Rest, rest, now for a time;
I pray you, and be thankful. Meantime, I know well all your
perversities, and give them a wide berth. They seriously annoy a
great many worthy readers, nations of readers sometimes,--but I
heap them all as style, and read them as I read Rabelais's
gigantic humors which astonish in order to force attention, and
by and by are seen to be the rhetoric of a highly virtuous
gentleman who _swears._ I have been quite too busy with fast
succeeding _jobs_ (I may well call them), in the last year, to
have read much in these proud books; but I begin to see daylight
coming through my fogs, and I have not lost in the least my
appetite for reading,--resolve, with my old Harvard professor,
"to retire and read the Authors."
I am impatient to deserve your grand Volumes by reading in them
with all the haughty airs that belong to seventy years which I
shall count if I live till May, 1873. Meantime I see well that
you have lost none of your power, and I wish that you would let
in some good Eckermann to dine with you day by day, and competent
to report your opinions,--for you can speak as well as you can
write, and what the world to come should know.
Pages:
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425