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TO THE SAME. - Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2 [1861]

Edition used:

Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated from the French by the translator of Napoleon’s Correspondence with King Joseph. With large Additions. In Two Volumes (London: Macamillan, 1861). 2 vols.

Part of: Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, 2 vols.

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TO THE SAME.

. . . . I returned to this place on the day we parted, and set myself furiously to work till at last my brain refused to act, in which state it remains for the present. Just now my head is much more full of blood than of ideas; and I am forced to stop my work for two or three days, lest I should be obliged to interrupt it for much longer. I am enraged to be thus brought back to earth from my highest flight, and I take refuge in philosophical reflections, which, however, I shall not pass on to you because you are in good health, and therefore would not be able to appreciate the elevation of my theories.

Do not fancy that this long story means that I am ill. I am only tired. I ought to have rest, but I cannot bear to rest; so that, besides the disease, I also abhor the remedy. My impatience is increased by seeing how little progress I have made in the three months during which I have worked like a horse. If I had been as slow, and had taken as much pains with my first book, it would now have only just appeared. Am I right or wrong in subjecting my thoughts to such a severe examination before I express them in words? Indeed I do not know. You, my dear Aristarchus, will be my first judge. In about eight months I hope to pass under your inspection, just as I intend you to submit to mine.

As I had nothing better to do, I have been reading for the last few days some old books that I brought with me; among others, Plutarch, which, to my great shame, I own that I had hardly ever opened. I read first one of his Lives, thinking of something else; then another, but languidly enough. But now they afford me intense delight. What a grand old world was that of ancient times! Plutarch, who by his gossip exhibits more than any other writer its blemishes, makes its greatness only the more striking. He gives life and motion to characters which had always seemed to me to be more or less fictitious; he draws them as men only a little above life-size, and reduced to this measure they are much more imposing than a motionless colossus, or an imaginary giant. This reading has captivated my imagination to such an extent, that I sometimes fear that I shall go mad, like a second Don Quixote. My head is crammed full of heroics which are by no means suited to the present day; and life seems very flat when I wake from my dreams.