We are not yet aware of all the
consequences
of that event.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
[1]
Jelousy does not strike me as the point in his passion; I take it to be
rather an agony that the creature, whom he had believed angelic, with whom
he had garnered up his heart, and whom he could not help still loving,
should be proved impure and worthless. It was the struggle _not_ to
love her. It was a moral indignation and regret that virture should so
fall:--"But yet the _pity_ of it, Iago! --O Iago! the _pity_ of it,
Iago! " In addition to this, his hourour was concerned: Iago would not have
succeeded but by hinting that this honour was compromised. There is no
ferocity in Othello; his mind is majestic and composed. He deliberately
determines to die; and speaks his last speech with a view of showing his
attachment to the Venetian state, though it had superseded him.
[Footnote 1:
Caballaeros Granadinos,
Aunque Moros, hijos d'algo--ED. ]
* * * * *
Schiller has the material Sublime; to produce an effect he sets you a
whole town on fire, and throws infants with their mothers into the flames,
or locks up a father in an old tower. [1] But Shakspeare drops a
handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow.
[Footnote 1:
This expression--"material sublime"--like a hundred others
which have slipped into general use, came originally from Mr. Coleridege,
and was by him, in the first instatnce, applied to Schiller's Robbers--
See Act iv, sc. 5. --ED. ]
Lear is the most tremendous effort of Shakspeare as a poet; Hamlet as a
philosopher or meditater; and Othello is the union of the two. There is
something gigantic and unformed in the former two; but in the latter, every
thing assumes its due place and proportion, and the whole mature powers of
his mind are displayed in admirable equilibrium.
I think Old Mortality and Guy Mannering the best of the Scotch novels.
It seems, to my ear, that there is a sad want of harmony in Lord Byron's
verses. Is it not unnatural to be always connecting very great intellectual
power with utter depravity? Does such a combination often really exist in
rerum naturae?
I always had a great liking--I may say, a sort of nondescript reverence--
for John Kemble. What a quaint creature he was! I remember a party, in
which he was discoursing in his measured manner after dinner, when the
servant announced his carriage. He nodded, and went on. The announcement
took place twice afterwards; Kemble each time nodding his head a little
more impatiently, but still going on. At last, and for the fourth time, the
servant entered, and said,--"Mrs. Kemble says, sir, she has the
rheumat_ise_, and cannot stay. " "Add_ism! _" dropped John, in a
parenthesis, and proceeded quietly in his harangue.
* * * * *
Kemble would correct any body, at any time, and in any place. Dear Charles
Mathews--a true genius in his line, in my judgment--told me he was once
performing privately before the King. The King was much pleased with the
imitation of Kemble, and said,--"I liked Kemble very much. He was one of my
earliest friends. I remember once he was talking, and found himself out of
snuff. I offered him my box. He declined taking any--'he, a poor actor,
could not put his fingers into a royal box. ' I said, 'Take some, pray; you
will obl_ee_ge me. ' Upon which Kemble replied,--'It would become your royal
mouth better to say, obl_i_ge me;' and took a pinch. "
* * * * *
It is not easy to put me out of countenance, or interrupt the feeling of
the time by mere external noise or circumstance; yet once I was thoroughly
_done up_, as you would say. I was reciting, at a particular house, the
"Remorse;" and was in the midst of Alhadra's description of the death of
her husband, [1] when a scrubby boy, with a shining face set in dirt, burst
open the door and cried out,--"Please, ma'am, master says, Will you ha'; or
will you _not_ ha', the pin-round? "
[Footnote 1:
"ALHADRA. This night your chieftain arm'd himself,
And hurried from me. But I follow'd him
At distance, till I saw him enter _there_!
NAOMI. The cavern?
ALHADRA. Yes, the mouth of yonder cavern.
After a while I saw the son of Valdez
Rush by with flaring torch: he likewise enter'd.
There was another and a longer pause;
And once, methought, I heard the clash of swords!
And soon the son of Valdez re-appear'd:
He flung his torch towards the moon in sport,
And seem'd as he were mirthful! I stood listening,
Impatient for the footsteps of my husband.
NAOMI. Thou calledst him?
ALHADRA. I crept into the cavern--
'Twas dark and very silent. What saidst thou?
No! No! I did not dare call Isidore,
Lest I should hear no answer! A brief while,
Belike, I lost all thought and memory
Of that for which I came! After that pause,
O Heaven! I heard a groan, and follow'd it;
And yet another groan, which guided me
Into a strange recess--and there was light,
A hideous light! his torch lay on the ground;
Its flame burnt dimly o'er a chasm's brink:
I spake; and whilst I spake, a feeble groan
Came from that chasm! it was his last--his death-groan!
NAOMI. Comfort her, Allah!
ALHADRA. I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony that cannot be remember'd,
Listening with horrid hope to hear a groan!
But I had heard his last;--my husband's death-groan!
NAOMI. Haste! let us onward!
ALHADRA. I look'd far down the pit--
My sight was bounded by a jutting fragment;
And it was stain'd with blood. Then first I shriek'd;
My eyeballs burnt, my brain grew hot as fire,
And all the hanging drops of the wet roof
Turn'd into blood--I saw them turn to blood!
And I was leaping wildly down the chasm,
When on the further brink I saw his sword,
And it said, Vengeance! --Curses on my tongue!
The moon hath moved in heaven, and I am here,
And he hath not had vengeance! --Isidore!
Spirit of Isidore, thy murderer lives!
Away, away! "--Act iv. sc. 3. ]
_January_ 1. 1823.
PARLIAMENTARY PRIVILEGE. ---PERMANENCY AND PROGRESSION OF NATIONS. --KANT'S
RACES OF MANKIND.
Privilege is a substitution for Law, where, from the nature of the
circumstances, a law cannot act without clashing with greater and more
general principles. The House of Commons must, of course, have the power of
taking cognizance of offences against its own rights. Sir Francis Burdett
might have been properly sent to the Tower for the speech he made in the
House [1]; but when afterwards he published it in Cobbett, and they took
cognizance of it as a breach of privilege, they violated the plain
distinction between privilege and law.
As a speech in the House, the House could alone animadvert upon it,
consistently with the effective preservation of its most necessary
prerogative of freedom of debate; but when that speech became a book, then
the law was to look to it; and there being a law of libel, commensurate
with every possible object of attack in the state, privilege, which acts,
or ought to act, only as a substitute for other laws, could have nothing to
do with it. I have heard that one distinguished individual said,--"That he,
for one, would not shrink from affirming, that if the House of Commons
chose to _burn_ one of their own members in Palace Yard, it had an inherent
power and right by the constitution to do so. " This was said, if at all, by
a moderate-minded man; and may show to what atrocious tyranny some persons
may advance in theory, under shadow of this word privilege.
[Footnote 1:
March 12. 1810. Sir Francis Burdett made a motion in the House of
Commons for the discharge of Mr. Gale Jones, who had been committed to
Newgate by a resolution of the House on the 21st of February preceding.
Sir Francis afterwards published, in Cobbett's Political Register, of the
24th of the same month of March, a "Letter to his Constituents, denying
the power of the House of Commons to imprison the people of England,"
and he accompanied the letter with an argument in support of his position.
On the 27th of March a complaint of breach of privilege, founded on this
publication, was made in the House by Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Lethbridge,
and after several long debates, a motion that Sir Francis Burdett should
be committed to the Tower was made on the 5th of April, 1810, by Sir
Robert Salisbury, and carried by a majority of 38. --ED. ]
* * * * *
There are two principles in every European and Christian state:
Permanency and Progression. [1]
In the civil wars of the seventeenth century in England, which are as new
and fresh now as they were a hundred and sixty years ago, and will be so
for ever to us, these two principles came to a struggle. It was natural
that the great and the good of the nation should he found in the ranks of
either side. In the Mohammedan states, there is no principle of permanence;
and, therefore, they sink directly. They existed, and could only exist, in
their efforts at progression; when they ceased to conquer, they fell in
pieces. Turkey would long since have fallen, had it not been supported by
the rival and conflicting interests of Christian Europe. The Turks have no
church; religion and state are one; hence there is no counterpoise, no
mutual support. This is the very essence of their Unitarianism. They have
no past; they are not an historical people; they exist only in the present.
China is an instance of a permanency without progression. The Persians are
a superior race: they have a history and a literature; they were always
considered by the Greeks as quite distinct from the other barbarians. The
Afghans are a remarkable people. They have a sort of republic. Europeans
and Orientalists may be well represented by two figures standing back to
back: the latter looking to the east, that is, backwards; the former
looking westward, or forwards.
[Footnote 1:
See this position stated and illustrated in detail in Mr. Coleridge's work,
"On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the Idea of
each," p. 21. 2d edit. 1830. Well acquainted as I am with the fact f the
comparatively small acceptation which Mr. Coleridge's prose works have ever
found in the literary world, and with the reasons, and, what is more, with
the causes, of it, I still wonder that this particular treatise has not
been more noticed: first, because it is a little book; secondly, because it
is, or at least nineteen-twentieths of it are, written in a popular style;
and thirdly, because it is the only work, that I know or have ever heard
mentioned, that even attempts a solution of the difficulty in which an
ingenious enemy of the church of England may easily involve most of its
modern defenders in Parliament, or through the press, upon their own
principles and admissions. Mr. Coleridge himself prized this little work
highly, although he admitted its incompleteness as a composition:--"But I
don't care a rush about it," he said to me, "as an author. The saving
distinctions are plainly stated in it, and I am sure nothing is wanted to
make them _tell_, but that some kind friend should steal them from their
obscure hiding-place, and just tumble them down before the public as _his
own_. "--ED. ]
* * * * *
Kant assigns three great races of mankind. If two individuals of distinct
races cross, a third, or _tertium aliquid_, is _invariably_ produced,
different from either, as a white and a negro produce a mulatto. But when
different varieties of the same race cross, the offspring is according to
what we call chance; it is now like one, now like the other parent. Note
this, when you see the children of any couple of distinct European
complexions,--as English and Spanish, German and Italian, Russian and
Portuguese, and so on.
_January_ 3. 1823.
MATERIALISM. --GHOSTS.
Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are
beasts; the first and wisest of beasts, it may be; but still true beasts.
[1] We shall only differ in degree, and not in kind; just as the elephant
differs from the slug. But by the concession of all the materialists of all
the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts--and this
also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the
possession of a soul within us that makes the difference.
[Footnote 1:
"Try to conceive a _man_ without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will,
absolute truth; of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An
_animal_ endowed with a memory of appearances and facts might remain. But
the _man_ will have vanished, and you have instead a creature more subtle
than any beast of the field, but likewise cursed above every beast of the
field; upon the belly must it go, and dust must it eat all the days of its
life. "--_Church and State_, p. 54. n. ]
* * * * *
Read the first chapter of Genesis without prejudice, and you will be
convinced at once. After the narrative of the creation of the earth and
brute animals, Moses seems to pause, and says:--"And God said, Let us make
man in _our image_, after _our likeness_. " And in the next chapter, he
repeats the narrative:--"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;" and then he
adds these words,--"_and man became a living soul_. " Materialism will never
explain those last words.
* * * * *
Define a vulgar ghost with reference to all that is called ghost-like. It
is visibility without tangibility; which is also the definition of a
shadow. Therefore, a vulgar ghost and a shadow would be the same; because
two different things cannot properly have the same definition. A _visible
substance_ without susceptibility of impact, I maintain to be an absurdity.
Unless there be an external substance, the bodily eye _cannot_ see it;
therefore, in all such cases, that which is supposed to be seen is, in
fact, _not_ seen, but is an image of the brain. External objects naturally
produce sensation; but here, in truth, sensation produces, as it were, the
external object. In certain states of the nerves, however, I do believe
that the eye, although not consciously so directed, may, by a slight
convulsion, see a portion of the body, as if opposite to it. The part
actually seen will by common association seem the whole; and the whole body
will then constitute an external object, which explains many stories of
persons seeing themselves lying dead. Bishop Berkeley once experienced
this. He had the presence of mind to ring the bell, and feel his pulse;
keeping his eye still fixed on his own figure right opposite to him. He was
in a high fever, and the brain image died away as the door opened. I
observed something very like it once at Grasmere; and was so conscious of
the cause, that I told a person what I was experiencing, whilst the image
still remained.
Of course, if the vulgar ghost be really a shadow, there must be some
substance of which it is the shadow. These visible and intangible shadows,
without substances to cause them, are absurd.
January 4. 1828.
CHARACTER OF THE AGE FOR LOGIC. --PLATO AND XENOPHON. ----GREEK DRAMA. ----
KOTZEBUE. --BURKE. --PLAGIARISTS.
This is not a logical age. A friend lately gave me some political pamphlets
of the times of Charles I. and the Cromwellate. In them the premisses are
frequently wrong, but the deductions are almost always legitimate; whereas,
in the writings of the present day, the premisses are commonly sound, but
the conclusions false. I think a great deal of commendation is due to the
University of Oxford for preserving the study of logic in the schools. It
is a great mistake to suppose geometry any substitute for it.
* * * * *
Negatively, there may be more of the philosophy of Socrates in the
Memorabilia of Xenophon than in Plato: that is, there is less of what does
not belong to Socrates; but the general spirit of, and impression left by,
Plato, are more Socratic. [1]
[Footnote 1:
See p. 26. Mr. Coleridge meant in both these passages, that Xenophon had
preserved the most of the _man_ Socrates; that he was the best Boswell; and
that Socrates, as a _persona dialogi_, was little more than a poetical
phantom in Plato's hands. On the other hand, he says that Plato is more
_Socratic_, that is, more of a philosopher in the Socratic _mode_ of
reasoning (Cicero calls the Platonic writings generally, _Socratici
libri_); and Mr. C. also says, that in the metaphysical disquisitions Plato
is Pythagorean, meaning, that he worked on the supposed ideal or
transcendental principles of the extraordinary founder of the Italian
school. ]
* * * * *
In AEschylus religion appears terrible, malignant, and persecuting:
Sophocles is the mildest of the three tragedians, but the persecuting
aspect is still maintained: Euripides is like a modern Frenchman, never so
happy as when giving a slap at the gods altogether.
* * * * *
Kotzebue represents the petty kings of the islands in the Pacific Ocean
exactly as so many Homeric chiefs. Riches command universal influence, and
all the kings are supposed to be descended from the gods.
* * * * *
I confess I doubt the Homeric genuineness of [Greek: dakruoen gelaschsa].
[1] It sounds to me much more like a prettiness of Bion or Moschus.
[Footnote 1:
[Greek: hos eipon, alochoio thilaes en chersin ethaeke paid eon hae d ara
min chaeodei dexato cholpo, dachruoen gelasasa. ]--Illiad. Z. vi. 482]
* * * * *
The very greatest writers write best when calm, and exerting themselves
upon subjects unconnected with party. Burke rarely shows all his powers,
unless where he is in a passion. The French Revolution was alone a subject
fit for him.
We are not yet aware of all the consequences of that event. We
are too near it.
* * * * *
Goldsmith did every thing happily.
* * * * *
You abuse snuff! Perhaps it is the final cause of the human nose.
* * * * *
A rogue is a roundabout fool; a fool _in circumbendibus_.
* * * * *
_Omne ignotum pro magnifico_. A dunghill at a distance sometimes smells
like musk, and a dead dog like elder-flowers.
* * * * *
Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from,--as pickpockets are
observed commonly to walk with their hands in their breeches' pockets.
_January 6_. 1823.
ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL. --CHRISTIANITY--EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. --THE LOGOS. --
REASON AND UNDERSTANDING.
St. John had a twofold object in his Gospel and his Epistles,--to prove the
divinity, and also the actual human nature and bodily suffering, of Jesus
Christ,--that he was God and Man. The notion that the effusion of blood and
water from the Saviour's side was intended to prove the real _death_ of the
sufferer originated, I believe, with some modern Germans, and seems to me
ridiculous: there is, indeed, a very small quantity of water occasionally
in the praecordia: but in the pleura, where wounds are not generally mortal,
there is a great deal. St. John did not mean, I apprehend, to insinuate
that the spear-thrust made the _death_, merely as such, certain or evident,
but that the effusion showed the human nature. "I saw it," he would say,
"with my own eyes. It was real blood, composed of lymph and crassamentum,
and not a mere celestial ichor, as the Phantasmists allege. "
* * * * *
I think the verse of the three witnesses (1 John, v. 7. ) spurious, not only
because the balance of external authority is against it, as Porson seems to
have shown; but also, because, in my way of looking at it, it spoils the
reasoning.
* * * * *
St. John's logic is Oriental, and consists chiefly in position and
parallel; whilst St. Paul displays all the intricacies of the Greek system.
* * * * *
Whatever may be thought of the genuineness or authority of any part of the
book of Daniel, it makes no difference in my belief in Christianity; for
Christianity is within a man, even as he is a being gifted with reason; it
is associated with your mother's chair, and with the first-remembered tones
of her blessed voice.
* * * * *
I do not believe St. Paul to be the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Luther's conjecture is very probable, that it was by Apollos, an
Alexandrian Jew. The plan is too studiously regular for St. Paul. It was
evidently written during the yet existing glories of the Temple. For three
hundred years the church did not affix St. Paul's name to it; but its
apostolical or catholic character, independently of its genuineness as to
St. Paul, was never much doubted.
* * * * *
The first three Gospels show the history, that is, the fulfilment of the
prophecies in the facts. St. John declares explicitly the doctrine,
oracularly, and without comment, because, being pure reason, it can only be
proved by itself. For Christianity proves itself, as the sun is seen by its
own light. Its evidence is involved in its existence. St. Paul writes more
particularly for the dialectic understanding; and proves those doctrines,
which were capable of such proof, by common logic.
* * * * *
St. John used the term [Greek: ho Logos] technically. Philo-Judaeus had so
used it several years before the probable date of the composition of this
Gospel; and it was commonly understood amongst the Jewish Rabbis at that
time, and afterwards, of the manifested God.
* * * * *
Our translators, unfortunately, as I think, render the clause [Greek: pros
ton Theos] "_with_ God;" that would be right, if the Greek were [Greek: syn
to Theo]. [1]
By the preposition [Greek: pros] in this place, is meant the utmost
possible _proximity_, without _confusion_; likeness, without sameness. The
Jewish Church understood the Messiah to be a divine person. Philo expressly
cautions against any one's supposing the Logos to be a mere
personification, or symbol. He says, the Logos is a substantial, self-
existent Being. The Gnostics, as they were afterwards called, were a kind
of Arians; and thought the Logos was an after-birth. They placed [Greek:
Abyssos] and [Greek: Sigae] (the Abyss and Silence) before him. Therefore
it was that St. John said, with emphasis, [Greek: en archae aen ho Logos]--
"In the _beginning_ was the Word. " He was begotten in the first
simultaneous burst of Godhead, if such an expression may be pardoned, in
speaking of eternal existence.
[Footnote 1: John, ch. i. v. 1, 2. ]
* * * * *
The Understanding suggests the materials of reasoning: the Reason decides
upon them. The first can only say,--This _is_, or _ought_ to be so. The
last says,--It _must_ be so. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I have preserved this, and several other equivalent remarks, out of a
dutiful wish to popularize, by all the honest means in my power, this
fundamental distinction; a thorough mastery of which Mr. Coleridge
considered necessary to any sound system of psychology; and in the denial
or neglect of which, he delighted to point out the source of most of the
vulgar errors in philosophy and religion. The distinction itself is
implied throughout almost all Mr. C. 's works, whether in verse or prose;
but it may be found minutely argued in the "Aids to Reflection," p. 206,
&c. 2d edit. 1831. --ED. ]
_April_ 27. 1823.
KEAN. --SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. --SIR H. DAVY. --ROBERT SMITH. --CANNING. --
NATIONAL DEBT. --POOR LAWS.
Kean is original; but he copies from himself. His rapid descents from the
hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial, though sometimes productive of great
effect, are often unreasonable. To see him act, is like reading Shakspeare
by flashes of lightning. I do not think him thorough-bred gentleman enough
to play Othello.
* * * * *
Sir James Mackintosh is the king of the men of talent. He is a most elegant
converger. How well I remember his giving breakfast to me and Sir Humphry
Davy, at that time an unknown young man, and our having a very spirited
talk about Locke and Newton, and so forth! When Davy was gone, Mackintosh
said to me, "That's a very extraordinary young man; but he is gone wrong on
some points. " But Davy was, at that time at least, a man of genius; and I
doubt if Mackintosh ever heartily appreciated an eminently original man. He
is uncommonly powerful in his own line; but it is not the line of a first-
rate man. After all his fluency and brilliant erudition, you can rarely
carry off any thing worth preserving. You might not improperly write on his
forehead, "Warehouse to let! " He always dealt too much in generalities for
a lawyer. He is deficient in power in applying his principles to the points
in debate. I remember Robert Smith had much more logical ability; but Smith
aimed at conquest by any gladiatorial shift; whereas Mackintosh was
uniformly candid in argument. I am speaking now from old recollections.
* * * * *
Canning is very irritable, surprisingly so for a wit who is always giving
such hard knocks. He should have put on an ass's skin before he went into
parliament. Lord Liverpool is the single stay of this ministry; but he is
not a man of a directing mind. He cannot ride on the whirlwind. He serves
as the isthmus to connect one half of the cabinet with the other. He always
gives you the common sense of the matter, and in that it is that his
strength in debate lies.
* * * * *
The national debt has, in fact, made more men rich than have a right to be
so, or, rather, any ultimate power, in case of a struggle, of actualizing
their riches. It is, in effect, like an ordinary, where three hundred
tickets have been distributed, but where there is, in truth, room only for
one hundred. So long as you can amuse the company with any thing else, or
make them come in successively, all is well, and the whole three hundred
fancy themselves sure of a dinner; but if any suspicion of a hoax should
arise, and they were all to rush into the room at once, there would be two
hundred without a potato for their money; and the table would be occupied
by the landholders, who live on the spot.
* * * * *
Poor-laws are the inevitable accompaniments of an extensive commerce and a
manufacturing system. In Scotland, they did without them, till Glasgow and
Paisley became great manufacturing places, and then people said, "We must
subscribe for the poor, or else we shall have poor-laws. " That is to say,
they enacted for themselves a poor-law in order to avoid having a poor-law
enacted for them. It is absurd to talk of Queen Elizabeth's act as creating
the poor-laws of this country. The poor-rates are the consideration paid
by, or on behalf of, capitalists for having labour at demand. It is the
price, and nothing else. The hardship consists in the agricultural interest
having to pay an undue proportion of the rates; for although, perhaps, in
the end, the land becomes more valuable, yet, at the first, the landowners
have to bear all the brunt. I think there ought to be a fixed revolving
period for the equalization of rates.
_April_ 28. 1823.
CONDUCT OF THE WHIGS. --REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
The conduct of the Whigs is extravagantly inconsistent. It originated in
the fatal error which Fox committed, in persisting, after the first three
years of the French Revolution, when every shadow of freedom in France had
vanished, in eulogizing the men and measures of that shallow-hearted
people. So he went on gradually, further and further departing from all the
principles of English policy and wisdom, till at length he became the
panegyrist, through thick and thin, of a military frenzy, under the
influence of which the very name of liberty was detested. And thus it was
that, in course of time, Fox's party became the absolute abettors of the
Buonapartean invasion of Spain, and did all in their power to thwart the
generous efforts of this country to resist it. Now, when the invasion is by
a Bourbon, and the cause of the Spanish nation neither united nor, indeed,
sound in many respects, the Whigs would precipitate this country into a
crusade to fight up the cause of a faction.
I have the honour of being slightly known to my lord Darnley. In 1808-9, I
met him accidentally, when, after a few words of salutation, he said to me,
"Are you mad, Mr. Coleridge? "--"Not that I know, my lord," I replied; "what
have I done which argues any derangement of mind? "--"Why, I mean," said he,
"those letters of yours in the Courier, 'On the Hopes and Fears of a People
invaded by foreign Armies. ' The Spaniards are absolutely conquered; it is
absurd to talk of their chance of resisting. "--"Very well, my lord," I
said, "we shall see. But will your lordship permit me, in the course of a
year or two, to retort your question upon you, if I should have grounds for
so doing? "--"Certainly! " said he; "that is fair! " Two years afterwards,
when affairs were altered in Spain, I met Lord Darnley again, and, after
some conversation, ventured to say to him, "Does your lordship recollect
giving me leave to retort a certain question upon you about the Spaniards?
Who is mad now? "--"Very true, very true, Mr. Coleridge," cried he: "you are
right. It is very extraordinary. It was a very happy and hold guess. " Upon
which I remarked, "I think '_guess_' is hardly a fair term. For, has any
thing happened that has happened, from any other causes, or under any other
conditions, than such as I laid down Beforehand? " Lord Darnley, who was
always very courteous to me, took this with a pleasant nod of his head.
* * * * *
Many votes are given for reform in the House of Commons, which are not
honest. Whilst it is well known that the measure will not he carried in
parliament, it is as well to purchase some popularity by voting for it.
When Hunt and his associates, before the Six Acts, created a panic, the
ministers lay on their oars for three or four months, until the general
cry, even from the opposition, was, "Why don't the ministers come forward
with some protective measure? " The present Ministry exists on the weakness
and desperate character of the Opposition. The sober part of the nation are
afraid of the latter getting into power, lest they should redeem some of
their pledges.
* * * * *
_April_ 29. 1823.
CHURCH OF ROME.
The present adherents of the church of Rome are not, in my judgment,
Catholics. We are the Catholics. We can prove that we hold the doctrines of
the primitive church for the first three hundred years. The council of
Trent made the Papists what they are. [1] A foreign Romish bishop has
declared, that the Protestants of his acquaintance were more like what he
conceived the enlightened Catholics to have been before the council of
Trent, than the best of the latter in his days. Perhaps you will say, this
bishop was not a _good Catholic_. [2] I cannot answer for that. The course
of Christianity and the Christian church may not unaptly be likened to a
mighty river, which filled a wide channel, and bore along with its waters
mud, and gravel, and weeds, till it met a great rock in the middle of its
stream. By some means or other, the water flows purely, and separated from
the filth, in a deeper and narrower course on one side of the rock, and the
refuse of the dirt and troubled water goes off on the other in a broader
current, and then cries out, "_We_ are the river! "
[Footnote 1: See Aids to Reflection, p. 180. note. ]
[Footnote 2: Mr. Coleridge named him, but the name was strange to me, and I
have been unable to recover it--ED. ]
* * * * *
A person said to me lately, "But you will, for civility's sake, _call_ them
_Catholics_, will you not? " I answered, that I would not; for I would not
tell a lie upon any, much less upon so solemn an occasion. "The adherents
of the church of Rome, I repeat, are not _Catholic_ Christians. If they
are, then it follows that we Protestants are heretics and schismatics, as,
indeed, the Papists very logically, from their own premisses, call us. And
'_Roman_ Catholics' makes no difference. Catholicism is not capable of
degrees or local apportionments. There can be but one body of Catholics,
_ex vi termini_. To talk strictly of _Irish_ or _Scotch Roman_ Catholics is
a mere absurdity. "
* * * * *
It is common to hear it said, that, if the legal disabilities are removed,
the Romish church will lose ground in this country. I think the reverse:
the Romish religion is, or, in certain hands, is capable of being made, so
flattering to the passions and self-delusion of men, that it is impossible
to say how far it would spread, amongst the higher orders of society
especially, if the secular disadvantages now attending its profession were
removed. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Here, at least, the prophecy has been fulfilled. The wisdom of our
ancestors, in the reign of King William III. , would have been jealous of
the daily increase in the numbers of the Romish church in England, of which
every attentive observer must be aware. See _Sancti Dominici Pallium_, in
vol. ii. p. 80. of Mr. Coleridge's Poems. -Ed. ]
April 30. 1823.
ZENDAVESTA. --PANTHEISM AND IDOLATRY.
The Zendavesta must, I think, have been copied in parts from the writings
of Moses. In the description of the creation, the first chapter of Genesis
is taken almost literally, except that the sun is created _before_ the
light, and then the herbs and the plants after the sun; which are precisely
the two points they did not understand, and therefore altered as errors. [1]
There are only two acts of creation, properly so called, in the Mosaic
account,--the material universe and man. The intermediate acts seem more as
the results of secondary causes, or, at any rate, of a modification of
prepared materials.
[Footnote 1:
The Zend, or Zendavesta, is the sacred book ascribed to Zoroaster, or
Zerdusht, the founder or reformer of the Magian religion. The modern
edition or paraphrase of this work, called the Sadda, written in the
Persian of the day, was, I believe, composed about three hundred years ago
--Ed. ]
* * * * *
Pantheism and idolatry naturally end in each other; for all extremes meet.
The Judaic religion is the exact medium, the true compromise.
_May_ 1.
Jelousy does not strike me as the point in his passion; I take it to be
rather an agony that the creature, whom he had believed angelic, with whom
he had garnered up his heart, and whom he could not help still loving,
should be proved impure and worthless. It was the struggle _not_ to
love her. It was a moral indignation and regret that virture should so
fall:--"But yet the _pity_ of it, Iago! --O Iago! the _pity_ of it,
Iago! " In addition to this, his hourour was concerned: Iago would not have
succeeded but by hinting that this honour was compromised. There is no
ferocity in Othello; his mind is majestic and composed. He deliberately
determines to die; and speaks his last speech with a view of showing his
attachment to the Venetian state, though it had superseded him.
[Footnote 1:
Caballaeros Granadinos,
Aunque Moros, hijos d'algo--ED. ]
* * * * *
Schiller has the material Sublime; to produce an effect he sets you a
whole town on fire, and throws infants with their mothers into the flames,
or locks up a father in an old tower. [1] But Shakspeare drops a
handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow.
[Footnote 1:
This expression--"material sublime"--like a hundred others
which have slipped into general use, came originally from Mr. Coleridege,
and was by him, in the first instatnce, applied to Schiller's Robbers--
See Act iv, sc. 5. --ED. ]
Lear is the most tremendous effort of Shakspeare as a poet; Hamlet as a
philosopher or meditater; and Othello is the union of the two. There is
something gigantic and unformed in the former two; but in the latter, every
thing assumes its due place and proportion, and the whole mature powers of
his mind are displayed in admirable equilibrium.
I think Old Mortality and Guy Mannering the best of the Scotch novels.
It seems, to my ear, that there is a sad want of harmony in Lord Byron's
verses. Is it not unnatural to be always connecting very great intellectual
power with utter depravity? Does such a combination often really exist in
rerum naturae?
I always had a great liking--I may say, a sort of nondescript reverence--
for John Kemble. What a quaint creature he was! I remember a party, in
which he was discoursing in his measured manner after dinner, when the
servant announced his carriage. He nodded, and went on. The announcement
took place twice afterwards; Kemble each time nodding his head a little
more impatiently, but still going on. At last, and for the fourth time, the
servant entered, and said,--"Mrs. Kemble says, sir, she has the
rheumat_ise_, and cannot stay. " "Add_ism! _" dropped John, in a
parenthesis, and proceeded quietly in his harangue.
* * * * *
Kemble would correct any body, at any time, and in any place. Dear Charles
Mathews--a true genius in his line, in my judgment--told me he was once
performing privately before the King. The King was much pleased with the
imitation of Kemble, and said,--"I liked Kemble very much. He was one of my
earliest friends. I remember once he was talking, and found himself out of
snuff. I offered him my box. He declined taking any--'he, a poor actor,
could not put his fingers into a royal box. ' I said, 'Take some, pray; you
will obl_ee_ge me. ' Upon which Kemble replied,--'It would become your royal
mouth better to say, obl_i_ge me;' and took a pinch. "
* * * * *
It is not easy to put me out of countenance, or interrupt the feeling of
the time by mere external noise or circumstance; yet once I was thoroughly
_done up_, as you would say. I was reciting, at a particular house, the
"Remorse;" and was in the midst of Alhadra's description of the death of
her husband, [1] when a scrubby boy, with a shining face set in dirt, burst
open the door and cried out,--"Please, ma'am, master says, Will you ha'; or
will you _not_ ha', the pin-round? "
[Footnote 1:
"ALHADRA. This night your chieftain arm'd himself,
And hurried from me. But I follow'd him
At distance, till I saw him enter _there_!
NAOMI. The cavern?
ALHADRA. Yes, the mouth of yonder cavern.
After a while I saw the son of Valdez
Rush by with flaring torch: he likewise enter'd.
There was another and a longer pause;
And once, methought, I heard the clash of swords!
And soon the son of Valdez re-appear'd:
He flung his torch towards the moon in sport,
And seem'd as he were mirthful! I stood listening,
Impatient for the footsteps of my husband.
NAOMI. Thou calledst him?
ALHADRA. I crept into the cavern--
'Twas dark and very silent. What saidst thou?
No! No! I did not dare call Isidore,
Lest I should hear no answer! A brief while,
Belike, I lost all thought and memory
Of that for which I came! After that pause,
O Heaven! I heard a groan, and follow'd it;
And yet another groan, which guided me
Into a strange recess--and there was light,
A hideous light! his torch lay on the ground;
Its flame burnt dimly o'er a chasm's brink:
I spake; and whilst I spake, a feeble groan
Came from that chasm! it was his last--his death-groan!
NAOMI. Comfort her, Allah!
ALHADRA. I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony that cannot be remember'd,
Listening with horrid hope to hear a groan!
But I had heard his last;--my husband's death-groan!
NAOMI. Haste! let us onward!
ALHADRA. I look'd far down the pit--
My sight was bounded by a jutting fragment;
And it was stain'd with blood. Then first I shriek'd;
My eyeballs burnt, my brain grew hot as fire,
And all the hanging drops of the wet roof
Turn'd into blood--I saw them turn to blood!
And I was leaping wildly down the chasm,
When on the further brink I saw his sword,
And it said, Vengeance! --Curses on my tongue!
The moon hath moved in heaven, and I am here,
And he hath not had vengeance! --Isidore!
Spirit of Isidore, thy murderer lives!
Away, away! "--Act iv. sc. 3. ]
_January_ 1. 1823.
PARLIAMENTARY PRIVILEGE. ---PERMANENCY AND PROGRESSION OF NATIONS. --KANT'S
RACES OF MANKIND.
Privilege is a substitution for Law, where, from the nature of the
circumstances, a law cannot act without clashing with greater and more
general principles. The House of Commons must, of course, have the power of
taking cognizance of offences against its own rights. Sir Francis Burdett
might have been properly sent to the Tower for the speech he made in the
House [1]; but when afterwards he published it in Cobbett, and they took
cognizance of it as a breach of privilege, they violated the plain
distinction between privilege and law.
As a speech in the House, the House could alone animadvert upon it,
consistently with the effective preservation of its most necessary
prerogative of freedom of debate; but when that speech became a book, then
the law was to look to it; and there being a law of libel, commensurate
with every possible object of attack in the state, privilege, which acts,
or ought to act, only as a substitute for other laws, could have nothing to
do with it. I have heard that one distinguished individual said,--"That he,
for one, would not shrink from affirming, that if the House of Commons
chose to _burn_ one of their own members in Palace Yard, it had an inherent
power and right by the constitution to do so. " This was said, if at all, by
a moderate-minded man; and may show to what atrocious tyranny some persons
may advance in theory, under shadow of this word privilege.
[Footnote 1:
March 12. 1810. Sir Francis Burdett made a motion in the House of
Commons for the discharge of Mr. Gale Jones, who had been committed to
Newgate by a resolution of the House on the 21st of February preceding.
Sir Francis afterwards published, in Cobbett's Political Register, of the
24th of the same month of March, a "Letter to his Constituents, denying
the power of the House of Commons to imprison the people of England,"
and he accompanied the letter with an argument in support of his position.
On the 27th of March a complaint of breach of privilege, founded on this
publication, was made in the House by Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Lethbridge,
and after several long debates, a motion that Sir Francis Burdett should
be committed to the Tower was made on the 5th of April, 1810, by Sir
Robert Salisbury, and carried by a majority of 38. --ED. ]
* * * * *
There are two principles in every European and Christian state:
Permanency and Progression. [1]
In the civil wars of the seventeenth century in England, which are as new
and fresh now as they were a hundred and sixty years ago, and will be so
for ever to us, these two principles came to a struggle. It was natural
that the great and the good of the nation should he found in the ranks of
either side. In the Mohammedan states, there is no principle of permanence;
and, therefore, they sink directly. They existed, and could only exist, in
their efforts at progression; when they ceased to conquer, they fell in
pieces. Turkey would long since have fallen, had it not been supported by
the rival and conflicting interests of Christian Europe. The Turks have no
church; religion and state are one; hence there is no counterpoise, no
mutual support. This is the very essence of their Unitarianism. They have
no past; they are not an historical people; they exist only in the present.
China is an instance of a permanency without progression. The Persians are
a superior race: they have a history and a literature; they were always
considered by the Greeks as quite distinct from the other barbarians. The
Afghans are a remarkable people. They have a sort of republic. Europeans
and Orientalists may be well represented by two figures standing back to
back: the latter looking to the east, that is, backwards; the former
looking westward, or forwards.
[Footnote 1:
See this position stated and illustrated in detail in Mr. Coleridge's work,
"On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the Idea of
each," p. 21. 2d edit. 1830. Well acquainted as I am with the fact f the
comparatively small acceptation which Mr. Coleridge's prose works have ever
found in the literary world, and with the reasons, and, what is more, with
the causes, of it, I still wonder that this particular treatise has not
been more noticed: first, because it is a little book; secondly, because it
is, or at least nineteen-twentieths of it are, written in a popular style;
and thirdly, because it is the only work, that I know or have ever heard
mentioned, that even attempts a solution of the difficulty in which an
ingenious enemy of the church of England may easily involve most of its
modern defenders in Parliament, or through the press, upon their own
principles and admissions. Mr. Coleridge himself prized this little work
highly, although he admitted its incompleteness as a composition:--"But I
don't care a rush about it," he said to me, "as an author. The saving
distinctions are plainly stated in it, and I am sure nothing is wanted to
make them _tell_, but that some kind friend should steal them from their
obscure hiding-place, and just tumble them down before the public as _his
own_. "--ED. ]
* * * * *
Kant assigns three great races of mankind. If two individuals of distinct
races cross, a third, or _tertium aliquid_, is _invariably_ produced,
different from either, as a white and a negro produce a mulatto. But when
different varieties of the same race cross, the offspring is according to
what we call chance; it is now like one, now like the other parent. Note
this, when you see the children of any couple of distinct European
complexions,--as English and Spanish, German and Italian, Russian and
Portuguese, and so on.
_January_ 3. 1823.
MATERIALISM. --GHOSTS.
Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are
beasts; the first and wisest of beasts, it may be; but still true beasts.
[1] We shall only differ in degree, and not in kind; just as the elephant
differs from the slug. But by the concession of all the materialists of all
the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts--and this
also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the
possession of a soul within us that makes the difference.
[Footnote 1:
"Try to conceive a _man_ without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will,
absolute truth; of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An
_animal_ endowed with a memory of appearances and facts might remain. But
the _man_ will have vanished, and you have instead a creature more subtle
than any beast of the field, but likewise cursed above every beast of the
field; upon the belly must it go, and dust must it eat all the days of its
life. "--_Church and State_, p. 54. n. ]
* * * * *
Read the first chapter of Genesis without prejudice, and you will be
convinced at once. After the narrative of the creation of the earth and
brute animals, Moses seems to pause, and says:--"And God said, Let us make
man in _our image_, after _our likeness_. " And in the next chapter, he
repeats the narrative:--"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;" and then he
adds these words,--"_and man became a living soul_. " Materialism will never
explain those last words.
* * * * *
Define a vulgar ghost with reference to all that is called ghost-like. It
is visibility without tangibility; which is also the definition of a
shadow. Therefore, a vulgar ghost and a shadow would be the same; because
two different things cannot properly have the same definition. A _visible
substance_ without susceptibility of impact, I maintain to be an absurdity.
Unless there be an external substance, the bodily eye _cannot_ see it;
therefore, in all such cases, that which is supposed to be seen is, in
fact, _not_ seen, but is an image of the brain. External objects naturally
produce sensation; but here, in truth, sensation produces, as it were, the
external object. In certain states of the nerves, however, I do believe
that the eye, although not consciously so directed, may, by a slight
convulsion, see a portion of the body, as if opposite to it. The part
actually seen will by common association seem the whole; and the whole body
will then constitute an external object, which explains many stories of
persons seeing themselves lying dead. Bishop Berkeley once experienced
this. He had the presence of mind to ring the bell, and feel his pulse;
keeping his eye still fixed on his own figure right opposite to him. He was
in a high fever, and the brain image died away as the door opened. I
observed something very like it once at Grasmere; and was so conscious of
the cause, that I told a person what I was experiencing, whilst the image
still remained.
Of course, if the vulgar ghost be really a shadow, there must be some
substance of which it is the shadow. These visible and intangible shadows,
without substances to cause them, are absurd.
January 4. 1828.
CHARACTER OF THE AGE FOR LOGIC. --PLATO AND XENOPHON. ----GREEK DRAMA. ----
KOTZEBUE. --BURKE. --PLAGIARISTS.
This is not a logical age. A friend lately gave me some political pamphlets
of the times of Charles I. and the Cromwellate. In them the premisses are
frequently wrong, but the deductions are almost always legitimate; whereas,
in the writings of the present day, the premisses are commonly sound, but
the conclusions false. I think a great deal of commendation is due to the
University of Oxford for preserving the study of logic in the schools. It
is a great mistake to suppose geometry any substitute for it.
* * * * *
Negatively, there may be more of the philosophy of Socrates in the
Memorabilia of Xenophon than in Plato: that is, there is less of what does
not belong to Socrates; but the general spirit of, and impression left by,
Plato, are more Socratic. [1]
[Footnote 1:
See p. 26. Mr. Coleridge meant in both these passages, that Xenophon had
preserved the most of the _man_ Socrates; that he was the best Boswell; and
that Socrates, as a _persona dialogi_, was little more than a poetical
phantom in Plato's hands. On the other hand, he says that Plato is more
_Socratic_, that is, more of a philosopher in the Socratic _mode_ of
reasoning (Cicero calls the Platonic writings generally, _Socratici
libri_); and Mr. C. also says, that in the metaphysical disquisitions Plato
is Pythagorean, meaning, that he worked on the supposed ideal or
transcendental principles of the extraordinary founder of the Italian
school. ]
* * * * *
In AEschylus religion appears terrible, malignant, and persecuting:
Sophocles is the mildest of the three tragedians, but the persecuting
aspect is still maintained: Euripides is like a modern Frenchman, never so
happy as when giving a slap at the gods altogether.
* * * * *
Kotzebue represents the petty kings of the islands in the Pacific Ocean
exactly as so many Homeric chiefs. Riches command universal influence, and
all the kings are supposed to be descended from the gods.
* * * * *
I confess I doubt the Homeric genuineness of [Greek: dakruoen gelaschsa].
[1] It sounds to me much more like a prettiness of Bion or Moschus.
[Footnote 1:
[Greek: hos eipon, alochoio thilaes en chersin ethaeke paid eon hae d ara
min chaeodei dexato cholpo, dachruoen gelasasa. ]--Illiad. Z. vi. 482]
* * * * *
The very greatest writers write best when calm, and exerting themselves
upon subjects unconnected with party. Burke rarely shows all his powers,
unless where he is in a passion. The French Revolution was alone a subject
fit for him.
We are not yet aware of all the consequences of that event. We
are too near it.
* * * * *
Goldsmith did every thing happily.
* * * * *
You abuse snuff! Perhaps it is the final cause of the human nose.
* * * * *
A rogue is a roundabout fool; a fool _in circumbendibus_.
* * * * *
_Omne ignotum pro magnifico_. A dunghill at a distance sometimes smells
like musk, and a dead dog like elder-flowers.
* * * * *
Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from,--as pickpockets are
observed commonly to walk with their hands in their breeches' pockets.
_January 6_. 1823.
ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL. --CHRISTIANITY--EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. --THE LOGOS. --
REASON AND UNDERSTANDING.
St. John had a twofold object in his Gospel and his Epistles,--to prove the
divinity, and also the actual human nature and bodily suffering, of Jesus
Christ,--that he was God and Man. The notion that the effusion of blood and
water from the Saviour's side was intended to prove the real _death_ of the
sufferer originated, I believe, with some modern Germans, and seems to me
ridiculous: there is, indeed, a very small quantity of water occasionally
in the praecordia: but in the pleura, where wounds are not generally mortal,
there is a great deal. St. John did not mean, I apprehend, to insinuate
that the spear-thrust made the _death_, merely as such, certain or evident,
but that the effusion showed the human nature. "I saw it," he would say,
"with my own eyes. It was real blood, composed of lymph and crassamentum,
and not a mere celestial ichor, as the Phantasmists allege. "
* * * * *
I think the verse of the three witnesses (1 John, v. 7. ) spurious, not only
because the balance of external authority is against it, as Porson seems to
have shown; but also, because, in my way of looking at it, it spoils the
reasoning.
* * * * *
St. John's logic is Oriental, and consists chiefly in position and
parallel; whilst St. Paul displays all the intricacies of the Greek system.
* * * * *
Whatever may be thought of the genuineness or authority of any part of the
book of Daniel, it makes no difference in my belief in Christianity; for
Christianity is within a man, even as he is a being gifted with reason; it
is associated with your mother's chair, and with the first-remembered tones
of her blessed voice.
* * * * *
I do not believe St. Paul to be the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Luther's conjecture is very probable, that it was by Apollos, an
Alexandrian Jew. The plan is too studiously regular for St. Paul. It was
evidently written during the yet existing glories of the Temple. For three
hundred years the church did not affix St. Paul's name to it; but its
apostolical or catholic character, independently of its genuineness as to
St. Paul, was never much doubted.
* * * * *
The first three Gospels show the history, that is, the fulfilment of the
prophecies in the facts. St. John declares explicitly the doctrine,
oracularly, and without comment, because, being pure reason, it can only be
proved by itself. For Christianity proves itself, as the sun is seen by its
own light. Its evidence is involved in its existence. St. Paul writes more
particularly for the dialectic understanding; and proves those doctrines,
which were capable of such proof, by common logic.
* * * * *
St. John used the term [Greek: ho Logos] technically. Philo-Judaeus had so
used it several years before the probable date of the composition of this
Gospel; and it was commonly understood amongst the Jewish Rabbis at that
time, and afterwards, of the manifested God.
* * * * *
Our translators, unfortunately, as I think, render the clause [Greek: pros
ton Theos] "_with_ God;" that would be right, if the Greek were [Greek: syn
to Theo]. [1]
By the preposition [Greek: pros] in this place, is meant the utmost
possible _proximity_, without _confusion_; likeness, without sameness. The
Jewish Church understood the Messiah to be a divine person. Philo expressly
cautions against any one's supposing the Logos to be a mere
personification, or symbol. He says, the Logos is a substantial, self-
existent Being. The Gnostics, as they were afterwards called, were a kind
of Arians; and thought the Logos was an after-birth. They placed [Greek:
Abyssos] and [Greek: Sigae] (the Abyss and Silence) before him. Therefore
it was that St. John said, with emphasis, [Greek: en archae aen ho Logos]--
"In the _beginning_ was the Word. " He was begotten in the first
simultaneous burst of Godhead, if such an expression may be pardoned, in
speaking of eternal existence.
[Footnote 1: John, ch. i. v. 1, 2. ]
* * * * *
The Understanding suggests the materials of reasoning: the Reason decides
upon them. The first can only say,--This _is_, or _ought_ to be so. The
last says,--It _must_ be so. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I have preserved this, and several other equivalent remarks, out of a
dutiful wish to popularize, by all the honest means in my power, this
fundamental distinction; a thorough mastery of which Mr. Coleridge
considered necessary to any sound system of psychology; and in the denial
or neglect of which, he delighted to point out the source of most of the
vulgar errors in philosophy and religion. The distinction itself is
implied throughout almost all Mr. C. 's works, whether in verse or prose;
but it may be found minutely argued in the "Aids to Reflection," p. 206,
&c. 2d edit. 1831. --ED. ]
_April_ 27. 1823.
KEAN. --SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. --SIR H. DAVY. --ROBERT SMITH. --CANNING. --
NATIONAL DEBT. --POOR LAWS.
Kean is original; but he copies from himself. His rapid descents from the
hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial, though sometimes productive of great
effect, are often unreasonable. To see him act, is like reading Shakspeare
by flashes of lightning. I do not think him thorough-bred gentleman enough
to play Othello.
* * * * *
Sir James Mackintosh is the king of the men of talent. He is a most elegant
converger. How well I remember his giving breakfast to me and Sir Humphry
Davy, at that time an unknown young man, and our having a very spirited
talk about Locke and Newton, and so forth! When Davy was gone, Mackintosh
said to me, "That's a very extraordinary young man; but he is gone wrong on
some points. " But Davy was, at that time at least, a man of genius; and I
doubt if Mackintosh ever heartily appreciated an eminently original man. He
is uncommonly powerful in his own line; but it is not the line of a first-
rate man. After all his fluency and brilliant erudition, you can rarely
carry off any thing worth preserving. You might not improperly write on his
forehead, "Warehouse to let! " He always dealt too much in generalities for
a lawyer. He is deficient in power in applying his principles to the points
in debate. I remember Robert Smith had much more logical ability; but Smith
aimed at conquest by any gladiatorial shift; whereas Mackintosh was
uniformly candid in argument. I am speaking now from old recollections.
* * * * *
Canning is very irritable, surprisingly so for a wit who is always giving
such hard knocks. He should have put on an ass's skin before he went into
parliament. Lord Liverpool is the single stay of this ministry; but he is
not a man of a directing mind. He cannot ride on the whirlwind. He serves
as the isthmus to connect one half of the cabinet with the other. He always
gives you the common sense of the matter, and in that it is that his
strength in debate lies.
* * * * *
The national debt has, in fact, made more men rich than have a right to be
so, or, rather, any ultimate power, in case of a struggle, of actualizing
their riches. It is, in effect, like an ordinary, where three hundred
tickets have been distributed, but where there is, in truth, room only for
one hundred. So long as you can amuse the company with any thing else, or
make them come in successively, all is well, and the whole three hundred
fancy themselves sure of a dinner; but if any suspicion of a hoax should
arise, and they were all to rush into the room at once, there would be two
hundred without a potato for their money; and the table would be occupied
by the landholders, who live on the spot.
* * * * *
Poor-laws are the inevitable accompaniments of an extensive commerce and a
manufacturing system. In Scotland, they did without them, till Glasgow and
Paisley became great manufacturing places, and then people said, "We must
subscribe for the poor, or else we shall have poor-laws. " That is to say,
they enacted for themselves a poor-law in order to avoid having a poor-law
enacted for them. It is absurd to talk of Queen Elizabeth's act as creating
the poor-laws of this country. The poor-rates are the consideration paid
by, or on behalf of, capitalists for having labour at demand. It is the
price, and nothing else. The hardship consists in the agricultural interest
having to pay an undue proportion of the rates; for although, perhaps, in
the end, the land becomes more valuable, yet, at the first, the landowners
have to bear all the brunt. I think there ought to be a fixed revolving
period for the equalization of rates.
_April_ 28. 1823.
CONDUCT OF THE WHIGS. --REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
The conduct of the Whigs is extravagantly inconsistent. It originated in
the fatal error which Fox committed, in persisting, after the first three
years of the French Revolution, when every shadow of freedom in France had
vanished, in eulogizing the men and measures of that shallow-hearted
people. So he went on gradually, further and further departing from all the
principles of English policy and wisdom, till at length he became the
panegyrist, through thick and thin, of a military frenzy, under the
influence of which the very name of liberty was detested. And thus it was
that, in course of time, Fox's party became the absolute abettors of the
Buonapartean invasion of Spain, and did all in their power to thwart the
generous efforts of this country to resist it. Now, when the invasion is by
a Bourbon, and the cause of the Spanish nation neither united nor, indeed,
sound in many respects, the Whigs would precipitate this country into a
crusade to fight up the cause of a faction.
I have the honour of being slightly known to my lord Darnley. In 1808-9, I
met him accidentally, when, after a few words of salutation, he said to me,
"Are you mad, Mr. Coleridge? "--"Not that I know, my lord," I replied; "what
have I done which argues any derangement of mind? "--"Why, I mean," said he,
"those letters of yours in the Courier, 'On the Hopes and Fears of a People
invaded by foreign Armies. ' The Spaniards are absolutely conquered; it is
absurd to talk of their chance of resisting. "--"Very well, my lord," I
said, "we shall see. But will your lordship permit me, in the course of a
year or two, to retort your question upon you, if I should have grounds for
so doing? "--"Certainly! " said he; "that is fair! " Two years afterwards,
when affairs were altered in Spain, I met Lord Darnley again, and, after
some conversation, ventured to say to him, "Does your lordship recollect
giving me leave to retort a certain question upon you about the Spaniards?
Who is mad now? "--"Very true, very true, Mr. Coleridge," cried he: "you are
right. It is very extraordinary. It was a very happy and hold guess. " Upon
which I remarked, "I think '_guess_' is hardly a fair term. For, has any
thing happened that has happened, from any other causes, or under any other
conditions, than such as I laid down Beforehand? " Lord Darnley, who was
always very courteous to me, took this with a pleasant nod of his head.
* * * * *
Many votes are given for reform in the House of Commons, which are not
honest. Whilst it is well known that the measure will not he carried in
parliament, it is as well to purchase some popularity by voting for it.
When Hunt and his associates, before the Six Acts, created a panic, the
ministers lay on their oars for three or four months, until the general
cry, even from the opposition, was, "Why don't the ministers come forward
with some protective measure? " The present Ministry exists on the weakness
and desperate character of the Opposition. The sober part of the nation are
afraid of the latter getting into power, lest they should redeem some of
their pledges.
* * * * *
_April_ 29. 1823.
CHURCH OF ROME.
The present adherents of the church of Rome are not, in my judgment,
Catholics. We are the Catholics. We can prove that we hold the doctrines of
the primitive church for the first three hundred years. The council of
Trent made the Papists what they are. [1] A foreign Romish bishop has
declared, that the Protestants of his acquaintance were more like what he
conceived the enlightened Catholics to have been before the council of
Trent, than the best of the latter in his days. Perhaps you will say, this
bishop was not a _good Catholic_. [2] I cannot answer for that. The course
of Christianity and the Christian church may not unaptly be likened to a
mighty river, which filled a wide channel, and bore along with its waters
mud, and gravel, and weeds, till it met a great rock in the middle of its
stream. By some means or other, the water flows purely, and separated from
the filth, in a deeper and narrower course on one side of the rock, and the
refuse of the dirt and troubled water goes off on the other in a broader
current, and then cries out, "_We_ are the river! "
[Footnote 1: See Aids to Reflection, p. 180. note. ]
[Footnote 2: Mr. Coleridge named him, but the name was strange to me, and I
have been unable to recover it--ED. ]
* * * * *
A person said to me lately, "But you will, for civility's sake, _call_ them
_Catholics_, will you not? " I answered, that I would not; for I would not
tell a lie upon any, much less upon so solemn an occasion. "The adherents
of the church of Rome, I repeat, are not _Catholic_ Christians. If they
are, then it follows that we Protestants are heretics and schismatics, as,
indeed, the Papists very logically, from their own premisses, call us. And
'_Roman_ Catholics' makes no difference. Catholicism is not capable of
degrees or local apportionments. There can be but one body of Catholics,
_ex vi termini_. To talk strictly of _Irish_ or _Scotch Roman_ Catholics is
a mere absurdity. "
* * * * *
It is common to hear it said, that, if the legal disabilities are removed,
the Romish church will lose ground in this country. I think the reverse:
the Romish religion is, or, in certain hands, is capable of being made, so
flattering to the passions and self-delusion of men, that it is impossible
to say how far it would spread, amongst the higher orders of society
especially, if the secular disadvantages now attending its profession were
removed. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Here, at least, the prophecy has been fulfilled. The wisdom of our
ancestors, in the reign of King William III. , would have been jealous of
the daily increase in the numbers of the Romish church in England, of which
every attentive observer must be aware. See _Sancti Dominici Pallium_, in
vol. ii. p. 80. of Mr. Coleridge's Poems. -Ed. ]
April 30. 1823.
ZENDAVESTA. --PANTHEISM AND IDOLATRY.
The Zendavesta must, I think, have been copied in parts from the writings
of Moses. In the description of the creation, the first chapter of Genesis
is taken almost literally, except that the sun is created _before_ the
light, and then the herbs and the plants after the sun; which are precisely
the two points they did not understand, and therefore altered as errors. [1]
There are only two acts of creation, properly so called, in the Mosaic
account,--the material universe and man. The intermediate acts seem more as
the results of secondary causes, or, at any rate, of a modification of
prepared materials.
[Footnote 1:
The Zend, or Zendavesta, is the sacred book ascribed to Zoroaster, or
Zerdusht, the founder or reformer of the Magian religion. The modern
edition or paraphrase of this work, called the Sadda, written in the
Persian of the day, was, I believe, composed about three hundred years ago
--Ed. ]
* * * * *
Pantheism and idolatry naturally end in each other; for all extremes meet.
The Judaic religion is the exact medium, the true compromise.
_May_ 1.
