I have no faith in act of parliament reform. All the great--the permanently
great--things that have been achieved in the world have been so achieved by
individuals, working from the instinct of genius or of goodness. The rage
now-a-days is all the other way: the individual is supposed capable of
nothing; there must be organization, classification, machinery, &c., as if
the capital of national morality could be increased by making a joint stock
of it. Hence you see these infant schools so patronized by the bishops and
others, who think them a grand invention. Is it found that an infant-school
child, who has been bawling all day a column of the multiplication-table,
or a verse from the Bible, grows up a more dutiful son or daughter to its
parents? Are domestic charities on the increase amongst families under this
system? In a great town, in our present state of society, perhaps such
schools may be a justifiable expedient--a choice of the lesser evil; but as
for driving these establishments into the country villages, and breaking up
the cottage home education, I think it one of the most miserable mistakes
which the well-intentioned people of the day have yet made; and they have
made, and are making, a good many, God knows.
_July_ 25. 1832.
MR. COLERIDGE'S PHILOSOPHY.--SUBLIMITY.--SOLOMON.--MADNESS.--C. LAMB--
SFORZA's DECISION.
The pith of my system is to make the senses out of the mind--not the mind
out of the senses, as Locke did.
* * * * *
Could you ever discover any thing sublime, in our sense of the term, in the
classic Greek literature? never could. Sublimity is Hebrew by birth.
* * * * *
I should conjecture that the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes were written, or,
perhaps, rather collected, about the time of Nehemiah. The language is
Hebrew with Chaldaic endings. It is totally unlike the language of Moses on
the one hand, and of Isaiah on the other.
* * * * *
Solomon introduced the commercial spirit into his kingdom. I cannot think
his idolatry could have been much more, in regard to himself, than a state
protection or toleration of the foreign worship.
* * * * *
When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, he is mad. A
madman is properly so defined.
* * * * *
Charles Lamb translated my motto _Sermoni propriora_ by--_properer for a
sermon_!
* * * * *
I was much amused some time ago by reading the pithy decision of one of the
Sforzas of Milan, upon occasion of a dispute for precedence between the
lawyers and physicians of his capital;--_Paecedant fures--sequantur
carnifices_. I hardly remember a neater thing.
_July_ 28. 1832.