I send you herewith an account of the Life, Character, Genius and Works of Thomas Carlyle, by one of the only two men in America capable of giving it. The very best man to do this is, of course, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and this is by the second-best, Mr. Emerson’s pupil, friend and daily companion, Henry D. Thoreau, whose essays and translations of some of the grand Greek Tragedies in The Dial made a deserved sensation. Thoreau is a young man, a scholar, poor of course, and sends this to me to get utterance and bread. I know it is unlike the general staple of your Magazine, but I think it will on that account be relished and give a zest to the work. That it is a brilliant as well as vigorous essay, and gives a Daguerreotype of Carlyle and Carlylism which no man living but Emerson could excel, I believe any scholar would say, and I am confident it would attract many new readers to the Magazine. It would make about a sheet or sixteen pages of the Mag. and would probably have to be divided—I hope but once. If you choose to publish it, and pay as much as you pay others for right good prose (where you are not buying a name) I will make it sell a pile of Magazines, anyhow.

  I offer it first to you, and ask you to let me have your decision upon it as soon as practicable. Keep the MS. till I send for it, as I may think best to offer it to Godey if you don’t want it.

Yours,
Horace Greeley