Chapter X: Preface (10)

* * * * *

Must not the ministerial plan for the West Indies lead necessarily to a change of property, either by force or dereliction? I can't see any way of escaping it.

* * * * *

You are always talking of the _rights_ of the negroes. As a rhetorical mode of stimulating the people of England _here_, I do not object; but I utterly condemn your frantic practice of declaiming about their rights to the blacks themselves. They ought to be forcibly reminded of the state in which their brethren in Africa still are, and taught to be thankful for the providence which has placed them within reach of the means of grace. I know no right except such as flows from righteousness; and as every Christian believes his righteousness to be imputed, so must his right be an imputed right too. It must flow out of a duty, and it is under that name that the process of humanization ought to begin and to be conducted throughout.

* * * * *

Thirty years ago, and more, Pitt availed himself, with great political dexterity, of the apprehension, which Burke and the conduct of some of the clubs in London had excited, and endeavoured to inspire into the nation a panic of property. Fox, instead of exposing the absurdity of this by showing the real numbers and contemptible weakness of the disaffected, fell into Pitt's trap, and was mad enough to exaggerate even Pitt's surmises. The consequence was, a very general apprehension throughout the country of an impending revolution, at a time when, I will venture to say, the people were more heart-whole than they had been for a hundred years previously. After I had travelled in Sicily and Italy, countries where there were real grounds for fear, I became deeply impressed with the difference. Now, after a long continuance of high national glory and influence, when a revolution of a most searching and general character is actually at work, and the old institutions of the country are all awaiting their certain destruction or violent modification--the people at large are perfectly secure, sleeping or gambolling on the very brink of a volcano.

_June_ 15. 1833.

VIRTUE AND LIBERTY.--EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.--ERASMUS.----LUTHER.

The necessity for external government to man is in an inverse ratio to the vigour of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first is least wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty.

* * * * *

I think St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans the most profound work in existence; and I hardly believe that the writings of the old Stoics, now lost, could have been deeper. Undoubtedly it is, and must be, very obscure to ordinary readers; but some of the difficulty is accidental, arising from the form in which the Epistle appears. If we could now arrange this work in the way in which we may be sure St. Paul would himself do, were he now alive, and preparing it for the press, his reasoning would stand out clearer. His accumulated parentheses would be thrown into notes, or extruded to the margin. You will smile, after this, if I say that I think I understand St. Paul; and I think so, because, really and truly, I recognize a cogent consecutiveness in the argument--the only evidence I know that you understand any book. How different is the style of this intensely passionate argument from that of the catholic circular charge called the Epistle to the Ephesians!--and how different that of both from the style of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which I venture to call [Greek: epistolal panloeideiz]

Erasmus's paraphrase of the New Testament is clear and explanatory; but you cannot expect any thing very deep from Erasmus. The only fit commentator on Paul was Luther--not by any means such a gentleman as the Apostle, but almost as great a genius.

_June_ 17. 1833.

NEGRO EMANCIPATION.

Have you been able to discover any principle in this Emancipation Bill for the Slaves, except a principle of fear of the abolition party struggling with a dread of causing some monstrous calamity to the empire at large? Well! I will not prophesy; and God grant that this tremendous and unprecedented act of positive enactment may not do the harm to the cause of humanity and freedom which I cannot but fear! But yet, what can be hoped, when all human wisdom and counsel are set at nought, and religious faith-- the only miraculous agent amongst men--is not invoked or regarded! and that most unblest phrase--the Dissenting _interest_--enters into the question!

_June_ 22. 1833.

HACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS.--CHARLES I.--MANNERS UNDER EDWARD III., RICHARD II., AND HENRY VIII.

What a delightful and instructive hook Bishop Hacket's Life of Archbishop Williams is! You learn more from it of that which is valuable towards an insight into the times preceding the Civil War than from all the ponderous histories and memoirs now composed about that period.

* * * * *

Charles seems to have been a very disagreeable personage during James's life. There is nothing dutiful in his demeanour.

* * * * *

I think the spirit of the court and nobility of Edward III. and Richard II. was less gross than that in the time of Henry VIII.; for in this latter period the chivalry had evaporated, and the whole coarseness was left by itself. Chaucer represents a very high and romantic style of society amongst the gentry.

_June_ 29. 1833.

HYPOTHESIS.--SUFFICTION.--THEORY.--LYELL'S GEOLOGY.--GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. --GERARD DOUW's "SCHOOLMASTER" AND TITIAN'S "VENUS."--SIR J. SCARLETT.

It seems to me a great delusion to call or suppose the imagination of a subtle fluid, or molecules penetrable with the same, a legitimate hypothesis. It is a mere _suffiction_. Newton took the fact of bodies falling to the centre, and upon that built up a legitimate hypothesis. It was a subposition of something certain. But Descartes' vortices were not an hypothesis; they rested on no fact at all; and yet they did, in a clumsy way, explain the motions of the heavenly bodies. But your subtle fluid is pure gratuitous assumption; and for what use? It explains nothing.

Besides, you are endeavouring to deduce power from mass, in which you expressly say there is no power but the _vis inertiae_: whereas, the whole analogy of chemistry proves that power produces mass.

* * * * *

The use of a theory in the real sciences is to help the investigator to a complete view of all the hitherto discovered facts relating to the science in question; it is a collected view, [Greek: the_orhia], of all he yet knows in _one_. Of course, whilst any pertinent facts remain unknown, no theory can be exactly true, because every new fact must necessarily, to a greater or less degree, displace the relation of all the others. A theory, therefore, only helps investigation; it cannot invent or discover. The only true theories are those of geometry, because in geometry all the premisses are true and unalterable. But, to suppose that, in our present exceedingly imperfect acquaintance with the facts, any theory in chemistry or geology is altogether accurate, is absurd:--it cannot be true.

Mr. Lyell's system of geology is just half the truth, and no more. He affirms a great deal that is true, and he denies a great deal which is equally true; which is the general characteristic of all systems not embracing the whole truth. So it is with the rectilinearity or undulatory motion of light;--I believe both; though philosophy has as yet but imperfectly ascertained the conditions of their alternate existence, or the laws by which they are regulated.

* * * * *

Those who deny light to be matter do not, therefore, deny its corporeity.

* * * * *

The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it depends much more on execution for its effect. I was more than ever impressed with the marvellous sublimity and transcendant beauty of King's College Chapel.[1] It is quite unparalleled.

I think Gerard Douw's "Schoolmaster," in the Fitzwilliam Museum, the finest thing of the sort I ever saw;--whether you look at it at the common distance, or examine it with a glass, the wonder is equal. And that glorious picture of the Venus--so perfectly beautiful and perfectly innocent--as if beauty and innocence could not be dissociated! The French thing below is a curious instance of the inherent grossness of the French taste. Titian's picture is made quite bestial.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge visited Cambridge upon the occasion of the scientific meeting there in June, 1833.--"My emotions," he said, "at revisiting the university were at first, overwhelming. I could not speak for an hour; yet my feelings were upon the whole very pleasurable, and I have not passed, of late years at least, three days of such great enjoyment and healthful excitement of mind and body. The bed on which I slept--and slept soundly too--was, as near as I can describe it, a couple of sacks full of potatoes tied together. I understand the young men think it hardens them. Truly I lay down at night a man, and arose in the morning a bruise." He told me "that the men were much amused at his saying that the fine old Quaker philosopher Dalton's face was like All Souls' College." The two persons of whom he spoke with the greatest interest were Mr. Faraday and Mr. Thirlwall; saying of the former, "that he seemed to have the true temperament of genius, that carrying-on of the spring and freshness of youthful, nay, boyish feelings, into the matured strength of manhood!" For, as Mr. Coleridge had long before expressed the same thought,--"To find no contradiction in the union of old and new; to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all his works with feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative fiat, this characterizes the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which everyday for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar;

'With sun and moon and stars throughout the year,
And man and woman;'--

this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish genius from talent. And therefore is it the prime merit of genius, and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling concerning them, and that freshness of sensation which is the constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence. Who has not a thousand times seen snow fall on water? Who has not watched it with a new feeling, from the time that he has read Burns's comparison of sensual pleasure

'To snow that falls upon a river,
A moment white--then gone for ever!'"

_Biog. Lit_. vol. i, p. 85.--ED.]

* * * * *

I think Sir James Scarlett's speech for the defendant, in the late action of Cobbett v. The Times, for a libel, worthy of the best ages of Greece or Rome; though, to be sure, some of his remarks could not have been very palatable to his clients.

* * * * *

I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, which I fear has gone on for an hour without any stop at all.

_July_ 1. 1833.

MANDEVILLE'S FABLE OF THE BEES.--BESTIAL THEORY.--CHARACTER OF BERTRAM.-- BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER'S DRAMAS.--ÆSCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES,--MILTON.

If I could ever believe that Mandeville really meant any thing more by his Fable of the Bees than a _bonne bouche_ of solemn raillery, I should like to ask those man-shaped apes who have taken up his suggestions in earnest, and seriously maintained them as bases for a rational account of man and the world--how they explain the very existence of those dexterous cheats, those superior charlatans, the legislators and philosophers, who have known how to play so well upon the peacock-like vanity and follies of their fellow mortals.

By the by, I wonder some of you lawyers (_sub rosa_, of course) have not quoted the pithy lines in Mandeville upon this registration question:--

"The lawyers, of whose art the basis
Was raising feuds and splitting cases,
_Oppos'd all Registers_, that cheats
Might make more work with dipt estates;
As 'twere unlawful that one's own
Without a lawsuit should be known!
They put off hearings wilfully,
To finger the refreshing fee;
And to defend a wicked cause
Examined and survey'd the laws,
As burglars shops and houses do,
To see where best they may break through."

There is great Hudibrastic vigour in these lines; and those on the doctors are also very terse.

* * * * *

Look at that head of Cline, by Chantrey! Is that forehead, that nose, those temples and that chin, akin to the monkey tribe? No, no. To a man of sensibility no argument could disprove the bestial theory so convincingly as a quiet contemplation of that fine bust.

* * * * *

I cannot agree with the solemn abuse which the critics have poured out upon Bertram in "All's Well that ends Well." He was a young nobleman in feudal times, just bursting into manhood, with all the feelings of pride of birth and appetite for pleasure and liberty natural to such a character so circumstanced. Of course he had never regarded Helena otherwise than as a dependant in the family; and of all that which she possessed of goodness and fidelity and courage, which might atone for her inferiority in other respects, Bertram was necessarily in a great measure ignorant. And after all, her _prima facie_ merit was the having inherited a prescription from her old father the doctor, by which she cures the king,--a merit, which supposes an extravagance of personal loyalty in Bertram to make conclusive to him in such a matter as that of taking a wife. Bertram had surely good reason to look upon the king's forcing him to marry Helena as a very tyrannical act. Indeed, it must be confessed that her character is not very delicate, and it required all Shakspeare's consummate skill to interest us for her; and he does this chiefly by the operation of the other characters,--the Countess, Lafeu, &c. We get to like Helena from their praising and commending her so much.

* * * * *

In Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedies the comic scenes are rarely so interfused amidst the tragic as to produce a unity of the tragic on the whole, without which the intermixture is a fault. In Shakspeare, this is always managed with transcendant skill. The Fool in Lear contributes in a very sensible manner to the tragic wildness of the whole drama. Beaumont and Fletcher's serious plays or tragedies are complete hybrids,--neither fish nor flesh,--upon any rules, Greek, Roman, or Gothic: and yet they are very delightful notwithstanding. No doubt, they imitate the ease of gentlemanly conversation better than Shakspeare, who was unable _not_ to be too much associated to succeed perfectly in this.

When I was a boy, I was fondest of Æschylus; in youth and middle age I preferred Euripides; now in my declining years I admire Sophocles. I can now at length see that Sophocles is the most perfect. Yet he never rises to the sublime simplicity of Æschylus--simplicity of design, I mean--nor diffuses himself in the passionate outpourings of Euripides. I understand why the ancients called Euripides the most tragic of their dramatists: he evidently embraces within the scope of the tragic poet many passions,-- love, conjugal affection, jealousy, and so on, which Sophocles seems to have considered as incongruous with the ideal statuesqueness of the tragic drama. Certainly Euripides was a greater poet in the abstract than Sophocles. His choruses may be faulty as choruses, but how beautiful and affecting they are as odes and songs! I think the famous [Greek: Euippoy Xene], in Oedipus Coloneus[1] cold in comparison with many of the odes of Euripides, as that song of the chorus in the Hippolytus--[Greek: "Eoos," Eoos[2]] and so on; and I remember a choric ode in the Hecuba, which always struck me as exquisitely rich and finished; I mean, where the chorus speaks of Troy and the night of the capture.[3]

There is nothing very surprising in Milton's preference of Euripides, though so unlike himself. It is very common--very natural--for men to _like_ and even admire an exhibition of power very different in kind from any thing of their own. No jealousy arises. Milton preferred Ovid too, and I dare say he admired both as a man of sensibility admires a lovely woman, with a feeling into which jealousy or envy cannot enter. With Aeschylus or Sophocles he might perchance have matched himself.

In Euripides you have oftentimes a very near approach to comedy, and I hardly know any writer in whom you can find such fine models of serious and dignified conversation.

[Footnote 1:
Greek:
Euíppoy, Xége, tmsde chosas
Tchoy tà chzátista gãs esaula
tdn àxgaeta Kolanón'--ch. t. l. v. 668]

[Footnote 2:
Greek:
"Exos" Exos, ó chat' ômmátton
s tázeos póthon eisagog glycheïan
Psuchä cháriu oûs èpithtzateúsei
mae moi totè sèn chachõ phaneiaes
maeô ãrruthmos ëlthois--x.t.l v.527]

[Footnote 3: I take it for granted that Mr. Coleridge alluded to the chorus,--

[Greek: Su men, _o patrhis Ilias t_on aporhth_et_on polis ouketi lexei toion El- lan_on nephos amphi se krhuptei, dorhi d_e, dorhi perhsan--k. t. l.] v. 899.

Thou, then, oh, natal Troy! no more The city of the unsack'd shalt be, So thick from dark Achaia's shore The cloud of war hath covered thee. Ah! not again I tread thy plain-- The spear--the spear hath rent thy pride; The flame hath scarr'd thee deep and wide; Thy coronal of towers is shorn, And thou most piteous art--most naked and forlorn!

I perish'd at the noon of night!
When sleep had seal'd each weary eye;
When the dance was o'er,
And harps no more
Rang out in choral minstrelsy.
In the dear bower of delight
My husband slept in joy;
His shield and spear
Suspended near,
Secure he slept: that sailor band
Full sure he deem'd no more should stand
Beneath the walls of Troy.
And I too, by the taper's light,
Which in the golden mirror's haze
Flash'd its interminable rays,
Bound up the tresses of my hair,
That I Love's peaceful sleep might share.

I slept; but, hark! that war-shout dread, Which rolling through the city spread; And this the cry,--"When, Sons of Greece, When shall the lingering leaguer cease; When will ye spoil Troy's watch-tower high, And home return?"--I heard the cry, And, starting from the genial bed, Veiled, as a Doric maid, I fled, And knelt, Diana, at thy holy fane, A trembling suppliant--all in vain.]

JULY 3. 1833.

STYLE.--CAVALIER SLANG.--JUNTOS.--PROSE AND VERSE.--IMITATION AND COPY.

The collocation of words is so artificial in Shakspeare and Milton, that you may as well think of pushing a[1] brick out of a wall with your forefinger, as attempt to remove a word out of any of their finished passages.[2]

A good lecture upon style might he composed, by taking on the one hand the slang of L'Estrange, and perhaps, even of Roger North,[3] which became so fashionable after the Restoration as a mark of loyalty; and on the other, the Johnsonian magniloquence or the balanced metre of Junius; and then showing how each extreme is faulty, upon different grounds.

It is quite curious to remark the prevalence of the Cavalier slang style in the divines of Charles the Second's time. Barrow could not of course adopt such a mode of writing throughout, because he could not in it have communicated his elaborate thinkings and lofty rhetoric; but even Barrow not unfrequently lets slip a phrase here and there in the regular Roger North way--much to the delight, no doubt, of the largest part of his audience and contemporary readers. See particularly, for instances of this, his work on the Pope's supremacy. South is full of it.

The style of Junius is a sort of metre, the law of which is a balance of thesis and antithesis. When he gets out of this aphorismic metre into a sentence of five or six lines long, nothing can exceed the slovenliness of the English. Horne Tooke and a long sentence seem the only two antagonists that were too much for him. Still the antithesis of Junius is a real antithesis of images or thought; but the antithesis of Johnson is rarely more than verbal.

The definition of good prose is--proper words in their proper places;--of good verse--the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault. In the very best styles, as Southey's, you read page after page, understanding the author perfectly, without once taking notice of the medium of communication;--it is as if he had been speaking to you all the while. But in verse you must do more;--there the words, the _media_, must be beautiful, and ought to attract your notice--yet not so much and so perpetually as to destroy the unity which ought to result from the whole poem. This is the general rule, but, of course, subject to some modifications, according to the different kinds of prose or verse. Some prose may approach towards verse, as oratory, and therefore a more studied exhibition of the _media_ may be proper; and some verse may border more on mere narrative, and there the style should be simpler. But the great thing in poetry is, _quocunque modo_, to effect a unity of impression upon the whole; and a too great fulness and profusion of point in the parts will prevent this. Who can read with pleasure more than a hundred lines or so of Hudibras at one time? Each couplet or quatrain is so whole in itself, that you can't connect them. There is no fusion,--just as it is in Seneca.

[Footnote 1:

They led me to the sounding shore--
Heavens! as I passed the crowded way,
My bleeding lord before me lay--
I saw--I saw--and wept no more,
Till, as the homeward breezes bore
The bark returning o'er the sea,
My gaze, oh Ilion, turn'd on thee!
Then, frantic, to the midnight air,
I cursed aloud the adulterous pair:--
"They plunge me deep in exile's woe;
They lay my country low:
Their love--no love! but some dark spell,
In vengeance breath'd, by spirit fell.
Rise, hoary sea, in awful tide,
And whelm that vessel's guilty pride;
Nor e'er, in high Mycene's hall,
Let Helen boast in peace of mighty Ilion's fall."

The translation was given to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge.--ED.]

[Footnote 2: "The amotion or transposition will alter the thought, or the feeling, or at least the tone. They are as pieces of mosaic work, from which you cannot strike the smallest block without making a hole in the picture."-- _Quarterly Review_, No. CIII. p. 7.]

[Footnote 3: But Mr. Coleridge took a great distinction between North and the other writers commonly associated with him. In speaking of the Examen and the Life of Lord North, in the Friend, Mr. C. calls them "two of the most interesting biographical works in our language, both for the weight of the matter, and the _incuriosa felicitas_ of the style. The pages are all alive with the genuine idioms of our mother tongue. A fastidious taste, it is true, will find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we now call _slang_, which not a few of our writers, shortly after the Restoration of Charles the Second, seem to have affected as a mark of loyalty. These instances, however, are but a trifling drawback. They are not _sought for_, as is too often and too plainly done by L'Estrange, Collyer, Tom Brown, and their imitators. North never goes out of his way, either to seek them, or to avoid them; and, in the main, his language gives us the very nerve, pulse, and sinew of a hearty, healthy, conversational _English_."--Vol. ii. p. 307.--ED.]

* * * * *

Imitation is the mesothesis of likeness and difference. The difference is as essential to it as the likeness; for without the difference, it would be copy or facsimile. But to borrow a term from astronomy, it is a librating mesothesis: for it may verge more to likeness as in painting, or more to difference, as in sculpture.

JULY 4. 1833.

DR. JOHNSON.--BOSWELL.--BURKE.--NEWTON.--MILTON.

Dr. Johnson's fame now rests principally upon Boswell. It is impossible not to be amused with such a book. But his _bow-wow_ manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced;--for no one, I suppose, will set Johnson before Burke,--and Burke was a great and universal talker;--yet now we hear nothing of this except by some chance remarks in Boswell. The fact is, Burke, like all men of genius who love to talk at all, was very discursive and continuous; hence he is not reported; he seldom said the sharp short things that Johnson almost always did, which produce a more decided effect at the moment, and which are so much more easy to carry off.[1] Besides, as to Burke's testimony to Johnson's powers, you must remember that Burke was a great courtier; and after all, Burke said and wrote more than once that he thought Johnson greater in talking than writing, and greater in Boswell than in real life.[2]

[Footnote 1: Burke, I am persuaded, was not so continuous a talker as Coleridge. Madame de Stael told a nephew of the latter, at Coppet, that Mr. C. was a master of monologue, _mais qu'il ne savait pas le dialogue_. There was a spice of vindictiveness in this, the exact history of which is not worth explaining. And if dialogue must be cut down in its meaning to small talk, I, for one, will admit that Coleridge, amongst his numberless qualifications, possessed it not. But I am sure that he could, when it suited him, converse as well as any one else, and with women he frequently did converse in a very winning and popular style, confining them, however, as well as he could, to the detail of facts or of their spontaneous emotions. In general, it was certainly otherwise. "You must not be surprised," he said to me, "at my talking so long to you--I pass so much of my time in pain and solitude, yet everlastingly thinking, that, when you or any other persons call on me, I can hardly help easing my mind by pouring forth some of the accumulated mass of reflection and feeling, upon an apparently interested recipient." But the principal reason, no doubt, was the habit of his intellect, which was under a law of discoursing upon all subjects with reference to ideas or ultimate ends. You might interrupt him when you pleased, and he was patient of every sort of conversation except mere personality, which he absolutely hated.--ED.]

[Footnote 2: This was said, I believe, to the late Sir James Mackintosh.--ED.]

* * * * *

Newton _was_ a great man, but you must excuse me if I think that it would take many Newtons to make one Milton.

_July_ 6. 1833.

PAINTING.----MUSIC.----POETRY.

It is a poor compliment to pay to a painter to tell him that his figure stands out of the canvass, or that you start at the likeness of the portrait. Take almost any daub, cut it out of the canvass, and place the figure looking into or out of a window, and any one may take it for life. Or take one of Mrs. Salmon's wax queens or generals, and you will very sensibly feel the difference between a copy, as they are, and an imitation, of the human form, as a good portrait ought to be. Look at that flower vase of Van Huysum, and at these wax or stone peaches and apricots! The last are likest to their original, but what pleasure do they give? None, except to children.[1]

Some music is above me; most music is beneath me. I like Beethoven and Mozart--or else some of the aërial compositions of the elder Italians, as Palestrina[2] and Carissimi.--And I love Purcell.

The best sort of music is what it should be--sacred; the next best, the military, has fallen to the lot of the Devil.

Good music never tires me, nor sends me to sleep. I feel physically refreshed and strengthened by it, as Milton says he did.

I could write as good verses now as ever I did, if I were perfectly free from vexations, and were in the _ad libitum_ hearing of fine music, which has a sensible effect in harmonizing my thoughts, and in animating and, as it were, lubricating my inventive faculty. The reason of my not finishing Christabel is not, that I don't know how to do it--for I have, as I always had, the whole plan entire from beginning to end in my mind; but I fear I could not carry on with equal success the execution of the idea, an extremely subtle and difficult one.

Besides, after this continuation of Faust, which they tell me is very poor, who can have courage to attempt[3] a reversal of the judgment of all criticism against continuations? Let us except Don Quixote, however, although the second part of that transcendant work is not exactly _uno flatu_ with the original conception.

[Footnote 1: This passage, and those following, will evidence, what the readers even of this little work must have seen, that Mr. Coleridge had an eye, almost exclusively, for the ideal or universal in painting and music. He knew nothing of the details of handling in the one, or of rules of composition in the other. Yet he was, to the best of my knowledge, an unerring judge of the merits of any serious effort in the fine arts, and detected the leading thought or feeling of the artist, with a decision which used sometimes to astonish me. Every picture which I have looked at in company with him, seems now, to my mind, translated into English. He would sometimes say, after looking for a minute at a picture, generally a modern one, "There's no use in stopping at this; for I see the painter had no idea. It is mere mechanical drawing. Come on; _here_ the artist _meant_ something for the mind." It was just the same with his knowledge of music. His appetite for what he thought good was literally inexhaustible. He told me he could listen to fine music for twelve hours together, and go away _refreshed_. But he required in music either thought or feeling; mere addresses to the sensual ear he could not away with; hence his utter distaste for Rossini, and his reverence for Beethoven and Mozart--ED.]

[Footnote 2: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born about 1529, and died in 1594. I believe he may be considered the founder or reformer of the Italian church music. His masses, motets, and hymns are tolerably well known amongst lovers of the old composers; but Mr. Coleridge used to speak with delight of some of Palestrina's madrigals which he heard at Rome.

Giacomo Carissimi composed about the years 1640--1650. His style has been charged with effeminacy; but Mr. C. thought it very graceful and chaste. Henry Purcell needs no addition in England.--ED.]

[Footnote 3: "The thing attempted in Christabel is the most difficult of execution in the whole field of romance--witchery by daylight--and the success is complete."--_Quarterly Review_, No. CIII. p. 29.]

_July 8. 1833._

PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

I am clear for public schools as the general rule; but for particular children private education may be proper. For the purpose of moving at ease in the best English society,--mind, I don't call the London exclusive clique the best English society,--the defect of a public education upon the plan of our great schools and Oxford and Cambridge is hardly to be supplied. But the defect is visible positively in some men, and only negatively in others. The first _offend_ you by habits and modes of thinking and acting directly attributable to their private education; in the others you only regret that the freedom and facility of the established and national mode of bringing up is not _added_ to their good qualities.

* * * * *

I more than doubt the expediency of making even elementary mathematics a part of the routine in the system of the great schools. It is enough, I think, that encouragement and facilities should be given; and I think more will be thus effected than by compelling all. Much less would I incorporate the German or French, or any modern language, into the school labours. I think that a great mistake.[1]

[Footnote 1: "One constant blunder"--I find it so pencilled by Mr. C. on a margin--"of these New-Broomers--these Penny Magazine sages and philanthropists, in reference to our public schools, is to confine their view to what schoolmasters teach the boys, with entire oversight of all that the boys are excited to learn from each other and of themselves--with more geniality even because it is not a part of their compelled school knowledge. An Eton boy's knowledge of the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Missouri, Orellana, &c. will be, generally, found in exact proportion to his knowledge of the Ilissus, Hebrus, Orontes, &c.; inasmuch as modern travels and voyages are more entertaining and fascinating than Cellarius; or Robinson Crusoe, Dampier, and Captain Cook, than the Periegesis. Compare the _lads_ themselves from Eton and Harrow, &c. with the alumni of the New-Broom Institution, and not the lists of school-lessons; and be that comparison the criterion.--ED.]

August 4, 1833.

SCOTT AND COLERIDGE.

Dear Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but harmonious, opposites in this;--that every old ruin, hill, river, or tree called up in his mind a host of historical or biographical associations,--just as a bright pan of brass, when beaten, is said to attract the swarming bees;--whereas, for myself, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson, I believe I should walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more interest in it than in any other plain of similar features. Yet I receive as much pleasure in reading the account of the battle, in Herodotus, as any one can. Charles Lamb wrote an essay [1] on a man who lived in past time:--I thought of adding another to it on one who lived not in time at all, past, present, or future,--but beside or collaterally.

[Footnote 1: I know not when or where; but are not all the writings of this exquisite genius the effusions of one whose spirit lived in past time? The place which Lamb holds, and will continue to hold, in English literature, seems less liable to interruption than that of any other writer of our day.--ED.]

August 10. 1833.

NERVOUS WEAKNESS.----HOOKER AND BULL.-----FAITH.----A POET'S NEED OF PRAISE.

A PERSON, nervously weak, has a sensation of weakness which is as bad to him as muscular weakness. The only difference lies in the better chance of removal.

* * * * *

The fact, that Hooker and Bull, in their two palmary works respectively, are read in the Jesuit Colleges, is a curious instance of the power of mind over the most profound of all prejudices.

There are permitted moments of exultation through faith, when we cease to feel our own emptiness save as a capacity for our Redeemer's fulness.

* * * * *

There is a species of applause scarcely less genial to a poet, than the vernal warmth to the feathered songsters during their nest-breeding or incubation; a sympathy, an expressed hope, that is the open air in which the poet breathes, and without which the sense of power sinks back on itself, like a sigh heaved up from the tightened chest of a sick man.

_August_ 14. 1833.

QUAKERS.--PHILANTHROPISTS.--JEWS.

A quaker is made up of ice and flame. He has no composition, no mean temperature. Hence he is rarely interested about any public measure but he becomes a fanatic, and oversteps, in his irrespective zeal, every decency and every right opposed to his course.

* * * * *

I have never known a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in heart somewhere or other. Individuals so distinguished are usually unhappy in their family relations,--men not benevolent or beneficent to individuals, but almost hostile to them, yet lavishing money and labour and time on the race, the abstract notion. The cosmopolitism which does not spring out of, and blossom upon, the deep-rooted stem of nationality or patriotism, is a spurious and rotten growth.

* * * * *

When I read the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of the Epistle to the Romans to that fine old man Mr. ----, at Ramsgate, he shed tears. Any Jew of sensibility must be deeply impressed by them.

* * * * *

The two images farthest removed from each other which can be comprehended under one term, are, I think, Isaiah [1]--"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth!"--and Levi of Holywell Street--"Old clothes!"--both of them Jews, you'll observe. _Immane quantum discrepant!_

[Footnote 1: I remember Mr. Coleridge used to call Isaiah his ideal of the Hebrew prophet. He studied that part of the Scripture with unremitting attention and most reverential admiration. Although Mr. C. was remarkably deficient in the technical memory of words, he could say a great deal of Isaiah by heart, and he delighted in pointing out the hexametrical rhythm of numerous passages in the English version:--

"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, | O earth: for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, | and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, | and the ass his master's crib: But Israel doth not know, | my people doth not consider."--ED.]

_August_ 15. 1833.

SALLUST.--THUCYDIDES.--HERODOTUS.--GIBBON.--KEY TO THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

I consider the two works of Sallust which have come down to us entire, as romances founded on facts; no adequate causes are stated, and there is no real continuity of action. In Thucydides, you are aware from the beginning that you are reading the reflections of a man of great genius and experience upon the character and operation of the two great political principles in conflict in the civilized world in his time; his narrative of events is of minor importance, and it is evident that he selects for the purpose of illustration. It is Thucydides himself whom you read throughout under the names of Pericles, Nicias, &c. But in Herodotus it is just the reverse. He has as little subjectivity as Homer, and, delighting in the great fancied epic of events, he narrates them without impressing any thing as of his own mind upon the narrative. It is the charm of Herodotus that he gives you the spirit of his age--that of Thucydides, that he reveals to you his own, which was above the spirit of his age.

The difference between the composition of a history in modern and ancient times is very great; still there are certain principles upon which the history of a modern period may be written, neither sacrificing all truth and reality, like Gibbon, nor descending into mere biography and anecdote.

Gibbon's style is detestable, but his style is not the worst thing about him. His history has proved an effectual bar to all real familiarity with the temper and habits of imperial Rome. Few persons read the original authorities, even those which are classical; and certainly no distinct knowledge of the actual state of the empire can be obtained from Gibbon's rhetorical sketches. He takes notice of nothing but what may produce an effect; he skips on from eminence to eminence, without ever taking you through the valleys between: in fact, his work is little else but a disguised collection of all the splendid anecdotes which he could find in any book concerning any persons or nations from the Antonines to the capture of Constantinople. When I read a chapter in Gibbon, I seem to be looking through a luminous haze or fog:--figures come and go, I know not how or why, all larger than life, or distorted or discoloured; nothing is real, vivid, true; all is scenical, and, as it were, exhibited by candlelight. And then to call it a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire!

Was there ever a greater misnomer? I protest I do not remember a single philosophical attempt made throughout the work to fathom the ultimate causes of the decline or fall of that empire. How miserably deficient is the narrative of the important reign of Justinian! And that poor scepticism, which Gibbon mistook for Socratic philosophy, has led him to misstate and mistake the character and influence of Christianity in a way which even an avowed infidel or atheist would not and could not have done. Gibbon was a man of immense reading; but he had no philosophy; and he never fully understood the principle upon which the best of the old historians wrote. He attempted to imitate their artificial construction of the whole work--their dramatic ordonnance of the parts--without seeing that their histories were intended more as documents illustrative of the truths of political philosophy than as mere chronicles of events.

The true key to the declension of the Roman empire--which is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work--may be stated in two words:--the _imperial_ character overlaying, and finally destroying, the _national_ character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.

_August_ 16. 1833.

DR. JOHNSON'S POLITICAL PAMPHLETS.--TAXATION.-DIRECT REPRESENTATION.--- UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.---RIGHT OF WOMEN TO VOTE----HORNE TOOKE.----ETYMOLOGY OF THE FINAL IVE.

I like Dr. Johnson's political pamphlets better than any other parts of his works:-particularly his "Taxation no Tyranny" is very clever and spirited, though he only sees half of his subject, and that not in a very philosophical manner. Plunder--Tribute--Taxation--are the three gradations of action by the sovereign on the property of the subject. The first is mere violence, bounded by no law or custom, and is properly an act only between conqueror and conquered, and that, too, in the moment of victory. The second supposes law; but law proceeding only from, and dictated by, one party, the conqueror; law, by which he consents to forego his right of plunder upon condition of the conquered giving up to him, of their own accord, a fixed commutation. The third implies compact, and negatives any right to plunder,--taxation being professedly for the direct benefit of the party taxed, that, by paying a part, he may through the labours and superintendence of the sovereign be able to enjoy the rest in peace. As to the right to tax being only commensurate with direct representation, it is a fable, falsely and treacherously brought forward by those who know its hollowness well enough. You may show its weakness in a moment, by observing that not even the universal suffrage of the Benthamites avoids the difficulty;--for although it may be allowed to be contrary to decorum that women should legislate; yet there can be no reason why women should not choose their representatives to legislate;--and if it be said that they are merged in their husbands, let it be allowed where the wife has no separate property; but where she has a distinct taxable estate, in which her husband has no interest, what right can her husband have to choose for her the person whose vote may affect her separate interest?--Besides, at all events, an unmarried woman of age, possessing one thousand pounds a year, has surely as good a moral right to vote, if taxation without representation is tyranny, as any ten-pounder in the kingdom. The truth, of course, is, that direct representation is a chimera, impracticable in fact, and useless or noxious if practicable.

Johnson had neither eye nor ear; for nature, therefore, he cared, as he knew, nothing. His knowledge of town life was minute; but even that was imperfect, as not being contrasted with the better life of the country.

Horne Tooke was once holding forth on language, when, turning to me, he asked me if I knew what the meaning of the final _ive_ was in English words. I said I thought I could tell what he, Horne Tooke himself, thought. "Why, what?" said he. "_Vis_," I replied; and he acknowledged I had guessed right. I told him, however, that I could not agree with him; but believed that the final _ive_ came from _ick_--_vicus_, [Greek: --] a'txaq; the root denoting collectivity and community, and that it was opposed to the final _ing_, which signifies separation, particularity, and individual property, from _ingle_, a hearth, or one man's place or seat: [Greek: --] oi'xo?, _vicus_, denoted an aggregation of _ingles_. The alteration of the _c_ and _k_ of the root into the _v_ was evidently the work of the digammate power, and hence we find the _icus_ and _ivus_ indifferently as finals in Latin. The precise difference of the etymologies is apparent in these phrases:--- The lamb is spor_tive;_ that is, has a nature or habit of sporting: the lamb is sport_ing;_ that is, the animal is now performing a sport. Horne Tooke upon this said nothing to my etymology; but I believe he found that he could not make a fool of me, as he did of Godwin and some other of his butts.

August 17. 1833.

"THE LORD" IN THE ENGLISH VERSION OF THE PSALMS, ETC.----SCOTCH KIRK AND IRVING.

It is very extraordinary that, in our translation of the Psalms, which professes to be from the Hebrew, the name Jehovah--[Hebrew: --] 'O -- The Being, or God--should be omitted, and, instead of it, the [Hebrew: --] Ktlpio?, or Lord, of the Septuagint be adopted. The Alexandrian Jews had a superstitious dread of writing the name of God, and put [Greek: Kurhios] not as a translation, but as a mere mark or sign--every one readily understanding for what it really stood. We, who have no such superstition, ought surely to restore the Jehovah, and thereby bring out in the true force the overwhelming testimony of the Psalms to the divinity of Christ, the Jehovah or manifested God.[1]

[Footnote 1: I find the same remark in the late most excellent Bishop Sandford's diary, under date 17th December, 1827:--"[Greek: CHairhete en t_o Kurhi_o Kurhios] idem significat quod [Hebrew: --] apud Hebraeos. Hebraei enim nomine [Hebrew: --] sanctissimo nempe Dei nomine, nunquam in colloquio utebantur, sed vice ejus [Hebrew: --] pronuntiabant, quod LXX per [Greek: Kurhios] exprimebant."--_Remains of Bishop Sandford_, vol. i. p. 207.

Mr. Coleridge saw this work for the first time many months after making the observation in the text. Indeed it was the very last book he ever read. He was deeply interested in the picture drawn of the Bishop, and said that the mental struggles and bodily sufferings indicated in the Diary had been his own for years past. He conjured me to peruse the Memoir and the Diary with great care:--"I have received," said he, "much spiritual comfort and strength from the latter. O! were my faith and devotion, like my sufferings, equal to that good man's! He felt, as I do, how deep a depth is prayer in faith."

In connection with the text, I may add here, that Mr. C. said, that long before he knew that the late Bishop Middleton was of the same opinion, he had deplored the misleading inadequacy of our authorized version of the expression, [Greek: pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os] in the Epistle to the Colossians, i. 15.: [Greek: hos estin eik_on tou THeou tou aoratou, pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os.] He rendered the verse in these words:--"Who is the manifestation of God the invisible, the begotten antecedently to all creation;" observing, that in [Greek: pr_ototokos] there was a double superlative of priority, and that the natural meaning of "_first-born of every creature_,"--the language of our version,--afforded no premiss for the causal [Greek: hoti] in the next verse. The same criticism may be found in the Stateman's Manual, p. 56. n.; and see Bishop Sandford's judgment to the same effect, vol. i. p. 165.--ED.]

* * * * *

I cannot understand the conduct of the Scotch Kirk with regard to poor Irving. They might with ample reason have visited him for the monstrous indecencies of those exhibitions of the spirit;--perhaps the Kirk would not have been justified in overlooking such disgraceful breaches of decorum; but to excommunicate him on account of his language about Christ's body was very foolish. Irving's expressions upon this subject are ill judged, inconvenient, in had taste, and in terms false: nevertheless his apparent meaning, such as it is, is orthodox. Christ's body--as mere body, or rather carcass (for body is an associated word), was no more capable of sin or righteousness than mine or yours;--that his humanity had a capacity of sin, follows from its own essence. He was of like passions as we, and was tempted. How could he be tempted, if he had no formal capacity of being seduced?

It is Irving's error to use declamation, high and passionate rhetoric, not introduced and pioneered by calm and clear logic, which is--to borrow a simile, though with a change in the application, from the witty-wise, but not always wisely-witty, Fuller--like knocking a nail into a board, without wimbling a hole for it, and which then either does not enter, or turns crooked, or splits the wood it pierces.

August 18. 1833.

MILTON'S EGOTISM.--CLAUDIAN.--STERNE.

In the Paradise Lost--indeed in every one of his poems--it is Milton himself whom you see; his Satan, his Adam, his Raphael, almost his Eve--are all John Milton; and it is a sense of this intense egotism that gives me the greatest pleasure in reading Milton's works. The egotism of such a man is a revelation of spirit.

* * * * *

Claudian deserves more attention than is generally paid to him. He is the link between the old classic and the modern way of thinking in verse. You will observe in him an oscillation between the objective poetry of the ancients and the subjective mood of the moderns. His power of pleasingly reproducing the same thought in different language is remarkable, as it is in Pope. Read particularly the Phoenix, and see how the single image of renascence is varied.[1]

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge referred to Claudian's first Idyll:--"Oceani summo circumfluus cequore lucus Trans Indos Eurumque viret," &c. See the lines--

"Hic neque concepto fetu, nec semine surgit; Sed pater est prolesque sibi, nulloque creante Emeritos artus foecunda morte reformat, Et petit alternam totidem per funera vitam. ... Et cumulum texens pretiosa fronde Sabaeum Componit bustumque sibi partumque futurum. ... O senium positure rogo, falsisque sepulcris Natales habiture vices, qui saepe renasci Exitio, proprioque soles pubescere leto, Accipe principium rursus. ... Parturiente rogo-- ... Victuri cineres-- ... Qm fuerat genitor, natus nunc prosilit idem, Succeditque novus--- ... O felix, haeresque tui! quo solvimur omnes, Hoc tibi suppeditat vires; praebetur origo Per cinerem; moritur te non pereunte senectus."--ED.]

* * * * *

I think highly of Sterne--that is, of the first part of Tristram Shandy: for as to the latter part about the widow Wadman, it is stupid and disgusting; and the Sentimental Journey is poor sickly stuff. There is a great deal of affectation in Sterne, to be sure; but still the characters of Trim and the two Shandies[1] are most individual and delightful. Sterne's morals are bad, but I don't think they can do much harm to any one whom they would not find bad enough before. Besides, the oddity and erudite grimaces under which much of his dirt is hidden take away the effect for the most part; although, to be sure, the book is scarcely readable by women.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge considered the character of the father, the elder Shandy, as by much the finer delineation of the two. I fear his low opinion of the Sentimental Journey will not suit a thorough Sterneist; but I could never get him to modify his criticism. He said, "The oftener you read Sterne, the more clearly will you perceive the _great_ difference between Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey. There is truth and reality in the one, and little beyond a clever affectation in the other."--ED.]

August 20. 1833.

HUMOUR AND GENIUS.--GREAT POETS GOOD MEN.--DICTION OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT VERSION.--HEBREW.--VOWELS AND CONSONANTS.

Men of humour are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may amongst other gifts possess wit, as Shakspeare.

* * * * *

Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.

* * * * *

Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking _at_ such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.

* * * * *