I am
willing to take the risk. Hire you your servants by the
month or the day, and get straight to Heaven; leave me to my
own method."
_Peter_: "No, I won't. I will beat your brains out
first!" [And is trying dreadfully ever since, but cannot yet
manage it.]
This, except the _Prinzenraub_, a dramatic presentation of a dramatic
incident in old German history, was his only side publication during the
writing of _Friedrich_.
After the war ended and Emerson's letters of remonstrance had proved
prophetic, Carlyle is said to have confessed to Mr. Moncure Conway as
well as to Mr. Froude that he "had not seen to the bottom of the matter."
But his republication of this nadir of his nonsense was an offence,
emphasising the fact that, however inspiring, he is not always a safe
guide, even to those content to abide by his own criterion of success.
There remains of this period the record of a triumph and of a tragedy.
After seven years more of rarely intermitted toil, broken only by a few
visits, trips to the sea-shore, etc., and the distress of the terrible
accident to his wife,--her fall on a curbstone and dislocation of a
limb,--which has been often sufficiently detailed, he had finished his
last great work. The third volume of _Friedrich_ was published in May
1862, the fourth appeared in February 1864, the fifth and sixth in March
1865.
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