1. Henry James (1811–82), American philosopher and author, influenced by Swedenborgianism and Fourierism; m., 1840, Mary Robertson, b. Walsh (1810–82); father of the psychologist William (1842–1910) and the novelist Henry (1843–1916). He had sailed with his family from the U.S. in Oct. Emerson' wrote to TC, 30 Oct.: “Lately went Henry James to you with a letter from me. He is a fine companion from his intelligence valour & worth, and
is & has been a very beneficent person” (Slater, CEC 347). James wrote to Emerson about TC, 11 May, when Past and Present was announced: “I am cheered by the coming of Carlyle's new book. … The title is provokingly enigmatical. Thought enough
will be there, no doubt, whatever it may be named.
Thought heaped up to top-heaviness and inevitable lopsidedness, but more interesting thought to me than comes from any other
quarter of Europe. Interesting for the man's sake whom it shews. According to my notion Carlyle is the very best interpreter
of spiritual philosophy which could be devised for this age. … Just to think of a Scotchman with a heart widened to German spiritualities! … You don't look upon Calvinism as a fact at all, wherein you are to my mind
philosophically infirm, and impaired as to your universality. I can see in Carlyle's writing the advantage his familiarity
with this fact gives him over you with a general audience. What is highest in Carlyle is built upon that lowest. At least
so I read” (quoted in F. O. Mathiessen, The James Family [New York, 1947] 42–43). James wrote “Some Personal Recollections of Carlyle” after TC's death, 1881; see The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James, ed. W. James (Boston, 1885), 421–68.
