to the winds with all
pretences to knowledge!
pretences to knowledge!
Coleridge - Table Talk
Now in our Malta there
are, I may say, no snakes at all; which, to be sure, the Maltese attribute
to St. Paul's having cursed them away. Melita in the Adriatic was a
perfectly barbarous island as to its native population, and was, and is
now, infested with serpents. Besides the context shows that the scene is in
the Adriatic.
[Footnote 1:
Acts xxviii. 2. and 4. Mr. C. seemed to think that the Greek words had
reference to something more than the fact of the islanders not speaking
Latin or Greek; the classical meaning of [Greek: Barbaroi]. -ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
Upwards of a century before the reign of Nero, Cicero speaks at
considerable length of our Malta in one of the Verrine orations. See Act.
ii. lib. iv. c. 46. "Insula est Melita, judices," &c. There was a town, and
Verres had established in it a manufactory of the fine cloth or cotton
stuffs, the _Melitensis vestis_, for which the island is uniformly
celebrated:--
"Fertilis est Melite sterili vicina Cocyrae
Insula, quam Libyci verberat unda freti. "
Ovid. Fast. iii. 567.
And Silius Italicus has--
----"telaque _superba_
_Lanigera_ Melite. "
Punic. xiv. 251.
Yet it may have been cotton after all--the present product of Malta. Cicero
describes an _ancient_ temple of Juno situated on a promontory near the
town, so famous and revered, that, even in the time of Masinissa, at least
150 years B. C. , that prince had religiously restored some relics which his
admiral had taken from it. The plunder of this very temple is an article of
accusation against Verres; and a deputation of Maltese (_legati
Melitenses_) came to Rome to establish the charge. These are all the facts,
I think, which can be gathered from Cicero; because I consider his
expression of _nudatae urbes_, in the working up of this article, a piece
of rhetoric. Strabo merely marks the position of Melita, and says that the
lap-dogs called [Greek: kunidia Melitaia] were sent from this island,
though some writers attribute them to the other Melite in the Adriatic,
(lib. vi. ) Diodorus, however, a Sicilian himself by birth, gives the
following remarkable testimony as to the state of the island in his time,
which, it will be remembered, was considerably before the date of St.
Paul's shipwreck. "There are three islands to the south of Sicily, each of
which has a city or town ([Greek: polin]), and harbours fitted for the safe
reception of ships. The first of these is Melite, distant about 800 stadia
from Syracuse, and possessing several harbours of surpassing excellence.
Its inhabitants are rich and luxurious ([Greek: tous katoikountas tais
ousiais eudaimonas]). There are artizans of every kind ([Greek: pantodapous
tais exgasias]); the best are those who weave cloth of a singular fineness
and softness. The houses are worthy of admiration for their superb
adornment with eaves and brilliant white-washing ([Greek: oikias axiologous
kai kateskeuasmenas philotimos geissois kai koniamasi pezittotezon]). "--
Lib. v. c. 12. Mela (ii. c. 7. ) and Pliny (iii. 14. ) simply mark the
position. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The Maltese seem to have preserved a fondness and taste for architecture
from the time of the knights--naturally enough occasioned by the
incomparable materials at hand. [1]
[Footnote 1:
The passage which I have cited from Diodorus shows that the origin was much
earlier. --ED. ]
_August_ 19. 1832.
ENGLISH AND GERMAN. --BEST STATE OF SOCIETY.
It may be doubted whether a composite language like the English is not a
happier instrument of expression than a homogeneous one like the German. We
possess a wonderful richness and variety of modified meanings in our Saxon
and Latin quasi-synonymes, which the Germans have not. For "the pomp and
_prodigality_ of Heaven," the Germans must have said "_the
spendthriftness_. "[1] Shakspeare is particularly happy in his use of the
Latin synonymes, and in distinguishing between them and the Saxon.
[Footnote 1: _Verschwendung_, I suppose. --ED. ]
* * * * *
That is the most excellent state of society in which the patriotism of the
citizen ennobles, but does not merge, the individual energy of the man.
September 1. 1832.
GREAT MINDS ANDROGYNOUS. --PHILOSOPHER'S ORDINARY
LANGUAGE.
In chemistry and nosology, by extending the degree to a certain point, the
constituent proportion may be destroyed, and a new kind produced.
* * * * *
I have known _strong_ minds with imposing, undoubting, Cobbett-like
manners, but I have never met a _great_ mind of this sort. And of the
former, they are at least as often wrong as right. The truth is, a great
mind must be androgynous. Great minds--Swedenborg's for instance--are never
wrong but in consequence of being in the right, but imperfectly.
* * * * *
A philosopher's ordinary language and admissions, in general conversation
or writings _ad populum_, are as his watch compared with his astronomical
timepiece. He sets the former by the town-clock, not because he believes it
right, but because his neighbours and his cook go by it.
_January_ 2. 1833.
JURIES. --BARRISTERS' AND PHYSICIANS' FEES. --QUACKS. --CAESAREAN OPERATION. --
INHERITED DISEASE.
I certainly think that juries would be more conscientious, if they were
allowed a larger discretion. But, after all, juries cannot be better than
the mass out of which they are taken. And if juries are not honest and
single-minded, they are the worst, because the least responsible,
instruments of judicial or popular tyranny.
I should he sorry to see the honorary character of the fees of barristers
and physicians done away with. Though it seems a shadowy distinction, I
believe it to be beneficial in effect. It contributes to preserve the idea
of a profession, of a class which belongs to the public,--in the employment
and remuneration of which no law interferes, but the citizen acts as he
likes _in foro conscientiae_.
* * * * *
There undoubtedly ought to be a declaratory act withdrawing expressly from
the St. John Longs and other quacks the protection which the law is
inclined to throw around the mistakes or miscarriages of the regularly
educated practitioner.
* * * * *
I think there are only two things wanting to justify a surgeon in
performing the Caesarean operation: first, that he should possess
infallible knowledge of his art: and, secondly, that he should be
infallibly certain that he is infallible.
* * * * *
Can any thing he more dreadful than the thought that an innocent child has
inherited from you a disease or a weakness, the penalty in yourself of sin
or want of caution?
* * * * *
In the treatment of nervous cases, he is the best physician, who is the
most ingenious inspirer of hope.
_January_ 3. 1833.
MASON'S POETRY.
I cannot bring myself to think much of Mason's poetry. I may be wrong; but
all those passages in the Caractacus, which we learn to admire at school,
now seem to me one continued _falsetto_.
_January_ 4. 1833.
NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN STATES OF THE AMERICAN UNION. --ALL AND THE WHOLE.
Naturally one would have thought that there would have been greater
sympathy between the northern and north-western states of the American
Union and England, than between England and the Southern states. There is
ten times as much English blood and spirit in New England as in Virginia,
the Carolinas, &c. Nevertheless, such has been the force of the interests
of commerce, that now, and for some years past, the people of the North
hate England with increasing bitterness, whilst, amongst those of the
south, who are Jacobins, the British connection has become popular. Can
there ever be any thorough national fusion of the Northern and Southern
states? I think not. In fact, the Union will be shaken almost to
dislocation whenever a very serious question between the states arises. The
American Union has no _centre_, and it is impossible now to make one. The
more they extend their borders into the Indians' land, the weaker will the
national cohesion be. But I look upon the states as splendid masses to be
used, by and by, in the composition of two or three great governments.
* * * * *
There is a great and important difference, both in politics and
metaphysics, between _all_ and _the whole_. The first can never be
ascertained as a standing quantity; the second, if comprehended by insight
into its parts, remains for ever known. Mr. Huskisson, I thought,
satisfactorily refuted the ship owners; and yet the shipping interest, who
must know where the shoe pinches, complain to this day.
_January_ 7, 1833.
NINTH ARTICLE. --SIN AND SINS. --OLD DIVINES. --PREACHING EXTEMPORE.
"Very far gone," is _quam longissime_ in the Latin of the ninth article,--
as far gone as possible, that is, as was possible for _man_ to go; as far
as was compatible with his having any redeemable qualities left in him. To
talk of man's being _utterly_ lost to good, is absurd; for then he would be
a devil at once.
* * * * *
One mistake perpetually made by one of our unhappy parties in religion,--
and with a pernicious tendency to Antinomianism,--is to confound _sin_ with
_sins_. To tell a modest girl, the watchful nurse of an aged parent, that
she is full of _sins_ against God, is monstrous, and as shocking to reason
as it is unwarrantable by Scripture. But to tell her that she, and all men
and women, are of a sinful nature, and that, without Christ's redeeming
love and God's grace, she cannot be emancipated from its dominion, is true
and proper. [1]
[Footnote 1:
In a marginal scrap Mr. C. wrote:--"What are the essential doctrines of our
religion, if not sin and original sin, as the necessitating occasion, and
the redemption of sinners by the Incarnate Word as the substance of the
Christian dispensation? And can these be intelligently believed without
knowledge and steadfast meditation. By the unlearned, they may be worthily
received, but not by the unthinking and self-ignorant, Christian. "--ED. ]
* * * * *
No article of faith can be truly and duly preached without necessarily and
simultaneously infusing a deep sense of the indispensableness of a holy
life.
* * * * *
How pregnant with instruction, and with knowledge of all sorts, are the
sermons of our old divines! in this respect, as in so many others, how
different from the major part of modern discourses!
* * * * *
Every attempt, in a sermon, to cause emotion, except as the consequence of
an impression made on the reason, or the understanding, or the will, I hold
to be fanatical and sectarian.
* * * * *
No doubt preaching, in the proper sense of the word, is more effective than
reading; and, therefore, I would not prohibit it, but leave a liberty to
the clergyman who feels himself able to accomplish it. But, as things now
are, I am quite sure I prefer going to church to a pastor who reads his
discourse: for I never yet heard more than one preacher without book, who
did not forget his argument in three minutes' time; and fall into vague and
unprofitable declamation, and, generally, very coarse declamation too.
These preachers never progress; they eddy round and round. Sterility of
mind follows their ministry.
_January_ 20. 1833.
CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
When the Church at the Reformation ceased to be extra-national, it
unhappily became royal instead; its proper bearing is intermediate between
the crown and the people, with an inclination to the latter.
* * * * *
The present prospects of the Church weigh heavily on my soul. Oh! that the
words of a statesman-like philosophy could win their way through the
ignorant zealotry and sordid vulgarity of the leaders of the day!
_February_ 5. 1833.
UNION WITH IRELAND.
If any modification of the Union takes place, I trust it will be a total
divorce _a vinculo matrimonii_. I am sure we have lived a cat and dog life
of it. Let us have no silly saving of one crown and two legislatures; that
would be preserving all the mischiefs without any of the goods, if there
are any, of the union.
I am deliberately of opinion, that England, in all its institutions, has
received injury from its union with Ireland. My only difficulty is as to
the Protestants, to whom we owe protection. But I cannot forget that the
Protestants themselves have greatly aided in accelerating the present
horrible state of things, by using that as a remedy and a reward which
should have been to them an opportunity. [1]
If the Protestant Church in Ireland is removed, of course the Romish Church
must be established in its place. There can be no resisting it in common
reason.
How miserably imbecile and objectless has the English government of Ireland
been for forty years past! Oh! for a great man--but one really great man,--
who could feel the weight and the power of a principle, and unflinchingly
put it into act! But truly there is no vision in the land, and the people
accordingly perisheth. See how triumphant in debate and in action O'Connell
is! Why? Because he asserts a broad principle, and acts up to it, rests all
his body on it, and has faith in it. Our ministers--true Whigs in that--
have faith in nothing but expedients _de die in diem_. Indeed, what
principles of government can _they_ have, who in the space of a month
recanted a life of political opinions, and now dare to threaten this and
that innovation at the huzza of a mob, or in pique at a parliamentary
defeat?
[Footnote 1:
"Whatever may be thought of the settlement that followed the battle of the
Boyne and the extinction of the war in Ireland, yet when this had been made
and submitted to, it would have been the far wiser policy, I doubt not, to
have provided for the safety of the constitution by improving the quality
of the elective franchise, leaving the eligibility open, or like the
former, limited only by considerations of property. Still, however, the
scheme of exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. The ink
was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of the
Popish parliament. The crimes of the man were generalized into attributes
of his faith; and the Irish catholics collectively were held accomplices in
the perfidy and baseness of the king. Alas! his immediate adherents had
afforded too great colour to the charge. The Irish massacre was in the
mouth of every Protestant, not as an event to be remembered, but as a thing
of recent expectation, fear still blending with the sense of deliverance.
At no time, therefore, could the disqualifying system have been enforced
with so little reclamation of the conquered party, or with so little
outrage on the general feeling of the country. There was no time, when it
was so capable of being indirectly useful as a _sedative_ in order to the
application of the remedies directly indicated, or as a counter-power
reducing to inactivity whatever disturbing forces might have interfered
with their operation. And had this use been made of these exclusive laws,
and had they been enforced as the precursors and negative conditions,--but,
above all, as _bona fide_ accompaniments, of a process of _emancipation_,
properly and worthily so named, the code would at this day have been
remembered in Ireland only as when, recalling a dangerous fever of our
boyhood, we think of the nauseous drugs and drenching-horn, and
congratulate ourselves that our doctors now-a-days know how to manage these
things less coarsely. But this angry code was neglected as an opportunity,
and mistaken for a _substitute_: _et hinc illae* lacrymae! _"--Church and
State, p. 195. ]
* * * * *
I sometimes think it just possible that the Dissenters may once more be
animated by a wiser and nobler spirit, and see their dearest interest in
the church of England as the bulwark and glory of Protestantism, as they
did at the Revolution. But I doubt their being able to resist the low
factious malignity to the church which has characterized them as a body for
so many years.
_February_ 16. 1833.
FAUST. ----MICHAEL SCOTT, GOETHE, SCHILLER, AND WORDSWORTH.
Before I had ever seen any part of Goethe's Faust[1], though, of course,
when I was familiar enough with Marlowe's, I conceived and drew up the plan
of a work, a drama, which was to be, to my mind, what the Faust was to
Goethe's. My Faust was old Michael Scott; a much better and more likely
original than Faust. He appeared in the midst of his college of devoted
disciples, enthusiastic, ebullient, shedding around him bright surmises of
discoveries fully perfected in after-times, and inculcating the study of
nature and its secrets as the pathway to the acquisition of power. He did
not love knowledge for itself--for its own exceeding great reward--but in
order to be powerful. This poison-speck infected his mind from the
beginning. The priests suspect him, circumvent him, accuse him; he is
condemned, and thrown into solitary confinement: this constituted the
_prologus_ of the drama. A pause of four or five years takes place, at the
end of which Michael escapes from prison, a soured, gloomy, miserable man.
He will not, cannot study; of what avail had all his study been to him? His
knowledge, great as it was, had failed to preserve him from the cruel fangs
of the persecutors; he could not command the lightning or the storm to
wreak their furies upon the heads of those whom he hated and contemned, and
yet feared. Away with learning! away with study!
to the winds with all
pretences to knowledge! We _know_ nothing; we are fools, wretches, mere
beasts. Anon I began to tempt him. I made him dream, gave him wine, and
passed the most exquisite of women before him, but out of his reach. Is
there, then, no knowledge by which these pleasures can be commanded? _That
way_ lay witchcraft, and accordingly to witchcraft Michael turns with all
his soul. He has many failures and some successes; he learns the chemistry
of exciting drugs and exploding powders, and some of the properties of
transmitted and reflected light: his appetites and his curiosity are both
stimulated, and his old craving for power and mental domination over others
revives. At last Michael tries to raise the Devil, and the Devil comes at
his call. My Devil was to be, like Goethe's, the universal humorist, who
should make all things vain and nothing worth, by a perpetual collation of
the great with the little in the presence of the infinite. I had many a
trick for him to play, some better, I think, than any in the Faust. In the
mean time, Michael is miserable; he has power, but no peace, and he every
day more keenly feels the tyranny of hell surrounding him. In vain he seems
to himself to assert the most absolute empire over the Devil, by imposing
the most extravagant tasks; one thing is as easy as another to the Devil.
"What next, Michael? " is repeated every day with more imperious servility.
Michael groans in spirit; his power is a curse: he commands women and wine!
but the women seem fictitious and devilish, and the wine does not make him
drunk. He now begins to hate the Devil, and tries to cheat him. He studies
again, and explores the darkest depths of sorcery for a receipt to cozen
hell; but all in vain. Sometimes the Devil's finger turns over the page for
him, and points out an experiment, and Michael hears a whisper--"Try
_that_, Michael! " The horror increases; and Michael feels that he is a
slave and a condemned criminal. Lost to hope, he throws himself into every
sensual excess,--in the mid-career of which he sees Agatha, my Margaret,
and immediately endeavours to seduce her. Agatha loves him; and the Devil
facilitates their meetings; but she resists Michael's attempts to ruin her,
and implores him not to act so as to forfeit her esteem. Long struggles of
passion ensue, in the result of which his affections are called forth
against his appetites, and, love-born, the idea of a redemption of the lost
will dawns upon his mind. This is instantaneously perceived by the Devil;
and for the first time the humorist becomes severe and menacing. A fearful
succession of conflicts between Michael and the Devil takes place, in which
Agatha helps and suffers. In the end, after subjecting him to every
imaginable horror and agony, I made him triumphant, and poured peace into
his soul in the conviction of a salvation for sinners through God's grace.
The intended theme of the Faust is the consequences of a misology, or
hatred and depreciation of knowledge caused by an originally intense thirst
for knowledge baffled. But a love of knowledge for itself, and for pure
ends, would never produce such a misology, but only a love of it for base
and unworthy purposes. There is neither causation nor progression in the
Faust; he is a ready-made conjuror from the very beginning; the _incredulus
odi_ is felt from the first line. The sensuality and the thirst after
knowledge are unconnected with each other. Mephistopheles and Margaret are
excellent; but Faust himself is dull and meaningless. The scene in
Auerbach's cellars is one of the best, perhaps the very best; that on the
Brocken is also fine; and all the songs are beautiful. But there is no
whole in the poem; the scenes are mere magic-lantern pictures, and a large
part of the work is to me very flat. The German is very pure and fine.
The young men in Germany and England who admire Lord Byron, prefer Goethe
to Schiller; but you may depend upon it, Goethe does not, nor ever will,
command the common mind of the people of Germany as Schiller does. Schiller
had two legitimate phases in his intellectual character:--the first as
author of the Robbers--a piece which must not be considered with reference
to Shakspeare, but as a work of the mere material sublime, and in that line
it is undoubtedly very powerful indeed. It is quite genuine, and deeply
imbued with Schiller's own soul. After this he outgrew the composition of
such plays as the Robbers, and at once took his true and only rightful
stand in the grand historical drama--the Wallenstein;--not the intense
drama of passion,--he was not master of that--but the diffused drama of
history, in which alone he had ample scope for his varied powers. The
Wallenstein is the greatest of his works; it is not unlike Shakspeare's
historical plays--a species by itself. You may take up any scene, and it
will please you by itself; just as you may in Don Quixote, which you read
_through_ once or twice only, but which you read _in_ repeatedly. After
this point it was, that Goethe and other writers injured by their theories
the steadiness and originality of Schiller's mind; and in every one of his
works after the Wallenstein you may perceive the fluctuations of his taste
and principles of composition. He got a notion of re-introducing the
characterlessness of the Greek tragedy with a chorus, as in the Bride of
Messina, and he was for infusing more lyric verse into it. Schiller
sometimes affected to despise the Robbers and the other works of his first
youth; whereas he ought to have spoken of them as of works not in a right
line, but full of excellence in their way. In his ballads and lighter
lyrics Goethe is most excellent. It is impossible to praise him too highly
in this respect. I like the Wilhelm Meister the best of his prose works.
But neither Schiller's nor Goethe's prose style approaches to Lessing's,
whose writings, for _manner_, are absolutely perfect.
Although Wordsworth and Goethe are not much alike, to be sure, upon the
whole; yet they both have this peculiarity of utter non-sympathy with the
subjects of their poetry. They are always, both of them, spectators _ab
extra_,--feeling _for_, but never _with_, their characters. Schiller is a
thousand times more _hearty_ than Goethe.
I was once pressed--many years ago--to translate the Faust; and I so far
entertained the proposal as to read the work through with great attention,
and to revive in my mind my own former plan of Michael Scott. But then I
considered with myself whether the time taken up in executing the
translation might not more worthily be devoted to the composition of a work
which, even if parallel in some points to the Faust, should be truly
original in motive and execution, and therefore more interesting and
valuable than any version which I could make; and, secondly, I debated with
myself whether it became my moral character to render into English--and so
far, certainly, lend my countenance to language--much of which I thought
vulgar, licentious, and blasphemous. I need not tell you that I never put
pen to paper as a translator of Faust.
I have read a good deal of Mr. Hayward's version, and I think it done in a
very manly style; but I do not admit the argument for prose translations. I
would in general rather see verse attempted in so capable a language as
ours. The French cannot help themselves, of course, with such a language as
theirs.
[Footnote 1:
"The poem was first published in 1790, and forms the commencement of the
seventh volume of _Goethe's Schriften, Wien und Leipzig, bey J. Stahel and
G. J. Goschen_, 1790. This edition is now before me. The poem entitled,
_Faust, ein Fragment_ (not _Doktor Faust, ein Trauerspiel_, as Doring
says), and contains no prologue or dedication of any sort. It commences
with the scene in Faust's study, _ante_, p. 17. , and is continued, as now,
down to the passage ending, _ante_, p. 26. line 5. In the original, the
line--
"Und froh ist, wenn er Regenwurmer findet,"
ends the scene.
The next scene is one between Faust and Mephistopheles, and begins thus:--
"Und was der ganzen Menschheit zugetheilt ist,"
_i. e. _ with the passage (_ante_, p. 70. ) beginning, "I will enjoy, in my
own heart's core, all that is parcelled out among mankind," &c. All that
intervenes, in later editions, is wanting. It is thenceforth continued, as
now, to the end of the cathedral scene (_ante_, p. (170)), except that the
whole scene, in which Valentine is killed, is wanting. Thus Margaret's
prayer to the Virgin and the cathedral scene come together, and form the
conclusion of the work. According to During's Verzeichniss, there was no
new edition of Faust until 1807. According to Dr. Sieglitz, the first part
of Faust first appeared, in its present shape, in the collected edition of
Goethe's works, which was published in 1808. --_Hayward's Translation of
Faust_, second edition, note, p. 215. ]
_February_ 17. 1833.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. --BEN JONSON. --MASSINGER.
In the romantic drama Beaumont and Fletcher are almost supreme. Their plays
are in general most truly delightful. I could read the Beggar's Bush from
morning to night. How sylvan and sunshiny it is! The Little French Lawyer
is excellent. Lawrit is conceived and executed from first to last in
genuine comic humour. Monsieur Thomas is also capital. I have no doubt
whatever that the first act and the first scene of the second act of the
Two Noble Kinsmen are Shakspeare's. Beaumont and Fletcher's plots are, to
be sure, wholly inartificial; they only care to pitch a character into a
position to make him or her talk; you must swallow all their gross
improbabilities, and, taking it all for granted, attend only to the
dialogue. How lamentable it is that no gentleman and scholar can he found
to edit these beautiful plays! [1] Did the name of criticism ever descend so
low as in the hands of those two fools and knaves, Seward and Simpson?
There are whole scenes in their edition which I could with certainty put
back into their original verse, and more that could he replaced in their
native prose. Was there ever such an absolute disregard of literary fame as
that displayed by Shakspeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher? [2]
[Footnote 1:
I believe Mr. Dyce could edit Beaumont and Fletcher as well as any man of
the present or last generation; but the truth is, the limited sale of the
late editions of Ben Jonson, Shirley, &c. , has damped the spirit of
enterprise amongst the respectable publishers. Still I marvel that some
cheap reprint of B. and F. is not undertaken. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
"The men of the greatest genius, as far as we can judge from their own
works, or from the accounts of their contemporaries, appear to have been of
calm and tranquil temper, in all that related to themselves. In the inward
assurance of permanent fame, they seem to have been either indifferent or
resigned, with regard to immediate reputation. "
* * * * *
"Shakspeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial in
his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative
greatness, we have abundant proof in his sonnets, which could scarcely have
been known to Mr. Pope, when he asserted, that our great bard 'grew
immortal in his own despite. '"--_Biog. Lit. _ vol. i, p. 32. ]
* * * * *
In Ben Jonson you have an intense and burning art. Some of his plots, that
of the Alchemist, for example, are perfect. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and
Fletcher would, if united, have made a great dramatist indeed, and yet not
have come near Shakspeare; but no doubt Ben Jonson was the greatest man
after Shakspeare in that age of dramatic genius.
The styles of Massinger's plays and the Sampson Agonistes are the two
extremes of the arc within which the diction of dramatic poetry may
oscillate. Shakspeare in his great plays is the midpoint. In the Samson
Agonistes, colloquial language is left at the greatest distance, yet
something of it is preserved, to render the dialogue probable: in Massinger
the style is differenced, but differenced in the smallest degree possible,
from animated conversation by the vein of poetry.
There's such a divinity doth hedge our Shakspeare round, that we cannot
even imitate his style. I tried to imitate his manner in the Remorse, and,
when I had done, I found I had been tracking Beaumont and Fletcher, and
Massinger instead. It is really very curious. At first sight, Shakspeare
and his contemporary dramatists seem to write in styles much alike: nothing
so easy as to fall into that of Massinger and the others; whilst no one has
ever yet produced one scene conceived and expressed in the Shakspearian
idiom. I suppose it is because Shakspeare is universal, and, in fact, has
no _manner_; just as you can so much more readily copy a picture than
Nature herself.
_February_ 20. 1833.
HOUSE OF COMMONS APPOINTING THE OFFICERS OF THE ARMY AND NAVY.
I was just now reading Sir John Cam Hobhouse's answer to Mr. Hume, I
believe, upon the point of transferring the patronage of the army and navy
from the Crown to the House of Commons. I think, if I had been in the House
of Commons, I would have said, "that, ten or fifteen years ago, I should
have considered Sir J. C. H. 's speech quite unanswerable,--it being clear
constitutional law that the House of Commons has not, nor ought to have,
any share, directly or indirectly, in the appointment of the officers of
the army or navy. But now that the King had been reduced, by the means and
procurement of the Honourable Baronet and his friends, to a puppet, which,
so far from having any independent will of its own, could not resist a
measure which it hated and condemned, it became a matter of grave
consideration whether it was not necessary to vest the appointment of such
officers in a body like the House of Commons, rather than in a junta of
ministers, who were obliged to make common cause with the mob and
democratic press for the sake of keeping their places. "
_March_ 9. 1833.
PENAL CODE IN IRELAND. --CHURCHMEN.
The penal code in Ireland, in the beginning of the last century, was
justifiable, as a temporary mean of enabling government to take breath and
look about them; and if right measures had been systematically pursued in a
right spirit, there can be no doubt that all, or the greater part, of
Ireland would have become Protestant. Protestantism under the Charter
Schools was greatly on the increase in the early part of that century, and
the complaints of the Romish priests to that effect are on record. But,
unfortunately, the drenching-horn was itself substituted for the medicine.
* * * * *
There seems to me, at present, to be a curse upon the English church, and
upon the governors of all institutions connected with the orderly
advancement of national piety and knowledge; it is the curse of prudence,
as they miscall it--in fact, of fear.
Clergymen are now almost afraid to explain in their pulpits the grounds of
their being Protestants. They are completely cowed by the vulgar harassings
of the press and of our Hectoring sciolists in Parliament. There should be
no _party_ politics in the pulpit to be sure; but every church in England
ought to resound with national politics,--I mean the sacred character of
the national church, and an exposure of the base robbery from the nation
itself--for so indeed it is[1]--about to be committed by these ministers,
in order to have a sop to throw to the Irish agitators, who will, of
course, only cut the deeper, and come the oftener. You cannot buy off a
barbarous invader.
[Footnote 1:
"That the maxims of a pure morality, and those sublime truths of the divine
unity and attributes, which a Plato found it hard to learn, and more
difficult to reveal; that these should have become the almost hereditary
property of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop; that even
to the unlettered they sound as _common-place_; this is a phenomenon which
must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the
services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. Yet he who should confine
the efficiency of an established church to these, can hardly be placed in a
much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the kingdom
there is transplanted a germ of civilization; that in the remotest villages
there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of the place may
crystallize and brighten; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet
sufficiently near to encourage and facilitate imitation; _this_
unobtrusive, continuous agency of a Protestant church establishment, _this_
it is, which the patriot and the philanthropist, who would fain unite the
love of peace with the faith in the progressive amelioration of mankind,
cannot estimate at too high a price. 'It cannot be valued with the gold of
Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No mention shall be made of
coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies. '--The
clergyman is with his parishioners and among them; he is neither in the
cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour and family man,
whose education and rank admit him to the mansion of the rich landholder,
while his duties make him the frequent visitor of the farm-house and the
cottage. He is, or he may become, connected with the families of his parish
or its vicinity by marriage. And among the instances of the blindness, or
at best of the short-sightedness, which it is the nature of cupidity to
inflict, I know few more striking than the clamours of the farmers against
church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergyman would inevitably at
the next lease be paid to the landholder; while, as the case at present
stands, the revenues of the church are in some sort the reversionary
property of every family that may have a member educated for the church, or
a daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead of being _foreclosed_ and
immovable, it is, in fact, the only species of landed property that is
essentially moving and circulative. That there exist no inconveniences who
will pretend to assert? --But I have yet to expect the proof, that the
inconveniences are greater in this than in any other species; or that
either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter
to become either _Trullibers_ or salaried _placemen_. "--_Church and State_,
p. 90. ]
_March_ 12. 1833.
CORONATION OATHS.
Lord Grey has, in Parliament, said two things: first, that the Coronation
Oaths only bind the King in his executive capacity; and, secondly, that
members of the House of Commons are bound to represent by their votes the
wishes and opinions of their constituents, and not their own. Put these two
together, and tell me what useful part of the constitutional monarchy of
England remains. It is clear that the Coronation Oaths would be no better
than Highgate oaths. For in his executive capacity the King _cannot_ do any
thing, against the doing of which the oaths bind him; it is _only_ in his
legislative character that he possesses a free agency capable of being
bound. The nation meant to bind _that_.
_March_ 14. 1833.
DIVINITY. --PROFESSIONS AND TRADES.
Divinity is essentially the first of the professions, because it is
necessary for all at all times; law and physic are only necessary for some
at some times. I speak of them, of course, not in their abstract existence,
but in their applicability to man.
* * * * *
Every true science bears necessarily within itself the germ of a cognate
profession, and the more you can elevate trades into professions the
better.
_March_ 17. 1833.
MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY.
What solemn humbug this modern political economy is! What is there true of
the little that is true in their dogmatic books, which is not a simple
deduction from the moral and religious _credenda_ and _agenda_ of any good
man, and with which we were not all previously acquainted, and upon which
every man of common sense instinctively acted? I know none. But what they
truly state, they do not truly understand in its ultimate grounds and
causes; and hence they have sometimes done more mischief by their half-
ignorant and half-sophistical reasonings about, and deductions from, well-
founded positions, than they could have done by the promulgation of
positive error. This particularly applies to their famous ratios of
increase between man and the means of his subsistence. Political economy,
at the highest, can never be a pure science. You may demonstrate that
certain properties inhere in the arch, which yet no bridge-builder _can_
ever reduce into brick and mortar; but an abstract conclusion in a matter
of political economy, the premisses of which neither exist now, nor ever
will exist within the range of the wildest imagination, is not a truth, but
a chimera--a practical falsehood. For there are no theorems in political
economy--but problems only. Certain things being actually so and so; the
question is, _how_ to _do_ so and so with them. Political _philosophy_,
indeed, points to ulterior ends, but even those ends are all practical; and
if you desert the conditions of reality, or of common probability, you may
show forth your eloquence or your fancy, but the utmost you can produce
will be a Utopia or Oceana.
You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the
market from 8_d_. to 6_d_. But suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your
country weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized
thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one
class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it,
after all. Is not its real price enhanced to every Christian and patriot a
hundred-fold?
* * * * *
_All_ is an endless fleeting abstraction; _the whole_ is a reality.
_March_ 31. 1833.
NATIONAL DEBT.
are, I may say, no snakes at all; which, to be sure, the Maltese attribute
to St. Paul's having cursed them away. Melita in the Adriatic was a
perfectly barbarous island as to its native population, and was, and is
now, infested with serpents. Besides the context shows that the scene is in
the Adriatic.
[Footnote 1:
Acts xxviii. 2. and 4. Mr. C. seemed to think that the Greek words had
reference to something more than the fact of the islanders not speaking
Latin or Greek; the classical meaning of [Greek: Barbaroi]. -ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
Upwards of a century before the reign of Nero, Cicero speaks at
considerable length of our Malta in one of the Verrine orations. See Act.
ii. lib. iv. c. 46. "Insula est Melita, judices," &c. There was a town, and
Verres had established in it a manufactory of the fine cloth or cotton
stuffs, the _Melitensis vestis_, for which the island is uniformly
celebrated:--
"Fertilis est Melite sterili vicina Cocyrae
Insula, quam Libyci verberat unda freti. "
Ovid. Fast. iii. 567.
And Silius Italicus has--
----"telaque _superba_
_Lanigera_ Melite. "
Punic. xiv. 251.
Yet it may have been cotton after all--the present product of Malta. Cicero
describes an _ancient_ temple of Juno situated on a promontory near the
town, so famous and revered, that, even in the time of Masinissa, at least
150 years B. C. , that prince had religiously restored some relics which his
admiral had taken from it. The plunder of this very temple is an article of
accusation against Verres; and a deputation of Maltese (_legati
Melitenses_) came to Rome to establish the charge. These are all the facts,
I think, which can be gathered from Cicero; because I consider his
expression of _nudatae urbes_, in the working up of this article, a piece
of rhetoric. Strabo merely marks the position of Melita, and says that the
lap-dogs called [Greek: kunidia Melitaia] were sent from this island,
though some writers attribute them to the other Melite in the Adriatic,
(lib. vi. ) Diodorus, however, a Sicilian himself by birth, gives the
following remarkable testimony as to the state of the island in his time,
which, it will be remembered, was considerably before the date of St.
Paul's shipwreck. "There are three islands to the south of Sicily, each of
which has a city or town ([Greek: polin]), and harbours fitted for the safe
reception of ships. The first of these is Melite, distant about 800 stadia
from Syracuse, and possessing several harbours of surpassing excellence.
Its inhabitants are rich and luxurious ([Greek: tous katoikountas tais
ousiais eudaimonas]). There are artizans of every kind ([Greek: pantodapous
tais exgasias]); the best are those who weave cloth of a singular fineness
and softness. The houses are worthy of admiration for their superb
adornment with eaves and brilliant white-washing ([Greek: oikias axiologous
kai kateskeuasmenas philotimos geissois kai koniamasi pezittotezon]). "--
Lib. v. c. 12. Mela (ii. c. 7. ) and Pliny (iii. 14. ) simply mark the
position. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The Maltese seem to have preserved a fondness and taste for architecture
from the time of the knights--naturally enough occasioned by the
incomparable materials at hand. [1]
[Footnote 1:
The passage which I have cited from Diodorus shows that the origin was much
earlier. --ED. ]
_August_ 19. 1832.
ENGLISH AND GERMAN. --BEST STATE OF SOCIETY.
It may be doubted whether a composite language like the English is not a
happier instrument of expression than a homogeneous one like the German. We
possess a wonderful richness and variety of modified meanings in our Saxon
and Latin quasi-synonymes, which the Germans have not. For "the pomp and
_prodigality_ of Heaven," the Germans must have said "_the
spendthriftness_. "[1] Shakspeare is particularly happy in his use of the
Latin synonymes, and in distinguishing between them and the Saxon.
[Footnote 1: _Verschwendung_, I suppose. --ED. ]
* * * * *
That is the most excellent state of society in which the patriotism of the
citizen ennobles, but does not merge, the individual energy of the man.
September 1. 1832.
GREAT MINDS ANDROGYNOUS. --PHILOSOPHER'S ORDINARY
LANGUAGE.
In chemistry and nosology, by extending the degree to a certain point, the
constituent proportion may be destroyed, and a new kind produced.
* * * * *
I have known _strong_ minds with imposing, undoubting, Cobbett-like
manners, but I have never met a _great_ mind of this sort. And of the
former, they are at least as often wrong as right. The truth is, a great
mind must be androgynous. Great minds--Swedenborg's for instance--are never
wrong but in consequence of being in the right, but imperfectly.
* * * * *
A philosopher's ordinary language and admissions, in general conversation
or writings _ad populum_, are as his watch compared with his astronomical
timepiece. He sets the former by the town-clock, not because he believes it
right, but because his neighbours and his cook go by it.
_January_ 2. 1833.
JURIES. --BARRISTERS' AND PHYSICIANS' FEES. --QUACKS. --CAESAREAN OPERATION. --
INHERITED DISEASE.
I certainly think that juries would be more conscientious, if they were
allowed a larger discretion. But, after all, juries cannot be better than
the mass out of which they are taken. And if juries are not honest and
single-minded, they are the worst, because the least responsible,
instruments of judicial or popular tyranny.
I should he sorry to see the honorary character of the fees of barristers
and physicians done away with. Though it seems a shadowy distinction, I
believe it to be beneficial in effect. It contributes to preserve the idea
of a profession, of a class which belongs to the public,--in the employment
and remuneration of which no law interferes, but the citizen acts as he
likes _in foro conscientiae_.
* * * * *
There undoubtedly ought to be a declaratory act withdrawing expressly from
the St. John Longs and other quacks the protection which the law is
inclined to throw around the mistakes or miscarriages of the regularly
educated practitioner.
* * * * *
I think there are only two things wanting to justify a surgeon in
performing the Caesarean operation: first, that he should possess
infallible knowledge of his art: and, secondly, that he should be
infallibly certain that he is infallible.
* * * * *
Can any thing he more dreadful than the thought that an innocent child has
inherited from you a disease or a weakness, the penalty in yourself of sin
or want of caution?
* * * * *
In the treatment of nervous cases, he is the best physician, who is the
most ingenious inspirer of hope.
_January_ 3. 1833.
MASON'S POETRY.
I cannot bring myself to think much of Mason's poetry. I may be wrong; but
all those passages in the Caractacus, which we learn to admire at school,
now seem to me one continued _falsetto_.
_January_ 4. 1833.
NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN STATES OF THE AMERICAN UNION. --ALL AND THE WHOLE.
Naturally one would have thought that there would have been greater
sympathy between the northern and north-western states of the American
Union and England, than between England and the Southern states. There is
ten times as much English blood and spirit in New England as in Virginia,
the Carolinas, &c. Nevertheless, such has been the force of the interests
of commerce, that now, and for some years past, the people of the North
hate England with increasing bitterness, whilst, amongst those of the
south, who are Jacobins, the British connection has become popular. Can
there ever be any thorough national fusion of the Northern and Southern
states? I think not. In fact, the Union will be shaken almost to
dislocation whenever a very serious question between the states arises. The
American Union has no _centre_, and it is impossible now to make one. The
more they extend their borders into the Indians' land, the weaker will the
national cohesion be. But I look upon the states as splendid masses to be
used, by and by, in the composition of two or three great governments.
* * * * *
There is a great and important difference, both in politics and
metaphysics, between _all_ and _the whole_. The first can never be
ascertained as a standing quantity; the second, if comprehended by insight
into its parts, remains for ever known. Mr. Huskisson, I thought,
satisfactorily refuted the ship owners; and yet the shipping interest, who
must know where the shoe pinches, complain to this day.
_January_ 7, 1833.
NINTH ARTICLE. --SIN AND SINS. --OLD DIVINES. --PREACHING EXTEMPORE.
"Very far gone," is _quam longissime_ in the Latin of the ninth article,--
as far gone as possible, that is, as was possible for _man_ to go; as far
as was compatible with his having any redeemable qualities left in him. To
talk of man's being _utterly_ lost to good, is absurd; for then he would be
a devil at once.
* * * * *
One mistake perpetually made by one of our unhappy parties in religion,--
and with a pernicious tendency to Antinomianism,--is to confound _sin_ with
_sins_. To tell a modest girl, the watchful nurse of an aged parent, that
she is full of _sins_ against God, is monstrous, and as shocking to reason
as it is unwarrantable by Scripture. But to tell her that she, and all men
and women, are of a sinful nature, and that, without Christ's redeeming
love and God's grace, she cannot be emancipated from its dominion, is true
and proper. [1]
[Footnote 1:
In a marginal scrap Mr. C. wrote:--"What are the essential doctrines of our
religion, if not sin and original sin, as the necessitating occasion, and
the redemption of sinners by the Incarnate Word as the substance of the
Christian dispensation? And can these be intelligently believed without
knowledge and steadfast meditation. By the unlearned, they may be worthily
received, but not by the unthinking and self-ignorant, Christian. "--ED. ]
* * * * *
No article of faith can be truly and duly preached without necessarily and
simultaneously infusing a deep sense of the indispensableness of a holy
life.
* * * * *
How pregnant with instruction, and with knowledge of all sorts, are the
sermons of our old divines! in this respect, as in so many others, how
different from the major part of modern discourses!
* * * * *
Every attempt, in a sermon, to cause emotion, except as the consequence of
an impression made on the reason, or the understanding, or the will, I hold
to be fanatical and sectarian.
* * * * *
No doubt preaching, in the proper sense of the word, is more effective than
reading; and, therefore, I would not prohibit it, but leave a liberty to
the clergyman who feels himself able to accomplish it. But, as things now
are, I am quite sure I prefer going to church to a pastor who reads his
discourse: for I never yet heard more than one preacher without book, who
did not forget his argument in three minutes' time; and fall into vague and
unprofitable declamation, and, generally, very coarse declamation too.
These preachers never progress; they eddy round and round. Sterility of
mind follows their ministry.
_January_ 20. 1833.
CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
When the Church at the Reformation ceased to be extra-national, it
unhappily became royal instead; its proper bearing is intermediate between
the crown and the people, with an inclination to the latter.
* * * * *
The present prospects of the Church weigh heavily on my soul. Oh! that the
words of a statesman-like philosophy could win their way through the
ignorant zealotry and sordid vulgarity of the leaders of the day!
_February_ 5. 1833.
UNION WITH IRELAND.
If any modification of the Union takes place, I trust it will be a total
divorce _a vinculo matrimonii_. I am sure we have lived a cat and dog life
of it. Let us have no silly saving of one crown and two legislatures; that
would be preserving all the mischiefs without any of the goods, if there
are any, of the union.
I am deliberately of opinion, that England, in all its institutions, has
received injury from its union with Ireland. My only difficulty is as to
the Protestants, to whom we owe protection. But I cannot forget that the
Protestants themselves have greatly aided in accelerating the present
horrible state of things, by using that as a remedy and a reward which
should have been to them an opportunity. [1]
If the Protestant Church in Ireland is removed, of course the Romish Church
must be established in its place. There can be no resisting it in common
reason.
How miserably imbecile and objectless has the English government of Ireland
been for forty years past! Oh! for a great man--but one really great man,--
who could feel the weight and the power of a principle, and unflinchingly
put it into act! But truly there is no vision in the land, and the people
accordingly perisheth. See how triumphant in debate and in action O'Connell
is! Why? Because he asserts a broad principle, and acts up to it, rests all
his body on it, and has faith in it. Our ministers--true Whigs in that--
have faith in nothing but expedients _de die in diem_. Indeed, what
principles of government can _they_ have, who in the space of a month
recanted a life of political opinions, and now dare to threaten this and
that innovation at the huzza of a mob, or in pique at a parliamentary
defeat?
[Footnote 1:
"Whatever may be thought of the settlement that followed the battle of the
Boyne and the extinction of the war in Ireland, yet when this had been made
and submitted to, it would have been the far wiser policy, I doubt not, to
have provided for the safety of the constitution by improving the quality
of the elective franchise, leaving the eligibility open, or like the
former, limited only by considerations of property. Still, however, the
scheme of exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. The ink
was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of the
Popish parliament. The crimes of the man were generalized into attributes
of his faith; and the Irish catholics collectively were held accomplices in
the perfidy and baseness of the king. Alas! his immediate adherents had
afforded too great colour to the charge. The Irish massacre was in the
mouth of every Protestant, not as an event to be remembered, but as a thing
of recent expectation, fear still blending with the sense of deliverance.
At no time, therefore, could the disqualifying system have been enforced
with so little reclamation of the conquered party, or with so little
outrage on the general feeling of the country. There was no time, when it
was so capable of being indirectly useful as a _sedative_ in order to the
application of the remedies directly indicated, or as a counter-power
reducing to inactivity whatever disturbing forces might have interfered
with their operation. And had this use been made of these exclusive laws,
and had they been enforced as the precursors and negative conditions,--but,
above all, as _bona fide_ accompaniments, of a process of _emancipation_,
properly and worthily so named, the code would at this day have been
remembered in Ireland only as when, recalling a dangerous fever of our
boyhood, we think of the nauseous drugs and drenching-horn, and
congratulate ourselves that our doctors now-a-days know how to manage these
things less coarsely. But this angry code was neglected as an opportunity,
and mistaken for a _substitute_: _et hinc illae* lacrymae! _"--Church and
State, p. 195. ]
* * * * *
I sometimes think it just possible that the Dissenters may once more be
animated by a wiser and nobler spirit, and see their dearest interest in
the church of England as the bulwark and glory of Protestantism, as they
did at the Revolution. But I doubt their being able to resist the low
factious malignity to the church which has characterized them as a body for
so many years.
_February_ 16. 1833.
FAUST. ----MICHAEL SCOTT, GOETHE, SCHILLER, AND WORDSWORTH.
Before I had ever seen any part of Goethe's Faust[1], though, of course,
when I was familiar enough with Marlowe's, I conceived and drew up the plan
of a work, a drama, which was to be, to my mind, what the Faust was to
Goethe's. My Faust was old Michael Scott; a much better and more likely
original than Faust. He appeared in the midst of his college of devoted
disciples, enthusiastic, ebullient, shedding around him bright surmises of
discoveries fully perfected in after-times, and inculcating the study of
nature and its secrets as the pathway to the acquisition of power. He did
not love knowledge for itself--for its own exceeding great reward--but in
order to be powerful. This poison-speck infected his mind from the
beginning. The priests suspect him, circumvent him, accuse him; he is
condemned, and thrown into solitary confinement: this constituted the
_prologus_ of the drama. A pause of four or five years takes place, at the
end of which Michael escapes from prison, a soured, gloomy, miserable man.
He will not, cannot study; of what avail had all his study been to him? His
knowledge, great as it was, had failed to preserve him from the cruel fangs
of the persecutors; he could not command the lightning or the storm to
wreak their furies upon the heads of those whom he hated and contemned, and
yet feared. Away with learning! away with study!
to the winds with all
pretences to knowledge! We _know_ nothing; we are fools, wretches, mere
beasts. Anon I began to tempt him. I made him dream, gave him wine, and
passed the most exquisite of women before him, but out of his reach. Is
there, then, no knowledge by which these pleasures can be commanded? _That
way_ lay witchcraft, and accordingly to witchcraft Michael turns with all
his soul. He has many failures and some successes; he learns the chemistry
of exciting drugs and exploding powders, and some of the properties of
transmitted and reflected light: his appetites and his curiosity are both
stimulated, and his old craving for power and mental domination over others
revives. At last Michael tries to raise the Devil, and the Devil comes at
his call. My Devil was to be, like Goethe's, the universal humorist, who
should make all things vain and nothing worth, by a perpetual collation of
the great with the little in the presence of the infinite. I had many a
trick for him to play, some better, I think, than any in the Faust. In the
mean time, Michael is miserable; he has power, but no peace, and he every
day more keenly feels the tyranny of hell surrounding him. In vain he seems
to himself to assert the most absolute empire over the Devil, by imposing
the most extravagant tasks; one thing is as easy as another to the Devil.
"What next, Michael? " is repeated every day with more imperious servility.
Michael groans in spirit; his power is a curse: he commands women and wine!
but the women seem fictitious and devilish, and the wine does not make him
drunk. He now begins to hate the Devil, and tries to cheat him. He studies
again, and explores the darkest depths of sorcery for a receipt to cozen
hell; but all in vain. Sometimes the Devil's finger turns over the page for
him, and points out an experiment, and Michael hears a whisper--"Try
_that_, Michael! " The horror increases; and Michael feels that he is a
slave and a condemned criminal. Lost to hope, he throws himself into every
sensual excess,--in the mid-career of which he sees Agatha, my Margaret,
and immediately endeavours to seduce her. Agatha loves him; and the Devil
facilitates their meetings; but she resists Michael's attempts to ruin her,
and implores him not to act so as to forfeit her esteem. Long struggles of
passion ensue, in the result of which his affections are called forth
against his appetites, and, love-born, the idea of a redemption of the lost
will dawns upon his mind. This is instantaneously perceived by the Devil;
and for the first time the humorist becomes severe and menacing. A fearful
succession of conflicts between Michael and the Devil takes place, in which
Agatha helps and suffers. In the end, after subjecting him to every
imaginable horror and agony, I made him triumphant, and poured peace into
his soul in the conviction of a salvation for sinners through God's grace.
The intended theme of the Faust is the consequences of a misology, or
hatred and depreciation of knowledge caused by an originally intense thirst
for knowledge baffled. But a love of knowledge for itself, and for pure
ends, would never produce such a misology, but only a love of it for base
and unworthy purposes. There is neither causation nor progression in the
Faust; he is a ready-made conjuror from the very beginning; the _incredulus
odi_ is felt from the first line. The sensuality and the thirst after
knowledge are unconnected with each other. Mephistopheles and Margaret are
excellent; but Faust himself is dull and meaningless. The scene in
Auerbach's cellars is one of the best, perhaps the very best; that on the
Brocken is also fine; and all the songs are beautiful. But there is no
whole in the poem; the scenes are mere magic-lantern pictures, and a large
part of the work is to me very flat. The German is very pure and fine.
The young men in Germany and England who admire Lord Byron, prefer Goethe
to Schiller; but you may depend upon it, Goethe does not, nor ever will,
command the common mind of the people of Germany as Schiller does. Schiller
had two legitimate phases in his intellectual character:--the first as
author of the Robbers--a piece which must not be considered with reference
to Shakspeare, but as a work of the mere material sublime, and in that line
it is undoubtedly very powerful indeed. It is quite genuine, and deeply
imbued with Schiller's own soul. After this he outgrew the composition of
such plays as the Robbers, and at once took his true and only rightful
stand in the grand historical drama--the Wallenstein;--not the intense
drama of passion,--he was not master of that--but the diffused drama of
history, in which alone he had ample scope for his varied powers. The
Wallenstein is the greatest of his works; it is not unlike Shakspeare's
historical plays--a species by itself. You may take up any scene, and it
will please you by itself; just as you may in Don Quixote, which you read
_through_ once or twice only, but which you read _in_ repeatedly. After
this point it was, that Goethe and other writers injured by their theories
the steadiness and originality of Schiller's mind; and in every one of his
works after the Wallenstein you may perceive the fluctuations of his taste
and principles of composition. He got a notion of re-introducing the
characterlessness of the Greek tragedy with a chorus, as in the Bride of
Messina, and he was for infusing more lyric verse into it. Schiller
sometimes affected to despise the Robbers and the other works of his first
youth; whereas he ought to have spoken of them as of works not in a right
line, but full of excellence in their way. In his ballads and lighter
lyrics Goethe is most excellent. It is impossible to praise him too highly
in this respect. I like the Wilhelm Meister the best of his prose works.
But neither Schiller's nor Goethe's prose style approaches to Lessing's,
whose writings, for _manner_, are absolutely perfect.
Although Wordsworth and Goethe are not much alike, to be sure, upon the
whole; yet they both have this peculiarity of utter non-sympathy with the
subjects of their poetry. They are always, both of them, spectators _ab
extra_,--feeling _for_, but never _with_, their characters. Schiller is a
thousand times more _hearty_ than Goethe.
I was once pressed--many years ago--to translate the Faust; and I so far
entertained the proposal as to read the work through with great attention,
and to revive in my mind my own former plan of Michael Scott. But then I
considered with myself whether the time taken up in executing the
translation might not more worthily be devoted to the composition of a work
which, even if parallel in some points to the Faust, should be truly
original in motive and execution, and therefore more interesting and
valuable than any version which I could make; and, secondly, I debated with
myself whether it became my moral character to render into English--and so
far, certainly, lend my countenance to language--much of which I thought
vulgar, licentious, and blasphemous. I need not tell you that I never put
pen to paper as a translator of Faust.
I have read a good deal of Mr. Hayward's version, and I think it done in a
very manly style; but I do not admit the argument for prose translations. I
would in general rather see verse attempted in so capable a language as
ours. The French cannot help themselves, of course, with such a language as
theirs.
[Footnote 1:
"The poem was first published in 1790, and forms the commencement of the
seventh volume of _Goethe's Schriften, Wien und Leipzig, bey J. Stahel and
G. J. Goschen_, 1790. This edition is now before me. The poem entitled,
_Faust, ein Fragment_ (not _Doktor Faust, ein Trauerspiel_, as Doring
says), and contains no prologue or dedication of any sort. It commences
with the scene in Faust's study, _ante_, p. 17. , and is continued, as now,
down to the passage ending, _ante_, p. 26. line 5. In the original, the
line--
"Und froh ist, wenn er Regenwurmer findet,"
ends the scene.
The next scene is one between Faust and Mephistopheles, and begins thus:--
"Und was der ganzen Menschheit zugetheilt ist,"
_i. e. _ with the passage (_ante_, p. 70. ) beginning, "I will enjoy, in my
own heart's core, all that is parcelled out among mankind," &c. All that
intervenes, in later editions, is wanting. It is thenceforth continued, as
now, to the end of the cathedral scene (_ante_, p. (170)), except that the
whole scene, in which Valentine is killed, is wanting. Thus Margaret's
prayer to the Virgin and the cathedral scene come together, and form the
conclusion of the work. According to During's Verzeichniss, there was no
new edition of Faust until 1807. According to Dr. Sieglitz, the first part
of Faust first appeared, in its present shape, in the collected edition of
Goethe's works, which was published in 1808. --_Hayward's Translation of
Faust_, second edition, note, p. 215. ]
_February_ 17. 1833.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. --BEN JONSON. --MASSINGER.
In the romantic drama Beaumont and Fletcher are almost supreme. Their plays
are in general most truly delightful. I could read the Beggar's Bush from
morning to night. How sylvan and sunshiny it is! The Little French Lawyer
is excellent. Lawrit is conceived and executed from first to last in
genuine comic humour. Monsieur Thomas is also capital. I have no doubt
whatever that the first act and the first scene of the second act of the
Two Noble Kinsmen are Shakspeare's. Beaumont and Fletcher's plots are, to
be sure, wholly inartificial; they only care to pitch a character into a
position to make him or her talk; you must swallow all their gross
improbabilities, and, taking it all for granted, attend only to the
dialogue. How lamentable it is that no gentleman and scholar can he found
to edit these beautiful plays! [1] Did the name of criticism ever descend so
low as in the hands of those two fools and knaves, Seward and Simpson?
There are whole scenes in their edition which I could with certainty put
back into their original verse, and more that could he replaced in their
native prose. Was there ever such an absolute disregard of literary fame as
that displayed by Shakspeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher? [2]
[Footnote 1:
I believe Mr. Dyce could edit Beaumont and Fletcher as well as any man of
the present or last generation; but the truth is, the limited sale of the
late editions of Ben Jonson, Shirley, &c. , has damped the spirit of
enterprise amongst the respectable publishers. Still I marvel that some
cheap reprint of B. and F. is not undertaken. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
"The men of the greatest genius, as far as we can judge from their own
works, or from the accounts of their contemporaries, appear to have been of
calm and tranquil temper, in all that related to themselves. In the inward
assurance of permanent fame, they seem to have been either indifferent or
resigned, with regard to immediate reputation. "
* * * * *
"Shakspeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial in
his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative
greatness, we have abundant proof in his sonnets, which could scarcely have
been known to Mr. Pope, when he asserted, that our great bard 'grew
immortal in his own despite. '"--_Biog. Lit. _ vol. i, p. 32. ]
* * * * *
In Ben Jonson you have an intense and burning art. Some of his plots, that
of the Alchemist, for example, are perfect. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and
Fletcher would, if united, have made a great dramatist indeed, and yet not
have come near Shakspeare; but no doubt Ben Jonson was the greatest man
after Shakspeare in that age of dramatic genius.
The styles of Massinger's plays and the Sampson Agonistes are the two
extremes of the arc within which the diction of dramatic poetry may
oscillate. Shakspeare in his great plays is the midpoint. In the Samson
Agonistes, colloquial language is left at the greatest distance, yet
something of it is preserved, to render the dialogue probable: in Massinger
the style is differenced, but differenced in the smallest degree possible,
from animated conversation by the vein of poetry.
There's such a divinity doth hedge our Shakspeare round, that we cannot
even imitate his style. I tried to imitate his manner in the Remorse, and,
when I had done, I found I had been tracking Beaumont and Fletcher, and
Massinger instead. It is really very curious. At first sight, Shakspeare
and his contemporary dramatists seem to write in styles much alike: nothing
so easy as to fall into that of Massinger and the others; whilst no one has
ever yet produced one scene conceived and expressed in the Shakspearian
idiom. I suppose it is because Shakspeare is universal, and, in fact, has
no _manner_; just as you can so much more readily copy a picture than
Nature herself.
_February_ 20. 1833.
HOUSE OF COMMONS APPOINTING THE OFFICERS OF THE ARMY AND NAVY.
I was just now reading Sir John Cam Hobhouse's answer to Mr. Hume, I
believe, upon the point of transferring the patronage of the army and navy
from the Crown to the House of Commons. I think, if I had been in the House
of Commons, I would have said, "that, ten or fifteen years ago, I should
have considered Sir J. C. H. 's speech quite unanswerable,--it being clear
constitutional law that the House of Commons has not, nor ought to have,
any share, directly or indirectly, in the appointment of the officers of
the army or navy. But now that the King had been reduced, by the means and
procurement of the Honourable Baronet and his friends, to a puppet, which,
so far from having any independent will of its own, could not resist a
measure which it hated and condemned, it became a matter of grave
consideration whether it was not necessary to vest the appointment of such
officers in a body like the House of Commons, rather than in a junta of
ministers, who were obliged to make common cause with the mob and
democratic press for the sake of keeping their places. "
_March_ 9. 1833.
PENAL CODE IN IRELAND. --CHURCHMEN.
The penal code in Ireland, in the beginning of the last century, was
justifiable, as a temporary mean of enabling government to take breath and
look about them; and if right measures had been systematically pursued in a
right spirit, there can be no doubt that all, or the greater part, of
Ireland would have become Protestant. Protestantism under the Charter
Schools was greatly on the increase in the early part of that century, and
the complaints of the Romish priests to that effect are on record. But,
unfortunately, the drenching-horn was itself substituted for the medicine.
* * * * *
There seems to me, at present, to be a curse upon the English church, and
upon the governors of all institutions connected with the orderly
advancement of national piety and knowledge; it is the curse of prudence,
as they miscall it--in fact, of fear.
Clergymen are now almost afraid to explain in their pulpits the grounds of
their being Protestants. They are completely cowed by the vulgar harassings
of the press and of our Hectoring sciolists in Parliament. There should be
no _party_ politics in the pulpit to be sure; but every church in England
ought to resound with national politics,--I mean the sacred character of
the national church, and an exposure of the base robbery from the nation
itself--for so indeed it is[1]--about to be committed by these ministers,
in order to have a sop to throw to the Irish agitators, who will, of
course, only cut the deeper, and come the oftener. You cannot buy off a
barbarous invader.
[Footnote 1:
"That the maxims of a pure morality, and those sublime truths of the divine
unity and attributes, which a Plato found it hard to learn, and more
difficult to reveal; that these should have become the almost hereditary
property of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop; that even
to the unlettered they sound as _common-place_; this is a phenomenon which
must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the
services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. Yet he who should confine
the efficiency of an established church to these, can hardly be placed in a
much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the kingdom
there is transplanted a germ of civilization; that in the remotest villages
there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of the place may
crystallize and brighten; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet
sufficiently near to encourage and facilitate imitation; _this_
unobtrusive, continuous agency of a Protestant church establishment, _this_
it is, which the patriot and the philanthropist, who would fain unite the
love of peace with the faith in the progressive amelioration of mankind,
cannot estimate at too high a price. 'It cannot be valued with the gold of
Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No mention shall be made of
coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies. '--The
clergyman is with his parishioners and among them; he is neither in the
cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour and family man,
whose education and rank admit him to the mansion of the rich landholder,
while his duties make him the frequent visitor of the farm-house and the
cottage. He is, or he may become, connected with the families of his parish
or its vicinity by marriage. And among the instances of the blindness, or
at best of the short-sightedness, which it is the nature of cupidity to
inflict, I know few more striking than the clamours of the farmers against
church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergyman would inevitably at
the next lease be paid to the landholder; while, as the case at present
stands, the revenues of the church are in some sort the reversionary
property of every family that may have a member educated for the church, or
a daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead of being _foreclosed_ and
immovable, it is, in fact, the only species of landed property that is
essentially moving and circulative. That there exist no inconveniences who
will pretend to assert? --But I have yet to expect the proof, that the
inconveniences are greater in this than in any other species; or that
either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter
to become either _Trullibers_ or salaried _placemen_. "--_Church and State_,
p. 90. ]
_March_ 12. 1833.
CORONATION OATHS.
Lord Grey has, in Parliament, said two things: first, that the Coronation
Oaths only bind the King in his executive capacity; and, secondly, that
members of the House of Commons are bound to represent by their votes the
wishes and opinions of their constituents, and not their own. Put these two
together, and tell me what useful part of the constitutional monarchy of
England remains. It is clear that the Coronation Oaths would be no better
than Highgate oaths. For in his executive capacity the King _cannot_ do any
thing, against the doing of which the oaths bind him; it is _only_ in his
legislative character that he possesses a free agency capable of being
bound. The nation meant to bind _that_.
_March_ 14. 1833.
DIVINITY. --PROFESSIONS AND TRADES.
Divinity is essentially the first of the professions, because it is
necessary for all at all times; law and physic are only necessary for some
at some times. I speak of them, of course, not in their abstract existence,
but in their applicability to man.
* * * * *
Every true science bears necessarily within itself the germ of a cognate
profession, and the more you can elevate trades into professions the
better.
_March_ 17. 1833.
MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY.
What solemn humbug this modern political economy is! What is there true of
the little that is true in their dogmatic books, which is not a simple
deduction from the moral and religious _credenda_ and _agenda_ of any good
man, and with which we were not all previously acquainted, and upon which
every man of common sense instinctively acted? I know none. But what they
truly state, they do not truly understand in its ultimate grounds and
causes; and hence they have sometimes done more mischief by their half-
ignorant and half-sophistical reasonings about, and deductions from, well-
founded positions, than they could have done by the promulgation of
positive error. This particularly applies to their famous ratios of
increase between man and the means of his subsistence. Political economy,
at the highest, can never be a pure science. You may demonstrate that
certain properties inhere in the arch, which yet no bridge-builder _can_
ever reduce into brick and mortar; but an abstract conclusion in a matter
of political economy, the premisses of which neither exist now, nor ever
will exist within the range of the wildest imagination, is not a truth, but
a chimera--a practical falsehood. For there are no theorems in political
economy--but problems only. Certain things being actually so and so; the
question is, _how_ to _do_ so and so with them. Political _philosophy_,
indeed, points to ulterior ends, but even those ends are all practical; and
if you desert the conditions of reality, or of common probability, you may
show forth your eloquence or your fancy, but the utmost you can produce
will be a Utopia or Oceana.
You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the
market from 8_d_. to 6_d_. But suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your
country weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized
thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one
class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it,
after all. Is not its real price enhanced to every Christian and patriot a
hundred-fold?
* * * * *
_All_ is an endless fleeting abstraction; _the whole_ is a reality.
_March_ 31. 1833.
NATIONAL DEBT.
