A Bit of Chaos

Abstract

… Moxon^l informs us that … Tennyson is now in Town, and means to come and see me. Of this latter result I shall be very glad: Alfred is one of the few British or foreign figures (a not increasing number, I think!) who are and remain beautiful to me;—a true human soul, or some authentic approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say, Brother!—However, I doubt h[e] will not come; he often skips me, in these brief visits to Town; skips [every]-body indeed; being a man solitary and sad, as certain men are, dwelling in an element of gloom,—carrying a bit of Chaos about him, in short, which he is manufacturing into Cosmos!

The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, ed. Joseph Slater (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964) p. 363.