Letter I. From this Letter all the faults and excellencies of Junius

may be exemplified. The moral and political aphorisms are just and

sensible, the irony in which his personal satire is conveyed is fine,

yet always intelligible; but it approaches too nearly to the nature of a

sneer; the sentences are cautiously constructed without the forms of

connection; the 'he' and 'it' everywhere substituted for the

'who' and 'which'; the sentences are short, laboriously

balanced, and the antitheses stand the test of analysis much better than

Johnson's. These are all excellencies in their kind;--where is the

defect? In this;--there is too much of each, and there is a defect of

many things, the presence of which would have been not only valuable for

their own sakes, but for the relief and variety which they would have

given. It is observable too that every Letter adds to the faults of

these Letters, while it weakens the effect of their beauties.

L. III. A capital letter, addressed to a private person, and intended as

a sharp reproof for intrusion. Its short sentences, its witty

perversions and deductions, its questions and omissions of connectives,

all in their proper places, are dramatically good.

(L. V.)

For my own part, I willingly leave it to the public to determine

whether your vindication of your friend has been as able and judicious

as it was certainly well intended; and you, I think, may be satisfied

with the warm acknowledgements he already owes you for making him the

principal figure in a piece in which, but for your amicable

assistance, he might have passed without particular notice or

distinction.

A long sentence and, as usual, inelegant and cumbrous. This Letter is a

faultless composition with exception of the one long sentence.

(L. VII.)

These are the gloomy companions of a disturbed 'imagination'; the

melancholy madness of poetry, without the 'inspiration'.

The rhyme is a fault. 'Fancy' had been better; though but for the rhyme,

imagination is the fitter word.

(Ib.)

Such a question might perhaps discompose the gravity of his muscles,

but I believe it would little affect the tranquillity of his

conscience.

A false antithesis, a mere verbal balance; there are far, far too many

of these. However, with these few exceptions, this Letter is a blameless

composition. Junius may be safely studied as a model for letters where

he truly writes letters. Those to the Duke of Grafton and others, are

small pamphlets in the form of letters.

(L. VIII.)

To do justice to your Grace's humanity, you felt for Mac Quick as you

ought to do; and, if you had been contented to assist him indirectly,

without a notorious denial of justice, or openly insulting the sense

of the nation, you might have satisfied every duty of political

friendship, without committing the honour of your sovereign, or

hazarding the reputation of his government.

An inelegant cluster of 'withouts'. Junius asks questions

incomparably well;--but 'ne quid nimis'.

L. IX. Perhaps the fair way of considering these Letters would be as a

kind of satirical poems; the short, and for ever balanced, sentences

constitute a true metre; and the connection is that of satiric poetry, a

witty logic, an association of thoughts by amusing semblances of cause

and effect, the sophistry of which the reader has an interest in not

stopping to detect, for it flatters his love of mischief, and makes the

sport.

L. XII. One of Junius's arts, and which gives me a high notion of his

genius, as a poet and satirist, is this:--he takes for granted the

existence of a character that never did and never can exist, and then

employs his wit, and surprises and amuses his readers with analyzing its

incompatibilities.

L. XIV. Continual sneer, continual irony, all excellent, if it were not

for the 'all;'--but a countenance, with a malignant smile in statuary

fixure on it, becomes at length an object of aversion, however beautiful

the face, and however beautiful the smile. We are relieved, in some

measure, from this by frequent just and well expressed moral aphorisms;

but then the preceding and following irony gives them the appearance of

proceeding from the head, not from the heart. This objection would be

less felt, when the Letters were first published at considerable

intervals; but Junius wrote for posterity.

L. XXIII. Sneer and irony continued with such gross violation of good

sense, as to be perfectly nonsense. The man who can address another on

his most detestable vices in a strain of cold continual irony, is

himself a wretch.

(L. XXXV.)

To honour them with a determined predilection and confidence in

exclusion of your English subjects, who placed your family, and, in

spite of treachery and rebellion, have supported it upon the throne,

is a mistake too gross even for the unsuspecting generosity of youth.

The words 'upon the throne', stand unfortunately for the harmonious

effect of the balance of 'placed' and 'supported.'

This address to the king is almost faultless in composition, and has

been evidently tormented with the file. But it has fewer beauties than

any other long letter of Junius; and it is utterly undramatic. There is

nothing in the style, the transitions, or the sentiments, which

represents the passions of a man emboldening himself to address his

sovereign personally. Like a Presbyterian's prayer, you may substitute

almost every where the third for the second person without injury. The

newspaper, his closet, and his own person were alone present to the

author's intention and imagination. This makes the composition vapid. It

possesses an Isocratic correctness, when it should have had the force

and drama of an oration of Demosthenes. From this, however, the

paragraph beginning with the words "As to the Scotch," and also the last

two paragraphs must be honourably excepted. They are, perhaps, the

finest passages in the whole collection.

NOTES ON BARCLAY'S 'ARGENIS'. 1803. [1]

Heaven forbid that this work should not exist in its present form and

language! Yet I cannot avoid the wish that it had, during the reign of

James I., been moulded into an heroic poem in English octave stanza, or

epic blank verse;--which, however, at that time had not been invented,

and which, alas! still remains the sole property of the inventor, as if

the Muses had given him an unevadible patent for it. Of dramatic blank

verse we have many and various specimens;--for example, Shakspeare's as

compared with Massinger's, both excellent in their kind:--of lyric, and

of what may be called Orphic, or philosophic, blank verse, perfect

models may be found in Wordsworth: of colloquial blank verse there are

excellent, though not perfect, examples in Cowper;--but of epic blank

verse, since Milton, there is not one.

It absolutely distresses me when I reflect that this work, admired as it

has been by great men of all ages, and lately, I hear, by the poet

Cowper, should be only not unknown to general readers. It has been

translated into English two or three times--how, I know not, wretchedly,

I doubt not. It affords matter for thought that the last translation (or

rather, in all probability, miserable and faithless abridgment of some

former one) was given under another name. What a mournful proof of the

incelebrity of this great and amazing work among both the public and the

people! For as Wordsworth, the greater of the two great men of this

age,--(at least, except Davy and him, I have known, read of, heard of,

no others)--for as Wordsworth did me the honour of once observing to me,

the people and the public are two distinct classes, and, as things go,

the former is likely to retain a better taste, the less it is acted out

by the latter. Yet Telemachus is in every mouth, in every school-boy's

and school-girl's hand! It is awful to say of a work, like the Argenis,

the style and Latinity of which, judged (not according to classical

pedantry, which pronounces every sentence right which can be found in

any book prior to Boetius, however vicious the age, or affected the

author, and every sentence wrong, however natural and beautiful, which

has been of the author's own combination),--but, according to the

universal logic of thought as modified by feeling, is equal to that of

Tacitus in energy and genuine conciseness, and is as perspicuous as that

of Livy, whilst it is free from the affectations, obscurities, and lust

to surprise of the former, and seems a sort of antithesis to the

slowness and prolixity of the latter;--(this remark does not, however,

impeach even the classicality of the language, which, when the freedom

and originality, the easy motion and perfect command of the thoughts,

are considered, is truly wonderful:--of such a work it is awful to say,

that it would have been well if it had been written in English or

Italian verse! Yet the event seems to justify the notion. Alas! it is

now too late. What modern work, even of the size of the 'Paradise

Lost'--much less of the 'Faery Queene'--would be read in the present day,

or even bought or be likely to be bought, unless it were an instructive

work, as the phrase is, like Roscoe's quartos of Leo X., or entertaining

like Boswell's three of Dr. Johnson's conversations. It may be fairly

objected--what work of surpassing merit has given the proof?--Certainly,

none. Yet still there are ominous facts, sufficient, I fear, to afford a

certain prophecy of its reception, if such were produced.

[Footnote 1: Communicated by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. Ed.]

NOTE IN CASAUBON'S 'PERSIUS'. 1807.

There are six hundred and sixteen pages in this volume, of which

twenty-two are text; and five hundred and ninety-four commentary and

introductory matter. Yet when I recollect, that I have the whole works

of Cicero, Livy, and Quinctilian, with many others,--the whole works of

each in a single volume, either thick quarto with thin paper and small

yet distinct print, or thick octavo or duodecimo of the same character,

and that they cost me in the proportion of a shilling to a guinea for

the same quantity of worse matter in modern books, or editions,--I a

poor man, yet one whom [Greek (transliterated): Biblion ktaeseos ek

paidariou deinos ekrataese pothos] feel the liveliest gratitude for the

age, which produced such editions, and for the education, which by

enabling me to understand and taste the Greek and Latin writers, has

thus put it in my power to collect on my own shelves, for my actual use,

almost all the best books in spite of my small income. Somewhat too I am

indebted to the ostentation of expense among the rich, which has

occasioned these cheap editions to become so disproportionately cheap.

NOTES ON CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

EXTRACT OF A LETTER SENT WITH THE VOLUME. [1] 1807.

Chapman I have sent in order that you might read the 'Odyssey'; the

'Iliad' is fine, but less equal in the translation, as well as less

interesting in itself. What is stupidly said of Shakspeare, is really

true and appropriate of Chapman; mighty faults counterpoised by mighty

beauties. Excepting his quaint epithets which he affects to render

literally from the Greek, a language above all others blest in the happy

marriage of sweet words, and which in our language are mere printer's

compound epithets--such as quaffed divine

'joy-in-the-heart-of-man-infusing' wine, (the undermarked is to be one

word, because one sweet mellifluous word expresses it in

Homer);--excepting this, it has no look, no air, of a translation. It is

as truly an original poem as the 'Faery Queene';--it will give you small

idea of Homer, though a far truer one than Pope's epigrams, or Cowper's

cumbersome most anti-Homeric Miltonism. For Chapman writes and feels as

a poet,--as Homer might have written had he lived in England in the

reign of Queen Elizabeth. In short, it is an exquisite poem, in spite of

its frequent and perverse quaintnesses and harshnesses, which are,

however, amply repaid by almost unexampled sweetness and beauty of

language, all over spirit and feeling. In the main it is an English

heroic poem, the tale of which is borrowed from the Greek. The

dedication to the 'Iliad' is a noble copy of verses, especially those

sublime lines beginning,--

O!'tis wondrous much

(Though nothing prisde) that the right vertuous touch

Of a well written soule, to vertue moves.

Nor haue we soules to purpose, if their loves

Of fitting objects be not so inflam'd.

How much then, were this kingdome's maine soule maim'd,

To want this great inflamer of all powers

That move in humane soules! All realmes but yours,

Are honor'd with him; and hold blest that state

That have his workes to reade and contemplate.

In which, humanitie to her height is raisde;

Which all the world (yet, none enough) hath praisde.

Seas, earth, and heaven, he did in verse comprize;

Out sung the Muses, and did equalise

Their king Apollo; being so farre from cause

Of princes light thoughts, that their gravest lawes

May finde stuffe to be fashiond by his lines.

Through all the pompe of kingdomes still he shines

And graceth all his gracers. Then let lie

Your lutes, and viols, and more loftily

Make the heroiques of your Homer sung,

To drums and trumpets set his Angels tongue:

And with the princely sports of haukes you use,

Behold the kingly flight of his high Muse:

And see how like the Phöenix she renues

Her age, and starrie feathers in your sunne;

Thousands of yeares attending; everie one

Blowing the holy fire, and throwing in

Their seasons, kingdomes, nations that have bin

Subverted in them; lawes, religions, all

Offerd to change, and greedie funerall;

Yet still your Homer lasting, living, raigning.--

and likewise the 1st, the 11th, and last but one, of the prefatory

sonnets to the 'Odyssey'. Could I have foreseen any other speedy

opportunity, I should have begged your acceptance of the volume in a

somewhat handsomer coat; but as it is, it will better represent the

sender,--to quote from myself--

A man disherited, in form and face,

By nature and mishap, of outward grace. [2]

Chapman in his moral heroic verse, as in this dedication and the

prefatory sonnets to his 'Odyssey', stands above Ben Jonson; there is more

dignity, more lustre, and equal strength; but not midway quite between

him and the sonnets of Milton. I do not know whether I give him the

higher praise, in that he reminds me of Ben Jonson with a sense of his

superior excellence, or that he brings Milton to memory notwithstanding

his inferiority. His moral poems are not quite out of books like

Jonson's, nor yet do the sentiments so wholly grow up out of his own

natural habit and grandeur of thought, as in Milton. The sentiments have

been attracted to him by a natural affinity of his intellect, and so

combined;-but Jonson has taken them by individual and successive acts of

choice. [3]

All this and the preceding is well felt and vigorously, though harshly,

expressed, respecting sublime poetry 'in genere'; but in reading

Homer I look about me, and ask how does all this apply here. For surely

never was there plainer writing; there are a thousand charms of sun and

moonbeam, ripple, and wave, and stormy billow, but all on the surface.

Had Chapman read Proclus and Porphyry?--and did he really believe

them,--or even that they believed themselves? They felt the immense

power of a Bible, a Shaster, a Koran. There was none in Greece or Rome,

and they tried therefore by subtle allegorical accommodations to conjure

the poem of Homer into the [Greek (transliterated): biblon

theoparadoton] of Greek faith. [4]

Chapman's identification of his fate with Homer's, and his complete

forgetfulness of the distinction between Christianity and idolatry,

under the general feeling of some religion, is very interesting. It is

amusing to observe, how familiar Chapman's fancy has become with Homer,

his life and its circumstances, though the very existence of any such

individual, at l east with regard to the 'Iliad' and the 'Hymns', is more

than problematic. N. B. The rude engraving in the page was designed by

no vulgar hand. It is full of spirit and passion. [5]

I am so dull, that neither in the original nor in any translation could

I ever find any wit or wise purpose in this poem. The whole humour seems

to lie in the names. The frogs and mice are not frogs or mice, but men,

and yet they do nothing that conveys any satire. In the Greek there is

much beauty of language, but the joke is very flat. This is always the

case in rude ages;--their serious vein is inimitable,--their comic low

and low indeed. The psychological cause is easily stated, and copiously

exemplifiable.

[Footnote 1: Communicated through Mr. Wordsworth. Ed.]

[Footnote 2: Dedication to Prince Henry.]

[Footnote 3: 'Epistle Dedicatorie to the Odyssey'.]

[Footnote 4: 'Epistle Dedicatorie to the Batrachomyomachia'.]

[Footnote 5: End of the 'Batrachomyomachia'.]

NOTE IN BAXTER'S 'LIFE OF HIMSELF'. 1820.

Among the grounds for recommending the perusal of our elder

writers--Hooker--Taylor--Baxter--in short almost any of the folios

composed from Edward VI. to Charles II. I note:

1. The overcoming the habit of deriving your whole pleasure passively

from the book itself, which can only be effected by excitement of

curiosity or of some passion. Force yourself to reflect on what you read

paragraph by paragraph, and in a short time you will derive your

pleasure, an ample portion of it, at least, from the activity of your

own mind. All else is picture sunshine.

2. The conquest of party and sectarian prejudices, when you have on the

same table before you the works of a Hammond and a Baxter, and reflect

how many and how momentous their points of agreement, how few and almost

childish the differences, which estranged and irritated these good men.

Let us but imagine what their blessed spirits now feel at the retrospect

of their earthly frailties, and can we do other than strive to feel as

they now feel, not as they once felt? So will it be with the disputes

between good men of the present day; and if you have no other reason to

doubt your opponent's goodness than the point in dispute, think of

Baxter and Hammond, of Milton and Taylor, and let it be no reason at

all.

3. It will secure you from the narrow idolatry of the present times and

fashions, and create the noblest kind of imaginative power in your soul,

that of living in past ages;--wholly devoid of which power, a man can

neither anticipate the future, nor ever live a truly human life, a life

of reason in the present.

4. In this particular work we may derive a most instructive lesson, that

in certain points, as of religion in relation to law, the 'medio

tutis--simus ibis', is inapplicable. There is no 'medium' possible; and

all the attempts as those of Baxter, though no more were required than

'I believe in God through Christ,' prove only the mildness of the

proposer's temper, but as a rule would be either equal to nothing, at

least exclude only the two or three in a century that make it a matter

of religion to declare themselves atheists, or else be just as fruitful

a rule for a persecutor as the most complete set of articles that could

be framed by a Spanish Inquisition. For to 'believe' must mean to

believe aright--and 'God' must mean the true God--and 'Christ' the

Christ in the sense and with the attributes understood by Christians who

are truly Christians. An established church with a liturgy is the

sufficient solution of the problem 'de jure magistratus'. Articles of

faith are in this point of view superfluous; for is it not too absurd

for a man to hesitate at subscribing his name to doctrines which yet in

the more awful duty of prayer and profession he dares affirm before his

Maker! They are therefore, in this sense, merely superfluous;--not worth

re-enacting, had they ever been done away with;--not worth removing now

that they exist.

5. The characteristic contra-distinction between the speculative

reasoners of the age before the Revolution, and those since, is

this:--the former cultivated metaphysics without, or neglecting

empirical, psychology:--the latter cultivate a mechanical psychology to

the neglect and contempt of metaphysics. Both, therefore, are almost

equi-distant from true philosophy. Hence the belief in ghosts, witches,

sensible replies to prayer, &c. in Baxter and in a hundred others. See

also Luther's 'Table Talk'.

6. The earlier part of this volume is interesting as materials for

medical history. The state of medical science in the reign of Charles I.

was almost incredibly low.

FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON TASTE. 1810.

The same arguments that decide the question, whether taste has any fixed

principles, may probably lead to a determination of what those

principles are. First then, what is taste in its metaphorical sense, or,

which will be the easiest mode of arriving at the same solution, what is

there in the primary sense of the word, which may give to its

metaphorical meaning an import different from that of sight or hearing,

on the one hand, and of touch or smell on the other? And this question

seems the more natural, because in correct language we confine beauty,

the main subject of taste, to objects of sight and combinations of

sounds, and never, except sportively or by abuse of words, speak of a

beautiful flavour or a beautiful scent.

Now the analysis of our senses in the commonest books of anthropology

has drawn our attention to the distinction between the perfectly

organic, and the mixed senses;--the first presenting objects, as

distinct from the perception;--the last as blending the perception with

the sense of the object. Our eyes and ears--(I am not now considering

what is or is not the case really, but only that of which we are

regularly conscious as appearances,) our eyes most often appear to us

perfect organs of the sentient principle, and wholly in action, and our

hearing so much more so than the three other senses, and in all the

ordinary exertions of that sense, perhaps, equally so with the sight,

that all languages place them in one class, and express their different

modifications by nearly the same metaphors. The three remaining senses

appear in part passive, and combine with the perception of the outward

object a distinct sense of our own life. Taste, therefore, as opposed to

vision and sound, will teach us to expect in its metaphorical use a

certain reference of any given object to our own being, and not merely a

distinct notion of the object as in itself, or in its independent

properties. From the sense of touch, on the other hand, it is

distinguishable by adding to this reference to our vital being some

degree of enjoyment, or the contrary,--some perceptible impulse from

pleasure or pain to complacency or dislike. The sense of smell, indeed,

might perhaps have furnished a metaphor of the same import with that of

taste; but the latter was naturally chosen by the majority of civilized

nations on account of the greater frequency, importance, and dignity of

its employment or exertion in human nature.

By taste, therefore, as applied to the fine arts, we must be supposed to

mean an intellectual perception of any object blended with a distinct

reference to our own sensibility of pain or pleasure, or, 'vice

versa', a sense of enjoyment or dislike co-instantaneously combined

with, and appearing to proceed from, some intellectual perception of the

object;--intellectual perception, I say; for otherwise it would be a

definition of taste in its primary rather than in its metaphorical

sense. Briefly, taste is a metaphor taken from one of our mixed senses,

and applied to objects of the more purely organic senses, and of our

moral sense, when we would imply the co-existence of immediate personal

dislike or complacency. In this definition of taste, therefore, is

involved the definition of fine arts, namely, as being such the chief

and discriminative purpose of which it is to gratify the taste,--that

is, not merely to connect, but to combine and unite, a sense of

immediate pleasure in ourselves, with the perception of external

arrangement.

The great question, therefore, whether taste in any one of the fine arts

has any fixed principle or ideal, will find its solution in the

ascertainment of two facts:--first, whether in every determination of

the taste concerning any work of the fine arts, the individual does not,

with or even against the approbation of his general judgment,

involuntarily claim that all other minds ought to think and feel the

same; whether the common expressions, 'I dare say I may be wrong, but

that is my particular taste;'--are uttered as an offering of courtesy,

as a sacrifice to the undoubted fact of our individual fallibility, or

are spoken with perfect sincerity, not only of the reason but of the

whole feeling, with the same entireness of mind and heart, with which we

concede a right to every person to differ from another in his preference

of bodily tastes and flavours. If we should find ourselves compelled to

deny this, and to admit that, notwithstanding the consciousness of our

liability to error, and in spite of all those many individual

experiences which may have strengthened the consciousness, each man does

at the moment so far legislate for all men, as to believe of necessity

that he is either right or wrong, and that if it be right for him, it is

universally right,--we must then proceed to ascertain:--secondly,

whether the source of these phenomena is at all to be found in those

parts of our nature, in which each intellect is representative of

all,--and whether wholly, or partially. No person of common reflection

demands even in feeling, that what tastes pleasant to him ought to

produce the same effect on all living beings; but every man does and

must expect and demand the universal acquiescence of all intelligent

beings in every conviction of his understanding. ...

FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON BEAUTY. 1818.

The only necessary, but this the absolutely necessary, pre-requisite to

a full insight into the grounds of the beauty in the objects of sight,

is--the directing of the attention to the action of those thoughts in

our own mind which are not consciously distinguished. Every man may

understand this, if he will but recall the state of his feelings in

endeavouring to recollect a name, which he is quite sure that he

remembers, though he cannot force it back into consciousness. This

region of unconscious thoughts, oftentimes the more working the more

indistinct they are, may, in reference to this subject, be conceived as

forming an ascending scale from the most universal associations of

motion with the functions and passions of life,--as when, on passing out

of a crowded city into the fields on a day in June, we describe the

grass and king-cups as nodding their heads and dancing in the

breeze,--up to the half perceived, yet not fixable, resemblance of a

form to some particular object of a diverse class, which resemblance we

need only increase but a little, to destroy, or at least injure, its

beauty-enhancing effect, and to make it a fantastic intrusion of the

accidental and the arbitrary, and consequently a disturbance of the

beautiful. This might be abundantly exemplified and illustrated from the

paintings of Salvator Rosa.

I am now using the term beauty in its most comprehensive sense, as

including expression and artistic interest,--that is, I consider not

only the living balance, but likewise all the accompaniments that even

by disturbing are necessary to the renewal and continuance of the

balance. And in this sense I proceed to show, that the beautiful in the

object may be referred to two elements,--lines and colours; the first

belonging to the shapely ('forma, formalis, formosus'), and in

this, to the law, and the reason; and the second, to the lively, the

free, the spontaneous, and the self-justifying. As to lines, the

rectilineal are in themselves the lifeless, the determined 'ab

extra', but still in immediate union with the cycloidal, which are

expressive of function. The curve line is a modification of the force

from without by the force from within, or the spontaneous. These are not

arbitrary symbols, but the language of nature, universal and intuitive,

by virtue of the law by which man is impelled to explain visible motions

by imaginary causative powers analogous to his own acts, as the Dryads,

Hamadryads, Naiads, &c.

The better way of applying these principles will be by a brief and rapid

sketch of the history of the fine arts,--in which it will be found, that

the beautiful in nature has been appropriated to the works of man, just

in proportion as the state of the mind in the artists themselves

approached to the subjective beauty. Determine what predominance in the

minds of the men is preventive of the living balance of excited

faculties, and you will discover the exact counterpart in the outward

products. Egypt is an illustration of this. Shapeliness is intellect

without freedom; but colours are significant. The introduction of the

arch is not less an epoch in the fine than in the useful arts.

Order is beautiful arrangement without any purpose 'ad

extra';--therefore there is a beauty of order, or order may be

contemplated exclusively as beauty.

The form given in every empirical intuition,--the stuff, that is, the

quality of the stuff, determines the agreeable: but when a thing excites

us to receive it in such and such a mould, so that its exact

correspondence to that mould is what occupies the mind,--this is taste

or the sense of beauty. Whether dishes full of painted wood or exquisite

viands were laid out on a table in the same arrangement, would be

indifferent to the taste, as in ladies' patterns; but surely the one is

far more agreeable than the other. Hence observe the disinterestedness

of all taste; and hence also a sensual perfection with intellect is

occasionally possible without moral feeling. So it may be in music and

painting, but not in poetry. How far it is a real preference of the

refined to the gross pleasures, is another question, upon the

supposition that pleasure, in some form or other, is that alone which

determines men to the objects of the former;--whether experience does

not show that if the latter were equally in our power, occasioned no

more trouble to enjoy, and caused no more exhaustion of the power of

enjoying them by the enjoyment itself, we should in real practice prefer

the grosser pleasure. It is not, therefore, any excellence in the

quality of the refined pleasures themselves, but the advantages and

facilities in the means of enjoying them, that give them the

pre-eminence.

This is, of course, on the supposition of the absence of all moral

feeling. Suppose its presence, and then there will accrue an excellence

even to the quality of the pleasures themselves; not only, however, of

the refined, but also of the grosser kinds,--inasmuch as a larger sweep

of thoughts will be associated with each enjoyment, and with each

thought will be associated a number of sensations; and so, consequently,

each pleasure will become more the pleasure of the whole being. This is

one of the earthly rewards of our being what we ought to be, but which

would be annihilated, if we attempted to be it for the sake of this

increased enjoyment. Indeed it is a contradiction to suppose it. Yet

this is the common 'argumentum in circulo', in which the

eudsemonists flee and pursue. ...

POEMS AND POETICAL FRAGMENTS.

'Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus'. CATULLUS.

My Lesbia, let us love and live,

And to the winds, my Lesbia, give

Each cold restraint, each boding fear

Of age, and all its saws severe!

Yon sun now posting to the main

Will set,--but 'tis to rise again;--

But we, when once our little light

Is set, must sleep in endless night.

Then come, with whom alone I'll live,

A thousand kisses take and give!

Another thousand!--to the store

Add hundreds--then a thousand more!

And when they to a million mount,

Let confusion take the account,--

That you, the number never knowing,

May continue still bestowing--

That I for joys may never pine,

Which never can again be mine! [1]

'Lugete, O Veneres, Cupidinesque.' CATULLUS.

Pity, mourn in plaintive tone

The lovely starling dead and gone!

Weep, ye Loves! and Venus, weep

The lovely starling fall'n asleep!

Venus see with tearful eyes--

In her lap the starling lies,

While the Loves all in a ring

Softly stroke the stiffen'd wing.

'Moriens superstiti'.

"The hour-bell sounds, and I must go;

Death waits--again I hear him calling;--

No cowardly desires have I,

Nor will I shun his face appalling.

I die in faith and honour rich--

But ah! I leave behind my treasure

In widowhood and lonely pain;--

To live were surely then a pleasure!

"My lifeless eyes upon thy face

Shall never open more to-morrow;

To-morrow shall thy beauteous eyes

Be closed to love, and drown'd in sorrow;

To-morrow death shall freeze this hand,

And on thy breast, my wedded treasure,

I never, never more shall live;--

Alas! I quit a life of pleasure."

'Morienti superstes.'

"Yet art thou happier far than she

Who feels the widow's love for thee!

For while her days are days of weeping,

Thou, in peace, in silence sleeping,

In some still world, unknown, remote,

The mighty parent's care hast found,

Without whose tender guardian thought

No sparrow falleth to the ground."

[Footnote 1: This and the following poems and fragments, with the

exception of those marked with an asterisk, were communicated by Mr.

Gutch. Ed.]

THE STRIPLING'S WAR SONG.

IMITATED FROM STOLBERG.

My noble old warrior! this heart has beat high,

Since you told of the deeds that our countrymen wrought;

Ah! give me the sabre which hung by thy thigh,

And I too will fight as my forefathers fought!

O, despise not my youth! for my spirit is steel'd,

And I know there is strength in the grasp of my hand;

Yea, as firm as thyself would I move to the field,

And as proudly would die for my dear father-land.

In the sports of my childhood I mimick'd the fight,--

The shrill of a trumpet suspended my breath;

And my fancy still wander'd by day and by night

Amid tumult and perils,'mid conquest and death.

My own eager shout in the heat of my trance,

How oft it awakes me from dreams full of glory,

When I meant to have leap'd on the hero of France,

And have dash'd him to earth pale and deathless and gory!

As late through the city with bannerets streaming,

And the music of trumpets the warriors flew by,--

With helmet and scymetar naked and gleaming

On their proud trampling thunder-hoof'd steeds did they fly,--

I sped to yon heath which is lonely and bare--

For each nerve was unquiet, each pulse in alarm,--

I hurl'd my mock lance through the objectless air,

And in open-eyed dream prov'd the strength of my arm.

Yes, noble old warrior! this heart has beat high,

Since you told of thedeeds that our countrymen wrought;

Ah! give me the falchion that hung by thy thigh,

And I too will fight as my forefathers fought!

[*] His own fair countenance, his kingly forehead,

His tender smiles, love's day-dawn on his lips,

The sense, and spirit, and the light divine,

At the same moment in his steadfast eye

Were virtue's native crest, th' immortal soul's

Unconscious meek self-heraldry,--to man

Genial, and pleasant to his guardian angel.

He suffer'd, nor complain'd;--tho' oft with tears

He mourn'd th' oppression of his helpless brethren,--

Yea, with a deeper and yet holier grief

Mourn'd for the oppressor. In those sabbath hours

His solemn grief, like the slow cloud at sunset,

Was but the veil of purest meditation

Pierced thro' and saturate with the rays of mind.

'Twas sweet to know it only possible!

Some wishes cross'd my mind and dimly cheer'd it,

And one or two poor melancholy pleasures,

Each in the pale unwarming light of hope

Silvering its flimsy wing, flew silent by--

Moths in the moonbeam!--

--Behind the thin

Grey cloud that cover'd, but not hid, the sky,

The round full moon look'd small.

The subtle snow in every passing breeze

Rose curling from the grove like shafts of smoke.

--On the broad mountain top

The neighing wild colt races with the wind

O'er fern and heath-flowers.

--Like a mighty giantess

Seized in sore travail and prodigious birth,

Sick nature struggled: long and strange her pangs,

Her groans were horrible;--but O, most fair

The twins she bore, Equality and Peace.

--Terrible and loud

As the strong voice that from the thunder-cloud

Speaks to the startled midnight.

Such fierce vivacity as fires the eye

Of genius fancy-craz'd.

The mild despairing of a heart resign'd.

FOR THE HYMN ON THE SUN.

--The sun (for now his orb

'Gan slowly sink)--

Shot half his rays aslant the heath, whose flow'rs

Purpled the mountain's broad and level top.

Rich was his bed of clouds, and wide beneath

FOR THE HYMN ON THE MOON.

In a cave in the mountains of Cashmeer there is an image of ice, which

makes its appearance thus: Two days before the new moon there appears a

bubble of ice, which increases in size every day till the fifteenth, by

which time it is an ell or more in height;--then as the moon wanes, the

image decreases till it vanishes away.

In darkness I remain'd;-the neighb'ring clock

Told me that now the rising sun at dawn

Shone lovely on my garden.

These be staggerers that, made drunk by power,

Forget thirst's eager promise, and presume,

Dark dreamers! that the world forgets it too!

--Perish warmth,

Unfaithful to its seeming!

Old age, 'the shape and messenger of death,'

His wither'd fist still knocking at death's door.

--God no distance knows

All of the whole possessing.

With skill that never alchemist yet told,

Made drossy lead as ductile as pure gold.

Guess at the wound and heal with secret hand.

The broad-breasted rock

Glasses his rugged forehead in the sea.

I mix in life, and labour to seem free,

With common persons pleas'd and common things,

While every thought and action tends to thee,

And every impulse from thy influence springs.

FAREWELL TO LOVE.

[*] Farewell, sweet Love! yet blame you not my truth;

More fondly ne'er did mother eye her child

Than I your form: your's were my hopes of youth,

And as you shaped my thoughts, I sigh'd or smil'd.

While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving

To pleasure's secret haunt, and some apart

Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving,

To you I gave my whole weak wishing heart;

And when I met the maid that realized

Your fair creations, and had won her kindness,

Say but for her if aught on earth I prized!

Your dreams alone I dreamt and caught your blindness.

O grief!--but farewell, Love! I will go play me

With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me.

[*] Within these circling hollies, woodbine-clad--

Beneath this small blue roof of vernal sky--

How warm, how still! Tho' tears should dim mine eye,

Yet will my heart for days continue glad,

For here, my love, thou art, and here am I!

Each crime that once estranges from the virtues

Doth make the memory of their features daily

More dim and vague, till each coarse counterfeit

Can have the passport to our confidence

Sign'd by ourselves. And fitly are they punish'd,

Who prize and seek the honest man but as

A safer lock to guard dishonest treasures.

Grant me a patron, gracious Heaven! whene'er

My unwash'd follies call for penance drear:

But when more hideous guilt this heart infects,

Instead of fiery coals upon my pate,

O let a titled patron be my fate;--

That fierce compendium of Egyptian pests!

Right reverend dean, right honourable squire,

Lord, marquis, earl, duke, prince,--or if aught higher,

However proudly nicknamed, he shall be Anathema Maránatha to me!

A SOBER STATEMENT OF HUMAN LIFE,

OR THE TRUE MEDIUM.

[*] A chance may win what by mischance was lost;

The net that holds not great, takes little fish:

In somethings all, in all things none are crost;

Few all they need, but none have all they wish:

Unmingled joys to no one here befall;

Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all!

OMNIANA. 1812

THE FRENCH DECADE.

I have nothing to say in defence of the French revolutionists, as far as

they are personally concerned in this substitution of every tenth for

the seventh day as a day of rest. It was not only a senseless outrage on

an ancient observance, around which a thousand good and gentle feelings

had clustered; it not only tended to weaken the bond of brotherhood

between France and the other members of Christendom; but it was

dishonest, and robbed the labourer of fifteen days of restorative and

humanizing repose in every year, and extended the wrong to all the

friends and fellow labourers of man in the brute creation. Yet when I

hear Protestants, and even those of the Lutheran persuasion, and members

of the church of England, inveigh against this change as a blasphemous

contempt of the fourth commandment, I pause, and before I can assent to

the verdict of condemnation, I must prepare my mind to include in the

same sentence, at least as far as theory goes, the names of several

among the most revered reformers of Christianity. Without referring to

Luther, I will begin with Master Frith, a founder and martyr of the

church of England, having witnessed his faith amid the flames in the

year 1533. This meek and enlightened, no less than zealous and orthodox,

divine, in his "Declaration of Baptism" thus expresses himself:

Our forefathers, which were in the beginning of the Church, did

abrogate the sabbath, to the intent that men might have an example of

Christian liberty. Howbeit, because it was necessary that a day should

be reserved in which the people should come together to hear the word

of God, they ordained instead of the Sabbath, which was Saturday, the

next following which is Sunday. And although they might have kept the

Saturday with the Jew as a thing indifferent, yet they did much better.

Some three years after the martyrdom of Frith, in 1536, being the 27th

of Henry VIII. suffered Master Tindal in the same glorious cause, and

this illustrious martyr and translator of the word of life, likewise, in

his "Answer to Sir Thomas More," hath similarly resolved this point:

As for the Sabbath, we be lords of the Sabbath, and may yet change it

into Monday, or any other day, as we see need; or we may make every

tenth day holy day only, if we see cause why. Neither was there any

cause to change it from the Saturday, save only to put a difference

between us and the Jews; neither need we any holy day at all, if the

people might be taught without it.

This great man believed that if Christian nations should ever become

Christians indeed, there would every day be so many hours taken from the

labour for the perishable body, to the service of the souls and the

understandings of mankind, both masters and servants, as to supersede

the necessity of a particular day. At present our Sunday may be

considered as so much Holy Land, rescued from the sea of oppression and

vain luxury, and embanked against the fury of their billows.

RIDE AND TIE.

"On a scheme of perfect retribution in the moral world"--observed

Empeiristes, and paused to look at, and wipe his spectacles.

"Frogs," interposed Musaello, "must have been experimental philosophers,

and experimental philosophers must all transmigrate into frogs."

"The scheme will not be yet perfect," added Gelon, "unless our friend

Empeiristes, is specially privileged to become an elect frog twenty

times successively, before he reascends into a galvanic philosopher."

"Well, well," replied Empeiristes, with a benignant smile, "I give my

consent, if only our little Mary's fits do not recur."

Little Mary was Gelon's only child, and the darling and god-daughter of

Empeiristes. By the application of galvanic influence Empeiristes had

removed a nervous affection of her right leg, accompanied with

symptomatic epilepsy. The tear started in Gelon's eye, and he pressed

the hand of his friend, while Musaello, half suppressing, half

indulging, a similar sense of shame, sportively exclaimed, "Hang it,

Gelon! somehow or other these philosopher fellows always have the better

of us wits, in the long run!"

JEREMY TAYLOR.

The writings of Bishop Jeremy Taylor are a perpetual feast to me. His

hospitable board groans under the weight and multitude of viands. Yet I

seldom rise from the perusal of his works without repeating or

recollecting the excellent observation of Minucius Felix. 'Fabulas et

errores ab imperitis parentibus discimus; et quod est gravius, ipsis

studiis et disciplinis elaboramus'.

CRITICISM.

Many of our modern criticisms on the works of our elder writers remind

me of the connoisseur, who, taking up a small cabinet picture, railed

most eloquently at the absurd caprice of the artist in painting a horse

sprawling. "Excuse me, Sir," replied the owner of the piece, "you hold

it the wrong way: it is a horse galloping."

PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.

Our statesmen, who survey with jealous dread all plans for the education

of the lower orders, may be thought to proceed on the system of

antagonist muscles; and in the belief, that the closer a nation shuts

its eyes, the wider it will open its hands. Or do they act on the

principle, that the 'status belli' is the natural relation between

the people and the government, and that it is prudent to secure the

result of the contest by gouging the adversary in the first instance?

Alas! the policy of the maxim is on a level with its honesty. The

Philistines had put out the eyes of Samson, and thus, as they thought,

fitted him to drudge and grind

Among the slaves and asses, his comrades,

As good for nothing else, no better service:--

But his darkness added to his fury without diminishing his strength, and

the very pillars of the temple of oppression--

With horrible convulsion, to and fro,

He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew

The whole roof after them with burst of thunder,

Upon the heads of all who sat beneath;

Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, and priests,

Their choice nobility.

The error might be less unpardonable with a statesman of the

continent;--but with Englishmen, who have Ireland in one direction, and

Scotland in another; the one in ignorance, sloth, and rebellion,--in the

other general information, industry, and loyalty, verily it is not error

merely, but infatuation.

PICTURESQUE WORDS.

Who is ignorant of Homer's [Greek (transliterated): Paelion

einosiphullon] Yet in some Greek manuscript hexameters I have met with

a compound epithet, which may compare with it for the prize of

excellence in flashing on the mental eye a complete image. It is an

epithet of the brutified archangel, and forms the latter half of the

verse,--

[Greek: Kerkokeronucha Satan]

Ye youthful bards! compare this word with its literal translation,

"tail-horn-hoofed Satan," and be shy of compound epithets, the

components of which are indebted for their union exclusively to the

printer's hyphen. Henry More, indeed, would have naturalized the word

without hesitation, and 'cercoceronychous' would have shared the

astonishment of the English reader in the glossary to his 'Song of the

Soul' with Achronycul, Anaisthaesie, &c. &c.

TOLERATION.

The state, with respect to the different sects of religion under its

protection, should resemble a well drawn portrait. Let there be half a

score individuals looking at it, every one sees its eyes and its

benignant smile directed towards himself.

The framer of preventive laws, no less than private tutors and

school-masters, should remember, that the readiest way to make either

mind or body grow awry, is by lacing it too tight.

WAR.

It would have proved a striking part of a vision presented to Adam the

day after the death of Abel, to have brought before his eyes half a

million of men crowded together in the space of a square mile. When the

first father had exhausted his wonder on the multitude of his offspring,

he would then naturally inquire of his angelic instructor, for what

purposes so vast a multitude had assembled? what is the common end?

Alas! to murder each other,--all Cains, and yet no Abels!

PARODIES.

Parodies on new poems are read as satires; on old ones,--the soliloquy

of Hamlet for instance--as compliments. A man of genius may securely

laugh at a mode of attack by which his reviler, in half a century or

less, becomes his encomiast.

M. DUPUIS.

Among the extravagancies of faith which have characterized many infidel

writers, who would swallow a whale to avoid believing that a whale

swallowed Jonas,--a high rank should be given to Dupuis, who, at the

commencement of the French Revolution, published a work in twelve

volumes, octavo, in order to prove that Jesus Christ was the sun, and

all Christians, worshippers of Mithra. His arguments, if arguments they

can be called, consist chiefly of metaphors quoted from the Fathers.

What irresistible conviction would not the following passage from

South's sermons (vol. v. p. 165.) have flashed on his fancy, had it

occurred in the writings of Origen or Tertullian! and how complete a

confutation of all his grounds does not the passage afford to those

humble souls, who, gifted with common sense alone, can boast of no

additional light received through a crack in their upper apartments:--

Christ the great sun of righteousness and saviour of the world, having

by a glorious rising, after a red and bloody setting, proclaimed his

deity to men and angels; and by a complete triumph over the two grand

enemies of mankind, sin and death, set up the everlasting gospel in

the room of all false religions, has now changed the Persian

superstition into the Christian doctrine, and without the least

approach to the idolatry of the former, made it henceforward the duty

of all nations, Jews and Gentiles, to worship the rising sun.

This one passage outblazes the whole host of Dupuis' evidences and

extracts. In the same sermon, the reader will meet with Hume's argument

against miracles anticipated, and put in Thomas's mouth.

ORIGIN OF THE WORSHIP OF HYMEN.

The origin of the worship of Hymen is thus related by Lactantius. The

story would furnish matter for an excellent pantomime. Hymen was a

beautiful youth of Athens, who for the love of a young virgin disguised

himself, and assisted at the Eleusinian rites: and at this time he,

together with his beloved, and divers other young ladies of that city,

was surprized and carried off by pirates, who supposing him to be what

he appeared, lodged him with his mistress. In the dead of the night when

the robbers were all asleep, he arose and cut their throats. Thence

making hasty way back to Athens, he bargained with the parents that he

would restore to them their daughter and all her companions, if they

would consent to her marriage with him. They did so, and this marriage

proving remarkably happy, it became the custom to invoke the name of

Hymen at all nuptials.

EGOTISM.

It is hard and uncandid to censure the great reformers in philosophy and

religion for their egotism and boastfulness. It is scarcely possible for

a man to meet with continued personal abuse, on account of his superior

talents, without associating more and more the sense of the value of his

discoveries or detections with his own person. The necessity of

repelling unjust contempt, forces the most modest man into a feeling of

pride and self-consciousness. How can a tall man help thinking of his

size, when dwarfs are constantly on tiptoe beside him?--Paracelsus was a

braggart and a quack; so was Cardan; but it was their merits, and not

their follies, which drew upon them that torrent of detraction and

calumny, which compelled them so frequently to think and write

concerning themselves, that at length it became a habit to do so. Wolff

too, though not a boaster, was yet persecuted into a habit of egotism

both in his prefaces and in his ordinary conversation, and the same

holds good of the founder of the Brunonian system, and of his great

namesake Giordano Bruno. The more decorous manners of the present age

have attached a disproportionate opprobrium to this foible, and many

therefore abstain with cautious prudence from all displays of what they

feel. Nay, some do actually flatter themselves, that they abhor all

egotism, and never betray it either in their writings or discourse. But

watch these men narrowly; and in the greater number of cases you will

find their thoughts, feelings, and mode of expression, saturated with

the passion of contempt, which is the concentrated vinegar of egotism.

Your very humble men in company, if they produce any thing, are in that

thing of the most exquisite irritability and vanity.

When a man is attempting to describe another person's character, he may

be right or he may be wrong; but in one thing he will always succeed,

that is, in describing himself. If, for example, he expresses simple

approbation, he praises from a consciousness of possessing similar

qualities;--if he approves with admiration, it is from a consciousness

of deficiency. A. "Ay! he is a sober man." B. "Ah! Sir, what a blessing

is sobriety!" Here A. is a man conscious of sobriety, who egotizes in

'tuism';--B. is one who, feeling the ill effects of a contrary

habit, contemplates sobriety with blameless envy. Again:--A. "Yes, he is

a warm man, a moneyed fellow; you may rely upon him." B. "Yes, yes, Sir,

no wonder! he has the blessing of being well in the world." This

reflection might be introduced in defence of plaintive egotism, and by

way of preface to an examination of all the charges against it, and from

what feelings they proceed. 1800.[1]

Contempt is egotism in ill humour. Appetite without moral affection,

social sympathy, and even without passion and imagination--(in plain

English, mere lust,)--is the basest form of egotism,--and being

'infra' human, or below humanity, should be pronounced with the

harsh breathing, as 'he-goat-ism'. 1820.

[Footnote 1: From Mr. Gulch's commonplace book. Ed]

CAP OF LIBERTY.

Those who hoped proudly of human nature, and admitted no distinction

between Christians and Frenchmen, regarded the first constitution as a

colossal statue of Corinthian brass, formed by the fusion and commixture

of all metals in the conflagration of the state. But there is a common

fungus, which so exactly represents the pole and cap of liberty, that it

seems offered by nature herself as the appropriate emblem of Gallic

republicanism,--mushroom patriots, with a mushroom cap of liberty.

BULLS.

'Novi ego aliquem qui dormitabundus aliquando pulsari horam quartam

audiverit, et sic numeravit, una, una, una, una; ac tum præ rei

absurditate, quam anima concipiebat, exclamavit, Næ! delirat

horologium! Quater pulsavit horam unam'.

I knew a person, who, during imperfect sleep, or dozing, as we say,

listened to the clock as it was striking four, and as it struck, he

counted the four, one, one, one, one; and then exclaimed, "Why, the

clock is out of its wits; it has struck one four times over!"

This is a good exemplification of the nature of 'Bulls', which will be

found always to contain in them a confusion of what the schoolmen would

have called--objectivity with subjectivity;--in plain English, the

impression of a thing as it exists in itself, and extrinsically, with

the image which the mind abstracts from the impression. Thus, number, or

the total of a series, is a generalization of the mind, an 'ens

rationis' not an 'ens reale'. I have read many attempts at a definition

of a 'Bull', and lately in the Edinburgh Review; but it then appeared to

me that the definers had fallen into the same fault with Miss Edgeworth,

in her delightful essay on 'Bulls', and given the definition of the

genus, 'Blunder', for that of the particular species. I will venture,

therefore, to propose the following: a 'Bull' consists in a mental

juxta-position of incongruous images or thoughts with the sensation, but

without the sense, of connection. The psychological conditions of the

possibility of a 'Bull', it would not be difficult to determine; but it

would require a larger space than can be afforded here, at least more

attention than my readers would be likely to afford.

There is a sort of spurious 'Bull' which consists wholly in mistake of

language, and which the closest thinker may make, if speaking in a

language of which he is not master.

WISE IGNORANCE.

It is impossible to become either an eminently great, or truly pious

man, without the courage to remain ignorant of many things. This

important truth is most happily expressed by the elder Scaliger in

prose, and by the younger in verse; the latter extract has an additional

claim from the exquisite terseness of its diction, and the purity of its

Latinity. I particularly recommend its perusal to the commentators on

the Apocalypse.

'Quare ulterior disquisitio morosi atque satagentis animi est; humanae

enim sapientiae pars est, quaedam aequo animo nescire velle'.

J. C, Scalig. Ex. 307. s. 29.

'Ne curiosus quaere causas omnium,

Quaecunque libris vis prophetarum indidit,

Afflata caelo, plena veraci Deo;

Nec operta sacri supparo silentii

Irrumpere aude; sed prudenter praeteri!

Nescire velle quae magister optimus

Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est'.

Josep. Scalig.

ROUGE.

Triumphant generals in Rome wore rouge. The ladies of France, and their

fair sisters and imitators in Britain, conceive themselves always in the

chair of triumph, and of course entitled to the same distinction. The

custom originated, perhaps, in the humility of the conquerors that they

might seem to blush continually at their own praises. Mr. Gilpin

frequently speaks of a "picturesque eye:" with something less of

solecism, I may affirm that our fair ever blushing triumphants have

secured to themselves the charm of picturesque cheeks, every face being

its own portrait.

[Greek: Epea pteroenta.] HASTY WORDS.

I crave mercy (at least of my contemporaries: for if these Omniana

should outlive the present generation, the opinion will not need it) but

I could not help writing in the blank page of a very celebrated work [1]

the following passage from Picus Mirandula:-

'Movent mihi stomachum grammatistae quidam, qui cum duas tenuerint

vocabulorum origines, ita se ostentant, ita venditant, ita

circumferunt jactabundi, ut prae ipsis pro nihilo habendos philosophos

arbitrentur'. Epist. ad Hermol. Barb.

[Footnote 1: Diversions of Purley. Ed.]

MOTIVES AND IMPULSES.

It is a matter of infinite difficulty, but fortunately of comparative

indifference to determine what a man's motive may have been for this or

that particular action. Rather seek to learn what his objects in general

are. What does he habitually wish, habitually pursue? and thence deduce

his impulses which are commonly the true efficient causes of men's

conduct; and without which the motive itself would not have become a

motive. Let a haunch of venison represent the motive, and the keen

appetite of health, and exercise the impulse: then place the same or

some more favourite dish before the same man, sick, dyspeptic, and

stomach-worn, and we may then weigh the comparative influences of

motives and impulses. Without the perception of this truth, it is

impossible to understand the character of lago, who is represented as

now assigning one, and then another, and again a third motive for his

conduct, all alike the mere fictions of his own restless nature,

distempered by a keen sense of his intellectual superiority, and haunted

by the love of exerting power on those especially who are his superiors

in practical and moral excellence. Yet how many among our modern critics

have attributed to the profound author this the appropriate

inconsistency of the character itself.

A second illustration:--Did Curio, the 'quondam' patriot, reformer,

and semi-revolutionist, abjure his opinion, and yell the foremost in the

hunt of persecution against his old friends and fellow-philosophists,

with a cold clear predetermination, formed at one moment, of making

£5000 a year by his apostacy?--I neither know nor care. Probably not.

But this I know, that to be thought a man of consequence by his

contemporaries, to be admitted into the society of his superiors in

artificial rank, to excite the admiration of lords, to live in splendour

and sensual luxury, have been the objects of his habitual wishes. A

flash of lightning has turned at once the polarity of the compass

needle: and so, perhaps, now and then, but as rarely, a violent motive

may revolutionize a man's opinions and professions. But more frequently

his honesty dies away imperceptibly from evening into twilight, and from

twilight into utter darkness. He turns hypocrite so gradually, and by

such tiny atoms of motion, that by the time he has arrived at a given

point, he forgets his own hypocrisy in the imperceptible degrees of his

conversion. The difference between such a man and a bolder liar, is

merely that between the hour hand, and that which tells the seconds, on

a watch. Of the former you can see only the past motion; of the latter

both the past motion and the present moving. Yet there is, perhaps, more

hope of the latter rogue: for he has lied to mankind only and not to

himself--the former lies to his own heart, as well as to the public.

INWARD BLINDNESS.

Talk to a blind man--he knows he wants the sense of sight, and willingly

makes the proper allowances. But there are certain internal senses,

which a man may want, and yet be wholly ignorant that he wants them. It

is most unpleasant to converse with such persons on subjects of taste,

philosophy, or religion. Of course there is no reasoning with them: for

they do not possess the facts, on which the reasoning must be grounded.

Nothing is possible, but a naked dissent, which implies a sort of

unsocial contempt; or, what a man of kind dispositions is very likely to

fall into, a heartless tacit acquiescence, which borders too nearly on

duplicity.

THE VICES OF SLAVES NO EXCUSE FOR SLAVERY.

It often happens, that the slave himself has neither the power nor the

wish to be free. He is then brutified; but this apathy is the dire

effect of slavery, and so far from being a justifying cause, that it

contains the grounds of its bitterest condemnation. The Carlovingian

race bred up the Merovingi as beasts; and then assigned their

unworthiness as the satisfactory reason for their dethronement. Alas!

the human being is more easily weaned from the habit of commanding than

from that of abject obedience. The slave loses his soul when he loses

his master; even as the dog that has lost himself in the street, howls

and whines till he has found the house again, where he had been kicked

and cudgelled, and half starved to boot. As we, however, or our

ancestors must have inoculated our fellow-creature with this wasting

disease of the soul, it becomes our duty to cure him; and though we

cannot immediately make him free, yet we can, and ought to, put him in

the way of becoming so at some future time, if not in his own person,

yet in that of his children. The French, you will say, are not capable

of freedom. Grant this;--but does this fact justify the ungrateful

traitor, whose every measure has been to make them still more incapable

of it?

CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.

The ancients attributed to the blood the same motion of ascent and

descent which really takes place in the sap of trees. Servetus

discovered the minor circulation from the heart to the lungs. Do not the

following passages of Giordano Bruno (published in 1591) seem to imply

more? I put the question, 'pauperis forma', with unfeigned

diffidence.

'"De Immenso et Innumerabili,"' lib. vi. cap. 8.

'Ut in nostro corpore sanguis per totum circumcursat et recursat, sic

in toto mundo, astro, tellure.

Quare non aliter quam nostro in corpore sanguis Hinc meat, hinc

remeat, neque ad inferiora fluit vi Majore, ad supera a pedibus quam

deinde recedat:--'

and still more plainly, in the ninth chapter of the same book,

'Quid esset Quodam ni gyro naturae cuncta redirent Ortus ad proprios

rursum; si sorbeat omnes Pontus aquas, totum non restituatque perenni

Ordine; qua possit rerum consistere vita? Tanquam si totus concurrat

sanguis in unam, In qua consistat, partem, nec prima revisat Ordia, et

antiquos cursus non inde resumat.'

It is affirmed in the "Supplement to the Scotch Encyclopædia

Britannica," that Des Cartes was the first who in defiance of Aristotle

and the Schools, attributed infinity to the universe. The very title of

Bruno's poem proves, that this honour belongs to him.

Feyjoo lays claim to a knowledge of the circulation of the blood for

Francisco de la Reyna, a farrier, who published a work upon his own art

at Burgos, in 1564. The passage which he quotes is perfectly clear.

'Por manera, que la sangre anda en torno, y en rueda por todos los

miembros, excluye toda duda.'

Whether Reyna himself claimed any

discovery, Feyjoo does not mention;--but, these words seem to refer to

some preceding demonstration of the fact. I am inclined to think that

this, like many other things, was known before it was discovered; just

as the preventive powers of the vaccine disease, the existence of

adipocire in graves, and certain principles in grammar and in

population, upon which bulky books have been written and great

reputations raised in our days.

PERITURAE PARCERE CHARTAE.

What scholar but must at times have a feeling of splenetic regret, when

he looks at the list of novels, in two, three, or four volumes each,

published monthly by Messrs. Lane, &c. and then reflects that there are

valuable works of Cudworth, prepared by himself for the press, yet still

unpublished by the University which possesses them, and which ought to

glory in the name of their great author! and that there is extant in

manuscript a folio volume of unprinted sermons by Jeremy Taylor. Surely,

surely, the patronage of our many literary societies might be employed

more beneficially to the literature and to the actual 'literati' of the

country, if they would publish the valuable manuscripts that lurk in our

different public libraries, and make it worth the while of men of

learning to correct and annotate the copies, instead of----, but it is

treading on hot embers!

TO HAVE AND TO BE.

The distinction is marked in a beautiful sentiment of a German poet:

Hast thou any thing? share it with me and I will pay thee the worth of

it. Art thou any thing? O then let us exchange souls!

The following is offered as a mere playful illustration:

"Women have no souls," says prophet Mahomet.

Nay, dearest Anna! why so grave?

I said you had no soul,'tis true:

For what you are, you cannot have--

'Tis I, that have one, since I first had you.

PARTY PASSION.

"Well, Sir!" exclaimed a lady, the vehement and impassionate partizan of

Mr. Wilkes, in the day of his glory, and during the broad blaze of his

patriotism, "Well, Sir! and will you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a

great man, and an eloquent man?"--"Oh! by no means, Madam! I have not a

doubt respecting Mr. Wilkes's talents!"--"Well, but, Sir! and is he not

a fine man, too, and a handsome man?"--"Why, Madam! he squints, doesn't

he?"--"Squints! yes to be sure he does, Sir! but not a bit more than a

gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint!"

GOODNESS OF HEART INDISPENSABLE TO A MAN OF GENIUS.

'If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and

function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the

impossibility of any man's being the good poet without being first a

good man. (Dedication to 'the Fox').'

Ben Jonson has borrowed this just and noble sentiment from Strabo.

[Greek (transliterated): 'h de (haretae) poiaetou sunezeuktai tae tou

anthropou kai ouch oionte agathhon genesthai, poiaetaen, mae proteron

genaethenta andra agathon.]

( Lib. I. p. 33. folio.)

MILTON AND BEN JONSON.

Those who have more faith in parallelism than myself, may trace Satan's

address to the sun in 'Paradise Lost' to the first lines of Ben Jonson's

Poetaster:

"Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wishing thy golden

splendour pitchy darkness!"

But even if Milton had the above in his mind, his own verses would be

more fitly entitled an apotheosis of Jonson's lines than an imitation.

STATISTICS.

We all remember Burke's curious assertion that there were 80,000

incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in

the number of beggars, prostitutes, and thieves in the City of London.

Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis XV. seems to have afforded the

precedent; he assures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there

were 50,000 incorrigible atheists in the City of Paris! Atheism then may

have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be

burthened on it, as its monster-child.

MAGNANIMITY.

The following ode was written by Giordano Bruno, under prospect of that

martyrdom which he soon after suffered at Rome, for atheism: that is, as

is proved by all his works, for a lofty and enlightened piety, which was

of course unintelligible to bigots and dangerous to an apostate

hierarchy. If the human mind be, as it assuredly is, the sublimest

object which nature affords to our contemplation, these lines which

portray the human mind under the action of its most elevated affections,

have a fair claim to the praise of sublimity. The work from which they

are extracted is exceedingly rare (as are, indeed, all the works of the

Nolan philosopher), and I have never seen them quoted:--

'Daedaleas vacuis plumas nectere humeris

Concupiant alii; aut vi suspendi nubium

Alis, ventorumve appetant remigium;

Aut orbitae flammantis raptari alveo;

Bellerophontisve alitem

Nos vero illo donati sumus genio,

Ut fatum intrepedi objectasque umbras cernimus,

Ne caeci ad lumen solis, ad perspicuas

Naturae voces surdi, ad Divum munera

Ingrato adsimus pectore.

Non curamus stultorum quid opinio

De nobis ferat, aut queis dignetur sedibus.

Alis ascendimus sursum melioribus!

Quid nubes ultra, ventorum ultra est semita,

Vidimus, quantum satis est.

Illuc conscendent plurimi, nobis ducibus,

Per scalam proprio erectam et firmam in pectore,

Quam Deus, et vegeti sors dabit ingeni;

Non manes, pluma, ignis, ventus, nubes, spiritus,

Divinantum phantasmata.

Non sensus vegetans, non me ratio arguet,

Non indoles exculti clara ingenii;

Sed perfidi sycophantae supercilium

Absque lance, statera, trutina, oculo,

Miraculum armati segete.

Versificantis grammatistae encomium,

Buglossae Graecissantum, et epistolia

Lectorem libri salutantum a limine,

Latrantum adversum Zoilos, Momos, mastiges,

Hinc absint testimonia!

Procedat nudus, quern non ornant nubila,

Sol! Non conveniunt quadrupedum phalerae

Humano dorso! Porra veri species

Quaesita, inventa, et patefacta me efferat!

Etsi nullus intelligat,

Si cum natura sapio, et sub numine,

Id vere plus quam satis est.'

The conclusion alludes to a charge of impenetrable obscurity, in which

Bruno shares one and the same fate with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and in

truth with every great discoverer and benefactor of the human race;

excepting only when the discoveries have been capable of being rendered

palpable to the outward senses, and have therefore come under the

cognizance of our "sober judicious critics," the men of "sound common

sense;" that is, of those snails in intellect, who wear their eyes at

the tips of their feelers, and cannot even see unless they at the same

time touch. When these finger-philosophers affirm that Plato, Bruno, &c.

must have been "out of their senses," the just and proper retort

is,--"Gentlemen! it is still worse with you! you have lost your reason!"

By the by, Addison in the Spectator has grossly misrepresented the

design and tendency of Bruno's 'Bestia Triomphante'; the object of

which was to show of all the theologies and theogonies which have been

conceived for the mere purpose of solving problems in the material

universe, that as they originate in fancy, so they all end in delusion,

and act to the hindrance or prevention of sound knowledge and actual

discovery. But the principal and most important truth taught in this

allegory is, that in the concerns of morality all pretended knowledge of

the will of Heaven which is not revealed to man through his conscience;

that all commands which do not consist in the unconditional obedience of

the will to the pure reason, without tampering with consequences (which

are in God's power, not in ours); in short, that all motives of hope and

fear from invisible powers, which are not immediately derived from, and

absolutely coincident with, the reverence due to the supreme reason of

the universe, are all alike dangerous superstitions. The worship founded

on them, whether offered by the Catholic to St. Francis, or by the poor

African to his Fetish differ in form only, not in substance. Herein

Bruno speaks not only as a philosopher, but as an enlightened

Christian;--the Evangelists and Apostles every where representing their

moral precepts not as doctrines then first revealed, but as truths

implanted in the hearts of men, which their vices only could have

obscured.

NEGROS AND NARCISSUSES.

There are certain tribes of Negros who take for the deity of the day the

first thing they see or meet with in the morning. Many of our fine

ladies, and some of our very fine gentlemen, are followers of the same

sect; though by aid of the looking-glass they secure a constancy as to

the object of their devotion.

AN ANECDOTE.

We here in England received a very high character of Lord ---- during his

stay abroad. "Not unlikely, Sir," replied the traveller; "a dead dog at

a distance is said to smell like musk."

THE PHAROS AT ALEXANDRIA.

Certain full and highly-wrought dissuasives from sensual indulgencies,

in the works of theologians as well as of satirists and story-writers,

may, not unaptly, remind one of the Pharos; the many lights of which

appeared at a distance as one, and this as a polar star, so as more

often to occasion wrecks than prevent them.

At the base of the Pharos the name of the reigning monarch was engraved,

on a composition, which the artist well knew would last no longer than

the king's life. Under this, and cut deep in the marble itself, was his

own name and dedication: "Sostratos of Gyndos, son of Dexiteles to the

Gods, protectors of sailors!"--So will it be with the 'Georgium Sidus'

the 'Ferdinandia', &c. &c.--Flattery's plaister of Paris will crumble

away, and under it we shall read the names of Herschel, Piozzi, and

their compeers.

SENSE AND COMMON SENSE.

I have noticed two main evils in philosophizing. The first is, the

absurdity of demanding proof for the very facts which constitute the

nature of him who demands it,--a proof for those primary and unceasing

revelations of self-consciousness, which every possible proof must

pre-suppose; reasoning, for instance, 'pro' and 'con', concerning the

existence of the power of reasoning. Other truths may be ascertained;

but these are certainty itself (all at least which we mean by the word),

and are the measure of every thing else which we deem certain. The

second evil is, that of mistaking for such facts mere general

prejudices, and those opinions that, having been habitually taken for

granted, are dignified with the name of common sense. Of these, the

first is the more injurious to the reputation, the latter more

detrimental to the progress of philosophy. In the affairs of common life

we very properly appeal to common sense; but it is absurd to reject the

results of the microscope from the negative testimony of the naked eye.

Knives are sufficient for the table and the market;--but for the

purposes of science we must dissect with the lancet.

As an instance of the latter evil, take that truly powerful and active

intellect, Sir Thomas Brown, who, though he had written a large volume

in detection of vulgar errors, yet peremptorily pronounces the motion of

the earth round the sun, and consequently the whole of the Copernican

system unworthy of any serious confutation, as being manifestly

repugnant to common sense; which said common sense, like a miller's

scales, used to weigh gold or gasses, may, and often does, become very

gross, though unfortunately not very uncommon, nonsense. And as for the

former, which may be called 'Logica Praepostera', I have read in

metaphysical essays of no small fame, arguments drawn 'ab extra' in

proof and disproof of personal identity, which, ingenious as they may

be, were clearly anticipated by the little old woman's appeal to her

little dog, for the solution of the very same doubts, occasioned by her

petticoats having been cut round about:--

If it is not me, he'll bark and he'll rail, But if I be I, he'll wag

his little tail.

TOLERATION.

I dare confess that Mr. Locke's treatise on Toleration appeared to me

far from being a full and satisfactory answer to the subtle and

oft-times plausible arguments of Bellarmin, and other Romanists. On the

whole, I was more pleased with the celebrated W. Penn's tracts on the

same subject. The following extract from his excellent letter to the

king of Poland appeals to the heart rather than to the head, to the

Christian rather than to the philosopher; and, besides, overlooks the

ostensible object of religious penalties, which is not so much to

convert the heretic, as to prevent the spread of heresy. The thoughts,

however, are so just in themselves, and expressed with so much life and

simplicity, that it well deserves a place in these Omniana:--

Now, O Prince! give a poor Christian leave to expostulate with thee.

Did Christ Jesus or his holy followers endeavour, by precept or

example, to set up their religion with a carnal sword? Called he any

troops of men or angels to defend him? Did he encourage Peter to

dispute his right with the sword? But did he not say, 'Put it up'? Or

did he countenance his over-zealous disciples, when they would have

had fire from heaven to destroy those that were not of their mind? No!

But did not Christ rebuke them, saying, 'Ye know not what spirit ye

are of?' And if it was neither Christ's spirit, nor their own spirit

that would have fire from heaven--Oh! what is that spirit that would

kindle fire on earth to destroy such as peaceably dissent upon the

account of conscience!

O King! when did the true religion persecute? When did the true church

offer violence for religion? Were not her weapons prayers, tears, and

patience? did not Jesus conquer by these weapons, and vanquish cruelty

by suffering? can clubs, and staves, and swords, and prisons, and

banishments reach the soul, convert the heart, or convince the

understanding of man? When did violence ever make a true convert, or

bodily punishment, a sincere Christian? This maketh void the end of

Christ's coming. Yea, it robbeth God's spirit of its office, which is

to convince the world. That is the sword by which the ancient

Christians overcame.

The theory of persecution seems to rest on the following assumptions.

1. A duty implies a right. We have a right to do whatever it is our duty

to do.

2. It is the duty and consequently the right of the supreme power in a

state to promote the greatest possible sum of well-being in that state.

3. This is impossible without morality.

4. But morality can neither be produced or preserved in a people at

large without true religion.

5. Relative to the duties of the legislature or governors, that is the

true religion which they conscientiously believe to be so.

6. As there can be but one true religion, at the same time, this one it

is their duty and right to authorize and protect.

7. But the established religion cannot be protected and secured except

by the imposition of restraints or the influence of penalties on those,

who profess and propagate hostility to it.

8. True religion, consisting of precepts, counsels, commandments,

doctrines, and historical narratives, cannot be effectually proved or

defended, but by a comprehensive view of the whole as a system. Now this

cannot be hoped for from the mass of mankind. But it may be attacked,

and the faith of ignorant men subverted by particular objections, by the

statement of difficulties without any counter-statement of the greater

difficulties which would result from the rejection of the former, and by

all the other stratagems used in the desultory warfare of sectaries and

infidels. This is, however, manifestly dishonest and dangerous, and

there must exist, therefore, a power in the state to prevent, suppress,

and punish it.

9. The advocates of toleration have never been able to agree among

themselves concerning the limits to their own claims; have never

established any clear rules, as to what shall and what shall not be

admitted under the name of religion and conscience. Treason and the

grossest indecencies not only may be, but have been, called by these

names: as among the earlier Anabaptists.

10. And last, it is a 'petitio principii', or begging the question, to

take for granted that a state has no power except in case of overt acts.

It is its duty to prevent a present evil, as much at least as to punish

the perpetrators of it. Besides, preaching and publishing are overt

acts. Nor has it yet been proved, though often asserted, that a

Christian sovereign has nothing to do with the eternal happiness or

misery of the fellow creatures entrusted to his charge.

HINT FOR A NEW SPECIES OF HISTORY.

"The very knowledge of the opinions and customs of so considerable a

part of mankind as the Jews now are, and especially have been

heretofore, is valuable both for pleasure and use. It is a very good

piece of history, and that of the best kind, namely, of human nature,

and of that part of it which is most different from us, and commonly

the least known to us. And, indeed, the principal advantage which is

to be made by the wiser sort of men of most writings, is rather to see

what men think and are, than to be informed of the natures and truth

of things; to observe what thoughts and passions have occupied men's

minds, what opinions and manners they are of. In this view it becomes

of no mean importance to notice and record the strangest ignorance,

the most putid fables, impertinent, trifling, ridiculous disputes, and

more ridiculous pugnacity in the defence and retention of the subjects

disputed."

(Publisher's preface to the reader in Lightfoot's 'Works', vol. i.)

In the thick volume of title pages and chapters of contents (composed)

of large and small works correspondent to each (proposed) by a certain

'omni'-pregnant, 'nihili'-parturient genius of my acquaintance, not the

least promising is,--"A History of the morals and (as connected

therewith) of the manners of the English Nation from the Conquest to the

present time." From the chapter of contents it appears, that my friend

is a steady believer in the uninterrupted progression of his fellow

countrymen; that there has been a constant growth of wealth and

well-being among us, and with these an increase of knowledge, and with

increasing knowledge an increase and diffusion of practical goodness.

The degrees of acceleration, indeed, have been different at different

periods. The moral being has sometimes crawled, sometimes strolled,

sometimes walked, sometimes run; but it has at all times been moving

onward. If in any one point it has gone backward, it has been only in

order to leap forward in some other. The work was to commence with a

numeration table, or catalogue, of those virtues or qualities which make

a man happy in himself, and which conduce to the happiness of those

about him, in a greater or lesser sphere of agency. The degree and the

frequency in which each of these virtues manifested themselves, in the

successive reigns from William the Conqueror inclusively, were to be

illustrated by apposite quotations from the works of contemporary

writers, not only of historians and chroniclers, but of the poets,

romance writers, and theologians, not omitting the correspondence

between literary men, the laws and regulations, civil and

ecclesiastical, and whatever records the industry of antiquarians has

brought to light in their provincial, municipal, and monastic

histories:--tall tomes and huge! undegenerate sons of Anak, which look

down from a dizzy height on the dwarfish progeny of contemporary wit,

and can find no associates in size at a less distance than two

centuries; and in arranging which the puzzled librarian must commit an

anachronism in order to avoid an anatopism.

Such of these illustrations as most amused or impressed me, when I heard

them (for alas! even his very title pages and contents my friend

composes only in air!) I shall probably attempt to preserve in different

parts of these 'Omniana'. At present I shall cite one article only which

I found wafered on a blank leaf of his memorandum book, superscribed:

"Flattering news for 'Anno Domini' 2000, whenever it shall institute a

comparison between itself and the 17th and 18th centuries." It consists

of an extract, say rather, an exsection from the Kingston Mercantile

Advertiser, from Saturday, August the 15th, to Tuesday, August 18th,

1801. This paper which contained at least twenty more advertisements of

the very same kind, was found by accident among the wrapping-papers in

the trunk of an officer just returned from the West India station. They

stand here exactly as in the original, from which they are reprinted:--

Kingston, July 30, 1801.

Ran away, about three weeks ago, from a penn near Halfway Tree, a

negro wench, named Nancy, of the Chamba country, strong made, an ulcer

on her left leg, marked D. C. diamond between. She is supposed to be

harboured by her husband, Dublin, who has the direction of a wherry

working between this town and Port Royal, and is the property of Mr.

Fishley, of that place; the said negro man having concealed a boy in

his wherry before. Half a joe will be paid to any person apprehending

the above described wench, and delivering to Mr. Archibald M' Lea,

East end; and if found secreted by any person, the law will be put in

force.

Kingston, August 13, 1801.

Strayed on Monday evening last, a negro boy of the Moco country, named

Joe, the property of Mr. Thomas Williams, planter, in St. John's, who

had sent him to town under the charge of a negro man, with a cart for

provisions. The said boy is, perhaps, from 15 to 18 years of age,

about twelve months in the country, no mark, speaks little English,

but can tell his owner's name; had on a long Oznaburg frock. It is

supposed he might have gone out to vend some pears and lemon-grass,

and have lost himself in the street. One pistole will be paid to any

person apprehending and bringing him to this office.

Kingston, July 1, 1801.

Forty Shillings Reward.

Strayed on Friday evening last, (and was seen going up West Street the

following morning), a small bay HORSE, the left ear lapped, flat rump,

much scored from the saddle on his back, and marked on the near side

F. M. with a diamond between. Whoever will take up the said horse, and

deliver him to W. Balantine, butcher, back of West Street, will

receive the above reward.

Kingston, July 4, 1801.

Strayed on Sunday morning last, from the subscriber's house, in East

Street, a bright dun He-Mule, the mane lately cropped, a large chafe

slightly skinned over on the near buttock, and otherwise chafed from

the action of the harness in his recent breaking. Half a joe will be

paid to any person taking up and bringing this mule to the

subscriber's house, or to the Store in Harbour Street. JOHN WALSH.

Kingston, July 2, 1801.

Ten pounds Reward,

Ran away

About two years ago from the subscriber, a Negro woman named

DORAH,

purchased from Alexander M'Kean, Esq. She is about 20 years of age,

and 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high; has a mark on one of her shoulders,

about the size of a quarter dollar, occasioned, she says, by the yaws;

of a coal black complexion, very artful, and most probably passes

about the country with false papers and under another name; if that is

not the case, it must be presumed she is harboured about Green pond,

where she has a mother and other connexions.

What a history! horses and negros! negros and horses! It makes me

tremble at my own nature. Surely, every religious and conscientious

Briton is equally a debtor in gratitude to Thomas Clarkson and his

fellow labourers with every African: for on the soul of every individual

among us did a portion of guilt rest, as long as the Slave Trade

remained legal.

A few years back the public was satiated with accounts of the happy

condition of the slaves in our colonies, and the great encouragements

and facilities afforded to such of them, as by industry and foresight

laboured to better their situation. With what truth this is stated as

the general tone of feeling among our planters, and their agents, may be

conjectured from the following sentences, which made part of what in

England we call the leading paragraph of the same newspaper:--

Strange as it may appear, we are assured as a fact, that a number of

slaves in this town have purchased lots of land, and are absolutely in

possession of the fee simple of lands and tenements. Neither is it

uncommon for the men slaves to purchase or manumize their wives, and

'vice versa', the wives their husbands. To account for this, we need

only look to the depredations daily committed, and the impositions

practised to the distress of the community and ruin of the fair

trader. Negro yards too, under such direction, will necessarily prove

the asylum of runaways from the country.

TEXT SPARRING.

When I hear (as who now can travel twenty miles in a stage coach without

the probability of hearing) an ignorant religionist quote an unconnected

sentence of half a dozen words from any part of the Old or New

Testament, and resting on the literal sense of these words the eternal

misery of all who reject, nay, even of all those countless myriads, who

have never had the opportunity of accepting this, and sundry other

articles of faith conjured up by the same textual magic; I ask myself

what idea these persons form of the Bible, that they should use it in a

way in which they themselves use no other book? They deem the whole

written by inspiration. Well! but is the very essence of rational

discourse, that is, connection and dependency done away, because the

discourse is infallibly rational? The mysteries, which these spiritual

lynxes detect in the simplest texts, remind me of the 500 nondescripts,

each as large as his own black cat, which Dr. Katterfelto, by aid of his

solar microscope, discovered in a drop of transparent water.

But to a contemporary who has not thrown his lot in the same helmet with

them, these fanatics think it a crime to listen. Let them then, or far

rather, let those who are in danger of infection from them, attend to

the golden aphorisms of the old and orthodox divines. "Sentences in

scripture (says Dr. Donne) like hairs in horses' tails, concur in one

root of beauty and strength; but being plucked out, one by one, serve

only for springes and snares."

The second I transcribe from the preface to Lightfoot's works. "Inspired

writings are an inestimable treasure to mankind; for so many sentences,

so many truths. But then the true sense of them must be known:

otherwise, so many sentences, so many authorized falsehoods."

PELAGIANISM.

Our modern latitudinarians will find it difficult to suppose, that

anything could have been said in the defence of Pelagianism equally

absurd with the facts and arguments which have been adduced in favour of

original sin, (sin being taken as guilt; that is, observes a Socinian

wit, the crime of being born). But in the comment of Rabbi Akibah on

Ecclesiastes xii. 1. we have a story of a mother, who must have been a

most determined believer in the uninheritability of sin. For having a

sickly and deformed child, and resolved that it should not be thought to

have been punished for any fault of its parents or ancestors, and yet

having nothing else for which to blame the child, she seriously and

earnestly accused it before the judge of having kicked her unmercifully

during her pregnancy.

I am firmly persuaded that no doctrine was ever widely diffused among

various nations through successive ages and under different religions,

(such as is the doctrine of original sin, and redemption, those

fundamental articles of every known religion professing to be revealed,)

which is not founded either in the nature of things or in the

necessities of our nature. In the language of the schools, it carries

with it presumptive evidence that it is either objectively or

subjectively true. And the more strange and contradictory such a

doctrine may appear to the understanding, or discursive faculty, the

stronger is the presumption in its favour. For whatever satirists may

say, and sciolists imagine, the human mind has no predilection for

absurdity. I do not, however, mean that such a doctrine shall be always

the best possible representation of the truth on which it is founded;

for the same body casts strangely different shadows in different places,

and different degrees of light, but that it always does shadow out some

such truth, and derive its influence over our faith from our obscure

perception of that truth. Yea, even where the person himself attributes

his belief of it to the miracles, with which it was announced by the

founder of his religion.

THE SOUL AND ITS ORGANS OF SENSE.

It is a strong presumptive proof against materialism, that there does

not exist a language on earth, from the rudest to the most refined, in

which a materialist can talk for five minutes together, without

involving some contradiction in terms to his own system.

'Objection'. Will not this apply equally to the astronomer? Newton,

no doubt, talked of the sun's rising and setting, just like other men.

What should we think of the coxcomb who should have objected to him,

that he contradicted his own system? 'Answer'--No! it does not

apply equally; say rather, it is utterly inapplicable to the astronomer

and natural philosopher. For his philosophic, and his ordinary language

speak of two quite different things, both of which are equally true. In

his ordinary language he refers to a fact of appearance, to a phenomenon

common and necessary to all persons in a given situation; in his

scientific language he determines that one position or figure, which

being supposed, the appearance in question would be the necessary

result, and all appearances in all situations maybe demonstrably

foretold. Let a body be suspended in the air, and strongly illuminated.

What figure is here? A triangle. But what here? A trapezium;--and so on.

The same question put to twenty men, in twenty different positions and

distances, would receive twenty different answers: each would be a true

answer. But what is that one figure which, being so placed, all these

facts of appearance must result according to the law of

perspective?--Ay! this is a different question, this is a new subject.

The words which answer this would be absurd if used in reply to the

former. [1]

Thus, the language of the scripture on natural objects is as strictly

philosophical as that of the Newtonian system. Perhaps more so. For it

is not only equally true, but it is universal among mankind, and

unchangeable. It describes facts of appearance. And what other language

would have been consistent with the divine wisdom? The inspired writers

must have borrowed their terminology, either from the crude and mistaken

philosophy of their own times, and so have sanctified and perpetuated

falsehood, unintelligible meantime to all but one in ten thousand; or

they must have anticipated the terminology of the true system, without

any revelation of the system itself, and so have become unintelligible

to all men; or lastly, they must have revealed the system itself, and

thus have left nothing for the exercise, developement, or reward of the

human understanding, instead of teaching that moral knowledge, and

enforcing those social and civic virtues, out of which the arts and

sciences will spring up in due time and of their own accord. But nothing

of this applies to the materialist; he refers to the very same facts, of

which the common language of mankind speaks: and these too are facts

that have their sole and entire being in our own consciousness; facts,

as to which 'esse' and 'conscire' are identical. Now, whatever is common

to all languages, in all climates, at all times, and in all stages of

civilization, must be the exponent and consequent of the common

consciousness of man as man. Whatever contradicts this universal

language, therefore, contradicts the universal consciousness, and the

facts in question subsisting exclusively in consciousness, whatever

contradicts the consciousness contradicts the fact.

I have been seduced into a dry discussion where I had intended only a

few amusing facts, in proof, that the mind makes the sense far more than

the senses make the mind. If I have life, and health, and leisure, I

purpose to compile from the works, memoirs, and transactions of the

different philosophical societies in Europe, from magazines, and the

rich store of medical and psychological publications, furnished by the

English, French, and German press, all the essays and cases that relate

to the human faculties under unusual circumstances, (for pathology is

the crucible of physiology), excluding such only as are not intelligible

without the symbols or terminology of science. These I would arrange

under the different senses and powers: as

the eye,

the ear,

the touch, &c.;

the imitative power, voluntary and automatic;

the imagination, or shaping and modifying power;

the fancy or the aggregative and associative power;

the understanding, or the regulative, substantiating, and realizing power;

the speculative reason, 'vis theoretica et scientifica', or the power,

by which we produce, or aim to produce, unity, necessity, and a

universality in all our knowledge by means of principles, [2]'a priori';

the will or practical reason;

the faculty of choice, ('Willkühr'), and

(distinct both from the moral will, and the choice),

the sensation of volition which I have found reason to include under the

head of single and double touch.

Thence I propose to make a new arrangement of madness, whether as

defect, or as excess, of any of these senses or faculties; and thus by

appropriate cases to shew the difference between;--

1. a man having lost his reason but not his senses or

understanding--that is, when he sees things as other men see

them,--adapts means to ends as other men would adapt them, and not

seldom, with more sagacity,--but his final end is altogether irrational:

2. his having lost his wits, that is, his understanding or judicial

power; but not his reason or the use of his senses,--(such was Don

Quixote; and, therefore, we love and reverence him, while we despise

Hudibras):

3. his being out of his senses, as in the case of a hypochondriac, to

whom his limbs appear to be of glass, although all his conduct is both

rational, or moral, and prudent:

4. Or the case may be a combination of all three, though I doubt the

existence of such a case, or of any two of them:

5. And lastly, it may be merely such an excess of sensation, as

overpowers and suspends all, which is frenzy or raving madness.

A diseased state of an organ of sense, or of the inner organs connected

with it, will perpetually tamper with the understanding, and unless

there be an energetic and watchful counter-action of the judgment (of

which I have known more than one instance, in which the comparing and

reflecting judgment has obstinately, though painfully, rejected the full

testimony of the senses,) will finally overpower it. But when the organ

is obliterated, or totally suspended, then the mind applies some other

organ to a double use. Passing through Temple Sowerby, in Westmorland,

some ten years back, I was shewn a man perfectly blind; and blind from

his infancy. Fowell was his name. This man's chief amusement was fishing

on the wild and uneven banks of the River Eden, and up the different

streams and tarns among the mountains. He had an intimate friend,

likewise stone blind, a dexterous card player, who knows every gate and

stile far and near throughout the country. These two often coursed

together, and the people here, as every where, fond of the marvellous,

affirm that they were the best beaters up of game in the whole country.

The every way amiable and estimable John Gough of Kendal is not only an

excellent mathematician, but an infallible botanist and zoologist. He

has frequently at the first feel corrected the mistakes of the most

experienced sportsman with regard to the birds or vermin which they had

killed, when it chanced to be a variety or rare species so completely

resembling the common one, that it required great steadiness of

observation to detect the difference, even after it had been pointed

out. As to plants and flowers, the rapidity of his touch appears fully

equal to that of sight; and the accuracy greater. Good heavens! it needs

only to look at him! Why his face sees all over! It is all one eye! I

almost envied him; for the purity and excellence of his own nature,

never broken in upon by those evil looks, (or features, which are looks

become fixtures), with which low cunning, habitual cupidity,

presumptuous sciolism, and heart-hardening vanity, coarsen the human

face,--it is the mere stamp, the undisturbed 'ectypon' of his own soul!

Add to this that he is a Quaker, with all the blest negatives, without

any of the silly and factious positives, of that sect, which, with all

its bogs and hollows, is still the prime sun-shine spot of Christendom

in the eye of the true philosopher. When I was in Germany in the year

1798, I read at Hanover, and met with two respectable persons, one a

clergyman, the other a physician, who confirmed to me, the account of

the upper-stall master at Hanover, written by himself, and countersigned

by all his medical attendants. As far as I recollect, he had fallen from

his horse on his head, and in consequence of the blow lost both his

sight and hearing for nearly three years, and continued for the greater

part of this period in a state of nervous fever. His understanding,

however, remained unimpaired and unaffected, and his entire

consciousness, as to outward impressions, being confined to the sense of

touch, he at length became capable of reading any book (if printed, as

most German books are, on coarse paper) with his fingers, in much the

same manner in which the 'piano-forte' is played, and latterly with an

almost incredible rapidity. Likewise by placing his hand with the

fingers all extended, at a small distance from the lips of any person

that spoke slowly and distinctly to him, he learned to recognize each

letter by its different effects on his nerves, and thus spelt the words

as they were uttered. It was particularly noticed both by himself from

his sensations, and by his medical attendants from observation, that the

letter R, if pronounced full and strong, and recurring once or more in

the same word, produced a small spasm, or twitch in his hand and

fingers. At the end of three years he recovered both his health and

senses, and with the necessity soon lost the power, which he had thus

acquired.

[Footnote 1: See Church and State. Appendix, p. 231. Ed.]

[Footnote 2: This phrase, 'a priori', is, in common, most grossly

misunderstood, and an absurdity burthened on it which it does not

deserve. By knowledge 'a priori', we do not mean that we can know any

thing previously to experience, which would be a contradiction in terms;

but having once known it by occasion of experience (that is, something

acting upon us from without) we then know, that it must have

pre-existed, or the experience itself would have been impossible. By

experience only I know, that I have eyes; but then my reason convinces

me, that I must have had eyes in order to the experience.]

SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE, ETC.

Often and often had I read Gay's 'Beggar's Opera', and always delighted

with its poignant wit and original satire, and if not without noticing

its immorality, yet without any offence from it. Some years ago, I for

the first time saw it represented in one of the London theatres; and

such were the horror and disgust with which it impressed me, so grossly

did it outrage all the best feelings of my nature, that even the angelic

voice, and perfect science of Mrs. Billington, lost half their charms,

or rather increased my aversion to the piece by an additional sense of

incongruity. Then I learned the immense difference between reading and

seeing a play;--and no wonder, indeed; for who has not passed over with

his eye a hundred passages without offence, which he yet could not have

even read aloud, or have heard so read by another person, without an

inward struggle?--In mere passive silent reading the thoughts remain

mere thoughts, and these too not our own,--phantoms with no attribute of

place, no sense of appropriation, that flit over the consciousness as

shadows over the grass or young corn in an April day. But even the sound

of our own or another's voice takes them out of that lifeless, twilight,

realm of thought, which is the confine, the 'intermundium', as it were,

of existence and non-existence. Merely that the thoughts have become

audible by blending with them a sense of outness gives them a sort of

reality. What then,--when by every contrivance of scenery, appropriate

dresses, according and auxiliary looks and gestures, and the variety of

persons on the stage, realities are employed to carry the imitation of

reality as near as possible to perfect delusion?

If a manly modesty shrinks from uttering an indecent phrase before a

wife or sister in a private room, what must be the effect when a

repetition of such treasons (for all gross and libidinous allusions are

emphatically treasons against the very foundations of human society,

against all its endearing charities, and all the mother virtues,) is

hazarded before a mixed multitude in a public theatre? When every

innocent woman must blush at once with pain at the thoughts she rejects,

and with indignant shame at those, which the foul hearts of others may

attribute to her!

Thus too with regard to the comedies of Wycherly, Vanburgh, and

Etherege, I used to please myself with the flattering comparison of the

manners universal at present among all classes above the lowest with

those of our ancestors even of the highest ranks. But if for a moment I

think of those comedies as having been acted, I lose all sense of

comparison in the shame, that human nature could at any time have

endured such outrages to its dignity; and if conjugal affection and the

sweet name of sister were too weak, that yet filial piety, the gratitude

for a mother's holy love, should not have risen and hissed into infancy

these traitors to their own natural gifts, who lampooned the noblest

passions of humanity, in order to pander for its lowest appetites.

As far, however, as one bad thing can be palliated by comparison with a

worse, this may be said, in extenuation of these writers; that the

mischief, which they can do even on the stage, is trifling compared with

that stile of writing which began in the pest-house of French

literature, and has of late been imported by the 'Littles' of the age,

which consists in a perpetual tampering with the morals without

offending the decencies. And yet the admirers of these publications,

nay, the authors themselves have the assurance to complain of Shakspeare

(for I will not refer to one yet far deeper blasphemy)--Shakspeare,

whose most objectionable passages are but grossnesses against lust, and

these written in a gross age; while three fourths of their whole works

are delicacies for its support and sustenance. Lastly, that I may leave

the reader in better humour with the name at the head of this article, I

shall quote one scene from Etherege's 'Love in a Tub', which for

exquisite, genuine, original humour, is worth all the rest of his plays,

though two or three of his witty contemporaries were thrown in among

them, as a make weight. The scene might be entitled, the different ways

in which the very same story may be told without any variation in matter

of fact; for the least attentive reader will perceive the perfect

identity of the footboy's account with the Frenchman's own statement in

contradiction to it.