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Title: Specimens of the Table Talk of S. T. Coleridge

Author: Coleridge

Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8489]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on July 26, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TABLE TALK OF S. T. COLERIDGE ***




Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Jerry Fairbanks, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




[The Greek transliterations throughout this file are either missing or
very suspect. ]


[Illustration: F. Finden sculp.
_London, John Murray, Albernarle St. 1837_]

[autographed:
Dear Sir,
Your obliged servant.
S. T. Coleridge]

SPECIMENS
OF THE
TABLE TALK
OF
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.


TO
JAMES GILLMAN, ESQUIRE,
OF THE GROVE, HIGHGATE, AND TO
MRS. GILLMAN,
This Volume IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED.




PREFACE.

* * * * *

It is nearly fifteen years since I was, for the first time, enabled to
become a frequent and attentive visitor in Mr. Coleridge's domestic
society. His exhibition of intellectual power in living discourse struck me
at once as unique and transcendant; and upon my return home, on the very
first evening which I spent with him after my boyhood, I committed to
writing, as well as I could, the principal topics of his conversation in
his own words. I had no settled design at that time of continuing the work,
but simply made the note in something like a spirit of vexation that such a
strain of music as I had just heard, should not last forever. What I did
once, I was easily induced by the same feeling to do again; and when, after
many years of affectionate communion between us, the painful existence of
my revered relative on earth was at length finished in peace, my occasional
notes of what he had said in my presence had grown to a mass, of which this
volume contains only such parts as seem fit for present publication. I
know, better than any one can tell me, how inadequately these specimens
represent the peculiar splendour and individuality of Mr. Coleridge's
conversation. How should it be otherwise? Who could always follow to the
turning-point his long arrow-flights of thought? Who could fix those
ejaculations of light, those tones of a prophet, which at times have made
me bend before him as before an inspired man? Such acts of spirit as these
were too subtle to be fettered down on paper; they live--if they can live
any where--in the memories alone of those who witnessed them. Yet I would
fain hope that these pages will prove that all is not lost;--that something
of the wisdom, the learning, and the eloquence of a great man's social
converse has been snatched from forgetfulness, and endowed with a permanent
shape for general use. And although, in the judgment of many persons, I may
incur a serious responsibility by this publication; I am, upon the whole,
willing to abide the result, in confidence that the fame of the loved and
lamented speaker will lose nothing hereby, and that the cause of Truth and
of Goodness will be every way a gainer. This sprig, though slight and
immature, may yet become its place, in the Poet's wreath of honour, among
flowers of graver hue.

If the favour shown to several modern instances of works nominally of the
same description as the present were alone to be considered, it might seem
that the old maxim, that nothing ought to be said of the dead but what is
good, is in a fair way of being dilated into an understanding that every
thing is good that has been said by the dead. The following pages do not, I
trust, stand in need of so much indulgence. Their contents may not, in
every particular passage, be of great intrinsic importance; but they can
hardly be without some, and, I hope, a worthy, interest, as coming from the
lips of one at least of the most extraordinary men of the age; whilst to
the best of my knowledge and intention, no living person's name is
introduced, whether for praise or for blame, except on literary or
political grounds of common notoriety. Upon the justice of the remarks here
published, it would be out of place in me to say any thing; and a
commentary of that kind is the less needed, as, in almost every instance,
the principles upon which the speaker founded his observations are
expressly stated, and may be satisfactorily examined by themselves. But,
for the purpose of general elucidation, it seemed not improper to add a few
notes, and to make some quotations from Mr. Coleridge's own works; and in
doing so, I was in addition actuated by an earnest wish to call the
attention of reflecting minds in general to the views of political, moral,
and religious philosophy contained in those works, which, through an
extensive, but now decreasing, prejudice, have hitherto been deprived of
that acceptance with the public which their great preponderating merits
deserve, and will, as I believe, finally obtain. And I can truly say, that
if, in the course of the perusal of this little work, any one of its
readers shall gain a clearer insight into the deep and pregnant principles,
in the light of which Mr. Coleridge was accustomed to regard God and the
World,--I shall look upon the publication as fortunate, and consider myself
abundantly rewarded for whatever trouble it has cost me.

A cursory inspection will show that this volume lays no claim to be ranked
with those of Boswell in point of dramatic interest. Coleridge differed
not more from Johnson in every characteristic of intellect, than in the
habits and circumstances of his life, during the greatest part of the time
in which I was intimately conversant with him. He was naturally very fond
of society, and continued to be so to the last; but the almost unceasing
ill health with which he was afflicted, after fifty, confined him for many
months in every year to his own room, and, most commonly, to his bed. He
was then rarely seen except by single visiters; and few of them would feel
any disposition upon such occasions to interrupt him, whatever might have
been the length or mood of his discourse. And indeed, although I have been
present in mixed company, where Mr. Coleridge has been questioned and
opposed, and the scene has been amusing for the moment--I own that it was
always much more delightful to me to let the river wander at its own sweet
will, unruffled by aught but a certain breeze of emotion which the stream
itself produced. If the course it took was not the shortest, it was
generally the most beautiful; and what you saw by the way was as worthy of
note as the ultimate object to which you were journeying. It is possible,
indeed, that Coleridge did not, in fact, possess the precise gladiatorial
power of Johnson; yet he understood a sword-play of his own; and I have,
upon several occasions, seen him exhibit brilliant proofs of its
effectiveness upon disputants of considerable pretensions in their
particular lines. But he had a genuine dislike of the practice in himself
or others, and no slight provocation could move him to any such exertion.
He was, indeed, to my observation, more distinguished from other great men
of letters by his moral thirst after the Truth--the ideal truth--in his
own mind, than by his merely intellectual qualifications. To leave the
everyday circle of society, in which the literary and scientific rarely--
the rest never--break through the spell of personality;--where Anecdote
reigns everlastingly paramount and exclusive, and the mildest attempt to
generalize the Babel of facts, and to control temporary and individual
phenomena by the application of eternal and overruling principles, is
unintelligible to many, and disagreeable to more;--to leave this species
of converse--if converse it deserves to be called--and pass an entire day
with Coleridge, was a marvellous change indeed. It was a Sabbath past
expression deep, and tranquil, and serene. You came to a man who had
travelled in many countries and in critical times; who had seen and felt
the world in most of its ranks and in many of its vicissitudes and
weaknesses; one to whom all literature and genial art were absolutely
subject, and to whom, with a reasonable allowance as to technical details,
all science was in a most extraordinary degree familiar. Throughout a
long-drawn summer's day would this man talk to you in low, equable, but
clear and musical, tones, concerning things human and divine; marshalling
all history, harmonizing all experiment, probing the depths of your
consciousness, and revealing visions of glory and of terror to the
imagination; but pouring withal such floods of light upon the mind, that
you might, for a season, like Paul, become blind in the very act of
conversion. And this he would do, without so much as one allusion to
himself, without a word of reflection on others, save when any given act
fell naturally in the way of his discourse,--without one anecdote that was
not proof and illustration of a previous position;--gratifying no passion,
indulging no caprice, but, with a calm mastery over your soul, leading you
onward and onward for ever through a thousand windings, yet with no pause,
to some magnificent point in which, as in a focus, all the party-coloured
rays of his discourse should converge in light. In all this he was, in
truth, your teacher and guide; but in a little while you might forget that
he was other than a fellow student and the companion of your way,--so
playful was his manner, so simple his language, so affectionate the glance
of his pleasant eye!

There were, indeed, some whom Coleridge tired, and some whom he sent
asleep. It would occasionally so happen, when the abstruser mood was strong
upon him, and the visiter was narrow and ungenial. I have seen him at times
when you could not incarnate him,--when he shook aside your petty questions
or doubts, and burst with some impatience through the obstacles of common
conversation. Then, escaped from the flesh, he would soar upwards into an
atmosphere almost too rare to breathe, but which seemed proper to _him_,
and there he would float at ease. Like enough, what Coleridge then said,
his subtlest listener would not understand as a man understands a
newspaper; but upon such a listener there would steal an influence, and an
impression, and a sympathy; there would be a gradual attempering of his
body and spirit, till his total being vibrated with one pulse alone, and
thought became merged in contemplation;--

And so, his senses gradually wrapt
In a half sleep, he'd dream of better worlds,
And dreaming hear thee still, O singing lark,
That sangest like an angel in the clouds!

But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the general character of
Mr. Coleridge's conversation was abstruse or rhapsodical. The contents of
the following pages may, I think, be taken as pretty strong presumptive
evidence that his ordinary manner was plain and direct enough; and even
when, as sometimes happened, he seemed to ramble from the road, and to
lose himself in a wilderness of digressions, the truth was, that at that
very time he was working out his fore-known conclusion through an almost
miraculous logic, the difficulty of which consisted precisely in the very
fact of its minuteness and universality. He took so large a scope, that,
if he was interrupted before he got to the end, he appeared to have been
talking without an object; although, perhaps, a few steps more would have
brought you to a point, a retrospect from which would show you the
pertinence of all he had been saying. I have heard persons complain that
they could get no answer to a question from Coleridge. The truth is, he
answered, or meant to answer, so fully that the querist should have no
second question to ask. In nine cases out of ten he saw the question was
short or misdirected; and knew that a mere _yes_ or _no_ answer could not
embrace the truth--that is, the whole truth--and might, very probably, by
implication, convey error. Hence that exhaustive, cyclical mode of
discoursing in which he frequently indulged; unfit, indeed, for a dinner-
table, and too long-breathed for the patience of a chance visiter,--but
which, to those who knew for what they came, was the object of their
profoundest admiration, as it was the source of their most valuable
instruction. Mr. Coleridge's affectionate disciples learned their lessons
of philosophy and criticism from his own mouth. He was to them as an old
master of the Academy or Lyceum. The more time he took, the better pleased
were such visiters; for they came expressly to listen, and had ample proof
how truly he had declared, that whatever difficulties he might feel, with
pen in hand, in the expression of his meaning, he never found the smallest
hitch or impediment in the utterance of his most subtle reasonings by word
of mouth. How many a time and oft have I felt his abtrusest thoughts steal
rhythmically on my soul, when chanted forth by him! Nay, how often have I
fancied I heard rise up in answer to his gentle touch, an interpreting
music of my own, as from the passive strings of some wind-smitten lyre!

Mr. Coleridge's conversation at all times required attention, because what
he said was so individual and unexpected. But when he was dealing deeply
with a question, the demand upon the intellect of the hearer was very
great; not so much for any hardness of language, for his diction was always
simple and easy; nor for the abstruseness of the thoughts, for they
generally explained, or appeared to explain, themselves; but preeminently
on account of the seeming remoteness of his associations, and the exceeding
subtlety of his transitional links. Upon this point it is very happily,
though, according to my observation, too generally, remarked, by one whose
powers and opportunities of judging were so eminent that the obliquity of
his testimony in other respects is the more unpardonable;--"Coleridge, to
many people--and often I have heard the complaint--seemed to wander; and he
seemed then to wander the most, when, in fact, his resistance to the
wandering instinct was greatest,--viz. when the compass and huge circuit,
by which his illustrations moved, travelled farthest into remote regions,
before they began to revolve. Long before this coming round commenced, most
people had lost him, and naturally enough supposed that he had lost
himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty of the thoughts, but
did not see their relations to the dominant theme. * * * * However, I can
assert, upon my long and intimate knowledge of Coleridge's mind, that logic
the most severe was as inalienable from his modes of thinking, as grammar
from his language. " [Footnote: Tait's Mag. Sept. 1834, p. 514. ] True: his
mind was a logic-vice; let him fasten it on the tiniest flourish of an
error, he never slacked his hold, till he had crushed body and tail to
dust. He was _always_ ratiocinating in his own mind, and therefore
sometimes seemed incoherent to the partial observer. It happened to him as
to Pindar, who in modern days has been called a rambling rhapsodist,
because the connections of his parts, though never arbitrary, are so fine
that the vulgar reader sees them not at all. But they are there
nevertheless, and may all be so distinctly shown, that no one can doubt
their existence; and a little study will also prove that the points of
contact are those which the true genius of lyric verse naturally evolved,
and that the entire Pindaric ode, instead of being the loose and lawless
out-burst which so many have fancied, is, without any exception, the most
artificial and highly wrought composition which Time has spared to us from
the wreck of the Greek Muse. So I can well remember occasions, in which,
after listening to Mr. Coleridge for several delightful hours, I have gone
away with divers splendid masses of reasoning in my head, the separate
beauty and coherency of which I deeply felt, but how they had produced, or
how they bore upon, each other, I could not then perceive. In such cases I
have mused sometimes even for days afterwards upon the words, till at
length, spontaneously as it seemed, "the fire would kindle," and the
association, which had escaped my utmost efforts of comprehension before,
flash itself all at once upon my mind with the clearness of noon-day light.

It may well be imagined that a style of conversation so continuous and
diffused as that which I have just attempted to describe, presented
remarkable difficulties to a mere reporter by memory. It is easy to
preserve the pithy remark, the brilliant retort, or the pointed anecdote;
these stick of themselves, and their retention requires no effort of mind.
But where the salient angles are comparatively few, and the object of
attention is a long-drawn subtle discoursing, you can never recollect,
except by yourself thinking the argument over again. In so doing, the order
and the characteristic expressions will for the most part spontaneously
arise; and it is scarcely credible with what degree of accuracy language
may thus be preserved, where practice has given some dexterity, and long
familiarity with the speaker has enabled, or almost forced, you to catch
the outlines of his manner. Yet with all this, so peculiar were the flow
and breadth of Mr. Coleridge's conversation, that I am very sensible how
much those who can best judge will have to complain of my representation of
it. The following specimens will, I fear, seem too fragmentary, and
therefore deficient in one of the most distinguishing properties of that
which they are designed to represent; and this is true. Yet the reader will
in most instances have little difficulty in understanding the course which
the conversation took, although my recollections of it are thrown into
separate paragraphs for the sake of superior precision. As I never
attempted to give dialogue--indeed, there was seldom much dialogue to give
--the great point with me was to condense what I could remember on each
particular topic into intelligible _wholes_ with as little injury to the
living manner and diction as was possible. With this explanation, I must
leave it to those who still have the tones of "that old man eloquent"
ringing in their ears, to say how far I have succeeded in this delicate
enterprise of stamping his winged words with perpetuity.

In reviewing the contents of the following pages, I can clearly see that I
have admitted some passages which will be pronounced illiberal by those
who, in the present day, emphatically call themselves liberal--_the_
liberal. I allude of course to Mr. Coleridge's remarks on the Reform Bill
and the Malthusian economists. The omission of such passages would probably
have rendered this publication more generally agreeable, and my disposition
does not lead me to give gratuitous offence to any one. But the opinions of
Mr. Coleridge on these subjects, however imperfectly expressed by me, were
deliberately entertained by him; and to have omitted, in so miscellaneous a
collection as this, what he was well known to have said, would have argued
in me a disapprobation or a fear, which I disclaim. A few words, however,
may be pertinently employed here in explaining the true bearing of
Coleridge's mind on the politics of our modern days. He was neither a Whig
nor a Tory, as those designations are usually understood; well enough
knowing that, for the most part, half-truths only are involved in the
Parliamentary tenets of one party or the other. In the common struggles of
a session, therefore, he took little interest; and as to mere personal
sympathies, the friend of Frere and of Poole, the respected guest of
Canning and of Lord Lansdowne, could have nothing to choose. But he threw
the weight of his opinion--and it was considerable--into the Tory or
Conservative scale, for these two reasons:--First, generally, because he
had a deep conviction that the cause of freedom and of truth is now
seriously menaced by a democratical spirit, growing more and more rabid
every day, and giving no doubtful promise of the tyranny to come; and
secondly, in particular, because the national Church was to him the ark of
the covenant of his beloved country, and he saw the Whigs about to coalesce
with those whose avowed principles lead them to lay the hand of spoliation
upon it. Add to these two grounds, some relics of the indignation which the
efforts of the Whigs to thwart the generous exertions of England in the
great Spanish war had formerly roused within him; and all the constituents
of any active feeling in Mr. Coleridge's mind upon matters of state are, I
believe, fairly laid before the reader. The Reform question in itself gave
him little concern, except as he foresaw the present attack on the Church
to be the immediate consequence of the passing of the Bill; "for let the
form of the House of Commons," said he, "be what it may, it will be, for
better or for worse, pretty much what the country at large is; but once
invade that truly national and essentially popular institution, the Church,
and divert its funds to the relief or aid of individual charity or public
taxation--how specious soever that pretext may be--and you will never
thereafter recover the lost means of perpetual cultivation. Give back to
the Church what the nation originally consecrated to its use, and it ought
then to be charged with the education of the people; but half of the
original revenue has been already taken by force from her, or lost to her
through desuetude, legal decision, or public opinion; and are those whose
very houses and parks are part and parcel of what the nation designed for
the general purposes of the Clergy, to be heard, when they argue for making
the Church support, out of her diminished revenues, institutions, the
intended means for maintaining which they themselves hold under the
sanction of legal robbery? " Upon this subject Mr. Coleridge did indeed feel
very warmly, and was accustomed to express himself accordingly. It weighed
upon his mind night and day, and he spoke upon it with an emotion, which I
never saw him betray upon any topic of common politics, however decided his
opinion might be. In this, therefore, he was _felix opportunitate mortis;
non enim vidit_----; and the just and honest of all parties will heartily
admit over his grave, that as his principles and opinions were untainted by
any sordid interest, so he maintained them in the purest spirit of a
reflective patriotism, without spleen, or bitterness, or breach of social
union.

It would require a rare pen to do justice to the constitution of
Coleridge's mind. It was too deep, subtle, and peculiar, to be fathomed by
a morning visiter. Few persons knew much of it in any thing below the
surface; scarcely three or four ever got to understand it in all its
marvellous completeness. Mere personal familiarity with this extraordinary
man did not put you in possession of him; his pursuits and aspirations,
though in their mighty range presenting points of contact and sympathy for
all, transcended in their ultimate reach the extremest limits of most men's
imaginations. For the last thirty years of his life, at least, Coleridge
was really and truly a philosopher of the antique cast. He had his esoteric
views; and all his prose works from the "Friend" to the "Church and State"
were little more than feelers, pioneers, disciplinants for the last and
complete exposition of them. Of the art of making hooks he knew little, and
cared less; but had he been as much an adept in it as a modern novelist, he
never could have succeeded in rendering popular or even tolerable, at
first, his attempt to push Locke and Paley from their common throne in
England. A little more working in the trenches might have brought him
closer to the walls with less personal damage; but it is better for
Christian philosophy as it is, though the assailant was sacrificed in the
bold and artless attack. Mr. Coleridge's prose works had so very limited a
sale, that although published in a technical sense, they could scarcely be
said to have ever become _publici juris_. He did not think them such
himself, with the exception, perhaps, of the "Aids to Reflection," and
generally made a particular remark if he met any person who professed or
showed that he had read the "Friend" or any of his other books. And I have
no doubt that had he lived to complete his great work on "Philosophy
reconciled with Christian Religion," he would without scruple have used in
that work any part or parts of his preliminary treatises, as their
intrinsic fitness required. Hence in every one of his prose writings there
are repetitions, either literal or substantial, of passages to be found in
some others of those writings; and there are several particular positions
and reasonings, which he considered of vital importance, reiterated in the
"Friend," the "Literary Life," the "Lay Sermons," the "Aids to Reflection,"
and the "Church and State. " He was always deepening and widening the
foundation, and cared not how often he used the same stone. In thinking
passionately of the principle, he forgot the authorship--and sowed beside
many waters, if peradventure some chance seedling might take root and bear
fruit to the glory of God and the spiritualization of Man.

His mere reading was immense, and the quality and direction of much of it
well considered, almost unique in this age of the world. He had gone
through most of the Fathers, and, I believe, all the Schoolmen of any
eminence; whilst his familiarity with all the more common departments of
literature in every language is notorious. The early age at which some of
these acquisitions were made, and his ardent self-abandonment in the
strange pursuit, might, according to a common notion, have seemed adverse
to increase and maturity of power in after life: yet it was not so; he
lost, indeed, for ever the chance of being a popular writer; but Lamb's
_inspired charity-boy_ of twelve years of age continued to his dying day,
when sixty-two, the eloquent centre of all companies, and the standard of
intellectual greatness to hundreds of affectionate disciples far and near.
Had Coleridge been master of his genius, and not, alas! mastered by it;--
had he less romantically fought a single-handed fight against the whole
prejudices of his age, nor so mercilessly racked his fine powers on the
problem of a universal Christian philosophy,--he might have easily won all
that a reading public can give to a favourite, and have left a name--not
greater nor more enduring indeed--but--better known, and more prized, than
now it is, amongst the wise, the gentle, and the good, throughout all ranks
of society. Nevertheless, desultory as his labours, fragmentary as his
productions at present may seem to the cursory observer--my undoubting
belief is, that in the end it will be found that Coleridge did, in his
vocation, the day's work of a giant. He has been melted into the very heart
of the rising literatures of England and America; and the principles he has
taught are the master-light of the moral and intellectual being of men,
who, if they shall fail to save, will assuredly illustrate and condemn, the
age in which they live. As it is, they 'bide their time.

Coleridge himself--blessings on his gentle memory! --Coleridge was a frail
mortal. He had indeed his peculiar weaknesses as well as his unique powers;
sensibilities that an averted look would rack, a heart which would have
beaten calmly in the tremblings of an earthquake. He shrank from mere
uneasiness like a child, and bore the preparatory agonies of his death-
attack like a martyr. Sinned against a thousand times more than sinning, he
himself suffered an almost life-long punishment for his errors, whilst the
world at large has the unwithering fruits of his labours, his genius, and
his sacrifice. _Necesse est tanquam immaturam mortem ejus defleam; si tamen
fas est aut flere, aut omnino mortem vocare, qua tanti viri mortalitas
magis finita quam vita est. Vivit enim, vivetque semper, atque etiam latius
in memoria hominum et sermone versabitur, postquam ab oculis recessit. _

* * * * *

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest child of the Reverend John
Coleridge, Vicar of the Parish of Ottery St. Mary, in the county of Devon,
and master of Henry the Eighth's Free Grammar School in that town. His
mother's maiden name was Ann Bowdon. He was born at Ottery on the 21st of
October, 1772, "about eleven o'clock in the forenoon," as his father the
vicar has, with rather a curious particularity, entered it in the register.

He died on the 25th of July, 1834, in Mr. Gillman's house, in the Grove,
Highgate, and is buried in the old church-yard, by the road side.

[Greek: ----]

H. N. C.




CONTENTS

* * * * *

Character of Othello
Schiller's Robbers
Shakspeare
Scotch Novels
Lord Byron
John Kemble
Mathews
Parliamentary Privilege
Permanency and Progression of Nations
Kant's Races of Mankind
Materialism
Ghosts
Character of the Age for Logic
Plato and Xenophon
Greek Drama
Kotzebue
Burke
St. John's Gospel
Christianity
Epistle to the Hebrews
The Logos
Reason and Understanding
Kean
Sir James Mackintosh
Sir H. Davy
Robert Smith
Canning
National Debt
Poor Laws
Conduct of the Whigs
Reform of the House of Commons
Church of Rome
Zendavesta
Pantheism and Idolatry
Difference between Stories of Dreams and Ghosts
Phantom Portrait
Witch of Endor
Socinianism
Plato and Xenophon
Religions of the Greeks
Egyptian Antiquities
Milton
Virgil
Granville Penn and the Deluge
Rainbow
English and Greek Dancing
Greek Acoustics
Lord Byron's Versification and Don Juan
Parental Control in Marriage
Marriage of Cousins
Differences of Character
Blumenbach and Kant's Races
Iapetic and Semitic
Hebrew
Solomon
Jewish History
Spinozistic and Hebrew Schemes
Roman Catholics
Energy of Man and other Animals
Shakspeare _in minimis_
Paul Sarpi
Bartram's Travels
The Understanding
Parts of Speech
Grammar
Magnetism
Electricity
Galvanism
Spenser
Character of Othello
Hamlet
Polonius
Principles and Maxims
Love
Measure for Measure
Ben Jonson
Beaumont and Fletcher
Version of the Bible
Craniology
Spurzheim
Bull and Waterland
The Trinity
Scale of Animal Being
Popedom
Scanderbeg
Thomas a Becket
Pure Ages of Greek, Italian, and English
Luther
Baxter
Algernon Sidney's Style
Ariosto and Tasso
Prose and Poetry
The Fathers
Rhenferd
Jacob Behmen
Non-perception of Colours
Restoration
Reformation
William III.
Berkeley
Spinosa
Genius
Envy
Love
Jeremy Taylor
Hooker
Ideas
Knowledge
Painting
Prophecies of the Old Testament
Messiah
Jews
The Trinity
Conversion of the Jews
Jews in Poland
Mosaic Miracles
Pantheism
Poetic Promise
Nominalists and Realists
British Schoolmen
Spinosa
Fall of Man
Madness
Brown and Darwin
Nitrous Oxide
Plants
Insects
Men
Dog
Ant and Bee
Black, Colonel
Holland and the Dutch
Religion Gentilizes
Women and Men
Biblical Commentators
Walkerite Creed
Horne Tooke
Diversions of Purley
Gender of the Sun in German
Horne Tooke
Jacobins
Persian and Arabic Poetry
Milesian Tales
Sir T. Monro
Sir S. Raffles
Canning
Shakspeare
Milton
Homer
Reason and Understanding
Words and Names of Things
The Trinity
Irving
Abraham
Isaac
Jacob
Origin of Acts
Love
Lord Eldon's Doctrine as to Grammar Schools
Democracy
The Eucharist
St. John, xix. 11.
Divinity of Christ
Genuineness of Books of Moses
Mosaic Prophecies
Talent and Genius
Motives and Impulses
Constitutional and functional Life
Hysteria
Hydro-carbonic Gas
Bitters and Tonics
Specific Medicines
Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians
Oaths
Flogging
Eloquence of Abuse
The Americans
Book of Job
Translation of the Psalms
Ancient Mariner
Undine
Martin
Pilgrim's Progress
Prayer
Church-singing
Hooker
Dreams
Jeremy Taylor
English Reformation
Catholicity
Gnosis
Tertullian
St. John
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Party Spirit
Southey's Life of Bunyan
Laud
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Study of the Bible
Rabelais
Swift
Bentley
Burnet
Giotto
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Canning
Bourrienne
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Leo X.
Thelwall
Swift
Stella
Iniquitous Legislation
Spurzheim and Craniology
French Revolution, 1830
Captain B. Hall and the Americans
English Reformation
Democracy
Idea of a State
Church
Government
French Gendarmerie
Philosophy of young Men at the present Day
Thucydides and Tacitus
Poetry
Modern Metre
Logic
Varro
Socrates
Greek Philosophy
Plotinus
Tertullian
Scotch and English Lakes
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Characterlessness of Women
Mental Anarchy
Ear and Taste for Music different
English Liturgy
Belgian Revolution
Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Bacon
The Reformation
House of Commons
Government
Earl Grey
Government
Popular Representation
Napier
Buonaparte
Southey
Patronage of the Fine Arts
Old Women
Pictures
Chillingworth
Superstition of Maltese, Sicilians, and Italians
Asgill
The French
The Good and the True
Romish Religion
England and Holland
Iron
Galvanism
Heat
National Colonial Character, and Naval Discipline
England
Holland and Belgium
Greatest Happiness Principle
Hobbism
The Two Modes of Political Action
Truths and Maxims
Drayton and Daniel
Mr. Coleridge's System of Philosophy
Keenness and Subtlety
Duties and Needs of an Advocate
Abolition of the French Hereditary Peerage
Conduct of Ministers on the Reform Bill
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Union with Ireland
Irish Church
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State
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Reform Bill
Crisis
John, Chap. III. Ver. 4.
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Unitarianism--Moral Philosophy
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Epidemic Disease
Quarantine
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Vico
Spinosa
Colours
Destruction of Jerusalem
Epic Poem
Vox Populi Vox Dei
Black
Asgill and Defoe
Horne Tooke
Fox and Pitt
Horner
Adiaphori
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De Vi Minimorum
Hahnemann
Luther
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War
Charm for Cramp
Greek
Dual, neuter pleural *sic*, and verb singular
Theta
Talented
Homer
Valcknaer
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Schmidt
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Wordsworth
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Solomon
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C. Lamb
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Sanskrit
Hesiod
Virgil
Genius Metaphysical
Don Quixote
Steinmetz
Keats
Christ's Hospital
Bowyer
St. Paul's Melita
English and German
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Philosopher's Ordinary Language
Juries
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Quacks
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Ninth Article
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Preaching extempore
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Union with Ireland
Faust
Michael Scott, Goethe, Schiller, and Wordsworth
Beaumont and Fletcher
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Massinger
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Penal Code in Ireland
Churchmen
Coronation Oaths
Divinity
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Modern Political Economy
National Debt
Property Tax
Duty of Landholders
Massinger
Shakspeare
Hieronimo
Love's Labour Lost
Gifford's Massinger
Shakspeare
The Old Dramatists
Statesmen
Burke
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The Reformed House of Commons
United States of America
Captain B. Hall
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Democracy with Slavery
Quakers
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Methods of Investigation
Church of Rome
Celibacy of the Clergy
Roman Conquest of Italy
Wedded Love in Shakspeare and his Contemporary Dramatists
Tennyson's Poems
Rabelais and Luther
Wit and Madness
Colonization
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Capital
Roman Conquest
Constantine
Papacy and the Schoolmen
Civil War of the Seventeenth Century
Hampden's Speech
Reformed House of Commons
Food
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Poison
Obstruction
Wilson
Shakspeare's Sonnets
Wickliffe
Love
Luther
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Johnson the Whig
Asgill
James I.
Sir P. Sidney
Things are finding their Level
German
Goethe
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Man's Freedom
Dom Miguel and Dom Pedro
Working to better one's condition
Negro Emancipation
Fox and Pitt
Revolution
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Epistle to the Romans
Erasmus
Luther
Negro Emancipation
Hackett's Life of Archbishop Williams
Charles I.
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Hypothesis
Suffiction
Theory
Lyell's Geology
Gothic Architecture
Gerard's Douw's "Schoolmaster" and Titian's "Venus"
Sir J. Scarlett
Mandeville's Fable of the Bees
Bestial Theory
Character of Bertram
Beaumont and Fletcher's Dramas
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
Milton
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Cavalier Slang
Junius
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Burke
Newton
Milton
Painting
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Gibbon
Key to the Decline of the Roman Empire
Dr. Johnson's Political Pamphlets
Taxation
Direct Representation
Universal Suffrage
Right of Women to vote
Horne Tooke
Etymology of the final _Ive_
"The Lord" in the English Version of the Psalms, etc.
Scotch Kirk and Irving
Milton's Egotism
Claudian
Sterne
Humour and Genius
Great Poets good Men
Diction of the Old and New Testament Version
Hebrew
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Greek Accent and Quantity
Consolation in Distress
Mock Evangelicals
Autumn Day
Rosetti on Dante
Laughter: Farce and Tragedy
Baron Von Humboldt
Modern Diplomatists
Man cannot be stationary
Fatalism and Providence
Characteristic Temperament of Nations
Greek Particles
Latin Compounds
Propertius
Tibullus
Lucan
Statius
Valerius Flaccus
Claudian
Persius
Prudentius
Hermesianax
Destruction of Jerusalem
Epic Poem
German and English
Paradise Lost
Modern Travels
The Trinity
Incarnation
Redemption
Education
Elegy
Lavacrum Pallados
Greek and Latin Pentameter
Milton's Latin Poems
Poetical Filter
Gray and Cotton
Homeric Heroes in Shakspeare
Dryden
Dr. Johnson
Scott's Novels
Scope of Christianity
Times of Charles I.
Messenger of the Covenant
Prophecy
Logic of Ideas and of Syllogisms
W. S. Lander's Poetry
Beauty
Chronological Arrangement of Works
Toleration
Norwegians
Articles of Faith
Modern Quakerism
Devotional Spirit
Sectarianism
Origen
Some Men like Musical Glasses
Sublime and Nonsense
Atheist
Proof of Existence of God
Kant's attempt
Plurality of Worlds
A Reasoner
Shakspeare's Intellectual Action
Crabbe and Southey
Peter Simple and Tom Cringle's Log
Chaucer
Shakspeare
Ben Jonson
Beaumont and Fletcher
Daniel
Massinger
Lord Byron and H. Walpole's "Mysterious Mother"
Lewis's Jamaica Journal
Sicily
Malta
Sir Alexander Ball
Cambridge Petition to admit Dissenters
Corn Laws
Christian Sabbath
High Prizes and Revenues of the Church
Sir Charles Wetherell's Speech
National Church
Dissenters
Papacy
Universities
Schiller's Versification
German Blank Verse
Roman Catholic Emancipation
Duke of Wellington
Coronation Oath
Corn Laws
Modern Political Economy
Socinianism
Unitarianism
Fancy and Imagination
Mr. Coleridge's System
Biographia Literaria
Dissenters
Lord Brooke
Barrow and Dryden
Peter Wilkins and Stothard
Fielding and Richardson
Bishop Sandford
Roman Catholic Religion
Euthanasia
Recollections, by Mr. Justice Coleridge
Address to a God-child




TABLE TALK


December 29, 1822

CHARACTER OF OTHELLO--SCHILLER'S ROBBERS-SHAKSPEARE
--SCOTCH NOVELS--LORD BYRON--JOHN KEMMBLE--MATHEWS

Othello must not be conceived as a negro, but a high and chivalrous Moorish
chief. Shakspeare learned the sprit of the character from the Spanish
poetry, which was prevalent in England in his time. [1]

Jelousy does not strike me as the point in his passion; I take it to be
rather an agony that the creature, whom he had believed angelic, with whom
he had garnered up his heart, and whom he could not help still loving,
should be proved impure and worthless.
It was the struggle _not_ to
love her. It was a moral indignation and regret that virture should so
fall:--"But yet the _pity_ of it, Iago! --O Iago! the _pity_ of it,
Iago! " In addition to this, his hourour was concerned: Iago would not have
succeeded but by hinting that this honour was compromised. There is no
ferocity in Othello; his mind is majestic and composed. He deliberately
determines to die; and speaks his last speech with a view of showing his
attachment to the Venetian state, though it had superseded him.

[Footnote 1:
Caballaeros Granadinos,
Aunque Moros, hijos d'algo--ED. ]

* * * * *

Schiller has the material Sublime; to produce an effect he sets you a
whole town on fire, and throws infants with their mothers into the flames,
or locks up a father in an old tower. [1] But Shakspeare drops a
handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow.

[Footnote 1:
This expression--"material sublime"--like a hundred others
which have slipped into general use, came originally from Mr. Coleridege,
and was by him, in the first instatnce, applied to Schiller's Robbers--
See Act iv, sc. 5. --ED. ]


Lear is the most tremendous effort of Shakspeare as a poet; Hamlet as a
philosopher or meditater; and Othello is the union of the two. There is
something gigantic and unformed in the former two; but in the latter, every
thing assumes its due place and proportion, and the whole mature powers of
his mind are displayed in admirable equilibrium.

I think Old Mortality and Guy Mannering the best of the Scotch novels.

It seems, to my ear, that there is a sad want of harmony in Lord Byron's
verses. Is it not unnatural to be always connecting very great intellectual
power with utter depravity? Does such a combination often really exist in
rerum naturae?

I always had a great liking--I may say, a sort of nondescript reverence--
for John Kemble. What a quaint creature he was! I remember a party, in
which he was discoursing in his measured manner after dinner, when the
servant announced his carriage. He nodded, and went on. The announcement
took place twice afterwards; Kemble each time nodding his head a little
more impatiently, but still going on. At last, and for the fourth time, the
servant entered, and said,--"Mrs. Kemble says, sir, she has the
rheumat_ise_, and cannot stay. " "Add_ism! _" dropped John, in a
parenthesis, and proceeded quietly in his harangue.

* * * * *

Kemble would correct any body, at any time, and in any place. Dear Charles
Mathews--a true genius in his line, in my judgment--told me he was once
performing privately before the King. The King was much pleased with the
imitation of Kemble, and said,--"I liked Kemble very much. He was one of my
earliest friends. I remember once he was talking, and found himself out of
snuff. I offered him my box. He declined taking any--'he, a poor actor,
could not put his fingers into a royal box. ' I said, 'Take some, pray; you
will obl_ee_ge me. ' Upon which Kemble replied,--'It would become your royal
mouth better to say, obl_i_ge me;' and took a pinch. "

* * * * *

It is not easy to put me out of countenance, or interrupt the feeling of
the time by mere external noise or circumstance; yet once I was thoroughly
_done up_, as you would say. I was reciting, at a particular house, the
"Remorse;" and was in the midst of Alhadra's description of the death of
her husband, [1] when a scrubby boy, with a shining face set in dirt, burst
open the door and cried out,--"Please, ma'am, master says, Will you ha'; or
will you _not_ ha', the pin-round? "

[Footnote 1:

"ALHADRA. This night your chieftain arm'd himself,
And hurried from me. But I follow'd him
At distance, till I saw him enter _there_!

NAOMI. The cavern?

ALHADRA. Yes, the mouth of yonder cavern.
After a while I saw the son of Valdez
Rush by with flaring torch: he likewise enter'd.
There was another and a longer pause;
And once, methought, I heard the clash of swords!
And soon the son of Valdez re-appear'd:
He flung his torch towards the moon in sport,
And seem'd as he were mirthful! I stood listening,
Impatient for the footsteps of my husband.

NAOMI. Thou calledst him?

ALHADRA. I crept into the cavern--
'Twas dark and very silent. What saidst thou?
No! No! I did not dare call Isidore,
Lest I should hear no answer! A brief while,
Belike, I lost all thought and memory
Of that for which I came! After that pause,
O Heaven! I heard a groan, and follow'd it;
And yet another groan, which guided me
Into a strange recess--and there was light,
A hideous light! his torch lay on the ground;
Its flame burnt dimly o'er a chasm's brink:
I spake; and whilst I spake, a feeble groan
Came from that chasm! it was his last--his death-groan!

NAOMI. Comfort her, Allah!

ALHADRA. I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony that cannot be remember'd,
Listening with horrid hope to hear a groan!
But I had heard his last;--my husband's death-groan!

NAOMI. Haste! let us onward!

ALHADRA. I look'd far down the pit--
My sight was bounded by a jutting fragment;
And it was stain'd with blood. Then first I shriek'd;
My eyeballs burnt, my brain grew hot as fire,
And all the hanging drops of the wet roof
Turn'd into blood--I saw them turn to blood!
And I was leaping wildly down the chasm,
When on the further brink I saw his sword,
And it said, Vengeance! --Curses on my tongue!
The moon hath moved in heaven, and I am here,
And he hath not had vengeance! --Isidore!
Spirit of Isidore, thy murderer lives!
Away, away! "--Act iv. sc. 3. ]



_January_ 1. 1823.

PARLIAMENTARY PRIVILEGE. ---PERMANENCY AND PROGRESSION OF NATIONS. --KANT'S
RACES OF MANKIND.

Privilege is a substitution for Law, where, from the nature of the
circumstances, a law cannot act without clashing with greater and more
general principles. The House of Commons must, of course, have the power of
taking cognizance of offences against its own rights. Sir Francis Burdett
might have been properly sent to the Tower for the speech he made in the
House [1]; but when afterwards he published it in Cobbett, and they took
cognizance of it as a breach of privilege, they violated the plain
distinction between privilege and law.

As a speech in the House, the House could alone animadvert upon it,
consistently with the effective preservation of its most necessary
prerogative of freedom of debate; but when that speech became a book, then
the law was to look to it; and there being a law of libel, commensurate
with every possible object of attack in the state, privilege, which acts,
or ought to act, only as a substitute for other laws, could have nothing to
do with it. I have heard that one distinguished individual said,--"That he,
for one, would not shrink from affirming, that if the House of Commons
chose to _burn_ one of their own members in Palace Yard, it had an inherent
power and right by the constitution to do so. " This was said, if at all, by
a moderate-minded man; and may show to what atrocious tyranny some persons
may advance in theory, under shadow of this word privilege.

[Footnote 1:
March 12. 1810. Sir Francis Burdett made a motion in the House of
Commons for the discharge of Mr. Gale Jones, who had been committed to
Newgate by a resolution of the House on the 21st of February preceding.
Sir Francis afterwards published, in Cobbett's Political Register, of the
24th of the same month of March, a "Letter to his Constituents, denying
the power of the House of Commons to imprison the people of England,"
and he accompanied the letter with an argument in support of his position.
On the 27th of March a complaint of breach of privilege, founded on this
publication, was made in the House by Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Lethbridge,
and after several long debates, a motion that Sir Francis Burdett should
be committed to the Tower was made on the 5th of April, 1810, by Sir
Robert Salisbury, and carried by a majority of 38. --ED. ]

* * * * *

There are two principles in every European and Christian state:
Permanency and Progression. [1]

In the civil wars of the seventeenth century in England, which are as new
and fresh now as they were a hundred and sixty years ago, and will be so
for ever to us, these two principles came to a struggle. It was natural
that the great and the good of the nation should he found in the ranks of
either side. In the Mohammedan states, there is no principle of permanence;
and, therefore, they sink directly. They existed, and could only exist, in
their efforts at progression; when they ceased to conquer, they fell in
pieces. Turkey would long since have fallen, had it not been supported by
the rival and conflicting interests of Christian Europe. The Turks have no
church; religion and state are one; hence there is no counterpoise, no
mutual support. This is the very essence of their Unitarianism. They have
no past; they are not an historical people; they exist only in the present.
China is an instance of a permanency without progression. The Persians are
a superior race: they have a history and a literature; they were always
considered by the Greeks as quite distinct from the other barbarians. The
Afghans are a remarkable people. They have a sort of republic. Europeans
and Orientalists may be well represented by two figures standing back to
back: the latter looking to the east, that is, backwards; the former
looking westward, or forwards.

[Footnote 1:
See this position stated and illustrated in detail in Mr. Coleridge's work,
"On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the Idea of
each," p. 21. 2d edit. 1830. Well acquainted as I am with the fact f the
comparatively small acceptation which Mr. Coleridge's prose works have ever
found in the literary world, and with the reasons, and, what is more, with
the causes, of it, I still wonder that this particular treatise has not
been more noticed: first, because it is a little book; secondly, because it
is, or at least nineteen-twentieths of it are, written in a popular style;
and thirdly, because it is the only work, that I know or have ever heard
mentioned, that even attempts a solution of the difficulty in which an
ingenious enemy of the church of England may easily involve most of its
modern defenders in Parliament, or through the press, upon their own
principles and admissions. Mr. Coleridge himself prized this little work
highly, although he admitted its incompleteness as a composition:--"But I
don't care a rush about it," he said to me, "as an author. The saving
distinctions are plainly stated in it, and I am sure nothing is wanted to
make them _tell_, but that some kind friend should steal them from their
obscure hiding-place, and just tumble them down before the public as _his
own_. "--ED. ]

* * * * *

Kant assigns three great races of mankind. If two individuals of distinct
races cross, a third, or _tertium aliquid_, is _invariably_ produced,
different from either, as a white and a negro produce a mulatto. But when
different varieties of the same race cross, the offspring is according to
what we call chance; it is now like one, now like the other parent. Note
this, when you see the children of any couple of distinct European
complexions,--as English and Spanish, German and Italian, Russian and
Portuguese, and so on.



_January_ 3. 1823.

MATERIALISM. --GHOSTS.


Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are
beasts; the first and wisest of beasts, it may be; but still true beasts.
[1] We shall only differ in degree, and not in kind; just as the elephant
differs from the slug. But by the concession of all the materialists of all
the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts--and this
also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the
possession of a soul within us that makes the difference.

[Footnote 1:
"Try to conceive a _man_ without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will,
absolute truth; of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An
_animal_ endowed with a memory of appearances and facts might remain. But
the _man_ will have vanished, and you have instead a creature more subtle
than any beast of the field, but likewise cursed above every beast of the
field; upon the belly must it go, and dust must it eat all the days of its
life. "--_Church and State_, p. 54. n. ]

* * * * *

Read the first chapter of Genesis without prejudice, and you will be
convinced at once. After the narrative of the creation of the earth and
brute animals, Moses seems to pause, and says:--"And God said, Let us make
man in _our image_, after _our likeness_. " And in the next chapter, he
repeats the narrative:--"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;" and then he
adds these words,--"_and man became a living soul_. " Materialism will never
explain those last words.

* * * * *

Define a vulgar ghost with reference to all that is called ghost-like. It
is visibility without tangibility; which is also the definition of a
shadow. Therefore, a vulgar ghost and a shadow would be the same; because
two different things cannot properly have the same definition. A _visible
substance_ without susceptibility of impact, I maintain to be an absurdity.



Unless there be an external substance, the bodily eye _cannot_ see it;
therefore, in all such cases, that which is supposed to be seen is, in
fact, _not_ seen, but is an image of the brain. External objects naturally
produce sensation; but here, in truth, sensation produces, as it were, the
external object. In certain states of the nerves, however, I do believe
that the eye, although not consciously so directed, may, by a slight
convulsion, see a portion of the body, as if opposite to it. The part
actually seen will by common association seem the whole; and the whole body
will then constitute an external object, which explains many stories of
persons seeing themselves lying dead. Bishop Berkeley once experienced
this. He had the presence of mind to ring the bell, and feel his pulse;
keeping his eye still fixed on his own figure right opposite to him. He was
in a high fever, and the brain image died away as the door opened. I
observed something very like it once at Grasmere; and was so conscious of
the cause, that I told a person what I was experiencing, whilst the image
still remained.

Of course, if the vulgar ghost be really a shadow, there must be some
substance of which it is the shadow. These visible and intangible shadows,
without substances to cause them, are absurd.



January 4. 1828.

CHARACTER OF THE AGE FOR LOGIC. --PLATO AND XENOPHON. ----GREEK DRAMA. ----
KOTZEBUE. --BURKE. --PLAGIARISTS.


This is not a logical age. A friend lately gave me some political pamphlets
of the times of Charles I. and the Cromwellate. In them the premisses are
frequently wrong, but the deductions are almost always legitimate; whereas,
in the writings of the present day, the premisses are commonly sound, but
the conclusions false. I think a great deal of commendation is due to the
University of Oxford for preserving the study of logic in the schools. It
is a great mistake to suppose geometry any substitute for it.

* * * * *

Negatively, there may be more of the philosophy of Socrates in the
Memorabilia of Xenophon than in Plato: that is, there is less of what does
not belong to Socrates; but the general spirit of, and impression left by,
Plato, are more Socratic. [1]

[Footnote 1:
See p. 26. Mr. Coleridge meant in both these passages, that Xenophon had
preserved the most of the _man_ Socrates; that he was the best Boswell; and
that Socrates, as a _persona dialogi_, was little more than a poetical
phantom in Plato's hands. On the other hand, he says that Plato is more
_Socratic_, that is, more of a philosopher in the Socratic _mode_ of
reasoning (Cicero calls the Platonic writings generally, _Socratici
libri_); and Mr. C. also says, that in the metaphysical disquisitions Plato
is Pythagorean, meaning, that he worked on the supposed ideal or
transcendental principles of the extraordinary founder of the Italian
school. ]

* * * * *

In AEschylus religion appears terrible, malignant, and persecuting:
Sophocles is the mildest of the three tragedians, but the persecuting
aspect is still maintained: Euripides is like a modern Frenchman, never so
happy as when giving a slap at the gods altogether.

* * * * *

Kotzebue represents the petty kings of the islands in the Pacific Ocean
exactly as so many Homeric chiefs. Riches command universal influence, and
all the kings are supposed to be descended from the gods.

* * * * *

I confess I doubt the Homeric genuineness of [Greek: dakruoen gelaschsa].
[1] It sounds to me much more like a prettiness of Bion or Moschus.

[Footnote 1:
[Greek: hos eipon, alochoio thilaes en chersin ethaeke paid eon hae d ara
min chaeodei dexato cholpo, dachruoen gelasasa. ]--Illiad. Z. vi. 482]


* * * * *

The very greatest writers write best when calm, and exerting themselves
upon subjects unconnected with party. Burke rarely shows all his powers,
unless where he is in a passion. The French Revolution was alone a subject
fit for him. We are not yet aware of all the consequences of that event. We
are too near it.