I am partly ashamed of myself; but cannot help
it. One of my grand difficulties I suspect to be that I cannot
write _two Books at once;_ cannot be in the seventeenth century
and in the nineteenth at one and the same moment; a feat which
excels even that of the Irishman's bird: "Nobody but a bird can
be in two places at once!" For my heart is sick and sore in
behalf of my own poor generation; nay, I feel withal as if the
one hope of help for it consisted in the possibility of new
Cromwells and new Puritans: thus do the two centuries stand
related to me, the seventeenth _worthless_ except precisely in so
far as it can be made the nineteenth; and yet let anybody try
that enterprise! Heaven help me.--I believe at least that I
ought _to hold my tongue;_ more especially at present.
Thanks for asking me to write you a word in the _Dial._ Had such
a purpose struck me long ago, there have been many things passing
through my head,--march-marching as they ever do, in long drawn,
scandalous Falstaff-regiments (a man ashamed to be seen passing
through Coventry with such a set!)--some one of which, snatched
out of the ragged rank, and dressed and drilled a little, might
perhaps fitly have been saved from Chaos, and sent to the _Dial.
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