From Thomas Archer Hirst   31st August 1850

Halifax, | 31st August, 1850

My dear Tyndall,

How are you coming on there? As usual I suppose or you would not be silent. January¹ and I were very near coming to Manchester last Sunday, he was there the day before and had promised to take me over to see some literary friend or other. But the day was too wet or we should have met with you. Did you get your bag safe?² I have read the Literary Gazette³ carefully, and your case is perfectly clear to me now – the subject is called intricate by yourself and by Thompson;⁴ if so there is great credit due to you, for it is as plain and simple as a pike-staff,⁵ as you have presented it. I have not been able to get hold of the Morning Chronicle⁶ I spoke of. Baines⁷ told me he had seen it there and to-night I will ask him the date. To-night is my last ‘Saturday evening’⁸ and the sorrow at their conclusion is alleviated most by the fact that when viewed from a point in time their interest and value will be increased, or rather made more visible to me. For these things when viewed near have never that steady clearness which they possess when viewed from their proper focus in Time.

I am working away at Ollendorf’s Exercises.⁹ I find it a thorough good system. I progress slowly but begin to feel the ground under me. I have been reading some poems of Carlyle’s – he has only written about 7 or 8, which I almost wonder at, seeing the worth of those he has done; it must be that he finds verse-making is not his proper task – and why he thinks so is a significant question to me and one to which his poems have not yet yielded an answer. I am so pleased with them, and they are so few, that I have copied them in my Log Book,¹⁰ and we will read them together. Another thing I have read that pleased me also is an old Critique by John Sterling on Carlyle.¹¹ It was written in the London and Westminster Review many years ago, immediately after the appearance of ‘Sartor Resartus’ in the Magazines.¹² Sterling is a man of deep clear insight and wide liberal sympathies; he appreciates Carlyle thoroughly and did not hesitate at that early period to characterize him as our modern Luther. He intermingles his own individuality strongly in his writings, and so clearly presents himself that he as it were holds up his candle and illuminates both Carlyle and himself. He is a sceptic much after Emerson’s definition, a fellow that can always see there are two sides of a question, and is anxious to place himself across the fulcrum of the balance.¹³ Carlyle has in a measure passed through this, and moreover has been so constituted by nature as to feel more keenly than most; he has on cool subjects just as much insight as Sterling – perhaps more, but it is impossible when his heart is heaving for him to weigh his assertions and define their limitations; if it is applicable to his case he uses it: careless whether one who feels less keenly and thus cannot see its deepest truth applies it to circumstances of less pressing moment, generalizes it, and finds it wanting. In this peculiarity of the two men, Sterling and Carlyle, lies all their differences. The critique is truly an instructive one, such as we seldom see in this day.

How are you getting on with Edmondson, and when do you expect going to meet him in London? Tell him however he may want your services someone else¹⁴ wants them also, and perhaps more, and that you wish to keep yourself as free as possible should a more advantageous situation present itself in the course of 6 months. It would be prudent for you to make yourself as much known as possible through your magnetic experiments, that Edinburgh affair¹⁵ will be of service in this respect, and could you extend it, it would be of more. Tell me what would be the best address to find me in Marburg. Continue for a week or ten days to direct my letters to Halifax. I shall be away a good deal but will leave all instructions for having them forwarded.

Yours as ever, | T.A. Hirst

Dr Tyndall, | Spring Bank, Over Darwen, Lancs.¹⁶

R1 MS JT/1/HTYP/110

LT Transcript Only