Professor Wilson's character of Charles Lamb in the last Blackwood,
_Twaddle on Tweed-side_[1], is very sweet indeed, and gratified me much. It
does honour to Wilson, to his head and his heart.
[Footnote 1:
"Charles Lamb ought really not to abuse Scotland in the pleasant way he so
often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield; for Scotland loves Charles
Lamb; but he is wayward and wilful in his wisdom, and conceits that many a
Cockney is a better man even than Christopher North. But what will not
Christopher forgive to genius and goodness! Even Lamb, bleating libels on
his native land. Nay, he learns lessons of humanity even from the mild
malice of Elia, and breathes a blessing on him and his household in their
bower of rest."
Some of Mr. Coleridge's poems were first published with some of C. Lamb's
at Bristol in 1797. The remarkable words on the title-page have been aptly
cited in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1835, p. 198.: "Duplex
nobis vinculum, et amicitiae et similium junctarumque Camcoenarum,--quod
utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas." And even so it came
to pass after thirty seven years more had passed over their heads,--ED.]
* * * * *
How can I wish that Wilson should cease to write what so often soothes and
suspends my bodily miseries, and my mental conflicts! Yet what a waste,
what a reckless spending, of talent, ay, and of genius, too, in his I know
not how many years' management of Blackwood! If Wilson cares for fame, for
an enduring place and prominence in literature, he should now, I think,
hold his hand, and say, as he well may,--
"Militavi non sine gloria:
Nunc arma defunctumque bello
Barbiton hic paries habebit."
Two or three volumes collected out of the magazine by himself would be very
delightful. But he must not leave it for others to do; for some recasting
and much condensation would be required; and literary executors make sad
work in general with their testators' brains.
* * * * *
I believe it possible that a man may, under certain states of the moral
feeling, entertain something deserving the name of love towards a male
object--an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from appetite. In
Elizabeth's and James's time it seems to have been almost fashionable to
cherish such a feeling; and perhaps we may account in some measure for it
by considering how very inferior the women of that age, taken generally,
were in education and accomplishment of mind to the men. Of course there
were brilliant exceptions enough; but the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher--
the most popular dramatists that ever wrote for the English stage--will
show us what sort of women it was generally pleasing to represent.
Certainly the language of the two friends, Musidorus and Pyrocles, in the
Arcadia, is such as we could not now use except to women; and in Cervantes
the same tone is sometimes adopted, as in the novel of the Curious
Impertinent. And I think there is a passage in the New Atlantis[1] of Lord
Bacon, in which he speaks of the possibility of such a feeling, but hints
the extreme danger of entertaining it, or allowing it any place in a moral
theory. I mention this with reference to Shakspeare's sonnets, which have
been supposed, by some, to be addressed to William Herbert, Earl of
Pembroke, whom Clarendon calls[2] the most beloved man of his age, though
his licentiousness was equal to his virtues.
I doubt this. I do not think that Shakespeare, merely because he was an
actor, would have thought it necessary to veil his emotions towards
Pembroke under a disguise, though he might probably have done so, if the
real object had perchance been a Laura or a Leonora. It seems to me that
the sonnets could only have come from a man deeply in love, and in love
with a woman; and there is one sonnet which, from its incongruity, I take
to be a purposed blind. These extraordinary sonnets form, in fact, a poem
of so many stanzas of fourteen lines each; and, like the passion which
inspired them, the sonnets are always the same, with a variety of
expression,--continuous, if you regard the lover's soul,--distinct, if you
listen to him, as he heaves them sigh after sigh.
These sonnets, like the Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, are
characterized by boundless fertility and laboured condensation of thought,
with perfection of sweetness in rhythm and metre. These are the essentials
in the budding of a great poet. Afterwards habit and consciousness of power
teach more ease--_praecipitandum liberum spiritum_.
[Footnote 1:
I cannot fix upon any passage in this work, to which it can be supposed
that Mr. Coleridge alluded, unless it be the speech of Joabin the Jew; but
it contains nothing coming up to the meaning in the text. The only approach
to it seems to be:--"As for masculine love, they have no touch of it; and
yet there are not so faithful and inviolate friendships in the world again
as are there; and to speak generally, as I said before, I have not read of
any such chastity in any people as theirs."--ED.]
[Footnote 2:
"William Earl of Pembroke was next, a man of another mould and making, and
of another fame and reputation with all men, being the most universally
beloved and esteemed of any man of that age." ......."He indulged to
himself the pleasures of all kinds, almost in all excesses."--_Hist. of the
Rebellion_, book i. He died in 1630, aged fifty years. The dedication by T.
T. (Thomas Thorpe) is to "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr.
W. H." and Malone is inclined to think that William Hughes is meant. As to
Mr. W. H. being the _only_ begetter of these sonnets, it must be observed,
that at least the last twenty-eight are beyond dispute addressed to a
woman. I suppose the twentieth sonnet was the particular one conceived by
Mr. C. to be a blind; but it seems to me that many others may be so
construed, if we set out with a conviction that the real object of the poet
was a woman.--ED.]
* * * * *
Every one who has been in love, knows that the passion is strongest, and
the appetite weakest, in the absence of the beloved object, and that the
reverse is the case in her presence.
_May_ 15. 1833.
WICLIFFE.--LUTHER.--REVERENCE FOR IDEAL TRUTHS.--JOHNSON THE WHIG.--
ASGILL.--JAMES I.
Wicliffe's genius was, perhaps, not equal to Luther's; but really the more
I know of him from Vaughan and Le Bas, both of whose books I like, I think
him as extraordinary a man as Luther upon the whole. He was much sounder
and more truly catholic in his view of the Eucharist than Luther. And I
find, not without some pleasure, that my own view of it, which I was
afraid was original, was maintained in the tenth century, that is to say,
that the body broken had no reference to the human body of Christ, but to
the Caro Noumenon, or symbolical Body, the Rock that followed the
Israelites.
Whitaker beautifully says of Luther;--_Felix ille, quem Dominus eo honore
dignatus est, ut homines nequissimos suos haberet inimicos_.
* * * * *
There is now no reverence for any thing; and the reason is, that men
possess conceptions only, and all their knowledge is conceptional only.
Now as, to conceive, is a work of the mere understanding, and as all that
can be conceived may be comprehended, it is impossible that a man should
reverence that, to which he must always feel something in himself
superior. If it were possible to conceive God in a strict sense, that is,
as we conceive a horse or a tree, even God himself could not excite any
reverence, though he might excite fear or terror, or perhaps love, as a
tiger or a beautiful woman. But reverence, which is the synthesis of love
and fear, is only due from man, and, indeed, only excitable in man,
towards ideal truths, which are always mysteries to the understanding, for
the same reason that the motion of my finger behind my back is a mystery
to you now--your eyes not being made for seeing through my body. It is
the reason only which has a sense by which ideas can be recognized, and
from the fontal light of ideas only can a man draw intellectual power.
* * * * *
Samuel Johnson[1], whom, to distinguish him from the Doctor, we may call
the Whig, was a very remarkable writer. He may be compared to his
contemporary De Foe, whom he resembled in many points. He is another
instance of King William's discrimination, which was so much superior to
that of any of his ministers, Johnson was one of the most formidable
advocates for the Exclusion Bill, and he suffered by whipping and
imprisonment under James accordingly. Like Asgill, he argues with great
apparent candour and clearness till he has his opponent within reach, and
then comes a blow as from a sledge-hammer. I do not know where I could put
my hand upon a book containing so much sense and sound constitutional
doctrine as this thin folio of Johnson's Works; and what party in this
country would read so severe a lecture in it as our modern Whigs!
A close reasoner and a good writer in general may be known by his pertinent
use of connectives. Read that page of Johnson; you cannot alter one
conjunction without spoiling the sense. It is a linked strain throughout.
In your modern books, for the most part, the sentences in a page have the
same connection with each other that marbles have in a bag; they touch
without adhering.
Asgill evidently formed his style upon Johnson's, but he only imitates one
part of it. Asgill never rises to Johnson's eloquence. The latter was a
sort of Cobbett-Burke.
James the First thought that, because all power in the state seemed to
proceed _from_ the crown, all power therefore remained in the crown;--as
if, because the tree sprang from the seed, the stem, branches, leaves, and
fruit were all contained in the seed. The constitutional doctrine as to the
relation which the king bears to the other components of the state is in
two words this:--He is a representative of the whole of that, of which he
is himself a part.
[Footnote 1:
Dryden's Ben Jochanan, in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel. He was
born in 1649, and died in 1703. He was a clergyman. In 1686, when the army
was encamped on Hounslow Heath, he published "A humble and hearty Address
to all English Protestants in the present Army." For this he was tried and
sentenced to be pilloried in three places, pay a fine, and be whipped from
Newgate to Tyburn. An attempt was also made to degrade him from his orders,
but this failed through an informality. After the Revolution he was
preferred.--ED.]
_May_ 17. 1833.