You may not understand my system, or any given part of it,--or by a
determined act of wilfulness, you may, even though perceiving a ray of
light, reject it in anger and disgust:--but this I will say,--that if you
once master it, or any part of it, you cannot hesitate to acknowledge it as
the truth. You cannot be sceptical about it.
The metaphysical disquisition at the end of the first volume of the
"Biographia Literaria" is unformed and immature;--it contains the fragments
of the truth, but it is not fully thought out. It is wonderful to myself to
think how infinitely more profound my views now are, and yet how much
clearer they are withal. The circle is completing; the idea is coming round
to, and to be, the common sense.
* * * * *
The generation of the modern worldly Dissenter was thus: Presbyterian,
Arian, Socinian, and last, Unitarian.
* * * * *
Is it not most extraordinary to see the Dissenters calling themselves the
descendants of the old Nonconformists, and yet clamouring for a divorce of
Church and State? Why--Baxter, and the other great leaders, would have
thought a man an atheist who had proposed such a thing. _They_ were rather
for merging the State _in_ the Church. But these our modern gentlemen, who
are blinded by political passion, give the kiss of alliance to the harlot
of Rome, and walk arm in arm with those who deny the God that redeemed
them, if so they may but wreak their insane antipathies on the National
Church! Well! I suppose they have counted the cost, and know what it is
they would have, and can keep.
_July_ 5. 1834.
LORD BROOKE.--BARROW AND DRYDEN.--PETER WILKINS AND STOTHARD.--FIELDING AND
RICHARDSON.--BISHOP SANDFORD.--ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION.
I do not remember a more beautiful piece of prose in English than the
consolation addressed by Lord Brooke (Fulke Greville) to a lady of quality
on certain conjugal infelicities. The diction is such that it might have
been written now, if we could find any one combining so thoughtful a head
with so tender a heart and so exquisite a taste.
* * * * *
Barrow often debased his language merely to evidence his loyalty. It was,
indeed, no easy task for a man of so much genius, and such a precise
mathematical mode of thinking, to adopt even for a moment the slang of
L'Estrange and Tom Brown; but he succeeded in doing so sometimes. With the
exception of such parts, Barrow must be considered as closing the first
great period of the English language. Dryden began the second. Of course
there are numerous subdivisions.
* * * * *
Peter Wilkins is to my mind a work of uncommon beauty; and yet Stothard's
illustrations have _added_ beauties to it. If it were not for a certain
tendency to affectation, scarcely any praise could be too high for
Stothard's designs. They give me great pleasure. I believe that Robinson
Crusoe and Peter Wilkins could only have been written by islanders. No
continentalist could have conceived either tale. Davis's story is an
imitation of Peter Wilkins; but there are many beautiful things in it;
especially his finding his wife crouching by the fireside--she having, in
his absence, plucked out all her feathers--to be like him!
It would require a very peculiar genius to add another tale, _ejusdem
generis_, to Robinson Crusoe and Peter Wilkins. I once projected such a
thing; but the difficulty of a pre-occupied ground stopped me. Perhaps La
Motte Fouqué might effect something; but I should fear that neither he, nor
any other German, could entirely understand what may be called the "_desert
island_" feeling. I would try the marvellous line of Peter Wilkins, if I
attempted it, rather than the _real_ fiction of Robinson Crusoe.
* * * * *
What a master of composition Fielding was! Upon my word, I think the
Oedipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones the three most perfect plots
ever planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take
him up after Richardson, is like emerging from a sick room heated by
stoves, into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May.
* * * * *
I have been very deeply interested in the account of Bishop Sandford's
life, published by his son. He seems to have been a thorough gentleman upon
the model of St. Paul, whose manners were the finest of any man's upon
record.
* * * * *
I think I could have conformed to the then dominant Church before the
Reformation. The errors existed, but they had not been riveted into
peremptory articles of faith before the Council of Trent. If a Romanist
were to ask me the question put to Sir Henry Wotton, [1]I should content
myself by answering, that I could not exactly say when my religion, as he
was pleased to call it, began--but that it was certainly some sixty or
seventy years before _his_, at all events--which began at the Council of
Trent.
[Footnote 1:
"Having, at his being in Rome, made acquaintance with a pleasant priest,
who invited him, one evening, to hear their vesper music at church; the
priest, seeing Sir Henry stand obscurely in a corner, sends to him by a boy
of the choir this question, writ in a small piece of paper;--'Where was
your religion to be found before Luther?' To which question Sir Henry
presently underwrit;--'My religion was to be found then, where yours is not
to be found now--in the written word of God.'"--_Isaak Walton's Life of Sir
Henry Wotton_.]
_July_ 10. 1834.
_EUTHANASIA._
I am, dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange
that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen
into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope--
those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love,--for what is
Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as _one?_ I say _realities_;
for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream; [Greek: *ai
g_or t onar e Di s esti]. Yet, in a strict sense, reality is not
predicable at all of aught below Heaven. "Es enim _in coelis_, Pater
noster, qui tu vere _es!_" Hooker wished to live to finish his
Ecclesiastical Polity;--so I own I wish life and strength had been spared
to me to complete my Philosophy. For, as God hears me, the originating,
continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my heart were to exalt the
glory of his name; and, which is the same thing in other words, to promote
the improvement of mankind. But _visum aliter Deo_, and his will be done.
* * * * *
** This note may well finish the present specimens. What followed was for
the memory of private friends only. Mr. Coleridge was then extremely ill;
but certainly did not believe his end to be quite so near at hand as it
was.--ED.
The following Recollections of Mr. Coleridge, written in May, 1811, have
been also communicated to me by my brother, Mr. Justice Coleridge:--
"20_th April_, 1811, _at Richmond_.
"We got on politics, and he related some curious facts of the Prince and
Perceval. Then, adverting to the present state of affairs in Portugal, he
said that he rejoiced not so much in the mere favourable turn, as in the
end that must now be put to the base reign of opinion respecting the
superiority and invincible skill of the French generals. Brave as Sir John
Moore was, he thought him deficient in that greater and more essential
manliness of soul which should have made him not hold his enemy in such
fearful respect, and which should have taught him to care less for the
opinion of the world at home.
"We then got, I know not how, to German topics. He said that the language
of their literature was entirely factitious, and had been formed by Luther
from the two dialects, High and Low German; that he had made it,
grammatically, most correct, more so, perhaps, than any other language; it
was equal to the Greek, except in harmony and sweetness. And yet the
Germans themselves thought it sweet;--Klopstock had repeated to him an ode
of his own to prove it, and really had deceived himself, by the force of
association, into a belief that the harsh sounds, conveying, indeed, or
being significant of, sweet images or thoughts, were themselves sweet. Mr.
C. was asked what he thought of Klopstock. He answered, that his fame was
rapidly declining in Germany; that an Englishman might form a correct
notion of him by uniting the moral epigram of Young, the bombast of Hervey,
and the minute description of Richardson. As to sublimity, he had, with all
Germans, one rule for producing it;--it was, to take something very great,
and make it very small in comparison with that which you wish to elevate.
Thus, for example, Klopstock says,--'As the gardener goes forth, and
scatters from his basket seed into the garden; so does the Creator scatter
worlds with his right hand.' Here _worlds_, a large object, are made small
in the hands of the Creator; consequently, the Creator is very great. In
short, the Germans were not a poetical nation in the very highest sense.
Wieland was their best poet: his subject was bad, and his thoughts often
impure; but his language was rich and harmonious, and his fancy luxuriant.
Sotheby's translation had not at all caught the manner of the original. But
the Germans were good metaphysicians and critics: they criticised on
principles previously laid down; thus, though they might be wrong, they
were in no danger of being self-contradictory, which was too often the case
with English critics.
"Young, he said, was not a poet to be read through at once. His love of
point and wit had often put an end to his pathos and sublimity; but there
were parts in him which must be immortal. He (Mr. C.) loved to read a page
of Young, and walk out to think of him.
"Returning to the Germans, he said that the state of their religion, when
he was in Germany, was really shocking. He had never met one clergyman a
Christian; and he found professors in the universities lecturing against
the most material points in the Gospel. He instanced, I think, Paulus,
whose lectures he had attended. The object was to resolve the miracles into
natural operations; and such a disposition evinced was the best road to
preferment. He severely censured Mr. Taylor's book, in which the principles
of Paulus were explained and insisted on with much gratuitous indelicacy.
He then entered into the question of Socinianism, and noticed, as I
recollect, the passage in the Old Testament; 'The people bowed their faces,
and _worshipped_ God and the king.' He said, that all worship implied the
presence of the object worshipped: the people worshipped, bowing to the
sensuous presence of the one, and the conceived omnipresence of the other.
He talked of his having constantly to defend the Church against the
Socinian Bishop of Llandaff, Watson. The subject then varied to Roman
Catholicism, and he gave us an account of a controversy he had had with a
very sensible priest in Sicily on the worship of saints. He had driven the
priest from one post to another, till the latter took up the ground, that
though the saints were not omnipresent, yet God, who was so, imparted to
them the prayers offered up, and then they used their interference with Him
to grant them. 'That is, father, (said C. in reply)--excuse my seeming
levity, for I mean no impiety--that is; I have a deaf and dumb wife, who
yet understands me, and I her, by signs. You have a favour to ask of me,
and want my wife's interference; so you communicate your request to me, who
impart it to her, and she, by signs back again, begs me to grant it.' The
good priest laughed, and said, '_Populus milt decipi, et decipiatur!_'
"We then got upon the Oxford controversy, and he was decidedly of opinion
that there could be no doubt of Copleston's complete victory. He thought
the Review had chosen its points of attack ill, as there must doubtless be
in every institution so old much to reprehend and carp at. On the other
hand, he thought that Copleston had not been so severe or hard upon them as
he might have been; but he admired the critical part of his work, which he
thought very highly valuable, independently of the controversy. He wished
some portion of mathematics was more essential to a degree at Oxford, as he
thought a gentleman's education incomplete without it, and had himself
found the necessity of getting up a little, when he could ill spare the
time. He every day more and more lamented his neglect of them when at
Cambridge,
"Then glancing off to Aristotle, he gave a very high character of him. He
said that Bacon objected to Aristotle the grossness of his examples, and
Davy now did precisely the same to Bacon: both were wrong; for each of
those philosophers wished to confine the attention of the mind in their
works to the _form_ of reasoning only, by which other truths might be
established or elicited, and therefore the most trite and common-place
examples were in fact the best. He said that during a long confinement to
his room, he had taken up the Schoolmen, and was astonished at the immense
learning and acute knowledge displayed by them; that there was scarcely any
thing which modern philosophers had proudly brought forward as their own,
which might not be found clearly and systematically laid down by them in
some or other of their writings. Locke had sneered at the Schoolmen
unfairly, and had raised a foolish laugh against them by citations from
their _Quid libet_ questions, which were discussed on the eyes of holydays,
and in which the greatest latitude was allowed, being considered mere
exercises of ingenuity. We had ridiculed their _quiddities_, and why? Had
we not borrowed their _quantity_ and their _quality_, and why then reject
their _quiddity_, when every schoolboy in logic must know, that of every
thing may be asked, _Quantum est? Quale est?_ and _Quid est?_ the last
bringing you to the most material of all points, its individual being. He
afterwards stated, that in a History of Speculative Philosophy which he was
endeavouring to prepare for publication, he had proved, and to the
satisfaction of Sir James Mackintosh, that there was nothing in Locke which
his best admirers most admired, that might not be found more clearly and
better laid down in Descartes or the old Schoolmen; not that he was himself
an implicit disciple of Descartes, though he thought that Descartes had
been much misinterpreted.
"When we got on the subject of poetry and Southey, he gave us a critique of
the Curse of Kehama, the fault of which he thought consisted in the
association of a plot and a machinery so very wild with feelings so sober
and tender: but he gave the poem high commendation, admired the art
displayed in the employment of the Hindu monstrosities, and begged us to
observe the noble feeling excited of the superiority of virtue over vice;
that Kehama went on, from the beginning to the end of the poem, increasing
in power, whilst Kailyal gradually lost her hopes and her protectors; and
yet by the time we got to the end, we had arrived at an utter contempt and
even carelessness of the power of evil, as exemplified in the almighty
Rajah, and felt a complete confidence in the safety of the unprotected
virtue of the maiden. This he thought the very great merit of the poem.
"When we walked home with him to the inn, he got on the subject of the
English Essay for the year at Oxford, and thought some consideration of the
corruption of language should he introduced into it.
[Footnote: On Etymology.]
It originated, he thought, in a desire to abbreviate all expression as much
as possible; and no doubt, if in one word, without violating idiom, I can
express what others have done in more, and yet be as fully and easily
understood, I have manifestly made an improvement; but if, on the other
hand, it becomes harder, and takes more time to comprehend a thought or
image put in one word by Apuleius than when expressed in a whole sentence
by Cicero, the saving is merely of pen and ink, and the alteration is
evidently a corruption."
_"April_ 21.--Richmond._
"Before breakfast we went into Mr. May's delightful book-room, where he was
again silent in admiration of the prospect. After breakfast, we walked to
church. He seemed full of calm piety, and said he always felt the most
delightful sensations in a Sunday church-yard,--that it struck him as if
God had given to man fifty-two springs in every year. After the service, he
was vehement against the sermon, as common-place, and invidious in its tone
towards the poor. Then he gave many texts from the lessons and gospel of
the day, as affording fit subjects for discourses. He ridiculed the
absurdity of refusing to believe every thing that you could not understand;
and mentioned a rebuke of Dr. Parr's to a man of the name of Frith, and
that of another clergyman to a young man, who said he would believe nothing
which he could not understand:--'Then, young man, your creed will be the
shortest of any man's I know.'
"As we walked up Mr. Cambridge's meadows towards Twickenham, he criticised
Johnson and Gray as poets, and did not seem to allow them high merit. The
excellence of verse, he said, was to be untranslatable into any other words
without detriment to the beauty of the passage;--the position of a single
word could not be altered in Milton without injury. Gray's
personifications, he said, were mere printer's devils' personifications--
persons with a capital letter, abstract qualities with a small one. He
thought Collins had more genius than Gray, who was a singular instance of a
man of taste, poetic feeling, and fancy, without imagination. He contrasted
Dryden's opening of the 10th satire of Juvenal with Johnson's:--
"'Let observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind from Ganges to Peru.'
which was as much as to say,--
"'Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind.'
"After dinner he told us a humorous story of his enthusiastic fondness for
Quakerism, when he was at Cambridge, and his attending one of their
meetings, which had entirely cured him. When the little children came in,
he was in raptures with them, and descanted upon the delightful mode of
treating them now, in comparison with what he had experienced in childhood.
He lamented the haughtiness with which Englishmen treated all foreigners
abroad, and the facility with which our government had always given up any
people which had allied itself to us, at the end of a war; and he
particularly remarked upon our abandonment of Minorca. These two things, he
said, made us universally disliked on the Continent; though, as a people,
most highly respected. He thought a war with America inevitable; and
expressed his opinion, that the United States were unfortunate in the
prematureness of their separation from this country, before they had in
themselves the materials of moral society--before they had a gentry and a
learned class,--the former looking backwards, and giving the sense of
stability--the latter looking forwards, and regulating the feelings of the
people.
"Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he sat down by Professor Rigaud, with
whom he entered into a discussion of Kant's System of Metaphysics. The
little knots of the company were speedily silent: Mr. C.'s voice grew
louder; and abstruse as the subject was, yet his language was so ready, so
energetic, and so eloquent, and his illustrations so very neat and
apposite, that the ladies even paid him the most solicitous and respectful
attention. They were really entertained with Kant's Metaphysics! At last I
took one of them, a very sweet singer, to the piano-forte; and, when there
was a pause, she began an Italian air. She was anxious to please him, and
he was enraptured. His frame quivered with emotion, and there was a titter
of uncommon delight on his countenance. When it was over, he praised the
singer warmly, and prayed she might finish those strains in heaven!
"This is nearly all, except some anecdotes, which I recollect of our
meeting with this most interesting, most wonderful man. Some of his topics
and arguments I have enumerated; but the connection and the words are lost.
And nothing that I can say can give any notion of his eloquence and
manner,--of the hold which he soon got on his audience--of the variety of
his stores of information--or, finally, of the artlessness of his habits,
or the modesty and temper with which he listened to, and answered
arguments, contradictory to his own."--J. T. C.
The following address has been printed before; but it cannot be too widely
circulated, and it will form an appropriate conclusion to this volume.
_To Adam Steinmetz K----._