TC TO JOSEPH NEUBERG ; 16 February 1856; DOI: 10.1215/lt-18560216-TC-JN-01; CL 31: 32
TC TO JOSEPH NEUBERG
Chelsea, 16 feby 1856—
Dear Neuberg,
It will be safer not to come tomorrow night, as, unluckily, I am like to be called out.
I have two Letters in the Helden-Staats= &c Leben,—Letters about the Siege of Prag1 in '44,—which I want you to try your hand upon abridging; reducing, say, to the 5th part of their present size (whh will be a useful feat for them and me!): you can get them, if you happen to be here any afternoon, before Sunday come a week; but indeed there is no hurry. I also think of some abridgements from Büsching's Beyträge,2 which might be useful; but these are in a still more immature state, most of them.
In the Museum, one day, I saw the old German Book of Reformation Portraits:3 they are dreadfully ugly, one and all, but have a certain air of reality;—only Christian II of Denmark4 was of much interest to me; the others I had mostly seen in more reliable form. It was not Horace Walpole's Book, but old Horatio his Uncle's.5
Decker, with his Succession War,6 was very elaborate and pretty; but, except a few Portraits (very few, of men and places), seemed to be a work of imagination only.
I find the old Gentleman's Magazine7 (which has Indexes &c, like a human production) very useful to me.
Yours always truly /
T. Carlyle
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