The
Pope always hated and maligned the Universities.
Pope always hated and maligned the Universities.
Coleridge - Table Talk
--BEAUMONT
AND FLETCHER. --DANIEL. --MASSINGER.
I take unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially
delicious to me in my old age. [1] How exquisitely tender he is, and yet how
perfectly free from the least touch of sickly melancholy or morbid
drooping! The sympathy of the poet with the subjects of his poetry is
particularly remarkable in Shakspeare and Chaucer; but what the first
effects by a strong act of imagination and mental metamorphosis, the last
does without any effort, merely by the inborn kindly joyousness of his
nature. How well we seem to know Chaucer! How absolutely nothing do we know
of Shakspeare!
I cannot in the least allow any necessity for Chaucer's poetry, especially
the Canterbury Tales, being considered obsolete. Let a few plain rules be
given for sounding the final _e_ of syllables, and for expressing the
termination of such words as _ocean_, and _nation_, &c. as dissyllables,--
or let the syllables to be sounded in such cases be marked by a competent
metrist. This simple expedient would, with a very few trifling exceptions,
where the errors are inveterate, enable any reader to feel the perfect
smoothness and harmony of Chaucer's verse.
[Footnote 1:
Eighteen years before, Mr. Coleridge entertained the same feelings towards
Chaucer:--"Through all the works of Chaucer there reigns a cheerfulness, a
manly hilarity, which makes it almost impossible to doubt a correspondent
habit of feeling in the author himself. " _Biog. Lit_. , vol. i. p. 32. --ED. ]
* * * * *
As to understanding his language, if you read twenty pages with a good
glossary, you surely can find no further difficulty, even as it is; but I
should have no objection to see this done:--Strike out those words which
are now obsolete, and I will venture to say that I will replace every one
of them by words still in use out of Chaucer himself, or Gower his
disciple. I don't want this myself: I rather like to see the significant
terms which Chaucer unsuccessfully offered as candidates for admission into
our language; but surely so very slight a change of the text may well be
pardoned, even by black--_letterati_, for the purpose of restoring so great
a poet to his ancient and most deserved popularity.
* * * * *
Shakspeare is of no age. It is idle to endeavour to support his phrases by
quotations from Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, &c. His language is
entirely his own, and the younger dramatists imitated him. The construction
of Shakspeare's sentences, whether in verse or prose, is the necessary and
homogeneous vehicle of his peculiar manner of thinking. His is not the
style of the age. More particularly, Shakspeare's blank verse is an
absolutely new creation. Read Daniel[1]--the admirable Daniel--in his
"Civil Wars," and "Triumphs of Hymen. "
The style and language are just such as any very pure and manly writer of
the present day--Wordsworth, for example--would use; it seems quite modern
in comparison with the style of Shakspeare. Ben Jonson's blank verse is
very masterly and individual, and perhaps Massinger's is even still nobler.
In Beaumont and Fletcher it is constantly slipping into lyricisms.
I believe Shakspeare was not a whit more intelligible in his own day than
he is now to an educated man, except for a few local allusions of no
consequence. As I said, he is of no age--nor, I may add, of any religion,
or party, or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of
the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind: his observation and
reading, which was considerable, supplied him with the drapery of his
figures. [2]
[Footnote 1:
"This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the '_well-languaged Daniel_;'
but, likewise, and by the consent of his contemporaries, no less than of
all succeeding critics, the 'prosaic Daniel. ' Yet those who thus designate
this wise and amiable writer, from the frequent incorrespondency of his
diction with his metre, in the majority of his compositions, not only deem
them valuable and interesting on other accounts, but willingly admit that
there are to be found throughout his poems, and especially in his
_Epistles_ and in his _Hymen's Triumph_, many and exquisite specimens of
that style, which, as the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to
both. "--_Biog. Lit_. , vol. ii. p. 82. ]
[Footnote 2:
Mr. Coleridge called Shakspeare "_the myriad-minded man_," [Greek: au_az
muzioyous]--" a phrase," said he, "which I have borrowed from a Greek monk,
who applies it to a patriarch of Constantinople. I might have said, that I
have _reclaimed_, rather than borrowed, it, for it seems to belong to
Shakspeare _de jure singulari, et ex privilegio naturae. " See Biog. Lit. ,
vol. ii. p. 13. --ED. ]
* * * * *
As for editing Beaumont and Fletcher, the task would be one _immensi
laboris_. The confusion is now so great, the errors so enormous, that the
editor must use a boldness quite unallowable in any other case. All I can
say as to Beaumont and Fletcher is, that I can point out well enough where
something has been lost, and that something so and so was probably in the
original; but the law of Shakspeare's thought and verse is such, that I
feel convinced that not only could I detect the spurious, but supply the
genuine, word.
_March_ 20. 1834.
LORD BYRON AND H. WALPOLE'S "MYSTERIOUS MOTHER. "--LEWIS'S "JAMAICA
JOURNAL. "
Lord Byron, as quoted by Lord Dover[1], says, that the "Mysterious Mother"
raises Horace Walpole above every author living in his, Lord Byron's, time.
Upon which I venture to remark, first, that I do not believe that Lord
Byron spoke sincerely; for I suspect that he made a tacit exception in
favour of himself at least;--secondly, that it is a miserable mode of
comparison which does not rest on difference of kind. It proceeds of envy
and malice and detraction to say that A. is higher than B. , unless you show
that they are _in pari materia_;--thirdly, that the "Mysterious Mother" is
the most disgusting, vile, detestable composition that ever came from the
hand of man. No one with a spark of true manliness, of which Horace Walpole
had none, could have written it. As to the blank verse, it is indeed better
than Rowe's and Thomson's, which was execrably bad:--any approach,
therefore, to the manner of the old dramatists was of course an
improvement; but the loosest lines in Shirley are superior to Walpole's
best.
[Footnote 1:
In the memoir prefixed to the correspondence with Sir H. Mann. Lord Byron's
words are:--"He is the _ultimus Romanorum_, the author of the 'Mysterious
Mother,' a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love play. He is
the father of the first romance, and of the last tragedy, in our language;
and surely worthy of a higher place than any living author, be he who he
may. "--_Preface to Marino Faliero_. Is not "Romeo and Juliet" a love play?
--But why reason about such insincere, splenetic trash? --ED. ]
* * * * *
Lewis's "Jamaica Journal" is delightful; it is almost the only unaffected
book of travels or touring I have read of late years. You have the man
himself, and not an inconsiderable man,--certainly a much finer mind than I
supposed before from the perusal of his romances, &c. It is by far his best
work, and will live and be popular. Those verses on the Hours are very
pretty; but the Isle of Devils is, like his romances,--a fever dream--
horrible, without point or terror.
_April_ 16. 1834.
SICILY. --MALTA--SIR ALEXANDER BALL.
I found that every thing in and about Sicily had been exaggerated by
travellers, except two things--the folly of the government and the
wretchedness of the people. _They_ did not admit of exaggeration.
Really you may learn the fundamental principles of political economy in a
very compendious way, by taking a short tour through Sicily, and simply
reversing in your own mind every law, custom, and ordinance you meet with.
I never was in a country in which every thing proceeding from man was so
exactly wrong. You have peremptory ordinances _against_ making roads, taxes
on the passage of common vegetables from one miserable village to another,
and so on.
By the by, do you know any parallel in modern history to the absurdity of
our giving a legislative assembly to the Sicilians? It exceeds any thing I
know. This precious legislature passed two bills before it was knocked on
the head: the first was, to render lands inalienable; and the second, to
cancel all debts due before the date of the bill.
And then consider the gross ignorance and folly of our laying a tax upon
the Sicilians! Taxation in its proper sense can only exist where there is a
free circulation of capital, labour, and commodities throughout the
community. But to tax the people in countries like Sicily and Corsica,
where there is no internal communication, is mere robbery and confiscation.
A crown taken from a Corsican living in the sierras would not get back to
him again in ten years.
* * * * *
It is interesting to pass from Malta to Sicily--from the highest specimen
of an inferior race, the Saracenic, to the most degraded class of a
superior race, the European.
* * * * *
No tongue can describe the moral corruption of the Maltese when the island
was surrendered to us. There was not a family in it in which a wife or a
daughter was not a kept mistress. A marquis of ancient family applied to
Sir Alexander Ball to be appointed his valet. "My valet! " said Ball, "what
can you mean, Sir? " The marquis said, he hoped he should then have had the
honour of presenting petitions to his Excellency. "Oh, that is it, is it! "
said Sir Alexander: "my valet, Sir, brushes my clothes, and brings them to
me. If he dared to meddle with matters of public business, I should kick
him down stairs. "
In short, Malta was an Augean stable, and Ball had all the inclination to
be a Hercules. [1] His task was most difficult, although his qualifications
were most remarkable. I remember an English officer of very high rank
soliciting him for the renewal of a pension to an abandoned woman who had
been notoriously treacherous to us. That officer had promised the woman as
a matter of course--she having sacrificed her daughter to him. Ball was
determined, as far as he could, to prevent Malta from being made a nest of
home patronage. He considered, as was the fact, that there was a contract
between England and the Maltese. Hence the government at home, especially
Dundas, disliked him, and never allowed him any other title than that of
Civil Commissioner. We have, I believe, nearly succeeded in alienating the
hearts of the inhabitants from us. Every officer in the island ought to be
a Maltese, except those belonging to the immediate executive: 100_l_. per
annum to a Maltese, to enable him to keep a gilt carriage, will satisfy him
where an Englishman must have 2000_l_.
[Footnote 1:
I refer the reader to the five concluding essays of the third volume of the
"Friend," as a specimen of what Mr. C. might have done as a biographer if
an irresistible instinct had not devoted him to profounder labours. As a
sketch--and it pretends to nothing more--is there any thing more perfect in
our literature than the monument raised in those essays to the memory of
Sir Alexander Ball? --and there are some touches added to the character of
Nelson, which the reader, even of Southey's matchless Life of our hero,
will find both new and interesting. --ED. ]
_May_ 1. 1834.
CAMBRIDGE PETITION TO ADMIT DISSENTERS.
There are, to my grief, the names of some men to the Cambridge petition for
admission of the Dissenters to the University, whose cheeks I think must
have burned with shame at the degrading patronage and befouling eulogies of
the democratic press, and at seeing themselves used as the tools of the
open and rancorous enemies of the church. How miserable to be held up for
the purpose of inflicting insult upon men, whose worth and ability and
sincerity you well know,--and this by a faction banded together like
obscene dogs and cats and serpents, against a church which you profoundly
revere! The _time_--the _time_--the _occasion_ and the _motive_ ought to
have been argument enough, that even if the measure were right or harmless
in itself, not _now_, nor with such as _these_, was it to be effected!
_May_ 3. 1834.
CORN LAWS.
Those who argue that England may safely depend upon a supply of foreign
corn, if it grow none or an insufficient quantity of its own, forget that
they are subjugating the necessaries of life itself to the mere luxuries or
comforts of society. Is it not certain that the price of corn abroad will
be raised upon us as soon as it is once known that we _must_ buy? --and when
that fact is known, in what sort of a situation shall we be? Besides this,
the argument supposes that agriculture is not a positive good to the
nation, taken in and by itself, as a mode of existence for the people,
which supposition is false and pernicious; and if we are to become a great
horde of manufacturers, shall we not, even more than at present, excite the
ill will of all the manufacturers of other nations? It has been already
shown, in evidence which is before all the world, that some of our
manufacturers have acted upon the accursed principle of deliberately
injuring foreign manufactures, if they can, even to the ultimate disgrace
of the country and loss to themselves.
_May_ 19. 1834.
CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
How grossly misunderstood the genuine character of the Christian sabbath,
or Lord's day, seems to be even by the church! To confound it with the
Jewish sabbath, or to rest its observance upon the fourth commandment, is,
in my judgment, heretical, and would so have been considered in the
primitive church. That cessation from labour on the Lord's day could not
have been absolutely incumbent on Christians for two centuries after
Christ, is apparent; because during that period the greater part of the
Christians were either slaves or in official situations under Pagan masters
or superiors, and had duties to perform for those who did not recognize the
day. And we know that St. Paul sent back Onesimus to his master, and told
every Christian slave, that, being a Christian, he was free in his mind
indeed, but still must serve his earthly master, although he might laudably
seek for his personal freedom also. If the early Christians had refused to
work on the Lord's day, rebellion and civil war must have been the
immediate consequences. But there is no notice of any such cessation.
The Jewish sabbath was commemorative of the termination of the great act of
creation; it was to record that the world had not been from eternity, nor
had arisen as a dream by itself, but that God had created it by distinct
acts of power, and that he had hallowed the day or season in which he
rested or desisted from his work. When our Lord arose from the dead, the
old creation was, as it were, superseded, and the new creation then began;
and therefore the first day and not the last day, the commencement and not
the end, of the work of God was solemnized.
Luther, in speaking of the _good by itself_, and the good _for its
expediency alone_, instances the observance of the Christian day of rest,--
a day of repose from manual labour, and of activity in spiritual labour,--a
day of joy and co-operation in the work of Christ's creation. "Keep it
holy"--says he--"for its use' sake,--both to body and soul! But if any
where the day is made holy for the mere day's sake,--if any where any one
sets up its observance upon a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work
on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it--to do any thing that
shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and liberty. "
The early church distinguished the day of Christian rest so strongly from a
fast, that it was unlawful for a man to bewail even _his own sins_, as such
only, on that day. He was to bewail the sins of _all_, and to pray as one
of the whole of Christ's body.
And the English Reformers evidently took the same view of the day as Luther
and the early church. But, unhappily, our church, in the reigns of James
and Charles the First, was so identified with the undue advancement of the
royal prerogative, that the puritanical Judaizing of the Presbyterians was
but too well seconded by the patriots of the nation, in resisting the wise
efforts of the church to prevent the incipient alteration in the character
of the day of rest. After the Restoration, the bishops and clergy in
general adopted the view taken and enforced by their enemies.
By the by, it is curious to observe, in this semi-infidel and Malthusian
Parliament, how the Sabbatarian spirit unites itself with a rancorous
hostility to that one institution, which alone, according to reason and
experience, can insure the continuance of any general religion at all in
the nation at large. Some of these gentlemen, who are for not letting a
poor labouring man have a dish of baked potatoes on a Sunday, _religionis
gratia_--(God forgive that audacious blasphemy! )--are foremost among those
who seem to live but in vilifying, weakening, and impoverishing the
national church. I own my indignation boils over against such contemptible
fellows.
I sincerely wish to preserve a decent quiet on Sunday. I would prohibit
compulsory labour, and put down operas, theatres, &c. , for this plain
reason--that if the rich be allowed to play, the poor will be forced, or,
what comes to the same thing, will be induced, to work. I am not for a
Paris Sunday. But to stop coaches, and let the gentleman's carriage run, is
monstrous.
_May_ 25. 1834.
HIGH PRIZES AND REVENUES OF THE CHURCH.
Your argument against the high prizes in the church might be put strongly
thus:--Admit that in the beginning it might have been fairly said, that
some eminent rewards ought to be set apart for the purpose of stimulating
and rewarding transcendant merit; what have you to say now, after centuries
of experience to the contrary? --_Have_ the high prizes been given to the
highest genius, virtue, or learning? Is it not rather the truth, as Jortin
said, that twelve votes in a contested election will do more to make a man
a bishop than an admired commentary on the twelve minor prophets? --To all
which and the like I say again, that you ought not to reason from the
abuse, which may be rectified, against the inherent uses of the thing.
_Appoint_ the most deserving--and the prize _will_ answer its purpose. As
to the bishops' incomes,--in the first place, the net receipts--that which
the bishops may spend--have been confessedly exaggerated beyond measure;
but, waiving that, and allowing the highest estimate to be correct, I
should like to have the disposition of the episcopal revenue in any one
year by the late or the present Bishop of Durham, or the present Bishops of
London or Winchester, compared with that of the most benevolent nobleman in
England of any party in politics. I firmly believe that the former give
away in charity of one kind or another, public, official, or private, three
times as much in proportion as the latter. You may have a hunks or two now
and then; but so you would much more certainly, if you were to reduce the
incomes to 2000_l_. per annum. As a body, in my opinion the clergy of
England do in truth act as if their property were impressed with a trust to
the utmost extent that can be demanded by those who affect to believe,
ignorantly or not, that lying legend of a tripartite or quadripartite
division of the tithe by law.
_May 31. 1834. _
SIR C. WETHERELL'S SPEECH. --NATIONAL CHURCH. --DISSENTERS. --PAPACY. ----
UNIVERSITIES.
I think Sir Charles Wetherell's speech before the Privy Council very
effective. I doubt if any other lawyer in Westminster Hall could have done
the thing so well.
* * * * *
The National Church requires, and is required by, the Christian Church, for
the perfection of each. For if there were no national Church, the mere
spiritual Church would either become, like the Papacy, a dreadful tyranny
over mind and body;--or else would fall abroad into a multitude of
enthusiastic sects, as in England in the seventeenth century. It is my deep
conviction that, in a country of any religion at all, liberty of conscience
can only be permanently preserved by means and under the shadow of a
national church--a political establishment connected with, but distinct
from, the spiritual Church.
* * * * *
I sometimes hope that the undisguised despotism of temper of the Dissenters
may at last awaken a jealousy in the laity of the Church of England. But
the apathy and inertness are, I fear, too profound--too providential.
* * * * *
Whatever the Papacy may have been on the Continent, it was always an
unqualified evil to this country. It destroyed what was rising of good, and
introduced a thousand evils of its own. The Papacy was and still is
essentially extra-national;--it affects, _temporally_, to do that which the
spiritual Church of Christ can alone do--to break down the natural
distinctions of nations. Now, as the Roman Papacy is in itself local and
peculiar, of course this attempt is nothing but a direct attack on the
political independence of other nations.
The institution of Universities was the single check on the Papacy.
The
Pope always hated and maligned the Universities. The old coenobitic
establishments of England were converted--perverted, rather--into
monasteries and other monking receptacles. You see it was at Oxford that
Wicliffe alone found protection and encouragement.
_June_ 2. 1834.
SCHILLER'S VERSIFICATION. --GERMAN BLANK VERSE.
Schiller's blank verse is bad. He moves in it as a fly in a glue bottle.
His thoughts have their connection and variety, it is true, but there is no
sufficiently corresponding movement in the verse. How different from
Shakspeare's endless rhythms!
There is a nimiety--a too-muchness--in all Germans. It is the national
fault. Leasing had the best notion of blank verse. The trochaic termination
of German words renders blank verse in that language almost impracticable.
We have it in our dramatic hendecasyllable; but then we have a power of
interweaving the iambic close _ad libitum. _
_June_ 14. 1834.
ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. --DUKE OF WELLINGTON. --CORONATION OATH.
The Roman Catholic Emancipation Act--carried in the violent, and, in fact,
unprincipled manner it was--was in effect a Surinam toad;--and the Reform
Bill, the Dissenters' admission to the Universities, and the attack on the
Church, are so many toadlets, one after another detaching themselves from
their parent brute.
* * * * *
If you say there is nothing in the Romish religion, sincerely felt,
inconsistent with the duties of citizenship and allegiance to a territorial
Protestant sovereign, _cadit quaestio_. For if _that_ is once admitted,
there can be no answer to the argument from numbers. Certainly, if the
religion of the majority of the _people_ be innocuous to the interests of
the _nation_, the majority have a natural right to be trustees of the
nationalty--that property which is set apart for the nation's use, and
rescued from the gripe of private hands. But when I say--_for the nation's
use_. --I mean the very reverse of what the Radicals mean. They would
convert it to relieve taxation, which I call a private, personal, and
perishable use. A nation's uses are immortal.
* * * * *
How lamentable it is to hear the Duke of Wellington expressing himself
doubtingly on the abominable sophism that the Coronation Oath only binds
the King as the executive power--thereby making a Highgate oath of it. But
the Duke is conscious of the ready retort which his language and conduct on
the Emancipation Bill afford to his opponents. He is hampered by that
affair.
_June_ 20. 1834.
CORN LAWS. --MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY.
In the argument on the Corn Laws there is a [Greek: metazasis eis allo
gevos]. It may be admitted that the great principles of commerce require
the interchange of commodities to be free; but commerce, which is barter,
has no proper range beyond luxuries or conveniences;--it is properly the
complement to the full existence and development of a state. But how can it
be shown that the principles applicable to an interchange of conveniences
or luxuries apply also to an interchange of necessaries? No state can be
such properly, which is not self-subsistent at least; for no state that is
not so, is essentially independent. The nation that cannot even exist
without the commodity of another nation, is in effect the slave of that
other nation. In common times, indeed, pecuniary interest will prevail, and
prevent a ruinous exercise of the power which the nation supplying the
necessary must have over the nation which has only the convenience or
luxury to return; but such interest, both in individuals and nations, will
yield to many stronger passions. Is Holland any authority to the contrary?
If so, Tyre and Sidon and Carthage were so! Would you put England on a
footing with a country, which can be overrun in a campaign, and starved in
a year?
* * * * *
The entire tendency of the modern or Malthusian political economy is to
denationalize. It would dig up the charcoal foundations of the temple of
Ephesus to burn as fuel for a steam-engine!
_June_ 21. 1834.
Mr. ----, in his poem, makes trees coeval with Chaos;--which is next door
to Hans Sachse[1] who, in describing Chaos, said it was so pitchy dark,
that even the very _cats_ ran against each other!
[Footnote 1: Hans Sachse was born 1494, and died 1576. --ED],
_June_ 23. 1834.
SOCINIANISM. --UNITARIANISM. --FANCY AND IMAGINATION.
Faustus Socinus worshipped Jesus Christ, and said that God had given him
the power of being omnipresent. Davidi, with a little more acuteness, urged
that mere audition or creaturely presence could not possibly justify
worship from men;--that a man, how glorified soever, was no nearer God in
essence than the vulgarest of the race. Prayer, therefore, was
inapplicable. And how could a _man_ be a mediator between God and man? How
could a _man_ with sins himself offer any compensation for, or expiation
of, sin, unless the most arbitrary caprice were admitted into the counsels
of God? --And so, at last, you see, it was discovered by the better
logicians amongst the Socinians, that there was no such thing as sin at
all.
It is wonderful how any Socinian can read the works of Philo Judaeus
without some pause of doubt in the truth of his views as to the person of
Christ. Whether Philo wrote on his own ground as a Jew, or borrowed from
the Christians, the testimony as to the then Jewish expectation and
belief, is equally strong. You know Philo calls the Logos [Greek: yios
Theoy], the _Son of God_, and [Greek: agap_athon te non], _beloved Son_.
He calls him [Greek: arhchierheus], _high priest_, [Greek: deuterhos
Thehos], _second divinity_, [Greek: ei an Theoy], _image of God_, and
describes him as [Greek: eggutat_o m_adenhos ovtos methorhioy
diast_amatos], the _nearest possible to God without any intervening
separation_. And there are numerous other remarkable expressions of the
same sort.
My faith is this:--God is the Absolute Will: it is his Name and the meaning
of it. It is the Hypostasis. As begetting his own Alterity, the Jehovah,
the Manifested--He is the Father; but the Love and the Life--the Spirit--
proceeds from both.
I think Priestley must be considered the author of the modern
Unitarianism. I owe, under God, my return to the faith, to my having gone
much further than the Unitarians, and so having come round to the other
side. I can truly say, I never falsified the Scripture. I always told them
that their interpretations of the Scripture were intolerable upon any
principles of sound criticism; and that, if they were to offer to construe
the will of a neighbour as they did that of their Maker, they would be
scouted out of society. I said then plainly and openly, that it was clear
enough that John and Paul were not Unitarians. But at that time I had a
strong sense of the repugnancy of the doctrine of vicarious atonement to
the moral being, and I thought nothing could counterbalance that. "What
care I," I said, "for the Platonisms of John, or the Rabbinisms of Paul? --
My conscience revolts! " That was the ground of my Unitarianism.
Always believing in the government of God, I was a fervent Optimist. But as
I could not but see that the present state of things was not the best, I
was necessarily led to look forward to some future state.
* * * * *
You may conceive the difference in kind between the Fancy and the
Imagination in this way,--that if the check of the senses and the reason
were withdrawn, the first would become delirium, and the last mania. The
Fancy brings together images which have no connection natural or moral, but
are yoked together by the poet by means of some accidental coincidence; as
in the well-known passage in Hudibras:
"The sun had long since in the lap
Of Thetis taken out his nap,
And like a lobster boyl'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn. "[1]
The Imagination modifies images, and gives unity to variety; it sees all
things in one, _il piu nell' uno_. There is the epic imagination, the
perfection of which is in Milton; and the dramatic, of which Shakspeare is
the absolute master. The first gives unity by throwing back into the
distance; as after the magnificent approach of the Messiah to battle[2],
the poet, by one touch from himself--
--"far off their coming shone! "--
makes the whole one image.
And so at the conclusion of the description of the appearance of the
entranced angels, in which every sort of image from all the regions of
earth and air is introduced to diversify and illustrate,--the reader is
brought back to the single image by--
"He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded. "[3]
The dramatic imagination does not throw back, but brings close; it stamps
all nature with one, and that its own, meaning, as in Lear throughout.
[Footnote 1: Part II. c. 2. v. 29. ]
[Footnote 2:
----"Forth rush'd with whirlwind sound
The chariot of Paternal Deity,
Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn,
Itself instinct with spirit, but convoy'd
By four cherubic shapes; four faces each
Had wonderous; as with stars their bodies all
And wings were set with eyes; with eyes the wheels
Of beryl, and careering fires between;
Over their heads a crystal firmament,
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure
Amber, and colours of the showery arch.
He, in celestial panoply all arm'd
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought,
Ascended; at his right hand Victory
Sat eagle-wing'd; beside him hung his bow
And quiver, with three-bolted thunder stored;
And from about him fierce effusion roll'd
Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire;
Attended with ten thousand thousand saints,
He onward came; _far off their coming shone;_
And twenty thousand (I their number heard)
Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen:
He on the wings of cherub rode sublime
On the crystalline sky, in sapphire throned,
Illustrious far and wide; but by his own
First seen. "--P. L. b. vi. v. 749, &c. ]
[Footnote 3:
----"and call'd
His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades,
High over arch'd, embower; or scatter'd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd
Hath vex'd the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris, and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcasses
And broken chariot wheels; so thick bestrewn,
Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
_He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded_. "--P. L. b. i. v. 300, &c. ]
* * * * *
At the very outset, what are we to think of the soundness of this modern
system of political economy, the direct tendency of every rule of which is
to denationalize, and to make the love of our country a foolish
superstition?
_June_ 28. 1834.
MR. COLERIDGE'S SYSTEM. --BIOGRAPHIA LITERAHIA. --DISSENTERS.
You may not understand my system, or any given part of it,--or by a
determined act of wilfulness, you may, even though perceiving a ray of
light, reject it in anger and disgust:--but this I will say,--that if you
once master it, or any part of it, you cannot hesitate to acknowledge it as
the truth. You cannot be sceptical about it.
The metaphysical disquisition at the end of the first volume of the
"Biographia Literaria" is unformed and immature;--it contains the fragments
of the truth, but it is not fully thought out. It is wonderful to myself to
think how infinitely more profound my views now are, and yet how much
clearer they are withal. The circle is completing; the idea is coming round
to, and to be, the common sense.
* * * * *
The generation of the modern worldly Dissenter was thus: Presbyterian,
Arian, Socinian, and last, Unitarian.
* * * * *
Is it not most extraordinary to see the Dissenters calling themselves the
descendants of the old Nonconformists, and yet clamouring for a divorce of
Church and State? Why--Baxter, and the other great leaders, would have
thought a man an atheist who had proposed such a thing. _They_ were rather
for merging the State _in_ the Church. But these our modern gentlemen, who
are blinded by political passion, give the kiss of alliance to the harlot
of Rome, and walk arm in arm with those who deny the God that redeemed
them, if so they may but wreak their insane antipathies on the National
Church! Well! I suppose they have counted the cost, and know what it is
they would have, and can keep.
_July_ 5. 1834.
LORD BROOKE. --BARROW AND DRYDEN. --PETER WILKINS AND STOTHARD. --FIELDING AND
RICHARDSON. --BISHOP SANDFORD. --ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION.
I do not remember a more beautiful piece of prose in English than the
consolation addressed by Lord Brooke (Fulke Greville) to a lady of quality
on certain conjugal infelicities. The diction is such that it might have
been written now, if we could find any one combining so thoughtful a head
with so tender a heart and so exquisite a taste.
* * * * *
Barrow often debased his language merely to evidence his loyalty. It was,
indeed, no easy task for a man of so much genius, and such a precise
mathematical mode of thinking, to adopt even for a moment the slang of
L'Estrange and Tom Brown; but he succeeded in doing so sometimes. With the
exception of such parts, Barrow must be considered as closing the first
great period of the English language. Dryden began the second. Of course
there are numerous subdivisions.
* * * * *
Peter Wilkins is to my mind a work of uncommon beauty; and yet Stothard's
illustrations have _added_ beauties to it. If it were not for a certain
tendency to affectation, scarcely any praise could be too high for
Stothard's designs. They give me great pleasure. I believe that Robinson
Crusoe and Peter Wilkins could only have been written by islanders. No
continentalist could have conceived either tale. Davis's story is an
imitation of Peter Wilkins; but there are many beautiful things in it;
especially his finding his wife crouching by the fireside--she having, in
his absence, plucked out all her feathers--to be like him!
It would require a very peculiar genius to add another tale, _ejusdem
generis_, to Robinson Crusoe and Peter Wilkins. I once projected such a
thing; but the difficulty of a pre-occupied ground stopped me. Perhaps La
Motte Fouque might effect something; but I should fear that neither he, nor
any other German, could entirely understand what may be called the "_desert
island_" feeling. I would try the marvellous line of Peter Wilkins, if I
attempted it, rather than the _real_ fiction of Robinson Crusoe.
* * * * *
What a master of composition Fielding was! Upon my word, I think the
Oedipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones the three most perfect plots
ever planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take
him up after Richardson, is like emerging from a sick room heated by
stoves, into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May.
* * * * *
I have been very deeply interested in the account of Bishop Sandford's
life, published by his son. He seems to have been a thorough gentleman upon
the model of St. Paul, whose manners were the finest of any man's upon
record.
* * * * *
I think I could have conformed to the then dominant Church before the
Reformation. The errors existed, but they had not been riveted into
peremptory articles of faith before the Council of Trent. If a Romanist
were to ask me the question put to Sir Henry Wotton, [1]I should content
myself by answering, that I could not exactly say when my religion, as he
was pleased to call it, began--but that it was certainly some sixty or
seventy years before _his_, at all events--which began at the Council of
Trent.
[Footnote 1:
"Having, at his being in Rome, made acquaintance with a pleasant priest,
who invited him, one evening, to hear their vesper music at church; the
priest, seeing Sir Henry stand obscurely in a corner, sends to him by a boy
of the choir this question, writ in a small piece of paper;--'Where was
your religion to be found before Luther? ' To which question Sir Henry
presently underwrit;--'My religion was to be found then, where yours is not
to be found now--in the written word of God. '"--_Isaak Walton's Life of Sir
Henry Wotton_. ]
_July_ 10. 1834.
_EUTHANASIA. _
I am, dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange
that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen
into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope--
those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love,--for what is
Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as _one? _ I say _realities_;
for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream; [Greek: *ai
g_or t onar e Di s esti]. Yet, in a strict sense, reality is not
predicable at all of aught below Heaven. "Es enim _in coelis_, Pater
noster, qui tu vere _es! _" Hooker wished to live to finish his
Ecclesiastical Polity;--so I own I wish life and strength had been spared
to me to complete my Philosophy. For, as God hears me, the originating,
continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my heart were to exalt the
glory of his name; and, which is the same thing in other words, to promote
the improvement of mankind. But _visum aliter Deo_, and his will be done.
* * * * *
** This note may well finish the present specimens. What followed was for
the memory of private friends only. Mr. Coleridge was then extremely ill;
but certainly did not believe his end to be quite so near at hand as it
was. --ED.
The following Recollections of Mr. Coleridge, written in May, 1811, have
been also communicated to me by my brother, Mr. Justice Coleridge:--
"20_th April_, 1811, _at Richmond_.
"We got on politics, and he related some curious facts of the Prince and
Perceval. Then, adverting to the present state of affairs in Portugal, he
said that he rejoiced not so much in the mere favourable turn, as in the
end that must now be put to the base reign of opinion respecting the
superiority and invincible skill of the French generals. Brave as Sir John
Moore was, he thought him deficient in that greater and more essential
manliness of soul which should have made him not hold his enemy in such
fearful respect, and which should have taught him to care less for the
opinion of the world at home.
"We then got, I know not how, to German topics. He said that the language
of their literature was entirely factitious, and had been formed by Luther
from the two dialects, High and Low German; that he had made it,
grammatically, most correct, more so, perhaps, than any other language; it
was equal to the Greek, except in harmony and sweetness. And yet the
Germans themselves thought it sweet;--Klopstock had repeated to him an ode
of his own to prove it, and really had deceived himself, by the force of
association, into a belief that the harsh sounds, conveying, indeed, or
being significant of, sweet images or thoughts, were themselves sweet. Mr.
C. was asked what he thought of Klopstock. He answered, that his fame was
rapidly declining in Germany; that an Englishman might form a correct
notion of him by uniting the moral epigram of Young, the bombast of Hervey,
and the minute description of Richardson. As to sublimity, he had, with all
Germans, one rule for producing it;--it was, to take something very great,
and make it very small in comparison with that which you wish to elevate.
Thus, for example, Klopstock says,--'As the gardener goes forth, and
scatters from his basket seed into the garden; so does the Creator scatter
worlds with his right hand. ' Here _worlds_, a large object, are made small
in the hands of the Creator; consequently, the Creator is very great.
AND FLETCHER. --DANIEL. --MASSINGER.
I take unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially
delicious to me in my old age. [1] How exquisitely tender he is, and yet how
perfectly free from the least touch of sickly melancholy or morbid
drooping! The sympathy of the poet with the subjects of his poetry is
particularly remarkable in Shakspeare and Chaucer; but what the first
effects by a strong act of imagination and mental metamorphosis, the last
does without any effort, merely by the inborn kindly joyousness of his
nature. How well we seem to know Chaucer! How absolutely nothing do we know
of Shakspeare!
I cannot in the least allow any necessity for Chaucer's poetry, especially
the Canterbury Tales, being considered obsolete. Let a few plain rules be
given for sounding the final _e_ of syllables, and for expressing the
termination of such words as _ocean_, and _nation_, &c. as dissyllables,--
or let the syllables to be sounded in such cases be marked by a competent
metrist. This simple expedient would, with a very few trifling exceptions,
where the errors are inveterate, enable any reader to feel the perfect
smoothness and harmony of Chaucer's verse.
[Footnote 1:
Eighteen years before, Mr. Coleridge entertained the same feelings towards
Chaucer:--"Through all the works of Chaucer there reigns a cheerfulness, a
manly hilarity, which makes it almost impossible to doubt a correspondent
habit of feeling in the author himself. " _Biog. Lit_. , vol. i. p. 32. --ED. ]
* * * * *
As to understanding his language, if you read twenty pages with a good
glossary, you surely can find no further difficulty, even as it is; but I
should have no objection to see this done:--Strike out those words which
are now obsolete, and I will venture to say that I will replace every one
of them by words still in use out of Chaucer himself, or Gower his
disciple. I don't want this myself: I rather like to see the significant
terms which Chaucer unsuccessfully offered as candidates for admission into
our language; but surely so very slight a change of the text may well be
pardoned, even by black--_letterati_, for the purpose of restoring so great
a poet to his ancient and most deserved popularity.
* * * * *
Shakspeare is of no age. It is idle to endeavour to support his phrases by
quotations from Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, &c. His language is
entirely his own, and the younger dramatists imitated him. The construction
of Shakspeare's sentences, whether in verse or prose, is the necessary and
homogeneous vehicle of his peculiar manner of thinking. His is not the
style of the age. More particularly, Shakspeare's blank verse is an
absolutely new creation. Read Daniel[1]--the admirable Daniel--in his
"Civil Wars," and "Triumphs of Hymen. "
The style and language are just such as any very pure and manly writer of
the present day--Wordsworth, for example--would use; it seems quite modern
in comparison with the style of Shakspeare. Ben Jonson's blank verse is
very masterly and individual, and perhaps Massinger's is even still nobler.
In Beaumont and Fletcher it is constantly slipping into lyricisms.
I believe Shakspeare was not a whit more intelligible in his own day than
he is now to an educated man, except for a few local allusions of no
consequence. As I said, he is of no age--nor, I may add, of any religion,
or party, or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of
the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind: his observation and
reading, which was considerable, supplied him with the drapery of his
figures. [2]
[Footnote 1:
"This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the '_well-languaged Daniel_;'
but, likewise, and by the consent of his contemporaries, no less than of
all succeeding critics, the 'prosaic Daniel. ' Yet those who thus designate
this wise and amiable writer, from the frequent incorrespondency of his
diction with his metre, in the majority of his compositions, not only deem
them valuable and interesting on other accounts, but willingly admit that
there are to be found throughout his poems, and especially in his
_Epistles_ and in his _Hymen's Triumph_, many and exquisite specimens of
that style, which, as the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to
both. "--_Biog. Lit_. , vol. ii. p. 82. ]
[Footnote 2:
Mr. Coleridge called Shakspeare "_the myriad-minded man_," [Greek: au_az
muzioyous]--" a phrase," said he, "which I have borrowed from a Greek monk,
who applies it to a patriarch of Constantinople. I might have said, that I
have _reclaimed_, rather than borrowed, it, for it seems to belong to
Shakspeare _de jure singulari, et ex privilegio naturae. " See Biog. Lit. ,
vol. ii. p. 13. --ED. ]
* * * * *
As for editing Beaumont and Fletcher, the task would be one _immensi
laboris_. The confusion is now so great, the errors so enormous, that the
editor must use a boldness quite unallowable in any other case. All I can
say as to Beaumont and Fletcher is, that I can point out well enough where
something has been lost, and that something so and so was probably in the
original; but the law of Shakspeare's thought and verse is such, that I
feel convinced that not only could I detect the spurious, but supply the
genuine, word.
_March_ 20. 1834.
LORD BYRON AND H. WALPOLE'S "MYSTERIOUS MOTHER. "--LEWIS'S "JAMAICA
JOURNAL. "
Lord Byron, as quoted by Lord Dover[1], says, that the "Mysterious Mother"
raises Horace Walpole above every author living in his, Lord Byron's, time.
Upon which I venture to remark, first, that I do not believe that Lord
Byron spoke sincerely; for I suspect that he made a tacit exception in
favour of himself at least;--secondly, that it is a miserable mode of
comparison which does not rest on difference of kind. It proceeds of envy
and malice and detraction to say that A. is higher than B. , unless you show
that they are _in pari materia_;--thirdly, that the "Mysterious Mother" is
the most disgusting, vile, detestable composition that ever came from the
hand of man. No one with a spark of true manliness, of which Horace Walpole
had none, could have written it. As to the blank verse, it is indeed better
than Rowe's and Thomson's, which was execrably bad:--any approach,
therefore, to the manner of the old dramatists was of course an
improvement; but the loosest lines in Shirley are superior to Walpole's
best.
[Footnote 1:
In the memoir prefixed to the correspondence with Sir H. Mann. Lord Byron's
words are:--"He is the _ultimus Romanorum_, the author of the 'Mysterious
Mother,' a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love play. He is
the father of the first romance, and of the last tragedy, in our language;
and surely worthy of a higher place than any living author, be he who he
may. "--_Preface to Marino Faliero_. Is not "Romeo and Juliet" a love play?
--But why reason about such insincere, splenetic trash? --ED. ]
* * * * *
Lewis's "Jamaica Journal" is delightful; it is almost the only unaffected
book of travels or touring I have read of late years. You have the man
himself, and not an inconsiderable man,--certainly a much finer mind than I
supposed before from the perusal of his romances, &c. It is by far his best
work, and will live and be popular. Those verses on the Hours are very
pretty; but the Isle of Devils is, like his romances,--a fever dream--
horrible, without point or terror.
_April_ 16. 1834.
SICILY. --MALTA--SIR ALEXANDER BALL.
I found that every thing in and about Sicily had been exaggerated by
travellers, except two things--the folly of the government and the
wretchedness of the people. _They_ did not admit of exaggeration.
Really you may learn the fundamental principles of political economy in a
very compendious way, by taking a short tour through Sicily, and simply
reversing in your own mind every law, custom, and ordinance you meet with.
I never was in a country in which every thing proceeding from man was so
exactly wrong. You have peremptory ordinances _against_ making roads, taxes
on the passage of common vegetables from one miserable village to another,
and so on.
By the by, do you know any parallel in modern history to the absurdity of
our giving a legislative assembly to the Sicilians? It exceeds any thing I
know. This precious legislature passed two bills before it was knocked on
the head: the first was, to render lands inalienable; and the second, to
cancel all debts due before the date of the bill.
And then consider the gross ignorance and folly of our laying a tax upon
the Sicilians! Taxation in its proper sense can only exist where there is a
free circulation of capital, labour, and commodities throughout the
community. But to tax the people in countries like Sicily and Corsica,
where there is no internal communication, is mere robbery and confiscation.
A crown taken from a Corsican living in the sierras would not get back to
him again in ten years.
* * * * *
It is interesting to pass from Malta to Sicily--from the highest specimen
of an inferior race, the Saracenic, to the most degraded class of a
superior race, the European.
* * * * *
No tongue can describe the moral corruption of the Maltese when the island
was surrendered to us. There was not a family in it in which a wife or a
daughter was not a kept mistress. A marquis of ancient family applied to
Sir Alexander Ball to be appointed his valet. "My valet! " said Ball, "what
can you mean, Sir? " The marquis said, he hoped he should then have had the
honour of presenting petitions to his Excellency. "Oh, that is it, is it! "
said Sir Alexander: "my valet, Sir, brushes my clothes, and brings them to
me. If he dared to meddle with matters of public business, I should kick
him down stairs. "
In short, Malta was an Augean stable, and Ball had all the inclination to
be a Hercules. [1] His task was most difficult, although his qualifications
were most remarkable. I remember an English officer of very high rank
soliciting him for the renewal of a pension to an abandoned woman who had
been notoriously treacherous to us. That officer had promised the woman as
a matter of course--she having sacrificed her daughter to him. Ball was
determined, as far as he could, to prevent Malta from being made a nest of
home patronage. He considered, as was the fact, that there was a contract
between England and the Maltese. Hence the government at home, especially
Dundas, disliked him, and never allowed him any other title than that of
Civil Commissioner. We have, I believe, nearly succeeded in alienating the
hearts of the inhabitants from us. Every officer in the island ought to be
a Maltese, except those belonging to the immediate executive: 100_l_. per
annum to a Maltese, to enable him to keep a gilt carriage, will satisfy him
where an Englishman must have 2000_l_.
[Footnote 1:
I refer the reader to the five concluding essays of the third volume of the
"Friend," as a specimen of what Mr. C. might have done as a biographer if
an irresistible instinct had not devoted him to profounder labours. As a
sketch--and it pretends to nothing more--is there any thing more perfect in
our literature than the monument raised in those essays to the memory of
Sir Alexander Ball? --and there are some touches added to the character of
Nelson, which the reader, even of Southey's matchless Life of our hero,
will find both new and interesting. --ED. ]
_May_ 1. 1834.
CAMBRIDGE PETITION TO ADMIT DISSENTERS.
There are, to my grief, the names of some men to the Cambridge petition for
admission of the Dissenters to the University, whose cheeks I think must
have burned with shame at the degrading patronage and befouling eulogies of
the democratic press, and at seeing themselves used as the tools of the
open and rancorous enemies of the church. How miserable to be held up for
the purpose of inflicting insult upon men, whose worth and ability and
sincerity you well know,--and this by a faction banded together like
obscene dogs and cats and serpents, against a church which you profoundly
revere! The _time_--the _time_--the _occasion_ and the _motive_ ought to
have been argument enough, that even if the measure were right or harmless
in itself, not _now_, nor with such as _these_, was it to be effected!
_May_ 3. 1834.
CORN LAWS.
Those who argue that England may safely depend upon a supply of foreign
corn, if it grow none or an insufficient quantity of its own, forget that
they are subjugating the necessaries of life itself to the mere luxuries or
comforts of society. Is it not certain that the price of corn abroad will
be raised upon us as soon as it is once known that we _must_ buy? --and when
that fact is known, in what sort of a situation shall we be? Besides this,
the argument supposes that agriculture is not a positive good to the
nation, taken in and by itself, as a mode of existence for the people,
which supposition is false and pernicious; and if we are to become a great
horde of manufacturers, shall we not, even more than at present, excite the
ill will of all the manufacturers of other nations? It has been already
shown, in evidence which is before all the world, that some of our
manufacturers have acted upon the accursed principle of deliberately
injuring foreign manufactures, if they can, even to the ultimate disgrace
of the country and loss to themselves.
_May_ 19. 1834.
CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
How grossly misunderstood the genuine character of the Christian sabbath,
or Lord's day, seems to be even by the church! To confound it with the
Jewish sabbath, or to rest its observance upon the fourth commandment, is,
in my judgment, heretical, and would so have been considered in the
primitive church. That cessation from labour on the Lord's day could not
have been absolutely incumbent on Christians for two centuries after
Christ, is apparent; because during that period the greater part of the
Christians were either slaves or in official situations under Pagan masters
or superiors, and had duties to perform for those who did not recognize the
day. And we know that St. Paul sent back Onesimus to his master, and told
every Christian slave, that, being a Christian, he was free in his mind
indeed, but still must serve his earthly master, although he might laudably
seek for his personal freedom also. If the early Christians had refused to
work on the Lord's day, rebellion and civil war must have been the
immediate consequences. But there is no notice of any such cessation.
The Jewish sabbath was commemorative of the termination of the great act of
creation; it was to record that the world had not been from eternity, nor
had arisen as a dream by itself, but that God had created it by distinct
acts of power, and that he had hallowed the day or season in which he
rested or desisted from his work. When our Lord arose from the dead, the
old creation was, as it were, superseded, and the new creation then began;
and therefore the first day and not the last day, the commencement and not
the end, of the work of God was solemnized.
Luther, in speaking of the _good by itself_, and the good _for its
expediency alone_, instances the observance of the Christian day of rest,--
a day of repose from manual labour, and of activity in spiritual labour,--a
day of joy and co-operation in the work of Christ's creation. "Keep it
holy"--says he--"for its use' sake,--both to body and soul! But if any
where the day is made holy for the mere day's sake,--if any where any one
sets up its observance upon a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work
on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it--to do any thing that
shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and liberty. "
The early church distinguished the day of Christian rest so strongly from a
fast, that it was unlawful for a man to bewail even _his own sins_, as such
only, on that day. He was to bewail the sins of _all_, and to pray as one
of the whole of Christ's body.
And the English Reformers evidently took the same view of the day as Luther
and the early church. But, unhappily, our church, in the reigns of James
and Charles the First, was so identified with the undue advancement of the
royal prerogative, that the puritanical Judaizing of the Presbyterians was
but too well seconded by the patriots of the nation, in resisting the wise
efforts of the church to prevent the incipient alteration in the character
of the day of rest. After the Restoration, the bishops and clergy in
general adopted the view taken and enforced by their enemies.
By the by, it is curious to observe, in this semi-infidel and Malthusian
Parliament, how the Sabbatarian spirit unites itself with a rancorous
hostility to that one institution, which alone, according to reason and
experience, can insure the continuance of any general religion at all in
the nation at large. Some of these gentlemen, who are for not letting a
poor labouring man have a dish of baked potatoes on a Sunday, _religionis
gratia_--(God forgive that audacious blasphemy! )--are foremost among those
who seem to live but in vilifying, weakening, and impoverishing the
national church. I own my indignation boils over against such contemptible
fellows.
I sincerely wish to preserve a decent quiet on Sunday. I would prohibit
compulsory labour, and put down operas, theatres, &c. , for this plain
reason--that if the rich be allowed to play, the poor will be forced, or,
what comes to the same thing, will be induced, to work. I am not for a
Paris Sunday. But to stop coaches, and let the gentleman's carriage run, is
monstrous.
_May_ 25. 1834.
HIGH PRIZES AND REVENUES OF THE CHURCH.
Your argument against the high prizes in the church might be put strongly
thus:--Admit that in the beginning it might have been fairly said, that
some eminent rewards ought to be set apart for the purpose of stimulating
and rewarding transcendant merit; what have you to say now, after centuries
of experience to the contrary? --_Have_ the high prizes been given to the
highest genius, virtue, or learning? Is it not rather the truth, as Jortin
said, that twelve votes in a contested election will do more to make a man
a bishop than an admired commentary on the twelve minor prophets? --To all
which and the like I say again, that you ought not to reason from the
abuse, which may be rectified, against the inherent uses of the thing.
_Appoint_ the most deserving--and the prize _will_ answer its purpose. As
to the bishops' incomes,--in the first place, the net receipts--that which
the bishops may spend--have been confessedly exaggerated beyond measure;
but, waiving that, and allowing the highest estimate to be correct, I
should like to have the disposition of the episcopal revenue in any one
year by the late or the present Bishop of Durham, or the present Bishops of
London or Winchester, compared with that of the most benevolent nobleman in
England of any party in politics. I firmly believe that the former give
away in charity of one kind or another, public, official, or private, three
times as much in proportion as the latter. You may have a hunks or two now
and then; but so you would much more certainly, if you were to reduce the
incomes to 2000_l_. per annum. As a body, in my opinion the clergy of
England do in truth act as if their property were impressed with a trust to
the utmost extent that can be demanded by those who affect to believe,
ignorantly or not, that lying legend of a tripartite or quadripartite
division of the tithe by law.
_May 31. 1834. _
SIR C. WETHERELL'S SPEECH. --NATIONAL CHURCH. --DISSENTERS. --PAPACY. ----
UNIVERSITIES.
I think Sir Charles Wetherell's speech before the Privy Council very
effective. I doubt if any other lawyer in Westminster Hall could have done
the thing so well.
* * * * *
The National Church requires, and is required by, the Christian Church, for
the perfection of each. For if there were no national Church, the mere
spiritual Church would either become, like the Papacy, a dreadful tyranny
over mind and body;--or else would fall abroad into a multitude of
enthusiastic sects, as in England in the seventeenth century. It is my deep
conviction that, in a country of any religion at all, liberty of conscience
can only be permanently preserved by means and under the shadow of a
national church--a political establishment connected with, but distinct
from, the spiritual Church.
* * * * *
I sometimes hope that the undisguised despotism of temper of the Dissenters
may at last awaken a jealousy in the laity of the Church of England. But
the apathy and inertness are, I fear, too profound--too providential.
* * * * *
Whatever the Papacy may have been on the Continent, it was always an
unqualified evil to this country. It destroyed what was rising of good, and
introduced a thousand evils of its own. The Papacy was and still is
essentially extra-national;--it affects, _temporally_, to do that which the
spiritual Church of Christ can alone do--to break down the natural
distinctions of nations. Now, as the Roman Papacy is in itself local and
peculiar, of course this attempt is nothing but a direct attack on the
political independence of other nations.
The institution of Universities was the single check on the Papacy.
The
Pope always hated and maligned the Universities. The old coenobitic
establishments of England were converted--perverted, rather--into
monasteries and other monking receptacles. You see it was at Oxford that
Wicliffe alone found protection and encouragement.
_June_ 2. 1834.
SCHILLER'S VERSIFICATION. --GERMAN BLANK VERSE.
Schiller's blank verse is bad. He moves in it as a fly in a glue bottle.
His thoughts have their connection and variety, it is true, but there is no
sufficiently corresponding movement in the verse. How different from
Shakspeare's endless rhythms!
There is a nimiety--a too-muchness--in all Germans. It is the national
fault. Leasing had the best notion of blank verse. The trochaic termination
of German words renders blank verse in that language almost impracticable.
We have it in our dramatic hendecasyllable; but then we have a power of
interweaving the iambic close _ad libitum. _
_June_ 14. 1834.
ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. --DUKE OF WELLINGTON. --CORONATION OATH.
The Roman Catholic Emancipation Act--carried in the violent, and, in fact,
unprincipled manner it was--was in effect a Surinam toad;--and the Reform
Bill, the Dissenters' admission to the Universities, and the attack on the
Church, are so many toadlets, one after another detaching themselves from
their parent brute.
* * * * *
If you say there is nothing in the Romish religion, sincerely felt,
inconsistent with the duties of citizenship and allegiance to a territorial
Protestant sovereign, _cadit quaestio_. For if _that_ is once admitted,
there can be no answer to the argument from numbers. Certainly, if the
religion of the majority of the _people_ be innocuous to the interests of
the _nation_, the majority have a natural right to be trustees of the
nationalty--that property which is set apart for the nation's use, and
rescued from the gripe of private hands. But when I say--_for the nation's
use_. --I mean the very reverse of what the Radicals mean. They would
convert it to relieve taxation, which I call a private, personal, and
perishable use. A nation's uses are immortal.
* * * * *
How lamentable it is to hear the Duke of Wellington expressing himself
doubtingly on the abominable sophism that the Coronation Oath only binds
the King as the executive power--thereby making a Highgate oath of it. But
the Duke is conscious of the ready retort which his language and conduct on
the Emancipation Bill afford to his opponents. He is hampered by that
affair.
_June_ 20. 1834.
CORN LAWS. --MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY.
In the argument on the Corn Laws there is a [Greek: metazasis eis allo
gevos]. It may be admitted that the great principles of commerce require
the interchange of commodities to be free; but commerce, which is barter,
has no proper range beyond luxuries or conveniences;--it is properly the
complement to the full existence and development of a state. But how can it
be shown that the principles applicable to an interchange of conveniences
or luxuries apply also to an interchange of necessaries? No state can be
such properly, which is not self-subsistent at least; for no state that is
not so, is essentially independent. The nation that cannot even exist
without the commodity of another nation, is in effect the slave of that
other nation. In common times, indeed, pecuniary interest will prevail, and
prevent a ruinous exercise of the power which the nation supplying the
necessary must have over the nation which has only the convenience or
luxury to return; but such interest, both in individuals and nations, will
yield to many stronger passions. Is Holland any authority to the contrary?
If so, Tyre and Sidon and Carthage were so! Would you put England on a
footing with a country, which can be overrun in a campaign, and starved in
a year?
* * * * *
The entire tendency of the modern or Malthusian political economy is to
denationalize. It would dig up the charcoal foundations of the temple of
Ephesus to burn as fuel for a steam-engine!
_June_ 21. 1834.
Mr. ----, in his poem, makes trees coeval with Chaos;--which is next door
to Hans Sachse[1] who, in describing Chaos, said it was so pitchy dark,
that even the very _cats_ ran against each other!
[Footnote 1: Hans Sachse was born 1494, and died 1576. --ED],
_June_ 23. 1834.
SOCINIANISM. --UNITARIANISM. --FANCY AND IMAGINATION.
Faustus Socinus worshipped Jesus Christ, and said that God had given him
the power of being omnipresent. Davidi, with a little more acuteness, urged
that mere audition or creaturely presence could not possibly justify
worship from men;--that a man, how glorified soever, was no nearer God in
essence than the vulgarest of the race. Prayer, therefore, was
inapplicable. And how could a _man_ be a mediator between God and man? How
could a _man_ with sins himself offer any compensation for, or expiation
of, sin, unless the most arbitrary caprice were admitted into the counsels
of God? --And so, at last, you see, it was discovered by the better
logicians amongst the Socinians, that there was no such thing as sin at
all.
It is wonderful how any Socinian can read the works of Philo Judaeus
without some pause of doubt in the truth of his views as to the person of
Christ. Whether Philo wrote on his own ground as a Jew, or borrowed from
the Christians, the testimony as to the then Jewish expectation and
belief, is equally strong. You know Philo calls the Logos [Greek: yios
Theoy], the _Son of God_, and [Greek: agap_athon te non], _beloved Son_.
He calls him [Greek: arhchierheus], _high priest_, [Greek: deuterhos
Thehos], _second divinity_, [Greek: ei an Theoy], _image of God_, and
describes him as [Greek: eggutat_o m_adenhos ovtos methorhioy
diast_amatos], the _nearest possible to God without any intervening
separation_. And there are numerous other remarkable expressions of the
same sort.
My faith is this:--God is the Absolute Will: it is his Name and the meaning
of it. It is the Hypostasis. As begetting his own Alterity, the Jehovah,
the Manifested--He is the Father; but the Love and the Life--the Spirit--
proceeds from both.
I think Priestley must be considered the author of the modern
Unitarianism. I owe, under God, my return to the faith, to my having gone
much further than the Unitarians, and so having come round to the other
side. I can truly say, I never falsified the Scripture. I always told them
that their interpretations of the Scripture were intolerable upon any
principles of sound criticism; and that, if they were to offer to construe
the will of a neighbour as they did that of their Maker, they would be
scouted out of society. I said then plainly and openly, that it was clear
enough that John and Paul were not Unitarians. But at that time I had a
strong sense of the repugnancy of the doctrine of vicarious atonement to
the moral being, and I thought nothing could counterbalance that. "What
care I," I said, "for the Platonisms of John, or the Rabbinisms of Paul? --
My conscience revolts! " That was the ground of my Unitarianism.
Always believing in the government of God, I was a fervent Optimist. But as
I could not but see that the present state of things was not the best, I
was necessarily led to look forward to some future state.
* * * * *
You may conceive the difference in kind between the Fancy and the
Imagination in this way,--that if the check of the senses and the reason
were withdrawn, the first would become delirium, and the last mania. The
Fancy brings together images which have no connection natural or moral, but
are yoked together by the poet by means of some accidental coincidence; as
in the well-known passage in Hudibras:
"The sun had long since in the lap
Of Thetis taken out his nap,
And like a lobster boyl'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn. "[1]
The Imagination modifies images, and gives unity to variety; it sees all
things in one, _il piu nell' uno_. There is the epic imagination, the
perfection of which is in Milton; and the dramatic, of which Shakspeare is
the absolute master. The first gives unity by throwing back into the
distance; as after the magnificent approach of the Messiah to battle[2],
the poet, by one touch from himself--
--"far off their coming shone! "--
makes the whole one image.
And so at the conclusion of the description of the appearance of the
entranced angels, in which every sort of image from all the regions of
earth and air is introduced to diversify and illustrate,--the reader is
brought back to the single image by--
"He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded. "[3]
The dramatic imagination does not throw back, but brings close; it stamps
all nature with one, and that its own, meaning, as in Lear throughout.
[Footnote 1: Part II. c. 2. v. 29. ]
[Footnote 2:
----"Forth rush'd with whirlwind sound
The chariot of Paternal Deity,
Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn,
Itself instinct with spirit, but convoy'd
By four cherubic shapes; four faces each
Had wonderous; as with stars their bodies all
And wings were set with eyes; with eyes the wheels
Of beryl, and careering fires between;
Over their heads a crystal firmament,
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure
Amber, and colours of the showery arch.
He, in celestial panoply all arm'd
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought,
Ascended; at his right hand Victory
Sat eagle-wing'd; beside him hung his bow
And quiver, with three-bolted thunder stored;
And from about him fierce effusion roll'd
Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire;
Attended with ten thousand thousand saints,
He onward came; _far off their coming shone;_
And twenty thousand (I their number heard)
Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen:
He on the wings of cherub rode sublime
On the crystalline sky, in sapphire throned,
Illustrious far and wide; but by his own
First seen. "--P. L. b. vi. v. 749, &c. ]
[Footnote 3:
----"and call'd
His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades,
High over arch'd, embower; or scatter'd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd
Hath vex'd the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris, and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcasses
And broken chariot wheels; so thick bestrewn,
Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
_He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded_. "--P. L. b. i. v. 300, &c. ]
* * * * *
At the very outset, what are we to think of the soundness of this modern
system of political economy, the direct tendency of every rule of which is
to denationalize, and to make the love of our country a foolish
superstition?
_June_ 28. 1834.
MR. COLERIDGE'S SYSTEM. --BIOGRAPHIA LITERAHIA. --DISSENTERS.
You may not understand my system, or any given part of it,--or by a
determined act of wilfulness, you may, even though perceiving a ray of
light, reject it in anger and disgust:--but this I will say,--that if you
once master it, or any part of it, you cannot hesitate to acknowledge it as
the truth. You cannot be sceptical about it.
The metaphysical disquisition at the end of the first volume of the
"Biographia Literaria" is unformed and immature;--it contains the fragments
of the truth, but it is not fully thought out. It is wonderful to myself to
think how infinitely more profound my views now are, and yet how much
clearer they are withal. The circle is completing; the idea is coming round
to, and to be, the common sense.
* * * * *
The generation of the modern worldly Dissenter was thus: Presbyterian,
Arian, Socinian, and last, Unitarian.
* * * * *
Is it not most extraordinary to see the Dissenters calling themselves the
descendants of the old Nonconformists, and yet clamouring for a divorce of
Church and State? Why--Baxter, and the other great leaders, would have
thought a man an atheist who had proposed such a thing. _They_ were rather
for merging the State _in_ the Church. But these our modern gentlemen, who
are blinded by political passion, give the kiss of alliance to the harlot
of Rome, and walk arm in arm with those who deny the God that redeemed
them, if so they may but wreak their insane antipathies on the National
Church! Well! I suppose they have counted the cost, and know what it is
they would have, and can keep.
_July_ 5. 1834.
LORD BROOKE. --BARROW AND DRYDEN. --PETER WILKINS AND STOTHARD. --FIELDING AND
RICHARDSON. --BISHOP SANDFORD. --ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION.
I do not remember a more beautiful piece of prose in English than the
consolation addressed by Lord Brooke (Fulke Greville) to a lady of quality
on certain conjugal infelicities. The diction is such that it might have
been written now, if we could find any one combining so thoughtful a head
with so tender a heart and so exquisite a taste.
* * * * *
Barrow often debased his language merely to evidence his loyalty. It was,
indeed, no easy task for a man of so much genius, and such a precise
mathematical mode of thinking, to adopt even for a moment the slang of
L'Estrange and Tom Brown; but he succeeded in doing so sometimes. With the
exception of such parts, Barrow must be considered as closing the first
great period of the English language. Dryden began the second. Of course
there are numerous subdivisions.
* * * * *
Peter Wilkins is to my mind a work of uncommon beauty; and yet Stothard's
illustrations have _added_ beauties to it. If it were not for a certain
tendency to affectation, scarcely any praise could be too high for
Stothard's designs. They give me great pleasure. I believe that Robinson
Crusoe and Peter Wilkins could only have been written by islanders. No
continentalist could have conceived either tale. Davis's story is an
imitation of Peter Wilkins; but there are many beautiful things in it;
especially his finding his wife crouching by the fireside--she having, in
his absence, plucked out all her feathers--to be like him!
It would require a very peculiar genius to add another tale, _ejusdem
generis_, to Robinson Crusoe and Peter Wilkins. I once projected such a
thing; but the difficulty of a pre-occupied ground stopped me. Perhaps La
Motte Fouque might effect something; but I should fear that neither he, nor
any other German, could entirely understand what may be called the "_desert
island_" feeling. I would try the marvellous line of Peter Wilkins, if I
attempted it, rather than the _real_ fiction of Robinson Crusoe.
* * * * *
What a master of composition Fielding was! Upon my word, I think the
Oedipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones the three most perfect plots
ever planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take
him up after Richardson, is like emerging from a sick room heated by
stoves, into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May.
* * * * *
I have been very deeply interested in the account of Bishop Sandford's
life, published by his son. He seems to have been a thorough gentleman upon
the model of St. Paul, whose manners were the finest of any man's upon
record.
* * * * *
I think I could have conformed to the then dominant Church before the
Reformation. The errors existed, but they had not been riveted into
peremptory articles of faith before the Council of Trent. If a Romanist
were to ask me the question put to Sir Henry Wotton, [1]I should content
myself by answering, that I could not exactly say when my religion, as he
was pleased to call it, began--but that it was certainly some sixty or
seventy years before _his_, at all events--which began at the Council of
Trent.
[Footnote 1:
"Having, at his being in Rome, made acquaintance with a pleasant priest,
who invited him, one evening, to hear their vesper music at church; the
priest, seeing Sir Henry stand obscurely in a corner, sends to him by a boy
of the choir this question, writ in a small piece of paper;--'Where was
your religion to be found before Luther? ' To which question Sir Henry
presently underwrit;--'My religion was to be found then, where yours is not
to be found now--in the written word of God. '"--_Isaak Walton's Life of Sir
Henry Wotton_. ]
_July_ 10. 1834.
_EUTHANASIA. _
I am, dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange
that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen
into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope--
those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love,--for what is
Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as _one? _ I say _realities_;
for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream; [Greek: *ai
g_or t onar e Di s esti]. Yet, in a strict sense, reality is not
predicable at all of aught below Heaven. "Es enim _in coelis_, Pater
noster, qui tu vere _es! _" Hooker wished to live to finish his
Ecclesiastical Polity;--so I own I wish life and strength had been spared
to me to complete my Philosophy. For, as God hears me, the originating,
continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my heart were to exalt the
glory of his name; and, which is the same thing in other words, to promote
the improvement of mankind. But _visum aliter Deo_, and his will be done.
* * * * *
** This note may well finish the present specimens. What followed was for
the memory of private friends only. Mr. Coleridge was then extremely ill;
but certainly did not believe his end to be quite so near at hand as it
was. --ED.
The following Recollections of Mr. Coleridge, written in May, 1811, have
been also communicated to me by my brother, Mr. Justice Coleridge:--
"20_th April_, 1811, _at Richmond_.
"We got on politics, and he related some curious facts of the Prince and
Perceval. Then, adverting to the present state of affairs in Portugal, he
said that he rejoiced not so much in the mere favourable turn, as in the
end that must now be put to the base reign of opinion respecting the
superiority and invincible skill of the French generals. Brave as Sir John
Moore was, he thought him deficient in that greater and more essential
manliness of soul which should have made him not hold his enemy in such
fearful respect, and which should have taught him to care less for the
opinion of the world at home.
"We then got, I know not how, to German topics. He said that the language
of their literature was entirely factitious, and had been formed by Luther
from the two dialects, High and Low German; that he had made it,
grammatically, most correct, more so, perhaps, than any other language; it
was equal to the Greek, except in harmony and sweetness. And yet the
Germans themselves thought it sweet;--Klopstock had repeated to him an ode
of his own to prove it, and really had deceived himself, by the force of
association, into a belief that the harsh sounds, conveying, indeed, or
being significant of, sweet images or thoughts, were themselves sweet. Mr.
C. was asked what he thought of Klopstock. He answered, that his fame was
rapidly declining in Germany; that an Englishman might form a correct
notion of him by uniting the moral epigram of Young, the bombast of Hervey,
and the minute description of Richardson. As to sublimity, he had, with all
Germans, one rule for producing it;--it was, to take something very great,
and make it very small in comparison with that which you wish to elevate.
Thus, for example, Klopstock says,--'As the gardener goes forth, and
scatters from his basket seed into the garden; so does the Creator scatter
worlds with his right hand. ' Here _worlds_, a large object, are made small
in the hands of the Creator; consequently, the Creator is very great.
