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FROM THE UNPUBLISHED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.]