more would rather surprise me. From the British side of the
water I have met simply one intelligent response,--clear, true,
though almost enthusiastic as your own. My British Friend too is
utterly a stranger, whose very name I know not, who did not
print, but only write, and to an unknown third party.* Shall I
say then, "In the mouth of two witnesses"? In any case, God be
thanked, I am done with it; can wash my hands of it, and send it
forth; sure that the Devil will get his full share of it,
and not a whit more, clutch as he may. But as for you, my
Transoceanic brothers, read this earnestly, for it _was_
earnestly meant and written, and contains no _voluntary_
falsehood of mine. For the rest, if you dislike it, say that I
wrote it four years ago, and could not now so write it, and on
the whole (as Fritz the Only said) "will do better another time."
With regard to style and so forth, what you call your "saucy"
objections are not only most intelligible to me, but welcome and
instructive. You say well that I take up that attitude because I
have no known public, am alone under the heavens, speaking into
friendly or unfriendly space; add only, that I will not defend
such attitude, that I call it questionable, tentative, and only
the best that I, in these mad times, could conveniently hit upon.
For you are to know, my view is that now at last we have lived to
see all manner of Poetics and Rhetorics and Sermonics, and one
may say generally all manner of _Pulpits_ for addressing mankind
from, as good as broken and abolished: alas, yes! if you have
any earnest meaning which demands to be not only listened to, but
_believed_ and _done,_ you cannot (at least I cannot) utter it
_there,_ but the sound sticks in my throat, as when a solemnity
were _felt_ to have become a mummery; and so one leaves the
pasteboard coulisses, and three unities, and Blair's Lectures,