No More Learning

Ah! thus thro' broken clouds at night's high noon
Peeps to fair fragments forth the full-orb'd harvest-moon!

The following anecdote will not be wholly out of place here, and may
perhaps amuse the reader. An amateur performer in verse expressed to a
common friend a strong desire to be introduced to me, but hesitated in
accepting my friend's immediate offer, on the score that "he was,
he must acknowledge, the author of a confounded severe epigram on my
Ancient Mariner, which had given me great pain. " I assured my friend
that, if the epigram was a good one, it would only increase my desire to
become acquainted with the author, and begged to hear it recited: when,
to my no less surprise than amusement, it proved to be one which I had
myself some time before written and inserted in the "Morning Post," to
wit--

To the Author of the Ancient Mariner.

Your poem must eternal be,
Dear sir! it cannot fail,
For 'tis incomprehensible,
And without head or tail. ]

[Footnote 8: --

Of old things all are over old,
Of good things none are good enough;--
We'll show that we can help to frame
A world of other stuff.

I too will have my kings, that take
From me the sign of life and death:
Kingdoms shall shift about, like clouds,
Obedient to my breath.
Wordsworth's Rob Roy. --Poet. Works, vol. III. p. 127. ]

[Footnote 9: Pope was under the common error of his age, an error far from
being sufficiently exploded even at the present day. It consists (as
I explained at large, and proved in detail in my public lectures,) in
mistaking for the essentials of the Greek stage certain rules, which the
wise poets imposed upon themselves, in order to render all the remaining
parts of the drama consistent with those, that had been forced upon them
by circumstances independent of their will; out of which circumstances
the drama itself arose. The circumstances in the time of Shakespeare,
which it was equally out of his power to alter, were different, and such
as, in my opinion, allowed a far wider sphere, and a deeper and more
human interest. Critics are too apt to forget, that rules are but means
to an end; consequently, where the ends are different, the rules must
be likewise so. We must have ascertained what the end is, before we can
determine what the rules ought to be. Judging under this impression,
I did not hestitate to declare my full conviction, that the consummate
judgment of Shakespeare, not only in the general construction, but in
all the details, of his dramas, impressed me with greater wonder,
than even the might of his genius, or the depth of his philosophy. The
substance of these lectures I hope soon to publish; and it is but a debt
of justice to myself and my friends to notice, that the first course
of lectures, which differed from the following courses only, by
occasionally varying the illustrations of the same thoughts, was
addressed to very numerous, and I need not add, respectable audiences at
the Royal institution, before Mr. Schlegel gave his lectures on the same
subjects at Vienna. ]

[Footnote 10: In the course of one of my Lectures, I had occasion to point out
the almost faultless position and choice of words, in Pope's original
compositions, particularly in his Satires and moral Essays, for the
purpose of comparing them with his translation of Homer, which, I do
not stand alone in regarding, as the main source of our pseudo-poetic
diction. And this, by the bye, is an additional confirmation of a remark
made, I believe, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, that next to the man who forms
and elevates the taste of the public, he that corrupts it, is commonly
the greatest genius. Among other passages, I analyzed sentence by
sentence, and almost word by word, the popular lines,

As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, etc.
(Iliad. B. viii. )

much in the same way as has been since done, in an excellent article on
Chalmers's British Poets in the Quarterly Review. The impression on the
audience in general was sudden and evident: and a number of enlightened
and highly educated persons, who at different times afterwards addressed
me on the subject, expressed their wonder, that truth so obvious should
not have struck them before; but at the same time acknowledged--(so much
had they been accustomed, in reading poetry, to receive pleasure from
the separate images and phrases successively, without asking themselves
whether the collective meaning was sense or nonsense)--that they might
in all probability have read the same passage again twenty times with
undiminished admiration, and without once reflecting, that

astra phaeinaen amphi selaenaen
phainet aritretea--

(that is, the stars around, or near the full moon, shine pre-eminently
bright) conveys a just and happy image of a moonlight sky: while it is
difficult to determine whether, in the lines,

Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole,

the sense or the diction be the more absurd. My answer was; that, though
I had derived peculiar advantages from my school discipline, and
though my general theory of poetry was the same then as now, I had yet
experienced the same sensations myself, and felt almost as if I bad
been newly couched, when, by Mr. Wordsworth's conversation, I had been
induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Gray's celebrated Elegy.
I had long before detected the defects in The Bard; but the Elegy I had
considered as proof against all fair attacks; and to this day I cannot
read either without delight, and a portion of enthusiasm. At all events,
whatever pleasure I may have lost by the clearer perception of the
faults in certain passages, has been more than repaid to me by the
additional delight with which I read the remainder.

Another instance in confirmation of these remarks occurs to me in the
Faithful Shepherdess. Seward first traces Fletcher's lines;

More foul diseases than e'er yet the hot
Sun bred thro' his burnings, while the dog
Pursues the raging lion, throwing the fog
And deadly vapour from his angry breath,
Filling the lower world with plague and death,

to Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar,

The rampant lion hunts he fast
With dogs of noisome breath;
Whose baleful barking brings, in haste,
Pine, plagues, and dreary death!

He then takes occasion to introduce Homer's simile of the appearance of
Achilles' mail to Priam compared with the Dog Star; literally thus--

"For this indeed is most splendid, but it was made an evil sign, and
brings many a consuming disease to wretched mortals. " Nothing can be
more simple as a description, or more accurate as a simile; which, (says
Seward,) is thus finely translated by Mr. Pope

Terrific Glory! for his burning breath
Taints the red air with fevers, plagues, and death!

Now here--(not to mention the tremendous bombast)--the Dog Star, so
called, is turned into a real dog, a very odd dog, a fire, fever,
plague, and death-breathing, red, air-tainting dog: and the whole visual
likeness is lost, while the likeness in the effects is rendered absurd
by the exaggeration. In Spenser and Fletcher the thought is justifiable;
for the images are at least consistent, and it was the intention of the
writers to mark the seasons by this allegory of visualized puns. ]

[Footnote 11: Especially in this age of personality, this age of literary and
political gossiping, when the meanest insects are worshipped with a sort
of Egyptian superstition, if only the brainless head be atoned for
by the sting of personal malignity in the tail;--when the most vapid
satires have become the objects of a keen public interest, purely from
the number of contemporary characters named in the patch-work notes,
(which possess, however, the comparative merit of being more poetical
than the text,) and because, to increase the stimulus, the author has
sagaciously left his own name for whispers and conjectures. ]

[Footnote 12: If it were worth while to mix together, as ingredients, half
the anecdotes which I either myself know to be true, or which I have
received from men incapable of intentional falsehood, concerning the
characters, qualifications, and motives of our anonymous critics, whose
decisions are oracles for our reading public; I might safely borrow the
words of the apocryphal Daniel; "Give me leave, O SOVEREIGN PUBLIC, and
I shall slay this dragon without sward or staff. " For the compound would
be as the "pitch, and fat, and hair, which Daniel took, and did seethe
them together, and made lumps thereof; this he put in the dragon's
mouth, and so the dragon burst in sunder; and Daniel said, LO, THESE ARE
THE GODS YE WORSHIP. "]

[Footnote 13: This is one instance among many of deception, by the telling the
half of a fact, and omitting the other half, when it is from their
mutual counteraction and neutralization, that the whole truth arises, as
a tertium aliquid different from either. Thus in Dryden's famous line

Great wit (meaning genius) to madness sure is near allied.

Now if the profound sensibility, which is doubtless one of the
components of genius, were alone considered, single and unbalanced, it
might be fairly described as exposing the individual to a greater
chance of mental derangement; but then a more than usual rapidity of
association, a more than usual power of passing from thought to thought,
and image to image, is a component equally essential; and to the due
modification of each by the other the genius itself consists; so that
it would be just as fair to describe the earth, as in imminent danger of
exorbitating, or of falling into the sun, according as the assertor of
the absurdity confined his attention either to the projectile or to the
attractive force exclusively. ]

[Footnote 14: For as to the devotees of the circulating libraries, I dare not
compliment their pass-time, or rather kill-time, with the name of
reading. Call it rather a sort of beggarly day-dreaming, during which
the mind of the dreamer furnishes for itself nothing but laziness, and a
little mawkish sensibility; while the whole materiel and imagery of
the doze is supplied ab extra by a sort of mental camera obscura
manufactured at the printing office, which pro tempore fixes, reflects,
and transmits the moving phantasms of one mans delirium, so as to people
the barrenness of a hundred other brains afflicted with the same trance
or suspension of all common sense and all definite purpose. We should
therefore transfer this species of amusement--(if indeed those can be
said to retire a musis, who were never in their company, or relaxation
be attributable to those, whose bows are never bent)--from the genus,
reading, to that comprebensive class characterized by the power of
reconciling the two contrary yet coexisting propensities of human
nature, namely, indulgence of sloth, and hatred of vacancy. In addition
to novels and tales of chivalry to prose or rhyme, (by which last I mean
neither rhythm nor metre) this genus comprises as its species, gaming,
swinging, or swaying on a chair or gate; spitting over a bridge;
smoking; snuff-taking; tete-a-tete quarrels after dinner between
husband and wife; conning word by word all the advertisements of a daily
newspaper in a public house on a rainy day, etc. etc. etc. ]

[Footnote 15: Ex. gr. Pediculos e capillis excerptos in arenam jacere incontusos;
eating of unripe fruit; gazing on the clouds, and (in genere) on
movable things suspended in the air; riding among a multitude of
camels; frequent laughter; listening to a series of jests and humorous
anecdotes,--as when (so to modernize the learned Saracen's meaning) one
man's droll story of an Irishman inevitably occasions another's droll
story of a Scotchman, which again, by the same sort of conjunction
disjunctive, leads to some etourderie of a Welshman, and that again to
some sly hit of a Yorkshireman;--the habit of reading tomb-stones in
church-yards, etc. By the bye, this catalogue, strange as it may appear,
is not insusceptible of a sound psychological commentary. ]

[Footnote 16: I have ventured to call it unique; not only because I know no work
of the kind in our language, (if we except a few chapters of the old
translation of Froissart)--none, which uniting the charms of romance and
history, keeps the imagination so constantly on the wing, and yet leaves
so much for after reflection; but likewise, and chiefly, because it is
a compilation, which, in the various excellencies of translation,
selection, and arrangement, required and proves greater genius in
the compiler, as living in the present state of society, than in the
original composers. ]

[Footnote 17: It is not easy to estimate the effects which the example of a
young man as highly distinguished for strict purity of disposition
and conduct, as for intellectual power and literary acquirements, may
produce on those of the same age with himself, especially on those of
similar pursuits and congenial minds. For many years, my opportunities
of intercourse with Mr. Southey have been rare, and at long intervals;
but I dwell with unabated pleasure on the strong and sudden, yet I
trust not fleeting, influence, which my moral being underwent on my
acquaintance with him at Oxford, whither I had gone at the commencement
of our Cambridge vacation on a visit to an old school-fellow. Not
indeed on my moral or religious principles, for they had never been
contaminated; but in awakening the sense of the duty and dignity of
making my actions accord with those principles, both in word and
deed. The irregularities only not universal among the young men of my
standing, which I always knew to be wrong, I then learned to feel as
degrading; learned to know that an opposite conduct, which was at that
time considered by us as the easy virtue of cold and selfish prudence,
might originate in the noblest emotions, in views the most disinterested
and imaginative. It is not however from grateful recollections only,
that I have been impelled thus to leave these my deliberate sentiments
on record; but in some sense as a debt of justice to the man, whose
name has been so often connected with mine for evil to which he is a
stranger. As a specimen I subjoin part of a note, from The Beauties of
the Anti-jacobin, in which, having previously informed the public that
I had been dishonoured at Cambridge for preaching Deism, at a time when,
for my youthful ardour in defence of Christianity, I was decried as
a bigot by the proselytes of French phi-(or to speak more truly
psi-)-losophy, the writer concludes with these words; "since this time
he has left his native country, commenced citizen of the world, left
his poor children fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex his disce his
friends, LAMB and SOUTHEY. " With severest truth it may be asserted, that
it would not be easy to select two men more exemplary in their domestic
affections than those whose names were thus printed at full length as in
the same rank of morals with a denounced infidel and fugitive, who had
left his children fatherless and his wife destitute! Is it surprising,
that many good men remained longer than perhaps they otherwise would
have done adverse to a party, which encouraged and openly rewarded the
authors of such atrocious calumnies? Qualis es, nescio; sed per quales
agis, scio et doleo. ]

[Footnote 18: In opinions of long continuance, and in which we have never before
been molested by a single doubt, to be suddenly convinced of an error,
is almost like being convicted of a fault. There is a state of mind,
which is the direct antithesis of that, which takes place when we make
a bull. The bull namely consists in the bringing her two incompatible
thoughts, with the sensation, but without the sense, of their
connection. The psychological condition, or that which constitutes the
possibility, of this state, being such disproportionate vividness of two
distant thoughts, as extinguishes or obscures the consciousness of the
intermediate images or conceptions, or wholly abstracts the attention
from them. Thus in the well known bull, "I was a fine child, but they
changed me:" the first conception expressed in the word "I," is that
of personal identity--Ego contemplans: the second expressed in the word
"me," is the visual image or object by which the mind represents to
itself its past condition, or rather, its personal identity under
the form in which it imagined itself previously to have existed,--Ego
contemplatus. Now the change of one visual image for another involves
in itself no absurdity, and becomes absurd only by its immediate
juxta-position with the fast thought, which is rendered possible by the
whole attention being successively absorbed to each singly, so as not to
notice the interjacent notion, changed, which by its incongruity, with
the first thought, I, constitutes the bull. Add only, that this process
is facilitated by the circumstance of the words I, and me, being
sometimes equivalent, and sometimes having a distinct meaning;
sometimes, namely, signifying the act of self-consciousness, sometimes
the external image in and by which the mind represents that act to
itself, the result and symbol of its individuality. Now suppose the
direct contrary state, and you will have a distinct sense of the
connection between two conceptions, without that sensation of such
connection which is supplied by habit. The man feels as if he were
standing on his head though he cannot but see that he is truly standing
on his feet. This, as a painful sensation, will of course have a
tendency to associate itself with him who occasions it; even as persons,
who have been by painful means restored from derangement, are known to
feel an involuntary dislike towards their physician. ]

[Footnote 19: Without however the apprehensions attributed to the Pagan reformer
of the poetic republic. If we may judge from the preface to the recent
collection of his poems, Mr. W. would have answered with Xanthias--

su d' ouk edeisas ton huophon ton rhaematon,
kai tas apeilas; XAN, ou ma Di', oud' ephrontisa. --Ranae, 492-3.

And here let me hint to the authors of the numerous parodies, and
pretended imitations of Mr. Wordsworth's style, that at once to conceal
and convey wit and wisdom in the semblance of folly and dulness, as
is done in the Clowns and Fools, nay even in the Dogberry, of our
Shakespeare, is doubtless a proof of genius, or at all events of satiric
talent; but that the attempt to ridicule a silly and childish poem, by
writing another still sillier and still more childish, can only prove
(if it prove any thing at all) that the parodist is a still greater
blockhead than the original writer, and, what is far worse, a malignant
coxcomb to boot. The talent for mimicry seems strongest where the
human race are most degraded. The poor, naked half human savages of New
Holland were found excellent mimics: and, in civilized society, minds of
the very lowest stamp alone satirize by copying. At least the difference
which must blend with and balance the likeness, in order to constitute
a just imitation, existing here merely in caricature, detracts from
the libeller's heart, without adding an iota to the credit of his
understanding. ]

[Footnote 20: --

The Butterfly the ancient Grecians made
The soul's fair emblem, and its only name--
But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade
Of mortal life! For to this earthly frame
Ours is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame,
Manifold motions making little speed,
And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed. ]

[Footnote 21: Mr. Wordsworth, even in his two earliest poems, The Evening Walk
and the Descriptive Sketches, is more free from this latter defect
than most of the young poets his contemporaries. It may however be
exemplified, together with the harsh and obscure construction, in which
he more often offended, in the following lines:--

"'Mid stormy vapours ever driving by,
Where ospreys, cormorants, and herons cry;
Where hardly given the hopeless waste to cheer,
Denied the bread of life the foodful ear,
Dwindles the pear on autumn's latest spray,
And apple sickens pale in summer's ray;
Ev'n here content has fixed her smiling reign
With independence, child of high disdain. "

I hope, I need not say, that I have quoted these lines for no other
purpose than to make my meaning fully understood. It is to be regretted
that Mr. Wordsworth has not republished these two poems entire. ]

[Footnote 22: This is effected either by giving to the one word a general, and to
the other an exclusive use; as "to put on the back" and "to indorse;" or
by an actual distinction of meanings, as "naturalist," and "physician;"
or by difference of relation, as "I" and "Me" (each of which the rustics
of our different provinces still use in all the cases singular of the
first personal pronoun). Even the mere difference, or corruption, in the
pronunciation of the same word, if it have become general, will
produce a new word with a distinct signification; thus "property" and
"propriety;" the latter of which, even to the time of Charles II was
the written word for all the senses of both. There is a sort of minim
immortal among the animalcula infusoria, which has not naturally either
birth, or death, absolute beginning, or absolute end: for at a certain
period a small point appears on its back, which deepens and lengthens
till the creature divides into two, and the same process recommences in
each of the halves now become integral. This may be a fanciful, but
it is by no means a bad emblem of the formation of words, and may
facilitate the conception, how immense a nomenclature may be organized
from a few simple sounds by rational beings in a social state. For each
new application, or excitement of the same sound, will call forth a
different sensation, which cannot but affect the pronunciation. The
after recollections of the sound, without the same vivid sensation,
will modify it still further till at length all trace of the original
likeness is worn away. ]

[Footnote 23: I ought to have added, with the exception of a single sheet which I
accidentally met with at the printer's. Even from this scanty specimen,
I found it impossible to doubt the talent, or not to admire the
ingenuity, of the author. That his distinctions were for the greater
part unsatisfactory to my mind, proves nothing against their accuracy;
but it may possibly be serviceable to him, in case of a second edition,
if I take this opportunity of suggesting the query; whether he may not
have been occasionally misled, by having assumed, as to me he appears to
have done, the non-existence of any absolute synonymes in our language?
Now I cannot but think, that there are many which remain for our
posterity to distinguish and appropriate, and which I regard as so much
reversionary wealth in our mother tongue. When two distinct meanings are
confounded under one or more words,--(and such must be the case, as
sure as our knowledge is progressive and of course imperfect)--erroneous
consequences will be drawn, and what is true in one sense of the word
will be affirmed as true in toto. Men of research, startled by the
consequences, seek in the things themselves--(whether in or out of
the mind)--for a knowledge of the fact, and having discovered the
difference, remove the equivocation either by the substitution of a new
word, or by the appropriation of one of the two or more words, which
had before been used promiscuously. When this distinction has been so
naturalized and of such general currency that the language does as it
were think for us--(like the sliding rule which is the mechanic's safe
substitute for arithmetical knowledge)--we then say, that it is evident
to common sense. Common sense, therefore, differs in different ages.
What was born and christened in the Schools passes by degrees into
the world at large, and becomes the property of the market and the
tea-table. At least I can discover no other meaning of the term,
common sense, if it is to convey any specific difference from sense
and judgment in genere, and where it is not used scholastically for the
universal reason. Thus in the reign of Charles II the philosophic world
was called to arms by the moral sophisms of Hobbes, and the ablest
writers exerted themselves in the detection of an error, which a
school-boy would now be able to confute by the mere recollection, that
compulsion and obligation conveyed two ideas perfectly disparate, and
that what appertained to the one, had been falsely transferred to the
other by a mere confusion of terms. ]

[Footnote 24: I here use the word idea in Mr. Hume's sense on account of its
general currency amongst the English metaphysicians; though against my
own judgment, for I believe that the vague use of this word has been the
cause of much error and more confusion. The word, idea, in its original
sense as used by Pindar, Aristophanes, and in the Gospel of St. Matthew,
represented the visual abstraction of a distant object, when we see the
whole without distinguishing its parts. Plato adopted it as a technical
term, and as the antithesis to eidolon, or sensuous image; the transient
and perishable emblem, or mental word, of the idea. Ideas themselves he
considered as mysterious powers, living, seminal, formative, and exempt
from time. In this sense the word Idea became the property of the
Platonic school; and it seldom occurs in Aristotle, without some such
phrase annexed to it, as according to Plato, or as Plato says. Our
English writers to the end of the reign of Charles II or somewhat later,
employed it either in the original sense, or Platonically, or in a
sense nearly correspondent to our present use of the substantive, Ideal;
always however opposing it, more or less to image, whether of present
or absent objects. The reader will not be displeased with the following
interesting exemplification from Bishop Jeremy Taylor. "St. Lewis the
King sent Ivo Bishop of Chartres on an embassy, and he told, that he met
a grave and stately matron on the way with a censer of fire in one
band, and a vessel of water in the other; and observing her to have a
melancholy, religious, and phantastic deportment and look, he asked her
what those symbols meant, and what she meant to do with her fire and
water; she answered, My purpose is with the fire to burn paradise,
and with my water to quench the flames of hell, that men may serve God
purely for the love of God. But we rarely meet with such spirits which
love virtue so metaphysically as to abstract her from all sensible
compositions, and love the purity of the idea. " Des Cartes having
introduced into his philosophy the fanciful hypothesis of material
ideas, or certain configurations of the brain, which were as so many
moulds to the influxes of the external world,--Locke adopted the term,
but extended its signification to whatever is the immediate object
of the mind's attention or consciousness. Hume, distinguishing those
representations which are accompanied with a sense of a present object
from those reproduced by the mind itself, designated the former by
impressions, and confined the word idea to the latter. ]

[Footnote 25: I am aware, that this word occurs neither in Johnson's Dictionary
nor in any classical writer. But the word, to intend, which Newton
and others before him employ in this sense, is now so completely
appropriated to another meaning, that I could not use it without
ambiguity: while to paraphrase the sense, as by render intense, would
often break up the sentence and destroy that harmony of the position of
the words with the logical position of the thoughts, which is a
beauty in all composition, and more especially desirable in a close
philosophical investigation. I have therefore hazarded the word,
intensify: though, I confess, it sounds uncouth to my own ear. ]

[Footnote 26: And Coxcombs vanquish Berkeley by a grin. ]

[Footnote 27: Videlicet; Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Mode, each consisting
of three subdivisions. See Kritik der reinen Vernunft. See too the
judicious remarks on Locke and Hume. ]

[Footnote 28: St. Luke x. 21. ]

[Footnote 29: An American Indian with little variety of images, and a still
scantier stock of language, is obliged to turn his few words to many
purposes, by likenesses so clear and analogies so remote as to give his
language the semblance and character of lyric poetry interspersed with
grotesques. Something not unlike this was the case of such men as
Behmen and Fox with regard to the Bible. It was their sole armoury of
expressions, their only organ of thought. ]

[Footnote 30: The following burlesque on the Fichtean Egoisnsus may, perhaps,
be amusing to the few who have studied the system, and to those who are
unacquainted with it, may convey as tolerable a likeness of Fichte's
idealism as can be expected from an avowed caricature.

The Categorical Imperative, or the annunciation of the new Teutonic God,
EGOENKAIPAN: a dithyrambic ode, by QUERKOPF VON KLUBSTICK, Grammarian,
and Subrector in Gymmasic.

Eu! Dei vices gerens, ipse Divus,
(Speak English, Friend! ) the God Imperativus,
Here on this market-cross aloud I cry:
I, I, I! I itself I!
The form and the substance, the what and the why,
The when and the where, and the low and the high,
The inside and outside, the earth and the sky,
I, you and he, and he, you and I,
All souls and all bodies are I itself I!
All I itself I!
(Fools! a truce with this starting! )
All my I! all my I!
He's a heretic dog who but adds Betty Martin!
Thus cried the God with high imperial tone;
In robe of stiffest state, that scoffed at beauty,
A pronoun-verb imperative he shone--
Then substantive and plural-singular grown
He thus spake on! Behold in I alone
(For ethics boast a syntax of their own)
Or if in ye, yet as I doth depute ye,
In O! I, you, the vocative of duty!
I of the world's whole Lexicon the root!
Of the whole universe of touch, sound, sight
The genitive and ablative to boot:
The accusative of wrong, the nominative of right,
And in all cases the case absolute!
Self-construed, I all other moods decline:
Imperative, from nothing we derive us;
Yet as a super-postulate of mine,
Unconstrued antecedence I assign
To X, Y, Z, the God Infinitivus! ]

[Footnote 31: It would be an act of high and almost criminal injustice to pass
over in silence the name of Mr. Richard Saumarez, a gentleman equally
well known as a medical man and as a philanthropist, but who demands
notice on the present occasion as the author of "A new System of
Physiology" in two volumes octavo, published 1797; and in 1812 of "An
Examination of the natural and artificial Systems of Philosophy
which now prevail" in one volume octavo, entitled, "The Principles of
physiological and physical Science. " The latter work is not quite equal
to the former in style or arrangement; and there is a greater necessity
of distinguishing the principles of the author's philosophy from his
conjectures concerning colour, the atmospheric matter, comets, etc.
which, whether just or erroneous, are by no means necessary consequences
of that philosophy. Yet even in this department of this volume, which I
regard as comparatively the inferior work, the reasonings by which Mr.
Saumarez invalidates the immanence of an infinite power in any finite
substance are the offspring of no common mind; and the experiment on the
expansibility of the air is at least plausible and highly ingenious. But
the merit, which will secure both to the book and to the writer a high
and honourable name with posterity, consists in the masterly force of
reasoning, and the copiousness of induction, with which he has assailed,
and (in my opinion) subverted the tyranny of the mechanic system in
physiology; established not only the existence of final causes, but
their necessity and efficiency to every system that merits the name
of philosophical; and, substituting life and progressive power for the
contradictory inert force, has a right to be known and remembered as
the first instaurator of the dynamic philosophy in England. The author's
views, as far as concerns himself, are unborrowed and completely his
own, as he neither possessed nor do his writings discover, the
least acquaintance with the works of Kant, in which the germs of the
philosophy exist: and his volumes were published many years before the
full development of these germs by Schelling. Mr. Saumarez's detection
of the Braunonian system was no light or ordinary service at the time;
and I scarcely remember in any work on any subject a confutation so
thoroughly satisfactory. It is sufficient at this time to have stated
the fact; as in the preface to the work, which I have already announced
on the Logos, I have exhibited in detail the merits of this writer, and
genuine philosopher, who needed only have taken his foundation somewhat
deeper and wider to have superseded a considerable part of my labours. ]

[Footnote 32: But for sundry notes on Shakespeare, and other pieces which have
fallen in my way, I should have deemed it unnecessary to observe; that
discourse here, or elsewhere does not mean what we now call discoursing;
but the discursion of the mind, the processes of generalization and
subsumption, of deduction and conclusion. Thus, Philosophy has hitherto
been discursive; while Geometry is always and essentially intuitive. ]

[Footnote 33: Revelation xx. 3. ]

[Footnote 34: See Laing's History of Scotland. --Walter Scott's bards, ballads,
etc. ]

[Footnote 35: Thus organization, and motion are regarded as from God, not in God. ]

[Footnote 36: Job, chap. xxviii. ]

[Footnote 37: Wherever A=B, and A is not=B, are equally demonstrable, the
premise in each undeniable, the induction evident, and the conclusion
legitimate--the result must be, either that contraries can both be true,
(which is absurd,) or that the faculty and forms of reasoning employed
are inapplicable to the subject--i. e. that there is a metabasis eis
allo genos. Thus, the attributes of Space and time applied to Spirit
are heterogeneous--and the proof of this is, that by admitting them
explicite or implicite contraries may be demonstrated true--i. e. that
the same, taken in the same sense, is true and not true. --That the world
had a beginning in Time and a bound in Space; and That the world had not
a beginning and has no limit;--That a self originating act is, and is
not possible, are instances. ]

[Footnote 38: To those, who design to acquire the language of a country in
the country itself, it may be useful, if I mention the incalculable
advantage which I derived from learning all the words, that could
possibly be so learned, with the objects before me, and without the
intermediation of the English terms. It was a regular part of my
morning studies for the first six weeks of my residence at Ratzeburg,
to accompany the good and kind old pastor, with whom I lived, from the
cellar to the roof, through gardens, farmyard, etc. and to call every,
the minutest, thing by its German name. Advertisements, farces, jest
books, and the conversation of children while I was at play with them,
contributed their share to a more home-like acquaintance with the
language than I could have acquired from works of polite literature
alone, or even from polite society. There is a passage of hearty sound
sense in Luther's German Letter on interpretation, to the translation of
which I shall prefix, for the sake of those who read the German, yet
are not likely to have dipped often in the massive folios of this heroic
reformer, the simple, sinewy, idiomatic words of the original. "Denn
man muss nicht die Buchstaben in der Lateinischen Sprache fragen wie man
soll Deutsch reden: sondern man muss die Mutter in Hause, die Kinder
auf den Gassen, den gemeinen Mann auf dem Markte, darum fragen: und
denselbigen auf das Maul sehen wie sie reden, und darnach dolmetschen.
So verstehen sie es denn, und merken dass man Deutsch mit ihnen redet. "

TRANSLATION:

For one must not ask the letters in the Latin tongue, how one ought to
speak German; but one must ask the mother in the house, the children
in the lanes and alleys, the common man in the market, concerning this;
yea, and look at the moves of their mouths while they are talking, and
thereafter interpret. They understand you then, and mark that one talks
German with them. ]

[Footnote 39: This paraphrase, written about the time of Charlemagne, is by no
means deficient in occasional passages of considerable poetic merit.
There is a flow, and a tender enthusiasm in the following lines (at the
conclusion of Chapter XI.
) which, even in the translation will not, I
flatter myself, fail to interest the reader. Ottfried is describing the
circumstances immediately following the birth of our Lord.

She gave with joy her virgin breast;
She hid it not, she bared the breast,
Which suckled that divinest babe!
Blessed, blessed were the breasts
Which the Saviour infant kiss'd;
And blessed, blessed was the mother
Who wrapp'd his limbs in swaddling clothes,
Singing placed him on her lap,
Hung o'er him with her looks of love,
And sooth'd him with a lulling motion.
Blessed; for she shelter'd him
From the damp and chilling air;
Blessed, blessed! for she lay
With such a babe in one blest bed,
Close as babes and mothers lie!
Blessed, blessed evermore,
With her virgin lips she kiss'd,
With her arms, and to her breast
She embraced the babe divine,
Her babe divine the virgin mother!
There lives not on this ring of earth
A mortal, that can sing her praise.
Mighty mother, virgin pure,
In the darkness and the night
For us she bore the heavenly Lord!

Most interesting is it to consider the effect, when the feelings are
wrought above the natural pitch by the belief of something mysterious,
while all the images are purely natural. Then it is, that religion and
poetry strike deepest. ]

[Footnote 40: Lord Grenville has lately re-asserted (in the House of Lords) the
imminent danger of a revolution in the earlier part of the war against
France. I doubt not, that his Lordship is sincere; and it must be
flattering to his feelings to believe it. But where are the evidences of
the danger, to which a future historian can appeal? Or must he rest on
an assertion? Let me be permitted to extract a passage on the subject
from The Friend. "I have said that to withstand the arguments of the
lawless, the anti-Jacobins proposed to suspend the law, and by the
interposition of a particular statute to eclipse the blessed light of
the universal sun, that spies and informers might tyrannize and escape
in the ominous darkness. Oh! if these mistaken men, intoxicated with
alarm and bewildered by that panic of property, which they themselves
were the chief agents in exciting, had ever lived in a country where
there really existed a general disposition to change and rebellion!
Had they ever travelled through Sicily; or through France at the first
coming on of the revolution; or even alas! through too many of the
provinces of a sister island; they could not but have shrunk from their
own declarations concerning the state of feeling and opinion at that
time predominant throughout Great Britain. There was a time--(Heaven
grant that that time may have passed by! )--when by crossing a narrow
strait, they might have learned the true symptoms of approaching danger,
and have secured themselves from mistaking the meetings and idle rant of
such sedition, as shrank appalled from the sight of a constable, for
the dire murmuring and strange consternation which precedes the storm
or earthquake of national discord. Not only in coffee-houses and public
theatres, but even at the tables of the wealthy, they would have heard
the advocates of existing Government defend their cause in the language
and with the tone of men, who are conscious that they are in a minority.
But in England, when the alarm was at its highest, there was not a
city, no, not a town or village, in which a man suspected of holding
democratic principles could move abroad without receiving some
unpleasant proof of the hatred in which his supposed opinions were held
by the great majority of the people; and the only instances of popular
excess and indignation were on the side of the government and the
established church. But why need I appeal to these invidious facts? Turn
over the pages of history and seek for a single instance of a revolution
having been effected without the concurrence of either the nobles, or
the ecclesiastics, or the monied classes, in any country, in which
the influences of property had ever been predominant, and where the
interests of the proprietors were interlinked! Examine the revolution
of the Belgic provinces under Philip II; the civil wars of France in the
preceding generation; the history of the American revolution, or the
yet more recent events in Sweden and in Spain; and it will be scarcely
possible not to perceive that in England from 1791 to the peace
of Amiens there were neither tendencies to confederacy nor actual
confederacies, against which the existing laws had not provided both
sufficient safeguards and an ample punishment. But alas! the panic of
property had been struck in the first instance for party purposes; and
when it became general, its propagators caught it themselves and ended
in believing their own lie; even as our bulls to Borrowdale sometimes
run mad with the echo of their own bellowing. The consequences were most
injurious. Our attention was concentrated on a monster, which could not
survive the convulsions, in which it had been brought forth,--even
the enlightened Burke himself too often talking and reasoning, as if a
perpetual and organized anarchy had been a possible thing! Thus while we
were warring against French doctrines, we took little heed whether the
means by which we attempted to overthrow them, were not likely to
aid and augment the far more formidable evil of French ambition. Like
children we ran away from the yelping of a cur, and took shelter at the
heels of a vicious war horse. " (Vol. II. Essay i. p. 21, 4th edit. )]

[Footnote 41: I seldom think of the murder of this illustrious Prince without
recollecting the lines of Valerius Flaccus:

------super ipsius ingens
Instat fama viri, virtusque haud laeta tyranno;
Ergo anteire metus, juvenemque exstinguere pergit.
Argonaut, I. 29. ]

[Footnote 42: --

Theara de kai ton chaena kai taen dorkada,
Kai ton lagoon, kai to ton tauron genos.
Manuel Phile, De Animal. Proprietat. sect. I. i. 12. ]

[Footnote 43: Paradise Regained. Book IV. I. 261. ]

[Footnote 44: Vita e Costumi di Dante. ]

[Footnote 45: TRANSLATION: "With the greatest possible solicitude avoid
authorship. Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste
and the heart empty; even were there no other worse consequences. A
person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss; and he,
who sends away through the pen and the press every thought, the moment
it occurs to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will
become a mere journeyman of the printing-office, a compositor. "

To which I may add from myself, that what medical physiologists affirm
of certain secretions applies equally to our thoughts; they too must be
taken up again into the circulation, and be again and again re-secreted
to order to ensure a healthful vigour, both to the mind and to its
intellectual offspring. ]

[Footnote 46: This distinction between transcendental and transcendent is
observed by our elder divines and philosophers, whenever they express
themselves scholastically. Dr. Johnson indeed has confounded the two
words; but his own authorities do not bear him out. Of this celebrated
dictionary I will venture to remark once for all, that I should suspect
the man of a morose disposition who should speak of it without respect
and gratitude as a most instructive and entertaining book, and hitherto,
unfortunately, an indispensable book; but I confess, that I should be
surprised at hearing from a philosophic and thorough scholar any but
very qualified praises of it, as a dictionary. I am not now alluding
to the number of genuine words omitted; for this is (and perhaps to a
greater extent) true, as Mr. Wakefield has noticed, of our best Greek
Lexicons, and this too after the successive labours of so many giants in
learning. I refer at present both to omissions and commissions of a more
important nature. What these are, me saltem judice, will be stated at
full in The Friend, re-published and completed.

I had never heard of the correspondence between Wakefield and Fox till I
saw the account of it this morning (16th September 1815) in the Monthly
Review. I was not a little gratified at finding, that Mr. Wakefield
had proposed to himself nearly the same plan for a Greek and English
Dictionary, which I had formed, and began to execute, now ten years ago.
But far, far more grieved am I, that he did not live to complete it.
I cannot but think it a subject of most serious regret, that the same
heavy expenditure, which is now employing in the republication of
STEPHANUS augmented, had not been applied to a new Lexicon on a more
philosophical plan, with the English, German, and French synonymes
as well as the Latin. In almost every instance the precise individual
meaning might be given in an English or German word; whereas in Latin we
must too often be contented with a mere general and inclusive term. How
indeed can it be otherwise, when we attempt to render the most copious
language of the world, the most admirable for the fineness of its
distinctions, into one of the poorest and most vague languages?
Especially when we reflect on the comparative number of the works, still
extant, written while the Greek and Latin were living languages. Were
I asked what I deemed the greatest and most unmixed benefit, which
a wealthy individual, or an association of wealthy individuals could
bestow on their country and on mankind, I should not hesitate to answer,
"a philosophical English dictionary; with the Greek, Latin, German,
French, Spanish, and Italian synonymes, and with correspondent indexes. "
That the learned languages might thereby be acquired, better, in
half the time, is but a part, and not the most important part, of the
advantages which would accrue from such a work. O! if it should
be permitted by Providence, that without detriment to freedom and
independence our government might be enabled to become more than a
committee for war and revenue! There was a time, when every thing was to
be done by Government. Have we not flown off to the contrary extreme? ]

[Footnote 47: April, 1825. If I did not see it with my own eyes, I should not
believe that I had been guilty of so many hydrostatic Bulls as bellow in
this unhappy allegory or string of metaphors! How a river was to
travel up hill from a vale far inward, over the intervening mountains,
Morpheus, the Dream weaver, can alone unriddle. I am ashamed and
humbled. S. T. Coleridge. ]

[Footnote 48: Ennead, III. 8. 3. The force of the Greek sunienai is imperfectly
expressed by "understand;" our own idiomatic phrase "to go along with
me" comes nearest to it. The passage, that follows, full of profound
sense, appears to me evidently corrupt; and in fact no writer more
wants, better deserves, or is less likely to obtain, a new and more
correct edition-ti oun sunienai; oti to genomenon esti theama emon,
siopaesis (mallem, theama, emon sioposaes,) kai physei genomenon
theoraema, kai moi genomenae ek theorias taes odi, taen physin echein
philotheamona uparkei. (mallem, kai moi hae genomenae ek theorias autaes
odis). "What then are we to understand? That whatever is produced is an
intuition, I silent; and that, which is thus generated, is by its nature
a theorem, or form of contemplation; and the birth; which results to
me from this contemplation, attains to have a contemplative nature. " So
Synesius:

'Odis hiera
'Arraeta gona

The after comparison of the process of the natura naturans with that of
the geometrician is drawn from the very heart of philosophy. ]

[Footnote 49: This is happily effected in three lines by Synesius, in his THIRD
HYMN:

'En kai Pan'ta--(taken by itself) is Spinozism.
'En d' 'Apan'ton--a mere Anima Mundi.
'En te pro panton--is mechanical Theism.

But unite all three, and the result is the Theism of Saint Paul and
Christianity. Synesius was censured for his doctrine of the pre-
existence of the soul; but never, that I can find, arraigned or deemed
heretical for his Pantheism, though neither Giordano Bruno, nor Jacob
Behmen ever avowed it more broadly.

Mystas de Noos,
Ta te kai ta legei,
Buthon arraeton
Amphichoreuon.
Su to tikton ephus,
Su to tiktomenon;
Su to photizon,
Su to lampomenon;
Su to phainomenon,
Su to kryptomenon
Idiais augais.
'En kai panta,
'En kath' heauto,
Kai dia panton.

Pantheism is therefore not necessarily irreligious or heretical; though
it may be taught atheistically. Thus Spinoza would agree with Synesius
in calling God Physis en Noerois, the Nature in Intelligences; but
he could not subscribe to the preceding Nous kai noeros, i. e. Himself
Intelligence and intelligent.

In this biographical sketch of my literary life I may be excused, if I
mention here, that I had translated the eight Hymns of Synesius from the
Greek into English Anacreontics before my fifteenth year. ]

[Footnote 50: See Schell. Abhandl. zur Erlaeuter. des Id. der Wissenschafslehre. ]

[Footnote 51: Des Cartes, Diss. de Methodo. ]

[Footnote 52: The impossibility of an absolute thing (substantia unica) as
neither genus, species, nor individuum: as well as its utter unfitness
for the fundamental position of a philosophic system, will be
demonstrated in the critique on Spinozism in the fifth treatise of my
Logosophia. ]

[Footnote 53: It is most worthy of notice, that in the first revelation
of himself, not confined to individuals; indeed in the very first
revelation of his absolute being, Jehovah at the same time revealed the
fundamental truth of all philosophy, which must either commence with
the absolute, or have no fixed commencement; that is, cease to be
philosophy. I cannot but express my regret, that in the equivocal use
of the word that, for in that, or because, our admirable version has
rendered the passage susceptible of a degraded interpretation in the
mind of common readers or hearers, as if it were a mere reproof to an
impertinent question, I am what I am, which might be equally affirmed of
himself by any existent being.

The Cartesian Cogito ergo sum is objectionable, because either the
Cogito is used extra gradum, and then it is involved to the sum and is
tautological; or it is taken as a particular mode or dignity, and then
it is subordinated to the sum as the species to the genus, or rather
as a particular modification to the subject modified; and not pre-
ordinated as the arguments seem to require. For Cogito is Sum Cogitans.
This is clear by the inevidence of the converse. Cogitat, ergo est is
true, because it is a mere application of the logical rule: Quicquid in
genere est, est et in specie. Est (cogitans), ergo est. It is a cherry
tree; therefore it is a tree. But, est ergo cogitat, is illogical: for
quod est in specie, non NBCESSARIO in genere est. It may be true. I hold
it to be true, that quicquid vere est, est per veram sui affirmationem;
but it is a derivative, not an immediate truth. Here then we have, by
anticipation, the distinction between the conditional finite! (which, as
known in distinct consciousness by occasion of experience, is called by
Kant's followers the empirical! ) and the absolute I AM, and likewise the
dependence or rather the inherence of the former in the latter; in whom
"we live, and move, and have our being," as St. Paul divinely asserts,
differing widely from the Theists of the mechanic school (as Sir J.
Newton, Locke, and others) who must say from whom we had our being, and
with it life and the powers of life. ]

[Footnote 54: TRANSLATION. "Hence it is clear, from what cause many
reject the notion of the continuous and the infinite. They take, namely,
the words irrepresentable and impossible in one and the same meaning;
and, according to the forms of sensuous evidence, the notion of the
continuous and the infinite is doubtless impossible. I am not now
pleading the cause of these laws, which not a few schools have thought
proper to explode, especially the former (the law of continuity). But it
is of the highest importance to admonish the reader, that those, who
adopt so perverted a mode of reasoning, are under a grievous error.
Whatever opposes the formal principles of the understanding and the
reason is confessedly impossible; but not therefore that, which is
therefore not amenable to the forms of sensuous evidence, because it is
exclusively an object of pure intellect. For this non-coincidence of the
sensuous and the intellectual (the nature of which I shall presently lay
open) proves nothing more, but that the mind cannot always adequately
represent to the concrete, and transform into distinct images, abstract
notions derived from the pure intellect. But this contradiction, which
is in itself merely subjective (i. e. an incapacity in the nature of
man), too often passes for an incongruity or impossibility in the object
(i. e. the notions themselves), and seduces the incautious to mistake the
limitations of the human faculties for the limits of things, as they
really exist. "

I take this occasion to observe, that here and elsewhere Kant uses the
term intuition, and the verb active (intueri Germanice anschauen) for
which we have unfortunately no correspondent word, exclusively for that
which can be represented in space and time. He therefore consistently
and rightly denies the possibility of intellectual intuitions. But as
I see no adequate reason for this exclusive sense of the term, I have
reverted to its wider signification, authorized by our elder theologians
and metaphysicians, according to whom the term comprehends all truths
known to us without a medium.

From Kant's Treatise De mundi sensibilis et intelligibilis forma et
principiis. 1770. ]

[Footnote 55: Franc. Baconis de Verulam, NOVUM ORGANUM. ]

[Footnote 56: This phrase, a priori, is in common, most grossly misunderstood,
and as absurdity burdened on it, which it does not deserve. By knowledge
a priori, we do not mean, that we can know anything previously to
experience, which would be a contradiction in terms; but that having
once known it by occasion of experience (that is, something acting
upon us from without) we then know, that it must have existed, or the
experience itself would have been impossible. By experience only now,
that I have eyes; but then my reason convinces me, that I must have had
eyes in order to the experience. ]

[Footnote 57: Jer. Taylor's Via Pacis. ]

[Footnote 58: Par. Lost. Book V. I. 469. ]

[Footnote 59: Leibnitz. Op. T. II. P. II. p. 53. --T. III. p. 321. ]

[Footnote 60: Synesii Episcop. Hymn. III. I. 231]

[Footnote 61: 'Anaer morionous, a phrase which I have borrowed from a Greek monk,
who applies it to a Patriarch of Constantinople. I might have said, that
I have reclaimed, rather than borrowed, it: for it seems to belong to
Shakespeare, de jure singulari, et ex privilegio naturae. ]

[Footnote 62: First published in 1803. ]

[Footnote 63: These thoughts were suggested to me during the perusal of the
Madrigals of Giovambatista Strozzi published in Florence in May, 1593,
by his sons Lorenzo and Filippo Strozzi, with a dedication to their
paternal uncle, Signor Leone Strozzi, Generale delle battaglie di Santa
Chiesa. As I do not remember to have seen either the poems or their
author mentioned in any English work, or to have found them in any of
the common collections of Italian poetry; and as the little work is of
rare occurrence; I will transcribe a few specimens. I have seldom
met with compositions that possessed, to my feelings, more of that
satisfying entireness, that complete adequateness of the manner to the
matter which so charms us in Anacreon, joined with the tenderness,
and more than the delicacy of Catullus. Trifles as they are, they were
probably elaborated with great care; yet to the perusal we refer them
to a spontaneous energy rather than to voluntary effort. To a cultivated
taste there is a delight in perfection for its own sake, independently
of the material in which it is manifested, that none but a cultivated
taste can understand or appreciate.

After what I have advanced, it would appear presumption to offer a
translation; even if the attempt were not discouraged by the different
genius of the English mind and language, which demands a denser body of
thought as the condition of a high polish, than the Italian. I cannot
but deem it likewise an advantage in the Italian tongue, in many other
respects inferior to our own, that the language of poetry is more
distinct from that of prose than with us. From the earlier appearance
and established primacy of the Tuscan poets, concurring with the
number of independent states, and the diversity of written dialects,
the Italians have gained a poetic idiom, as the Greeks before them
had obtained from the same causes with greater and more various
discriminations, for example, the Ionic for their heroic verses; the
Attic for their iambic; and the two modes of the Doric for the lyric or
sacerdotal, and the pastoral, the distinctions of which were doubtless
more obvious to the Greeks themselves than they are to us.

I will venture to add one other observation before I proceed to the
transcription. I am aware that the sentiments which I have avowed
concerning the points of difference between the poetry of the present
age, and that of the period between 1500 and 1650, are the reverse of
the opinion commonly entertained. I was conversing on this subject with
a friend, when the servant, a worthy and sensible woman, coming in, I
placed before her two engravings, the one a pinky-coloured plate of the
day, the other a masterly etching by Salvator Rosa from one of his
own pictures. On pressing her to tell us, which she preferred, after a
little blushing and flutter of feeling, she replied "Why, that, Sir, to
be sure! (pointing to the ware from the Fleet-street print shops);--it's
so neat and elegant. T'other is such a scratchy slovenly thing. " An
artist, whose writings are scarcely less valuable than his pictures, and
to whose authority more deference will be willingly paid, than I
could even wish should be shown to mine, has told us, and from his own
experience too, that good taste must be acquired, and like all other
good things, is the result of thought and the submissive study of the
best models. If it be asked, "But what shall I deem such? "--the answer
is; presume those to be the best, the reputation of which has been
matured into fame by the consent of ages. For wisdom always has a final
majority, if not by conviction, yet by acquiescence. In addition to
Sir J. Reynolds I may mention Harris of Salisbury; who in one of his
philosophical disquisitions has written on the means of acquiring a just
taste with the precision of Aristotle, and the elegance of Quinctilian.