with life to the maid

But when the surprise

Vague shadow of surmise

Flits across her bosom young

Of a joy apart from thine

Free she be fancy free

Do not thou detain a hem

From her summer diadem

Though thou loved her as thyself

As a self of purer clay

Tho’ her parting dims the day

Stealing grace from all alive

Heartily know

When half god’s go

The gods arrive.³⁸

This is brave and it is wise. nay politic – if ever fickleness is to be broken down and woman thoroughly subdued it must be by this unfearing readiness to yield her if she will. it enchants her, and magnetizes her, and holds her faster, and keeps her truer than 10 million reproaches coupled with the wringing of hands.

I shall be there God willing on the 25^th.³⁹

Don’t think too much on the first part of this letter. I am half inclined not to send it, however I shall do,

as ever |⁴⁰ Tyndall

I bought Carlyle’s pamphlet⁴¹ in Manchester and read it with a certain grimness of soul which was very refreshing to me. The great rolling snorting leviathan how he smashed up that Hudson. ‘And then swung as a tragic pendulum admonitary to earth in the name of heaven &c &c.⁴²

I must manage to see John for I have a great regard for him. Was Phillips with you on Saturday night. I find my education tract slow work. It requires thought to make any thing of it. I could write a deal very soon, but a deal of stuff.

May the gods bless you my son | Goodbye

In ‘Merlin’⁴³ there is a fine limit drawn round the understanding.

Nor profane affect to hit Or compass that by meddling wit Which only the propitious mind Publishes where its inclined44 & c.

The poet cant sing off-hand like a blackbird, perhaps I do the animal wrong. It also may have its hours of inspiration – The nightingale loves the moon ________

In Bacchus⁴⁵ the high Pantheism again crops out.

That I intoxicated And by the draft assimilated May float at pleasure thru all natures The bird language rightly Spell And that which the roses say so well46

and again. ‘The poor grass shall plot and plan what it will do when it is man’47

All this puts me in mind of Plato. It is unspeakable and yet Knowable – Who does not feel the heavy truth of the image – ‘Reason in nature’s lotus drenched!’⁴⁸ There is a kind of Swampishness of the soul which this perfectly expresses. Somehow or other that beautiful piece ‘the House’⁴⁹ does not please me as it used to do. There is confusion in the figure.

She lays her beams in music In music every one -50

Perhaps its my defect. I used to love it ––

Here in Saadi⁵¹ is a passage similar to one already noticed

‘Flee from the gods which from thee flee Seek nothing; Fortune seeketh thee.’52

This is the moral gravitation between man’s true necessity and the objects of them.

Emerson in one of his essays I think mention an occult relation subsisting between the man and the vegetable.⁵³ The apprehension of this fact lies at the bottom of most of his poems. The suggestion haunts him and he yearns for its fulfilment. The transmutation appears sometimes to be effected and both natures run into one.

‘We coldly ask their pottage not their love’⁵⁴ I used to meet a jolly fat old fellow sometimes on the roads about Marburg. He always saluted me with the assurance ‘now the coffee will smack vortrefflich⁵⁵ when you get home. Nun mein Freund Sie werden [sich] heute gut finden’.⁵⁶ He walked to get an appetite and nothing else – he had his reward. Nature is a kindly mother.

There is a sweet consolation in that verse in ‘Musketaquid’⁵⁷-

The polite found me impolite; the great Would mortify me but in vain I am a willow of the wilderness Loving the wind that bent me.58

all this verse to the end is beautiful –– Canst thou shine now then darkle And being latent feel thyself no less admirable! ––59

The affirmative to this question would presuppose the entire eradication of egotism.

Thats beautiful in the Threnody⁶⁰

‘Hast thou forgot me in a new delight?’⁶¹

and here.

O child of paradise

Boy who made dear his father’s home

In whose deep eyes

Men read the wellfare of the times to come

I am too much bereft

The world dishonoured thou hast left

O trusted broken prophecy!

O richest fortune sourly crost

Born for the future, to the future lost!⁶²

And his recovery is very fine

‘And [thought^st] thou that such a guest

Would in thy hall take up his rest

Would rushing life forget its laws

Fate’s glowing revolution pause

High omens ask diviner guess

Not to be conned to tediousness’⁶³

His hatred of immobility breaks out even here

‘Not of adamant or gold

Built he heaven Stark and Cold

No, but a nest of bending reeds

Flowering grass and scented weeds’⁶⁴

The world and all that therein is [is], with Emerson, a differential, a fluxion what the Germans call a Werdende – a becoming. It is as it were an effort perpetually manifesting itself and not to be cabinned in an institution – no not in heaven of ‘adamant or gold’

I heard a lady socialist lecturer⁶⁵ once assert ‘For my part I shouldn’t like to be caged up in what you call your heaven, singing an eternally Holy! Holy!’⁶⁶ nor should I exactly | J.T.

M^r Hirst | Harrison Road | Halifax | Yorkshire⁶⁷

RI MS JT/1/T/529