Concord, 7 January, 1866

Dear Carlyle,--Is it too late to send a letter to your door to
claim an old right to enter, and to scatter all your convictions
that I had passed under the earth? You had not to learn what a
sluggish pen mine is. Of course, the sluggishness grows on me,
and even such a trumpet at my gate as a letter from you
heralding-in noble books, whilst it gives me joy, cannot heal the
paralysis. Yet your letter deeply interested me, with the
account of your rest so well earned. You had fought your great
battle, and might roll in the grass, or ride your pony, or shout
to the Cumberland or Scotland echoes, with largest leave of men
and gods. My lethargies have not dulled my delight in good
books. I read these in the bright days of our new peace, which
added a lustre to every genial work. Now first we had a right to
read, for the very bookworms were driven out of doors whilst the
war lasted. I found in the book no trace of age, which your
letter so impressively claimed. In the book, the hand does not
shake, the mind is ubiquitous. The treatment is so spontaneous,
self-respecting, defiant,--liberties with your hero as if he were
your client, or your son, and you were proud of him, and yet can
check and chide him, and even put him in the corner when he is
not a good boy, freedoms with kings, and reputations, and
nations, yes, and with principles too,--that each reader, I
suppose, feels complimented by the confidences with which he is
honored by this free-tongued, masterful Hermes.--Who knows what
the [Greek] will say next? This humor of telling the story in a
gale,--bantering, scoffing, at the hero, at the enemy, at the
learned reporters,--is a perpetual flattery to the admiring
student,--the author abusing the whole world as mad dunces,--all