The Spanish
Tragedy is, upon the authority of Heywood, attributed to Kyd.
Tragedy is, upon the authority of Heywood, attributed to Kyd.
Coleridge - Table Talk
Beaumont and Fletcher's plots are, to
be sure, wholly inartificial; they only care to pitch a character into a
position to make him or her talk; you must swallow all their gross
improbabilities, and, taking it all for granted, attend only to the
dialogue. How lamentable it is that no gentleman and scholar can he found
to edit these beautiful plays! [1] Did the name of criticism ever descend so
low as in the hands of those two fools and knaves, Seward and Simpson?
There are whole scenes in their edition which I could with certainty put
back into their original verse, and more that could he replaced in their
native prose. Was there ever such an absolute disregard of literary fame as
that displayed by Shakspeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher? [2]
[Footnote 1:
I believe Mr. Dyce could edit Beaumont and Fletcher as well as any man of
the present or last generation; but the truth is, the limited sale of the
late editions of Ben Jonson, Shirley, &c. , has damped the spirit of
enterprise amongst the respectable publishers. Still I marvel that some
cheap reprint of B. and F. is not undertaken. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
"The men of the greatest genius, as far as we can judge from their own
works, or from the accounts of their contemporaries, appear to have been of
calm and tranquil temper, in all that related to themselves. In the inward
assurance of permanent fame, they seem to have been either indifferent or
resigned, with regard to immediate reputation. "
* * * * *
"Shakspeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial in
his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative
greatness, we have abundant proof in his sonnets, which could scarcely have
been known to Mr. Pope, when he asserted, that our great bard 'grew
immortal in his own despite. '"--_Biog. Lit. _ vol. i, p. 32. ]
* * * * *
In Ben Jonson you have an intense and burning art. Some of his plots, that
of the Alchemist, for example, are perfect. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and
Fletcher would, if united, have made a great dramatist indeed, and yet not
have come near Shakspeare; but no doubt Ben Jonson was the greatest man
after Shakspeare in that age of dramatic genius.
The styles of Massinger's plays and the Sampson Agonistes are the two
extremes of the arc within which the diction of dramatic poetry may
oscillate. Shakspeare in his great plays is the midpoint. In the Samson
Agonistes, colloquial language is left at the greatest distance, yet
something of it is preserved, to render the dialogue probable: in Massinger
the style is differenced, but differenced in the smallest degree possible,
from animated conversation by the vein of poetry.
There's such a divinity doth hedge our Shakspeare round, that we cannot
even imitate his style. I tried to imitate his manner in the Remorse, and,
when I had done, I found I had been tracking Beaumont and Fletcher, and
Massinger instead. It is really very curious. At first sight, Shakspeare
and his contemporary dramatists seem to write in styles much alike: nothing
so easy as to fall into that of Massinger and the others; whilst no one has
ever yet produced one scene conceived and expressed in the Shakspearian
idiom. I suppose it is because Shakspeare is universal, and, in fact, has
no _manner_; just as you can so much more readily copy a picture than
Nature herself.
_February_ 20. 1833.
HOUSE OF COMMONS APPOINTING THE OFFICERS OF THE ARMY AND NAVY.
I was just now reading Sir John Cam Hobhouse's answer to Mr. Hume, I
believe, upon the point of transferring the patronage of the army and navy
from the Crown to the House of Commons. I think, if I had been in the House
of Commons, I would have said, "that, ten or fifteen years ago, I should
have considered Sir J. C. H. 's speech quite unanswerable,--it being clear
constitutional law that the House of Commons has not, nor ought to have,
any share, directly or indirectly, in the appointment of the officers of
the army or navy. But now that the King had been reduced, by the means and
procurement of the Honourable Baronet and his friends, to a puppet, which,
so far from having any independent will of its own, could not resist a
measure which it hated and condemned, it became a matter of grave
consideration whether it was not necessary to vest the appointment of such
officers in a body like the House of Commons, rather than in a junta of
ministers, who were obliged to make common cause with the mob and
democratic press for the sake of keeping their places. "
_March_ 9. 1833.
PENAL CODE IN IRELAND. --CHURCHMEN.
The penal code in Ireland, in the beginning of the last century, was
justifiable, as a temporary mean of enabling government to take breath and
look about them; and if right measures had been systematically pursued in a
right spirit, there can be no doubt that all, or the greater part, of
Ireland would have become Protestant. Protestantism under the Charter
Schools was greatly on the increase in the early part of that century, and
the complaints of the Romish priests to that effect are on record. But,
unfortunately, the drenching-horn was itself substituted for the medicine.
* * * * *
There seems to me, at present, to be a curse upon the English church, and
upon the governors of all institutions connected with the orderly
advancement of national piety and knowledge; it is the curse of prudence,
as they miscall it--in fact, of fear.
Clergymen are now almost afraid to explain in their pulpits the grounds of
their being Protestants. They are completely cowed by the vulgar harassings
of the press and of our Hectoring sciolists in Parliament. There should be
no _party_ politics in the pulpit to be sure; but every church in England
ought to resound with national politics,--I mean the sacred character of
the national church, and an exposure of the base robbery from the nation
itself--for so indeed it is[1]--about to be committed by these ministers,
in order to have a sop to throw to the Irish agitators, who will, of
course, only cut the deeper, and come the oftener. You cannot buy off a
barbarous invader.
[Footnote 1:
"That the maxims of a pure morality, and those sublime truths of the divine
unity and attributes, which a Plato found it hard to learn, and more
difficult to reveal; that these should have become the almost hereditary
property of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop; that even
to the unlettered they sound as _common-place_; this is a phenomenon which
must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the
services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. Yet he who should confine
the efficiency of an established church to these, can hardly be placed in a
much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the kingdom
there is transplanted a germ of civilization; that in the remotest villages
there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of the place may
crystallize and brighten; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet
sufficiently near to encourage and facilitate imitation; _this_
unobtrusive, continuous agency of a Protestant church establishment, _this_
it is, which the patriot and the philanthropist, who would fain unite the
love of peace with the faith in the progressive amelioration of mankind,
cannot estimate at too high a price. 'It cannot be valued with the gold of
Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No mention shall be made of
coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies. '--The
clergyman is with his parishioners and among them; he is neither in the
cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour and family man,
whose education and rank admit him to the mansion of the rich landholder,
while his duties make him the frequent visitor of the farm-house and the
cottage. He is, or he may become, connected with the families of his parish
or its vicinity by marriage. And among the instances of the blindness, or
at best of the short-sightedness, which it is the nature of cupidity to
inflict, I know few more striking than the clamours of the farmers against
church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergyman would inevitably at
the next lease be paid to the landholder; while, as the case at present
stands, the revenues of the church are in some sort the reversionary
property of every family that may have a member educated for the church, or
a daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead of being _foreclosed_ and
immovable, it is, in fact, the only species of landed property that is
essentially moving and circulative. That there exist no inconveniences who
will pretend to assert? --But I have yet to expect the proof, that the
inconveniences are greater in this than in any other species; or that
either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter
to become either _Trullibers_ or salaried _placemen_. "--_Church and State_,
p. 90. ]
_March_ 12. 1833.
CORONATION OATHS.
Lord Grey has, in Parliament, said two things: first, that the Coronation
Oaths only bind the King in his executive capacity; and, secondly, that
members of the House of Commons are bound to represent by their votes the
wishes and opinions of their constituents, and not their own. Put these two
together, and tell me what useful part of the constitutional monarchy of
England remains. It is clear that the Coronation Oaths would be no better
than Highgate oaths. For in his executive capacity the King _cannot_ do any
thing, against the doing of which the oaths bind him; it is _only_ in his
legislative character that he possesses a free agency capable of being
bound. The nation meant to bind _that_.
_March_ 14. 1833.
DIVINITY. --PROFESSIONS AND TRADES.
Divinity is essentially the first of the professions, because it is
necessary for all at all times; law and physic are only necessary for some
at some times. I speak of them, of course, not in their abstract existence,
but in their applicability to man.
* * * * *
Every true science bears necessarily within itself the germ of a cognate
profession, and the more you can elevate trades into professions the
better.
_March_ 17. 1833.
MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY.
What solemn humbug this modern political economy is! What is there true of
the little that is true in their dogmatic books, which is not a simple
deduction from the moral and religious _credenda_ and _agenda_ of any good
man, and with which we were not all previously acquainted, and upon which
every man of common sense instinctively acted? I know none. But what they
truly state, they do not truly understand in its ultimate grounds and
causes; and hence they have sometimes done more mischief by their half-
ignorant and half-sophistical reasonings about, and deductions from, well-
founded positions, than they could have done by the promulgation of
positive error. This particularly applies to their famous ratios of
increase between man and the means of his subsistence. Political economy,
at the highest, can never be a pure science. You may demonstrate that
certain properties inhere in the arch, which yet no bridge-builder _can_
ever reduce into brick and mortar; but an abstract conclusion in a matter
of political economy, the premisses of which neither exist now, nor ever
will exist within the range of the wildest imagination, is not a truth, but
a chimera--a practical falsehood. For there are no theorems in political
economy--but problems only. Certain things being actually so and so; the
question is, _how_ to _do_ so and so with them. Political _philosophy_,
indeed, points to ulterior ends, but even those ends are all practical; and
if you desert the conditions of reality, or of common probability, you may
show forth your eloquence or your fancy, but the utmost you can produce
will be a Utopia or Oceana.
You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the
market from 8_d_. to 6_d_. But suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your
country weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized
thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one
class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it,
after all. Is not its real price enhanced to every Christian and patriot a
hundred-fold?
* * * * *
_All_ is an endless fleeting abstraction; _the whole_ is a reality.
_March_ 31. 1833.
NATIONAL DEBT. --PROPERTY TAX. --DUTY OF LANDHOLDERS.
What evil results now to this country, taken at large, from the actual
existence of the National Debt? I never could get a plain and practical
answer to that question. I do not advert to the past loss of capital,
although it is hard to see how that capital can be said to have been
unproductive, which produces, in the defence of the nation itself, the
conditions of the permanence and productivity of all other capital. As to
taxation to pay the interest, how can the country suffer by a process,
under which the money is never one minute out of the pockets of the people?
You may just as well say that a man is weakened by the circulation of his
blood. There may, certainly, be particular local evils and grievances
resulting from the mode of taxation or collection; but how can that debt be
in any proper sense a burthen to the nation, which the nation owes to
itself, and to no one but itself? It is a juggle to talk of the nation
owing the capital or the interest to the stockholders; it owes to itself
only. Suppose the interest to be owing to the Emperor of Russia, and then
you would feel the difference of a debt in the proper sense. It is really
and truly nothing more in effect than so much moneys or money's worth,
raised annually by the state for the purpose of quickening industry. [1]
I should like to see a well graduated property tax, accompanied by a large
loan.
One common objection to a property tax is, that it tends to diminish the
accumulation of capital. In my judgment, one of the chief sources of the
bad economy of the country now is the enormous aggregation of capitals.
When shall we return to a sound conception of the right to property--
namely, as being official, implying and demanding the performance of
commensurate duties! Nothing but the most horrible perversion of humanity
and moral justice, under the specious name of political economy, could have
blinded men to this truth as to the possession of land,--the law of God
having connected indissolubly the cultivation of every rood of earth with
the maintenance and watchful labour of man. But money, stock, riches by
credit, transferable and convertible at will, are under no such
obligations; and, unhappily, it is from the selfish autocratic possession
of _such_ property, that our landholders have learnt their present theory
of trading with that which was never meant to be an object of commerce.
[Footnote 1:
See the splendid essay in the Friend (vol. ii, p. 47. ) on the vulgar errors
respecting taxes and taxation.
"A great statesman, lately deceased, in one of his anti-ministerial
harangues against some proposed impost, said, 'The nation has been already
bled in every vein, and is faint with loss of blood. ' This blood, however,
was circulating in the mean time through the whole body of the state, and
what was received into one chamber of the heart was instantly sent out
again at the other portal. Had he wanted a metaphor to convey the possible
injuries of taxation, he might have found one less opposite to the fact, in
the known disease of aneurism, or relaxation of the coats of particular
vessels, by a disproportionate accumulation of blood in them, which
sometimes occurs when the circulation has been suddenly and violently
changed, and causes helplessness, or even mortal stagnation, though the
total quantity of blood remains the same in the system at large.
"But a fuller and fairer symbol of taxation, both in its possible good and
evil effects, is to be found in the evaporation of waters from the surface
of the earth. The sun may draw up the moisture from the river, the morass,
and the ocean, to be given back in genial showers to the garden, to the
pasture, and the corn field; but it may, likewise, force away the moisture
from the fields of tillage, to drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated
swamp, or the unprofitable sand-waste. The gardens in the south of Europe
supply, perhaps, a not less apt illustration of a system of finance
judiciously conducted, where the tanks or reservoirs would represent the
capital of a nation, and the hundred rills, hourly varying their channels
and directions under the gardener's spade, give a pleasing image of the
dispersion of that capital through the whole population by the joint effect
of taxation and trade. For taxation itself is a part of commerce, and the
government maybe fairly considered as a great manufacturing house, carrying
on, in different places, by means of its partners and overseers, the trades
of the shipbuilder, the clothier, the iron-founder," &c. &c. --ED. ]
_April_ 5. 1833.
MASSINGER. --SHAKSPEARE. --HIERONIMO.
To please me, a poem must be either music or sense; if it is neither, I
confess I cannot interest myself in it.
* * * * *
The first act of the Virgin Martyr is as fine an act as I remember in any
play. The Very Woman is, I think, one of the most perfect plays we have.
There is some good fun in the first scene between Don John, or Antonio, and
Cuculo, his master[1]; and can any thing exceed the skill and sweetness of
the scene between him and his mistress, in which he relates his story? [2]
The Bondman is also a delightful play. Massinger is always entertaining;
his plays have the interest of novels.
But, like most of his contemporaries, except Shakspeare, Massinger often
deals in exaggerated passion. Malefort senior, in the Unnatural Combat,
however he may have had the moral will to be so wicked, could never have
actually done all that he is represented as guilty of, without losing his
senses. He would have been, in fact, mad. Regan and Goneril are the only
pictures of the unnatural in Shakspeare; the pure unnatural--and you will
observe that Shakspeare has left their hideousness unsoftened or
diversified by a single line of goodness or common human frailty. Whereas
in Edmund, for whom passion, the sense of shame as a bastard, and ambition,
offer some plausible excuses, Shakspeare has placed many redeeming traits.
Edmund is what, under certain circumstances, any man of powerful intellect
might be, if some other qualities and feelings were cut off. Hamlet is,
inclusively, an Edmund, but different from him as a whole, on account of
the controlling agency of other principles which Edmund had not.
It is worth while to remark the use which Shakspeare always makes of his
bold villains as vehicles for expressing opinions and conjectures of a
nature too hazardous for a wise man to put forth directly as his own, or
from any sustained character.
[Footnote 1: Act iii. sc. 2. ]
[Footnote 2: Act iv. sc. 3. :--
"ANT. Not far from where my father lives, a lady,
A neighbour by, bless'd with as great a beauty
As nature durst bestow without undoing,
Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then,
And bless'd the home a thousand times she dwelt in.
This beauty, in the blossom of my youth,
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,
Nor I no way to flatter, but my fondness;
In all the bravery my friends could show me,
In all the faith my innocence could give me,
In the best language my true tongue could tell me,
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lent me,
I sued and served: long did I love this lady,
Long was my travail, long my trade to win her;
With all the duty of my soul, I served her.
ALM. How feelingly he speaks! (_Aside_. ) And she loved you too?
It must be so.
ANT. I would it had, dear lady;
This story had been needless, and this place,
I think, unknown to me.
ALM. Were your bloods equal?
ANT. Yes; and I thought our hearts too.
ALM. Then she must love.
ANT. She did--but never me; she could not love me,
She would not love, she hated; more, she scorn'd me,
And in so poor and base a way abused me,
For all my services, for all my bounties,
So bold neglects flung on me--
ALM. An ill woman!
Belike you found some rival in your love, then?
ANT. How perfectly she points me to my story! (_Aside_. )
Madam, I did; and one whose pride and anger,
Ill manners, and worse mien, she doted on,
Doted to my undoing, and my ruin.
And, but for honour to your sacred beauty,
And reverence to the noble sex, though she fall,
As she must fall that durst be so unnoble,
I should say something unbeseeming me.
What out of love, and worthy love, I gave her,
Shame to her most unworthy mind! to fools,
To girls, and fiddlers, to her boys she flung,
And in disdain of me.
ALM. Pray you take me with you.
Of what complexion was she?
ANT. But that I dare not
Commit so great a sacrilege 'gainst virtue,
She look'd not much unlike--though far, far short,
Something, I see, appears--your pardon, madam--
Her eyes would smile so, but her eyes could cozen;
And so she would look sad; but yours is pity,
A noble chorus to my wretched story;
Hers was disdain and cruelty.
ALM. Pray heaven,
Mine be no worse! he has told me a strange story, (_Aside_. )" &c. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The parts pointed out in Hieronimo as Ben Jonson's bear no traces of his
style; but they are very like Shakspeare's; and it is very remarkable that
every one of them re-appears in full form and development, and tempered
with mature judgment, in some one or other of Shakspeare's great pieces. [1]
[Footnote 1:
By Hieronimo Mr. Coleridge meant The Spanish Tragedy, and not the previous
play, which is usually called The First Part of Jeronimo.
The Spanish
Tragedy is, upon the authority of Heywood, attributed to Kyd. It is
supposed that Ben Jonson originally performed the part of Hieronimo, and
hence it has been surmised that certain passages and whole scenes connected
with that character, and not found in some of the editions of the play,
are, in fact, Ben Jonson's own writing. Some of these supposed
interpolations are amongst the best things in the Spanish Tragedy; the
style is singularly unlike Jonson's, whilst there are turns and particular
images which do certainly seem to have been imitated by or from Shakspeare.
Mr. Lamb at one time gave them to Webster. Take this, passage, in the
fourth act:--
"HIERON. What make you with your torches in the dark?
PEDRO. You bid us light them, and attend you here.
HIERON. No! you are deceived; not I; you are deceived.
Was I so mad to bid light torches now?
Light me your torches at the mid of noon,
When as the sun-god rides in all his glory;
Light me your torches then.
PEDRO. Then we burn day-light.
HIERON. _Let it be burnt; Night is a murd'rous slut,
That would not have her treasons to be seen;
And yonder pale-faced Hecate there, the moon,
Doth give consent to that is done in darkness;
And all those stars that gaze upon her face
Are aglets on her sleeve, pins on her train;
And those that should be powerful and divine,
Do sleep in darkness when they most should shine. _
PEDRO. Provoke them not, fair sir, with tempting words.
The heavens are gracious, and your miseries and sorrow
Make you speak you know not what
HIERON. _Villain! thou liest, and thou dost nought
But tell me I am mad: thou liest, I am not mad;
I know thee to be Pedro, and he Jaques;
I'll prove it thee; and were I mad, how could I?
Where was she the same night, when my Horatio was murder'd!
She should have shone then; search thou the book:
Had the moon shone in my boy's face, there was a kind of grace,
That I know--nay, I do know, had the murderer seen him,
His weapon would have fallen, and cut the earth,
Had he been framed of nought but blood and death," &c. _
Again, in the fifth act:--
"HIERON. But are you sure that they are dead?
CASTILE. Ay, slain, too sure.
HIERON. What, and yours too?
VICEROY. Ay, all are dead; not one of them survive.
HIBRON. Nay, then I care not--come, we shall be friends;
Let us lay our heads together.
See, here's a goodly noose will hold them all.
VICEROY. O damned devil! how secure he is!
HIERON. Secure! why dost thou wonder at it?
_I tell thee, Viceroy, this day I've seen Revenge,
d in that sight am grown a prouder monarch
Than ever sate under the crown of Spain.
Had I as many lives at there be stars,_,
_As many heavens to go to as those lives,
I'd give them all, ay, and my soul to boot,
But I would see thee ride in this red pool.
Methinks, since I grew inward with revenge,
I cannot look with scorn enough on death. _
KING. What! dost thou mock us, slave? Bring tortures forth.
HIERON. _Do, do, do; and meantime I'll torture you.
You had a son as I take it, and your son
Should have been married to your daughter: ha! was it not so?
You had a son too, he was my liege's nephew.
He was proud and politic--had he lived,
He might have come to wear the crown of Spain:
I think 't was so--'t was I that killed him;
Look you--this same hand was it that stabb'd
His heart--do you see this hand?
For one Horatio, if you ever knew him--
A youth, one that they hang'd up in his father's garden--
One that did force your valiant son to yield_," &c. --ED. ]
_April_ 7. 1833.
LOVE'S LABOUR LOST. --GIFFORD'S MASSINGER. --SHAKSPEARE. --THE OLD DRAMATISTS.
I think I could point out to a half line what is really Shakspeare's in
Love's Labour Lost, and some other of the not entirely genuine plays. What
he wrote in that play is of his earliest manner, having the all-pervading
sweetness which he never lost, and that extreme condensation which makes
the couplets fall into epigrams, as in the Venus and Adonis, and Rape of
Lucrece. [1] In the drama alone, as Shakspeare soon found out, could the
sublime poet and profound philosopher find the conditions of a compromise.
In the Love's Labour Lost there are many faint sketches of some of his
vigorous portraits in after-life--as for example, in particular, of
Benedict and Beatrice. [2]
[Footnote 1:
"In Shakspeare's _Poems_ the creative power and the intellectual energy
wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to
threaten the extinction of the other. At length, in the drama, they were
reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other.
Or like two rapid streams, that, at their first meeting within narrow and
rocky banks, mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly,
and in tumult; but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores,
blend, and dilate, and flow on in one current, and with one voice. "--_Biog.
Lit. _ vol. ii. p. 21. ]
[Footnote 2:
Mr. Coleridge, of course, alluded to Biron and Rosaline; and there are
other obvious prolusions, as the scene of the masque with the courtiers,
compared with the play in A Midsummer Night's Dream. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Gifford has done a great deal for the text of Massinger, but not as much as
might easily be done. His comparison of Shakspeare with his contemporary
dramatists is obtuse indeed. [1]
[Footnote 1:
See his _Introduction to Massinger, vol_. i. p. 79. , in which, amongst other
most extraordinary assertions, Mr. Gifford pronounces that _rhythmical
modulation is not one of Shakspeare's merits! _--ED. ]
* * * * *
In Shakspeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all
inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere;
yet, when the creation in its outline is once perfect, then he seems to
rest from his labour, and to smile upon his work, and tell himself that it
is very good. You see many scenes and parts of scenes which are simply
Shakspeare's, disporting himself in joyous triumph and vigorous fun after a
great achievement of his highest genius.
* * * * *
The old dramatists took great liberties in respect of bringing parties in
scene together, and representing one as not recognizing the other under
some faint disguise. Some of their finest scenes are constructed on this
ground. Shakspeare avails himself of this artifice only twice, I think,--in
Twelfth Night, where the two are with great skill kept apart till the end
of the play; and in the Comedy of Errors, which is a pure farce, and should
be so considered. The definition of a farce is, an improbability or even
impossibility granted in the outset, see what odd and laughable events will
fairly follow from it!
_April _8. 1833.
STATESMEN. --BURKE.
I never was much subject to violent political humours or accesses of
feelings. When I was very young, I wrote and spoke very enthusiastically,
but it was always on subjects connected with some grand general principle,
the violation of which I thought I could point out. As to mere details of
administration, I honestly thought that ministers, and men in office, must,
of course, know much better than any private person could possibly do; and
it was not till I went to Malta, and had to correspond with official
characters myself, that I fully understood the extreme shallowness and
ignorance with which men of some note too were able, after a certain
fashion, to carry on the government of important departments of the empire.
I then quite assented to Oxenstiern's saying, _Nescis, mi fili, quam parva
sapientia regitur mundus_.
* * * * *
Burke was, indeed, a great man. No one ever read history so philosophically
as he seems to have done. Yet, until he could associate his general
principles with some sordid interest, panic of property, jacobinism, &c. ,
he was a mere dinner bell. Hence you will find so many half truths in his
speeches and writings. Nevertheless, let us heartily acknowledge his
transcendant greatness. He would have been more influential if he had less
surpassed his contemporaries, as Fox and Pitt, men of much inferior minds
in all respects.
* * * * *
As a telegraph supposes a correspondent telescope, so a scientific lecture
requires a scientific audience.
_April _9. 1833.
PROSPECT OF MONARCHY OR DEMOCRACY. --THE REFORMED HOUSE OF COMMONS.
I have a deep, though paradoxical, conviction that most of the European
nations are more or less on their way, unconsciously indeed, to pure
monarchy; that is, to a government in which, under circumstances of
complicated and subtle control, the reason of the people shall become
efficient in the apparent will of the king. [1] As it seems to me, the wise
and good in every country will, in all likelihood, become every day more
and more disgusted with the representative form of government, brutalized
as it is, and will be, by the predominance of democracy in England, France,
and Belgium. The statesmen of antiquity, we know, doubted the possibility
of the effective and permanent combination of the three elementary forms of
government; and, perhaps, they had more reason than we have been accustomed
to think.
[Footnote 1: This is backing Vico against Spinosa. It must, however, be
acknowledged that at present the prophet of democracy has a good right to
be considered the favourite. --ED. ]
* * * * *
You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill
prophecies that were made of it--low, vulgar, meddling with every thing,
assuming universal competency, flattering every base passion, and sneering
at every thing noble, refined, and truly national! The direct and personal
despotism will come on by and by, after the multitude shall have been
gratified with the ruin and the spoil of the old institutions of the land.
As for the House of Lords, what is the use of ever so much fiery spirit, if
there be no principle to guide and to sanctify it?
_April _10. 1833.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. --CAPTAIN B. HALL. --NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN STATES.
--DEMOCRACY WITH SLAVERY. --QUAKERS.
The possible destiny of the United States of America,--as a nation of a
hundred millions of freemen,--stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shakspeare
and Milton, is an august conception. Why should we not wish to see it
realized? America would then be England viewed through a solar microscope;
Great Britain in a state of glorious magnification! How deeply to be
lamented is the spirit of hostility and sneering which some of the popular
books of travels have shown in treating of the Americans! They hate us, no
doubt, just as brothers hate; but they respect the opinion of an Englishman
concerning themselves ten times as much as that of a native of any other
country on earth. A very little humouring of their prejudices, and some
courtesy of language and demeanour on the part of Englishmen, would work
wonders, even as it is, with the public mind of the Americans.
* * * * *
Captain Basil Hall's book is certainly very entertaining and instructive;
but, in my judgment, his sentiments upon many points, and more especially
his mode of expression, are unwise and uncharitable. After all, are not
most of the things shown up with so much bitterness by him mere national
foibles, parallels to which every people has and must of necessity have?
* * * * *
What you say about the quarrel in the United States is sophistical. No
doubt, taxation may, and perhaps in some cases must, press unequally, or
apparently so, on different classes of people in a state. In such cases
there is a hardship; but, in the long run, the matter is fully compensated
to the over-taxed class. For example, take the householders of London, who
complain so bitterly of the house and window taxes. Is it not pretty clear
that, whether such householder be a tradesman, who indemnifies himself in
the price of his goods,--or a letter of lodgings, who does so in his rent,
--or a stockholder, who receives it back again in his dividends,--or a
country gentleman, who has saved so much fresh levy on his land or his
other property,--one way or other, it comes at last pretty nearly to the
same thing, though the pressure for the time may be unjust and vexatious,
and fit to be removed? But when New England, which may be considered a
state in itself, taxes the admission of foreign manufactures in order to
cherish manufactures of its own, and thereby forces the Carolinians,
another state of itself, with which there is little intercommunion, which
has no such desire or interest to serve, to buy worse articles at a higher
price, it is altogether a different question, and is, in fact, downright
tyranny of the worst, because of the most sordid, kind. What would you
think of a law which should tax every person in Devonshire for the
pecuniary benefit of every person in Yorkshire? And yet that is a feeble
image of the actual usurpation of the New England deputies over the
property of the Southern States.
* * * * *
There are two possible modes of unity in a State; one by absolute
coordination of each to all, and of all to each; the other by
subordination of classes and offices. Now, I maintain that there never was
an instance of the first, nor can there be, without slavery as its
condition and accompaniment, as in Athens. The poor Swiss cantons are no
exception.
The mistake lies in confounding a state which must be based on classes and
interests and unequal property, with a church, which is founded on the
person, and has no qualification but personal merit. Such a community _may_
exist, as in the case of the Quakers; but, in order to exist, it must be
compressed and hedged in by another society--_mundus mundulus in mundo
immundo_.
* * * * *
The free class in a slave state is always, in one sense, the most patriotic
class of people in an empire; for their patriotism is not simply the
patriotism of other people, but an aggregate of lust of power and
distinction and supremacy.
_April _11. 1833.
LAND AND MONEY.
Land was the only species of property which, in the old time, carried any
respectability with it. Money alone, apart from some tenure of land, not
only did not make the possessor great and respectable, but actually made
him at once the object of plunder and hatred. Witness the history of the
Jews in this country in the early reigns after the Conquest.
* * * * *
I have no objection to your aspiring to the political principles of our old
Cavaliers; but embrace them all fully, and not merely this and that
feeling, whilst in other points you speak the canting foppery of the
Benthamite or Malthusian schools.
_April _14. 1833.
METHODS OF INVESTIGATION.
There are three ways of treating a subject:--
In the first mode, you begin with a definition, and that definition is
necessarily assumed as the truth. As the argument proceeds, the conclusion
from the first proposition becomes the base of the second, and so on. Now,
it is quite impossible that you can be sure that you have included all the
necessary, and none but the necessary, terms in your definition; as,
therefore, you proceed, the original speck of error is multiplied at every
remove; the same infirmity of knowledge besetting each successive
definition. Hence you may set out, like Spinosa, with all but the truth,
and end with a conclusion which is altogether monstrous; and yet the mere
deduction shall be irrefragable. Warburton's "Divine Legation" is also a
splendid instance of this mode of discussion, and of its inability to lead
to the truth: in fact, it is an attempt to adopt the mathematical series of
proof, in forgetfulness that the mathematician is sure of the truth of his
definition at each remove, because he _creates _it, as he can do, in pure
figure and number. But you cannot _make _any thing true which results from,
or is connected with, real externals; you can only _find _it out. The chief
use of this first mode of discussion is to sharpen the wit, for which
purpose it is the best exercitation.
2. The historical mode is a very common one: in it the author professes to
find out the truth by collecting the facts of the case, and tracing them
downwards; but this mode is worse than the other. Suppose the question is
as to the true essence and character of the English constitution. First,
where will you begin your collection of facts? where will you end it? What
facts will you select, and how do you know that the class of facts which
you select are necessary terms in the premisses, and that other classes of
facts, which you neglect, are not necessary? And how do you distinguish
phenomena which proceed from disease or accident from those which are the
genuine fruits of the essence of the constitution? What can be more
striking, in illustration of the utter inadequacy of this line of
investigation for arriving at the real truth, than the political treatises
and constitutional histories which we have in every library? A Whig proves
his case convincingly to the reader who knows nothing beyond his author;
then comes an old Tory (Carte, for instance), and ferrets up a hamperful of
conflicting documents and notices, which proves _his _case _per contra_. A.
takes this class of facts; B. takes that class: each proves something true,
neither proves _the_ truth, or any thing like _the _truth; that is, the
whole truth.
3. You must, therefore, commence with the philosophic idea of the thing,
the true nature of which you wish to find out and manifest. You must carry
your rule ready made, if you wish to measure aright. If you ask me how I
can know that this idea--my own invention--is the truth, by which the
phenomena of history are to be explained, I answer, in the same way exactly
that you know that your eyes were made to see with; and that is, because
you _do _see with them. If I propose to you an idea or self-realizing
theory of the constitution, which shall manifest itself as in existence
from the earliest times to the present,--which shall comprehend within it
_all _the facts which history has preserved, and shall give them a meaning
as interchangeably causals or effects;--if I show you that such an event or
reign was an obliquity to the right hand, and how produced, and such other
event or reign a deviation to the left, and whence originating,--that the
growth was stopped here, accelerated there,--that such a tendency is, and
always has been, corroborative, and such other tendency destructive, of the
main progress of the idea towards realization;--if this idea, not only like
a kaleidoscope, shall reduce all the miscellaneous fragments into order,
but shall also minister strength, and knowledge, and light to the true
patriot and statesmen for working out the bright thought, and bringing the
glorious embryo to a perfect birth;--then, I think, I have a right to say
that the idea which led to this is not only true, but the truth, the only
truth. To set up for a statesman upon historical knowledge only, is as
about as wise as to set up for a musician by the purchase of some score
flutes, fiddles, and horns. In order to make music, you must know how to
play; in order to make your facts speak truth, you must know what the truth
is which _ought_ to be proved,--the ideal truth,--the truth which was
consciously or unconsciously, strongly or weakly, wisely or blindly,
intended at all times. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I have preserved this passage, conscious, the while, how liable it is to be
misunderstood, or at least not understood. The readers of Mr. Coleridge's
works generally, or of his "Church and State" in particular, will have no
difficulty in entering into his meaning; namely, that no investigation in
the non-mathematical sciences can be carried on in a way deserving to be
called philosophical, unless the investigator have in himself a mental
initiative, or, what comes to the same thing, unless he set out with an
intuition of the ultimate aim or idea of the science or aggregation of
facts to be explained or interpreted. The analysis of the Platonic and
Baconian methods in "The Friend," to which I have before referred, and the
"Church and State," exhibit respectively a splendid vindication and example
of Mr. Coleridge's mode of reasoning on this subject. --ED. ]
_April _18. 1833.
CHURCH OF ROME. --CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY.
be sure, wholly inartificial; they only care to pitch a character into a
position to make him or her talk; you must swallow all their gross
improbabilities, and, taking it all for granted, attend only to the
dialogue. How lamentable it is that no gentleman and scholar can he found
to edit these beautiful plays! [1] Did the name of criticism ever descend so
low as in the hands of those two fools and knaves, Seward and Simpson?
There are whole scenes in their edition which I could with certainty put
back into their original verse, and more that could he replaced in their
native prose. Was there ever such an absolute disregard of literary fame as
that displayed by Shakspeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher? [2]
[Footnote 1:
I believe Mr. Dyce could edit Beaumont and Fletcher as well as any man of
the present or last generation; but the truth is, the limited sale of the
late editions of Ben Jonson, Shirley, &c. , has damped the spirit of
enterprise amongst the respectable publishers. Still I marvel that some
cheap reprint of B. and F. is not undertaken. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
"The men of the greatest genius, as far as we can judge from their own
works, or from the accounts of their contemporaries, appear to have been of
calm and tranquil temper, in all that related to themselves. In the inward
assurance of permanent fame, they seem to have been either indifferent or
resigned, with regard to immediate reputation. "
* * * * *
"Shakspeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial in
his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative
greatness, we have abundant proof in his sonnets, which could scarcely have
been known to Mr. Pope, when he asserted, that our great bard 'grew
immortal in his own despite. '"--_Biog. Lit. _ vol. i, p. 32. ]
* * * * *
In Ben Jonson you have an intense and burning art. Some of his plots, that
of the Alchemist, for example, are perfect. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and
Fletcher would, if united, have made a great dramatist indeed, and yet not
have come near Shakspeare; but no doubt Ben Jonson was the greatest man
after Shakspeare in that age of dramatic genius.
The styles of Massinger's plays and the Sampson Agonistes are the two
extremes of the arc within which the diction of dramatic poetry may
oscillate. Shakspeare in his great plays is the midpoint. In the Samson
Agonistes, colloquial language is left at the greatest distance, yet
something of it is preserved, to render the dialogue probable: in Massinger
the style is differenced, but differenced in the smallest degree possible,
from animated conversation by the vein of poetry.
There's such a divinity doth hedge our Shakspeare round, that we cannot
even imitate his style. I tried to imitate his manner in the Remorse, and,
when I had done, I found I had been tracking Beaumont and Fletcher, and
Massinger instead. It is really very curious. At first sight, Shakspeare
and his contemporary dramatists seem to write in styles much alike: nothing
so easy as to fall into that of Massinger and the others; whilst no one has
ever yet produced one scene conceived and expressed in the Shakspearian
idiom. I suppose it is because Shakspeare is universal, and, in fact, has
no _manner_; just as you can so much more readily copy a picture than
Nature herself.
_February_ 20. 1833.
HOUSE OF COMMONS APPOINTING THE OFFICERS OF THE ARMY AND NAVY.
I was just now reading Sir John Cam Hobhouse's answer to Mr. Hume, I
believe, upon the point of transferring the patronage of the army and navy
from the Crown to the House of Commons. I think, if I had been in the House
of Commons, I would have said, "that, ten or fifteen years ago, I should
have considered Sir J. C. H. 's speech quite unanswerable,--it being clear
constitutional law that the House of Commons has not, nor ought to have,
any share, directly or indirectly, in the appointment of the officers of
the army or navy. But now that the King had been reduced, by the means and
procurement of the Honourable Baronet and his friends, to a puppet, which,
so far from having any independent will of its own, could not resist a
measure which it hated and condemned, it became a matter of grave
consideration whether it was not necessary to vest the appointment of such
officers in a body like the House of Commons, rather than in a junta of
ministers, who were obliged to make common cause with the mob and
democratic press for the sake of keeping their places. "
_March_ 9. 1833.
PENAL CODE IN IRELAND. --CHURCHMEN.
The penal code in Ireland, in the beginning of the last century, was
justifiable, as a temporary mean of enabling government to take breath and
look about them; and if right measures had been systematically pursued in a
right spirit, there can be no doubt that all, or the greater part, of
Ireland would have become Protestant. Protestantism under the Charter
Schools was greatly on the increase in the early part of that century, and
the complaints of the Romish priests to that effect are on record. But,
unfortunately, the drenching-horn was itself substituted for the medicine.
* * * * *
There seems to me, at present, to be a curse upon the English church, and
upon the governors of all institutions connected with the orderly
advancement of national piety and knowledge; it is the curse of prudence,
as they miscall it--in fact, of fear.
Clergymen are now almost afraid to explain in their pulpits the grounds of
their being Protestants. They are completely cowed by the vulgar harassings
of the press and of our Hectoring sciolists in Parliament. There should be
no _party_ politics in the pulpit to be sure; but every church in England
ought to resound with national politics,--I mean the sacred character of
the national church, and an exposure of the base robbery from the nation
itself--for so indeed it is[1]--about to be committed by these ministers,
in order to have a sop to throw to the Irish agitators, who will, of
course, only cut the deeper, and come the oftener. You cannot buy off a
barbarous invader.
[Footnote 1:
"That the maxims of a pure morality, and those sublime truths of the divine
unity and attributes, which a Plato found it hard to learn, and more
difficult to reveal; that these should have become the almost hereditary
property of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop; that even
to the unlettered they sound as _common-place_; this is a phenomenon which
must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the
services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. Yet he who should confine
the efficiency of an established church to these, can hardly be placed in a
much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the kingdom
there is transplanted a germ of civilization; that in the remotest villages
there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of the place may
crystallize and brighten; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet
sufficiently near to encourage and facilitate imitation; _this_
unobtrusive, continuous agency of a Protestant church establishment, _this_
it is, which the patriot and the philanthropist, who would fain unite the
love of peace with the faith in the progressive amelioration of mankind,
cannot estimate at too high a price. 'It cannot be valued with the gold of
Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No mention shall be made of
coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies. '--The
clergyman is with his parishioners and among them; he is neither in the
cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour and family man,
whose education and rank admit him to the mansion of the rich landholder,
while his duties make him the frequent visitor of the farm-house and the
cottage. He is, or he may become, connected with the families of his parish
or its vicinity by marriage. And among the instances of the blindness, or
at best of the short-sightedness, which it is the nature of cupidity to
inflict, I know few more striking than the clamours of the farmers against
church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergyman would inevitably at
the next lease be paid to the landholder; while, as the case at present
stands, the revenues of the church are in some sort the reversionary
property of every family that may have a member educated for the church, or
a daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead of being _foreclosed_ and
immovable, it is, in fact, the only species of landed property that is
essentially moving and circulative. That there exist no inconveniences who
will pretend to assert? --But I have yet to expect the proof, that the
inconveniences are greater in this than in any other species; or that
either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter
to become either _Trullibers_ or salaried _placemen_. "--_Church and State_,
p. 90. ]
_March_ 12. 1833.
CORONATION OATHS.
Lord Grey has, in Parliament, said two things: first, that the Coronation
Oaths only bind the King in his executive capacity; and, secondly, that
members of the House of Commons are bound to represent by their votes the
wishes and opinions of their constituents, and not their own. Put these two
together, and tell me what useful part of the constitutional monarchy of
England remains. It is clear that the Coronation Oaths would be no better
than Highgate oaths. For in his executive capacity the King _cannot_ do any
thing, against the doing of which the oaths bind him; it is _only_ in his
legislative character that he possesses a free agency capable of being
bound. The nation meant to bind _that_.
_March_ 14. 1833.
DIVINITY. --PROFESSIONS AND TRADES.
Divinity is essentially the first of the professions, because it is
necessary for all at all times; law and physic are only necessary for some
at some times. I speak of them, of course, not in their abstract existence,
but in their applicability to man.
* * * * *
Every true science bears necessarily within itself the germ of a cognate
profession, and the more you can elevate trades into professions the
better.
_March_ 17. 1833.
MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY.
What solemn humbug this modern political economy is! What is there true of
the little that is true in their dogmatic books, which is not a simple
deduction from the moral and religious _credenda_ and _agenda_ of any good
man, and with which we were not all previously acquainted, and upon which
every man of common sense instinctively acted? I know none. But what they
truly state, they do not truly understand in its ultimate grounds and
causes; and hence they have sometimes done more mischief by their half-
ignorant and half-sophistical reasonings about, and deductions from, well-
founded positions, than they could have done by the promulgation of
positive error. This particularly applies to their famous ratios of
increase between man and the means of his subsistence. Political economy,
at the highest, can never be a pure science. You may demonstrate that
certain properties inhere in the arch, which yet no bridge-builder _can_
ever reduce into brick and mortar; but an abstract conclusion in a matter
of political economy, the premisses of which neither exist now, nor ever
will exist within the range of the wildest imagination, is not a truth, but
a chimera--a practical falsehood. For there are no theorems in political
economy--but problems only. Certain things being actually so and so; the
question is, _how_ to _do_ so and so with them. Political _philosophy_,
indeed, points to ulterior ends, but even those ends are all practical; and
if you desert the conditions of reality, or of common probability, you may
show forth your eloquence or your fancy, but the utmost you can produce
will be a Utopia or Oceana.
You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the
market from 8_d_. to 6_d_. But suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your
country weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized
thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one
class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it,
after all. Is not its real price enhanced to every Christian and patriot a
hundred-fold?
* * * * *
_All_ is an endless fleeting abstraction; _the whole_ is a reality.
_March_ 31. 1833.
NATIONAL DEBT. --PROPERTY TAX. --DUTY OF LANDHOLDERS.
What evil results now to this country, taken at large, from the actual
existence of the National Debt? I never could get a plain and practical
answer to that question. I do not advert to the past loss of capital,
although it is hard to see how that capital can be said to have been
unproductive, which produces, in the defence of the nation itself, the
conditions of the permanence and productivity of all other capital. As to
taxation to pay the interest, how can the country suffer by a process,
under which the money is never one minute out of the pockets of the people?
You may just as well say that a man is weakened by the circulation of his
blood. There may, certainly, be particular local evils and grievances
resulting from the mode of taxation or collection; but how can that debt be
in any proper sense a burthen to the nation, which the nation owes to
itself, and to no one but itself? It is a juggle to talk of the nation
owing the capital or the interest to the stockholders; it owes to itself
only. Suppose the interest to be owing to the Emperor of Russia, and then
you would feel the difference of a debt in the proper sense. It is really
and truly nothing more in effect than so much moneys or money's worth,
raised annually by the state for the purpose of quickening industry. [1]
I should like to see a well graduated property tax, accompanied by a large
loan.
One common objection to a property tax is, that it tends to diminish the
accumulation of capital. In my judgment, one of the chief sources of the
bad economy of the country now is the enormous aggregation of capitals.
When shall we return to a sound conception of the right to property--
namely, as being official, implying and demanding the performance of
commensurate duties! Nothing but the most horrible perversion of humanity
and moral justice, under the specious name of political economy, could have
blinded men to this truth as to the possession of land,--the law of God
having connected indissolubly the cultivation of every rood of earth with
the maintenance and watchful labour of man. But money, stock, riches by
credit, transferable and convertible at will, are under no such
obligations; and, unhappily, it is from the selfish autocratic possession
of _such_ property, that our landholders have learnt their present theory
of trading with that which was never meant to be an object of commerce.
[Footnote 1:
See the splendid essay in the Friend (vol. ii, p. 47. ) on the vulgar errors
respecting taxes and taxation.
"A great statesman, lately deceased, in one of his anti-ministerial
harangues against some proposed impost, said, 'The nation has been already
bled in every vein, and is faint with loss of blood. ' This blood, however,
was circulating in the mean time through the whole body of the state, and
what was received into one chamber of the heart was instantly sent out
again at the other portal. Had he wanted a metaphor to convey the possible
injuries of taxation, he might have found one less opposite to the fact, in
the known disease of aneurism, or relaxation of the coats of particular
vessels, by a disproportionate accumulation of blood in them, which
sometimes occurs when the circulation has been suddenly and violently
changed, and causes helplessness, or even mortal stagnation, though the
total quantity of blood remains the same in the system at large.
"But a fuller and fairer symbol of taxation, both in its possible good and
evil effects, is to be found in the evaporation of waters from the surface
of the earth. The sun may draw up the moisture from the river, the morass,
and the ocean, to be given back in genial showers to the garden, to the
pasture, and the corn field; but it may, likewise, force away the moisture
from the fields of tillage, to drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated
swamp, or the unprofitable sand-waste. The gardens in the south of Europe
supply, perhaps, a not less apt illustration of a system of finance
judiciously conducted, where the tanks or reservoirs would represent the
capital of a nation, and the hundred rills, hourly varying their channels
and directions under the gardener's spade, give a pleasing image of the
dispersion of that capital through the whole population by the joint effect
of taxation and trade. For taxation itself is a part of commerce, and the
government maybe fairly considered as a great manufacturing house, carrying
on, in different places, by means of its partners and overseers, the trades
of the shipbuilder, the clothier, the iron-founder," &c. &c. --ED. ]
_April_ 5. 1833.
MASSINGER. --SHAKSPEARE. --HIERONIMO.
To please me, a poem must be either music or sense; if it is neither, I
confess I cannot interest myself in it.
* * * * *
The first act of the Virgin Martyr is as fine an act as I remember in any
play. The Very Woman is, I think, one of the most perfect plays we have.
There is some good fun in the first scene between Don John, or Antonio, and
Cuculo, his master[1]; and can any thing exceed the skill and sweetness of
the scene between him and his mistress, in which he relates his story? [2]
The Bondman is also a delightful play. Massinger is always entertaining;
his plays have the interest of novels.
But, like most of his contemporaries, except Shakspeare, Massinger often
deals in exaggerated passion. Malefort senior, in the Unnatural Combat,
however he may have had the moral will to be so wicked, could never have
actually done all that he is represented as guilty of, without losing his
senses. He would have been, in fact, mad. Regan and Goneril are the only
pictures of the unnatural in Shakspeare; the pure unnatural--and you will
observe that Shakspeare has left their hideousness unsoftened or
diversified by a single line of goodness or common human frailty. Whereas
in Edmund, for whom passion, the sense of shame as a bastard, and ambition,
offer some plausible excuses, Shakspeare has placed many redeeming traits.
Edmund is what, under certain circumstances, any man of powerful intellect
might be, if some other qualities and feelings were cut off. Hamlet is,
inclusively, an Edmund, but different from him as a whole, on account of
the controlling agency of other principles which Edmund had not.
It is worth while to remark the use which Shakspeare always makes of his
bold villains as vehicles for expressing opinions and conjectures of a
nature too hazardous for a wise man to put forth directly as his own, or
from any sustained character.
[Footnote 1: Act iii. sc. 2. ]
[Footnote 2: Act iv. sc. 3. :--
"ANT. Not far from where my father lives, a lady,
A neighbour by, bless'd with as great a beauty
As nature durst bestow without undoing,
Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then,
And bless'd the home a thousand times she dwelt in.
This beauty, in the blossom of my youth,
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,
Nor I no way to flatter, but my fondness;
In all the bravery my friends could show me,
In all the faith my innocence could give me,
In the best language my true tongue could tell me,
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lent me,
I sued and served: long did I love this lady,
Long was my travail, long my trade to win her;
With all the duty of my soul, I served her.
ALM. How feelingly he speaks! (_Aside_. ) And she loved you too?
It must be so.
ANT. I would it had, dear lady;
This story had been needless, and this place,
I think, unknown to me.
ALM. Were your bloods equal?
ANT. Yes; and I thought our hearts too.
ALM. Then she must love.
ANT. She did--but never me; she could not love me,
She would not love, she hated; more, she scorn'd me,
And in so poor and base a way abused me,
For all my services, for all my bounties,
So bold neglects flung on me--
ALM. An ill woman!
Belike you found some rival in your love, then?
ANT. How perfectly she points me to my story! (_Aside_. )
Madam, I did; and one whose pride and anger,
Ill manners, and worse mien, she doted on,
Doted to my undoing, and my ruin.
And, but for honour to your sacred beauty,
And reverence to the noble sex, though she fall,
As she must fall that durst be so unnoble,
I should say something unbeseeming me.
What out of love, and worthy love, I gave her,
Shame to her most unworthy mind! to fools,
To girls, and fiddlers, to her boys she flung,
And in disdain of me.
ALM. Pray you take me with you.
Of what complexion was she?
ANT. But that I dare not
Commit so great a sacrilege 'gainst virtue,
She look'd not much unlike--though far, far short,
Something, I see, appears--your pardon, madam--
Her eyes would smile so, but her eyes could cozen;
And so she would look sad; but yours is pity,
A noble chorus to my wretched story;
Hers was disdain and cruelty.
ALM. Pray heaven,
Mine be no worse! he has told me a strange story, (_Aside_. )" &c. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The parts pointed out in Hieronimo as Ben Jonson's bear no traces of his
style; but they are very like Shakspeare's; and it is very remarkable that
every one of them re-appears in full form and development, and tempered
with mature judgment, in some one or other of Shakspeare's great pieces. [1]
[Footnote 1:
By Hieronimo Mr. Coleridge meant The Spanish Tragedy, and not the previous
play, which is usually called The First Part of Jeronimo.
The Spanish
Tragedy is, upon the authority of Heywood, attributed to Kyd. It is
supposed that Ben Jonson originally performed the part of Hieronimo, and
hence it has been surmised that certain passages and whole scenes connected
with that character, and not found in some of the editions of the play,
are, in fact, Ben Jonson's own writing. Some of these supposed
interpolations are amongst the best things in the Spanish Tragedy; the
style is singularly unlike Jonson's, whilst there are turns and particular
images which do certainly seem to have been imitated by or from Shakspeare.
Mr. Lamb at one time gave them to Webster. Take this, passage, in the
fourth act:--
"HIERON. What make you with your torches in the dark?
PEDRO. You bid us light them, and attend you here.
HIERON. No! you are deceived; not I; you are deceived.
Was I so mad to bid light torches now?
Light me your torches at the mid of noon,
When as the sun-god rides in all his glory;
Light me your torches then.
PEDRO. Then we burn day-light.
HIERON. _Let it be burnt; Night is a murd'rous slut,
That would not have her treasons to be seen;
And yonder pale-faced Hecate there, the moon,
Doth give consent to that is done in darkness;
And all those stars that gaze upon her face
Are aglets on her sleeve, pins on her train;
And those that should be powerful and divine,
Do sleep in darkness when they most should shine. _
PEDRO. Provoke them not, fair sir, with tempting words.
The heavens are gracious, and your miseries and sorrow
Make you speak you know not what
HIERON. _Villain! thou liest, and thou dost nought
But tell me I am mad: thou liest, I am not mad;
I know thee to be Pedro, and he Jaques;
I'll prove it thee; and were I mad, how could I?
Where was she the same night, when my Horatio was murder'd!
She should have shone then; search thou the book:
Had the moon shone in my boy's face, there was a kind of grace,
That I know--nay, I do know, had the murderer seen him,
His weapon would have fallen, and cut the earth,
Had he been framed of nought but blood and death," &c. _
Again, in the fifth act:--
"HIERON. But are you sure that they are dead?
CASTILE. Ay, slain, too sure.
HIERON. What, and yours too?
VICEROY. Ay, all are dead; not one of them survive.
HIBRON. Nay, then I care not--come, we shall be friends;
Let us lay our heads together.
See, here's a goodly noose will hold them all.
VICEROY. O damned devil! how secure he is!
HIERON. Secure! why dost thou wonder at it?
_I tell thee, Viceroy, this day I've seen Revenge,
d in that sight am grown a prouder monarch
Than ever sate under the crown of Spain.
Had I as many lives at there be stars,_,
_As many heavens to go to as those lives,
I'd give them all, ay, and my soul to boot,
But I would see thee ride in this red pool.
Methinks, since I grew inward with revenge,
I cannot look with scorn enough on death. _
KING. What! dost thou mock us, slave? Bring tortures forth.
HIERON. _Do, do, do; and meantime I'll torture you.
You had a son as I take it, and your son
Should have been married to your daughter: ha! was it not so?
You had a son too, he was my liege's nephew.
He was proud and politic--had he lived,
He might have come to wear the crown of Spain:
I think 't was so--'t was I that killed him;
Look you--this same hand was it that stabb'd
His heart--do you see this hand?
For one Horatio, if you ever knew him--
A youth, one that they hang'd up in his father's garden--
One that did force your valiant son to yield_," &c. --ED. ]
_April_ 7. 1833.
LOVE'S LABOUR LOST. --GIFFORD'S MASSINGER. --SHAKSPEARE. --THE OLD DRAMATISTS.
I think I could point out to a half line what is really Shakspeare's in
Love's Labour Lost, and some other of the not entirely genuine plays. What
he wrote in that play is of his earliest manner, having the all-pervading
sweetness which he never lost, and that extreme condensation which makes
the couplets fall into epigrams, as in the Venus and Adonis, and Rape of
Lucrece. [1] In the drama alone, as Shakspeare soon found out, could the
sublime poet and profound philosopher find the conditions of a compromise.
In the Love's Labour Lost there are many faint sketches of some of his
vigorous portraits in after-life--as for example, in particular, of
Benedict and Beatrice. [2]
[Footnote 1:
"In Shakspeare's _Poems_ the creative power and the intellectual energy
wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to
threaten the extinction of the other. At length, in the drama, they were
reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other.
Or like two rapid streams, that, at their first meeting within narrow and
rocky banks, mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly,
and in tumult; but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores,
blend, and dilate, and flow on in one current, and with one voice. "--_Biog.
Lit. _ vol. ii. p. 21. ]
[Footnote 2:
Mr. Coleridge, of course, alluded to Biron and Rosaline; and there are
other obvious prolusions, as the scene of the masque with the courtiers,
compared with the play in A Midsummer Night's Dream. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Gifford has done a great deal for the text of Massinger, but not as much as
might easily be done. His comparison of Shakspeare with his contemporary
dramatists is obtuse indeed. [1]
[Footnote 1:
See his _Introduction to Massinger, vol_. i. p. 79. , in which, amongst other
most extraordinary assertions, Mr. Gifford pronounces that _rhythmical
modulation is not one of Shakspeare's merits! _--ED. ]
* * * * *
In Shakspeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all
inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere;
yet, when the creation in its outline is once perfect, then he seems to
rest from his labour, and to smile upon his work, and tell himself that it
is very good. You see many scenes and parts of scenes which are simply
Shakspeare's, disporting himself in joyous triumph and vigorous fun after a
great achievement of his highest genius.
* * * * *
The old dramatists took great liberties in respect of bringing parties in
scene together, and representing one as not recognizing the other under
some faint disguise. Some of their finest scenes are constructed on this
ground. Shakspeare avails himself of this artifice only twice, I think,--in
Twelfth Night, where the two are with great skill kept apart till the end
of the play; and in the Comedy of Errors, which is a pure farce, and should
be so considered. The definition of a farce is, an improbability or even
impossibility granted in the outset, see what odd and laughable events will
fairly follow from it!
_April _8. 1833.
STATESMEN. --BURKE.
I never was much subject to violent political humours or accesses of
feelings. When I was very young, I wrote and spoke very enthusiastically,
but it was always on subjects connected with some grand general principle,
the violation of which I thought I could point out. As to mere details of
administration, I honestly thought that ministers, and men in office, must,
of course, know much better than any private person could possibly do; and
it was not till I went to Malta, and had to correspond with official
characters myself, that I fully understood the extreme shallowness and
ignorance with which men of some note too were able, after a certain
fashion, to carry on the government of important departments of the empire.
I then quite assented to Oxenstiern's saying, _Nescis, mi fili, quam parva
sapientia regitur mundus_.
* * * * *
Burke was, indeed, a great man. No one ever read history so philosophically
as he seems to have done. Yet, until he could associate his general
principles with some sordid interest, panic of property, jacobinism, &c. ,
he was a mere dinner bell. Hence you will find so many half truths in his
speeches and writings. Nevertheless, let us heartily acknowledge his
transcendant greatness. He would have been more influential if he had less
surpassed his contemporaries, as Fox and Pitt, men of much inferior minds
in all respects.
* * * * *
As a telegraph supposes a correspondent telescope, so a scientific lecture
requires a scientific audience.
_April _9. 1833.
PROSPECT OF MONARCHY OR DEMOCRACY. --THE REFORMED HOUSE OF COMMONS.
I have a deep, though paradoxical, conviction that most of the European
nations are more or less on their way, unconsciously indeed, to pure
monarchy; that is, to a government in which, under circumstances of
complicated and subtle control, the reason of the people shall become
efficient in the apparent will of the king. [1] As it seems to me, the wise
and good in every country will, in all likelihood, become every day more
and more disgusted with the representative form of government, brutalized
as it is, and will be, by the predominance of democracy in England, France,
and Belgium. The statesmen of antiquity, we know, doubted the possibility
of the effective and permanent combination of the three elementary forms of
government; and, perhaps, they had more reason than we have been accustomed
to think.
[Footnote 1: This is backing Vico against Spinosa. It must, however, be
acknowledged that at present the prophet of democracy has a good right to
be considered the favourite. --ED. ]
* * * * *
You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill
prophecies that were made of it--low, vulgar, meddling with every thing,
assuming universal competency, flattering every base passion, and sneering
at every thing noble, refined, and truly national! The direct and personal
despotism will come on by and by, after the multitude shall have been
gratified with the ruin and the spoil of the old institutions of the land.
As for the House of Lords, what is the use of ever so much fiery spirit, if
there be no principle to guide and to sanctify it?
_April _10. 1833.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. --CAPTAIN B. HALL. --NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN STATES.
--DEMOCRACY WITH SLAVERY. --QUAKERS.
The possible destiny of the United States of America,--as a nation of a
hundred millions of freemen,--stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shakspeare
and Milton, is an august conception. Why should we not wish to see it
realized? America would then be England viewed through a solar microscope;
Great Britain in a state of glorious magnification! How deeply to be
lamented is the spirit of hostility and sneering which some of the popular
books of travels have shown in treating of the Americans! They hate us, no
doubt, just as brothers hate; but they respect the opinion of an Englishman
concerning themselves ten times as much as that of a native of any other
country on earth. A very little humouring of their prejudices, and some
courtesy of language and demeanour on the part of Englishmen, would work
wonders, even as it is, with the public mind of the Americans.
* * * * *
Captain Basil Hall's book is certainly very entertaining and instructive;
but, in my judgment, his sentiments upon many points, and more especially
his mode of expression, are unwise and uncharitable. After all, are not
most of the things shown up with so much bitterness by him mere national
foibles, parallels to which every people has and must of necessity have?
* * * * *
What you say about the quarrel in the United States is sophistical. No
doubt, taxation may, and perhaps in some cases must, press unequally, or
apparently so, on different classes of people in a state. In such cases
there is a hardship; but, in the long run, the matter is fully compensated
to the over-taxed class. For example, take the householders of London, who
complain so bitterly of the house and window taxes. Is it not pretty clear
that, whether such householder be a tradesman, who indemnifies himself in
the price of his goods,--or a letter of lodgings, who does so in his rent,
--or a stockholder, who receives it back again in his dividends,--or a
country gentleman, who has saved so much fresh levy on his land or his
other property,--one way or other, it comes at last pretty nearly to the
same thing, though the pressure for the time may be unjust and vexatious,
and fit to be removed? But when New England, which may be considered a
state in itself, taxes the admission of foreign manufactures in order to
cherish manufactures of its own, and thereby forces the Carolinians,
another state of itself, with which there is little intercommunion, which
has no such desire or interest to serve, to buy worse articles at a higher
price, it is altogether a different question, and is, in fact, downright
tyranny of the worst, because of the most sordid, kind. What would you
think of a law which should tax every person in Devonshire for the
pecuniary benefit of every person in Yorkshire? And yet that is a feeble
image of the actual usurpation of the New England deputies over the
property of the Southern States.
* * * * *
There are two possible modes of unity in a State; one by absolute
coordination of each to all, and of all to each; the other by
subordination of classes and offices. Now, I maintain that there never was
an instance of the first, nor can there be, without slavery as its
condition and accompaniment, as in Athens. The poor Swiss cantons are no
exception.
The mistake lies in confounding a state which must be based on classes and
interests and unequal property, with a church, which is founded on the
person, and has no qualification but personal merit. Such a community _may_
exist, as in the case of the Quakers; but, in order to exist, it must be
compressed and hedged in by another society--_mundus mundulus in mundo
immundo_.
* * * * *
The free class in a slave state is always, in one sense, the most patriotic
class of people in an empire; for their patriotism is not simply the
patriotism of other people, but an aggregate of lust of power and
distinction and supremacy.
_April _11. 1833.
LAND AND MONEY.
Land was the only species of property which, in the old time, carried any
respectability with it. Money alone, apart from some tenure of land, not
only did not make the possessor great and respectable, but actually made
him at once the object of plunder and hatred. Witness the history of the
Jews in this country in the early reigns after the Conquest.
* * * * *
I have no objection to your aspiring to the political principles of our old
Cavaliers; but embrace them all fully, and not merely this and that
feeling, whilst in other points you speak the canting foppery of the
Benthamite or Malthusian schools.
_April _14. 1833.
METHODS OF INVESTIGATION.
There are three ways of treating a subject:--
In the first mode, you begin with a definition, and that definition is
necessarily assumed as the truth. As the argument proceeds, the conclusion
from the first proposition becomes the base of the second, and so on. Now,
it is quite impossible that you can be sure that you have included all the
necessary, and none but the necessary, terms in your definition; as,
therefore, you proceed, the original speck of error is multiplied at every
remove; the same infirmity of knowledge besetting each successive
definition. Hence you may set out, like Spinosa, with all but the truth,
and end with a conclusion which is altogether monstrous; and yet the mere
deduction shall be irrefragable. Warburton's "Divine Legation" is also a
splendid instance of this mode of discussion, and of its inability to lead
to the truth: in fact, it is an attempt to adopt the mathematical series of
proof, in forgetfulness that the mathematician is sure of the truth of his
definition at each remove, because he _creates _it, as he can do, in pure
figure and number. But you cannot _make _any thing true which results from,
or is connected with, real externals; you can only _find _it out. The chief
use of this first mode of discussion is to sharpen the wit, for which
purpose it is the best exercitation.
2. The historical mode is a very common one: in it the author professes to
find out the truth by collecting the facts of the case, and tracing them
downwards; but this mode is worse than the other. Suppose the question is
as to the true essence and character of the English constitution. First,
where will you begin your collection of facts? where will you end it? What
facts will you select, and how do you know that the class of facts which
you select are necessary terms in the premisses, and that other classes of
facts, which you neglect, are not necessary? And how do you distinguish
phenomena which proceed from disease or accident from those which are the
genuine fruits of the essence of the constitution? What can be more
striking, in illustration of the utter inadequacy of this line of
investigation for arriving at the real truth, than the political treatises
and constitutional histories which we have in every library? A Whig proves
his case convincingly to the reader who knows nothing beyond his author;
then comes an old Tory (Carte, for instance), and ferrets up a hamperful of
conflicting documents and notices, which proves _his _case _per contra_. A.
takes this class of facts; B. takes that class: each proves something true,
neither proves _the_ truth, or any thing like _the _truth; that is, the
whole truth.
3. You must, therefore, commence with the philosophic idea of the thing,
the true nature of which you wish to find out and manifest. You must carry
your rule ready made, if you wish to measure aright. If you ask me how I
can know that this idea--my own invention--is the truth, by which the
phenomena of history are to be explained, I answer, in the same way exactly
that you know that your eyes were made to see with; and that is, because
you _do _see with them. If I propose to you an idea or self-realizing
theory of the constitution, which shall manifest itself as in existence
from the earliest times to the present,--which shall comprehend within it
_all _the facts which history has preserved, and shall give them a meaning
as interchangeably causals or effects;--if I show you that such an event or
reign was an obliquity to the right hand, and how produced, and such other
event or reign a deviation to the left, and whence originating,--that the
growth was stopped here, accelerated there,--that such a tendency is, and
always has been, corroborative, and such other tendency destructive, of the
main progress of the idea towards realization;--if this idea, not only like
a kaleidoscope, shall reduce all the miscellaneous fragments into order,
but shall also minister strength, and knowledge, and light to the true
patriot and statesmen for working out the bright thought, and bringing the
glorious embryo to a perfect birth;--then, I think, I have a right to say
that the idea which led to this is not only true, but the truth, the only
truth. To set up for a statesman upon historical knowledge only, is as
about as wise as to set up for a musician by the purchase of some score
flutes, fiddles, and horns. In order to make music, you must know how to
play; in order to make your facts speak truth, you must know what the truth
is which _ought_ to be proved,--the ideal truth,--the truth which was
consciously or unconsciously, strongly or weakly, wisely or blindly,
intended at all times. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I have preserved this passage, conscious, the while, how liable it is to be
misunderstood, or at least not understood. The readers of Mr. Coleridge's
works generally, or of his "Church and State" in particular, will have no
difficulty in entering into his meaning; namely, that no investigation in
the non-mathematical sciences can be carried on in a way deserving to be
called philosophical, unless the investigator have in himself a mental
initiative, or, what comes to the same thing, unless he set out with an
intuition of the ultimate aim or idea of the science or aggregation of
facts to be explained or interpreted. The analysis of the Platonic and
Baconian methods in "The Friend," to which I have before referred, and the
"Church and State," exhibit respectively a splendid vindication and example
of Mr. Coleridge's mode of reasoning on this subject. --ED. ]
_April _18. 1833.
CHURCH OF ROME. --CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY.
