_1804_
"Home-sickness is no baby-pang."--S. T. C.
[Sidenote: THE UNDISCIPLINED WILL]
This evening, and indeed all this day, I ought to have been reading and
filling the margins of Malthus. ["An Essay on the Principles of
Population, &c., London," 1803, 4to. The copy annotated by Coleridge is
now in the British Museum.]
I had begun and found it pleasant. Why did I neglect it? Because I ought
not to have done this. The same applies to the reading and writing of
letters, essays, etc. Surely this is well worth a serious analysis,
that, by understanding, I may attempt to heal it. For it is a deep and
wide disease in my moral nature, at once elm-and-oak-rooted. Is it love
of liberty, of spontaneity or what? These all express, but do not
explain the fact.
[Sidenote: Tuesday morning, January 10, 1804]
After I had got into bed last night I said to myself that I had been
pompously enunciating as a difficulty, a problem of easy and common
solution--viz., that it was the effect of association. From infancy up
to manhood, under parents, schoolmasters, inspectors, etc., our
pleasures and pleasant self-chosen pursuits (self-chosen because
pleasant, and not originally pleasant because self-chosen) have been
forcibly interrupted, and dull, unintelligible rudiments, or painful
tasks imposed upon us instead. Now all duty is felt as a _command_, and
every command is of the nature of an offence. Duty, therefore, by the
law of association being felt as a command from without, would naturally
call up the sensation of the pain roused from the commands of parents
and schoolmasters. But I awoke this morning at half-past one, and as
soon as disease permitted me to think at all, the shallowness and
sophistry of this solution flashed upon me at once. I saw that the
phenomenon occurred far, far too early: I have observed it in infants of
two or three months old, and in Hartley I have seen it turned up and
layed bare to the unarmed eye of the merest common sense. The fact is
that interruption of itself is painful, because and as far as it acts as
_disruption_. And thus without any reference to or distinct recollection
of my former theory I saw great reason to attribute the effect, wholly,
to the streamy nature of the associative faculty, and the more, as it is
evident that they labour under this defect who are most reverie-ish and
streamy--Hartley, for instance, and myself. This seems to me no common
corroboration of my former thought or the origin of moral evil in
general.
[Sidenote: COGITARE EST LABORARE]
A time will come when passiveness will attain the dignity of worthy
activity, when men shall be as proud within themselves of having
remained in a state of deep tranquil emotion, whether in reading or in
hearing or in looking, as they now are in having figured away for an
hour. Oh! how few can transmute activity of mind into emotion! Yet there
are as active as the stirring tempest and playful as the may-blossom in
a breeze of May, who can yet for hours together remain with _hearts_
broad awake, and the _understanding_ asleep in all but its retentiveness
and _receptivity_. Yea, and (in) the latter (state of mind) evince as
great genius as in the former.
[Sidenote: A SHEAF OF ANECDOTES, Sunday morning, Feb. 5, 1804]
I called on Charles Lamb fully expecting him to be out, and intending
all the way, to write to him. I found him at home, and while sitting and
talking to him, took the pen and note-paper and began to write.
As soon as Holcroft heard that Mary Wollstonecraft was dead, he took a
chaise and came with incredible speed to "have Mrs. Godwin opened for a
remarkable woman!"
[Sidenote: Sunday morning, Feb. 13, 1804]
Lady Beaumont told me that when she was a child, previously to her
saying her prayers, she endeavoured to think of a mountain or great
river, or something great, in order to raise up her soul and kindle it.
Rickman has a tale about George Dyer and his "Ode to the Hero Race."
"Your Aunt, Sir," said George to the Man of Figures, "your Aunt is a
very sensible woman. Why I read Sir, my Ode to her and she said that it
was a very pretty Thing. There are very few women, Sir! that possess
that fine discrimination, Sir!"
The huge Organ Pipe at Exeter, larger than the largest at Haarlem, at
first was dumb. Green determined to make it speak, and tried all means
in vain, till at last he made a second pipe precisely alike, and placed
it at its side. _Then_ it spoke.
Sir George Beaumont found great advantage in learning to draw from
Nature through gauze spectacles.
At Göttingen, at Blumenbach's lectures on Psychology, when some
anatomical preparations were being handed round, there came in and
seated himself by us Englishmen a _Hospitator_, one, that is, who
attends one or two lectures unbidden and unforbidden and gratis, as a
stranger, and on a claim, as it were, of hospitality. This _Hospes_ was
the uncouthest, strangest fish, pretending to human which I ever beheld.
I turned to Greenough and "Who broke his bottle?" I whispered.
Godwin and Holcroft went together to Underwood's chambers. "Little Mr.
Underwood," said they, "we are perfectly acquainted with the subject of
your studies, only ignorant of the particulars. What is the difference
between a thermometer and a barometer?"
[Sidenote: THE ADOLESCENCE OF LOVE]
It is a pleasure to me to perceive the buddings of virtuous loves, to
know their minutes of increase, their stealth and silent growings--
A pretty idea, that of a good soul watching the progress of an
attachment from the first glance to the time when the lover himself
becomes conscious of it. A poem for my "Soother of Absence."
[Sidenote: THE RAGE FOR MONITION]
To J. Tobin, Esq., April 10, 1804.
Men who habitually enjoy robust health have, too generally, the trick,
and a very cruel one it is, of imagining that they discover the secret
of all their acquaintances' ill health in some malpractice or other;
and, sometimes, by gravely asserting this, here there and everywhere (as
who likes his penetration [hid] under a bushel?), they not only do all
they can, without intending it, to deprive the poor sufferer of that
sympathy which is always a comfort and, in some degree, a support to
human nature, but, likewise, too often implant serious alarm and
uneasiness in the minds of the person's relatives and his nearest and
dearest connections. Indeed (but that I have known its inutility, that I
should be ridiculously sinning against my own law which I was
propounding, and that those who are most fond of advising are the least
able to hear advice from others, as the passion to command makes men
disobedient) I should often have been on the point of advising you
against the two-fold rage of advising and of discussing character, both
the one and the other of which infallibly generates presumption and
blindness to our own faults. Nay! more particularly where, from whatever
cause, there exists a slowness to understand or an aptitude to mishear
and consequently misunderstand what has been said, it too often renders
an otherwise truly good man a mischief-maker to an extent of which he is
but little aware. Our friends' reputation should be a religion to us,
and when it is lightly sacrificed to what self-adulation calls a love of
telling the truth (in reality a lust of talking something seasoned with
the cayenne and capsicum of personality), depend upon it, something in
the heart is warped or warping, more or less according to the greater or
lesser power of the counteracting causes. I confess to you, that being
exceedingly low and heart-fallen, I should have almost sunk under the
operation of reproof and admonition (the whole too, in my conviction,
grounded on utter mistake) at the moment I was quitting, perhaps for
ever! my dear country and all that makes it so dear--but the high esteem
I cherish towards you, and my sense of your integrity and the reality of
your attachment and concern blows upon me refreshingly as the sea-breeze
on the tropic islander. Show me anyone made better by blunt advice, and
I may abate of my dislike to it, but I have experienced the good effects
of the contrary in Wordsworth's conduct to me; and, in Poole and others,
have witnessed enough of its ill effects to be convinced that it does
little else but harm both to the adviser and the advisee.
[See _Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, Letter cli., ii. 474, 475.]
[Sidenote: PLACES AND PERSONS, Thursday, April 19, 1804]
This is Spain! That is Africa! Now, then, I have seen Africa! &c., &c.
O! the power of names to give interest. When I first sate down, with
Europe on my left and Africa on my right, both distinctly visible, I
felt a quickening of the movements in the blood, but still it felt as a
pleasure of _amusement_ rather than of thought or elevation; and at the
same time, and gradually winning on the other, the nameless silent forms
of nature were working in me, like a tender thought in a man who is
hailed merrily by some acquaintance in his work, and answers it in the
same tone. This is Africa! That is Europe! There is _division_, sharp
boundary, abrupt change! and what are they in nature? Two mountain banks
that make a noble river of the interfluent sea, not existing and acting
with distinctness and manifoldness indeed, but at once and as one--no
division, no change, no antithesis! Of all men I ever knew, Wordsworth
himself not excepted, I have the faintest pleasure in things contingent
and transitory. I never, except as a forced courtesy of conversation,
ask in a stage-coach, Whose house is that? nor receive the least
additional pleasure when I receive the answer. Nay, it goes to a disease
in me. As I was gazing at a wall in Caernarvon Castle, I wished the
guide fifty miles off that was telling me, In this chamber the Black
Prince was born (or whoever it was). I am not certain whether I should
have seen with any emotion the mulberry-tree of Shakspere. If it were a
tree of no notice in itself, I am sure that I should feel by an
effort--with self-reproach at the dimness of the feeling; if a striking
tree, I fear that the pleasure would be diminished rather than
increased, that I should have no unity of feeling, and find in the
constant association of Shakspere having planted it an intrusion that
prevented me from wholly (as a whole man) losing myself in the flexures
of its branches and intertwining of its roots. No doubt there are times
and conceivable circumstances in which the contrary would be true, in
which the thought that under this rock by the sea-shore I know that
Giordano Bruno hid himself from the pursuit of the enraged priesthood,
and overcome with the power and sublimity of the truths for which they
sought his life, thought his life therefore given him that he might bear
witness to the truths, and _morti ultra occurrens_, returned and
surrendered himself! So, here, on this bank Milton used to lie, in late
May, when a young man, and familiar with all its primroses, made them
yet dearer than their dear selves, by that sweetest line in the Lycidas,
"And the rathe primrose that forsaken dies:" or from this spot the
immortal deer-stealer, on his escape from Warwickshire, had the first
view of London, and asked himself, And what am I to do there? At certain
times, uncalled and sudden, subject to no bidding of my own or others,
these thoughts would come upon me like a storm, and fill the place with
something more than nature. But these are not contingent or transitory,
they are nature, even as the elements are nature--yea, more to the
human mind, for the mind has the power of abstracting all agency from
the former and considering [them] as mere effects and instruments. But a
Shakspere, a Milton, a Bruno, exist in the mind as pure _action_,
defecated of all that is material and passive. And the great moments
that formed them--it is a kind of impiety against a voice within us, not
to regard them as predestined, and therefore things of now, for ever,
and which were always. But it degrades the sacred feeling, and is to it
what stupid superstition is to enthusiastic religion, when a man makes a
pilgrimage to see a great man's shin-bone found unmouldered in his
coffin. Perhaps the matter stands thus. I could feel amused by these
things, and should be, if there had not been connected with the great
name upon which the amusement wholly depends a higher and deeper
pleasure, that will [not] endure the co-presence of so mean a companion;
while the mass of mankind, whether from nature or (as I fervently hope)
from error of rearing and the worldliness of their after-pursuits, are
rarely susceptible of any other pleasures than those of _amusement_,
gratification of curiosity, novelty, surprise, wonderment, from the
glaring, the harshly-contrasted, the odd, the accidental, and find the
reading of the _Paradise Lost_ a task somewhat alleviated by a few
entertaining incidents, such as the pandemonium and self-endwarfment of
the devils, the fool's paradise and the transformation of the infernal
court into serpents and of their intended applauses into hisses.
["Dear Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but harmonious opposites
in this--that every old ruin, hill, river or tree called up in his mind
a host of historical or biographical associations; whereas, for myself,
I believe I should walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more
interest in it than in any other plain of similar features."--_Table
Talk_, August 4, 1833, Bell & Co., 1834, p. 242.]
[Sidenote: THE INTOLERANCE OF CONVERTS]
Why do we so very, very often see men pass from one extreme to the
other? [Greek: stodkardia] [Stoddart, for instance]. Alas! they
sought not the truth, but praise, self-importance, and above all [the
sense of] something doing! Disappointed, they hate and persecute their
former opinion, which no man will do who by meditation had adopted it,
and in the course of unfeigned meditation gradually enlarged the circle
and so get out of it. For in the perception of its falsehood he will
form a perception of certain truths which had made the falsehood
plausible, and can never cease to venerate his own sincerity of
intention and Philalethie. For, perhaps, we never _hate_ any opinion, or
can do so, till we have _impersonated_ it. We hate the persons because
they oppose us, symbolise that opposition under the form and words of
the opinion and then hate the person for the opinion and the opinion for
the person.
[For some weeks after his arrival at Valetta Coleridge remained as the
guest of Dr. John (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart, at that time H.M.
Advocate at Malta.]
[Sidenote: FACTS AND FICTION]
Facts! Never be weary of discussing and exposing the hollowness of
these. [For, in the first place,] every man [is] an accomplice on one
side or the other, [and, secondly, there is] _human testimony_. "You
were in fault, I hear," said B to C, and B had heard it from A. [Now] A
had said, "And C, God bless her, was perhaps the innocent occasion"! But
what a trifle this to the generality of blunders!
[Sidenote: CANDOUR ANOTHER NAME FOR CANT]
[I have no pity or patience for that], blindness which comes from
putting out your own eyes and in mock humility refusing to form an
opinion on the right and the wrong of a question. "If we say so of the
Sicilians, why may not Buonaparte say this of the Swiss?" and so forth.
As if England and France, Swiss and Sicilian were the x y z of Algebra,
naked names of unknown quantities. [What is this but] to fix morals
without morality, and [to allow] general rules to supersede all
particular thought? And though it be never acted on in reality, yet the
opinion is pernicious. It kills public spirit and deadens national
effort.
[Sidenote: A SIMILE]
The little point, or, sometimes, minim globe of flame remains on the
[newly] lighted taper for three minutes or more unaltered. But, see, it
is given over, and then, at once, the flame darts or plunges down into
the wick, then up again, and all is bright--a fair cone of flame, with
its black column in it, and minor cone, shadow-coloured, resting upon
the blue flame the common base of the two cones, that is, of the whole
flame. A pretty detailed simile in the manner of J. Taylor might be made
of this, applying it to slow learners, to opportunities of grace
manifestly neglected and seemingly lost and useless.
[Sidenote: O STAR BENIGN]
Monday evening, July 9, 1804, about 8 o'clock. The glorious evening star
coasted the moon, and at length absolutely crested its upper tip.... It
was the most singular and at the same time beautiful sight I ever
beheld. Oh, that it could have appeared the same in England, at
Grasmere!
[Sidenote: NEFAS EST AB HOSTE DOCERI]
In the Jacobinism of anti-jacobins, note the dreariest feature of
Jacobins, a contempt for the institutions of our ancestors and of past
wisdom, which has generated Cobbetts and contempt of the liberty of the
press and of liberty itself. Men are not wholly unmodified by the
opinion of their fellow-men, even when they happen to be enemies or
(still worse) of the opposite faction.
[Sidenote: THE MANY AND THE ONE]
I saw in early youth, as in a dream, the birth of the planets; and my
eyes beheld as _one_ what the understanding afterwards divided into (1)
the origin of the masses, (2) the origin of their motions, and (3) the
site or position of their circles and ellipses. All the deviations, too,
were seen as one intuition of one the self-same necessity, and this
necessity was a law of spirit, and all was spirit. And in matter all
beheld the past activity of others or their own--and this reflection,
this echo is matter--its only essence, if essence it be. And of this,
too, I saw the necessity and understood it, but I understood not how
infinite multitude and manifoldness could be one; only I saw and
understood that it was yet more out of my power to comprehend how it
could be otherwise--and in this unity I worshipped in the depth of
knowledge that passes all understanding the Being of all things--and in
Being their sole goodness--and I saw that God is the One, the
Good--possesses it not, but _is it_.
[Sidenote: THE WINDMILL AND ITS SHADOW]
The visibility of motion at a great distance is increased by all that
increases the the distinct visibility of the moving object. This
Saturday, August 3, 1804, in the room immediately under the tower in St.
Antonio, as I was musing on the difference, whether ultimate or only of
degree, between _auffassen_ and _erkennen_ (an idea received and an idea
acquired) I saw on the top of the distant hills a shadow on the sunny
ground moving very fast and wave-like, yet always in the same place,
which I should have attributed to the windmill close by, but the
windmill (which I saw distinctly too) appeared at rest. On steady
gazing, however, (and most plainly with my spy-glass) I found that it
was not at rest, but that this was its shadow. The windmill itself was
white in the sunshine, and there were sunny white clouds at its back,
the shadow black on the white ground.
[Sidenote: SYRACUSE Thursday night at the Opera, September 27, 1804]
In reflecting on the cause of the "meeting soul" in music, the seeming
recognisance etc., etc., the whole explanation of _memory_ as in the
nature of _accord_ struck upon me; accord produces a phantom of memory,
because memory is always in accord.
[Sidenote: Oct. 5, 1804]
Philosophy to a few, religion with many, is the friend of poetry, as
producing the two conditions of pleasure arising from poetry, namely
tranquillity and the attachment of the affections to _generalisations_.
God, soul, Heaven, the Gospel miracles, etc., are a sort of _poetry_
compared with Lombard Street and Change Alley speculations.
[Sidenote: A SERIOUS MEMORANDUM Syracuse, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1804]
In company, indeed, with all except a very chosen few, never dissent
from anyone as to the _merits_ of another, especially in your own
supposed department, but content yourself with praising, in your turn;
the really good praises of the unworthy are felt by a good man, and man
of genius as detractions from the worthy, and robberies--so the _flashy_
moderns seem to _rob_ the ancients of the honours due to them, and Bacon
and Harrington are _not_ read because Hume and Condillac _are_. This is
an evil; but oppose it, if at all, in books in which you can evolve the
whole of your reasons and feeling, not in conversation when it will be
inevitably attributed to envy. Besides, they who praise the unworthy
must be the injudicious: and the eulogies of critics without taste or
judgment are the natural pay of authors without feeling or genius--and
why rob them? _Sint unicuique sua præmia._ Coleridge! Coleridge! will
you never learn to appropriate your conversation to your company! Is it
not desecration, indelicacy, and a proof of great weakness and even
vanity to talk to, etc. etc., as if you [were talking to] Wordsworth or
Sir G. Beaumont?
[Sidenote: "CAST NOT YOUR PEARLS BEFORE SWINE"]
[Sidenote: Oct. 11, Syracuse, Lecky's, midnight]
O young man, who hast seen, felt and known the truth, to whom reality is
a phantom and virtue and mind the sole actual and permanent being, do
not degrade the truth in thee by disputing. Avoid it! do not by any
persuasion be tempted to it! Surely not by vanity or the weakness of the
pleasure of communicating thy thoughts and awaking sympathy, but not
even by the always mixed hope of producing conviction. This is not the
mode, this is not the time, not the place. [Truth will be better served]
by modestly and most truly saying, "Your arguments are all consequent,
if the foundation be admitted. I do not admit the foundation. But this
will be a business for moments of thought, for a Sabbath-day of your
existence. Then, perhaps, a voice from within will say to you, better,
because [in a manner] more adapted to you, all I can say. But if I felt
this to _be_ that day or that moment, a sacred sympathy would at once
compel and inspire me to the task of uttering the very truth. Till then
I am right willing to bear the character of a mystic, a visionary, or
self-important juggler, who nods his head and says, 'I could if I
would.' But I cannot, I _may_ not, bear the reproach of profaning the
truth which is my life in moments when all passions heterogeneous to it
are eclipsing it to the exclusion of its dimmest ray. I might lose my
tranquillity, and in acquiring the _passion_ of proselytism lose the
_sense_ of conviction. I might become _positive_! Now I am _certain_! I
might have the heat and fermentation, now I have the warmth of life."
[Sidenote: THE YEARNING OF THE FINITE FOR THE INFINITE: Oct. 13, 1804,
Saturday, Syracuse]
Each man having a spark (to use the old metaphor) of the Divinity, yet a
whole fire-grate of humanity--each, therefore, will legislate for the
whole, and spite of the _De gustibus non est disputandum_, even in
trifles--and, till corrected by experience, at least, in this endless
struggle of presumption, really occasioned by the ever-working spark of
the Universal, in the disappointments and baffled attempts of each, all
are disposed to [admit] the _jus extrinsecum_ of Spinoza, and recognise
that reason as the highest which may not be understood as the best, but
of which the concrete possession is felt to be the strongest. Then come
society, habit, education, misery, intrigue, oppression, then
_revolution_, and the circle begins anew. Each man will universalise his
notions, and, yet, each is variously finite. To _reconcile_, therefore,
is truly the work of the inspired! This is the true _Atonement_--that
is, to reconcile the struggles of the infinitely various finite with the
_permanent_.
[Sidenote: A MEASURE IN SELF-REPROOF]
Do not be too much discouraged, if any virtue _should_ be mixed, in your
consciousness, with affectation and imperfect sincerity, and some
vanity. Disapprove of this, and continue the practice of the good
feeling, even though mixed, and it will _gradually_ purify itself.
_Probatum est_. Disapprove, be _ashamed_ of the thought, of its always
continuing thus, but do not harshly quarrel with your present self, for
all virtue subsists in and by pleasure. S. T. C. Sunday evening, October
14, 1804.
But a great deal of this is constitutional. That constitution which
predisposes to certain virtues, the [Greek: Dôron Theôn], has this
[Greek: temenos Nemeseôs] in it. It is the dregs of sympathy, and while
we are _weak_ and dependent on each other, and each is forced to think
often for himself, sympathy will have its dregs, and the strongest, who
have least of these, have the dregs of other virtues to strain off.
[Sidenote: THE OPERA]
All the objections to the opera are equally applicable to tragedy and
comedy without music, and all proceed on the false principle that
theatrical representations are _copies_ of nature, whereas they are
imitations.
[Sidenote: A SALVE FOR WOUNDED VANITY]
When you are harassed, disquieted, and have little dreams of resentment,
and mock triumphs in consequence of the clearest perceptions of unkind
treatment and strange misconceptions and illogicalities, palpably from
bad passion, in any person connected with you, suspect a sympathy in
yourself with some of these bad passions--vanity, for instance. Though a
sense of wounded justice is possible, nay, probably, forms a part of
your uneasy feelings, yet this of itself would yield, at the first
moment of reflection, to pity for the wretched state of a man too
untranquil and perpetually selfish to love anything for itself or
without some end of vanity or ambition--who detests all poetry, tosses
about in the impotence of desires disproportionate to his powers, and
whose whole history of his whole life is a tale of disappointment in
circumstances where the hope and pretension was always unwise, often
presumptuous and insolent. Surely an intuition of this restless and
no-end-having mood of mind would at once fill a hearer having no
sympathy with these passions with tender melancholy, virtuously mixed
with grateful unpharisaic self-complacency. But a patient _almost_, but
not quite, recovered from madness, yet on its confines, finds in the
notions of madness that which irritates and haunts and makes unhappy.
[Sidenote: OFFICIAL DISTRUST]
Malta, Friday, Nov. 23, 1804.
One of the heart-depressing habits and temptations of men in power, as
governors, &c., is to make _instruments_ of their fellow-creatures, and
the moment they find a man of honour and talents, instead of loving and
esteeming him, they wish to _use him_. Hence that self-betraying
side-and-down look of cunning; and they justify and inveterate the habit
by believing that every individual who approaches has selfish designs on
them.
[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"]
Days and weeks and months pass on, and now a year--and the sea, the sea,
and the breeze have their influences on me, and [so, too, has the
association with] good and sensible men. I feel a pleasure upon me, and
I am, to the outward view, cheerful, and have myself no distinct
consciousness of the contrary, for I use my faculties, not, indeed, at
once, but freely. But, oh! I am never happy, never deeply gladdened. I
know not--I have forgotten--what the _joy_ is of which the heart is
full, as of a deep and quiet fountain overflowing insensibly, or the
gladness of joy, when the fountain overflows ebullient.
The most common appearance in wintry weather is that of the sun under a
sharp, defined level line of a stormy cloud, that stretches one-third or
half round the circle of the horizon, thrice the height of the space
that intervenes between it and the horizon, which last is about half
again as broad as the sun. [At length] out comes the sun, a mass of
brassy light, himself lost and diffused in his [own] strong splendour.
Compare this with the beautiful summer _set_ of colours without cloud.
Even in the most tranquil dreams, one is much less a mere spectator
[than in reveries or day-dreams]. One seems always about to do, [to be]
suffering, or thinking or talking. I do not recollect [in dreams] that
state of feeling, so common when awake, of thinking on one subject and
looking at another; or [of looking] at a whole prospect, till at last,
perhaps, or by intervals, at least, you only look passively at the
prospect.
[Sidenote: MULTUM IN PARVO]
At Dresden there is a cherry-stone engraved with eighty-five portraits.
Christ and the Twelve Apostles form one group, the table and supper all
drawn by the letters of the text--at once portraits and language. This
is a universal particular language--Roman Catholic language with a
vengeance.
The beautifully _white_ sails of the Mediterranean, so carefully, when
in port, put up into clean bags; and the interesting circumstance of the
Spéronara's sailing without a compass--by an obscure sense of time.
[Sidenote: THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH]
So far from deeming it, in a religious point of view, criminal to spread
doubts of God, immortality and virtue (that 3 = 1) in the minds of
individuals, I seem to see in it a duty--lest men by taking the _words_
for granted never attain the feeling or the true _faith_. They only
forbear, that is, even to suspect that the idea is erroneous or the
communicators deceivers, but do not _believe_ the idea itself. Whereas
to _doubt_ has more of faith, nay even to disbelieve, than that blank
negation of all such thoughts and feelings which is the lot of the herd
of church-and-meeting-trotters.
[Sidenote: AN APOLOGY FOR COTTLE]
The Holy Ghost, say the harmonists, left all the solecisms, Hebraisms,
and low Judaic prejudices as evidences of the credibility of the
Apostles. So, too, the Theophneusty left Cottle his Bristolisms, not to
take away the credit from him and give it to the Muses.
[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"]
His fine mind met vice and vicious thoughts by accident only, as a poet
running through terminations in the heat of composing a rhyme-poem on
the purest and best subjects, startles and half-vexedly turns away from
a foul or impure word.
The gracious promises and sweetnesses and aids of religion are alarming
and distressful to a trifling, light, fluttering gay child of fashion
and vanity, as its threats and reproaches and warnings--as a little bird
which fears as much when you come to give it food as when you come with
a desire to kill or imprison it.
That is a striking legend of Caracciolo and his floating corse, that
came to ask the King of Naples' pardon.
Final causes answer to why? not to how? and who ever supposed that they
did?
O those crinkled, ever-varying circles which the moonlight makes in the
not calm, yet not wavy sea! Quarantine, Malta, Saturday, Nov. 10, 1804.
[Sidenote: THE CREATIVE POWER OF WORDS AND IMAGES]
Hard to express that sense of the analogy or likeness of a thing which
enables a symbol to represent it so that we think of the thing itself,
yet knowing that the thing is not present to us. Surely on this
universal fact of words and images depends, by more or less mediations,
the imitation, instead of the _copy_ which is illustrated, in very
nature Shaksperianised--that Proteus essence that could assume the very
form, but yet known and felt not to be the thing by that difference of
the substance which made every atom of the form another thing, that
likeness not identity--an exact web, every line of direction
miraculously the same, but the one worsted, the other silk.
[Sidenote: SHAKSPERE AND MALONE]
Rival editors have recourse to necromancy to know from Shakspere himself
who of them is the fittest to edit and illustrate him. Describe the
meeting, the ceremonies of conjuration, the appearance of the spirit,
the effect on the rival invokers. When they have resumed courage, the
arbiter appointed by them asks the question. They listen, Malone leaps
up while the rest lay their heads at the same instant that the arbiter
re-echoes the words of the spirit, "Let Malone!" The spirit shudders,
then exclaims in the dread and angry utterance of the dead, "No! no! Let
me alone, I said, inexorable boobies!"
O that eternal bricker-up of Shakspere! Registers, memorandum-books--and
that Bill, Jack and Harry, Tom, Walter and Gregory, Charles, Dick and
Jim, lived at that house, but that nothing more is known of them. But,
oh! the importance when half-a-dozen players'-bills can be made to
stretch through half-a-hundred or more of pages, though there is not one
word in them that by any force can be made either to illustrate the
times or life or writings of Shakspere, or, indeed, of any time. And,
yet, no edition but this gentleman's name _burs_ upon it--_burglossa_
with a vengeance. Like the genitive plural of a Greek adjective, it is
Malone, Malone, Malone, [Greek: Malôn, Malôn, Malôn].
[Edmund Malone's _Variorum_ edition of Shakspere was published in 1790.]
[Sidenote: OF THE FROWARDNESS OF WOMAN December 11, 1804]
It is a remark that I have made many times, and many times, I guess,
shall repeat, that women are infinitely fonder of clinging to and
beating about, hanging upon and keeping up, and reluctantly letting fall
any doleful or painful or unpleasant subject, than men of the same class
and rank.
[Sidenote: NE QUID NIMIS]
A young man newly arrived in the West Indies, who happened to be sitting
next to a certain Captain Reignia, observed by way of introducing a
conversation, "It is a very fine day, sir!" "Yes, sir," was the abrupt
reply, "and be damned to it; it is never otherwise in this damned
rascally climate."
[Sidenote: WE ASK NOT WHENCE BUT WHAT AND WHITHER]
I addressed a butterfly on a pea-blossom thus, "Beautiful Psyche, soul
of a blossom, that art visiting and hovering o'er thy former friends
whom thou hast left!" Had I forgot the caterpillar? or did I dream like
a mad metaphysician that the caterpillar's hunger for plants was
self-love, recollection, and a lust that in its next state refined
itself into love? Dec. 12, 1804.
[Sidenote: ANALOGY]
Different means to the same end seem to constitute analogy. Seeing and
touching are analogous senses with respect to magnitude, figure,
&c.--they would, and to a certain extent do, supply each other's place.
The air-vessels of fish and of insects are analogous to lungs--the end
the same, however different the means. No one would say, "Lungs are
analogous to lungs," and it seems to me either inaccurate or involving
some true conception obscurely, when we speak of planets by analogy of
ours--for here, knowing nothing but likeness, we presume the difference
from the remoteness and difficulty, in the vulgar apprehension, of
considering those pin-points as worlds. So, likewise, instead of the
phrase "analogy of the past," applied to historical reasoning, nine
times out of ten I should say, "by the example of the past." This may
appear verbal trifling, but "_animadverte quam sit ab improprietate
verborum pronum hominibus prolabi in errores circa res_." In short,
analogy always implies a difference in kind and not merely in degree.
There is an analogy between dimness and numbness and a certain state of
the sense of hearing correspondent to these, which produces confusion
with _magnification_, for which we have no name. But between light green
and dark green, between a mole and a lynceus, there is a gradation, no
analogy.
[Sidenote: COROLLARY]
Between beasts and men, when the same actions are performed by both, are
the means analogous or different only in degree? That is the question!
The sameness of the end and the equal fitness of the means prove no
identity of means. I can only read, but understand no arithmetic. Yet,
by Napier's tables or the _House-keepers' Almanack_, I may even arrive
at the conclusion quicker than a tolerably expert mathematician. Yet,
still, reading and reckoning are utterly different things.
[Sidenote: THOMAS WEDGWOOD AND REIMARUS]
In Reimarus on _The Instincts of Animals_, Tom Wedgwood's
ground-principle of the influx of memory on perception is fully and
beautifully detailed.
["Observations Moral and Philosophical on the Instinct of Animals, their
Industry and their Manners," by Herman Samuel Reimarus, was published in
1770. See _Biographia Literaria_, chapter vi. and _Note_, by Mrs. H. N.
Coleridge in the Appendix, _Coleridge's Works_, Harper & Brothers, iii.
225, 717.]
[Sidenote: HINC ILLA MARGINALIA]
It is often said that books are companions. They are so, dear, very dear
companions! But I often, when I read a book that delights me on the
whole, feel a pang that the author is not present, that I cannot
_object_ to him this and that, express my sympathy and gratitude for
this part and mention some facts that self-evidently overset a second,
start a doubt about a third, or confirm and carry [on] a fourth thought.
At times I become restless, for my nature is very social.
[Sidenote: CORRUPTIO OPTIMI PESSIMA]
"Well" (says Lady Ball), "the Catholic religion is better than none."
Why, to be sure, it is called a religion, but the question is, Is it a
religion? Sugar of lead! better than no sugar! Put oil of vitriol into
my salad--well, better than no oil at all! Or a fellow vends a poison
under the name of James' powders--well, we must get the best we
can--better that than none! So did not our noble ancestors reason or
feel, or we should now be slaves and even as the Sicilians are at this
day, or worse, for even they have been made less foolish, in spite of
themselves, by others' wisdom.
[Sidenote: REIMARUS AND THE "INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS"]
I have read with wonder and delight that passage of Reimarus in which he
speaks of the immense multitude of plants, and the curious, regular
_choice_ of different herbivorous animals with respect to them, and the
following pages in which he treats of the pairing of insects and the
equally wonderful processes of egg-laying and so forth. All in motion!
the sea-fish to the shores and rivers--the land crab to the sea-shore! I
would fain describe all the creation thus agitated by the one or other
of the three instincts--self-preservation, childing, and
child-preservation. Set this by Darwin's theory of the maternal
instinct--O mercy! the blindness of the man! and it is imagination,
forsooth! that misled him--too much poetry in his philosophy! this
abject deadness of all that sense of the obscure and indefinite, this
superstitious fetish-worship of lazy or fascinated fancy! O this,
indeed, deserves to be dwelt on.
Think of all this as an absolute revelation, a real presence of Deity,
and compare it with historical traditionary religion. There are two
revelations--the material and the moral--and the former is not to be
seen but by the latter. As St. Paul has so well observed: "By worldly
wisdom no man ever arrived at God;" but having seen Him by the moral
sense, then we _understand_ the outward world. Even as with books, no
book of itself teaches a language in the first instance; but having by
sympathy of soul learnt it, we then understand the book--that is, the
_Deus minor_ in His work.
The _hirschkäfer_ (stag-beetle) in its worm state makes its bed-chamber,
prior to its metamorphosis, half as long as itself. Why? There was a
stiff horn turned under its belly, which in the fly state must project
and harden, and this required exactly that length.
The sea-snail creeps out of its house, which, thus hollowed, lifts him
aloft, and is his boat and cork jacket; the Nautilus, additionally,
spreads a thin skin as a sail.
All creatures obey the great game-laws of Nature, and fish with nets of
such meshes as permit many to escape, and preclude the taking of many.
So two races are saved, the one by taking part, and the other by part
not being taken.
[Sidenote: ENTOMOLOGY VERSUS ONTOLOGY]
Wonderful, perplexing divisibility of life! It is related by D. Unzer,
an authority wholly to be relied on, that an _ohrwurm_ (earwig) cut in
half ate its own hinder part! Will it be the reverse with Great Britain
and America? The head of the rattlesnake severed from the body bit it
and squirted out its poison, as is related by Beverley in his History of
Virginia. Lyonnet in his Insect. Theol. tells us that he tore a wasp in
half and, three days after, the fore-half bit whatever was presented to
it of its former food, and the hind-half darted out its sting at being
touched. Stranger still, a turtle has been known to live six months with
his head off, and to wander about, yea, six hours after its heart and
intestines (all but the lungs) were taken out! How shall we think of
this compatibly with the monad soul? If I say, what has spirit to do
with space?--what odd dreams it would suggest! or is every animal a
republic _in se_? or is there one Breeze of Life, "at once the soul of
each, and God of all?" Is it not strictly analogous to generation, and
no more contrary to unity than it? But IT? Aye! there's the twist in the
logic. Is not the reproduction of the lizard a complete generation? O it
is easy to dream, and, surely, better of these things than of a £20,000
prize in the lottery, or of a place at Court. Dec. 13, 1804.
[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"]
To trace the if not absolute birth, yet the growth and endurancy of
language, from the mother talking to the child at her breast. O what a
subject for some happy moment of deep feeling and strong imagination!
Of the Quintetta in the Syracuse opera and the pleasure of the
voices--one and not one, they leave, seek, pursue, oppose, fight with,
strengthen, annihilate each other, awake, enliven, soothe, flatter and
embrace each other again, till at length they die away in one tone.
There is no sweeter image of wayward yet fond lovers, of seeking and
finding, of the love-quarrel, and the making-up, of the losing and the
yearning regret, of the doubtful, the complete recognition, and of the
total melting union. Words are not interpreters, but fellow-combatants.
Title for a Medical Romance:--The adventures, rivalry, warfare and final
union and partnership of Dr. Hocus and Dr. Pocus.
Idly talk they who speak of poets as mere indulgers of fancy,
imagination, superstition, etc. They are the bridlers by delight, the
purifiers; they that combine all these with reason and order--the true
protoplasts--Gods of Love who tame the chaos.
To deduce instincts from obscure recollections of a pre-existing
state--I have often thought of it. "Ey!" I have said, when I have seen
certain tempers and actions in Hartley, "that is I in my future state."
So I think, oftentimes, that my children are my soul--that multitude and
division are not [O mystery!] necessarily subversive of unity. I am sure
that two very different meanings, if not more, lurk in the word One.
The drollest explanation of instinct is that of Mylius, who attributes
every act to pain, and all the wonderful webs and envelopes of spiders,
caterpillars, etc., absolutely to fits of colic or paroxysms of dry
belly-ache!
This Tarantula-dance of repetitions and vertiginous argumentation _in
circulo_, begun in imposture and self-consummated in madness!
While the whole planet (_quoad_ its Lord or, at least, Lord-Lieutenancy)
is in stir and bustle, why should not I keep in time with the tune, and,
like old Diogenes, roll my tub about?
I cannot too often remember that to be deeply interested and to be
highly satisfied are not always commensurate. Apply this to the
affecting and yet unnatural passages of the _Stranger_ or of _John
Bull_, and to the finest passages in Shakspere, such as the death of
Cleopatra or Hamlet.
[Sidenote: A SUNDOG Dec. 15, 1804]
Saw the limb of a rainbow footing itself on the sea at a small apparent
distance from the shore, a thing of itself--no substrate cloud or even
mist visible--but the distance glimmered through it as through a thin
semi-transparent hoop.
[Sidenote: THE SQUARE, THE CIRCLE, THE PYRAMID]
To be and to act, two in Intellect (that mother of orderly multitude,
and half-sister of Wisdom and Madness) but one in essence = to rest, and
to move = [sq] and a [cir]! and out of the infinite combinations of
these, from the more and the less, now of one now of the other, all
pleasing figures and the sources of all pleasure arise. But the pyramid,
that base of stedfastness that rises, yet never deserts itself nor can,
approaches to the [cir]. Sunday. Midnight. Malta. December 16th, 1804.
[Sidenote: THE PYRAMID IN ART]
I can make out no other affinity [in the pyramid] to the circle but by
taking its evanescence as the central point, and so, having thus gained
a melting of the radii in the circumference [by proceeding to] _look_ it
into the object. Extravagance! Why? Does not everyone do this in looking
at any conspicuous three stars together? does not every one see by the
inner vision, a triangle? However, this is in art; but the prototype in
nature is, indeed, loveliness. In Nature there are no straight lines, or
[such straight lines as there are] have the soul of curves, from
activity and positive rapid energy. Or, whether the line seem curve or
straight, yet _here_, in nature, is motion--motion in its most
significant form. It is motion in that form which has been chosen to
express motion in general, hieroglyphical from pre-eminence, [and by
this very pre-eminence, in the particular instance, made significant of
motion in its totality]. Hence, though it chance that a line in nature
should be perfectly straight, there is no need here of any curve whose
effect is that of embleming motion and counteracting actual solidity by
that emblem. For here the line [in contra-distinction to the line in
art] is actual motion, and therefore a balancing _Figurite_ of rest and
solidity. But I will study the wood-fire this evening in the Palace.
[Sidenote: Wednesday Night, 11 o'clock, December 19]
I see now that the eye refuses to decide whether it be surface or
convexity, for the exquisite oneness of the flame makes even its angles
so different from the angles of tangible substances. Its exceeding
oneness added to its very subsistence in motion is the very _soul_ of
the loveliest curve--it does not need its body as it were. Its sharpest
point is, however, rounded, and besides it is cased within its own
penumbra.
[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE" Friday Morning, Dec. 21, 8
o'clock]
How beautiful a circumstance, the improvement of the flower, from the
root up to that crown of its life and labours, that bridal-chamber of
its beauty and its two-fold love, the nuptial and the parental--the
womb, the cradle, and the nursery of the garden!
_Quisque sui faber_--a pretty simile this would make to a young lady
producing beauty by moral feeling.
Nature may be personified as the [Greek: polymêchanos erganê], an ever
industrious Penelope, for ever unravelling what she has woven, for ever
weaving what she has unravelled.
[Sidenote: THE MEDITERRANEAN]
Oh, said I, as I looked at the blue, yellow, green and purple-green sea,
with all its hollows and swells, and cut-glass surfaces--oh, what an
_ocean_ of lovely forms! And I was vexed, teased that the sentence
sounded like a play of words! _That_ it was not--the mind within me was
struggling to express the marvellous distinctness and unconfounded
personality of each of the million millions of forms, and yet the
individual unity in which they subsisted.
A brisk gale and the foam that peopled the _alive_ sea, most
interestingly combined with the number of white sea-gulls, that,
repeatedly, it seemed as if the foam-spit had taken life and wing and
had flown up--the white precisely-same-colour birds rose up so close by
the ever-perishing white-water wavehead, that the eye was unable to
detect the illusion which the mind delighted to indulge in. O that sky,
that soft, blue, mighty arch resting on the mountain or solid sea-like
plain--what an awful omneity in unity! I know no other perfect union of
the sublime with the beautiful, so that they should be felt, that is,
at the same minute, though by different faculties, and yet, each faculty
be predisposed, by itself, to receive the specific modifications from
the other. To the eye it is an inverted goblet, the inside of a sapphire
basin, perfect beauty in shape and colour. To the mind, it is immensity;
but even the eye feels as if it were [able] to look through with [a] dim
sense of the non-resistance--it is not exactly the feeling given to the
organ by solid and limited things, [but] the eye feels that the
limitation is in its own power, not in the object. But [hereafter] to
pursue this in the manner of the old Hamburg poet [Klopstock].
[Sidenote: I WILL LIFT UP MINE EYES TO THE HILLS]
One travels along with the lines of a mountain. Years ago I wanted to
make Wordsworth sensible of this. How fine is Keswick vale! Would I
repose, my soul lies and is quiet upon the broad level vale. Would it
act? it darts up into the mountain-top like a kite, and like a
chamois-goat runs along the ridge--or like a boy that makes a sport on
the road of running along a wall or narrow fence!
[Sidenote: FORM AND FEELING]
One of the most noticeable and fruitful facts in psychology is the
modification of the same feeling by difference of form. The Heaven lifts
up my soul, the sight of the ocean seems to widen it. We feel the same
force at work, but the difference, whether in mind or body that we
should feel in actual travelling horizontally or in direct ascent,
_that_ we feel in fancy. For what are our feelings of this kind but a
motion imagined, [together] with the feelings that would accompany that
motion, [but] less distinguished, more blended, more rapid, more
confused, and, thereby, co-adunated? Just as white is the very emblem of
one in being the confusion of all.
[Sidenote: VERBUM SAPIENTIBUS]
Mem.--Not to hastily abandon and kick away the means after the end is or
seems to be accomplished. So have I, in blowing out the paper or match
with which I have lit a candle, blown out the candle at the same
instant.
[Sidenote: THE CONTINUITY OF SENSATIONS]
How opposite to nature and the fact to talk of the "one moment" of Hume,
of our whole being an aggregate of successive single sensations! Who
ever felt a single sensation? Is not every one at the same moment
conscious that there co-exist a thousand others, a darker shade, or less
light, even as when I fix my attention on a white house or a grey bare
hill or rather long ridge that runs out of sight each way (how often I
want the German _unübersekbar_!) [untranslatable]--the pretended
sight-sensation, is it anything more than the light-point in every
picture either of nature or of a good painter? and, again,
subordinately, in every component part of the picture? And what is a
moment? Succession with interspace? Absurdity! It is evidently only the
_icht-punct_ in the indivisible undivided duration.
See yonder rainbow strangely preserving its form on broken clouds, with
here a bit out, here a bit in, yet still a rainbow--even as you might
place bits of coloured ribbon at distances, so as to preserve the form
of a bow to the mind. Dec. 25, 1804.
[Sidenote: HIS CONVERSATION, A NIMIETY OF IDEAS, NOT OF WORDS]
There are two sorts of talkative fellows whom it would be injurious to
confound, and I, S. T. Coleridge, am the latter. The first sort is of
those who use five hundred words more than needs to express an
idea--that is not my case. Few men, I will be bold to say, put more
meaning into their words than I, or choose them more deliberately and
discriminately. The second sort is of those who use five hundred more
ideas, images, reasons, &c., than there is any need of to arrive at
their object, till the only object arrived at is that the mind's eye of
the bystander is dazzled with colours succeeding so rapidly as to leave
one vague impression that there has been a great blaze of colours all
about something. Now this is my case, and a grievous fault it is. My
illustrations swallow up my thesis. I feel too intensely the
omnipresence of all in each, platonically speaking; or, psychologically,
my brain-fibres, or the spiritual light which abides in the
brain-marrow, as visible light appears to do in sundry rotten mackerel
and other _smashy_ matters, is of too general an affinity with all
things, and though it perceives the _difference_ of things, yet is
eternally pursuing the likenesses, or, rather, that which is common
[between them]. Bring me two things that seem the very same, and then I
am quick enough [not only] to show the difference, even to
hair-splitting, but to go on from circle to circle till I break against
the shore of my hearers' patience, or have my concentricals dashed to
nothing by a snore. That is my ordinary mishap. At Malta, however, no
one can charge me with one or the other. I have earned the general
character of being a quiet well-meaning man, rather dull indeed! and who
would have thought that he had been a _poet_! "O, a very wretched
poetaster, ma'am! As to the reviews, 'tis well known he half-ruined
himself in paying cleverer fellows than himself to write them," &c.
[Sidenote: THE EMBRYONIC SOUL]
How far might one imagine all the theory of association out of a system
of growth, by applying to the brain and soul what we know of an embryo?
One tiny particle combines with another its like, and, so, lengthens and
thickens, and this is, at once, memory and increasing vividness of
impression. One might make a very amusing allegory of an embryo soul up
to birth! Try! it is promising! You have not above three hundred volumes
to write before you come to it, and as you write, perhaps, a volume once
in ten years, you have ample time.
My dear fellow! never be ashamed of scheming--you can't think of living
less than 4000 years, and that would nearly suffice for your present
schemes. To be sure, if they go on in the same ratio to the performance,
then a small difficulty arises; but never mind! look at the bright side
always and die in a dream! Oh!
[Sidenote: OF A NEW HYPOTHESIS]
The evil effect of a new hypothesis or even of a new nomenclature is,
that many minds which had familiarised themselves to the old one, and
were riding on the road of discovery accustomed to their horse, if put
on a new animal, lose time in learning how to sit him; while the others,
looking too stedfastly at a few facts which the jeweller Hypothesis had
set in a perfectly beautiful whole, forget to dig for more, though
inhabitants of a Golconda. However, it has its advantages too, and these
have been ably pointed out. It excites contradiction, and is thence a
stimulus to new experiments to _support_, and to a more severe
repetition of these experiments and of other new ones to _confute_
[arguments pro and con]. And, besides, one must alloy severe truth with
a little fancy, in order to mint it into common coin.
[Sidenote: HIS INDEBTEDNESS TO GERMAN PHILOSOPHY]
In the preface of my metaphysical works, I should say--"Once for all,
read Kant, Fichte, &c., and then you will trace, or, if you are on the
hunt, track me." Why, then, not acknowledge your obligations step by
step? Because I could not do so in a multitude of glaring resemblances
without a lie, for they had been mine, formed and full-formed, before I
had ever heard of these writers, because to have fixed on the particular
instances in which I have really been indebted to these writers would
have been hard, if possible, to me who read for truth and
self-satisfaction, and not to make a book, and who always rejoiced and
was jubilant when I found my own ideas well expressed by others--and,
lastly, let me say, because (I am proud, perhaps, but) I seem to know
that much of the _matter_ remains my own, and that the _soul_ is mine. I
fear not him for a critic who can confound a fellow-thinker with a
compiler.
[Sidenote: THE METAPHYSICIAN AT BAY]
Good heavens! that there should be anything at all, and not nothing. Ask
the bluntest faculty that pretends to reason, and, if indeed he have
felt and reasoned, he must feel that something is to be sought after out
of the vulgar track of Change-Alley speculation.
If my researches are shadowy, what, in the name of reason, are you? or
do you resign all pretence to reason, and consider yourself--nay, even
that in a contradiction--as a passive [cir] among Nothings?
[Sidenote: MEANS TO ENDS]
How flat and common-place! O that it were in my heart, nerves, and
muscles! O that it were the _prudential_ soul of all I love, of all who
deserve to be loved, in every proposed action to ask yourself, To what
end is this? and how is this the means? and not the means to something
else foreign to or abhorrent from my purpose? _Distinct means to
distinct ends!_ With friends and beloved ones follow the heart. Better
be deceived twenty times than suspect one-twentieth of once; but with
strangers, or enemies, or in a quarrel, whether in the world's
squabbles, as Dr. Stoddart's and Dr. Sorel in the Admiralty Court at
Malta; or in moral businesses, as mine with Southey or Lloyd (O pardon
me, dear and honoured Southey, that I put such a name by the side of
yours....)--in all those cases, write your letter, disburthen yourself,
and when you have done it--even as when you have pared, sliced,
vinegared, oiled, peppered and salted your plate of cucumber, you are
directed to smell it, and then throw it out of the window--so, dear
friend, vinegar, pepper and salt your letter--your cucumber argument,
that is, cool reasoning previously sauced with passion and
sharpness--then read it, eat it, drink it, smell it, with eyes and ears
(a small catachresis but never mind), and then throw it into the
fire--unless you can put down in three or four sentences (I cannot allow
more than one side of a sheet of paper) the _distinct end_ for which you
conceive this letter (or whatever it be) to be the _distinct means_! How
trivial! Would to God it were only _habitual_! O what is sadder than
that the _crambe bis cocta_ of the understanding should be and remain a
foreign dish to the efficient _will_--that the best and loftiest
precepts of wisdom should be trivial, and the worst and lowest modes of
folly habitual.
[Sidenote: VERBAL CONCEITS]
I have learnt, sometimes not _at all_, and seldom _harshly_, to chide
those conceits of words which are analogous to sudden fleeting
affinities of mind. Even, as in a dance, you touch and join and off
again, and rejoin your partner that leads down with you the dance, in
spite of these occasional off-starts--for they, too, not merely conform
to, but are of and in and help to form the delicious harmony. Shakspere
is not a thousandth part so faulty as the [scir][scir][scir]
believe him. "Thus him that over-rul'd I over-sway'd," etc., etc. I
noticed this to that bubbling ice-spring of cold-hearted, mad-headed
fanaticism, the late Dr. Geddes, in the "_Heri vidi fragilem frangi,
hodie mortalem mori_."
[Dr. Alexander Geddes, 1737-1802, was, _inter alia_, author of a revised
translation of the Scriptures.]
[Sidenote: THE BRIGHT BLUE SEA]
How often I have occasion to notice with pure delight the depth of the
exceeding blueness of the Mediterranean from my window! It is often,
indeed, purple; but I am speaking of its blueness--a perfect blue, so
very pure an one. The sea is like a night-sky; and but for its
_planities_, it were as if the night-sky were a thing that turned round
and lay in the day-time under the paler Heaven. And it is on this
expanse that the vessels have the fine white dazzling cotton sails.
[Sidenote: THE BIRTH OF THE IDEA]
Centuries before their mortal incarnation, Jove was wont to manifest to
the gods the several creations as they emerged from the divine ideal.
Now it was reported in heaven that an unusually fair creation of a woman
was emerging, and Venus, fearful that her son should become enamoured as
of yore with Psyche (what time he wandered alone, his bow unslung, and
using his darts only to cut out her name on rocks and trees, or, at
best, to shoot hummingbirds and birds of Paradise to make
feather-chaplets for her hair, and the world, meanwhile, grown loveless,
hardened into the Iron Age), entreats Jove to secrete this form [of
perilous beauty]. But Cupid, who had heard the report, and fondly
expected a re-manifestation of Psyche, hid himself in the hollow of the
sacred oak beneath which the Father of Gods had withdrawn as to an
unapproachable adytum, and beheld the Idea emerging in its _First
Glory_. Forthwith the wanton was struck blind by the splendour ere yet
the blaze had defined itself with form, and now his arrows strike but
vaguely.
[Sidenote: THE CONVERSION OF CERES]
I have somewhere read, or I have dreamt, a wild tale of Ceres' loss of
Proserpine, and her final recovery of her daughter by means of Christ
when He descended into hell, at which time she met Him and abjured all
worship for the future.
It were a quaint mythological conceit to feign that the gods of Greece
and Rome were some of the _best_ of the fallen spirits, and that of
their number _Apollo_, Mars, and the Muses were converted to
Christianity, and became different saints.
[Sidenote: AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD]
The ribbed flame--its snatches of impatience, that half-seem, and only
_seem_ that half, to baffle its upward rush--the eternal unity of
individualities whose essence is in their distinguishableness, even as
thought and _fancies_ in the mind; the points of so many cherubic swords
snatched back, but never discouraged, still fountaining upwards:--flames
self-snatched up heavenward, if earth supply the fuel, heaven the dry
light air--themselves still making the current that will fan and spread
them--yet all their force in vain, if of itself--and light dry air,
heaped fuel, fanning breeze as idle, if no inward spark lurks there, or
lurks unkindled. Such a spark, O man! is thy Free Will--the star whose
beams are Virtue!