Have you been able to discover any principle in this Emancipation Bill for
the Slaves, except a principle of fear of the abolition party struggling
with a dread of causing some monstrous calamity to the empire at large?
Well! I will not prophesy; and God grant that this tremendous and
unprecedented act of positive enactment may not do the harm to the cause of
humanity and freedom which I cannot but fear! But yet, what can be hoped,
when all human wisdom and counsel are set at nought, and religious faith--
the only miraculous agent amongst men--is not invoked or regarded! and that
most unblest phrase--the Dissenting _interest_--enters into the question!
_June_ 22. 1833.
HACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS.--CHARLES I.--MANNERS UNDER EDWARD
III., RICHARD II., AND HENRY VIII.
What a delightful and instructive hook Bishop Hacket's Life of Archbishop
Williams is! You learn more from it of that which is valuable towards an
insight into the times preceding the Civil War than from all the ponderous
histories and memoirs now composed about that period.
* * * * *
Charles seems to have been a very disagreeable personage during James's
life. There is nothing dutiful in his demeanour.
* * * * *
I think the spirit of the court and nobility of Edward III. and Richard II.
was less gross than that in the time of Henry VIII.; for in this latter
period the chivalry had evaporated, and the whole coarseness was left by
itself. Chaucer represents a very high and romantic style of society
amongst the gentry.
_June_ 29. 1833.
HYPOTHESIS.--SUFFICTION.--THEORY.--LYELL'S GEOLOGY.--GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
--GERARD DOUW's "SCHOOLMASTER" AND TITIAN'S "VENUS."--SIR J. SCARLETT.
It seems to me a great delusion to call or suppose the imagination of a
subtle fluid, or molecules penetrable with the same, a legitimate
hypothesis. It is a mere _suffiction_. Newton took the fact of bodies
falling to the centre, and upon that built up a legitimate hypothesis. It
was a subposition of something certain. But Descartes' vortices were not an
hypothesis; they rested on no fact at all; and yet they did, in a clumsy
way, explain the motions of the heavenly bodies. But your subtle fluid is
pure gratuitous assumption; and for what use? It explains nothing.
Besides, you are endeavouring to deduce power from mass, in which you
expressly say there is no power but the _vis inertiae_: whereas, the whole
analogy of chemistry proves that power produces mass.
* * * * *
The use of a theory in the real sciences is to help the investigator to a
complete view of all the hitherto discovered facts relating to the science
in question; it is a collected view, [Greek: the_orhia], of all he yet
knows in _one_. Of course, whilst any pertinent facts remain unknown, no
theory can be exactly true, because every new fact must necessarily, to a
greater or less degree, displace the relation of all the others. A theory,
therefore, only helps investigation; it cannot invent or discover. The only
true theories are those of geometry, because in geometry all the premisses
are true and unalterable. But, to suppose that, in our present exceedingly
imperfect acquaintance with the facts, any theory in chemistry or geology
is altogether accurate, is absurd:--it cannot be true.
Mr. Lyell's system of geology is just half the truth, and no more. He
affirms a great deal that is true, and he denies a great deal which is
equally true; which is the general characteristic of all systems not
embracing the whole truth. So it is with the rectilinearity or undulatory
motion of light;--I believe both; though philosophy has as yet but
imperfectly ascertained the conditions of their alternate existence, or the
laws by which they are regulated.
* * * * *
Those who deny light to be matter do not, therefore, deny its corporeity.
* * * * *
The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is
no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it
depends much more on execution for its effect. I was more than ever
impressed with the marvellous sublimity and transcendant beauty of King's
College Chapel.[1] It is quite unparalleled.
I think Gerard Douw's "Schoolmaster," in the Fitzwilliam Museum, the finest
thing of the sort I ever saw;--whether you look at it at the common
distance, or examine it with a glass, the wonder is equal. And that
glorious picture of the Venus--so perfectly beautiful and perfectly
innocent--as if beauty and innocence could not be dissociated! The French
thing below is a curious instance of the inherent grossness of the French
taste. Titian's picture is made quite bestial.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge visited Cambridge upon the occasion of the scientific meeting
there in June, 1833.--"My emotions," he said, "at revisiting the university
were at first, overwhelming. I could not speak for an hour; yet my feelings
were upon the whole very pleasurable, and I have not passed, of late years
at least, three days of such great enjoyment and healthful excitement of
mind and body. The bed on which I slept--and slept soundly too--was, as
near as I can describe it, a couple of sacks full of potatoes tied
together. I understand the young men think it hardens them. Truly I lay
down at night a man, and arose in the morning a bruise." He told me "that
the men were much amused at his saying that the fine old Quaker philosopher
Dalton's face was like All Souls' College." The two persons of whom he
spoke with the greatest interest were Mr. Faraday and Mr. Thirlwall; saying
of the former, "that he seemed to have the true temperament of genius, that
carrying-on of the spring and freshness of youthful, nay, boyish feelings,
into the matured strength of manhood!" For, as Mr. Coleridge had long
before expressed the same thought,--"To find no contradiction in the union
of old and new; to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all his works with
feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative
fiat, this characterizes the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and
may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the
powers of manhood; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with
the appearances which everyday for perhaps forty years had rendered
familiar;
'With sun and moon and stars throughout the year,
And man and woman;'--
this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which
distinguish genius from talent. And therefore is it the prime merit of
genius, and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent
familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling
concerning them, and that freshness of sensation which is the constant
accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence. Who has not
a thousand times seen snow fall on water? Who has not watched it with a new
feeling, from the time that he has read Burns's comparison of sensual
pleasure
'To snow that falls upon a river,
A moment white--then gone for ever!'"
_Biog. Lit_. vol. i, p. 85.--ED.]
* * * * *
I think Sir James Scarlett's speech for the defendant, in the late action
of Cobbett v. The Times, for a libel, worthy of the best ages of Greece or
Rome; though, to be sure, some of his remarks could not have been very
palatable to his clients.
* * * * *
I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, which I fear has gone on
for an hour without any stop at all.
_July_ 1. 1833.
MANDEVILLE'S FABLE OF THE BEES.--BESTIAL THEORY.--CHARACTER OF BERTRAM.--
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER'S DRAMAS.--ÆSCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES,--MILTON.
If I could ever believe that Mandeville really meant any thing more by his
Fable of the Bees than a _bonne bouche_ of solemn raillery, I should like
to ask those man-shaped apes who have taken up his suggestions in earnest,
and seriously maintained them as bases for a rational account of man and
the world--how they explain the very existence of those dexterous cheats,
those superior charlatans, the legislators and philosophers, who have known
how to play so well upon the peacock-like vanity and follies of their
fellow mortals.
By the by, I wonder some of you lawyers (_sub rosa_, of course) have not
quoted the pithy lines in Mandeville upon this registration question:--
"The lawyers, of whose art the basis
Was raising feuds and splitting cases,
_Oppos'd all Registers_, that cheats
Might make more work with dipt estates;
As 'twere unlawful that one's own
Without a lawsuit should be known!
They put off hearings wilfully,
To finger the refreshing fee;
And to defend a wicked cause
Examined and survey'd the laws,
As burglars shops and houses do,
To see where best they may break through."
There is great Hudibrastic vigour in these lines; and those on the doctors
are also very terse.
* * * * *
Look at that head of Cline, by Chantrey! Is that forehead, that nose, those
temples and that chin, akin to the monkey tribe? No, no. To a man of
sensibility no argument could disprove the bestial theory so convincingly
as a quiet contemplation of that fine bust.
* * * * *
I cannot agree with the solemn abuse which the critics have poured out upon
Bertram in "All's Well that ends Well." He was a young nobleman in feudal
times, just bursting into manhood, with all the feelings of pride of birth
and appetite for pleasure and liberty natural to such a character so
circumstanced. Of course he had never regarded Helena otherwise than as a
dependant in the family; and of all that which she possessed of goodness
and fidelity and courage, which might atone for her inferiority in other
respects, Bertram was necessarily in a great measure ignorant. And after
all, her _prima facie_ merit was the having inherited a prescription from
her old father the doctor, by which she cures the king,--a merit, which
supposes an extravagance of personal loyalty in Bertram to make conclusive
to him in such a matter as that of taking a wife. Bertram had surely good
reason to look upon the king's forcing him to marry Helena as a very
tyrannical act. Indeed, it must be confessed that her character is not very
delicate, and it required all Shakspeare's consummate skill to interest us
for her; and he does this chiefly by the operation of the other
characters,--the Countess, Lafeu, &c. We get to like Helena from their
praising and commending her so much.
* * * * *
In Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedies the comic scenes are rarely so
interfused amidst the tragic as to produce a unity of the tragic on the
whole, without which the intermixture is a fault. In Shakspeare, this is
always managed with transcendant skill. The Fool in Lear contributes in a
very sensible manner to the tragic wildness of the whole drama. Beaumont
and Fletcher's serious plays or tragedies are complete hybrids,--neither
fish nor flesh,--upon any rules, Greek, Roman, or Gothic: and yet they are
very delightful notwithstanding. No doubt, they imitate the ease of
gentlemanly conversation better than Shakspeare, who was unable _not_ to be
too much associated to succeed perfectly in this.
When I was a boy, I was fondest of Æschylus; in youth and middle age I
preferred Euripides; now in my declining years I admire Sophocles. I can
now at length see that Sophocles is the most perfect. Yet he never rises to
the sublime simplicity of Æschylus--simplicity of design, I mean--nor
diffuses himself in the passionate outpourings of Euripides. I understand
why the ancients called Euripides the most tragic of their dramatists: he
evidently embraces within the scope of the tragic poet many passions,--
love, conjugal affection, jealousy, and so on, which Sophocles seems to
have considered as incongruous with the ideal statuesqueness of the tragic
drama. Certainly Euripides was a greater poet in the abstract than
Sophocles. His choruses may be faulty as choruses, but how beautiful and
affecting they are as odes and songs! I think the famous [Greek: Euippoy
Xene], in Oedipus Coloneus[1] cold in comparison with many of the odes of
Euripides, as that song of the chorus in the Hippolytus--[Greek: "Eoos,"
Eoos[2]] and so on; and I remember a choric ode in the Hecuba, which always
struck me as exquisitely rich and finished; I mean, where the chorus speaks
of Troy and the night of the capture.[3]
There is nothing very surprising in Milton's preference of Euripides,
though so unlike himself. It is very common--very natural--for men to
_like_ and even admire an exhibition of power very different in kind from
any thing of their own. No jealousy arises. Milton preferred Ovid too, and
I dare say he admired both as a man of sensibility admires a lovely woman,
with a feeling into which jealousy or envy cannot enter. With Aeschylus or
Sophocles he might perchance have matched himself.
In Euripides you have oftentimes a very near approach to comedy, and I
hardly know any writer in whom you can find such fine models of serious and
dignified conversation.
[Footnote 1:
Greek:
Euíppoy, Xége, tmsde chosas
Tchoy tà chzátista gãs esaula
tdn àxgaeta Kolanón'--ch. t. l. v. 668]
[Footnote 2:
Greek:
"Exos" Exos, ó chat' ômmátton
s tázeos póthon eisagog glycheïan
Psuchä cháriu oûs èpithtzateúsei
mae moi totè sèn chachõ phaneiaes
maeô ãrruthmos ëlthois--x.t.l v.527]
[Footnote 3:
I take it for granted that Mr. Coleridge alluded to the chorus,--
[Greek: Su men, _o patrhis Ilias
t_on aporhth_et_on polis
ouketi lexei toion El-
lan_on nephos amphi se krhuptei,
dorhi d_e, dorhi perhsan--k. t. l.] v. 899.
Thou, then, oh, natal Troy! no more
The city of the unsack'd shalt be,
So thick from dark Achaia's shore
The cloud of war hath covered thee.
Ah! not again
I tread thy plain--
The spear--the spear hath rent thy pride;
The flame hath scarr'd thee deep and wide;
Thy coronal of towers is shorn,
And thou most piteous art--most naked and forlorn!
I perish'd at the noon of night!
When sleep had seal'd each weary eye;
When the dance was o'er,
And harps no more
Rang out in choral minstrelsy.
In the dear bower of delight
My husband slept in joy;
His shield and spear
Suspended near,
Secure he slept: that sailor band
Full sure he deem'd no more should stand
Beneath the walls of Troy.
And I too, by the taper's light,
Which in the golden mirror's haze
Flash'd its interminable rays,
Bound up the tresses of my hair,
That I Love's peaceful sleep might share.
I slept; but, hark! that war-shout dread,
Which rolling through the city spread;
And this the cry,--"When, Sons of Greece,
When shall the lingering leaguer cease;
When will ye spoil Troy's watch-tower high,
And home return?"--I heard the cry,
And, starting from the genial bed,
Veiled, as a Doric maid, I fled,
And knelt, Diana, at thy holy fane,
A trembling suppliant--all in vain.]