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diff --git a/41705-0.txt b/41705-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b81baef --- /dev/null +++ b/41705-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10177 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41705 *** + +Transcriber's note + + +Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer +errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other +inconsistencies are as in the original. + +Characters that could not be displayed directly in Latin-1 are +transcribed as follows: + + _ - Italic + ^ - superscript + {_C} - subscript C + [cir] - circle + [py] - pyramid + [rec] - rectangle + [scir] - small circle + [sq] - square + [V] - slant + + + + +ANIMA POETÆ + + FROM THE UNPUBLISHED + NOTE-BOOKS OF + SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE + + + EDITED BY + ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE + + + LONDON + WILLIAM HEINEMANN + MDCCCXCV + + _All rights reserved_ + + _Entered at Stationers' Hall_ + + _Entered at the Library of Congress, Washington_ + + _Copyright_, 1895 + + + + +When shall I find time and ease to reduce my pocket-books and +memorandums to an _Index_ or _Memoriæ Memorandorum_? If--aye! and alas! +if I could see the last sheet of my _Assertio Fidei Christianæ, et +eterni temporizantis_, having previously beheld my elements of +Discourse, Logic, Dialectic, and Noetic, or Canon, Criterion, and +Organon, with the philosophic Glossary--in one printed volume, and the +Exercises in Reasoning as another--if--what then? Why, then I would +publish all that remained unused, Travels and all, under the title of +Excursions Abroad and at Home, what I have seen and what I have thought +with a little of what I have felt, in the words in which I told and +talked them to my pocket-books, the confidants who have _not_ betrayed +me, the friends whose silence was _not_ detraction, and the inmates +before whom I was not ashamed to complain, to yearn, to weep, or even to +pray! To which are added marginal notes from many old books and one or +two new ones, sifted through the Mogul Sieve of Duty towards my +Neighbour--by [Greek: 'Estêse]. + +_21 June, 1823._ + + + + +PREFACE + + +_Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, which the +poet's nephew and son-in-law, Henry Nelson Coleridge, published in 1835, +was a popular book from the first, and has won the approval of two +generations of readers. Unlike the _Biographia Literaria_, or the +original and revised versions of _The Friend_, which never had their day +at all, or the _Aids to Reflection_, which passed through many editions, +but now seems to have delivered its message, the _Table Talk_ is still +well known and widely read, and that not only by students of literature. +The task which the editor set himself was a difficult one, but it lay +within the powers of an attentive listener, possessed of a good memory +and those rarer gifts of a refined and scholarly taste, a sound and +luminous common sense. He does not attempt to reproduce Coleridge's +conversation or monologue or impassioned harangue, but he preserves and +notes down the detached fragments of knowledge and wisdom which fell +from time to time from the master's lips. Here are "the balmy sunny +islets of the blest and the intelligible," an unvexed and _harbourous_ +archipelago. Very sparingly, if at all, have those pithy "sentences" and +weighty paragraphs been trimmed or pruned by the pious solicitude of the +memorialist, but it must be borne in mind that the unities are more or +less consciously observed, alike in the matter of the discourse and the +artistic presentation to the reader. There is, in short, not merely a +"mechanic" but an "organic regularity" in the composition of the work as +a whole. A "myriad-minded" sage, who has seen men and cities, who has +read widely and shaped his thoughts in a peculiar mould, is pouring out +his stores of knowledge, the garnered fruit of a life of study and +meditation, for the benefit of an apt learner, a discreet and +appreciative disciple. A day comes when the marvellous lips are +constrained to an endless silence, and it becomes the duty and privilege +of the beloved and honoured pupil to "snatch from forgetfulness" and to +hand down to posterity the great tradition of his master's eloquence. A +labour of love so useful and so fascinating was accomplished by the +gifted editor of the _Table Talk_, and it was accomplished once for all. +The compilation of a new _Table Talk_, if it were possible, would be a +mistake and an impertinence. + +The present collection of hitherto unpublished aphorisms, reflections, +confessions and soliloquies, which for want of a better name I have +entitled _Anima Poetæ_, does not in any way challenge comparison with +the _Table Talk_. It is, indeed, essentially different, not only in the +sources from which it has been compiled but in constitution and in aim. + +"Since I left you," writes Coleridge in a letter to Wordsworth of May +12, 1812, "my pocket-books have been my sole confidants." Doubtless, in +earlier and happier days, he had been eager not merely to record but to +communicate to the few who would listen or might understand the +ceaseless and curious workings of his ever-shaping imagination, but from +youth to age note-books and pocket-books were his silent confidants, his +"never-failing friends" by night and day. + +More than fifty of these remarkable documents are extant. The earliest +of the series, which dates from 1795 and which is known as the "Gutch +Memorandum Book," was purchased in 1868 by the trustees of the British +Museum, and is now exhibited in the King's Library. It consists, for the +most part, of fragments of prose and verse thrown off at the moment, +and stored up for future use in poem or lecture or sermon. A few of +these fragments were printed in the _Literary Remains_ (4 vols. +1836-39), and others are to be found (pp. 103, 5, 6, 9 _et passim_) in +Herr Brandl's _Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English Romantic School_. +The poetical fragments are printed _in extenso_ in Coleridge's _Poetical +Works_ (Macmillan, 1893), pp. 453-58. A few specimens of the prose +fragments have been included in the first chapter of this work. One of +the latest note-books, an unfinished folio, contains the Autobiographic +Note of 1832, portions of which were printed in Gillman's _Life of +Coleridge_, pp. 9-33, and a mass of unpublished matter, consisting +mainly of religious exercises and biblical criticism. + +Of the intervening collection of pocket-books, note-books, copy-books, +of all shapes, sizes and bindings, a detailed description would be +tedious and out of place. Their contents may be roughly divided into +diaries of tours in Germany, the Lake District, Scotland, Sicily and +Italy; notes for projected and accomplished works, rough drafts of +poems, schemes of metre and metrical experiments; notes for lectures on +Shakspere and other dramatists; quotations from books of travel, from +Greek, Latin, German and Italian classics, with and without critical +comments; innumerable fragments of metaphysical and theological +speculation; and commingled with this unassorted medley of facts and +thoughts and fancies, an occasional and intermitted record of personal +feeling, of love and friendship, of disappointment and regret, of +penitence and resolve, of faith and hope in the Unseen. + +Hitherto, but little use has been made of this life-long accumulation of +literary material. A few specimens, "Curiosities of Literature" they +might have been called, were contributed by Coleridge himself to +Southey's _Omniana_ of 1812, and a further selection of some fifty +fragments, gleaned from note-books 21-1/2 and 22, and from a third +unnumbered MS. book now in my possession, were printed by H. N. +Coleridge in the first volume of the _Literary Remains_ under the +heading _Omniana 1809-1816_. The _Omniana_ of 1812 were, in many +instances, re-written by Coleridge before they were included in +Southey's volumes, and in the later issue, here and there, the editor +has given shape and articulation to an unfinished or half-formed +sentence. The earlier and later _Omniana_, together with the fragments +which were published by Allsop in his _Letters, Conversations and +Recollections of S. T. Coleridge_, in 1836, were included by the late +Thomas Ashe in his reprint of the _Table Talk_, Bell & Co., 1884. + +Some fourteen or fifteen notes of singular interest and beauty, which +belong to the years 1804, 1812, 1826, 1829, etc., were printed by James +Gillman in his unfinished "Life of Coleridge," and it is evident that he +contemplated a more extended use of the note-books in the construction +of his second volume, or, possibly, the publication of a supplementary +volume of notes or _Omniana_. Transcripts which were made for this +purpose are extant, and have been placed at my disposal by the kindness +of Mrs. Henry Watson, who inherited them from her grandmother, Mrs. +Gillman. + +I may add that a few quotations from diaries of tours in the Lake +Country and on the Continent are to be found in the foot-notes appended +to the two volumes of _Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_ which were +issued in the spring of the present year. + +To publish the note-books _in extenso_ would be impracticable, if even +after the lapse of sixty years since the death of the writer it were +permissible. They are private memoranda-books, and rightly and properly +have been regarded as a sacred trust by their several custodians. But it +is none the less certain that in disburthening himself of the ideas and +imaginations which pressed upon his consciousness, in committing them to +writing and carefully preserving them through all his wanderings, +Coleridge had no mind that they should perish utterly. The invisible +pageantry of thought and passion which for ever floated into his +spiritual ken, the perpetual hope, the half-belief that the veil of the +senses would be rent in twain, and that he and not another would be the +first to lay bare the mysteries of being, and to solve the problem of +the ages--of these was the breath of his soul. It was his fate to +wrestle from night to morn with the Angel of the Vision, and of that +unequal combat he has left, by way of warning or encouragement, a broken +but an inspired and inspiring record. "Hints and first thoughts" he bade +us regard the contents of his memorandum-books--"_cogitabilia_ rather +than _cogitata_ a me, not fixed opinions," and yet acts of obedience to +the apostolic command of "Try all things: hold fast that which is +good"--say, rather, acts of obedience to the compulsion of his own +genius to "take a pen and write in a book all the words of the vision." + +The aim of the present work, however imperfectly accomplished, has been +to present in a compendious shape a collection of unpublished aphorisms +and sentences, and at the same time to enable the reader to form some +estimate of those strange self-communings to which Coleridge devoted so +much of his intellectual energies, and by means of which he hoped to +pass through the mists and shadows of words and thoughts to a steadier +contemplation, to the apprehension if not the comprehension of the +mysteries of Truth and Being. + +The various excerpts which I have selected for publication are arranged, +as far as possible, in chronological order. They begin with the +beginning of Coleridge's literary career, and are carried down to the +summer of 1828, when he accompanied Wordsworth and his daughter Dora on +a six months' tour on the Continent. The series of note-books which +belong to the remaining years of his life (1828-1834) were devoted for +the most part to a commentary on the Old and New Testament, to +theological controversy, and to metaphysical disquisition. Whatever +interest they may have possessed, or still possess, appeals to the +student, not to the general reader. With his inveterate love of humorous +or facetious titles, Coleridge was pleased to designate these serious +and abstruse dissertations as "The Flycatchers." + +My especial thanks are due to Amy, Lady Coleridge, who, in accordance +with the known wishes of the late Lord Coleridge, has afforded me every +facility for collating my own transcripts of the note-books, and those +which were made by my father and other members of my family, with the +original MSS. now in her possession. + +I have to also thank Miss Edith Coleridge for valuable assistance in the +preparation of the present work for the press. + +The death of my friend, Mr. James Dykes Campbell, has deprived me of aid +which he alone could give. + +It was due to his suggestion and encouragement that I began to compile +these pages, and only a few days before his death he promised me (it was +all he could undertake) to "run through the proofs with my pencil in my +hand." He has passed away _multis flebilis_, but he lived to accomplish +his own work both as critic and biographer, and to leave to all who +follow in his footsteps a type and example of honest workmanship and of +literary excellence. + + ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE. + + + + +ANIMA POETÆ + + + + +CHAPTER I + +_1797-1801_ + + "O Youth! for years so many and sweet, + 'Tis known, that Thou and I were one." + + S. T. C. + + +[Sidenote: PAST AND PRESENT] + +"We should judge of absent things by the absent. Objects which are +present are apt to produce perceptions too strong to be impartially +compared with those recalled only by the memory." SIR J. STEWART. + +True! and O how often the very opposite is true likewise, namely, that +the objects of memory are, often, so dear and vivid, that present things +are injured by being compared with them, vivid from dearness! + + +[Sidenote: LOVE] + +Love, a myrtle wand, is transformed by the Aaron touch of jealousy into +a serpent so vast as to swallow up every other stinging woe, and makes +us mourn the exchange. + + +Love that soothes misfortune and buoys up to virtue--the pillow of +sorrows, the wings of virtue. + + +Disappointed love not uncommonly causes misogyny, even as extreme thirst +is supposed to be the cause of hydrophobia. + + +Love transforms the soul into a conformity with the object loved. + + +[Sidenote: DUTY AND EXPERIENCE] + +From the narrow path of virtue Pleasure leads us to more flowery fields, +and there Pain meets and chides our wandering. Of how many pleasures, of +what lasting happiness, is Pain the parent and Woe the womb! + + +Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills. We feel a thousand +miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery. + + +Misfortunes prepare the heart for the enjoyment of happiness in a better +state. The life of a religious benevolent man is an April day. His pains +and sorrows [what are they but] the fertilising rain? The sunshine +blends with every shower, and look! how full and lovely it lies on +yonder hill! + + +Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like +playthings by the bedside of a child deadly sick. + + +Human happiness, like the aloe, is a flower of slow growth. + + +What we must do let us love to do. It is a noble chymistry that turns +necessity into pleasure. + + +[Sidenote: INFANCY AND INFANTS] + +1. The first smile--what kind of _reason_ it displays. The first smile +after sickness. + +2. Asleep with the polyanthus held fast in its hand, its bells dropping +over the rosy face. + +3. Stretching after the stars. + +4. Seen asleep by the light of glowworms. + +5. Sports of infants; their excessive activity, the means being the end. +Nature, how lovely a school-mistress!... Children at houses of industry. + +6. Infant beholding its new-born sister. + +7. Kissing itself in the looking-glass. + +8. The Lapland infant seeing the sun. + +9. An infant's prayer on its mother's lap. Mother directing a baby's +hand. (Hartley's "love to Papa," scrawls pothooks and reads what he +meant by them.) + +10. The infants of kings and nobles. ("Princess unkissed and foully +husbanded!") + +11. The souls of infants, a vision (_vide Swedenborg_). + +12. Some tales of an infant. + +13. [Greek: Storgê]. The absurdity of the Darwinian system (instanced +by) birds and alligators. + +14. The wisdom and graciousness of God in the infancy of the human +species--its beauty, long continuance, etc. (Children in the wind--hair +floating, tossing, a miniature of the agitated trees below which they +played. The elder whirling for joy the one in petticoats, a fat baby +eddying half-willingly, half by the force of the gust, driven backward, +struggling forward--both drunk with the pleasure, both shouting their +hymn of joy.) [_Letters of S. T. C._, 1895, i. 408.] + +15. Poor William seeking his mother, in love with her picture, and +having that union of beauty and filial affection that the Virgin Mary +may be supposed to give. + + +[Sidenote: POETRY] + +Poetry, like schoolboys, by too frequent and severe correction, may be +cowed into dullness! + + +Peculiar, not far-fetched; natural, but not obvious; delicate, not +affected; dignified, not swelling; fiery, but not mad; rich in imagery, +but not loaded with it--in short, a union of harmony and good sense, of +perspicuity and conciseness. Thought is the body of such an ode, +enthusiasm the soul, and imagery the drapery. + + +Dr. Darwin's poetry is nothing but a succession of landscapes or +paintings. It arrests the attention too often, and so prevents the +rapidity necessary to pathos. + + +The elder languages were fitter for poetry because they expressed only +prominent ideas with clearness, the others but darkly.... Poetry gives +most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood. It was +so by me with Gray's "Bard" and Collins' Odes. The "Bard" once +intoxicated me, and now I read it without pleasure. From this cause it +is that what I call metaphysical poetry gives me so much delight. + +[Compare _Lecture_ vi. 1811-12, Bell & Co., p. 70; and _Table Talk_, +Oct. 23, 1833, Bell & Co., p. 264.] + + +[Sidenote: COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS] + +Poetry which excites us to artificial feelings makes us callous to real +ones. + + +The whale is followed by waves. I would glide down the rivulet of quiet +life, a trout. + + +Australis [Southey] may be compared to an ostrich. He cannot fly, but he +has such other qualities that he needs it not. + + +Mackintosh _intertrudes_ not introduces his beauties. + + +Snails of intellect who see only by their feelers. + + +Pygmy minds, measuring others by their own standard, cry What a +_monster_, when they view a man! + + +Our constitution is to some like cheese--the rotten parts they like the +best. + + +Her eyes sparkled as if they had been cut out of a diamond-quarry in +some Golconda of Fairyland, and cast such meaning glances as would have +vitrified the flint in a murderer's blunderbuss. + + +[A task] as difficult as to separate two dew-drops blended together on a +bosom of a new-blown rose. + + +I discovered unprovoked malice in his hard heart, like a huge toad in +the centre of a marble rock. + + +Men anxious for this world are like owls that wake all night to catch +mice. + + +At Genoa the word _Liberty_ is engraved on the chains of the galley +slaves and the doors of prisons. + + +Gratitude, worse than witchcraft, conjures up the pale, meagre ghosts of +dead forgotten kindnesses to haunt and trouble [his memory]. + + +The sot, rolling on his sofa, stretching and yawning, exclaimed, +"_Utinam hoc esset laborare._" + + +Truth still more than Justice [is] blind, and needs Wisdom for her +guide. + + +[Sidenote: OF THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE] + +[A Proof of] the severity of the winter--the kingfisher [by] its slow, +short flight permitting you to observe all its colours, almost as if it +had been a flower. + + +Little daisy--very late Spring, March. Quid si vivat? Do all things in +faith. _Never pluck a flower again!_ Mem. + + +[Sidenote: May 20, 1799] + +The nightingales in a cluster or little wood of blossomed trees, and a +bat wheeling incessantly round and round! The noise of the frogs was +not unpleasant, like the humming of spinning wheels in a large +manufactory--now and then a distinct sound, sometimes like a duck, and, +sometimes, like the shrill notes of sea-fowl. + +[This note was written one day later than S. T. C.'s last letter from +Germany, May 19, 1799.] + + +O Heavens! when I think how perishable things, how imperishable thoughts +seem to be! For what is forgetfulness? Renew the state of affection or +bodily feeling [so as to be the] same or similar, sometimes dimly +similar, and, instantly, the trains of forgotten thoughts rise from +their living catacombs! + + +[Sidenote:[Sockburn] October 1799] + +Few moments in life are so interesting as those of our affectionate +reception from a stranger who is the dear friend of your dear friend! +How often you have been the subject of conversation, and how +affectionately! + +[The note commemorates his first introduction to Mary and Sarah +Hutchinson.] + + +[Sidenote: Friday evening, Nov, 27, 1799] + +The immoveableness of all things through which so many men were +moving--a harsh contrast compared with the universal motion, the +harmonious system of motions in the country, and everywhere in Nature. +In the dim light London appeared to be a huge place of sepulchres +through which hosts of spirits were gliding. + + +Ridicule the rage for quotations by quoting from "My Baby's +Handkerchief." Analyse the causes that the ludicrous weakens memory, and +laughter, mechanically, makes it difficult to remember a good story. + + +Sara sent twice for the measure of George's[A] neck. He wondered that +Sara should be such a fool, as she might have measured William's or +Coleridge's--as "all poets' throttles were of one size." + + +Hazlitt, the painter, told me that a picture never looked so well as +when the pallet was by the side of it. Association, with the glow of +production. + + +Mr. J. Cairns, in the _Gentleman's Diary_ for 1800, supposes that the +Nazarites, who, under the law of Moses, had their heads [shaved] must +have used some sort of wigs! + + +Slanting pillars of misty light moved along under the sun hid by +clouds. + + +Leaves of trees upturned by the stirring wind in twilight--an image of +paleness, wan affright. + + +A child scolding a flower in the words in which he had been himself +scolded and whipped, is poetry--passion past with pleasure. + + +[Sidenote: July 20, 1800] + +Poor fellow at a distance--idle? in this hay-time when wages are so +high? [We] come near [and] then [see that he is] pale, can scarce speak +or throw out his fishing rod. + +[This incident is fully described by Wordsworth in the last of the four +poems on "Naming of Places." + +--_Poetical Works of W. Wordsworth_, 1889, p. 144.] + + +[Sidenote: September 1, [1800]] + +The beards of thistle and dandelions flying about the lonely mountains +like life--and I saw them through the trees skimming the lake like +swallows. + + ["And, in our vacant mood, + Not seldom did we stop to watch some tuft + Of dandelion seed or thistle's beard, + That skimmed the surface of the dead calm lake, + Suddenly halting now--a lifeless stand! + And starting off again with freak as sudden; + In all its sportive wanderings, all the while, + Making report of an invisible breeze + That was its wings, its chariot and its horse, + Its playmate, rather say, its moving soul." + + _Ibid._ p. 143.] + + +Luther--a hero, fettered, indeed, with prejudices--but with those very +fetters he would knock out the brains of a modern _Fort Esprit_. + + +_Comment._ Frightening by his prejudices, as a spirit does by clanking +his chains. + +Not only words, as far as relates to speaking, but the knowledge of +words as distinct component parts, which we learn by learning to +read--what an immense effect it must have on our reasoning faculties! +Logical in opposition to real. + + +[Sidenote: 1797-1801] + +Children, in making new words, always do it analogously. Explain this. + + +Hot-headed men confuse, your cool-headed gentry jumble. The man of warm +feelings only produces order and true connection. In what a jumble M. +and H. write, every third paragraph beginning with "Let us now return," +or "We come now to the consideration of such a thing"--that is, what _I +said_ I _would_ come to in the contents prefixed to the chapter. + + +[Sidenote: Dec. 19, 1800] + +The thin scattered rain-clouds were scudding along the sky; above them, +with a visible interspace, the crescent moon hung, and partook not of +the motion; her own hazy light filled up the concave, as if it had been +painted and the colours had run. + + +"He to whom all things are one, who draweth all things to one, and seeth +all things in one, may enjoy true peace of mind and rest of +spirit."--JEREMY TAYLOR'S _Via Pacis_. + + +To each reproach that thunders from without may remorse groan an echo. + + +A prison without ransom, anguish without patience, a sick bed in the +house of contempt. + + +To _think_ of a thing is different from to _perceive_ it, as "to walk" +is from to "feel the ground under you;" perhaps in the same way +too--namely, a succession of perceptions accompanied by a sense of +_nisus_ and purpose. + + +Space, is it merely another word for the perception of a capability of +additional magnitude, or does this very perception presuppose the idea +of space? The latter is Kant's opinion. + + +A babe who had never known greater cruelty than that of being snatched +away by its mother for half a moment from the breast in order to be +kissed. + + +To attempt to subordinate the idea of time to that of likeness. + + +Every man asks _how_? This power to instruct is the true substratum of +philosophy. + + +Godwin's philosophy is contained in these words: _Rationem defectus esse +defectum rationis_.--HOBBES. + + +Hartley just able to speak a few words, making a fire-place of stones, +with stones for fire--four stones for the fire-place, two for the +fire--seems to illustrate a theory of language, the use of arbitrary +symbols in imagination. Hartley walked remarkably soon and, therefore, +learnt to talk remarkably late. + + +Anti-optimism! Praised be our Maker, and to the honour of human nature +is it, that we may truly call this an inhuman opinion. Man strives after +good. + + +Materialists unwilling to admit the mysterious element of our nature +make it all mysterious--nothing mysterious in nerves, eyes, &c., but +that nerves think, etc.! Stir up the sediment into the transparent +water, and so make all opaque. + + +[Sidenote: 1797-1801] + +As we recede from anthropomorphism we must go either to the Trinity or +Pantheism. The Fathers who were Unitarians were anthropomorphites. + + +[Sidenote: EGOTISM January 1801] + +Empirics are boastful and egotists because they introduce real or +apparent novelty, which excites great opposition, [while] personal +opposition creates re-action (which is of course a consciousness of +power) associated with the person re-acting. Paracelsus was a boaster, +it is true; so were the French Jacobins, and Wolff, though not a +boaster, was persecuted into a habit of egotism in his philosophical +writings; so Dr. John Brown, and Milton in his prose works; and those, +in similar circumstances, who, from prudence, abstain from egotism in +their writings are still egotists among their friends. It would be +unnatural effort not to be so, and egotism in such cases is by no means +offensive to a kind and discerning man. + +Some flatter themselves that they abhor egotism, and do not suffer it to +appear _primâ facie_, either in their writings or conversation, however +much and however personally they or their opinions have been opposed. +What now? Observe, watch those men; their habits of feeling and thinking +are made up of _contempt_, which is the concentrated vinegar of +egotism--it is _lætitia mixta cum odio_, a notion of the weakness of +another conjoined with a notion of our own comparative strength, though +that weakness is still strong enough to be troublesome to us, though not +formidable. + + "--and the deep power of Joy + We see into the Life of Things." + + +[Sidenote: THE EGO] + +By deep feeling we make our _ideas dim_, and this is what we mean by our +life, ourselves. I think of the wall--it is before me a distinct image. +Here I necessarily think of the _idea_ and the thinking _I_ as two +distinct and opposite things. Now let me think of _myself_, of the +thinking being. The idea becomes dim, whatever it be--so dim that I know +not what it is; but the feeling is deep and steady, and this I call +_I_--identifying the percipient and the perceived. + + "O Thou! whose fancies from afar are brought." + + +[Sidenote: March 17, 1801, Tuesday] + +[Sidenote: 1797-1801] + +Hartley, looking out of my study window, fixed his eyes steadily and for +some time on the opposite prospect and said, "Will yon mountains +_always_ be?" I shewed him the whole magnificent prospect in a +looking-glass, and held it up, so that the whole was like a canopy or +ceiling over his head, and he struggled to express himself concerning +the difference between the thing and the image almost with convulsive +effort. I never before saw such an abstract of _thinking_ as a pure act +and energy--of thinking as distinguished from thought. + + +[Sidenote: GIORDANO BRUNO] + +Monday, April 1801, and Tuesday, read two works of Giordano Bruno, with +one title-page: _Jordani Bruni Nolani de Monade, Numero et Figurâ liber +consequens. Quinque de Minimo, Magno et Mensurâ. Item. De +Innumerabilibus Immenso, et Infigurabili seu de Universo et Mundis libri +octo. Francofurti, Apud Joan. Wechelum et Petrum Fischerum consortes_, +1591. + +Then follows the dedication, then the index of contents of the whole +volume, at the end of which index is a Latin ode, conceived with great +dignity and grandeur of thought. Then the work _De Monade, Numero et +Figurâ, secretioris nempe Physicæ, Mathematicæ, et Metaphysicæ elementa_ +commences, which, as well as the eight books _De Innumerabili_, &c., is +a poem in Latin hexameters, divided (each book) into chapters, and to +each chapter is affixed a prose commentary. If the five books _de +Minimo_, &c., to which this book is consequent are of the same +character, I lost nothing in not having it. As to the work _De Monade_, +it was far too numerical, lineal and Pythagorean for my comprehension. +It read very much like Thomas Taylor and Proclus, &c. I by no means +think it certain that there is no meaning in these works. Nor do I +presume even to suppose that the meaning is of no value (till I +understand a man's ignorance I presume myself ignorant of his +understanding), but it is for others, at present, not for me. Sir P. +Sidney and Fulk Greville shut the doors at their philosophical +conferences with Bruno. If his conversation resembled this book, I +should have thought he would have talked with a trumpet. + +The poems and commentaries, in the _De Immenso et Innumerabili_ are of a +different character. The commentary is a very sublime enunciation of the +dignity of the human soul, according to the principles of Plato. + +[Here follows the passage, "_Anima Sapiens ----ubique totus_," quoted in +_The Friend_ (_Coleridge's Works_, ii. 109), together with a brief +_résumé_ of Bruno's other works. See, too, _Biographia Literaria_, +chapter ix. (_Coleridge's Works_, iii. 249).] + + +[Sidenote: OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS] + +The spring with the little tiny cone of loose sand ever rising and +sinking at the bottom, but its surface without a wrinkle. + + +[Sidenote: Monday, September 14, 1801] + +Northern lights remarkably fine--chiefly a purple-blue--in shooting +pyramids, moved from over Bassenthwaite behind Skiddaw. Derwent's +birthday, one year old. + + +[Sidenote: September 15, 1801] + +Observed the great half moon setting behind the mountain ridge, and +watched the shapes its various segments presented as it slowly +sunk--first the foot of a boot, all but the heel--then a little pyramid +[py]--then a star of the first magnitude--indeed, it was not +distinguishable from the evening star at its largest--then rapidly a +smaller, a small, a very small star--and, as it diminished in size, so +it grew paler in tint. And now where is it? Unseen--but a little fleecy +cloud hangs above the mountain ridge, and is rich in amber light. + + +I do not wish you to act from those truths. No! still and always act +from your feelings; but only meditate often on these truths, that +sometime or other they may become your feelings. + + +The state should be to the religions under its protection as a +well-drawn picture, equally eyeing all in the room. + + +Quære, whether or no too great definiteness of terms in any language may +not consume too much of the vital and idea-creating force in distinct, +clear, full-made images, and so prevent originality. For original might +be distinguished from positive thought. + + +The thing that causes _in_stability in a particular state, of itself +causes stability. For instance, wet soap slips off the ledge--detain it +till it dries a little, and it _sticks_. + + +Is there anything in the idea that citizens are fonder of good eating +and rustics of strong drink--the one from the rarity of all such things, +the other from the uniformity of his life? + + +[Sidenote: October 19, 1801] + +[Sidenote: 1797-1801] + +On the Greta, over the bridge by Mr. Edmundson's father-in-law, the +ashes--their leaves of that light yellow which autumn gives them, cast a +reflection on the river like a painter's sunshine. + + +[Sidenote: October 20, 1801] + +My birthday. The snow fell on Skiddaw and Grysdale Pike for the first +time. + +[A life-long mistake. He was born October 21, 1772.] + + +[Sidenote: Tuesday evening, 1/2 past 6, October 22, 1801] + +All the mountains black and tremendously obscure, except Swinside. At +this time I saw, one after the other, nearly in the same place, two +perfect moon-rainbows, the one foot in the field below my garden, the +other in the field nearest but two to the church. It was +grey-moonlight-mist-colour. Friday morning, Mary Hutchinson arrives. + + +The art in a great man, and of evidently superior faculties, to be often +_obliged_ to people, often his inferiors--in this way the enthusiasm of +affection may be excited. Pity where we can help and our help is +accepted with gratitude, conjoined with admiration, breeds an +enthusiastic affection. The same pity conjoined with admiration, where +neither our help is accepted nor efficient, breeds dyspathy and fear. + + +_Nota bene_ to make a detailed comparison, in the manner of Jeremy +Taylor, between the searching for the first cause of a thing and the +seeking the fountains of the Nile--so many streams, each with its +particular fountain--and, at last, it all comes to a name! + + +The soul a mummy embalmed by Hope in the catacombs. + + +To write a _series_ of love poems truly Sapphic, save that they shall +have a large interfusion of moral sentiment and calm imagery--love in +all the moods of mind, philosophic, fantastic--in moods of high +enthusiasm, of simple feeling, of mysticism, of religion--comprise in it +all the practice and all the philosophy of love! + + +[Greek: Ho myrionous]--hyperbole from Naucratius' panegyric of Theodoras +Chersites. Shakspere, _item_, [Greek: ho pollostos kai polyeidês tê +poikilostrophô sophia. Ho megalophrônotatos tês alêtheias kêryx.]--LORD +BACON. + +[Compare _Biographia Literaria_, cap. xv., "our myriad-minded Shakspere" +and _footnote_. [Greek: Anêr myrionous] a phrase which I have borrowed +from a Greek monk, who applies it to a Patriarch of Constantinople. I +might have said that I have reclaimed rather than borrowed it; for it +seems to belong to Shakspere, _de jure singulari, et ex privilegio +naturæ. Coleridge's Works_, iii. 375.] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote A: Presumably George Dyer.] + + + + +CHAPTER II + +_1802-1803_ + + + "In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds, + And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark, + That singest like an angel in the clouds!" + + S. T .C. + + +[Sidenote: THOUGHTS AND FANCIES] + +No one can leap over his own shadow, but poets leap over death. + + +The old world begins a new year. That is _ours_, but this is from God. + + +We may think of time as threefold. Slowly comes the Future, swift the +Present passes by, but the Past is unmoveable. No impatience will +quicken the loiterer, no terror, no delight rein in the flyer, and no +regret set in motion the stationary. Wouldst be happy, take the delayer +for thy counsellor; do not choose the flyer for thy friend, nor the +ever-remainer for thine enemy. + + +[Sidenote: LIMBO] + +Vastum, incultum, solitudo mera, et incrinitissima nuditas. + +[_Crinitus_, covered with hair, is to be found in Cicero, _nuditas_ in +Quintilian, but _incrinitissima_ is, probably, Coleridgian Latinity.] + + +[An old man gloating over his past vices may be compared to the] devil +at the very end of hell, warming himself at the reflection of the fire +in the ice. + + +Dimness of vision, mist, &c., magnify the powers of sight, numbness adds +to those of touch. A numb limb seems twice its real size. + + +Take away from sounds the sense of outness, and what a horrible disease +would every minute become! A drive over a pavement would be exquisite +torture. What, then, is sympathy if the feelings be not disclosed? An +inward reverberation of the stifled cry of distress. + + +Metaphysics make all one's thoughts equally corrosive on the body, by +inducing a habit of making momently and common thought the subject of +uncommon interest and intellectual energy. + + +A kind-hearted man who is obliged to give a refusal or the like which +will inflict great pain, finds a relief in doing it roughly and +fiercely. Explain this and use it in Christabel. + + +The unspeakable comfort to a good man's mind, nay, even to a criminal, +to be _understood_--to have some one that understands one--and who does +not feel that, on earth, no one does? The hope of this, always more or +less disappointed, gives the passion to friendship. + + +[Sidenote: October,1802] + +Hartley, at Mr. Clarkson's, sent for a candle. The _seems_ made him +miserable. "What do you mean, my love?" "The seems, the seems. What +seems to be and is not, men and faces, and I do not [know] what, ugly, +and sometimes pretty, and these turn ugly, and they seem when my eyes +are open and worse when they are shut--and the candle cures the +_seems_." + + +Great injury has resulted from the supposed incompatibility of one +talent with another, judgment with imagination and taste, good sense +with strong feeling, &c. If it be false, as assuredly it is, the opinion +has deprived us of a test which every man might apply. [Hence] Locke's +opinions of Blackmore, Hume's of Milton and Shakspere. + + +[Sidenote: October 25, 1802] + +I began to look through Swift's works. First volume, containing "Tale of +a Tub," wanting. Second volume--the sermon on the Trinity, rank +Socinianism, _purus putus Socinianism_, while the author rails against +the Socinians for monsters. + + +The first sight of green fields with the numberless nodding gold cups, +and the winding river with alders on its banks, affected me, coming out +of a city confinement, with the sweetness and power of a sudden strain +of music. + + +Mem. to end my preface with "in short, speaking to the poets of the age, +'_Primus vestrûm non sum, neque imus_.' I am none of the best, I am none +of the meanest of you."--BURTON. + + +"Et pour moi, le bonheur n'a commencé que lorsque je l'ai eu perdu. Je +mettrais volontiers sur la porte du Paradis le vers que le Dante a mis +sur celle de l'Enfer. + +'Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate.'" + + +Were I Achilles, I would have had my leg cut off, and have got rid of my +vulnerable heel. + + +In natural objects we feel ourselves, or think of ourselves, only by +_likenesses_--among men, too often by _differences_. Hence the soothing, +love-kindling effect of rural nature--the bad passions of human +societies. And why is difference linked with hatred? + + +[Sidenote: TRANSCRIPTS FROM MY VELVET-PAPER POCKET-BOOKS] + +Regular post--its influence on the general literature of the country; +turns two-thirds of the nation into writers. + + +Socinianism, moonlight; methodism, a stove. O for some sun to unite heat +and light! + + +[Sidenote: Nov. 25, 1802] + +I intend to examine minutely the nature, cause, birth and growth of the +verbal imagination, in the possession of which Barrow excels almost +every other writer of prose. + + +[Sidenote: Sunday, December 19] + +Remember the pear trees in the lovely vale of Teme. Every season Nature +converts me from some unloving heresy, and will make a Catholic of me at +last. + + +A fine and apposite quotation, or a good story, so far from promoting, +are wont to _damp_ the easy commerce of sensible chit-chat. + + +We imagine ourselves discoverers, and that we have struck a light, when, +in reality, at most, we have but snuffed a candle. + + +A thief in the candle, consuming in a blaze the tallow belonging to the +wick which has sunk out of sight, is an apt simile for a plagiarist from +a dead author. + + +An author with a new play which has been hissed off the stage is not +unlike a boy who has launched on a pond a ship of his own making, and +tries to prove to his schoolfellows that it _ought_ to have sailed. + + +Repose after agitation is like the pool under a waterfall, which the +waterfall has made. + + +Something inherently mean in action! Even the creation of the universe +disturbs my idea of the Almighty's greatness--would do so but that I +perceive that thought with Him creates. + + +The great federal republic of the universe. + + +T. Wedgwood's objection to my "Things and Thoughts," because "thought +always implies an act or _nisus_ of mind" is not well founded. A thought +and thoughts are quite different words from Thought, as a fancy from +Fancy, a work from Work, a life from Life, a force and forces from +Force, a feeling, a writing [from Feelings, Writings.] + + +[Sidenote: May 10, 1803] + +To _fall_ asleep. Is not a real _event_ in the body well represented by +this phrase? Is it in _excess_ when on first _dropping_ asleep we +_fall_ down precipices, or sink down, all things sinking beneath us, or +drop down? Is there not a disease from deficiency of this critical +sensation when people imagine that they have been awake all night, and +actually lie dreaming, expecting and wishing for the critical sensation? + +[Compare the phrase, "precipices of distempered sleep," in the sonnet, +"No more my visionary soul shall dwell," attributed by Southey to +Favell.--_Life and Corresp._ of R. SOUTHEY, i. 224.] + + +[Sidenote: A TREACHEROUS KNAVE] + +[He] drew out the secrets from men's hearts as the Egyptian enchanters +by particular strains of music draw out serpents from their +lurking-places. + + +[Sidenote: COUNTRY AND TOWN] + +The rocks and stones put on a vital resemblance and life itself seemed, +thereby, to forego its restlessness, to anticipate in its own nature an +infinite repose, and to become, as it were, compatible with +immoveability. + + +Bright reflections, in the canal, of the blue and green vitriol bottles +in the druggists' shops in London. + + +A curious, and more than curious, fact, that when the country does not +benefit, it depraves. Hence the violent, vindictive passions and the +outrageous and dark and wild cruelties of very many country folk. [On +the other hand] the continual sight of human faces and human houses, as +in China, emasculates [and degrades.] + + +[Sidenote: Monday night, June 8, 1803] + +"He who cannot wait for his reward has, in reality, not earned it." +These words I uttered in a dream, in which a lecture I was giving--a +very profound one, as I thought--was not listened to, but I was quizzed. + + +[Sidenote: Tuesday night, July 19, 1803] + +Intensely hot day; left off a waistcoat and for yarn wore silk +stockings. Before nine o'clock, had unpleasant chillness; heard a noise +which I thought Derwent's in sleep, listened, and found it was a calf +bellowing. Instantly came on my mind that night I slept out at Ottery, +and the calf in the field across the river whose lowing so deeply +impressed me. Chill + child and calf-lowing--probably the Rivers Greta +and Otter. [_Letters of S.T.C._, 1895, i. 14, _note_.] + + +[Sidenote: October, 1803] + +A smile, as foreign or alien to, as detached from the gloom of the +countenance, as I have seen a small spot of light travel slowly and +sadly along the mountain's breast, when all beside has been dark with +the storm. + + +[Sidenote: A PRINCIPLE OF CRITICISM.] + +Never to lose an opportunity of reasoning against the head-dimming, +heart-damping principle of judging a work by its defects, not its +beauties. Every work must have the former--we know it _a priori_--but +every work has not the latter, and he, therefore, who discovers them, +tells you something that you could not with certainty, or even with +probability, have anticipated. + + +[Sidenote: WORDSWORTH AND THE PRELUDE] + +I am sincerely glad that he has bidden farewell to all small poems, and +is devoting himself to his great work, grandly imprisoning, while it +deifies, his attention and feelings within the sacred circle and +temple-walls of great objects and elevated conceptions. In those little +poems, his own corrections coming of necessity so often--at the end of +every fourteen or twenty lines, or whatever the poem might chance to +be--wore him out; difference of opinion with his best friends irritated +him, and he wrote, at times, too much with a sectarian spirit, in a sort +of bravado. But now he is at the helm of a noble bark; now he sails +right onward; it is all open ocean and a steady breeze, and he drives +before it, unfretted by short tacks, reefing and unreefing the sails, +hauling and disentangling the ropes. His only disease is the having been +out of his element; his return to it is food to famine; it is both the +specific remedy and the condition of health. + + +[Sidenote: THE INCOMMUNICABLE] + +Without drawing, I feel myself but half invested with language. Music, +too, is wanting to me. But yet, though one should unite poetry, +draftsman's skill, and music, the greater and, perhaps, nobler, +certainly _all_ the subtler, parts of one's nature must be _solitary_. +Man exists herein to himself and to God alone--yea! in how much only to +God! how much lies _below_ his own consciousness! + + +The tree or sea-weed like appearance of the side of the mountain, all +white with snow, made by little bits of snow loosened. Introduce this +and the stones leaping rabbit-like down on my sopha of sods. [_Vide_ p. +60.] + + +The sunny mist, the luminous gloom of Plato. + + +[Sidenote: TIME AN ELEMENT OF GRIEF] + +Nothing affects me much at the moment it happens. It either stupefies +me, and I, perhaps, look at a merry-make and dance-the-hay of flies, or +listen entirely to the loud click of the great clock, or I am simply +indifferent, not without some sense of philosophical self-complacency. +For a thing at the moment is but a thing of the moment; it must be taken +up into the mind, diffuse itself through the whole multitude of shapes +and thoughts, not one of which it leaves untinged, between [not one of] +which and it some new thought is not engendered. Now this is a work of +time, but the body feels it quicker with me. + + +[Sidenote: THE POET AND THE SPIDER] + +On St. Herbert's Island, I saw a large spider with most beautiful legs, +floating in the air on his back by a single thread which he was spinning +out, and still, as he spun, heaving on the air, as if the air beneath +was a pavement elastic to his strokes. From the top of a very high tree +he had spun his line; at length reached the bottom, tied his thread +round a piece of grass, and reascended to spin another--a net to hang, +as a fisherman's sea-net hangs, in the sun and wind to dry. + + +[Sidenote: THE COMMUNICABLE] + +One excellent use of communication of sorrow to a friend is this, that +in relating what ails us, we ourselves first know exactly what the real +grief is, and see it for itself in its own form and limits. Unspoken +grief is a misty medley of which the real affliction only plays the +first fiddle, blows the horn to a scattered mob of obscure feelings. +Perhaps, at certain moments, a single, almost insignificant sorrow may, +by association, bring together all the little relicts of pain and +discomfort, bodily and mental, that we have endured even from infancy. + + +[Sidenote: NOSCITUR A SOCIIS] + +One may best judge of men by their pleasures. Who has not known men who +have passed the day in honourable toil with honour and ability, and at +night sought the vilest pleasure in the vilest society? This is the +man's self. The other is a trick learnt by heart (for we may even learn +the power of extemporaneous elocution and instant action as an automatic +trick); but a man's pleasures--children, books, friends, nature, the +Muse--O these deceive not. + + +[Sidenote: TEMPERAMENT AND MORALS October, 1803] + +Even among good and sensible men, how common it is that one attaches +himself scrupulously to the rigid performance of some minor virtue or +makes a point of carrying some virtue into all its minutiæ, and is just +as lax in a similar point, _professedly_ lax. What this is depends, +seemingly, on temperament. _A_ makes no conscience of a little flattery +in cases where he is certain that he is not acting from base or +interested motives--in short, whenever his only motives are the +amusement, the momentary pleasure given, &c., a medley of good nature, +diseased proneness to sympathy, and a habit of _being wiser_ behind the +curtain than his own actions before it. _B_ would die rather than +deviate from truth and sincerity in this instance, but permits himself +to utter, nay, publish the harshest censure of men as moralists and as +literati, and that, too, on his simple _ipse dixit_, without assigning +any reason, and often without having any, save that he himself +_believes_ it--believes it because he _dislikes_ the man, and dislikes +him probably for his looks, or, at best, for some one fault without any +collation of the sum total of the man's qualities. Yet _A_ and _B_ are +both good men, as the world goes. They do not act from conscious +self-love, and are amenable to principles in their own minds. + + +[Sidenote: BRIGHT OCTOBER October 21, 1803, Friday morning] + +A drizzling rain. Heavy masses of shapeless vapour upon the mountains (O +the perpetual forms of Borrowdale!) yet it is no unbroken tale of dull +sadness. Slanting pillars travel across the lake at long intervals, the +vaporous mass whitens in large stains of light--on the lakeward ridge of +that huge arm-chair of Lodore fell a gleam of softest light, that +brought out the rich hues of the late autumn. The woody Castle Crag +between me and Lodore is a rich flower-garden of colours--the brightest +yellows with the deepest crimsons and the infinite shades of brown and +green, the _infinite_ diversity of which blends the whole, so that the +brighter colours seem to be colours upon a ground, not coloured things. +Little woolpacks of white bright vapour rest on different summits and +declivities. The vale is narrowed by the mist and cloud, yet through the +wall of mist you can see into a bower of sunny light, in Borrowdale; the +birds are singing in the tender rain, as if it were the rain of April, +and the decaying foliage were flowers and blossoms. The pillar of smoke +from the chimney rises up in the mist, and is just distinguishable from +it, and the mountain forms in the gorge of Borrowdale consubstantiate +with the mist and cloud, even as the pillar'd smoke--a shade deeper and +a determinate form. + + +[Sidenote: TELEOLOGY AND NATURE WORSHIP A PROTEST October 26, 1803] + +A most unpleasant dispute with Wordsworth and Hazlitt. I spoke, I fear, +too contemptuously; but they spoke so irreverently, so malignantly of +the Divine Wisdom that it overset me. Hazlitt, how easily raised to rage +and hatred self-projected! but who shall find the force that can drag +him up out of the depth into one expression of kindness, into the +showing of one gleam of the light of love on his countenance. Peace be +with him! But _thou_, dearest Wordsworth--and what if Ray, Durham, Paley +have carried the observation of the aptitude of things too far, too +habitually into pedantry? O how many worse pedantries! how few so +harmless, with so much efficient good! Dear William, pardon pedantry in +others, and avoid it in yourself, instead of scoffing and reviling at +pedantry in good men and a good cause and _becoming_ a pedant yourself +in a bad cause--even by that very act becoming one. But, surely, always +to look at the superficies of objects for the purpose of taking delight +in their beauty, and sympathy with their real or imagined life, is as +deleterious to the health and manhood of intellect as, always to be +peering and unravelling contrivance may be to the simplicity of the +affection and the grandeur and unity of the imagination. O dearest +William! would Ray or Durham have spoken of God as you spoke of Nature? + + +[Sidenote: W. H.] + +Hazlitt to the feelings of anger and hatred, phosphorus--it is but to +open the cork and it flames--but to love and serviceable friendship, let +them, like Nebuchadnezzar, heat the furnace with a sevenfold heat, this +triune, Shadrach, Meshach, Abed-nego, will shiver in the midst of it. + + +[Sidenote: THE ORIGIN OF EVIL Thursday October 27, 1803] + +I sate for my picture [to Hazlitt]--heard from Southey the "Institution +of the Jesuits," during which some interesting idea occurred to me, and +has escaped. I made out, however, the whole business of the origin of +evil satisfactorily to my own mind, and forced H. to confess that the +metaphysical argument reduced itself to this, Why did not infinite Power +_always exclusively_ produce such beings as in each moment of their +duration were infinite? why, in short, did not the Almighty create an +absolutely infinite number of Almighties? The hollowness and impiety of +the argument will be felt by considering that, suppose a universal +happiness, a perfection of the moral as well as natural world, still the +whole objection applies just as forcibly as at this moment. The +malignity of the Deity (I shudder even at the assumption of this +affrightful and Satanic language) is manifested in the creation of +archangels and cherubs and the whole company of pure Intelligences +burning in their unquenchable felicity, equally as in the creation of +Neros and Tiberiuses, of stone and leprosy. Suppose yourself perfectly +happy, yet, according to this argument, you _ought_ to charge God with +malignity for having created you--your own life and all its comforts are +in the indictment against the Creator--for surely even a child would be +ashamed to answer, "No! I should still exist, only in that case, instead +of being a man, I should be an infinite being." As if the word _I_ here +had even the remotest semblance of a meaning. Infinitely more absurd +than if I should write the fraction 1/1000 on a slate, then rub it out +with my sponge, and write in the same place the integral number +555,666,879, and then observe that the former figure was _greatly_ +improved by the measure, that _it_ was grown a far finer +figure!--conceiting a _change_ where there had been positive +substitution. Thus, then, it appears that the sole justification of +those who, offended by the vice and misery of the created world, as far +as we know it, impeach the power and goodness of the Almighty, making +the proper cause of such vice and misery to have been a defect either of +power or goodness--it appears, I say, that their sole justification +rests on an argument which has nothing to do with vice and misery, as +vice and misery--on an argument which would hold equally good in heaven +as in hell--on an argument which it might be demonstrated no human being +in a state of happiness could ever have conceived--an argument which a +millennium would annihilate, and which yet would hold equally good then +as now! But even in point of metaphysic the whole rests at last on the +conceivable. Now, I appeal to every man's internal consciousness, if he +will but sincerely and in brotherly simplicity silence the bustle of +argument in his mind and the ungenial feelings that mingle with and fill +up the mob, and then ask his own intellect whether, supposing he could +conceive the creation of positively infinite and co-equal beings, and +whether, supposing this not only possible but real, this has exhausted +his notion of _creatability_? whether the intellect, by an unborn and +original law of its essence, does not demand of infinite power more than +merely infinity of number, infinity of sorts and orders? Let him have +created this infinity of infinites, still there is space in the +imagination for the creation of finites; but instead of these, let him +again create infinites; yet still the same space is left, it is no way +filled up. I feel, too, that the whole rests on a miserable sophism of +applying to an Almighty Being such words as _all_. Why were not _all_ +Gods? But there is no _all_ in creation. It is composed of infinites, +and the imagination, bewildered by heaping infinites on infinites and +wearying of demanding increase of number to a number which it conceives +already infinite, deserted by images and mocked by words, whose sole +substance is the inward sense of difficulty that accompanies all our +notions of infinity applied to numbers--turns with delight to distinct +images and clear ideas, contemplates a _world_, an harmonious system, +where an infinity of kinds subsist each in a multitude of individuals +apportionate to its kind in conformity to laws existing in the divine +nature, and therefore in the nature of things. We cannot, indeed, +_prove_ this in any other way than by finding it as impossible to deny +omniform, as eternal, agency to God--by finding it impossible to +conceive that an omniscient Being should not have a distinct idea of +finite beings, or that distinct ideas in the mind of God should be +without the perfection of real existence, that is, imperfect. But this +is a proof subtle indeed, yet not more so than the difficulty. The +intellect that can start the one can understand the other, if his vices +do not prevent him. Admit for a moment that "conceive" is equivalent to +creation in the divine nature, synonymous with "to beget" (a feeling of +which has given to marriage a mysterious sanctity and sacramental +significance in the mind of many great and good men)--admit this, and +all difficulty ceases, all tumult is hushed, all is clear and beautiful. +We sit in the dark, but each by the side of his little fire, in his own +group, and lo! the summit of the distant mountain is smitten with light. +All night long it has dwelt there, and we look at it and know that the +sun is not extinguished, that he is elsewhere bright and vivifying, that +he is coming to us, to make our fires needless; yet, even now, that our +cold and darkness are so called only in comparison with the heat and +light of the coming day, never wholly deserted of the rays. + +This I wrote on Friday morning, forty minutes past three o'clock, the +sky covered with one cloud that yet lies in dark and light shades, and +though one smooth cloud, by the dark colour, it appears to be _steppy_. + + +[Sidenote: A DREAM AND A PARENTHESIS Friday morning, 5 o'clock] + +Dozing, dreamt of Hartley as at his christening--how, as he was asked +who redeemed him, and was to say, "God the Son," he went on humming and +hawing in one hum and haw (like a boy who knows a thing and will not +make the effort to recollect) so as to irritate me greatly. Awakening +gradually, I was able completely to detect that it was the ticking of my +watch, which lay in the pen-place in my desk, on the round table close +by my ear, and which, in the diseased state of my nerves, had fretted +on my ears. I caught the fact while Hartley's face and moving lips were +yet before my eyes, and his hum and haw and the ticking of the watch +were each the other, as often happens in the passing off of sleep--that +curious modification of ideas by each other which is the element of +_bulls_. I arose instantly and wrote it down. It is now ten minutes past +five. + + +To return to the question of evil--woe to the man to whom it is an +uninteresting question, though many a mind over-wearied by it may shun +it with dread. And here--N.B.--scourge with deserved and lofty scorn +those critics who laugh at the discussion of old questions: God, right +and wrong, necessity and arbitrement, evil, &c. No! forsooth, the +question must be _new, spicy hot_ gingerbread, from a French +constitution to a balloon, change of ministry, or, Which had the best of +it in the parliamentary duel, Wyndham or Sheridan? or, at the best, a +chymical thing [or] whether the new celestial bodies shall be called +planets or asteroids--something new [it must be], something out of +themselves--for whatever is _in_ them is deep within them--must be old +as elementary nature [but] to find no contradiction in the union of old +and novel--to contemplate the Ancient of Days with feelings new as if +they _then_ sprang forth at His own Fiat--this marks the mind that feels +the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. But to return to +the question. The whole rests on the sophism of imaginary change in a +case of positive substitution. This, I fully believe, settles the +question. The assertion that there is in the essence of the divine +nature a necessity of omniform harmonious action, and that order and +system (not number--in itself base, disorderly and irrational) define +the creative energy, determine and employ it, and that number is +subservient to order, regulated, organised, made beautiful and rational, +an object both of imagination and intellect by order--this is no mere +assertion, it is strictly in harmony with the fact. For the world +appears so, and it is proved by whatever proves the being of God. +Indeed, it is involved in the idea of God. + + +[Sidenote: THE AIM OF HIS METAPHYSIC] + +What is it that I employ my metaphysics on? To perplex our clearest +notions and living moral instincts? To extinguish the light of love and +of conscience, to put out the life of arbitrement, to make myself and +others _worthless, soulless, Godless_? No, to expose the folly and the +legerdemain of those who have thus abused the blessed organ of language, +to support all old and venerable truths, to support, to kindle, to +project, to make the reason spread light over our feelings, to make our +feelings diffuse vital warmth through our reason--these are my objects +and these my subjects. Is this the metaphysic that bad spirits in hell +delight in? + + +[Sidenote: IN THE VISIONS OF THE NIGHT Nov. 2, 1803, Wednesday morning, +20 minutes past 2 o'clock] + +The voice of the Greta and the cock-crowing. The voice seems to grow +like a flower on or about the water beyond the bridge, while the +cock-crowing is nowhere particular--it is at any place I imagine and do +not distinctly see. A most remarkable sky! the moon, now waned to a +perfect ostrich egg, hangs over our house almost, only so much beyond +it, garden-ward, that I can see it, holding my head out of the smaller +study window. The sky is covered with whitish and with dingy cloudage, +thin dingiest scud close under the moon, and one side of it moving, all +else moveless; but there are two great breaks of blue sky, the one +stretches over our house and away toward Castlerigg, and this is +speckled and blotched with white cloud; the other hangs over the road, +in the line of the road, in the shape of an ellipse or shuttle, I do not +know what to call it--this is unspeckled, all blue, three stars in +it--more in the former break, all unmoving. The water leaden-white, even +as the grey gleam of water is in latest twilight. Now while I have been +writing this and gazing between-whiles (it is forty minutes past two), +the break over the road is swallowed up, and the stars gone; the break +over the house is narrowed into a rude circle, and on the edge of its +circumference one very bright star. See! already the white mass, +thinning at its edge, _fights_ with its brilliance. See! it has bedimmed +it, and now it is gone, and the moon is gone. The cock-crowing too has +ceased. The Greta sounds on for ever. But I hear only the ticking of my +watch in the pen-place of my writing-desk and the far lower note of the +noise of the fire, perpetual, yet seeming uncertain. It is the low voice +of quiet change, of destruction doing its work by little and little. + + +[Sidenote: AURI SACRA FAMES] + +O! The impudence of those who dare hold property to be the great +binder-up of the affections of the young to the old, &c., and Godwin's +folly in his book! Two brothers in this country fought in the mourning +coach, and stood with black eyes and their black clothes all blood over +their father's grave. + + +[Sidenote: EARLY DEATH November 1803] + +Poor Miss Dacre! born with a spinal deformity, that prophesied the early +death it occasioned. Such are generally gentle and innocent beings. God +seems to stamp on their foreheads the seal of death, in sign of +appropriation. No evil dares approach the sacred hieroglyphic on this +seal of redemption; we on earth interpret early death, but the heavenly +spirits, that minister around us, read in it "Abiding innocence." + + +Something to me delicious in the thought that one who dies a baby +presents to the glorified Saviour and Redeemer that same sweet face of +infancy which He blessed when on earth, and sanctified with a kiss, and +solemnly pronounced to be the type and sacrament of regeneration. + + +[Sidenote: THE NIGHT SIDE OF NATURE November 9, Wednesday night, 45 min. +past 6] + +The town, with lighted windows and noise of the _clogged_ passengers in +the streets--sound of the unseen river. Mountains scarcely perceivable +except by eyes long used to them, and supported by the images of memory +flowing in on the impulses of immediate impression. On the sky, black +clouds; two or three dim, untwinkling stars, like full stops on damp +paper, and large stains and spreads of sullen white, like a tunic of +white wool seen here and there through a torn and tattered cloak of +black. Whence do these stains of white proceed all over the sky, so long +after sunset, and from their indifference of place in the sky, seemingly +unaffected by the west? + + +[Sidenote: November 10, 1/2 past 2 o'clock, morning] + +Awoke, after long struggles, from a persecuting dream. The tale of the +dream began in two _images_, in two sons of a nobleman, desperately fond +of shooting, brought out by the footman to resign their property, and to +be made believe that they had none. They were far too cunning for that, +and as they struggled and resisted their cruel wrongers, and my interest +for them, I suppose, increased, I became they--the duality +vanished--Boyer and Christ's Hospital became concerned; yet, still, the +former story was kept up, and I was conjuring him, as he met me in the +street, to have pity on a nobleman's orphan, when I was carried up to +bed, and was struggling up against some unknown impediment--when a noise +of one of the doors awoke me. Drizzle; the sky uncouthly marbled with +white vapours and large black clouds, their surface of a fine woolly +grain, but in the height and key-stone of the arch a round space of sky +with dim watery stars, like a friar's crown; the seven stars in the +central seen through white vapour that, entirely shapeless, gave a +whiteness to the circle of the sky, but stained with exceedingly thin +and subtle flakes of black vapour, might be happily said in language of +Boccace (describing Demogorgon, in his _Genealogia De Gli Dei_) to be +_vestito d'una pallidezza affumicata_. + +[Sidenote: Tuesday night, 1/4 after 7] + +The sky covered with stars, the wind up--right opposite my window, over +Brandelhow, as its centre, and extending from the gorge to Whinlatter, +an enormous black cloud, exactly in the shape of an egg--this, the only +cloud in all the sky, impressed me with a demoniacal grandeur. O for +change of weather! + +[Sidenote: Sunday morning, Nov. 13, 1/2 past 2] + +The sky, in upon Grysdale Pike and onward to the Withop Fells, floored +with flat, smooth, dark or dingy clouds, elsewhere starry. Though seven +stars and all the rest in the height of the heaven be dimmed, those in +the descent bright and frosty. The river has a loud voice, +self-biographer of to-day's rain and thunder-showers. The owls are +silent; they have been very musical. All weathers on Saturday the +twelfth, storm and frost, sunshine, lightning and what not! God be +praised, though sleepless, am marvellously bettered, and I take it for +granted that the barometer has risen. I have been reading Barrow's +treatise "On the Pope's Supremacy," and have made a note on the +_L'Estrangeism_ of his style whenever his thoughts rendered it possible +for the words to be pert, frisky and vulgar--which, luckily, could not +be often, from the gravity of his subjects, the solidity and +appropriateness of his thoughts, and that habitual geometrical +_precision_ of mind which demanded the most _appropriate_ words. He +seems to me below South in dignity; at least, South never sinks so low +as B. sometimes. + + +[Sidenote: AN OPTICAL ILLUSION] + +A pretty optical fact occurred this morning. As I was returning from +Fletcher's, up the back lane and just in sight of the river, I saw, +floating high in the air, somewhere over Mr. Banks', a noble kite. I +continued gazing at it for some time, when, turning suddenly round, I +saw at an equi-distance on my right, that is, over the middle of our +field, a pair of kites floating about. I looked at them for some +seconds, when it occurred to me that I had never before seen two kites +together, and instantly the vision disappeared. It was neither more nor +less than two pair of leaves, each pair on a separate stalk, on a young +fruit tree that grew on the other side of the wall, not two yards from +my eye. The leaves being alternate, did, when I looked at them as +leaves, strikingly resemble wings, and they were the only leaves on the +tree. The magnitude was given by the imagined distance, that distance by +the former adjustment of the eye, which _remained_ in consequence of the +deep impression, the length of time I had been looking at the kite, the +pleasure, &c., and [the fact that] a new object [had] impressed itself +on the eye. + + +[Sidenote: THE INWARD LIGHT] + +In Plotinus the system of the Quakers is most beautifully expressed in +the fifth book of the Fifth Ennead (he is speaking of "the inward +light"): "It is not lawful to enquire from whence it originated, for it +neither approached hither, nor again departs from hence to some other +place, but it either appears to us, or does not appear. So that we ought +not to pursue it as if with a view of discerning its latent original, +but to abide in quiet till it suddenly shines upon us, preparing +ourselves for the blessed spectacle, like the eye waiting for the rising +sun." + + +[Sidenote: PARS ALTERA MEI] + +My nature requires another nature for its support, and reposes only in +another from the necessary indigence of its being. Intensely similar yet +not the same [must that other be]; or, may I venture to say, the same +indeed, but dissimilar, as the same breath sent with the same force, the +same pauses, and the same melody pre-imaged in the mind, into the flute +and the clarion shall be the same _soul diversely incarnate_. + + +[Sidenote: NOT THE BEAUTIFUL BUT THE GOOD] + +"ALL things desire that which is first from a necessity of nature, +prophesying, as it were, that they cannot subsist without the energies +of that first nature. But beauty is not first, it happens only to +intellect, and creates restlessness and seeking; but good, which is +present from the beginning and unceasingly to our innate appetite, +abides with us even in sleep, and never seizes the mind with +astonishment, and requires no peculiar reminiscence to convince us of +its presence."--PLOTINUS. + +This is just and profound, yet perfect beauty being an abstract of good, +in and for that particular form excites in me no passion but that of an +admiration so quiet as scarcely to admit of the name _passion_, but one +that, participating in the same root of soul, does yet spring up with +excellences that I have not. To this I am driven by a desire of +self-completion with a restless and inextinguishable love. God is not +all things, for in this case He would be indigent of all; but all things +are God, and eternally indigent of God. And in the original meaning of +the word _essence_ as predicable of that concerning which you can say, +This is he, or That is he (this or that rather than any other), in this +sense of the word essence, I perfectly coincide with the Platonists and +Plotinists that, if we add to the nature of God either essence or +intellect or beauty, we deprive Him of being the Good himself, the only +One, the purely and absolutely One. + + +[Sidenote: A MOON-SET Friday, Nov. 25, 1803, morning 45 minutes past] + +After a night of storm and rain, the sky calm and white, by blue vapour +thinning into formlessness instead of clouds, the mountains of height +covered with snow, the secondary mountains black. The moon descending +aslant the [V]^A, through the midst of which the great road +winds, set exactly behind Whinlatter Point, marked A. She being an egg, +somewhat uncouthly shaped, perhaps, but an ostrich's egg rather than any +other (she is two nights more than a half-moon), she set behind the +black point, fitted herself on to it like a cap of fire, then became a +crescent, then a mountain of fire in the distance, then the peak itself +on fire, one steady flame; then stars of the first, second and third +magnitude, and vanishing, upboiled a swell of light, and in the next +second the whole sky, which had been _sable blue_ around the yellow +moon, whitened and brightened for as large a space as would take the +moon half an hour to descend through. + + +[Sidenote: THE DEATH OF ADAM A DREAM Dec. 6, 1803] + +Adam travelling in his old age came to a set of the descendants of Cain, +ignorant of the origin of the world, and treating him as a madman, +killed him. A sort of dream which I had this night. + + +[Sidenote: A MAN'S A MAN FOR ALL THAT] + +We ought to suspect reasoning founded wholly on the difference of man +from man, not on their commonnesses, which are infinitely greater. So I +doubt the wisdom of the treatment of sailors and criminals, because it +is wholly grounded on their vices, as if the vices formed the whole or +major part of their being. + + +[Sidenote: A DEFENCE OF METAPHYSIC] + +Abstruse reasoning is to the inductions of common sense what reaping is +to delving. But the implements with which we reap, how are they gained? +by delving. Besides, what is common sense now was abstract reasoning +with earlier ages. + + +[Sidenote: A SUNSET] + +A beautiful sunset, the sun setting behind Newlands across the foot of +the lake. The sky is cloudless, save that there is a cloud on Skiddaw, +one on the highest mountains in Borrowdale, some on Helvellyn, and that +the sun sets in a glorious cloud. These clouds are of various shapes, +various colours, and belong to their mountains and have nothing to do +with the sky. N.B.--There is something metallic, silver playfully and +imperfectly gilt and highly polished, or, rather, something +mother-of-pearlish, in the sun-gleams on ice, thin ice. + + +[Sidenote: EXTREMES MEET] + +I have repeatedly said that I could make a volume if only I had noted +down, as they occurred to my recollection, the instances of the proverb +"Extremes Meet." This night, Sunday, December 11, 1803, half-past +eleven, I have determined to devote the last nine pages of my +pocket-book to a collection of the same. + + 1. The parching air + Burns frore and cold performs the effect of fire. + + _Paradise Lost_, ii. 594. + + 2. Insects by their smallness, the mammoth by its hugeness, + terrible. + + 3. In the foam-islands in a fiercely boiling pool, at the + bottom of a waterfall, there is sameness from infinite change. + + 4. The excess of humanity and disinterestedness in polite + society, the desire not to give pain, for example, not to talk + of your own diseases and misfortunes, and to introduce nothing + but what will give pleasure, destroy all humanity and + disinterestedness, by making it intolerable, through desuetude, + to listen to the complaints of our equals, or of any, where the + listening does not gratify or excite some vicious pride and + sense of superiority. + + 5. It is difficult to say whether a perfectly unheard-of + subject or a _crambe bis cocta_, if chosen by a man of genius, + would excite in the higher degree the sense of novelty. Take, + as an instance of the latter, the "Orestes" of Sotheby. + + 6. Dark with excess of light. + + 7. Self-absorption and worldly-mindedness (N.B.--The latter a + most philosophical word). + + 8. The dim intellect sees an absolute oneness, the perfectly + clear intellect _knowingly perceives_ it. Distinction and + plurality lie in the betwixt. + + 9. The naked savage and the gymnosophist. + + 10. Nothing and intensest absolute being. + + 11. Despotism and ochlocracy. + + +[Sidenote: ABSTRUSE RESEARCH] + +A dirty business! "How," said I, with a great effort to conquer my +laziness and a great wish to rest in the generality, "what do you +include under the words 'dirty business'"? I note this in order to +remember the reluctance the mind has in general to analysis. + + +The soul within the body--can I, any way, compare this to the reflection +of the fire seen through my window on the solid wall, seeming, of +course, within the solid wall, as deep within as the distance of the +fire from the wall. I fear I can make nothing out of it; but why do I +always hurry away from any interesting thought to do something +uninteresting? As, for instance, when this thought struck me, I turned +off my attention suddenly and went to look for the copy of Wolff which I +had missed. Is it a cowardice of all deep feeling, even though +pleasurable? or is it laziness? or is it something less obvious than +either? Is it connected with my epistolary embarrassments? + +["The window of my library at Keswick is opposite to the fireplace. At +the coming on of evening, it was my frequent amusement to watch the +image or reflection of the fire that seemed burning in the bushes or +between the trees in different parts of the garden."--_The Friend._ +_Coleridge's Works_, ii. 135.] + + +As I was sitting at the foot of my bed, reading with my face downwards, +I saw a phantom of my face upon the nightcap which lay just on the +middle of my pillow--it was indistinct but of bright colours, and came +only as my head bent low. Was it the action of the rays of my face upon +my eyes? that is, did my eyes see my face, and from the sidelong and +faint action of the rays place the image in that situation? But I moved +the nightcap and I lost it. + + +[Sidenote: Dec. 19, 1803, morning] + +I have only to shut my eyes to feel how ignorant I am whence these forms +and coloured forms, and colours distinguishable beyond what I can +distinguish, derive their birth. These varying and infinite co-present +colours, what are they? I ask, to what do they belong in my waking +remembrance? and almost never receive an answer. Only I perceive and +know that whatever I change, in any part of me, produces some change in +these eye-spectra; as, for instance, if I press my legs or change sides. + + +[Sidenote: OF STREAMY ASSOCIATION] + +I will at least make the attempt to explain to myself the origin of +moral evil from the streamy nature of association, which thinking curbs +and rudders. Do not the bad passions in dreams throw light and show of +proof upon this hypothesis? If I can but explain those passions I shall +gain light, I am sure. A clue! a clue! a Hecatomb à la Pythagoras, if it +unlabyrinth me. + + +[Sidenote: December 28, 1803, 11 o'clock] + +I note the beautiful luminous shadow of my pencil-point which follows it +from the candle, or rather goes before it and illuminates the word I am +writing. But, to resume, take in the blessedness of innocent children, +the blessedness of sweet sleep, do they or do they not contradict the +argument of evil from streamy associations? I hope not, but all is to be +thought over and _into_. And what is the height and ideal of mere +association? Delirium. But how far is this state produced by pain and +denaturalisation? And what are these? In short, as far as I can see +anything in this total mist, vice is imperfect yet existing volition, +giving diseased currents of association, because it yields on all sides +and yet _is_--so, too, think of madness! + + +[Sidenote: A DOUBTFUL EXPERIMENT] + +December 30th, half-past one o'clock, or, rather, Saturday morning, +December 31st, put rolled bits of paper, many tiny bits of wick, some +tallow, and the soap together. The whole flame, equal in size to +half-a-dozen candles, did not give the light of one, and the letters of +the book looked by the unsteady flare just as through tears or in +dizziness--every line of every letter dislocated into angles, or like +the mica in crumbly stones. + + +[Sidenote: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MOTION] + +The experiment over leaf illustrates my idea of motion, namely, that it +is a presence and absence rapidly alternating, so that the fits of +_absence_ exist continuously in the feeling, and the fits of presence +_vice versâ_ continuedly in the eye. Of course I am speaking of motion +psychologically, not physically, what it is in us, not what the +supposed mundane cause may be. I believe that what we call _motion_ is +our consciousness of motion arising from the interruption of motion, the +action of the soul in suffering resistance. Free unresisted action, the +going forth of the soul, life without consciousness, is, properly, +infinite, that is unlimited. For whatever resists limits, and whatever +is unresisted is unlimited. This, psychologically speaking, is space, +while the sense of resistance or limitation is time, and motion is a +synthesis of the two. The closest approach of time to space forms +co-existent multitude. + + +[Sidenote: RECOLLECTION AND REMEMBRANCE] + +There is an important distinction between the memory or reminiscent +faculty of sensation which young children seem to possess in so small a +degree, from their perpetual desire to have a tale repeated to them, and +the memory of words and images which the very same children manifestly +possess in an unusual degree, even to sealing-wax accuracy of retention +and representation. + + +[Sidenote: THE ETHICS OF SPINOZA] + +If Spinoza had left the doctrine of miracles untouched, and had not +written so powerfully in support of universal toleration, his ethics +would never have brought on him the charge of Atheism. His doctrine, in +this respect, is truly and severely orthodox, in the reformed Church; +neither do I know that the Church of Rome has authoritatively decided +between the Spinosists and Scotists in their great controversy on the +nature of the being which creatures possess. + + +[Sidenote: A UNITARIAN SCHOOLMAN] + +Creation is explained by Joannes Scotus Erigena as only a manifestation +of the unity of God in forms--_et fit et facit, et creat et creatur_. +Lib. 4. p. 7. + +P. 8. A curious and highly-philosophical account of the Trinity, and +completely Unitarian. God is, is wise, and is living. The essence we +call Father, the wisdom Son, the life the Holy Spirit. And he +positively affirms that these three exist only as distinguishable +relations--_habitudines_; and he states the whole doctrine to be an +invention and condescension of Theology to the intellect of man, which +must _define_, and consequently _personify_, in order to understand, and +must have some phantom of understanding in order to keep alive in the +heart the substantial faith. They are _fuel_ to the sacred fire--in the +empyrean it may burn without fuel, and they who do so are seraphs. + + +[Sidenote: A CROWD OF THOUGHTS] + +A fine epitheton of man would be "Lord of fire and light." All other +creatures whose existence we perceive are mere alms-receivers of both. + + +A company of children driving a hungry, hard-skinned ass out of a +corn-field. The ass cannot by such weaklings be driven so hard but he +will feed as he goes. + + +Such light as lovers love, when the waxing moon steals in behind a +black, black cloud, emerging soon enough to make the blush visible which +the long kiss had kindled. + + +All notions [remain] hushed in the phantasms of place and time that +still escape the finest sieve and most searching winnow of our reason +and abstraction. + + +A rosemary tree, large as a timber tree, is a sweet sign of the +antiquity and antique manners of the house against which it groweth. +"Rosemary" (says Parkinson, _Theatrum Botanicum_ [London, 1640] p. 76) +"is a herb of as great use with us in these days as any whatsoever, not +only for physical but civil purposes--the civil uses, as all know, are +at weddings, funerals, &c., to bestow on friends." + + +Great harm is done by bad poets in trivialising beautiful expressions +and images and associating disgust and indifference with the technical +forms of poetry. + + +Advantage of public schools. [They teach men to be] content with school +praise when they publish. Apply this to Cottle and J. Jennings. + + +Religious slang operates better on women than on men. N.B.--Why? I will +give over--it is not _tanti_! + + +Poem. Ghost of a mountain--the forms, seizing my body as I passed, +became realities--I a ghost, till I had reconquered my substance. + + +The sopha of sods. Lack-wit and the clock find him at last in the +Yorkshire cave, where the waterfall is. + +[The reference is, no doubt, to Wordsworth's "Idiot Boy," which was +composed at Nether Stowey, in 1798. In a letter addressed to John Wilson +of June 5, 1802, Wordsworth discusses and discards the use of the word +"lackwit" as an equivalent to "idiot." The "Sopha of Sods" was on +Latrigg. In her journal for August, 1800, Dorothy Wordsworth records the +making of a seat on Windybrow, a part of Latrigg. Possibly this was the +"Sopha of Sods."--_Life of W. Wordsworth_, 1889, i. 268, 403.] + + +The old stump of the tree, with briar-roses and bramble leaves wreathed +round and round--a bramble arch--a foxglove in the centre. + + +The palm, still faithful to forsaken deserts, an emblem of hope. + + +The stedfast rainbow in the fast-moving, fast-hurrying hail-mist! What a +congregation of images and feelings, of fantastic permanence amidst the +rapid change of tempest--quietness the daughter of storm. + + +[Sidenote: "POEM ON SPIRIT, OR ON SPINOZA"] + +I would make a pilgrimage to the deserts of Arabia to find the man who +could make me understand how the _one can be many_. Eternal, universal +mystery! It seems as if it were impossible, yet it _is_, and it is +everywhere! It is indeed a contradiction in _terms_, and only in terms. +It is the co-presence of feeling and life, limitless by their very +essence, with form by its very essence limited, determinable, definite. + + +[Sidenote: TRANS-SUBSTANTIATION] + +Meditate on trans-substantiation! What a conception of a miracle! Were +one a Catholic, what a sublime oration might one not make of it? +Perpetual, [Greek: pan]topical, yet offering no violence to the sense, +exercising no domination over the free-will--a miracle always existing, +yet perceived only by an act of the free-will--the beautiful fuel of the +fire of faith--the fire must be pre-existent or it is not fuel, yet it +feeds and supports and is necessary to feed and support the fire that +converts it into his own nature. + + +[Sidenote: THE DANGER OF THE MEAN] + +Errors beget opposite errors, for it is our imperfect nature to run into +extremes. But this trite, because ever-recurring, truth is not the +whole. Alas! those are endangered who have avoided the extremes, as if +among the Tartars, in opposition to a faction that had unnaturally +lengthened their noses into monstrosity, there should arise another who +had cut off theirs flat to the face, Socinians in physiognomy. The few +who retained their noses as nature made them and reason dictated would +assuredly be persecuted by the noseless party as adherents of the +rhinocerotists or monster-nosed men, which is the case of those [Greek: +archaspistai] [braves] of the English Church, called Evangelicals. +Excess of Calvinism produced Arminianism, and those not in excess must +therefore be Calvinists! + + +[Sidenote: ALAS! THEY HAD BEEN FRIENDS IN YOUTH] + +To a former friend who pleaded how near he formerly had been, how near +and close a friend! Yes! you were, indeed, near to my heart and native +to my soul--a part of my being and its natural, even as the chaff to +corn. But since that time, through whose fault I will be mute, I have +been thrashed out by the flail of experience. Because you have been, +therefore, never more can you be a part of the grain. + + +[Sidenote: Oct. 31, 1803 AVE PH[OE]BE IMPERATOR] + +The full moon glided behind a black cloud. And what then? and who cared? +It was past seven o'clock in the morning. There is a small cloud in the +east, not larger than the moon and ten times brighter than she! So +passes night, and all her favours vanish in our minds ungrateful! + + +[Sidenote: THE ONE AND THE GOOD] + +In the chapter on abstract ideas I might introduce the subject by +quoting the eighth Proposition of Proclus' "Elements of Theology." The +whole of religion seems to me to rest on and in the question: The One +and The Good--are these words or realities? I long to read the schoolmen +on the subject. + + +[Sidenote: A MORTAL AGONY OF THOUGHT] + +There are thoughts that seem to give me a power over my own life. I +could kill myself by persevering in the thought. Mem., to describe as +accurately as may be the approximating symptoms. I met something very +like this observation where I should least have expected such a +coincidence of sentiment, such sympathy with so wild a feeling of +mine--in p. 71 of Blount's translation of "The Spanish Rogue," 1623. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +_1804_ + + "Home-sickness is no baby-pang."--S. T. C. + + +[Sidenote: THE UNDISCIPLINED WILL] + +This evening, and indeed all this day, I ought to have been reading and +filling the margins of Malthus. ["An Essay on the Principles of +Population, &c., London," 1803, 4to. The copy annotated by Coleridge is +now in the British Museum.] + +I had begun and found it pleasant. Why did I neglect it? Because I ought +not to have done this. The same applies to the reading and writing of +letters, essays, etc. Surely this is well worth a serious analysis, +that, by understanding, I may attempt to heal it. For it is a deep and +wide disease in my moral nature, at once elm-and-oak-rooted. Is it love +of liberty, of spontaneity or what? These all express, but do not +explain the fact. + +[Sidenote: Tuesday morning, January 10, 1804] + +After I had got into bed last night I said to myself that I had been +pompously enunciating as a difficulty, a problem of easy and common +solution--viz., that it was the effect of association. From infancy up +to manhood, under parents, schoolmasters, inspectors, etc., our +pleasures and pleasant self-chosen pursuits (self-chosen because +pleasant, and not originally pleasant because self-chosen) have been +forcibly interrupted, and dull, unintelligible rudiments, or painful +tasks imposed upon us instead. Now all duty is felt as a _command_, and +every command is of the nature of an offence. Duty, therefore, by the +law of association being felt as a command from without, would naturally +call up the sensation of the pain roused from the commands of parents +and schoolmasters. But I awoke this morning at half-past one, and as +soon as disease permitted me to think at all, the shallowness and +sophistry of this solution flashed upon me at once. I saw that the +phenomenon occurred far, far too early: I have observed it in infants of +two or three months old, and in Hartley I have seen it turned up and +layed bare to the unarmed eye of the merest common sense. The fact is +that interruption of itself is painful, because and as far as it acts as +_disruption_. And thus without any reference to or distinct recollection +of my former theory I saw great reason to attribute the effect, wholly, +to the streamy nature of the associative faculty, and the more, as it is +evident that they labour under this defect who are most reverie-ish and +streamy--Hartley, for instance, and myself. This seems to me no common +corroboration of my former thought or the origin of moral evil in +general. + + +[Sidenote: COGITARE EST LABORARE] + +A time will come when passiveness will attain the dignity of worthy +activity, when men shall be as proud within themselves of having +remained in a state of deep tranquil emotion, whether in reading or in +hearing or in looking, as they now are in having figured away for an +hour. Oh! how few can transmute activity of mind into emotion! Yet there +are as active as the stirring tempest and playful as the may-blossom in +a breeze of May, who can yet for hours together remain with _hearts_ +broad awake, and the _understanding_ asleep in all but its retentiveness +and _receptivity_. Yea, and (in) the latter (state of mind) evince as +great genius as in the former. + + +[Sidenote: A SHEAF OF ANECDOTES, Sunday morning, Feb. 5, 1804] + +I called on Charles Lamb fully expecting him to be out, and intending +all the way, to write to him. I found him at home, and while sitting and +talking to him, took the pen and note-paper and began to write. + + +As soon as Holcroft heard that Mary Wollstonecraft was dead, he took a +chaise and came with incredible speed to "have Mrs. Godwin opened for a +remarkable woman!" + + +[Sidenote: Sunday morning, Feb. 13, 1804] + +Lady Beaumont told me that when she was a child, previously to her +saying her prayers, she endeavoured to think of a mountain or great +river, or something great, in order to raise up her soul and kindle it. + + +Rickman has a tale about George Dyer and his "Ode to the Hero Race." +"Your Aunt, Sir," said George to the Man of Figures, "your Aunt is a +very sensible woman. Why I read Sir, my Ode to her and she said that it +was a very pretty Thing. There are very few women, Sir! that possess +that fine discrimination, Sir!" + + +The huge Organ Pipe at Exeter, larger than the largest at Haarlem, at +first was dumb. Green determined to make it speak, and tried all means +in vain, till at last he made a second pipe precisely alike, and placed +it at its side. _Then_ it spoke. + + +Sir George Beaumont found great advantage in learning to draw from +Nature through gauze spectacles. + + +At Göttingen, at Blumenbach's lectures on Psychology, when some +anatomical preparations were being handed round, there came in and +seated himself by us Englishmen a _Hospitator_, one, that is, who +attends one or two lectures unbidden and unforbidden and gratis, as a +stranger, and on a claim, as it were, of hospitality. This _Hospes_ was +the uncouthest, strangest fish, pretending to human which I ever beheld. +I turned to Greenough and "Who broke his bottle?" I whispered. + + +Godwin and Holcroft went together to Underwood's chambers. "Little Mr. +Underwood," said they, "we are perfectly acquainted with the subject of +your studies, only ignorant of the particulars. What is the difference +between a thermometer and a barometer?" + + +[Sidenote: THE ADOLESCENCE OF LOVE] + +It is a pleasure to me to perceive the buddings of virtuous loves, to +know their minutes of increase, their stealth and silent growings-- + +A pretty idea, that of a good soul watching the progress of an +attachment from the first glance to the time when the lover himself +becomes conscious of it. A poem for my "Soother of Absence." + + +[Sidenote: THE RAGE FOR MONITION] + + To J. Tobin, Esq., April 10, 1804. + +Men who habitually enjoy robust health have, too generally, the trick, +and a very cruel one it is, of imagining that they discover the secret +of all their acquaintances' ill health in some malpractice or other; +and, sometimes, by gravely asserting this, here there and everywhere (as +who likes his penetration [hid] under a bushel?), they not only do all +they can, without intending it, to deprive the poor sufferer of that +sympathy which is always a comfort and, in some degree, a support to +human nature, but, likewise, too often implant serious alarm and +uneasiness in the minds of the person's relatives and his nearest and +dearest connections. Indeed (but that I have known its inutility, that I +should be ridiculously sinning against my own law which I was +propounding, and that those who are most fond of advising are the least +able to hear advice from others, as the passion to command makes men +disobedient) I should often have been on the point of advising you +against the two-fold rage of advising and of discussing character, both +the one and the other of which infallibly generates presumption and +blindness to our own faults. Nay! more particularly where, from whatever +cause, there exists a slowness to understand or an aptitude to mishear +and consequently misunderstand what has been said, it too often renders +an otherwise truly good man a mischief-maker to an extent of which he is +but little aware. Our friends' reputation should be a religion to us, +and when it is lightly sacrificed to what self-adulation calls a love of +telling the truth (in reality a lust of talking something seasoned with +the cayenne and capsicum of personality), depend upon it, something in +the heart is warped or warping, more or less according to the greater or +lesser power of the counteracting causes. I confess to you, that being +exceedingly low and heart-fallen, I should have almost sunk under the +operation of reproof and admonition (the whole too, in my conviction, +grounded on utter mistake) at the moment I was quitting, perhaps for +ever! my dear country and all that makes it so dear--but the high esteem +I cherish towards you, and my sense of your integrity and the reality of +your attachment and concern blows upon me refreshingly as the sea-breeze +on the tropic islander. Show me anyone made better by blunt advice, and +I may abate of my dislike to it, but I have experienced the good effects +of the contrary in Wordsworth's conduct to me; and, in Poole and others, +have witnessed enough of its ill effects to be convinced that it does +little else but harm both to the adviser and the advisee. + +[See _Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, Letter cli., ii. 474, 475.] + + +[Sidenote: PLACES AND PERSONS, Thursday, April 19, 1804] + +This is Spain! That is Africa! Now, then, I have seen Africa! &c., &c. +O! the power of names to give interest. When I first sate down, with +Europe on my left and Africa on my right, both distinctly visible, I +felt a quickening of the movements in the blood, but still it felt as a +pleasure of _amusement_ rather than of thought or elevation; and at the +same time, and gradually winning on the other, the nameless silent forms +of nature were working in me, like a tender thought in a man who is +hailed merrily by some acquaintance in his work, and answers it in the +same tone. This is Africa! That is Europe! There is _division_, sharp +boundary, abrupt change! and what are they in nature? Two mountain banks +that make a noble river of the interfluent sea, not existing and acting +with distinctness and manifoldness indeed, but at once and as one--no +division, no change, no antithesis! Of all men I ever knew, Wordsworth +himself not excepted, I have the faintest pleasure in things contingent +and transitory. I never, except as a forced courtesy of conversation, +ask in a stage-coach, Whose house is that? nor receive the least +additional pleasure when I receive the answer. Nay, it goes to a disease +in me. As I was gazing at a wall in Caernarvon Castle, I wished the +guide fifty miles off that was telling me, In this chamber the Black +Prince was born (or whoever it was). I am not certain whether I should +have seen with any emotion the mulberry-tree of Shakspere. If it were a +tree of no notice in itself, I am sure that I should feel by an +effort--with self-reproach at the dimness of the feeling; if a striking +tree, I fear that the pleasure would be diminished rather than +increased, that I should have no unity of feeling, and find in the +constant association of Shakspere having planted it an intrusion that +prevented me from wholly (as a whole man) losing myself in the flexures +of its branches and intertwining of its roots. No doubt there are times +and conceivable circumstances in which the contrary would be true, in +which the thought that under this rock by the sea-shore I know that +Giordano Bruno hid himself from the pursuit of the enraged priesthood, +and overcome with the power and sublimity of the truths for which they +sought his life, thought his life therefore given him that he might bear +witness to the truths, and _morti ultra occurrens_, returned and +surrendered himself! So, here, on this bank Milton used to lie, in late +May, when a young man, and familiar with all its primroses, made them +yet dearer than their dear selves, by that sweetest line in the Lycidas, +"And the rathe primrose that forsaken dies:" or from this spot the +immortal deer-stealer, on his escape from Warwickshire, had the first +view of London, and asked himself, And what am I to do there? At certain +times, uncalled and sudden, subject to no bidding of my own or others, +these thoughts would come upon me like a storm, and fill the place with +something more than nature. But these are not contingent or transitory, +they are nature, even as the elements are nature--yea, more to the +human mind, for the mind has the power of abstracting all agency from +the former and considering [them] as mere effects and instruments. But a +Shakspere, a Milton, a Bruno, exist in the mind as pure _action_, +defecated of all that is material and passive. And the great moments +that formed them--it is a kind of impiety against a voice within us, not +to regard them as predestined, and therefore things of now, for ever, +and which were always. But it degrades the sacred feeling, and is to it +what stupid superstition is to enthusiastic religion, when a man makes a +pilgrimage to see a great man's shin-bone found unmouldered in his +coffin. Perhaps the matter stands thus. I could feel amused by these +things, and should be, if there had not been connected with the great +name upon which the amusement wholly depends a higher and deeper +pleasure, that will [not] endure the co-presence of so mean a companion; +while the mass of mankind, whether from nature or (as I fervently hope) +from error of rearing and the worldliness of their after-pursuits, are +rarely susceptible of any other pleasures than those of _amusement_, +gratification of curiosity, novelty, surprise, wonderment, from the +glaring, the harshly-contrasted, the odd, the accidental, and find the +reading of the _Paradise Lost_ a task somewhat alleviated by a few +entertaining incidents, such as the pandemonium and self-endwarfment of +the devils, the fool's paradise and the transformation of the infernal +court into serpents and of their intended applauses into hisses. + +["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; whereas, for myself, +I believe I should walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more +interest in it than in any other plain of similar features."--_Table +Talk_, August 4, 1833, Bell & Co., 1834, p. 242.] + + +[Sidenote: THE INTOLERANCE OF CONVERTS] + +Why do we so very, very often see men pass from one extreme to the +other? [Greek: stodkardia] [Stoddart, for instance]. Alas! they +sought not the truth, but praise, self-importance, and above all [the +sense of] something doing! Disappointed, they hate and persecute their +former opinion, which no man will do who by meditation had adopted it, +and in the course of unfeigned meditation gradually enlarged the circle +and so get out of it. For in the perception of its falsehood he will +form a perception of certain truths which had made the falsehood +plausible, and can never cease to venerate his own sincerity of +intention and Philalethie. For, perhaps, we never _hate_ any opinion, or +can do so, till we have _impersonated_ it. We hate the persons because +they oppose us, symbolise that opposition under the form and words of +the opinion and then hate the person for the opinion and the opinion for +the person. + +[For some weeks after his arrival at Valetta Coleridge remained as the +guest of Dr. John (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart, at that time H.M. +Advocate at Malta.] + + +[Sidenote: FACTS AND FICTION] + +Facts! Never be weary of discussing and exposing the hollowness of +these. [For, in the first place,] every man [is] an accomplice on one +side or the other, [and, secondly, there is] _human testimony_. "You +were in fault, I hear," said B to C, and B had heard it from A. [Now] A +had said, "And C, God bless her, was perhaps the innocent occasion"! But +what a trifle this to the generality of blunders! + + +[Sidenote: CANDOUR ANOTHER NAME FOR CANT] + +[I have no pity or patience for that], blindness which comes from +putting out your own eyes and in mock humility refusing to form an +opinion on the right and the wrong of a question. "If we say so of the +Sicilians, why may not Buonaparte say this of the Swiss?" and so forth. +As if England and France, Swiss and Sicilian were the x y z of Algebra, +naked names of unknown quantities. [What is this but] to fix morals +without morality, and [to allow] general rules to supersede all +particular thought? And though it be never acted on in reality, yet the +opinion is pernicious. It kills public spirit and deadens national +effort. + + +[Sidenote: A SIMILE] + +The little point, or, sometimes, minim globe of flame remains on the +[newly] lighted taper for three minutes or more unaltered. But, see, it +is given over, and then, at once, the flame darts or plunges down into +the wick, then up again, and all is bright--a fair cone of flame, with +its black column in it, and minor cone, shadow-coloured, resting upon +the blue flame the common base of the two cones, that is, of the whole +flame. A pretty detailed simile in the manner of J. Taylor might be made +of this, applying it to slow learners, to opportunities of grace +manifestly neglected and seemingly lost and useless. + + +[Sidenote: O STAR BENIGN] + +Monday evening, July 9, 1804, about 8 o'clock. The glorious evening star +coasted the moon, and at length absolutely crested its upper tip.... It +was the most singular and at the same time beautiful sight I ever +beheld. Oh, that it could have appeared the same in England, at +Grasmere! + + +[Sidenote: NEFAS EST AB HOSTE DOCERI] + +In the Jacobinism of anti-jacobins, note the dreariest feature of +Jacobins, a contempt for the institutions of our ancestors and of past +wisdom, which has generated Cobbetts and contempt of the liberty of the +press and of liberty itself. Men are not wholly unmodified by the +opinion of their fellow-men, even when they happen to be enemies or +(still worse) of the opposite faction. + + +[Sidenote: THE MANY AND THE ONE] + +I saw in early youth, as in a dream, the birth of the planets; and my +eyes beheld as _one_ what the understanding afterwards divided into (1) +the origin of the masses, (2) the origin of their motions, and (3) the +site or position of their circles and ellipses. All the deviations, too, +were seen as one intuition of one the self-same necessity, and this +necessity was a law of spirit, and all was spirit. And in matter all +beheld the past activity of others or their own--and this reflection, +this echo is matter--its only essence, if essence it be. And of this, +too, I saw the necessity and understood it, but I understood not how +infinite multitude and manifoldness could be one; only I saw and +understood that it was yet more out of my power to comprehend how it +could be otherwise--and in this unity I worshipped in the depth of +knowledge that passes all understanding the Being of all things--and in +Being their sole goodness--and I saw that God is the One, the +Good--possesses it not, but _is it_. + + +[Sidenote: THE WINDMILL AND ITS SHADOW] + +The visibility of motion at a great distance is increased by all that +increases the the distinct visibility of the moving object. This +Saturday, August 3, 1804, in the room immediately under the tower in St. +Antonio, as I was musing on the difference, whether ultimate or only of +degree, between _auffassen_ and _erkennen_ (an idea received and an idea +acquired) I saw on the top of the distant hills a shadow on the sunny +ground moving very fast and wave-like, yet always in the same place, +which I should have attributed to the windmill close by, but the +windmill (which I saw distinctly too) appeared at rest. On steady +gazing, however, (and most plainly with my spy-glass) I found that it +was not at rest, but that this was its shadow. The windmill itself was +white in the sunshine, and there were sunny white clouds at its back, +the shadow black on the white ground. + + +[Sidenote: SYRACUSE Thursday night at the Opera, September 27, 1804] + +In reflecting on the cause of the "meeting soul" in music, the seeming +recognisance etc., etc., the whole explanation of _memory_ as in the +nature of _accord_ struck upon me; accord produces a phantom of memory, +because memory is always in accord. + + +[Sidenote: Oct. 5, 1804] + +Philosophy to a few, religion with many, is the friend of poetry, as +producing the two conditions of pleasure arising from poetry, namely +tranquillity and the attachment of the affections to _generalisations_. +God, soul, Heaven, the Gospel miracles, etc., are a sort of _poetry_ +compared with Lombard Street and Change Alley speculations. + + +[Sidenote: A SERIOUS MEMORANDUM Syracuse, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1804] + +In company, indeed, with all except a very chosen few, never dissent +from anyone as to the _merits_ of another, especially in your own +supposed department, but content yourself with praising, in your turn; +the really good praises of the unworthy are felt by a good man, and man +of genius as detractions from the worthy, and robberies--so the _flashy_ +moderns seem to _rob_ the ancients of the honours due to them, and Bacon +and Harrington are _not_ read because Hume and Condillac _are_. This is +an evil; but oppose it, if at all, in books in which you can evolve the +whole of your reasons and feeling, not in conversation when it will be +inevitably attributed to envy. Besides, they who praise the unworthy +must be the injudicious: and the eulogies of critics without taste or +judgment are the natural pay of authors without feeling or genius--and +why rob them? _Sint unicuique sua præmia._ Coleridge! Coleridge! will +you never learn to appropriate your conversation to your company! Is it +not desecration, indelicacy, and a proof of great weakness and even +vanity to talk to, etc. etc., as if you [were talking to] Wordsworth or +Sir G. Beaumont? + + +[Sidenote: "CAST NOT YOUR PEARLS BEFORE SWINE"] + +[Sidenote: Oct. 11, Syracuse, Lecky's, midnight] + +O young man, who hast seen, felt and known the truth, to whom reality is +a phantom and virtue and mind the sole actual and permanent being, do +not degrade the truth in thee by disputing. Avoid it! do not by any +persuasion be tempted to it! Surely not by vanity or the weakness of the +pleasure of communicating thy thoughts and awaking sympathy, but not +even by the always mixed hope of producing conviction. This is not the +mode, this is not the time, not the place. [Truth will be better served] +by modestly and most truly saying, "Your arguments are all consequent, +if the foundation be admitted. I do not admit the foundation. But this +will be a business for moments of thought, for a Sabbath-day of your +existence. Then, perhaps, a voice from within will say to you, better, +because [in a manner] more adapted to you, all I can say. But if I felt +this to _be_ that day or that moment, a sacred sympathy would at once +compel and inspire me to the task of uttering the very truth. Till then +I am right willing to bear the character of a mystic, a visionary, or +self-important juggler, who nods his head and says, 'I could if I +would.' But I cannot, I _may_ not, bear the reproach of profaning the +truth which is my life in moments when all passions heterogeneous to it +are eclipsing it to the exclusion of its dimmest ray. I might lose my +tranquillity, and in acquiring the _passion_ of proselytism lose the +_sense_ of conviction. I might become _positive_! Now I am _certain_! I +might have the heat and fermentation, now I have the warmth of life." + + +[Sidenote: THE YEARNING OF THE FINITE FOR THE INFINITE: Oct. 13, 1804, +Saturday, Syracuse] + +Each man having a spark (to use the old metaphor) of the Divinity, yet a +whole fire-grate of humanity--each, therefore, will legislate for the +whole, and spite of the _De gustibus non est disputandum_, even in +trifles--and, till corrected by experience, at least, in this endless +struggle of presumption, really occasioned by the ever-working spark of +the Universal, in the disappointments and baffled attempts of each, all +are disposed to [admit] the _jus extrinsecum_ of Spinoza, and recognise +that reason as the highest which may not be understood as the best, but +of which the concrete possession is felt to be the strongest. Then come +society, habit, education, misery, intrigue, oppression, then +_revolution_, and the circle begins anew. Each man will universalise his +notions, and, yet, each is variously finite. To _reconcile_, therefore, +is truly the work of the inspired! This is the true _Atonement_--that +is, to reconcile the struggles of the infinitely various finite with the +_permanent_. + + +[Sidenote: A MEASURE IN SELF-REPROOF] + +Do not be too much discouraged, if any virtue _should_ be mixed, in your +consciousness, with affectation and imperfect sincerity, and some +vanity. Disapprove of this, and continue the practice of the good +feeling, even though mixed, and it will _gradually_ purify itself. +_Probatum est_. Disapprove, be _ashamed_ of the thought, of its always +continuing thus, but do not harshly quarrel with your present self, for +all virtue subsists in and by pleasure. S. T. C. Sunday evening, October +14, 1804. + +But a great deal of this is constitutional. That constitution which +predisposes to certain virtues, the [Greek: Dôron Theôn], has this +[Greek: temenos Nemeseôs] in it. It is the dregs of sympathy, and while +we are _weak_ and dependent on each other, and each is forced to think +often for himself, sympathy will have its dregs, and the strongest, who +have least of these, have the dregs of other virtues to strain off. + + +[Sidenote: THE OPERA] + +All the objections to the opera are equally applicable to tragedy and +comedy without music, and all proceed on the false principle that +theatrical representations are _copies_ of nature, whereas they are +imitations. + + +[Sidenote: A SALVE FOR WOUNDED VANITY] + +When you are harassed, disquieted, and have little dreams of resentment, +and mock triumphs in consequence of the clearest perceptions of unkind +treatment and strange misconceptions and illogicalities, palpably from +bad passion, in any person connected with you, suspect a sympathy in +yourself with some of these bad passions--vanity, for instance. Though a +sense of wounded justice is possible, nay, probably, forms a part of +your uneasy feelings, yet this of itself would yield, at the first +moment of reflection, to pity for the wretched state of a man too +untranquil and perpetually selfish to love anything for itself or +without some end of vanity or ambition--who detests all poetry, tosses +about in the impotence of desires disproportionate to his powers, and +whose whole history of his whole life is a tale of disappointment in +circumstances where the hope and pretension was always unwise, often +presumptuous and insolent. Surely an intuition of this restless and +no-end-having mood of mind would at once fill a hearer having no +sympathy with these passions with tender melancholy, virtuously mixed +with grateful unpharisaic self-complacency. But a patient _almost_, but +not quite, recovered from madness, yet on its confines, finds in the +notions of madness that which irritates and haunts and makes unhappy. + + +[Sidenote: OFFICIAL DISTRUST] + +Malta, Friday, Nov. 23, 1804. + +One of the heart-depressing habits and temptations of men in power, as +governors, &c., is to make _instruments_ of their fellow-creatures, and +the moment they find a man of honour and talents, instead of loving and +esteeming him, they wish to _use him_. Hence that self-betraying +side-and-down look of cunning; and they justify and inveterate the habit +by believing that every individual who approaches has selfish designs on +them. + + +[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"] + +Days and weeks and months pass on, and now a year--and the sea, the sea, +and the breeze have their influences on me, and [so, too, has the +association with] good and sensible men. I feel a pleasure upon me, and +I am, to the outward view, cheerful, and have myself no distinct +consciousness of the contrary, for I use my faculties, not, indeed, at +once, but freely. But, oh! I am never happy, never deeply gladdened. I +know not--I have forgotten--what the _joy_ is of which the heart is +full, as of a deep and quiet fountain overflowing insensibly, or the +gladness of joy, when the fountain overflows ebullient. + + +The most common appearance in wintry weather is that of the sun under a +sharp, defined level line of a stormy cloud, that stretches one-third or +half round the circle of the horizon, thrice the height of the space +that intervenes between it and the horizon, which last is about half +again as broad as the sun. [At length] out comes the sun, a mass of +brassy light, himself lost and diffused in his [own] strong splendour. +Compare this with the beautiful summer _set_ of colours without cloud. + + +Even in the most tranquil dreams, one is much less a mere spectator +[than in reveries or day-dreams]. One seems always about to do, [to be] +suffering, or thinking or talking. I do not recollect [in dreams] that +state of feeling, so common when awake, of thinking on one subject and +looking at another; or [of looking] at a whole prospect, till at last, +perhaps, or by intervals, at least, you only look passively at the +prospect. + + +[Sidenote: MULTUM IN PARVO] + +At Dresden there is a cherry-stone engraved with eighty-five portraits. +Christ and the Twelve Apostles form one group, the table and supper all +drawn by the letters of the text--at once portraits and language. This +is a universal particular language--Roman Catholic language with a +vengeance. + + +The beautifully _white_ sails of the Mediterranean, so carefully, when +in port, put up into clean bags; and the interesting circumstance of the +Spéronara's sailing without a compass--by an obscure sense of time. + + +[Sidenote: THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH] + +So far from deeming it, in a religious point of view, criminal to spread +doubts of God, immortality and virtue (that 3 = 1) in the minds of +individuals, I seem to see in it a duty--lest men by taking the _words_ +for granted never attain the feeling or the true _faith_. They only +forbear, that is, even to suspect that the idea is erroneous or the +communicators deceivers, but do not _believe_ the idea itself. Whereas +to _doubt_ has more of faith, nay even to disbelieve, than that blank +negation of all such thoughts and feelings which is the lot of the herd +of church-and-meeting-trotters. + + +[Sidenote: AN APOLOGY FOR COTTLE] + +The Holy Ghost, say the harmonists, left all the solecisms, Hebraisms, +and low Judaic prejudices as evidences of the credibility of the +Apostles. So, too, the Theophneusty left Cottle his Bristolisms, not to +take away the credit from him and give it to the Muses. + + +[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"] + +His fine mind met vice and vicious thoughts by accident only, as a poet +running through terminations in the heat of composing a rhyme-poem on +the purest and best subjects, startles and half-vexedly turns away from +a foul or impure word. + + +The gracious promises and sweetnesses and aids of religion are alarming +and distressful to a trifling, light, fluttering gay child of fashion +and vanity, as its threats and reproaches and warnings--as a little bird +which fears as much when you come to give it food as when you come with +a desire to kill or imprison it. + + +That is a striking legend of Caracciolo and his floating corse, that +came to ask the King of Naples' pardon. + + +Final causes answer to why? not to how? and who ever supposed that they +did? + + +O those crinkled, ever-varying circles which the moonlight makes in the +not calm, yet not wavy sea! Quarantine, Malta, Saturday, Nov. 10, 1804. + + +[Sidenote: THE CREATIVE POWER OF WORDS AND IMAGES] + +Hard to express that sense of the analogy or likeness of a thing which +enables a symbol to represent it so that we think of the thing itself, +yet knowing that the thing is not present to us. Surely on this +universal fact of words and images depends, by more or less mediations, +the imitation, instead of the _copy_ which is illustrated, in very +nature Shaksperianised--that Proteus essence that could assume the very +form, but yet known and felt not to be the thing by that difference of +the substance which made every atom of the form another thing, that +likeness not identity--an exact web, every line of direction +miraculously the same, but the one worsted, the other silk. + + +[Sidenote: SHAKSPERE AND MALONE] + +Rival editors have recourse to necromancy to know from Shakspere himself +who of them is the fittest to edit and illustrate him. Describe the +meeting, the ceremonies of conjuration, the appearance of the spirit, +the effect on the rival invokers. When they have resumed courage, the +arbiter appointed by them asks the question. They listen, Malone leaps +up while the rest lay their heads at the same instant that the arbiter +re-echoes the words of the spirit, "Let Malone!" The spirit shudders, +then exclaims in the dread and angry utterance of the dead, "No! no! Let +me alone, I said, inexorable boobies!" + +O that eternal bricker-up of Shakspere! Registers, memorandum-books--and +that Bill, Jack and Harry, Tom, Walter and Gregory, Charles, Dick and +Jim, lived at that house, but that nothing more is known of them. But, +oh! the importance when half-a-dozen players'-bills can be made to +stretch through half-a-hundred or more of pages, though there is not one +word in them that by any force can be made either to illustrate the +times or life or writings of Shakspere, or, indeed, of any time. And, +yet, no edition but this gentleman's name _burs_ upon it--_burglossa_ +with a vengeance. Like the genitive plural of a Greek adjective, it is +Malone, Malone, Malone, [Greek: Malôn, Malôn, Malôn]. + +[Edmund Malone's _Variorum_ edition of Shakspere was published in 1790.] + + +[Sidenote: OF THE FROWARDNESS OF WOMAN December 11, 1804] + +It is a remark that I have made many times, and many times, I guess, +shall repeat, that women are infinitely fonder of clinging to and +beating about, hanging upon and keeping up, and reluctantly letting fall +any doleful or painful or unpleasant subject, than men of the same class +and rank. + + +[Sidenote: NE QUID NIMIS] + +A young man newly arrived in the West Indies, who happened to be sitting +next to a certain Captain Reignia, observed by way of introducing a +conversation, "It is a very fine day, sir!" "Yes, sir," was the abrupt +reply, "and be damned to it; it is never otherwise in this damned +rascally climate." + + +[Sidenote: WE ASK NOT WHENCE BUT WHAT AND WHITHER] + +I addressed a butterfly on a pea-blossom thus, "Beautiful Psyche, soul +of a blossom, that art visiting and hovering o'er thy former friends +whom thou hast left!" Had I forgot the caterpillar? or did I dream like +a mad metaphysician that the caterpillar's hunger for plants was +self-love, recollection, and a lust that in its next state refined +itself into love? Dec. 12, 1804. + + +[Sidenote: ANALOGY] + +Different means to the same end seem to constitute analogy. Seeing and +touching are analogous senses with respect to magnitude, figure, +&c.--they would, and to a certain extent do, supply each other's place. +The air-vessels of fish and of insects are analogous to lungs--the end +the same, however different the means. No one would say, "Lungs are +analogous to lungs," and it seems to me either inaccurate or involving +some true conception obscurely, when we speak of planets by analogy of +ours--for here, knowing nothing but likeness, we presume the difference +from the remoteness and difficulty, in the vulgar apprehension, of +considering those pin-points as worlds. So, likewise, instead of the +phrase "analogy of the past," applied to historical reasoning, nine +times out of ten I should say, "by the example of the past." This may +appear verbal trifling, but "_animadverte quam sit ab improprietate +verborum pronum hominibus prolabi in errores circa res_." In short, +analogy always implies a difference in kind and not merely in degree. +There is an analogy between dimness and numbness and a certain state of +the sense of hearing correspondent to these, which produces confusion +with _magnification_, for which we have no name. But between light green +and dark green, between a mole and a lynceus, there is a gradation, no +analogy. + +[Sidenote: COROLLARY] + +Between beasts and men, when the same actions are performed by both, are +the means analogous or different only in degree? That is the question! +The sameness of the end and the equal fitness of the means prove no +identity of means. I can only read, but understand no arithmetic. Yet, +by Napier's tables or the _House-keepers' Almanack_, I may even arrive +at the conclusion quicker than a tolerably expert mathematician. Yet, +still, reading and reckoning are utterly different things. + + +[Sidenote: THOMAS WEDGWOOD AND REIMARUS] + +In Reimarus on _The Instincts of Animals_, Tom Wedgwood's +ground-principle of the influx of memory on perception is fully and +beautifully detailed. + +["Observations Moral and Philosophical on the Instinct of Animals, their +Industry and their Manners," by Herman Samuel Reimarus, was published in +1770. See _Biographia Literaria_, chapter vi. and _Note_, by Mrs. H. N. +Coleridge in the Appendix, _Coleridge's Works_, Harper & Brothers, iii. +225, 717.] + + +[Sidenote: HINC ILLA MARGINALIA] + +It is often said that books are companions. They are so, dear, very dear +companions! But I often, when I read a book that delights me on the +whole, feel a pang that the author is not present, that I cannot +_object_ to him this and that, express my sympathy and gratitude for +this part and mention some facts that self-evidently overset a second, +start a doubt about a third, or confirm and carry [on] a fourth thought. +At times I become restless, for my nature is very social. + + +[Sidenote: CORRUPTIO OPTIMI PESSIMA] + +"Well" (says Lady Ball), "the Catholic religion is better than none." +Why, to be sure, it is called a religion, but the question is, Is it a +religion? Sugar of lead! better than no sugar! Put oil of vitriol into +my salad--well, better than no oil at all! Or a fellow vends a poison +under the name of James' powders--well, we must get the best we +can--better that than none! So did not our noble ancestors reason or +feel, or we should now be slaves and even as the Sicilians are at this +day, or worse, for even they have been made less foolish, in spite of +themselves, by others' wisdom. + + +[Sidenote: REIMARUS AND THE "INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS"] + +I have read with wonder and delight that passage of Reimarus in which he +speaks of the immense multitude of plants, and the curious, regular +_choice_ of different herbivorous animals with respect to them, and the +following pages in which he treats of the pairing of insects and the +equally wonderful processes of egg-laying and so forth. All in motion! +the sea-fish to the shores and rivers--the land crab to the sea-shore! I +would fain describe all the creation thus agitated by the one or other +of the three instincts--self-preservation, childing, and +child-preservation. Set this by Darwin's theory of the maternal +instinct--O mercy! the blindness of the man! and it is imagination, +forsooth! that misled him--too much poetry in his philosophy! this +abject deadness of all that sense of the obscure and indefinite, this +superstitious fetish-worship of lazy or fascinated fancy! O this, +indeed, deserves to be dwelt on. + + +Think of all this as an absolute revelation, a real presence of Deity, +and compare it with historical traditionary religion. There are two +revelations--the material and the moral--and the former is not to be +seen but by the latter. As St. Paul has so well observed: "By worldly +wisdom no man ever arrived at God;" but having seen Him by the moral +sense, then we _understand_ the outward world. Even as with books, no +book of itself teaches a language in the first instance; but having by +sympathy of soul learnt it, we then understand the book--that is, the +_Deus minor_ in His work. + + +The _hirschkäfer_ (stag-beetle) in its worm state makes its bed-chamber, +prior to its metamorphosis, half as long as itself. Why? There was a +stiff horn turned under its belly, which in the fly state must project +and harden, and this required exactly that length. + + +The sea-snail creeps out of its house, which, thus hollowed, lifts him +aloft, and is his boat and cork jacket; the Nautilus, additionally, +spreads a thin skin as a sail. + + +All creatures obey the great game-laws of Nature, and fish with nets of +such meshes as permit many to escape, and preclude the taking of many. +So two races are saved, the one by taking part, and the other by part +not being taken. + + +[Sidenote: ENTOMOLOGY VERSUS ONTOLOGY] + +Wonderful, perplexing divisibility of life! It is related by D. Unzer, +an authority wholly to be relied on, that an _ohrwurm_ (earwig) cut in +half ate its own hinder part! Will it be the reverse with Great Britain +and America? The head of the rattlesnake severed from the body bit it +and squirted out its poison, as is related by Beverley in his History of +Virginia. Lyonnet in his Insect. Theol. tells us that he tore a wasp in +half and, three days after, the fore-half bit whatever was presented to +it of its former food, and the hind-half darted out its sting at being +touched. Stranger still, a turtle has been known to live six months with +his head off, and to wander about, yea, six hours after its heart and +intestines (all but the lungs) were taken out! How shall we think of +this compatibly with the monad soul? If I say, what has spirit to do +with space?--what odd dreams it would suggest! or is every animal a +republic _in se_? or is there one Breeze of Life, "at once the soul of +each, and God of all?" Is it not strictly analogous to generation, and +no more contrary to unity than it? But IT? Aye! there's the twist in the +logic. Is not the reproduction of the lizard a complete generation? O it +is easy to dream, and, surely, better of these things than of a £20,000 +prize in the lottery, or of a place at Court. Dec. 13, 1804. + + +[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"] + +To trace the if not absolute birth, yet the growth and endurancy of +language, from the mother talking to the child at her breast. O what a +subject for some happy moment of deep feeling and strong imagination! + + +Of the Quintetta in the Syracuse opera and the pleasure of the +voices--one and not one, they leave, seek, pursue, oppose, fight with, +strengthen, annihilate each other, awake, enliven, soothe, flatter and +embrace each other again, till at length they die away in one tone. +There is no sweeter image of wayward yet fond lovers, of seeking and +finding, of the love-quarrel, and the making-up, of the losing and the +yearning regret, of the doubtful, the complete recognition, and of the +total melting union. Words are not interpreters, but fellow-combatants. + + +Title for a Medical Romance:--The adventures, rivalry, warfare and final +union and partnership of Dr. Hocus and Dr. Pocus. + + +Idly talk they who speak of poets as mere indulgers of fancy, +imagination, superstition, etc. They are the bridlers by delight, the +purifiers; they that combine all these with reason and order--the true +protoplasts--Gods of Love who tame the chaos. + + +To deduce instincts from obscure recollections of a pre-existing +state--I have often thought of it. "Ey!" I have said, when I have seen +certain tempers and actions in Hartley, "that is I in my future state." +So I think, oftentimes, that my children are my soul--that multitude and +division are not [O mystery!] necessarily subversive of unity. I am sure +that two very different meanings, if not more, lurk in the word One. + + +The drollest explanation of instinct is that of Mylius, who attributes +every act to pain, and all the wonderful webs and envelopes of spiders, +caterpillars, etc., absolutely to fits of colic or paroxysms of dry +belly-ache! + + +This Tarantula-dance of repetitions and vertiginous argumentation _in +circulo_, begun in imposture and self-consummated in madness! + + +While the whole planet (_quoad_ its Lord or, at least, Lord-Lieutenancy) +is in stir and bustle, why should not I keep in time with the tune, and, +like old Diogenes, roll my tub about? + + +I cannot too often remember that to be deeply interested and to be +highly satisfied are not always commensurate. Apply this to the +affecting and yet unnatural passages of the _Stranger_ or of _John +Bull_, and to the finest passages in Shakspere, such as the death of +Cleopatra or Hamlet. + + +[Sidenote: A SUNDOG Dec. 15, 1804] + +Saw the limb of a rainbow footing itself on the sea at a small apparent +distance from the shore, a thing of itself--no substrate cloud or even +mist visible--but the distance glimmered through it as through a thin +semi-transparent hoop. + + +[Sidenote: THE SQUARE, THE CIRCLE, THE PYRAMID] + +To be and to act, two in Intellect (that mother of orderly multitude, +and half-sister of Wisdom and Madness) but one in essence = to rest, and +to move = [sq] and a [cir]! and out of the infinite combinations of +these, from the more and the less, now of one now of the other, all +pleasing figures and the sources of all pleasure arise. But the pyramid, +that base of stedfastness that rises, yet never deserts itself nor can, +approaches to the [cir]. Sunday. Midnight. Malta. December 16th, 1804. + + +[Sidenote: THE PYRAMID IN ART] + +I can make out no other affinity [in the pyramid] to the circle but by +taking its evanescence as the central point, and so, having thus gained +a melting of the radii in the circumference [by proceeding to] _look_ it +into the object. Extravagance! Why? Does not everyone do this in looking +at any conspicuous three stars together? does not every one see by the +inner vision, a triangle? However, this is in art; but the prototype in +nature is, indeed, loveliness. In Nature there are no straight lines, or +[such straight lines as there are] have the soul of curves, from +activity and positive rapid energy. Or, whether the line seem curve or +straight, yet _here_, in nature, is motion--motion in its most +significant form. It is motion in that form which has been chosen to +express motion in general, hieroglyphical from pre-eminence, [and by +this very pre-eminence, in the particular instance, made significant of +motion in its totality]. Hence, though it chance that a line in nature +should be perfectly straight, there is no need here of any curve whose +effect is that of embleming motion and counteracting actual solidity by +that emblem. For here the line [in contra-distinction to the line in +art] is actual motion, and therefore a balancing _Figurite_ of rest and +solidity. But I will study the wood-fire this evening in the Palace. + + +[Sidenote: Wednesday Night, 11 o'clock, December 19] + +I see now that the eye refuses to decide whether it be surface or +convexity, for the exquisite oneness of the flame makes even its angles +so different from the angles of tangible substances. Its exceeding +oneness added to its very subsistence in motion is the very _soul_ of +the loveliest curve--it does not need its body as it were. Its sharpest +point is, however, rounded, and besides it is cased within its own +penumbra. + + +[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE" Friday Morning, Dec. 21, 8 +o'clock] + +How beautiful a circumstance, the improvement of the flower, from the +root up to that crown of its life and labours, that bridal-chamber of +its beauty and its two-fold love, the nuptial and the parental--the +womb, the cradle, and the nursery of the garden! + + +_Quisque sui faber_--a pretty simile this would make to a young lady +producing beauty by moral feeling. + + +Nature may be personified as the [Greek: polymêchanos erganê], an ever +industrious Penelope, for ever unravelling what she has woven, for ever +weaving what she has unravelled. + + +[Sidenote: THE MEDITERRANEAN] + +Oh, said I, as I looked at the blue, yellow, green and purple-green sea, +with all its hollows and swells, and cut-glass surfaces--oh, what an +_ocean_ of lovely forms! And I was vexed, teased that the sentence +sounded like a play of words! _That_ it was not--the mind within me was +struggling to express the marvellous distinctness and unconfounded +personality of each of the million millions of forms, and yet the +individual unity in which they subsisted. + + +A brisk gale and the foam that peopled the _alive_ sea, most +interestingly combined with the number of white sea-gulls, that, +repeatedly, it seemed as if the foam-spit had taken life and wing and +had flown up--the white precisely-same-colour birds rose up so close by +the ever-perishing white-water wavehead, that the eye was unable to +detect the illusion which the mind delighted to indulge in. O that sky, +that soft, blue, mighty arch resting on the mountain or solid sea-like +plain--what an awful omneity in unity! I know no other perfect union of +the sublime with the beautiful, so that they should be felt, that is, +at the same minute, though by different faculties, and yet, each faculty +be predisposed, by itself, to receive the specific modifications from +the other. To the eye it is an inverted goblet, the inside of a sapphire +basin, perfect beauty in shape and colour. To the mind, it is immensity; +but even the eye feels as if it were [able] to look through with [a] dim +sense of the non-resistance--it is not exactly the feeling given to the +organ by solid and limited things, [but] the eye feels that the +limitation is in its own power, not in the object. But [hereafter] to +pursue this in the manner of the old Hamburg poet [Klopstock]. + + +[Sidenote: I WILL LIFT UP MINE EYES TO THE HILLS] + +One travels along with the lines of a mountain. Years ago I wanted to +make Wordsworth sensible of this. How fine is Keswick vale! Would I +repose, my soul lies and is quiet upon the broad level vale. Would it +act? it darts up into the mountain-top like a kite, and like a +chamois-goat runs along the ridge--or like a boy that makes a sport on +the road of running along a wall or narrow fence! + + +[Sidenote: FORM AND FEELING] + +One of the most noticeable and fruitful facts in psychology is the +modification of the same feeling by difference of form. The Heaven lifts +up my soul, the sight of the ocean seems to widen it. We feel the same +force at work, but the difference, whether in mind or body that we +should feel in actual travelling horizontally or in direct ascent, +_that_ we feel in fancy. For what are our feelings of this kind but a +motion imagined, [together] with the feelings that would accompany that +motion, [but] less distinguished, more blended, more rapid, more +confused, and, thereby, co-adunated? Just as white is the very emblem of +one in being the confusion of all. + + +[Sidenote: VERBUM SAPIENTIBUS] + +Mem.--Not to hastily abandon and kick away the means after the end is or +seems to be accomplished. So have I, in blowing out the paper or match +with which I have lit a candle, blown out the candle at the same +instant. + + +[Sidenote: THE CONTINUITY OF SENSATIONS] + +How opposite to nature and the fact to talk of the "one moment" of Hume, +of our whole being an aggregate of successive single sensations! Who +ever felt a single sensation? Is not every one at the same moment +conscious that there co-exist a thousand others, a darker shade, or less +light, even as when I fix my attention on a white house or a grey bare +hill or rather long ridge that runs out of sight each way (how often I +want the German _unübersekbar_!) [untranslatable]--the pretended +sight-sensation, is it anything more than the light-point in every +picture either of nature or of a good painter? and, again, +subordinately, in every component part of the picture? And what is a +moment? Succession with interspace? Absurdity! It is evidently only the +_icht-punct_ in the indivisible undivided duration. + + +See yonder rainbow strangely preserving its form on broken clouds, with +here a bit out, here a bit in, yet still a rainbow--even as you might +place bits of coloured ribbon at distances, so as to preserve the form +of a bow to the mind. Dec. 25, 1804. + + +[Sidenote: HIS CONVERSATION, A NIMIETY OF IDEAS, NOT OF WORDS] + +There are two sorts of talkative fellows whom it would be injurious to +confound, and I, S. T. Coleridge, am the latter. The first sort is of +those who use five hundred words more than needs to express an +idea--that is not my case. Few men, I will be bold to say, put more +meaning into their words than I, or choose them more deliberately and +discriminately. The second sort is of those who use five hundred more +ideas, images, reasons, &c., than there is any need of to arrive at +their object, till the only object arrived at is that the mind's eye of +the bystander is dazzled with colours succeeding so rapidly as to leave +one vague impression that there has been a great blaze of colours all +about something. Now this is my case, and a grievous fault it is. My +illustrations swallow up my thesis. I feel too intensely the +omnipresence of all in each, platonically speaking; or, psychologically, +my brain-fibres, or the spiritual light which abides in the +brain-marrow, as visible light appears to do in sundry rotten mackerel +and other _smashy_ matters, is of too general an affinity with all +things, and though it perceives the _difference_ of things, yet is +eternally pursuing the likenesses, or, rather, that which is common +[between them]. Bring me two things that seem the very same, and then I +am quick enough [not only] to show the difference, even to +hair-splitting, but to go on from circle to circle till I break against +the shore of my hearers' patience, or have my concentricals dashed to +nothing by a snore. That is my ordinary mishap. At Malta, however, no +one can charge me with one or the other. I have earned the general +character of being a quiet well-meaning man, rather dull indeed! and who +would have thought that he had been a _poet_! "O, a very wretched +poetaster, ma'am! As to the reviews, 'tis well known he half-ruined +himself in paying cleverer fellows than himself to write them," &c. + + +[Sidenote: THE EMBRYONIC SOUL] + +How far might one imagine all the theory of association out of a system +of growth, by applying to the brain and soul what we know of an embryo? +One tiny particle combines with another its like, and, so, lengthens and +thickens, and this is, at once, memory and increasing vividness of +impression. One might make a very amusing allegory of an embryo soul up +to birth! Try! it is promising! You have not above three hundred volumes +to write before you come to it, and as you write, perhaps, a volume once +in ten years, you have ample time. + +My dear fellow! never be ashamed of scheming--you can't think of living +less than 4000 years, and that would nearly suffice for your present +schemes. To be sure, if they go on in the same ratio to the performance, +then a small difficulty arises; but never mind! look at the bright side +always and die in a dream! Oh! + + +[Sidenote: OF A NEW HYPOTHESIS] + +The evil effect of a new hypothesis or even of a new nomenclature is, +that many minds which had familiarised themselves to the old one, and +were riding on the road of discovery accustomed to their horse, if put +on a new animal, lose time in learning how to sit him; while the others, +looking too stedfastly at a few facts which the jeweller Hypothesis had +set in a perfectly beautiful whole, forget to dig for more, though +inhabitants of a Golconda. However, it has its advantages too, and these +have been ably pointed out. It excites contradiction, and is thence a +stimulus to new experiments to _support_, and to a more severe +repetition of these experiments and of other new ones to _confute_ +[arguments pro and con]. And, besides, one must alloy severe truth with +a little fancy, in order to mint it into common coin. + + +[Sidenote: HIS INDEBTEDNESS TO GERMAN PHILOSOPHY] + +In the preface of my metaphysical works, I should say--"Once for all, +read Kant, Fichte, &c., and then you will trace, or, if you are on the +hunt, track me." Why, then, not acknowledge your obligations step by +step? Because I could not do so in a multitude of glaring resemblances +without a lie, for they had been mine, formed and full-formed, before I +had ever heard of these writers, because to have fixed on the particular +instances in which I have really been indebted to these writers would +have been hard, if possible, to me who read for truth and +self-satisfaction, and not to make a book, and who always rejoiced and +was jubilant when I found my own ideas well expressed by others--and, +lastly, let me say, because (I am proud, perhaps, but) I seem to know +that much of the _matter_ remains my own, and that the _soul_ is mine. I +fear not him for a critic who can confound a fellow-thinker with a +compiler. + + +[Sidenote: THE METAPHYSICIAN AT BAY] + +Good heavens! that there should be anything at all, and not nothing. Ask +the bluntest faculty that pretends to reason, and, if indeed he have +felt and reasoned, he must feel that something is to be sought after out +of the vulgar track of Change-Alley speculation. + +If my researches are shadowy, what, in the name of reason, are you? or +do you resign all pretence to reason, and consider yourself--nay, even +that in a contradiction--as a passive [cir] among Nothings? + + +[Sidenote: MEANS TO ENDS] + +How flat and common-place! O that it were in my heart, nerves, and +muscles! O that it were the _prudential_ soul of all I love, of all who +deserve to be loved, in every proposed action to ask yourself, To what +end is this? and how is this the means? and not the means to something +else foreign to or abhorrent from my purpose? _Distinct means to +distinct ends!_ With friends and beloved ones follow the heart. Better +be deceived twenty times than suspect one-twentieth of once; but with +strangers, or enemies, or in a quarrel, whether in the world's +squabbles, as Dr. Stoddart's and Dr. Sorel in the Admiralty Court at +Malta; or in moral businesses, as mine with Southey or Lloyd (O pardon +me, dear and honoured Southey, that I put such a name by the side of +yours....)--in all those cases, write your letter, disburthen yourself, +and when you have done it--even as when you have pared, sliced, +vinegared, oiled, peppered and salted your plate of cucumber, you are +directed to smell it, and then throw it out of the window--so, dear +friend, vinegar, pepper and salt your letter--your cucumber argument, +that is, cool reasoning previously sauced with passion and +sharpness--then read it, eat it, drink it, smell it, with eyes and ears +(a small catachresis but never mind), and then throw it into the +fire--unless you can put down in three or four sentences (I cannot allow +more than one side of a sheet of paper) the _distinct end_ for which you +conceive this letter (or whatever it be) to be the _distinct means_! How +trivial! Would to God it were only _habitual_! O what is sadder than +that the _crambe bis cocta_ of the understanding should be and remain a +foreign dish to the efficient _will_--that the best and loftiest +precepts of wisdom should be trivial, and the worst and lowest modes of +folly habitual. + + +[Sidenote: VERBAL CONCEITS] + +I have learnt, sometimes not _at all_, and seldom _harshly_, to chide +those conceits of words which are analogous to sudden fleeting +affinities of mind. Even, as in a dance, you touch and join and off +again, and rejoin your partner that leads down with you the dance, in +spite of these occasional off-starts--for they, too, not merely conform +to, but are of and in and help to form the delicious harmony. Shakspere +is not a thousandth part so faulty as the [scir][scir][scir] +believe him. "Thus him that over-rul'd I over-sway'd," etc., etc. I +noticed this to that bubbling ice-spring of cold-hearted, mad-headed +fanaticism, the late Dr. Geddes, in the "_Heri vidi fragilem frangi, +hodie mortalem mori_." + +[Dr. Alexander Geddes, 1737-1802, was, _inter alia_, author of a revised +translation of the Scriptures.] + + +[Sidenote: THE BRIGHT BLUE SEA] + +How often I have occasion to notice with pure delight the depth of the +exceeding blueness of the Mediterranean from my window! It is often, +indeed, purple; but I am speaking of its blueness--a perfect blue, so +very pure an one. The sea is like a night-sky; and but for its +_planities_, it were as if the night-sky were a thing that turned round +and lay in the day-time under the paler Heaven. And it is on this +expanse that the vessels have the fine white dazzling cotton sails. + + +[Sidenote: THE BIRTH OF THE IDEA] + +Centuries before their mortal incarnation, Jove was wont to manifest to +the gods the several creations as they emerged from the divine ideal. +Now it was reported in heaven that an unusually fair creation of a woman +was emerging, and Venus, fearful that her son should become enamoured as +of yore with Psyche (what time he wandered alone, his bow unslung, and +using his darts only to cut out her name on rocks and trees, or, at +best, to shoot hummingbirds and birds of Paradise to make +feather-chaplets for her hair, and the world, meanwhile, grown loveless, +hardened into the Iron Age), entreats Jove to secrete this form [of +perilous beauty]. But Cupid, who had heard the report, and fondly +expected a re-manifestation of Psyche, hid himself in the hollow of the +sacred oak beneath which the Father of Gods had withdrawn as to an +unapproachable adytum, and beheld the Idea emerging in its _First +Glory_. Forthwith the wanton was struck blind by the splendour ere yet +the blaze had defined itself with form, and now his arrows strike but +vaguely. + + +[Sidenote: THE CONVERSION OF CERES] + +I have somewhere read, or I have dreamt, a wild tale of Ceres' loss of +Proserpine, and her final recovery of her daughter by means of Christ +when He descended into hell, at which time she met Him and abjured all +worship for the future. + +It were a quaint mythological conceit to feign that the gods of Greece +and Rome were some of the _best_ of the fallen spirits, and that of +their number _Apollo_, Mars, and the Muses were converted to +Christianity, and became different saints. + + +[Sidenote: AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD] + +The ribbed flame--its snatches of impatience, that half-seem, and only +_seem_ that half, to baffle its upward rush--the eternal unity of +individualities whose essence is in their distinguishableness, even as +thought and _fancies_ in the mind; the points of so many cherubic swords +snatched back, but never discouraged, still fountaining upwards:--flames +self-snatched up heavenward, if earth supply the fuel, heaven the dry +light air--themselves still making the current that will fan and spread +them--yet all their force in vain, if of itself--and light dry air, +heaped fuel, fanning breeze as idle, if no inward spark lurks there, or +lurks unkindled. Such a spark, O man! is thy Free Will--the star whose +beams are Virtue! + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +_1805_ + + Alone, alone, all, all alone, + Alone on a wide, wide sea! + And never a saint took pity on + My soul in agony. + + S. T. C. + + +[Sidenote: THE SENSE OF MAGNITUDE Tuesday, Jan. 15, 1805] + +This evening there was the most perfect and the brightest halo circling +the roundest and brightest moon I ever beheld. So bright was the halo, +so compact, so entire a circle, that it gave the whole of its area, the +moon itself included, the appearance of a solid opaque body, an enormous +planet. It was as if this planet had a circular trough of some +light-reflecting fluid for its rim (that is the halo) and its centre +(that is the moon) a small circular basin of some fluid that still more +copiously reflected, or that even emitted light; and as if the +interspatial area were somewhat equally substantial but sullen. Thence I +have found occasion to meditate on the nature of the sense of magnitude +and its absolute dependence on the idea of _substance_; the consequent +difference between magnitude and spaciousness, the dependence of the +idea on double-touch, and thence to evolve all our feelings and ideas of +magnitude, magnitudinal sublimity, &c., from a scale of our own bodies. +For why, if form constituted the sense, that is, if it were pure vision, +as a perceptive sense abstracted from _feeling_ in the organ of vision, +why do I seek for mountains, when in the flattest countries the clouds +present so many and so much more romantic and _spacious_ forms, and the +coal-fire so many, so much more varied and lovely forms? And whence +arises the pleasure from musing on the latter? Do I not, more or less +consciously, fancy myself a Lilliputian to whom these would be +mountains, and so, by this factitious scale, make them mountains, my +pleasure being consequently playful, a voluntary poem in hieroglyphics +or picture-writing--"_phantoms_ of sublimity," which I continue to know +to be _phantoms_? And form itself, is not its main agency exerted in +individualising the thing, making it _this_ and _that_, and thereby +facilitating the shadowy measurement of it by the scale of my own body? + +Yon long, not unvaried, ridge of hills, that runs out of sight each way, +it is _spacious_, and the pleasure derivable from it is from its +_running_, its _motion_, its assimilation to action; and here the scale +is taken from my life and soul, and not from my body. Space is the +Hebrew name for God, and it is the most perfect image of _soul, pure +soul_, being to us nothing but unresisted action. Whenever action is +resisted, limitation begins--and limitation is the first constituent of +body--the more omnipresent it is in a given space, the more that space +is _body_ or matter--and thus all body necessarily presupposes soul, +inasmuch as all resistance presupposes action. Magnitude, therefore, is +the intimate blending, the most perfect union, through its whole sphere, +in every minutest part of it, of action and resistance to action. It is +spaciousness in which space is filled up--that is, as we well say, +transmitted by incorporate accession, not destroyed. In all limited +things, that is, in _all forms_, it is at least fantastically stopped, +and, thus, from the positive _grasp_ to the mountain, from the mountain +to the cloud, from the cloud to the blue depth of sky, which, as on the +top of Etna, in a serene atmosphere, seems to go _behind_ the sun, all +is _graduation_, that precludes division, indeed, but not distinction; +and he who endeavours to overturn a distinction by showing that there is +no chasm, by the old sophism of the _cumulus_ or the horse's tail, is +still diseased with the _formication_,[B] the (what is the nosological +name of it? the hairs or dancing infinites of black specks seeming +always to be before the eye), the araneosis of corpuscular +materialism.--S. T. C. + + +[Sidenote: STRAY THOUGHTS FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"] + +The least things, how they evidence the superiority of English artisans! +Even the Maltese wafers, for instance, that stick to your mouth and +fingers almost so as to make it impossible to get them off without +squeezing them into a little pellet, and yet will not stick to the +paper. + + +Everyone of tolerable education feels the _imitability_ of Dr. Johnson's +and other-such's style, the inimitability of Shakspere's, &c. Hence, I +believe, arises the partiality of thousands for Johnson. They can +imagine _themselves_ doing the same. Vanity is at the bottom of it. The +number of imitators proves this in some measure. + + +Of the feelings of the English at the sight of a convoy from England. +Man cannot be selfish--that part of me (my beloved) which is distant, in +space, excites the same feeling as the "ich"[C] distant from me in +time. My friends are indeed my soul! + + +[Sidenote: Jan. 22, 1805.] + +I had not moved from my seat, and wanted the stick of sealing-wax, +nearly a whole one, for another letter. I could not find it, it was not +on the table--had it dropped on the ground? I searched and searched +everywhere, my pockets, my fobs, impossible places--literally it had +vanished, and where was it? It had stuck to my _elbow_, I having leaned +upon it ere it had grown cold! A curious accident, and in no way similar +to that of the butcher and his steel in his mouth which he was seeking +for. Mine was true accident. + + +The maxims which govern the Courts of Admiralty, their "betwixt and +between" of positive law and the dictates of right reason, resemble the +half-way _inter jus et æquitatem_ of Roman jurisprudence. It were worth +while to examine the advantages of this as far as it is a real +_modification_, its disadvantages as far as it appears a _jumble_. + + +Seeing a nice bed of glowing embers with one junk of firewood well +placed, like the remains of an old edifice, and another well-nigh +mouldered one corresponding to it, I felt an impulse to put on three +pieces of wood that exactly completed the perishable architecture, +though it was eleven o'clock, though I was that instant going to bed, +and there could be, in common ideas, no possible use in it. Hence I seem +(for I write not having yet gone to bed) to suspect that this disease of +totalising, of perfecting, may be the bottom impulse of many, many +actions, in which it never is brought forward as an avowed or even +agnised as a conscious motive. + +Mem.--to collect facts for a comparison between a _wood_ and a _coal_ +fire, as to sights and sounds and bodily feeling. + + +I have read somewhere of a sailor who dreamt that an encounter with the +enemy was about to take place, and that he should discover cowardice +during action. Accordingly he awakes his brother the Captain, and bids +him prepare for an engagement. At daybreak a ship is discovered on the +horizon and the sailor, mindful of his dream, procures himself to be +tied to a post. At the close of the day he is released unwounded but +dead from fright. Apply this incident to Miss Edgeworth's Tales, and all +similar attempts to cure faults by detailed forewarnings, which leave on +the similarly faulty an impression of fatality that extinguishes hope. + + +What precedes to the voice follows to the eye, as 000.1 and 100. A, B, +C--were they men, you would say that "C" went first, but being letters, +things of voice and ear in their original, we say that "A" goes first. + + +There are many men who, following, made 1 = 1000, being placed at head, +become useless cyphers, mere finery for form's sake. + + +[Sidenote: Feb. 1, 1805, Friday, Malta] + +Of the millions that use the pen, how many (query) understand the story +of this machine, the action of the slit, eh? I confess, ridiculous as it +must appear to those who do understand it, that I have not been able to +answer the question off-hand to myself, having only this moment thought +of it. + + +[Sidenote: Feb. 3, 1805] + +The gentlest form of Death, a Sylphid Death, passed by, beheld a +sleeping baby--became, Narcissus-like, enamoured of its own self in the +sweet counterfeit, seized it and carried it off as a mirror close by the +green Paradise--but the reviving air awakened the babe, and 'twas death +that died at the sudden loss. + + +[Sidenote: THE FRENCH LANGUAGE AND POETRY Feb. 4, 1805] + +I cannot admit that any language can be unfit for poetry, or that there +is any language in which a divinely inspired architect may not sustain +the lofty edifice of verse on its two pillars of sublimity and pathos. +Yet I have heard Frenchmen, nay, even Englishmen, assert that of the +German, which contains perhaps an hundred passages equal to the-- + + Und ein Gott ist, ein heiliger Wille lebt, + Wie auch der menschliche wanke;-- + +and I have heard both German and Englishmen (and these, too, men of true +feeling and genius, and so many of them that such company of my betters +makes me not ashamed to the having myself been guilty of this injustice) +assert that the French language is insusceptible of poetry in its higher +and purer sense, of poetry which excites emotion not merely creates +amusement, which demands continuous admiration, not regular recurrence +of conscious surprise, and the effect of which is love and joy. +Unfortunately the manners, religion and government of France, and the +circumstances of its emergence from the polyarchy of feudal barony, have +given a bad taste to the Parisians--so bad a one as doubtless to have +mildewed many an opening blossom. I cannot say that I know and can name +any one French writer that can be placed among the greater poets, but +when I read the inscription over the Chartreuse-- + + C'est ici que la Mort et la Verité + Elevent leurs flambeaux terribles; + C'est de cette demeure au monde inaccessible + Que l'on passe à l'Eternité + +I seem to feel that if France had been for ages a Protestant nation, and +a Milton had been born in it, the French language would not have +precluded the production of a "Paradise Lost," though it might, perhaps, +that of a Hamlet or a Lear. + + +[Sidenote: THE ABSTRACT SELF On Friday night, Feb. 8, 1805] + +On Friday Night, 8th Feb. 1805, my feeling, in sleep, of exceeding great +love for my infant, seen by me in the dream!--yet so as it might be +Sara, Derwent, or Berkley, and still it was an individual babe and mine. + + "All look or likeness caught from earth, + All accident of kin or birth, + Had pass'd away. There seem'd no trace + Of aught upon her brighten'd face, + Upraised beneath the rifted stone, + Save of one spirit all her own; + She, she herself, and only she, + Shone through her body visibly." + + _Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 172. + +This abstract self is, indeed, in its nature a Universal personified, as +Life, Soul, Spirit, etc. Will not this _prove_ it to be a _deeper_ +feeling, and of such intimate affinity with ideas, so as to modify them +and become one with them; whereas the appetites and the feelings of +revenge and anger co-exist with the ideas, not combine with them, and +alter the apparent effect of this form, not the forms themselves? +Certain modifications of fear seem to approach nearest to this +love-sense in its manner of acting. + + +Those whispers just as you have fallen asleep--what are they, and +whence? + + +[Sidenote: LITERA SCRIPTA MANET Monday, Feb 11, 1805] + +I must own to a superstitious dread of the destruction of paper worthy +of a Mahometan. But I am also ashamed to confess to myself what pulling +back of heart I feel whenever I wish to light a candle or kindle a fire +with a Hospital or Harbour Report, and what a cumulus lies on my table, +I not able to conjecture of what use they can ever be, and yet trembling +lest what I then destroyed might be of some use in the way of knowledge. +This seems to be the excess of a good feeling, but it is ridiculous. + + +[Sidenote: COWPER'S "LINES TO MRS. UNWIN"] + +It is not without a certain sense of self-reproof, as well as +self-distrust, that I ask, or, rather, that my understanding suggests to +me the query, whether this divine poem (in so original a strain of +thought and feeling honourable to human nature) would not have been more +perfect if the third, fourth, and fifth stanzas had been omitted, and +the tenth and eleventh transposed so as to stand as the third and +fourth. It is not, perhaps not at all, but, certainly, not principally +that I feel any meanness in the "needles;" but, not to mention that the +words "once a shining store" is a speck in the diamond (in a less dear +poem I might, perhaps, have called it more harshly a _rhyme-botch_), and +that the word "restless" is rather too strong an impersonation for the +serious tone, the _real_ness of the poem, and seems to tread too closely +on the mock-heroic; but that it seems not true to poetic feeling to +introduce the affecting circumstance of dimness of sight from decay of +nature on an occasion so remote from the [Greek: to katholou], and that +the fifth stanza, graceful and even affecting as the spirit of the +playfulness is or would be, at least, in a poem having less depth of +feeling, breaks in painfully here--the age and afflicting infirmities +both of the writer and his subject seem abhorrent from such trifling +of--scarcely fancy, for I fear, if it were analysed, that the whole +effect would be found to depend on phrases hackneyed, and taken from the +alms-house of the Muses. The test would be this: read the poem to a +well-educated but natural woman, an unaffected, gentle being, endued +with sense and sensibility--substituting the tenth and eleventh stanzas +for those three, and some days after shew her the poem as it now stands. +I seem to be sure that she would be shocked--an alien would have +intruded himself, and be found sitting in a circle of dear friends whom +she expected to have found _all to themselves_. + + +[Sidenote: ETYMOLOGY] + +To say that etymology is a science--is to use this word in its laxest +and improper sense. But our language, except, at least, in poetry, has +dropped the word "lore"--the _lehre_ of the Germans, the _logos_ of the +Greek. Either we should have retained the word and ventured on +_Root-lore_, _verse-lore_, etc., or have adopted the Greek as a single +word as well as a word in combination. All novelties appear or are +rather felt as ridiculous in language; but, if it had been once adopted, +it would have been no stranger to have said that etymo_logy_ is a _logy_ +which perishes from a plethora of probability, than that the _art_ of +war is an _art_ apparently for the destruction and subjugation of +particular states, but really for the lessening of bloodshed and the +preservation of the liberties of mankind. Art and Science are both too +much appropriated--our language wants terms of comprehensive generality, +implying the kind, not the degree or species, as in that good and +necessary word _sensuous_, which we have likewise dropped, opposed to +sensual, sensitive, sensible, etc., etc. Chymistry has felt this +difficulty, and found the necessity of having one word for the supposed +cause, another for the effect, as in caloric or calorific, opposed to +heat; and psychology has still more need of the reformation. + + +[Sidenote: SENTIMENT, AN ANTIDOTE TO CASUISTRY] + +The Queen-bee in the hive of Popish Error, the great mother of the +swarm, seems to me their tenet concerning Faith and Works, placing the +former wholly in the rectitude, nay, in the rightness of intellectual +conviction, and the latter in the definite and, most often, the material +action, and, consequently, the assertion of the dividuous nature and +self-existence of works. Hence the doctrine of damnation out of the +Church of Rome--of the one visible Church--of the absolute efficiency +_in se_ of all the Sacraments and the absolute merit of ceremonial +observances. Consider the incalculable advantage of chiefly dwelling on +the virtues of the heart, of habits of feeling and harmonious action, +the music of the adjusted string at the impulse of the breeze, and, on +the other hand, the evils of books concerning particular actions, minute +cases of conscience, hair-splitting directions and decisions, O how +illustrated by the detestable character of most of the Roman Catholic +casuists! No actions should be distinctly described but such as +manifestly tend to awaken the heart to efficient feeling, whether of +fear or of love--actions that, falling back on the fountain, keep it +full, or clear out the mud from its pipes, and make it play in its +abundance, shining in that purity in which, at once, the purity and the +light is each the cause of the other, the light purifying, and the +purified receiving and reflecting the light, sending it off to others; +not, like the polished mirror, by reflection from itself, but by +transmission through itself. + + +[Sidenote: THE EMPYREAN] + +Friday + Saturday, 12-1 o'clock [March 2, 1805.] + +What a sky! the not yet orbed moon, the spotted oval, blue at one edge +from the deep utter blue of the sky--a MASS of _pearl_-white cloud +below, distant, and travelling to the horizon, but all the upper part of +the ascent and all the height such _profound_ blue, deep as a deep +river, and deep in colour, and those two depths so entirely _one_, _as_ +to give the meaning and explanation of the two different significations +of the epithet. Here, so far from _divided_, they were scarcely +_distinct_, scattered over with thin pearl-white cloudlets--hands and +fingers--the largest not larger than a floating veil! Unconsciously I +stretched forth my arms as to embrace the sky, and in a trance I had +worshipped God in the moon--the spirit, not the form. I felt in how +innocent a feeling Sabeism might have begun. Oh! not only the moon, but +the depths of the sky! The moon was the _idea_; but deep sky is, of all +visual impressions, the nearest akin to a feeling. It is more a feeling +than a sight, or, rather, it is the melting away and entire union of +feeling and sight! + + +[Sidenote: DISTEMPER'S WORST CALAMITY] + +Monday morning, which I ought not to have known not to be Sunday night, +2 o'clock, March 4, 1805. + +My dreams to-night were interfused with struggle and fear, though, till +the very last, not victors; but the very last, which awoke me, was a +completed night-mare, as it gave the _idea_ and _sensation_ of actual +grasp or touch contrary to _my_ will and in apparent consequence of the +malignant will of the external form, whether actually appearing or, as +sometimes happened, believed to exist--in which latter case I have two +or three times felt a horrid touch of hatred, a grasp, or a weight of +hate and horror abstracted from all [conscious] form or supposal of +form, an _abstract touch_, an _abstract_ grasp, an _abstract_ weight! +_Quam nihil ad genium Papiliane tuum!_ or, in other words, _This +Mackintosh would prove to be nonsense by a Scotch smile._ The last +[dream], that woke me, though a true night-mare, was, however, a mild +one. I cried out early, like a scarcely-hurt child who knows himself +within hearing of his mother. But, anterior to this, I had been playing +with children, especially with one most lovely child, about two years or +two and a half, and had repeated to her, in my dream, "The dews were +falling fast," &c., and I was sorely frightened by the sneering and +fiendish malignity of the beautiful creature, but from the beginning +there had been a terror about it and proceeding from it. I shall +hereafter, read the Vision in "Macbeth" with increased admiration. + +["_Quam nihil ad genium Papiniane tuum_," was the motto of _The Lyrical +Ballads_.] + + +That deep intuition of our _one_ness, is it not at the bottom of many of +our faults as well as virtues? the dislike that a bad man should have +any virtues, a good man any faults? And yet, too, a something noble and +incentive is in this. + + +[Sidenote: THE OMNISCIENT THE COMFORTER] + +What comfort in the silent eye upraised to God! "_Thou_ knowest." O! +what a thought! Never to be friendless, never to be unintelligible! The +omnipresence has been generally represented as a spy, a sort of +Bentham's Panopticon.[D] O to feel what the pain is to be utterly +unintelligible and then--"O God, thou understandest!" + + +[Sidenote: POETS AS CRITICS OF POETS] + +The question should be fairly stated, how far a man can be an adequate, +or even a good (as far as he goes) though inadequate critic of poetry +who is not a poet, at least, _in posse_? Can he be an adequate, can he +be a good critic, though not commensurate [with the poet criticised]? +But there is yet another distinction. Supposing he is not only not a +poet, but is a bad poet! What then? + + +[Sidenote: IMMATURE CRITICS March 16, 1805] + +[The] cause of the offence or disgust received by the _mean_ in good +poems when we are young, and its diminution and occasional evanescence +when we are older in true taste [is] that, at first, we are from various +causes delighted with _generalities_ of nature which can all be +expressed in dignified words; but, afterwards, becoming more intimately +acquainted with Nature in her detail, we are delighted with _distinct_, +vivid ideas, and with vivid ideas most when made distinct, and can most +often forgive and sometimes be delighted with even a low image from art +or low life when it gives you the very thing by an illustration, as, for +instance, Cowper's stream "inlaying" the level vale as with silver, and +even Shakspere's "shrill-tongued Tapster's answering shallow wits" +applied to echoes in an _echofull_ place. + + +[Sidenote: ATTENTION AND SENSATION March 17, 1805] + +Of the not being able to know whether you are smoking in the dark or +when your eyes are shut: item, of the ignorance in that state of the +difference of beef, veal, &c.--it is all attention. Your ideas being +shut, other images arise which you must _attend to_, it being the habit +of a _seeing_ man to attend chiefly to _sight_. So close your eyes, +(and) you attend to the ideal images, and, attending to them, you +abstract your _attention_. It is the same when deeply thinking in a +reverie, you no longer hear distinct sound made to you. But what a +strange inference that there were no sounds! + + +[Sidenote: ST. COLUMBA] + +I love St. Combe or Columba and he shall be my saint. For he is not in +the Catalogue of Romish Saints, having never been canonised at Rome, and +because this Apostle of the Picts lived and gave his name to an island +on the Hebrides, and from him Switzerland was christianised. + + +[Sidenote: EXPERIENCE AND BOOK KNOWLEDGE Midnight, April 5, 1805] + +"I will write," I said, "as truly as I can from experience, actual +individual experience, not from book-knowledge." But yet it is wonderful +how exactly the knowledge from good books coincides with the experience +of men of the world. How often, when I was younger, have I noticed the +deep delight of men of the world who have taken late in life to +literature, on coming across a passage the force of which had either +escaped me altogether, or which I knew to be true from books only and at +second hand! Experience is necessary, no doubt, if only to give a light +and shade in the mind, to give to some one idea a greater vividness than +to others, and thereby to make it a _Thing_ of _Time_ and actual +reality. For all ideas being equally vivid, the whole becomes a dream. +But, notwithstanding this and other reasons, I yet believe that the saws +against book-knowledge are handed down to us from times when books +conveyed only abstract science or abstract morality and religion. +Whereas, in the present day, what is there of real life, in all its +goings on, trades, manufactures, high life, low life, animate and +inanimate that is not to be found in books? In these days books are +conversation. And this, I know, is for evil as well as good, but for +good, too, as well as evil. + + +[Sidenote: DUTY AND SELF INTEREST Sunday morning 4 o'clock, April 7, +1805] + +How feebly, how unlike an English cock, that cock crows and the other +answers! Did I not particularly notice the _un_likeness on my first +arrival at Malta? Well, to-day I will disburthen my mind. Yet one thing +strikes me, the difference I find in myself during the past year or two. +My enthusiasm for the happiness of mankind in particular places and +countries, and my eagerness to promote it, seems to decrease, and my +sense of duty, my hauntings of conscience, from any stain of thought or +action to increase in the same ratio. I remember having written a +strong letter to my most dear and honoured Wordsworth in consequence of +his "Ode to Duty," and in that letter explained this as the effect of +selfness in a mind incapable of gross self-interest--I mean, the +decrease of hope and joy, the soul in its round and round flight forming +narrower circles, till at every gyre its wings beat against the +_personal self_. But let me examine this more accurately. It may be that +the phenomena will come out more honourable to our nature. + + +[Sidenote: EVIL PRODUCES EVIL] + +It is as trite as it is mournful (but yet most instructive), and by the +genius that can produce the strongest impressions of novelty by rescuing +the stalest and most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the +very circumstance of their universal admission--admitted so instantly as +never to be _reflected_ on, never by that sole key of reflection +admitted into the effective, legislative chamber of the heart--so true +that they lose all the privileges of Truth, and, as extremes meet by +being _truisms_, correspond in utter inefficiency with universally +acknowledged errors (in Algebraic symbols Truisms = Falsehoodisms = +[scir][scir])--by that genius, I say, might good be worked in +considering the old, old Methusalem saw that "evil produces evil." One +error almost compels another. Tell one lie, tell a hundred. Oh, to show +this, _a priori_, by bottoming it in all our faculties and by +experience of touching examples! + + +[Sidenote: JOHN WORDSWORTH Monday, April 8, 1805] + +The favourite object of all Oriental tales, and that which, whist it +inspired their authors in the East, still inspires their readers +everywhere, is the impossibility of baffling Destiny--the perception +that what we considered as the means of one thing becomes, in a strange +manner, the direct means of the reverse. O dear John Wordsworth! what +joy at Grasmere that you were made Captain of the Abergavenny, and so +young too! Now it was next to certain that you would in a few years +settle in your native hills and be verily one of the _Concern_! Then +came your share in the brilliant action with Linois. (I was at Grasmere +in spirit only, but in spirit I was one of the rejoicers--as joyful as +any, and, perhaps, more joyous!) This, doubtless, not only enabled you +to lay in a larger and more advantageous cargo, but procured you a +voyage to India instead of China, and in this circumstance a next to +certainty of independence--and all these were decoys of Death! Well, but +a nobler feeling than these vain regrets would become the friend of the +man whose last words were: "I have done my duty! let her go!" Let us do +our _duty_! all else is a dream, life and death alike a dream. This +short sentence would comprise, I believe, the sum of all profound +philosophy, of ethics and metaphysics conjointly, from Plato to Fichte! + +[_Vide Letters of S. T. C._, 1895, ii. 495, _note_.] + + +[Sidenote: LOVE THE DIVINE ESSENCE] + +The best, the truly lovely in each and all, is God. Therefore the truly +beloved is _the symbol of God_ to whomever it is truly beloved by, but +it may become perfect and maintained love by the function of the two. +The lover worships in his beloved that final consummation of itself +which is produced in his own soul by the action of the soul of the +beloved upon it, and that final perception of the soul of the beloved +which is in part the consequence of the reaction of his (so ameliorated +and regenerated) soul upon the soul of his beloved, till each +contemplates the soul of the other as involving his own, both in its +givings and its receivings, and thus, still keeping alive its _outness_, +its _self-oblivion_ united with self-warmth, still approximates to God! +Where shall I find an image for this sublime symbol which, ever +involving the presence of Deity, yet tends towards it ever? Shall it be +in the attractive powers of the different surfaces of the earth? each +attraction the vicegerent and representative of the central attraction, +and yet being no other than that attraction itself? By some such feeling +as this I can easily believe the mind of Fénelon and Madame Guyon to +have coloured its faith in the worship of saints, but that was most +dangerous. It was not idolatry in _them_, but it encouraged idolatry in +others. Now, the pure love of a good man for a good woman does not +involve this evil, but it multiplies, intensifies the good. + + +[Sidenote: ORDER IN DREAMS] + +Dreamt that I was saying or reading, or that it was read to me, "Varrius +thus prophesied vinegar at his door by damned frigid tremblings." Just +after, I woke. I fell to sleep again, having in the previous doze +meditated on the possibility of making dreams regular; and just as I had +passed on the other side of the confine of dozing, I afforded this +specimen: "I should have thought it Vossius rather than Varrius, though, +Varrius being a great poet, the idea would have been more suitable to +him, only that all his writings were unfortunately lost in the _Arrow_." +Again I awoke. _N.B._--The _Arrow_, Captain Vincent's frigate, from +which our Malta letters and dispatches had been previously thrown +overboard, was taken by the French, in February 1805. This _illustrates +the connection of dreams_. + + +[Sidenote: ORANGE BLOSSOM April 8, 1805] + +I never had a more lovely twig of orange-blossoms, with four old last +year's leaves with their steady green well-placed among them, than +to-day, and with a rose-twig of three roses [it] made a very striking +nosegay to an Englishman, The Orange Twig was so very full of blossoms +that one-fourth of the number becoming fruit of the natural size would +have broken the twig off. Is there, then, disproportion here? or waste? +O no! no! In the first place, here is a prodigality of beauty; and what +harm do they do by existing? And is not man a being capable of Beauty +even as of Hunger and Thirst? And if the latter be fit objects of a +final cause, why not the former? But secondly [Nature] hereby multiplies +manifold the chances of a proper number becoming fruit--in this twig, +for instance, for one set of accidents that would have been fatal to the +year's growth if only as many blossoms had been on it as it was designed +to bear fruit, there may now be three sets of accidents--and no harm +done. And, thirdly and lastly, for _me_ at _least_--or, at least, at +present, for in nature doubtless there are many additional reasons, and +possibly for _me_ at some future hour of reflection, after some new +influx of information from books or observance-and, thirdly, these +blossoms are Fruit, fruit to the winged insect, fruit to man--yea! and +of more solid value, perhaps, than the orange itself! O how the Bees +be-throng and be-murmur it! O how the honey tells the tale of its +birthplace to the sense of sight and odour! and to how many minute and +uneyeable insects beside! So, I cannot but think, ought I to be talking +to Hartley, and sometimes to detail all the insects that have arts or +implements resembling human--the sea-snails, with the nautilus at their +head; the wheel-insect, the galvanic eel, etc. + +[This note was printed in the _Illustrated London News_, June 10, 1893.] + + +[Sidenote: ANTICIPATIONS IN NATURE AND IN THOUGHT Saturday night, April +14, 1805] + +In looking at objects of Nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon +dim-glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be +seeking, as it were _asking_ for, a symbolical language for something +within me that already and for ever exists, than observing anything new. +Even when that latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure +feeling as if that new phenomena were the dim awaking of a forgotten or +hidden truth of my inner nature. It is still interesting as a word--a +symbol. It is [Greek: Logos] the Creator, and the Evolver! [Now] what is +the right, the virtuous feeling, and consequent action when a man having +long meditated on and perceived a certain truth, finds another, a +foreign writer, who has handled the same with an approximation to the +truth as he had previously conceived it? Joy! Let Truth make her voice +audible! While I was preparing the pen to write this remark, I lost the +train of thought which had led me to it. I meant to have asked something +else now forgotten. For the above answers itself. It needed no answer, +I trust, in my heart. + +[Printed in _Life of S. T. C._, by James Gillman, 1838, p. 311.] + + +[Sidenote: THE HOPE OF HUMANITY, Easter Sunday, 1805] + +That beautiful passage in dear and honoured W. Wordsworth's "Michael," +respecting the forward-looking Hope inspired pre-eminently by the birth +of a child, was brought to my mind most forcibly by my own independent +though, in part, anticipated reflections on the importance of young +children to the keeping up the stock of Hope in the human species. They +seem to be the immediate and secreting organ of Hope in the great +organised body of the whole human race, in _all men_ considered as the +component atoms of _Man_--as young leaves are the organs of supplying +vital air to the atmosphere. + + Thus living on through such a length of years, + The Shepherd, if he loved himself, must needs + Have loved his Helpmate; but to Michael's heart + This son of his old age was yet more dear-- + Less from instinctive tenderness, the same + Fond spirit that blindly works in the blood of all-- + Than that a child, more than all other gifts + That earth can offer to declining man, + Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts, + And stirrings of inquietude, when they + By tendency of nature needs must fail. + + --_Poetical Works of_ W. WORDSWORTH, p. 133. + + +[Sidenote: THE NORTHERN EASTER Easter Sunday, 1805] + +The English and German climates and that of northern France possess, +among many others, this one little beauty of uniting the mysteries of +positive with those of natural religion--in celebrating the symbolical +resurrection of the human soul in that of the Crucified, at the time of +the actual resurrection of the "living life" of nature. + + +[Sidenote: SPIRITUAL RELIGION] + +Religion consists in truth and virtue, that is, the permanent, the +_forma efformans_, in the flux of things without, of feelings and images +within. Well, therefore, does the Scripture speak of the Spirit as +praying to the Spirit, "The Lord said to my Lord." God is the essence as +well as the object of religion. + + +[Sidenote: A SUPPOSITION Wednesday, April 17, 1805] + +I would not willingly kill even a flower, but were I at the head of an +army, or a revolutionary kingdom, I would do my duty; and though it +should be the ordering of the military execution of a city, yet, +supposing it to be my duty, I would give the order--and then, in awe, +listen to the uproar, even as to a thunderstorm--the awe as tranquil, +the submission to the inevitable, to the unconnected with myself, as +profound. It should be as if the lightning of heaven passed along my +sword and destroyed a man. + + +[Sidenote: ENTHUSIASM] + +Does the sober judgement previously measure out the banks between which +the stream of enthusiasm shall rush with its torrent-sound? Far rather +does the stream itself plough up its own channel and find its banks in +the adamant rocks of nature! + + +[Sidenote: ADHÆSIT PAVIMENTO COR] + +There are times when my thoughts--how like music! O that these times +were more frequent! But how can they be, I being so hopeless, and for +months past so incessantly employed in official tasks, subscribing, +examining, administering oaths, auditing, and so forth? + + +[Sidenote: THE REALISATION OF DEATH] + +John Tobin dead, and just after the success of his play! and Robert +Allen dead suddenly! + +O when we are young we lament for death only by sympathy, or with the +general feeling with which we grieve for misfortunes in general, but +there comes a time (and this year is the time that has come to me) when +we lament for death as death, when it is felt for itself, and as itself, +aloof from all its consequences. Then comes the grave-stone into the +heart with all its mournful names, then the bell-man's or clerk's verses +subjoined to the bills of mortality are no longer common-place. + +[John Tobin the dramatist died December 7, 1804. His play entitled "The +Honeymoon" was published in 1805. + +Robert Allen, Coleridge's contemporary and school-friend, held the post +of deputy-surgeon to the 2nd Royals, then on service in Portugal. He was +a friend of Dr. (afterwards Sir J.) Stoddart, with whom Coleridge stayed +on his first arrival at Malta. See _Letters of Charles Lamb_, Macmillan, +1888, i. 188.] + + +[Sidenote: LOVE AND DUTY] + +Würde, worthiness, VIRTUE, consist in the mastery over the sensuous and +sensual impulses; but love requires INNOCENCE. Let the lover ask his +heart whether he can endure that his mistress should have _struggled_ +with a sensual impulse for another man, though she overcame it from a +sense of duty to him. Women are LESS offended with men, in part, from +the vicious habits of men, and, in part, from the difference of bodily +constitution. Yet, still, to a pure and truly loving woman this must be +a painful thought. That he should struggle with and overcome ambition, +desire of fortune, superior beauty, &c., or with objectless desire of +any kind, is pleasing, but _not_ that he has struggled with positive, +appropriated desire, that is, desire _with_ an object. Love, in short, +requires an absolute peace and harmony between all parts of human +nature, such as it is; and it is offended by any _war_, though the +battle should be decided in favour of the worthier. This is, perhaps, +the final cause of the _rarity_ of true love, and the efficient and +immediate cause of its difficulty. Ours is a life of probation. We are +to contemplate and obey _duty_ for its own sake, and in order to do +this, we, in our present imperfect state of being, must see it not +merely abstracted from but in direct opposition to the _wish_, the +_inclination_. Having perfected this, the highest possibility of human +nature, man may then with safety harmonise _all_ his being with this--he +may _love_. To perform duties absolutely from the sense of duty is the +_ideal_, which, perhaps, no human being ever can arrive at, but which +every human being ought to try to draw near unto. This is, in the only +wise, and, verily, in a most sublime sense, to see God face to face, +which, alas! it seems too true that no man can do and _live_, that is, a +_human_ life. It would become incompatible with his organization, or +rather, it would _transmute_ it, and the process of that transmutation, +to the senses of other men, would be called death. Even as to the +caterpillar, in all probability, the caterpillar dies, and he either, +which is most probable, does not see (or, at all events, does not see +the connection between the caterpillar and) the butterfly, the beautiful +Psyche of the Greeks. + + +[Sidenote: HAPPINESS MADE PERFECT] + +Those who in this life love in perfection, if such there be, in +proportion as their love has no struggles, see God darkly and through a +veil. For when duty and pleasure are absolutely co-incident, the very +nature of our organisation necessitates that duty will be contemplated +as the symbol of pleasure, instead of pleasure being (as in a future +life we have faith it will be) the symbol of duty. For herein lies the +distinction between human and angelic happiness. Humanly happy I call +him who in enjoyment _finds_ his duty; angelically happy he, who seeks +and finds his duty in enjoyment. + +Happiness in general may be defined, not the aggregate of pleasurable +sensations--for this is either a dangerous error and the creed of +sensualists, or else a mere translation or wordy paraphrase--but the +state of that person who, in order to enjoy his nature in the highest +manifestation of conscious _feeling_, has no need of doing wrong, and +who, in order to do right, is under no necessity of abstaining from +enjoyment. + +[_Vide Life of S. T. C._, by James Gillman, 1838, pp. 176-78.] + + +[Sidenote: THOUGHT AND THINGS] + +Thought and reality are, as it were, two distinct corresponding sounds, +of which no man can say positively which is the voice and which the +echo. + +Oh, the beautiful fountain or natural well at Upper Stowey! The images +of the weeds which hung down from its sides appear as plants growing up, +straight and upright, among the water-weeds that really grow from the +bottom of the well, and so vivid was the image, that for some moments, +and not till after I had disturbed the water, did I perceive that their +roots were not neighbours, and they side-by-side companions. So ever, +then I said, so are the happy man's thoughts and things, [or in the +language of the modern philosophers] his ideas and impressions. + + +[Sidenote: SUPERSTITION] + +The two characteristics which I have most observed in Roman Catholic +mummery processions, baptisms, etc., are, first, the immense _noise_ and +jingle-jingle as if to frighten away the dæmon common-sense; and, +secondly, the unmoved, stupid, uninterested faces of the conjurers. I +have noticed no exception. Is not the very nature of superstition in +general, as being utterly sensuous, _cold_ except where it is _sensual_? +Hence the older form of idolatry, as displayed in the Greek mythology, +was, in some sense, even preferable to the Popish. For whatever life +did and could exist in superstition it brought forward and sanctified in +its rites of Bacchus, Venus, etc. The papist by pretence of suppression +warps and denaturalises. In the pagan [ritual, superstition] burnt with +a bright flame, in the popish it consumes the soul with a smothered fire +that stinks in darkness and smoulders like gum that burns but is +incapable of light. + + +[Sidenote: ILLUSION Sunday Midnight, May 12, 1805] + +At the Treasury, La Valetta, Malta, in the room the windows of which +directly face the piazzas and vast saloon built for the archives and +Library and now used as the Garrison Ball-room, sitting at one corner of +a large parallelogram table well-littered with books, in a red +arm-chair, at the other corner of which (diagonally) {_C}[rec]^D Mr. +Dennison had been sitting--he and I having conversed for a long time, he +bade me good night, and retired--I meaning to retire too, however sunk +for five minutes or so into a doze and on suddenly awaking up I saw him +as distinctly sitting in the chair, as I had, really, some ten minutes +before. I was startled, and thinking of it, sunk into a second doze, out +of which awaking as before I saw again the same appearance; not more +distinct indeed, but more of his form--for at the first time I had seen +only his face and bust--but now I saw as much as I could have seen if +he had been really there. The appearance was very nearly that of a +person seen through thin smoke distinct indeed, but yet a sort of +distinct _shape_ and _colour_, with a diminished sense of +_substantiality_--like a face in a clear stream. My nerves had been +violently agitated yesterday morning by the attack of three dogs as I +was mounting the steps of Captain Pasley's door--two of them savage +Bedouins, who wounded me in the calf of my left leg. I have noted this +down, not three minutes having intervened since the illusion took place. +Often and often I have had similar experiences and, therefore, resolved +to write down the particulars whenever any new instance should occur, as +a weapon against superstition, and an explanation of ghosts--Banquo in +"Macbeth" the very same thing. I once told a lady the reason why I did +not believe in the existence of ghosts, etc., was that I had seen too +many of them myself. N.B. There were on the table a common black +wine-bottle, a decanter of water, and, between these, one of the +half-gallon glass flasks which Sir G. Beaumont had given me (four of +these full of port), the cork in, covered with leather, and having a +white plated ring on the top. I mention this because since I wrote the +former pages, on blinking a bit a third time, and opening my eyes, I +clearly _detected_ that this high-shouldered hypochondriacal bottle-man +had a great share in producing the effect. The metamorphosis was +clearly beginning, though I snapped the spell before it had assumed a +recognisable form. The red-leather arm-chair was so placed at the corner +that the flask was exactly between me and it--and the lamp being close +to my corner of the large table, and not giving much light, the chair +was rather obscure, and the brass nails where the leather was fastened +to the outward wooden rim reflecting the light more copiously were seen +almost for themselves. What if instead of immediately checking the +sight, and then pleased with it as a philosophical _case_, I had been +frightened and encouraged it, and my understanding had joined _its vote_ +to that of my senses? + +My own shadow, too, on the wall not far from Mr. D.'s chair--the white +paper, the sheet of Harbour Reports lying spread out on the table on the +other side of the bottles--influence of mere colour, influence of +shape--wonderful coalescence of scattered colours at distances, and, +then, all going to some one shape, and the modification! Likewise I am +more convinced by repeated observation that, perhaps, always in a very +minute degree but assuredly in certain states and postures of the eye, +as in drowsiness, in the state of the brain and nerves after distress or +agitation, especially if it had been accompanied by weeping, and in +many others, we see our own faces, and project them according to the +distance given them by the degree of indistinctness--that this may +occasion in the highest degree the Wraith (_vide_ a hundred Scotch +stories, but better than all, Wordsworth's most wonderful and admirable +poem, Peter Bell, when he sees his own figure), and, still oftener, that +it facilitates the formation of a human face out of some really present +object, and from the alteration of the distance among other causes never +suspected as the occasion and substratum. + + S. T. C. + +N.B.--This is a valuable note, re-read by me, Tuesday morning, May 14. + +[Compare _Table Talk_ for January 3 and May 1, 1823, Bell & Co., 1884, +pp. 20, 31-33. See, too, _The Friend_, First Landing Place Essay, iii., +_Coleridge's Works_, Harper & Brothers, 1853, ii. 134-137.] + + +[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"] + +Mem. always to bear in mind that profound sentence of Leibnitz that +men's intellectual errors consist chiefly in _denying_. What they +_affirm_ with _feeling_ is, for the most part, right--if it be a real +affirmation, and not affirmative in form, negative in reality. As, for +instance, when a man praises the French stage, meaning and implying his +dislike of Shakspere [and the Elizabethan dramatists]. + + +"Facts--stubborn facts! None of your theory!" A most entertaining and +instructive essay might be written on this text, and the sooner the +better. Trace it from the most absurd credulity--_e.g._, in +Fracastorius' _De Sympathiâ_, cap. i. and the Alchemy Book--even to that +of your modern agriculturists, relating their own facts and swearing +against each other like ships' crews. O! it is the relation of the +facts--not the facts, friend! + + +Speculative men are wont to be condemned by the general. But who more +speculative then Sir Walter Raleigh, and _he_, even he, brought the +potato to Europe. Good heavens! let me never eat a roasted potato +without dwelling on it, and detailing its train of consequences. +Likewise, too, _dubious_ to the philosopher, but to be clapped chorally +by the commercial world, he, this mere wild speculatist, introduced +tobacco. + + +For a nation to make peace only because it is tired of war, and, as it +were, in order just to take breath, is in direct subversion of the end +and object of the war which was its sole justification. 'Tis like a poor +way-sore foot traveller getting up behind a coach that is going the +contrary way to his. + + +The eye hath a two-fold power. It is, verily, a window through which you +not only look _out_ of the house, but can look into it too. A statesman +and diplomatist should for this reason always wear spectacles. + + +Worldly men gain their purposes with worldly men by that instinctive +belief in sincerity. Hence (nothing immediately and passionately +contradicting it) the effect of the "with unfeigned esteem," "entire +devotion," and the other smooth phrases in letters, all, in short, that +sea-officers call _oil_, and of which they, with all their bluntness, +well understand the use. + + +The confusion of metaphor with reality is one of the fountains of the +many-headed Nile of credulity, which, overflowing its banks, covers the +world with miscreations and reptile monsters, and feeds by its many +mouths the sea of blood. + + +A ready command of a limited number of words is but a playing cat-cradle +dexterously with language. + + +Plain contra-reasoning may be compared with boxing with fists. +Controversy with boxing is the cestus, that is, the lead-loaded glove, +like the pugilists in the Æneid. But the stiletto! the envenomed +stiletto is here. What worse? (a Germanism) Yes! the poisoned Italian +glove of mock friendship. + + +The more I reflect, the more exact and close appears to me the analogy +between a watch and watches, and the conscience and consciences of men, +on the one hand, and that between the sun and motion of the heavenly +bodies in general and the reason and goodness of the Supreme on the +other. Never goes quite right any one, no two go exactly the same; they +derive their dignity and use as being substitutes and exponents of +heavenly motions, but still, in a thousand instances, they are and must +be our instructors by which we must act, in practice presuming a +coincidence while theoretically we are aware of incalculable variations. + + + One lifts up one's eyes to heaven, as if to seek there what one had + lost on earth--eyes, + Whose half-beholdings through unsteady tears + Gave shape, hue, distance to the inward dream. + + +[Sidenote: GREAT MEN THE CRITERION OF NATIONAL WORTH] + +Schiller, disgusted with Kotzebuisms, deserts from Shakspere! What! +cannot we condemn a counterfeit and yet remain admirers of the original? +This is a sufficient proof that the first admiration was not sound, or +founded on sound distinct perceptions [or, if sprung from], a sound +feeling, yet clothed and manifested to the consciousness by false ideas. +And now the French stage is to be re-introduced. O Germany! Germany! why +this endless rage for novelty? Why this endless looking out of thyself? +But stop, let me not fall into the pit against which I was about to warn +others. Let me not confound the discriminating character and genius of a +nation with the conflux of its individuals in cities and reviews. Let +England be Sir Philip Sidney, Shakspere, Milton, Bacon, Harrington, +Swift, Wordsworth; and never let the names of Darwin, Johnson, Hume, +_fur_ it over. If these, too, must be England let them be another +England; or, rather, let the first be old England, the spiritual, +Platonic old England, and the second, with Locke at the head of the +philosophers and Pope [at the head] of the poets, together with the long +list of Priestleys, Paleys, Hayleys, Darwins, Mr. Pitts, Dundasses, &c., +&c., be the representatives of commercial Great Britain. These have +[indeed] their merits, but are as alien to me as the Mandarin +philosophers and poets of China. Even so Leibnitz, Lessing, Voss, Kant, +shall be _Germany_ to me, let whatever coxcombs rise up, and _shrill_ it +away in the grasshopper vale of reviews. And so shall Dante, Ariosto, +Giordano Bruno, be my Italy; Cervantes my Spain; and O! that I could +find a France for my love. But spite of Pascal, Madame Guyon and +Molière, France is my Babylon, the mother of whoredoms in morality, +philosophy and taste. The French themselves feel a foreignness in these +writers. How indeed is it possible at once to _love_ Pascal and +Voltaire? + + +[Sidenote: AN INTELLECTUAL PURGATORY Tuesday morning, May 14, 1805] + +With any distinct remembrance of a past life there could be no fear of +death as death, no idea even of death! Now, in the next state, to meet +with the Luthers, Miltons, Leibnitzs, Bernouillis, Bonnets, Shaksperes, +etc., and to live a longer and better life, the good and wise entirely +among the good and wise, might serve as a step to break the abruptness +of an immediate Heaven? But it must be a human life; and though the +faith in a hereafter would be more firm, more undoubting, yet, still, it +must not be a sensuous remembrance of a death passed over. No! [it would +be] something like a dream that you had not died, but had been taken +off; in short, the real events with the obscurity of a dream, +accompanied with the notion that you had never died, but that death was +yet to come. As a man who, having walked in his sleep, by rapid openings +of his eyes--too rapid to be observable by others or rememberable by +himself--sees and remembers the whole of his path, mixing it with many +fancies _ab intra_, and, awaking, remembers, but yet as a dream. + + +[Sidenote: OF FIRST LOVES] + +'Tis one source of mistakes concerning the merits of poems, that to +those read in youth men attribute all that praise which is due to poetry +in general, merely considered as select language in metre. (Little +children should not be taught verses, in my opinion; better not to let +them set eyes on verse till they are ten or eleven years old.) Now, +poetry produces two kinds of pleasure, one for each of the two +master-movements and impulses of man, the gratification of the love of +variety, and the gratification of the love of uniformity--and that by a +recurrence delightful as a painless and yet exciting act of memory--tiny +breezelets of surprise, each one destroying the ripplets which the +former had made--yet all together keeping the surface of the mind in a +bright dimple-smile. So, too, a hatred of vacancy is reconciled with the +love of rest. These and other causes often make [a first acquaintance +with] poetry an overpowering delight to a lad of feeling, as I have +heard Poole relate of himself respecting Edwin and Angelina. But so it +would be with a man bred up in a wilderness by Unseen Beings, who should +yet converse and discourse rationally with him--how beautiful would not +the first other man appear whom he saw and knew to be a man by the +resemblance to his own image seen in the clear stream; and would he not, +in like manner, attribute to the man all the divine attributes of +humanity, though, haply, he should be a very ordinary, or even a most +ugly man, compared with a hundred others? Many of us who have felt this +with respect to women have been bred up where few are to be seen; and I +acknowledge that, both in persons and in poems, it is well _on the +whole_ that we should retain our first love, though, alike in both +cases, evils have happened as the consequence. + + +[Sidenote: THE MADDENING RAIN August 1, 1805] + +The excellent fable of the maddening rain I have found in Drayton's +"Moon Calf," most miserably marred in the telling! vastly inferior to +Benedict Fay's Latin exposition of it, and that is no great thing. +_Vide_ his Lucretian Poem on the Newtonian System. Never was a finer +tale for a satire, or, rather, to conclude a long satirical poem of five +or six hundred lines. + +[For excellent use of this fable, see _The Friend_, No. 1, June 9, 1809, +_Coleridge's Works_, Harper & Brothers, ii. 21, 22.] + + +[Sidenote: SENTIMENTS BELOW MORALS] + +Pasley remarked last night (2nd August 1805), and with great precision +and originality, that men themselves, in the present age, were not so +much degraded as their sentiments. This is most true! almost all men +nowadays act and feel more nobly than they think--yet still the vile, +cowardly, selfish, calculating ethics of Paley, Priestley, Locke, and +other Erastians do woefully influence and determine our course of +action. + + +[Sidenote: TIME AND ETERNITY] + +O the complexities of the ravel produced by time struggling with +eternity! _a_ and _b_ are different, and eternity or duration makes them +one--this we call modification--the principle of all greatness in finite +beings, the principle of all contradiction and absurdity. + + +[Sidenote: THE PASSION FOR THE MOT PROPRE August 3, 1805 Saturday] + +It is worthy notice (shewn in the phrase "I envy him such and such a +thing," meaning only, "I regret I cannot share with him, have the same +as he, without depriving him of it, or any part of it,") the instinctive +passion in the mind for a _one word_ to express _one act_ of +feeling--[one] that is, in which, however complex in reality, the mind +is _conscious_ of no discursion and synthesis _a posteriori_. On this +instinct rest all the improvements (and, on the habits formed by this +instinct and [the] knowledge of these improvements, Vanity rears all the +Apuleian, Apollonian, etc., etc., corruptions) of style. Even so with +our Johnson. + + +[Sidenote: BULLS OF ACTION] + +There are _bulls_ of action equally as of thought, [for] (not to allude +to the story of the Irish labourer who laid his comrade all his wages +that he would not carry him down in his hod from the top to the bottom +of a high house, down the ladder) the feeling of vindictive honour in +duelling, and the feudal revenges anterior to duelling, formed a true +bull; for they were superstitious Christians, knew it was wrong, and yet +knew it was right--they would be damned deservedly if they did, and, if +they did not, they thought themselves deserving of being damned. + + +[Sidenote: PSEUDO-POETS] + +The pseudo-poets Campbell, Rogers, etc., both by their writings and +moral character tend to bring poetry into disgrace, and, but that men in +general are the slaves of the same wretched infirmities, they would [set +their seal on this disgrace,] and it would be well. The true poet could +not smother the sacred fire ("his heart burnt within him and he spake"), +and wisdom would be justified by her children. But the false poet--that +is, the no-poet--finding poetry in contempt among the many, of whose +praise, whatever he may affirm, he is alone ambitious, would be +prevented from scribbling. + + +[Sidenote: LANDING PLACES] + +The progress of human intellect from earth to heaven is not a Jacob's +ladder, but a geometrical staircase with five or more landing-places. +That on which we stand enables us to see clearly and count all below us, +while that or those above us are so transparent for our eyes that they +appear the canopy of heaven. We do not see them, and believe ourselves +on the highest. + +["Among my earliest impressions I still distinctly remember that of my +first entrance into the mansion of a neighbouring baronet, awefully +known to me by the name of the Great House [Escot, near Ottery St. Mary, +Devon].... Beyond all other objects I was most struck with the +magnificent staircase, relieved at well-proportioned intervals by +spacious landing-places.... My readers will find no difficulty in +translating these forms of the outward senses into their intellectual +analogies, so as to understand the purport of _The Friend's_ +Landing-Places." _The Friend_, "The Landing-Place," Essay iv. +_Coleridge's Works_, Harper & Brothers, 1853, ii. 137, 138.] + + +[Sidenote: WILLIAM BROWNE OF OTTERY] + +In the _Threnæ_ or funeral songs and elegies of our old poets, I am +often impressed with the idea of their resemblance to hired weepers in +Rome and among the Irish, where he who howled the loudest and most +wildly was the most capital mourner and was at the head of his trade. +So [too] see William Browne's elegy on Prince Henry (_Britt. Past. +Songs_ v.), whom, perhaps, he never spoke to. Yet he is a dear fellow, +and I love him, that W. Browne who died at Ottery, and with whose family +my own is united, or, rather, connected and acquainted. + +[Colonel James Coleridge, the poet's eldest surviving brother and Henry +Langford Browne of Combe-Satchfield married sisters, Frances and Dorothy +Taylor, whose mother was one of five co-heiresses of Richard Duke of +Otterton. + +It is uncertain whether a William Browne of Ottery St. Mary, who died in +1645, was the author of _The Shepherd's Pipe_ and _Britannia's +Pastorals_. Two beautiful inscriptions on a tomb in St. Stephen's Chapel +in the collegiate church of St. Mary Ottery, were, in Southey's opinion +(doubtless at Coleridge's suggestion), composed by the poet William +Browne.] + + +[Sidenote: "ASCEND A STEP IN CHOOSING A FRIEND" TALMUD] + +God knows! that at times I derive a comfort even from my infirmities, my +sins of omission and commission, in the joy of the deep feeling of the +opposite virtues in the two or three whom I love in my heart of hearts. +Sharp, therefore, is the pain when I find faults in these friends +opposite to my virtues. I find no comfort in the notion of average, for +I wish to love even more than to be beloved, and am so haunted by the +conscience of my many failings that I find an unmixed pleasure in +esteeming and admiring, but, as the recipient of esteem or admiration, I +feel as a man, whose good dispositions are still alive, feels in the +enjoyment of a _darling_ property on a doubtful title. My instincts are +so far dog-like that I love beings superior to myself better than my +equals. But the notion of inferiority is so painful to me that I never, +in common life, feel a man my inferior except by after-reflection. What +seems vanity in me is in great part attributable to this feeling. But of +this hereafter. I will cross-examine myself. + + +[Sidenote: A CAUTION TO POSTERITY] + +There are actions which left undone mark the greater man; but to have +done them does not imply a bad or mean man. Such, for instance, are +Martial's compliments of Domitian. So may we praise Milton without +condemning Dryden. By-the-bye, we are all too apt to forget that +contemporaries have not the same _wholeness_, and _fixedness_ in their +notions of persons' characters, that we their posterity have. They can +_hope_ and _fear_ and _believe_ and _disbelieve_. We make up an ideal +which, like the fox or lion in the fable, never changes. + + +[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"] + +I have several times seen the stiletto and the rosary come out of the +same pocket. + + +A man who marries for love is like a frog who leaps into a well. He has +plenty of water but then he cannot get out. + + +[Not until national ruin is imminent will Ministers contemplate the +approach of national danger]; as if Judgment were overwhelmed like +Belgic towns in the sea, and showed its towers only at dead low water. + + +The superiority of the genus to the particular may be illustrated by +music. How infinitely more perfect in passion and its transition than +even poetry, and poetry again than painting! And yet how marvellous is +genius in all its implements! + +[Compare _Table Talk_, July 6, 1833. H. N. C. _foot-note_. Bell & Co., +1884, p. 240.] + + +Those only who feel no originality, no consciousness of having received +their thoughts and opinions from immediate inspiration are anxious to be +thought original. The certainty, the feeling that he is right, is enough +for the man of genius, and he rejoices to find his opinions plumed and +winged with the authority of several forefathers. + + +The water-lily in the midst of the lake is equally refreshed by the +rain, as the sponge on the sandy sea-shore. + + +In the next world the souls of dull good men serve for bodies to the +souls of the Shaksperes and Miltons, and in the course of a few +centuries, when the soul can do without its vehicle, the bodies will by +advantage of good company have refined themselves into souls fit to be +clothed with like bodies. + + +How much better it would be, in the House of Commons, to have everything +that is, and by the spirit of English freedom must be legal, legal and +open! The reporting, for instance, should be done by shorthandists +appointed by Government. There are, I see, weighty arguments on the +other side, but are they not to be got over? + + +Co-arctation is not a bad phrase for that narrowing in of breadth on +both sides as in my interpolation of Schiller. + + "And soon + The narrowing line of day-light that ran after + The closing door was gone." + + _Piccolomini_, ii. sc. 4, _P.W._, p. 257. + + +[Sidenote: THE DEVIL WITH A MEMORY THE FIRST SINNER] + +In order not to be baffled by the infinite ascent of the heavenly +angels, the devil feigned that all (the [Greek: tagathon], that is, +God himself included) sprang from nothing. And now he has a pretty task +to multiply, without paper or slate, the exact number of all the +animalcules, and the eggs and embryos of each planet, by some other, and +the product by a third and that product by a fourth, and he is not to +stop till he has gone through the planets of half the universe, the +number of which being infinite, it is considered by the devils in +general a great puzzle. A dream in a doze. + + +[Sidenote: THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS] + +A bodily substance, an unborrowed Self--God in God immanent! The Eternal +Word! That goes forth yet remains! Crescent and Full and Wane, yet ever +entire and one, it dawns, and sets, and crowns the height of heaven. At +the same time, the dawning and setting sun, at the same time the +zodiac--while each, in its own hour, boasts and beholds the exclusive +Presence, a peculiar Orb, each the great Traveller's inn, yet still the +unmoving Sun-- + + Great genial Agent in all finite souls; + And by that action puts on finiteness, + Absolute Infinite, whose dazzling robe + Flows in rich folds, and plays in shooting hues + Of infinite finiteness. + + +[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE." Syracuse, September 26, 1805] + +I was standing gazing at the starry heaven, and said, "I will go to bed, +the next star that shoots." Observe this, in counting fixed numbers +previous to doing anything, and deduce from man's own unconscious +acknowledgment man's _dependence_ on something more apparently and +believedly subject to regular and certain laws than his own will and +reason. + + +To Wordsworth in the progression of spirit, once Simonides, or +Empedocles, or both in one-- + +"Oh! that my spirit, purged by death of its weaknesses, which are, alas! +my identity, might flow into thine, and live and act in thee and be +thine!" + + +Death, first of all, eats of the Tree of Life and becomes immortal. +Describe the frightful metamorphosis. He weds the Hamadryad of the Tree +[and begets a twy-form] progeny. This in the manner of Dante. + + +Sad drooping children of a wretched parent are those yellowing leaflets +of a broken twig, broke ere its June. + + +We are not inert in the grave. St. Paul's corn in the ground proves this +scripturally, and the growth of infants in their sleep by natural +analogy. What, then, if our spiritual growth be in proportion to the +length and depth of the sleep! With what mysterious grandeur does not +this thought invest the grave, and how poor compared with this an +immediate Paradise! + + +I awake and find my beloved asleep, gaze upon her by the taper that +feebly illumines the darkness, then fall asleep by her side; and we both +awake together for _good_ and _all_ in the broad daylight of heaven. + + +Forget not to impress as often and as manifoldly as possible the _totus +in omni parte_ of Truth, and its consequent interdependence on +co-operation and, _vice versâ_, the fragmentary character of action, and +its absolute dependence on society, a majority, etc. The blindness to +this distinction creates fanaticism on one side, alarm and prosecution +on the other. Jacobins or soul-gougers. It is an interesting fact or +fable that the stork (the emblem of filial or conjugal piety) never +abides in a monarchy. + + +Commend me to the Irish architect who took out the foundation-stone to +repair the roof. + + +Knox and the other reformers were _Scopæ viarum_--that is, highway +besoms. + + +The Pine Tree blasted at the top was applied by Swift to himself as a +prophetic emblem of his own decay. The Chestnut is a fine shady tree, +and its wood excellent, were it not that it dies away at the _heart_ +first. Alas! poor me! + + +[Sidenote: TASTE, AN ETHICAL QUALITY] + +Modern poetry is characterised by the poets' _anxiety_ to be always +striking. There is the same march in the Greek and Latin poets. +Claudian, who had powers to have been anything--observe in him this +anxious, craving vanity! Every line, nay, every word, stops, looks full +in your face, and asks and _begs_ for praise! As in a Chinese painting, +there are no distances, no perspective, but all is in the foreground; +and this is nothing but vanity. I am pleased to think that, when a mere +stripling, I had formed the opinion that true taste was virtue, and that +bad writing was bad feeling. + + +[Sidenote: A PLEA FOR POETIC LICENSE] + +The desire of carrying things to a greater height of pleasure and +admiration than, _omnibus trutinatis_, they are susceptible of, is one +great cause of the corruption of poetry. Both to understand my own +reasoning and to communicate it, ponder on Catullus' hexameters and +pentameters, his "_numine abusum homines_" [Carmen, lxxvi. 4] [and +similar harsh expressions]. It is not whether or no the very same ideas +expressed with the very same force and the very same naturalness and +simplicity in the versification of Ovid and Tibullus, would not be +still more delightful (though even that, for any number of poems, may +well admit a doubt), but whether it is _possible_ so to express them and +whether, in every attempt, the result has not been to substitute manner +for matter, and point that will not bear reflection (so fine that it +breaks the moment you try it) for genuine sense and true feeling, and, +lastly, to confine both the subjects, thoughts, and even words of poetry +within a most beggarly cordon. _N.B._--The same criticism applies to +Metastasio, and, in Pope, to his quaintness, perversion, unnatural +metaphors, and, still more, the cold-blooded use, for artifice or +connection, of language justifiable only by enthusiasm and passion. + + +[Sidenote: RICHARDSON] + +I confess that it has cost, and still costs, my philosophy some exertion +not to be vexed that I must admire, aye, greatly admire, Richardson. His +mind is so very vile a mind, so oozy, hypocritical, praise-mad, canting, +envious, concupiscent! But to understand and draw _him_ would be to +produce a work almost equal to his own; and, in order to do this, +"_down, proud Heart, down_" (as we teach little children to say to +themselves, bless them!), all hatred down! and, instead thereof, +charity, calmness, a heart fixed on the good part, though the +understanding is surveying all. Richardson felt truly the defect of +Fielding, or what was not his excellence, and made that his _defect_--a +trick of uncharitableness often played, though not exclusively, by +contemporaries. Fielding's talent was observation, not meditation. But +Richardson was not philosopher enough to know the difference--say, +rather, to understand and develop it. + + +[Sidenote: HIS NEED OF EXTERNAL SOLACE] + +O there are some natures which under the most cheerless all-threatening +nothing-promising circumstances can draw hope from the invisible, as the +tropical trees that in the sandy desolation produce their own lidded +vessels full of the waters from air and dew! Alas! to my root not a drop +trickles down but from the watering-pot of immediate friends. And, even +so, it seems much more a sympathy with their feeling rather than hope of +my own. So should I feel sorrow, if Allston's mother, whom I have never +seen, were to die? + + +[Sidenote: MINUTE CRITICISM] + +Stoddart passes over a poem as one of those tiniest of tiny night-flies +runs over a leaf, casting its shadow, three times as long as itself, yet +only just shading one, or at most two letters at a time. + + +[Sidenote: DR. PRICE] + +A maidservant of Mrs. Clarkson's parents had a great desire to hear Dr. +Price, and accordingly attended his congregation. On her return, being +asked "Well, what do you think?" &c., "Ai--i," replied she, "there was +neither the poor nor the Gospel." Excellent that on the fine +_respectable_ attendants of Unitarian chapels, and the moonshine, +heartless head-work of the sermons. + + +[Sidenote: A _DOCUMENT HUMAIN_] + +The mahogany tables, all, but especially the large dining-table, +[marked] with the segments of circles (deep according to the passion of +the dice-box plunger), chiefly half-circles, O the anger and spite with +which many have been thrown! It is truly a written history of the +fiendish passion of gambling. Oct. 12, 1806. Newmarket. + + +[Sidenote: PINDAR] + +The odes of Pindar (with few exceptions, and these chiefly in the +shorter ones) seem by intention to die away by soft gradations into a +languid interest, like most of the landscapes of the great elder +painters. Modern ode-writers have commonly preferred a continued rising +of interest. + + +[Sidenote: "ONE MUSIC AS BEFORE, BUT VASTER"] + +The shattering of long and deep-rooted associations always places the +mind in an angry state, and even when our own understandings have +effected the revolution, it still holds good, only we apply the feeling +to and against our former faith and those who still hold it--[a +tendency] shown in modern infidels. Great good, therefore, of such +revolution as alters, not by exclusion, but by an enlargement that +includes the former, though it places it in a new point of view. + + +[Sidenote: TO ALLSTON] + +After the formation of a new acquaintance, found, by some weeks' or +months' unintermitted communion, worthy of all our esteem, affection +and, perhaps, admiration, an intervening absence, whether we meet again +or only write, raises it into friendship, and encourages the modesty of +our nature, impelling us to assume the language and express all the +feelings of an established attachment. + + +[Sidenote: MORBID SENTIMENT] + +The _thinking_ disease is that in which the feelings, instead of +embodying themselves in _acts_, ascend and become materials of general +reasoning and intellectual pride. The dreadful consequences of this +perversion [may be] instanced in Germany, _e.g._, in Fichte _versus_ +Kant, Schelling _versus_ Fichte and in Verbidigno [Wordsworth] _versus_ +S. T. C. Ascent where nature meant descent, and thus shortening the +process--viz., _feelings_ made the subjects and tangible substance of +thought, instead of actions, realizations, _things done_, and as such +externalised and remembered. On such meagre diet as feelings, evaporated +embryos in their progress to _birth_, no moral being ever becomes +healthy. + + +[Sidenote: "PHANTOMS OF SUBLIMITY"] + +Empires, states, &c., may be beautifully illustrated by a large clump of +coal placed on a fire--Russia, for instance--or of small coal moistened, +and by the first action of the heat of any government not absolutely +lawless, formed into a cake, as the northern nations under +Charlemagne--then a slight impulse from the fall of accident, or the +hand of patriotic foresight, splits [the one] into many, and makes each +[fragment] burn with its own flame, till at length all burning equally, +it becomes again one by universal similar action--then burns low, +cinerises, and without accession of rude materials goes out. + + +[Sidenote: A MILD WINTER] + +Winter slumbering soft, seemed to smile at visions of buds and blooms, +and dreamt so livelily of spring, that his stern visage had relaxed and +softened itself into a dim likeness of his dream. The soul of the vision +breathed through and lay like light upon his face. + +But, heavens! what an outrageous day of winter this is and has been! +Terrible weather for the last two months, but this is horrible! Thunder +and lightning, floods of rain, and volleys of hail, with such frantic +winds. December 1806. + +[This note was written when S. T. C. was staying with Wordsworth at the +Hall Farm, Coleorton.] + + +[Sidenote: MOONLIGHT GLEAMS AND MASSY GLORIES] + +In the first [entrance to the wood] the spots of moonlight of the +wildest outlines, not unfrequently approaching so near to the shape of +man and the domestic animals most attached to him as to be easily +confused with them by fancy and mistaken by terror, moved and started as +the wind stirred the branches, so that it almost seemed like a flight of +recent spirits, sylphs and sylphids dancing and capering in a world of +shadows. Once, when our path was over-canopied by the meeting boughs, as +I halloed to those a stone-throw behind me, a sudden flash of light +dashed down, as it were, upon the path close before me, with such rapid +and indescribable effect that my life seemed snatched away from me--not +by terror but by the whole attention being suddenly and unexpectedly +seized hold of--if one could conceive a violent blow given by an unseen +hand, yet without pain or local sense of injury, of the weight falling +here or there, it might assist in conceiving the feeling. This I found +was occasioned by some very large bird, who, scared by my noise, had +suddenly flown upward, and by the spring of his feet or body had driven +down the branch on which he was aperch. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote B: When instead of the general feeling of the lifeblood in its +equable individual motion, and the consequent wholeness of the one +feeling of the skin, we feel as if a heap of ants were running over +us--_the one_ corrupting into _ten thousand_--so in _araneosis_, instead +of the one view of the air, or blue sky, a thousand specks, etc., dance +before the eye. The metaphor is as just as, of a metaphor, anyone has a +right to claim, but it is clumsily expressed.] + +[Footnote C: I have the same anxiety for my friend now in England as for +myself, that is to be, or may be, two months hence.] + +[Footnote D: "A prison so constructed that the inspector can see each of +the prisoners at all times without being seen by them."] + + + + +CHAPTER V + +_September 1806--December 1807_ + + Alas! for some abiding-place of love, + O'er which my spirit, like the mother dove, + Might brood with warming wings! + + S. T. C. + + +[Sidenote: DREAMS AND SHADOWS] + +I had a confused shadow rather than an image in my recollection, like +that from a thin cloud, as if the idea were descending, though still in +some measureless height. + + +As when the taper's white cone of flame is seen double, till the eye +moving brings them into one space and then they become one--so did the +idea in my imagination coadunate with your present form soon after I +first gazed upon you. + + + And in life's noisiest hour + There whispers still the ceaseless love of thee, + The heart's self-solace and soliloquy. + + + You mould my hopes, you fashion me within, + And to the leading love-throb in my heart + Through all my being, all my pulses beat. + You lie in all my many thoughts like light, + Like the fair light of dawn, or summer light, + On rippling stream, or cloud-reflecting lake-- + And looking to the Heaven that beams above you, + How do I bless the lot that made me love you! + + +[Sidenote: KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING] + +In all processes of the understanding the shortest way will be +discovered the last and this, perhaps, while it constitutes the great +advantage of having a teacher to put us on the shortest road at the +first, yet sometimes occasions a difficulty in the comprehension, +inasmuch as the longest way is more near to the existing state of the +mind, nearer to what if left to myself, on starting the thought, I +should have thought next. The shortest way gives me the _knowledge_ +best, but the longest makes me more _knowing_. + + +[Sidenote: PARTISANS AND RENEGADES] + +When a party man talks as if he hated his country, saddens at her +prosperous events, exults in her disasters and yet, all the while, is +merely hating the opposite party, and would himself feel and talk as a +patriot were he in a foreign land [_he_ is a party man]. The true +monster is he (and such alas! there are in these monstrous days, +"vollendeter Sündhaftigkeit"), who abuses his country when out of his +country. + + +[Sidenote: POPULACE AND PEOPLE] + +Oh the profanation of the sacred word _the People_! Every brutal +Burdett-led mob, assembled on some drunken St. Monday of faction, is the +People forsooth, and each leprous ragamuffin, like a circle in geometry, +is, at once, one and all, and calls its own brutal self, "_us_ the +People." And who are the friends of the People? Not those who would wish +to elevate each of them, or, at least, the child who is to take his +place in the flux of life and death, into something worthy of esteem and +capable of freedom, but those who flatter and infuriate them, as they +_are_. A contradiction in the very thought! For if, really, they are +good and wise, virtuous and well-informed, how weak must be the motives +of discontent to a truly moral being--but if the contrary, and the +motives for discontent proportionably strong, how without guilt and +absurdity appeal to them as judges and arbiters? He alone is entitled to +a share in the government of all, who has learnt to govern himself. +There is but one possible ground of a right of freedom--viz., to +understand and revere its duties. + +[_Vide Life of S. T. C._, by James Gillman, 1838, p. 223.] + + +[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE." May 28, 1807 Bristol] + +How villainously these metallic pencils have degenerated, not only in +the length and quantity, but what is far worse, in the _quality_ of the +metal! This one appears to have no superiority over the worst sort sold +by the Maltese shopkeepers. + + +Blue sky through the glimmering interspaces of the dark elms at twilight +rendered a lovely deep yellow-green--all the rest a delicate blue. + + +The hay-field in the close hard by the farm-house--babe, and totterer +little more [than a babe]--old cat with her eyes blinking in the sun and +little kittens leaping and frisking over the hay-lines. + + +What an admirable subject for an Allston would Tycho Brahe be, listening +with religious awe to the oracular gabble of the idiot, whom he kept at +his feet, and used to feed with his own hands! + + +The sun-flower ought to be cultivated, the leaves being excellent +fodder, the flowers eminently melliferous, and the seeds a capital food +for poultry, none nourishing quicker or occasioning them to lay more +eggs. + + +Serpentium allapsus timet. Quære--_allapse_ of serpents. _Horace_.--What +other word have we? Pity that we dare not Saxonise as boldly as our +forefathers, by unfortunate preference, Latinised. Then we should have +on-glide, _angleiten_; onlook _anschauen_, etc. + + +I moisten the bread of affliction with the water of adversity. + + +If kings are gods on earth, they are, however, gods of earth. + + +Parisatis poisoned one side of the knife with which he carved, and eat +of the same joint the next slice unhurt--a happy illustration of +affected self-inclusion in accusation. + + +It is possible to conceive a planet without any general atmosphere, but +in which each living body has its peculiar atmosphere. To hear and +understand, one man joins his atmosphere to that of another, and, +according to the sympathies of their nature, the aberrations of sound +will be greater or less, and their thoughts more or less intelligible. A +pretty allegory might be made of this. + + +Two faces, each of a confused countenance. In the eyes of the one, +muddiness and lustre were blended; and the eyes of the other were the +same, but in them there was a red fever that made them appear more +fierce. And yet, methought, the former struck a greater trouble, a fear +and distress of the mind; and sometimes all the face looked meek and +mild, but the eye was ever the same. + +[Qu. S. T. C. and De Quincey?] + + +Shadow--its being subsists in shaped and definite nonentity. + + +Plain sense, measure, clearness, dignity, grace over all--these made the +genius of Greece. + + +Heu! quam miserum ab illo lædi, de quo non possis queri! Eheu! quam +miserrimum est ab illo lædi, de quo propter amorem non possis queri! + + +Observation from Bacon after reading Mr. Sheridan's speech on Ireland: +"Things will have their first or second agitation; if they be not tossed +on the arguments of council, they will be tossed on the waves of +fortune." + + +The death of an immortal has been beautifully compared to an Indian fig, +which at its full height declines its branches to the earth, and there +takes root again. + + +The blast rises and falls, and trembles at its height. + + +A passionate woman may be likened to a wet candle spitting flame. + + +TO LOVE. + +It is a duty, nay, it is a religion to that power to shew that, though +it makes all things--wealth, pleasure, ambition--worthless, yea, noisome +for themselves; yet for _it_self can it produce all efforts, even if +only to secure its name from scoffs as the child and parent of +slothfulness. Works, therefore, of general profit--works of abstruse +thought [will be born of love]; activity, and, above all, virtue and +chastity [will come forth from his presence]. + + +The moulting peacock, with only two of his long tail-feathers remaining, +and those sadly in tatters, yet, proudly as ever, spreads out his ruined +fan in the sun and breeze. + + +Yesterday I saw seven or eight water-wagtails following a feeding horse +in the pasture, fluttering about and hopping close by his hoofs, under +his belly, and even so as often to tickle his nostrils with their pert +tails. The horse shortens the grass and they get the insects. + + +Sic accipite, sic credite, ut mereamini intelligere: fides enim debet +præcedere intellectum, ut sit intellectus fidei præmium. + +_S. August. Sermones De Verb. Dom._ + +Yet should a friend think foully of that wherein the pride of thy +spirit's purity is in shrine. + + O the agony! the agony! + Nor Time nor varying Fate, + Nor tender Memory, old or late, + Nor all his Virtues, great though they be, + Nor all his Genius can free + His friend's soul from the agony! + +[So receive, so believe [divine ideas] that ye may earn the right to +understand them. For faith should go before understanding, in order that +understanding may be the reward of faith.] + + +[Greek: Hote enthousiasmos epineusin tina theian hechein dokei kai tô +mantikô genei plêsiazein.] _Strabo Geographicus._ + +Though Genius, like the fire on the altar, can only be kindled from +heaven, yet it will perish unless supplied with appropriate fuel to feed +it; or if it meet not with the virtues whose society alone can reconcile +it to earth, it will return whence it came, or, at least, lie hid as +beneath embers, till some sudden and awakening gust of regenerating +Grace, [Greek: anazôpyrei], rekindles and reveals it anew. + +[Now the inspiration of genius seems to bear the stamp of Divine assent, +and to attain to something of prophetic strain.] + + +[Sidenote: FALLINGS FROM US, VANISHINGS] + +I trust you are very happy in your domestic being--very; because, alas! +I know that to a man of sensibility and more emphatically if he be a +literary man, there is _no_ medium between that and "the secret pang +that eats away the heart." ... Hence, even in dreams of sleep, the soul +never _is_, because it either cannot or dare not be any _one_ thing, but +lives in _approaches_ touched by the outgoing pre-existent ghosts of +many feelings. It feels for ever as a blind man with his protruded staff +dimly through the medium of the instrument by which it pushes off, and +in the act of repulsion--(O for the eloquence of Shakspere, who alone +could feel and yet know how to embody those conceptions with as curious +a felicity as the thoughts are subtle!)--as if the finger which I saw +with eyes, had, as it were, another finger, invisible, touching me with +a ghostly touch, even while I feared the real touch from it. What if, in +certain cases, touch acted by itself, co-present with vision, yet not +coalescing? Then I should see the finger as at a distance, and yet feel +a finger touching which was nothing but it, and yet was not it. The two +senses cannot co-exist without a sense of causation. The _touch_ must be +the effect of that finger [which] I see, and yet it is not yet near to +me, and therefore it is not it, and yet it is it. Why it is is in an +imaginary pre-duplication! + +_N.B._--There is a passage in the second part of Wallenstein expressing, +not explaining, the same feeling. "The spirits of great events stride on +before the events"--it is in one of the last two or three scenes:-- + + "As the sun, + Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image + In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits + Of great events, stride on before the events." + + [WALLENSTEIN, Part II., act v. sc. 1. _P. W._, + 1893, p. 351.] + + +[Sidenote: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CLERICAL ERRORS] + +It is worth noting and endeavouring to detect the Law of the Mind, by +which, in writing earnestly while we are thinking, we omit words +necessary to the sense. It will be found, I guess, that we seldom omit +the material word, but generally the word by which the mind expresses +its modification of the _verbum materiale_. Thus, in the preceding page, +7th line, _medium_ is the _materiale_: that was its own brute, inert +sense--but the _no_ is the mind's action, its _use_ of the word. + +I think this a hint of some value. Thus, _the_ is a word in constant +combination with the passive or material words; but _to_ is an act of +the mind, and I had written _the_ detect instead of _to_ detect. Again, +when my sense demanded "the" to express a distinct modification of some +_verbum materiale_, I remember to have often omitted it in writing. The +principle is evident--the mind borrows the _materia_ from without, and +is passive with regard to it as the mere subject "stoff"--a simple event +of memory takes place; but having the other in itself, the inward Having +with its sense of security passes for the outward Having--or is all +memory an anxious act, and thereby suspended by vivid security? or are +both reasons the same? or if not, are they consistent, and capable of +being co-or sub-ordinated? It will be lucky if some day, after having +written on for two or three sheets rapidly and as a first copy, without +correcting, I should by chance glance on this note, not having thought +at all about it during or before the time of writing; and then to +examine every word omitted. + + +[Sidenote: BIBLIOLOGICAL MEMORANDA] + +To spend half-an-hour in Cuthill's shop, examining Stephen's +_Thesaurus_, in order to form an accurate idea of its utilities above +Scapula, and to examine the _Budæo-Tusan-Constantine_, whether it be the +same or as good as Constantine, and the comparative merits of +Constantine with Scapula. + +3. To examine Bosc relatively to Brunck, and to see after the new German +_Anthologia_. + +4. Before I quit town, to buy Appendix (either No. 1430 or 1431), 8_s._ +or 18_s._ What a difference! ten shillings, because the latter, the +Parma Anacreon, is on large paper, green morocco; the former is neat in +red morocco, but the type the same. + +5. To have a long morning's ramble with De Quincey, first to Egerton's, +and then to the book haunts. + +6. To see if I can find that Arrian with Epictetus which I admired so +much at Mr. Leckie's. + +7. To find out D'Orville's _Daphnis_, and the price. Is there no other +edition? no cheap German? + +8. To write out the passage from Strada's _Prolusions_ at Cuthill's. + +9. Aristotle's Works, and to hunt for Proclus. + +10. In case of my speedy death, it would answer to buy a £100 worth of +carefully-chosen books, in order to attract attention to my library and +to give accession to the value of books by their co-existing with +co-appurtenants--as, for instance, Plato, Aristotle; Plotinus, Porphyry, +Proclus: Schoolmen, Interscholastic; Bacon, Hobbes; Locke, Berkeley; +Leibnitz, Spinoza; Kant and the critical Fichte, and Wissenschaftslehre, +Schelling, &c. + +[The first edition of Robert Constantin's _Lexicon Græco-Lat._ was +published at Geneva in 1564. A second ed. _post correctiones_ G. Budæi +et J. Tusani, at Basle, in 1584.] + + +[Sidenote: [Greek: panta rhei]] + +Our mortal existence, what is it but a stoppage in the blood of life, a +brief eddy from wind or concourse of currents in the ever-flowing ocean +of pure Activity, who beholds pyramids, yea, Alps and Andes, giant +pyramids, the work of fire that raiseth monuments, like a generous +victor o'er its own conquest, the tombstones of a world destroyed! Yet +these, too, float adown the sea of Time, and melt away as mountains of +floating ice. + + + +[Sidenote: DISTINCTION IN UNION] + +Has every finite being (or only some) the temptation to become intensely +and wholly conscious of its distinctness and, as a result, to be +betrayed into the wretchedness of _division_? Grosser natures, wholly +swallowed up in selfishness which does not rise to self-love, never even +acquire that sense of distinctness, while, to others, love is the first +step to re-union. It is a by-word that religious enthusiasm borders on +and tends to sensuality--possibly because all our powers work together, +and as a consequence of striding too vastly up the ladder of existence, +a great _round_ of the ladder is omitted, namely, love to some, _Eine +verschiedene_, of our own kind. Then let Religion love, else will it not +only partake of, instead of being partaken by, and so co-adunated with, +the summit of love, but will necessarily include the nadir of love, +that is, appetite. Hence will it tend to dissensualise its nature into +fantastic passions, the idolatry of Paphian priestesses. + + +[Sidenote: IN WONDER ALL PHILOSOPHY BEGAN] + +Time, space, duration, action, active passion passive, activeness, +passiveness, reaction, causation, affinity--here assemble all the +mysteries known. All is known-unknown, say, rather, _merely_ known. All +is unintelligible, and yet Locke and the stupid adorers of that _fetish_ +earth-clod take all for granted. By the bye, in poetry as well as +metaphysics, that which we first meet with in the dawn of our mind +becomes ever after _fetish_, to the many at least. Blessed he who first +sees the morning star, if not the sun, or purpling clouds his +harbingers. Thence is _fame_ desirable to a great man, and thence +subversion of vulgar fetishes becomes a duty. + +Rest, motion! O ye strange locks of intricate simplicity, who shall find +the key? He shall throw wide open the portals of the palace of sensuous +or symbolical truth, and the Holy of Holies will be found in the adyta. +Rest = enjoyment and death. Motion = enjoyment and life. O the depth of the +proverb, "Extremes meet"! + + +[Sidenote: IN A TWINKLING OF THE EYE] + +The "break of the morning"--and from inaction a nation starts up into +motion and wide fellow-consciousness! The trumpet of the Archangel--and +a world with all its troops and companies of generations starts up into +a hundredfold expansion, power multiplied into itself cubically by the +number of all its possible acts--all the potential springing into power. +Conceive a bliss from self-conscience, combining with bliss from +increase of action; the first dreaming, the latter dead-asleep in a +grain of gunpowder--conceive a huge magazine of gunpowder and a flash of +lightning awakes the whole at once. What an image of the resurrection, +grand from its very inadequacy. Yet again, conceive the living, moving +ocean--its bed sinks away from under and the whole world of waters falls +in at once on a thousand times vaster mass of intensest fire, and the +whole prior orbit of the planet's successive revolutions is possessed by +it at once (_Potentia fit actus_) amid the thunder of rapture. + + +[Sidenote: SINE QUÂ NON] + +Form is factitious being, and thinking is the process; imagination the +laboratory in which the thought elaborates essence into existence. A +philosopher, that is, a nominal philosopher without imagination, is a +_coiner_. Vanity, the _froth_ of the molten mass, is his _stuff_, and +verbiage the stamp and impression. This is but a deaf metaphor--better +say that he is guilty of forgery. He presents the same sort of _paper_ +as the honest barterer, but when you carry it to the bank it is found to +be drawn to _Outis_, _Esq._ His words had deposited no forms there, +payable at sight--or even at any imaginable _time_ from the date of the +draft. + + +[Sidenote: SOLVITUR SUSPICIENDO] + +The sky, or rather say, the æther at Malta, with the sun apparently +suspended in it, the eye seeming to pierce beyond and, as it were, +behind it--and, below, the æthereal sea, so blue, so _ein zerflossenes_, +the substantial image, and fixed real reflection of the sky! O! I could +annihilate in a deep moment all possibility of the needle-point, +pin's-head system of the _atomists_ by one submissive gaze! + + +[Sidenote: A GEM OF MORNING] + +A dewdrop, the pearl of Aurora, is indeed a true _unio_. I would that +_unio_ were the word for the dewdrop, and the pearl be called _unio +marinus_. + + +_VER_, _ZER_, AND _AL_ + +O for the power to persuade all the writers of Great Britain to adopt +the _ver_, _zer_, and _al_ of the German! Why not verboil, zerboil; +verrend, zerrend? I should like the very words _verflossen_, +_zerflossen_, to be naturalised: + + And as I looked now feels my soul creative throes, + And now all joy, all sense _zerflows_. + +I do not know, whether I am in earnest or in sport while I recommend +this _ver_ and _zer_; that is, I cannot be sure whether I feel, myself, +anything ridiculous in the idea, or whether the feeling that seems to +imply this be not the effect of my anticipation of and sympathy with the +ridicule of, perhaps, all my readers. + + +[Sidenote: THE LOVER'S HUMILITY] + +To you there are many like me, yet to me there is none like you, and you +are always like yourself. There are groves of night-flowers, yet the +night-flower sees only the moon. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +_1808-1809_ + + Yea, oft alone, + Piercing the long-neglected holy cave + The haunt obscure of old Philosophy, + He bade with lifted torch its starry walls + Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame + Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage. + + S. T. C. + + +[Sidenote: INOPEM ME COPIA FECIT] + +If one thought leads to another, so often does it blot out another. This +I find when having lain musing on my sofa, a number of interesting +thoughts having suggested themselves, I conquer my bodily indolence, and +rise to record them in these books, alas! my only confidants. The first +thought leads me on indeed to new ones; but nothing but the faint memory +of having had these remains of the other, which had been even more +interesting to me. I do not know whether this be an idiosyncrasy, a +peculiar disease, of _my_ particular memory--but so it is with _me_--my +thoughts crowd each other to death. + + +[Sidenote: A NEUTRAL PRONOUN] + +Quære--whether we may not, _nay_ ought not, to use a neutral pronoun +relative, or representative, to the word "Person," where it hath been +used in the sense of _homo_, _mensch_, or noun of the common gender, in +order to avoid particularising man or woman, or in order to express +either sex indifferently? If this be incorrect in syntax, the whole use +of the word Person is lost in a number of instances, or only retained by +some stiff and strange position of words, as--"not letting the _person_ +be aware, _wherein offence has been given_"--instead of--"wherein he or +she has offended." In my [judgment] both the specific intention and +general _etymon_ of "Person" in such sentences, fully authorise the use +of _it_ and _which_ instead of he, she, him, her, who, whom. + + +[Sidenote: THE HUMBLE COMPLAINT OF THE LOVER] + +If love be the genial sun of human nature, unkindly has he divided his +rays [in acting] on me and my beloved! On her hath he poured all his +light and splendour, and my being doth he permeate with his invisible +rays of heat alone. She shines and is cold like the tropic fire-fly--I, +dark and uncomely, would better resemble the cricket in hot ashes. My +soul, at least, might be considered as a cricket eradiating the heat +which gradually cinerising the heart produces the embers and ashes from +among which it chirps out of its hiding-place. + +N.B.--This put in simple and elegant verse, [would pass] as an imitation +of Marini, and of too large a part of the madrigals of Guarini himself. + + +[Sidenote: TRUTH] + +Truth _per se_ is like unto quicksilver, bright, agile, harmless. +Swallow a pound and it will run through unaltered and only, perhaps, by +its weight force down impurities from out the system. But mix and +comminute it by the mineral acid of spite and bigotry, and even truth +becomes a deadly poison--medicinal only when some other, yet deadlier, +lurks in the bones. + + +[Sidenote: LOVE THE INEFFABLE] + +O! many, many are the seeings, hearings, of pure love that have a being +of their own, and to call them by the names of things unsouled and +debased below even their own lowest nature by associations accidental, +and of vicious accidents, is _blasphemy_. What seest thou yonder? The +lovely countenance of a lovely maiden, fervid yet awe-suffering with +devotion--her face resigned to bliss or bale; or a _bit_ of _flesh_; or, +rather, that which cannot be seen unless by him whose very seeing is +more than an act of mere sight--that which refuses all words, because +words being, perforce, generalities do not awake, but really involve +associations of other words as well as other thoughts--but that which I +see, must be felt, be possessed, in and by its sole self! What! shall +the _statuary_ Pygmalion of necessity feel this for every part of the +insensate marble, and shall the lover Pygmalion in contemplating the +living statue, the heart-adored maiden, breathing forth in every look, +every movement, the genial life imbreathed of God, grovel in the mire +and grunt the language of the swinish slaves of the Circe, of vulgar +generality and still more vulgar association? The Polyclete that created +the Aphrodite [Greek: kallipygos], thought in acts, not words--energy +divinely languageless--[Greek: dia ton Logon, ou syn epesi], through +_the_ Word, not with _words_. And what though it met with Imp-fathers +and Imp-mothers and Fiendsips at its christening in its parents' +absence! + + +[Sidenote: THE MANUFACTURE OF PROPHESY] + +One of the causes of superstition, and also of enthusiasm, and, indeed, +of all errors in matters of fact, is the great power with which the +effect acts upon and modifies the remembrance of its cause, at times +even transforming it in the mind. Let _A_ have said a few words to _B_, +which (by some change and accommodation of them to the event in the mind +of _B_) have been remarkably fulfilled; and let _B_ remind _A_ of these +words which he (_A_) had spoken, _A_ will instantly forget all his mood, +motive, and meaning, at the time of speaking them, nay, remember words +he had never spoken, and throw back upon them, from the immediate event, +an imagined fulfillment, a prophetic grandeur--himself, in his own +faith, a seer of no small inspiration. We yet want the growth of a +prophet and self-deceived wonder-worker _step by step_, through all the +stages; and, yet, what ample materials exist for a true and nobly-minded +psychologist! For, in order to make fit use of these materials, he must +love and honour as well as understand human nature--rather, he must love +in order to understand it. + + +[Sidenote: THE CAPTIVE BIRD May 16th, 1808] + +O that sweet bird! where is it? It is encaged somewhere out of sight; +but from my bedroom at the _Courier_ office, from the windows of which I +look out on the walls of the Lyceum, I hear it at early dawn, often, +alas! lulling me to late sleep--again when I awake and all day long. It +is in prison, all its instincts ungratified, yet it feels the influence +of spring, and calls with unceasing melody to the Loves that dwell in +field and greenwood bowers, unconscious, perhaps, that it calls in vain. +O are they the songs of a happy, enduring day-dream? Has the bird hope? +or does it abandon itself to the joy of its frame, a living harp of +Eolus? O that I could do so! + + +Assuredly a thrush or blackbird encaged in London is a far less shocking +spectacle, its encagement a more venial defect of just feeling, than +(which yet one so often sees) a bird in a gay cage in the heart of the +country--yea, as if at once to mock both the poor prisoner and its kind +mother, Nature--in a cage hung up in a tree, where the free birds after +a while, when the gaudy dungeon is no longer a scare, crowd to it, perch +on the wires, drink the water, and peck up the seeds. But of all birds I +most detest to see the nightingale encaged, and the swallow, and the +cuckoo. Motiveless! monstrous! But the robin! O woes' woe! woe!--he, +sweet cock-my-head-and-eye, pert-bashful darling, that makes our kitchen +its chosen cage. + + +[Sidenote: ARCHITECTURE AND CLIMATE] + +If we take into consideration the effect of the climates of the North, +_Gothic_, in contra-distinction to Greek and Græco-Roman architecture, +is rightly so named. Take, for instance, a rainy, windy day, or sleet, +or a fall of snow, or an icicle-hanging frost, and then compare the +total effect of the South European roundnesses and smooth perpendicular +surface with the ever-varying angles and meeting-lines of the +North-European or Gothic styles. + +[The above is probably a dropped sentence from the report of the First +or Second Lecture of the 1818 series. See _Coleridge's Works_ (Harper +and Brothers, 1853), iv. 232-239.] + + +[Sidenote: NEITHER BOND NOR FREE] + +The demagogues address the lower orders as if they were negroes--as if +each individual were an inseparable part of the order, always to remain, +_nolens volens_, poor and ignorant. How different from Christianity, +which for ever calls on us to detach ourselves spiritually not merely +from our rank, but even from our body, and from the whole world of +sense! + + +[Sidenote: THE MAIDEN'S PRIMER] + +The one mighty main defect of female education is that everything is +taught but reason and the means of retaining affection. This--this--O! +it is worth all the rest told ten thousand times:--how to greet a +husband, how to receive him, how never to recriminate--in short, the +power of pleasurable thoughts and feelings, and the mischief of giving +pain, or (as often happens when a husband comes home from a party of old +friends, joyous and full of heart) the love-killing effect of cold, dry, +uninterested looks and manners. + + +[Sidenote: THE HALFWAY HOUSE Wednesday night, May 18th, 1808] + +Let me record the following important remark of Stuart, with whom I +never converse but to receive some distinct and rememberable improvement +(and if it be not remembered, it is the defect of my memory--which, +alas! grows weaker daily--or a fault from my indolence in not noting it +down, as I do this)--that there is a period in a man's life, varying in +various men, from thirty-five to forty-five, and operating most strongly +in bachelors, widowers, or those worst and miserablest widowers, unhappy +husbands, in which a man finds himself at the _top of the hill_, and +having attained, perhaps, what he wishes, begins to ask himself, What is +all this for?--begins to feel the vanity of his pursuits, becomes +half-melancholy, gives in to wild dissipation or self-regardless +drinking; and some, not content with these (not _slow_) poisons, destroy +themselves, and leave their ingenious female or female-minded friends to +fish out some _motive_ for an act which proceeded from a _motive-making_ +impulse, which would have acted even without a motive (even as the +terror[E] in nightmare is a bodily sensation, and though it most often +calls up consonant images, yet, as I know by experience, can take +effect equally without any); or, if not so, yet like gunpowder in a +smithy, though it will not go off without a spark, is _sure_ to receive +one, if not this hour, yet the next. I had _felt_ this truth, but never +saw it before clearly: it came upon me at Malta under the melancholy, +dreadful feeling of finding myself to be _man_, by a distinct division +from boyhood, youth, and "young man." Dreadful was the feeling--till +then life had flown so that I had always been a boy, as it were; and +this sensation had blended in all my conduct, my willing acknowledgment +of superiority, and, in truth, my meeting every person as a superior at +the first moment. Yet if men survive this period, they commonly become +cheerful again. That is a comfort for mankind, _not for me_! + + +[Sidenote: HIS OWN GENIUS] + +My inner mind does not justify the thought that I possess a genius, my +_strength_ is so very small in proportion to my power. I believe that I +first, from internal feeling, made or gave light and impulse to this +important distinction between strength and power, the oak and the tropic +annual, or biennial, which grows nearly as high and spreads as large as +the oak, but in which the _wood_, the _heart_ is wanting--the vital +works vehemently, but the immortal is not with it. And yet, I think, I +must have some analogue of genius; because, among other things, when I +am in company with Mr. Sharp, Sir J. Mackintosh, R. and Sydney Smith, +Mr. Scarlett, &c. &c., I feel like a child, nay, rather like an +inhabitant of another planet. Their very faces all act upon me, +sometimes, as if they were ghosts, but more often as if I were a ghost +among them--at all times as if we were not consubstantial. + + +[Sidenote: NAME IT AND YOU BREAK IT] + +"The class that ought to be kept separate from all others"--and this +said by one of themselves! O what a confession that it is no longer +separated! Who would have said this even fifty years ago? It is the +howling of ice during a thaw. When there is any just reason for saying +this, it ought not to be said, it is already too late. And though it may +receive the assent of the people of "the squares and places," yet what +does that do, if it be the ridicule of all other classes? + + +[Sidenote: THE DANGER OF OVER-BLAMING] + +The general experience, or rather supposed experience, prevails over the +particular knowledge. So many causes oppose man to man, that he _begins_ +by thinking of other men worse than they deserve, and receives his +punishment by at last thinking worse of himself than the truth is. + + +[Sidenote: EXCESS OF SELF-ESTEEM] + +Expressions of honest self-esteem, in which _self_ was only a diagram of +the _genus_, will excite sympathy at the minute, and yet, even among +persons who love and esteem you, be remembered and quoted as ludicrous +instances of strange self-involution. + + +[Sidenote: DEFECT OF SELF-ESTEEM. May 23, 1808] + +Those who think lowliest of themselves, perhaps with a _feeling_ +stronger than rational comparison would justify, are apt to feel and +express undue asperity for the faults and defects of those whom they +habitually have looked up to as to their superiors. For placing +themselves very low, perhaps too low, wherever a series of experiences, +struggled against for a while, have at length convinced the mind that in +such and such a moral habit the long-idolised superior is far below even +itself, the grief and anger will be in proportion. "If even _I_ could +never have done this, O anguish, that _he_, so much my superior, should +do it! If even _I_ with all my infirmities have not this defect, this +selfishness, that _he_ should have it!" This is the course of thought. +Men are bad enough; and yet they often think themselves worse than they +are, among other causes by a reaction from their own uncharitable +thoughts. The poisoned chalice is brought back to our own lips. + + +[Sidenote: A PRACTICAL MAN] + +He was grown, and solid from his infancy, like that most _useful_ of +domesticated animals, that never runs but with some prudent motive to +the mast or the wash-tub and, at no time a slave to the present moment, +never even grunts over the acorns before him without a scheming squint +and the segment, at least, of its wise little eye cast toward those on +one side, which his neighbour is or may be about to enjoy. + + +[Sidenote: LUCUS A NON LUCENDO] + +Quære, whether the high and mighty Edinburghers, &c., have not been +elevated into guardians and overseers of taste and poetry for much the +same reason as St. Cecilia was chosen as the guardian goddess of music, +because, forsooth, so far from being able to compose or play herself, +she could never endure any other instrument than the jew's-harp or +Scotch bag-pipe? No! too eager recensent! you are mistaken, there is no +anachronism in this. We are informed by various antique bas-reliefs that +the bag-pipe was well known to the Romans, and probably, therefore, that +the Picts and Scots were even then fond of seeking their fortune in +other countries. + + +[Sidenote: LOVE AND MUSIC] + +"Love is the spirit of life and music the life of the spirit." + +Q. What is music? A. Poetry in its grand sense! Passion and order at +once! Imperative power in obedience! + +Q. What is the first and divinest strain of music? A.--In the +intellect--"Be able to will that thy maxims (rules of individual +conduct) should be the law of all intelligent being!" + +In the heart, or practical reason, "Do unto others as thou wouldst be +done by." This in the widest extent involves the test, "Love thy +neighbour as thyself, and God above all things." For, conceive thy being +to be all-including, that is, God--thou knowest that _thou_ wouldest +command thyself to be beloved above all things. + +[For the motto at the head of this note see the lines "Ad Vilmum +Axiologum." _P. W._, 1893, p. 138.] + + +[Sidenote: CONSCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY] + +From what reasons do I believe in _continuous_ and ever-continuable +consciousness? From conscience! Not for myself, but for my conscience, +that is, my affections and duties towards others, I should have no +self--for self is definition, but all boundary implies neighbourhood and +is knowable only by neighbourhood or relations. Does the understanding +say nothing in favour of immortality? It says nothing for or against; +but its silence gives consent, and is better than a thousand arguments +such as mere understanding could afford. But miracles! "Do you speak of +them as proofs or as natural consequences of revelation, whose presence +is proof only by precluding the disproof that would arise from their +absence?" "Nay, I speak of them as of positive fundamental proofs." +Then I dare answer you "Miracles in that sense are blasphemies in +morality, contradictions in reason. God the Truth, the actuality of +logic, the very _logos_--He deceive his creatures and demonstrate the +properties of a triangle by the confusion of all properties! If a +miracle merely means an event before inexperienced, it proves only +itself, and the inexperience of mankind. Whatever other definition be +given of it, or rather attempted (for no other not involving direct +contradiction can be given), it is blasphemy. It calls darkness light, +and makes Ignorance the mother of Malignity, the appointed nurse of +religion--which is knowledge as opposed to mere calculating and +conjectural understanding. Seven years ago, but oh! in what happier +times--I wrote thus-- + + O ye hopes! that stir within me! + Health comes with you from above! + God is _with_ me! God is _in_ me! + I _cannot_ die: for life is love! + +And now, that I am alone and utterly hopeless for myself, yet still I +love--and more strongly than ever feel that conscience or the duty of +love is the proof of continuing, as it is the cause and condition of +existing consciousness. How beautiful the harmony! Whence could the +proof come, so appropriately, so conformly with all nature, in which the +cause and condition of each thing is its revealing and infallible +prophecy! + +And for what reason, say, rather, for what cause, do you believe +immortality? Because I _ought_, therefore I _must_! + +[The lines "On revisiting the sea-shore," of which the last stanza is +quoted, were written in August, 1801. [_P.W._, 1893, p. 159.] If the +note was written exactly seven years after the date of that poem, it +must belong to the summer of 1808, when Coleridge was living over the +_Courier_ office in the Strand.] + + +[Sidenote: THE CAP OF LIBERTY] + +Truly, I hope not irreverently, may we apply to the French nation the +Scripture text, "From him that hath nothing shall be taken that which he +hath"--that is, their pretences to being free, which are the same as +nothing. They, the illuminators, the discoverers and sole possessors of +the true philosopher's stone! Alas! it proved both for them and Europe +the _Lapis Infernalis_. + + +[Sidenote: VAIN GLORY] + +Lord of light and fire? What is the universal of man in all, but +especially in savage states? Fantastic ornament and, in general, the +most frightful deformities--slits in the ears and nose, for instance. +What is the solution? Man will not be a mere thing of nature: he will +be and shew himself a power of himself. Hence these violent disruptions +of himself from all other creatures! What they are made, that they +remain--they are Nature's, and wholly Nature's. + + +[Sidenote: CHILDREN OF A LARGER GROWTH] + +Try to contemplate mankind as children. These we love tenderly, because +they are beautiful and happy; we know that a sweet-meat or a top will +transfer their little love for a moment, and that we shall be repelled +with a grimace. Yet we are not offended. + + +[Sidenote: CHYMICAL ANALOGIES] + +I am persuaded that the chymical technology, as far as it was borrowed +from life and intelligence, half-metaphorically, half-mystically, may be +brought back again (as when a man borrows of another a sum which the +latter had previously borrowed of him, because he is too polite to +remind him of a debt) to the use of psychology in many instances, and, +above all, [may be re-adapted to] the philosophy of language, which +ought to be experimentative and analytic of the elements of +meaning--their double, triple, and quadruple combinations, of simple +aggregation or of composition by balance of opposition. + +Thus innocence is distinguished from virtue, and _vice versâ_. In both +of them there is a positive, but in each opposite. A decomposition must +take place in the first instance, and then a new composition, in order +for innocence to become virtue. It loses a positive, and then the base +attracts another different positive, by the higher affinity of the same +base under a different temperature for the latter. + +I stated the legal use of the innocent as opposed to mere _not guilty_ +(he was not only acquitted, but was proved innocent), only to shew the +existence of a _positive_ in the former--by no means as confounding this +use of the word with the moral pleasurable feeling connected with it +when used of little children, maidens, and those who in mature age +preserve this sweet fragrance of vernal life, this mother's gift and +so-seldom-kept keepsake to her child, as she sends him forth into the +world. The distinction is obvious. Law agnizes actions alone, and +character only as presumptive or illustrative of particular action as to +its guilt or non-guilt, or to the commission or non-commission. But our +moral feelings are never pleasurably excited except as they refer to a +state of being--and the most glorious actions do not delight us as +separate acts, or, rather, facts, but as representatives of the being of +the agent--mental stenographs which bring an indeterminate extension +within the field of easy and simultaneous vision, diffused being +rendered visible by condensation. Only for the hero's sake do we exult +in the heroic act, or, rather, the act abstracted from the hero would no +longer appear to us heroic. Not, therefore, solely from the advantage of +poets and historians do the deeds of ancient Greece and Rome strike us +into admiration, while we relate the very same deeds of barbarians as +matters of curiosity, but because in the former we refer the deed to the +individual exaltation of the agent, in the latter only to the physical +result of a given state of society. Compare the [heroism of that] Swiss +patriot, with his bundle of spears turned towards his breast, in order +to break the Austrian pikemen, and that of the Mameluke, related to me +by Sir Alexander Ball, who, when his horse refused to plunge in on the +French line, turned round and _backed_ it on them, with a certainty of +death, in order to effect the same purpose. In the former, the state of +mind arose from reason, morals, liberty, the sense of the duty owing to +the independence of his country, and its continuing in a state +compatible with the highest perfection and development; while the latter +was predicative only of mere animal habit, ferocity, and unreasoned +antipathy to strangers of a different dress and religion. + + +[Sidenote: BOOKS IN THE AIR] + +If, contrary to my expectations--alas! almost, I fear, to my wishes--I +should live, it is my intention to make a catalogue of the Greek and +Latin Classics, and of those who, like the author of the _Argenis_ +[William Barclay, 1546-1605], and Euphormio, Fracastorius, Flaminius, +etc., deserve that name though moderns--and every year to apply all my +book-money to the gradual completion of the collection, and buy no other +books except German, if the continent should be opened again, except +Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Jonson. The two last I have, I +believe, but imperfect--indeed, B. and F. worthless, the best plays +omitted. It would be a pleasing employment, had I health, to translate +the Hymns of Homer, with a disquisitional attempt to settle the question +concerning the _personality_ of Homer. Such a thing in two volumes, +_well done_, by philosophical notes on the mythology of the Greeks, +distinguishing the sacerdotal from the poetical, and both from the +philosophical or allegorical, fairly grown into two octavos, might go a +good way, if not all the way, to the Bipontine Latin and Greek Classics. + + +[Sidenote: A TURTLE-SHELL FOR HOUSE-HOLD TUB] + +I almost fear that the alteration would excite surprise and uneasy +contempt in Verbidigno's mind (towards one less loved, at least); but +had I written the sweet tale of the "Blind Highland Boy," I would have +substituted for the washing-tub, and the awkward stanza in which it is +specified, the images suggested in the following lines from Dampier's +Travels, vol. i. pp. 105-6:--"I heard of a monstrous green turtle once +taken at the Port Royal, in the Bay of Campeachy, that was four feet +deep from the back to the belly, and the belly six feet broad. Captain +Rock's son, of about nine or ten years of age, went in it as in a boat, +on board his father's ship, about a quarter of a mile from the shore." +And a few lines before--"The green turtle are so called because their +shell is greener than any other. It is very thin and clear, and better +clouded than the Hawksbill, but 'tis used only for _inlays_, being +_extraordinary_ thin." Why might not some mariners have left this shell +on the shore of Loch Leven for a while, about to have transported it +inland for a curiosity, and the blind boy have found it? Would not the +incident be in equal keeping with that of the child, as well as the +image and tone of romantic uncommonness? + +["In deference to the opinion of a friend," this substitution took +place. A promise made to Sara Coleridge to re-instate the washing-tub +was, alas! never fulfilled. See _Poetical Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1859, +pp. 197, and 200 _footnote_.] + + +[Sidenote: THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE GOOD] + +Tremendous as a Mexican god is a strong sense of duty--separate from an +enlarged and discriminating mind, and gigantic ally disproportionate to +the size of the understanding; and, if combined with obstinacy of +self-opinion and indocility, it is the parent of tyranny, a promoter of +inquisitorial persecution in public life, and of inconceivable misery in +private families. Nay, the very virtue of the person, and the +consciousness that _it_ is sacrificing its own happiness, increases the +obduracy, and selects those whom it best loves for its objects. _Eoque +immitior quia ipse tolerat_ (not _toleraverat_) is its inspiration and +watchword. + + +[Sidenote: HINTS FOR "THE FRIEND"] + +A nation of reformers looks like a scourer of silver-plate--black all +over and dingy, with making things white and brilliant. + + +A joint combination of authors leagued together to declaim for or +against liberty may be compared to Buffon's collection of smooth mirrors +in a vast fan arranged to form one focus. May there not be gunpowder as +well as corn set before it, and the latter will not thrive, but become +cinders? + + +A good conscience and hope combined are like fine weather that +reconciles travel with delight. + + +Great exploits and the thirst of honour which they inspire, enlarge +states by enlarging hearts. + + +The rejection of the love of glory without the admission of Christianity +is, truly, human darkness lacking human light. + + +Heaven preserve me from the modern epidemic of a proud ignorance! + + +Hypocrisy, the deadly crime which, like Judas, kisses Hell at the lips +of Redemption. + + +Is't then a mystery so great, what God and the man, and the world is? +No, but we hate to hear! Hence a mystery it remains. + + +The massy misery so prettily hidden with the gold and silver +leaf--_bracteata felicitas_. + + +[Sidenote: CONCERNING BELLS] + +If I have leisure, I may, perhaps, write a wild rhyme on the _Bell_, +from the mine to the belfry, and take for my motto and Chapter of +Contents, the two distichs, but especially the latter-- + + Laudo Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum: + Defunctos ploro, pestem fugo, festa decoro. + Funera plango, fulgura frango, sabbata pango: + Excito lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos. + + +The waggon-horse _celsâ cervice eminens clarumque jactans +tintinnabulum_. Item, the cattle on the river, and valley of dark pines +and firs in the Hartz. + + +The army of Clotharius besieging Sens were frightened away by the bells +of St. Stephen's, rung by the contrivance of Lupus, Bishop of Orleans. + + +For ringing the largest bell, as a Passing-bell, a high price was wont +to be paid, because being heard afar it both kept the evil spirits at a +greater distance, and gave the chance of the greater number of prayers +_pro mortuo_, from the pious who heard it. + + +Names of saints were given to bells that it might appear the voice of +the Saint himself calling to prayer. Man will humanise all things. + +[It is strange that Coleridge should make no mention of Schiller's "Song +of the Bell," of which he must, at any rate, have heard the title. +Possibly the idea remained though its source was forgotten. The Latin +distichs were introduced by Longfellow in his "Golden Legend." + +Of the cow-bells in the Hartz he gives the following account in an +unpublished letter to his wife. April-May, 1799. "But low down in the +valley and in little companies on each bank of the river a multitude of +green conical fir-trees, with herds of cattle wandering about almost +every one with a cylindrical bell around its neck, of no inconsiderable +size. And as they moved, scattered over the narrow vale, and up among +the trees of the hill, the noise was like that of a great city in the +stillness of the Sabbath morning, where all the steeples, all at once +are ringing for Church. The whole was a melancholy scene and quite new +to me."] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote E: + + [O heaven, 'twas frightful! now run down and stared at + By shapes more ugly than can be remembered-- + Now seeing nothing and imagining nothing, + But only being afraid--stifled with Fear! + And every goodly, each familiar form + Had a strange somewhat that breathed terrors on me! + +(_From my MS. tragedy_ [S. T. C.]) _Remorse_, iv. 69-74--but the passage +is omitted from _Osorio_, act iv. 53 _sq. P. W._, pp. 386-499]]. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +_1810_ + + O dare I accuse + My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen, + Or call my destiny niggard! O no! no! + It is her largeness, and her overflow, + Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so! + + S. T. C. + + +[Sidenote: A PIOUS ASPIRATION] + +My own faculties, cloudy as they may be, will be a sufficient direction +to me in plain daylight, but my friend's wish shall be the pillar of +fire to guide me darkling in my nightly march through the wilderness. + + +[Sidenote: THOUGHT AND ATTENTION] + +Thought and attention are very different things. I never expected the +former, (viz., _selbst-thätige Erzeugung dessen, wovon meine Rede war_) +from the readers of _The Friend_. I did expect the latter, and was +disappointed. Jan. 3, 1810. + +This is a most important distinction, and in the new light afforded by +it to my mind, I see more plainly why mathematics cannot be a +substitute for logic, much less for metaphysics, that is, +transcendental logic, and why, therefore, Cambridge has produced so few +men of genius and original power since the time of Newton. Not only it +does not call forth the balancing and discriminating power [_that_ I saw +long ago] but it requires only _attention,_ not _thought_ or +self-production. + + +[Sidenote: LAW AND GOSPEL] + +"The man who squares his conscience by the law" was, formerly, a phrase +for a prudent villain, an unprincipled coward. At present the law takes +in everything--the things most incongruous with its nature, as the moral +motive, and even the feelings of sensibility resulting from accidents of +cultivation, novel-reading for instance. If, therefore, _at all_ times, +the law would be found to have a much greater influence on the actions +of men than men generally suppose, or the agents were themselves +conscious of, this influence we must expect to find augmented at the +present time in proportion to the encroachments of the law on religion, +the moral sense, and the sympathies engendered by artificial rank. +Examine this and begin, for instance, with reviews, and so on through +the common legal immoralities of life, in the pursuits and pleasures of +the higher half of the middle classes of society in Great Britain. + + +[Sidenote: CATHOLIC REUNION] + +"Hence (_i.e._, from servile and thrall-like fear) men came to scan the +Scriptures by the letter and in the covenant of our redemption magnified +the external signs more than the quickening power of the +Spirit."--MILTON'S _Review of Church Government_, vol. i. p. 2. + +It were not an unpleasing fancy, nor one wholly unworthy of a serious +and charitable Christianity, to derive a shadow of hope for the +conversion and purification of the Roman Apostasy from the conduct and +character of St. Peter as shadowing out the history of the Latin Church, +whose ruling pastor calls himself the successor of that saint. Thus, by +proud _humility_, he hazarded the loss of his heavenly portion in +objecting to Christ's taking upon himself a lowly office and character +of a servant (hence the pomps and vanities with which Rome has tricked +out her bishops, &c.), the eager drawing of the fleshly sword in defence +of Christ; the denying of Christ at the cross (in the apostasy); but, +finally, his bitter repentance at the third crowing of the cock (perhaps +Wickliffe and Huss the first, Luther the second, and the third yet to +come-or, perhaps Wickliffe and Luther the first, the second may be the +present state of humiliation, and the third yet to come). After this her +eyes will be opened to the heavenly vision of the universal acceptance +of Christ of all good men of all sects, that is, that faith is a moral, +not an intellectual act. + + +[Sidenote: THE IDEAL MARRIAGE] + +On some delightful day in early spring some of my countrymen hallow the +anniversary of their marriage, and with love and fear go over the +reckoning of the past and the unknown future. The wife tells with +half-renewed modesty all the sweet feelings that she disguised and +cherished in the courting-time; the man looks with a tear full in his +eye and blesses the hour when for the first time (and oh! let it be the +last) he spake deep and solemn to a beloved being--"Thou art mine and I +am thine, and henceforward I shield and shelter [thee] against the +world, and thy sorrows shall be my sorrows, and though abandoned by all +men, we two will abide together in love and duty." + +In the holy eloquent solitude where the very stars that twinkle seem to +be a _voice_ that suits the dream, a voice of a dream, a voice soundless +and yet for the _ear_ not the _eye_ of the soul, when the winged soul +passes over vale and mountain, sinks into glens, and then climbs with +the cloud, and passes from cloud to cloud, and thence from sun to +sun--never is she alone. Always one, the dearest, accompanies and even +when he melts, diffused in the blue sky, she melts at the same moment +into union with the beloved. + + +[Sidenote: A SUPERFLUOUS ENTITY] + +That our religious faiths, by the instincts which lead us to +metaphysical investigation, are founded in a practical necessity, not a +mere intellectual craving after knowledge, and systematic conjecture, is +evinced by the interest which all men take in the questions of future +existence, and the being of God; while even among those who are +speculative by profession a few phantasts only have troubled themselves +with the questions of pre-existence, or with attempts to demonstrate the +_posse_ and _esse_ of a devil. But in the latter case more is involved. +Concerning pre-existence men in general have neither care nor belief; +but a devil is taken for granted, and, if we might trust words, with the +same faith as a Deity--"He neither believes God or devil." And yet, +while we are delighted in hearing proofs of the one, we never think of +asking a simple question concerning the other. This, too, originates in +a practical source. The Deity is not a mere solution of difficulties +concerning origination, but a truth which spreads light and joy and hope +and certitude through all things--while a devil _is_ a mere solution of +an enigma, an assumption to silence our uneasiness. That end answered +(and most easily are such ends answered), we have no further concern +with it. + + +[Sidenote: PSYCHOLOGY IN YOUTH AND MATURITY] + +The _great change_--that in youth and early manhood we psychologise and +with enthusiasm but all out of ourselves, and so far ourselves only as +we descry therein some general law. Our own self is but the diagram, the +triangle which represents all triangles. Afterward we pyschologise out +of others, and so far as they differ from ourselves. O how hollowly! + + +[Sidenote: HAIL AND FAREWELL!] + +We have been for many years at a great distance from each other, but +that may happen with no real breach of friendship. All intervening +nature is the _continuum_ of two good and wise men. We are now +separated. You have combined arsenic with your gold, Sir Humphry! You +are brittle, and I will rather dine with Duke Humphry than with you. + + +[Sidenote: A GENUINE "ANECDOTE"] + +Sara Coleridge says, on telling me of the universal sneeze produced on +the lasses while shaking my carpet, that she wishes my snuff would +_grow_, as I sow it so plentifully! + +[This points to the summer of 1810, the five months spent at Greta Hall +previous to the departure south with Basil Montagu.] + + +[Sidenote: SPIRITUAL RELIGION] + +A thing cannot be one _and_ three at the same time! True! but _time_ +does not apply to God. He is neither one in time nor three in time, for +he exists not in time at all--the Eternal! + +The truly religious man, when he is not conveying his feelings and +beliefs to other men, and does not need the medium of words--O! how +little does he find in his religious sense either of form or of +number--it is _infinite_! Alas! why do we all seek by instinct for a +God, a supersensual, but because we feel the insufficiency, the +unsubstantiality of all _forms_, and formal being for itself. And shall +we explain _a_ by _x_ and then _x_ by _a_--give a soul to the body, and +then a body to the soul--_ergo_, a body to the body--feel the weakness +of the weak, and call in the strengthener, and then make the very +weakness the substratum of the strength? This is worse than the poor +Indian! Even he does not make the tortoise support the elephant, and yet +put the elephant under the tortoise! + +But we are too social, we become in a sort idolaters--for the means we +are obliged to use to excite notions of truth in the minds of others we +by witchcraft of slothful association impose on ourselves for the truths +themselves. Our intellectual bank stops payment, and we pass an act by +acclamation that hereafter the paper promises shall be the gold and +silver itself--and ridicule a man for a dreamer and reviver of +antiquated dreams who believes that gold and silver exist. This may do +as well in the market, but O! for the universal, for the man himself the +difference is woeful. + + +[Sidenote: TRUTH] + +The immense difference between being glad to find Truth _it_, and to +find _it_ TRUTH! O! I am ashamed of those who praise me! For I know that +as soon as I tell them my mind on another subject, they will shrink and +abhor me. For not because I enforced a truth were they pleased in the +first instance, but because I had supported a favourite notion of theirs +which they loved for its and their sake, and therefore would be glad to +find it true--not that loving Truth they loved this opinion as one of +its forms and consequences. The root! the root must be attacked! + + +[Sidenote: A TIME TO CRY OUT] + +Among the evils that attend a conscientious author who writes in a +corrupt age, is the necessity he is under of exposing himself even to +plausible charges of envy, mortified vanity, and, above all, of +self-conceit before those whose bad passions would make even the most +improbable charges plausible. + +What _can_ he do? Tell the truth, and the whole truth plainly, and with +the natural affection which it inspires, and keeping off (difficult +task!) all _scorn_ (for to suppress resentment is easy), let him trust +the bread to the waters in the firm faith that wisdom shall be justified +by her children. Vanity! self-conceit! What vanity, what self-conceit? +What say I more than this? Ye who think and feel the same will love and +esteem me by the law of sympathy, and _value_ me according to the +comparative effect I have made on your intellectual powers, in enabling +you better to defend before others, or more clearly to _onlook_ +(_anschauen_) in yourselves the truths to which your noblest being bears +witness. The rest I leave to the judgment of posterity, utterly +unconcerned whether _my name_ be attached to these opinions or (_my_ +writings forgotten) another man's. + +But what can I say, when I have declared my abhorrence of the _Edinburgh +Review_? In vain should I tell my critics that were I placed on the rack +I could not remember ten lines of my own poems, and that on seeing my +own name in their abuse, I regard it only as a symbol of Wordsworth and +Southey, and that I am well aware that from utter disregard and oblivion +of anything and all things which they can know of me by experience, my +name is mentioned only because they have heard that I was Wordsworth's +and Southey's friend. + + +[Sidenote: HINTS FOR "THE FRIEND"] + +The brightest luminaries of earth give names to the dusky spots in the +selenography of Helvetius. + + +The intrepidity of a pure conscience and a simple principle [may be] +compared to a life-boat, and somewhat in the detail, stemming with a +little rudder the tumbling ruins of the sea, rebounding from the rocks +and shelves in fury. + + +Duns Scotus affirms that the certainty of faith is the greatest +certainty--a dark speech which is explained and proved by the dependence +of the theoretic powers on the practical. But Aristotle admits that +demonstrated truths are inferior in kind of certainty to the +indemonstrable out of which the former are deduced. + + +Faithful, confident reliance on man and on God is the last and hardest +virtue! And wherefore? Because we must first have earned a FAITH in +ourselves. Let the conscience pronounce: "Trust in thyself!" Let the +whole heart be able to say, "I trust in myself," and those whomever we +_love_ we shall rely on, in proportion to that love. + + +A testy patriot might be pardoned for saying with Falstaff, when Dame +Quickly told him "She came from the two parties, forsooth," "The Devil +take one party and his Dam the other." John Bull has suffered more for +their sake, more than even the supererogatory cullibility of his +disposition is able to bear. + + +Lavater fixed on the simplest physiognomy in his whole congregation, and +pitched his sermon to his comprehension. Narcissus either looks at or +thinks of his looking glass, for the same wise purpose I presume. + + +Reviewers resemble often the English jury and the Italian conclave, they +are incapable of eating till they have condemned or craned. + + +The Pope [may be compared to] an old lark, who, though he leaves off +soaring and singing in the height, yet has his spurs grow longer and +sharper the older he grows. + + +Let us not, because the foliage waves in necessary obedience to every +breeze, fancy that the tree shakes also. Though the slender branch bend, +one moment to the East and another to the West, its motion is +circumscribed by its connection with the unyielding trunk. + + +[Sidenote: A HINT FOR "CHRISTABEL"] + +My first cries mingled with my mother's death-groan, and she beheld the +vision of glory, ere I the earthly sun. When I first looked up to Heaven +consciously, it was to look up after, or for, my mother. + + +[Sidenote: "ALL THOUGHTS ALL PASSIONS ALL DELIGHTS"] + +The two sweet silences--first in the purpling dawn of love-troth, when +the heart of each ripens in the other's looks within the unburst calyx, +and fear becomes so sweet that it seems but a fear of losing hope in +certainty; the second, when the sun is setting in the calm eve of +confident love, and [the lovers] in mute recollection enjoy each other. +"I fear to speak, I fear to hear you speak, so deeply do I now enjoy +your presence, so totally possess you in myself, myself in you. The very +sound would break the union and separate _you-me_ into you and me. We +both, and this sweet room, its books, its furniture, and the shadows on +the wall slumbering with the low, quiet fire are all _our_ thought, one +harmonious imagery of forms distinct on the still substance of one deep +feeling, love and joy--a lake, or, if a stream, yet flowing so softly, +so unwrinkled, that its flow is life, not change--that state in which +all the individuous nature, the distinction without division of a vivid +thought, is united with the sense and substance of intensest reality." + +And what if joy pass quick away? Long is the track of Hope before--long, +too, the track of recollection after, as in the Polar spring the sun [is +seen in the heavens] sixteen days before it really rises, and in the +Polar autumn ten days after it has set; so Nature, with Hope and +Recollection, pieces out our short summer. + + +[Sidenote: WORDS AND THINGS] + +N.B.--In my intended essay in defence of punning (Apology for +Paronomasy, _alias_ Punning), to defend those turns of words-- + + Che l'onda chiara, + El'ombra non men cara-- + +in certain styles of writing, by proving that language itself is formed +upon associations of this kind--that possibly the _sensus genericus_ of +whole classes of words may be thus deciphered (as has indeed been +attempted by Mr. White, of Clare Hall), that words are not mere symbols +of things and thoughts, but themselves things, and that any harmony in +the things symbolised will perforce be presented to us more easily, as +well as with additional beauty, by a correspondent harmony of the +symbols with each other. Thus, _heri vidi fragilem frangi, hodie +mortalem mori_; Gestern seh ich was gebrechliches brechen, heute was +sterbliches sterben, compared with the English. This the beauty of +homogeneous languages. So _Veni, vidi, vici_. + +[This note follows an essay on Giambattista Strozzi's Madrigals, +together with a transcription of twenty-seven specimens. The substance +of the essay is embodied in the text of Chapter xvi. of the "Biographia +Literaria," and a long footnote. The quotation is from the first +madrigal, quoted in the note, which is not included in those transcribed +in Notebook 17.--_Coleridge's Works_, iii. (Harper & Brothers, 1853), +pp. 388-393.] + + +[Sidenote: ASSOCIATION] + +Important suggestion on 4th March, 1810 (Monday night). The law of +association clearly begins in common causality. How continued but by a +_causative power_ in the soul? What a proof of _causation_ and _power_ +from the very law of mind, and cluster of facts adduced by Hume to +overthrow it! + + +[Sidenote: COROLLARY] + +It is proud ignorance that, as a disease of the mind, alone superinduces +the necessity of the _medium_ of metaphysical philosophy. The errors +into which a sound, unaffected mind is led by the nature of things +(Thing as the substratum of power)--no errors at all, any more than the +motion of the sun. "So it _appears_"--and that is most true--but when +pride will work up these phenomena into a _system_ of _things in +themselves_, then they become most pernicious errors, and it is the duty +of true mind to examine these with all the virtues of the +intellect--patience, humility, etc. + + +[Sidenote: MOTHER WIT] + +"By aid of a large portion of mother's wit, Paine, though an unlearned +man, saw the absurdity of the Christian religion." Mother's wit, indeed! +Wit from his mother the earth--the earthy and material wit of the +_flesh_ and its lusts. One ounce of mother-wit may be worth a pound of +learning, but a grain of the Father's wisdom is worth a ton of +mother-wit--yea! of both together. + + +[Sidenote: OF EDUCATION] + +"O it is but an infant! 'tis but a child! he will be better as he grows +older." "O! she'll grow ashamed of it. This is but waywardness." Grant +all this--that _they_ will _out_grow these particular actions, yet with +what HABITS of _feeling_ will they arrive at youth and manhood? +Especially with regard to obedience, how is it possible that they should +struggle against the boiling passions of youth by means of obedience to +their own conscience who are to meet the dawn of conscience with the +broad meridian of disobedience and habits of self-willedness? Besides, +when are the rebukes, the chastisements to commence? Why! about nine or +ten, perhaps, when, for the father at least, [the child] is less a +plaything--when, therefore, anger is not healed up in its mind, either +by its own infant versatility and forgetfulness, or by after +caresses--when everything is remembered individually, and sense of +injustice felt. For the boy very well remembers the different treatment +when he was a child; but what has been so long permitted becomes a right +to him. Far better, in such a case, to have them sent off to others--a +strict schoolmaster--than to breed that contradiction of feeling toward +the same person which subverts the very _principle_ of our impulses. +Whereas, in a tender, yet obedience-exacting and improvement-enforcing +education, though very gradually, and by small doses at a time, yet +always going on--yea! even from a twelvemonth old--at six or seven the +child really has outgrown all things that annoy, just at the time when, +as the charm of infancy begins to diminish, they would begin really to +annoy. + + +[Sidenote: THE DANGERS OF ADAPTING TRUTH TO THE MINDS OF THE VULGAR] + +There are, in every country, times when the few who know the truth have +clothed it for the vulgar, and addressed the vulgar in the vulgar +language and modes of conception, in order to convey any part of the +truth. This, however, could not be done with safety, even to the +_illuminati_ themselves in the first instance; but to their successors, +habit gradually turned lie into belief, partial and _stagnate_ truth +into ignorance, and the teachers of the vulgar (like the Franciscan +friars in the South of Europe) became a part of the vulgar--nay, because +the laymen were open to various impulses and influences, which their +instructors had built out (compare a brook in open air, liable to +rainstreams and rills from new-opened fountains, to the same running +through a mill guarded by sluice-gates and back-water), they became the +vulgarest of the vulgar, till, finally, resolute not to detach +themselves from the mob, the mob at length detaches itself from them, +and leaves the mill-race dry, the moveless, rotten wheels as +day-dormitories for bats and owls, and the old grindstones for wags and +scoffers of the taproom to whet their wits on. + + +[Sidenote: POETRY AND PROSE] + +When there are few literary men, and the vast 999999/10000000 of the +population are ignorant, as was the case of Italy from Dante to +Metastasio, _from causes I need not here put down, there will be a +poetical language_; but that a poet ever uses a word as poetical--that +is, formally--which he, in the same mood and thought, would not use in +prose or conversation, Milton's Prose Works will assist us in +disproving. But as soon as literature becomes common, and critics +numerous in any country, and a large body of men seek to express +themselves habitually in the most precise, sensuous, and impassioned +words, the difference as to mere words ceases, as, for example, the +German prose writers. Produce to me _one_ word out of Klopstock, +Wieland, Schiller, Goethe, Voss, &c., which I will not find as +frequently used in the most energetic prose writers. The sole difference +in style is that poetry demands a severe keeping--it admits nothing that +prose may not often admit, but it oftener rejects. In other words, it +presupposes a more continuous state of passion. _N.B._--Provincialisms +of poets who have become the supreme classics in countries one in +language but under various states and governments have aided this false +idea, as, in Italy, the Tuscanisms of Dante, Ariosto, and Alfieri, +foolishly imitated by Venetians, Romans, and Neapolitans. How much this +is against the opinion of Dante, see his admirable treatise on "Lingua +Volgare Nobile," the first, I believe, of his prose or _prose and verse_ +works; for the "Convito" and "La Vita Nuova" are, one-third, in metre. + + +[Sidenote: WORLDLY WISE] + +I would strongly recommend Lloyd's "State Worthies" [_The Statesmen and +Favourites of England since the Reformation._ By David Lloyd. London, +1665-70] as the manual of every man who would rise in the world. In +every twenty pages it recommends contradictions, but he who cannot +reconcile them for himself, and discover which suits his plan, can never +rise in the world. _N.B._--I have a mind to draw a complete character of +a worldly-wise man out of Lloyd. He would be highly-finished, useful, +honoured, popular--a man revered by his children, his wife, and so +forth. To be sure, he must not expect to be _beloved_ by _one_ +proto-friend; and, if there be truth in reason or Christianity, he will +go to hell--but, even so, he will doubtless secure himself a most +respectable place in the devil's chimney-corner. + + +[Sidenote: HINTS FOR "THE FRIEND"] + +The falseness of that so very common opinion, "Mathematics, aye, that is +something! that has been useful--but metaphysics!" Now fairly compare +the two, what each has really done. + +But [be thou] only concerned to find out truth, which, on what side +soever it appears, is always _victory_ to every honest mind. + + +Christianity, too (as well as Platonism and the school of Pythagoras), +has its esoteric philosophy, or why are we forbidden to cast pearls +before swine? But who are the swine? Are they the poor and despised, the +unalphabeted in worldly learning? O, no! the rich whose hearts are +steeled by ignorance of misery and habits of receiving slavish +obedience--the dropsical learned and the St. Vitus' [bewitched] +sciolist. + + +In controversy it is highly useful to know whether you are really +addressing yourself to an opponent or only to partisans, with the +intention of preserving them firm. Either is well, but they should never +be commingled. + + +In her letter to Lord Willoughby Queen Elizabeth hath the word "eloign." +There is no exact equivalent in modern use. Neither "withdraw" or +"absent" are precisely synonymous. + + +We understand Nature just as if, at a distance, we looked at the image +of a person in a looking-glass, plainly and fervently discoursing, yet +what he uttered we could decipher only by the motion of the lips or by +his mien. + + +I must extract and transcribe from the preface to the works of +Paracelsus that eloquent defence of technical new words and of old words +used in a new sense. The whole preface is exceedingly lively, and +(excepting the mountebank defence of intentional obscurity and the +attack on logic, as if it were ever intended to be an organon of +discovery of material truth and directly, instead of a formal +preliminary assisting the mind indirectly, and showing what cannot be +truth, and what has not been proved truth,) very just. + + +The Chinese call the monsoon whirlwind, when more than usually fierce, +the elephant. This is a fine image--a mad wounded war-elephant. + + +The poor oppressed Amboynese, who bear with patience the extirpation of +their clove and nutmeg trees, in their fields and native woods, and the +cruel taxes on sugar, their staff of life, will yet, at once and +universally, rise up in rebellion and prepare to destroy in despair all +and everything, themselves included, if any attempt is made to destroy +any individual's Tatanaman, the clove-tree which each Amboynese plants +at the birth of each of his children. Very affecting! + + +[Sidenote: GENIUS] + +The man of genius places things in a new light. This trivial phrase +better expresses the appropriate effects of genius than Pope's +celebrated distich-- + + "What oft was thought but ne'er so well exprest." + +It has been thought distinctly, but only possessed, as it were, unpacked +and unsorted. The poet not only displays what, though often seen in its +unfolded mass, had never been opened out, but he likewise adds +something, namely, light and relations. Who has not seen a rose, or +sprig of jasmine or myrtle? But behold those same flowers in a posy or +flower-pot, painted by a man of genius, or assorted by the hand of a +woman of fine taste and instinctive sense of beauty! + + +[Sidenote: LOVE] + +To find our happiness incomplete without the happiness of some other +given person or persons is the definition of affection in general, and +applies equally to friendship, to the parental and to the conjugal +relations. But what is love? Love as it may subsist between two persons +of different senses? This--and what more than this? The mutual +dependence of their happiness, each on that of the other, each being at +once cause and effect. You, therefore, I--I, therefore you. The sense of +this reciprocity of well-being, is that which first stamps and +legitimates the name of happiness in all the other advantages and +favourable accidents of nature, or fortune, without which they would +change their essence and become like the curse of Tantalus, insulting +remembrances of misery, of that most unquiet of all miseries, means of +happiness blasted and transformed by incompleteness, nay, by the loss of +the sole organ through which we could enjoy them. + +Suppose a wide and delightful landscape, and what the eye is to the +light, and the light to the eye, that interchangeably is the lover to +the beloved. "O best beloved! who lovest _me_ the best!" In strictest +propriety of application might he thus address her, if only she with +equal truth could echo the same sense in the same feeling. "Light of +mine eye! by which alone I not only see all I see, but which makes up +more than half the loveliness of the objects seen, yet, still, like the +rising sun in the morning, like the moon at night, remainest thyself and +for thyself, the dearest, fairest form of all the thousand forms that +derive from thee all their visibility, and borrow from thy presence +their chiefest beauty!" + + +[Sidenote: COTTLE'S "FREE VERSION OF THE PSALMS"] + +Diamond + oxygen = charcoal. Even so on the fire-spark of his zeal did +Cottle place the King-David diamonds, and caused to pass over them the +oxygenous blast of his own inspiration, and lo! the diamond becomes a +bit of charcoal. + + +[Sidenote: FRIENDSHIP AND MARRIAGE] + + "Ich finde alles eher auf der Erde, so gar Wahrheit und Freude, + als Freundschaft."--JEAN PAUL.[F] + +This for the motto--to examine and attest the fact, and then to explain +the reason. First, then, there are the extraordinary qualifications +demanded for true friendship, arising from the multitude of causes that +make men delude themselves and attribute to friendship what is only a +similarity of pursuit, or even a mere dislike of feeling oneself alone +in anything. But, secondly, supposing the friendship to be as real as +human nature ordinarily permits, yet how many causes are at constant war +against it, whether in the shape of violent irruptions or unobserved yet +constant wearings away by dyspathy, &c. Exemplify this in youth and then +in manhood. First, there is the influence of wives, how frequently +deadly to friendship, either by direct encroach, or, perhaps, +intentional plans of alienation! Secondly, there is the effect of +families, by otherwise occupying the heart; and, thirdly, the action of +life in general, by the worldly-wise, chilling effects of prudential +anxieties. + +Corollary. These reflections, however, suggest an argument in favour of +the existing indissolubility of marriage. + +To be compelled to make it up, or consent to be miserable and +disrespected, is indeed a coarse plaister for the wounds of love, but so +it must be while the patients themselves are of coarse make and +unhealthy humours. + + +[Sidenote: IMAGINATION] + +His imagination, if it must be so called, is at all events of the +pettiest kind--it is an _imaginunculation_. How excellently the German +_Einbildungskraft_ expresses this prime and loftiest faculty, the +power of co-adunation, the faculty that forms the many into +one--_In-eins-bildung!_ Eisenoplasy, or esenoplastic power, is +contradistinguished from fantasy, or the mirrorment, either catoptric or +metoptric--repeating simply, or by transposition--and, again, +involuntary [fantasy] as in dreams, or by an act of the will. + +[See _Biog. Lit._, cap. x.; _Coleridge's Works_, iii. 272. See also +_Blackwood's Magazine_, March 1840, No. ccxciii., Art. The Plagiarisms +of S. T. Coleridge.] + + +[Sidenote: PUBLIC OPINION AND THE SERVICES] + +Ministers, as in the Admiralty, or War Office, compared to managers of +theatres. The numerous absurd claims at length deaden their sense of +judgment to real merit, and superinduce in the mind an anticipation of +clamorous vanity. Hence the great importance of the public voice, +forcing them to be just. This, how illustrated by the life of +Nelson--the infamous coldness with which all his claims were +received--especially Mr. Wyndham's answer, July 21, 1795. And no wonder! +for such is the state of moral feeling even with the English public, +that an instance of credulity to an ingenious scheme which has failed in +the trial will weigh more heavily on a minister's character than to have +stifled in the birth half-a-dozen such men as Nelson or Cochrane, or +such schemes as that of a floating army. Nelson's life is a perpetual +comment on this. + + +[Sidenote: SERMONS ANCIENT AND MODERN] + +Of moral discourses and fine moral discussions in the pulpit--"none of +your Methodist stuff for me." And, yet, most certain it is, that never +were either ministers or congregations so strict in all morality as at +the time when nothing but fine _moral_ discourses (that is calculations +in self-love) would have driven a preacher from the pulpit--and when +the clergy thought it their pulpit-duty to preach Christ and Him +crucified, and the why and the wherefore--and that the soberest, +law-obeying, most prudent nation in the world would need Him as much as +a nation of drunkards, thieves and profligates. How was this? Why, I +take it, those old parsons thought, very wisely, that the pulpit was the +place for truths that applied to all men, humbled all alike (not +mortified one or two, and sent the rest home, scandal-talking with +pharisaic "I thank thee, God, I am not as so and so, but I was glad to +hear the parson"), comforted all, frightened all, offended all, because +they were all _men_--that private vices depend so much on particular +circumstances, that without making the pulpit a lampoon shop, (or, even +supposing the genius of him who wrote Isaac Jenkins, without particulars +not suited to the pulpit) that it would be a cold generality affair--and +that, therefore, they considered the pulpit as _one_ part of their duty, +but to their whole congregation as _men_, and that the other part of +their duty, which they thought equally binding on them, was to each and +every member of that congregation as John Harris, or James Tomkins, in +private conversation--and, like that of Mr. Longford, sometimes to +rebuke and warn, sometimes to comfort, sometimes and oftener to +instruct, and render them capable of understanding his sermon. In short +they would _preach_ as Luther, and would converse as Mr. Longford to +Isaac Jenkins. + +[_The History of Isaac Jenkins, a Moral Fiction._ By Thomas Beddoes, +M.D., 1793]. + + +[Sidenote: HEAVINESS MAY ENDURE FOR A NIGHT] + +With a loving generous man whose activity of intellect is exerted +habitually on truth and events of permanent, or, at least, general +interest still warmed and coloured by benevolent enthusiasm +self-unconsciously, and whose heart-movements are all the property of +the few, whom he dearly loves--with such a man, for the vast majority of +the wrongs met with in life, that at all affect him, a one-night's sleep +provides the oblivion and the cure--he awakes from his slumbers and his +resentment at the same moment. Yesterday is gone and the clouds of +yesterday. The sun is born again, and how bright and joyous! and I am +born again! But O! there may be wrongs, for which with our best efforts +for the most perfect suppression, with the absence, nay, the +impossibility of anger or hate, yet, longer, deeper sleep is required +for the heart's oblivion, and thence renewal--even the long total sleep +of death. + +To me, I dare avow, even this connects a new soothing with the thought +of death, an additional lustre in anticipation to the confidence of +resurrection, that such sensations as I have so often had after small +wrongs, trifling quarrels, on first awaking in a summer morn after +refreshing sleep, I shall experience after death for those few wounds +too deep and broad for the _vis medicatrix_ of mortal life to fill +wholly up with new flesh--those that, though healed, yet left an +unsightly scar which, too often, spite of our best wishes, opened anew +at other derangements and indispositions of the mental health, even when +they were altogether unconnected with the wound itself or its +occasions--even as the scars of the sailor, the relics and remembrances +of sword or gun-shot wounds (first of all his bodily frame giving way to +ungenial influences from without or from within), ache and throb at the +coming in of rain or easterly winds, and open again and bleed anew, at +the attack of fever, or injury from deficient or unwholesome food--that +even for these I should enjoy the same delightful annihilation of them, +as of ordinary wrongs after sleep. + + +I would say to a man who reminded me of a friend's unkind words or deeds +which I had forgiven--Smoking is very well while we are all smoking, +even though the head is made dizzy by it and the candle of reason burns +red, dim and thick; but, for Heaven's sake, don't put an old pipe to my +nose just at breakfast time, among dews and flowers and sunshine. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote F: ["I find all things upon earth, even truth and joy, rather +than friendship."]] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +_1811-1812_ + + From all that meets or eye or ear, + There falls a genial holy fear, + Which, like the heavy dew of morn, + Refreshes while it bows the heart forlorn! + + S. T. C. + + +[Sidenote: TIME REAL AND IMAGINARY] + +How marked the contrast between troubled manhood, and joyously-active +youth in the sense of time! To the former, time like the sun in an empty +sky is never seen to move, but only to have _moved_. There, there it +was, and now 'tis here, now distant! yet all a blank between. To the +latter it is as the full moon in a fine breezy October night, driving on +amid clouds of all shapes and hues, and kindling shifting colours, like +an ostrich in its speed, and yet seems not to have moved at all. This I +feel to be a just image of time real and time as felt, in two different +states of being. The title of the poem therefore (for poem it ought to +be) should be time real and time felt (in the sense of time) in active +youth, or activity with hope and fullness of aim in any period, and in +despondent, objectless manhood--time objective and subjective. + +[The riddle is hard to read, but the underlying thought seems to be that +in youth the sense of time is like the apparent motion of the moon +through clouds, ever driving on, but ever seeming to stand still; +whereas the sense of time in manhood is like the sun, which seems to be +stationary, and yet, at short intervals, is seen to have moved. This is +time _felt_ in two different states of being. Time real is, as it were, +sun or moon which move independently of our perceptions of their +movements. The note (1811), no doubt, contains the germ of "Time Real +and Imaginary" first published in "Sibylline Leaves" in 1817, which +Coleridge in his Preface describes as a "school-boy poem," and +interprets thus: "By imaginary time I meant the state of a schoolboy's +mind when, on his return to school, he projects his being in his +day-dreams, and lives in his next holidays, six months hence!" The +explanation was probably an afterthought. "The two lovely children" who +"run an endless race" may have haunted his schoolboy dreams, may perhaps +have returned to the dreams of his troubled manhood, bringing with them +the sense rather than the memory of youth, intermingled with a +consciousness that youth was gone for ever, but the composition of the +poem dates from 1811, or possibly 1815, when the preparation of the +poems for the press would persuade him once more to express his thoughts +in verse.] + + +[Sidenote: TIME REAL AND IMAGINARY; AN ALLEGORY] + + On the wide level of a mountain's head, + (I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place) + Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread, + Two lovely children run an endless race, + A sister and a brother! + This far outstript the other; + Yet ever runs she with reverted face, + And looks and listens for the boy behind: + For he, alas! is blind! + O'er rough and smooth with even step he passed, + And knows not whether he be first or last. + +[_P. W._, 1893, p. 187. See, too, Editor's _Note_, p. 638.] + + +[Sidenote: THE HAG NIGHTMARE] + +Elucidation of my _all-zermalming_, [that is, all-crushing] argument on +the subject of ghosts, apparitions, &c. + +Night-mare is, I think, always, even when it occurs in the midst of +sleep, and not as it more commonly does after a waking interval, a state +not of sleep, but of stupor of the outward organs of sense--not in +words, indeed, but yet in fact distinguishable from the suspended power +of the senses in true sleep, while the volitions of reason, that is the +faculty of comparison, &c., are awake though disturbed. This stupor +seems to be occasioned by some painful sensations of unknown locality +(most often, I believe, in the lower bowel) which, withdrawing the +attention to itself from the sense of other realities present, makes us +asleep to them, indeed, but otherwise awake. And, whenever the +derangement occasions an interruption in the circulation, aided, +perhaps, by pressure, awkward position, &c., the part deadened, as the +hand, the arm, or the foot and leg, or the side, transmits double touch +as single touch, to which the imagination, therefore, the true inward +creatrix, instantly out of the chaos of elements or shattered fragments +of memory, puts together some form to fit it. And this [_imaginatio_] +derives an over-mastering sense of reality from the circumstance that +the power of reason, being in good measure awake, most generally +presents to us all the accompanying images very nearly as they existed +the moment before, when we fell out of anxious wakefulness into this +reverie. For example, the bed, the curtain, the room and its furniture, +the knowledge of who lives in the next room, and so forth contribute to +the illusion.... In short, the night-mare is not, properly, a dream, but +a species of reverie, akin to somnambulism, during which the +understanding and moral sense are awake, though more or less confused, +and over the terrors of which the reason can exert no influence, +because it is not true _terror_, that is, apprehension of danger, but is +itself a specific sensation = _terror corporeus sive materialis_. The +explanation and classification of these strange sensations, the organic +material analogous (_ideas materiales intermedias_, as the Cartesians +say) of Fear, Hope, Rage, Shame, and (strangest of all) Remorse, form at +present the most difficult, and at the same time the most interesting +problem of psychology, and are intimately connected with prudential +morals, the science, that is, of morals not as the ground and law of +duty, but in their relation to the empirical hindrances and focillations +in the realising of the law by human beings. The solution of this +problem would, perhaps, throw great doubt on the present [notion] that +the forms and feelings of sleep are always the reflections and confused +echoes of our waking thoughts and experiences. + + +[Sidenote: A MOMENT AND A MAGIC MIRROR] + +What a swarm of thoughts and feelings, endlessly minute fragments, and, +as it were, representations of all preceding and embryos of all future +thought, lie compact in any one moment! So, in a single drop of water, +the microscope discovers what motions, what tumult, what wars, what +pursuits, what stratagems, what a circle-dance of death and life, +death-hunting life, and life renewed and invigorated by death! The whole +world seems here in a many-meaning cypher. What if our existence was +but that moment? What an unintelligible, affrightful riddle, what a +chaos of limbs and trunk, tailless, headless, nothing begun and nothing +ended, would it not be? And yet scarcely more than that other moment of +fifty or sixty years, were that our all? Each part throughout infinite +diminution adapted to some other, and yet the whole a means to +nothing--ends everywhere, and yet an end nowhere. + +[Compare the three last lines of "What is Life?" + + Is very life by consciousness unbounded? + And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath, + A war-embrace of wrestling life and death? + + _P. W._, 1893, p. 173.] + + +[Sidenote: THAT INWARD EYE, THE BLISS OF SOLITUDE] + +The love of Nature is ever returned double to us, not only the delighter +in our delight, but by linking our sweetest, but of themselves +perishable feelings to distinct and vivid images, which we ourselves, at +times, and which a thousand casual recollections, recall to our memory. +She is the preserver, the treasurer of our joys. Even in sickness and +nervous diseases, she has peopled our imagination with lovely forms +which have sometimes overpowered the inward pain and brought with them +their old sensations. And even when all men have seemed to desert us +and the friend of our heart has passed on, with one glance from his +"cold disliking eye"--yet even then the blue heaven spreads it out and +bends over us, and the little tree still shelters us under its plumage +as a second cope, a domestic firmament, and the low creeping gale will +sigh in the heath-plant and soothe us by sound of sympathy till the +lulled grief lose itself in fixed gaze on the purple heath-blossom, till +the present beauty becomes a vision of memory. + + +[Sidenote: HESPERUS] + +I have never seen the evening star set behind the mountains, but it was +as if I had lost a hope out of my soul, as if a love were gone, and a +sad memory only remained. O it was my earliest affection, the evening +star! One of my first utterances in verse was an address to it as I was +returning from the New River, and it looked newly bathed as well as I. I +remember that the substance of the sonnet was that the woman whom I +could ever love would surely have been emblemed in the pensive serene +brightness of that planet, that we were both constellated to it, and +would after death return thither. + +[Sidenote: TO THE EVENING STAR] + + TO THE EVENING STAR + + O meek attendant of Sol's setting blaze, + I hail, sweet star, thy chaste effulgent glow; + On thee full oft with fixed eye I gaze, + Till I methinks, all spirit seem to grow. + O first and fairest of the starry choir, + O loveliest 'mid the daughters of the night, + Must not the maid I love like thee inspire + _Pure_ joy and _calm_ delight? + Must she not be, as is thy placid sphere, + Serenely brilliant? Whilst to gaze awhile + Be all my wish 'mid Fancy's high career + E'en till she quit this scene of earthly toil; + Then Hope perchance might fondly sigh to join + Her image in thy kindred orb, O star benign! + +[First printed from MS. _Poetical and Dramatic Works_, 1877-80; +_Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 11.] + + +[Sidenote: HEALTH, INDEPENDENCE, FRIENDSHIP] + +Where health is--at least, though pain be no stranger, yet when the +breath can rise, and turn round like a comet at its perihelion in its +ellipse, and again descend, instead of being a Sisiphus's stone; and the +chest can expand as by its own volition and the head sits firm yet +mobile aloft, like the vane of a tower on a hill shining in the blue +air, and appropriating sunshine and moonlight whatever weight of clouds +brood below--O when health and hope, and if not competence yet a +debtless _unwealth, libera et læta paupertas_, is his, a man may have +and love many friends, but yet, if indeed they be friends, he lives with +each a several and individual life. + + +[Sidenote: SELF-ABSORPTION AND SELFISHNESS] + +One source of calumny (I say _source_, because _allophoby_ from +_hëautopithygmy_ is the only proper _cause_) may be found in this--every +man's life exhibits two sorts of selfishness, those which are and those +which are not objects of his own consciousness. _A_ is thinking, +perhaps, of some plan in which he may benefit another, and during this +absorption consults his own little bodily comforts blindly--occupies the +best place at the fire-side, or asks at once, "Where am I to sit?" +instead of first inquiring after the health of another. Now the error +lies here, that _B_, in complaining of _A_, first takes for granted +either that these are acts of conscious selfishness in _A_, or, if he +allows the truth, yet considers them just as bad (and so perhaps they +may be in a certain sense), but _forgets_ that his own life presents the +same, judges of his own life exclusively by his own consciousness, that +of another by conscious and unconscious in a lump. A monkey's +anthropomorph attitudes we take for anthropic. + + +[Sidenote: SELF-ADVERTISING PHILANTHROPY] + +Try not to become disgusted with active benevolence, or despondent +because there is a _philanthropy-trade_. It is a sort of benefit-club of +virtue, supported by the contributions of paupers in virtue, founded by +genuine enthusiasts who gain a reputation for the thing--then slip in +successors who know how to avail themselves of the influence and +connections derived thereby--quite gratuitous, however, and +bustling-active--but yet _bribe high_ to become the unpaid physicians of +the dispensary at St. Luke's Hospital, and bow and scrape and intrigue, +Carlyleise and Knappise for it. And such is the [case with regard to] +the slave trade. The first abolitionists were the good men who laboured +when the thing seemed desperate--it was virtue for its own sake. Then +the quakers, Granville Sharp, etc.--then the restless spirits who are +under the action of tyrannical oppression from images, and, gradually, +mixed vanity and love of power with it--the politicians + saints = +Wilberforce. Last come the Scotchmen--and Brougham is now canvassing +more successfully for the seat of Wilberforce, who retires with great +honour and regret, from infirmities of age and _enoughness_. It is just +as with the great original benefactors and founders of useful plans, +Raleigh, Sir Hugh Middleton, etc.--men of genius succeeded by sharpers, +but who often can better carry on what they never could have first +conceived--and this, too, by their very want of those qualities and +virtues which were necessary to the discovery. + + +[Sidenote: "BUT LOVE IS INDESTRUCTIBLE"] + +All mere passions, like spirits and apparitions, have their hour of +cock-crow, in which they must vanish. But pure love is, therefore, no +_mere_ passion; and it is a test of its being love, that no reason can +be assigned _why_ it should disappear. Shall we not always, in this life +at least, remain _animæ dimidiatæ_?--must not the moral reason always +hold out the perfecting of each by union of both as good and lovely? +With reason, therefore, and conscience let love vanish, but let these +vanish only with our being. + + +[Sidenote: THE FEINT OF THE SLEEPLESS] + +The sick and sleepless man, after the dawn of the fresh day, is fain to +watch the smoke now from this and then from the other chimney of the +town from his bed-chamber, as if willing to borrow from others that +sense of a new day, of a discontinuity between the yesterday and the +to-day which his own sensations had not afforded. [Compare Wordsworth's +"Blessed Barrier Between Day and Day," Wordsworth's Third Sonnet to +Sleep, _Poetical Works_, 1889, 354.] + + +[Sidenote: FIRST THOUGHTS AND FRIENDSHIP] + +O what wisdom could I _talk_ to a YOUTH of genius and +genial-heartedness! O how little could I teach! and yet, though +despairing of success, I would attempt to enforce:--"Whenever you meet +with a person of undoubted talents, more especially if a woman, and of +apparent goodness, and yet you feel uncomfortable, and urged against +your nature, and, therefore, probably in vain, to be on your guard--then +take yourself to task and enquire what strong reason, moral or +prudential, you have to form any intimacy or even familiarity with that +person. If you after this (or moreover) detect any falsehood, or, what +amounts to the same, proneness and quickness to look into, to analyse, +to find out and represent evil or weakness in others (however this may +be disguised even from the person's own mind by _candour_, [in] pointing +out the good at the same time, by affectation of speculative truth, as +psychologists, or of telling you all their thoughts as open-hearted +friends), then let no reason but a strong and coercive one suffice to +make you any other than as formal and distant acquaintance as +circumstances will permit." And am I not now suffering, in part, for +forcing my feelings into slavery to my notions, and intellectual +admiration for a whole year and more with regard to ---- ? [So the MS.] +If I played the hypocrite to myself, can I blame my fate that he has, at +length, played the deceiver to me? Yet, God knows! I did it most +virtuously!--not only without vanity or any self-interest of however +subtle a nature, but from humility and a true delight in finding +excellence of any kind, and a disposition to fall prostrate before it. + + +[Sidenote: MILTON'S BLANK VERSE] + +To understand fully the mechanism, in order fully to feel the +incomparable excellence of Milton's metre, we must make four tables, or +a fourfold compartment, the first for the feet, single and composite, +for which the whole twenty-six feet of the ancients will be found +necessary; the second to note the construction of the feet, whether from +different or from single words--for who does not perceive the difference +to the ear between-- + + "Inextricable disobedience" and + + "To love or not: in this we stand or fall"-- + +yet both lines are composed of five iambics? The third, of the strength +and position, the concentration or diffusion of the _emphasis_. Fourth, +the length and position of the pauses. Then compare his narrative with +the harangues. I have not noticed the ellipses, because they either do +not affect the rhythm, or are not ellipses, but are comprehended in the +feet. + + +[Sidenote: APHORISMS OR PITHY SENTENCES] + +Shall I compare man to a clockwork Catamaran, destined to float on in a +meaner element for so many moments or hours, and then to explode, +scattering its _involucrum_ and itself to ascend into its proper +element? + + +I am persuaded that we love what is above us more than what is under +us. + + +Money--paper money--peace, war. How comes it that all men in all +companies are talking of the depreciation, etc. etc.--and yet that a +discourse on transubstantiation would not be a more withering sirocco +than the attempt to explain philosophically the true cure and causes of +that which interests all so vehemently? + + +All convalescence is a resurrection, a palingenesy of our youth--"and +loves the earth and all that live thereon with a new heart." But oh! the +anguish to have the aching freshness of yearning and no answering +object--only remembrances of faithless change--and unmerited alienation! + + +The sun at evening holds up her fingers of both hands before her face +that mortals may have one steady gaze--her transparent crimson fingers +as when a lovely woman looks at the fire through her slender palms. + + +O that perilous moment [for such there is] of a half-reconciliation, +when the coldness and the resentment have been sustained too long. Each +is drawing toward the other, but like glass in the mid-state between +fusion and compaction a single sand will splinter it. + + +Sometimes when I earnestly look at a beautiful object or landscape, it +seems as if I were on the _brink_ of a fruition still denied--as if +Vision were an _appetite_; even as a man would feel who, having put +forth all his muscular strength in an act of prosilience, is at the very +moment _held back_--he leaps and yet moves not from his place. + + +Philosophy in general, but a plummet to so short a line that it can +sound no deeper than the sounder's eyes can reach--and yet--in certain +waters it may teach the exact depth and prevent a drowning. + + +The midnight wild beasts staring at the hunter's torch, or when the +hunter sees the tiger's eye glaring on the red light of his own torch. + + +A summer-sailing on a still peninsulating river, and sweet as the delays +of parting lovers. + + +Sir F[rancis] B[urdett], like a Lapland witch drowned in a storm of her +own raising. Mr. Cobbett, who, for a dollar, can raise what, offer him +ten thousand dollars, he could not allay. + + +[Sidenote: August, 1811] + +Why do you make a book? Because my hands can extend but a few score +inches from my body; because my poverty keeps those hands empty when my +heart aches to empty them; because my life is short, and [by reason of] +my infirmities; and because a book, if it extends but to one edition, +will probably benefit three or four score on whom I could not otherwise +have acted, and, should it live and deserve to live, will make ample +compensation for all the aforestated infirmities. O, but think only of +the thoughts, feelings, radical impulses that have been implanted in how +many thousands by the little ballad of the "Children in the Wood"! The +sphere of Alexander the Great's agency is trifling compared with it. + + +[Sidenote: PRESENTIMENTS] + +One of the strangest and most painful peculiarities of my nature (unless +others have the same, and, like me, hide it, from the same inexplicable +feeling of causeless shame and sense of a sort of guilt, joined with the +apprehension of being feared and shrunk from as a something +transnatural) I will here record--and my motive, or, rather, impulse, to +do this seems an effort to eloign and abalienate it from the dark adyt +of my own being by a visual outness, and not the wish for others to see +it. It consists in a sudden second sight of some hidden vice, past, +present or to come, of the person or persons with whom I am about to +form a close intimacy--which never deters me, but rather (as all these +transnaturals) urges me on, just like the feeling of an eddy-torrent to +a swimmer. I see it as a vision, feel it as a prophecy, not as one +_given_ me by any other being, but as an act of my own spirit, of the +absolute _noumenon_, which, in so doing, seems to have offended against +some law of its being, and to have acted the traitor by a commune with +full consciousness independent of the tenure or inflected state of +association, cause and effect, &c. + + +[Sidenote: THE FIXED STARS OF TRUTH] + +As the most far-sighted eye, even aided by the most powerful telescope, +will not make a fixed star appear larger than it does to an ordinary and +unaided sight, even so there are heights of knowledge and truth sublime +which all men in possession of the ordinary human understanding may +comprehend as much and as well as the profoundest philosopher and the +most learned theologian. Such are the truths relating to the _logos_ and +its oneness with the self-existent Deity, and of the humanity of Christ +and its union with the _logos_. It is idle, therefore, to refrain from +preaching on these subjects, provided only such preparations have been +made as no man can be a Christian without. The misfortune is that the +majority are Christians only in name, and by birth only. Let them but +once, according to St. James, have looked down steadfastly into the +_law_ of liberty or freedom in their own souls (the will and the +conscience), and they are capable of whatever God has chosen to reveal. + + +[Sidenote: C'EST MAGNIFIQUE, MAIS CE N'EST PAS LA POÉSIE] + +A long line of (!!) marks of admiration would be its aptest symbol! It +has given me the eye-ache with dazzlement, the brain-ache with +wonderment, the stomach and all-ache with the shock and after-eddy +of contradictory feelings. Splendour is there, splendour +everywhere--distinct the figures as vivid--skill in construction of +events--beauties numberless of form and thought. But there is not +anywhere the "one low piping note more sweet than all"--there is not the +divine vision of the poet, which gives the full fruition of sight +without the effort--and where the feelings of the heart are struck, they +are awakened only to complain of and recoil from the occasion. O! it is +mournful to see and wonder at such a marvel of labour, erudition and +talent concentered into such a burning-glass of factitious power, and +yet to know that it is all in vain--like the Pyramids, it shows what can +be done, and, like them, leaves in painful and almost scornful +perplexity, why it was done, for what or whom. + + +[Sidenote: SILENCE IS GOLDEN September 29th, 1812] + +Grand rule in case of quarrels between friends or lovers--never to say, +hint, or do _anything_ in a moment of anger or indignation or sense of +ill-treatment, but to be passive--and even if the fit should recur the +next morning, still to delay it--in short, however plausible the motive +may be, yet if you have loved the persons concerned, not to say it till +their love has returned toward you, and your feelings are the same as +they were before. And for this plain reason--you knew this before, and +yet because you were in kindness, you never felt an impulse to speak of +it--then, surely, not now when you may perpetuate what would otherwise +be fugitive. + + +[Sidenote: THE DEVIL: A RECANTATION] + +"That not one of the _peculiarities_ of Christianity, no one point in +which, being clearly different from other religions or philosophies, it +would have, at least, the _possibility_ of being superior to all, is +retained by the modern Unitarians." This remark is occasioned by my +reflections on the fact that Christianity _exclusively_ has asserted the +_positive_ being of evil or sin, "of sin the exceeding sinfulness"--and +thence exclusively the _freedom_ of the creature, as that, the clear +intuition of which is, both, the result and the accompaniment of +redemption. The nearest philosophy to Christianity is the Platonic, and +it is observable that this is the mere antipodes of the +Hartleio-Lockian held by the Unitarians; but the true honours of +Christianity would be most easily manifested by a comparison even with +that "_nec pari nec secundo_," but yet "_omnibus aliis propriore_," the +Platonic! With what contempt, even in later years, have I not +contemplated the doctrine of a devil! but now I see the intimate +connection, if not as existent _person_, yet as essence and symbol with +Christianity--and that so far from being identical with Manicheism, it +is the surest antidote (that is, rightly understood). + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +_1814-1818_ + + + Lynx amid moles! had I stood by thy bed, + Be of good cheer, meek soul! I would have said: + I see a hope spring from that humble fear. + + S. T. C. + + +[Sidenote: SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY] + +The first man of science was he who looked into a thing, not to learn +whether it could furnish him with food, or shelter, or weapons, or +tools, or ornaments, or _playwiths_, but who sought to know it for the +gratification of _knowing_; while he that first sought to _know_ in +order to _be_ was the first philosopher. I have read of two rivers +passing through the same lake, yet all the way preserving their streams +visibly distinct--if I mistake not, the Rhone and the Adar, through the +Lake of Geneva. In a far finer distinction, yet in a subtler union, +such, for the contemplative mind, are the streams of knowing and being. +The lake is formed by the two streams in man and nature as it exists in +and for man; and up this lake the philosopher sails on the junction-line +of the constituent streams, still pushing upward and sounding as he +goes, towards the common fountain-head of both, the mysterious source +whose being is knowledge, whose knowledge is being--the adorable I AM IN +THAT I AM. + + +[Sidenote: PETRARCH'S EPISTLES] + +I have culled the following extracts from the First Epistle of the First +Book of Petrarch's Epistle, that "Barbato Salmonensi." [Basil, 1554, i. +76.] + + Vultûs, heu, blanda severi + Majestas, placidæque decus pondusque senectæ! + + Non omnia terræ + Obruta! vivit amor, vivit dolor! Ora negatum + Dulcia conspicere; at flere et meminisse relictum est. + + Jamque observatio vitæ + Multa dedit--lugere nihil, ferre omnia; jamque + Paulatim lacrymas rerum experientia tersit. + [Heu! et spem quoque tersit] + + Pectore nunc gelido calidos miseremur amantes, + Jamque arsisse pudet. Veteres tranquilla tumultus + Mens horret, relegensque alium putat esse locutum. + +But, indeed, the whole of this letter deserves to be read and +translated. Had Petrarch lived a century later, and, retaining all his +_substantiality_ of head and heart, added to it the elegancies and manly +politure of Fracastorius, Flaminius, Vida and their corrivals, this +letter would have been a classical gem. To a translator of genius, and +who possessed the English language as unembarrassed property, the +defects of style in the original would present no obstacle; nay, rather +an honourable motive in the well-grounded hope of rendering the version +a finer poem than the original. + +[Twelve lines of Petrarch's Ep. _Barbato Salmonensi_ are quoted in the +_Biog. Liter._ at the end of chapter x.; and a portion of the same poem +was prefixed as a motto to "Love Poems" in the _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817, +and the editions of _P. W._, 1828-9. _Coleridge's Works_, Harper & +Brother, 1853, iii. 314. See, too, _P. W._, 1893, _Editor's Note_, pp. +614, 634.] + + +[Sidenote: CORRUPTIO OPTIMI PESSIMA] + +A fine writer of bad principles or a fine poem on a hateful subject, +such as the "Alexis" of Virgil or the "Bathyllus" of Anacreon, I compare +to the flowers and leaves of the Stramonium. The flowers are remarkable +sweet, but such is the fetid odour of the leaves that you start back +from the one through disgust at the other. + + +[Sidenote: A BLISS TO BE ALIVE] + + Zephyrs that captive roam among these boughs, + Strive ye in vain to thread the leafy maze? + Or have ye lim'd your wings with honey-dew? + Unfelt ye murmur restless o'er my head + And rock the feeding drone or bustling bees + That blend their eager, earnest, happy hum! + + +[Sidenote: WHAT MAN HAS MADE OF MAN] + + Gravior terras infestat Echidna, + Cur sua vipereæ jaculantur toxica linguæ + Atque homini sit homo serpens. O prodiga culpæ + Germina, naturæque uteri fatalia monstra! + Queis nimis innocuo volupe est in sanguine rictus + Tingere, fraternasque fibras cognataque per se + Viscera, et arrosæ deglubere funera famæ. + Quæ morum ista lues! + +25th Feb. 1819 Five years since the preceding lines were written on this +leaf!! Ah! how yet more intrusively has the hornet scandal since then +scared away the bee of poetic thought and silenced its "eager, earnest, +happy hum"! + + +[Sidenote: SAVE ME FROM MY FRIENDS] + +The sore evil now so general, alas! only not universal, of supporting +our religion, just as a keen party-man would support his party in +Parliament. All must be defended which can give a momentary advantage +over any one opponent, no matter how naked it lays the cause open to +another, perhaps, more formidable opponent--no matter how incompatible +the two assumptions may be. We rejoice, not because our religion is the +truth, but because the truth appears to be our religion. Talk with any +dignified orthodoxist in the sober way of farther preferment and he will +concrete all the grounds of Socinianism, talk Paley and the Resurrection +as a proof and as the only proper _proof_ of our immortality, will give +to external evidence and miracles the same self-grounded force, the same +fundamentality. Even so the old Puritans felt towards the Papists. +Because so much was wrong, everything was wrong, and by denying all +reverence to the fathers and to the constant tradition of the Catholic +Churches, they undermined the wall of the city in order that it might +fall on the heads of the Romanists--thoughtless that by this very act +they made a Breach for the Arian and Socinian to enter. + + +[Sidenote: DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP] + +The ear-deceiving imitation of a steady soaking rain, while the sky is +in full uncurtainment of sprinkled stars and milky stream and dark blue +interspace. The rain had held up for two hours or more, but so deep was +the silence of the night that the _drip_ from the leaves of the garden +trees _copied_ a steady shower. + + +[Sidenote: REMEDIUM AMORIS] + +So intense are my affections, and so despotically am I governed by them +(not indeed so much as I once was, but still far, far too much) that I +should be the most wretched of men if my love outlived my esteem. But +this, thank Heaven! is the antidote. The bitterer the tear of anguish at +the clear detection of misapplied attachment, the calmer I am +afterwards. It is a funeral tear for an object no more. + + +[Sidenote: THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER] + +February 23, 1816. + +I thought I expressed my thoughts well when I said, "There is no +superstition but what has a religion as its base [or radical], and +religion is only reason, seen perspectively by a finite intellect." + + +[Sidenote: THE POWER OF WORDS] + +It is a common remark, in medical books for instance, that there are +certain niceties which words, from their always abstract and so far +general nature, cannot convey. Now this I am disposed to deny, that is, +in any comparative sense. In my opinion there is nothing which, being +equally known as any other thing, may not be conveyed by words with +equal clearness. But the question of the source of the remark is, to +whom? If I say that in jaundice the skin looks yellow, my words have no +meaning for a man who has no sense of colours. Words are but +remembrances, though remembrance may be so excited, as by the _a priori_ +powers of the mind to produce a _tertium aliquid_. The utmost, therefore +that should be said is that every additament of perception requires a +new word, which (like all other words) will be intelligible to all who +have seen the subject recalled by it, and who have learnt that such a +word or phrase was appropriated to it; and this may be attained either +by a new word, as _platinum_, _titanium_, _osmium_, etc., for the new +metals, or an epithet peculiarising the application of an old word. For +instance, no one can have attended to the brightness of the eyes in a +healthy person in high spirits and particularly delighted by some +occurrence, and that of the eye of a person deranged or predisposed to +derangement, without observing the difference; and, in this case, the +phrase "a maniacal glitter of the eye" conveys as clear a notion as that +jaundice is marked by yellow. There is, doubtless, a difference, but no +other than that of the _commencement_ of particular knowledge by the +application of universal knowledge (that is to all who have the senses +and common faculties of men), and the next step of knowledge when it +particularises itself. But the defect is not in words, but in the +imperfect knowledge of those to whom they are addressed. Then proof is +obvious. Desire a physician or metaphysician, or a lawyer to mention +the most perspicuous book in their several knowledges. Then bid them +read that book to a sensible carpenter or shoemaker, and a great part +will be as unintelligible as a technical treatise on carpentering to the +lawyer or physician, who had not been brought up in a carpenter's shop +or looked at his tools. + +I have dwelt on this for more reasons than one: first, because a remark +that seems at first sight the same, namely, that "everything clearly +perceived may be conveyed in simple common language," without taking in +the "to whom?" is the disease of the age--an arrogant pusillanimity, a +hatred of all information that cannot be obtained without thinking; and, +secondly, because the pretended imperfection of language is often a +disguise of muddy thoughts; and, thirdly, because to the mind itself it +is made an excuse for indolence in determining what the fact or truth is +which is the premise. For whether there does or does not exist a term in +our present store of words significant thereof--if not, a word must be +made--and, indeed, all wise men have so acted from Moses to Aristotle +and from Theophrastus to Linnæus. + +The sum, therefore, is this. The conveyal of knowledge by words is in +direct proportion to the stores and faculties of observation (internal +or external) of the person who hears or reads them. And this holds +equally whether I distinguish the green grass from the white lily and +the yellow crocus, which all who have eyes understand, because all are +equal to me in the knowledge of the facts signified--or of the +difference between the apprehensive, perceptive, conceptive, and +conclusive powers which I might [try to enunciate to] Doctors of +Divinity and they would translate the words by _Abra Ca Dabra_. + + +[Sidenote: FLOWERS OF SPEECH Sunday, April 30, 1816] + +Reflections on my four gaudy flower-pots, compared with the former +flower-poems. After a certain period, crowded with counterfeiters of +poetry, and illustrious with true poets, there is formed for common use +a vast _garden_ of language, all the showy and all the odorous words and +clusters of words are brought together, and to be plucked by mere +mechanic and passive memory. In such a state, any man of common poetical +reading, having a strong desire (to be?--O no! but--) to be thought a +poet will present a flower-pot gay and gaudy, but the _composition_! +That is wanting. We carry on judgment of times and circumstances into +our pleasures. A flower-pot which would have enchanted us before flower +gardens were common, for the very beauty of the component flowers, will +be rightly condemned as common-place, out of place (for such is a +common-place poet)--it involves a contradiction both in terms and +thought. So Homer's Juno, Minerva, etc., are read with delight--but +Blackmore? This is the reason why the judgment of those who are newlings +in poetic reading is not to be relied on. The positive, which belongs to +all, is taken as the comparative, which is the individual's praise. A +good ear which had never heard music--with what raptures would it praise +one of Shield's or Arne's Pasticcios and Centos! But it is the human +mind it praises, not the individual. Hence it may happen (I believe has +happened) that fashionableness may produce popularity. "The Beggar's +Petition" is a fair instance, and what if I dared to add Gray's "Elegy +in a Country Churchyard"? + + +[Sidenote: SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS] + +Men who direct what they call their understanding or common-sense by +rules abstracted from sensuous experience in moral and super-sensuous +truths remind one of the zemmi (mus [Greek: typhlos] or _typhlus_), "a +kind of rat in which the skin (conjunctiva) is not even transparent over +the eye, but is there covered with hairs as in the rest of the body. The +eye (= the understanding), which is scarcely the size of the poppy-seed, +is perfectly useless." An eel (_muroena coecilia_) and the myxine +(_gastobranchus coecus_) are blind in the same manner, through the +opacity of the conjunctiva. + + +[Sidenote: INSECTS] + +Sir G. Staunton asserts that, in the forests of Java, spiders' webs are +found of so strong a texture as to require a sharp-cutting instrument to +make way through them. Pity that he did not procure a specimen and bring +it home with him. It would be a pleasure to see a sailing-boat rigged +with them--twisting the larger threads into ropes and weaving the +smaller into a sort of silk canvas resembling the indestructible white +cloth of the arindy or _palma Christi_ silkworm. + + +The _Libellulidæ_ fly all ways without needing to turn their +bodies--onward, backward, right and left--with more than +swallow-rivalling rapidity of wing, readiness of evolution, and +indefatigable continuance. + + +The merry little gnats (_Tipulidæ minimæ_) I have myself often watched +in an April shower, evidently "dancing the hayes" in and out between the +falling drops, unwetted, or, rather, un-down-dashed by rocks of water +many times larger than their whole bodies. + + +[Sidenote: OF STYLE Sunday, January 25, 1817] + +A valuable remark has just struck me on reading Milton's beautiful +passage on true eloquence, his apology for Smectymnuus. "For me, reader, +though I cannot say," etc.--first, to shew the vastly greater numbers +of admirable passages, in our elder writers, that may be gotten by +heart as the most exquisite poems; and to point out the great +intellectual advantage of this reading, over the gliding smoothly on +through a whole volume of equability. But still, it will be said, there +is an antiquity, an oddness in the style. Granted; but hear this same +passage from the Smectymnuus, or this, or this. Every one would know at +first hearing that they were not written by Gibbon, Hume, Johnson, or +Robertson. But why? Are they not pure English? Aye! incomparably more +so! Are not the words precisely appropriate, so that you cannot change +them without changing the force and meaning? Aye! But are they not even +now intelligible to man, woman, and child? Aye! there is no +riddle-my-ree in them. What, then, is it? The unnatural, false, affected +style of the moderns that makes sense and simplicity _oddness_. + + +[Sidenote: OBDUCTÂ FRONTE SENECTUS] + +Even to a sense of shrinking, I felt in this man's face and figure what +a shape comes to view when age has dried away the mask from a bad, +depraved man, and flesh and colour no longer conceal or palliate the +traits of the countenance. Then shows itself the indurated nerve; stiff +and rigid in all its ugliness the inflexible muscle; then quiver the +naked lips, the cold, the loveless; then blinks the turbid eye, whose +glance no longer pliant _fixes_, abides in its evil expression. Then lie +on the powerless forehead the wrinkles of suspicion and fear, and +conscience-stung watchfulness. Contrast this with the countenance of +Mrs. Gillman's mother as she once described it to me. This for "Puff and +Slander,"[G] Highgate, 1817. + + +[Sidenote: A "KINGDOM-OF-HEAVENITE"] + +When the little creature has slept out its sleep and stilled its hunger +at the mother's bosom (that very hunger a mode of love all made up of +kisses), and coos, and wantons with pleasure, and laughs, and plays +bob-cherry with his mother, that is all, all to it. It understands not +either itself or its mother, but it clings to her, and has an undeniable +right to cling to her, seeks her, thanks her, loves her without +forethought and without an afterthought. + + +[Sidenote: A DIVINE EPIGRAM] + +_Nec mihi, Christe, tua sufficiunt sine te, nec tibi placent mea sine +me_, exclaims St. Bernard. _Nota Bene._--This single epigram is worth +(shall I say--O far rather--is a sufficient antidote to) a waggon-load +of Paleyan moral and political philosophies. + + +[Sidenote: SERIORES ROSÆ] + +We all look up to the blue sky for comfort, but nothing appears there, +nothing comforts, nothing answers us, and so we die. + + +Lie with the ear upon a dear friend's grave. + + +On the same man, as in a vineyard, grow far different grapes--on the +sunny south nectar, and on the bleak north verjuice. + + +The blossom gives not only future fruit, but present honey. We may take +the one, the other nothing injured. + + +Like some spendthrift Lord, after we have disposed of nature's great +masterpiece and [priceless] heirloom, the wisdom of innocence, we hang +up as a poor copy our [own base] cunning. + + +[Sidenote: A PLEA FOR SCHOLASTIC TERMS] + +The revival of classical literature, like all other revolutions, was not +an unmixed good. One evil was the passion for pure Latinity, and a +consequent contempt for the barbarism of the scholastic style and +terminology. For awhile the schoolmen made head against their +assailants; but, alas! all the genius and eloquence of the world was +against them, and by an additional misfortune the scholastic logic was +professed by those who had no other attainments, namely, the monks, and +these, from monkishness, were the enemies of all genius and liberal +knowledge. They were, of course, laughed out of the field as soon as +they lost the power of aiding their logic by the post-predicaments of +dungeon, fire, and faggot. Henceforward speculative philosophy must be +written classically, that is, without technical terms--therefore +popularly--and the inevitable consequence was that those sciences only +were progressive which were permitted by the apparent as well as real +necessity of the case to have a scientific terminology--as mathesis, +geometry, astronomy and so forth--while metaphysic sank and died, and an +empirical highly superficial psychology took its place. And so it has +remained in England to the present day. A man must have felt the pain of +being compelled to express himself either laxly or paraphrastically +(which latter is almost as great an impediment in intellectual +construction as the translation of letters and symbols into the thought +they represent would be in Algebra), in order to understand how much a +metaphysician suffers from not daring to adopt the _ivitates_ and +_eitates_ of the schoolmen as objectivity, subjectivity, negativity, +positivity. April 29, 1817, Tuesday night. + + +[Sidenote: THE BODY OF THIS DEATH] + +The sentimental _cantilena_ respecting the benignity and loveliness of +nature--how does it not sink before the contemplation of the pravity of +nature, on whose reluctance and inaptness a form is forced (the mere +reflex of that form which is itself absolute substance!) and which it +struggles against, bears but for a while and then sinks with the +alacrity of self-seeking into dust or _sanies_, which falls abroad into +endless nothings or creeps and cowers in poison or explodes in havock! +What is the beginning? what the end? And how evident an alien is the +supernatural in the brief interval! + + +[Sidenote: SPIRITUALISM AND MYSTICISM] + +There are many, alas! too many, either born or who have become deaf and +dumb. So there are too many who have perverted the religion of the +spirit into the superstition of spirits that mutter and mock and mow, +like deaf and dumb idiots. Plans of teaching the deaf and dumb have been +invented. For these the deaf and dumb owe thanks, and we for their +sakes. _Homines sumus et nihil humani a nobis alienum._ But does it +follow, therefore, that in _all_ schools these plans of teaching should +be followed? Yet in the other case this is insisted on--and the Holy +Ghost must not be our guide because mysticism and ghosts may come in +under this name. Why? Because the deaf and dumb have been promoted to +superintendents of education at large for all! + + +[Sidenote: IDEALISM AND SUPERSTITION] + +Save only in that in which I have a right to demand of every man that he +should be able to understand me, the experience or inward witnessing of +the conscience, and in respect of which every man in real life (even the +very disputant who affects doubt or denial in the moment of metaphysical +arguing) would hold himself insulted by the supposition that he did not +understand it--save in this only, and in that which if it be at all must +be _unique_, and therefore cannot be supported by an analogue, and +which, if it be at all, must be first, and therefore cannot have an +antecedent, and therefore may be _monstrated_, but cannot be +_de_monstrated.--I am no ghost-seer, I am no believer in apparitions. I +do not contend for indescribable sensations, nor refer to, much less +ground my convictions on, blind feelings or incommunicable experiences, +but far rather contend against these superstitions in the mechanic sect, +and impeach you as guilty, habitually and systematically guilty, of the +same. Guilty, I say, of superstitions, which at worst are but exceptions +and _fits_ in the poor self-misapprehending pietists, with whom, under +the name mystics, you would fain confound and discredit _all_ who +receive and worship God in spirit and in truth, and in the former as +the only possible mode of the latter. According to your own account, +your own scheme, you know nothing but your own sensations, indescribable +inasmuch as they are sensations--for the appropriate expression even of +which we must fly not merely to the indeclinables in the lowest parts of +speech, but to human articulations that only (like musical notes) _stand +for_ inarticulate sounds--the [Greek: oi, oi, papai] of the Greek +tragedies, or, rather, Greek oratorios. You see nothing, but only by a +sensation that conjures up an image in your own brain, or optic nerve +(as in a nightmare), have an apparition, in consequence of which, as +again in the nightmare, you are _forced_ to believe for the moment, and +are _inclined_ to infer the existence of a corresponding reality out of +your brain, but by what intermediation you cannot even form an +intelligible conjecture. During the years of ill-health from disturbed +digestion, I saw a host of apparitions, and heard them too--but I +attributed them to an act in my brain. You, according to your own +showing, see and hear nothing but apparitions in your brain, and +strangely attribute them to things that _are_ outside your skull. Which +of the two notions is most like the philosopher, which the +superstitionist? The philosopher who makes my apparitions nothing but +apparitions--a brain-image nothing more than a brain-image--and affirm +_nihil super stare_--or you and yours who vehemently contend that it is +but a brain-image, and yet cry, "_ast superstitit aliquid. Est super +stitio alicujus quod in externo, id est, in apparenti non apparet_." + +What is outness, external and the like, but either the generalisation of +apparence or the result of a given degree, a comparative intensity of +the same? "I see it in my mind's eye," exclaims Hamlet, when his +thoughts were in his own purview the same phantom, yea! in a higher +intensity, became his father's ghost and marched along the platform. I +quoted your own exposition, and dare you with these opinions charge +others with superstition? You who deny aught permanent in our being, you +with whom the soul, yea, the soul of the soul, our conscience and +morality, are but the _tune_ from a fragile barrel-organ played by air +and water, and whose life, therefore, must of course be a _pointing_ +to--as of a Marcellus or a Hamlet--"Tis here! 'Tis gone!" Were it +possible that I could actually believe such a system, I should not be +scared from striking it, from its being so _majestical_! + + +[Sidenote: THE GREATER DAMNATION] + +The old law of England punishes those who dig up the bones of the dead +for superstitious or magical purposes, that is, in order to injure the +living. What then are they guilty of who uncover the dormitories of the +departed, and throw their souls into hell, in order to cast odium on a +living truth? + + +[Sidenote: DARWIN'S BOTANICAL GARDEN] + +Darwin possesses the _epidermis_ of poetry but not the _cutis_; the +_cortex_ without the _liber_, _alburnum_, _lignum_, or _medulla_. And no +wonder! for the inner bark or _liber_, alburnum, and wood are one and +the same substance, in different periods of existence. + + +[Sidenote: SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY YARDS NOT EXACTLY A MILE] + +"It is a mile and a half in height." "How much is that in yards or +feet?" The mind rests satisfied in producing a correspondency in its own +thoughts, and in the exponents of those thoughts. This seems to be a +matter purely analytic, not yet properly synthetic. It is rather an +interchange of equivalent acts, but not the same acts. In the yard I am +prospective; in the mile I seem to be retrospective. Come, a hundred +strides more, and we shall have come a mile. This, if true, may be a +subtlety, but is it necessarily a trifle? May not many common but false +conclusions originate in the neglect of this distinction--in the +confounding of objective and subjective logic? + + +[Sidenote: OF A TOO WITTY BOOK] + +I like salt to my meat so well that I can scarce say grace over meat +without salt. But salt to one's salt! Ay! a sparkling, dazzling, lit-up +saloon or subterranean minster in a vast mine of rock-salt--what of +it?--full of white pillars and aisles and altars of eye-dazzling salt. +Well, what of it?--'twere an uncomfortable lodging or boarding-house--in +short, _all my eye_. Now, I am content with a work if it be but my eye +and Betty Martin, because, having never heard any charge against the +author of the adage, candour obliges me to conclude that Eliza Martin is +"sense for certain." In short, never was a metaphor more lucky, apt, +ramescent, and fructiferous--a hundred branches, and each hung with a +different graft-fruit--than salt as typical of wit--the uses of both +being the same, not to nourish, but to season and preserve nourishment. +Yea! even when there is plenty of good substantial meat to incorporate +with, stout aitch-bone and buttock, still there may be too much; and +they who confine themselves to such meals will contract a scorbutic +habit of intellect (_i.e._, a scurvy taste), and, with loose teeth and +tender gums, become incapable of chewing and digesting hard matters of +mere plain thinking. + + +[Sidenote: SPOOKS] + +It is thus that the Glanvillians reason. First, they assume the facts as +objectively as if the question related to the experimentable of our +senses. Secondly, they take the imaginative possibility--that is, that +the [assumed] facts involve no contradiction, [as if it were] a +scientific possibility. And, lastly, they [advocate] them as proofs of +a spiritual world and our own immortality. This last [I hold to] be the +greatest insult to conscience and the greatest incongruity with the +objects of religion. + +N.B.--It is amusing, in all ghost stories, etc., that the recorders are +"the farthest in the world from being credulous," or "as far from +believing such things as any man." + + +If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower +presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if +he found that flower in his hand when he awoke--Aye! and what then? + + +The more exquisite and delicate a flower of joy, the tenderer must be +the hand that plucks it. + + +Floods and general inundations render for the time even the purest +springs turbid. + + +For compassion a human heart suffices; but for full, adequate sympathy +with joy, an angel's. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote G: A projected satire, of which, perhaps, the lines headed "A +Character" were an instalment. See _P. W._, 1893, pp. 195-642. _Letters +of S. T. C._, 1895, ii. 631.] + + + + +CHAPTER X + +_1819-1828_ + + Where'er I find the Good, the True, the Fair, + I ask no names--God's spirit dwelleth there! + The unconfounded, undivided Three, + Each for itself, and all in each, to see + In man and Nature, is Philosophy. + + S. T. C. + + +[Sidenote: THE MOON'S HALO AN EMBLEM OF HOPE] + +The moon, rushing onward through the coursing clouds, advances like an +indignant warrior through a fleeing army; but the amber halo in which +she moves--O! it is a circle of Hope. For what she leaves behind her has +not lost its radiance as it is melting away into oblivion, while, still, +the other semi-circle catches the rich light at her approach, and +heralds her ongress. + + +[Sidenote: A COMPLEX VEXATION] + +It is by strength of mind that we are to untwist the tie or copula of +the besom of affliction, which not nature but the strength of +imagination had twisted round it, and thus resolve it into its component +twigs, and conquer in detail "one down and t'other come on"! _Dividendo +diminuitur_--which forms the true ground of the advantage accruing from +communicating our griefs to another. We enable ourselves to see them +each in its true magnitude. + + +[Sidenote: THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF ENGLAND] + +After re-perusal of my inefficient, yet not feeble efforts in behalf of +the poor little white slaves in the cotton-factories, I ask myself, "But +still are we not better than the other nations of Christendom?" +Yes--Perhaps. I don't know. I dare not affirm it. Better than the French +certainly! Mammon _versus_ Moloch and Belial. But Sweden, Norway, +Germany, the Tyrol? No. + + +[Sidenote: THE MEED OF PRAISE] + +There is a species of applause scarcely less genial to a poet, whether +bard, musician, or artist, than the vernal warmth to the feathered +songsters during their nest-building 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. Alas! alas! alas! + + +[Sidenote: THE GREAT UNKNOWN] + +Anonymity is now an artifice to acquire celebrity, as a black veil is +worn to make a pair of bright eyes more conspicuous. + + +[Sidenote: BOOK-LEARNING FOR LEGISLATORS] + +For the same reasons that we cannot now act by impulses, but must think, +so now must every legislator be a man of sound book-learning, because he +cannot, if he would, think or act from the simple dictates of unimproved +but undepraved common sense. Newspapers, reviews, and the conversation +of men who derive their opinions from newspapers and reviews will secure +for him artificial opinions, if he does not secure them for himself from +purer and more authentic sources. There is now no such being as a +country gentleman. Like their relation, the Dodo, the race is extinct, +or if by accident one has escaped, it belongs to the Museum, not to +active life, or the purposes of active life. + + +[Sidenote: THEISM AND ATHEISM] + +The more I read and reflect on the arguments of the truly philosophical +theists and atheists, the more I feel convinced that the ultimate +difference is a moral rather than an intellectual one, that the result +is an x y z, an acknowledged insufficiency of the known to account for +itself, and, therefore, a something unknown--that to which, while the +atheist leaves it a blank in the understanding, the theist dedicates his +noblest feelings of love and awe, and with which, by a moral syllogism, +he connects and unites his conscience and actions. For the words +goodness and wisdom are clearly only reflexes of the effect, just as +when we call the unknown cause of cold and heat by the name of its +effects, and _know_ nothing further. For if we mean that a Being like +man, with human goodness and intellect, only magnified, is the cause, +that is, that the First Cause is an immense man (as according to +Swedenborg and Zinzendorf), then come the insoluble difficulties of the +incongruity of qualities whose very essence implies finiteness, with a +Being _ex hypothesi_ infinite. + + +[Sidenote: THE MIND'S EYE] + +An excellent instance of the abstraction [from objects of the sense] +that results from the attention converging to any one object, is +furnished by the oily rags, broken saucers, greasy phials, dabs, crusts, +and smears of paints in the laboratory of a Raphael, or a Claude +Lorraine, or a Van Huysum, or any other great master of the beautiful +and becoming. In like manner, the mud and clay in the modelling hand of +a Chantrey--what are they to him whose total soul is awake, in his eye +as a subject, and before his eye as some ideal of beauty _objectively_? +The various objects of the senses are as little the objects of _his_ +senses, as the ink with which the "Lear" was written, existed in the +consciousness of a Shakspere. + + +[Sidenote: A LAND OF BLISS] + +The humming-moth with its glimmer-mist of rapid unceasing motion before +the humble-bee within the flowering bells and cups--and the eagle +_level_ with the clouds, himself a cloudy speck, surveys the vale from +mount to mount. From the cataract flung on the vale, the broadest +fleeces of the snowy foam light on the bank flowers or the water-lilies +in the stiller pool below. + + +[Sidenote: TIME AND ETERNITY] + +The defect of Archbishop Leighton's reasoning is the taking eternity for +a sort of time, a _baro major_, a baron of beef or quarter of lamb, out +of which and off which time is cut, as a brisket or shoulder--while, +even in common discourse, without any design of sounding the depth of +the truth or of weighing the words expressing it in the hair-balance of +metaphysics, it would be more convenient to consider eternity the _simul +et totum_ as the _antitheton_ of time. + + +[Sidenote: THE LITERARY STERILITY OF ISLAMISM] + +The extraordinary florency of letters under the Spanish Caliphate in +connection with the character and capabilities of Mohammedanism has +never yet been treated as its importance requires. Halim II, founder of +the University of Cordova, and of numerous colleges and libraries +throughout Spain, is said to have possessed a library of six hundred +thousand MSS., the catalogue filling forty-four volumes. Nor were his +successors behind him in zeal and munificence. That the prime article of +Islamism, the uni-personality of God, is one cause of the downfall, say +rather of the merely meteoric existence of their literary age, I am +persuaded, but the exclusive scene (in Spain) suggests many interesting +views. With a learned class Mohammedanism could not but pass into Deism, +and Deism never did, never can, establish itself as a religion. It is +the doctrine of the tri-unity that connects Christianity with +philosophy, gives a positive religion a specific interest to the +philosopher, and that of redemption to the moralist and psychologist. +Predestination, in the plenitude, in which it is equivalent to fatalism, +was the necessary alternative and _succedaneum_ of Redemption, and the +Incarnation the only preservative against pantheism on one side, and +anthropomorphism on the other. The Persian (Europeans in Asia) form of +Mohammedanism is very striking in this point of view. + + +[Sidenote: THE SPIRIT OF A PEOPLE] + +It is not by individual character that an individual can derive just +conclusions respecting a community or an age. Conclusions so drawn are +the excuse of selfish, narrow and pusillanimous statesmen, who, by +dwelling on the kindred baseness or folly of the persons with whom they +come in immediate contact, lose all faith in human nature, ignorant that +even in these a spark is latent which would light up and consume the +worthless overlay in a national moment. The spirit of a race is the +character of a people, the sleep or the awakening of which depends on a +few minds, pre-ordained for this purpose, and sometimes by the mere +removal of the dead weight of a degenerate Court or nobility pressing on +the spring. So I doubt not would it be with the Turks, were the Porte +and its seraglio conquered by Russia. But the spirit of a race ought +never to be supposed extinct, but on the other hand no more or other +ought to be expected than the race contains in itself. The true cause of +the irrecoverable fall of Rome is to be found in the fact, that Rome was +a city, a handful of men that multiplied its subjects incomparably +faster than its citizens, so that the latter were soon dilute and lost +in the former. On a similar principle colonists in modern times +degenerate by _excision_ from their race (the ancient colonies were +_buds_). This, I think, applies to the Neapolitans and most of the +Italian States. A nest of republics keep each other alive; but a +patchwork of principalities has the effect of excision by insulation, or +rather by compressure. How long did the life of Germany doze under these +ligatures! Yet did we not _despair wrongfully_ of the people? The spirit +of the race survived, of which literature was a part. Hence I dare not +despair of Greece, because it has been barbarised and enslaved, but not +split up into puny independent governments under Princes of their own +race. The Neapolitans have always been a conquered people, and +degenerates in the original sense of the word, _de genere_--they have +lost their race, though what it was is uncertain. Lastly, the individual +in all things is the prerogative of the divine knowledge. What it is, +our eyes can see only by what it has in common, and this can only be +seen in communities where neither excision, nor ligature, nor commixture +exists. Despotism and superstition will not extinguish the character of +a race, as Russia testifies. But again, take care to understand that +character, and expect no other fruit than the root contains in its +nature. + + +[Sidenote: THE FLIGHT OF MOHAMMED] + +Had I proceeded, in concert with R. Southey, with the "Flight and Return +of Mohammed," [1799] I had intended to introduce a disputation between +Mahomet, as the representative of unipersonal Theism with the +Judaico-Christian machinery of angels, genii, and prophets, an idolater +with his gods, heroes, and spirits of the departed mighty, and a +fetish-worshipper who adored the invisible alone, and held no religion +common to all men or any number of men other than as they chanced at the +same moment to be acted on by the same influence--even as when a hundred +ant-hills are in motion under the same burst of sunshine. And, still, +chiefly for the sake of the last scheme, I should like to do something +of the kind. My enlightened fetish-divine would have been an Okenist, a +zoo-magnetist and (a priest of) the night-side of Nature. + +[For the fragment entitled "Mahomet," see _P. W._, 1893, p. 139, and +editor's _Note_, p. 615.] + + +[Sidenote: PRUDENCE _VERSUS_ FRIENDSHIP] + +Among the countless arguments against the Paleyans state, this too--Can +a wise moral legislator have made _prudence_ the true principle-ground, +and guide of moral conduct, where in almost all cases in which there is +contemplation to act wrong the first appearances of prudence are in +favour of immorality, and, in order to ground the contrary on a +principle of prudence, it is necessary to refine, to calculate, to look +far onward into an uncertain future? Is this a guide, or primary guide, +that for ever requires a guide against itself? Is it not a strange +system which sets prudence against prudence? Compare this with the Law +of Conscience--Is it not its specific character to be immediate, +positive, unalterable? In short, _a priori_, state the requisites of a +moral guide, and apply them first to prudence, and then to the law of +pure reason or conscience, and ask if we need fear the result if the +Judge is pure from all bribes and prejudices. + +What then are the real dictates of prudence as drawn from every man's +experience in late manhood, and so lured from the intoxication of +youth, hope, and love? How cold, how dead'ning, what a dire vacuum they +would leave in the soul, if the high and supreme sense of duty did not +form a root out of which new prospects budded. What, I say, is the clear +dictate of prudence in the matter of friendship? Assuredly to _like_ +only, and never to be so attached as to be stripped naked by the loss. A +friend may be a great-coat, a beloved a couch, but never, never our +necessary clothing, our only means of quiet heart-repose! And, yet, with +this the mind of a generous man would be so miserable, that prudence +itself would fight against prudence, and advise him to drink off the +draught of Hope, spite of the horrid and bitter dregs of disappointment, +with which the draught will assuredly finish. + +Though I have said that duty is a consolation, I have not affirmed that +the scar of the wound of disappointed love and insulted, betrayed +fidelity would be removed in _this_ life. No! it will not--nay, the very +duty must for ever keep alive feelings the appropriate objects of which +are indeed in another world; but yet our human nature cannot avoid at +times the connection of those feelings with their original or their +first forms and objects; and so far, therefore, from removing the scar, +will often and often make the wound open and bleed afresh. But, still, +we know that the feeling is not objectless, that the counterfeit has a +correspondent genuine, and this is the comfort. + + +[Sidenote: A POET ON POETRY] + +_Canzone XVIII. fra le Rime di Dante_ is a poem of wild and interesting +images, intended as an enigma, and to me an enigma it remains, spite of +all my efforts. Yet it deserves transcription and translation. A.D. 1806 +[? 1807]. + +"Tre donne intorno al cuor mi son venute," &c. + +[After the four first lines the handwriting is that of my old, dear, and +honoured friend, Mr. Wade, of Bristol.--S. T. C.] + +_Ramsgate, Sept. 2nd, 1819._--I _begin_ to understand the above poem, +after an interval from 1805, during which no year passed in which I did +not reperuse, I might say construe, parse, and spell it, twelve times at +least--such a fascination had it, spite of its obscurity! It affords a +good instance, by the bye, of that soul of _universal_ significance in a +true poet's composition, in addition to the specific meaning. + + +[Sidenote: GREAT AND LITTLE MINDS] + +Great minds can and do create the taste of the age, and one of the +contingent causes which warp the taste of nations and ages is, that men +of genius in part yield to it, and in part are acted on by the taste of +the age. + + +Common minds may be compared to the component drops of the stream of +life--men of genius to the large and small bubbles. What if they break? +they are still as good as the rest--drops of water. + + +[Sidenote: SUBJECT AND OBJECT] + +In youth our happiness is hope; in age the recollection of the hopes of +youth. What else can there be?--for the substantial mind, for the _I_, +what else can there be? Pleasure? Fruition? Filter hope and memory from +pleasure, and the more entire the fruition the more is it the death of +the _I_. A neutral product results that may exist for others, but no +longer for itself--a coke or a slag. To make the object one with us, we +must become one with the object--_ergo, an_ object. _Ergo_, the object +must be itself a subject--partially a favourite dog, principally a +friend, wholly God, _the_ Friend. God is Love--that is, an object that +is absolutely subject (God is a spirit), but a subject that for ever +condescends to become the object for those that meet Him subjectively. +[As in the] Eucharist, [He is] verily and truly present to the Faithful, +neither [by a] _trans_ nor _con_, but [by] _substantiation_. + + +[Sidenote: THE THREE ESTATES OF BEING] + +We might as well attempt to conceive more than three dimensions of +space, as to imagine more than three kinds of living existence--God, +man, and beast. And even of these the last (division) is obscure, and +scarce endures a fixed contemplation without passing into an unripe or +degenerated humanity. + + +[Sidenote: A LIFE-LONG ERROR] + +My mother told my wife that I was a year younger, and that there was a +blunder made either in the baptismal register itself or in the +transcript sent for my admission into Christ's Hospital; and Mrs. C., +who is older than myself, believes me only 48. Be this as it may, in +_life_, if not in years, I am, alas! nearer to 68. + +[S. T. C. was born on October 21, 1772. Consequently, on October 20, +1819, he was not yet forty-seven. He entered his forty-eighth year +October 21, 1819.] + + +[Sidenote: AN UNWRITTEN SONNET] + +N.B.--A sonnet on the child collecting shells and pebbles on the +sea-shore or lake-side, and carrying each with a fresh shout of delight +and admiration to the mother's apron, who smiles and assents to each +"This is pretty!" "Is not that a nice one?" and then when the prattler +is tired of its _conchozetetic_ labours lifts up her apron and throws +them out on her apron. Such are our first discoveries both in science +and philosophy.--S. T. Coleridge, Oct. 21, 1819. + + +[Sidenote: MILTON AND SHAKSPERE] + +Found Mr. G. with Hartley in the garden, attempting to explain to +himself and to Hartley a feeling of a something not present in Milton's +works, that is, in "Paradise Lost," "Paradise Regained," and "Samson +Agonistes," which he _did_ feel delightedly in the "Lycidas," and (as I +added afterwards) in the Italian sonnets compared with the English. And +this appeared to me to be the _poet_ appearing and wishing to appear as +the poet, and, likewise, as the man, as much as, though more rare than, +the father, the brother, the preacher, and the patriot. Compare with +Milton, Chaucer's "Fall of the Leaf" and Spenser throughout, and you +cannot but _feel_ what Gillman meant to convey. What is the solution? +This, I believe--but I must premise that there is a _synthesis_ of +intellectual insight including the mental object, the organ of the +correspondent being indivisible, and this (O deep truth!) because the +objectivity consists in the universality of its subjectiveness--as when +it _sees_, and millions _see_ even so, and the seeing of the millions is +what constitutes to _A_ and to each of the millions the _objectivity_ of +the sight, the equivalent to a common object--a synthesis of _this_, I +say, and of proper external object which we call _fact_. Now, this it is +which we find in religion. It is more than philosophical truth--it is +other and more than historical fact; it is not made up by the addition +of the one to the other, but it is the _identity_ of both, the +co-inherence. + +Now, this being understood, I proceed to say, using the term objectivity +(arbitrarily, I grant), for this identity of truth and fact, that Milton +hid the poetry in or transformed (not trans-substantiated) the poetry +into this objectivity, while Shakspere, in all things, the divine +opposite or antithetic correspondent of the divine Milton, transformed +the objectivity into poetry. + +Mr. G. observed as peculiar to the Hamlet, that it alone, of all +Shakspere's plays, presented to him a moving along _before_ him; while +in others it was a moving, indeed, but with which he himself moved +equally in all and with all, and without any external something by which +the motion was manifested, even as a man would move in a balloon--a +sensation of motion, but not a sight of moving and having been moved. +And why is this? Because of all the characters of Shakspere's plays +Hamlet is the only character with which, by contra-distinction from the +rest of the _dramatis personæ_, the fit and capable reader identifies +himself as the representation of his own contemplative and strictly +proper and very own being (action, etc., belongs to others, the moment +we call it our own)--hence the events of the play, with all the +characters, move because you stand still. In the other plays, your +identity is equally diffused over all. Of no parts can you say, as in +Hamlet, they are moving. But ever it is _we_, or that period and portion +of human action, which is unified into a dream, even as in a dream the +personal unity is diffused and severalised (divided to the sight though +united in the dim feeling) into a sort of reality. Even so [it is with] +the styles of Milton and Shakspere--the same weight of effect from the +exceeding _felicity_ (subjectively) of Shakspere, and the exceeding +_propriety_ (_extra arbitrium_) of Milton. + + +[Sidenote: A ROYAL ROAD TO KNOWLEDGE] + +The best plan, I think, for a man who would wish his mind to continue +growing is to find, in the first place, some means of ascertaining for +himself whether it does or no; and I can think of no better than early +in life, say after three-and-twenty, to procure gradually the works of +some two or three great writers--say, for instance, Bacon, Jeremy +Taylor, and Kant, with the _De Republicâ_, _De Legibus_, the _Sophistes_ +and _Politicus_ of Plato, and the _Poetics_, _Rhetorics_, and _Politics_ +of Aristotle--and amidst all other reading, to make a point of +reperusing some one, or some weighty part of some one of these every +four or five years, having from the beginning a separate note-book for +each of these writers, in which your impressions, suggestions, +conjectures, doubts and judgments are to be recorded with date of each, +and so worded as to represent most sincerely the exact state of your +convictions at the time, such as they would be if you did not (which +this plan will assuredly make you do sooner or later) anticipate a +change in them from increase of knowledge. "It is possible that I am in +the wrong, but so it now appears to me, after my best attempts; and I +must therefore put it down in order that I may find myself so, if so I +am." It would make a little volume to give in detail all the various +moral as well as intellectual advantages that would result from the +systematic observation of the plan. Diffidence and hope would +reciprocally balance and excite each other. A continuity would be given +to your being, and its progressiveness ensured. All your knowledge +otherwise obtained, whether from books or conversation or experience, +would find centres round which it would organise itself. And, lastly, +the habit of confuting your past self, and detecting the causes and +occasions of your having mistaken or overlooked the truth, will give you +both a quickness and a winning kindness, resulting from sympathy, in +exposing the errors of others, as if you were an _alter ego_, of his +mistake. And such, indeed, will your antagonist appear to you, another +past self--in all points in which the falsity is not too plainly a +derivation from a corrupt heart and the predominance of bad passion or +worldly interests overlaying the love of truth as truth. And even in +this case the liveliness with which you will so often have expressed +yourself in your private note-books, in which the words, unsought for +and untrimmed because intended for your own eye, exclusively, were the +first-born of your first impressions, when you were either enkindled by +admiration of your writer, or excited by a humble disputing with him +reimpersonated in his book, will be of no mean rhetorical advantage to +you, especially in public and extemporary debate or animated +conversation. + + +[Sidenote: THE IDEA OF GOD] + +Did you deduce your own being? Even that is less absurd than the conceit +of deducing the Divine being? Never would you have had the notion, had +you not had the idea--rather, had not the idea worked in you like the +memory of a name which we cannot recollect and yet feel that we have and +which reveals its existence in the mind only by a restless anticipation +and proves its _a priori_ actuality by the almost explosive +instantaneity with which it is welcomed and recognised on its +re-emersion out of the cloud, or its re-ascent from the horizon of +consciousness. + + +[Sidenote: APHORISMS AND ADAGES] + +I should like to know whether or how far the delight I feel, and have +always felt, in adages or aphorisms of universal or very extensive +application is a general or common feeling with men, or a peculiarity of +my own mind. I cannot describe how much pleasure I have derived from +"Extremes meet," for instance, or "Treat everything according to its +nature," and, the last, "Be"! In the last I bring all inward rectitude +to its test, in the former all outward morality to its rule, and in the +first all problematic results to their solution, and reduce apparent +contraries to correspondent opposites. How many hostile tenets has it +enabled me to contemplate as fragments of truth, false only by negation +and mutual exclusion? + + +[Sidenote: IGNORE THYSELF July 12, 1822] + +I have myself too often of late used the phrase "rational self-love" the +same as "enlightened self-love." O no more of this! What have love, +reason or light to do with _self_, except as the dark and evil spirit +which it is given to them to overcome! _Soul-love_, if you please. O +there is more stuff of thought in our simple and pious fore-elders' +adjuration, "Take pity of your poor soul!" than in all the volumes of +Paley, Rochefoucauld, and Helvetius! + + +[Sidenote: RUGIT LEO] + +N.B.--The injurious manner in which men of genius are treated, not only +as authors, but even when they are in social company. _A_ is believed to +be, or talked of as, a man of unusual talent. People are anxious to +meet him. If he says little or nothing, they wonder at the report, never +considering whether they themselves were fit either to excite, or if +self-excited to receive and comprehend him. But with the simplicity of +genius he attributes more to them than they have, and they put questions +that cannot be answered but by a return to first principles, and then +they complain of him as not conversing, but lecturing. "He is quite +intolerable," "Might as well be hearing a sermon." In short, in answer +to some objection, _A_ replies, "Sir, this rests on the distinction +between an _idea_ and an _image_, and, likewise, its difference from a +perfect _conception_." "Pray, sir, explain." Because he does not and +cannot [state the case as concisely as if he had been appealed to about +a hand at] whist, 'tis "Lord! how long he talks," and they never ask +themselves, Did this man force himself into your company? Was he not +dragged into it? What is the practical result? That the man of genius +should live as much as possible with beings that simply love him, from +relationship or old association, or with those that have the same +feelings with himself; but in all other company he will do well to cease +to be the man of genius, and make up his mind to appear dull or +commonplace as a companion, to be the most silent except upon the most +trivial subjects of any in the company, to turn off questions with a +joke or a pun as not suiting a wine-table, and to trust only to his +writings. + + +[Sidenote: A BROKEN HEART] + +Few die of a _broken heart_, and these few (the surgeons tell us) know +nothing of it, and, dying suddenly, leave to the dissector the first +discovery. O this is but the shallow remark of a hard and unthinking +prosperity! Have you never seen a stick broken in the middle, and yet +cohering by the rind? The fibres, half of them actually broken and the +rest sprained and, though tough, unsustaining? O many, many are the +broken-hearted for those who know what the moral and practical heart of +the man is! + + +[Sidenote: VOX HIEMALIS Thursday, Sept. 30, 1824] + +Now the breeze through the stiff and brittle-becoming foliage of the +trees counterfeits the sound of a rushing stream or water-flood suddenly +sweeping by. The sigh, the modulated continuousness of the murmur is +exchanged for the confusion of overtaking sounds--the self-evolution of +the One, for the clash or stroke of ever-commencing contact of the +multitudinous, without interspace, by confusion. The short gusts rustle +and the ear feels the unlithesome dryness, before the eye detects the +coarser, duller, though deeper green, deadened and not [yet] awakened +into the hues of decay--echoes of spring from the sepulchral vault of +winter. The aged year, conversant with the forms of its youth and +forgetting all the intervals, feebly reproduces them [as it were, from], +memory. + + +[Sidenote: CONSTANCY Friday, June 9, 1826] + +"Constancy lives in realms above." This exclusion of constancy from the +list of earthly virtues may be a poet's exaggeration, but, certainly, it +is of far rarer occurrence in _all_ relations of life than the young and +warm-hearted are willing to believe, but in cases of _exclusive_ +attachment (that is, in Love, properly so-called, and yet distinct from +Friendship), and in the _highest_ form of the Virtue, it is _so_ rare +that I cannot help doubting whether an instance of _mutual_ constancy in +effect ever existed. For there are two sorts of constancy, the one +negative, where there is no _transfer_ of affection, where the bond of +attachment is not broken though it may be attenuated to a thread--this +may be met with, not so seldom, and, where there is goodness of heart, +it may be expected--but the other sort, or _positive_ constancy, where +the affection endures in the same intensity with the same or increased +tenderness and _nearness_, of this it is that I doubt whether once in an +age an instance occurs where _A_ feels it toward _B_, and _B_ feels it +towards _A_, and _vice versâ_. + + +[Sidenote: FLOWERS AND LIGHT April 18, 1826] + +Spring flowers, I have observed, look best in the day, and by sunshine: +but summer and autumnal flower-pots by lamp or candle-light. I have now +before me a flower-pot of cherry-blossoms, polyanthuses, double violets, +periwinkles, wall-flowers, but how dim and dusky they look! The scarlet +anemone is an exception, and three or four of them with all the rest of +the flower-glass sprays of white blossoms, and one or two periwinkles +for the sake of the dark green leaves, green stems, and flexible elegant +form, make a lovely group both by sun and by candle-light. + + +Grove, Highgate. + +[Sidenote: THE BREATH OF SPRING Feb. 28, 1827] + +What an interval! Heard the singing birds this morning in our garden for +the first time this year, though it rained and blew fiercely; but the +long frost has broken up, and the wind, though fierce, was warm and +westerly. + + +[Sidenote: THE IDEA OF LIFE May 5, 1827] + +To the right understanding of the most awfully _concerning_ declaration +of Holy Writ there has been no greater obstacle than the want of insight +into the nature of Life--what it is and what it is not. But in order to +this, the mind must have been raised to the contemplation of the +_Idea_--the life celestial, to wit--or the distinctive essence and +character of the Holy Spirit. Here Life is _Love_--communicative, +outpouring love. _Ergo_, the terrestrial or the Life of Nature ever the +shadow and opposite of the Divine is appropriative, absorbing +_appetence_. But the great mistake is, that the soul cannot continue +without life; for, if so, with what propriety can the portion of the +reprobate soul be called Death? What if the natural life have two +possible terminations--true Being and the falling back into the dark +Will? + + +[Sidenote: A COMPREHENSIVE FORMULA] + +The painter-parson, Rev. Mr. Judkin, is about to show off a Romish +priest converted to the Protestant belief, on Sunday next at his church, +and asked of me (this day, at Mr. Gray's, Friday, 27th July, 1827) +whether I knew of any form of recantation but that of Archbishop +Tenison. I knew nothing of Tenison's or any other, but expressed my +opinion that no other recantation ought to be required than a +declaration that he admitted no outward authority superior to, or +co-ordinate with, the canonical Scriptures, and no interpreter that +superseded or stood in the place of the Holy Spirit, enlightening the +mind of each true believer, according to his individual needs. I can +conceive a person holding all the articles that distinguish the Romish +from the Protestant conception, with this one exception; and, yet, if he +did make this exception, and professed to believe them, because he +thought they were contained in, or to be fairly inferred from, right +reason and the Scriptures, I should consider him as true a Protestant +as Luther, Knox, or Calvin, and a far better than Laud and his +compeers, however meanly I might think of him as a philosopher and +theologian. The laying so great a stress on transubstantiation I have +long regarded as the great calamity or error of the Reformation--if not +constrained by circumstances, the great _error_--or, if constrained, the +great _calamity_. + + +[Sidenote: THE NIGHT IS AT HAND August 1, 1828] + +The sweet prattle of the chimes--counsellors pleading in the court of +Love--then the clock, the solemn sentence of the mighty Judge--long +pause between each pregnant, inappellable word, too deeply weighed to be +reversed in the High-Justice-Court of Time and Fate. A more richly +solemn sound than this eleven o'clock at Antwerp I never heard--dead +enough to be opaque as central gold, yet clear enough to be the mountain +air. + + + + +INDEX OF PROPER NAMES + + + _Abergavenny, The_, 132 + + Achilles, 25 + + Adam, 51 + + Adar River, 261 + + Africa, 70, 71 + + Alexander the Great, 256 + + Alfieri, 230 + + Allen, Robert, 139, 140 _n_ + + Allston, Washington, 167, 175 + + Anacreon, 183, 263 + + Antonio, St., 78 + + Antwerp, 307 + + Aphrodite, 192 + + Apollo, 110 + + Ariosto, 151, 230 + + Aristotle, 183, 222, 268, 298 + + Arne, 270 + + Arrian, 183 + + Augustine, St., 179 + + + Bacon, F. (Lord Verulam), 21, 79, 151, 177, 183, 298 + + Ball, Sir Alexander, 206 + + Ball, Lady, 92 + + Barrow, J., 26, 47 + + Bassenthwaite, 18 + + Barclay, W. ("Argenis"), 207 + + Beaumont, Francis, 207 + + Beaumont, Sir George, 67, 79, 145 + + Beaumont, Lady, 67 + + Beddoes, Thomas, M.D., 239 _n_ + + Bentham, 127 + + Berkeley, Bishop, 183 + + Bernard, Saint, 273 + + Bernouilli, 152 + + Beverley, 94 + + Blackmore, 24, 270 + + Blount, Sir Edward, 63 + + Blumenbach, 67 + + Boccaccio, 46 + + Bonnet, 152 + + Borrowdale, 34, 35, 52 + + Bosch, 182 + + Boyer, J., 14 + + Brandelhow, 46 + + Bristol, 293 _n_ + + Brunck, 182 + + Brougham, Lord, 250 + + Brown, Dr. J., 14 + + Browne, William, 158 and _n_ + + Bruno, Giordano, 16, 17 _n_, 72, 73, 151 + + Buffon, 209 + + Buonaparte, 75 + + Burdett, Sir F., 174, 255 + + Burton, Robert, 25 + + + Cain, 51 + + Cairns, M. J., 9 + + Calvin, 307 + + Cambridge, 214 + + Campbell, T., 156 + + Campeachy, Bay of, 208 + + Caracciolo, 87 + + Caernarvon Castle, 71 + + Castle Crag, 34 + + Castlerigg, 43 + + Catullus, 165 + + Cecilia, St., 200 + + Ceres, 110 + + Cervantes, 152 + + Chantrey, 286 + + Charlemagne, 170 + + Chartreuse, 119 + + Chaucer, 296 + + Chersites, Theodoras, 21 + + China, 29, 132, 151 + + Christ's Hospital, 46, 295 + + Cicero, 23 _n_ + + Circe, 192 + + Clarkson, Thomas, 24 + + Clarkson, Mrs., 167 + + Claudian, 165 + + Clotharius, 211 + + Cobbett, W., 76, 255 + + Cochrane (Earl of Dundonald). 237 + + Coleorton, 171 _n_ + + Coleridge, Berkeley, 120 + + Coleridge, Derwent, 18, 29, 120 + + Coleridge, Hartley, 3, 13, 15, 24, 40, 41, 65, 66, 96, 135, 296 + + Coleridge, Colonel James, 158 _n_. + + Coleridge, S. T., 9, 23 _n_, 64 _n_, 75 _n_, 103, 140 _n_, 157 and _n_, + 158 _n_, 169, 177 _n_, 195 _n_, 196 _n_, 203 _n_, 211 _n_, 225 _n_, + 236 _n_, 242 _n_, 246 _n_, 248 _n_, 263 _n_, 273 _n_, 293 _n_, + 295 and _n_ + + Coleridge, Sara (Mrs. S. T.), 9, 218, 295 + + Coleridge, Sara (Mrs. H. N. Coleridge), 120, 208 _n_. + + Collins, 5 + + Combe, S., 129 + + Combe Satchfield, 158 _n_. + + Condillac, 79 + + Constantine, Budæo-Tusan, 182 + + Cordova, 287 + + Cottle, Joseph, 60, 86, 235 + + _Courier_ Office, 193, 203 _n_ + + Cowper, William, 121, 128 + + Cuthill, Mr., 182, 183 + + + Dampier, Travels of, 208 + + Dante, 25, 151, 229, 230, 293 + + Daphnis, D'Orvilles, 183 + + Darwin, Dr., 5, 92, 151, 280 + + David, King, 235 + + Davy, Sir H., 218 + + Dennison, Mr., 144, 146 + + De Quincey, 177 _n_, 183 + + Diogenes, 97 + + Domitian, 159 + + Drayton, 154 + + Dresden, 85 + + Dryden, 159 + + Duke Richard, 158 _n_ + + Dundas (Lord Melville), 151 + + Durham, 35, 36 + + Dyer, George, 9 _n_, 67 + + + Edgeworth, Miss, 117 + + Elizabeth, Queen, 231 + + Empedocles, 163 + + Eolus, 193 + + Epictetus, 183 + + Erigena, Joannes Scotus, 58 + + Escot, 157 _n_ + + Etna, 114 + + Euphormio, 207 + + Exeter, 67 + + + Favell, 28 _n_ + + Fay, Benedict, 154 + + Fénelon, 133 + + Fichte, 106, 133, 169, 183 + + Fielding, 166, 167 + + Flaminius, 207, 263 + + Fletcher, John, 207 + + Fracastorius, 148, 207, 263 + + France, 75, 119, 120, 152 + + + Geddes, Dr. Alexander, 109 _n_ + + Geneva, Lake of, 261 + + Genoa, 7 + + Germany, 8 _n_, 151, 169, 284, 289 + + Gibbon, 272 + + Gillman, James, 296, 297 + + Gillman, Mrs., 273 + + Glanvillians, The, 281 + + Godwin, W., 13, 66, 68 + + Goethe, 229 + + Göttingen, 67 + + Grasmere, 76, 132 + + Gray, Thomas, 5, 270 + + Greece, 110, 177, 206, 289 + + Greenough, 68 + + Greta River, 19, 29, 43, 44 + + Greta Hall, 218 _n_ + + Greville, Fulk, 17 + + Grysdale Pike, 19, 46 + + Guarini, 191 + + Guyon, Madame, 133, 152 + + + Haarlem, 67 + + Halim II., 287 + + Hamburg, 101 + + Harrington, J., 79, 151 + + Hartz, 211 and _n_ + + Hayley, 151 + + Hazlitt, W., 9, 35, 36 + + Hebrides, 129 + + Helvellyn, 52 + + Helvetius, 301 + + Henry, Prince, 158 + + Herbert's, St., Island, 32 + + Hobbes, 13, 183 + + Holcroft, 66, 68 + + Homer, 207, 270 + + Horace, 176 + + Hume, David, 24, 79, 102, 151, 272 + + Huss, 215 + + Hutchinson, Mary (Mrs. Wordsworth), 8 _n_, 20 + + Hutchinson, Sarah, 8 _n_ + + + India, 132 + + Ireland, 177 + + Italy, 152, 229 + + + Java, 271 + + Jennings, J., 60 + + Johnson, Dr., 115, 151, 155, 272 + + Jonson, Ben, 207 + + Judkin, Rev. Mr., 306 + + + Kant, 12, 106, 151, 169, 183 + + Keswick, 54 _n_, 101 + + Klopstock, 101, 229 + + Knox, John, 164, 307 + + + Lamb, Charles, 66, 140 _n_. + + Latrigg, 60 _n_ + + Laud, 307 + + Lavater, 223 + + Leckie, 183 + + Leibnitz, 147, 151, 152, 183 + + Leighton, 287 + + Lessing, 151 + + Linnæus, 268 + + Lloyd, Charles, 107 + + Lloyd, David, 230 + + Locke, 24, 151, 155, 183, 185 + + Loch Leven, 208 + + Lodore, 34 + + London, 9, 28, 194 + + Lorraine, Claude, 286 + + Lupus, 211 + + Luther, 11, 152, 215, 239, 307 + + Lyceum, 193 + + Lyonnet, 94 + + + Mackintosh, Sir J., 6, 126, 198 + + Malone, E., 88, 89 _n_ + + Malta, 75 _n_, 83, 87, 98, 104, 107, 130, 140 _n_, 144, 187, 197 + + Malthus, Rev. J., 64 + + Marathon, 74 _n_ + + Marini, G. B., 191 + + Martial, 159 + + Massinger, 207 + + Mediterranean, 85, 109 + + Metastasio, 166, 229 + + Middleton, Sir Hugh, 250 + + Milton, 14, 24, 72, 73, 120, 151, 152, 159, 161, 215 _n_, 229, 253, + 271, 296, 297, 298 + + Mohammed, 290, 291 _n_. + + Molière, 152 + + Montagu, Basil, 218 _n_. + + Moses, 9, 268 + + Mylius, Johann Christoph., 96 + + + Naples, King of, 87 + + Naucratius, 21 + + Nelson, Lord, 237 + + Newlands, 52 + + Newmarket, 168 + + New River, 168 + + Newton, Sir Isaac, 214 + + Nile, 20 + + Norway, 284 + + + Okenist, An, 291 + + Orleans, 211 + + Otter River, 29 + + Otterton, 158 _n_ + + Ottery St. Mary, 29, 157 _n_, 158 _n_ + + Ovid, 165 + + + Paine, Tom, 226 + + Paley, Archdeacon, 35, 151, 155, 265, 301 + + Paracelsus, 14, 232 + + Parisatis, 176 + + Parkinson (_Theatrum Botanicum_), 59 + + Pascal, 152 + + Pasley, Captain, 145, 154 + + Paul, Jean (Richter), 235 + + Paul, St., 93, 163 + + Penelope, Nature a, 100 + + Peter, St., 215 + + Petrarch, 262, 263 _n_ + + Picts, The, 129 + + Pindar, 168 + + Pitt, 151 + + Plato, 31, 133, 183, 298 + + Plotinus, 48, 49, 183 + + Polyclete, 192 + + Poole, T., 70, 153 + + Pope, 151, 166, 233 + + Porphyry, 183 + + Port Royal, 208 + + Porte, The, 289 + + Portugal, 140 _n_ + + Price, Dr., 167 + + Priestley, Dr., 151, 155 + + Prince, The Black, 71 + + Proclus, 17, 63, 183 + + Proserpine, 110 + + Psyche, 89, 109, 142 + + Pygmalion, 192 + + Pyramids, The, 258 + + Pythagoras, 55, 231 + + + Quintilian, 23 _n_ + + + Raleigh, Sir W., 148, 250 + + Raphael, 286 + + Ray (or Wray), John, 35, 36 + + Reignia, Captain, 89 + + Reimarus, Herman Samuel, 91 _n_, 92 + + Rhone River, 261 + + Richardson, Samuel, 166, 167 + + Rickman, J., 67 + + Robertson, William, 272 + + Rochefoucauld, 301 + + Rock, Captain (son of), 208 + + Rogers, Samuel, 156 + + Rome, Church of, 58, 124, 215 + + Rome, 110, 129, 206, 289 + + Russia, 170, 289 + + + Scapula, 182 + + Scarlett (James Lord Abinger), 198 + + Schelling, 169, 183 + + Schiller, 150, 161, 181, 211 _n_, 229 + + Scott, Sir Walter, 74 _n_ + + Scotus, Duns, 222 + + Sens, 211 + + Shakspere, 21, 24, 71, 72, 73, 88, 89 _n_, 97, 108, 115, 127, 128, 145, + 147, 150, 151, 152, 161, 180, 286, 297, 298 + + Sharp, Grenville, 250 + + Sharp, Richard, 158, 198 + + Sheridan, R. B., 41, 177 + + Shield, 270 + + Sidney, Sir Philip, 17, 151 + + Simonides, 163 + + Skiddaw, 18, 19, 52 + + Smith, Robert, 198 + + Smith, Sydney, 198 + + Sorel, Dr., 107 + + Sotheby, William, 53 + + South, 47 + + Southey, 6, 28 _n_, 36, 107, 158 _n_, 221, 290 + + Spain, 70, 152, 287 + + Spenser, 296 + + Spinoza, 57, 81, 183 + + Staunton, Sir G., 271 + + Stephen's, St., 211 + + Stephen's Thesaurus, 182 + + Stewart, Sir James, 1 + + Stoddart (Dr. afterwards Sir J.), 74, 75 _n_, 107, 140 _n_, 167 + + Stowey, Upper, 143 + + Stowey, Nether, 60 _n_ + + Strabo, Geographicus, 179 + + Strada, Prolusions of, 183 + + Strozzi, Giambatista, 225 + + Stuart, Daniel, 195 + + Sweden, 284 + + Swedenborg, 286 + + Swift, Dean, 24, 151, 164 + + Swinside, 19 + + Switzerland, 129 + + Syracuse, 95 + + + Tantalus, 234 + + Taylor, Dorothy, 158 _n_ + + Taylor, Frances, 158 _n_ + + Taylor, Jeremy, 12, 20, 76, 298 + + Taylor, Thomas, 17 + + Teme, Valley of, 26 + + Tenison, Archbishop, 306 + + Theophrastus, 268 + + Tiberius, 37 + + Tibullus, 165 + + Tobin, J., 68, 139, 140 _n_ + + Tyrol, The, 284 + + + Underwood, Mr., 68 + + Unzer, D., 94 + + + Valetta, 75 _n_, 144 + + Van Huysum, 286 + + Varrius, 134 + + Vida, 263 + + Vincent, Captain, 134 + + Virgil, 263 + + Virginia, 94 + + Voltaire, 152 + + Voss, 151, 229 + + Vossius, 134 + + + Wade, Mr., 293 _n_ + + Wedgwood, T., 27, 91 + + Whinlatter, 46, 50 + + White, Mr. (of Clare Hall, Camb.), 225 + + Wickliffe, 215 + + Wieland, 229 + + Wilberforce, 250 + + Willoughby, Lord, 231 + + Wilson, John, 60 _n_ + + Windybrow, 60 _n_ + + Withop Fells, 47 + + Wollstonecraft, Mary, 66 + + Wordsworth, Dorothy, 60 _n_ + + Wordsworth, John, 132 + + Wordsworth, William, 4, 10 _n_, 30, 35, 36, 60 _n_, 70, 71, + 79, 101, 131, 137, 138 _n_, 147, 151, 163, 169, 171 _n_, + 201 _n_, 207, 208 _n_, 221, 251 _n_ + + Wyndham, 41, 237 + + + Zinzendorf, 286 + + + + +INDEX OF TITLES + +NOTE.--_Brief paragraphs and sentences to which no title has been given, +in the text will be found indexed under the following headings._ + + + Abstruse Research, 53-56 + + Anecdotes, A Sheaf of, 66-68 + + Aphorisms and Pithy Sentences, 253-256 + + Comparisons and Contrasts, 5-7 + + Country and Town, 28-29 + + Dreams and Shadows, 172-173 + + Duty and Experience, 2-3 + + For the _Soother in Absence_, 84-85; 86-87; 95-97; 99-100; 115-118; + 147-150; 159-161; 162-165; 175-180 + + Hints for _The Friend_, 209, 210; 221-223; 230-233 + + Observations and Reflections, 17-21 + + _Seriores Rosæ_, 274 + + Things Visible and Invisible, 7-14 + + Thoughts, a Crowd of, 58-61 + + Thoughts and Fancies, 22-25 + + Transcripts from my Velvet Pocket Books, 26-28 + + + + +INDEX + + + _Abstruse Research_, 53-55 + Face, the phantom of, 54 + Eye-spectra, 55 + Reluctance of mind to analyse, 53 + Soul within the body. Window at Keswick, 54 + + A bliss, &c., 264 + + Adam's death, 51 + + Alas! they had been friends, &c., 62 + + Allston, To, 169 + + All thoughts, all passions, &c., 224 + + A man's a man, &c., 51 + + Analogy, 89-91 + + Anecdote, a genuine, 218 + + _Anecdotes, a Sheaf of_, 66-68 + Beaumont, Sir G., and gauze spectacles, 67 + Beaumont, Lady, her prayers, 67 + Göttingen and the _hospes_, 67 + Godwin, Holcroft, and Underwood, 68 + Holcroft and M. Wollstonecraft, 66 + Exeter, the organ pipe, 67 + Lamb, Charles, a call upon, 66 + Rickman and George Dyer, 67 + + Anticipations in Nature, &c., 136 + + Aphorisms and Adages, 300-301 + + _Aphorisms and Pithy Sentences_, 253-256 + Bookmaking, 256 + Burdett, Sir Francis, 255 + Catamaran, man compared with, 253 + Convalescence without love, 254 + Half-reconciliation, 254 + Hunter, the light of his torch, 255 + Love, inspired by superiority, 253 + Money, the depreciation of, 254 + Peninsulating river, 255 + Philosophy, its plummet-line, 255 + Sun, the rosy fingers of, 254 + Vision and appetite, 255 + + Architecture and Climate, 194 + + Art, the pyramid in, 98 + An afterthought, 99 + + As the sparks fly upward, 110 + + Ascend a step, etc., 158-159 + + Aspiration, a pious, 213 + + Association, 226 + + Association, of streamy, 55 + + A time to cry out, 220-221 + + Attention and sensation, 128 + + _Auri sacra fames_, 44 + + Ave Phoebe Imperator, 63 + + + Being, the three estates of, 294 + + Bells, concerning, 210-212 + Clotharius, 211 + Latin distichs, 210 + Names of bells, 211 + Passing bells, 211 + Waggon-horse, &c., in the Hartz, 211 + Note on Schiller's 'Song of the Bell,' &c., 211 + + Bibliological memoranda, 182-183 + + Bird, the captive, 193 + + Birds caged, especially the robin, 194 + + Bliss, a land of, 286-287 + + Book-knowledge and experience, 129 + + Book-learning for legislators, 285 + + Books in the air, 206-207 + + Bright October, 34 + + Browne, William, of Ottery and Note, 157-158 + + Bruno, Giordano, 16, 17 + + Bulls in action, 156 + + But love is indestructible, 250 + + + Candour another name for cant, 75 + + Catholic reunion, 215 + + Cast not your pearls, &c., 80-81 + + Ceres, the conversion of, 110 + + _C'est magnifique_, etc., 258 + + Children of a larger growth, 204 + + Christabel, a hint for, 223 + + Chymical analogies, 204-206 + + Clerical errors, the psychology of, 181-182 + + _Cogitare est laborare_, 66 + + Communicable, the, 32 + + _Comparisons and Contrasts_, 5-7 + Constitution, the, and rotten cheese, 6 + Eyes, meaning glances from, 6 + Genoa, "Liberty" on prisons of, 7 + Gratitude, the curse of, 7 + Intellect, snails of, 6 + Mackintosh, the style of, 6 + Malice, 6 + Minds, pygmy, 6 + Poetry, the effect of, 5 + Sot, the prayer of, 7 + Southey, an ostrich, 6 + Trout, his likeness to, 5 + Truth, the blindness of, 7 + Two dew-drops, 6 + Worldly-minded men, like owls, 7 + + Columba, St., 129 + + Conceits, verbal, 108 + + Conscience and immortality, 201-3 + + Constancy, etc., 304 + + Conversation, his, a nimiety, &c., 103-104 + + Converts, the intolerance of, 74 + + _Corruptio optimi pessima_, 92, 263 + + Cottle, an apology for, 86 + + Cottle, free version of the Psalms, 235 + + _Country and Town_, 28-29 + Calf-lowing, a reminiscence of Ottery, 29 + Coloured bottles, reflections of, 28 + Country, depraving effect of, 25 + Lecture, dream concerning a, 29 + Smiles on men and mountains, 29 + Stones like life, and life motionless as stones, 28 + + Critics, immature, 128 + + Criticism, a principle of, 30 + + Criticism, minute, 167 + + + Darwin's "Botanical Garden," 280 + + Death, the realisation of, 139-140 + + Delusion, an optical, 47 + + Devil, the, with a memory, 161-162 + + Devil, the, a recantation, 259-260 + + Distemper's worst calamity, 126-127 + + Distinction in union, 184 + + _Document humain_, 168 + + Dream, a, and a parenthesis, 40 + + Dreams, order in, 134 + + _Dreams and Shadows_, 172-173 + Idea, the descent of, 172 + Taper's cone of flame, a simile, 172 + "As in life's noisiest hour," etc., 172 + "You mould my thoughts," etc., 173 + + Drip, drip, drip, drip, 165 + + _Duty and Experience_, 2, 3 + Human happiness, 3 + Chymistry, a noble, 3 + Metaphysical opinion in anguish, 3 + Misfortunes a fertilising rain, 2 + Pleasure and pain, 2 + Real pain a panacea, 2 + + Duty and self-interest, 130-131 + + + Early death, 44, 45 + + Easter, the Northern, 138 + + Education, of, 227-228 + + Ego, the, 15 + + Egotism, 14 + + Empyrean, the, 125 + + England, the righteousness of, 284 + + Enthusiasm, 139 + + Entity, a superfluous, 217 + + Entomology _v._ ontology, 94 + + Epigram, a divine, 273 + + Error, a life-long (his age), 295 + + Etymology, 123-124 + + Evil, the origin of, 36-42 + + Evil produces evil, 131 + + Experience and book knowledge, 129-130 + + Experiment, a doubtful, 56 + + Extremes meet, 52, 53 + + + Facts and Fiction, 75 + + Fallings from us vanishings, 180-181 + + "Floods and general inundations," 282 + + First thoughts and friendship, 251, 252 + + Flowers and light, 304, 305 + + Flowers of speech, 269, 270 + + Form and feeling, 101 + + Formula, a comprehensive, 306-307 + + "For compassion a human heart," 282 + + _For the soother in absence_, 84-85 + Dreams and reveries, 85 + Dresden, the engraved cherry-stone, 85 + Mediterranean, the white sails on, 85 + Outwardly happy but no joy within, 84 + Sunset in winter, and summer-set, 84 + + _For the soother in absence_, 86-87 + Caracciolo and his floating corse, 87 + Final causes, 87 + Moonlight, crinkled circles on the sea, 87 + Religion repels the gay, 86 + Vicious thoughts and rhyme-terminations, 86 + Diogenes, why not? 97 + Interest and satisfaction, 97 + + _For the soother in absence_, 95-97 + Language, its growth, etc., 95 + Medical romance--a title, 96 + Mylius, 96 + Poets the bridlers of delight, 96 + Quintetta, the, in the Syracuse Opera, 95 + Recollections of pre-existent state, 96 + Tarantula dance of argumentation, 97 + + _For the soother in absence_, 99-100 + _Quisque sui faber_, 99 + Nature a Penelope, 100 + Root to the crown--growth of the flower, 99 + + _For the soother in absence_, 115-118 + Admiralty Court maxims, 116 + Convoy from England, 115 + Cyphers, 118 + Death and the sleeping baby, 118 + Faults and forewarnings, Miss Edgeworth, 117 + Johnson, Dr., and Shakspere, 115 + Pen-slit, the action of, 118 + Sealing-wax--where was it? 116 + Totalising, disease of, 116 + Voice and eye--precedence and sequence, 118 + Wafers, Maltese, 115 + + _For the soother in absence_, 147-150 + Conscience and watches, 150 + Contra-reasoning and controversy, 149 + Earthly losses and heaven, 150 + Eye, the twofold power of, 149 + Facts and the relation of them, 148 + Metaphor and reality, 149 + Negation begets errors, 147 + Speculative men not unpractical, 148 + War, the weariness of, no excuse for peace, 148 + Word-play a cat's cradle, 149 + Worldly men, their belief in sincerity, 149 + + _For the soother in absence_, 159-161 + _Co-arctation_, 161 + Dull souls may become great poet's bodies, 161 + Judgment compared to Belgic towns, 160 + Lover married, a frog in a well, 160 + Music and the genus and particular, 160 + Originality not claimed by the original, 160 + Shorthandists for the House of Commons, 161 + Stiletto and the rosary, 159 + Water-lily and the sponge, 160 + + _For the Soother in Absence_, 162-164 + Death and the tree of life, 163 + Grave, our growth in, 163 + Irish architect, 164 + _Scopæ viarum_, 164 + Shooting stars and bedtime, 162 + Sleep, the lovers', 164 + Swift and the pine-tree, 164 + Truth and action, 164 + Wordsworth, an aspiration, 163 + Yellowing leaflets, 163 + + _For the Soother in Absence_, 175-180 + Affliction and adversity, 176 + _Allapse_ of serpents, 176 + Atmosphere, every man his own, 176 + Augustine, St., and a friend's misjudgment, 179 + Blast, the, 178 + Blue sky, yellow green at twilight, 175 + Greece, the genius of, 177 + Hayfield and still life, 175 + _Heu! quam miserum_, 177 + Indian fig and death of an immortal, 177 + Kings, what kind of gods? 176 + Love, the mighty works of, 178 + Metallic pencils, 175 + Parisatis, and the poisoned knife, 176 + Peacock moulting, 178 + Shadow, 177 + Sheridan, and Bacon, 177 + Sunflowers, 175 + Strabo Geographicus on genius, 179 + Two faces, etc., 176-177 + Tycho Brahe, a subject for Allston, 175 + Water-wagtails, 178 + Woman, a passionate, a simile, 178 + + French language and poetry, 118-120 + + Friendship and marriage, 235-236 + + + Genius, 233 + + Genius, his own, 197-198 + + German philosophy, his indebtedness to, 106 + + God, the idea of, 300 + + Great and little minds, 293 + + Great men and national worth, 150-152 + + + Hail and farewell, 218 + + Halfway house, the, 195-197 + + Happiness made perfect, 142 + + Hazlitt, W., 36 + + Health, independence, and friendship, 248 + + Heart, a broken, 303 + + Heaviness, may endure, &c., 239, 240 + + Hesperus, 247, 248 + + _Hinc illa marginalia_, 91-92 + + _Hints for the Friend_, 209, 210 + Authors and Buffon's fan, 209 + Conscience good, and fine weather, 209 + Great deeds, great hearts, and great states, 209 + Hypocrisy, 210 + Massy misery, 210 + Mystery from wilful deafness, 210 + No glory and no Christianity, a total eclipse, 210 + Proud ignorance, 210 + Reformers like scourers of silver plate, 209 + + _Hints for the Friend_, 221-223 + Conscience, a pure, like a life-boat, 221 + Dame Quickly on parties, 222 + Duns Scotus on faith, 222 + Foliage, not the trunk, 223 + Helvetius, his selenography, 221 + Lavater and Narcissus, 223 + Pope, the, a simile, 233 + Reliance on God and man, 222 + Reviewers like jurymen, 223 + + _Hints for the Friend_, 230-233 + Amboynese, and their clove trees, 232 + Eloign, a word of Queen Elizabeth's, 231 + Esoteric Christianity, 231 + Mathematics and metaphysics, 230 + Monsoon, the Chinese elephant, 232 + Nature, the perception of, a comparison, 232 + Paracelsus, on new words, 232 + Partisans or opponents, how to address them, 231 + + Hope, the moon's halo an emblem of, 238 + + Humanity, the hope of, 137, 138 + + Humility, the lover's, 188 + + Hypothesis, of a new, 105 + + + I will lift up, etc., 101 + + Idea, the birth of, 109 + + Idealist, the, at bay, 277-279 + + "If a man could pass through paradise," 282 + + Ignore thyself, 301 + + Illusion (Mr. Dennison and the "bottle man"), 144-147 + + Imagination 'eisenoplasy,' 236 + + In a twinkling of an eye, 185-186 + + In wonder all philosophy began, 185 + + Incommunicable, the, 31 + + Infancy and infants, 3, 4 + + Infinite, the, and the finite, 81 + + _Inopem me copia fecit_, 189 + + Insects, 271 + _Spiders' webs in Java_, 271 + _Libellulidæ_, 271 + _Tipulidæ minimæ_, 271 + + Islamism, 287, 288 + + + "Kingdom of Heavenite," a, 273 + + Knave, a treacherous, 28 + + Knowledge, a royal road to, 298-300 + + Knowledge and Understanding, 173 + + + Landing places, 157 + + Law and gospel, 214 + + Liberty, the cap of, 203 + + Life, the idea of, 305 + + Light, the inward, 48 + + _Litera scripta manet_, 121 + + Love, 1-2 + Affected by jealousy, 1 + soother of misfortune, 2 + Disappointed, 2 + The transformer, 2 + + Love, 233-235 + + Love, the adolescence of, 68 + + Love, the divine essence, 133-134 + + Love and duty, 140-142 + + Love, the ineffable, 191-192 + + Love and music, 200-201 + + Lover, the humble complaint of, 190 + + Loves, of first, 153-154 + + _Lucus a non lucendo_, 200 + + + Magnitude, the sense of, 112-115 + + Maiden's primer, 195 + + Marriage, the ideal, 216 + + Mean, the danger of, 62 + + Means to ends, 107 + + Mediterranean, the, 100 + "A brisk gale and the foam," 100 + + Memorandum, a serious, 79 + + Metaphysic, a defence of, 42 + + Metaphysician, the, at bay, 106 + + Metaphysic, the aim of his, 42 + + Milton's blank verse, 253 + + Milton and Shakspere, 296-8 + + Mohammed, the flight of, 290-291 + + Moment, a, and a magic mirror, 245-246 + + Monition, the rage for, 68-70 + + Moonlight gleams and massy glories, 171 + + Moonset, a, 50 + + Morning, a gem of, 187 + + _Mot propre_, the passion for, 155 + + Mother wit, 226 + + Motion, the psychology of, 56-57 + + _Multum in parvo_, 85 + + + Name it and you break it, 198 + + Nature, the night side of, 45-47 + + _Ne quid nimis_, 89 + + _Nefas est ab hoste doceri_, 76 + + Neither bond nor free, 195 + + Neutral pronoun, a, 190 + + Night, in the visions of, 43, 44 + + Nightmare, the hag, 243-245 + + _Noscitur a sociis_, 32 + + Not the beautiful, etc., 49-50 + + + _Obductâ fronte senectus_, 272-273 + + _Observations and Reflections_, 17-21 + Ashes in autumn, 19 + Citizens eat, rustics drink, 19 + Definition hostile to images, 19 + First cause and source of the Nile, 20 + Love poems, a scheme of, 20 + Moon, the setting, 18 + My birthday, 19 + Northern Lights, Derwent's birthday, 18 + Shakspere and Naucratius, 21 + Soul the mummy, an emblem, 20 + Spring with cone of sand, 17 + Stability and Instability, the cause of, 19 + State, the eye of, 18 + Superiors and inferiors, 20 + Truths and feelings, 18 + Two moon-rainbows, 19 + + Of a too witty book, 280-281 + + Official distrust, 83 + + O star benign! 76 + + O thou whose fancies, etc., 15-16 + + Omniscient, the comforter, 127 + + One music as before, etc. 168 + + One, the, and the good, 63 + + One, the many and the, 77 + + Opera, the, 82 + + Orange blossom, 134-136 + + Over-blaming, the danger of, 198 + + + [Greek: PANTA RHEI], 183-184 + + _Pars altera mei_, 49 + + Partisans and renegades, 173-174 + + Past and present, 1 + + People, the spirit of a, 288-290 + + Petrarch's epistles, 262, 263 + + Phantoms of sublimity, 170 + + Philanthropy and self-advertisement, 249, 250 + + Philosophy the friend of poetry, 78 + + Pindar, 168 + + Places and persons, 70-74 + + Poet, a, on poetry, 294 + + Poet, the, and the spider, 32 + + Poetic licence, a plea for, 165-166 + + Poetry, 4 + Correction of, 4 + Dr. Darwin, 5 + Elder languages, the fitter for, 5 + Ode, definition of, 4 + + Poetry and prose, 229-230 + + Poets as critics of poets, 127-128 + + Populace and people, 174 + + Posterity, a caution to, 159 + + Practical man, a, 199-200 + + Praise, the meed of, 284 + + Presentiments, 256-257 + + Price, Dr., 167-168 + + Prophecy, the manufacture of, 192-193 + + Prudence _versus_ friendship, 291-293 + + Pseudo-poets, 156 + + Psychology in youth and maturity, 218 + + Public opinion and the services, 237 + + Purgatory, an intellectual, 152-153 + + + Rain, the maddening, 154 + + Recollection and remembrance, 57 + + Reimarus and the instinct of animals, 92-95 + + Religion, spiritual, 138, 218-219 + + _Remedium amoris_, 266 + + Richardson, 166-167 + + Righteousness, the sun of, 162 + + _Rugit leo_, 301-303 + + + Save me from my friends, 264-265 + + Science and philosophy, 261-262 + + Scholastic terms, a plea for, 274-275 + + Schoolman, a Unitarian, 58 + + Sea, the bright blue, 109 + + Self, the abstract, 120 + + Self-absorption and selfishness, 249 + + Self-esteem, excess of, 198, 199 + + Self-esteem, defect of, 199 + + Self-reproof, a measure in, 81-82 + + Sensations, the continuity of, 102, 103 + + Sentiment an antidote to casuistry, 124-125 + + Sentiment, morbid, 169-170 + + Sentiments below morals, 154 + + _Seriores Rosæ_, 274 + "Lie with the ear," 274 + "Like some spendthrift lord," 274 + "On the same man as in a vineyard," 274 + "The blossom gives not only," 274 + "We all look up," 274 + + Sermons, ancient and modern, 237-239 + + Seventeen hundred and sixty yards, etc., 280 + + Shakspere and Malone, 88 + + Subject and object, 294 + + Silence is golden, 259 + + Simile, a, 76 + + _Sine qua non_, 186 + + Sleepless, the feint of the, 251 + + Solace, external, his need of, 167 + + _Solvitur suspiciendo_, 187 + + Sonnet, an unwritten, 295 + + Soul, the embryonic, 104 + + Spinoza, a poem on spirit or on, 61 + + Spinoza, the ethics of, 57 + + Spiritual blindness, 270 + + Spiritualism and mysticism, 276-277 + + Spooks, 281 + + Spring, the breath of, 305 + + Square, the, the circle, the pyramid, 97 + + Star, to the evening, 247 + + Style of Milton, Smectymnuus, etc., 271 + + Subject and object, 294 + + Sundog, a, 97 + + Sunset, a, 52 + + Superstition, 143-144 + + Supposition, a, 138 + + Syracuse, 78 + + + Taste, an ethical quality, 165 + + Teleology and nature worship, 35 + + Temperament and morals, 33 + + That inward eye, etc., 246, 247 + + The body of this death, 276 + + The conclusion of the whole matter, 266 + + The greater damnation, 279 + + The mind's eye, 286 + + "The more exquisite," etc., 282 + + The night is at hand, 307 + + "The sunny mist," etc., 31 + + The tender mercies of the good, 208-209 + + "The tree or sea-weed like," etc., 31 + + Theism and Atheism, 285-286 + + _Things Visible and Invisible_, 7-14 + Anthropomorphism and the Trinity, 14 + Anti-optimism, 13 + Babe, its sole notion of cruelty, 13 + Cairns, J., on the Nazarites, 9 + Child scolding a flower, 10 + Children's words, analogous, 11 + Dandelions, beards of, note, 10 + Dyer, George, and poets' throttles, 9 + Fisherman, the idle, note, 10 + Friends' friends, reception by, note, 8 + Godwin, a definition of, 13 + Hartley's fire-place of stones, 13 + Hazlitt's theory of picture and palette, 9 + "Hot-headed men confuse," 11 + "How," the substratum of philosophy, 13 + Kingfishers' flight, 7 + "Little Daisy," etc., 7 + London and Nature, 8 + Luther, his prejudices, 11 + Comment, 11 + Materialists and mystery, 14 + Nightingale and frogs in Germany, note, 7 + Quotations, rage for, 9 + Reproaches and remorse, 12 + Sickbed and prison, 12 + "Slanting pillars of misty light," 9 + Space a perception of additional magnitude, 12 + Taylor, Jeremy, quotation from _Via Pacis_, 12 + "The thin scattered rain-clouds," 12 + Things perishable, thoughts imperishable, 8 + Thinking and perceiving, 12 + Time and likeness, 13 + Upturned leaves, 10 + + _Thoughts, a Crowd of_, 58-61 + Children and hard-skinned ass, 59 + Ghost of a mountain, 60 + Light as lovers love, 59 + Man, epitheton of, 58 + Palm, the, 61 + Place and time, 59 + Poets' bad and beautiful expressions, 59 + Public schools, advantage of, 60 + Rainbows stedfast in mist, 61 + Rosemary tree, a, 59 + Slang, religious, 60 + Sopha of sods, note, 60 + Stump of a tree, 61 + + Thought, a mortal agony of, 63 + + Thought and attention, 213-214 + + _Thoughts and Fancies_, 22-25 + Achilles and his heel, 25 + Devil at the very end of hell, 23 + Dimness and numbness, 23 + Friendship and comprehension, 24 + Green fields after the city, 25 + Happiness and paradise, 25 + Hartley and the "seems," 24 + Kind-hearted men refuse roughly, 23 + Limbo, 22 + Metaphysics, their effect on the thoughts, 23 + Nature for likeness, men for difference, 25 + Old world, the, and the new year, 22 + Opposite talents not incompatible, 24 + Poets and death, 22 + Poets, his rank among, 25 + Sounds and outness, 23 + Swift and Socinianism, 24 + Time as threefold, 22 + + Thought and things, 143 + + Thoughts-how like music at times! 139 + + Through doubt to faith, 85 + + Time an element of grief, 31 + + Time and eternity, 155 + + Time, real and imaginary, note, 241-243 + + _Transcripts from my velvet pocket-books_, 26-28 + Action, the meanness of, 27 + Barrow and the verbal imagination, 26 + Candle-snuffers not discoverers, 26 + Falling asleep, 27 + New play compared to toy ship, 27 + Plagiarist, a thief in the candle, 26 + Post, its influence, 26 + Quotation and conversation, 26 + Repose after agitation, 27 + Socinianism and methodism, 26 + Teme, the valley of, 26 + Universe, the federal republic of, 27 + Wedgwood, T., and thoughts and things, 27 + + Transubstantiation, 61-62 + + Truth, 191, 220 + + Truth, the danger of adapting, &c., 228 + + Truth, the fixed stars of, 257 + + Turtle-shell, a, for household tub, 207-208 + + + Unwin, Mrs., Cowper's lines to, 121-123 + + Unknown, the great, 284 + + + Vain Glory, 203-204 + + _Verbum sapientibus_, 102 + + _Ver, zer, and al_, 187 + + Vexation, a complex, 283 + + _Vox hiemalis_, 303-304 + + + We ask not whence, etc., 89 + + Wedgwood, T., and Reimarus, 91 + + What man has made of man, 264-265 + + Will, the undisciplined, 64-66 + + Windmill and its shadow, 77-78 + + Winter, a mild, 170 + + Woman's frowardness, 89 + + Words and things, 225 + + Words, creative power of, and images, 87 + + Words, the power of, 266-269 + + Wordsworth and _The Prelude_, 30 + + Wordsworth, John, 132 + + Worldly wise, 230 + + Wounded vanity, a salve for, 82-83 + + +Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. London & Edinburgh + + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's note + + +The following changes have been made to the text: + +Page ix: "ceasless" changed to ceaseless". + +Page 73: "wordliness" changed to "worldliness". + +Page 173: "PARTIZANS" changed to "PARTISANS". + +Page 218: "pyschologise" changed to "psychologise". + +Page 253: "strenghth" changed to "strength". + +Page 320: "lifelong" changed to "life-long". + +Page 320: "Caraccioli" changed to "Caracciolo". + +Page 323: "philososhy" changed to "philosophy". + +Page 324: "Partizans" changed to "Partisans". + +Page 327: "Righteousnesss" changed to "Righteousness". + +Page 330: "rainclouds" changed to "rain-clouds'. + +Page 330: "hardskinned" changed to "hard-skinned". + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Anima Poetæ, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41705 *** |