Two autograph letters by Emerson, one unsigned and one signed "R. W. Emerson," totaling eight pages on four sheets, 4.5 x 7, dated 1862. The first, an unsigned letter of August 6, 1862, in part: "The invitation of the Ontario Literary Society is very welcome to me. I have the most agreeable recollections of my visits to Toronto. Indeed, I have a certain misgiving as of duties left undone there, and a strong wish to meet again some members of your association, to whom I believe I ought to have written a letter. It would therefore please me better to read two lectures on two consecutive nights, or, if that is too near, two lectures in three nights." He goes on to suggest potential dates and his appearance fees ("fifty dollars for each").
The second, of September 28, 1862, to C. N. Borce in New York, in part: "Thanks for the beautiful books you have sent me, and with such kind inscription. I have been making good acquaintance with them, and shall make better. Who can help reading a book so elegant without and within? I admire the good taste and temper which pervade it, and have found not only entertaining, but far better, acute and just observations. It is dangerous—this form of detached sentences—as requiring a perfection in each sentence. But if it meets the conditions, the reward is great, for the good reader will prize the work from which every unessential atom has been pared away…I like the political allusions, and especially the paragraph in the note on 'war,' and perhaps I may yet be moved to send you some commentaries.". In very good to fine condition, with almost complete separation (and small repairs) to the folds of the September letter. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope for the letter to Borce.
