So had it lasted for some months; and now the Volume on Clothes, read and again read, was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the personality of its Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of all that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic; whereby the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent,—­when altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke, our Professor’s chief friend and associate in Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously corresponded.  The Hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on the “agitation and attention” which the Philosophy of Clothes was exciting in its own German Republic of Letters; on the deep significance and tendency of his Friend’s Volume; and then, at length, with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of conveying “some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and through England to the distant West:”  a work on Professor Teufelsdrockh “were undoubtedly welcome to the Family, the National, or any other of those patriotic Libraries, at present the glory of British Literature;” might work revolutions in Thought; and so forth;—­in conclusion, intimating not obscurely, that should the present Editor feel disposed to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he, Hofrath Heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the requisite Documents.

As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporating, but would not crystallize, instantly when the wire or other fixed substance is introduced, crystallization commences, and rapidly proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with the Editor’s mind and this offer of Heuschrecke’s.  Form rose out of void solution and discontinuity; like united itself with like in definite arrangement:  and soon either in actual vision and possession, or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of the whole Enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid mass.  Cautiously yet courageously, through the twopenny post, application to the famed redoubtable OLIVER YORKE was now made:  an interview, interviews with that singular man have taken place; with more of assurance on our side, with less of satire (at least of open satire) on his, than we anticipated; for the rest, with such issue as is now visible.  As to those same “patriotic Libraries,” the Hofrath’s counsel could only be viewed with silent amazement; but with his offer of Documents we joyfully and almost instantaneously closed.  Thus, too, in the sure expectation of these, we already see our task begun; and this our Sartor Resartus, which is properly a “Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh,” hourly advancing.