_September 1806--December 1807_
Alas! for some abiding-place of love,
O'er which my spirit, like the mother dove,
Might brood with warming wings!
S. T. C.
[Sidenote: DREAMS AND SHADOWS]
I had a confused shadow rather than an image in my recollection, like
that from a thin cloud, as if the idea were descending, though still in
some measureless height.
As when the taper's white cone of flame is seen double, till the eye
moving brings them into one space and then they become one--so did the
idea in my imagination coadunate with your present form soon after I
first gazed upon you.
And in life's noisiest hour
There whispers still the ceaseless love of thee,
The heart's self-solace and soliloquy.
You mould my hopes, you fashion me within,
And to the leading love-throb in my heart
Through all my being, all my pulses beat.
You lie in all my many thoughts like light,
Like the fair light of dawn, or summer light,
On rippling stream, or cloud-reflecting lake--
And looking to the Heaven that beams above you,
How do I bless the lot that made me love you!
[Sidenote: KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING]
In all processes of the understanding the shortest way will be
discovered the last and this, perhaps, while it constitutes the great
advantage of having a teacher to put us on the shortest road at the
first, yet sometimes occasions a difficulty in the comprehension,
inasmuch as the longest way is more near to the existing state of the
mind, nearer to what if left to myself, on starting the thought, I
should have thought next. The shortest way gives me the _knowledge_
best, but the longest makes me more _knowing_.
[Sidenote: PARTISANS AND RENEGADES]
When a party man talks as if he hated his country, saddens at her
prosperous events, exults in her disasters and yet, all the while, is
merely hating the opposite party, and would himself feel and talk as a
patriot were he in a foreign land [_he_ is a party man]. The true
monster is he (and such alas! there are in these monstrous days,
"vollendeter Sündhaftigkeit"), who abuses his country when out of his
country.
[Sidenote: POPULACE AND PEOPLE]
Oh the profanation of the sacred word _the People_! Every brutal
Burdett-led mob, assembled on some drunken St. Monday of faction, is the
People forsooth, and each leprous ragamuffin, like a circle in geometry,
is, at once, one and all, and calls its own brutal self, "_us_ the
People." And who are the friends of the People? Not those who would wish
to elevate each of them, or, at least, the child who is to take his
place in the flux of life and death, into something worthy of esteem and
capable of freedom, but those who flatter and infuriate them, as they
_are_. A contradiction in the very thought! For if, really, they are
good and wise, virtuous and well-informed, how weak must be the motives
of discontent to a truly moral being--but if the contrary, and the
motives for discontent proportionably strong, how without guilt and
absurdity appeal to them as judges and arbiters? He alone is entitled to
a share in the government of all, who has learnt to govern himself.
There is but one possible ground of a right of freedom--viz., to
understand and revere its duties.
[_Vide Life of S. T. C._, by James Gillman, 1838, p. 223.]
[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE." May 28, 1807 Bristol]
How villainously these metallic pencils have degenerated, not only in
the length and quantity, but what is far worse, in the _quality_ of the
metal! This one appears to have no superiority over the worst sort sold
by the Maltese shopkeepers.
Blue sky through the glimmering interspaces of the dark elms at twilight
rendered a lovely deep yellow-green--all the rest a delicate blue.
The hay-field in the close hard by the farm-house--babe, and totterer
little more [than a babe]--old cat with her eyes blinking in the sun and
little kittens leaping and frisking over the hay-lines.
What an admirable subject for an Allston would Tycho Brahe be, listening
with religious awe to the oracular gabble of the idiot, whom he kept at
his feet, and used to feed with his own hands!
The sun-flower ought to be cultivated, the leaves being excellent
fodder, the flowers eminently melliferous, and the seeds a capital food
for poultry, none nourishing quicker or occasioning them to lay more
eggs.
Serpentium allapsus timet. Quære--_allapse_ of serpents. _Horace_.--What
other word have we? Pity that we dare not Saxonise as boldly as our
forefathers, by unfortunate preference, Latinised. Then we should have
on-glide, _angleiten_; onlook _anschauen_, etc.
I moisten the bread of affliction with the water of adversity.
If kings are gods on earth, they are, however, gods of earth.
Parisatis poisoned one side of the knife with which he carved, and eat
of the same joint the next slice unhurt--a happy illustration of
affected self-inclusion in accusation.
It is possible to conceive a planet without any general atmosphere, but
in which each living body has its peculiar atmosphere. To hear and
understand, one man joins his atmosphere to that of another, and,
according to the sympathies of their nature, the aberrations of sound
will be greater or less, and their thoughts more or less intelligible. A
pretty allegory might be made of this.
Two faces, each of a confused countenance. In the eyes of the one,
muddiness and lustre were blended; and the eyes of the other were the
same, but in them there was a red fever that made them appear more
fierce. And yet, methought, the former struck a greater trouble, a fear
and distress of the mind; and sometimes all the face looked meek and
mild, but the eye was ever the same.
[Qu. S. T. C. and De Quincey?]
Shadow--its being subsists in shaped and definite nonentity.
Plain sense, measure, clearness, dignity, grace over all--these made the
genius of Greece.
Heu! quam miserum ab illo lædi, de quo non possis queri! Eheu! quam
miserrimum est ab illo lædi, de quo propter amorem non possis queri!
Observation from Bacon after reading Mr. Sheridan's speech on Ireland:
"Things will have their first or second agitation; if they be not tossed
on the arguments of council, they will be tossed on the waves of
fortune."
The death of an immortal has been beautifully compared to an Indian fig,
which at its full height declines its branches to the earth, and there
takes root again.
The blast rises and falls, and trembles at its height.
A passionate woman may be likened to a wet candle spitting flame.
TO LOVE.
It is a duty, nay, it is a religion to that power to shew that, though
it makes all things--wealth, pleasure, ambition--worthless, yea, noisome
for themselves; yet for _it_self can it produce all efforts, even if
only to secure its name from scoffs as the child and parent of
slothfulness. Works, therefore, of general profit--works of abstruse
thought [will be born of love]; activity, and, above all, virtue and
chastity [will come forth from his presence].
The moulting peacock, with only two of his long tail-feathers remaining,
and those sadly in tatters, yet, proudly as ever, spreads out his ruined
fan in the sun and breeze.
Yesterday I saw seven or eight water-wagtails following a feeding horse
in the pasture, fluttering about and hopping close by his hoofs, under
his belly, and even so as often to tickle his nostrils with their pert
tails. The horse shortens the grass and they get the insects.
Sic accipite, sic credite, ut mereamini intelligere: fides enim debet
præcedere intellectum, ut sit intellectus fidei præmium.
_S. August. Sermones De Verb. Dom._
Yet should a friend think foully of that wherein the pride of thy
spirit's purity is in shrine.
O the agony! the agony!
Nor Time nor varying Fate,
Nor tender Memory, old or late,
Nor all his Virtues, great though they be,
Nor all his Genius can free
His friend's soul from the agony!
[So receive, so believe [divine ideas] that ye may earn the right to
understand them. For faith should go before understanding, in order that
understanding may be the reward of faith.]
[Greek: Hote enthousiasmos epineusin tina theian hechein dokei kai tô
mantikô genei plêsiazein.] _Strabo Geographicus._
Though Genius, like the fire on the altar, can only be kindled from
heaven, yet it will perish unless supplied with appropriate fuel to feed
it; or if it meet not with the virtues whose society alone can reconcile
it to earth, it will return whence it came, or, at least, lie hid as
beneath embers, till some sudden and awakening gust of regenerating
Grace, [Greek: anazôpyrei], rekindles and reveals it anew.
[Now the inspiration of genius seems to bear the stamp of Divine assent,
and to attain to something of prophetic strain.]
[Sidenote: FALLINGS FROM US, VANISHINGS]
I trust you are very happy in your domestic being--very; because, alas!
I know that to a man of sensibility and more emphatically if he be a
literary man, there is _no_ medium between that and "the secret pang
that eats away the heart." ... Hence, even in dreams of sleep, the soul
never _is_, because it either cannot or dare not be any _one_ thing, but
lives in _approaches_ touched by the outgoing pre-existent ghosts of
many feelings. It feels for ever as a blind man with his protruded staff
dimly through the medium of the instrument by which it pushes off, and
in the act of repulsion--(O for the eloquence of Shakspere, who alone
could feel and yet know how to embody those conceptions with as curious
a felicity as the thoughts are subtle!)--as if the finger which I saw
with eyes, had, as it were, another finger, invisible, touching me with
a ghostly touch, even while I feared the real touch from it. What if, in
certain cases, touch acted by itself, co-present with vision, yet not
coalescing? Then I should see the finger as at a distance, and yet feel
a finger touching which was nothing but it, and yet was not it. The two
senses cannot co-exist without a sense of causation. The _touch_ must be
the effect of that finger [which] I see, and yet it is not yet near to
me, and therefore it is not it, and yet it is it. Why it is is in an
imaginary pre-duplication!
_N.B._--There is a passage in the second part of Wallenstein expressing,
not explaining, the same feeling. "The spirits of great events stride on
before the events"--it is in one of the last two or three scenes:--
"As the sun,
Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image
In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits
Of great events, stride on before the events."
[WALLENSTEIN, Part II., act v. sc. 1. _P. W._,
1893, p. 351.]
[Sidenote: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CLERICAL ERRORS]
It is worth noting and endeavouring to detect the Law of the Mind, by
which, in writing earnestly while we are thinking, we omit words
necessary to the sense. It will be found, I guess, that we seldom omit
the material word, but generally the word by which the mind expresses
its modification of the _verbum materiale_. Thus, in the preceding page,
7th line, _medium_ is the _materiale_: that was its own brute, inert
sense--but the _no_ is the mind's action, its _use_ of the word.
I think this a hint of some value. Thus, _the_ is a word in constant
combination with the passive or material words; but _to_ is an act of
the mind, and I had written _the_ detect instead of _to_ detect. Again,
when my sense demanded "the" to express a distinct modification of some
_verbum materiale_, I remember to have often omitted it in writing. The
principle is evident--the mind borrows the _materia_ from without, and
is passive with regard to it as the mere subject "stoff"--a simple event
of memory takes place; but having the other in itself, the inward Having
with its sense of security passes for the outward Having--or is all
memory an anxious act, and thereby suspended by vivid security? or are
both reasons the same? or if not, are they consistent, and capable of
being co-or sub-ordinated? It will be lucky if some day, after having
written on for two or three sheets rapidly and as a first copy, without
correcting, I should by chance glance on this note, not having thought
at all about it during or before the time of writing; and then to
examine every word omitted.
[Sidenote: BIBLIOLOGICAL MEMORANDA]
To spend half-an-hour in Cuthill's shop, examining Stephen's
_Thesaurus_, in order to form an accurate idea of its utilities above
Scapula, and to examine the _Budæo-Tusan-Constantine_, whether it be the
same or as good as Constantine, and the comparative merits of
Constantine with Scapula.
3. To examine Bosc relatively to Brunck, and to see after the new German
_Anthologia_.
4. Before I quit town, to buy Appendix (either No. 1430 or 1431), 8_s._
or 18_s._ What a difference! ten shillings, because the latter, the
Parma Anacreon, is on large paper, green morocco; the former is neat in
red morocco, but the type the same.
5. To have a long morning's ramble with De Quincey, first to Egerton's,
and then to the book haunts.
6. To see if I can find that Arrian with Epictetus which I admired so
much at Mr. Leckie's.
7. To find out D'Orville's _Daphnis_, and the price. Is there no other
edition? no cheap German?
8. To write out the passage from Strada's _Prolusions_ at Cuthill's.
9. Aristotle's Works, and to hunt for Proclus.
10. In case of my speedy death, it would answer to buy a £100 worth of
carefully-chosen books, in order to attract attention to my library and
to give accession to the value of books by their co-existing with
co-appurtenants--as, for instance, Plato, Aristotle; Plotinus, Porphyry,
Proclus: Schoolmen, Interscholastic; Bacon, Hobbes; Locke, Berkeley;
Leibnitz, Spinoza; Kant and the critical Fichte, and Wissenschaftslehre,
Schelling, &c.
[The first edition of Robert Constantin's _Lexicon Græco-Lat._ was
published at Geneva in 1564. A second ed. _post correctiones_ G. Budæi
et J. Tusani, at Basle, in 1584.]
[Sidenote: [Greek: panta rhei]]
Our mortal existence, what is it but a stoppage in the blood of life, a
brief eddy from wind or concourse of currents in the ever-flowing ocean
of pure Activity, who beholds pyramids, yea, Alps and Andes, giant
pyramids, the work of fire that raiseth monuments, like a generous
victor o'er its own conquest, the tombstones of a world destroyed! Yet
these, too, float adown the sea of Time, and melt away as mountains of
floating ice.
[Sidenote: DISTINCTION IN UNION]
Has every finite being (or only some) the temptation to become intensely
and wholly conscious of its distinctness and, as a result, to be
betrayed into the wretchedness of _division_? Grosser natures, wholly
swallowed up in selfishness which does not rise to self-love, never even
acquire that sense of distinctness, while, to others, love is the first
step to re-union. It is a by-word that religious enthusiasm borders on
and tends to sensuality--possibly because all our powers work together,
and as a consequence of striding too vastly up the ladder of existence,
a great _round_ of the ladder is omitted, namely, love to some, _Eine
verschiedene_, of our own kind. Then let Religion love, else will it not
only partake of, instead of being partaken by, and so co-adunated with,
the summit of love, but will necessarily include the nadir of love,
that is, appetite. Hence will it tend to dissensualise its nature into
fantastic passions, the idolatry of Paphian priestesses.
[Sidenote: IN WONDER ALL PHILOSOPHY BEGAN]
Time, space, duration, action, active passion passive, activeness,
passiveness, reaction, causation, affinity--here assemble all the
mysteries known. All is known-unknown, say, rather, _merely_ known. All
is unintelligible, and yet Locke and the stupid adorers of that _fetish_
earth-clod take all for granted. By the bye, in poetry as well as
metaphysics, that which we first meet with in the dawn of our mind
becomes ever after _fetish_, to the many at least. Blessed he who first
sees the morning star, if not the sun, or purpling clouds his
harbingers. Thence is _fame_ desirable to a great man, and thence
subversion of vulgar fetishes becomes a duty.
Rest, motion! O ye strange locks of intricate simplicity, who shall find
the key? He shall throw wide open the portals of the palace of sensuous
or symbolical truth, and the Holy of Holies will be found in the adyta.
Rest = enjoyment and death. Motion = enjoyment and life. O the depth of the
proverb, "Extremes meet"!
[Sidenote: IN A TWINKLING OF THE EYE]
The "break of the morning"--and from inaction a nation starts up into
motion and wide fellow-consciousness! The trumpet of the Archangel--and
a world with all its troops and companies of generations starts up into
a hundredfold expansion, power multiplied into itself cubically by the
number of all its possible acts--all the potential springing into power.
Conceive a bliss from self-conscience, combining with bliss from
increase of action; the first dreaming, the latter dead-asleep in a
grain of gunpowder--conceive a huge magazine of gunpowder and a flash of
lightning awakes the whole at once. What an image of the resurrection,
grand from its very inadequacy. Yet again, conceive the living, moving
ocean--its bed sinks away from under and the whole world of waters falls
in at once on a thousand times vaster mass of intensest fire, and the
whole prior orbit of the planet's successive revolutions is possessed by
it at once (_Potentia fit actus_) amid the thunder of rapture.
[Sidenote: SINE QUÂ NON]
Form is factitious being, and thinking is the process; imagination the
laboratory in which the thought elaborates essence into existence. A
philosopher, that is, a nominal philosopher without imagination, is a
_coiner_. Vanity, the _froth_ of the molten mass, is his _stuff_, and
verbiage the stamp and impression. This is but a deaf metaphor--better
say that he is guilty of forgery. He presents the same sort of _paper_
as the honest barterer, but when you carry it to the bank it is found to
be drawn to _Outis_, _Esq._ His words had deposited no forms there,
payable at sight--or even at any imaginable _time_ from the date of the
draft.
[Sidenote: SOLVITUR SUSPICIENDO]
The sky, or rather say, the æther at Malta, with the sun apparently
suspended in it, the eye seeming to pierce beyond and, as it were,
behind it--and, below, the æthereal sea, so blue, so _ein zerflossenes_,
the substantial image, and fixed real reflection of the sky! O! I could
annihilate in a deep moment all possibility of the needle-point,
pin's-head system of the _atomists_ by one submissive gaze!
[Sidenote: A GEM OF MORNING]
A dewdrop, the pearl of Aurora, is indeed a true _unio_. I would that
_unio_ were the word for the dewdrop, and the pearl be called _unio
marinus_.
_VER_, _ZER_, AND _AL_
O for the power to persuade all the writers of Great Britain to adopt
the _ver_, _zer_, and _al_ of the German! Why not verboil, zerboil;
verrend, zerrend? I should like the very words _verflossen_,
_zerflossen_, to be naturalised:
And as I looked now feels my soul creative throes,
And now all joy, all sense _zerflows_.
I do not know, whether I am in earnest or in sport while I recommend
this _ver_ and _zer_; that is, I cannot be sure whether I feel, myself,
anything ridiculous in the idea, or whether the feeling that seems to
imply this be not the effect of my anticipation of and sympathy with the
ridicule of, perhaps, all my readers.
[Sidenote: THE LOVER'S HUMILITY]
To you there are many like me, yet to me there is none like you, and you
are always like yourself. There are groves of night-flowers, yet the
night-flower sees only the moon.