You see the great
reviewers
are now ashamed
of reviewing works in the old style, and have taken up essay writing
instead.
of reviewing works in the old style, and have taken up essay writing
instead.
Coleridge - Table Talk
--PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired the Ancient Mariner very much,
but that there were two faults in it,--it was improbable, and had no moral.
As for the probability, I owned that that might admit some question; but as
to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgment the poem had too
much; and that the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the
obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or
cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no
more moral than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to
eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a
genie starts up, and says he _must_ kill the aforesaid merchant, _because_
one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's
son. [1]
I took the thought of "_grinning for joy_," in that poem, from my
companion's remark to me, when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and
were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the constriction,
till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to me,--"You grinned
like an idiot! " He had done the same.
[Footnote 1:
"There he found, at the foot of a great walnut-tree, a fountain of a very
clear running water, and alighting, tied his horse to a branch of a tree,
and sitting clown by the fountain, took some biscuits and dates out of his
portmanteau, and, as he ate his dates, threw the shells about on both sides
of him. When he had done eating, being a good Mussulman, he washed his
hands, his face, and his feet, and said his prayers. He had not made an
end, but was still on his knees, when he saw a genie appear, all white with
age, and of a monstrous bulk; who, advancing towards him with a cimetar in
his hand, spoke to him in a terrible voice thus:--'Rise up, that I may kill
thee with this cimetar as you have killed my son! ' and accompanied these
words with a frightful cry. The merchant being as much frightened at the
hideous shape of the monster as at these threatening words, answered him
trembling:--'Alas! my good lord, of what crime can I be guilty towards you
that you should take away my life? '--'I will,' replies the genie, 'kill
thee, as thou hast killed my son! '--'O heaven! ' says the merchant, 'how
should I kill your son? I did not know him, nor ever saw him. '--'Did not
you sit down when you came hither? ' replies the genie. 'Did not you take
dates out of your portmanteau, and, as you ate them, did not you throw the
shells about on both sides? '--'I did all that you say,' answers the
merchant, 'I cannot deny it. '--'If it be so,' replied the genie, 'I tell
thee that thou hast killed my son; and the way was thus: when you threw the
nutshells about, my son was passing by, and you threw one of them into his
eye, which killed him, _therefore_ I must kill thee. '--'Ah! my good lord,
pardon me! ' cried the merchant. --'No pardon,' answers the genie, 'no mercy!
Is it not just to kill him that has killed another? '--'I agree to it,' says
the merchant, 'but certainly I never killed your son, and if I have, it was
unknown to me, and I did it innocently; therefore I beg you to pardon me,
and suffer me to live. '--'No, no,' says the genie, persisting in his
resolution, 'I must kill thee, since thou hast killed my son;' and then
taking the merchant by the arm, threw him with his face upon the ground,
and lifted up his cimetar to cut off his head! "--The Merchant and the
Genie. First night. --Ed. ]
* * * * *
Undine is a most exquisite work. It shows the general want of any sense for
the fine and the subtle in the public taste, that this romance made no deep
impression. Undine's character, before she receives a soul, is marvellously
beautiful. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge's admiration of this little romance was unbounded. He read it
several times in German, and once in the English translation, made in
America, I believe; the latter he thought inadequately done. Mr. C. said
that there was something in Undine even beyond Scott,--that Scott's best
characters and conceptions were _composed_; by which I understood him to
mean that Baillie Nicol Jarvie, for example, was made up of old
particulars, and received its individuality from the author's power of
fusion, being in the result an admirable product, as Corinthian brass was
said to be the conflux of the spoils of a city. But Undine, he said, was
one and single in projection, and had presented to his imagination, what
Scott had never done, an absolutely new idea--ED. ]
* * * * *
It seems to me, that Martin never looks at nature except through bits of
stained glass. He is never satisfied with any appearance that is not
prodigious. He should endeavour to school his imagination into the
apprehension of the true idea of the Beautiful. [1]
The wood-cut of Slay-good[2] is admirable, to be sure; but this new edition
of the Pilgrim's Progress is too fine a book for it. It should be much
larger, and on sixpenny coarse paper.
The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without
slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy
the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in
very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more
necessary it is to be plain.
This wonderful work is one of the few books which may be read over
repeatedly at different times, and each time with a new and a different
pleasure. I read it once as a theologian--and let me assure you, that there
is great theological acumen in the work--once with devotional feelings--and
once as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could
be painted in such exquisitely delightful colours. [3]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge said this, after looking at the engravings of Mr. Martin's
two pictures of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the Celestial City,
published in the beautiful edition of the Pilgrim's Progress by Messrs.
Murray and Major, in 1830. I wish Mr. Martin could have heard the poet's
lecture: he would have been flattered, and at the same time, I believe,
instructed; for in the philosophy of painting Coleridge was a master. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
P. 350. , by S. Mosses from a design by Mr. W. Harvey. "When they came to
the place where he was, they found him with one _Feeble-mind_ in his hand,
whom his servants had brought unto him, having taken him in the way. Now
the giant was rifling him, with a purpose, after that, to pick his bones;
for he was of the nature of flesh eaters. "--ED. ]
[Footnote 3:
I find written on a blank leaf of my copy of this edition of the P. 's P.
the following note by Mr. C. :--"I know of no book, the Bible excepted as
above all comparison, which I, according to _my_ judgment and experience,
could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth
according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress.
It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best _summa theologiae
evangalicae_ ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired. " June 14.
1830. --ED. ]
_June_ 1. 1830.
PRAYER. --CHURCH-SINGING. --HOOKER. --DREAMS.
There are three sorts of prayer:--1. Public; 2. Domestic; 3. Solitary. Each
has its peculiar uses and character. I think the church ought to publish
and authorise a directory of forms for the latter two. Yet I fear the
execution would be inadequate. There is a great decay of devotional unction
in the numerous books of prayers put out now-a-days. I really think the
hawker was very happy, who blundered New Form of Prayer into New _former_
Prayers. [1]
I exceedingly regret that our church pays so little attention to the
subject of congregational singing. See how it is! In that particular part
of the public worship in which, more than in all the rest, the common
people might, and ought to, join,--which, by its association with music, is
meant to give a fitting vent and expression to the emotions,--in that part
we all sing as Jews; or, at best, as mere men, in the abstract, without a
Saviour. You know my veneration for the Book of Psalms, or most of it; but
with some half dozen exceptions, the Psalms are surely not adequate
vehicles of Christian thanksgiving and joy! Upon this deficiency in our
service, Wesley and Whitfield seized; and you know it is the hearty
congregational singing of Christian hymns which keeps the humbler
Methodists together. Luther did as much for the Reformation by his hymns as
by his translation of the Bible. In Germany, the hymns are known by heart
by every peasant: they advise, they argue from the hymns, and every soul in
the church praises God, like a Christian, with words which are natural and
yet sacred to his mind. No doubt this defect in our service proceeded from
the dread which the English Reformers had of being charged with introducing
any thing into the worship of God but the text of Scripture.
[Footnote 1:
"I will add, at the risk of appearing to dwell too long on religious
topics, that on this my first introduction to Coleridge he reverted with
strong compunction to a sentiment which he had expressed in earlier days
upon prayer. In one of his youthful poems, speaking of God, he had said--
--'Of whose all-seeing eye
Aught to demand were impotence of mind. '
This sentiment he now so utterly condemned, that, on the contrary, he told
me, as his own peculiar opinion, that the act of praying was the very
highest energy of which the human heart was capable, praying, that is, with
the total concentration of the faculties; and the great mass of worldly men
and of learned men he pronounced absolutely incapable of prayer. "--_Tait's
Magazine_, September, 1834, p. 515.
Mr. Coleridge within two years of his death very solemnly declared to me
his conviction upon the same subject. I was sitting by his bedside one
afternoon, and he fell, an unusual thing for him, into a long account of
many passages of his past life, lamenting some things, condemning others,
but complaining withal, though very gently, of the way in which many of his
most innocent acts had been cruelly misrepresented. "But I have no
difficulty," said he, "in forgiveness; indeed, I know not how to say with
sincerity the clause in the Lord's Prayer, which asks forgiveness _as we
forgive_. I feel nothing answering to it in my heart. Neither do I find, or
reckon, the most solemn faith in God as a real object, the most arduous act
of the reason and will. O no, my dear, it is _to pray, to pray_ as God
would have us; this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe
me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will,
to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and
verily do the thing he pleaseth thereupon--this is the last, the greatest
achievement of the Christian's warfare upon earth. _Teach_ us to pray, O
Lord! " And then he burst into a flood of tears, and begged me to pray for
him. O what a sight was there! --ED. ]
* * * * *
Hooker said,--That by looking for that in the Bible which it is impossible
that _any book_ can have, we lose the benefits which we might reap from its
being the best of all books.
* * * * *
You will observe, that even in dreams nothing is fancied without an
antecedent _quasi_ cause. It could not be otherwise.
_June_ 4. 1830.
JEREMY TAYLOR. --ENGLISH REFORMATION.
Taylor's was a great and lovely mind; yet how much and injuriously was it
perverted by his being a favourite and follower of Laud, and by his
intensely popish feelings of church authority. [1] His Liberty of
Prophesying is a work of wonderful eloquence and skill; but if we believe
the argument, what do we come to? Why to nothing more or less than this,
that--so much can be said for every opinion and sect,--so impossible is it
to settle any thing by reasoning or authority of Scripture,--we must appeal
to some positive jurisdiction on earth, _ut sit finis controversiarum_. In
fact, the whole book is the precise argument used by the Papists to induce
men to admit the necessity of a supreme and infallible head of the church
on earth. It is one of the works which preeminently gives countenance to
the saying of Charles or James II. , I forget which:--"When you of the
Church of England contend with the Catholics, you use the arguments of the
Puritans; when you contend with the Puritans, you immediately adopt all the
weapons of the Catholics. " Taylor never speaks with the slightest symptom
of affection or respect of Luther, Calvin, or any other of the great
reformers--at least, not in any of his learned works; but he _saints_ every
trumpery monk and friar, down to the very latest canonizations by the
modern popes. I fear you will think me harsh, when I say that I believe
Taylor was, perhaps unconsciously, half a Socinian in heart. Such a strange
inconsistency would not be impossible. The Romish church has produced many
such devout Socinians. The cross of Christ is dimly seen in Taylor's works.
Compare him in this particular with Donne, and you will feel the difference
in a moment. Why are not Donne's volumes of sermons reprinted at Oxford? [2]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge placed Jeremy Taylor amongst the four great geniuses of old
English literature. I think he used to reckon Shakspeare and Bacon, Milton
and Taylor, four-square, each against each. In mere eloquence, he thought
the Bishop without any fellow. He called him Chrysostom. Further, he loved
the man, and was anxious to find excuses for some weak parts in his
character. But Mr. Coleridge's assent to Taylor's views of many of the
fundamental positions of Christianity was very limited; and, indeed, he
considered him as the least sound in point of doctrine of any of the old
divines, comprehending, within that designation, the writers to the middle
of Charles II. 's reign. He speaks of Taylor in "The Friend" in the
following terms:--"Among the numerous examples with which I might enforce
this warning, I refer, not without reluctance, to the most eloquent, and
one of the most learned, of our divines; a rigorist, indeed, concerning the
authority of the church, but a latitudinarian in the articles of its faith;
who stretched the latter almost to the advanced posts of Socinianism, and
strained the former to a hazardous conformity with the assumptions of the
Roman hierarchy. " Vol. ii. p. 108. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
Why not, indeed! It is really quite unaccountable that the sermons
of this great divine of the English church should be so little known as
they are, even to very literary clergymen of the present day. It might
have been expected, that the sermons of the greatest preacher of his age,
the admired of Ben Jonson, Selden, and all that splendid band of poets
and scholars, would even as curiosities have been reprinted, when works,
which are curious for nothing, are every year sent forth afresh under the
most authoritative auspices. Dr. Donne was educated at both universities,
at Hart Hall, Oxford, first, and afterwards at Cambridge, but at
what college Walton does not mention--ED. ]
* * * * *
In the reign of Edward VI. , the Reformers feared to admit almost any thing
on human authority alone. They had seen and felt the abuses consequent on
the popish theory of Christianity; and I doubt not they wished and intended
to reconstruct the religion and the church, as far as was possible, upon
the plan of the primitive ages? But the Puritans pushed this bias to an
absolute bibliolatry. They would not put on a corn-plaster without scraping
a text over it. Men of learning, however, soon felt that this was wrong in
the other extreme, and indeed united itself to the very abuse it seemed to
shun. They saw that a knowledge of the Fathers, and of early tradition, was
absolutely necessary; and unhappily, in many instances, the excess of the
Puritans drove the men of learning into the old popish extreme of denying
the Scriptures to be capable of affording a rule of faith without the
dogmas of the church. Taylor is a striking instance how far a Protestant
might be driven in this direction.
_June_ 6. 1830.
CATHOLICITY. --GNOSIS. --TERTULLIAN. --ST. JOHN.
In the first century, catholicity was the test of a book or epistle--
whether it were of the Evangelicon or Apostolicon--being canonical. This
catholic spirit was opposed to the gnostic or peculiar spirit,--the humour
of fantastical interpretation of the old Scriptures into Christian
meanings. It is this gnosis, or _knowingness,_ which the Apostle says
puffeth up,--not _knowledge_, as we translate it. The Epistle of Barnabas,
of the genuineness of which I have no sort of doubt, is an example of this
gnostic spirit. The Epistle to the Hebrews is the only instance of gnosis
in the canon: it was written evidently by some apostolical man before the
destruction of the Temple, and probably at Alexandria. For three hundred
years, and more, it was not admitted into the canon, especially not by the
Latin church, on account of this difference in it from the other
Scriptures. But its merit was so great, and the gnosis in it is so kept
within due bounds, that its admirers at last succeeded, especially by
affixing St. Paul's name to it, to have it included in the canon; which was
first done, I think, by the council of Laodicea in the middle of the fourth
century. Fortunately for us it was so.
* * * * *
I beg Tertullian's pardon; but amongst his many _bravuras_, he says
something about St. Paul's autograph. Origen expressly declares the
reverse.
* * * * *
It is delightful to think, that the beloved apostle was born a Plato. To
him was left the almost oracular utterance of the mysteries of the
Christian religion while to St. Paul was committed the task of explanation,
defence, and assertion of all the doctrines, and especially of those
metaphysical ones touching the will and grace;[1] for which purpose his
active mind, his learned education, and his Greek logic, made him
pre-eminently fit.
[Footnote 1:
"The imperative and oracular form of the inspired Scripture is the form of
reason itself, in all things purely rational and moral. "--_Statesman's
Manual_, p. 22. ]
June 7. 1830.
PRINCIPLES OF A REVIEW. --PARTY-SPIRIT.
Notwithstanding what you say, I am persuaded that a review would amply
succeed even now, which should be started upon a published code of
principles, critical, moral, political, and religious; which should
announce what sort of books it would review, namely, works of literature as
contradistinguished from all that offspring of the press, which in the
present age supplies food for the craving caused by the extended ability of
reading without any correspondent education of the mind, and which formerly
was done by conversation, and which should really give a fair account of
what the author intended to do, and in his own words, if possible, and in
addition, afford one or two fair specimens of the execution,--itself never
descending for one moment to any personality. It should also be provided
before the commencement with a dozen powerful articles upon fundamental
topics to appear in succession.
You see the great reviewers are now ashamed
of reviewing works in the old style, and have taken up essay writing
instead. Hence arose such publications as the Literary Gazette and others,
which are set up for the purpose--not a useless one--of advertizing new
books of all sorts for the circulating libraries. A mean between the two
extremes still remains to be taken.
* * * * *
Party men always hate a slightly differing friend more than a downright
enemy. I quite calculate on my being one day or other holden in worse
repute by many Christians than the Unitarians and open infidels. It must be
undergone by every one who loves the truth for its own sake beyond all
other things.
* * * * *
Truth is a good dog; but beware of barking too close to the heels of an
error, lest you get your brains kicked out.
_June_ 10. 1830.
SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF BUNYAN. --LAUD. --PURITANS AND CAVALIERS. --PRESBYTERIANS,
INDEPENDENTS, AND BISHOPS.
Southey's Life of Bunyan is beautiful. I wish he had illustrated that mood
of mind which exaggerates, and still more, mistakes, the inward
depravation, as in Bunyan, Nelson, and others, by extracts from Baxter's
Life of himself. What genuine superstition is exemplified in that bandying
of texts and half texts, and demi-semi-texts, just as memory happened to
suggest them, or chance brought them before Bunyan's mind! His tract,
entitled, "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners"[1] is a study for a
philosopher.
[Footnote 1:
"Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, in a faithful Account of the Life
and Death of John Bunyan, &c. " Is it not, however, an historical error to
call the Puritans dissenters? Before St. Bartholomew's day, they were
essentially a part of the church, and had as determined opinions in favour
of a church establishment as the bishops themselves.
* * * * *
Laud was not exactly a Papist to be sure; but he was on the road with the
church with him to a point, where declared popery would have been
inevitable. A wise and vigorous Papist king would very soon, and very
justifiably too, in that case, have effected a reconciliation between the
churches of Rome and England, when the line of demarcation had become so
very faint.
* * * * *
The faults of the Puritans were many; but surely their morality will, in
general, bear comparison with that of the Cavaliers after the Restoration.
* * * * *
The Presbyterians hated the Independents much more than they did the
bishops, which induced them to cooperate in effecting the Restoration.
* * * * *
The conduct of the bishops towards Charles, whilst at Breda, was wise and
constitutional. They knew, however, that when the forms of the constitution
were once restored, all their power would revive again as of course.
June 14. 1830.
STUDY OF THE BIBLE.
Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being _vulgar_, in
point of style.
June 15. 1830.
RABELAIS. --SWIFT. --BENTLEY. --SUBNET.
Rabelais is a most wonderful writer. Pantagruel is the Reason; Panurge the
Understanding,--the pollarded man, the man with every faculty except the
reason. I scarcely know an example more illustrative of the distinction
between the two. Rabelais had no mode of speaking the truth in those days
but in such a form as this; as it was, he was indebted to the King's
protection for his life. Some of the commentators talk about his book being
all political; there are contemporary politics in it, of course, but the
real scope is much higher and more philosophical. It is in vain to look
about for a hidden meaning in all that he has written; you will observe
that, after any particularly deep thrust, as the Papimania[1] for example,
Rabelais, as if to break the blow, and to appear unconscious of what he has
done, writes a chapter or two of pure buffoonery.
He, every now and then, flashes you a glimpse of a real face from his magic
lantern, and then buries the whole scene in mist. The morality of the work
is of the most refined and exalted kind; as for the manners, to be sure, I
cannot say much.
Swift was _anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco_,--the soul of Rabelais
dwelling in a dry place.
Yet Swift was rare. Can any thing beat his remark on King William's motto,
--_Recepit, non rapuit_,--"that the receiver was as bad as the thief? "
[Footnote 1:
B. iv. c. 48. "Comment Pantagruel descendit en l'Isle de Papimanes. " See
the five following chapters, especially c. 50. ; and note also c. 9. of the
fifth book; "Comment nous fut monstre Papegaut a grande difficulte. "--ED. ]
* * * * *
The effect of the Tory wits attacking Bentley with such acrimony has been
to make them appear a set of shallow and incompetent scholars. Neither
Bentley nor Burnet suffered from the hostility of the wits. Burnet's
"History of his own Times" is a truly valuable book. His credulity is
great, but his simplicity is equally great; and he never deceives you for a
moment.
_June_ 25. 1830.
GIOTTO. --PAINTING.
The fresco paintings by Giotto[1] and others, in the cemetery at Pisa,
are most noble. Giotto was a contemporary of Dante: and it is a curious
question, whether the painters borrowed from the poet, or _vice versa_.
Certainly M. Angelo and Raffael fed their imaginations highly with these
grand drawings, especially M. Angelo, who took from them his bold yet
graceful lines.
[Footnote 1:
Giotto, or Angiolotto's birth is fixed by Vasari in 1276, but there is
some reason to think that he was born a little earlier. Dante, who was
his friend, was born in 1265. Giotto was the pupil of Cimabue, whom he
entirely eclipsed, as Dante testifies in the well-known lines in
the Purgatorio:--
"O vana gloria dell'umane posse!
Com' poco verde in su la cima dura,
Se non e giunta dall' etati grosse!
Credette Cirnabue nella pintura
Tener lo campo: ed ora ha Giotto il grido,
Si che la fama di colui oscura. "--C. xi. v. 91.
His six great frescos in the cemetery at Pisa are upon the sufferings and
patience of Job. --ED. ]
* * * * *
People may say what they please about the gradual improvement of the Arts.
It is not true of the substance. The Arts and the Muses both spring forth
in the youth of nations, like Minerva from the front of Jupiter, all armed:
manual dexterity may, indeed, he improved by practice.
* * * * *
Painting went on in power till, in Raffael, it attained the zenith, and in
him too it showed signs of a tendency downwards by another path. The
painter began to think of overcoming difficulties. After this the descent
was rapid, till sculptors began to work inveterate likenesses of perriwigs
in marble,--as see Algarotti's tomb in the cemetery at Pisa,--and painters
did nothing but copy, as well as they could, the external face of nature.
Now, in this age, we have a sort of reviviscence,--not, I fear, of the
power, but of a taste for the power, of the early times.
_June_ 26. 1830.
SENECA.
You may get a motto for every sect in religion, or line of thought in
morals or philosophy, from Seneca; but nothing is ever thought _out_ by
him.
_July_ 2. 1830.
PLATO. --ARISTOTLE.
Every man is born an Aristotelian, or a Platonist. I do not think it
possible that any one born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and I am
sure no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are the
two classes of men, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a
third. The one considers reason a quality, or attribute; the other
considers it a power. I believe that Aristotle never could get to
understand what Plato meant by an idea. There is a passage, indeed, in the
Eudemian Ethics which looks like an exception; but I doubt not of its being
spurious, as that whole work is supposed by some to be. With Plato ideas
are constitutive in themselves. [1]
Aristotle was, and still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding; the
faculty judging by the senses. He was a conceptualist, and never could
raise himself into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, and has
been so to others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated,
and, as it were, looked down upon from the throne of actual ideas, or
living, inborn, essential truths.
Yet what a mind was Aristotle's--only not the greatest that ever animated
the human form! --the parent of science, properly so called, the master of
criticism, and the founder or editor of logic! But he confounded science
with philosophy, which is an error. Philosophy is the middle state between
science, or knowledge, and sophia, or wisdom.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge said the Eudemian Ethics; but I half suspect he must have
meant the Metaphysics, although I do not know that _all_ the fourteen books
under that title have been considered non-genuine. The [Greek: Aethicha
Eusaemeia] are not Aristotle's. To what passage in particular allusion is
here made, I cannot exactly say; many might be alleged, but not one seems
to express the true Platonic idea, as Mr. Coleridge used to understand it;
and as, I believe, he ultimately considered ideas in his own philosophy.
Fourteen or fifteen years previously, he seems to have been undecided upon
this point. "Whether," he says, "ideas are regulative only, according to
Aristotle and Kant, or likewise _constitutive_, and one with the power and
life of nature, according to Plato and Plotinus [Greek:--eg logo zoae aeg,
chai ae zoae aeg to phos tog agthwpog] is the highest problem of
philosophy, and not part of its nomenclature. " Essay (E) in the Appendix to
the _Statesman's Manual_, 1816. --ED. ]
_July_ 4. 1830.
DUKE OF WELLINGTON. --MONEYED INTEREST. --CANNING.
I sometimes fear the Duke of Wellington is too much disposed to imagine
that he can govern a great nation by word of command, in the same way in
which he governed a highly disciplined army. He seems to be unaccustomed
to, and to despise, the inconsistencies, the weaknesses, the bursts of
heroism followed by prostration and cowardice, which invariably
characterise all popular efforts. He forgets that, after all, it is from
such efforts that all the great and noble institutions of the world have
come; and that, on the other hand, the discipline and organization of
armies have been only like the flight of the cannon-ball, the object of
which is destruction. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Straight forward goes
The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path
Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid,
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches.
_Wallenstein_, Part I, act i, sc. 4]
* * * * *
The stock-jobbing and moneyed interest is so strong in this country, that
it has more than once prevailed in our foreign councils over national
honour and national justice. The country gentlemen are not slow to join in
this influence. Canning felt this very keenly, and said he was unable to
contend against the city trained-bands.
_July_ 6, 1830.
BOURRIENNE.
Bourienne is admirable. He is the French Pepys,--a man with right feelings,
but always wishing to participate in what is going on, be it what it may.
He has one remark, when comparing Buonaparte with Charlemagne, the
substance of which I have attempted to express in "The Friend"[1] but which
Bourrienne has condensed into a sentence worthy of Tacitus, or Machiavel,
or Bacon. It is this; that Charlemagne was above his age, whilst Buonaparte
was only above his competitors, but under his age! Bourrienne has done more
than any one else to show Buonaparte to the world as he really was,--always
contemptible, except when acting a part, and that part not his own.
[Footnote 1: Vol. i. Essay 12. p. 133. ]
_July_ 8. 1830.
JEWS.
The other day I was what you would call _floored_ by a Jew. He passed me
several times crying out for old clothes in the most nasal and
extraordinary tone I ever heard. At last I was so provoked, that I said to
him, "Pray, why can't you say 'old clothes' in a plain way as I do now? "
The Jew stopped, and looking very gravely at me, said in a clear and even
fine accent, "Sir, I can say 'old clothes' as well as you can; but if you
had to say so ten times a minute, for an hour together, you would say _Ogh
Clo_ as I do now;" and so he marched off. I was so confounded with the
justice of his retort, that I followed and gave him a shilling, the only
one I had.
* * * * *
I have had a good deal to do with Jews in the course of my life, although I
never borrowed any money of them. Once I sat in a coach opposite a Jew--a
symbol of old clothes' bags--an Isaiah of Hollywell Street. He would close
the window; I opened it. He closed it again; upon which, in a very solemn
tone, I said to him, "Son of Abraham! thou smellest; son of Isaac! thou art
offensive; son of Jacob! thou stinkest foully. See the man in the moon! he
is holding his nose at thee at that distance; dost thou think that I,
sitting here, can endure it any longer? " My Jew was astounded, opened the
window forthwith himself, and said, "he was sorry he did not know before I
was so great a gentleman. "
_July_ 24. 1830.
THE PAPACY AND THE REFORMATION. --LEO X.
During the early part of the middle ages, the papacy was nothing, in fact,
but a confederation of the learned men in the west of Europe against the
barbarism and ignorance of the times. The Pope was chief of this
confederacy; and so long as he retained that character exclusively, his
power was just and irresistible. It was the principal mean of preserving
for us and for our posterity all that we now have of the illumination of
past ages. But as soon as the Pope made a separation between his character
as premier clerk in Christendom and as a secular prince; as soon as he
began to squabble for towns and castles; then he at once broke the charm,
and gave birth to a revolution. From that moment, those who remained firm
to the cause of truth and knowledge became necessary enemies to the Roman
See. The great British schoolmen led the way; then Wicliffe rose, Huss,
Jerome, and others;--in short, every where, but especially throughout the
north of Europe, the breach of feeling and sympathy went on widening,--so
that all Germany, England, Scotland, and other countries started like
giants out of their sleep at the first blast of Luther's trumpet. In
France, one half of the people--and that the most wealthy and enlightened--
embraced the Reformation. The seeds of it were deeply and widely spread in
Spain and in Italy; and as to the latter, if James I. had been an
Elizabeth, I have no doubt at all that Venice would have publicly declared
itself against Rome. It is a profound question to answer, why it is, that
since the middle of the sixteenth century the Reformation has not advanced
one step in Europe.
* * * * *
In the time of Leo X. atheism, or infidelity of some sort, was almost
universal in Italy amongst the high dignitaries of the Romish church.
_July_ 27. 1830.
THELWALL. --SWIFT. --STELLA.
John Thelwall had something very good about him. We were once sitting in a
beautiful recess in the Quantocks, when I said to him, "Citizen John, this
is a fine place to talk treason in! "--"Nay! Citizen Samuel," replied he,
"it is rather a place to make a man forget that there is any necessity for
treason! "
Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a child's mind by inculcating
any opinions before it should have come to years of discretion, and be able
to choose for itself. I showed him my garden, and told him it was my
botanical garden. "How so? " said he, "it is covered with weeds. "--"Oh," I
replied, "_that_ is only because it has not yet come to its age of
discretion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow,
and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and
strawberries. "
* * * * *
I think Swift adopted the name of Stella, which is a man's name, with a
feminine termination, to denote the mysterious epicene relation in which
poor Miss Johnston stood to him.
_July_ 28. 1830.
INIQUITOUS LEGISLATION.
That legislation is iniquitous which sets law in conflict with the common
and unsophisticated feelings of our nature. If I were a clergyman in a
smuggling town, I would _not_ preach against smuggling.
Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired the Ancient Mariner very much,
but that there were two faults in it,--it was improbable, and had no moral.
As for the probability, I owned that that might admit some question; but as
to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgment the poem had too
much; and that the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the
obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or
cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no
more moral than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to
eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a
genie starts up, and says he _must_ kill the aforesaid merchant, _because_
one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's
son. [1]
I took the thought of "_grinning for joy_," in that poem, from my
companion's remark to me, when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and
were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the constriction,
till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to me,--"You grinned
like an idiot! " He had done the same.
[Footnote 1:
"There he found, at the foot of a great walnut-tree, a fountain of a very
clear running water, and alighting, tied his horse to a branch of a tree,
and sitting clown by the fountain, took some biscuits and dates out of his
portmanteau, and, as he ate his dates, threw the shells about on both sides
of him. When he had done eating, being a good Mussulman, he washed his
hands, his face, and his feet, and said his prayers. He had not made an
end, but was still on his knees, when he saw a genie appear, all white with
age, and of a monstrous bulk; who, advancing towards him with a cimetar in
his hand, spoke to him in a terrible voice thus:--'Rise up, that I may kill
thee with this cimetar as you have killed my son! ' and accompanied these
words with a frightful cry. The merchant being as much frightened at the
hideous shape of the monster as at these threatening words, answered him
trembling:--'Alas! my good lord, of what crime can I be guilty towards you
that you should take away my life? '--'I will,' replies the genie, 'kill
thee, as thou hast killed my son! '--'O heaven! ' says the merchant, 'how
should I kill your son? I did not know him, nor ever saw him. '--'Did not
you sit down when you came hither? ' replies the genie. 'Did not you take
dates out of your portmanteau, and, as you ate them, did not you throw the
shells about on both sides? '--'I did all that you say,' answers the
merchant, 'I cannot deny it. '--'If it be so,' replied the genie, 'I tell
thee that thou hast killed my son; and the way was thus: when you threw the
nutshells about, my son was passing by, and you threw one of them into his
eye, which killed him, _therefore_ I must kill thee. '--'Ah! my good lord,
pardon me! ' cried the merchant. --'No pardon,' answers the genie, 'no mercy!
Is it not just to kill him that has killed another? '--'I agree to it,' says
the merchant, 'but certainly I never killed your son, and if I have, it was
unknown to me, and I did it innocently; therefore I beg you to pardon me,
and suffer me to live. '--'No, no,' says the genie, persisting in his
resolution, 'I must kill thee, since thou hast killed my son;' and then
taking the merchant by the arm, threw him with his face upon the ground,
and lifted up his cimetar to cut off his head! "--The Merchant and the
Genie. First night. --Ed. ]
* * * * *
Undine is a most exquisite work. It shows the general want of any sense for
the fine and the subtle in the public taste, that this romance made no deep
impression. Undine's character, before she receives a soul, is marvellously
beautiful. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge's admiration of this little romance was unbounded. He read it
several times in German, and once in the English translation, made in
America, I believe; the latter he thought inadequately done. Mr. C. said
that there was something in Undine even beyond Scott,--that Scott's best
characters and conceptions were _composed_; by which I understood him to
mean that Baillie Nicol Jarvie, for example, was made up of old
particulars, and received its individuality from the author's power of
fusion, being in the result an admirable product, as Corinthian brass was
said to be the conflux of the spoils of a city. But Undine, he said, was
one and single in projection, and had presented to his imagination, what
Scott had never done, an absolutely new idea--ED. ]
* * * * *
It seems to me, that Martin never looks at nature except through bits of
stained glass. He is never satisfied with any appearance that is not
prodigious. He should endeavour to school his imagination into the
apprehension of the true idea of the Beautiful. [1]
The wood-cut of Slay-good[2] is admirable, to be sure; but this new edition
of the Pilgrim's Progress is too fine a book for it. It should be much
larger, and on sixpenny coarse paper.
The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without
slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy
the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in
very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more
necessary it is to be plain.
This wonderful work is one of the few books which may be read over
repeatedly at different times, and each time with a new and a different
pleasure. I read it once as a theologian--and let me assure you, that there
is great theological acumen in the work--once with devotional feelings--and
once as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could
be painted in such exquisitely delightful colours. [3]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge said this, after looking at the engravings of Mr. Martin's
two pictures of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the Celestial City,
published in the beautiful edition of the Pilgrim's Progress by Messrs.
Murray and Major, in 1830. I wish Mr. Martin could have heard the poet's
lecture: he would have been flattered, and at the same time, I believe,
instructed; for in the philosophy of painting Coleridge was a master. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
P. 350. , by S. Mosses from a design by Mr. W. Harvey. "When they came to
the place where he was, they found him with one _Feeble-mind_ in his hand,
whom his servants had brought unto him, having taken him in the way. Now
the giant was rifling him, with a purpose, after that, to pick his bones;
for he was of the nature of flesh eaters. "--ED. ]
[Footnote 3:
I find written on a blank leaf of my copy of this edition of the P. 's P.
the following note by Mr. C. :--"I know of no book, the Bible excepted as
above all comparison, which I, according to _my_ judgment and experience,
could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth
according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress.
It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best _summa theologiae
evangalicae_ ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired. " June 14.
1830. --ED. ]
_June_ 1. 1830.
PRAYER. --CHURCH-SINGING. --HOOKER. --DREAMS.
There are three sorts of prayer:--1. Public; 2. Domestic; 3. Solitary. Each
has its peculiar uses and character. I think the church ought to publish
and authorise a directory of forms for the latter two. Yet I fear the
execution would be inadequate. There is a great decay of devotional unction
in the numerous books of prayers put out now-a-days. I really think the
hawker was very happy, who blundered New Form of Prayer into New _former_
Prayers. [1]
I exceedingly regret that our church pays so little attention to the
subject of congregational singing. See how it is! In that particular part
of the public worship in which, more than in all the rest, the common
people might, and ought to, join,--which, by its association with music, is
meant to give a fitting vent and expression to the emotions,--in that part
we all sing as Jews; or, at best, as mere men, in the abstract, without a
Saviour. You know my veneration for the Book of Psalms, or most of it; but
with some half dozen exceptions, the Psalms are surely not adequate
vehicles of Christian thanksgiving and joy! Upon this deficiency in our
service, Wesley and Whitfield seized; and you know it is the hearty
congregational singing of Christian hymns which keeps the humbler
Methodists together. Luther did as much for the Reformation by his hymns as
by his translation of the Bible. In Germany, the hymns are known by heart
by every peasant: they advise, they argue from the hymns, and every soul in
the church praises God, like a Christian, with words which are natural and
yet sacred to his mind. No doubt this defect in our service proceeded from
the dread which the English Reformers had of being charged with introducing
any thing into the worship of God but the text of Scripture.
[Footnote 1:
"I will add, at the risk of appearing to dwell too long on religious
topics, that on this my first introduction to Coleridge he reverted with
strong compunction to a sentiment which he had expressed in earlier days
upon prayer. In one of his youthful poems, speaking of God, he had said--
--'Of whose all-seeing eye
Aught to demand were impotence of mind. '
This sentiment he now so utterly condemned, that, on the contrary, he told
me, as his own peculiar opinion, that the act of praying was the very
highest energy of which the human heart was capable, praying, that is, with
the total concentration of the faculties; and the great mass of worldly men
and of learned men he pronounced absolutely incapable of prayer. "--_Tait's
Magazine_, September, 1834, p. 515.
Mr. Coleridge within two years of his death very solemnly declared to me
his conviction upon the same subject. I was sitting by his bedside one
afternoon, and he fell, an unusual thing for him, into a long account of
many passages of his past life, lamenting some things, condemning others,
but complaining withal, though very gently, of the way in which many of his
most innocent acts had been cruelly misrepresented. "But I have no
difficulty," said he, "in forgiveness; indeed, I know not how to say with
sincerity the clause in the Lord's Prayer, which asks forgiveness _as we
forgive_. I feel nothing answering to it in my heart. Neither do I find, or
reckon, the most solemn faith in God as a real object, the most arduous act
of the reason and will. O no, my dear, it is _to pray, to pray_ as God
would have us; this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe
me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will,
to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and
verily do the thing he pleaseth thereupon--this is the last, the greatest
achievement of the Christian's warfare upon earth. _Teach_ us to pray, O
Lord! " And then he burst into a flood of tears, and begged me to pray for
him. O what a sight was there! --ED. ]
* * * * *
Hooker said,--That by looking for that in the Bible which it is impossible
that _any book_ can have, we lose the benefits which we might reap from its
being the best of all books.
* * * * *
You will observe, that even in dreams nothing is fancied without an
antecedent _quasi_ cause. It could not be otherwise.
_June_ 4. 1830.
JEREMY TAYLOR. --ENGLISH REFORMATION.
Taylor's was a great and lovely mind; yet how much and injuriously was it
perverted by his being a favourite and follower of Laud, and by his
intensely popish feelings of church authority. [1] His Liberty of
Prophesying is a work of wonderful eloquence and skill; but if we believe
the argument, what do we come to? Why to nothing more or less than this,
that--so much can be said for every opinion and sect,--so impossible is it
to settle any thing by reasoning or authority of Scripture,--we must appeal
to some positive jurisdiction on earth, _ut sit finis controversiarum_. In
fact, the whole book is the precise argument used by the Papists to induce
men to admit the necessity of a supreme and infallible head of the church
on earth. It is one of the works which preeminently gives countenance to
the saying of Charles or James II. , I forget which:--"When you of the
Church of England contend with the Catholics, you use the arguments of the
Puritans; when you contend with the Puritans, you immediately adopt all the
weapons of the Catholics. " Taylor never speaks with the slightest symptom
of affection or respect of Luther, Calvin, or any other of the great
reformers--at least, not in any of his learned works; but he _saints_ every
trumpery monk and friar, down to the very latest canonizations by the
modern popes. I fear you will think me harsh, when I say that I believe
Taylor was, perhaps unconsciously, half a Socinian in heart. Such a strange
inconsistency would not be impossible. The Romish church has produced many
such devout Socinians. The cross of Christ is dimly seen in Taylor's works.
Compare him in this particular with Donne, and you will feel the difference
in a moment. Why are not Donne's volumes of sermons reprinted at Oxford? [2]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge placed Jeremy Taylor amongst the four great geniuses of old
English literature. I think he used to reckon Shakspeare and Bacon, Milton
and Taylor, four-square, each against each. In mere eloquence, he thought
the Bishop without any fellow. He called him Chrysostom. Further, he loved
the man, and was anxious to find excuses for some weak parts in his
character. But Mr. Coleridge's assent to Taylor's views of many of the
fundamental positions of Christianity was very limited; and, indeed, he
considered him as the least sound in point of doctrine of any of the old
divines, comprehending, within that designation, the writers to the middle
of Charles II. 's reign. He speaks of Taylor in "The Friend" in the
following terms:--"Among the numerous examples with which I might enforce
this warning, I refer, not without reluctance, to the most eloquent, and
one of the most learned, of our divines; a rigorist, indeed, concerning the
authority of the church, but a latitudinarian in the articles of its faith;
who stretched the latter almost to the advanced posts of Socinianism, and
strained the former to a hazardous conformity with the assumptions of the
Roman hierarchy. " Vol. ii. p. 108. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
Why not, indeed! It is really quite unaccountable that the sermons
of this great divine of the English church should be so little known as
they are, even to very literary clergymen of the present day. It might
have been expected, that the sermons of the greatest preacher of his age,
the admired of Ben Jonson, Selden, and all that splendid band of poets
and scholars, would even as curiosities have been reprinted, when works,
which are curious for nothing, are every year sent forth afresh under the
most authoritative auspices. Dr. Donne was educated at both universities,
at Hart Hall, Oxford, first, and afterwards at Cambridge, but at
what college Walton does not mention--ED. ]
* * * * *
In the reign of Edward VI. , the Reformers feared to admit almost any thing
on human authority alone. They had seen and felt the abuses consequent on
the popish theory of Christianity; and I doubt not they wished and intended
to reconstruct the religion and the church, as far as was possible, upon
the plan of the primitive ages? But the Puritans pushed this bias to an
absolute bibliolatry. They would not put on a corn-plaster without scraping
a text over it. Men of learning, however, soon felt that this was wrong in
the other extreme, and indeed united itself to the very abuse it seemed to
shun. They saw that a knowledge of the Fathers, and of early tradition, was
absolutely necessary; and unhappily, in many instances, the excess of the
Puritans drove the men of learning into the old popish extreme of denying
the Scriptures to be capable of affording a rule of faith without the
dogmas of the church. Taylor is a striking instance how far a Protestant
might be driven in this direction.
_June_ 6. 1830.
CATHOLICITY. --GNOSIS. --TERTULLIAN. --ST. JOHN.
In the first century, catholicity was the test of a book or epistle--
whether it were of the Evangelicon or Apostolicon--being canonical. This
catholic spirit was opposed to the gnostic or peculiar spirit,--the humour
of fantastical interpretation of the old Scriptures into Christian
meanings. It is this gnosis, or _knowingness,_ which the Apostle says
puffeth up,--not _knowledge_, as we translate it. The Epistle of Barnabas,
of the genuineness of which I have no sort of doubt, is an example of this
gnostic spirit. The Epistle to the Hebrews is the only instance of gnosis
in the canon: it was written evidently by some apostolical man before the
destruction of the Temple, and probably at Alexandria. For three hundred
years, and more, it was not admitted into the canon, especially not by the
Latin church, on account of this difference in it from the other
Scriptures. But its merit was so great, and the gnosis in it is so kept
within due bounds, that its admirers at last succeeded, especially by
affixing St. Paul's name to it, to have it included in the canon; which was
first done, I think, by the council of Laodicea in the middle of the fourth
century. Fortunately for us it was so.
* * * * *
I beg Tertullian's pardon; but amongst his many _bravuras_, he says
something about St. Paul's autograph. Origen expressly declares the
reverse.
* * * * *
It is delightful to think, that the beloved apostle was born a Plato. To
him was left the almost oracular utterance of the mysteries of the
Christian religion while to St. Paul was committed the task of explanation,
defence, and assertion of all the doctrines, and especially of those
metaphysical ones touching the will and grace;[1] for which purpose his
active mind, his learned education, and his Greek logic, made him
pre-eminently fit.
[Footnote 1:
"The imperative and oracular form of the inspired Scripture is the form of
reason itself, in all things purely rational and moral. "--_Statesman's
Manual_, p. 22. ]
June 7. 1830.
PRINCIPLES OF A REVIEW. --PARTY-SPIRIT.
Notwithstanding what you say, I am persuaded that a review would amply
succeed even now, which should be started upon a published code of
principles, critical, moral, political, and religious; which should
announce what sort of books it would review, namely, works of literature as
contradistinguished from all that offspring of the press, which in the
present age supplies food for the craving caused by the extended ability of
reading without any correspondent education of the mind, and which formerly
was done by conversation, and which should really give a fair account of
what the author intended to do, and in his own words, if possible, and in
addition, afford one or two fair specimens of the execution,--itself never
descending for one moment to any personality. It should also be provided
before the commencement with a dozen powerful articles upon fundamental
topics to appear in succession.
You see the great reviewers are now ashamed
of reviewing works in the old style, and have taken up essay writing
instead. Hence arose such publications as the Literary Gazette and others,
which are set up for the purpose--not a useless one--of advertizing new
books of all sorts for the circulating libraries. A mean between the two
extremes still remains to be taken.
* * * * *
Party men always hate a slightly differing friend more than a downright
enemy. I quite calculate on my being one day or other holden in worse
repute by many Christians than the Unitarians and open infidels. It must be
undergone by every one who loves the truth for its own sake beyond all
other things.
* * * * *
Truth is a good dog; but beware of barking too close to the heels of an
error, lest you get your brains kicked out.
_June_ 10. 1830.
SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF BUNYAN. --LAUD. --PURITANS AND CAVALIERS. --PRESBYTERIANS,
INDEPENDENTS, AND BISHOPS.
Southey's Life of Bunyan is beautiful. I wish he had illustrated that mood
of mind which exaggerates, and still more, mistakes, the inward
depravation, as in Bunyan, Nelson, and others, by extracts from Baxter's
Life of himself. What genuine superstition is exemplified in that bandying
of texts and half texts, and demi-semi-texts, just as memory happened to
suggest them, or chance brought them before Bunyan's mind! His tract,
entitled, "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners"[1] is a study for a
philosopher.
[Footnote 1:
"Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, in a faithful Account of the Life
and Death of John Bunyan, &c. " Is it not, however, an historical error to
call the Puritans dissenters? Before St. Bartholomew's day, they were
essentially a part of the church, and had as determined opinions in favour
of a church establishment as the bishops themselves.
* * * * *
Laud was not exactly a Papist to be sure; but he was on the road with the
church with him to a point, where declared popery would have been
inevitable. A wise and vigorous Papist king would very soon, and very
justifiably too, in that case, have effected a reconciliation between the
churches of Rome and England, when the line of demarcation had become so
very faint.
* * * * *
The faults of the Puritans were many; but surely their morality will, in
general, bear comparison with that of the Cavaliers after the Restoration.
* * * * *
The Presbyterians hated the Independents much more than they did the
bishops, which induced them to cooperate in effecting the Restoration.
* * * * *
The conduct of the bishops towards Charles, whilst at Breda, was wise and
constitutional. They knew, however, that when the forms of the constitution
were once restored, all their power would revive again as of course.
June 14. 1830.
STUDY OF THE BIBLE.
Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being _vulgar_, in
point of style.
June 15. 1830.
RABELAIS. --SWIFT. --BENTLEY. --SUBNET.
Rabelais is a most wonderful writer. Pantagruel is the Reason; Panurge the
Understanding,--the pollarded man, the man with every faculty except the
reason. I scarcely know an example more illustrative of the distinction
between the two. Rabelais had no mode of speaking the truth in those days
but in such a form as this; as it was, he was indebted to the King's
protection for his life. Some of the commentators talk about his book being
all political; there are contemporary politics in it, of course, but the
real scope is much higher and more philosophical. It is in vain to look
about for a hidden meaning in all that he has written; you will observe
that, after any particularly deep thrust, as the Papimania[1] for example,
Rabelais, as if to break the blow, and to appear unconscious of what he has
done, writes a chapter or two of pure buffoonery.
He, every now and then, flashes you a glimpse of a real face from his magic
lantern, and then buries the whole scene in mist. The morality of the work
is of the most refined and exalted kind; as for the manners, to be sure, I
cannot say much.
Swift was _anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco_,--the soul of Rabelais
dwelling in a dry place.
Yet Swift was rare. Can any thing beat his remark on King William's motto,
--_Recepit, non rapuit_,--"that the receiver was as bad as the thief? "
[Footnote 1:
B. iv. c. 48. "Comment Pantagruel descendit en l'Isle de Papimanes. " See
the five following chapters, especially c. 50. ; and note also c. 9. of the
fifth book; "Comment nous fut monstre Papegaut a grande difficulte. "--ED. ]
* * * * *
The effect of the Tory wits attacking Bentley with such acrimony has been
to make them appear a set of shallow and incompetent scholars. Neither
Bentley nor Burnet suffered from the hostility of the wits. Burnet's
"History of his own Times" is a truly valuable book. His credulity is
great, but his simplicity is equally great; and he never deceives you for a
moment.
_June_ 25. 1830.
GIOTTO. --PAINTING.
The fresco paintings by Giotto[1] and others, in the cemetery at Pisa,
are most noble. Giotto was a contemporary of Dante: and it is a curious
question, whether the painters borrowed from the poet, or _vice versa_.
Certainly M. Angelo and Raffael fed their imaginations highly with these
grand drawings, especially M. Angelo, who took from them his bold yet
graceful lines.
[Footnote 1:
Giotto, or Angiolotto's birth is fixed by Vasari in 1276, but there is
some reason to think that he was born a little earlier. Dante, who was
his friend, was born in 1265. Giotto was the pupil of Cimabue, whom he
entirely eclipsed, as Dante testifies in the well-known lines in
the Purgatorio:--
"O vana gloria dell'umane posse!
Com' poco verde in su la cima dura,
Se non e giunta dall' etati grosse!
Credette Cirnabue nella pintura
Tener lo campo: ed ora ha Giotto il grido,
Si che la fama di colui oscura. "--C. xi. v. 91.
His six great frescos in the cemetery at Pisa are upon the sufferings and
patience of Job. --ED. ]
* * * * *
People may say what they please about the gradual improvement of the Arts.
It is not true of the substance. The Arts and the Muses both spring forth
in the youth of nations, like Minerva from the front of Jupiter, all armed:
manual dexterity may, indeed, he improved by practice.
* * * * *
Painting went on in power till, in Raffael, it attained the zenith, and in
him too it showed signs of a tendency downwards by another path. The
painter began to think of overcoming difficulties. After this the descent
was rapid, till sculptors began to work inveterate likenesses of perriwigs
in marble,--as see Algarotti's tomb in the cemetery at Pisa,--and painters
did nothing but copy, as well as they could, the external face of nature.
Now, in this age, we have a sort of reviviscence,--not, I fear, of the
power, but of a taste for the power, of the early times.
_June_ 26. 1830.
SENECA.
You may get a motto for every sect in religion, or line of thought in
morals or philosophy, from Seneca; but nothing is ever thought _out_ by
him.
_July_ 2. 1830.
PLATO. --ARISTOTLE.
Every man is born an Aristotelian, or a Platonist. I do not think it
possible that any one born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and I am
sure no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are the
two classes of men, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a
third. The one considers reason a quality, or attribute; the other
considers it a power. I believe that Aristotle never could get to
understand what Plato meant by an idea. There is a passage, indeed, in the
Eudemian Ethics which looks like an exception; but I doubt not of its being
spurious, as that whole work is supposed by some to be. With Plato ideas
are constitutive in themselves. [1]
Aristotle was, and still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding; the
faculty judging by the senses. He was a conceptualist, and never could
raise himself into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, and has
been so to others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated,
and, as it were, looked down upon from the throne of actual ideas, or
living, inborn, essential truths.
Yet what a mind was Aristotle's--only not the greatest that ever animated
the human form! --the parent of science, properly so called, the master of
criticism, and the founder or editor of logic! But he confounded science
with philosophy, which is an error. Philosophy is the middle state between
science, or knowledge, and sophia, or wisdom.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge said the Eudemian Ethics; but I half suspect he must have
meant the Metaphysics, although I do not know that _all_ the fourteen books
under that title have been considered non-genuine. The [Greek: Aethicha
Eusaemeia] are not Aristotle's. To what passage in particular allusion is
here made, I cannot exactly say; many might be alleged, but not one seems
to express the true Platonic idea, as Mr. Coleridge used to understand it;
and as, I believe, he ultimately considered ideas in his own philosophy.
Fourteen or fifteen years previously, he seems to have been undecided upon
this point. "Whether," he says, "ideas are regulative only, according to
Aristotle and Kant, or likewise _constitutive_, and one with the power and
life of nature, according to Plato and Plotinus [Greek:--eg logo zoae aeg,
chai ae zoae aeg to phos tog agthwpog] is the highest problem of
philosophy, and not part of its nomenclature. " Essay (E) in the Appendix to
the _Statesman's Manual_, 1816. --ED. ]
_July_ 4. 1830.
DUKE OF WELLINGTON. --MONEYED INTEREST. --CANNING.
I sometimes fear the Duke of Wellington is too much disposed to imagine
that he can govern a great nation by word of command, in the same way in
which he governed a highly disciplined army. He seems to be unaccustomed
to, and to despise, the inconsistencies, the weaknesses, the bursts of
heroism followed by prostration and cowardice, which invariably
characterise all popular efforts. He forgets that, after all, it is from
such efforts that all the great and noble institutions of the world have
come; and that, on the other hand, the discipline and organization of
armies have been only like the flight of the cannon-ball, the object of
which is destruction. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Straight forward goes
The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path
Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid,
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches.
_Wallenstein_, Part I, act i, sc. 4]
* * * * *
The stock-jobbing and moneyed interest is so strong in this country, that
it has more than once prevailed in our foreign councils over national
honour and national justice. The country gentlemen are not slow to join in
this influence. Canning felt this very keenly, and said he was unable to
contend against the city trained-bands.
_July_ 6, 1830.
BOURRIENNE.
Bourienne is admirable. He is the French Pepys,--a man with right feelings,
but always wishing to participate in what is going on, be it what it may.
He has one remark, when comparing Buonaparte with Charlemagne, the
substance of which I have attempted to express in "The Friend"[1] but which
Bourrienne has condensed into a sentence worthy of Tacitus, or Machiavel,
or Bacon. It is this; that Charlemagne was above his age, whilst Buonaparte
was only above his competitors, but under his age! Bourrienne has done more
than any one else to show Buonaparte to the world as he really was,--always
contemptible, except when acting a part, and that part not his own.
[Footnote 1: Vol. i. Essay 12. p. 133. ]
_July_ 8. 1830.
JEWS.
The other day I was what you would call _floored_ by a Jew. He passed me
several times crying out for old clothes in the most nasal and
extraordinary tone I ever heard. At last I was so provoked, that I said to
him, "Pray, why can't you say 'old clothes' in a plain way as I do now? "
The Jew stopped, and looking very gravely at me, said in a clear and even
fine accent, "Sir, I can say 'old clothes' as well as you can; but if you
had to say so ten times a minute, for an hour together, you would say _Ogh
Clo_ as I do now;" and so he marched off. I was so confounded with the
justice of his retort, that I followed and gave him a shilling, the only
one I had.
* * * * *
I have had a good deal to do with Jews in the course of my life, although I
never borrowed any money of them. Once I sat in a coach opposite a Jew--a
symbol of old clothes' bags--an Isaiah of Hollywell Street. He would close
the window; I opened it. He closed it again; upon which, in a very solemn
tone, I said to him, "Son of Abraham! thou smellest; son of Isaac! thou art
offensive; son of Jacob! thou stinkest foully. See the man in the moon! he
is holding his nose at thee at that distance; dost thou think that I,
sitting here, can endure it any longer? " My Jew was astounded, opened the
window forthwith himself, and said, "he was sorry he did not know before I
was so great a gentleman. "
_July_ 24. 1830.
THE PAPACY AND THE REFORMATION. --LEO X.
During the early part of the middle ages, the papacy was nothing, in fact,
but a confederation of the learned men in the west of Europe against the
barbarism and ignorance of the times. The Pope was chief of this
confederacy; and so long as he retained that character exclusively, his
power was just and irresistible. It was the principal mean of preserving
for us and for our posterity all that we now have of the illumination of
past ages. But as soon as the Pope made a separation between his character
as premier clerk in Christendom and as a secular prince; as soon as he
began to squabble for towns and castles; then he at once broke the charm,
and gave birth to a revolution. From that moment, those who remained firm
to the cause of truth and knowledge became necessary enemies to the Roman
See. The great British schoolmen led the way; then Wicliffe rose, Huss,
Jerome, and others;--in short, every where, but especially throughout the
north of Europe, the breach of feeling and sympathy went on widening,--so
that all Germany, England, Scotland, and other countries started like
giants out of their sleep at the first blast of Luther's trumpet. In
France, one half of the people--and that the most wealthy and enlightened--
embraced the Reformation. The seeds of it were deeply and widely spread in
Spain and in Italy; and as to the latter, if James I. had been an
Elizabeth, I have no doubt at all that Venice would have publicly declared
itself against Rome. It is a profound question to answer, why it is, that
since the middle of the sixteenth century the Reformation has not advanced
one step in Europe.
* * * * *
In the time of Leo X. atheism, or infidelity of some sort, was almost
universal in Italy amongst the high dignitaries of the Romish church.
_July_ 27. 1830.
THELWALL. --SWIFT. --STELLA.
John Thelwall had something very good about him. We were once sitting in a
beautiful recess in the Quantocks, when I said to him, "Citizen John, this
is a fine place to talk treason in! "--"Nay! Citizen Samuel," replied he,
"it is rather a place to make a man forget that there is any necessity for
treason! "
Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a child's mind by inculcating
any opinions before it should have come to years of discretion, and be able
to choose for itself. I showed him my garden, and told him it was my
botanical garden. "How so? " said he, "it is covered with weeds. "--"Oh," I
replied, "_that_ is only because it has not yet come to its age of
discretion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow,
and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and
strawberries. "
* * * * *
I think Swift adopted the name of Stella, which is a man's name, with a
feminine termination, to denote the mysterious epicene relation in which
poor Miss Johnston stood to him.
_July_ 28. 1830.
INIQUITOUS LEGISLATION.
That legislation is iniquitous which sets law in conflict with the common
and unsophisticated feelings of our nature. If I were a clergyman in a
smuggling town, I would _not_ preach against smuggling.
