It seemed to him a
desirable
thing for Christianity that it should
have been written by some other person than St.
have been written by some other person than St.
Coleridge - Table Talk
1, 2.
]
* * * * *
The Understanding suggests the materials of reasoning: the Reason decides
upon them. The first can only say,--This _is_, or _ought_ to be so. The
last says,--It _must_ be so. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I have preserved this, and several other equivalent remarks, out of a
dutiful wish to popularize, by all the honest means in my power, this
fundamental distinction; a thorough mastery of which Mr. Coleridge
considered necessary to any sound system of psychology; and in the denial
or neglect of which, he delighted to point out the source of most of the
vulgar errors in philosophy and religion. The distinction itself is
implied throughout almost all Mr. C. 's works, whether in verse or prose;
but it may be found minutely argued in the "Aids to Reflection," p. 206,
&c. 2d edit. 1831. --ED. ]
_April_ 27. 1823.
KEAN. --SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. --SIR H. DAVY. --ROBERT SMITH. --CANNING. --
NATIONAL DEBT. --POOR LAWS.
Kean is original; but he copies from himself. His rapid descents from the
hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial, though sometimes productive of great
effect, are often unreasonable. To see him act, is like reading Shakspeare
by flashes of lightning. I do not think him thorough-bred gentleman enough
to play Othello.
* * * * *
Sir James Mackintosh is the king of the men of talent. He is a most elegant
converger. How well I remember his giving breakfast to me and Sir Humphry
Davy, at that time an unknown young man, and our having a very spirited
talk about Locke and Newton, and so forth! When Davy was gone, Mackintosh
said to me, "That's a very extraordinary young man; but he is gone wrong on
some points. " But Davy was, at that time at least, a man of genius; and I
doubt if Mackintosh ever heartily appreciated an eminently original man. He
is uncommonly powerful in his own line; but it is not the line of a first-
rate man. After all his fluency and brilliant erudition, you can rarely
carry off any thing worth preserving. You might not improperly write on his
forehead, "Warehouse to let! " He always dealt too much in generalities for
a lawyer. He is deficient in power in applying his principles to the points
in debate. I remember Robert Smith had much more logical ability; but Smith
aimed at conquest by any gladiatorial shift; whereas Mackintosh was
uniformly candid in argument. I am speaking now from old recollections.
* * * * *
Canning is very irritable, surprisingly so for a wit who is always giving
such hard knocks. He should have put on an ass's skin before he went into
parliament. Lord Liverpool is the single stay of this ministry; but he is
not a man of a directing mind. He cannot ride on the whirlwind. He serves
as the isthmus to connect one half of the cabinet with the other. He always
gives you the common sense of the matter, and in that it is that his
strength in debate lies.
* * * * *
The national debt has, in fact, made more men rich than have a right to be
so, or, rather, any ultimate power, in case of a struggle, of actualizing
their riches. It is, in effect, like an ordinary, where three hundred
tickets have been distributed, but where there is, in truth, room only for
one hundred. So long as you can amuse the company with any thing else, or
make them come in successively, all is well, and the whole three hundred
fancy themselves sure of a dinner; but if any suspicion of a hoax should
arise, and they were all to rush into the room at once, there would be two
hundred without a potato for their money; and the table would be occupied
by the landholders, who live on the spot.
* * * * *
Poor-laws are the inevitable accompaniments of an extensive commerce and a
manufacturing system. In Scotland, they did without them, till Glasgow and
Paisley became great manufacturing places, and then people said, "We must
subscribe for the poor, or else we shall have poor-laws. " That is to say,
they enacted for themselves a poor-law in order to avoid having a poor-law
enacted for them. It is absurd to talk of Queen Elizabeth's act as creating
the poor-laws of this country. The poor-rates are the consideration paid
by, or on behalf of, capitalists for having labour at demand. It is the
price, and nothing else. The hardship consists in the agricultural interest
having to pay an undue proportion of the rates; for although, perhaps, in
the end, the land becomes more valuable, yet, at the first, the landowners
have to bear all the brunt. I think there ought to be a fixed revolving
period for the equalization of rates.
_April_ 28. 1823.
CONDUCT OF THE WHIGS. --REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
The conduct of the Whigs is extravagantly inconsistent. It originated in
the fatal error which Fox committed, in persisting, after the first three
years of the French Revolution, when every shadow of freedom in France had
vanished, in eulogizing the men and measures of that shallow-hearted
people. So he went on gradually, further and further departing from all the
principles of English policy and wisdom, till at length he became the
panegyrist, through thick and thin, of a military frenzy, under the
influence of which the very name of liberty was detested. And thus it was
that, in course of time, Fox's party became the absolute abettors of the
Buonapartean invasion of Spain, and did all in their power to thwart the
generous efforts of this country to resist it. Now, when the invasion is by
a Bourbon, and the cause of the Spanish nation neither united nor, indeed,
sound in many respects, the Whigs would precipitate this country into a
crusade to fight up the cause of a faction.
I have the honour of being slightly known to my lord Darnley. In 1808-9, I
met him accidentally, when, after a few words of salutation, he said to me,
"Are you mad, Mr. Coleridge? "--"Not that I know, my lord," I replied; "what
have I done which argues any derangement of mind? "--"Why, I mean," said he,
"those letters of yours in the Courier, 'On the Hopes and Fears of a People
invaded by foreign Armies. ' The Spaniards are absolutely conquered; it is
absurd to talk of their chance of resisting. "--"Very well, my lord," I
said, "we shall see. But will your lordship permit me, in the course of a
year or two, to retort your question upon you, if I should have grounds for
so doing? "--"Certainly! " said he; "that is fair! " Two years afterwards,
when affairs were altered in Spain, I met Lord Darnley again, and, after
some conversation, ventured to say to him, "Does your lordship recollect
giving me leave to retort a certain question upon you about the Spaniards?
Who is mad now? "--"Very true, very true, Mr. Coleridge," cried he: "you are
right. It is very extraordinary. It was a very happy and hold guess. " Upon
which I remarked, "I think '_guess_' is hardly a fair term. For, has any
thing happened that has happened, from any other causes, or under any other
conditions, than such as I laid down Beforehand? " Lord Darnley, who was
always very courteous to me, took this with a pleasant nod of his head.
* * * * *
Many votes are given for reform in the House of Commons, which are not
honest. Whilst it is well known that the measure will not he carried in
parliament, it is as well to purchase some popularity by voting for it.
When Hunt and his associates, before the Six Acts, created a panic, the
ministers lay on their oars for three or four months, until the general
cry, even from the opposition, was, "Why don't the ministers come forward
with some protective measure? " The present Ministry exists on the weakness
and desperate character of the Opposition. The sober part of the nation are
afraid of the latter getting into power, lest they should redeem some of
their pledges.
* * * * *
_April_ 29. 1823.
CHURCH OF ROME.
The present adherents of the church of Rome are not, in my judgment,
Catholics. We are the Catholics. We can prove that we hold the doctrines of
the primitive church for the first three hundred years. The council of
Trent made the Papists what they are. [1] A foreign Romish bishop has
declared, that the Protestants of his acquaintance were more like what he
conceived the enlightened Catholics to have been before the council of
Trent, than the best of the latter in his days. Perhaps you will say, this
bishop was not a _good Catholic_. [2] I cannot answer for that. The course
of Christianity and the Christian church may not unaptly be likened to a
mighty river, which filled a wide channel, and bore along with its waters
mud, and gravel, and weeds, till it met a great rock in the middle of its
stream. By some means or other, the water flows purely, and separated from
the filth, in a deeper and narrower course on one side of the rock, and the
refuse of the dirt and troubled water goes off on the other in a broader
current, and then cries out, "_We_ are the river! "
[Footnote 1: See Aids to Reflection, p. 180. note. ]
[Footnote 2: Mr. Coleridge named him, but the name was strange to me, and I
have been unable to recover it--ED. ]
* * * * *
A person said to me lately, "But you will, for civility's sake, _call_ them
_Catholics_, will you not? " I answered, that I would not; for I would not
tell a lie upon any, much less upon so solemn an occasion. "The adherents
of the church of Rome, I repeat, are not _Catholic_ Christians. If they
are, then it follows that we Protestants are heretics and schismatics, as,
indeed, the Papists very logically, from their own premisses, call us. And
'_Roman_ Catholics' makes no difference. Catholicism is not capable of
degrees or local apportionments. There can be but one body of Catholics,
_ex vi termini_. To talk strictly of _Irish_ or _Scotch Roman_ Catholics is
a mere absurdity. "
* * * * *
It is common to hear it said, that, if the legal disabilities are removed,
the Romish church will lose ground in this country. I think the reverse:
the Romish religion is, or, in certain hands, is capable of being made, so
flattering to the passions and self-delusion of men, that it is impossible
to say how far it would spread, amongst the higher orders of society
especially, if the secular disadvantages now attending its profession were
removed. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Here, at least, the prophecy has been fulfilled. The wisdom of our
ancestors, in the reign of King William III. , would have been jealous of
the daily increase in the numbers of the Romish church in England, of which
every attentive observer must be aware. See _Sancti Dominici Pallium_, in
vol. ii. p. 80. of Mr. Coleridge's Poems. -Ed. ]
April 30. 1823.
ZENDAVESTA. --PANTHEISM AND IDOLATRY.
The Zendavesta must, I think, have been copied in parts from the writings
of Moses. In the description of the creation, the first chapter of Genesis
is taken almost literally, except that the sun is created _before_ the
light, and then the herbs and the plants after the sun; which are precisely
the two points they did not understand, and therefore altered as errors. [1]
There are only two acts of creation, properly so called, in the Mosaic
account,--the material universe and man. The intermediate acts seem more as
the results of secondary causes, or, at any rate, of a modification of
prepared materials.
[Footnote 1:
The Zend, or Zendavesta, is the sacred book ascribed to Zoroaster, or
Zerdusht, the founder or reformer of the Magian religion. The modern
edition or paraphrase of this work, called the Sadda, written in the
Persian of the day, was, I believe, composed about three hundred years ago
--Ed. ]
* * * * *
Pantheism and idolatry naturally end in each other; for all extremes meet.
The Judaic religion is the exact medium, the true compromise.
_May_ 1. 1823.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STORIES OF DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
--PHANTOM PORTRAIT. --WITCH
OF ENDOR. --SOCINIANISM.
There is a great difference in the credibility to be attached to stories of
dreams and stories of ghosts. Dreams have nothing in them which are absurd
and nonsensical; and, though most of the coincidences may be readily
explained by the diseased system of the dreamer, and the great and
surprising power of association, yet it is impossible to say whether an
inner sense does not really exist in the mind, seldom developed, indeed,
but which may have a power of presentiment. [1]
All the external senses have their correspondents in the mind; the eye can
see an object before it is distinctly apprehended;--why may there not be a
corresponding power in the soul? The power of prophecy might have been
merely a spiritual excitation of this dormant faculty. Hence you will
observe that the Hebrew seers sometimes seem to have required music, as in
the instance of Elisha before Jehoram:--"But now bring me a minstrel. And
it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came
upon him. " [2] Every thing in nature has a tendency to move in cycles; and
it would be a miracle if, out of such myriads of cycles moving
concurrently, some coincidences did not take place. No doubt, many such
take place in the daytime; but then our senses drive out the remembrance of
them, and render the impression hardly felt; but when we sleep, the mind
acts without interruption. Terror and the heated imagination will, even in
the daytime, create all sorts of features, shapes, and colours out of a
simple object possessing none of them in reality.
But ghost stories are absurd. Whenever a real ghost appears,--by which I
mean some man or woman dressed up to frighten another,--if the supernatural
character of the apparition has been for a moment believed, the effects on
the spectator have always been most terrible,--convulsion, idiocy, madness,
or even death on the spot. Consider the awful descriptions in the Old
Testament of the effects of a spiritual presence on the prophets and seers
of the Hebrews; the terror, the exceeding great dread, the utter loss of
all animal power. But in our common ghost stories, you always find that the
seer, after a most appalling apparition, as you are to believe, is quite
well the next day. Perhaps, he may have a headach; but that is the outside
of the effect produced. Alston, a man of genius, and the best painter yet
produced by America, when he was in England told me an anecdote which
confirms what I have been saying. It was, I think, in the university of
Cambridge, near Boston, that a certain youth took it into his wise head to
endeavour to convert a Tom-Painish companion of his by appearing as a ghost
before him. He accordingly dressed himself up in the usual way, having
previously extracted the ball from the pistol which always lay near the
head of his friend's bed. Upon first awaking, and seeing the apparition,
the youth who was to be frightened, A. , very coolly looked his companion
the ghost in the face, and said, "I know you. This is a good joke; but you
see I am not frightened. Now you may vanish! " The ghost stood still.
"Come," said A. , "that is enough. I shall get angry. Away! " Still the ghost
moved not. "By ----," ejaculated A. , "if you do not in three minutes go
away, I'll shoot you. " He waited the time, deliberately levelled the
pistol, fired, and, with a scream at the immobility of the figure, became
convulsed, and afterwards died. The very instant he believed it _to be_ a
ghost, his human nature fell before it.
[Footnote 1:
See this point suggested and reasoned with extraordinary subtlety in the
third essay (marked C), in the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual, Or first
Lay Sermon, p. 19, &c. One beautiful paragraph I will venture to quote:--
"Not only may we expect that men of strong religious feelings, but little
religious knowledge, will occasionally be tempted to regard such
occurrences as supernatural visitations; but it ought not to surprise us if
such dreams should sometimes be confirmed by the event, as though they had
actually possessed a character of divination. For who shall decide how far
a perfect reminiscence of past experiences (of many, perhaps, that had
escaped our reflex consciousness at the time)--who shall determine to what
extent this reproductive imagination, unsophisticated by the will, and
undistracted by intrusions from the senses, may or may not be concentred
and sublimed into foresight and presentiment? There would be nothing herein
either to foster superstition on the one hand, or to justify contemptuous
disbelief on the other. Incredulity is but Credulity seen from behind,
bowing and nodding assent to the Habitual and the Fashionable"-ED. ]
[Footnote 2: 2 Kings, iii. 15. , and see 1 Sam. x. 5. --ED. ]
* * * * *
[What follows in the text within commas was written about this time, and
communicated to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge. --ED. ]
"Last Thursday my uncle, S. T. C. , dined with us, and several men came to
meet him. I have heard him more brilliant, but he was very fine, and
delighted every one very much. It is impossible to carry off, or commit to
paper, his long trains of argument; indeed, it is not always possible to
understand them, he lays the foundation so deep, and views every question
in so original a manner. Nothing can be finer than the principles which he
lays down in morals and religion. His deep study of Scripture is very
astonishing; the rest of the party were but as children in his hands, not
merely in general views of theology, but in nice verbal criticism. He
thinks it clear that St. Paul did not write the Epistle to the Hebrews, but
that it must have been the work of some Alexandrian Greek, and he thinks
Apollos.
It seemed to him a desirable thing for Christianity that it should
have been written by some other person than St. Paul; because, its
inspiration being unquestioned, it added another independent teacher and
expounder of the faith.
"We fell upon ghosts, and he exposed many of the stories physically and
metaphysically. He seemed to think it impossible that you should really see
with the bodily eye what was impalpable, unless it were a shadow; and if
what you fancied you saw with the bodily eye was in fact only an impression
on the imagination, then you were seeing something _out of your senses_,
and your testimony was full of uncertainty. He observed how uniformly, in
all the best-attested stories of spectres, the appearance might be
accounted for from the disturbed state of the mind or body of the seer, as
in the instances of Dion and Brutus. Upon some one's saying that he
_wished_ to believe these stories true, thinking that they constituted a
useful subsidiary testimony of another state of existence, Mr. C. differed,
and said, he thought it a dangerous testimony, and one not wanted: it was
Saul, with the Scriptures and the Prophet before him, calling upon the
witch of Endor to certify him of the truth! He explained very ingeniously,
yet very naturally, what has often startled people in ghost stories--such
as Lord Lyttelton's--namely, that when a real person has appeared, habited
like the phantom, the ghost-seer has immediately seen two, the real man and
the phantom. He said that such must be the case. The man under the morbid
delusion sees with the eye of the imagination, and sees with the bodily eye
too; if no one were really present, he would see the spectre with one, and
the bed-curtains with the other. When, therefore, a real person comes, he
sees the real man as he would have seen any one else in the same place, and
he sees the spectre not a whit the less: being perceptible by different
powers of vision, so to say, the appearances do not interfere with each
other.
"He told us the following story of the Phantom Portrait [1]:--
"A stranger came recommended to a merchant's house at Lubeck. He was
hospitably received; but, the house being full, he was lodged at night in
an apartment handsomely furnished, but not often used. There was nothing
that struck him particularly in the room when left alone, till he happened
to cast his eyes on a picture, which immediately arrested his attention. It
was a single head; but there was something so uncommon, so frightful and
unearthly, in its expression, though by no means ugly, that he found
himself irresistibly attracted to look at it. In fact, he could not tear
himself from the fascination of this portrait, till his imagination was
filled by it, and his rest broken. He retired to bed, dreamed, and awoke
from time to time with the head glaring on him. In the morning, his host
saw by his looks that he had slept ill, and inquired the cause, which was
told. The master of the house was much vexed, and said that the picture
ought to have been removed, that it was an oversight, and that it always
was removed when the chamber was used. The picture, he said, was, indeed,
terrible to every one; but it was so fine, and had come into the family in
so curious a way, that he could not make up his mind to part with it, or to
destroy it. The story of it was this:--'My father,' said he, 'was at
Hamburgh on business, and, whilst dining at a coffee-house, he observed a
young man of a remarkable appearance enter, seat himself alone in a corner,
and commence a solitary meal. His countenance bespoke the extreme of mental
distress, and every now and then he turned his head quickly round, as if he
heard something, then shudder, grow pale, and go on with his meal after an
effort as before. My father saw this same man at the same place for two or
three successive days; and at length became so much interested about him,
that he spoke to him. The address was not repulsed, and the stranger seemed
to find some comfort in the tone of sympathy and kindness which my father
used. He was an Italian, well informed, poor but not destitute, and living
economically upon the profits of his art as a painter. Their intimacy
increased; and at length the Italian, seeing my father's involuntary
emotion at his convulsive turnings and shuddering, which continued as
formerly, interrupting their conversation from time to time, told him his
story. He was a native of Rome, and had lived in some familiarity with, and
been much patronized by, a young nobleman; but upon some slight occasion
they had fallen out, and his patron, besides using many reproachful
expressions, had struck him. The painter brooded over the disgrace of the
blow. He could not challenge the nobleman, on account of his rank; he
therefore watched for an opportunity, and assassinated him. Of course he
fled from his country, and finally had reached Hamburgh. He had not,
however, passed many weeks from the night of the murder, before, one day,
in the crowded street, he heard his name called by a voice familiar to him:
he turned short round, and saw the face of his victim looking at him with a
fixed eye. From that moment he had no peace: at all hours, in all places,
and amidst all companies, however engaged he might be, he heard the voice,
and could never help looking round; and, whenever he so looked round, he
always encountered the same face staring close upon him. At last, in a mood
of desperation, he had fixed himself face to face, and eye to eye, and
deliberately drawn the phantom visage as it glared upon him; and _this_ was
the picture so drawn. The Italian said he had struggled long, but life was
a burden which he could now no longer bear; and he was resolved, when he
had made money enough to return to Rome, to surrender himself to justice,
and expiate his crime on the scaffold. He gave the finished picture to my
father, in return for the kindness which he had shown to him. '"
[Footnote 1:
This is the story which Mr. Washington Irving has dressed up very prettily
in the first volume of his "Tales of a Traveller," pp. 84-119. ; professing
in his preface that he could not remember whence he had derived the
anecdote. --ED. ]
* * * * *
I have no doubt that the Jews believed generally in a future state,
independently of the Mosaic law. The story of the witch of Endor is a proof
of it. What we translate "_witch_," or "familiar spirit," is, in the
Hebrew, Ob, that is, a bottle or bladder, and means a person whose belly is
swelled like a leathern bottle by divine inflation. In the Greek it is
[Greek: engastrimuthos], a ventriloquist. The text (1 Sam. ch. xxviii. ) is
a simple record of the facts, the solution of which the sacred historian
leaves to the reader. I take it to have been a trick of ventriloquism, got
up by the courtiers and friends of Saul, to prevent him, if possible, from
hazarding an engagement with an army despondent and oppressed with bodings
of defeat. Saul is not said to have seen Samuel; the woman only pretends to
see him. And then what does this Samuel do? He merely repeats the prophecy
known to all Israel, which the true Samuel had uttered some years before.
Read Captain Lyon's account of the scene in the cabin with the Esquimaux
bladder, or conjurer; it is impossible not to be reminded of the witch of
Endor. I recommend you also to look at Webster's admirable treatise on
Witchcraft.
* * * * *
The pet texts of a Socinian are quite enough for his confutation with acute
thinkers. If Christ had been a mere man, it would have been ridiculous in
_him_ to call himself "the Son of man;" but being God and man, it then
became, in his own assumption of it, a peculiar and mysterious title. So,
if Christ had been a mere man, his saying, "My Father is greater than I,"
(John, xv. 28. ) would have been as unmeaning. It would be laughable enough,
for example, to hear me say, "My 'Remorse' succeeded, indeed, but
Shakspeare is a greater dramatist than I. " But how immeasurably more
foolish, more monstrous, would it not be for a _man_, however honest, good,
or wise, to say, "But Jehovah is greater than I! "
_May_ 8. 1824.
PLATO AND XENOPHON. --RELIGIONS OF THE GREEKS. --EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES. --
MILTON. --VIRGIL.
Plato's works are logical exercises for the mind. Little that is positive
is advanced in them. Socrates may be fairly represented by Plato in the
more moral parts; but in all the metaphysical disquisitions it is
Pythagoras. Xenophon's representation of his master is quite different. [1]
[Footnote 1: See p. 9. n. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Observe the remarkable contrast between the religion of the tragic and
other poets of Greece. The former are always opposed in heart to the
popular divinities. In fact, there are the popular, the sacerdotal, and the
mysterious religions of Greece, represented roughly by Homer, Pindar, and
AEschylus. The ancients had no notion of a _fall_ of man, though they had of
his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in the old mythus, and for the most
part in AEschylus, is the Redeemer and the Devil jumbled together.
* * * * *
I cannot say I expect much from mere Egyptian antiquities. Almost every
thing really, that is, intellectually, great in that country seems to me of
Grecian origin.
* * * * *
I think nothing can be added to Milton's definition or rule of poetry,--
that it ought to be simple, sensuous, and impassioned; that is to say,
single in conception, abounding in sensible images, and informing them all
with the spirit of the mind.
Milton's Latin style is, I think, better and easier than his English. His
style, in prose, is quite as characteristic of him as a philosophic
republican, as Cowley's is of _him_ as a first-rate gentleman.
If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave him?
* * * * *
_June_ 2. 1824.
CRANVILLE PENN AND THE DELUGE. --RAINBOW.
I confess I have small patience with Mr. Granville Penn's book against
Professor Buckland. Science will be superseded, if every phenomenon is to
be referred in this manner to an actual miracle. I think it absurd to
attribute so much to the Deluge. An inundation, which left an olive-tree
standing, and bore up the ark peacefully on its bosom, could scarcely have
been the sole cause of the rents and dislocations observable on the face of
the earth. How could the tropical animals, which have been discovered in
England and in Russia in a perfectly natural state, have been transported
thither by such a flood? Those animals must evidently have been natives of
the countries in which they have been found. The climates must have been
altered. Assume a sudden evaporation upon the retiring of the Deluge to
have caused an intense cold, the solar heat might not be sufficient
afterwards to overcome it. I do not think that the polar cold is adequately
explained by mere comparative distance from the sun.
* * * * *
You will observe, that there is no mention of rain previously to the
Deluge. Hence it may be inferred, that the rainbow was exhibited for the
first time after God's covenant with Noah. However, I only suggest this.
* * * * *
The Earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the Past; the Air and
Heaven, of Futurity.
_June_ 5. 1824.
ENGLISH AND GREEK DANCING. --GREEK ACOUSTICS.
The fondness for dancing in English women is the reaction of their reserved
manners. It is the only way in which they can throw themselves forth in
natural liberty. We have no adequate conception of the perfection of the
ancient tragic dance. The pleasure which the Greeks received from it had
for its basis Difference and the more unfit the vehicle, the more lively
was the curiosity and intense the delight at seeing the difficulty
overcome.
* * * * *
The ancients certainly seem to have understood some principles in acoustics
which we have lost, or, at least, they applied them better. They contrived
to convey the voice distinctly in their huge theatres by means of pipes,
which created no echo or confusion. Our theatres--Drury Lane and Covent
Garden--are fit for nothing: they are too large for acting, and too small
for a bull-fight.
* * * * *
_June_ 7. 1824.
LORD BYRON'S VERSIFICATION, AND DON JUAN.
How lamentably the _art_ of versification is neglected by most of the
poets of the present day! --by Lord Byron, as it strikes me, in particular,
among those of eminence for other qualities. Upon the whole, I think the
part of Don Juan in which Lambro's return to his home, and Lambro himself,
are described, is the best, that is, the most individual, thing in all I
know of Lord B. 's works. The festal abandonment puts one in mind of
Nicholas Poussin's pictures. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge particularly noticed, for its classical air, the 32d stanza
of this Canto (the third):--
"A band of children, round a snow-white ram,
There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers,
While, peaceful as if still an unwean'd lamb,
The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers
His sober head, majestically tame,
Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers
His brow, as if in act to butt, and then
Yielding to their small hands, draws back again. "
But Mr. C. said that _then_, and _again_, made no rhyme to his ear. Why
should not the old form _agen_ be lawful in verse? We wilfully abridge
ourselves of the liberty which our great poets achieved and sanctioned for
us in innumerable instances. --ED. ]
_June_ 10. 1824.
PARENTAL CONTROL IN MARRIAGE. --MARRIAGE OF
COUSINS. --DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER.
Up to twenty-one, I hold a father to have power over his children as to
marriage; after that age, authority and influence only. Show me one couple
unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show
you ten that are wretched from other causes.
* * * * *
If the matter were quite open, I should incline to disapprove the
intermarriage of first cousins; but the church has decided otherwise on the
authority of Augustine, and that seems enough upon such a point.
* * * * *
You may depend upon it, that a slight contrast of character is very
material to happiness in marriage.
_February_ 24. 1827.
BLUMENBACH AND KANT'S RACES. --IAPETIC AND SEMITIC. --HEBREW. --SOLOMON.
Blumenbach makes five races; Kant, three. Blumenbach's scale of dignity may
be thus figured:--
1. Caucasian or European.
2. Malay ================= 2. American
3. Negro ========================== 3. Mongolian, Asiatic
There was, I conceive, one great Iapetic original of language, under which
Greek, Latin, and other European dialects, and, perhaps, Sanscrit, range as
species. The Iapetic race, [Greek: Iaones]; separated into two branches;
one, with a tendency to migrate south-west,--Greeks, Italians, &c. ; and the
other north-west,--Goths, Germans, Swedes, &c. The Hebrew is Semitic.
* * * * *
Hebrew, in point of force and purity, seems at its height in Isaiah. It is
most corrupt in Daniel, and not much less so in Ecclesiastes; which I
cannot believe to have been actually composed by Solomon, but rather
suppose to have been so attributed by the Jews, in their passion for
ascribing all works of that sort to their _grand monurque_.
_March_ 10. 1827.
JEWISH HISTORY. --SPINOZISTIC AND HEBREW SCHEMES.
The people of all other nations, but the Jewish, seem to look backwards and
also to exist for the present; but in the Jewish scheme every thing is
prospective and preparatory; nothing, however trifling, is done for itself
alone, but all is typical of something yet to come.
* * * * *
I would rather call the book of Proverbs Solomonian than as actually a work
of Solomon's. So I apprehend many of the Psalms to be Davidical only, not
David's own compositions.
* * * * *
You may state the Pantheism of Spinosa, in contrast with the Hebrew or
Christian scheme, shortly, as thus:--
Spinosism.
W-G = 0; _i. e. _ the World without God is an impossible idea.
G-W = 0; _i. e. _ God without the World is so likewise.
Hebrew or Christian scheme.
W-G = 0; _i. e. _ The same as Spinosa's premiss.
But G-W = G; _i. e. _ God without the World is God the self-subsistent.
* * * * *
_March_ 12. 1827.
ROMAN CATHOLICS. --ENERGY OF MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS. --SHAKSPEARE _IN
MINIMIS_. --PAUL SARPI. --BARTRAM'S TRAVELS.
I have no doubt that the real object closest to the hearts of the leading
Irish Romanists is the destruction of the Irish Protestant church, and the
re-establishment of their own. I think more is involved in the manner than
the matter of legislating upon the civil disabilities of the members of the
church of Rome; and, for one, I should he willing to vote for a removal of
those disabilities, with two or three exceptions, upon a solemn declaration
being made legislatively in parliament, that at no time, nor under any
circumstances, could or should a branch of the Romish hierarchy, as at
present constituted, become an estate of this realm. [1]
[Footnote 1: See Church and State, second part, p. 189. ]
* * * * *
Internal or mental energy and external or corporeal modificability are in
inverse proportions. In man, internal energy is greater than in any other
animal; and you will see that he is less changed by climate than any
animal. For the highest and lowest specimens of man are not one half as
much apart from each other as the different kinds even of dogs, animals of
great internal energy themselves.
* * * * *
For an instance of Shakspeare's power _in minimis_, I generally quote James
Gurney's character in King John. How individual and comical he is with the
four words allowed to his dramatic life! [1] And pray look at Skelton's
Richard Sparrow also!
Paul Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent deserves your study. It is
very interesting.
* * * * *
The Understanding suggests the materials of reasoning: the Reason decides
upon them. The first can only say,--This _is_, or _ought_ to be so. The
last says,--It _must_ be so. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I have preserved this, and several other equivalent remarks, out of a
dutiful wish to popularize, by all the honest means in my power, this
fundamental distinction; a thorough mastery of which Mr. Coleridge
considered necessary to any sound system of psychology; and in the denial
or neglect of which, he delighted to point out the source of most of the
vulgar errors in philosophy and religion. The distinction itself is
implied throughout almost all Mr. C. 's works, whether in verse or prose;
but it may be found minutely argued in the "Aids to Reflection," p. 206,
&c. 2d edit. 1831. --ED. ]
_April_ 27. 1823.
KEAN. --SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. --SIR H. DAVY. --ROBERT SMITH. --CANNING. --
NATIONAL DEBT. --POOR LAWS.
Kean is original; but he copies from himself. His rapid descents from the
hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial, though sometimes productive of great
effect, are often unreasonable. To see him act, is like reading Shakspeare
by flashes of lightning. I do not think him thorough-bred gentleman enough
to play Othello.
* * * * *
Sir James Mackintosh is the king of the men of talent. He is a most elegant
converger. How well I remember his giving breakfast to me and Sir Humphry
Davy, at that time an unknown young man, and our having a very spirited
talk about Locke and Newton, and so forth! When Davy was gone, Mackintosh
said to me, "That's a very extraordinary young man; but he is gone wrong on
some points. " But Davy was, at that time at least, a man of genius; and I
doubt if Mackintosh ever heartily appreciated an eminently original man. He
is uncommonly powerful in his own line; but it is not the line of a first-
rate man. After all his fluency and brilliant erudition, you can rarely
carry off any thing worth preserving. You might not improperly write on his
forehead, "Warehouse to let! " He always dealt too much in generalities for
a lawyer. He is deficient in power in applying his principles to the points
in debate. I remember Robert Smith had much more logical ability; but Smith
aimed at conquest by any gladiatorial shift; whereas Mackintosh was
uniformly candid in argument. I am speaking now from old recollections.
* * * * *
Canning is very irritable, surprisingly so for a wit who is always giving
such hard knocks. He should have put on an ass's skin before he went into
parliament. Lord Liverpool is the single stay of this ministry; but he is
not a man of a directing mind. He cannot ride on the whirlwind. He serves
as the isthmus to connect one half of the cabinet with the other. He always
gives you the common sense of the matter, and in that it is that his
strength in debate lies.
* * * * *
The national debt has, in fact, made more men rich than have a right to be
so, or, rather, any ultimate power, in case of a struggle, of actualizing
their riches. It is, in effect, like an ordinary, where three hundred
tickets have been distributed, but where there is, in truth, room only for
one hundred. So long as you can amuse the company with any thing else, or
make them come in successively, all is well, and the whole three hundred
fancy themselves sure of a dinner; but if any suspicion of a hoax should
arise, and they were all to rush into the room at once, there would be two
hundred without a potato for their money; and the table would be occupied
by the landholders, who live on the spot.
* * * * *
Poor-laws are the inevitable accompaniments of an extensive commerce and a
manufacturing system. In Scotland, they did without them, till Glasgow and
Paisley became great manufacturing places, and then people said, "We must
subscribe for the poor, or else we shall have poor-laws. " That is to say,
they enacted for themselves a poor-law in order to avoid having a poor-law
enacted for them. It is absurd to talk of Queen Elizabeth's act as creating
the poor-laws of this country. The poor-rates are the consideration paid
by, or on behalf of, capitalists for having labour at demand. It is the
price, and nothing else. The hardship consists in the agricultural interest
having to pay an undue proportion of the rates; for although, perhaps, in
the end, the land becomes more valuable, yet, at the first, the landowners
have to bear all the brunt. I think there ought to be a fixed revolving
period for the equalization of rates.
_April_ 28. 1823.
CONDUCT OF THE WHIGS. --REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
The conduct of the Whigs is extravagantly inconsistent. It originated in
the fatal error which Fox committed, in persisting, after the first three
years of the French Revolution, when every shadow of freedom in France had
vanished, in eulogizing the men and measures of that shallow-hearted
people. So he went on gradually, further and further departing from all the
principles of English policy and wisdom, till at length he became the
panegyrist, through thick and thin, of a military frenzy, under the
influence of which the very name of liberty was detested. And thus it was
that, in course of time, Fox's party became the absolute abettors of the
Buonapartean invasion of Spain, and did all in their power to thwart the
generous efforts of this country to resist it. Now, when the invasion is by
a Bourbon, and the cause of the Spanish nation neither united nor, indeed,
sound in many respects, the Whigs would precipitate this country into a
crusade to fight up the cause of a faction.
I have the honour of being slightly known to my lord Darnley. In 1808-9, I
met him accidentally, when, after a few words of salutation, he said to me,
"Are you mad, Mr. Coleridge? "--"Not that I know, my lord," I replied; "what
have I done which argues any derangement of mind? "--"Why, I mean," said he,
"those letters of yours in the Courier, 'On the Hopes and Fears of a People
invaded by foreign Armies. ' The Spaniards are absolutely conquered; it is
absurd to talk of their chance of resisting. "--"Very well, my lord," I
said, "we shall see. But will your lordship permit me, in the course of a
year or two, to retort your question upon you, if I should have grounds for
so doing? "--"Certainly! " said he; "that is fair! " Two years afterwards,
when affairs were altered in Spain, I met Lord Darnley again, and, after
some conversation, ventured to say to him, "Does your lordship recollect
giving me leave to retort a certain question upon you about the Spaniards?
Who is mad now? "--"Very true, very true, Mr. Coleridge," cried he: "you are
right. It is very extraordinary. It was a very happy and hold guess. " Upon
which I remarked, "I think '_guess_' is hardly a fair term. For, has any
thing happened that has happened, from any other causes, or under any other
conditions, than such as I laid down Beforehand? " Lord Darnley, who was
always very courteous to me, took this with a pleasant nod of his head.
* * * * *
Many votes are given for reform in the House of Commons, which are not
honest. Whilst it is well known that the measure will not he carried in
parliament, it is as well to purchase some popularity by voting for it.
When Hunt and his associates, before the Six Acts, created a panic, the
ministers lay on their oars for three or four months, until the general
cry, even from the opposition, was, "Why don't the ministers come forward
with some protective measure? " The present Ministry exists on the weakness
and desperate character of the Opposition. The sober part of the nation are
afraid of the latter getting into power, lest they should redeem some of
their pledges.
* * * * *
_April_ 29. 1823.
CHURCH OF ROME.
The present adherents of the church of Rome are not, in my judgment,
Catholics. We are the Catholics. We can prove that we hold the doctrines of
the primitive church for the first three hundred years. The council of
Trent made the Papists what they are. [1] A foreign Romish bishop has
declared, that the Protestants of his acquaintance were more like what he
conceived the enlightened Catholics to have been before the council of
Trent, than the best of the latter in his days. Perhaps you will say, this
bishop was not a _good Catholic_. [2] I cannot answer for that. The course
of Christianity and the Christian church may not unaptly be likened to a
mighty river, which filled a wide channel, and bore along with its waters
mud, and gravel, and weeds, till it met a great rock in the middle of its
stream. By some means or other, the water flows purely, and separated from
the filth, in a deeper and narrower course on one side of the rock, and the
refuse of the dirt and troubled water goes off on the other in a broader
current, and then cries out, "_We_ are the river! "
[Footnote 1: See Aids to Reflection, p. 180. note. ]
[Footnote 2: Mr. Coleridge named him, but the name was strange to me, and I
have been unable to recover it--ED. ]
* * * * *
A person said to me lately, "But you will, for civility's sake, _call_ them
_Catholics_, will you not? " I answered, that I would not; for I would not
tell a lie upon any, much less upon so solemn an occasion. "The adherents
of the church of Rome, I repeat, are not _Catholic_ Christians. If they
are, then it follows that we Protestants are heretics and schismatics, as,
indeed, the Papists very logically, from their own premisses, call us. And
'_Roman_ Catholics' makes no difference. Catholicism is not capable of
degrees or local apportionments. There can be but one body of Catholics,
_ex vi termini_. To talk strictly of _Irish_ or _Scotch Roman_ Catholics is
a mere absurdity. "
* * * * *
It is common to hear it said, that, if the legal disabilities are removed,
the Romish church will lose ground in this country. I think the reverse:
the Romish religion is, or, in certain hands, is capable of being made, so
flattering to the passions and self-delusion of men, that it is impossible
to say how far it would spread, amongst the higher orders of society
especially, if the secular disadvantages now attending its profession were
removed. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Here, at least, the prophecy has been fulfilled. The wisdom of our
ancestors, in the reign of King William III. , would have been jealous of
the daily increase in the numbers of the Romish church in England, of which
every attentive observer must be aware. See _Sancti Dominici Pallium_, in
vol. ii. p. 80. of Mr. Coleridge's Poems. -Ed. ]
April 30. 1823.
ZENDAVESTA. --PANTHEISM AND IDOLATRY.
The Zendavesta must, I think, have been copied in parts from the writings
of Moses. In the description of the creation, the first chapter of Genesis
is taken almost literally, except that the sun is created _before_ the
light, and then the herbs and the plants after the sun; which are precisely
the two points they did not understand, and therefore altered as errors. [1]
There are only two acts of creation, properly so called, in the Mosaic
account,--the material universe and man. The intermediate acts seem more as
the results of secondary causes, or, at any rate, of a modification of
prepared materials.
[Footnote 1:
The Zend, or Zendavesta, is the sacred book ascribed to Zoroaster, or
Zerdusht, the founder or reformer of the Magian religion. The modern
edition or paraphrase of this work, called the Sadda, written in the
Persian of the day, was, I believe, composed about three hundred years ago
--Ed. ]
* * * * *
Pantheism and idolatry naturally end in each other; for all extremes meet.
The Judaic religion is the exact medium, the true compromise.
_May_ 1. 1823.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STORIES OF DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
--PHANTOM PORTRAIT. --WITCH
OF ENDOR. --SOCINIANISM.
There is a great difference in the credibility to be attached to stories of
dreams and stories of ghosts. Dreams have nothing in them which are absurd
and nonsensical; and, though most of the coincidences may be readily
explained by the diseased system of the dreamer, and the great and
surprising power of association, yet it is impossible to say whether an
inner sense does not really exist in the mind, seldom developed, indeed,
but which may have a power of presentiment. [1]
All the external senses have their correspondents in the mind; the eye can
see an object before it is distinctly apprehended;--why may there not be a
corresponding power in the soul? The power of prophecy might have been
merely a spiritual excitation of this dormant faculty. Hence you will
observe that the Hebrew seers sometimes seem to have required music, as in
the instance of Elisha before Jehoram:--"But now bring me a minstrel. And
it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came
upon him. " [2] Every thing in nature has a tendency to move in cycles; and
it would be a miracle if, out of such myriads of cycles moving
concurrently, some coincidences did not take place. No doubt, many such
take place in the daytime; but then our senses drive out the remembrance of
them, and render the impression hardly felt; but when we sleep, the mind
acts without interruption. Terror and the heated imagination will, even in
the daytime, create all sorts of features, shapes, and colours out of a
simple object possessing none of them in reality.
But ghost stories are absurd. Whenever a real ghost appears,--by which I
mean some man or woman dressed up to frighten another,--if the supernatural
character of the apparition has been for a moment believed, the effects on
the spectator have always been most terrible,--convulsion, idiocy, madness,
or even death on the spot. Consider the awful descriptions in the Old
Testament of the effects of a spiritual presence on the prophets and seers
of the Hebrews; the terror, the exceeding great dread, the utter loss of
all animal power. But in our common ghost stories, you always find that the
seer, after a most appalling apparition, as you are to believe, is quite
well the next day. Perhaps, he may have a headach; but that is the outside
of the effect produced. Alston, a man of genius, and the best painter yet
produced by America, when he was in England told me an anecdote which
confirms what I have been saying. It was, I think, in the university of
Cambridge, near Boston, that a certain youth took it into his wise head to
endeavour to convert a Tom-Painish companion of his by appearing as a ghost
before him. He accordingly dressed himself up in the usual way, having
previously extracted the ball from the pistol which always lay near the
head of his friend's bed. Upon first awaking, and seeing the apparition,
the youth who was to be frightened, A. , very coolly looked his companion
the ghost in the face, and said, "I know you. This is a good joke; but you
see I am not frightened. Now you may vanish! " The ghost stood still.
"Come," said A. , "that is enough. I shall get angry. Away! " Still the ghost
moved not. "By ----," ejaculated A. , "if you do not in three minutes go
away, I'll shoot you. " He waited the time, deliberately levelled the
pistol, fired, and, with a scream at the immobility of the figure, became
convulsed, and afterwards died. The very instant he believed it _to be_ a
ghost, his human nature fell before it.
[Footnote 1:
See this point suggested and reasoned with extraordinary subtlety in the
third essay (marked C), in the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual, Or first
Lay Sermon, p. 19, &c. One beautiful paragraph I will venture to quote:--
"Not only may we expect that men of strong religious feelings, but little
religious knowledge, will occasionally be tempted to regard such
occurrences as supernatural visitations; but it ought not to surprise us if
such dreams should sometimes be confirmed by the event, as though they had
actually possessed a character of divination. For who shall decide how far
a perfect reminiscence of past experiences (of many, perhaps, that had
escaped our reflex consciousness at the time)--who shall determine to what
extent this reproductive imagination, unsophisticated by the will, and
undistracted by intrusions from the senses, may or may not be concentred
and sublimed into foresight and presentiment? There would be nothing herein
either to foster superstition on the one hand, or to justify contemptuous
disbelief on the other. Incredulity is but Credulity seen from behind,
bowing and nodding assent to the Habitual and the Fashionable"-ED. ]
[Footnote 2: 2 Kings, iii. 15. , and see 1 Sam. x. 5. --ED. ]
* * * * *
[What follows in the text within commas was written about this time, and
communicated to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge. --ED. ]
"Last Thursday my uncle, S. T. C. , dined with us, and several men came to
meet him. I have heard him more brilliant, but he was very fine, and
delighted every one very much. It is impossible to carry off, or commit to
paper, his long trains of argument; indeed, it is not always possible to
understand them, he lays the foundation so deep, and views every question
in so original a manner. Nothing can be finer than the principles which he
lays down in morals and religion. His deep study of Scripture is very
astonishing; the rest of the party were but as children in his hands, not
merely in general views of theology, but in nice verbal criticism. He
thinks it clear that St. Paul did not write the Epistle to the Hebrews, but
that it must have been the work of some Alexandrian Greek, and he thinks
Apollos.
It seemed to him a desirable thing for Christianity that it should
have been written by some other person than St. Paul; because, its
inspiration being unquestioned, it added another independent teacher and
expounder of the faith.
"We fell upon ghosts, and he exposed many of the stories physically and
metaphysically. He seemed to think it impossible that you should really see
with the bodily eye what was impalpable, unless it were a shadow; and if
what you fancied you saw with the bodily eye was in fact only an impression
on the imagination, then you were seeing something _out of your senses_,
and your testimony was full of uncertainty. He observed how uniformly, in
all the best-attested stories of spectres, the appearance might be
accounted for from the disturbed state of the mind or body of the seer, as
in the instances of Dion and Brutus. Upon some one's saying that he
_wished_ to believe these stories true, thinking that they constituted a
useful subsidiary testimony of another state of existence, Mr. C. differed,
and said, he thought it a dangerous testimony, and one not wanted: it was
Saul, with the Scriptures and the Prophet before him, calling upon the
witch of Endor to certify him of the truth! He explained very ingeniously,
yet very naturally, what has often startled people in ghost stories--such
as Lord Lyttelton's--namely, that when a real person has appeared, habited
like the phantom, the ghost-seer has immediately seen two, the real man and
the phantom. He said that such must be the case. The man under the morbid
delusion sees with the eye of the imagination, and sees with the bodily eye
too; if no one were really present, he would see the spectre with one, and
the bed-curtains with the other. When, therefore, a real person comes, he
sees the real man as he would have seen any one else in the same place, and
he sees the spectre not a whit the less: being perceptible by different
powers of vision, so to say, the appearances do not interfere with each
other.
"He told us the following story of the Phantom Portrait [1]:--
"A stranger came recommended to a merchant's house at Lubeck. He was
hospitably received; but, the house being full, he was lodged at night in
an apartment handsomely furnished, but not often used. There was nothing
that struck him particularly in the room when left alone, till he happened
to cast his eyes on a picture, which immediately arrested his attention. It
was a single head; but there was something so uncommon, so frightful and
unearthly, in its expression, though by no means ugly, that he found
himself irresistibly attracted to look at it. In fact, he could not tear
himself from the fascination of this portrait, till his imagination was
filled by it, and his rest broken. He retired to bed, dreamed, and awoke
from time to time with the head glaring on him. In the morning, his host
saw by his looks that he had slept ill, and inquired the cause, which was
told. The master of the house was much vexed, and said that the picture
ought to have been removed, that it was an oversight, and that it always
was removed when the chamber was used. The picture, he said, was, indeed,
terrible to every one; but it was so fine, and had come into the family in
so curious a way, that he could not make up his mind to part with it, or to
destroy it. The story of it was this:--'My father,' said he, 'was at
Hamburgh on business, and, whilst dining at a coffee-house, he observed a
young man of a remarkable appearance enter, seat himself alone in a corner,
and commence a solitary meal. His countenance bespoke the extreme of mental
distress, and every now and then he turned his head quickly round, as if he
heard something, then shudder, grow pale, and go on with his meal after an
effort as before. My father saw this same man at the same place for two or
three successive days; and at length became so much interested about him,
that he spoke to him. The address was not repulsed, and the stranger seemed
to find some comfort in the tone of sympathy and kindness which my father
used. He was an Italian, well informed, poor but not destitute, and living
economically upon the profits of his art as a painter. Their intimacy
increased; and at length the Italian, seeing my father's involuntary
emotion at his convulsive turnings and shuddering, which continued as
formerly, interrupting their conversation from time to time, told him his
story. He was a native of Rome, and had lived in some familiarity with, and
been much patronized by, a young nobleman; but upon some slight occasion
they had fallen out, and his patron, besides using many reproachful
expressions, had struck him. The painter brooded over the disgrace of the
blow. He could not challenge the nobleman, on account of his rank; he
therefore watched for an opportunity, and assassinated him. Of course he
fled from his country, and finally had reached Hamburgh. He had not,
however, passed many weeks from the night of the murder, before, one day,
in the crowded street, he heard his name called by a voice familiar to him:
he turned short round, and saw the face of his victim looking at him with a
fixed eye. From that moment he had no peace: at all hours, in all places,
and amidst all companies, however engaged he might be, he heard the voice,
and could never help looking round; and, whenever he so looked round, he
always encountered the same face staring close upon him. At last, in a mood
of desperation, he had fixed himself face to face, and eye to eye, and
deliberately drawn the phantom visage as it glared upon him; and _this_ was
the picture so drawn. The Italian said he had struggled long, but life was
a burden which he could now no longer bear; and he was resolved, when he
had made money enough to return to Rome, to surrender himself to justice,
and expiate his crime on the scaffold. He gave the finished picture to my
father, in return for the kindness which he had shown to him. '"
[Footnote 1:
This is the story which Mr. Washington Irving has dressed up very prettily
in the first volume of his "Tales of a Traveller," pp. 84-119. ; professing
in his preface that he could not remember whence he had derived the
anecdote. --ED. ]
* * * * *
I have no doubt that the Jews believed generally in a future state,
independently of the Mosaic law. The story of the witch of Endor is a proof
of it. What we translate "_witch_," or "familiar spirit," is, in the
Hebrew, Ob, that is, a bottle or bladder, and means a person whose belly is
swelled like a leathern bottle by divine inflation. In the Greek it is
[Greek: engastrimuthos], a ventriloquist. The text (1 Sam. ch. xxviii. ) is
a simple record of the facts, the solution of which the sacred historian
leaves to the reader. I take it to have been a trick of ventriloquism, got
up by the courtiers and friends of Saul, to prevent him, if possible, from
hazarding an engagement with an army despondent and oppressed with bodings
of defeat. Saul is not said to have seen Samuel; the woman only pretends to
see him. And then what does this Samuel do? He merely repeats the prophecy
known to all Israel, which the true Samuel had uttered some years before.
Read Captain Lyon's account of the scene in the cabin with the Esquimaux
bladder, or conjurer; it is impossible not to be reminded of the witch of
Endor. I recommend you also to look at Webster's admirable treatise on
Witchcraft.
* * * * *
The pet texts of a Socinian are quite enough for his confutation with acute
thinkers. If Christ had been a mere man, it would have been ridiculous in
_him_ to call himself "the Son of man;" but being God and man, it then
became, in his own assumption of it, a peculiar and mysterious title. So,
if Christ had been a mere man, his saying, "My Father is greater than I,"
(John, xv. 28. ) would have been as unmeaning. It would be laughable enough,
for example, to hear me say, "My 'Remorse' succeeded, indeed, but
Shakspeare is a greater dramatist than I. " But how immeasurably more
foolish, more monstrous, would it not be for a _man_, however honest, good,
or wise, to say, "But Jehovah is greater than I! "
_May_ 8. 1824.
PLATO AND XENOPHON. --RELIGIONS OF THE GREEKS. --EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES. --
MILTON. --VIRGIL.
Plato's works are logical exercises for the mind. Little that is positive
is advanced in them. Socrates may be fairly represented by Plato in the
more moral parts; but in all the metaphysical disquisitions it is
Pythagoras. Xenophon's representation of his master is quite different. [1]
[Footnote 1: See p. 9. n. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Observe the remarkable contrast between the religion of the tragic and
other poets of Greece. The former are always opposed in heart to the
popular divinities. In fact, there are the popular, the sacerdotal, and the
mysterious religions of Greece, represented roughly by Homer, Pindar, and
AEschylus. The ancients had no notion of a _fall_ of man, though they had of
his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in the old mythus, and for the most
part in AEschylus, is the Redeemer and the Devil jumbled together.
* * * * *
I cannot say I expect much from mere Egyptian antiquities. Almost every
thing really, that is, intellectually, great in that country seems to me of
Grecian origin.
* * * * *
I think nothing can be added to Milton's definition or rule of poetry,--
that it ought to be simple, sensuous, and impassioned; that is to say,
single in conception, abounding in sensible images, and informing them all
with the spirit of the mind.
Milton's Latin style is, I think, better and easier than his English. His
style, in prose, is quite as characteristic of him as a philosophic
republican, as Cowley's is of _him_ as a first-rate gentleman.
If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave him?
* * * * *
_June_ 2. 1824.
CRANVILLE PENN AND THE DELUGE. --RAINBOW.
I confess I have small patience with Mr. Granville Penn's book against
Professor Buckland. Science will be superseded, if every phenomenon is to
be referred in this manner to an actual miracle. I think it absurd to
attribute so much to the Deluge. An inundation, which left an olive-tree
standing, and bore up the ark peacefully on its bosom, could scarcely have
been the sole cause of the rents and dislocations observable on the face of
the earth. How could the tropical animals, which have been discovered in
England and in Russia in a perfectly natural state, have been transported
thither by such a flood? Those animals must evidently have been natives of
the countries in which they have been found. The climates must have been
altered. Assume a sudden evaporation upon the retiring of the Deluge to
have caused an intense cold, the solar heat might not be sufficient
afterwards to overcome it. I do not think that the polar cold is adequately
explained by mere comparative distance from the sun.
* * * * *
You will observe, that there is no mention of rain previously to the
Deluge. Hence it may be inferred, that the rainbow was exhibited for the
first time after God's covenant with Noah. However, I only suggest this.
* * * * *
The Earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the Past; the Air and
Heaven, of Futurity.
_June_ 5. 1824.
ENGLISH AND GREEK DANCING. --GREEK ACOUSTICS.
The fondness for dancing in English women is the reaction of their reserved
manners. It is the only way in which they can throw themselves forth in
natural liberty. We have no adequate conception of the perfection of the
ancient tragic dance. The pleasure which the Greeks received from it had
for its basis Difference and the more unfit the vehicle, the more lively
was the curiosity and intense the delight at seeing the difficulty
overcome.
* * * * *
The ancients certainly seem to have understood some principles in acoustics
which we have lost, or, at least, they applied them better. They contrived
to convey the voice distinctly in their huge theatres by means of pipes,
which created no echo or confusion. Our theatres--Drury Lane and Covent
Garden--are fit for nothing: they are too large for acting, and too small
for a bull-fight.
* * * * *
_June_ 7. 1824.
LORD BYRON'S VERSIFICATION, AND DON JUAN.
How lamentably the _art_ of versification is neglected by most of the
poets of the present day! --by Lord Byron, as it strikes me, in particular,
among those of eminence for other qualities. Upon the whole, I think the
part of Don Juan in which Lambro's return to his home, and Lambro himself,
are described, is the best, that is, the most individual, thing in all I
know of Lord B. 's works. The festal abandonment puts one in mind of
Nicholas Poussin's pictures. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge particularly noticed, for its classical air, the 32d stanza
of this Canto (the third):--
"A band of children, round a snow-white ram,
There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers,
While, peaceful as if still an unwean'd lamb,
The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers
His sober head, majestically tame,
Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers
His brow, as if in act to butt, and then
Yielding to their small hands, draws back again. "
But Mr. C. said that _then_, and _again_, made no rhyme to his ear. Why
should not the old form _agen_ be lawful in verse? We wilfully abridge
ourselves of the liberty which our great poets achieved and sanctioned for
us in innumerable instances. --ED. ]
_June_ 10. 1824.
PARENTAL CONTROL IN MARRIAGE. --MARRIAGE OF
COUSINS. --DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER.
Up to twenty-one, I hold a father to have power over his children as to
marriage; after that age, authority and influence only. Show me one couple
unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show
you ten that are wretched from other causes.
* * * * *
If the matter were quite open, I should incline to disapprove the
intermarriage of first cousins; but the church has decided otherwise on the
authority of Augustine, and that seems enough upon such a point.
* * * * *
You may depend upon it, that a slight contrast of character is very
material to happiness in marriage.
_February_ 24. 1827.
BLUMENBACH AND KANT'S RACES. --IAPETIC AND SEMITIC. --HEBREW. --SOLOMON.
Blumenbach makes five races; Kant, three. Blumenbach's scale of dignity may
be thus figured:--
1. Caucasian or European.
2. Malay ================= 2. American
3. Negro ========================== 3. Mongolian, Asiatic
There was, I conceive, one great Iapetic original of language, under which
Greek, Latin, and other European dialects, and, perhaps, Sanscrit, range as
species. The Iapetic race, [Greek: Iaones]; separated into two branches;
one, with a tendency to migrate south-west,--Greeks, Italians, &c. ; and the
other north-west,--Goths, Germans, Swedes, &c. The Hebrew is Semitic.
* * * * *
Hebrew, in point of force and purity, seems at its height in Isaiah. It is
most corrupt in Daniel, and not much less so in Ecclesiastes; which I
cannot believe to have been actually composed by Solomon, but rather
suppose to have been so attributed by the Jews, in their passion for
ascribing all works of that sort to their _grand monurque_.
_March_ 10. 1827.
JEWISH HISTORY. --SPINOZISTIC AND HEBREW SCHEMES.
The people of all other nations, but the Jewish, seem to look backwards and
also to exist for the present; but in the Jewish scheme every thing is
prospective and preparatory; nothing, however trifling, is done for itself
alone, but all is typical of something yet to come.
* * * * *
I would rather call the book of Proverbs Solomonian than as actually a work
of Solomon's. So I apprehend many of the Psalms to be Davidical only, not
David's own compositions.
* * * * *
You may state the Pantheism of Spinosa, in contrast with the Hebrew or
Christian scheme, shortly, as thus:--
Spinosism.
W-G = 0; _i. e. _ the World without God is an impossible idea.
G-W = 0; _i. e. _ God without the World is so likewise.
Hebrew or Christian scheme.
W-G = 0; _i. e. _ The same as Spinosa's premiss.
But G-W = G; _i. e. _ God without the World is God the self-subsistent.
* * * * *
_March_ 12. 1827.
ROMAN CATHOLICS. --ENERGY OF MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS. --SHAKSPEARE _IN
MINIMIS_. --PAUL SARPI. --BARTRAM'S TRAVELS.
I have no doubt that the real object closest to the hearts of the leading
Irish Romanists is the destruction of the Irish Protestant church, and the
re-establishment of their own. I think more is involved in the manner than
the matter of legislating upon the civil disabilities of the members of the
church of Rome; and, for one, I should he willing to vote for a removal of
those disabilities, with two or three exceptions, upon a solemn declaration
being made legislatively in parliament, that at no time, nor under any
circumstances, could or should a branch of the Romish hierarchy, as at
present constituted, become an estate of this realm. [1]
[Footnote 1: See Church and State, second part, p. 189. ]
* * * * *
Internal or mental energy and external or corporeal modificability are in
inverse proportions. In man, internal energy is greater than in any other
animal; and you will see that he is less changed by climate than any
animal. For the highest and lowest specimens of man are not one half as
much apart from each other as the different kinds even of dogs, animals of
great internal energy themselves.
* * * * *
For an instance of Shakspeare's power _in minimis_, I generally quote James
Gurney's character in King John. How individual and comical he is with the
four words allowed to his dramatic life! [1] And pray look at Skelton's
Richard Sparrow also!
Paul Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent deserves your study. It is
very interesting.
