In your modern books, for the most part, the
sentences
in a page have the
same connection with each other that marbles have in a bag; they touch
without adhering.
same connection with each other that marbles have in a bag; they touch
without adhering.
Coleridge - Table Talk
As it is,
I can scarcely scan some of his verses.
_May _1. 1833.
RABELAIS AND LUTHER. --WIT AND MADNESS.
I think with some interest upon the fact that Rabelais and Luther were born
in the same year. [1] Glorious spirits! glorious spirits!
----"Hos utinam inter
Heroas natum me! "
[Footnote 1:
They were both born within twelve months of each other, I believe; but
Luther's birth was in November, 1484, and that of Rabelais is generally
placed at the end of the year preceding. --ED. ]
* * * * *
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,"
says Dryden, and true so far as this, that genius of the highest kind
implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power, which detached from
the discriminative and reproductive power, might conjure a platted straw
into a royal diadem: but it would be at least as true, that great genius is
most alien from madness,--yea, divided from it by an impassable mountain,--
namely, the activity of thought and vivacity of the accumulative memory,
which are no less essential constituents of "great wit. "
_May _4. 1833.
COLONIZATION. --MACHINERY. --CAPITAL.
Colonization is not only a manifest expedient for, but an imperative duty
on, Great Britain. God seems to hold out his finger to us over the sea. But
it must be a national colonization, such as was that of the Scotch to
America; a colonization of hope, and not such as we have alone encouraged
and effected for the last fifty years, a colonization of despair.
* * * * *
The wonderful powers of machinery can, by multiplied production, render the
mere _arte facta _of life actually cheaper: thus money and all other things
being supposed the same in value, a silk gown is five times cheaper now
than in Queen Elizabeth's time; but machinery cannot cheapen, in any thing
like an equal degree, the immediate growths of nature or the immediate
necessaries of man. Now the _arte facta _are sought by the higher classes
of society in a proportion incalculably beyond that in which they are
sought by the lower classes; and therefore it is that the vast increase of
mechanical powers has not cheapened life and pleasure to the poor as it has
done to the rich. In some respects, no doubt, it has done so, as in giving
cotton dresses to maid-servants, and penny gin to all. A pretty benefit
truly!
* * * * *
I think this country is now suffering grievously under an excessive
accumulation of capital, which, having no field for profitable operation,
is in a state of fierce civil war with itself.
_May _6. 1833.
ROMAN CONQUEST. --CONSTANTINE. --PAPACY AND THE
SCHOOLMEN.
The Romans had no national clerisy; their priesthood was entirely a matter
of state, and, as far back as we can trace it, an evident stronghold of the
Patricians against the increasing powers of the Plebeians. All we know of
the early Romans is, that, after an indefinite lapse of years, they had
conquered some fifty or sixty miles round their city. Then it is that they
go to war with Carthage, the great maritime power, and the result of that
war was the occupation of Sicily. Thence they, in succession, conquered
Spain, Macedonia, Asia Minor, &c. , and so at last contrived to subjugate
Italy, partly by a tremendous back blow, and partly by bribing the Italian
States with a communication of their privileges, which the now enormously
enriched conquerors possessed over so large a portion of the civilized
world. They were ordained by Providence to conquer and amalgamate the
materials of Christendom. They were not a national people; they
were truly--
_Romanos rerum dominos--_
--and that's all.
* * * * *
Under Constantine the spiritual power became a complete reflex of the
temporal. There were four patriarchs, and four prefects, and so on. The
Clergy and the Lawyers, the Church and the State, were opposed.
* * * * *
The beneficial influence of the Papacy upon the whole has been much over-
rated by some writers; and certainly no country in Europe received less
benefit and more harm from it than England. In fact, the lawful kings and
parliaments of England were always essentially Protestant in feeling for a
national church, though they adhered to the received doctrines of the
Christianity of the day; and it was only the usurpers, John, Henry IV. ,
&c. , that went against this policy. All the great English schoolmen, Scotus
Erigena[1], Duns Scotus, Ockham, and others, those morning stars of the
Reformation, were heart and soul opposed to Rome, and maintained the Papacy
to be Antichrist. The Popes always persecuted, with rancorous hatred, the
national clerisies, the married clergy, and disliked the universities which
grew out of the old monasteries. The Papacy was, and is, essentially extra-
national, and was always so considered in this country, although not
believed to be anti-Christian.
[Footnote 1:
John Scotus, or Erigena, was born, according to different authors, in
Wales, Scotland, or Ireland; but I do not find any account making him an
Englishman of Saxon blood. His death is uncertainly placed in the beginning
of the ninth century. He lived in well-known intimacy with Charles the
Bald, of France, who died about A. D. 874. He resolutely resisted the
doctrine of transubstantiation, and was publicly accused of heresy on that
account. But the king of France protected him--ED. ]
_May_ 8. 1833.
CIVIL WAR OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. --HAMPDEN'S SPEECH.
I know no portion of history which a man might write with so much pleasure
as that of the great struggle in the time of Charles I. , because he may
feel the profoundest respect for both parties. The side taken by any
particular person was determined by the point of view which such person
happened to command at the commencement of the inevitable collision, one
line seeming straight to this man, another line to another. No man of that
age saw _the_ truth, the whole truth; there was not light enough for that.
The consequence, of course, was a violent exaggeration of each party for
the time. The King became a martyr, and the Parliamentarians traitors, and
_vice versa_. The great reform brought into act by and under William the
Third combined the principles truly contended for by Charles and his
Parliament respectively: the great revolution of 1831 has certainly, to an
almost ruinous degree, dislocated those principles of government again. As
to Hampden's speech[1], no doubt it means a declaration of passive
obedience to the sovereign, as the creed of an English Protestant
individual: every man, Cromwell and all, would have said as much; it was
the antipapistical tenet, and almost vauntingly asserted on all occasions
by Protestants up to that time. But it implies nothing of Hampden's creed
as to the duty of Parliament.
[Footnote 1:
On his impeachment with the other four members, 1642. See the "Letter to
John Murray, Esq. _touching_ Lord Nugent," 1833. It is extraordinary that
Lord N. should not see the plain distinction taken by Hampden, between not
obeying an unlawful command, and rebelling against the King because of it.
He approves the one, and condemns the other. His words are, "to _yield
obedience to_ the commands of a King, if against the true religion, against
the ancient and fundamental laws of the land, is another sign of an ill
subject:"--"To _resist_ the lawful power of the King; to raise insurrection
against the King; admit him adverse in his religion; _to conspire against
his sacred person, or any ways to rebel, though commanding things against
our consciences in exercising religion, or against the rights and
privileges of the subject_, is an absolute sign of the disaffected and
traitorous subject. "--ED. ]
_May_ 10. 1833.
REFORMED HOUSE OF COMMONS.
Well, I think no honest man will deny that the prophetic denunciations of
those who seriously and solemnly opposed the Reform Bill are in a fair way
of exact fulfilment! For myself, I own I did not expect such rapidity of
movement. I supposed that the first parliament would contain a large number
of low factious men, who would vulgarize and degrade the debates of the
House of Commons, and considerably impede public business, and that the
majority would be gentlemen more fond of their property than their
politics. But really the truth is something more than this. Think of
upwards of 160 members voting away two millions and a half of tax on
Friday[1], at the bidding of whom, shall I say? and then no less than 70 of
those very members rescinding their votes on the Tuesday next following,
nothing whatever having intervened to justify the change, except that they
had found out that at least seven or eight millions more must go also upon
the same principle, and that the revenue was cut in two! Of course I
approve the vote of rescission, however dangerous a precedent; but what a
picture of the composition of this House of Commons!
[Footnote 1:
On Friday, the 26th of April, 1833, Sir William Ingilby moved and carried a
resolution for reducing the duty on malt from 28s. 8d. to l0s. per quarter.
One hundred and sixty-two members voted with him. On Tuesday following, the
30th of April, seventy-six members only voted against the rescission of the
same resolution. --ED. ]
_May_ 13. 1833.
FOOD. --MEDICINE. --POISON. --OBSTRUCTION.
1. That which is digested wholly, and part of which is assimilated, and
part rejected, is--Food.
2. That which is digested wholly, and the whole of which is partly
assimilated, and partly not, is--Medicine.
3. That which is digested, but not assimilated, is--Poison.
4. That which is neither digested nor assimilated is--Mere Obstruction.
As to the stories of slow poisons, I cannot say whether there was any, or
what, truth in them; but I certainly believe a man may be poisoned by
arsenic a year after he has taken it. In fact, I think that is known to
have happened.
May 14. 1833.
WILSON. --SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. --LOVE.
Professor Wilson's character of Charles Lamb in the last Blackwood,
_Twaddle on Tweed-side_[1], is very sweet indeed, and gratified me much. It
does honour to Wilson, to his head and his heart.
[Footnote 1:
"Charles Lamb ought really not to abuse Scotland in the pleasant way he so
often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield; for Scotland loves Charles
Lamb; but he is wayward and wilful in his wisdom, and conceits that many a
Cockney is a better man even than Christopher North. But what will not
Christopher forgive to genius and goodness! Even Lamb, bleating libels on
his native land. Nay, he learns lessons of humanity even from the mild
malice of Elia, and breathes a blessing on him and his household in their
bower of rest. "
Some of Mr. Coleridge's poems were first published with some of C. Lamb's
at Bristol in 1797. The remarkable words on the title-page have been aptly
cited in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1835, p. 198. : "Duplex
nobis vinculum, et amicitiae et similium junctarumque Camcoenarum,--quod
utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas. " And even so it came
to pass after thirty seven years more had passed over their heads,--ED. ]
* * * * *
How can I wish that Wilson should cease to write what so often soothes and
suspends my bodily miseries, and my mental conflicts! Yet what a waste,
what a reckless spending, of talent, ay, and of genius, too, in his I know
not how many years' management of Blackwood! If Wilson cares for fame, for
an enduring place and prominence in literature, he should now, I think,
hold his hand, and say, as he well may,--
"Militavi non sine gloria:
Nunc arma defunctumque bello
Barbiton hic paries habebit. "
Two or three volumes collected out of the magazine by himself would be very
delightful. But he must not leave it for others to do; for some recasting
and much condensation would be required; and literary executors make sad
work in general with their testators' brains.
* * * * *
I believe it possible that a man may, under certain states of the moral
feeling, entertain something deserving the name of love towards a male
object--an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from appetite. In
Elizabeth's and James's time it seems to have been almost fashionable to
cherish such a feeling; and perhaps we may account in some measure for it
by considering how very inferior the women of that age, taken generally,
were in education and accomplishment of mind to the men. Of course there
were brilliant exceptions enough; but the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher--
the most popular dramatists that ever wrote for the English stage--will
show us what sort of women it was generally pleasing to represent.
Certainly the language of the two friends, Musidorus and Pyrocles, in the
Arcadia, is such as we could not now use except to women; and in Cervantes
the same tone is sometimes adopted, as in the novel of the Curious
Impertinent. And I think there is a passage in the New Atlantis[1] of Lord
Bacon, in which he speaks of the possibility of such a feeling, but hints
the extreme danger of entertaining it, or allowing it any place in a moral
theory. I mention this with reference to Shakspeare's sonnets, which have
been supposed, by some, to be addressed to William Herbert, Earl of
Pembroke, whom Clarendon calls[2] the most beloved man of his age, though
his licentiousness was equal to his virtues.
I doubt this. I do not think that Shakespeare, merely because he was an
actor, would have thought it necessary to veil his emotions towards
Pembroke under a disguise, though he might probably have done so, if the
real object had perchance been a Laura or a Leonora. It seems to me that
the sonnets could only have come from a man deeply in love, and in love
with a woman; and there is one sonnet which, from its incongruity, I take
to be a purposed blind. These extraordinary sonnets form, in fact, a poem
of so many stanzas of fourteen lines each; and, like the passion which
inspired them, the sonnets are always the same, with a variety of
expression,--continuous, if you regard the lover's soul,--distinct, if you
listen to him, as he heaves them sigh after sigh.
These sonnets, like the Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, are
characterized by boundless fertility and laboured condensation of thought,
with perfection of sweetness in rhythm and metre. These are the essentials
in the budding of a great poet. Afterwards habit and consciousness of power
teach more ease--_praecipitandum liberum spiritum_.
[Footnote 1:
I cannot fix upon any passage in this work, to which it can be supposed
that Mr. Coleridge alluded, unless it be the speech of Joabin the Jew; but
it contains nothing coming up to the meaning in the text. The only approach
to it seems to be:--"As for masculine love, they have no touch of it; and
yet there are not so faithful and inviolate friendships in the world again
as are there; and to speak generally, as I said before, I have not read of
any such chastity in any people as theirs. "--ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
"William Earl of Pembroke was next, a man of another mould and making, and
of another fame and reputation with all men, being the most universally
beloved and esteemed of any man of that age. " . . . . . . . "He indulged to
himself the pleasures of all kinds, almost in all excesses. "--_Hist. of the
Rebellion_, book i. He died in 1630, aged fifty years. The dedication by T.
T. (Thomas Thorpe) is to "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr.
W. H. " and Malone is inclined to think that William Hughes is meant. As to
Mr. W. H. being the _only_ begetter of these sonnets, it must be observed,
that at least the last twenty-eight are beyond dispute addressed to a
woman. I suppose the twentieth sonnet was the particular one conceived by
Mr. C. to be a blind; but it seems to me that many others may be so
construed, if we set out with a conviction that the real object of the poet
was a woman. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Every one who has been in love, knows that the passion is strongest, and
the appetite weakest, in the absence of the beloved object, and that the
reverse is the case in her presence.
_May_ 15. 1833.
WICLIFFE. --LUTHER. --REVERENCE FOR IDEAL TRUTHS. --JOHNSON THE WHIG. --
ASGILL. --JAMES I.
Wicliffe's genius was, perhaps, not equal to Luther's; but really the more
I know of him from Vaughan and Le Bas, both of whose books I like, I think
him as extraordinary a man as Luther upon the whole. He was much sounder
and more truly catholic in his view of the Eucharist than Luther. And I
find, not without some pleasure, that my own view of it, which I was
afraid was original, was maintained in the tenth century, that is to say,
that the body broken had no reference to the human body of Christ, but to
the Caro Noumenon, or symbolical Body, the Rock that followed the
Israelites.
Whitaker beautifully says of Luther;--_Felix ille, quem Dominus eo honore
dignatus est, ut homines nequissimos suos haberet inimicos_.
* * * * *
There is now no reverence for any thing; and the reason is, that men
possess conceptions only, and all their knowledge is conceptional only.
Now as, to conceive, is a work of the mere understanding, and as all that
can be conceived may be comprehended, it is impossible that a man should
reverence that, to which he must always feel something in himself
superior. If it were possible to conceive God in a strict sense, that is,
as we conceive a horse or a tree, even God himself could not excite any
reverence, though he might excite fear or terror, or perhaps love, as a
tiger or a beautiful woman. But reverence, which is the synthesis of love
and fear, is only due from man, and, indeed, only excitable in man,
towards ideal truths, which are always mysteries to the understanding, for
the same reason that the motion of my finger behind my back is a mystery
to you now--your eyes not being made for seeing through my body. It is
the reason only which has a sense by which ideas can be recognized, and
from the fontal light of ideas only can a man draw intellectual power.
* * * * *
Samuel Johnson[1], whom, to distinguish him from the Doctor, we may call
the Whig, was a very remarkable writer. He may be compared to his
contemporary De Foe, whom he resembled in many points. He is another
instance of King William's discrimination, which was so much superior to
that of any of his ministers, Johnson was one of the most formidable
advocates for the Exclusion Bill, and he suffered by whipping and
imprisonment under James accordingly. Like Asgill, he argues with great
apparent candour and clearness till he has his opponent within reach, and
then comes a blow as from a sledge-hammer. I do not know where I could put
my hand upon a book containing so much sense and sound constitutional
doctrine as this thin folio of Johnson's Works; and what party in this
country would read so severe a lecture in it as our modern Whigs!
A close reasoner and a good writer in general may be known by his pertinent
use of connectives. Read that page of Johnson; you cannot alter one
conjunction without spoiling the sense. It is a linked strain throughout.
In your modern books, for the most part, the sentences in a page have the
same connection with each other that marbles have in a bag; they touch
without adhering.
Asgill evidently formed his style upon Johnson's, but he only imitates one
part of it. Asgill never rises to Johnson's eloquence. The latter was a
sort of Cobbett-Burke.
James the First thought that, because all power in the state seemed to
proceed _from_ the crown, all power therefore remained in the crown;--as
if, because the tree sprang from the seed, the stem, branches, leaves, and
fruit were all contained in the seed. The constitutional doctrine as to the
relation which the king bears to the other components of the state is in
two words this:--He is a representative of the whole of that, of which he
is himself a part.
[Footnote 1:
Dryden's Ben Jochanan, in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel. He was
born in 1649, and died in 1703. He was a clergyman. In 1686, when the army
was encamped on Hounslow Heath, he published "A humble and hearty Address
to all English Protestants in the present Army. " For this he was tried and
sentenced to be pilloried in three places, pay a fine, and be whipped from
Newgate to Tyburn. An attempt was also made to degrade him from his orders,
but this failed through an informality. After the Revolution he was
preferred. --ED. ]
_May_ 17. 1833.
SIR P. SIDNEY. --THINGS ARE FINDING THEIR LEVEL.
When Sir Philip Sidney saw the enthusiasm which agitated every man, woman,
and child in the Netherlands against Philip and D'Alva, he told Queen
Elizabeth that it was the spirit of God, and that it was invincible. What
is the spirit which seems to move and unsettle every other man in England
and on the Continent at this time? Upon my conscience, and judging by St.
John's rule, I think it is a special spirit of the devil--and a very vulgar
devil too!
* * * * *
Your modern political economists say that it is a principle in their
science--that all things _find_ their level;--which I deny; and say, on
the contrary, that the true principle is, that all things are _finding_
their level like water in a storm.
_May_ 18. 1833.
GERMAN. --GOETHE. --GOD'S PROVIDENCE. --MAN'S FREEDOM.
German is inferior to English in modifications of expression of the
affections, but superior to it in modifications of expression of all
objects of the senses.
* * * * *
Goethe's small lyrics are delightful. He showed good taste in not
attempting to imitate Shakspeare's Witches, which are threefold,--Fates,
Furies, and earthly Hags o' the caldron.
* * * * *
Man does not move in cycles, though nature does. Man's course is like that
of an arrow; for the portion of the great cometary ellipse which he
occupies is no more than a needle's length to a mile.
In natural history, God's freedom is shown in the law of necessity. In
moral history, God's necessity or providence is shown in man's freedom.
_June_ 8. 1833.
DOM MIGUEL AND DOM PEDRO. --WORKING TO BETTER ONE'S CONDITION. --NEGRO
EMANCIPATION. --FOX AND PITT. --REVOLUTION.
There can be no doubt of the gross violations of strict neutrality by this
government in the Portuguese affair; but I wish the Tories had left the
matter alone, and not given room to the people to associate them with that
scoundrel Dom Miguel. You can never interest the common herd in the
abstract question; with them it is a mere quarrel between the men; and
though Pedro is a very doubtful character, he is not so bad as his brother;
and, besides, we are naturally interested for the girl.
* * * * *
It is very strange that men who make light of the direct doctrines of the
Scriptures, and turn up their noses at the recommendation of a line of
conduct suggested by religious truth, will nevertheless stake the
tranquillity of an empire, the lives and properties of millions of men and
women, on the faith of a maxim of modern political economy! And this, too,
of a maxim true only, if at all, of England or a part of England, or some
other country;--namely, that the desire of bettering their condition will
induce men to labour even more abundantly and profitably than servile
compulsion,--to which maxim the past history and present state of all Asia
and Africa give the lie. Nay, even in England at this day, every man in
Manchester, Birmingham, and in other great manufacturing towns, knows that
the most skilful artisans, who may earn high wages at pleasure, are
constantly in the habit of working but a few days in the week, and of
idling the rest. I believe St.
Monday is very well kept by the workmen in London. The love of indolence is
universal, or next to it.
* * * * *
Must not the ministerial plan for the West Indies lead necessarily to a
change of property, either by force or dereliction? I can't see any way of
escaping it.
* * * * *
You are always talking of the _rights_ of the negroes. As a rhetorical mode
of stimulating the people of England _here_, I do not object; but I utterly
condemn your frantic practice of declaiming about their rights to the
blacks themselves. They ought to be forcibly reminded of the state in which
their brethren in Africa still are, and taught to be thankful for the
providence which has placed them within reach of the means of grace. I know
no right except such as flows from righteousness; and as every Christian
believes his righteousness to be imputed, so must his right be an imputed
right too. It must flow out of a duty, and it is under that name that the
process of humanization ought to begin and to be conducted throughout.
* * * * *
Thirty years ago, and more, Pitt availed himself, with great political
dexterity, of the apprehension, which Burke and the conduct of some of the
clubs in London had excited, and endeavoured to inspire into the nation a
panic of property. Fox, instead of exposing the absurdity of this by
showing the real numbers and contemptible weakness of the disaffected, fell
into Pitt's trap, and was mad enough to exaggerate even Pitt's surmises.
The consequence was, a very general apprehension throughout the country of
an impending revolution, at a time when, I will venture to say, the people
were more heart-whole than they had been for a hundred years previously.
After I had travelled in Sicily and Italy, countries where there were real
grounds for fear, I became deeply impressed with the difference. Now, after
a long continuance of high national glory and influence, when a revolution
of a most searching and general character is actually at work, and the old
institutions of the country are all awaiting their certain destruction or
violent modification--the people at large are perfectly secure, sleeping or
gambolling on the very brink of a volcano.
_June_ 15. 1833.
VIRTUE AND LIBERTY. --EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. --ERASMUS. ----LUTHER.
The necessity for external government to man is in an inverse ratio to the
vigour of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first
is least wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty.
* * * * *
I think St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans the most profound work in
existence; and I hardly believe that the writings of the old Stoics, now
lost, could have been deeper. Undoubtedly it is, and must be, very obscure
to ordinary readers; but some of the difficulty is accidental, arising from
the form in which the Epistle appears. If we could now arrange this work in
the way in which we may be sure St. Paul would himself do, were he now
alive, and preparing it for the press, his reasoning would stand out
clearer. His accumulated parentheses would be thrown into notes, or
extruded to the margin. You will smile, after this, if I say that I think I
understand St. Paul; and I think so, because, really and truly, I recognize
a cogent consecutiveness in the argument--the only evidence I know that you
understand any book. How different is the style of this intensely
passionate argument from that of the catholic circular charge called the
Epistle to the Ephesians! --and how different that of both from the style of
the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which I venture to call [Greek:
epistolal panloeideiz]
Erasmus's paraphrase of the New Testament is clear and explanatory; but you
cannot expect any thing very deep from Erasmus. The only fit commentator on
Paul was Luther--not by any means such a gentleman as the Apostle, but
almost as great a genius.
_June_ 17. 1833.
NEGRO EMANCIPATION.
Have you been able to discover any principle in this Emancipation Bill for
the Slaves, except a principle of fear of the abolition party struggling
with a dread of causing some monstrous calamity to the empire at large?
Well! I will not prophesy; and God grant that this tremendous and
unprecedented act of positive enactment may not do the harm to the cause of
humanity and freedom which I cannot but fear! But yet, what can be hoped,
when all human wisdom and counsel are set at nought, and religious faith--
the only miraculous agent amongst men--is not invoked or regarded! and that
most unblest phrase--the Dissenting _interest_--enters into the question!
_June_ 22. 1833.
HACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS. --CHARLES I. --MANNERS UNDER EDWARD
III. , RICHARD II. , AND HENRY VIII.
What a delightful and instructive hook Bishop Hacket's Life of Archbishop
Williams is! You learn more from it of that which is valuable towards an
insight into the times preceding the Civil War than from all the ponderous
histories and memoirs now composed about that period.
* * * * *
Charles seems to have been a very disagreeable personage during James's
life. There is nothing dutiful in his demeanour.
* * * * *
I think the spirit of the court and nobility of Edward III. and Richard II.
was less gross than that in the time of Henry VIII. ; for in this latter
period the chivalry had evaporated, and the whole coarseness was left by
itself. Chaucer represents a very high and romantic style of society
amongst the gentry.
_June_ 29. 1833.
HYPOTHESIS. --SUFFICTION. --THEORY. --LYELL'S GEOLOGY. --GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
--GERARD DOUW's "SCHOOLMASTER" AND TITIAN'S "VENUS. "--SIR J. SCARLETT.
It seems to me a great delusion to call or suppose the imagination of a
subtle fluid, or molecules penetrable with the same, a legitimate
hypothesis. It is a mere _suffiction_. Newton took the fact of bodies
falling to the centre, and upon that built up a legitimate hypothesis. It
was a subposition of something certain. But Descartes' vortices were not an
hypothesis; they rested on no fact at all; and yet they did, in a clumsy
way, explain the motions of the heavenly bodies. But your subtle fluid is
pure gratuitous assumption; and for what use? It explains nothing.
Besides, you are endeavouring to deduce power from mass, in which you
expressly say there is no power but the _vis inertiae_: whereas, the whole
analogy of chemistry proves that power produces mass.
* * * * *
The use of a theory in the real sciences is to help the investigator to a
complete view of all the hitherto discovered facts relating to the science
in question; it is a collected view, [Greek: the_orhia], of all he yet
knows in _one_. Of course, whilst any pertinent facts remain unknown, no
theory can be exactly true, because every new fact must necessarily, to a
greater or less degree, displace the relation of all the others. A theory,
therefore, only helps investigation; it cannot invent or discover. The only
true theories are those of geometry, because in geometry all the premisses
are true and unalterable. But, to suppose that, in our present exceedingly
imperfect acquaintance with the facts, any theory in chemistry or geology
is altogether accurate, is absurd:--it cannot be true.
Mr. Lyell's system of geology is just half the truth, and no more. He
affirms a great deal that is true, and he denies a great deal which is
equally true; which is the general characteristic of all systems not
embracing the whole truth. So it is with the rectilinearity or undulatory
motion of light;--I believe both; though philosophy has as yet but
imperfectly ascertained the conditions of their alternate existence, or the
laws by which they are regulated.
* * * * *
Those who deny light to be matter do not, therefore, deny its corporeity.
* * * * *
The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is
no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it
depends much more on execution for its effect. I was more than ever
impressed with the marvellous sublimity and transcendant beauty of King's
College Chapel. [1] It is quite unparalleled.
I think Gerard Douw's "Schoolmaster," in the Fitzwilliam Museum, the finest
thing of the sort I ever saw;--whether you look at it at the common
distance, or examine it with a glass, the wonder is equal. And that
glorious picture of the Venus--so perfectly beautiful and perfectly
innocent--as if beauty and innocence could not be dissociated! The French
thing below is a curious instance of the inherent grossness of the French
taste. Titian's picture is made quite bestial.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge visited Cambridge upon the occasion of the scientific meeting
there in June, 1833. --"My emotions," he said, "at revisiting the university
were at first, overwhelming. I could not speak for an hour; yet my feelings
were upon the whole very pleasurable, and I have not passed, of late years
at least, three days of such great enjoyment and healthful excitement of
mind and body. The bed on which I slept--and slept soundly too--was, as
near as I can describe it, a couple of sacks full of potatoes tied
together. I understand the young men think it hardens them. Truly I lay
down at night a man, and arose in the morning a bruise. " He told me "that
the men were much amused at his saying that the fine old Quaker philosopher
Dalton's face was like All Souls' College. " The two persons of whom he
spoke with the greatest interest were Mr. Faraday and Mr. Thirlwall; saying
of the former, "that he seemed to have the true temperament of genius, that
carrying-on of the spring and freshness of youthful, nay, boyish feelings,
into the matured strength of manhood! " For, as Mr. Coleridge had long
before expressed the same thought,--"To find no contradiction in the union
of old and new; to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all his works with
feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative
fiat, this characterizes the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and
may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the
powers of manhood; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with
the appearances which everyday for perhaps forty years had rendered
familiar;
'With sun and moon and stars throughout the year,
And man and woman;'--
this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which
distinguish genius from talent. And therefore is it the prime merit of
genius, and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent
familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling
concerning them, and that freshness of sensation which is the constant
accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence. Who has not
a thousand times seen snow fall on water? Who has not watched it with a new
feeling, from the time that he has read Burns's comparison of sensual
pleasure
'To snow that falls upon a river,
A moment white--then gone for ever! '"
_Biog. Lit_. vol. i, p. 85. --ED. ]
* * * * *
I think Sir James Scarlett's speech for the defendant, in the late action
of Cobbett v. The Times, for a libel, worthy of the best ages of Greece or
Rome; though, to be sure, some of his remarks could not have been very
palatable to his clients.
* * * * *
I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, which I fear has gone on
for an hour without any stop at all.
_July_ 1. 1833.
MANDEVILLE'S FABLE OF THE BEES. --BESTIAL THEORY. --CHARACTER OF BERTRAM. --
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER'S DRAMAS. --AESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES,--MILTON.
If I could ever believe that Mandeville really meant any thing more by his
Fable of the Bees than a _bonne bouche_ of solemn raillery, I should like
to ask those man-shaped apes who have taken up his suggestions in earnest,
and seriously maintained them as bases for a rational account of man and
the world--how they explain the very existence of those dexterous cheats,
those superior charlatans, the legislators and philosophers, who have known
how to play so well upon the peacock-like vanity and follies of their
fellow mortals.
By the by, I wonder some of you lawyers (_sub rosa_, of course) have not
quoted the pithy lines in Mandeville upon this registration question:--
"The lawyers, of whose art the basis
Was raising feuds and splitting cases,
_Oppos'd all Registers_, that cheats
Might make more work with dipt estates;
As 'twere unlawful that one's own
Without a lawsuit should be known!
They put off hearings wilfully,
To finger the refreshing fee;
And to defend a wicked cause
Examined and survey'd the laws,
As burglars shops and houses do,
To see where best they may break through. "
There is great Hudibrastic vigour in these lines; and those on the doctors
are also very terse.
* * * * *
Look at that head of Cline, by Chantrey! Is that forehead, that nose, those
temples and that chin, akin to the monkey tribe? No, no. To a man of
sensibility no argument could disprove the bestial theory so convincingly
as a quiet contemplation of that fine bust.
* * * * *
I cannot agree with the solemn abuse which the critics have poured out upon
Bertram in "All's Well that ends Well. " He was a young nobleman in feudal
times, just bursting into manhood, with all the feelings of pride of birth
and appetite for pleasure and liberty natural to such a character so
circumstanced. Of course he had never regarded Helena otherwise than as a
dependant in the family; and of all that which she possessed of goodness
and fidelity and courage, which might atone for her inferiority in other
respects, Bertram was necessarily in a great measure ignorant. And after
all, her _prima facie_ merit was the having inherited a prescription from
her old father the doctor, by which she cures the king,--a merit, which
supposes an extravagance of personal loyalty in Bertram to make conclusive
to him in such a matter as that of taking a wife. Bertram had surely good
reason to look upon the king's forcing him to marry Helena as a very
tyrannical act. Indeed, it must be confessed that her character is not very
delicate, and it required all Shakspeare's consummate skill to interest us
for her; and he does this chiefly by the operation of the other
characters,--the Countess, Lafeu, &c. We get to like Helena from their
praising and commending her so much.
* * * * *
In Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedies the comic scenes are rarely so
interfused amidst the tragic as to produce a unity of the tragic on the
whole, without which the intermixture is a fault. In Shakspeare, this is
always managed with transcendant skill. The Fool in Lear contributes in a
very sensible manner to the tragic wildness of the whole drama. Beaumont
and Fletcher's serious plays or tragedies are complete hybrids,--neither
fish nor flesh,--upon any rules, Greek, Roman, or Gothic: and yet they are
very delightful notwithstanding. No doubt, they imitate the ease of
gentlemanly conversation better than Shakspeare, who was unable _not_ to be
too much associated to succeed perfectly in this.
When I was a boy, I was fondest of AEschylus; in youth and middle age I
preferred Euripides; now in my declining years I admire Sophocles. I can
now at length see that Sophocles is the most perfect. Yet he never rises to
the sublime simplicity of AEschylus--simplicity of design, I mean--nor
diffuses himself in the passionate outpourings of Euripides. I understand
why the ancients called Euripides the most tragic of their dramatists: he
evidently embraces within the scope of the tragic poet many passions,--
love, conjugal affection, jealousy, and so on, which Sophocles seems to
have considered as incongruous with the ideal statuesqueness of the tragic
drama.
I can scarcely scan some of his verses.
_May _1. 1833.
RABELAIS AND LUTHER. --WIT AND MADNESS.
I think with some interest upon the fact that Rabelais and Luther were born
in the same year. [1] Glorious spirits! glorious spirits!
----"Hos utinam inter
Heroas natum me! "
[Footnote 1:
They were both born within twelve months of each other, I believe; but
Luther's birth was in November, 1484, and that of Rabelais is generally
placed at the end of the year preceding. --ED. ]
* * * * *
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,"
says Dryden, and true so far as this, that genius of the highest kind
implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power, which detached from
the discriminative and reproductive power, might conjure a platted straw
into a royal diadem: but it would be at least as true, that great genius is
most alien from madness,--yea, divided from it by an impassable mountain,--
namely, the activity of thought and vivacity of the accumulative memory,
which are no less essential constituents of "great wit. "
_May _4. 1833.
COLONIZATION. --MACHINERY. --CAPITAL.
Colonization is not only a manifest expedient for, but an imperative duty
on, Great Britain. God seems to hold out his finger to us over the sea. But
it must be a national colonization, such as was that of the Scotch to
America; a colonization of hope, and not such as we have alone encouraged
and effected for the last fifty years, a colonization of despair.
* * * * *
The wonderful powers of machinery can, by multiplied production, render the
mere _arte facta _of life actually cheaper: thus money and all other things
being supposed the same in value, a silk gown is five times cheaper now
than in Queen Elizabeth's time; but machinery cannot cheapen, in any thing
like an equal degree, the immediate growths of nature or the immediate
necessaries of man. Now the _arte facta _are sought by the higher classes
of society in a proportion incalculably beyond that in which they are
sought by the lower classes; and therefore it is that the vast increase of
mechanical powers has not cheapened life and pleasure to the poor as it has
done to the rich. In some respects, no doubt, it has done so, as in giving
cotton dresses to maid-servants, and penny gin to all. A pretty benefit
truly!
* * * * *
I think this country is now suffering grievously under an excessive
accumulation of capital, which, having no field for profitable operation,
is in a state of fierce civil war with itself.
_May _6. 1833.
ROMAN CONQUEST. --CONSTANTINE. --PAPACY AND THE
SCHOOLMEN.
The Romans had no national clerisy; their priesthood was entirely a matter
of state, and, as far back as we can trace it, an evident stronghold of the
Patricians against the increasing powers of the Plebeians. All we know of
the early Romans is, that, after an indefinite lapse of years, they had
conquered some fifty or sixty miles round their city. Then it is that they
go to war with Carthage, the great maritime power, and the result of that
war was the occupation of Sicily. Thence they, in succession, conquered
Spain, Macedonia, Asia Minor, &c. , and so at last contrived to subjugate
Italy, partly by a tremendous back blow, and partly by bribing the Italian
States with a communication of their privileges, which the now enormously
enriched conquerors possessed over so large a portion of the civilized
world. They were ordained by Providence to conquer and amalgamate the
materials of Christendom. They were not a national people; they
were truly--
_Romanos rerum dominos--_
--and that's all.
* * * * *
Under Constantine the spiritual power became a complete reflex of the
temporal. There were four patriarchs, and four prefects, and so on. The
Clergy and the Lawyers, the Church and the State, were opposed.
* * * * *
The beneficial influence of the Papacy upon the whole has been much over-
rated by some writers; and certainly no country in Europe received less
benefit and more harm from it than England. In fact, the lawful kings and
parliaments of England were always essentially Protestant in feeling for a
national church, though they adhered to the received doctrines of the
Christianity of the day; and it was only the usurpers, John, Henry IV. ,
&c. , that went against this policy. All the great English schoolmen, Scotus
Erigena[1], Duns Scotus, Ockham, and others, those morning stars of the
Reformation, were heart and soul opposed to Rome, and maintained the Papacy
to be Antichrist. The Popes always persecuted, with rancorous hatred, the
national clerisies, the married clergy, and disliked the universities which
grew out of the old monasteries. The Papacy was, and is, essentially extra-
national, and was always so considered in this country, although not
believed to be anti-Christian.
[Footnote 1:
John Scotus, or Erigena, was born, according to different authors, in
Wales, Scotland, or Ireland; but I do not find any account making him an
Englishman of Saxon blood. His death is uncertainly placed in the beginning
of the ninth century. He lived in well-known intimacy with Charles the
Bald, of France, who died about A. D. 874. He resolutely resisted the
doctrine of transubstantiation, and was publicly accused of heresy on that
account. But the king of France protected him--ED. ]
_May_ 8. 1833.
CIVIL WAR OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. --HAMPDEN'S SPEECH.
I know no portion of history which a man might write with so much pleasure
as that of the great struggle in the time of Charles I. , because he may
feel the profoundest respect for both parties. The side taken by any
particular person was determined by the point of view which such person
happened to command at the commencement of the inevitable collision, one
line seeming straight to this man, another line to another. No man of that
age saw _the_ truth, the whole truth; there was not light enough for that.
The consequence, of course, was a violent exaggeration of each party for
the time. The King became a martyr, and the Parliamentarians traitors, and
_vice versa_. The great reform brought into act by and under William the
Third combined the principles truly contended for by Charles and his
Parliament respectively: the great revolution of 1831 has certainly, to an
almost ruinous degree, dislocated those principles of government again. As
to Hampden's speech[1], no doubt it means a declaration of passive
obedience to the sovereign, as the creed of an English Protestant
individual: every man, Cromwell and all, would have said as much; it was
the antipapistical tenet, and almost vauntingly asserted on all occasions
by Protestants up to that time. But it implies nothing of Hampden's creed
as to the duty of Parliament.
[Footnote 1:
On his impeachment with the other four members, 1642. See the "Letter to
John Murray, Esq. _touching_ Lord Nugent," 1833. It is extraordinary that
Lord N. should not see the plain distinction taken by Hampden, between not
obeying an unlawful command, and rebelling against the King because of it.
He approves the one, and condemns the other. His words are, "to _yield
obedience to_ the commands of a King, if against the true religion, against
the ancient and fundamental laws of the land, is another sign of an ill
subject:"--"To _resist_ the lawful power of the King; to raise insurrection
against the King; admit him adverse in his religion; _to conspire against
his sacred person, or any ways to rebel, though commanding things against
our consciences in exercising religion, or against the rights and
privileges of the subject_, is an absolute sign of the disaffected and
traitorous subject. "--ED. ]
_May_ 10. 1833.
REFORMED HOUSE OF COMMONS.
Well, I think no honest man will deny that the prophetic denunciations of
those who seriously and solemnly opposed the Reform Bill are in a fair way
of exact fulfilment! For myself, I own I did not expect such rapidity of
movement. I supposed that the first parliament would contain a large number
of low factious men, who would vulgarize and degrade the debates of the
House of Commons, and considerably impede public business, and that the
majority would be gentlemen more fond of their property than their
politics. But really the truth is something more than this. Think of
upwards of 160 members voting away two millions and a half of tax on
Friday[1], at the bidding of whom, shall I say? and then no less than 70 of
those very members rescinding their votes on the Tuesday next following,
nothing whatever having intervened to justify the change, except that they
had found out that at least seven or eight millions more must go also upon
the same principle, and that the revenue was cut in two! Of course I
approve the vote of rescission, however dangerous a precedent; but what a
picture of the composition of this House of Commons!
[Footnote 1:
On Friday, the 26th of April, 1833, Sir William Ingilby moved and carried a
resolution for reducing the duty on malt from 28s. 8d. to l0s. per quarter.
One hundred and sixty-two members voted with him. On Tuesday following, the
30th of April, seventy-six members only voted against the rescission of the
same resolution. --ED. ]
_May_ 13. 1833.
FOOD. --MEDICINE. --POISON. --OBSTRUCTION.
1. That which is digested wholly, and part of which is assimilated, and
part rejected, is--Food.
2. That which is digested wholly, and the whole of which is partly
assimilated, and partly not, is--Medicine.
3. That which is digested, but not assimilated, is--Poison.
4. That which is neither digested nor assimilated is--Mere Obstruction.
As to the stories of slow poisons, I cannot say whether there was any, or
what, truth in them; but I certainly believe a man may be poisoned by
arsenic a year after he has taken it. In fact, I think that is known to
have happened.
May 14. 1833.
WILSON. --SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. --LOVE.
Professor Wilson's character of Charles Lamb in the last Blackwood,
_Twaddle on Tweed-side_[1], is very sweet indeed, and gratified me much. It
does honour to Wilson, to his head and his heart.
[Footnote 1:
"Charles Lamb ought really not to abuse Scotland in the pleasant way he so
often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield; for Scotland loves Charles
Lamb; but he is wayward and wilful in his wisdom, and conceits that many a
Cockney is a better man even than Christopher North. But what will not
Christopher forgive to genius and goodness! Even Lamb, bleating libels on
his native land. Nay, he learns lessons of humanity even from the mild
malice of Elia, and breathes a blessing on him and his household in their
bower of rest. "
Some of Mr. Coleridge's poems were first published with some of C. Lamb's
at Bristol in 1797. The remarkable words on the title-page have been aptly
cited in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1835, p. 198. : "Duplex
nobis vinculum, et amicitiae et similium junctarumque Camcoenarum,--quod
utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas. " And even so it came
to pass after thirty seven years more had passed over their heads,--ED. ]
* * * * *
How can I wish that Wilson should cease to write what so often soothes and
suspends my bodily miseries, and my mental conflicts! Yet what a waste,
what a reckless spending, of talent, ay, and of genius, too, in his I know
not how many years' management of Blackwood! If Wilson cares for fame, for
an enduring place and prominence in literature, he should now, I think,
hold his hand, and say, as he well may,--
"Militavi non sine gloria:
Nunc arma defunctumque bello
Barbiton hic paries habebit. "
Two or three volumes collected out of the magazine by himself would be very
delightful. But he must not leave it for others to do; for some recasting
and much condensation would be required; and literary executors make sad
work in general with their testators' brains.
* * * * *
I believe it possible that a man may, under certain states of the moral
feeling, entertain something deserving the name of love towards a male
object--an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from appetite. In
Elizabeth's and James's time it seems to have been almost fashionable to
cherish such a feeling; and perhaps we may account in some measure for it
by considering how very inferior the women of that age, taken generally,
were in education and accomplishment of mind to the men. Of course there
were brilliant exceptions enough; but the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher--
the most popular dramatists that ever wrote for the English stage--will
show us what sort of women it was generally pleasing to represent.
Certainly the language of the two friends, Musidorus and Pyrocles, in the
Arcadia, is such as we could not now use except to women; and in Cervantes
the same tone is sometimes adopted, as in the novel of the Curious
Impertinent. And I think there is a passage in the New Atlantis[1] of Lord
Bacon, in which he speaks of the possibility of such a feeling, but hints
the extreme danger of entertaining it, or allowing it any place in a moral
theory. I mention this with reference to Shakspeare's sonnets, which have
been supposed, by some, to be addressed to William Herbert, Earl of
Pembroke, whom Clarendon calls[2] the most beloved man of his age, though
his licentiousness was equal to his virtues.
I doubt this. I do not think that Shakespeare, merely because he was an
actor, would have thought it necessary to veil his emotions towards
Pembroke under a disguise, though he might probably have done so, if the
real object had perchance been a Laura or a Leonora. It seems to me that
the sonnets could only have come from a man deeply in love, and in love
with a woman; and there is one sonnet which, from its incongruity, I take
to be a purposed blind. These extraordinary sonnets form, in fact, a poem
of so many stanzas of fourteen lines each; and, like the passion which
inspired them, the sonnets are always the same, with a variety of
expression,--continuous, if you regard the lover's soul,--distinct, if you
listen to him, as he heaves them sigh after sigh.
These sonnets, like the Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, are
characterized by boundless fertility and laboured condensation of thought,
with perfection of sweetness in rhythm and metre. These are the essentials
in the budding of a great poet. Afterwards habit and consciousness of power
teach more ease--_praecipitandum liberum spiritum_.
[Footnote 1:
I cannot fix upon any passage in this work, to which it can be supposed
that Mr. Coleridge alluded, unless it be the speech of Joabin the Jew; but
it contains nothing coming up to the meaning in the text. The only approach
to it seems to be:--"As for masculine love, they have no touch of it; and
yet there are not so faithful and inviolate friendships in the world again
as are there; and to speak generally, as I said before, I have not read of
any such chastity in any people as theirs. "--ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
"William Earl of Pembroke was next, a man of another mould and making, and
of another fame and reputation with all men, being the most universally
beloved and esteemed of any man of that age. " . . . . . . . "He indulged to
himself the pleasures of all kinds, almost in all excesses. "--_Hist. of the
Rebellion_, book i. He died in 1630, aged fifty years. The dedication by T.
T. (Thomas Thorpe) is to "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr.
W. H. " and Malone is inclined to think that William Hughes is meant. As to
Mr. W. H. being the _only_ begetter of these sonnets, it must be observed,
that at least the last twenty-eight are beyond dispute addressed to a
woman. I suppose the twentieth sonnet was the particular one conceived by
Mr. C. to be a blind; but it seems to me that many others may be so
construed, if we set out with a conviction that the real object of the poet
was a woman. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Every one who has been in love, knows that the passion is strongest, and
the appetite weakest, in the absence of the beloved object, and that the
reverse is the case in her presence.
_May_ 15. 1833.
WICLIFFE. --LUTHER. --REVERENCE FOR IDEAL TRUTHS. --JOHNSON THE WHIG. --
ASGILL. --JAMES I.
Wicliffe's genius was, perhaps, not equal to Luther's; but really the more
I know of him from Vaughan and Le Bas, both of whose books I like, I think
him as extraordinary a man as Luther upon the whole. He was much sounder
and more truly catholic in his view of the Eucharist than Luther. And I
find, not without some pleasure, that my own view of it, which I was
afraid was original, was maintained in the tenth century, that is to say,
that the body broken had no reference to the human body of Christ, but to
the Caro Noumenon, or symbolical Body, the Rock that followed the
Israelites.
Whitaker beautifully says of Luther;--_Felix ille, quem Dominus eo honore
dignatus est, ut homines nequissimos suos haberet inimicos_.
* * * * *
There is now no reverence for any thing; and the reason is, that men
possess conceptions only, and all their knowledge is conceptional only.
Now as, to conceive, is a work of the mere understanding, and as all that
can be conceived may be comprehended, it is impossible that a man should
reverence that, to which he must always feel something in himself
superior. If it were possible to conceive God in a strict sense, that is,
as we conceive a horse or a tree, even God himself could not excite any
reverence, though he might excite fear or terror, or perhaps love, as a
tiger or a beautiful woman. But reverence, which is the synthesis of love
and fear, is only due from man, and, indeed, only excitable in man,
towards ideal truths, which are always mysteries to the understanding, for
the same reason that the motion of my finger behind my back is a mystery
to you now--your eyes not being made for seeing through my body. It is
the reason only which has a sense by which ideas can be recognized, and
from the fontal light of ideas only can a man draw intellectual power.
* * * * *
Samuel Johnson[1], whom, to distinguish him from the Doctor, we may call
the Whig, was a very remarkable writer. He may be compared to his
contemporary De Foe, whom he resembled in many points. He is another
instance of King William's discrimination, which was so much superior to
that of any of his ministers, Johnson was one of the most formidable
advocates for the Exclusion Bill, and he suffered by whipping and
imprisonment under James accordingly. Like Asgill, he argues with great
apparent candour and clearness till he has his opponent within reach, and
then comes a blow as from a sledge-hammer. I do not know where I could put
my hand upon a book containing so much sense and sound constitutional
doctrine as this thin folio of Johnson's Works; and what party in this
country would read so severe a lecture in it as our modern Whigs!
A close reasoner and a good writer in general may be known by his pertinent
use of connectives. Read that page of Johnson; you cannot alter one
conjunction without spoiling the sense. It is a linked strain throughout.
In your modern books, for the most part, the sentences in a page have the
same connection with each other that marbles have in a bag; they touch
without adhering.
Asgill evidently formed his style upon Johnson's, but he only imitates one
part of it. Asgill never rises to Johnson's eloquence. The latter was a
sort of Cobbett-Burke.
James the First thought that, because all power in the state seemed to
proceed _from_ the crown, all power therefore remained in the crown;--as
if, because the tree sprang from the seed, the stem, branches, leaves, and
fruit were all contained in the seed. The constitutional doctrine as to the
relation which the king bears to the other components of the state is in
two words this:--He is a representative of the whole of that, of which he
is himself a part.
[Footnote 1:
Dryden's Ben Jochanan, in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel. He was
born in 1649, and died in 1703. He was a clergyman. In 1686, when the army
was encamped on Hounslow Heath, he published "A humble and hearty Address
to all English Protestants in the present Army. " For this he was tried and
sentenced to be pilloried in three places, pay a fine, and be whipped from
Newgate to Tyburn. An attempt was also made to degrade him from his orders,
but this failed through an informality. After the Revolution he was
preferred. --ED. ]
_May_ 17. 1833.
SIR P. SIDNEY. --THINGS ARE FINDING THEIR LEVEL.
When Sir Philip Sidney saw the enthusiasm which agitated every man, woman,
and child in the Netherlands against Philip and D'Alva, he told Queen
Elizabeth that it was the spirit of God, and that it was invincible. What
is the spirit which seems to move and unsettle every other man in England
and on the Continent at this time? Upon my conscience, and judging by St.
John's rule, I think it is a special spirit of the devil--and a very vulgar
devil too!
* * * * *
Your modern political economists say that it is a principle in their
science--that all things _find_ their level;--which I deny; and say, on
the contrary, that the true principle is, that all things are _finding_
their level like water in a storm.
_May_ 18. 1833.
GERMAN. --GOETHE. --GOD'S PROVIDENCE. --MAN'S FREEDOM.
German is inferior to English in modifications of expression of the
affections, but superior to it in modifications of expression of all
objects of the senses.
* * * * *
Goethe's small lyrics are delightful. He showed good taste in not
attempting to imitate Shakspeare's Witches, which are threefold,--Fates,
Furies, and earthly Hags o' the caldron.
* * * * *
Man does not move in cycles, though nature does. Man's course is like that
of an arrow; for the portion of the great cometary ellipse which he
occupies is no more than a needle's length to a mile.
In natural history, God's freedom is shown in the law of necessity. In
moral history, God's necessity or providence is shown in man's freedom.
_June_ 8. 1833.
DOM MIGUEL AND DOM PEDRO. --WORKING TO BETTER ONE'S CONDITION. --NEGRO
EMANCIPATION. --FOX AND PITT. --REVOLUTION.
There can be no doubt of the gross violations of strict neutrality by this
government in the Portuguese affair; but I wish the Tories had left the
matter alone, and not given room to the people to associate them with that
scoundrel Dom Miguel. You can never interest the common herd in the
abstract question; with them it is a mere quarrel between the men; and
though Pedro is a very doubtful character, he is not so bad as his brother;
and, besides, we are naturally interested for the girl.
* * * * *
It is very strange that men who make light of the direct doctrines of the
Scriptures, and turn up their noses at the recommendation of a line of
conduct suggested by religious truth, will nevertheless stake the
tranquillity of an empire, the lives and properties of millions of men and
women, on the faith of a maxim of modern political economy! And this, too,
of a maxim true only, if at all, of England or a part of England, or some
other country;--namely, that the desire of bettering their condition will
induce men to labour even more abundantly and profitably than servile
compulsion,--to which maxim the past history and present state of all Asia
and Africa give the lie. Nay, even in England at this day, every man in
Manchester, Birmingham, and in other great manufacturing towns, knows that
the most skilful artisans, who may earn high wages at pleasure, are
constantly in the habit of working but a few days in the week, and of
idling the rest. I believe St.
Monday is very well kept by the workmen in London. The love of indolence is
universal, or next to it.
* * * * *
Must not the ministerial plan for the West Indies lead necessarily to a
change of property, either by force or dereliction? I can't see any way of
escaping it.
* * * * *
You are always talking of the _rights_ of the negroes. As a rhetorical mode
of stimulating the people of England _here_, I do not object; but I utterly
condemn your frantic practice of declaiming about their rights to the
blacks themselves. They ought to be forcibly reminded of the state in which
their brethren in Africa still are, and taught to be thankful for the
providence which has placed them within reach of the means of grace. I know
no right except such as flows from righteousness; and as every Christian
believes his righteousness to be imputed, so must his right be an imputed
right too. It must flow out of a duty, and it is under that name that the
process of humanization ought to begin and to be conducted throughout.
* * * * *
Thirty years ago, and more, Pitt availed himself, with great political
dexterity, of the apprehension, which Burke and the conduct of some of the
clubs in London had excited, and endeavoured to inspire into the nation a
panic of property. Fox, instead of exposing the absurdity of this by
showing the real numbers and contemptible weakness of the disaffected, fell
into Pitt's trap, and was mad enough to exaggerate even Pitt's surmises.
The consequence was, a very general apprehension throughout the country of
an impending revolution, at a time when, I will venture to say, the people
were more heart-whole than they had been for a hundred years previously.
After I had travelled in Sicily and Italy, countries where there were real
grounds for fear, I became deeply impressed with the difference. Now, after
a long continuance of high national glory and influence, when a revolution
of a most searching and general character is actually at work, and the old
institutions of the country are all awaiting their certain destruction or
violent modification--the people at large are perfectly secure, sleeping or
gambolling on the very brink of a volcano.
_June_ 15. 1833.
VIRTUE AND LIBERTY. --EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. --ERASMUS. ----LUTHER.
The necessity for external government to man is in an inverse ratio to the
vigour of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first
is least wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty.
* * * * *
I think St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans the most profound work in
existence; and I hardly believe that the writings of the old Stoics, now
lost, could have been deeper. Undoubtedly it is, and must be, very obscure
to ordinary readers; but some of the difficulty is accidental, arising from
the form in which the Epistle appears. If we could now arrange this work in
the way in which we may be sure St. Paul would himself do, were he now
alive, and preparing it for the press, his reasoning would stand out
clearer. His accumulated parentheses would be thrown into notes, or
extruded to the margin. You will smile, after this, if I say that I think I
understand St. Paul; and I think so, because, really and truly, I recognize
a cogent consecutiveness in the argument--the only evidence I know that you
understand any book. How different is the style of this intensely
passionate argument from that of the catholic circular charge called the
Epistle to the Ephesians! --and how different that of both from the style of
the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which I venture to call [Greek:
epistolal panloeideiz]
Erasmus's paraphrase of the New Testament is clear and explanatory; but you
cannot expect any thing very deep from Erasmus. The only fit commentator on
Paul was Luther--not by any means such a gentleman as the Apostle, but
almost as great a genius.
_June_ 17. 1833.
NEGRO EMANCIPATION.
Have you been able to discover any principle in this Emancipation Bill for
the Slaves, except a principle of fear of the abolition party struggling
with a dread of causing some monstrous calamity to the empire at large?
Well! I will not prophesy; and God grant that this tremendous and
unprecedented act of positive enactment may not do the harm to the cause of
humanity and freedom which I cannot but fear! But yet, what can be hoped,
when all human wisdom and counsel are set at nought, and religious faith--
the only miraculous agent amongst men--is not invoked or regarded! and that
most unblest phrase--the Dissenting _interest_--enters into the question!
_June_ 22. 1833.
HACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS. --CHARLES I. --MANNERS UNDER EDWARD
III. , RICHARD II. , AND HENRY VIII.
What a delightful and instructive hook Bishop Hacket's Life of Archbishop
Williams is! You learn more from it of that which is valuable towards an
insight into the times preceding the Civil War than from all the ponderous
histories and memoirs now composed about that period.
* * * * *
Charles seems to have been a very disagreeable personage during James's
life. There is nothing dutiful in his demeanour.
* * * * *
I think the spirit of the court and nobility of Edward III. and Richard II.
was less gross than that in the time of Henry VIII. ; for in this latter
period the chivalry had evaporated, and the whole coarseness was left by
itself. Chaucer represents a very high and romantic style of society
amongst the gentry.
_June_ 29. 1833.
HYPOTHESIS. --SUFFICTION. --THEORY. --LYELL'S GEOLOGY. --GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
--GERARD DOUW's "SCHOOLMASTER" AND TITIAN'S "VENUS. "--SIR J. SCARLETT.
It seems to me a great delusion to call or suppose the imagination of a
subtle fluid, or molecules penetrable with the same, a legitimate
hypothesis. It is a mere _suffiction_. Newton took the fact of bodies
falling to the centre, and upon that built up a legitimate hypothesis. It
was a subposition of something certain. But Descartes' vortices were not an
hypothesis; they rested on no fact at all; and yet they did, in a clumsy
way, explain the motions of the heavenly bodies. But your subtle fluid is
pure gratuitous assumption; and for what use? It explains nothing.
Besides, you are endeavouring to deduce power from mass, in which you
expressly say there is no power but the _vis inertiae_: whereas, the whole
analogy of chemistry proves that power produces mass.
* * * * *
The use of a theory in the real sciences is to help the investigator to a
complete view of all the hitherto discovered facts relating to the science
in question; it is a collected view, [Greek: the_orhia], of all he yet
knows in _one_. Of course, whilst any pertinent facts remain unknown, no
theory can be exactly true, because every new fact must necessarily, to a
greater or less degree, displace the relation of all the others. A theory,
therefore, only helps investigation; it cannot invent or discover. The only
true theories are those of geometry, because in geometry all the premisses
are true and unalterable. But, to suppose that, in our present exceedingly
imperfect acquaintance with the facts, any theory in chemistry or geology
is altogether accurate, is absurd:--it cannot be true.
Mr. Lyell's system of geology is just half the truth, and no more. He
affirms a great deal that is true, and he denies a great deal which is
equally true; which is the general characteristic of all systems not
embracing the whole truth. So it is with the rectilinearity or undulatory
motion of light;--I believe both; though philosophy has as yet but
imperfectly ascertained the conditions of their alternate existence, or the
laws by which they are regulated.
* * * * *
Those who deny light to be matter do not, therefore, deny its corporeity.
* * * * *
The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is
no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it
depends much more on execution for its effect. I was more than ever
impressed with the marvellous sublimity and transcendant beauty of King's
College Chapel. [1] It is quite unparalleled.
I think Gerard Douw's "Schoolmaster," in the Fitzwilliam Museum, the finest
thing of the sort I ever saw;--whether you look at it at the common
distance, or examine it with a glass, the wonder is equal. And that
glorious picture of the Venus--so perfectly beautiful and perfectly
innocent--as if beauty and innocence could not be dissociated! The French
thing below is a curious instance of the inherent grossness of the French
taste. Titian's picture is made quite bestial.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge visited Cambridge upon the occasion of the scientific meeting
there in June, 1833. --"My emotions," he said, "at revisiting the university
were at first, overwhelming. I could not speak for an hour; yet my feelings
were upon the whole very pleasurable, and I have not passed, of late years
at least, three days of such great enjoyment and healthful excitement of
mind and body. The bed on which I slept--and slept soundly too--was, as
near as I can describe it, a couple of sacks full of potatoes tied
together. I understand the young men think it hardens them. Truly I lay
down at night a man, and arose in the morning a bruise. " He told me "that
the men were much amused at his saying that the fine old Quaker philosopher
Dalton's face was like All Souls' College. " The two persons of whom he
spoke with the greatest interest were Mr. Faraday and Mr. Thirlwall; saying
of the former, "that he seemed to have the true temperament of genius, that
carrying-on of the spring and freshness of youthful, nay, boyish feelings,
into the matured strength of manhood! " For, as Mr. Coleridge had long
before expressed the same thought,--"To find no contradiction in the union
of old and new; to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all his works with
feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative
fiat, this characterizes the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and
may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the
powers of manhood; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with
the appearances which everyday for perhaps forty years had rendered
familiar;
'With sun and moon and stars throughout the year,
And man and woman;'--
this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which
distinguish genius from talent. And therefore is it the prime merit of
genius, and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent
familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling
concerning them, and that freshness of sensation which is the constant
accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence. Who has not
a thousand times seen snow fall on water? Who has not watched it with a new
feeling, from the time that he has read Burns's comparison of sensual
pleasure
'To snow that falls upon a river,
A moment white--then gone for ever! '"
_Biog. Lit_. vol. i, p. 85. --ED. ]
* * * * *
I think Sir James Scarlett's speech for the defendant, in the late action
of Cobbett v. The Times, for a libel, worthy of the best ages of Greece or
Rome; though, to be sure, some of his remarks could not have been very
palatable to his clients.
* * * * *
I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, which I fear has gone on
for an hour without any stop at all.
_July_ 1. 1833.
MANDEVILLE'S FABLE OF THE BEES. --BESTIAL THEORY. --CHARACTER OF BERTRAM. --
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER'S DRAMAS. --AESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES,--MILTON.
If I could ever believe that Mandeville really meant any thing more by his
Fable of the Bees than a _bonne bouche_ of solemn raillery, I should like
to ask those man-shaped apes who have taken up his suggestions in earnest,
and seriously maintained them as bases for a rational account of man and
the world--how they explain the very existence of those dexterous cheats,
those superior charlatans, the legislators and philosophers, who have known
how to play so well upon the peacock-like vanity and follies of their
fellow mortals.
By the by, I wonder some of you lawyers (_sub rosa_, of course) have not
quoted the pithy lines in Mandeville upon this registration question:--
"The lawyers, of whose art the basis
Was raising feuds and splitting cases,
_Oppos'd all Registers_, that cheats
Might make more work with dipt estates;
As 'twere unlawful that one's own
Without a lawsuit should be known!
They put off hearings wilfully,
To finger the refreshing fee;
And to defend a wicked cause
Examined and survey'd the laws,
As burglars shops and houses do,
To see where best they may break through. "
There is great Hudibrastic vigour in these lines; and those on the doctors
are also very terse.
* * * * *
Look at that head of Cline, by Chantrey! Is that forehead, that nose, those
temples and that chin, akin to the monkey tribe? No, no. To a man of
sensibility no argument could disprove the bestial theory so convincingly
as a quiet contemplation of that fine bust.
* * * * *
I cannot agree with the solemn abuse which the critics have poured out upon
Bertram in "All's Well that ends Well. " He was a young nobleman in feudal
times, just bursting into manhood, with all the feelings of pride of birth
and appetite for pleasure and liberty natural to such a character so
circumstanced. Of course he had never regarded Helena otherwise than as a
dependant in the family; and of all that which she possessed of goodness
and fidelity and courage, which might atone for her inferiority in other
respects, Bertram was necessarily in a great measure ignorant. And after
all, her _prima facie_ merit was the having inherited a prescription from
her old father the doctor, by which she cures the king,--a merit, which
supposes an extravagance of personal loyalty in Bertram to make conclusive
to him in such a matter as that of taking a wife. Bertram had surely good
reason to look upon the king's forcing him to marry Helena as a very
tyrannical act. Indeed, it must be confessed that her character is not very
delicate, and it required all Shakspeare's consummate skill to interest us
for her; and he does this chiefly by the operation of the other
characters,--the Countess, Lafeu, &c. We get to like Helena from their
praising and commending her so much.
* * * * *
In Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedies the comic scenes are rarely so
interfused amidst the tragic as to produce a unity of the tragic on the
whole, without which the intermixture is a fault. In Shakspeare, this is
always managed with transcendant skill. The Fool in Lear contributes in a
very sensible manner to the tragic wildness of the whole drama. Beaumont
and Fletcher's serious plays or tragedies are complete hybrids,--neither
fish nor flesh,--upon any rules, Greek, Roman, or Gothic: and yet they are
very delightful notwithstanding. No doubt, they imitate the ease of
gentlemanly conversation better than Shakspeare, who was unable _not_ to be
too much associated to succeed perfectly in this.
When I was a boy, I was fondest of AEschylus; in youth and middle age I
preferred Euripides; now in my declining years I admire Sophocles. I can
now at length see that Sophocles is the most perfect. Yet he never rises to
the sublime simplicity of AEschylus--simplicity of design, I mean--nor
diffuses himself in the passionate outpourings of Euripides. I understand
why the ancients called Euripides the most tragic of their dramatists: he
evidently embraces within the scope of the tragic poet many passions,--
love, conjugal affection, jealousy, and so on, which Sophocles seems to
have considered as incongruous with the ideal statuesqueness of the tragic
drama.
