[Footnote 9: Some readers may be apt to suppose, from all English
experience, that the word _exorcise_ means properly banishment to the
shades. Not so. Citation _from_ the shades, or sometimes the torturing
coercion of mystic adjurations, is more truly the primary sense.]
[Footnote 10: "_Laughter from the fields of ocean._"--Many readers will
recall, though at the moment of writing my own thoughts did _not_
recall, the well-known passage in the Prometheus--
[Greek:----oonlion te chymapon
'Anezithmon Gelasma.]
"Oh multitudinous laughter of the ocean billows!" It is not clear
whether AEschylus contemplated the laughter as addressing the ear or the
eye.]
[Footnote 11: This, it may be said, requires a corresponding duration of
experience; but, as an argument for this mysterious power lurking in our
nature, I may remind the reader of one phenomenon open to the notice of
every body, viz. the tendency of very aged persons to throw back and
concentrate the light of their memory upon scenes of early childhood, as
to which they recall many traces that had faded even to _themselves_ in
middle life, whilst they often forget altogether the whole intermediate
stages of their experience. This shows that naturally, and without
violent agencies, the human brain is by tendency a palimpsest.]
[Footnote 12: "_Glimmering._"--As I have never allowed myself to covet
any man's ox nor his ass, nor any thing that is his, still less would it
become a philosopher to covet other people's images, or metaphors. Here,
therefore, I restore to Mr Wordsworth this fine image of the revolving
wheel, and the glimmering spokes, as applied by him to the flying
successions of day and night. I borrowed it for one moment in order to
point my own sentence; which being done, the reader is witness that I
now pay it back instantly by a note made for that sole purpose. On the
same principle I often borrow their seals from young ladies--when
closing my letters. Because there is sure to be some tender sentiment
upon them about "memory," or "hope," or "roses," or "reunion:" and my
correspondent must be a sad brute who is not touched by the eloquence of
the seal, even if his taste is so bad that he remains deaf to mine.]
[Footnote 13: This, the reader will be aware, applies chiefly to the
cotton and tobacco States of North America; but not to them only: on
which account I have not scrupled to figure the sun, which looks down
upon slavery, as _tropical_--no matter if strictly within the tropics,
or simply so near to them as to produce a similar climate.]
[Footnote 14: "_Sublime Goddesses._"--The word [Greek: semnos] is
usually rendered _venerable_ in dictionaries; not a very flattering
epithet for females. But by weighing a number of passages in which the
word is used pointedly, I am disposed to think that it comes nearest to
our idea of the _sublime_; as near as a Greek word _could_ come.]
[Footnote 15: The reader, who wishes at all to understand the course of
these Confessions, ought not to pass over this dream-legend. There is no
great wonder that a vision, which occupied my waking thoughts in those
years, should re-appear in my dreams. It was in fact a legend recurring
in sleep, most of which I had myself silently written or sculptured in
my daylight reveries. But its importance to the present Confessions is
this--that it rehearses or prefigures their course. This FIRST part
belongs to Madonna. The THIRD belongs to the "Mater Suspiriorum," and
will be entitled _The Pariah Worlds_. The FOURTH, which terminates the
work, belongs to the "Mater Tenebrarum," and will be entitled _The
Kingdom of Darkness_. As to the SECOND, it is an interpolation requisite
to the effect of the others; and will be explained in its proper place.]
[Footnote 16: "_Spectre of the Brocken._"--This very striking phenomenon
has been continually described by writers, both German and English, for
the last fifty years. Many readers, however, will not have met with
these descriptions: and on _their_ account I add a few words in
explanation; referring them for the best scientific comment on the case
to Sir David Brewster's "Natural Magic." The spectre takes the shape of
a human figure, or, if the visitors are more than one, then the spectres
multiply; they arrange themselves on the blue ground of the sky, or the
dark ground of any clouds that may be in the right quarter, or perhaps
they are strongly relieved against a curtain of rock, at a distance of
some miles, and always exhibiting gigantic proportions. At first, from
the distance and the colossal size, every spectator supposes the
appearance to be quite independent of himself. But very soon he is
surprised to observe his own motions and gestures mimicked; and wakens
to the conviction that the phantom is but a dilated reflection of
himself. This Titan amongst the apparitions of earth is exceedingly
capricious, vanishing abruptly for reasons best known to himself, and
more coy in coming forward than the Lady Echo of Ovid. One reason why he
is seen so seldom must be ascribed to the concurrence of conditions
under which only the phenomenon can be manifested: the sun must be near
to the horizon, (which of itself implies a time of day inconvenient to a
person starting from a station as distant as Elbingerode;) the spectator
must have his back to the sun; and the air must contain some vapour--but
_partially_ distributed. Coleridge ascended the Brocken on the
Whitsunday of 1799, with a party of English students from Goettingen,
but failed to see the phantom; afterwards in England (and under the same
three conditions) he saw a much rarer phenomenon, which he described in
the following eight lines. I give them from a corrected copy: (the
apostrophe in the beginning must be understood as addressed to an ideal
conception):--
"And art thou nothing? Such thou art as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, when o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head:
This shade he worships for its golden hues,
And _makes_ (not knowing) that which he pursues."]
[Footnote 17: "_On Whitsunday._"--It is singular, and perhaps owing to
the temperature and weather likely to prevail in that early part of
summer, that more appearances of the spectre have been witnessed on
Whitsunday than on any other day.]
[Footnote 18: "_The sorcerer's flower_," and "_the sorcerer's
altar_."--These are names still clinging to the anemone of the Brocken,
and to an altar-shaped fragment of granite near one of the summits; and
it is not doubted that they both connect themselves through links of
ancient tradition with the gloomy realities of Paganism, when the whole
Hartz and the Brocken formed for a very long time the last asylum to a
ferocious but perishing idolatry.]
[Footnote 19: "_Hailstone choruses._"--I need not tell any lover of
Handel that his oratorio of "Israel in Egypt" contains a chorus
familiarly known by this name. The words are--"And he gave them
hailstones for rain; fire, mingled with the hail, ran along upon the
ground."]