You do not guess how much pleasure it gives me to look over your pencillings, they prove so clearly that you have really entered into the meaning of every sentence, and it always gives one satisfaction to see the evidence of brain-work. I am quite indebted to you for your care, and I feel greatly the advantage of having a friend to undertake the office of critic. There is one word I must mention—Azazel is the word put in the original of the Old Testament for the scapegoat: now I imagine there is some dubiousness about the meaning, and that Strauss would not think it right to translate scapegoat, because, from the tenor of his sentence, he appears to include Azazel with the evil demons. I wonder if it be supposed by any one that Azazel is in any way a distinct being from the goat. I know no Hebrew scholar, and have access to no Hebrew lexicon. Have you asked Mr. Hennell about it?
Your letter describes what I have felt rather than what I feel. It seems as if my affections were quietly sinking down to temperate, and I every day seem more and more to value thought rather than feeling. I do not think this is man's best estate, but it is better than what I have sometimes known.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Friday evening, autumn of 1845.
I am not ashamed to confess that I should like to be idle with you for a little while, more than anything else I can think of just now. But, alas! leathery brain must work at leathery Strauss for a short time before my butterfly days come. O, how I shall spread my wings then! Anent the Greek, it would produce very dreadful cold perspirations indeed in me, if there were anything amounting to a serious error, but this, I trust, there will not be. You must really expect me, if not to sleep and snore aliquando, at least to nod in the course of some thousand pages. I should like you to be deliberate over the Schluss Abhandlung. It is the only part on which I have bestowed much pains, for the difficulty was piquing, not piquant.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, no date, 1845.
I am never pained when I think Strauss right; but in many cases I think him wrong, as every man must be in working out into detail an idea which has general truth, but is only one element in a perfect theory—not a perfect theory in itself.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 25th Sept. 1845.
I am delighted with the proof. The type and everything else are just what I wished. To see the first sheet is the next best thing to seeing the last, which I hope we shall all have done this time next year. There is a very misty vision of a trip to the Highlands haunting us in this quarter. The vision would be much pleasanter if Sara were one of the images in it. You would surely go if we went, and then the thing would be perfect. I long to see you, for you are becoming a sort of transfigured existence, a mere ideal to me, and I have nothing to tell me of your real flesh-and-blood self but sundry very useful little pencil-marks, and a scrap of Mrs. Bray's notes now and then. So, if you would have me bear in my memory your own self, and not some aerial creation that I call by your name, you must make your appearance.
In October "the misty vision" took palpable shape, and the Brays, Miss Hennell, and Miss Evans had a delightful fortnight in Scotland, visiting Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, The Trossachs, Stirling, Edinburgh, Melrose, and Abbotsford. They were away from the 14th to the 28th, and on returning to Coventry Strauss was taken up again. Miss Hennell was reading the translation, and aiding with suggestions and corrections. The next letter to her seems to be dated in November.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Nov. 1845.
Please to tell Mr. Hennell that "habits of thought" is not a translation of the word particularismus. This does not mean national idiosyncrasy, but is a word which characterizes that idiosyncrasy. If he decidedly objects to particularism, ask him to be so good as substitute exclusiveness, though there is a shade of meaning in particularismus which even that does not express. It was because the word could only be translated by a circumlocution that I ventured to Anglicize it.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Tuesday morning, Dec. (?) 1845.
I have been idle, and have not done a stroke to the prefaces, but they shall be sent as soon as possible. Thanks for the copy of the Latin preface and letter. They are in preconceived harmony with my ideas of the appropriate.
I will leave the titlepage to you and Mr. Hennell. Thanks for the news in your last extra Blatt. I am glad to find that the theological organs are beginning to deal with philosophy, but I can hardly imagine your writer to be a friend with a false cognizance on his shield. These dear orthodox people talk so simply sometimes that one cannot help fancying them satirists of their own doctrines and fears, though they mean manfully to fight against the enemy. I should like if possible to throw the emphasis on critically in the titlepage. Strauss means it to be so: and yet I do not know how we can put anything better than what you say.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Dec. 1845.
I send you to-day the conclusion of the chapter you are reading, and, unless you find anything of importance to be rectified, you need not return this to me, but may forward the whole to the printer as soon as you have read it. I am not altogether satisfied with the use of the word sacrament as applied specifically to the Abendmahl. It seems like a vulgarism to say the sacrament for one thing, and for another it does not seem aboriginal enough in the life of Jesus; but I know of no other word that can be substituted. I have altered passover to paschal mealtho pascha, but τὸ πάσχα is used in the New Testament of the eating of the lamb par excellence. You remember, in the title of the first section in the Schluss—which I had been so careless as to omit—the expression is "Nothwendiger Uebergang der Kritik in das Dogma." Now, dogmatism will not do, as that would represent Dogmatismus. "Dogmatik" is the idea, I believe—i.e., positive theology. Is it allowable to say dogmatics, think you? I do not understand how the want of manuscript can be so pressing, as I have only had one proof for the last fortnight. It seems quite dispiriting to me now not to see the proofs regularly. I have had a miserable week of headache, but am better now, and ready for work, to which I must go.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Jan. 1846.
I do pity you, with the drunken Christmas workmen keeping you in this uncomfortable interregnum. But do not go distraught; the spring will really come and the birds—many having had to fly across the Atlantic, which is farther than you have to go to establish yourself. I could easily give the meaning of the Hebrew word in question, as I know where to borrow a lexicon. But observe, there are two Hebrew words untranslated in this proof. I do not think it will do to give the English in one place and not in another, where there is no reason for such a distinction, and there is not here, for the note in this proof sounds just as fee-fo-fum-ish as the other without any translation. I could not alter the "troublesome," because it is the nearest usable adjective for schwierig, which stands in the German. I am tired of inevitable importants, and cannot bear to put them when they do not represent the German.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Jan. 1846.
I have been sadly occupied for the last ten days. My father has been ill, and has required much attention, and my own head was very middling for some days, so that I send you but a poor cargo of new manuscript. Indeed, on looking through the last quire of paper this morning for the purpose of putting in the Greek, it seemed all very poor to me, but the subject is by no means inspiring, and no muse would condescend to visit such an uncertain votary as I have been for the last week or so. How is it that I have only had one proof this week? You know we are five hundred pages in advance of the printer, so you need not be dreadfully alarmed. I have been so pleased to hear some of your letters read to me, but, alas! I can reflect no pleasure at this moment, for I have a woful pain and am in a desperate hurry.
On 14th February, 1846, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Sara Hennell that Miss Evans "says she is Strauss-sick—it makes her ill dissecting the beautiful story of the Crucifixion, and only the
