individual characters, and those too in a light, in which they appeared
to him; not clear and discriminate ideas. Hence a mixture of truth and
error, of appropriate and inappropriate terms, which it is scarcely
possible to disentangle. Part applies to fanaticism; part to enthusiasm;
and no small portion of this latter to enthusiasm not pure, but as it
exists in particular men, modified by their imperfections--and bad
because not wholly enthusiasm. I regret this, because it is evidently
the discourse of a very powerful mind;--and because I am convinced that
the disease of the age is want of enthusiasm, and a tending to
fanaticism. You may very naturally object that the senses, in which I
use the two terms, fanaticism and enthusiasm, are private
interpretations equally as, if not more than, Mr. Birch's. They are so;
but the difference between us is, that without reference to either term,
I have attempted to ascertain the existence and diversity of two states
of moral being; and then having found in our language two words of very
fluctuating and indeterminate use, indeed, but the one word more
frequently bordering on the one state, the other on the other, I try to
fix each to that state exclusively. And herein I follow the practice of
all scientific men, whether naturalists or metaphysicians, and the
dictate of common sense, that one word ought to have but one meaning.
Thus by Hobbes and others of the materialists, compulsion and obligation
were used indiscriminately; but the distinction of the two senses is the
condition of all moral responsibility. Now the effect of Mr. Birch's use
of the words is to continue the confusion. Remember we could not reason
at all, if our conceptions and terms were not more single and definite
than the things designated. Enthusiasm is the absorption of the
individual in the object contemplated from the vividness or intensity of
his conceptions and convictions: fanaticism is heat, or accumulation and
direction, of feeling acquired by contagion, and relying on the sympathy
of sect or confederacy; intense sensation with confused or dim
conceptions. Hence the fanatic can exist only in a crowd, from inward
weakness anxious for outward confirmation; and, therefore, an eager
proselyter and intolerant. The enthusiast, on the contrary, is a
solitary, who lives in a world of his own peopling, and for that cause
is disinclined to outward action. Lastly, enthusiasm is susceptible of
many degrees, (according to the proportionateness of the objects
contemplated,) from the highest grandeur of moral and intellectual
being, even to madness; but fanaticism is one and the same, and appears
different only from the manners and original temperament of the
individual. There is a white and a red heat; a sullen glow as well as a
crackling flame; cold-blooded as well as hot-blooded fanaticism.
Enthusiasts, [Greek: enthousiastai] from [Greek: entheos, ois ho theos
enesi], or possibly from [Greek: en thusiais], those who, in sacrifice
to, or at, the altar of truth or falsehood, are possessed by a spirit or
influence mightier than their own individuality. 'Fanatici-qui circum
fana favorem mutuo contrahunt el afflant'--those who in the same
conventicle, or before the same shrine, relique or image, heat and
ferment by co-acervation.
I am fully aware that the words are used by the best writers
indifferently, but such must be the case in very many words in a
composite language, such as the English, before they are desynonymized.
Thus imagination and fancy; chronical and temporal, and many others.
FÉNÉLON ON CHARITY.[1]
Note to pages 196,197.
This chapter is plausible, shewy, insinuating, and (as indeed is the
character of the whole work) 'makes the amiable.' To many,--to myself
formerly,--it has appeared a mere dispute about words: but it is by no
means of so harmless a character, for it tends to give a false direction
to our thoughts, by diverting the conscience from the ruined and
corrupted state, in which we are without Christ. Sin is the disease.
What is the remedy? What is the antidote?--Charity?--Pshaw! Charity in
the large apostolic sense of the term is the health, the state to be
obtained by the use of the remedy, not the sovereign balm itself,--faith
of grace,--faith in the God-manhood, the cross, the mediation, and
perfected righteousness, of Jesus, to the utter rejection and abjuration
of all righteousness of our own! Faith alone is the restorative. The
Romish scheme is preposterous;--it puts the rill before the spring.
Faith is the source,--charity, that is, the whole Christian life, is the
stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect
without charity. As wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and
strong, was imperfect without heat, or that the sun, however cloudless,
was imperfect without beams. The true answer would be:--it is not
faith,--but utter reprobate faithlessness, which may indeed very
possibly coexist with a mere acquiescence of the understanding in
certain facts recorded by the Evangelists. But did John, or Paul, or
Martin Luther, ever flatter this barren belief with the name of saving
faith? No. Little ones! Be not deceived. Wear at your bosoms that
precious amulet against all the spells of antichrist, the 20th verse of
the 2nd chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians:--'I am crucified
with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:
and the life, which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the
Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me'.
Thus we see even our faith is not ours in its origin: but is the faith
of the Son of God graciously communicated to us. Beware, therefore, that
you do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the
Law, then Christ is dead in vain. If, therefore, we are saved by
charity, we are saved by the keeping of the Law, which doctrine St. Paul
declared to be an apostacy from Christ, and a bewitching of the soul
from the truth. But, you will perhaps say, can a man be saved without
charity?--The answer is, a man without charity cannot be saved: the
faith of the Son of God is not in him.
[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.]
CHANGE OF THE CLIMATES.
The character and circumstances of the animal and vegetable remains
discovered in the northern zone, in Siberia and other parts of
Russia,--all with scarcely an exception belonging to 'genera' that are
now only found in, and require, a tropical climate,--are such as receive
no adequate solution from the hypothesis of their having been casually
floated thither, and deposited, by the waters of a deluge, still less of
the Noachian deluge, as related and described by the great Hebrew
historian and legislator. In order to a full solution of this problem,
two 'data' are requisite:
1. A total change of climate:
2. That this change shall have been, not gradual, but sudden,
instantaneous, and incompatible with the life and subsistency of the
animals and vegetables in these high latitudes, at that period, and
previously, existing.
Now these 'data' or conditions will be afforded, if we assume a total
submersion of the surface of this planet, even of its highest mountains
then and now existing, by a sudden contemporaneous mass of waters, and
that the evaporation of these waters was aided by a steady wind,
especially adapted to this purpose in a peculiarly dry atmosphere, and
was (as it must of necessity have been) most rapid and intense at the
equator and within the tropics proportionally. For--as it has been
demonstrated by Dr. Wollaston's experiment, in which the evaporation,
occasioned by boiling water at the mid point of a line of water, froze
the fluid at the two ends, that is, at a given distance from the
greatest intensity of the evaporative process,--the effect of an
evaporation of the supposed power and rapidity would be to produce at
certain distances from the 'maximum' point, north and south, a vast
barrier of ice,--such as having once taken place, and being of such mass
and magnitude as to be only in a small degree diminishable by the
ensuing summer, must have become permanent, and beyond the power of all
the known and ordinary dissolving agents of nature. That the situation
of the magnetic poles of the earth, and the almost certain connection of
magnetism with cold, no less than with metallic cohesion, co-operated in
determining the distance of the barriers, or two poles, of evaporation,
from its centre or the 'maximum' of its activity, is highly probable,
and receives a strong confirmation from the open sea and diminished
cold, both at the north and south zones, on the ulterior of the barrier,
and towards the true or physical poles of the earth.
Now the action of a powerful co-agent in the evaporative process, such
as is assumed in this hypothesis, is a fact of history. 'And God
remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was
with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the
waters assuaged'. Gen. viii. 1. I do not recollect the Hebrew word
rendered 'assuaged;' but I will consult my learned friend Hyman Hurwitz
on its radical, and its primary sense. At all events, the note by Pyle
in Drs. Mant and D'Oyly's Bible is arbitrary, though excusable by the
state of chemical science in his time.
The problem of the multitude of 'genera' of animals, and their several
exclusive acclimatements at the present period may, likewise, I persuade
myself, receive a probable solution by an hypothesis legitimated by
known laws and fair analogies. But of this hereafter.
1823.
WONDERFULNESS OF PROSE.
It has just struck my feelings that the Pherecydean origin of prose
being granted, prose must have struck men with greater admiration than
poetry. In the latter, it was the language of passion and emotion: it is
what they themselves spoke and heard in moments of exultation,
indignation, &c. But to hear an evolving roll, or a succession of
leaves, talk continually the language of deliberate reason in a form of
continued preconception, of a 'Z' already possessed when 'A' was being
uttered,--this must have appeared godlike. I feel myself in the same
state, when in the perusal of a sober, yet elevated and harmonious,
succession of sentences and periods, I abstract my mind from the
particular passage, and sympathize with the wonder of the common people
who say of an eloquent man:--'He talks like a book!'
NOTES ON TOM JONES. [1]
Manners change from generation to generation, and with manners morals
appear to change,--actually change with some, but appear to change with
all but the abandoned. A young man of the present day who should act as
Tom Jones is supposed to act at Upton, with Lady Bellaston, &c. would
not be a Tom Jones; and a Tom Jones of the present day, without perhaps
being in the ground a better man, would have perished rather than submit
to be kept by a harridan of fortune. Therefore this novel is, and,
indeed, pretends to be, no exemplar of conduct. But, notwithstanding all
this, I do loathe the cant which can recommend Pamela and Clarissa
Harlowe as strictly moral, though they poison the imagination of the
young with continued doses of 'tinct. lyttae', while Tom Jones is
prohibited as loose. I do not speak of young women;--but a young man
whose heart or feelings can be injured, or even his passions excited, by
aught in this novel, is already thoroughly corrupt. There is a cheerful,
sun-shiny, breezy spirit that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted
with the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson. Every
indiscretion, every immoral act, of Tom Jones, (and it must be
remembered that he is in every one taken by surprise--his inward
principles remaining firm--) is so instantly punished by embarrassment
and unanticipated evil consequences of his folly, that the reader's mind
is not left for a moment to dwell or run riot on the criminal indulgence
itself. In short, let the requisite allowance be made for the increased
refinement of our manners,--and then I dare believe that no young man
who consulted his heart and conscience only, without adverting to what
the world would say--could rise from the perusal of Fielding's Tom
Jones, Joseph Andrews, or Amelia, without feeling himself a better
man;--at least, without an intense conviction that he could not be
guilty of a base act.
If I want a servant or mechanic, I wish to know what he does:--but of a
friend, I must know what he is. And in no writer is this momentous
distinction so finely brought forward as by Fielding. We do not care
what Blifil does;--the deed, as separate from the agent, may be good or
ill;--but Blifil is a villain;--and we feel him to be so from the very
moment he, the boy Blifil, restores Sophia's poor captive bird to its
native and rightful liberty.
Book xiv. ch. 8.
Notwithstanding the sentiment of the Roman satirist, which denies the
divinity of fortune; and the opinion of Seneca to the same purpose;
Cicero, who was, I believe, a wiser man than either of them, expressly
holds the contrary; and certain it is there are some incidents in life
so very strange and unaccountable, that it seems to require more than
human skill and foresight in producing them.
Surely Juvenal, Seneca, and Cicero, all meant the same thing, namely,
that there was no chance, but instead of it providence, either human or
divine.
Book xv. ch. 9.
The rupture with Lady Bellaston.
Even in the most questionable part of Tom Jones, I cannot but think,
after frequent reflection, that an additional paragraph, more fully and
forcibly unfolding Tom Jones's sense of self-degradation on the
discovery of the true character of the relation in which he had stood to
Lady Bellaston, and his awakened feeling of the dignity of manly
chastity, would have removed in great measure any just objections, at
all events relatively to Fielding himself, and with regard to the state
of manners in his time.
Book xvi. ch. 5.
That refined degree of Platonic affection which is absolutely detached
from the flesh, and is indeed entirely and purely spiritual, is a gift
confined to the female part of the creation; many of whom I have heard
declare (and doubtless with great truth) that they would, with the
utmost readiness, resign a lover to a rival, when such resignation was
proved to be necessary for the temporal interest of such lover.
I firmly believe that there are men capable of such a sacrifice, and
this, without pretending to, or even admiring or seeing any virtue in,
this absolute detachment from the flesh.
[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman, Ed.]
JONATHAN WILD. [1]
Jonathan Wild is assuredly the best of all the fictions in which a
villain is throughout the prominent character. But how impossible it is
by any force of genius to create a sustained attractive interest for
such a groundwork, and how the mind wearies of, and shrinks from, the
more than painful interest, the [Greek: mis_eton], of utter
depravity,--Fielding himself felt and endeavoured to mitigate and remedy
by the (on all other principles) far too large a proportion, and too
quick recurrence, of the interposed chapters of moral reflection, like
the chorus in the Greek tragedy,--admirable specimens as these chapters
are of profound irony and philosophic satire. Chap. VI. Book 2, on
Hats,[Footnote 1]--brief as it is, exceeds any thing even in Swift's
Lilliput, or Tale of the Tub. How forcibly it applies to the Whigs,
Tories, and Radicals of our own times.
Whether the transposition of Fielding's scorching wit (as B. III. c.
xiv.) to the mouth of his hero be objectionable on the ground of
incredulus odi', or is to be admired as answering the author's purpose
by unrealizing the story, in order to give a deeper reality to the
truths intended,--I must leave doubtful, yet myself inclining to the
latter judgment. 27th Feb. 1832.
[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.]
[Footnote 2: 'In which our hero makes a speech well worthy to be
celebrated; and the behaviour of one of the gang, perhaps more unnatural
than any other part of this history.']
BARRY CORNWALL.[1]
Barry Cornwall is a poet, 'me saltem judice'; and in that sense of the
term, in which I apply it to C. Lamb and W. Wordsworth. There are poems
of great merit, the authors of which I should yet not feel impelled so
to designate.
The faults of these poems are no less things of hope, than the beauties;
both are just what they ought to be,--that is, now.
If B.C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn him, that as
poetry is the identity of all other knowledges, so a poet cannot be a
great poet, but as being likewise inclusively an historian and
naturalist, in the light, as well as the life, of philosophy: all other
men's worlds are his chaos.
Hints 'obiter' are:--
not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to seduce into effeminacy.
Not to permit beauties by repetition to become mannerisms.
To be jealous of fragmentary composition,--as epicurism of genius, and
apple-pie made all of quinces.
'Item', that dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and
passion,--not thought or passion disguised in the dress of poetry.
Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similies, figures, &c. They
will all find their place, sooner or later, each as the luminary of a
sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in poetry, because it is
language,--'ergo' processive,--'ergo' every the smallest star must be
seen singly.
There are not five metrists in the kingdom, whose works are known by me,
to whom I could have held myself allowed to have spoken so plainly. But
B.C. is a man of genius, and it depends on himself--(competence
protecting him from gnawing or distracting cares)--to become a rightful
poet,--that is, a great man.
Oh! for such a man worldly prudence is transfigured into the highest
spiritual duty! How generous is self-interest in him, whose true self is
all that is good and hopeful in all ages, as far as the language of
Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton shall become the mother-tongue!
A map of the road to Paradise, drawn in Purgatory, on the confines of
Hell, by S.T.C. July 30, 1819.
[Footnote 1: Written in Mr. Lamb's copy of the 'Dramatic Scenes'. Ed.]
THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE CROSS. [1]
O! That it were as it was wont to be,
When thy old friends of fire, all full of thee,
Fought against frowns with smiles; gave glorius chace
To persecutions; and against the face
Of death and fiercest dangers durst with brave
And sober pace march on to meet a grave!
On their bold breast about the world they bore thee,
And to the teeth of hell stood up to teach thee,
In centre of their inmost souls they wore thee,
Where racks and torments strove in vain to reach thee!
Powers of my soul, be proud, And speak aloud
To the dear-bought nations this redeeming name,
And in the wealth of one rich word proclaim
New smiles to nature! May it be no wrong,
Blest heavens! to you and your superior song,
That we, dark sons of dust and sorrow, Awhile dare borrow
The name of your delights and your desires,
And fit it to so far inferior lyres!--Our lispings have their music too,
Ye mighty orbs! as well as you; Nor yields the noblest nest
Of warbling cherubs to the ear of love, A melody above
The low fond murmurs from the loyal breast
Of a poor panting turtle dove.
We mortals too
Have leave to do
The same bright business, ye third heavens with you.
[Footnote 1: This poem was found in Mr. Coleridge's hand-writing on a
sheet of paper with other passages undoubtedly of his own composition.
There is something, however, in it which leads me to think it
transcribed or translated from some other writer, though I have been
unable from recollection or inquiry to ascertain the fact. It is
published here, therefore, expressly under caution. Ed.]
FULLER'S HOLY STATE.
B.I.c.9. Life of Eliezer.
He will not truant it now in the afternoon, but with convenient speed
returns to Abraham, who onely was worthy of such a servant, who onely
was worthy of such a master.
On my word, Eliezer did his business in an orderly and sensible manner;
but what there is to call forth this hyper-encomiastic--'who only'--I
cannot see.
B.II.c.3. Life of Paracelsus. It is matter of regret with me, that
Fuller, (whose wit, alike in quantity, quality, and perpetuity,
surpassing that of the wittiest in a witty age, robbed him of the praise
not less due to him for an equal superiority in sound, shrewd, good
sense, and freedom of intellect,) had not looked through the two Latin
folios of Paracelsus's Works. It is not to be doubted that a rich and
delightful article would have been the result. For who like Fuller could
have brought out and set forth, this singular compound of true
philosophic genius with the morals of a quack and the manners of a king
of the gypsies! Nevertheless, Paracelsus belonged to his age--the dawn
of experimental science: and a well written critique on his life and
writings would present, through the magnifying glass of a caricature,
the distinguishing features of the Helmonts, Kirchers, &c. in short, of
the host of naturalists of the sixteenth century. The period might begin
with Paracelsus and end with Sir Kenelm Digby.
N. B. The potential, ([Greek: Logos theanthropos]) the ground of the
prophetic, directed the first thinkers, (the 'Mystæ') to the metallic
bodies, as the key of all natural science. The then actual blended with
this instinct all the fancies and fond desires, and false perspective of
the childhood of intellect. The essence was truth, the form was folly:
and this is the definition of alchemy. Nevertheless the very terms bear
witness to the veracity of the original instinct. The world of sensible
experience cannot be more luminously divided than into the modifying
powers, [Greek: to allo],--that which differences, makes this other than
that; and the [Greek: met allo]--that which is beyond, or deeper than
the modification. 'Metallon' is strictly the base of the mode; and such
have the metals been determined to be by modern chemistry. And what are
now the great problems of chemistry? The difference of the metals
themselves, their origin, the causes of their locations, of their
co-existence in the same ore--as, for instance, iridium, osmium,
palladium, rhodium, and iron with platinum. Were these problems solved,
the results who dare limit? In addition to the 'méchanique céleste', we
might have a new department of astronomy, the 'chymie céleste', that is,
a philosophic astrology. And to this I do not hesitate to refer the
whole connection between alchemy and astrology, the same divinity in the
idea, the same childishness in the attempt to realize it. Nay, the very
invocations of spirits were not without a ground of truth. The light was
for the greater part suffocated and the rest fantastically refracted,
but still it was light struggling in the darkness. And I am persuaded,
that to the full triumph of science, it will be necessary that nature
should be commanded more spiritually than hitherto, that is, more
directly in the power of the will.
B. IV. c. 19. The Prince.
He sympathizeth with him that by a proxy is corrected for his offence.
See Sir W. Scott's Fortunes of Nigel. In an oriental despotism one would
not have been surprised at finding such a custom, but in a Christian
court, and under the light of Protestantism, it is marvellous. It would
be well to ascertain, if possible, the earliest date of this
contrivance; whether it existed under the Plantagenets, or whether first
under the Tudors, or lastly, whether it was a precious import from
Scotland with gentle King Jamie.
Ib. c. 21. The King.
He is a mortal god.
Compare the fulsome flattery of these and other passages in this volume
(though modest to the common language of James's priestly courtiers)
with the loyal but free and manly tone of Fuller's later works, towards
the close of Charles the First's reign and under the Commonwealth and
Protectorate. And doubtless this was not peculiar to Fuller: but a great
and lasting change was effected in the mind of the country generally.
The bishops and other church dignitaries tried for a while to renew the
old king-godding 'mumpsimus'; but the second Charles laughed at them,
and they quarrelled with his successor, and hated the hero who delivered
them from him too thoroughly to have flattered him with any unction,
even if William's Dutch phlegm had not precluded the attempt by making
its failure certain.
FULLER'S PROFANE STATE.
B. V. c. 2.
God gave magistrates power to punish them, else they bear the sword in
vain. They may command people to serve God, who herein have no cause
to complain.
And elsewhere. The only serious 'macula' in Fuller's mind is his uniform
support of the right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish errors
in belief. Fuller would, indeed, recommend moderation in the practice;
but of 'upas', 'woorara', and persecution, there are no moderate doses
possible.
FULLER'S APPEAL OF INJURED INNOCENCE.
Part I. c. 5.
Yet there want not learned writers (whom I need not name) of the
opinion that even the instrumental penmen of the Scripture might
commit [Greek: hamartaemata mnaemonika]: though open that window to
profaneness, and it will be in vain to shut any dores; 'Let God be
true, and every man a lyer'.
It has been matter of complaint with hundreds, yea, it is an old cuckoo
song of grim saints, that the Reformation came to its close long before
it came to its completion. But the cause of this imperfection has been
fully laid open by no party,--'scilicet', that in divines of both
parties of the Reformers, the Protestants and the Detestants, there was
the same relic of the Roman 'lues',--the habit of deciding for or
against the orthodoxy of a position, not according to its truth or
falsehood, not on grounds of reason or of history, but by the imagined
consequences of the position. The very same principles on which the
pontifical polemics vindicate the Papal infallibility, Fuller 'et centum
alii' apply to the (if possible) still more extravagant notion of the
absolute truth and divinity of every syllable of the text of the books
of the Old and New Testament as we have it.
Ib.
Sure I am, that one of as much meekness, as some are of moroseness,
even upright Moses himself, in his service of the essential and
increated truth (of higher consequence than the historical truth
controverted betwixt us) had notwithstanding 'a respect to the
reward'. Heb. xi. 26.
In religion the faith pre-supposed in the respect, and as its condition,
gives to the motive a purity and an elevation which of itself, and where
the recompense is looked for in temporal and carnal pleasures or
profits, it would not have.
FULLER'S CHURCH HISTORY.
B. I. cent. 5.
PELAGIUS:--Let no foreiner insult on the infelicity of our land in
bearing this monster.
It raises, or ought to raise, our estimation of Fuller's good sense and
the general temperance of his mind, when we see the heavy weight of
prejudices, the universal code of his age, incumbent on his judgment,
and which nevertheless left sanity of opinion, the general character of
his writings: this remark was suggested by the term 'monster' attached
to the worthy Cambrian Pelagius--the teacher _Arminianismi ante
Arminium_.
B. II. cent. 6. s. 8.
Whereas in Holy Writ, when the Apostles (and the Papists commonly call
Augustine the English apostle, how properly we shall see hereafter,)
went to a foreign nation, 'God gave them the language thereof, &c.'
What a loss that Fuller has not made a reference to his authorities for
this assertion! I am sure he could have found none in the New Testament,
but facts that imply, and, in the absence of all such proof, prove the
contrary.
Ib. s. 6.
Thus we see the whole week bescattered with Saxon idols, whose pagan
gods were the godfathers of the days, and gave them their names. 'This
some zealot may behold as the object of a necessary reformation,
desiring to have the days of the week new dipt, and called after other
names'. Though indeed this supposed scandal will not offend the wise,
as beneath their notice, and cannot offend the ignorant, as above
their knowledge.
A curious prediction fulfilled a few years after in the Quakers, and
well worthy of being extracted and addressed to the present Friends.
Memorandum.--It is the error of the Friends, but natural and common to
almost all sects,--the perversion of the wisdom of the first
establishers of their sect into their own folly, by not distinguishing
between the conditionally right and the permanently and essentially so.
For example: It was right conditionally in the Apostles to forbid black
puddings even to the Gentile Christians, and it was wisdom in them; but
to continue the prohibition would be folly and Judaism in us. The elder
church very sensibly distinguished episcopal from apostolic inspiration;
the episcopal spirit, that which dictated what was fit and profitable
for a particular community or church at a particular period,--from the
apostolic and catholic spirit which dictated truth and duties of
permanent and universal obligation.
Ib. cent. 7.
This Latin dedication is remarkably pleasing and elegant. Milton in his
classical youth, the aera of Lycidas, might have written it--only he
would have given it in Latin verse.
B. x. cent. 17.
Bp. of London. May your Majesty be pleased, that the ancient canon may
be remembered, 'Schismatici contra episcopos non sunt audiendi'. And
there is another decree of a very ancient council, that no man should
be admitted to speak against that whereunto he hath formerly
subscribed.
And as for you, Doctor Reynolds, and your sociates, how much are you
bound to his Majestie's clemencye, permitting you contrary to the
statute 'primo Elizabethae', so freely to speak against the liturgie
and discipline established. Faine would I know the end you aime at,
and whether you be not of Mr. Cartwright's minde, who affirmed, that
we ought in ceremonies rather to conforme to the Turks than to the
Papists. I doubt you approve his position, because here appearing
before his Majesty in Turkey-gownes, not in your scholastic habits,
according to the order of the Universities.
If any man, who like myself hath attentively read the Church history of
the reign of Elizabeth, and the conference before, and with, her pedant
successor, can shew me any essential difference between Whitgift and
Bancroft during their rule, and Bonner and Gardiner in the reign of
Mary, I will be thankful to him in my heart and for him in my prayers.
One difference I see, namely, that the former professing the New
Testament to be their rule and guide, and making the fallibility of all
churches and individuals an article of faith, were more inconsistent,
and therefore less excusable, than the Popish persecutors. 30 Aug. 1824.
N.B. The crimes, murderous as they were, were the vice and delusion of
the age, and it is ignorance to lack charity towards the persons, Papist
or Protestant; but the tone, the spirit, characterizes, and belongs to,
the individual: for example, the bursting spleen of this Bancroft, not
so satisfied with this precious arbitrator for having pre-condemned his
opponents, as fierce and surly with him for not hanging them up unheard.
At the end. Next to Shakspeare, I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller,
beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the sense and emotion of
the marvellous;--the degree in which any given faculty or combination of
faculties is possessed and manifested, so far surpassing what one would
have thought possible in a single mind, as to give one's admiration the
flavour and quality of wonder! Wit was the stuff and substance of
Fuller's intellect. It was the element, the earthen base, the material
which he worked in, and this very circumstance has defrauded him of his
due praise for the practical wisdom of the thoughts, for the beauty and
variety of the truths, into which he shaped the stuff. Fuller was
incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man of an
age that boasted a galaxy of great men. He is a very voluminous writer,
and yet in all his numerous volumes on so many different subjects, it is
scarcely too much to say, that you will hardly find a page in which some
one sentence out of every three does not deserve to be quoted for
itself--as motto or as maxim. God bless thee, dear old man! may I meet
with thee!--which is tantamount to--may I go to heaven!
July, 1829.
ASGILL'S ARGUMENT.
'That according to the covenant of eternal life revealed in the
Scriptures, man may be translated from hence into that eternal life,
without passing through death, although the human nature of Christ
himself could not be thus translated till he had passed through
death.' Edit. 1715.
If I needed an illustrative example of the distinction between the
reason and the understanding, between spiritual sense and logic, this
treatise of Asgill's would supply it. Excuse the defect of all idea, or
spiritual intuition of God, and allow yourself to bring Him as plaintiff
or defendant into a common-law court,--and then I cannot conceive a
clearer or cleverer piece of special pleading than Asgill has here
given. The language is excellent--idiomatic, simple, perspicuous, at
once significant and lively, that is, expressive of the thought, and
also of a manly proportion of feeling appropriate to it. In short, it is
the ablest attempt to exhibit a scheme of religion without ideas, that
the inherent contradiction in the thought renders possible.
It is of minor importance how a man represents to himself his redemption
by the Word Incarnate,--within what scheme of his understanding he
concludes it, or by what supposed analogies (though actually no better
than metaphors) he tries to conceive it, provided he has a lively faith
in Christ, the Son of the living God, and his Redeemer. The faith may
and must be the same in all who are thereby saved; but every man, more
or less, construes it into an intelligible belief through the shaping
and coloring optical glass of his own individual understanding. Mr.
Asgill has given a very ingenious common-law scheme. 'Valeat quantum
valere potest'! It would make a figure before the Benchers of the Middle
Temple. For myself, I prefer the belief that man was made to know that a
finite free agent could not stand but by the coincidence, and
independent harmony, of a separate will with the will of God. For only
by the will of God can he obey God's will. Man fell as a soul to rise a
spirit. The first Adam was a living soul; the last a life-making spirit.
In the Word was life, and that life is the light of men. And as long as
the light abides within its own sphere, that is, appears as reason,--so
long it is commensurate with the life, and is its adequate
representative. But not so, when this light shines downward into the
understanding; for there it is always, more or less, refracted, and
differently in every different individual; and it must be re-converted
into life to rectify itself, and regain its universality, or
'all-commonness, Allgemeinheit', as the German more expressively says.
Hence in faith and charity the church is catholic: so likewise in the
fundamental articles of belief, which constitute the right reason of
faith. But in the minor 'dogmata', in modes of exposition, and the
vehicles of faith and reason to the understandings, imaginations, and
affections of men, the churches may differ, and in this difference
supply one object for charity to exercise itself on by mutual
forbearance.
O! there is a deep philosophy in the proverbial phrase,--'his heart sets
his head right!' In our commerce with heaven, we must cast our local
coins and tokens into the melting pot of love, to pass by weight and
bullion. And where the balance of trade is so immensely in our favour,
we have little right to complain, though they should not pass for half
the nominal value they go for in our own market.
P. 46.
And I am so far from thinking this covenant of eternal life to be an
allusion to the forms of title amongst men, that I rather adore it as
the precedent for them all, from which our imperfect forms are taken:
believing with that great Apostle, that 'the things on earth are but
the patterns of things in the heavens, where the originals are kept'.
Aye! this, this is the pinch of the argument, which Asgill should have
proved, not merely asserted. Are these human laws, and these forms of
law, absolutely good and wise, or only conditionally so--the limited
powers and intellect, and the corrupt will of men being considered?
P. 64.
And hence, though the dead shall not arise with the same identity of
matter with which they died, yet being in the same form, they will not
know themselves from themselves, being the same to all uses, intents,
and purposes.... But then as God, in the resurrection, is not bound to
use the same matter, neither is he obliged to use a different matter.
The great objection to this part of Asgill's scheme, which has had, and
still, I am told, has, many advocates among the chief dignitaries of our
church, is--that it either takes death as the utter extinction of
being,--or it supposes a continuance, or at least a renewal, of
consciousness after death. The former involves all the irrational, and
all the immoral, consequences of materialism. But if the latter be
granted, the proportionality, adhesion, and symmetry, of the whole
scheme are gone, and the infinite quantity,--that is, immortality under
the curse of estrangement from God,--is rendered a mere supplement
tacked on to the finite, and comparatively insignificant, if not
doubtful, evil, namely, the dissolution of the organic body. See what a
poor hand Asgill makes of it, p. 26:--
And therefore to signify the height of this resentment, God raises man
from the dead to demand further satisfaction of him.
Death is a commitment to the prison of the grave till the judgment of
the great day; and then the grand 'Habeas corpus' will issue 'to the
earth and to the sea', to give up their dead; to remove the bodies,
with the cause of their commitment: and as these causes shall appear,
they shall either be released, or else sentenced to the common goal of
hell, there to remain until satisfaction.
P. 66.
Thou wilt not leave my 'soul' in the grave....
And that it is translated 'soul', is an Anglicism, not understood in
other languages, which have no other word for 'soul' but the same
which is for life.
How so? 'Seele', the soul, 'Leben', life, in German; [Greek: psychae]
and [Greek: zo_ae], in Greek, and so on.
P. 67.
Then to this figure God added 'life', by breathing it into him from
himself, whereby this inanimate body became a living one.
And what was this life? Something, or nothing? And had not, first, the
Spirit, and next the Word, of God infused life into the earth, of which
man as an animal and all other animals were made,--and then, in addition
to this, breathed into man a living soul, which he did not breathe into
the other animals?
P. 75.-78-81. 'ad finem':
I have a great deal of business yet in this world, without doing of
which heaven itself would be uneasy to me.
And therefore do depend, that I shall not be taken hence in the midst
of my days, before I have done all my heart's desire.
But when that is done, I know no business I have with the dead, and
therefore do as much depend that I shall not go hence by 'returning to
the dust', which is the sentence of that law from which I claim a
discharge: but that I shall make my 'exit' by way of translation,
which I claim as a dignity belonging to that degree in the science of
eternal life, of which I profess myself a graduate, according to the
true intent and meaning of the covenant of eternal life revealed in
the Scriptures.
A man so [Greek: kat exochaen] clear-headed, so remarkable for the
perspicuity of his sentences, and the luminous orderliness of his
arrangement,--in short, so consummate an artist in the statement of his
case, and in the inferences from his 'data', as John Asgill must be
allowed by all competent judges to have been,--was he in earnest or in
jest from p. 75 to the end of this treatise?--My belief is, that he
himself did not know. He was a thorough humorist: and so much of will,
with a spice of the wilful, goes to the making up of a humorist's creed,
that it is no easy matter to determine, how far such a man might not
have a pleasure in 'humming' his own mind, and believing, in order to
enjoy a dry laugh at himself for the belief.
But let us look at it in another way. That Asgill's belief, professed
and maintained in this tract, is unwise and odd, I can more readily
grant, than that it is altogether irrational and absurd. I am even
strongly inclined to conjecture, that so early as St. Paul's apostolate
there were persons (whether sufficiently numerous to form a sect or
party, I cannot say), who held the same tenet as Asgill's, and in a more
intolerant and exclusive sense; and that it is to such persons that St.
Paul refers in the justly admired fifteenth chapter of the first epistle
to the Corinthians; and that the inadvertence to this has led a numerous
class of divines to a misconception of the Apostle's reasoning, and a
misinterpretation of his words, in behoof of the Socinian notion, that
the resurrection of Christ is the only argument of proof for the belief
of a future state, and that this was the great end and purpose of this
event. Now this assumption is so destitute of support from the other
writers of the New Testament, and so discordant with the whole spirit
and gist of St. Paul's views and reasoning every where else, that it is
'a priori' probable, that the apparent exception in this chapter is only
apparent. And this the hypothesis, I have here advanced, would enable
one to shew, and to exhibit the true bearing of the texts. Asgill
contents himself with maintaining that translation without death is one,
and the best, mode of passing to the heavenly state. 'Hinc itur ad
astra'. But his earliest predecessors contended that it was the only
mode, and to this St. Paul justly replies:'--If in this life only we
have hope, we are of all men most miserable.'
1827.
INTRODUCTION TO ASGILL'S DEFENCE
UPON HIS EXPULSION FROM THE HOUSE OP COMMONS.
EDIT. 1712.
P. 28.
For as every faith, or credit, that a man hath attained to, is the
result of some knowledge or other; so that whoever hath attained that
knowledge, hath that faith, (for whatever a man knows, he cannot but
believe:)
So this 'all faith' being the result of all knowledge,'tis easy to
conceive that whoever had once attained to all that knowledge, nothing
could be difficult to him.
This whole discussion on faith is one of the very few instances, in
which Asgill has got out of his depth. According to all usage of words,
science and faith are incompatible in relation to the same object;
while, according to Asgill, faith is merely the power which science
confers on the will. Asgill says,--What we know, we must believe. I
retort,--What we only believe, we do not know. The 'minor' here is
excluded by, not included in, the 'major'. Minors by difference of
quantity are included in their majors; but minors by difference of
quality are excluded by them, or superseded. Apply this to belief and
science, or certain knowledge. On the confusion of the second, that is,
minors by difference of quality, with the first, or minors by difference
of quantity, rests Asgill's erroneous exposition of faith.
NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWN'S RELIGIO MEDICI,
MADE DURING A SECOND PERUSAL. 1808. [1]
Part I. S.1.
For my religion, though there be several circumstances that might
perswade the world I have none at all, 'as the generall scandall of my
profession', &c.
The historical origin of this scandal, which in nine cases out of ten is
the honour of the medical profession, may, perhaps, be found in the
fact, that Ænesidemus and Sextus Empiricus, the sceptics, were both
physicians, about the close of the second century. [2] A fragment from
the writings of the former has been preserved by Photius, and such as
would leave a painful regret for the loss of the work, had not the
invaluable work of Sextus Empiricus been still extant.
S. 7.
A third there is which I did never positively maintaine or practise,
but have often wished it had been consonant to truth, and not
offensive to my religion, and that is, the prayer for the dead, &c.
Our church with her characteristic Christian prudence does not enjoin
prayer for the dead, but neither does she prohibit it. In its own nature
it belongs to a private aspiration; and being conditional, like all
religious acts not expressed in Scripture, and therefore not combinable
with a perfect faith, it is something between prayer and wish,--an act
of natural piety sublimed by Christian hope, that shares in the light,
and meets the diverging rays, of faith, though it be not contained in
the focus.
S. 13.
He holds no counsell, but that mysticall one of the Trinity, wherein,
though there be three persons, there is but one mind that decrees
without contradiction, &c.
Sir T.B. is very amusing. He confesses his part heresies, which are mere
opinions, while his orthodoxy is full of heretical errors. His Trinity
is a mere trefoil, a 3=1, which is no mystery at all, but a common
object of the senses. The mystery is, that one is three, that is, each
being the whole God.
S. 18.
'Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at
tables, &c.
But a great profanation, methinks, and a no less absurdity. Would Sir T.
Brown, before weighing two pigs of lead, A. and B., pray to God that A.
might weigh the heavier? Yet if the result of the dice be at the time
equally believed to be a settled and predetermined effect, where lies
the difference? Would not this apply against all petitionary
prayer?--St. Paul's injunction involves the answer:--'Pray always'.
S. 22.
They who to salve this would make the deluge particular, proceed upon
a principle that I can no way grant, &c.
But according to the Scripture, the deluge was so gentle as to leave
uncrushed the green leaves on the olive tree. If then it was universal,
and if (as with the longevity of the antediluvians it must have been)
the earth was fully peopled, is it not strange that no buildings remain
in the since then uninhabited parts--in America for instance? That no
human skeletons are found may be solved from the circumstance of the
large proportion of phosphoric acid in human bones. But cities and
traces of civilization?--I do not know what to think, unless we might be
allowed to consider Noah a 'homo repraesentativus', or the last and
nearest of a series taken for the whole.
S. 33.
They that to refute the invocation of saints, have denied that they
have any knowledge of our affairs below, have proceeded too farre, and
must pardon my opinion, till I can throughly answer that piece of
Scripture, 'At the conversion of a sinner the angels of Heaven
rejoyce'.
Take any moral or religious book, and, instead of understanding each
sentence according to the main purpose and intention, interpret every
phrase in its literal sense as conveying, and designed to convey, a
metaphysical verity, or historical fact:--what a strange medley of
doctrines should we not educe? And yet this is the way in which we are
constantly in the habit of treating the books of the New Testament.
S. 34.
And, truely, for the first chapters of 'Genesis' I must confesse a
great deal of obscurity; though divines have to the power of humane
reason endeavored to make all go in a literall meaning, yet those
allegoricall interpretations are also probable, and perhaps, the
mysticall method of Moses bred up in the hieroglyphicall schooles of
the Egyptians.
The second chapter of Genesis from v. 4, and the third chapter are to my
mind, as evidently symbolical, as the first chapter is literal. The
first chapter is manifestly by Moses himself; but the second and third
seem to me of far higher antiquity, and have the air of being translated
into words from graven stones.
S. 48. This section is a series of ingenious paralogisms.
S. 49.
Moses, that was bred up in all the learning of the Egyptians,
committed a grosse absurdity in philosophy, when with these eyes of
flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his maker, that is, truth
itself, to a contradiction.
Bear in mind the Jehovah 'Logos', the [Symbol: 'O "omega N] [Greek: en
kolp_o patros]--the person 'ad extra',--and few passages in the Old
Testament are more instructive, or of profounder import. Overlook this,
or deny it,--and none so perplexing or so irreconcilable with the known
character of the inspired writer.
S. 50.
For that mysticall metall of gold, whose solary and celestiall nature
I admire, &c.
Rather anti-solar and terrene nature! For gold, most of all metals,
repelleth light, and resisteth that power and portion of the common air,
which of all ponderable bodies is most akin to light, and its surrogate
in the realm of [Greek: antiph'os]; or gravity, namely, oxygen. Gold is
'tellurian' [Greek: kat exochaen] and if solar, yet as in the solidity
and dark 'nucleus' of the sun.
S. 52.
I thank God that with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of hell,
nor never grew pale at the description of that place; I have so fixed
my contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of
hell, &c.
Excellent throughout. The fear of hell may, indeed, in some desperate
cases, like the _moxa_, give the first rouse from a moral lethargy, or
like the green venom of copper, by evacuating poison or a dead load from
the inner man, prepare it for nobler ministrations and medicines from
the realm of light and life, that nourish while they stimulate.
S. 54.
There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ, &c.
This is plainly confined to such as have had Christ preached to
them;--but the doctrine, that salvation is in and by Christ only, is a
most essential verity, and an article of unspeakable grandeur and
consolation. Name--_nomen_, that is, [Greek: noumenon], in its spiritual
interpretation, is the same as power, or intrinsic cause. What? Is it a
few letters of the alphabet, the hearing of which in a given succession,
that saves?
S. 59.
'Before Abraham was, I am,' is the saying of Christ; yet is it true in
some sense if I say it of myself, for I was not only before myself,
but Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod
held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was before
the creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I
dead before I was alive;--though my grave be England, my dying-place
was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain.
Compare this with s. 11, and the judicious remark there on the mere
accommodation in the 'prae' of predestination. But the subject was too
tempting for the rhetorician.
Part II. s. 1.
But as in casting account, three or four men together come short in
account of one man placed by himself below them, &c.
Thus 1,965. But why is the 1, said to be placed below the 965?
S. 7.
Let me be nothing, if within the compass of myself, I do not finde the
battaile of Lepanto, passion against reason, 'reason against faith',
faith against the devil, and my conscience against all.
It may appear whimsical, but I really feel an impatient regret, that
this good man had so misconceived the nature both of faith and reason as
to affirm their contrariety to each other.
Ib.
For my originale sin, I hold it to bee washed away in my baptisme; for
my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with God, but from my
last repentance, &c.
This is most true as far as the imputation of the same is concerned. For
where the means of avoiding its consequences have been afforded, each
after transgression is actual, by a neglect of those means.
S. 14.
God, being all goodnesse, can love nothing but himself; he loves us
but for that part which is, as it were, himselfe, and the traduction
of his Holy Spirit.
This recalls a sublime thought of Spinosa. Every true virtue is a part
of that love, with which God loveth himself.
[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Wordsworth.--Ed.]
[Footnote 2: A mistake as to Ænesidemus, who lived in the age of
Augustus--Ed.]
NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S GARDEN OF CYRUS,
OR THE QUINCUNCIAL, ETC. PLANTATIONS OF THE ANCIENTS, ETC.
Ch. III.
That bodies are first spirits, Paracelsus could affirm, &c.
Effects purely relative from properties merely comparative, such as
edge, point, grater, &c. are not proper qualities: for they are
indifferently producible 'ab extra', by grinding, &c., and 'ab intra',
from growth. In the latter instance, they suppose qualities as their
antecedents. Now, therefore, since qualities cannot proceed from
quantity, but quantity from quality,--and as matter opposed to spirit is
shape by modification of extension, or pure quantity,--Paracelsus's
'dictum' is defensible.
Ib.
The æquivocall production of things, under undiscerned principles,
makes a large part of generation, &c.
Written before Harvey's 'ab ovo omnia'. Since his work, and Lewenhock's
'Microscopium', the question is settled in physics; but whether in
metaphysics, is not quite so clear.
Ch. IV.
And mint growing in glasses of water, until it arriveth at the weight
of an ounce, in a shady place, will sometimes exhaust a pound of
water.
How much did Brown allow for evaporation?
Ib.
Things entering upon the intellect by a pyramid from without, and
thence into the memory by another from within, the common decussation
being in the understanding, &c.
This nearly resembles Kant's intellectual 'mechanique'.
The Platonists held three knowledges of God;--first, [Greek: parousia],
his own incommunicable self-comprehension;--second, [Greek: kata
noaesin]--by pure mind, unmixed with the sensuous;--third, [Greek: kat
epistaemaen]--by discursive intelligential act. Thus a Greek
philosopher:--[Greek: tous epistaemonikous logous muthous haegaesetai
sunousa t'o patri kai sunesti'omenae hae psuchae en tae alaetheia tou
ontos, kai en augae kathara].--Those notions of God which we attain by
processes of intellect, the soul will consider as mythological
allegories, when it exists in union with the Father, and is feasting
with him in the truth of very being, and in the pure, unmixed,
absolutely simple and elementary, splendor. Thus expound Exod. c.
xxxiii. v. 10. 'And he said, thou canst not see my face: for there
shall no man see me, and live'. By the 'face of God,' Moses meant the
[Greek: idea noaetikae] which God declared incompatible with human life,
it implying [Greek: epaphae tou noaetou], or contact with the pure
spirit.
NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S VULGAR ERRORS.
ADDRESS TO THE READER.
Dr. Primrose,
Is not this the same person as the physician mentioned by Mrs.
Hutchinson in her Memoirs of her husband?
Book I. c. 8. s. 1. The veracity and credibility of Herodotus have
increased and increase with the increase of our discoveries. Several of
his relations deemed fabulous, have been authenticated within the last
thirty years from this present 1808.
Ib. s. 2.
Sir John Mandevill left a book of travels:--herein he often attesteth
the fabulous relations of Ctesias.
Many, if not most, of these Ctesian fables in Sir J. Mandevill were
monkish interpolations.
Ib. s. 13.
Cardanus--is of singular use unto a prudent reader; but unto him that
only desireth 'hoties', or to replenish his head with varieties,--he
may become no small occasion of error.
'Hoties'--[Greek: hoti s]--'whatevers,' that is, whatever is
written, no matter what, true or false,--'omniana'; 'all sorts of
varieties,' as a dear young lady once said to me.
Ib. c. ix.
If Heraclitus with his adherents will hold the sun is no bigger than
it appeareth.
It is not improbable that Heraclitus meant merely to imply that we
perceive only our own sensations, and they of course are what they
are;--that the image of the sun is an appearance, or sensation in our
eyes, and, of course, an appearance can be neither more nor less than
what it appears to be;--that the notion of the true size of the sun is
not an image, or belonging either to the sense, or to the sensuous
fancy, but is an imageless truth of the understanding obtained by
intellectual deductions. He could not possibly mean what Sir T. B.
supposes him to have meant; for if he had believed the sun to be no more
than a mile distant from us, every tree and house must have shown its
absurdity.
...
In the following books I have endeavoured, wherever the author himself
is in a vulgar error, as far as my knowledge extends, to give in the
margin, either the demonstrated discoveries, or more probable opinions,
of the present natural philosophy;--so that, independently of the
entertainingness of the thoughts and tales, and the force and splendor
of Sir Thomas Browne's diction and manner, you may at once learn from
him the history of human fancies and superstitions, both when he detects
them, and when he himself falls into them,--and from my notes, the real
truth of things, or, at least, the highest degree of probability, at
which human research has hitherto arrived.
...
Book II. c. i. Production of crystal. Cold is the attractive or
astringent power, comparatively uncounteracted by the dilative, the
diminution of which is the proportional increase of the contractive.
Hence the astringent, or power of negative magnetism, is the proper
agent in cold, and the contractive, or oxygen, an allied and
consequential power. 'Crystallum, non ex aqua, sed ex substantia
metallorum communi confrigeratum dico'. As the equator, or mid point of
the equatorial hemispherical line, is to the centre, so water is to
gold. Hydrogen is to the electrical azote, as azote to the magnetic
hydrogen.
Ib.
Crystal--will strike fire--and upon collision with steel send forth
its sparks, not much inferiourly to a flint.
It being, indeed, nothing else but pure flint.
C. iii.
And the magick thereof (the lodestone) is not safely to be believed,
which was delivered by Orpheus, that sprinkled with water it will upon
a question emit a voice not much unlike an infant.
That is:--to the twin counterforces of the magnetic power, the
equilibrium of which is revealed in magnetic iron, as the substantial,
add the twin counterforces or positive and negative poles of the
electrical power, the indifference of which is realized in water, as the
superficial--(whence Orpheus employed the term 'sprinkled,' or rather
affused or superfused)--and you will hear the voice of infant
nature;--that is, you will understand the rudimental products and
elementary powers and constructions of the phenomenal world. An enigma
this not unworthy of Orpheus, 'quicunque fuit', and therefore not
improbably ascribed to him.
N. B. Negative and positive magnetism are to attraction and repulsion,
or cohesion and dispersion, as negative and positive electricity are to
contraction and dilation.
C. vii. s. 4.
That camphire begets in men [Greek: taen anaphrodisian], observation
will hardly confirm, &c.
There is no doubt of the fact as to a temporary effect; and camphire is
therefore a strong and immediate antidote to an overdose of
'cantharides'. Yet there are, doubtless, sorts and cases of [Greek:
anaphrodisia], which camphire might relieve. Opium is occasionally an
aphrodisiac, but far oftener the contrary. The same is true of 'bang',
or powdered hemp leaves, and, I suppose, of the whole tribe of narcotic
stimulants.
Ib. s. 8.
The yew and the berries thereof are harmless, we know.
The berries are harmless, but the leaves of the yew are undoubtedly
poisonous. See Withering's British Plants. Taxus.
Book III. c. xiii.
For although lapidaries and 'questuary' enquirers affirm it, &c.
'Questuary'--having gain or money for their object.
B. VI. c. viii.
The river Gihon, a branch of Euphrates and river of Paradise.
The rivers from Eden were, perhaps, meant to symbolize, or rather
expressed only, the great primary races of mankind. Sir T.B. was the
very man to have seen this; but the superstition of the letter was then
culminant.
Ib. c. x.
The chymists have laudably reduced their causes--(of colors)--unto
'sal', 'sulphur', and 'mercury', &c.
Even now, after all the brilliant discoveries from Scheele, Priestley,
and Cavendish, to Berzelius and Davy, no improvement has been made in
this division,--not of primary bodies (those idols of the modern atomic
chemistry), but of causes, as Sir T.B. rightly expresses them,--that is,
of elementary powers manifested in bodies. Let mercury stand for the
bi-polar metallic principle, best imaged as a line or 'axis' from north
to south,--the north or negative pole being the cohesive or coherentific
force, and the south or positive pole being the dispersive or
incoherentific force: the first is predominant in, and therefore
represented by, carbon,--the second by nitrogen; and the series of
metals are the primary and, hence, indecomponible 'syntheta' and
proportions of both. In like manner, sulphur represents the active and
passive principle of fire: the contractive force, or negative
electricity--oxygen--produces flame; and the dilative force, or positive
electricity--hydrogen--produces warmth. And lastly, salt is the
equilibrium or compound of the two former. So taken, salt, sulphur, and
mercury are equivalent to the combustive, the combustible, and the
combust, under one or other of which all known bodies, or ponderable
substances, may be classed and distinguished.
The difference between a great mind's and a little mind's use of history
is this. The latter would consider, for instance, what Luther did,
taught, or sanctioned: the former, what Luther,--a Luther,--would now
do, teach, and sanction. This thought occurred to me at midnight,
Tuesday, the 16th of March, 1824, as I was stepping into bed,--my eye
having glanced on Luther's Table Talk.
If you would be well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable
impression of you;--if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable
opinion of himself.
It is not common to find a book of so early date as this (1658), at
least among those of equal neatness of printing, that contains so many
gross typographical errors;--with the exception of our earliest dramatic
writers, some of which appear to have been never corrected, but worked
off at once as the types were first arranged by the compositors. But the
grave and doctrinal works are, in general, exceedingly correct, and form
a striking contrast to modern publications, of which the late edition of
Bacon's Works would be paramount in the infamy of multiplied unnoticed
'errata', were it not for the unrivalled slovenliness of Anderson's
British Poets, in which the blunders are, at least, as numerous as the
pages, and many of them perverting the sense, or killing the whole
beauty, and yet giving or affording a meaning, however low, instead.
These are the most execrable of all typographical errors. 1808.
[The volume from which the foregoing notes have been taken, is inscribed
in Mr. Lamb's writing--
'C. Lamb, 9th March, 1804. Bought for S.T. Coleridge.' Under which in
Mr. Coleridge's hand is written--
'N.B. It was on the 10th; on which day I dined and punched at Lamb's,
and exulted in the having procured the 'Hydriotaphia', and all the rest
'lucro apposita'. S.T.C.'
That same night, the volume was devoted as a gift to a dear friend in
the following letter.-Ed.]
10th, 1804,
Sat. night, 12 o'clock.
My dear--,
Sir Thomas Brown is among my first favorites, rich in various knowledge,
exuberant in conceptions and conceits, contemplative, imaginative; often
truly great and magnificent in his style and diction, though doubtless
too often big, stiff, and hyperlatinistic: thus I might without
admixture of falsehood, describe Sir T. Brown, and my description would
have only this fault, that it would be equally, or almost equally,
applicable to half a dozen other writers, from the beginning of the
reign of Elizabeth to the end of Charles II. He is indeed all this; and
what he has more than all this peculiar to himself, I seem to convey to
my own mind in some measure by saying,--that he is a quiet and sublime
enthusiast with a strong tinge of the fantast,--the humourist constantly
mingling with, and flashing across, the philosopher, as the darting
colours in shot silk play upon the main dye. In short, he has brains in
his head which is all the more interesting for a little twist in the
brains. He sometimes reminds the reader of Montaigne, but from no other
than the general circumstances of an egotism common to both; which in
Montaigne is too often a mere amusing gossip, a chit-chat story of whims
and peculiarities that lead to nothing,--but which in Sir Thomas Brown
is always the result of a feeling heart conjoined with a mind of active
curiosity,--the natural and becoming egotism of a man, who, loving other
men as himself, gains the habit, and the privilege of talking about
himself as familiarly as about other men. Fond of the curious, and a
hunter of oddities and strangenesses, while he conceived himself, with
quaint and humourous gravity a useful inquirer into physical truth and
fundamental science,--he loved to contemplate and discuss his own
thoughts and feelings, because he found by comparison with other men's,
that they too were curiosities, and so with a perfectly graceful and
interesting ease he put them too into his museum and cabinet of
varieties. In very truth he was not mistaken:--so completely does he see
every thing in a light of his own, reading nature neither by sun, moon,
nor candle light, but by the light of the faery glory around his own
head; so that you might say that nature had granted to him in perpetuity
a patent and monopoly for all his thoughts. Read his 'Hydriotaphia'
above all:--and in addition to the peculiarity, the exclusive
Sir-Thomas-Brown-ness of all the fancies and modes of illustration, wonder
at and admire his entireness in every subject, which is before him--he
is 'totus in illo'; he follows it; he never wanders from it,--and he has
no occasion to wander;--for whatever happens to be his subject, he
metamorphoses all nature into it. In that 'Hydriotaphia' or Treatise on
some Urns dug up in Norfolk--how earthy, how redolent of graves and
sepulchres is every line! You have now dark mould, now a thigh-bone, now
a scull, then a bit of mouldered coffin! a fragment of an old tombstone
with moss in its 'hic jacet';--a ghost or a winding-sheet--or the echo
of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind! and the gayest thing you
shall meet with shall be a silver nail or gilt 'Anno Domini' from a
perished coffin top. The very same remark applies in the same force to
the interesting, through the far less interesting, Treatise on the
Quincuncial Plantations of the Ancients. There is the same attention to
oddities, to the remotenesses and 'minutiæ' of vegetable terms,--the
same entireness of subject. You have quincunxes in heaven above,
quincunxes in earth below, and quincunxes in the water beneath the
earth; quincunxes in deity, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in
bones, in the optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in petals, in
every thing. In short, first turn to the last leaf of this volume, and
read out aloud to yourself the last seven paragraphs of Chap. v.
beginning with the words 'More considerables,' &c. But it is time for me
to be in bed, in the words of Sir Thomas, which will serve you, my dear,
as a fair specimen of his manner.--'But the quincunx of heaven--(the
Hyades or five stars about the horizon at midnight at that time)--runs
low, and 'tis time we close the five ports of knowledge: we are
unwilling to spin out our waking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep,
which often continueth præcogitations,--making tables of cobwebbes, and
wildernesses of handsome groves. To keep our eyes open longer were but
to act our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are
already past their first sleep in Persia.' Think you, my dear Friend,
that there ever was such a reason given before for going to bed at
midnight;--to wit, that if we did not, we should be acting the part of
our Antipodes! And then 'the huntsmen are up in America.'--What life,
what fancy!--Does the whimsical knight give us thus a dish of strong
green tea, and call it an opiate! I trust that you are quietly asleep--
And that all the stars hang bright above your dwelling, Silent as tho'
they watched the sleeping earth!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
FINIS.