Rubens does not take for his
subjects
grand or novel conformations of
objects; he has, you see, no precipices, no forests, no frowning castles,--
nothing that a poet would take at all times, and a painter take in these
times.
objects; he has, you see, no precipices, no forests, no frowning castles,--
nothing that a poet would take at all times, and a painter take in these
times.
Coleridge - Table Talk
Naldi, a good
fellow, remarked to me once at a concert, that I did not seem much
interested with a piece of Rossini's which had just been performed. I said,
it sounded to me like nonsense verses. But I could scarcely contain myself
when a thing of Beethoven's followed.
* * * * *
I never distinctly felt the heavenly superiority of the prayers in the
English liturgy, till I had attended some kirks in the country parts of
Scotland, I call these strings of school boys or girls which we meet near
London--walking advertisements.
* * * * *
The Brussels riot--I cannot bring myself to dignify it with a higher name
--is a wretched parody on the last French revolution. Were I King William,
I would banish the Belgians, as Coriolanus banishes the Romans in
Shakspeare. [1]
It is a wicked rebellion without one just cause.
[Footnote 1:
"You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with _your uncertainty! _"
Act iii. sc. 3. ]
_October_ 8. 1830.
GALILEO, NEWTON, KEPLER, BACON.
Galileo was a great genius, and so was Newton; but it would take two or
three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler. [1] It is in the order of
Providence, that the inventive, generative, constitutive mind--the Kepler--
should come first; and then that the patient and collective mind--the
Newton--should follow, and elaborate the pregnant queries and illumining
guesses of the former. The laws of the planetary system are, in fact, due
to Kepler. There is not a more glorious achievement of scientific genius
upon record, than Kepler's guesses, prophecies, and ultimate apprehension
of the law[2] of the mean distances of the planets as connected with the
periods of their revolutions round the sun. Gravitation, too, he had fully
conceived; but, because it seemed inconsistent with some received
observations on light, he gave it up, in allegiance, as he says, to Nature.
Yet the idea vexed and haunted his mind; _"Vexat me et lacessit,"_ are his
words, I believe.
We praise Newton's clearness and steadiness. He was clear and steady, no
doubt, whilst working out, by the help of an admirable geometry, the idea
brought forth by another. Newton had his ether, and could not rest in--he
could not conceive--the idea of a law. He thought it a physical thing after
all. As for his chronology, I believe, those who are most competent to
judge, rely on it less and less every day. His lucubrations on Daniel and
the Revelations seem to me little less than mere raving.
[Footnote 1:
Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa, on the 15th of February, 1564. John
Kepler was born at Weil, in the duchy of Wirtemberg, on the 2lst of
December, 1571. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
Namely, that the squares of their times vary as the cubes of their
distances,--ED. ]
* * * * *
Personal experiment is necessary, in order to correct our own observation
of the experiments which Nature herself makes for us--I mean, the phenomena
of the universe. But then observation is, in turn, wanted to direct and
substantiate the course of experiment. Experiments alone cannot advance
knowledge, without observation; they amuse for a time, and then pass off
the scene and leave no trace behind them.
* * * * *
Bacon, when like himself--for no man was ever more inconsistent--says,
_"Prudens qiuestio--dimidium scientiae est. "_
_October_ 20. 1830.
THE REFORMATION.
At the Reformation, the first reformers were beset with an almost morbid
anxiety not to be considered heretical in point of doctrine. They knew that
the Romanists were on the watch to fasten the brand of heresy upon them
whenever a fair pretext could be found; and I have no doubt it was the
excess of this fear which at once led to the burning of Servetus, and also
to the thanks offered by all the Protestant churches, to Calvin and the
Church of Geneva, for burning him.
_November_ 21. 1830.
HOUSE OF COMMONS.
---- never makes a figure in quietude. He astounds the vulgar with a
certain enormity of exertion; he takes an acre of canvass, on which he
scrawls every thing. He thinks aloud; every thing in his mind, good, bad,
or indifferent, out it comes; he is like the Newgate gutter, flowing with
garbage, dead dogs, and mud. He is preeminently a man of many thoughts,
with no ideas: hence he is always so lengthy, because he must go through
every thing to see any thing.
* * * * *
It is a melancholy thing to live when there is no vision in the land. Where
are our statesmen to meet this emergency? I see no reformer who asks
himself the question, _What_ is it that I propose to myself to effect in
the result?
Is the House of Commons to be re-constructed on the principle of a
representation of interests, or of a delegation of men? If on the former,
we may, perhaps, see our way; if on the latter, you can never, in reason,
stop short of universal suffrage; and in that case, I am sure that women
have as good a right to vote as men. [1]
[Footnote 1:
In Mr. Coleridge's masterly analysis and confutation of the physiocratic
system of the early French revolutionists, in the Friend, he has the
following passage in the nature of a _reductio ad absurdum_. "Rousseau,
indeed, asserts that there is an inalienable sovereignty inherent in every
human being possessed of reason; and from this the framers of the
Constitution of 1791 deduce, that the people itself is its own sole
rightful legislator, and at most dare only recede so far from its right as
to delegate to chosen deputies the power of representing and declaring the
general will. But this is wholly without proof; for it has been already
fully shown, that, according to the principle out of which this consequence
is attempted to be drawn, it is not the actual man, but the abstract reason
alone, that is the sovereign and rightful lawgiver. The confusion of two
things so different is so gross an error, that the Constituent Assembly
could scarce proceed a step in their declaration of rights, without some
glaring inconsistency. Children are excluded from all political power; are
they not human beings in whom the faculty of reason resides? Yes! but|in
_them_ the faculty is not yet adequately developed. But are not gross
ignorance, inveterate superstition, and the habitual tyranny of passion and
sensuality, equally preventives of the developement, equally impediments to
the rightful exercise, of the reason, as childhood and early youth? Who
would not rely on the judgment of a well-educated English lad, bred in a
virtuous and enlightened family, in preference to that of a brutal Russian,
who believes that he can scourge his wooden idol into good humour, or
attributes to himself the merit of perpetual prayer, when he has fastened
the petitions, which his priest has written for him, on the wings of a
windmill? Again: women are likewise excluded; a full half, and that
assuredly the most innocent, the most amiable half, of the whole human race
is excluded, and this too by a Constitution which boasts to have no other
foundations but those of universal reason! Is reason, then, an affair of
sex? No! but women are commonly in a state of dependence, and are not
likely to exercise their reason with freedom. Well! and does not this
ground of exclusion apply with equal or greater force to the poor, to the
infirm, to men in embarrassed circumstances, to all, in short, whose
maintenance, be it scanty, or be it ample, depends on the will of others?
How far are we to go? Where must we stop? What classes should we admit?
Whom must we disfranchise? The objects concerning whom we are to determine
these questions, are all human beings, and differenced from each other by
_degrees_ only, these degrees, too, oftentimes changing. Yet the principle
on which the whole system rests, is that reason is not susceptible of
degree. Nothing, therefore, which subsists wholly in degrees, the changes
of which do not obey any necessary law, can be the object of pure science,
or determinate by mere reason,"--Vol. i. p. 341, ED. ]
_March_ 20. 1831.
GOVERNMENT. --EARL GREY.
Government is not founded on property, taken merely as such, in the
abstract; it is founded on _unequal_ property; the inequality is an
essential term in the position. The phrases--higher, middle, and lower
classes, with reference to this point of representation--are delusive; no
such divisions as classes actually exist in society. There is an
indissoluble blending and interfusion of persons from top to bottom; and no
man can trace a line of separation through them, except such a confessedly
unmeaning and unjustifiable line of political empiricism as 10_l_.
householders. I cannot discover a ray of principle in the government plan,
--not a hint of the effect of the change upon the balance of the estates of
the realm,--not a remark on the nature of the constitution of England, and
the character of the property of so many millions of its inhabitants. Half
the wealth of this country is purely artificial,--existing only in and on
the credit given to it by the integrity and honesty of the nation. This
property appears, in many instances, a heavy burthen to the numerical
majority of the people, and they believe that it causes all their distress:
and they are now to have the maintenance of this property committed to
their good faith--the lamb to the wolves!
Necker, you remember, asked the people to come and help him against the
aristocracy. The people came fast enough at his bidding; but, somehow or
other, they would not go away again when they had done their work. I hope
Lord Grey will not see himself or his friends in the woeful case of the
conjuror, who, with infinite zeal and pains, called up the devils to do
something for him. They came at the word, thronging about him, grinning,
and howling, and dancing, and whisking their long tails in diabolic glee;
but when they asked him what he wanted of them, the poor wretch, frightened
out his of wits, could only stammer forth,--"I pray you, my friends, be
gone down again! " At which the devils, with one voice, replied,--
"Yes! yes! we'll go down! we'll go down! --
But we'll take _you_ with us to swim or to drown! "[1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge must have been thinking of that "very pithy and profitable"
ballad by the Laureate, wherein is shown how a young man "would read
unlawful books, and how he was punished:"--
"The _young_ man, he began to read
He knew not what, but he would proceed,
When there was heard a sound at the door,
Which as he read on grew more and more.
"And more and more the knocking grew,
The young man knew not what to do:
But trembling in fear he sat within,
_Till the door was broke, and the devil came in_.
"'What would'st thou with me? ' the wicked one cried;
But not a word the young man replied;
Every hair on his head was standing upright,
And his limbs like a palsy shook with affright.
"'What would'st thou with me? ' cried the author of ill;
But the wretched young man was silent still," &c.
The catastrophe is very terrible, and the moral, though addressed by the
poet to young men only, is quite as applicable to old men, as the times
show.
"Henceforth let all young men take heed
How in a conjuror's books they read! "
_Southey's Minor Poems_, vol. iii. p. 92. --ED. ]
* * * * *
_June_ 25. 1831.
GOVERNMENT. --POPULAR REPRESENTATION.
The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the
government of a nation, are,--1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to
acquirers; and; 3. Hope to all.
* * * * *
A nation is the unity of a people. King and parliament are the unity made
visible. The king and the peers are as integral portions of this manifested
unity as the commons. [1]
In that imperfect state of society in which our system of representation
began, the interests of the country were pretty exactly commensurate with
its municipal divisions. The counties, the towns, and the seaports,
accurately enough represented the only interests then existing; that is
say,--the landed, the shop-keeping or manufacturing, and the mercantile.
But for a century past, at least, this division has become notoriously
imperfect, some of the most vital interests of the empire being now totally
unconnected with any English localities. Yet now, when the evil and the
want are known, we are to abandon the accommodations which the necessity of
the case had worked out for itself, and begin again with a rigidly
territorial plan of representation! The miserable tendency of all is to
destroy our nationality, which consists, in a principal degree, in our
representative government, and to convert it into a degrading delegation of
the populace. There is no unity for a people but in a representation of
national interests; a delegation from the passions or wishes of the
individuals themselves is a rope of sand. Undoubtedly it is a great evil,
that there should be such an evident discrepancy between the law and the
practice of the constitution in the matter of the representation. Such a
direct, yet clandestine, contravention of solemn resolutions and
established laws is immoral, and greatly injurious to the cause of legal
loyalty and general subordination in the minds of the people. But then a
statesman should consider that these very contraventions of law in practice
point out to him the places in the body politic which need a remodelling of
the law. You acknowledge a certain necessity for indirect representation in
the present day, and that such representation has been instinctively
obtained by means contrary to law; why then do you not approximate the
useless law to the useful practice, instead of abandoning both law and
practice for a completely new system of your own?
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge was very fond of quoting George Withers's fine lines:--
"Let not your king and parliament in one,
Much less apart, mistake themselves for that
Which is most worthy to be thought upon:
Nor think _they_ are, essentially, The STATE.
Let them not fancy that th' authority
And privileges upon them bestown,
Conferr'd are to set up a majesty,
A power, or a glory, of their own!
But let them know, 't was for a deeper life,
Which they but _represent_--
That there's on earth a yet auguster thing,
Veil'd though it be, than parliament and king! "--ED. ]
* * * * *
The malignant duplicity and unprincipled tergiversations of the specific
Whig newspapers are to me detestable. I prefer the open endeavours of those
publications which seek to destroy the church, and introduce a republic in
effect: there is a sort of honesty in _that_ which I approve, though I
would with joy lay down my life to save my country from the consummation
which is so evidently desired by that section of the periodical press.
_June_ 26. 1831.
NAPIER. --BUONAPARTE. --SOUTHEY.
I have been exceedingly impressed with the evil precedent of Colonel
Napier's History of the Peninsular War. It is a specimen of the true French
military school; not a thought for the justice of the war,--not a
consideration of the damnable and damning iniquity of the French invasion.
All is looked at as a mere game of exquisite skill, and the praise is
regularly awarded to the most successful player. How perfectly ridiculous
is the prostration of Napier's mind, apparently a powerful one, before the
name of Buonaparte! I declare I know no book more likely to undermine the
national sense of right and wrong in matters of foreign interference than
this work of Napier's.
If A. has a hundred means of doing a certain thing, and B. has only one or
two, is it very wonderful, or does it argue very transcendant superiority,
if A. surpasses B. ? Buonaparte was the child of circumstances, which he
neither originated nor controlled. He had no chance of preserving his power
but by continual warfare. No thought of a wise tranquillization of the
shaken elements of France seems ever to have passed through his mind; and I
believe that at no part of his reign could be have survived one year's
continued peace. He never had but one obstacle to contend with--physical
force; commonly the least difficult enemy a general, subject to courts-
martial and courts of conscience, has to overcome.
* * * * *
Southey's History[1] is on the right side, and starts from the right point;
but he is personally fond of the Spaniards, and in bringing forward their
nationality in the prominent manner it deserves, he does not, in my
judgment, state with sufficient clearness the truth, that the nationality
of the Spaniards was not founded on any just ground of good government or
wise laws, but was, in fact, very little more than a rooted antipathy to
all strangers as such.
In this sense every thing is national in Spain. Even their so called
Catholic religion is exclusively national in a genuine Spaniard's mind; he
does not regard the religious professions of the Frenchman or Italian at
all in the same light with his own.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge said that the conclusion of this great work was the finest
specimen of historic eulogy he had ever read in English;--that it was more
than a campaign to the duke's fame. --ED. ]
_July_ 7. 1831.
PATRONAGE OF THE FINE ARTS. --OLD WOMEN.
The darkest despotisms on the Continent have done more for the growth and
elevation of the fine arts than the English government. A great musical
composer in Germany and Italy is a great man in society, and a real dignity
and rank are universally conceded to him. So it is with a sculptor, or
painter, or architect. Without this sort of encouragement and patronage
such arts as music and painting will never come into great eminence. In
this country there is no general reverence for the fine arts; and the
sordid spirit of a money-amassing philosophy would meet any proposition for
the fostering of art, in a genial and extended sense, with the commercial
maxim,--_Laissez faire_. Paganini, indeed, will make a fortune, because he
can actually sell the tones of his fiddle at so much a scrape; but Mozart
himself might have languished in a garret for any thing that would have
been done for him here.
* * * * *
There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I
knew were to be divided:--1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That
old witch.
_July_ 24. 1831.
PICTURES. [1]
Observe the remarkable difference between Claude and Teniers in their power
of painting vacant space. Claude makes his whole landscape a _plenum:_ the
air is quite as substantial as any other part of the scene. Hence there are
no true distances, and every thing presses at once and equally upon the
eye. There is something close and almost suffocating in the atmosphere of
some of Claude's sunsets. Never did any one paint air, the thin air, the
absolutely apparent vacancy between object and object, so admirably as
Teniers. That picture of the Archers[2] exemplifies this excellence. See
the distances between those ugly louts! how perfectly true to the fact!
But oh! what a wonderful picture is that Triumph of Silenus! [3] It is the
very revelry of hell. Every evil passion is there that could in any way be
forced into juxtaposition with joyance. Mark the lust, and, hard by, the
hate. Every part is pregnant with libidinous nature without one spark of
the grace of Heaven. The animal is triumphing--not over, but--in the
absence, in the non-existence, of the spiritual part of man. I could fancy
that Rubens had seen in a vision--
All the souls that damned be
Leap up at once in anarchy,
Clap their hands, and dance for glee!
That landscape[4] on the other side is only less magnificent than dear Sir
George Beaumont's, now in the National Gallery. It has the same charm.
Rubens does not take for his subjects grand or novel conformations of
objects; he has, you see, no precipices, no forests, no frowning castles,--
nothing that a poet would take at all times, and a painter take in these
times. No; he gets some little ponds, old tumble-down cottages, that
ruinous chateau, two or three peasants, a hay-rick, and other such humble
images, which looked at in and by themselves convey no pleasure and excite
no surprise; but he--and he Peter Paul Rubens alone--handles these every-
day ingredients of all common landscapes as they are handled in nature; he
throws them into a vast and magnificent whole, consisting of heaven and
earth and all things therein. He extracts the latent poetry out of these
common objects,--that poetry and harmony which every man of genius
perceives in the face of nature, and which many men of no genius are taught
to perceive and feel after examining such a picture as this. In other
landscape painters the scene is confined and as it were imprisoned;--in
Rubens the landscape dies a natural death; it fades away into the apparent
infinity of space.
So long as Rubens confines himself to space and outward figure--to the mere
animal man with animal passions--he is, I may say, a god amongst painters.
His satyrs, Silenuses, lions, tigers, and dogs, are almost godlike; but the
moment he attempts any thing involving or presuming the spiritual, his gods
and goddesses, his nymphs and heroes, become beasts, absolute, unmitigated
beasts.
[Footnote 1:
All the following remarks in this section were made at the exhibition of
ancient masters at the British Gallery in Pall Mall. The recollection of
those two hours has made the rooms of that Institution a melancholy place
for me. Mr. Coleridge was in high spirits, and seemed to kindle in his mind
at the contemplation of the splendid pictures before him. He did not
examine them all by the catalogue, but anchored himself before some three
or four great works, telling me that he saw the rest of the Gallery
_potentially_. I can yet distinctly recall him, half leaning on his old
simple stick, and his hat off in one hand, whilst with the fingers of the
other he went on, as was his constant wont, figuring in the air a
commentary of small diagrams, wherewith, as he fancied, he could translate
to the eye those relations of form and space which his words might fail to
convey with clearness to the ear. His admiration for Rubens showed itself
in a sort of joy and brotherly fondness; he looked as if he would shake
hands with his pictures. What the company, which by degrees formed itself
round this silver-haired, bright-eyed, music-breathing, old man, took him
for, I cannot guess; there was probably not one there who knew him to be
that Ancient Mariner, who held people with his glittering eye, and
constrained them, like three years' children, to hear his tale. In the
midst of his speech, he turned to the right hand, where stood a very lovely
young woman, whose attention he had involuntarily arrested;--to her,
without apparently any consciousness of her being a stranger to him, he
addressed many remarks, although I must acknowledge they were couched in a
somewhat softer tone, as if he were soliciting her sympathy. He was,
verily, a gentle-hearted man at all times; but I never was in company with
him in my life, when the entry of a woman, it mattered not who, did not
provoke a dim gush of emotion, which passed like an infant's breath over
the mirror of his intellect. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
"Figures shooting at a Target," belonging, I believe, to Lord Bandon. --ED. ]
[Footnote 3: This belongs to Sir Robert Peel. --ED. ]
[Footnote 4:
"Landscape with setting Sun,"--Lord Farnborough's picture. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The Italian masters differ from the Dutch in this--that in their pictures
ages are perfectly ideal. The infant that Raffael's Madonna holds in her
arms cannot be guessed of any particular age; it is Humanity in infancy.
The babe in the manger in a Dutch painting is a fac-simile of some real
new-born bantling; it is just like the little rabbits we fathers have all
seen with some dismay at first burst.
* * * * *
Carlo Dolce's representations of our Saviour are pretty, to be sure; but
they are too smooth to please me. His Christs are always in sugar-candy.
* * * * *
That is a very odd and funny picture of the Connoisseurs
at Rome[1] by Reynolds.
[Footnote 1:
"Portraits of distinguished Connoisseurs painted at Rome,"--belonging to
Lord Burlington. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The more I see of modern pictures, the more I am convinced that the ancient
art of painting is gone, and something substituted for it,--very pleasing,
but different, and different in kind and not in degree only. Portraits by
the old masters,--take for example the pock-fritten lady by Cuyp[1]--are
pictures of men and women: they fill, not merely occupy, a space; they
represent individuals, but individuals as types of a species.
Modern portraits--a few by Jackson and Owen, perhaps, excepted--give you
not the man, not the inward humanity, but merely the external mark, that in
which Tom is different from Bill. There is something affected and
meretricious in the Snake in the Grass[2] and such pictures, by Reynolds.
[Footnote 1:
I almost forget, but have some recollection that the allusion is to Mr.
Heneage Finch's picture of a Lady with a Fan. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2: Sir Robert Peel's. --ED. ]
July 25. 1831.
CHILLINGWORTH. --SUPERSTITION OF MALTESE, SICILIANS, AND ITALIANS.
It is now twenty years since I read Chillingworth's book[1]; but certainly
it seemed to me that his main position, that the mere text of the Bible is
the sole and exclusive ground of Christian faith and practice, is quite
untenable against the Romanists. It entirely destroys the conditions of a
church, of an authority residing in a religious community, and all that
holy sense of brotherhood which is so sublime and consolatory to a
meditative Christian. Had I been a Papist, I should not have wished for a
more vanquishable opponent in controversy. I certainly believe
Chillingworth to have been in some sense a Socinian. Lord Falkland, his
friend, said so in substance. I do not deny his skill in dialectics; he was
more than a match for Knott[2] to be sure.
I must be bold enough to say, that I do not think that even Hooker puts the
idea of a church on the true foundation.
[Footnote 1:
"The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation; or, an Answer to a
Booke entitled 'Mercy and Truth; or, Charity maintained by Catholicks,'
which pretends to prove the contrary. "]
[Footnote 2:
Socinianism, or some inclination that way, is an old and clinging charge
against Chillingworth. On the one hand, it is well known that he subscribed
the articles of the church of England, in the usual form, on the 20th of
July, 1638; and on the other, it is equally certain that within two years
immediately previous, he wrote the letter to some unnamed correspondent,
beginning "Dear Harry," and printed in all the Lives of Chillingworth, in
which letter he sums up his arguments upon the Arian doctrine in this
passage:--"In a word, whosoever shall freely and impartially consider of
this thing, and how on the other side the ancient fathers' weapons against
the Arrians are in a manner only places of Scripture (and these now for the
most part discarded as importunate and unconcluding), and how in the
argument drawn from the authority of the ancient fathers, they are almost
always defendants, and scarse ever opponents, _he shall not choose but
confesses or at least be very inclinable to beleeve, that the doctrine of
Arrius is eyther a truth, or at least no damnable heresy_. " The truth is,
however, that the Socinianism of Chillingworth, such as it may have been,
had more reference to the doctrine of the redemption of man than of the
being of God.
Edward Knott's real name was Matthias Wilson. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The superstition of the peasantry and lower orders generally in Malta,
Sicily, and Italy exceeds common belief. It is unlike the superstition of
Spain, which is a jealous fanaticism, having reference to their
catholicism, and always glancing on heresy. The popular superstition of
Italy is the offspring of the climate, the old associations, the manners,
and the very names of the places. It is pure paganism, undisturbed by any
anxiety about orthodoxy, or animosity against heretics. Hence, it is much
more good-natured and pleasing to a traveller's feelings, and certainly not
a whit less like the true religion of our dear Lord than the gloomy
idolatry of the Spaniards.
* * * * *
I well remember, when in Valetta in 1805, asking a boy who waited on me,
what a certain procession, then passing, was, and his answering with great
quickness, that it was Jesus Christ, _who lives here (sta di casa qui)_,
and when he comes out, it is in the shape of a wafer. But, "Eccelenza,"
said he, smiling and correcting himself, "non e Cristiano. "[1]
[Footnote 1:
The following anecdote related by Mr. Coleridge, in April, 1811, was
preserved and communicated to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge:--"As I was
descending from Mount AEtna with a very lively talkative guide, we passed
through a village (I think called) Nicolozzi, when the host happened to be
passing through the street. Every one was prostrate; my guide became so;
and, not to be singular, I went down also. After resuming our journey, I
observed in my guide an unusual seriousness and long silence, which, after
many _hums_ and _hahs_, was interrupted by a low bow, and leave requested
to ask a question. This was of course granted, and the ensuing dialogue
took place. Guide. "Signor, are you then a Christian? " Coleridge. "I hope
so. " G. "What! are all Englishmen Christians? " C. "I hope and trust they
are. " G. "What! are you not Turks? Are you not damned eternally? " C. "I
trust not, through Christ. " G. "What! you believe in Christ then? " C.
"Certainly. " This answer produced another long silence. At length my guide
again spoke, still doubting the grand point of my Christianity. G. "I'm
thinking, Signor, what is the difference between you and us, that you are
to be certainly damned? " C. "Nothing very material; nothing that can
prevent our both going to heaven, I hope. We believe in the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost. " G. (interrupting me) "Oh those damned priests!
what liars they are! But (pausing) we can't do without them; we can't go to
heaven without them. But tell me, Signor, what _are_ the differences? " C.
"Why, for instance, we do not worship the Virgin. " G. "And why not,
Signor? " C. "Because, though holy and pure, we think her still a woman,
and, therefore, do not pay her the honour due to God. " G. "But do you not
worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand of God? " C. "We do. " G. "Then why
not worship the Virgin, who sits on the left? " C. "I did not know she did.
If you can show it me in the Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship
her. " "Oh," said my man, with uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingers,
"sicuro, Signor! sicuro, Signor! ""--ED. ]
_July_ 30. 1831.
ASGILL. --THE FRENCH.
Asgill was an extraordinary man, and his pamphlet[1] is invaluable. He
undertook to prove that man is literally immortal; or, rather, that any
given living man might probably never die. He complains of the cowardly
practice of dying. He was expelled from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy
and atheism, as was pretended;--really I suspect because he was a staunch
Hanoverian. I expected to find the ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen
snarlings of an infidel; whereas I found the very soul of Swift--an intense
half self-deceived humorism. I scarcely remember elsewhere such uncommon
skill in logic, such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of common
sense. Each of his paragraphs is in itself a whole, and yet a link between
the preceding and following; so that the entire series forms one argument,
and yet each is a diamond in itself.
[Footnote 1:
"An argument proving, that, according to the covenant of eternal life,
revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence, without
passing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could
not be thus translated, till he had passed through death. " Asgill died in
the year 1738, in the King's Bench prison, where he had been a prisoner for
debt thirty years. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Was there ever such a miserable scene as that of the exhibition of the
Austrian standards in the French house of peers the other day? [1] Every
other nation but the French would see that it was an exhibition of their
own falsehood and cowardice. A man swears that the property intrusted to
him is burnt, and then, when he is no longer afraid, produces it, and
boasts of the atmosphere of "_honour_," through which the lie did not
transpire.
Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder,--each by itself smutty and
contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed.
[Footnote 1:
When the allies were in Paris in 1815, all the Austrian standards were
reclaimed. The answer was that they had been burnt by the soldiers at the
Hotel des Invalides. This was untrue. The Marquis de Semonville confessed
with pride that he, knowing of the fraud, had concealed these standards,
taken from Mack at Ulm in 1805, in a vault under the Luxemburg palace. "An
inviolable asylum," said the Marquis in his speech to the peers, "formed in
the vault of this hall has protected this treasure from every search.
Vainly, during this long space of time, have the most authoritative
researches endeavoured to penetrate the secret. It would have been culpable
to reveal it, as long as we were liable to the demands of haughty
foreigners. No one in this atmosphere of honour is capable of so great a
weakness," &c. --ED. ]
_August_ 1. 1831.
As there is much beast and some devil in man; so is there some angel and
some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life
never destroyed.
* * * * *
I will defy any one to answer the arguments of a St. Simonist, except on
the ground of Christianity--its precepts and its assurances.
_August_ 6. 1831.
THE GOOD AND THE TRUE. --ROMISH RELIGION.
There is the love of the good for the good's sake, and the love of the
truth for the truth's sake. I have known many, especially women, love the
good for the good's sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman,
love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet; without the latter, the former
may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of
the truth,--the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party
zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is
ultimately identical--is given only to those who love both sincerely and
without any foreign ends.
* * * * *
Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion,
and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed
principle of action--that the end will sanction any means.
_August_ 8. 1831.
ENGLAND AND HOLLAND.
The conduct of this country to King William of Holland has been, in my
judgment, base and unprincipled beyond any thing in our history since the
times of Charles the Second. Certainly, Holland is one of the most
important allies that England has; and we are doing our utmost to subject
it, and Portugal, to French influence, or even dominion! Upon my word, the
English people, at this moment, are like a man palsied in every part of his
body but one, in which one part he is so morbidly sensitive that he cannot
bear to have it so much as breathed upon, whilst you may pinch him with a
hot forceps elsewhere without his taking any notice of it.
_August_ 8. 1831.
IRON. --GALVANISM. --HEAT.
Iron is the most ductile of all hard metals, and the hardest of all ductile
metals. With the exception of nickel, in which it is dimly seen, iron is
the only metal in which the magnetic power is visible. Indeed, it is almost
impossible to purify nickel of iron.
* * * * *
Galvanism is the union of electricity and magnetism, and, by being
continuous, it exhibits an image of life;--I say, an image only: it is
life in death.
* * * * *
Heat is the mesothesis or indifference of light and matter.
_August_ 14. 1831.
NATIONAL COLONIAL CHARACTER, AND NAVAL DISCIPLINE.
The character of most nations in their colonial dependencies is in an
inverse ratio of excellence to their character at home. The best people in
the mother-country will generally be the worst in the colonies; the worst
at home will be the best abroad. Or, perhaps, I may state it less
offensively thus:--The colonists of a well governed-country will
degenerate; those of an ill-governed country will improve. I am now
considering the natural tendency of such colonists if left to themselves;
of course, a direct act of the legislature of the mother-country will break
in upon this. Where this tendency is exemplified, the cause is obvious. In
countries well governed and happily conditioned, none, or very few, but
those who are desperate through vice or folly, or who are mere trading
adventurers, will be willing to leave their homes and settle in another
hemisphere; and of those who do go, the best and worthiest are always
striving to acquire the means of leaving the colony, and of returning to
their native land. In ill-governed and ill-conditioned countries, on the
contrary, the most respectable of the people are willing and anxious to
emigrate for the chance of greater security and enlarged freedom; and if
they succeed in obtaining these blessings in almost any degree, they have
little inducement, on the average, to wish to abandon their second and
better country. Hence, in the former case, the colonists consider
themselves as mere strangers, sojourners, birds of passage, and shift to
live from hand to mouth, with little regard to lasting improvement of the
place of their temporary commerce; whilst, in the latter case, men feel
attached to a community to which they are individually indebted for
otherwise unattainable benefits, and for the most part learn to regard it
as their abode, and to make themselves as happy and comfortable in it as
possible. I believe that the internal condition and character of the
English and French West India islands of the last century amply verified
this distinction; the Dutch colonists most certainly did, and have always
done.
Analogous to this, though not founded on precisely the same principle, is
the fact that the severest naval discipline is always found in the ships of
the freest nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of the most
oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of the Americans is the sharpest;
then that of the English;[1] then that of the French (I speak as it used to
be); and on board a Spanish ship, there is no discipline at all.
At Genoa, the word "Liberty" is, or used to be, engraved on the chains of
the galley-slaves, and the doors of the dungeons.
[Footnote 1:
This expression needs explanation. It _looks_ as if Mr. Coleridge rated the
degree of liberty enjoyed by the English, _after_ that of the citizens of
the United States; but he meant no such thing. His meaning was, that the
form of government of the latter was more democratic, and formally assigned
more power to each individual. The Americans, as a nation, had no better
friend in England than Coleridge; he contemplated their growth with
interest, and prophesied highly of their destiny, whether under their
present or other governments. But he well knew their besetting faults and
their peculiar difficulties, and was most deliberately of opinion that the
English had, for 130 years last past, possessed a measure of individual
freedom and social dignity which had never been equalled, much less
surpassed, in any other country ancient or modern. There is a passage in
Mr. Coleridge's latest publication (Church and State}, which clearly
expresses his opinion upon this subject: "It has been frequently and truly
observed that in England, where the ground-plan, the skeleton, as it were,
of the government is a monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the
aristocracy (the assertions of its popular character finding a better
support in the harangues and theories of popular men, than in state
documents, and the records of clear history), afar greater degree of
liberty is, and long has been, enjoyed, than ever existed in, the
ostensibly freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths of ancient or
modern times; greater, indeed, and with a more decisive predominance of the
spirit of freedom, than the wisest and most philanthropic statesmen of
antiquity, or than the great commonwealth's men,--the stars of that narrow
interspace of blue sky between the black clouds of the first and second
Charles's reigns--believed compatible, the one with the safety of the
state, the other with the interests of morality.
fellow, remarked to me once at a concert, that I did not seem much
interested with a piece of Rossini's which had just been performed. I said,
it sounded to me like nonsense verses. But I could scarcely contain myself
when a thing of Beethoven's followed.
* * * * *
I never distinctly felt the heavenly superiority of the prayers in the
English liturgy, till I had attended some kirks in the country parts of
Scotland, I call these strings of school boys or girls which we meet near
London--walking advertisements.
* * * * *
The Brussels riot--I cannot bring myself to dignify it with a higher name
--is a wretched parody on the last French revolution. Were I King William,
I would banish the Belgians, as Coriolanus banishes the Romans in
Shakspeare. [1]
It is a wicked rebellion without one just cause.
[Footnote 1:
"You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with _your uncertainty! _"
Act iii. sc. 3. ]
_October_ 8. 1830.
GALILEO, NEWTON, KEPLER, BACON.
Galileo was a great genius, and so was Newton; but it would take two or
three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler. [1] It is in the order of
Providence, that the inventive, generative, constitutive mind--the Kepler--
should come first; and then that the patient and collective mind--the
Newton--should follow, and elaborate the pregnant queries and illumining
guesses of the former. The laws of the planetary system are, in fact, due
to Kepler. There is not a more glorious achievement of scientific genius
upon record, than Kepler's guesses, prophecies, and ultimate apprehension
of the law[2] of the mean distances of the planets as connected with the
periods of their revolutions round the sun. Gravitation, too, he had fully
conceived; but, because it seemed inconsistent with some received
observations on light, he gave it up, in allegiance, as he says, to Nature.
Yet the idea vexed and haunted his mind; _"Vexat me et lacessit,"_ are his
words, I believe.
We praise Newton's clearness and steadiness. He was clear and steady, no
doubt, whilst working out, by the help of an admirable geometry, the idea
brought forth by another. Newton had his ether, and could not rest in--he
could not conceive--the idea of a law. He thought it a physical thing after
all. As for his chronology, I believe, those who are most competent to
judge, rely on it less and less every day. His lucubrations on Daniel and
the Revelations seem to me little less than mere raving.
[Footnote 1:
Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa, on the 15th of February, 1564. John
Kepler was born at Weil, in the duchy of Wirtemberg, on the 2lst of
December, 1571. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
Namely, that the squares of their times vary as the cubes of their
distances,--ED. ]
* * * * *
Personal experiment is necessary, in order to correct our own observation
of the experiments which Nature herself makes for us--I mean, the phenomena
of the universe. But then observation is, in turn, wanted to direct and
substantiate the course of experiment. Experiments alone cannot advance
knowledge, without observation; they amuse for a time, and then pass off
the scene and leave no trace behind them.
* * * * *
Bacon, when like himself--for no man was ever more inconsistent--says,
_"Prudens qiuestio--dimidium scientiae est. "_
_October_ 20. 1830.
THE REFORMATION.
At the Reformation, the first reformers were beset with an almost morbid
anxiety not to be considered heretical in point of doctrine. They knew that
the Romanists were on the watch to fasten the brand of heresy upon them
whenever a fair pretext could be found; and I have no doubt it was the
excess of this fear which at once led to the burning of Servetus, and also
to the thanks offered by all the Protestant churches, to Calvin and the
Church of Geneva, for burning him.
_November_ 21. 1830.
HOUSE OF COMMONS.
---- never makes a figure in quietude. He astounds the vulgar with a
certain enormity of exertion; he takes an acre of canvass, on which he
scrawls every thing. He thinks aloud; every thing in his mind, good, bad,
or indifferent, out it comes; he is like the Newgate gutter, flowing with
garbage, dead dogs, and mud. He is preeminently a man of many thoughts,
with no ideas: hence he is always so lengthy, because he must go through
every thing to see any thing.
* * * * *
It is a melancholy thing to live when there is no vision in the land. Where
are our statesmen to meet this emergency? I see no reformer who asks
himself the question, _What_ is it that I propose to myself to effect in
the result?
Is the House of Commons to be re-constructed on the principle of a
representation of interests, or of a delegation of men? If on the former,
we may, perhaps, see our way; if on the latter, you can never, in reason,
stop short of universal suffrage; and in that case, I am sure that women
have as good a right to vote as men. [1]
[Footnote 1:
In Mr. Coleridge's masterly analysis and confutation of the physiocratic
system of the early French revolutionists, in the Friend, he has the
following passage in the nature of a _reductio ad absurdum_. "Rousseau,
indeed, asserts that there is an inalienable sovereignty inherent in every
human being possessed of reason; and from this the framers of the
Constitution of 1791 deduce, that the people itself is its own sole
rightful legislator, and at most dare only recede so far from its right as
to delegate to chosen deputies the power of representing and declaring the
general will. But this is wholly without proof; for it has been already
fully shown, that, according to the principle out of which this consequence
is attempted to be drawn, it is not the actual man, but the abstract reason
alone, that is the sovereign and rightful lawgiver. The confusion of two
things so different is so gross an error, that the Constituent Assembly
could scarce proceed a step in their declaration of rights, without some
glaring inconsistency. Children are excluded from all political power; are
they not human beings in whom the faculty of reason resides? Yes! but|in
_them_ the faculty is not yet adequately developed. But are not gross
ignorance, inveterate superstition, and the habitual tyranny of passion and
sensuality, equally preventives of the developement, equally impediments to
the rightful exercise, of the reason, as childhood and early youth? Who
would not rely on the judgment of a well-educated English lad, bred in a
virtuous and enlightened family, in preference to that of a brutal Russian,
who believes that he can scourge his wooden idol into good humour, or
attributes to himself the merit of perpetual prayer, when he has fastened
the petitions, which his priest has written for him, on the wings of a
windmill? Again: women are likewise excluded; a full half, and that
assuredly the most innocent, the most amiable half, of the whole human race
is excluded, and this too by a Constitution which boasts to have no other
foundations but those of universal reason! Is reason, then, an affair of
sex? No! but women are commonly in a state of dependence, and are not
likely to exercise their reason with freedom. Well! and does not this
ground of exclusion apply with equal or greater force to the poor, to the
infirm, to men in embarrassed circumstances, to all, in short, whose
maintenance, be it scanty, or be it ample, depends on the will of others?
How far are we to go? Where must we stop? What classes should we admit?
Whom must we disfranchise? The objects concerning whom we are to determine
these questions, are all human beings, and differenced from each other by
_degrees_ only, these degrees, too, oftentimes changing. Yet the principle
on which the whole system rests, is that reason is not susceptible of
degree. Nothing, therefore, which subsists wholly in degrees, the changes
of which do not obey any necessary law, can be the object of pure science,
or determinate by mere reason,"--Vol. i. p. 341, ED. ]
_March_ 20. 1831.
GOVERNMENT. --EARL GREY.
Government is not founded on property, taken merely as such, in the
abstract; it is founded on _unequal_ property; the inequality is an
essential term in the position. The phrases--higher, middle, and lower
classes, with reference to this point of representation--are delusive; no
such divisions as classes actually exist in society. There is an
indissoluble blending and interfusion of persons from top to bottom; and no
man can trace a line of separation through them, except such a confessedly
unmeaning and unjustifiable line of political empiricism as 10_l_.
householders. I cannot discover a ray of principle in the government plan,
--not a hint of the effect of the change upon the balance of the estates of
the realm,--not a remark on the nature of the constitution of England, and
the character of the property of so many millions of its inhabitants. Half
the wealth of this country is purely artificial,--existing only in and on
the credit given to it by the integrity and honesty of the nation. This
property appears, in many instances, a heavy burthen to the numerical
majority of the people, and they believe that it causes all their distress:
and they are now to have the maintenance of this property committed to
their good faith--the lamb to the wolves!
Necker, you remember, asked the people to come and help him against the
aristocracy. The people came fast enough at his bidding; but, somehow or
other, they would not go away again when they had done their work. I hope
Lord Grey will not see himself or his friends in the woeful case of the
conjuror, who, with infinite zeal and pains, called up the devils to do
something for him. They came at the word, thronging about him, grinning,
and howling, and dancing, and whisking their long tails in diabolic glee;
but when they asked him what he wanted of them, the poor wretch, frightened
out his of wits, could only stammer forth,--"I pray you, my friends, be
gone down again! " At which the devils, with one voice, replied,--
"Yes! yes! we'll go down! we'll go down! --
But we'll take _you_ with us to swim or to drown! "[1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge must have been thinking of that "very pithy and profitable"
ballad by the Laureate, wherein is shown how a young man "would read
unlawful books, and how he was punished:"--
"The _young_ man, he began to read
He knew not what, but he would proceed,
When there was heard a sound at the door,
Which as he read on grew more and more.
"And more and more the knocking grew,
The young man knew not what to do:
But trembling in fear he sat within,
_Till the door was broke, and the devil came in_.
"'What would'st thou with me? ' the wicked one cried;
But not a word the young man replied;
Every hair on his head was standing upright,
And his limbs like a palsy shook with affright.
"'What would'st thou with me? ' cried the author of ill;
But the wretched young man was silent still," &c.
The catastrophe is very terrible, and the moral, though addressed by the
poet to young men only, is quite as applicable to old men, as the times
show.
"Henceforth let all young men take heed
How in a conjuror's books they read! "
_Southey's Minor Poems_, vol. iii. p. 92. --ED. ]
* * * * *
_June_ 25. 1831.
GOVERNMENT. --POPULAR REPRESENTATION.
The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the
government of a nation, are,--1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to
acquirers; and; 3. Hope to all.
* * * * *
A nation is the unity of a people. King and parliament are the unity made
visible. The king and the peers are as integral portions of this manifested
unity as the commons. [1]
In that imperfect state of society in which our system of representation
began, the interests of the country were pretty exactly commensurate with
its municipal divisions. The counties, the towns, and the seaports,
accurately enough represented the only interests then existing; that is
say,--the landed, the shop-keeping or manufacturing, and the mercantile.
But for a century past, at least, this division has become notoriously
imperfect, some of the most vital interests of the empire being now totally
unconnected with any English localities. Yet now, when the evil and the
want are known, we are to abandon the accommodations which the necessity of
the case had worked out for itself, and begin again with a rigidly
territorial plan of representation! The miserable tendency of all is to
destroy our nationality, which consists, in a principal degree, in our
representative government, and to convert it into a degrading delegation of
the populace. There is no unity for a people but in a representation of
national interests; a delegation from the passions or wishes of the
individuals themselves is a rope of sand. Undoubtedly it is a great evil,
that there should be such an evident discrepancy between the law and the
practice of the constitution in the matter of the representation. Such a
direct, yet clandestine, contravention of solemn resolutions and
established laws is immoral, and greatly injurious to the cause of legal
loyalty and general subordination in the minds of the people. But then a
statesman should consider that these very contraventions of law in practice
point out to him the places in the body politic which need a remodelling of
the law. You acknowledge a certain necessity for indirect representation in
the present day, and that such representation has been instinctively
obtained by means contrary to law; why then do you not approximate the
useless law to the useful practice, instead of abandoning both law and
practice for a completely new system of your own?
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge was very fond of quoting George Withers's fine lines:--
"Let not your king and parliament in one,
Much less apart, mistake themselves for that
Which is most worthy to be thought upon:
Nor think _they_ are, essentially, The STATE.
Let them not fancy that th' authority
And privileges upon them bestown,
Conferr'd are to set up a majesty,
A power, or a glory, of their own!
But let them know, 't was for a deeper life,
Which they but _represent_--
That there's on earth a yet auguster thing,
Veil'd though it be, than parliament and king! "--ED. ]
* * * * *
The malignant duplicity and unprincipled tergiversations of the specific
Whig newspapers are to me detestable. I prefer the open endeavours of those
publications which seek to destroy the church, and introduce a republic in
effect: there is a sort of honesty in _that_ which I approve, though I
would with joy lay down my life to save my country from the consummation
which is so evidently desired by that section of the periodical press.
_June_ 26. 1831.
NAPIER. --BUONAPARTE. --SOUTHEY.
I have been exceedingly impressed with the evil precedent of Colonel
Napier's History of the Peninsular War. It is a specimen of the true French
military school; not a thought for the justice of the war,--not a
consideration of the damnable and damning iniquity of the French invasion.
All is looked at as a mere game of exquisite skill, and the praise is
regularly awarded to the most successful player. How perfectly ridiculous
is the prostration of Napier's mind, apparently a powerful one, before the
name of Buonaparte! I declare I know no book more likely to undermine the
national sense of right and wrong in matters of foreign interference than
this work of Napier's.
If A. has a hundred means of doing a certain thing, and B. has only one or
two, is it very wonderful, or does it argue very transcendant superiority,
if A. surpasses B. ? Buonaparte was the child of circumstances, which he
neither originated nor controlled. He had no chance of preserving his power
but by continual warfare. No thought of a wise tranquillization of the
shaken elements of France seems ever to have passed through his mind; and I
believe that at no part of his reign could be have survived one year's
continued peace. He never had but one obstacle to contend with--physical
force; commonly the least difficult enemy a general, subject to courts-
martial and courts of conscience, has to overcome.
* * * * *
Southey's History[1] is on the right side, and starts from the right point;
but he is personally fond of the Spaniards, and in bringing forward their
nationality in the prominent manner it deserves, he does not, in my
judgment, state with sufficient clearness the truth, that the nationality
of the Spaniards was not founded on any just ground of good government or
wise laws, but was, in fact, very little more than a rooted antipathy to
all strangers as such.
In this sense every thing is national in Spain. Even their so called
Catholic religion is exclusively national in a genuine Spaniard's mind; he
does not regard the religious professions of the Frenchman or Italian at
all in the same light with his own.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge said that the conclusion of this great work was the finest
specimen of historic eulogy he had ever read in English;--that it was more
than a campaign to the duke's fame. --ED. ]
_July_ 7. 1831.
PATRONAGE OF THE FINE ARTS. --OLD WOMEN.
The darkest despotisms on the Continent have done more for the growth and
elevation of the fine arts than the English government. A great musical
composer in Germany and Italy is a great man in society, and a real dignity
and rank are universally conceded to him. So it is with a sculptor, or
painter, or architect. Without this sort of encouragement and patronage
such arts as music and painting will never come into great eminence. In
this country there is no general reverence for the fine arts; and the
sordid spirit of a money-amassing philosophy would meet any proposition for
the fostering of art, in a genial and extended sense, with the commercial
maxim,--_Laissez faire_. Paganini, indeed, will make a fortune, because he
can actually sell the tones of his fiddle at so much a scrape; but Mozart
himself might have languished in a garret for any thing that would have
been done for him here.
* * * * *
There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I
knew were to be divided:--1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That
old witch.
_July_ 24. 1831.
PICTURES. [1]
Observe the remarkable difference between Claude and Teniers in their power
of painting vacant space. Claude makes his whole landscape a _plenum:_ the
air is quite as substantial as any other part of the scene. Hence there are
no true distances, and every thing presses at once and equally upon the
eye. There is something close and almost suffocating in the atmosphere of
some of Claude's sunsets. Never did any one paint air, the thin air, the
absolutely apparent vacancy between object and object, so admirably as
Teniers. That picture of the Archers[2] exemplifies this excellence. See
the distances between those ugly louts! how perfectly true to the fact!
But oh! what a wonderful picture is that Triumph of Silenus! [3] It is the
very revelry of hell. Every evil passion is there that could in any way be
forced into juxtaposition with joyance. Mark the lust, and, hard by, the
hate. Every part is pregnant with libidinous nature without one spark of
the grace of Heaven. The animal is triumphing--not over, but--in the
absence, in the non-existence, of the spiritual part of man. I could fancy
that Rubens had seen in a vision--
All the souls that damned be
Leap up at once in anarchy,
Clap their hands, and dance for glee!
That landscape[4] on the other side is only less magnificent than dear Sir
George Beaumont's, now in the National Gallery. It has the same charm.
Rubens does not take for his subjects grand or novel conformations of
objects; he has, you see, no precipices, no forests, no frowning castles,--
nothing that a poet would take at all times, and a painter take in these
times. No; he gets some little ponds, old tumble-down cottages, that
ruinous chateau, two or three peasants, a hay-rick, and other such humble
images, which looked at in and by themselves convey no pleasure and excite
no surprise; but he--and he Peter Paul Rubens alone--handles these every-
day ingredients of all common landscapes as they are handled in nature; he
throws them into a vast and magnificent whole, consisting of heaven and
earth and all things therein. He extracts the latent poetry out of these
common objects,--that poetry and harmony which every man of genius
perceives in the face of nature, and which many men of no genius are taught
to perceive and feel after examining such a picture as this. In other
landscape painters the scene is confined and as it were imprisoned;--in
Rubens the landscape dies a natural death; it fades away into the apparent
infinity of space.
So long as Rubens confines himself to space and outward figure--to the mere
animal man with animal passions--he is, I may say, a god amongst painters.
His satyrs, Silenuses, lions, tigers, and dogs, are almost godlike; but the
moment he attempts any thing involving or presuming the spiritual, his gods
and goddesses, his nymphs and heroes, become beasts, absolute, unmitigated
beasts.
[Footnote 1:
All the following remarks in this section were made at the exhibition of
ancient masters at the British Gallery in Pall Mall. The recollection of
those two hours has made the rooms of that Institution a melancholy place
for me. Mr. Coleridge was in high spirits, and seemed to kindle in his mind
at the contemplation of the splendid pictures before him. He did not
examine them all by the catalogue, but anchored himself before some three
or four great works, telling me that he saw the rest of the Gallery
_potentially_. I can yet distinctly recall him, half leaning on his old
simple stick, and his hat off in one hand, whilst with the fingers of the
other he went on, as was his constant wont, figuring in the air a
commentary of small diagrams, wherewith, as he fancied, he could translate
to the eye those relations of form and space which his words might fail to
convey with clearness to the ear. His admiration for Rubens showed itself
in a sort of joy and brotherly fondness; he looked as if he would shake
hands with his pictures. What the company, which by degrees formed itself
round this silver-haired, bright-eyed, music-breathing, old man, took him
for, I cannot guess; there was probably not one there who knew him to be
that Ancient Mariner, who held people with his glittering eye, and
constrained them, like three years' children, to hear his tale. In the
midst of his speech, he turned to the right hand, where stood a very lovely
young woman, whose attention he had involuntarily arrested;--to her,
without apparently any consciousness of her being a stranger to him, he
addressed many remarks, although I must acknowledge they were couched in a
somewhat softer tone, as if he were soliciting her sympathy. He was,
verily, a gentle-hearted man at all times; but I never was in company with
him in my life, when the entry of a woman, it mattered not who, did not
provoke a dim gush of emotion, which passed like an infant's breath over
the mirror of his intellect. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
"Figures shooting at a Target," belonging, I believe, to Lord Bandon. --ED. ]
[Footnote 3: This belongs to Sir Robert Peel. --ED. ]
[Footnote 4:
"Landscape with setting Sun,"--Lord Farnborough's picture. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The Italian masters differ from the Dutch in this--that in their pictures
ages are perfectly ideal. The infant that Raffael's Madonna holds in her
arms cannot be guessed of any particular age; it is Humanity in infancy.
The babe in the manger in a Dutch painting is a fac-simile of some real
new-born bantling; it is just like the little rabbits we fathers have all
seen with some dismay at first burst.
* * * * *
Carlo Dolce's representations of our Saviour are pretty, to be sure; but
they are too smooth to please me. His Christs are always in sugar-candy.
* * * * *
That is a very odd and funny picture of the Connoisseurs
at Rome[1] by Reynolds.
[Footnote 1:
"Portraits of distinguished Connoisseurs painted at Rome,"--belonging to
Lord Burlington. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The more I see of modern pictures, the more I am convinced that the ancient
art of painting is gone, and something substituted for it,--very pleasing,
but different, and different in kind and not in degree only. Portraits by
the old masters,--take for example the pock-fritten lady by Cuyp[1]--are
pictures of men and women: they fill, not merely occupy, a space; they
represent individuals, but individuals as types of a species.
Modern portraits--a few by Jackson and Owen, perhaps, excepted--give you
not the man, not the inward humanity, but merely the external mark, that in
which Tom is different from Bill. There is something affected and
meretricious in the Snake in the Grass[2] and such pictures, by Reynolds.
[Footnote 1:
I almost forget, but have some recollection that the allusion is to Mr.
Heneage Finch's picture of a Lady with a Fan. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2: Sir Robert Peel's. --ED. ]
July 25. 1831.
CHILLINGWORTH. --SUPERSTITION OF MALTESE, SICILIANS, AND ITALIANS.
It is now twenty years since I read Chillingworth's book[1]; but certainly
it seemed to me that his main position, that the mere text of the Bible is
the sole and exclusive ground of Christian faith and practice, is quite
untenable against the Romanists. It entirely destroys the conditions of a
church, of an authority residing in a religious community, and all that
holy sense of brotherhood which is so sublime and consolatory to a
meditative Christian. Had I been a Papist, I should not have wished for a
more vanquishable opponent in controversy. I certainly believe
Chillingworth to have been in some sense a Socinian. Lord Falkland, his
friend, said so in substance. I do not deny his skill in dialectics; he was
more than a match for Knott[2] to be sure.
I must be bold enough to say, that I do not think that even Hooker puts the
idea of a church on the true foundation.
[Footnote 1:
"The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation; or, an Answer to a
Booke entitled 'Mercy and Truth; or, Charity maintained by Catholicks,'
which pretends to prove the contrary. "]
[Footnote 2:
Socinianism, or some inclination that way, is an old and clinging charge
against Chillingworth. On the one hand, it is well known that he subscribed
the articles of the church of England, in the usual form, on the 20th of
July, 1638; and on the other, it is equally certain that within two years
immediately previous, he wrote the letter to some unnamed correspondent,
beginning "Dear Harry," and printed in all the Lives of Chillingworth, in
which letter he sums up his arguments upon the Arian doctrine in this
passage:--"In a word, whosoever shall freely and impartially consider of
this thing, and how on the other side the ancient fathers' weapons against
the Arrians are in a manner only places of Scripture (and these now for the
most part discarded as importunate and unconcluding), and how in the
argument drawn from the authority of the ancient fathers, they are almost
always defendants, and scarse ever opponents, _he shall not choose but
confesses or at least be very inclinable to beleeve, that the doctrine of
Arrius is eyther a truth, or at least no damnable heresy_. " The truth is,
however, that the Socinianism of Chillingworth, such as it may have been,
had more reference to the doctrine of the redemption of man than of the
being of God.
Edward Knott's real name was Matthias Wilson. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The superstition of the peasantry and lower orders generally in Malta,
Sicily, and Italy exceeds common belief. It is unlike the superstition of
Spain, which is a jealous fanaticism, having reference to their
catholicism, and always glancing on heresy. The popular superstition of
Italy is the offspring of the climate, the old associations, the manners,
and the very names of the places. It is pure paganism, undisturbed by any
anxiety about orthodoxy, or animosity against heretics. Hence, it is much
more good-natured and pleasing to a traveller's feelings, and certainly not
a whit less like the true religion of our dear Lord than the gloomy
idolatry of the Spaniards.
* * * * *
I well remember, when in Valetta in 1805, asking a boy who waited on me,
what a certain procession, then passing, was, and his answering with great
quickness, that it was Jesus Christ, _who lives here (sta di casa qui)_,
and when he comes out, it is in the shape of a wafer. But, "Eccelenza,"
said he, smiling and correcting himself, "non e Cristiano. "[1]
[Footnote 1:
The following anecdote related by Mr. Coleridge, in April, 1811, was
preserved and communicated to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge:--"As I was
descending from Mount AEtna with a very lively talkative guide, we passed
through a village (I think called) Nicolozzi, when the host happened to be
passing through the street. Every one was prostrate; my guide became so;
and, not to be singular, I went down also. After resuming our journey, I
observed in my guide an unusual seriousness and long silence, which, after
many _hums_ and _hahs_, was interrupted by a low bow, and leave requested
to ask a question. This was of course granted, and the ensuing dialogue
took place. Guide. "Signor, are you then a Christian? " Coleridge. "I hope
so. " G. "What! are all Englishmen Christians? " C. "I hope and trust they
are. " G. "What! are you not Turks? Are you not damned eternally? " C. "I
trust not, through Christ. " G. "What! you believe in Christ then? " C.
"Certainly. " This answer produced another long silence. At length my guide
again spoke, still doubting the grand point of my Christianity. G. "I'm
thinking, Signor, what is the difference between you and us, that you are
to be certainly damned? " C. "Nothing very material; nothing that can
prevent our both going to heaven, I hope. We believe in the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost. " G. (interrupting me) "Oh those damned priests!
what liars they are! But (pausing) we can't do without them; we can't go to
heaven without them. But tell me, Signor, what _are_ the differences? " C.
"Why, for instance, we do not worship the Virgin. " G. "And why not,
Signor? " C. "Because, though holy and pure, we think her still a woman,
and, therefore, do not pay her the honour due to God. " G. "But do you not
worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand of God? " C. "We do. " G. "Then why
not worship the Virgin, who sits on the left? " C. "I did not know she did.
If you can show it me in the Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship
her. " "Oh," said my man, with uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingers,
"sicuro, Signor! sicuro, Signor! ""--ED. ]
_July_ 30. 1831.
ASGILL. --THE FRENCH.
Asgill was an extraordinary man, and his pamphlet[1] is invaluable. He
undertook to prove that man is literally immortal; or, rather, that any
given living man might probably never die. He complains of the cowardly
practice of dying. He was expelled from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy
and atheism, as was pretended;--really I suspect because he was a staunch
Hanoverian. I expected to find the ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen
snarlings of an infidel; whereas I found the very soul of Swift--an intense
half self-deceived humorism. I scarcely remember elsewhere such uncommon
skill in logic, such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of common
sense. Each of his paragraphs is in itself a whole, and yet a link between
the preceding and following; so that the entire series forms one argument,
and yet each is a diamond in itself.
[Footnote 1:
"An argument proving, that, according to the covenant of eternal life,
revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence, without
passing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could
not be thus translated, till he had passed through death. " Asgill died in
the year 1738, in the King's Bench prison, where he had been a prisoner for
debt thirty years. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Was there ever such a miserable scene as that of the exhibition of the
Austrian standards in the French house of peers the other day? [1] Every
other nation but the French would see that it was an exhibition of their
own falsehood and cowardice. A man swears that the property intrusted to
him is burnt, and then, when he is no longer afraid, produces it, and
boasts of the atmosphere of "_honour_," through which the lie did not
transpire.
Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder,--each by itself smutty and
contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed.
[Footnote 1:
When the allies were in Paris in 1815, all the Austrian standards were
reclaimed. The answer was that they had been burnt by the soldiers at the
Hotel des Invalides. This was untrue. The Marquis de Semonville confessed
with pride that he, knowing of the fraud, had concealed these standards,
taken from Mack at Ulm in 1805, in a vault under the Luxemburg palace. "An
inviolable asylum," said the Marquis in his speech to the peers, "formed in
the vault of this hall has protected this treasure from every search.
Vainly, during this long space of time, have the most authoritative
researches endeavoured to penetrate the secret. It would have been culpable
to reveal it, as long as we were liable to the demands of haughty
foreigners. No one in this atmosphere of honour is capable of so great a
weakness," &c. --ED. ]
_August_ 1. 1831.
As there is much beast and some devil in man; so is there some angel and
some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life
never destroyed.
* * * * *
I will defy any one to answer the arguments of a St. Simonist, except on
the ground of Christianity--its precepts and its assurances.
_August_ 6. 1831.
THE GOOD AND THE TRUE. --ROMISH RELIGION.
There is the love of the good for the good's sake, and the love of the
truth for the truth's sake. I have known many, especially women, love the
good for the good's sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman,
love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet; without the latter, the former
may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of
the truth,--the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party
zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is
ultimately identical--is given only to those who love both sincerely and
without any foreign ends.
* * * * *
Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion,
and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed
principle of action--that the end will sanction any means.
_August_ 8. 1831.
ENGLAND AND HOLLAND.
The conduct of this country to King William of Holland has been, in my
judgment, base and unprincipled beyond any thing in our history since the
times of Charles the Second. Certainly, Holland is one of the most
important allies that England has; and we are doing our utmost to subject
it, and Portugal, to French influence, or even dominion! Upon my word, the
English people, at this moment, are like a man palsied in every part of his
body but one, in which one part he is so morbidly sensitive that he cannot
bear to have it so much as breathed upon, whilst you may pinch him with a
hot forceps elsewhere without his taking any notice of it.
_August_ 8. 1831.
IRON. --GALVANISM. --HEAT.
Iron is the most ductile of all hard metals, and the hardest of all ductile
metals. With the exception of nickel, in which it is dimly seen, iron is
the only metal in which the magnetic power is visible. Indeed, it is almost
impossible to purify nickel of iron.
* * * * *
Galvanism is the union of electricity and magnetism, and, by being
continuous, it exhibits an image of life;--I say, an image only: it is
life in death.
* * * * *
Heat is the mesothesis or indifference of light and matter.
_August_ 14. 1831.
NATIONAL COLONIAL CHARACTER, AND NAVAL DISCIPLINE.
The character of most nations in their colonial dependencies is in an
inverse ratio of excellence to their character at home. The best people in
the mother-country will generally be the worst in the colonies; the worst
at home will be the best abroad. Or, perhaps, I may state it less
offensively thus:--The colonists of a well governed-country will
degenerate; those of an ill-governed country will improve. I am now
considering the natural tendency of such colonists if left to themselves;
of course, a direct act of the legislature of the mother-country will break
in upon this. Where this tendency is exemplified, the cause is obvious. In
countries well governed and happily conditioned, none, or very few, but
those who are desperate through vice or folly, or who are mere trading
adventurers, will be willing to leave their homes and settle in another
hemisphere; and of those who do go, the best and worthiest are always
striving to acquire the means of leaving the colony, and of returning to
their native land. In ill-governed and ill-conditioned countries, on the
contrary, the most respectable of the people are willing and anxious to
emigrate for the chance of greater security and enlarged freedom; and if
they succeed in obtaining these blessings in almost any degree, they have
little inducement, on the average, to wish to abandon their second and
better country. Hence, in the former case, the colonists consider
themselves as mere strangers, sojourners, birds of passage, and shift to
live from hand to mouth, with little regard to lasting improvement of the
place of their temporary commerce; whilst, in the latter case, men feel
attached to a community to which they are individually indebted for
otherwise unattainable benefits, and for the most part learn to regard it
as their abode, and to make themselves as happy and comfortable in it as
possible. I believe that the internal condition and character of the
English and French West India islands of the last century amply verified
this distinction; the Dutch colonists most certainly did, and have always
done.
Analogous to this, though not founded on precisely the same principle, is
the fact that the severest naval discipline is always found in the ships of
the freest nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of the most
oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of the Americans is the sharpest;
then that of the English;[1] then that of the French (I speak as it used to
be); and on board a Spanish ship, there is no discipline at all.
At Genoa, the word "Liberty" is, or used to be, engraved on the chains of
the galley-slaves, and the doors of the dungeons.
[Footnote 1:
This expression needs explanation. It _looks_ as if Mr. Coleridge rated the
degree of liberty enjoyed by the English, _after_ that of the citizens of
the United States; but he meant no such thing. His meaning was, that the
form of government of the latter was more democratic, and formally assigned
more power to each individual. The Americans, as a nation, had no better
friend in England than Coleridge; he contemplated their growth with
interest, and prophesied highly of their destiny, whether under their
present or other governments. But he well knew their besetting faults and
their peculiar difficulties, and was most deliberately of opinion that the
English had, for 130 years last past, possessed a measure of individual
freedom and social dignity which had never been equalled, much less
surpassed, in any other country ancient or modern. There is a passage in
Mr. Coleridge's latest publication (Church and State}, which clearly
expresses his opinion upon this subject: "It has been frequently and truly
observed that in England, where the ground-plan, the skeleton, as it were,
of the government is a monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the
aristocracy (the assertions of its popular character finding a better
support in the harangues and theories of popular men, than in state
documents, and the records of clear history), afar greater degree of
liberty is, and long has been, enjoyed, than ever existed in, the
ostensibly freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths of ancient or
modern times; greater, indeed, and with a more decisive predominance of the
spirit of freedom, than the wisest and most philanthropic statesmen of
antiquity, or than the great commonwealth's men,--the stars of that narrow
interspace of blue sky between the black clouds of the first and second
Charles's reigns--believed compatible, the one with the safety of the
state, the other with the interests of morality.
