But in
Herodotus
it is just the
reverse.
reverse.
Coleridge - Table Talk
Still the antithesis of Junius is a real
antithesis of images or thought; but the antithesis of Johnson is rarely
more than verbal.
The definition of good prose is--proper words in their proper places;--of
good verse--the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is
in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended
meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in
general, a fault. In the very best styles, as Southey's, you read page
after page, understanding the author perfectly, without once taking notice
of the medium of communication;--it is as if he had been speaking to you
all the while. But in verse you must do more;--there the words, the
_media_, must be beautiful, and ought to attract your notice--yet not so
much and so perpetually as to destroy the unity which ought to result from
the whole poem. This is the general rule, but, of course, subject to some
modifications, according to the different kinds of prose or verse. Some
prose may approach towards verse, as oratory, and therefore a more studied
exhibition of the _media_ may be proper; and some verse may border more on
mere narrative, and there the style should be simpler. But the great thing
in poetry is, _quocunque modo_, to effect a unity of impression upon the
whole; and a too great fulness and profusion of point in the parts will
prevent this. Who can read with pleasure more than a hundred lines or so of
Hudibras at one time? Each couplet or quatrain is so whole in itself, that
you can't connect them. There is no fusion,--just as it is in Seneca.
[Footnote 1:
They led me to the sounding shore--
Heavens! as I passed the crowded way,
My bleeding lord before me lay--
I saw--I saw--and wept no more,
Till, as the homeward breezes bore
The bark returning o'er the sea,
My gaze, oh Ilion, turn'd on thee!
Then, frantic, to the midnight air,
I cursed aloud the adulterous pair:--
"They plunge me deep in exile's woe;
They lay my country low:
Their love--no love! but some dark spell,
In vengeance breath'd, by spirit fell.
Rise, hoary sea, in awful tide,
And whelm that vessel's guilty pride;
Nor e'er, in high Mycene's hall,
Let Helen boast in peace of mighty Ilion's fall. "
The translation was given to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
"The amotion or transposition will alter the thought, or the feeling, or at
least the tone. They are as pieces of mosaic work, from which you cannot
strike the smallest block without making a hole in the picture. "--
_Quarterly Review_, No. CIII. p. 7. ]
[Footnote 3:
But Mr. Coleridge took a great distinction between North and the other
writers commonly associated with him. In speaking of the Examen and the
Life of Lord North, in the Friend, Mr. C. calls them "two of the most
interesting biographical works in our language, both for the weight of the
matter, and the _incuriosa felicitas_ of the style. The pages are all alive
with the genuine idioms of our mother tongue. A fastidious taste, it is
true, will find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we now call
_slang_, which not a few of our writers, shortly after the Restoration of
Charles the Second, seem to have affected as a mark of loyalty. These
instances, however, are but a trifling drawback. They are not _sought for_,
as is too often and too plainly done by L'Estrange, Collyer, Tom Brown, and
their imitators. North never goes out of his way, either to seek them, or
to avoid them; and, in the main, his language gives us the very nerve,
pulse, and sinew of a hearty, healthy, conversational _English_. "--Vol. ii.
p. 307. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Imitation is the mesothesis of likeness and difference. The difference is
as essential to it as the likeness; for without the difference, it would be
copy or facsimile. But to borrow a term from astronomy, it is a librating
mesothesis: for it may verge more to likeness as in painting, or more to
difference, as in sculpture.
JULY 4. 1833.
DR. JOHNSON. --BOSWELL. --BURKE. --NEWTON. --MILTON.
Dr. Johnson's fame now rests principally upon Boswell. It is impossible not
to be amused with such a book. But his _bow-wow_ manner must have had a
good deal to do with the effect produced;--for no one, I suppose, will set
Johnson before Burke,--and Burke was a great and universal talker;--yet now
we hear nothing of this except by some chance remarks in Boswell. The fact
is, Burke, like all men of genius who love to talk at all, was very
discursive and continuous; hence he is not reported; he seldom said the
sharp short things that Johnson almost always did, which produce a more
decided effect at the moment, and which are so much more easy to carry
off. [1] Besides, as to Burke's testimony to Johnson's powers, you must
remember that Burke was a great courtier; and after all, Burke said and
wrote more than once that he thought Johnson greater in talking than
writing, and greater in Boswell than in real life. [2]
[Footnote 1:
Burke, I am persuaded, was not so continuous a talker as Coleridge. Madame
de Stael told a nephew of the latter, at Coppet, that Mr. C. was a master
of monologue, _mais qu'il ne savait pas le dialogue_. There was a spice of
vindictiveness in this, the exact history of which is not worth explaining.
And if dialogue must be cut down in its meaning to small talk, I, for one,
will admit that Coleridge, amongst his numberless qualifications, possessed
it not. But I am sure that he could, when it suited him, converse as well
as any one else, and with women he frequently did converse in a very
winning and popular style, confining them, however, as well as he could, to
the detail of facts or of their spontaneous emotions. In general, it was
certainly otherwise. "You must not be surprised," he said to me, "at my
talking so long to you--I pass so much of my time in pain and solitude, yet
everlastingly thinking, that, when you or any other persons call on me, I
can hardly help easing my mind by pouring forth some of the accumulated
mass of reflection and feeling, upon an apparently interested recipient. "
But the principal reason, no doubt, was the habit of his intellect, which
was under a law of discoursing upon all subjects with reference to ideas or
ultimate ends. You might interrupt him when you pleased, and he was patient
of every sort of conversation except mere personality, which he absolutely
hated. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
This was said, I believe, to the late Sir James Mackintosh. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Newton _was_ a great man, but you must excuse me if I think that it would
take many Newtons to make one Milton.
_July_ 6. 1833.
PAINTING. ----MUSIC. ----POETRY.
It is a poor compliment to pay to a painter to tell him that his figure
stands out of the canvass, or that you start at the likeness of the
portrait. Take almost any daub, cut it out of the canvass, and place the
figure looking into or out of a window, and any one may take it for life.
Or take one of Mrs. Salmon's wax queens or generals, and you will very
sensibly feel the difference between a copy, as they are, and an imitation,
of the human form, as a good portrait ought to be. Look at that flower vase
of Van Huysum, and at these wax or stone peaches and apricots! The last are
likest to their original, but what pleasure do they give? None, except to
children. [1]
Some music is above me; most music is beneath me. I like Beethoven and
Mozart--or else some of the aerial compositions of the elder Italians, as
Palestrina[2] and Carissimi. --And I love Purcell.
The best sort of music is what it should be--sacred; the next best, the
military, has fallen to the lot of the Devil.
Good music never tires me, nor sends me to sleep. I feel physically
refreshed and strengthened by it, as Milton says he did.
I could write as good verses now as ever I did, if I were perfectly free
from vexations, and were in the _ad libitum_ hearing of fine music, which
has a sensible effect in harmonizing my thoughts, and in animating and, as
it were, lubricating my inventive faculty. The reason of my not finishing
Christabel is not, that I don't know how to do it--for I have, as I always
had, the whole plan entire from beginning to end in my mind; but I fear I
could not carry on with equal success the execution of the idea, an
extremely subtle and difficult one.
Besides, after this continuation of Faust, which they tell me is very poor,
who can have courage to attempt[3] a reversal of the judgment of all
criticism against continuations? Let us except Don Quixote, however,
although the second part of that transcendant work is not exactly _uno
flatu_ with the original conception.
[Footnote 1:
This passage, and those following, will evidence, what the readers even of
this little work must have seen, that Mr. Coleridge had an eye, almost
exclusively, for the ideal or universal in painting and music. He knew
nothing of the details of handling in the one, or of rules of composition
in the other. Yet he was, to the best of my knowledge, an unerring judge of
the merits of any serious effort in the fine arts, and detected the leading
thought or feeling of the artist, with a decision which used sometimes to
astonish me. Every picture which I have looked at in company with him,
seems now, to my mind, translated into English. He would sometimes say,
after looking for a minute at a picture, generally a modern one, "There's
no use in stopping at this; for I see the painter had no idea. It is mere
mechanical drawing. Come on; _here_ the artist _meant_ something for the
mind. " It was just the same with his knowledge of music. His appetite for
what he thought good was literally inexhaustible. He told me he could
listen to fine music for twelve hours together, and go away _refreshed_.
But he required in music either thought or feeling; mere addresses to the
sensual ear he could not away with; hence his utter distaste for Rossini,
and his reverence for Beethoven and Mozart--ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born about 1529, and died in 1594. I
believe he may be considered the founder or reformer of the Italian church
music. His masses, motets, and hymns are tolerably well known amongst
lovers of the old composers; but Mr. Coleridge used to speak with delight
of some of Palestrina's madrigals which he heard at Rome.
Giacomo Carissimi composed about the years 1640--1650. His style has been
charged with effeminacy; but Mr. C. thought it very graceful and chaste.
Henry Purcell needs no addition in England. --ED. ]
[Footnote 3:
"The thing attempted in Christabel is the most difficult of execution in
the whole field of romance--witchery by daylight--and the success is
complete. "--_Quarterly Review_, No. CIII. p. 29. ]
_July 8. 1833. _
PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
I am clear for public schools as the general rule; but for particular
children private education may be proper. For the purpose of moving at ease
in the best English society,--mind, I don't call the London exclusive
clique the best English society,--the defect of a public education upon the
plan of our great schools and Oxford and Cambridge is hardly to be
supplied. But the defect is visible positively in some men, and only
negatively in others. The first _offend_ you by habits and modes of
thinking and acting directly attributable to their private education; in
the others you only regret that the freedom and facility of the established
and national mode of bringing up is not _added_ to their good qualities.
* * * * *
I more than doubt the expediency of making even
elementary mathematics a part of the routine in the
system of the great schools. It is enough, I think,
that encouragement and facilities should be given; and
I think more will be thus effected than by compelling
all. Much less would I incorporate the German or
French, or any modern language, into the school labours.
I think that a great mistake. [1]
[Footnote 1:
"One constant blunder"--I find it so pencilled by Mr. C. on a margin--"of
these New-Broomers--these Penny Magazine sages and philanthropists, in
reference to our public schools, is to confine their view to what
schoolmasters teach the boys, with entire oversight of all that the boys
are excited to learn from each other and of themselves--with more geniality
even because it is not a part of their compelled school knowledge. An Eton
boy's knowledge of the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Missouri, Orellana, &c.
will be, generally, found in exact proportion to his knowledge of the
Ilissus, Hebrus, Orontes, &c. ; inasmuch as modern travels and voyages are
more entertaining and fascinating than Cellarius; or Robinson Crusoe,
Dampier, and Captain Cook, than the Periegesis. Compare the _lads_
themselves from Eton and Harrow, &c. with the alumni of the New-Broom
Institution, and not the lists of school-lessons; and be that comparison
the criterion. --ED. ]
August 4, 1833.
SCOTT AND COLERIDGE.
Dear Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but harmonious, opposites in
this;--that every old ruin, hill, river, or tree called up in his mind a
host of historical or biographical associations,--just as a bright pan of
brass, when beaten, is said to attract the swarming bees;--whereas, for
myself, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson, I believe I should walk over the plain
of Marathon without taking more interest in it than in any other plain of
similar features. Yet I receive as much pleasure in reading the account of
the battle, in Herodotus, as any one can. Charles Lamb wrote an essay [1]
on a man who lived in past time:--I thought of adding another to it on one
who lived not in time at all, past, present, or future,--but beside or
collaterally.
[Footnote 1:
I know not when or where; but are not all the writings of this exquisite
genius the effusions of one whose spirit lived in past time? The place
which Lamb holds, and will continue to hold, in English literature, seems
less liable to interruption than that of any other writer of our day. --ED. ]
August 10. 1833.
NERVOUS WEAKNESS. ----HOOKER AND BULL. -----FAITH. ----A POET'S NEED OF
PRAISE.
A PERSON, nervously weak, has a sensation of weakness which is as bad to
him as muscular weakness. The only difference lies in the better chance of
removal.
* * * * *
The fact, that Hooker and Bull, in their two palmary works respectively,
are read in the Jesuit Colleges, is a curious instance of the power of mind
over the most profound of all prejudices.
There are permitted moments of exultation through faith, when we cease to
feel our own emptiness save as a capacity for our Redeemer's fulness.
* * * * *
There is a species of applause scarcely less genial to a poet, than the
vernal warmth to the feathered songsters during their nest-breeding or
incubation; a sympathy, an expressed hope, that is the open air in which
the poet breathes, and without which the sense of power sinks back on
itself, like a sigh heaved up from the tightened chest of a sick man.
_August_ 14. 1833.
QUAKERS. --PHILANTHROPISTS. --JEWS.
A quaker is made up of ice and flame. He has no composition, no mean
temperature. Hence he is rarely interested about any public measure but he
becomes a fanatic, and oversteps, in his irrespective zeal, every decency
and every right opposed to his course.
* * * * *
I have never known a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in heart
somewhere or other. Individuals so distinguished are usually unhappy in
their family relations,--men not benevolent or beneficent to individuals,
but almost hostile to them, yet lavishing money and labour and time on the
race, the abstract notion. The cosmopolitism which does not spring out of,
and blossom upon, the deep-rooted stem of nationality or patriotism, is a
spurious and rotten growth.
* * * * *
When I read the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of the Epistle to the
Romans to that fine old man Mr. ----, at Ramsgate, he shed tears. Any Jew
of sensibility must be deeply impressed by them.
* * * * *
The two images farthest removed from each other which can be comprehended
under one term, are, I think, Isaiah [1]--"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O
earth! "--and Levi of Holywell Street--"Old clothes! "--both of them Jews,
you'll observe. _Immane quantum discrepant! _
[Footnote 1:
I remember Mr. Coleridge used to call Isaiah his ideal of the Hebrew
prophet. He studied that part of the Scripture with unremitting attention
and most reverential admiration. Although Mr. C. was remarkably deficient
in the technical memory of words, he could say a great deal of Isaiah by
heart, and he delighted in pointing out the hexametrical rhythm of numerous
passages in the English version:--
"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, | O earth: for the Lord hath spoken.
I have nourished and brought up children, | and they have rebelled
against me.
The ox knoweth his owner, | and the ass his master's crib:
But Israel doth not know, | my people doth not consider. "--ED. ]
_August_ 15. 1833.
SALLUST. --THUCYDIDES. --HERODOTUS. --GIBBON. --KEY TO THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN
EMPIRE.
I consider the two works of Sallust which have come down to us entire, as
romances founded on facts; no adequate causes are stated, and there is no
real continuity of action. In Thucydides, you are aware from the beginning
that you are reading the reflections of a man of great genius and
experience upon the character and operation of the two great political
principles in conflict in the civilized world in his time; his narrative of
events is of minor importance, and it is evident that he selects for the
purpose of illustration. It is Thucydides himself whom you read throughout
under the names of Pericles, Nicias, &c.
But in Herodotus it is just the
reverse. He has as little subjectivity as Homer, and, delighting in the
great fancied epic of events, he narrates them without impressing any thing
as of his own mind upon the narrative. It is the charm of Herodotus that he
gives you the spirit of his age--that of Thucydides, that he reveals to you
his own, which was above the spirit of his age.
The difference between the composition of a history in modern and ancient
times is very great; still there are certain principles upon which the
history of a modern period may be written, neither sacrificing all truth
and reality, like Gibbon, nor descending into mere biography and anecdote.
Gibbon's style is detestable, but his style is not the worst thing about
him. His history has proved an effectual bar to all real familiarity with
the temper and habits of imperial Rome. Few persons read the original
authorities, even those which are classical; and certainly no distinct
knowledge of the actual state of the empire can be obtained from Gibbon's
rhetorical sketches. He takes notice of nothing but what may produce an
effect; he skips on from eminence to eminence, without ever taking you
through the valleys between: in fact, his work is little else but a
disguised collection of all the splendid anecdotes which he could find in
any book concerning any persons or nations from the Antonines to the
capture of Constantinople. When I read a chapter in Gibbon, I seem to be
looking through a luminous haze or fog:--figures come and go, I know not
how or why, all larger than life, or distorted or discoloured; nothing is
real, vivid, true; all is scenical, and, as it were, exhibited by
candlelight. And then to call it a History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire!
Was there ever a greater misnomer? I protest I do not remember a single
philosophical attempt made throughout the work to fathom the ultimate
causes of the decline or fall of that empire. How miserably deficient is
the narrative of the important reign of Justinian! And that poor
scepticism, which Gibbon mistook for Socratic philosophy, has led him to
misstate and mistake the character and influence of Christianity in a way
which even an avowed infidel or atheist would not and could not have done.
Gibbon was a man of immense reading; but he had no philosophy; and he never
fully understood the principle upon which the best of the old historians
wrote. He attempted to imitate their artificial construction of the whole
work--their dramatic ordonnance of the parts--without seeing that their
histories were intended more as documents illustrative of the truths of
political philosophy than as mere chronicles of events.
The true key to the declension of the Roman empire--which is not to be
found in all Gibbon's immense work--may be stated in two words:--the
_imperial_ character overlaying, and finally destroying, the _national_
character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.
_August_ 16. 1833.
DR. JOHNSON'S POLITICAL PAMPHLETS. --TAXATION. -DIRECT REPRESENTATION. ---
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. ---RIGHT OF WOMEN TO VOTE----HORNE TOOKE. ----ETYMOLOGY
OF THE FINAL IVE.
I like Dr. Johnson's political pamphlets better than any other parts of his
works:-particularly his "Taxation no Tyranny" is very clever and spirited,
though he only sees half of his subject, and that not in a very
philosophical manner. Plunder--Tribute--Taxation--are the three gradations
of action by the sovereign on the property of the subject. The first is
mere violence, bounded by no law or custom, and is properly an act only
between conqueror and conquered, and that, too, in the moment of victory.
The second supposes law; but law proceeding only from, and dictated by, one
party, the conqueror; law, by which he consents to forego his right of
plunder upon condition of the conquered giving up to him, of their own
accord, a fixed commutation. The third implies compact, and negatives any
right to plunder,--taxation being professedly for the direct benefit of the
party taxed, that, by paying a part, he may through the labours and
superintendence of the sovereign be able to enjoy the rest in peace. As to
the right to tax being only commensurate with direct representation, it is
a fable, falsely and treacherously brought forward by those who know its
hollowness well enough. You may show its weakness in a moment, by observing
that not even the universal suffrage of the Benthamites avoids the
difficulty;--for although it may be allowed to be contrary to decorum that
women should legislate; yet there can be no reason why women should not
choose their representatives to legislate;--and if it be said that they are
merged in their husbands, let it be allowed where the wife has no separate
property; but where she has a distinct taxable estate, in which her husband
has no interest, what right can her husband have to choose for her the
person whose vote may affect her separate interest? --Besides, at all
events, an unmarried woman of age, possessing one thousand pounds a year,
has surely as good a moral right to vote, if taxation without
representation is tyranny, as any ten-pounder in the kingdom. The truth, of
course, is, that direct representation is a chimera, impracticable in fact,
and useless or noxious if practicable.
Johnson had neither eye nor ear; for nature, therefore, he cared, as he
knew, nothing. His knowledge of town life was minute; but even that was
imperfect, as not being contrasted with the better life of the country.
Horne Tooke was once holding forth on language, when, turning to me, he
asked me if I knew what the meaning of the final _ive_ was in English
words. I said I thought I could tell what he, Horne Tooke himself, thought.
"Why, what? " said he. "_Vis_," I replied; and he acknowledged I had guessed
right. I told him, however, that I could not agree with him; but believed
that the final _ive_ came from _ick_--_vicus_, [Greek: --] a'txaq; the root
denoting collectivity and community, and that it was opposed to the final
_ing_, which signifies separation, particularity, and individual property,
from _ingle_, a hearth, or one man's place or seat: [Greek: --] oi'xo? ,
_vicus_, denoted an aggregation of _ingles_. The alteration of the _c_ and
_k_ of the root into the _v_ was evidently the work of the digammate power,
and hence we find the _icus_ and _ivus_ indifferently as finals in Latin.
The precise difference of the etymologies is apparent in these phrases:---
The lamb is spor_tive;_ that is, has a nature or habit of sporting: the
lamb is sport_ing;_ that is, the animal is now performing a sport. Horne
Tooke upon this said nothing to my etymology; but I believe he found that
he could not make a fool of me, as he did of Godwin and some other of his
butts.
August 17. 1833.
"THE LORD" IN THE ENGLISH VERSION OF THE PSALMS, ETC. ----SCOTCH KIRK AND
IRVING.
It is very extraordinary that, in our translation of the Psalms, which
professes to be from the Hebrew, the name Jehovah--[Hebrew: --] 'O -- The
Being, or God--should be omitted, and, instead of it, the [Hebrew: --]
Ktlpio? , or Lord, of the Septuagint be adopted. The Alexandrian Jews had a
superstitious dread of writing the name of God, and put [Greek: Kurhios]
not as a translation, but as a mere mark or sign--every one readily
understanding for what it really stood. We, who have no such superstition,
ought surely to restore the Jehovah, and thereby bring out in the true
force the overwhelming testimony of the Psalms to the divinity of Christ,
the Jehovah or manifested God. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I find the same remark in the late most excellent Bishop Sandford's diary,
under date 17th December, 1827:--"[Greek: CHairhete en t_o Kurhi_o Kurhios]
idem significat quod [Hebrew: --] apud Hebraeos. Hebraei enim nomine
[Hebrew: --] sanctissimo nempe Dei nomine, nunquam in colloquio utebantur,
sed vice ejus [Hebrew: --] pronuntiabant, quod LXX per [Greek: Kurhios]
exprimebant. "--_Remains of Bishop Sandford_, vol. i. p. 207.
Mr. Coleridge saw this work for the first time many months after making the
observation in the text. Indeed it was the very last book he ever read. He
was deeply interested in the picture drawn of the Bishop, and said that the
mental struggles and bodily sufferings indicated in the Diary had been his
own for years past. He conjured me to peruse the Memoir and the Diary with
great care:--"I have received," said he, "much spiritual comfort and
strength from the latter. O! were my faith and devotion, like my
sufferings, equal to that good man's! He felt, as I do, how deep a depth is
prayer in faith. "
In connection with the text, I may add here, that Mr. C. said, that long
before he knew that the late Bishop Middleton was of the same opinion, he
had deplored the misleading inadequacy of our authorized version of the
expression, [Greek: pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os] in the Epistle to the
Colossians, i. 15. : [Greek: hos estin eik_on tou THeou tou aoratou,
pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os. ] He rendered the verse in these words:--"Who
is the manifestation of God the invisible, the begotten antecedently to all
creation;" observing, that in [Greek: pr_ototokos] there was a double
superlative of priority, and that the natural meaning of "_first-born of
every creature_,"--the language of our version,--afforded no premiss for
the causal [Greek: hoti] in the next verse. The same criticism may be found
in the Stateman's Manual, p. 56. n. ; and see Bishop Sandford's judgment to
the same effect, vol. i. p. 165. --ED. ]
* * * * *
I cannot understand the conduct of the Scotch Kirk with regard to poor
Irving. They might with ample reason have visited him for the monstrous
indecencies of those exhibitions of the spirit;--perhaps the Kirk would not
have been justified in overlooking such disgraceful breaches of decorum;
but to excommunicate him on account of his language about Christ's body was
very foolish. Irving's expressions upon this subject are ill judged,
inconvenient, in had taste, and in terms false: nevertheless his apparent
meaning, such as it is, is orthodox. Christ's body--as mere body, or rather
carcass (for body is an associated word), was no more capable of sin or
righteousness than mine or yours;--that his humanity had a capacity of sin,
follows from its own essence. He was of like passions as we, and was
tempted. How could he be tempted, if he had no formal capacity of being
seduced?
It is Irving's error to use declamation, high and passionate rhetoric, not
introduced and pioneered by calm and clear logic, which is--to borrow a
simile, though with a change in the application, from the witty-wise, but
not always wisely-witty, Fuller--like knocking a nail into a board, without
wimbling a hole for it, and which then either does not enter, or turns
crooked, or splits the wood it pierces.
August 18. 1833.
MILTON'S EGOTISM. --CLAUDIAN. --STERNE.
In the Paradise Lost--indeed in every one of his poems--it is Milton
himself whom you see; his Satan, his Adam, his Raphael, almost his Eve--are
all John Milton; and it is a sense of this intense egotism that gives me
the greatest pleasure in reading Milton's works. The egotism of such a man
is a revelation of spirit.
* * * * *
Claudian deserves more attention than is generally paid to him. He is the
link between the old classic and the modern way of thinking in verse. You
will observe in him an oscillation between the objective poetry of the
ancients and the subjective mood of the moderns. His power of pleasingly
reproducing the same thought in different language is remarkable, as it is
in Pope. Read particularly the Phoenix, and see how the single image of
renascence is varied. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge referred to Claudian's first Idyll:--"Oceani summo
circumfluus cequore lucus Trans Indos Eurumque viret," &c. See the lines--
"Hic neque concepto fetu, nec semine surgit;
Sed pater est prolesque sibi, nulloque creante
Emeritos artus foecunda morte reformat,
Et petit alternam totidem per funera vitam.
. . .
Et cumulum texens pretiosa fronde Sabaeum
Componit bustumque sibi partumque futurum.
. . .
O senium positure rogo, falsisque sepulcris
Natales habiture vices, qui saepe renasci
Exitio, proprioque soles pubescere leto,
Accipe principium rursus.
. . .
Parturiente rogo--
. . .
Victuri cineres--
. . .
Qm fuerat genitor, natus nunc prosilit idem,
Succeditque novus---
. . .
O felix, haeresque tui! quo solvimur omnes,
Hoc tibi suppeditat vires; praebetur origo
Per cinerem; moritur te non pereunte senectus. "--ED. ]
* * * * *
I think highly of Sterne--that is, of the first part of Tristram Shandy:
for as to the latter part about the widow Wadman, it is stupid and
disgusting; and the Sentimental Journey is poor sickly stuff. There is a
great deal of affectation in Sterne, to be sure; but still the characters
of Trim and the two Shandies[1] are most individual and delightful.
Sterne's morals are bad, but I don't think they can do much harm to any one
whom they would not find bad enough before. Besides, the oddity and erudite
grimaces under which much of his dirt is hidden take away the effect for
the most part; although, to be sure, the book is scarcely readable by
women.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge considered the character of the father, the elder Shandy, as
by much the finer delineation of the two. I fear his low opinion of the
Sentimental Journey will not suit a thorough Sterneist; but I could never
get him to modify his criticism. He said, "The oftener you read Sterne, the
more clearly will you perceive the _great_ difference between Tristram
Shandy and the Sentimental Journey. There is truth and reality in the one,
and little beyond a clever affectation in the other. "--ED. ]
August 20. 1833.
HUMOUR AND GENIUS. --GREAT POETS GOOD MEN. --DICTION OF THE OLD AND NEW
TESTAMENT VERSION. --HEBREW. --VOWELS AND CONSONANTS.
Men of humour are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so,
although a man of genius may amongst other gifts possess wit, as
Shakspeare.
* * * * *
Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like
manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual
powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.
* * * * *
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people,
because they have a power of looking _at_ such persons as objects of
amusement of another race altogether.
* * * * *
I quite agree with Strabo, as translated by Ben Jonson in his splendid
dedication of the Fox[1]--that there can be no great poet who is not a good
man, though not, perhaps, a _goody_ man. His heart must be pure; he must
have learned to look into his own heart, and sometimes to look _at_ it; for
how can he who is ignorant of his own heart know any thing of, or be able
to move, the heart of any one else?
[Footnote 1:
[Greek: 'H de (arhet_e) poi_etou synezeyktai t_e tou anthrh_opou kai ouch
oion te agathon genesthai poi_et_en, m_e prhoterhon gen_ethenta angrha
agathon. ]--Lib. I. p. 33. folio.
"For, if men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and
function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the
impossibility of any man's being the good poet without first being a good
man. "]
* * * * *
I think there is a perceptible difference in the elegance and correctness
of the English in our versions of the Old and New Testament. I cannot yield
to the authority of many examples of usages which may be alleged from the
New Testament version. St. Paul is very often most inadequately rendered,
and there are slovenly phrases which would never have come from Ben Jonson
or any other good prose writer of that day.
* * * * *
Hebrew is so simple, and its words are so few and near the roots, that it
is impossible to keep up any adequate knowledge of it without constant
application. The meanings of the words are chiefly traditional. The loss of
Origen's Heptaglott Bible, in which he had written out the Hebrew words in
Greek characters, is the heaviest which biblical literature has ever
experienced. It would have fixed the sounds as known at that time.
* * * * *
Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants. It is
natural, therefore, that the consonants should be marked first, as being
the framework of the word; and no doubt a very simple living language might
be written quite intelligibly to the natives without any vowel sounds
marked at all. The words would be traditionally and conventionally
recognized as in short hand--thus--_Gd crtd th Hvn nd th Rth_. I wish I
understood Arabic; and yet I doubt whether to the European philosopher or
scholar it is worth while to undergo the immense labour of acquiring that
or any other Oriental tongue, except Hebrew.
_August_ 23. 1833.
GREEK ACCENT AND QUANTITY.
The distinction between accent and quantity is clear, and was, no doubt,
observed by the ancients in the recitation of verse. But I believe such
recitation to have been always an artificial thing, and that the common
conversation was entirely regulated by accent. I do not think it possible
to _talk_ any language without confounding the quantity of syllables with
their high or low tones[1]; although you may _sing_ or _recitative_ the
difference well enough. Why should the marks of accent have been considered
exclusively necessary for teaching the pronunciation to the Asiatic or
African Hellenist, if the knowledge of the acuted syllable did not also
carry the stress of time with it? If _[Greek: **anthropos]_ was to be
pronounced in common conversation with a perceptible distinction of the
length of the penultima as well as of the elevation of the antepenultima,
why was not that long quantity also marked? It was surely as important an
ingredient in the pronunciation as the accent. And although the letter
omega might in such a word show the quantity, yet what do you say to such
words as [Greek: lelonchasi, tupsasa], and the like--the quantity of the
penultima of which is not marked to the eye at all? Besides, can we
altogether disregard the practice of the modern Greeks? Their confusion of
accent and quantity in verse is of course a barbarism, though a very old
one, as the _versus politici_ of John Tzetzes [2] in the twelfth century
and the Anacreontics prefixed to Proclus will show; but these very examples
prove _a fortiori_ what the common pronunciation in prose then was.
[Footnote 1:
This opinion, I need not say, is in direct opposition to the conclusion of
Foster and Mitford, and scarcely reconcilable with the apparent meaning of
the authorities from the old critics and grammarians. Foster's opponent was
for rejecting the accents and attending only to the syllabic quantity;--Mr.
C. would, _in prose_, attend to the accents only as indicators of the
quantity, being unable to conceive any practical distinction between time
and tone in common speech. Yet how can we deal with the authority of
Dionysius of Halicarnassus alone, who, on the one hand, discriminates
quantity so exquisitely as to make four degrees of _shortness_ in the
penultimates of _[Greek: --hodos hr odos, tz opos]_ and _[Greek: --stz
ophos]_, and this expressly _[Greek: --eu logois psilois]_, or plain prose,
as well as in verse; and on the other hand declares, according to the
evidently correct interpretation of the passage, that the difference
between music and ordinary speech consists in the number only, and not in
the quality, of tones:--_[Greek: **to Poso diallattousa taes su odais kahi
oznauois, kahi ouchi to Poio_. (Pezhi Sun. c. 11. ? ]) The extreme
sensibility of the Athenian ear to the accent in prose is, indeed, proved
by numerous anecdotes, one of the most amusing of which, though, perhaps,
not the best authenticated as a fact, is that of Demosthenes in the Speech
for the Crown, asking, "Whether, O Athenians, does Aeschines appear to you
to be the mercenary (_[Greek: **misthothos]_} of Alexander, or his guest or
friend (_[Greek: **xenos]_)? " It is said that he pronounced _[Greek:
**misthothos]_ with a false accent on the antepenultima, as _[Greek:
**misthotos]_, and that upon the audience immediately crying out, by way of
correction, _[Greek: **misthothos]_, with an emphasis, the orator continued
coolly,--_[Greek: **achoueis a legousi]_--"You yourself hear what they
say! " Demosthenes is also said, whether affectedly, or in ignorance, to
have sworn in some speech by _[Greek: Asklaepios]_, throwing the accent
falsely on the antepenultima, and that, upon being interrupted for it, he
declared, in his justification, that the pronunciation was proper, for that
the divinity was _[Greek: aepios]_, mild. The expressions in Plutarch are
very striking:--"[Greek: **Thozuxon ekinaesen, omnue dhe kahi thon'
Asklaepion, pzopasoxunon' Asklaepion, kai pazedeiknuen autohn ozthos
legonta' einai gahz tohn thehon aepion' kahi epi outo polakis
hethozuzaethae. " Dec. Orat. _--Ed. ]
[Footnote 2:
See his Chiliads.
antithesis of images or thought; but the antithesis of Johnson is rarely
more than verbal.
The definition of good prose is--proper words in their proper places;--of
good verse--the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is
in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended
meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in
general, a fault. In the very best styles, as Southey's, you read page
after page, understanding the author perfectly, without once taking notice
of the medium of communication;--it is as if he had been speaking to you
all the while. But in verse you must do more;--there the words, the
_media_, must be beautiful, and ought to attract your notice--yet not so
much and so perpetually as to destroy the unity which ought to result from
the whole poem. This is the general rule, but, of course, subject to some
modifications, according to the different kinds of prose or verse. Some
prose may approach towards verse, as oratory, and therefore a more studied
exhibition of the _media_ may be proper; and some verse may border more on
mere narrative, and there the style should be simpler. But the great thing
in poetry is, _quocunque modo_, to effect a unity of impression upon the
whole; and a too great fulness and profusion of point in the parts will
prevent this. Who can read with pleasure more than a hundred lines or so of
Hudibras at one time? Each couplet or quatrain is so whole in itself, that
you can't connect them. There is no fusion,--just as it is in Seneca.
[Footnote 1:
They led me to the sounding shore--
Heavens! as I passed the crowded way,
My bleeding lord before me lay--
I saw--I saw--and wept no more,
Till, as the homeward breezes bore
The bark returning o'er the sea,
My gaze, oh Ilion, turn'd on thee!
Then, frantic, to the midnight air,
I cursed aloud the adulterous pair:--
"They plunge me deep in exile's woe;
They lay my country low:
Their love--no love! but some dark spell,
In vengeance breath'd, by spirit fell.
Rise, hoary sea, in awful tide,
And whelm that vessel's guilty pride;
Nor e'er, in high Mycene's hall,
Let Helen boast in peace of mighty Ilion's fall. "
The translation was given to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
"The amotion or transposition will alter the thought, or the feeling, or at
least the tone. They are as pieces of mosaic work, from which you cannot
strike the smallest block without making a hole in the picture. "--
_Quarterly Review_, No. CIII. p. 7. ]
[Footnote 3:
But Mr. Coleridge took a great distinction between North and the other
writers commonly associated with him. In speaking of the Examen and the
Life of Lord North, in the Friend, Mr. C. calls them "two of the most
interesting biographical works in our language, both for the weight of the
matter, and the _incuriosa felicitas_ of the style. The pages are all alive
with the genuine idioms of our mother tongue. A fastidious taste, it is
true, will find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we now call
_slang_, which not a few of our writers, shortly after the Restoration of
Charles the Second, seem to have affected as a mark of loyalty. These
instances, however, are but a trifling drawback. They are not _sought for_,
as is too often and too plainly done by L'Estrange, Collyer, Tom Brown, and
their imitators. North never goes out of his way, either to seek them, or
to avoid them; and, in the main, his language gives us the very nerve,
pulse, and sinew of a hearty, healthy, conversational _English_. "--Vol. ii.
p. 307. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Imitation is the mesothesis of likeness and difference. The difference is
as essential to it as the likeness; for without the difference, it would be
copy or facsimile. But to borrow a term from astronomy, it is a librating
mesothesis: for it may verge more to likeness as in painting, or more to
difference, as in sculpture.
JULY 4. 1833.
DR. JOHNSON. --BOSWELL. --BURKE. --NEWTON. --MILTON.
Dr. Johnson's fame now rests principally upon Boswell. It is impossible not
to be amused with such a book. But his _bow-wow_ manner must have had a
good deal to do with the effect produced;--for no one, I suppose, will set
Johnson before Burke,--and Burke was a great and universal talker;--yet now
we hear nothing of this except by some chance remarks in Boswell. The fact
is, Burke, like all men of genius who love to talk at all, was very
discursive and continuous; hence he is not reported; he seldom said the
sharp short things that Johnson almost always did, which produce a more
decided effect at the moment, and which are so much more easy to carry
off. [1] Besides, as to Burke's testimony to Johnson's powers, you must
remember that Burke was a great courtier; and after all, Burke said and
wrote more than once that he thought Johnson greater in talking than
writing, and greater in Boswell than in real life. [2]
[Footnote 1:
Burke, I am persuaded, was not so continuous a talker as Coleridge. Madame
de Stael told a nephew of the latter, at Coppet, that Mr. C. was a master
of monologue, _mais qu'il ne savait pas le dialogue_. There was a spice of
vindictiveness in this, the exact history of which is not worth explaining.
And if dialogue must be cut down in its meaning to small talk, I, for one,
will admit that Coleridge, amongst his numberless qualifications, possessed
it not. But I am sure that he could, when it suited him, converse as well
as any one else, and with women he frequently did converse in a very
winning and popular style, confining them, however, as well as he could, to
the detail of facts or of their spontaneous emotions. In general, it was
certainly otherwise. "You must not be surprised," he said to me, "at my
talking so long to you--I pass so much of my time in pain and solitude, yet
everlastingly thinking, that, when you or any other persons call on me, I
can hardly help easing my mind by pouring forth some of the accumulated
mass of reflection and feeling, upon an apparently interested recipient. "
But the principal reason, no doubt, was the habit of his intellect, which
was under a law of discoursing upon all subjects with reference to ideas or
ultimate ends. You might interrupt him when you pleased, and he was patient
of every sort of conversation except mere personality, which he absolutely
hated. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
This was said, I believe, to the late Sir James Mackintosh. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Newton _was_ a great man, but you must excuse me if I think that it would
take many Newtons to make one Milton.
_July_ 6. 1833.
PAINTING. ----MUSIC. ----POETRY.
It is a poor compliment to pay to a painter to tell him that his figure
stands out of the canvass, or that you start at the likeness of the
portrait. Take almost any daub, cut it out of the canvass, and place the
figure looking into or out of a window, and any one may take it for life.
Or take one of Mrs. Salmon's wax queens or generals, and you will very
sensibly feel the difference between a copy, as they are, and an imitation,
of the human form, as a good portrait ought to be. Look at that flower vase
of Van Huysum, and at these wax or stone peaches and apricots! The last are
likest to their original, but what pleasure do they give? None, except to
children. [1]
Some music is above me; most music is beneath me. I like Beethoven and
Mozart--or else some of the aerial compositions of the elder Italians, as
Palestrina[2] and Carissimi. --And I love Purcell.
The best sort of music is what it should be--sacred; the next best, the
military, has fallen to the lot of the Devil.
Good music never tires me, nor sends me to sleep. I feel physically
refreshed and strengthened by it, as Milton says he did.
I could write as good verses now as ever I did, if I were perfectly free
from vexations, and were in the _ad libitum_ hearing of fine music, which
has a sensible effect in harmonizing my thoughts, and in animating and, as
it were, lubricating my inventive faculty. The reason of my not finishing
Christabel is not, that I don't know how to do it--for I have, as I always
had, the whole plan entire from beginning to end in my mind; but I fear I
could not carry on with equal success the execution of the idea, an
extremely subtle and difficult one.
Besides, after this continuation of Faust, which they tell me is very poor,
who can have courage to attempt[3] a reversal of the judgment of all
criticism against continuations? Let us except Don Quixote, however,
although the second part of that transcendant work is not exactly _uno
flatu_ with the original conception.
[Footnote 1:
This passage, and those following, will evidence, what the readers even of
this little work must have seen, that Mr. Coleridge had an eye, almost
exclusively, for the ideal or universal in painting and music. He knew
nothing of the details of handling in the one, or of rules of composition
in the other. Yet he was, to the best of my knowledge, an unerring judge of
the merits of any serious effort in the fine arts, and detected the leading
thought or feeling of the artist, with a decision which used sometimes to
astonish me. Every picture which I have looked at in company with him,
seems now, to my mind, translated into English. He would sometimes say,
after looking for a minute at a picture, generally a modern one, "There's
no use in stopping at this; for I see the painter had no idea. It is mere
mechanical drawing. Come on; _here_ the artist _meant_ something for the
mind. " It was just the same with his knowledge of music. His appetite for
what he thought good was literally inexhaustible. He told me he could
listen to fine music for twelve hours together, and go away _refreshed_.
But he required in music either thought or feeling; mere addresses to the
sensual ear he could not away with; hence his utter distaste for Rossini,
and his reverence for Beethoven and Mozart--ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born about 1529, and died in 1594. I
believe he may be considered the founder or reformer of the Italian church
music. His masses, motets, and hymns are tolerably well known amongst
lovers of the old composers; but Mr. Coleridge used to speak with delight
of some of Palestrina's madrigals which he heard at Rome.
Giacomo Carissimi composed about the years 1640--1650. His style has been
charged with effeminacy; but Mr. C. thought it very graceful and chaste.
Henry Purcell needs no addition in England. --ED. ]
[Footnote 3:
"The thing attempted in Christabel is the most difficult of execution in
the whole field of romance--witchery by daylight--and the success is
complete. "--_Quarterly Review_, No. CIII. p. 29. ]
_July 8. 1833. _
PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
I am clear for public schools as the general rule; but for particular
children private education may be proper. For the purpose of moving at ease
in the best English society,--mind, I don't call the London exclusive
clique the best English society,--the defect of a public education upon the
plan of our great schools and Oxford and Cambridge is hardly to be
supplied. But the defect is visible positively in some men, and only
negatively in others. The first _offend_ you by habits and modes of
thinking and acting directly attributable to their private education; in
the others you only regret that the freedom and facility of the established
and national mode of bringing up is not _added_ to their good qualities.
* * * * *
I more than doubt the expediency of making even
elementary mathematics a part of the routine in the
system of the great schools. It is enough, I think,
that encouragement and facilities should be given; and
I think more will be thus effected than by compelling
all. Much less would I incorporate the German or
French, or any modern language, into the school labours.
I think that a great mistake. [1]
[Footnote 1:
"One constant blunder"--I find it so pencilled by Mr. C. on a margin--"of
these New-Broomers--these Penny Magazine sages and philanthropists, in
reference to our public schools, is to confine their view to what
schoolmasters teach the boys, with entire oversight of all that the boys
are excited to learn from each other and of themselves--with more geniality
even because it is not a part of their compelled school knowledge. An Eton
boy's knowledge of the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Missouri, Orellana, &c.
will be, generally, found in exact proportion to his knowledge of the
Ilissus, Hebrus, Orontes, &c. ; inasmuch as modern travels and voyages are
more entertaining and fascinating than Cellarius; or Robinson Crusoe,
Dampier, and Captain Cook, than the Periegesis. Compare the _lads_
themselves from Eton and Harrow, &c. with the alumni of the New-Broom
Institution, and not the lists of school-lessons; and be that comparison
the criterion. --ED. ]
August 4, 1833.
SCOTT AND COLERIDGE.
Dear Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but harmonious, opposites in
this;--that every old ruin, hill, river, or tree called up in his mind a
host of historical or biographical associations,--just as a bright pan of
brass, when beaten, is said to attract the swarming bees;--whereas, for
myself, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson, I believe I should walk over the plain
of Marathon without taking more interest in it than in any other plain of
similar features. Yet I receive as much pleasure in reading the account of
the battle, in Herodotus, as any one can. Charles Lamb wrote an essay [1]
on a man who lived in past time:--I thought of adding another to it on one
who lived not in time at all, past, present, or future,--but beside or
collaterally.
[Footnote 1:
I know not when or where; but are not all the writings of this exquisite
genius the effusions of one whose spirit lived in past time? The place
which Lamb holds, and will continue to hold, in English literature, seems
less liable to interruption than that of any other writer of our day. --ED. ]
August 10. 1833.
NERVOUS WEAKNESS. ----HOOKER AND BULL. -----FAITH. ----A POET'S NEED OF
PRAISE.
A PERSON, nervously weak, has a sensation of weakness which is as bad to
him as muscular weakness. The only difference lies in the better chance of
removal.
* * * * *
The fact, that Hooker and Bull, in their two palmary works respectively,
are read in the Jesuit Colleges, is a curious instance of the power of mind
over the most profound of all prejudices.
There are permitted moments of exultation through faith, when we cease to
feel our own emptiness save as a capacity for our Redeemer's fulness.
* * * * *
There is a species of applause scarcely less genial to a poet, than the
vernal warmth to the feathered songsters during their nest-breeding or
incubation; a sympathy, an expressed hope, that is the open air in which
the poet breathes, and without which the sense of power sinks back on
itself, like a sigh heaved up from the tightened chest of a sick man.
_August_ 14. 1833.
QUAKERS. --PHILANTHROPISTS. --JEWS.
A quaker is made up of ice and flame. He has no composition, no mean
temperature. Hence he is rarely interested about any public measure but he
becomes a fanatic, and oversteps, in his irrespective zeal, every decency
and every right opposed to his course.
* * * * *
I have never known a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in heart
somewhere or other. Individuals so distinguished are usually unhappy in
their family relations,--men not benevolent or beneficent to individuals,
but almost hostile to them, yet lavishing money and labour and time on the
race, the abstract notion. The cosmopolitism which does not spring out of,
and blossom upon, the deep-rooted stem of nationality or patriotism, is a
spurious and rotten growth.
* * * * *
When I read the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of the Epistle to the
Romans to that fine old man Mr. ----, at Ramsgate, he shed tears. Any Jew
of sensibility must be deeply impressed by them.
* * * * *
The two images farthest removed from each other which can be comprehended
under one term, are, I think, Isaiah [1]--"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O
earth! "--and Levi of Holywell Street--"Old clothes! "--both of them Jews,
you'll observe. _Immane quantum discrepant! _
[Footnote 1:
I remember Mr. Coleridge used to call Isaiah his ideal of the Hebrew
prophet. He studied that part of the Scripture with unremitting attention
and most reverential admiration. Although Mr. C. was remarkably deficient
in the technical memory of words, he could say a great deal of Isaiah by
heart, and he delighted in pointing out the hexametrical rhythm of numerous
passages in the English version:--
"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, | O earth: for the Lord hath spoken.
I have nourished and brought up children, | and they have rebelled
against me.
The ox knoweth his owner, | and the ass his master's crib:
But Israel doth not know, | my people doth not consider. "--ED. ]
_August_ 15. 1833.
SALLUST. --THUCYDIDES. --HERODOTUS. --GIBBON. --KEY TO THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN
EMPIRE.
I consider the two works of Sallust which have come down to us entire, as
romances founded on facts; no adequate causes are stated, and there is no
real continuity of action. In Thucydides, you are aware from the beginning
that you are reading the reflections of a man of great genius and
experience upon the character and operation of the two great political
principles in conflict in the civilized world in his time; his narrative of
events is of minor importance, and it is evident that he selects for the
purpose of illustration. It is Thucydides himself whom you read throughout
under the names of Pericles, Nicias, &c.
But in Herodotus it is just the
reverse. He has as little subjectivity as Homer, and, delighting in the
great fancied epic of events, he narrates them without impressing any thing
as of his own mind upon the narrative. It is the charm of Herodotus that he
gives you the spirit of his age--that of Thucydides, that he reveals to you
his own, which was above the spirit of his age.
The difference between the composition of a history in modern and ancient
times is very great; still there are certain principles upon which the
history of a modern period may be written, neither sacrificing all truth
and reality, like Gibbon, nor descending into mere biography and anecdote.
Gibbon's style is detestable, but his style is not the worst thing about
him. His history has proved an effectual bar to all real familiarity with
the temper and habits of imperial Rome. Few persons read the original
authorities, even those which are classical; and certainly no distinct
knowledge of the actual state of the empire can be obtained from Gibbon's
rhetorical sketches. He takes notice of nothing but what may produce an
effect; he skips on from eminence to eminence, without ever taking you
through the valleys between: in fact, his work is little else but a
disguised collection of all the splendid anecdotes which he could find in
any book concerning any persons or nations from the Antonines to the
capture of Constantinople. When I read a chapter in Gibbon, I seem to be
looking through a luminous haze or fog:--figures come and go, I know not
how or why, all larger than life, or distorted or discoloured; nothing is
real, vivid, true; all is scenical, and, as it were, exhibited by
candlelight. And then to call it a History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire!
Was there ever a greater misnomer? I protest I do not remember a single
philosophical attempt made throughout the work to fathom the ultimate
causes of the decline or fall of that empire. How miserably deficient is
the narrative of the important reign of Justinian! And that poor
scepticism, which Gibbon mistook for Socratic philosophy, has led him to
misstate and mistake the character and influence of Christianity in a way
which even an avowed infidel or atheist would not and could not have done.
Gibbon was a man of immense reading; but he had no philosophy; and he never
fully understood the principle upon which the best of the old historians
wrote. He attempted to imitate their artificial construction of the whole
work--their dramatic ordonnance of the parts--without seeing that their
histories were intended more as documents illustrative of the truths of
political philosophy than as mere chronicles of events.
The true key to the declension of the Roman empire--which is not to be
found in all Gibbon's immense work--may be stated in two words:--the
_imperial_ character overlaying, and finally destroying, the _national_
character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.
_August_ 16. 1833.
DR. JOHNSON'S POLITICAL PAMPHLETS. --TAXATION. -DIRECT REPRESENTATION. ---
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. ---RIGHT OF WOMEN TO VOTE----HORNE TOOKE. ----ETYMOLOGY
OF THE FINAL IVE.
I like Dr. Johnson's political pamphlets better than any other parts of his
works:-particularly his "Taxation no Tyranny" is very clever and spirited,
though he only sees half of his subject, and that not in a very
philosophical manner. Plunder--Tribute--Taxation--are the three gradations
of action by the sovereign on the property of the subject. The first is
mere violence, bounded by no law or custom, and is properly an act only
between conqueror and conquered, and that, too, in the moment of victory.
The second supposes law; but law proceeding only from, and dictated by, one
party, the conqueror; law, by which he consents to forego his right of
plunder upon condition of the conquered giving up to him, of their own
accord, a fixed commutation. The third implies compact, and negatives any
right to plunder,--taxation being professedly for the direct benefit of the
party taxed, that, by paying a part, he may through the labours and
superintendence of the sovereign be able to enjoy the rest in peace. As to
the right to tax being only commensurate with direct representation, it is
a fable, falsely and treacherously brought forward by those who know its
hollowness well enough. You may show its weakness in a moment, by observing
that not even the universal suffrage of the Benthamites avoids the
difficulty;--for although it may be allowed to be contrary to decorum that
women should legislate; yet there can be no reason why women should not
choose their representatives to legislate;--and if it be said that they are
merged in their husbands, let it be allowed where the wife has no separate
property; but where she has a distinct taxable estate, in which her husband
has no interest, what right can her husband have to choose for her the
person whose vote may affect her separate interest? --Besides, at all
events, an unmarried woman of age, possessing one thousand pounds a year,
has surely as good a moral right to vote, if taxation without
representation is tyranny, as any ten-pounder in the kingdom. The truth, of
course, is, that direct representation is a chimera, impracticable in fact,
and useless or noxious if practicable.
Johnson had neither eye nor ear; for nature, therefore, he cared, as he
knew, nothing. His knowledge of town life was minute; but even that was
imperfect, as not being contrasted with the better life of the country.
Horne Tooke was once holding forth on language, when, turning to me, he
asked me if I knew what the meaning of the final _ive_ was in English
words. I said I thought I could tell what he, Horne Tooke himself, thought.
"Why, what? " said he. "_Vis_," I replied; and he acknowledged I had guessed
right. I told him, however, that I could not agree with him; but believed
that the final _ive_ came from _ick_--_vicus_, [Greek: --] a'txaq; the root
denoting collectivity and community, and that it was opposed to the final
_ing_, which signifies separation, particularity, and individual property,
from _ingle_, a hearth, or one man's place or seat: [Greek: --] oi'xo? ,
_vicus_, denoted an aggregation of _ingles_. The alteration of the _c_ and
_k_ of the root into the _v_ was evidently the work of the digammate power,
and hence we find the _icus_ and _ivus_ indifferently as finals in Latin.
The precise difference of the etymologies is apparent in these phrases:---
The lamb is spor_tive;_ that is, has a nature or habit of sporting: the
lamb is sport_ing;_ that is, the animal is now performing a sport. Horne
Tooke upon this said nothing to my etymology; but I believe he found that
he could not make a fool of me, as he did of Godwin and some other of his
butts.
August 17. 1833.
"THE LORD" IN THE ENGLISH VERSION OF THE PSALMS, ETC. ----SCOTCH KIRK AND
IRVING.
It is very extraordinary that, in our translation of the Psalms, which
professes to be from the Hebrew, the name Jehovah--[Hebrew: --] 'O -- The
Being, or God--should be omitted, and, instead of it, the [Hebrew: --]
Ktlpio? , or Lord, of the Septuagint be adopted. The Alexandrian Jews had a
superstitious dread of writing the name of God, and put [Greek: Kurhios]
not as a translation, but as a mere mark or sign--every one readily
understanding for what it really stood. We, who have no such superstition,
ought surely to restore the Jehovah, and thereby bring out in the true
force the overwhelming testimony of the Psalms to the divinity of Christ,
the Jehovah or manifested God. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I find the same remark in the late most excellent Bishop Sandford's diary,
under date 17th December, 1827:--"[Greek: CHairhete en t_o Kurhi_o Kurhios]
idem significat quod [Hebrew: --] apud Hebraeos. Hebraei enim nomine
[Hebrew: --] sanctissimo nempe Dei nomine, nunquam in colloquio utebantur,
sed vice ejus [Hebrew: --] pronuntiabant, quod LXX per [Greek: Kurhios]
exprimebant. "--_Remains of Bishop Sandford_, vol. i. p. 207.
Mr. Coleridge saw this work for the first time many months after making the
observation in the text. Indeed it was the very last book he ever read. He
was deeply interested in the picture drawn of the Bishop, and said that the
mental struggles and bodily sufferings indicated in the Diary had been his
own for years past. He conjured me to peruse the Memoir and the Diary with
great care:--"I have received," said he, "much spiritual comfort and
strength from the latter. O! were my faith and devotion, like my
sufferings, equal to that good man's! He felt, as I do, how deep a depth is
prayer in faith. "
In connection with the text, I may add here, that Mr. C. said, that long
before he knew that the late Bishop Middleton was of the same opinion, he
had deplored the misleading inadequacy of our authorized version of the
expression, [Greek: pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os] in the Epistle to the
Colossians, i. 15. : [Greek: hos estin eik_on tou THeou tou aoratou,
pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os. ] He rendered the verse in these words:--"Who
is the manifestation of God the invisible, the begotten antecedently to all
creation;" observing, that in [Greek: pr_ototokos] there was a double
superlative of priority, and that the natural meaning of "_first-born of
every creature_,"--the language of our version,--afforded no premiss for
the causal [Greek: hoti] in the next verse. The same criticism may be found
in the Stateman's Manual, p. 56. n. ; and see Bishop Sandford's judgment to
the same effect, vol. i. p. 165. --ED. ]
* * * * *
I cannot understand the conduct of the Scotch Kirk with regard to poor
Irving. They might with ample reason have visited him for the monstrous
indecencies of those exhibitions of the spirit;--perhaps the Kirk would not
have been justified in overlooking such disgraceful breaches of decorum;
but to excommunicate him on account of his language about Christ's body was
very foolish. Irving's expressions upon this subject are ill judged,
inconvenient, in had taste, and in terms false: nevertheless his apparent
meaning, such as it is, is orthodox. Christ's body--as mere body, or rather
carcass (for body is an associated word), was no more capable of sin or
righteousness than mine or yours;--that his humanity had a capacity of sin,
follows from its own essence. He was of like passions as we, and was
tempted. How could he be tempted, if he had no formal capacity of being
seduced?
It is Irving's error to use declamation, high and passionate rhetoric, not
introduced and pioneered by calm and clear logic, which is--to borrow a
simile, though with a change in the application, from the witty-wise, but
not always wisely-witty, Fuller--like knocking a nail into a board, without
wimbling a hole for it, and which then either does not enter, or turns
crooked, or splits the wood it pierces.
August 18. 1833.
MILTON'S EGOTISM. --CLAUDIAN. --STERNE.
In the Paradise Lost--indeed in every one of his poems--it is Milton
himself whom you see; his Satan, his Adam, his Raphael, almost his Eve--are
all John Milton; and it is a sense of this intense egotism that gives me
the greatest pleasure in reading Milton's works. The egotism of such a man
is a revelation of spirit.
* * * * *
Claudian deserves more attention than is generally paid to him. He is the
link between the old classic and the modern way of thinking in verse. You
will observe in him an oscillation between the objective poetry of the
ancients and the subjective mood of the moderns. His power of pleasingly
reproducing the same thought in different language is remarkable, as it is
in Pope. Read particularly the Phoenix, and see how the single image of
renascence is varied. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge referred to Claudian's first Idyll:--"Oceani summo
circumfluus cequore lucus Trans Indos Eurumque viret," &c. See the lines--
"Hic neque concepto fetu, nec semine surgit;
Sed pater est prolesque sibi, nulloque creante
Emeritos artus foecunda morte reformat,
Et petit alternam totidem per funera vitam.
. . .
Et cumulum texens pretiosa fronde Sabaeum
Componit bustumque sibi partumque futurum.
. . .
O senium positure rogo, falsisque sepulcris
Natales habiture vices, qui saepe renasci
Exitio, proprioque soles pubescere leto,
Accipe principium rursus.
. . .
Parturiente rogo--
. . .
Victuri cineres--
. . .
Qm fuerat genitor, natus nunc prosilit idem,
Succeditque novus---
. . .
O felix, haeresque tui! quo solvimur omnes,
Hoc tibi suppeditat vires; praebetur origo
Per cinerem; moritur te non pereunte senectus. "--ED. ]
* * * * *
I think highly of Sterne--that is, of the first part of Tristram Shandy:
for as to the latter part about the widow Wadman, it is stupid and
disgusting; and the Sentimental Journey is poor sickly stuff. There is a
great deal of affectation in Sterne, to be sure; but still the characters
of Trim and the two Shandies[1] are most individual and delightful.
Sterne's morals are bad, but I don't think they can do much harm to any one
whom they would not find bad enough before. Besides, the oddity and erudite
grimaces under which much of his dirt is hidden take away the effect for
the most part; although, to be sure, the book is scarcely readable by
women.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge considered the character of the father, the elder Shandy, as
by much the finer delineation of the two. I fear his low opinion of the
Sentimental Journey will not suit a thorough Sterneist; but I could never
get him to modify his criticism. He said, "The oftener you read Sterne, the
more clearly will you perceive the _great_ difference between Tristram
Shandy and the Sentimental Journey. There is truth and reality in the one,
and little beyond a clever affectation in the other. "--ED. ]
August 20. 1833.
HUMOUR AND GENIUS. --GREAT POETS GOOD MEN. --DICTION OF THE OLD AND NEW
TESTAMENT VERSION. --HEBREW. --VOWELS AND CONSONANTS.
Men of humour are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so,
although a man of genius may amongst other gifts possess wit, as
Shakspeare.
* * * * *
Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like
manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual
powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.
* * * * *
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people,
because they have a power of looking _at_ such persons as objects of
amusement of another race altogether.
* * * * *
I quite agree with Strabo, as translated by Ben Jonson in his splendid
dedication of the Fox[1]--that there can be no great poet who is not a good
man, though not, perhaps, a _goody_ man. His heart must be pure; he must
have learned to look into his own heart, and sometimes to look _at_ it; for
how can he who is ignorant of his own heart know any thing of, or be able
to move, the heart of any one else?
[Footnote 1:
[Greek: 'H de (arhet_e) poi_etou synezeyktai t_e tou anthrh_opou kai ouch
oion te agathon genesthai poi_et_en, m_e prhoterhon gen_ethenta angrha
agathon. ]--Lib. I. p. 33. folio.
"For, if men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and
function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the
impossibility of any man's being the good poet without first being a good
man. "]
* * * * *
I think there is a perceptible difference in the elegance and correctness
of the English in our versions of the Old and New Testament. I cannot yield
to the authority of many examples of usages which may be alleged from the
New Testament version. St. Paul is very often most inadequately rendered,
and there are slovenly phrases which would never have come from Ben Jonson
or any other good prose writer of that day.
* * * * *
Hebrew is so simple, and its words are so few and near the roots, that it
is impossible to keep up any adequate knowledge of it without constant
application. The meanings of the words are chiefly traditional. The loss of
Origen's Heptaglott Bible, in which he had written out the Hebrew words in
Greek characters, is the heaviest which biblical literature has ever
experienced. It would have fixed the sounds as known at that time.
* * * * *
Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants. It is
natural, therefore, that the consonants should be marked first, as being
the framework of the word; and no doubt a very simple living language might
be written quite intelligibly to the natives without any vowel sounds
marked at all. The words would be traditionally and conventionally
recognized as in short hand--thus--_Gd crtd th Hvn nd th Rth_. I wish I
understood Arabic; and yet I doubt whether to the European philosopher or
scholar it is worth while to undergo the immense labour of acquiring that
or any other Oriental tongue, except Hebrew.
_August_ 23. 1833.
GREEK ACCENT AND QUANTITY.
The distinction between accent and quantity is clear, and was, no doubt,
observed by the ancients in the recitation of verse. But I believe such
recitation to have been always an artificial thing, and that the common
conversation was entirely regulated by accent. I do not think it possible
to _talk_ any language without confounding the quantity of syllables with
their high or low tones[1]; although you may _sing_ or _recitative_ the
difference well enough. Why should the marks of accent have been considered
exclusively necessary for teaching the pronunciation to the Asiatic or
African Hellenist, if the knowledge of the acuted syllable did not also
carry the stress of time with it? If _[Greek: **anthropos]_ was to be
pronounced in common conversation with a perceptible distinction of the
length of the penultima as well as of the elevation of the antepenultima,
why was not that long quantity also marked? It was surely as important an
ingredient in the pronunciation as the accent. And although the letter
omega might in such a word show the quantity, yet what do you say to such
words as [Greek: lelonchasi, tupsasa], and the like--the quantity of the
penultima of which is not marked to the eye at all? Besides, can we
altogether disregard the practice of the modern Greeks? Their confusion of
accent and quantity in verse is of course a barbarism, though a very old
one, as the _versus politici_ of John Tzetzes [2] in the twelfth century
and the Anacreontics prefixed to Proclus will show; but these very examples
prove _a fortiori_ what the common pronunciation in prose then was.
[Footnote 1:
This opinion, I need not say, is in direct opposition to the conclusion of
Foster and Mitford, and scarcely reconcilable with the apparent meaning of
the authorities from the old critics and grammarians. Foster's opponent was
for rejecting the accents and attending only to the syllabic quantity;--Mr.
C. would, _in prose_, attend to the accents only as indicators of the
quantity, being unable to conceive any practical distinction between time
and tone in common speech. Yet how can we deal with the authority of
Dionysius of Halicarnassus alone, who, on the one hand, discriminates
quantity so exquisitely as to make four degrees of _shortness_ in the
penultimates of _[Greek: --hodos hr odos, tz opos]_ and _[Greek: --stz
ophos]_, and this expressly _[Greek: --eu logois psilois]_, or plain prose,
as well as in verse; and on the other hand declares, according to the
evidently correct interpretation of the passage, that the difference
between music and ordinary speech consists in the number only, and not in
the quality, of tones:--_[Greek: **to Poso diallattousa taes su odais kahi
oznauois, kahi ouchi to Poio_. (Pezhi Sun. c. 11. ? ]) The extreme
sensibility of the Athenian ear to the accent in prose is, indeed, proved
by numerous anecdotes, one of the most amusing of which, though, perhaps,
not the best authenticated as a fact, is that of Demosthenes in the Speech
for the Crown, asking, "Whether, O Athenians, does Aeschines appear to you
to be the mercenary (_[Greek: **misthothos]_} of Alexander, or his guest or
friend (_[Greek: **xenos]_)? " It is said that he pronounced _[Greek:
**misthothos]_ with a false accent on the antepenultima, as _[Greek:
**misthotos]_, and that upon the audience immediately crying out, by way of
correction, _[Greek: **misthothos]_, with an emphasis, the orator continued
coolly,--_[Greek: **achoueis a legousi]_--"You yourself hear what they
say! " Demosthenes is also said, whether affectedly, or in ignorance, to
have sworn in some speech by _[Greek: Asklaepios]_, throwing the accent
falsely on the antepenultima, and that, upon being interrupted for it, he
declared, in his justification, that the pronunciation was proper, for that
the divinity was _[Greek: aepios]_, mild. The expressions in Plutarch are
very striking:--"[Greek: **Thozuxon ekinaesen, omnue dhe kahi thon'
Asklaepion, pzopasoxunon' Asklaepion, kai pazedeiknuen autohn ozthos
legonta' einai gahz tohn thehon aepion' kahi epi outo polakis
hethozuzaethae. " Dec. Orat. _--Ed. ]
[Footnote 2:
See his Chiliads.
