Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 August 1889 — Emerson and Carlyle. [ARTICLE]

Emerson and Carlyle.

The London Westminster Review quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson as saying, in Paris, that he discovered that “his French was far from being as good as Madame de Stael’s.” A grimly ludicrous remark emanating from the staid, philosophic sage of Concord. Emerson met Tennyson at Coventry Patmore’s house, and gives this impression of him: “Though cultivated, quite unaffected. Quiet, sluggish sense and thought; refined, as all English are, and good-humored.” Carlyle alludes to Tennyson as “the best man in England to smoke a pipe with.” Under date of August 26, 1833, Emerson thus records his impressions of Carlyle: I found the youth I sought in Scotland, and good and wise and pleasant he seems to me. * * * I never saw more amiableness than in his countenance. T. C. has made up his mind to pay his taxes to William and Adelaide Guelf. with great cheerfulness, as long as William is able to compel the payment; and shall cease to do so the moment ne ceases to compel them. On his side, Carlyle seems to have “fallen in love at first sight” with Emerson. Later on, speaking to Lord Houghton of him, he said: That man came to see me; I don’t*know what brought him: and we kept him one night, and then he left us. I saw him go up the hill: I didn’t so with him to see him descend. I preferred to watch him mount and vanish like an angel. The mutual admiration society that sprung from this first meeting is far more likely to go down the ages than the Howells-James affair of you-puff-me-and-I’ll-puff-you.—St. Louis Magazine.