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THE LIBRARY
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THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
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THE LITERARY REMAINS
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
COLLECTED AND EDITED BY
HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A.
VOLUME THE FIRST
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LONDOiN
WILLIAM PICKERING
1836
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TO
JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, ESQ.
MEMBER OF IIIF, ROYAL COLLEGE OF SUKGF.OXS,
THE APPROVED FRIEND
OF
COLERIDGE
THESE VOLUMES
ARE
GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED.
VOL. 1.
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„-» I ^ ■ M
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PREFACE.
Mr. Coleridge by his will, dated in Sep-
tember, 1829, authorized his executor, if he
should think it expedient, to publish any of
the notes or writing made by him (Mr. C.)
in his books, or any other of his manu-
scripts or writings, or any letters which
should thereafter be collected from, or sup-
plied by, his friends or correspondents.
Agreeably to this authority, an arrange-
ment was made, under the superintendence
of Mr. Green, for the collection of Cole-
ridge's literary remains ; and at the same
time the preparation for the press of such
part of the materials as should consist of
criticism and general literature, was en-
trusted to the care of the present Editor.
The volumes now offered to the public are
the first results of that arrangement. They
must in any case stand in need of much
indulgence from the ingenuous reader ; —
Vlll PREFACE.
mulfa sunt condonanda in opere postumo ;
but a short statement of the difficulties
attending the compihition may serve to ex-
jihiin some apparent anomahes, and to pre-
chule some unnecessaiy censure.
The materials were fragmentary in the
extreme — Sibylline leaves ; — notes of the
lecturer, memoranda of the investigator,
out-pourings of the solitary and self-com-
miming student. The fear of the press was
not in them. Numerous as they were, too,
they came to light, or were communicated,
at different times, before and after the print-
ing was commenced ; and the dates, the
occasions, and the references, in most in-
stances remained to be discovered or con-
jectured. To give to such materials method
and continuity, as far as might be, — to set
them forth in the least disadvantageous
manner which the circumstances would per-
mit,— was a delicate and perplexing task ;
and the Editor is painfully sensible that he
could bring few qualifications for the under-
taking, but such as were involved in a many
years' intercourse with the author himself,
a patient study of his writings, a reverential
admiration of his genius, and an affectionate
desire to help in extending its beneficial
influence.
PREFACE. IX
The contents of these volumes are drawn
from a portion only of the manuscripts en-
trusted to the Editor : the remainder of the
collection, which, under favourable circum-
stances, he hopes may hereafter see the
light, is at least of equal value with what is
now presented to the reader as a sample.
In perusing the following pages, the reader
will, in a few instances, meet with disqui-
sitions of a transcendental character, which,
as a General rule, have been avoided : the
truth is, that they were sometimes found so
indissolubly intertwined with the more po-
pular matter which preceded and followed,
as to make separation impracticable. There
are very many to whom no apology will be
necessary in this respect ; and the Editor
only adverts to it for the purpose of ob-
viating, as far as may be, the possible com-
plaint of the more general reader. But
there is another point to which, taught by
past experience, he attaches more import-
ance, and as to which, therefore, he ven-
tures to put in a more express and par-
ticular caution. In many of the books and
papers, which have been used in the com-
pilation of these volumes, passages from
other writers, noted down by Mr. Coleridge
as in some way remarkable, were mixed up
X PREFACE.
with his own comments on such passages,
or with his reflections on other subjects, in
a manner very eml)arrassing to the eye of
a tliircl ])crson undertaking to select the
original matter, after the lapse of several
years. The Editor need not say that he
has not knowingly admitted any thing that
was not genuine without an express decla-
ration, as in Vol. I. p. 1 ; and in another
instance, Vol. II. p. 379, he has intimated
his own suspicion : but, besides these, it is
possible that some cases of mistake in this
respect may have occurred. There may
be one or two passages — they cannot well
be more — printed in these volumes, which
belong to other writers ; and if such there
be, the Editor can only plead in excuse,
that the work has been prepared by him
amidst many distractions, and hope that, in
this instance at least, no ungenerous use
will be made of such a circumstance to the
disadvantage of the author, and that persons
of o^reater reading: or more retentive memo-
ries than the Editor, who may discover any
such passages, will do him the favour to
communicate the fact.
The Editor's motive in publishing the
few poems and fragments included in these
volumes, was to make a supplement to the
PREFACE. XI
collected edition of Coleridge's poetical
works. In these frag-ments the reader will
see the germs of several passages in the
already published poems of the author, but
which the Editor has not thought it neces-
sary to notice more particularly. The Fall
of Robespierre, a joint composition, has
been so long in print in the French edition
of Coleridge's poems, that, independently
of such merit as it may possess, it seemed
natural to adopt it upon the present occasion,
and to declare the true state of the author-
ship.
To those who have been kind enough
to communicate books and manuscripts for
the purpose of the present publication, the
Editor and, through him, Mr. Coleridge's
executor return their grateful thanks. In
most cases a specific acknowledgment has
been made. But, above and independently
of all others, it is to Mr. and Mrs. Gillman,
and to Mr. Green himself, that the public
are indebted for the preservation and use
of the principal part of the contents of these
volumes. The claims of those respected
individuals on the gratitude of the friends
and admirers of Coleridge and his works
are already well known, and in due season
those claims will receive additional confir-
mation.
Xll PREFACE.
With tlicse remarks, sincerely conscious
of his own inadequate execution of the task
assi«i;ned to liini, yet confident withal of the
general worth of the contents of the follow-
ing; pages — the Editor commits the reliques
of a great man to the indulgent consideration
of the Pidjlic.
Lincoln's Inn,
August 11, 1836.
L' ENVOY
He was one who with long and large arm
still collected precious armfulls in whatever
direction he pressed forward, yet still took
up so much more than he could keep to-
gether, that those who followed him gleaned
more from his continual droppings than he
himself brought home ; — nay, made stately
corn-ricks therewith, w^hile the reaper him-
self was still seen only with a strutting
armful of newly-cut sheaves. But I should
misinform you grossly if I left you to infer
that his collections were a heap of inco-
herent miscellanea. No ! the very con-
trary. Their variety, conjoined with the
too great coherency, the too great both
desire and power of referring them in sys-
tematic, nay, genetic subordination, w^as
that which rendered his schemes gigantic
and impracticable, as an author, and his
conversation less instructive as a man.
XIV L ENVOY.
Auditoron inopeni ipsa copia fecit. — Too
much A\'as g'iveii, all so weighty and brilliant
as to preclude a chance of its being all
received, — so that it not seldom passed
over the hearer's mind like a roar of many
waters.
I
CONTENTS.
Page
The Fall of Robespierre 1
Poems.
" Julia was blest with beauty, wit, and grace". ... 33
" I yet remain" 34
To the Rev. W. J. Hort 35
To Charles Lamb 36
To the Nightingale 38
To Sara 39
To Joseph Cottle 40
Casimir 41
Darwiniana 43
" The early year's fast-flying vapours stray" 44
Count Rumford's Essays 45
Epigrams.
On a late Marriage between an Old Maid and a
French Petit Maitre 45
On an Amorous Doctor 46
" There comes from old Avaro's grave" 46
" Last Monday all the papers said" 46
To a Primrose, (the first seen in the season) 47
On the Christening of a Friend's Child 48
Epigram, " Hoarse Msevius reads his hobbling verse" 49
Inscription by the Rev. W. L. Bowles, in Nether
Stowey Church 50
Translation 50
Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie 50
Epilogue to the Rash Conjuror 52
Psyche 53
Complaint 53
Reproof 53
An Ode to the Rain 54
Translation of a Passage in Ottfried's Metrical Pa-
raphrase of the Gospels 56
XVI CONTENTS.
Pfig-e
Poonis.
Israel's Lament on ihe Death of the Princess Char-
lotte of Wales -i^
Sentimental 59
The Alternative 59
The Exchange 59
What is Life ? 60
Inscription for a Time-piece 60
'E.inTa(piov avroypwrToy 60
A COURSE OF LECTURES.
Prospectus 61
Lecture I. General character of the Gothic Mind in tlie
Middle Ages 67
II. General Character of the Gothic Literature
and Art 70
III. The Troubadours — Boccaccio — Petrarch —
Pulci — Chaucer — Spenser 79
VII. Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and
Massinger 97
V'lII. Don Quixote. Cervantes 113
IX. On the Distinctions of the Witty, the Droll,
the Odd, and the Humorous; the Nature
and Constituents of Humour; Rabelais,
Swift, Sterne 131
X. Donne, Dante, Milton, Paradise Lost 148
XL Asiatic and Greek Mythologies, Robinson
Crusoe, Use of Works of Imagination in
Education 184
XII. Dreams, Apparitions, Alchemists, Person-
ality of the Evil Being, Bodily Identity... 201
XIII. On Poesy or Art 216
XIV. On Style 230
Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici 241
Notes on .Junius 248
Notes on Barclay's Argenis 255
Note in Casaubon's Persius 258
CONTENTS. XVll
Page
Notes on Chapman's Homer 259
Note in Baxter's Life of Himself 263
Fragment of an Essay on Taste 266
Fragment of an Essay on Beauty 270
Poems and Poetical Fragments 274
OMNIANA.
The French Decade 282
Ride and Tie , 284
Jeremy Taylor 285
Criticism 285
Public Instruction 286
Picturesque Words 287
Toleration 288
War 288
Parodies 289
M. Dupuis 289
Origin of the Worship of Hymen 290
Egotism 291
Cap of Liberty 293
Bulls , 294
Wise Ignorance 295
Rouge 296
Hasty Words 296
Motives and Impulses 297
Inward Blindness 299
The Vices of Slaves no excuse for Slavery 300
Circulation of the Blood 301
PeriturcB Parcere ChartcB 302
To have and to be 303
Party Passion 304
(jroodness of Heart Indispensable to a Man of Genius . . 304
Milton and Ben Jonson 305
Statistics 305
Magnanimity 306
Negroes and Narcissuses 309
An Anecdote 309
The Pharos at Alexandria 310
will CONTESTS.
Pnga
Sense and Common Sense 310
Toleration 312
Mint for a New Species of History 315
Text Sparring 320
Pelagianism 321
The Soul and its Organs of Sense 323
Sir George Etherege, &c 330
Evidence 335
Force of Habit 336
Phoenix 336
Memory and Recollection 336
Aliquid ex Nihilo 337
Brevity of the Greek and English compared 337
The Will and the Deed 338
The Will for the Deed 338
Sincerity 339
Truth and Falsehood 339
Religious Ceremonies 340
Association 340
Curiosity 341
New Truths 342
Vicious Pleasures 342
Meriting Heaven 342
Dust to Dust 343
Human Countenance 343
Lie useful to Truth 343
Science in Roman Catholic States 343
Voluntary Belief 344
Amanda 344
Hymen's Torch 345
Youth and Age 345
December Morning 345
Archbishop Leighton 346
Christian Honesty 346
Inscription on a Clock in Cheapside 347
Rationalism is not Reason 347
Inconsistency 349
Hope in Humanity 349
CONTENTS. XIX
Page
Self-love in Religion 351
Limitation of Love of Poetry 356
Humility of the Amiable 357
Temper in Argument 357
Patriarchal Government 358
Callous self-conceit 359
A Librarian 359
Trimming 360
Death 360
Love an Act of the Will 360
Wedded Union 361
Difference between Hobbes and Spinosa 362
The End may justify the Means. . , 363
Negative Thought 363
Man's return to Heaven 364
Young Prodigies 364
Welch names 365
German Language 366
The Universe 367
Harberous 368
An Admonition 368
To Thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry. . . . 370
Definition of Miracle 370
Death, and grounds of belief in a Future State 372
Hatred of Injustice , 374
Religion 374
The Apostles' Creed 379
A Good Heart 380
Evidences of Christianity 386
Confessio Fidei 389
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE
AND OTHER POEMS.
VOL. I.
TO n. MARTIN, ESQ.
OF JESUS COLLKGE, CAM Hill OCiE.
DRAi; Sll?,
Accept, as a small testimony of my grateful attacli-
ment, the following Dramatic Poem, in wliicli I have
endeavoured to detail, in an interesting form, the fall of
a man, whose great bad actions have cast a disastrous
lustre on his name. In the execution of the work, as
intricacy of plot could not have been attempted without
a gross violation of recent facts, it has been my sole aim
to imitate the impassioned and highly figurative lan-
guage of the French Orators, and to develope the cha-
racters of the chief actors on a vast sta^e of horrors.
Yours fraternally,
8. T. Coleridge.
Jesus College,
September 22, 1794.
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.
AN HISTORIC DRAMA. 1794.*
ACT I.
Scene — The Tui/Ieries:
BARRERE.
The tempest gathers — be it mine to seek
A friendly shelter, ere it bursts upon him.
But where ? and how ? I fear the tyrant's soul —
Sudden in action, fertile in resource,
And rising awful 'mid impending ruins;
In splendour gloomy, as the midnight meteor,
That fearless thwarts the elemental war.
* The origin and authorship of "The Fall of Robespierre" will be
best explained by the following extract from a letter from Mr. Southey
to tlie Editor:
" This is the history of The Fall of Robespierre. It originated in
sportive conversation at poor Lovell's, and we agreed each to produce an
act by the next evening; — S. T. C. the first, I the second, and Lovell
the third. S. T. C. brought part of his, I and Lovell the whole of ours ;
but L.'s was not in keeping, and therefore I undertook to supply the
third also by the following day. By that time, S, T. C. had filled up
his. A dedication to Mrs. Hannah More was concocted, and the notable
performance was offered for sale to a bookseller in Bristol, who was too
wise to buy it. Your Uncle took the MSS. with him to Cambridge,
and there rewrote the first act at leisure, and published it. My portion
I never saw from the time it was written till the whole was before the
world. It was written with newspapers before me, as fast as newspaper
could be put into blank verse. I have no desire to claim it now, or
hereafter; but neither am I ashamed of it; and if you think proper to
print the whole, so be it." —
" Tlie Fall of Robespierre, a tragedy, of whicli the first act was written
by S. T. Coleridge." Mr. C.'s note in the Conciuiies ad Fopulimi,
1795. Ed.
4 THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.
When last in secret conference we met,
He scovvl'd upon me with suspicious rage,
Making his eye the inmate of my bosom.
I know he scorns me — and I feel, I hate him —
Yet there is in him that which makes me tremble !
[Exit.
Enter 'r.MAAEts and Lkgendue.
TALLIRN.
It was Barrere, Legendre ! didst thou mark him ?
Abrupt he turn'd, yet linger'd as he went,
And tow'rds us cast a look of doubtful meaning.
LEGENDRE.
I mark'd him well. I met his eye's last glance;
It menac'd not so proudly as of yore.
Methought he would have spoke — but that he dar'd not —
Such agitation darken'd on his brow.
TALLIKN.
'Twas all-distrusting guilt that kept from bursting
Th' imprison'd secret struggling in the face :
E'en as the sudden breeze upstarting onwards
Hurries the thunder cloud, that pois'd awhile
Hung in mid air, red with its mutinous burthen.
LEGENDRE.
Perfidious traitor ! — still afraid to bask
In the full blaze of power, the rustling serpent
Lurks in the thicket of the tyrant's greatness,
Ever prepar'd to sting who shelters him.
Each thought, each action in himself converges ;
And love and friendship on his coward heart
Shine like the powerless sun on polar ice :
To all attach'd, by turns deserting all,
Cunning and dark — a necessary villain !
TALLIEN.
Yet much depends upon him — well you know
With plausible harangue 'tis his to paint
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE. 5
Defeat like victory — and blind the mob
With truth-mix'd falsehood. They, led on by him,
And wild of head to work their own destruction,
Support with uproar what he plans in darkness.
LEGENDRE.
O what a precious name is liberty
To scare or cheat the simple into slaves !
Yes — we must gain him over : by dark hints
We'll show enough to rouse his watchful fears,
Till the cold coward blaze a patriot.
O Danton ! murder'd friend ! assist my counsels —
Hover around me on sad memory's wings.
And pour thy daring vengeance in my heart.
Tallien ! if but to-morrow's fateful sun
Beholds the tyrant living — we are dead !
TALLIEN.
Yet his keen eye that flashes mighty meanings —
LEGENDRE.
Fear not — or rather fear th' alternative.
And seek for courage e'en in cowardice —
But see — hither he comes — let us away !
His brother with him, and the bloody Couthon,
And, high of haughty spirit, young St. Just. [Exeunt.
Enter Robespierre, Couthon, St. Just, a/id
Robespierre Junior.
ROBESPIERRE.
What ! did La Fayette fall before my power —
And did I conquer Roland's spotless virtues —
The fervent eloquence of Vergniaud's tongue.
And Brissot's thoughtful soul unbribed and bold !
Did zealot armies haste in vain to save them !
What! did th' assassin's dagger aim its point
Vain, as a dream of murder, at my bosom;
And shall I dread the soft luxurious Tallien?
Th' Adonis Tallien, — banquet-hunting Tallien,- —
0 THE FALL OF ROIJESI'IERRE.
Him, whose heart flutters at the dice-box ! Ilini,
Who ever on the harlots' downy pillow
Resigns his head impure to feverish slumbers !
ST. JLsr.
1 cannot fear him — yet we must not scorn him.
Was it not Antony that conquer'd Brutus,
Th* Adonis, banquet-hunting Antony?
The state is not yet purified : and though
The stream runs clear, yet at the bottom lies
The thick black sediment of all the factions —
It needs no magic hand to stir it up !
COL'TIION.
O, we did wrong to spare them — fatal error !
Why lived Legendre, when that Danton died,
And Collot d'Herbois danoerous in crimes?
I've fear'd him, since his iron heart endured
To make of Lyons one vast human shambles,
Compar'd with which the sun-scorch'd wilderness
Of Zara were a smiling paradise.
ST. JUST.
Rightly thou judgest, Couthon ! He is one.
Who flies from silent solitary anguish.
Seeking forgetful peace amid the jar
Of elements. The howl of maniac uproar
Lulls to sad sleep the memory of himself.
A calm is fatal to him — then he feels
The dire upboilings of the storm within him.
A tiger mad with inward wounds ! — I dread
The fierce and restless turbulence of guilt.
IIOBESPIERRE.
Is not the Commune ours ? the stern Tribunal ?
Dumas? andVivier? Fleuriot? andLouvet?
And Henriot ? We'll denounce a hundred, nor
Shall they behold to-morrow's sun roll westward.
IJOBESl'lERRE JUNIOR.
iNav — I am sick of blood ! my achimi: heart
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERllE.
Reviews the long, long train of hideous horrors
That still have glooni'd the rise of the Republic.
I should have died before Toulon, when war
Became the patriot !
ROBESPIERRE.
Most unworthy wish !
He, whose heart sickens at the blood of traitors
Would be himself a traitor, were he not
A coward ! 'Tis congenial souls alone
Shed tears of sorrow for each other's fate.
O, thou art brave, my brother ! and thine eye
Full firmly shines amid the groaning battle —
Yet in thine heart the woman-form of pity
Asserts too large a share, an ill-timed guest !
There is unsoundness in the state — to-morrow
Shall see it cleansed by wholesome massacre !
ROBESPIERRE JUNIOR.
Beware ! already do the Sections murmur —
" O the great glorious patriot, Robespierre —
The tyrant guardian of the country's freedom !"
COUTHON.
'Tvvere folly sure to work great deeds by halves !
Much I suspect the darksome fickle heart
Of cold Barrere !
ROBESPIERRE.
I see the villain in him !
ROBESPIERRE JUNIOR.
If he — if all forsake thee — what remains?
ROBESPIERRE.
Myself! the steel-strong rectitude of soul
And poverty sublime 'mid circling virtues
The giant victories, my counsels form'd.
Shall stalk around me with sun-glittering plumes.
Bidding the darts of calumny fall pointless.
[Exeuttt. Manet Coiithoit.
I
8 THE FALL OF KOBESPIKRUE.
COUTHOM.
So we deceive ourselves ! What goodly virtues
Bloom on the poisonous branches of ambition !
Still, Robespierre ! thou'l't guard thy country's freedom
To despotize in all the patriot's pomp.
While conscience, 'mid the mob's applauding clamours,
Sleeps in thine ear, nor whispers — blood-stain'd tyrant !
Yet what is conscience ? superstition's dream
Making such deep impression on our sleep —
Tiiat long th' awaken'd breast retains its horrors !
But he returns — and with him comes Barrerc.
[Exit Couthon.
Enter Robespierre and Barrere.
ROBESPIERRE.
There is no danger but in cowardice. —
Barrere ! we make the danger, when we fear it.
We have such force without, as will suspend
The cold and trembling treachery of these members.
BARRERE.
'Twill be a j^ause of terror. —
ROBESPIERRE.
But to whom ?
Rather the short-lived slumber of the tempest,
Gathering its strength anew. The dastard traitors !
Moles, that would undermine the rooted oak !
A pause ! — a moment's pause ! — 'Tis all their life.
BARRERE.
Yet much they talk — and plausible their speech.
Couthon's decree has given such powers, that — ■
ROBESPIERRE.
That what ?
BARRERE.
The freedom of debate —
ROBESPIERRE.
Transparent mask !
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE. 9
They wish to clog the wheels of government,
Forcing the hand that guides the vast machine
To bribe them to their duty. — English patriots !
Are not the congregated clouds of war
Black all around us ? In our very vitals
Works not the king-bred poison of rebellion ?
Say, what shall counteract the selfish plottings
Of wretches, cold of heart, nor awed by fears
Of him, whose power directs th' eternal justice ?
Terror ? or secret-sapping gold ? The first
Heavy, but transient as the ills that cause it ;
And to the virtuous patriot render'd light
By the necessities that gave it birth :
The other fouls the fount of the Republic,
Making it flow polluted to all ages;
Inoculates the state with a slow venom,
That once imbibed, must be continued ever.
Myself incorruptible I ne'er could bribe them —
Therefore they hate me.
BARRERE.
Are the Sections friendly ?
ROBESPIERRE.
There are who wish my ruin — but I'll make them
Blush for the crime in blood !
BARRERE.
Nay — but I tell thee,
Thou art too fond of slaughter — and the right
(If right it be) workest by most foul means !
ROBESPIERRE.
Self-centering Fear ! how well thou canst ape Mercy !
Too fond of slaughter ! — matchless hypocrite !
Thought Barrere so, when Brissot, Danton died ?
Thought Barrere so, when through the streaming streets
Of Paris red-eyed Massacre, o'er wearied,
Reel'd heavily, intoxicate with blood?
And when (O heavens !) in Lyons' death-red square
10 THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.
Sick fancy groan'cl o'er putrid liills of slain,
Didst thou not fiercely laugh, and bless the day i
Why, thou hast been the mouth-piece of ail horrors,
And, like a blood-hound, crouch'd for murder ! Now
Aloof thou standest from the tottering pillar.
Or, like a frighted child behind its mother,
Hidest thy pale face in the skirts of — Mercy !
BAllRERE.
0 prodigahty of eloquent anger !
Why now I see thou'rt weak — thy case is desperate !
The cool ferocious Robespierre turn'd scolder !
ROBESPIERRE.
Who from a bad man's bosom wards the blow.
Reserves the whetted dawger for his own.
Denounced twice — and twice I sav'd his life ! [Exit.
BARRERE,
The Sections will support them — there's the point !
No ! he can never weather out the storm —
Yet he is sudden in reven^-e — No more !
1 must away to Tallien. [ Exit.
Scene changes to the House oj' Adelaide.
Adelaide enters, speaking to a Servant.
ADELAIDE.
Didst thou present the letter that I gave thee?
Did Tallien answer, he would soon return ?
SERVANT.
He is in the Tuilleries — with him, Legendre —
In deep discourse they seem'd : as I approach'd
He waved his hand, as biddiniz; me retire :
I did not interrupt him. [Returns the letter.
ADELAIDE.
Thou didst rightly.
[Exit Servant.
O this new freedom ! at how dear a price
We've bought the seeming good ! The peaceful virtues
THE FALL OF 11015ESPIERRE. 1 I
And every blandishment of private life,
The father's cares, the mother's fond endearment.
All sacrificed to liberty's wild riot.
The winged hours, that scatter'd roses round me,
Lanouid and sad drag their slow course along,
And shake big gall-drops from their heavy wings.
But I will steal away these anxious thoughts
By the soft languishment of warbled airs.
If haply melodies may lull the sense
Of sorrow for a while. [Soft Music.
Elite)- Tallien.
TALLIEN,
Music, my love ? O breathe again that air !
Soft nurse of pain, it soothes the weary soul
Of care, sweet as the whisper'd breeze of evening
That plays around the sick man's throbbing temples.
SONG.
Tell me, on what holy ground
May domestic peace be found ?
Halcyon daughter of the skies,
Far on fearful wing she flies.
From the pomp of sceptred state.
From the rebel's noisy hate.
In a cottag'd vale she dwells,
List'nino- to the Sabbath bells !
Still around her steps are seen
Spotless honour's meeker mien.
Love, the sire of pleasing fears.
Sorrow smilino- through her tears.
And conscious of the past employ,
Memory, bosom-spring of joy.
TALI.IEN.
I thank thee, Adelaide ! 'twas sweet, though mournful.
12 THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.
13ut wliy thy brow o'ercast, thy cheek so wan ?
Thou look'st as a lorn maid beside some stream,
That sighs away the soul in fond despairing,
While sorrow sad, like the dank willow near her,
Hangs o'er the troubled fountain ofher eye.
ADELAIDE.
Ah ! rather let me ask what mystery lowers
On Tallien's darken'd brow. Thou dost me wrong-
Thy soul distemper'd, can my heart be tranquil ?
TALLIEN.
Tell me, by whom thy brother's blood was spilt ?
Asks he not vengeance on these patriot murderers ?
It has been borne too tamely. Fears and curses
Groan on our midnight beds, and e'en our dreams
Threaten the assassin hand of Robespierre.
He dies ! — nor has the plot escaped his fears.
ADELAIDE.
Yet — yet — be cautious ! much I fear the Communc-
The tyrant's creatures, and their fate with his
Fast link'd in close indissoluble union.
The pale Convention —
TALLIEN.
Hate him as they fear him,
Impatient of the chain, resolved and ready.
ADELAIDE.
Th' enthusiast mob, confusion's lawless sons —
TALLIEN.
They are aweary of his stern morality,
The fair-mask'd offspring of ferocious pride.
The Sections too support the delegates :
All — all is ours ! e'en now the vital air
Of Liberty, condens'd awhile, is bursting
(Force irresistible !) from its compressurc —
To shatter the arch chemist in the explosion !
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE. 13
Enter Billaud Varennes and Bourdon l'Oise.
\^ Adelaide retires.
BOURDON l'oISE.
Tallien ! was this a time for amorous conference ?
Hen riot, the tyrant's most devoted creature,
Marshals the force of Paris : The fierce club.
With Vivier at their head, in loud acclaim
Have sworn to make the guillotine in blood
Float on the scaffold. — But who comes here ?
Enter Barrere abruptly.
barrere.
Say, are ye friends to freedom ? I am hers !
Let us, forgetful of all common feuds,
Rally around her shrine ! E'en now the tyrant
Concerts a plan of instant massacre !
billaud varennes.
Away to the Convention ! with that voice
So oft the herald of glad victory.
Rouse their fallen spirits, thunder in their ears
The names of tyrant, plunderer, assassin !
The violent workings of my soul within
Anticipate the monster's blood !
[Cry from the street of- — No tyrant !
Down with the tyrant I
TALLIEN.
Hear ye that outcry ? — If the trembling members
Even for a moment hold his fate suspended,
I swear by the holy poniard, that stabbed Csesar,
This dagger probes his heart ! [Exeu7it omnes.
14 THIi FALL OF UOBESPIFRRi:.
ACT II.
Scene — The Convention.
RoBiiSPiEiiRE mounts the Tribune.
Once more befits it that the voice of" trutli,
Fearless in innocence, thougli Icaguer'd round
By envy and her hateful brood of hell,
Be heard amid this hall ; once more befits
The patriot, whose prophetic eye so oft
Has pierc'd thro' faction's veil, to flash on crimes
Of deadliest import. Mouldering in the grave
Sleeps Capet's caitiff corse ; my daring hand
Levell'd to earth his blood-cemented throne, '
My voice declared his guilt, and stirr'd up France
To call for vengeance. 1 too dug the grave
Where sleep the Girondists, detested band !
Long with the show of freedom they abused
Her ardent sons. Long time the well-turn'd phrase,
The high fraught sentence, and the lofty tone
Of declamation thunder'd in this hall,
Till reason, midst a labyrinth of words,
Perplex'd, in silence seem'd to yield assent.
I durst oppose. Soul of my honour'd friend.
Spirit of Marat, upon thee I call —
Thou know'st me faithful, know'st with what warm zeal
I urged the cause of justice, stripp'd the mask
From faction's deadly visage, and destroy'd
Her traitor brood. Whose patriot arm hurl'd down
Hebert and Rousin, and the villain friends
Of Danton, foul apostate ! those, who long
Mask'd treason's form in liberty's fair garb,
Long deluged France with blood, and durst defy
Omni])otence ! but I, it seems, am false !
I am a traitor too ! I — Robespierre !
THE FALL OF RORESPIFRRE, 15
I — at whose name tlie dastard despot brood
Look pale with fear, and call on saints to help them
Who dares accuse me? who shall dare belie
My spotless name ? Speak, ye accomplice band,
Of what am I accused ? of what strange crime
Is Maximilian Robespierre accused.
That through this hall the buzz of discontent
Should murmur ? who shall speak ?
BILLAUD VARENNES.
O patriot tongue,
Belying the foul heart! Who was it urged
Friendly to tyrants that accurst decree,
Whose influence brooding o'er this hallow'd hall,
Has chill'd each tongue to silence. Who destroy 'd
The freedom of debate, and carried through
The fatal law, that doom'd the delegates,
Unlieard before their equals, to the bar
Where cruelty sat throned, and murder reign'd
With her Dumas coequal? Say — thou man
Of mighty eloquence, whose law was that ?
COUTH ON.
That law was mine. I urged it — I proposed —
The voice of France assembled in her sons
Assented, though the tame and timid voice
Of traitors murmur'd. I advised that law —
I justify it. It was wise and good.
BARRERE.
Oh, wondrous wise, and most convenient too !
I have long mark'd thee, Robespierre — and now
Proclaim thee traitor — tyrant I [Loud apphnises.
ROBESPIERRE.
[t is well ; —
I am a traitor ! oh, that I had fallen
Wheu Regnault lifted high the murderous knife;
Regnault, the instrument belike of those
Who now themselves would fain assassinate,
IC THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.
And legalize their murders. I stand here
An isohitcd patriot — henim'd around
By faction's noisy pack ; beset and bay'd
By the foul hell-hounds who know no escape
From justice' outstretch'd arm, but by the force
That pierces through her breast.
[Murmurs, and shouts of — Down ivith the tyrant !
ROBESPIERRE.
Nay, but I will be heard. There was a time
When Robespierre began, the loud applauses
Of honest patriots drown'd the honest sound.
But times are changed, and villany prevails.
COLLOT d'hERBOIS.
No — villany shall fall. France could not brook
A monarch's sway ; — sounds the dictator's name
More soothing to her ear ?
BOURDON l'oISE.
Rattle her chains
More musically now than when the hand
Of Brissot forged her fetters ; or the crew
Of Hebert thunder'd out their blasphemies,
And Danton talk'd of virtue ?
ROBESPIERRE.
Oh, that Brissot
Were here again to thunder in this hall, —
That Hebert lived, and Danton's giant form
Scowl'd once again defiance ! so my soul
Might cope with worthy foes.
People of France,
Hear me ! Beneath the vengeance of the law
Traitors have perish 'd countless ; more survive :
The hydra-headed faction lifts anew
Her daring front, and fruitful from her wounds,
Cautious from past defects, contrives new wiles
Against the sons of Freedom.
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE. 17
TALLIRN.
Freedom lives !
Oppression falls — for France has felt her chains,
Has burst them too. Who, traitor-like, stept forth
Amid the hall of Jacobins to save
Camille Desmoulins, and the venal wretch
D'Egiantine ?
ROBESPIERRE.
I did — for I thought them honest.
And Heaven forefend that vengeance e'er should strike,
Ere justice doom'd the blow.
BAURERE.
Traitor, thou didst.
Yes, the accomplice of their dark designs,
Awhile didst thou defend them, when the storm
Lour'd at safe distance. When the clouds frown'd darker,
Fear'd for yourself, and left them to their fate.
Oh, I have mark'd thee long, and through the veil
Seen thy foul projects. Yes, ambitious man,
Self-will'd dictator o'er the realm of France,
The vengeance thou hast plann'd for patriots.
Falls on thy head. Look how thy brother's deeds
Dishonour thine ! He, the firm patriot ;
Thou, the foul parricide of Liberty !
ROBESPIERRE JUNIOR.
Barrere — attempt not meanly to divide
Me from my brother. I partake his guilt,
For I partake his virtue.
ROBESPIERRE.
Brother, by my soul.
More dear I hold thee to my heart, that thus
With me thou dar'st to tread the dangerous path
Of virtue, than that nature twined her cords
Of kindred round us.
BARRERE.
Yes, allied in onilt,
VOL. !. c
10 THE FALL OP ROBESPIERRE.
Even as in blood ye are. Oh, tliou worst wretcli,
Thou worse than Sylla ! hast thou not proscrib'd,
Yea, in most foul anticipation slaughter'd
Each patriot representative of France ?
BOURDON l'oISE.
Was not the younger Caesar too to reign
O'er all our valiant armies in the south,
And still continue there his merchant wiles ?
ROBESPIERRE JUNIOR.
His merchant wiles ! Oh, grant me patience, heaven !
Was it by merchant wiles I gain'd you back
Toulon, when proudly on her captive towers
Wav'd high the English flag? or fought I then
With merchant wiles, when sword in hand I led
Your troops to conquest? fought I merchant-like,
Or barter'd I for victory, when death
Strode o'er the reeking streets with giant stride,
And shook his ebon plumes, and sternly smil'd
Amid the bloody banquet? when appall'd
The hireling sons of England spread the sail
Of safety, fought I like a merchant then ?
Oh, patience ! patience !
BOURDON l'oiSE.
How this younger tyrant
Mouths out defiance to us ! even so
He had led on the armies of the south.
Till once again the plains of France were drench'd
With her best blood.
COLLOT d'hERBOIS.
Till once again display 'd
Lyons' sad tragedy had call'd me forth
The minister of wrath, whilst slaughter by
Had bathed in human blood.
DUBOIS GRANGE.
No wonder, friend,
That we are traitors — that our heads must fall
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE. 19
Beneatli the axe of death ! when Csesar-like
Reigns Robespierre, 'tis wisely done to doom
The fall of Brutus. Tell me, bloody man,
Hast thou not parcell'd out deluded France
As it had been some province won in fight
Between your curst triumvirate. You, Couthon,
Go with my brother to the southern plains ;
St. Just, be yours the army of the north ;
Meantime I rule at Paris.
ROBESPIERRE.
Matchless knave!
What — not one blush of conscience on thy cheek —
Not one poor blush of truth ! most likely tale !
That I, who ruin'd Brissot's towering hopes,
I, who discover'd Hebert's impious wiles,
And sharp'd for Danton's recreant neck the axe.
Should now be traitor ! had I been so minded.
Think ye I had destroy'd the very men
Whose plots resembled mine ? bring forth your proofs
Of this deep treason. Tell me in whose breast
Found ye the fatal scroll ? or tell me rather
Who foreed the shameless falsehood ?
COLLOT d'hERBOIS.
Ask you proofs ?
Robespierre, what proofs were ask'd when Brissotdied?
LEGENDRE.
What proofs adduced you when the Danton died ?
When at the imminent peril of my life
I rose, and, fearless of thy frowning brow,
Proclaim'd him guiltless?
ROBESPIERRE,
I remember well
The fatal day. I do repent me much
That I kill'd Cgesar and spared Antony.
But I have been too lenient. I have spared
The stream of blood, and now my own must flow
20 THE FALL OF ROIJESPIEHRE.
To fill the current. [Loud Applauses.
Triumph not too soon,
Justice may yet be victor.
Enter St. Just, and mounts the Tribune.
ST. JUST.
I come from the committee — charged to speak
Of matters of high import. I omit
Their orders. Representatives of France,
Boldly in his own person speaks St. Just
What his own heart shall dictate.
TALLIEN.
Hear ye this,
Insulted delegates of France ? St. Just
From your committee comes — comes charged to speak
Of matters of high import — yet omits
Their orders ! Representatives of France,
That bold man I denounce, who disobeys
The nation's orders. — I denounce St. Just.
\_Loud Applauses.
ST. JUST.
Hear me ! [ Violent Murmurs.
ROBESPIERRE.
He shall be heard !
BURDON l'oISE.
Must we contaminate this sacred hall
With the foul breath of treason ?
COLLOT d'hRRBOIS.
Drag him away !
Hence with him to the bar.
COUTHON.
Oh, just proceedings !
Robespierre prevented liberty of speech —
And Robespierre is a tyrant ! Tallien reigns,
He dreads to hear the voice of innocence —
And St. Just must be silent !
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE. 21
LEGENDRK.
Heed we well
That justice guide our actions. No light import
Attends this day. I move St. Just be heard.
FRERON.
Inviolate be the sacred right of man,
The freedom of debate. [Violent Applauses.
ST. JUST.
I may be heard then I much the times are changed,
When St. Just thanks this hall for hearing him.
Robespierre is call'd a tyrant. Men of France,
Judge not too soon. By popular discontent
Was Aristides driven into exile,
Was Phocion murder'd ! Ere ye dare pronounce
Robespierre is guilty, it befits ye well,
Consider who accuse him. Tallien,
Bourdon of Oise — the very men denounced,
For that their dark intrigues disturb'd the plan
Of o;overnment. Legendre, the sworn friend
Of Danton fall'n apostate. Dubois Crance,
He who at Lyons spared the royalists —
Collot d'Herbois—
BOURDON l'oISE.
What — shall the traitor rear
His head amid our tribune, and blaspheme
Each patriot j^ shall the hireling slave of faction —
ST. JUST.
I am of no one faction. I contend
Against all factions.
TALLIEN.
I espouse the cause
Of truth. Robespierre on yester morn pronounced
U{)on his own authority a report.
To-day St. Just comes down. St. Just neglects
What the committee orders, and harangues
From his own will. O citizens of France,
22 THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.
I weep for you — I weep for my poor country —
I tremble for the cause of Liberty,
When individuals shall assume the sway,
And with more insolence than kingly pride
Rule the Republic.
BILLAUD VARENNES.
Shudder, ye representatives of France,
Shudder with horror. Henriot commands
The marshall'd force of Paris. Henriot,
Foul parricide — the sworn ally of Hebert
Denounced by all — upheld by Robespierre.
Who spared La Valette? who promoted him,
Stain'd with the deep die of nobility ?
Who to an ex-peer gave the high command ?
Who screen'd from justice the rapacious thief?
Who cast in chains the friends of Liberty ?
Robespierre, the self-styled patriot, Robespierre —
Robespierre, allied with villain Daubigne —
Robespierre, the foul arch tyrant, Robespierre.
BOURDON l'oISE.
He talks of virtue — of morality —
Consistent patriot ! he Daubigne's friend I
Henriot's supporter virtuous ! preach of virtue.
Yet league with villains, for with Robespierre
Villains alone ally. Thou art a tyrant !
I style thee tyrant, Robespierre ! [Loud Applauses.
ROBESPIERRE.
Take back the name. Ye citizens of France —
[Violeut Clamour. Ci'ies of- — Doivti with the tyrant!
TALLIEN.
Oppression falls. The traitor stands appall'd —
Guilt's iron fangs engrasp his shrinking soul —
He hears assembled France denounce his crimes !
He sees the mask torn from his secret sins —
He trembles on the precipice of fate.
Fall'n guilty tyrant ! murder'd by thy rage.
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE. 23
How many an innocent victim's blood has stain'd
Fair freedom's altar ! Sylla-like thy hand
Mark'd down the virtues, that, thy foes removed.
Perpetual Dictator thou might'st reign,
And tyrannize o'er France, and call it freedom !
Long time in timid guilt the traitor plann'd
His fearful wiles — success embolden'd sin —
And his stretch'd arm had grasp'd the diadem
Ere now, but that the coward's heart recoil'd,
Lest France awaked, should rouse her from her dream,
And call aloud for vengeance. He, like Caesar,
With rapid step urged on his bold career,
Even to the summit of ambitious power.
And deem'd the name of King alone was wanting.
Was it for this we hurl'd proud Capet down ?
Is it for this we wage eternal war
Against the tyrant horde of murderers.
The crowned cockatrices whose foul venom
Infects all Europe ? was it then for this
We swore to guard our liberty with life.
That Robespierre should reign ? the spirit of freedom
Is not yet sunk so low. The glowing flame
That animates each honest Frenchman's heart
Not yet extinguish'd. I invoke thy shade,
Immortal Brutus ! I too wear a dagger ;
And if the representatives of France
Through fear or favour should delay the sword
Of justice, Tallien emulates thy virtues;
Tallien, like Brutus, lifts the avenging arm ;
Tallien shall save his country. IVio/ent Applauses.
BILLAUD VARENNES.
I demand
The arrest of all the traitors. Memorable
Will be this day for France.
ROBESPIEIIUE.
Yes ! Memorable
24 THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.
This day will be for France — for villains triumph.
LEBAS.
I will not sliare in this day's damning guilt.
Condenni me too.
\_Great en/ — Doivn with the tyrants! The tivo
liobespierres, Couthon, St. Just, and Lebas
are led off.
ACT III.
Scene continues.
COLLOT d'hERBOIS. ,
Csesar is fallen ! The baneful tree of Java,
Whose death-distilling boughs dropt poisonous dew.
Is rooted from its base. This worse than Cromwell,
The austere, the self-denying Robespierre,
Even in this hall, where once with terror mute
We listen 'd to the hypocrite's harangues,
Has heard his doom.
BILLAUD VARENNES.
Yet must we not suppose
The tyrant will fall tamely. His sworn hireling
Henriot, the daring desperate Henriot
Commands the force of Paris. I denounce him.
FRERON.
I denounce Fleuriot too, the mayor of Paris.
Enter Dubois Crance.
DUBOIS CRANCE.
Robespierre is rescued. Henriot, at the head
Of the arm'd force, has rescued the fierce tyrant.
COLLOT d'hERBOIS.
Ring the tocsin — call all the citizens
To save their country — never yet has Paris
Forsook the representatives of France.
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE. 20
TALLIEN.
It is the hour of danger. I propose
This sitting be made permanent. [Loud Applauses.
COLLOT d'hERBOIS.
The national Convention shall remain
Firm at its post.
Enter a Messenger.
MESSENGER.
Robespierre has reach'd the Commune. They espouse
The tyrant's cause. St. Just is up in arms !
St. Just — the young, ambitious, bold St. Just
Harangues the mob. The sanguinary Couthon
Thirsts for your blood. [Tocsin rings.
TALLIEN.
These tyrants are in arms against the law :
Outlaw the rebels.
Enter Merlin of Douay.
MERLIN.
Health to the representatives of France !
I pass'd this moment through the armed force —
They ask'd my name — and when they heard a delegate.
Swore I was not the friend of France.
COLLOT d'hERBOIS.
The tyrants threaten us as when they turn'd
The cannon's mouth on Brissot.
Enter another Messenger.
SECOND MESSENGER.
Vivier harangues the Jacobins — the club
Espouse the cause of Robespierre.
Etiter another Messenger.
THIRD messenger.
All's lost — the tyrant triuni])hs. Hcnriut leads
26 THE FALL OF ROBESPIEIUIE.
The soldiers to his aid. — Ah'eady I hear
The ratthng cannon destin'd to surround
This sacred hall.
TALLIEN.
Why, we will die like men then.
The representatives of France dare death,
When duty steels their bosoms. [Loud Applauses.
TALLIEN addressing the galleries.
Citizens !
France is insulted in her delecrates —
The majesty of the Republic is insulted —
Tyrants are up in arms. An armed force
Threats the Convention. The Convention swears
To die, or save the country !
[Violent Applauses front the galleries.
ciTizETS Jroni above.
We too swear
To die, or save the country. Follow me.
[All the men quit the galleries.
Enter another Messenger.
FOURTH MESSENGER.
Henriot is taken ! — [Loud Applauses.
Henriot is taken. Three of your brave soldiers
Swore they would seize the rebel slave of tyrants.
Or perish in the attempt. As he patroU'd
The streets of Paris, stirring up the mob.
They seized him. [Applauses.
BILLAUD VARENNES.
Let the names of these brave men
•Live to the future day.
Enter Bourdon l'Oise, sword in hand.
BOURDON l'oISE.
I have clear'd the Commune. [Applauses.
Tinough the throng 1 rush'd,
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE. 27
Brandishing- my good sword to drench its blade
Deep in the tyrant's heart. The timid rebels
Gave way. I met the soldiery — I spake
Of the dictator's crimes — of patriots chain'd
In dark deep dungeons by his lawless rage —
Of knaves secure beneath his fostering power.
I spake of Liberty. Their honest hearts
Caught the warm flame. The general shout burst forth,
" Live the Convention — Down with Robespierre !"
[Apjjlaiises.
Shouts from without — Down icith the tyrant !
TALLIEN.
I hear, I hear the soul-inspiring sounds,
France shall be saved ! her generous sons attach'd
To principles, not persons, spurn the idol
They worshipp'd once. Yes, Robespierre shall fall
As Capet fell ! Oh ! never let us deem
That France shall crouch beneath a tyrant's throne,
That the almighty people who have broke
On their oppressors' heads the oppressive chain.
Will court again their fetters ! easier were it
To hurl the cloud-capt mountain from its base,
Than force the bonds of slavery upon men
Determined to be free ! {^Applauses.
Enter Legend re, a Pistolin one hand, Kei/s in the other.
i,EGET^ BEE., Jiinging down the Keys.
So — let the mutinous Jacobins meet now
Li the open air. [Loud Aj^plauses.
A factious, turbulent party.
Lording it o'er the state since Danton died,
And with him the Cordeliers. — A hireling band
Of loud-tongued orators controll'd the club,
And bade them bow the knee to Robespierre.
Vivier has 'seap'd me. Curse his coward heart —
This fate-fraught tube of Justice in my hand,
28 THE FALL OF ROBESl'IERRE.
I rusli'd into the ball. He mark'd mine eye.
That beam'd its patriot anger, and flash'd full
With death-denouncinfj nieanino-. 'Mid the throno-
He mingled. I pursued — but staid my hand,
Lest haply I might shed the innocent blood. [Ajip/auses.
FRERON.
They took from me my ticket of admission —
Expell'd me from their sittings. — Now, forsooth,
Humbled and trembling re-insert my name.
But Freron enters not the club awain
Till it be purged of guilt — till, purified
Of tyrants and of traitors, honest men
May breathe the air in safety. [Shotitsfroin ivilhoiit.
BARRERE.
What means this uproar ! if the tyrant band
Should gain the people once again to rise —
We are as dead !
TALLIEN.
And wherefore fear we death ?
Did Brutus fear it? or the Grecian friends
Who buried in Hipparchus' breast the sword.
And died triumphant? Caesar should fear death,
Brutus must scorn the bugbear.
\_Shoiitsfrom without. Live the Convention
— Doivn with the tyratits !
TALLIEN.
Hark ! again
The sounds of honest Freedom !
Enter Deputies from the Sections.
CITIZEN.
Citizens ! representatives of France !
Hold on your steady course. The men of Paris
Espouse your cause. The men of Paris swear
They will defend the delegates of Freedom,
THE FALL 0{^ ROBESPIERRE. 29
TALLIEN.
Hear ye this, colleagues ? hear ye this, my brethren ?
And does no thrill of joy pervade your breasts ?
My bosom bounds to rapture. I have seen
The sons of France shake off the tyrant yoke;
I have, as much as lies in mine own arm,
Hurl'd down the usurper. — Come death when it will,
I have lived long enough. [S/iotits ivithout.
BARRERE.
Hark ! how the noise increases ! through the gloom
Of the still evening — harbinp;er of death
Rings the tocsin ! the dreadful generale
Thunders through Paris —
[CVj/ without — Doum xoith the tyrant !
Enter Lecointre.
LECOINTRE.
So may eternal justice blast the foes
Of France ! so perish all the tyrant brood.
As Robespierre has perish 'd ! Citizens,
Csesar is taken. [Loud and repeated Applauses.
I marvel not, that, with such fearless front.
He braved our vengeance, and with angry eye
Scowl'd round the hall defiance. He relied
On Henriot's aid — the Commune's villain friendship,
And Henriot's bouohten succours. Ye have heard
How Henriot rescued him — how with open arms
The Commune welcomed in the rebel tyrant —
How Fleuriot aided, and seditious Vivier
Stirr'd up the Jacobins. All had been lost —
The representatives of France had perish'd —
Freedom had sunk beneath the tyrant arm
Of this foul parricide, but that her spirit
Inspired the men of Paris. Henriot call'd
" To arms" in vain, whilst Bourdon's patriot voice
Breathed eloquence, and o'er the Jacobins
30 THE FALL OF lyjllESPIliRRE.
Legendre frown'd dismay. The tyrants fled —
They reach'd the Hotel. We gather'd round — we call'd
For vengeance ! Long time, obstinate in despair,
With knives they hack'd around them. Till foreboding
The sentence of the law, the clamorous cry
Of joyful thousands hailing their destruction,
Each sought by suicide to escape the dread
Of death. Lebas succeeded. From the window
Leap'd the younger Robespierre; but his fractur'd limb
Forbade to escape. The self-will'd dictator
Plung'd often the keen knife in his dark breast.
Yet impotent to die. He lives, all mangled
By his own tremulous hand ! All gash'd and gored.
He lives to taste the bitterness of death.
Even now they meet their doom. The bloody Coutlion,
The fierce St. Just, even now attend their tyrant
To fall beneath the axe. I saw the torches
Flash on their visages a dreadful light —
I saw them whilst the black blood roll'd adown
Each stern face, even then with dauntless eye
Scowl round contemptuous, dying as they lived.
Fearless of fate! [Loud and repeated Applauses.
Barrere mounts the Tribune.
For ever hallow'd be this glorious day,
When Freedom, bursting her oppressive chain,
Tramples on the oppressor. When the tyrant,
Hurl'd from his blood-cemented throne by the arm
Of the almighty people, meets the death
He plann'd for thousands. Oh ! my sickening heart
Has sunk within me, when the various woes
Of my brave country crowded o'er my brain
In ghastly numbers — when assembled hordes,
Dragg'd from their hovels by despotic power,
Rush'd o'er her frontiers, plunder'd her fair hamlets.
And sack'd her populous towns, and tlrench'd with blood
THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE. 31
The reeking fields of Flanders. — When within,
Upon her vitals prey'd the rankling tooth
Of treason; and oppression, giant form.
Trampling on freedom, left the alternative
Of slavery, or of death. Even from that day,
When, on the guilty Capet, I pronounced
The doom of injured France, has faction rear'd
Her hated head amongst us. Roland preach 'd
Of mercy — the uxorious, dotard Roland,
The vvoman-govern'd Roland durst aspire
To govern France ; and Petion talk'd of virtue,
And Vergniaud's eloquence, like the honey'd tongue
Of some soft Syren wooed us to destruction.
W^e triumph'd over these. On the same scaffold
Where the last Louis pour'd his guilty blood.
Fell Brissot's head, the womb of darksome treasons,
And Orleans, villain kinsman of the Capet,
And Hebert's atheist crew, whose maddening hand
Hurl'd down the altars of the livino; God,
With all the infidel's intolerance.
The last worst traitor triumph'd — triumph'd long,
Secured by matchless villany. By turns
Defending and deserting each accomplice
As interest prompted. In the goodly soil
Of Freedom, the foul tree of treason struck
Its deep-fix'd roots, and dropt the dews of death
On all who slumber'd in its specious shade.
He wove the web of treachery. He caught
The listening crowd by his wild eloquence,
His cool ferocity that persuaded murder.
Even whilst it spake of mercy ! — never, never
Shall this regenerated country wear
The despot yoke. Though myriads round assail.
And with worse fury urge this new crusade
Than savages have known ; though the leagued des])ots
Depopulate all Europe, so to pour
32 THE FALL OF ROHESPlERRr..
The accumulated mass upon our coasts,
Sublime amid the storm shall France arise,
And like the rock amid surrounding waves
Repel the rushing ocean. — She shall wield
The thunder-bolt of vengeance — she shall blast
The despot's pride, and liberate the world !
POEMS.
— medio de fonte lepomm
Surgit amari aliquid. Lucret.
Julia was blest with beauty, wit, and grace :
Small poets loved to sing her blooming face.
Before her altars, lo ! a numerous train
Preferr'd their vows ; yet all preferr'd in vain :
Till charming Florio, born to conquer, came.
And touch'd the fair one with an equal flame.
The flame she felt, and ill could she conceal
What every look and action would reveal.
With boldness then, which seldom fails to move.
He pleads the cause of marriage and of love ;
The course of hymeneal joys he rounds.
The fair one's eyes dance pleasure at the sounds.
Nouo;ht now remain'd but " Noes" — how little meant-
And the sweet coyness that endears consent.
The youth upon his knees enraptur'd fell : —
The strange misfortune, oh ! what words can tell ?
Tell ! ye neglected sylphs ! who lap-dogs guard,
Why snatch'd ye not away your precious ward ?
Why suffer'd ye the lover's weight to fall
On the ill-fated neck of much-loved Ball?
The favourite on his mistress cast his eyes,
Gives a short melancholy howl, and — dies !
Sacred his ashes lie, and long his rest !
Anger and grief divide poor Julia's breast,
vol.. 1. D
34 POEMS.
Her eyes she fix'cl on guilty Flurio first,
On him the storm of angry grief must burst.
That storm he fled : — he wooes a kinder fair,
Whose fond affections no dear puppies share.
'Twere vain to tell how Julia pined away ; —
Unhappy fair, that in one luckless day
(From future almanacks the day be crost !)
At once her lover and her lap-dog lost !
1789.*
I YET remain
To mourn the hours of youth (yet mourn in vain)
That fled neglected : wisely thou hast trod
The better path — and that high meed which God
Assign'd to virtue, tow'ring from the dust,
Shall wait thy rising, Spirit pure and just !
O God ! how sweet it were to think, that all
Who silent mourn around this gloomy ball
Might hear the voice of joy; — but 'tis the will
Of man's great Author, that through good and ill
Calm he should hold his course, and so sustain
His varied lot of pleasure, toil, and pain !
1793.t
* Tliis copy of verses was wriUen at Clirist's Hospital, and transcribed,
honoih causa, into the book kept by the head-master, Mr. Bowyer, for
that purpose. Tliey are printed by Mr. Trollope in p. 192 of iiis His-
tory of the Hospital, published in 1834. Ed.
t These lines were found in Mr. Coleridge's hand-writing in one of
the Prayer Books in the cliapel of Jesus College, Cambridge. Ed.
POEMS. 35
TO THE REV. W. J. HORT.-
Hush ! ye clamorous cares, be mute !
Again, dear harmonist ! again
Through the hollow of thy flute
Breathe that passion-warbled strain ;
Till memory back each form shall bring
The loveliest of her shadowy throng,
And hope, that soars on sky-lark wing,
Shall carol forth her gladdest song !
O skill'd with magic spell to roll
The tlirillino; tones that concentrate the soul !
Breathe through thy flute those tender notes again,
While near thee sits the chaste-eyed maiden mild ;
And bid her raise the poet's kindred strain
In soft impassion'd voice, correctly wild.
In freedom's undivided dell.
Where toil and health with mellow'd love shall dwell —
Far from folly, far from men.
In the rude romantic glen.
Up the clift", and through the glade,
Wand'rino- with the dear-loved maid,
I shall listen to the lay.
And ponder on thee far away ; —
Still as she bids those thrilling notes aspire
(Making my fond attuned heart her lyre),
Thy honour'd form, my friend ! shall reappear.
And I will thank thee with a raptured tear !
1794.
* Mr. Hort was a Unitarian clerg7man,and in 1794 second master in
Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Estlin's school on St. Michael's Hill, Bristol. Ed.
^n FOE MS.
TO CHARLES LAMB,
WITH AS UNFINISHED POEM.
Thus far my scanty brain hath built the rhyme
Elaborate and swelling ; — yet the heart
Not owns it. From thy spirit-breathing powers
I ask not now, my friend ! the aiding verse
Tedious to thee, and from thy anxious thought
Of dissonant mood. In fancy (well I know)
From business wand'ring far and local cares.
Thou creepest round a dear-loved sister's bed
With noiseless step, and watchest the faint look,
Soothing each pang with fond solicitude,
And tenderest tones medicinal of love.
I, too, a sister had, an only sister — *
She loved me dearly, and I doted on her ;
To her I pour'd forth all my puny sorrows ;
(As a sick patient in a nurse's arms,)
And of the heart those hidden maladies —
That e'en from friendship's eye will shrink ashamed.
O ! I have waked at midnight, and have wept
Because she was not ! — Cheerily, dear Charles !
Thou thy best friend shalt cherish many a year;
Such warm presages feel I of high hope !
For not uninterested the dear maid
I've view'd — her soul affectionate yet wise.
Her polish'd wit as mild as lambent glories
That play around a sainted infant's head.
He knows (the Spirit that in secret sees,
Of whose omniscient and all-spreading love
* This line and the six and a half which follow are printed, by mis-
take, as a fragment in tlie first volume of the Poetical Works, 1834,
p. 35. Ed.
POEMS. 37
Aught to implore were impotence of mind !)*
That my mute thoughts are sad before his throne, —
Prepared, when He his healing ray vouchsafes,
Thanksgiving to pour forth with lifted heart,
And praise him gracious with a brother's joy !
1794.
* " I utterly recant the sentiment contained in the lines,
Of whose omniscient and all-spreading love
Aught to implore were impotence of mind, —
it being written in Scripture, Ask, and it shall be given you ! and my
human reason being, moreover, convinced of the propriety of oftering
petitions as well as thanksgivings to Deity." S. T. C. 1797.
" I will add, at the risk of appearing to dwell too long on religious
topics, that on this my first introduction to Coleridge, he reverted with
strong compunction to a sentiment which he had expressed in earlier
days upon prayer. In one of his youthful poems, speaking of God, he
had said, —
— ' Of whose all-seeing eye
Aught to demand were impotence of mind.'
This sentiment he now so utterly condemned, that, on the contrary, he
told me, as his own peculiar opinion, that the act of praying was the high-
est energy of which the human heart was capable — praying, that is, with
the total concentration of the faculties ; and the great mass of worldly
men and of learned men he pronounced absolutely incapable of pray-
ing." Mr. De Quincry in Taifs Magazine, September, 1834, p. 515.
" Mr. Coleridge, within two years of his death, very solemnly de-
clared to me his conviction upon the same subject. I was sitting by his
bed-side one afternoon, and he fell — an unusual thing for him — into a
long account of many passages of his past life, lamenting some things,
condemning otliers, but complaining withal, though very gently, of the
way in which many of liis most innocent acts had been cruelly misre-
presented. ' But I have no difficulty,' said he, 'in forgiveness; indeed,
I know not how to say with sincerity the clause in the Lord's Prayer,
which asks forgiveness us we forgive. I feel nothing answering to it in
my heart. Neither do I find, or reckon, the most solemn faith in God
as a real object, the most arduous act of the reason and will ; — O no !
my dear, it is to pray, to pray as God would have us ; this is what at
times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe me, to pray with all
your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly
that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and verily do the thing
he pleaseth thereupon — this is the last, the greatest achievement of the
Christian's warfare on earth. Tench us to pray, O Lord ! ' And then
he burst into a flood nf tears, and begged me to pray for him. O what
a sight was there!" Table Talk, vol. i. p. 162, n. Eel.
3^ POEMS.
TO THE NIGHTINGALE.
Sister of lovelorn poets, Philomel !
How many bards in city garret spent,
While at their window they with downward eye
Mark the faint lamp-beam on the kenncll'd mud,
And listen to the drowsy cry of watchmen,
(Those hoarse, unfeather'd nightingales of time !)
How many wretched bards address thy name,
And hers, the full-orb'd queen, that shines above.
But I do hear thee, and the high bough mark,
Within whose mild moon-mellow'd foliage hid,
Thou warblest sad thy pity-pleading strains.
0 I have listen'd, till my working soul.
Waked by those strains to thousand phantasies,
Absorb'd, hath ceas'd to listen ! Therefore oft
1 hymn thy name ; and witli a proud delight
Oft will I tell thee, minstrel of the moon.
Most musical, most melancholy bird !
That all thy soft diversities of tone,
Thoudi sweeter far than the delicious airs
That vibrate from a white-arm'd lady's harp,
What time the languishment of lonely love
Melts in her eye, and heaves her breast of snow,
Are not so sweet, as is the voice of her.
My Sara — best beloved of human kind !
When breathing the pure soul of tenderness.
She thrills me with the husband's promised name
1794.
POEMS. 39
TO SARA.
The stream with languid murmur creeps
111 Lumin's flowery vale;
Beneath the dew the lily weeps,
Slow waving to the gale.
" Cease, restless gale," it seems to say,
" Nor wake me with thy sighing:
The honours of my vernal day
On rapid wings are flying.
" To-morrow shall the traveller come.
That erst beheld me blooming,
His searching eye shall vainly roam
The dreary vale of Lumin."
With eager gaze and wetted cheek
My wonted haunts along.
Thus, lovely maiden, thou shalt seek
The youth of simplest song.
But I alono- the breeze will roll
The voice of feeble power.
And dwell, the moon-beam of thy soul,
In slumber's nightly hour.
1794.
40 I'OLMS.
TO JOSEPH COTTLE.
Un BOASTFUL Bard ! whose verse concise, yet clear.
Tunes to smooth melody unconquer'd sense,
May your fame fadeless live, as never-sere
The ivy wreathes yon oak, whose broad defence
Embowers me from noon's sultry influence !
For, like that nameless rivulet stealing by,
Your modest verse to musing quiet dear.
Is rich with tints heaven-borrovv'd ; — the charm'd eye
Shall gaze undazzled there, and love the soften'd sky.
Circling the base of the poetic mount,
A stream there is, which rolls in lazy flow
Its coal-black waters from oblivion's fount :
The vapour-poison'd birds, that fly too low,
Fall with dead swoop, and to the bottom go.
Escaped that heavy stream on pinion fleet
Beneath the mountain's lofty-frowning brow,
Ere aught of perilous ascent you meet,
A mead of mildest charm delays th' unlabouring feet.
Not there the cloud-climb'd rock, sublime and vast,
That, like some giant king, o'er-glooms the hill ;
Nor there the pine-grove to the midnight blast
Makes solemn music ! but th' unceasing rill
To the soft wren or lark's descending trill.
Murmurs sweet undersong mid jasmine bowers.
In this same pleasant meadow, at your will,
I ween, you wander'd — there collecting flowers
Of sober tint, and herbs of med'cinable powers !
POEMS. 41
There for the monarch-murder'd soldier's tomb
You wove th' unfinish'd wreath of saddest hues ;
And to that hoher chaplet added bloom,
Besprinkling it with Jordan's cleansing dews.
But lo ! your Henderson awakes the Muse —
His spirit beckon'd from the mountain's height !
You left the plain, and soar'd mid richer views.
So Nature mourn'd, when sank the first day's light,
With stars, unseen before, spangling her robe of night !
Still soar, my friend ! those richer views among.
Strong, rapid, fervent, flashing fancy's beam !
Virtue and truth shall love your gentler song;
But poesy demands th' impassion'd theme.
Wak'd by heaven's silent dews at eve's mild gleam,
What balmy sweets Pomona breathes around !
But if the vext air rush a stormy stream.
Or autumn's shrill gust moan in plaintive sound,
With fruits and flowers she loads the tempcst-honour'd
ground! 1795.
CASIMIR.
If we except Lucretius and Statins, I know no Latin
poet, ancient or modern, who has equalled Casimir
in boldness of conception, opulence of fancy, or
beauty of versification. The Odes of this illustrious
Jesuit were translated into English about 150 years
ago, by a G. Hils, I think.* I never saw the trans-
lation. A few of the Odes have been translated
in a very animated manner by Watts. I have sub-
* The Odes of Casimire translated by G. H. [G. Hils.] Londor?,
1646. 12mo. Ed.
42 I'OEMS.
joined the third Ode of the second Book, which,
with the exception of the first Hne, is an effusion
of exquisite elegance. In the imitation attempted,
I am sensible that I have destroyed the effect of
suddenness, by translating into two stanzas what is
one in the original. 1 796.
AD LYRAM.
SoNORA buxi filia sutilis,
Pendebis alta, barbite, populo,
Dum ridet aer, et supinas
Solicitat levis aura frondes.
Te sibilantis lenior halitus
Perflabit Euri : me juvet interim
CoUum reclinasse, et virenti
Sic temere* jacuisse ripa.
Eheu ! serenum qua3 nebuliB tegunt
Repente calum ! quis sonus imbrium
Surgamus — heu semper fugaci
Gaudia prseteritura passu !
IMITATION.
The solemn-breathing air is ended —
Cease, O Lyre ! thy kindred lay !
From the poplar branch suspended.
Glitter to the eye of day !
* Had Ciisiinir any better aulliority fur this quantity than Tertul-
lians line, —
Inimcmor ille Dei temcie commiltere tale — ?
In the classic poets the last syllabic is, I believe, uniformly eut off.
Jul.
POEMS.
On thy wires, hov'ring, dying,
Softly sighs the summer wind :
I will slumber, careless lying,
By yon waterfall reclin'd.
In the forest hollow-roaring,
Hark ! I hear a deep'ning sound —
Clouds rise thick with heavy low'ring !
See ! th' horizon blackens romid !
Parent of the soothing measure.
Let me seize thy wetted string !
Swiftly flies the flatterer, pleasure,
Hcadlono-, ever on the wing !
43
DARWINIANA.
THE HOUR WHEN WE SHALL MEET AGAIN.
(composed during ILLNliSS AND IN ABSENCE.)
Dim Hour ! that sleep 'st on pillowing clouds afar,
O rise, and yoke the turtles to thy car !
Bend o'er the traces, blame each lingering dove,
And give me to the bosom of my love !
My gentle love ! caressing and carest.
With heaving heart shall cradle me to rest ;
Shed the warm tear-drop from her smiling eyes,
Lull witli fond woe, and med'cine me with sighs;
While Hncly-flushing float her kisses meek,
Like melted rubies, o'er my pallid cheek.
44 POEMS.
Chill'd by the night, the drooping rose of May
Mourns the long absence of the lovely day :
Young Day returning at her promised hour,
Weeps o'er the sorrows of the fav'rite flower, —
Weeps the soft dew, the balmy gale she sighs,
And darts a trembling lustre from her eyes.
New life and joy th' expanding flow'rct feels:
His pitying mistress mourns, and mourning heals !
1796.
In my calmer moments I have the firmest faith that
all things work together for good. But, alas ! it seems
a long and a dark process : —
The early year's fast-flying vapours stray
In shadowing trains across the orb of day ;
And we, poor insects of a few short hours,
Deem it a world of gloom.
Were it not better hope, a nobler doom.
Proud to believe, that with more active powers
On rapid many-colour'd wing.
We thro' one bright perpetual spring
Shall hover round the fruits and flowers,
Screen'd by those clouds, and cherish'd by those showers !
1796.
POEMS. 45
COUNT RUM FORD'S ESSAYS.
These, Virtue, are thy triumphs, that adorn
Fitliest our nature, and bespeak us born
For loftiest action ; — not to gaze and run
From chme to chme ; or batten in the sun,
Dragging a drony flight from flower to flowei',
Like summer insects in a gaudy hour ;
Nor yet o'er lovesick tales with fancy range.
And cry, ' 'Tis pitiful, 'tis passing strange !'
But on life's varied views to look around,
And raise expiring sorrow from the ground : —
And he — who thus hath borne his part assign'd
In the sad fellowship of human kind.
Or for a moment soothed the bitter pain
Of a poor brother — has not lived in vain.
1796.
EPIGRAMS.
ON A LATE MARRIAGE BETWEEN AN OLD MAID AND
A FRENCH PETIT MAITRE.
Tho' Miss 's match is a subject of mirth,
She consider'd the matter full well,
And wisely preferr'd leading one ape on earth
To perhaps a whole dozen in hell.
1796.
46 p()i:ms.
ON AN AMOi:OUS DOCTOR.
FiiOiM Rufa's eye sly Cupid sljot his dart,
And left it sticking in Sangrado's heart.
No quiet from that moment has he known,
And peaceful sleep has from his eyelids flown;
And opium's force, and what is more, alack !
His own orations cainiot bring it back.
In short, unless she pities his afflictions,
Despair will make him take his own prescriptions.
1796.
There comes from old Avaro's orave
A deadly stench ; — why, sure, they have
Immured his soul within his grave
179G.
liAST Monday all the papers said
That Mr. was dead ;
Why, then, what said the city ?
The tenth part sadly shook their head,
And shaking sigh'd, and sighing said,
"Pity, indeed, 'tis pity!"
But when the said report was found
A rumour wholly without ground,
Why, then, what said the city ?
The other nine parts shook their head.
Repeating what the tenth had said,
" Pity, indeed, 'tis pity !"
1796.
POEMS.
47
TO A PRIMROSE,
(the first seen in the season.)
— nitens, et roboris expers
Target et insolida est: at spe delectat. Ovid.
Thy smiles I note, sweet early flower,
That peeping from thy rustic bower,
The festive news to earth dost bring,
A fragrant messenger of spring !
But tender blossom, why so pale ?
Dost hear stern winter in the gale ?
And didst thou tempt th' ungentle sky
To catch one vernal glance and die ?
Such the wan lustre sickness wears.
When health's first feeble beam appears ;
So lanscuid are the smiles that seek
To settle on the care-worn cheek,
When timorous hope the head uprears,
Still drooping and still moist with tears,
If, through dispersing grief, be seen
Of bliss the heavenly spark serene.
1796.
48 POEMS.
ON THE CIIRIS'l i:NIN(J OF A FRIEND'S CHILD.
This day among the faithful placed,
And fed with fontal manna,
O with maternal title graced
Dear Anna's dearest Anna ! —
While others wish thee wise and fair,
A maid of spotless fame,
I'll breathe this more compendious prayer —
May'st thou deserve thy name !
Thy mother's name — a potent spell.
That bids the virtues hie
From mystic grove and living cell
Confess'd to fancy's eye ; —
Meek quietness without offence ;
Content in homespun kirtle ;
True love ; and true love's innocence.
White blossom of the myrtle !
Associates of thy name, sweet child !
These virtues may'st thou win ;
With face as eloquently mild
To say, they lodge within.
So, when her tale of days all flown.
Thy mother shall be mist here ;
When Heaven at length shall claim its own,
And angels snatch their sister ;
POEMS. 49
Some hoary-headed friend, perchance,
May gaze with stifled breath ;
And oft, in momentary trance,
Foraet the waste of death.
Ev'n thus a lovely rose T view'd.
In summer-swelling pride ;
Nor mark'd the bud, that green and rude
Peep'd at the rose's side.
It chanced, I pass'd again that way
In autumn's latest hour,
And wond'ring saw the selfsame spray
Rich with the selfsame flower.
Ah, fond deceit ! the rude green bud
Alike in shape, place, name.
Had bloom'd, where bloom 'd its parent stud.
Another and the same !
1796.
EPIGRAM.
Hoarse Mtevius reads his hobbling verse
To all, and at all times ;
And finds them both divinely smooth.
His voice, as well as rhymes.
Yet folks say — " Msevius is no ass :" —
But Msevius makes it clear.
That he's a monster of an ass,
An ass without an ear.
1797.
VOL. I. E
50 POEMS.
INSCRIPTION BY THE REV. W. L. BOWLES
IN NETHER STOWEY CIIUKCH.
LiETus abi ! mundi strepitu curisque remotus ;
Lffitus abi ! ca-li qua vocat ahna quics.
Ipsa Fides loquitur, lacrymamquc incusat inancm,
Quffi cadit in vestros, care pater, cineres.
Heu ! tantum liceat meritos hos solvere ritus,
Et longum tremula dicere voce, Vale !
TRANSLATION.
Depart in joy from this world's noise and strife
To the deep quiet of celestial life !
Depart ! — Affection's self reproves the tear
Which falls, O honour'd Parent! on thy bier; —
Yet Nature will be heard, the heart will swell.
And the voice tremble with a last Farewell !
INTRODUCTION TO THE TALE OF THE
DARK LADIE.
The following poem is intended as the introduction to
a somewhat lono-er one. The use of the old ballad
word Ladie for Lady, is the only piece of obsolete-
ness in it; and as it is professedly a tale of ancient
POEMS. 51
times, I trust that the affectionate lovers of venerable
antiquity, as Camden says, will grant me their par-
don, and perhaps may be induced to admit a force
and propriety in it. A heavier objection may be
adduced against the author, tliat in these times of
fear and expectation, when novelties explode around
us in all directions, he should presume to offer to
the public a silly tale of old-fashioned love ; and
five years ago, I own I should have allowed and felt
the force of this objection. But alas ! explosion has
succeeded explosion so rapidly, that novelty itself
ceases to appear new ; and it is possible that now,
even a simple story, wholly uninspired with politics
or personality, may find some attention amid the
hubbub of revolutions, as to those who have re-
mained a long time by the falls of Niagara, the
lowest whispering becomes distinctly audible.
1799.
O LEAVE the lily on its stem ;
O leave the rose upon the spray ;
O leave the elder-bloom, fair maids !
And listen to my lay.
A cypress and a myrtle-bough
This morn around my harp you twin'd,
Because it fashion'd mournfully
Its murmurs in the wind.
And now a tale of love and woe,
A woful tale of love I sing ;
Hark, gentle maidens, hark ! it sighs
And trembles on the string.
But most, my own dear Genevieve,
It sighs and trembles most for thee
POEMS.
0 come and hear the cruel wrongs
Befell the Dark Ladie ! *
* a: * * *
And now once more a tale of woe,
A woful tale of love I sing ;
For thee, my Genevieve ! it sighs,
And trembles on the string.
When last I sang the cruel scorn
That craz'd this bold and lovely knight,
And how he roani'd the mountain-woods.
Nor rested day or night ;
1 promised thee a sister tale
Of man's perfidious cruelty ;
Come, then, and hear what cruel wrong
Befell the Dark Ladie.
EPILOGUE TO THE RASH CONJUROR.
AN UNCOMPOSED POEM.
We ask and urge — (here ends the story !)
All Christian Papishes to pray
That this unhappy Conjuror may,
Instead of Hell, be but in Purgatory, —
For then there's hope; —
Long live the Pope !
1805.
* Here followed the stanzas, afterwards published separately under
the title " Love." (Poet. Works, vol. i. p. 145. Pickering, 1834.)
and after them came the other three stanzas printed above ; the whole
forming the introduction to the intended Dark Ladie, of which all that
exists is to be found ibid. p. 150. Ed.
POEMS. 53
PSYCHE.
Th e butterfly the ancient Grecians made
The soul's fair emblem, and its only name —
But of the soul, escap'd the slavish trade
Of mortal life ! — For in this earthly frame
Ours is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame,
Manifold motions making little speed.
And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed.
1808.
COMPLAINT.
How seldom. Friend ! a good great man inherits
Honour or wealth, with all his worth and pains !
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits,
If any man obtain that which he merits.
Or any merit that which he obtains.
REPROOF.
For shame, dear Friend ! renounce this canting strain !
What would'st thou have a good great man obtain ?
Place — titles — salary — a gilded chain —
Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain? —
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends !
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man ? — three treasures, love and light.
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath ; —
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night —
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
1809.
54 POEMS.
AN ODE TO THE RAIN.
COMPOSED BEFORE DAY-LIGHT, ON THE MORNING APPOINTED
FOR THE DEPARTURE OF A VERY WORTHY,
BUT NOT VERY PLEASANT VISITOR, WHOM IT WAS FEARED
THE RAIN MIGHT DETAIN.
I KNOW it is dark; and though I have lain
Awake, as I guess, an hour or twain,
I have not once open'd the hds of my eyes,
But I he in the dark, as a bhnd man lies.
0 Rain ! that I lie listening to,
You're but a doleful sound at best :
1 owe you little thanks, 'tis true,
For breaking thus my needful rest !
Yet if, as soon as it is light,
O Rain ! you will but take your flight,
I'll neither rail, nor malice keep.
Though sick and sore for want of sleep.
But only now, for this one day.
Do go, dear Rain ! do go away !
O Rain ! with your dull two-fold sound,
The clash hard by, and the murmur all round !
You know, if you know aught, that we.
Both night and day, but ill agree :
For days, and months, and almost years.
Have limped on through this vale of tears.
Since body of mine, and rainy weather.
Have lived on easy terms together.
Yet if, as soon as it is light,
O Rain ! you will but take your flight.
Though you should come again to-morrow.
And bring with you botli pain and sorrow;
POEMS. 55
Though stomach should sicken, and knees should swell—
I'll nothing speak of you but well.
But only now for this one day,
Do go, dear Rain ! do go away !
Dear Rain ! I ne'er refused to say
You're a good creature in your way.
Nay, I could write a book myself.
Would fit a parson's lower shelf,
Showing, how very good you are. —
What then? sometimes it must be fair !
And if sometimes, why not to-day ?
Do go, dear Rain ! do go away !
Dear Rain ! if I've been cold and shy.
Take no offence ! I'll tell you why.
A dear old Friend e'en now is here,
And with him came my sister dear ;
After long absence now first met.
Long months by pain and grief beset —
With three dear friends ! in truth, we groan
Impatiently to be alone.
We three, you mark ! and not one more !
The strong wish makes my spirit sore.
We have so much to talk about.
So many sad things to let out ;
So many tears in our eye-corners.
Sitting like little Jacky Homers —
In short, as soon as it is day.
Do go, dear Rain ! do go away.
And this I'll swear to you, dear Rain !
Whenever you shall come again,
Be you as dull as e'er you could ;
(And by the bye 'tis understood.
You're not so pleasant, as you're good ;)
56 POEMS.
Yet, knowing well your worth and place,
I'll welcome you with cheerful face ;
And though you stay'd a week or more,
Were ten times duller than before ;
Yet with kind heart, and right good will,
I'll sit and listen to you still ;
Nor should you go away, dear Rain !
Uninvited to remain.
15 ut only now, for this one day.
Do go, dear Rain ! do go away. 1H09.
TRANSLATION
OF A PASSAGE IN OTTFRIEd's METRICAL PARAPHRASE
OF THE GOSPELS.
"This Paraphrase, written about the time of Charle-
magne, is by no means deficient in occasional pas-
sages of considerable poetic merit. There is a flow,
and a tender enthusiasm in the following lines (at
the conclusion of Chapter V.), which even in the
translation will not, I flatter myself, fail to interest
the reader. Ottfried is describing the circumstances
immediately following the birth of our Lord." —
Biog. Lit, vol. i. p. 203.
She gave with joy her virgin breast;
She hid it not, she bared the breast.
Which suckled that divinest babe !
Blessed, blessed were the breasts
Which the Saviour infant kiss'd ;
And blessed, blessed was the mother
Who wrapp'd his limbs in swaddling clothes,
Singing placed him on her lap.
Hung o'er him with her looks of love,
And soothed him with ik lulling motion.
POEMS.
57
Blessed ! for she shelter'd him
From the damp and chiUing air ; —
Blessed, blessed ! for she lay
With such a babe in one blest bed,
Close as babes and mothers lie !
Blessed, blessed evermore,
With her virgin lips she kiss'd.
With her arms, and to her breast,
She embraced the babe divine,
Her babe divine the virgin mother !
There lives not on this ring of earth
A mortal that can sing her praise.
Mighty mother, virgin pure.
In the darkness and the night
For us she bore the heavenly Lord. 1810.
Most interesting: is it to consider the effect, when the
feelings are wrought above the natural pitch by the
belief of something mysterious, while all the images
are purely natural : then it is that religion and poetry
strike deepest." — Biog. Lit. vol. i. p. 204.
ISRAEL'S LAMENT
ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES.
FROM THE HEBREW OF HYMAN HURWITZ.
Mourn, Israel ! Sons of Israel, mourn !
Give utterance to the inward throe.
As wails of her first love forlorn
The virgin clad in robes of woe !
Mourn the young mother snatch'd away
From light and life's ascending sun !
Mourn for the babe, death's voiceless prey,
Earn'd by long pangs, and lost ere won !
58 POEMS.
Mourn the bright rose that blooin'd and went,
Ere half disclosed its vernal hue !
Mourn the green bud, so rudely rent.
It brake the stem on which it grew !
Mourn for the universal woe,
With solemn dirge and fait' ring tongue;
For England's Lady is laid low.
So dear, so lovely, and so young !
The blossoms on her tree of life
Shone with the dews of recent bliss ; —
Translated in that deadly strife
She plucks its fruit in Paradise.
Mourn for the prince, who rose at morn
To seek and bless the firstling bud
Of his own rose, and fovuid the thorn,
Its point bedew'd with tears of blood.
Mourn for Britannia's hopes decay'd ; —
Her daughters wail their dear defence.
Their fair example, prostrate laid,
Chaste love, and fervid innocence !
O Thou ! who mark'st the monarch's path,
To sad Jeshurun's sons attend !
Amid the lightnings of thy wrath
The showers of consolation send !
Jehovah frowns ! — The Islands bow.
And prince and people kiss the rod !
Their dread chastising judge wert Thou —
Be Thou their comforter, O God !
1817.
POEMS. 50
SENTIMENTAL.
The rose that blushes hke the mora
Bedecks the valleys low ;
And so dost thou, sweet infant corn,
My Angelina's toe.
But on the rose there grows a thorn
That breeds disastrous woe ;
And so dost thou, remorseless corn,
On Angelina's toe. 1825,
THE ALTERNATIVE.
This way or that, ye Powers above me !
I of my grief were rid —
Did Enna either really love me,
Or cease to think she did. 1826.
THE EXCHANGE.
We pledged our hearts, my love and I, —
I in my arms the maiden clasping ;
I could not tell the reason why,
But, oh ! I trembled like an aspen.
Her father's love she bade me gain ;
I went, and shook like any reed !
I strove to act the man — in vain !
We had exchanged our hearts indeed.
1826.
00 I'OEMS.
WHAT IS LIFE?
Resembles life what once was deem'd of liaht.
Too ample in itself for human sight?
An absolute self — an element ungrounded —
All that we see, all colours of all shade
By encroach of darkness made ? —
Is very life by consciousness unbounded ?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling life and death ?
1829.
INSCRIPTION FOR A TIME-PIECE.
Now ! It is gone. — Our brief hours travel post,
Each with its thought or deed, its Why or How : —
But know, each parting hour gives up a ghost
To dwell within thee — an eternal Now !
1830.
EniTA^ION ATTOrPAnTON.
Qu^ linquam, aut nihil, aut nihili, aut vix sunt mea; —
Do Morti ; — reddo csetera, Christe ! tibi. [sordes
A COURSE OF LECTURES.
PROSPECTUS.
There are few families, at present, in the
higher and middle classes of English society,
in which literary topics and the productions of
the Fine Arts, in some one or other of their
various forms, do not occasionally take their
turn in contributing to the entertainment of
the social board, and the amusement of the
circle at the fire side. The acquisitions and
attainments of the intellect ought, indeed, to
hold a very inferior rank in our estimation,
opposed to moral worth, or even to professional
and specific skill, prudence, and industry.
But why should they be opposed, when they
may be made subservient merely by being
subordinated? It can rarely happen, that a
man of social disposition, altogether a stranger
to subjects of taste, (almost the only ones on
which persons of both sexes can converse with
a common interest) should pass through the
world without at times feeling dissatisfied with
himself. The best proof of this is to be found
62 PROSPECTUS OF A
ill the marked anxiety which men, wlio have
succeeded in life without the aid of these ac-
compHshments, shew in securing them to their
children. A young man of ingenuous mind
will not wilfully deprive himself of any species
of respect. He will wish to feel himself on a
level with the average of the society in which
he lives, though he may be ambitious of dis-
tinguishing himself only in his own immediate
pursuit or occupation.
Under this conviction, the following Course
of Lectures was planned. The several titles
will best explain the particular subjects and
purposes of each : but the main objects j^ro-
posed, as the result of all, are the two following.
1 . To convey, in a form best fitted to render
them impressive at the time, and remembered
afterwards, rules and principles of sound judg-
ment, with a kind and degree of connected in-
formation, such as the hearers cannot generally
be supposed likely to form, collect, and arrange
for themselves, by their own unassisted studies.
It might be presumption to say, that any im-
portant part of these Lectures could not be de-
rived from books ; but none, I trust, in suppos-
ing, that the same information could not be
so surely or conveniently acquired from such
books as are of commonest occurrence, or with
that quantity of time and attention which can
be reasonably expected, or even wisely desired,
of men engaged in business and the active
duties of the world.
COURSE OF LECTURES. 63
2. Under a strong persuasion that little of
real value is derived by persons in general
from a wide and various reading ; but still
more deeply convinced as to the actual mischief
of unconnected and promiscuous reading, and
that it is sure, in a greater or less degree, to
enervate even where it does not likewise in-
flate; I hope to satisfy many an ingenuous
mind, seriously interested in its own develop-
ment and cultivation, how moderate a number
of volumes, if only they be judiciously chosen,
will suffice for the attainment of every wise and
desirable purpose ; that is, in addition to those
which he studies for specific and professional
purposes. It is saying less than the truth to
affirm, that an excellent book (and the remark
holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of
a Milton) is like a well chosen and well tended
fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season
only. AVith the due and natural intervals, we
may recur to it year after year, and it will
supply the same nourishment and the same
gratification, if only we ourselves return to it
with the same healthful appetite.
The subjects of the Lectures are indeed very
different, but not (in the strict sense of the
term) diverse ; they are various, rather than
miscellaneous. There is this bond of con-
nexion common to them all, — that the mental
pleasure which they are calculated to excite is
not dependent on accidents of fashion, place,
or age, or the events or the customs of the day ;
04 PROSPECTUS OF A
but commensurate with the good sense, taste,
and feeling, to the cultivation of which they
themselves so largely contribute, as being all
in kind, though not all in the same degree, pro-
ductions of genius.
What it would be arrogant to promise, I may
yet be permitted to hope, — that the execution
will prove correspondent and adequate to the
plan. Assuredly, my best efforts have not
been wanting so to select and prepare the ma-
terials, that, at the conclusion of the Lectures,
an attentive auditor, who should consent to
aid his future recollection by a few notes taken
either during each Lecture or soon after, would
rarely feel himself, for the time to come, ex-
cluded, from taking an intelligent interest in
any general conversation likely to occur in
mixed society.
Syllahvs of the Course.
I. January 27, 1818.- — On the manners,
morals, literature, philosophy, religion, and
the state of society in general, in Euroj^ean
Christendom, from the eighth to the fifteenth
century, (that is from A.D. 700, to A.D. 1400),
more particularly in reference to England,
France, Italy and Germany ; in other words,
a portrait of the so called dark ages of Eu-
rope.
n. January 30. — On the tales and metrical
COURSE OF LECTURES. 65
romances common, for the most part, to En-
gland, Germany, and the north of France,
and on the English songs and ballads, con-
tinued to the reign of Charles I. A few
selections will be made from the Swedish,
Danish, and German languages, translated
for the purpose by the Lecturer.
III. February 3.— Chaucer and Spenser;
of Petrarch ; of Ariosto, Pulci, and Boiardo.
IV. V. VI. February 6, 10, 13.— On the
dramatic works of Shakspeare. In these
Lectures will be comprised the substance of
Mr. Coleridge's former courses on the same
subject, enlarged and varied by subsequent
study and reflection.
VII. February 17.— On Ben Jonson, Beau-
mont and Fletcher, and Massinger ; with the
probable causes of the cessation of dramatic
poetry in England with Shirley and Otway,
soon after the restoration of Charles II.
VIII. February 20.— Of the life and all
the works of Cervantes, but chiefly of his
Don Quixote. The ridicule of knight er-
rantry shewn to have been but a secondary
object in the mind of the author, and not the
principal cause of the delight which the
work continues to give to all nations, and
imder all the revolutions of manners and
opinions.
IX. February 24. — On Rabelais, Swift, and
Sterne : on the nature and constituents of
genuine Humour, and on the distinctions of
VOL. I. F
GO PROSPECTUS OF A
the Humorous from the Witty, the Fauci fnl,
the Droll, aud the Odd.
X. February 27. — Of Donne, Dante, and
Milton.
XI. March 3.— On the Arabian Nights' En-
tertainments, and on the romantic use of the
supernatural, in poetry, and in works of fic-
tion not poetical. On the conditions and
regulations under which such books may be
employed advantageously in the earlier periods
of education.
XII. March 6. — On tales of Matches, ap-
paritions, &c. as distinguished from the magic
and magicians of Asiatic origin. The pro-
bable sources of the former, and of the belief
in them in certain ages and classes of men.
Criteria by which mistaken and exaggerated
facts may be distinguished from absolute false-
hood and imposture. Lastly, the causes of the
terror and interest which stories of ghosts and
witches inspire, in early life at least, whether
believed or not.
XIII. March 10. — On colour, sound, and
form in Nature, as coiuiected with poesy :
the word " Poesy " used as the generic or class
term, including poetry, music, painting, sta-
tuary, and ideal architecture, as its species.
The reciprocal relations of poetry and philo-
sophy to each other ; and of both to religion,
and the moral sense.
XIV. March 1.3. — On the corruptions of the
English language since the reign of Queen
Ann, in our style of writing prose. A few
COURSE OF LECTURES. 67
easy rules for the attainment of a manly, un-
affected and pure language, in our genuine
mother tongue, whether for the purpose of
writing, oratory, or conversation.
LECTURE I.*
GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE GOTHIC MIND
IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
Mr. Coleridge began by treating of the races
of mankind as descended from Shem, Ham,
and Japhet, and therein of the early condi-
tion of man in his antique form. He then
dwelt on the pre-eminence of the Greeks in
Art and Philosophy, and noticed the suitable-
ness of polytheism to small insulated states, in
which patriotism acted as a substitute for re-
ligion, in destroying or suspending self. Af-
terwards, in consequence of the extension of
the Roman empire, some universal or common
spirit became necessary for the conservation of
the vast body, and this common spirit was, in
fact, produced in Christianity. The causes of
the decline of the Roman empire were in
operation long before the time of the actual
overthrow ; that overthrow had been foreseen
by many eminent Romans, especially by
Seneca. In fact, there was under the empire
* From Mr. Green's note taken at the delivery. Ed.
68 COURSE OF LKCTURES.
an Italian and a German party in Rome, and
in the end the latter prevailed.
He then proceeded to describe the generic
character of the Northern nations, and defined
it as an independence of the whole in the
freedom of the individual, noticing their res-
pect for women, and their consequent chival-
rous spirit in w ar ; and how evidently the
participation in the general council laid the
foundation of the representative form of go-
vernment, the only rational mode of preserving
individual liberty in opposition to the licentious
democracy of the ancient republics.
He called our attention to the peculiarity of
their art, and showed how it entirely depended
on a symbolical expression of the infinite, —
which is not vastness, nor immensity, nor per-
fection, but whatever cannot be circumscribed
within the limits of actual sensuous being.
In the ancient art, on the contrary, every
thing was finite and material. Accordingly,
sculpture was not attempted by the Gothic
races till the ancient specimens were disco-
vered, whilst painting and architecture were
of native growth amongst them. In the earli-
est specimens of the paintings of modern ages,
as in those of Giotto and his associates in the
cemetery at Pisa, this complexity, variety, and
symbolical character are evident, and are more
fully developed in the mightier works of Michel
Angelo and Raffael. The contemplation of
the works of antique art excites a feeling of
elevated beauty, and exalted notions of the
LECTURE I. 69
human self; but the Gothic architecture im-
presses the beholder with a sense of self-
annihilation ; he becomes, as it were, a part
of the work contemplated. An endless com-
plexity and variety are united into one whole,
the plan of which is not distinct from the exe-
cution. A Gothic cathedral is the petrefaction
of our religion. The only work of truly modern
sculpture is the Moses of Michel Angelo.
The Northern nations were prepared by their
own previous religion for Christianity; they,
for the most part, received it gladly, and it
took root as in a native soil. The deference
to woman, characteristic of the Gothic races,
combined itself with devotion in the idea of the
Virgin Mother, and gave rise to many beautiful
associations.
Mr. C. remarked how Gothic an instrument
in origin and character the organ was.
He also enlarged on the influence of female
character on our education, the first impressions
of our childhood being derived from women.
Amongst oriental nations, he said, the only
distinction was between lord and slave. With
the antique Greeks, the will of every one con-
flicting with the will of all, produced licentious-
ness ; with the modern descendants from the
northern stocks, both these extremes were shut
out, to reappear mixed and condensed into this
principle or temper ; — submission, but with
free choice, — illustrated in chivalrous devotion
to women as such, in attachment to the sove-
reign, &c.
70 COURSE OF LKCTURES.
LECTURE II.*
GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE GOTHIC
LITERATURE AND ART.
I N my last lecture I stated that the descendants
of Japhet and Shem peopled Europe and Asia,
fulfilling in their distribution the prophecies of
Scripture, while the descendants of Ham passed
►into Africa, there also actually verifying the
interdiction pronounced against them. The
Keltic and Teutonic nations occupied that part
of Europe, which is now France, Britain, Ger-
many, Sweden, Denmark, &c. They were in
general a hardy race, possessing great fortitude,
and capable of great endurance. The Romans
slowly conquered the more southerly portion of
their tribes, and succeeded only by their su-
perior arts, their policy, and better discipline.
After a time, when the Goths, — to use the name
of the noblest and most historical of the Teu-
tonic tribes, — had acquired some knowledge
of these arts from mixing with their conquerors,
they invaded the Roman territories. The hardy
habits, the steady perseverance, the better faith
of the enduring Goth rendered him too for-
midable an enemy for the corrupt Roman, who
* From Mr. William Hammond's note taken at the deli-
very. Ed.
LECTURE II. 71
was more inclined to purchase the subjection
of his enemy, than to go through the suffering
necessary to secure it. The conquest of the
Romans gave to the Goths the Christian re-
ligion as it was then existing in Italy ; and the
light and graceful building of Grecian, or Ro-
man-Greek order, became singularly combined
witli the massy architecture of the Goths, as
wild and varied as the forest vegetation which
it resembled. The Greek art is beautiful.
When I enter a Greek church, my eye is
charmed, and my mind elated ; I feel exalted,
and proud that I am a man. But the Gothic
art is sublime. On entering a cathedral, I am
filled with devotion and with awe ; I am lost
to the actualities that surround me, and my
whole being expands into the infinite ; earth
and air, nature and art, all swell up into eter-
nity, and the only sensible impression left, is,
' that I am nothing !' This religion, while it
tended to soften the, manners of the Northern
tribes, was at the same time highly congenial
to their nature. The Goths are free from the
stain of hero worship. Gazing on their rugged
mountains, surrounded by impassable forests,
accustomed to gloomy seasons, they lived in
the bosom of nature, and worshipped an in-
visible and unknown deity. Firm in his faith,
domestic in his habits, the life of the Goth was
simple and dignified, yet tender and affec-
tionate.
The Greeks were remarkabie for compla-
72 COURSE OF LECTURES.
cency and completion ; they delighted in what-
ever pleased the eye; to them it was not enough
to have merely the idea of a divinity, they must
have it placed before them, shaped in the most
perfect symmetry, and presented with the
nicest] udgment; and if we look upon any Greek
production of art, the beauty of its parts, and
the harmony of their union, the complete and
complacent effect of the whole, are the striking
characteristics. It is the same in their poetry.
In Homer you have a poem perfect in its form,
whether originally so, or from the labour of
after critics, I know not ; his descriptions are
pictures brought vividly before you, and as far
as the eye and understanding are concerned, I
am indeed gratified. But if I wish my feelings
to be affected, if I wish my heart to be touched,
if I wish to melt into sentiment and tenderness,
I must turn to the heroic songs of the Goths,
to the poetry of the middle ages. The worship
of statues in Greece had, in a civil sense, its
advantage, and disadvantage ; advantage, in
promoting statuary and the arts ; disadvantage,
in bringing their gods too much on a level with
human beings, and thence depriving them of
their dignity, and gradually giving rise to scep-
ticism and ridicule. But no statue, no artificial
emblem, could satisfy the Northman's mind ;
the dark wild imagery of nature, which sur-
rounded him, and the freedom of his life, gave
his mind a tendency to the infinite, so that
he found rest in that which presented no end.
LECTURE II. 73
and derived satisfaction from that which was
indistinct.
We have few and uncertain vestiges of Gothic
Hterature till the time of Theodoric, who en-
couraged his subjects to write, and who made
a collection of their poems. These consisted
chiefly of heroic songs, sung at the Court; for
at that time this was the custom. Charlemagne,
in the beginning of the ninth century, greatly
encouraged letters, and made a further collec-
tion of the poems of his time, among which
were several epic poems of great merit ; or
rather in strictness there was a vast cycle of
heroic poems, or minstrelsies, from and out of
which separate poems were composed. The
form of poetry was, however, for the most
part, the metrical romance and heroic tale'.
Charlemagne's army, or a large division of it,
was utterly destroyed in the Pyrenees, when
returning from a successful attack on the Arabs
of Navarre and Arragon; yet the name of Ron-
cesvalles became famous in the songs of the
Gothic poets. The Greeks and Romans would
not have done this ; they would not have re-
corded in heroic verse the death and defeat of
their fellow-countrymen. But the Goths, firm
in their faith, with a constancy not to be shaken,
celebrated those brave men who died for their
religion and their country ! What, though they
had been defeated, they died without fear, as
they had lived without reproach ; they left no
stain on their names, for they fell fighting for
74 rOUIiSE OF LECTliRES.
tlieir God, their liberty, and their rights ; and
the song that sang that day's reverse animated
them to future victory and certain vengeance.
I must now turn to our great monarch, Al-
fred, one of the most august characters that any
age has ever produced ; and when I picture
him after the toils of government and the dan-
gers of battle, seated by a solitary lamp, trans-
lating the holy scriptures into the Saxon tongue,
— when I reflect on his moderation in success,
on his fortitude and perseverance in difficidty
and defeat, and on the wisdom and extensive
nature of his legislation, I am really at a loss
which part of this great man's character most
to admire. Yet above all, I see the grandeur,
the freedom, the mildness, the domestic unity,
the universal character of the middle ages con-
densed into Alfred's glorious institution of the
trial by jury. I gaze upon it as the immortal
symbol of that age ; — an age called indeed
dark ; — but how could that age be considered
dark, which solved the difficult problem of uni-
versal liberty, freed man from the shackles of
tyranny, and subjected his actions to the deci-
sion of twelve of his fellow countrymen ? The
liberty of the Greeks was a phenomenon, a me-
teor, which blazed for a short time, and then
sank into eternal darkness. It was a combi-
nation of most opposite materials, slavery and
liberty. Such can neither be happy nor last-
ing. The Goths on the other hand said, You
shall be our Emperor; but we must be Princes
LECTURE II. 75
on our own estates, and over them you shall
have no power ! The Vassals said to their
Prince, We will serve yon in your wars, and
defend your castle ; but we must have liberty
in our own circle, our cottage, our cattle, our
proportion of land. The Cities said, We ac-
knowledge you for our Emperor ; but we must
have our walls and our strong holds, and be
governed by our own laws. Thus all combined,
yet all were separate ; all served, yet all were
free. Such a government could not exist in a
dark age. Our ancestors may not indeed have
been deep in the metaphysics of the schools ;
they may not have shone in the fine arts ; but
much knowledge of human nature, much prac-
tical wisdom must have existed amongst them,
when this admirable constitution was formed ;
and I believe it is a decided truth, though cer-
tainly an awful lesson, that nations are not the
most happy at the time when literature and the
arts flourish the most among them.
The translations I had promised in my syl-
labus I shall defer to the end of the course,
when I shall give a single lecture of recitations
illustrative of the different ages of poetry.
There is one Northern tale I will relate, as it
is one from which Shakspeare derived that
strongly marked and extraordinary scene be-
tween Richard III. and the Lady Anne. It
may not be equal to that in strength and ge-
nius, but it is, undoubtedly, superior in deco-
rum and delicacy.
76 COURSE OF LKCTUKliS.
A Knight had slain a Prince, the lord of a
strong castle, in combat. He afterwards con-
trived to get into the castle, where he obtained
an interview with the Princess's attendant,
whose life he had saved in some encounter ;
he told her of his love for her mistress, and
won her to his interest. She then slowly and
gradually worked on her mistress's mind,
spoke of the beauty of his person, the fire of
his eyes, the sweetness of his voice, his valour
in the field, his gentleness in the court ; in
short, by watching her opportunities, she at
last filled the Princess's soul with this one
image ; she became restless ; sleep forsook
her ; her curiosity to see this Knight became
strong ; but her maid still deferred the inter-
view, till at length she confessed she was in
love with him ; — the Knight is then introduced,
and the nuptials are quickly celebrated.
In this age there was a tendency in writers
to the droll and the grotesque, and in the little
dramas which at that time existed, there were
singular instances of these. It was the disease
of the age. It is a remarkable fact that Luther
and Melancthon, the great religious reformers
of that day, should have strongly recommended
for the education of children, dramas, which
at present would be considered highly indeco-
rous, if not bordering on a deeper sin. From
one which they particularly recommended, I
will give a few extracts ; more I should not
think it right to do. The play opens with
LECTURE II. 77
Adam and Eve washing and dressing their
children to appear before the Lord, who is co-
ming from heaven to hear them repeat the
Lord's Prayer, Belief, &c. In the next scene
the Lord appears seated like a schoolmaster,
with the children standing round, when Cain,
who is behind hand, and a sad pickle, comes
running in with a bloody nose and his hat on.
Adam says, " What, with your hat on !" Cain
then goes up to shake hands with the Almighty,
when Adam says (giving him a cuff), " Ah,
would you give your left hand to the Lord?"
At length Cain takes his place in the class, and
it becomes his turn to say the Lord's Prayer.
At this time the Devil (a constant attendant at
that time) makes his appearance, and getting
behind Cain, whispers in his ear ; instead of
the Lord's Prayer, Cain gives it so changed
by the transposition of the words, that the
meaning is reversed; yet this is so artfully done
by the author, that it is exactly as an obstinate
child would answer, who knows his lesson, yet
does not choose to say it. In the last scene,
horses in rich trappings and carriages covered
with gold are introduced, and the good children
are to ride in them and be Lord Mayors,
Lords, &c. ; Cain and the bad ones are to be
made cobblers and tinkers, and only to associate
with such.
This, with numberless others, was written
by Hans Sachs. Our simple ancestors, firm
in their faith, and pure in their morals, were
78 COl'RSE OF LECTURES.
only amused by these pleasantries, as they
seemed to them, and neither they nor the re-
formers feared their having any influence hos-
tile to religion. When I was many years back
in the north of Germany, there were several
innocent superstitions in practice. Among
others at Christmas, presents used to be given
to the children by the parents, and they were
delivered on Christmas day by a person who
personated, and was supposed by the children
to be, Christ : early on Christmas morning he
called, knocking loudly at the door, and (hav-
ing received his instructions) left presents for
the good and a rod for the bad. Those who
have since been in Germany have found this
custom relinquished ; it was considered pro-
fane and irrational. Yet they have not found
the children better, nor the mothers more
careful of their offspring ; they have not found
their devotion more fervent, their faith more
strong, nor their morality more pure.*
* See this custom of Kneclit Rupert more minutely de-
scribed in Mr. Coleridge's own letter from Germany, published
in the 2nd vol. of the Friend, p. 320. Ed.
LECTDUR III. 79
LECTURE III.
THE TROUBADOURS — BOCCACCIO —PETRARCH
PULCI — CHAUCER — SPENSER.
The last Lecture was allotted to an investi-
gation into the origin and character of a species
of poetry, the least influenced of any by the
literature of Greece and Rome, — that in which
the portion contributed by the Gothic conque-
rors, the predilections and general tone or
habit of thought and feeling, brought by our
remote ancestors with them from the forests of
Germany, or the deep dells and rocky moun-
tains of Norway, are the most prominent. In
the present Lecture I must introduce you to a
species of poetry, which had its birth-place
near the centre of Roman glory, and in
which, as might be anticipated, the influences
of the Greek and Roman muse are far more
conspicuous, — as great, indeed, as the efforts of
intentional imitation on the part of the poets
themselves could render them. But happily
for us and for their own fame, the intention
of the writers as men is often at complete va-
riance with the genius of the same men as
poets. To the force of their intention we owe
their mythological ornaments, and the greater
definiteness of their imagery ; and their pas-
80 COURSE OF LECTUKi:S.
sioii for the beautiful, the vohiptuous, and the
artificial, we must in part attribute to the
same intention, but in part likewise to their
natural dispositions and tastes. For the same
climate and many of the same circumstances
were acting on them, which had acted on the
great classics, whom they were endeavouring
to imitate. But the love of the marvellous, the
deeper sensibility, the higher reverence for
womanhood, the characteristic spirit of senti-
ment and courtesy,^ — these were the heir-looms
of nature, which still regained the ascendant,
whenever the use of the living mother-lan-
guage enabled the inspired poet to appear in-
stead of the toilsome scholar.
From this same union, in which the soul
(if I may dare so express myself) was Gothic,
while the outward forms and a majority of the
words themselves, were the reliques of the
Roman, arose the Romance, or romantic lan-
guage, in which the Troubadours or Love-
singers of Provence sang and wrote, and the
different dialects of which have been modified
into the modern Italian, Spanish, and Portu-
guese ; while the language of the Trouveurs,
Trouveres, or Norman-French poets, forms the
intermediate link between the Romance or mo-
dified Roman, and the Teutonic, including the
Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and the upper and
lower German, as being the modified Gothic.
And as the northernmost extreme of the Nor-
man-French, or that part of the link in which
LECTURE III. 81
it formed on the Teutonic, we must take the
Norman-Enghsh minstrels and metrical ro-
mances, from the greater predominance of the
Anglo-Saxon Gothic in the derivation of the
words. I mean, that the language of the En-
glish metrical romance is less romanized, and
has fewer words, not originally of a northern
origin, than the same romances in the Norman -
French ; which is the more striking, because the
former were for the most part translated from
the latter ; the authors of which seem to have
eminently merited their name of Trouveres, or
inventors. Thus then we have a chain with
two rings or staples : — at the southern end there
is the Roman, or Latin ; at the northern end
the Keltic, Teutonic, or Gothic ; and the links
beginning with the southern end, are the Ro-
mance, including the Provencal, the Italian,
Spanish, and Portuguese, with their different
dialects, then the Norman-French, and lastly
the English.
My object in adverting to the Italian j^oets,
is not so much for their own sakes, in which
point of view Dante and Ariosto alone would
have required separate Lectures, but for the
elucidation of the merits of our countrymen, as
to what extent we must consider them as for-
tunate imitators of their Italian predecessors,
and in what points they have the higher claims
of original genius. Of Dante, I am to speak
elsewhere. Of Boccaccio, who has little inte-
rest as a metrical poet in any respect, and none
VOL. I. G
f
82 COURSE OF LECTURES.
for my present purpose, except, perhaps, as
the reputed inventor or introducer of the octave
stanza in his Teseide, it will be sufficient to say,
that we owe to him the subjects of numerous
poems taken from his famous tales, the happy
art of narration, and the still greater merit of
a depth and fineness in the workings of the
passions, in which last excellence, as likewise
in the wild and imaginative character of the
situations, his almost neglected romances ap-
pear to me greatly to excel his far famed De-
cameron. To him, too, we owe the more doubt-
ful merit of having introduced into the Italian
prose, and by the authority of his name and
the influence of his example, more or less
throughout Europe, the long interwoven pe-
riods, and architectural structure which arose
from the very nature of their language in the
Greek writers, but which already in the Latin
orators and historians, had betrayed a spe-
cies of effort, a foreign something, which had
been superinduced on the language, instead of
growing out of it; and which was far too
alien from that individualizing and confedera-
ting, yet not blending, character of the North,
to become permanent, although its magnifi-
cence and stateliness were objects of admi-
ration and occasional imitation. This style
diminished the control of the writer over the
inner feelings of men, and created too great a
charm between the body and the life ; and
hence especially it was abandoned by Luther.
LECTURE III. 83
But lastly, to Boccaccio's sanction we must
trace a large portion of the mythological pe-
dantry and incongruous paganisms, which for
so long a period deformed the poetry, even of
the truest poets. To such an extravagance
did Boccaccio himself carry this folly, that in
a romance of chivalry, he has uniformly styled
God the Father Jupiter, our Saviour Apollo,
and the Evil Being Pluto. But for this there
might be some excuse pleaded. I dare make
none for the gross and disgusting licentiousness,
the daring profaneness, which rendered the De-
cameron of Boccaccio the parent of a hundred
worse children, fit to be classed among the
enemies of the human race ; which poisons
Ariosto-~(for that I may not speak oftener
than necessary of so odious a subject, I men-
tion it here once for all) — which interposes a
painful mixture in the humour of Chaucer, and
which has once or twice seduced even our
pure-minded Spenser into a grossness, as hete-
rogeneous from the spirit of his great poem,
as it was alien to the delicacy of his morals.
Petrarch.
Born at Arezzo, 1304.— Died 1374.
Petrarch was the final blossom and perfec-
tion of the Troubadours. See Biog. Lit. vol. ii,
p. 27, &c.
84 COURSE OF LECTURES.
NOTES ON PETRARCH'S* SONNETS,
CANZONES, &c.
VOL. I.
Good.
Sonnet. 1. Voi, ch' ascoltate, &c.
7. La gola, e '1 sonno, &c.
11. Se la mia vita, &c.
12. Quando fra I'altre, &c.
18. Vergognando talor, &c.
25. Quanto piil m' avvicino, &c.
28. Solo e pensoso, &c.
29. S' io credessi, &c.
Canz. 14. S\ e debile il filo, &c.
PleasinQ\
Ball. 1, Lassare il velo, &c.
Canz. 1. Nel dolce tempo, &c.
This poem was imitated by our old Herbert ;i
it is ridiculous in the thoughts, but simple
and sweet in diction.
Dignified.
Canz. 2. O aspettata in ciel, &c.
9. Gentil mia Donna, &c.
The first half of this ninth canzone is exquisite ;
and in Canzone 8, the nine lines beginning
0 poggi, o valli, &c.
to cura, are expressed with vigour and chastity.
* These notes, by Mr. C, are written in a Petrarch in my
possession, and are of some date before 1812. It is hoped
that they will not seem ill placed here. Ed.
t If George Herbert is meant, I can find nothing like an
imitation of this canzone in his poems. Ed.
LECTURE III. 85
Canz. 9. Daquel di innanzi a me medesmo piacqui,
Empiendo d'un pensier' alto, e soave
Quel core, 07id' hanno i begli occhi la chiave.
Note. O that the Pope would take these
eternal keys, which so for ever turn the bolts
on the finest passages of true passion !
VOL. n.
Canz. 1. Che debb' io far? &c.
Very good ; but not equal, I think, to Can-
zone 2,
Amor, se vuoi ch' i' torni, &c.
though less faulty. With the omission of half-
a-dozen conceits and Petrarchisms of hooks,
baits, flames, and torches, this second canzone
is a bold and impassioned lyric, and leaves no
doubt in my mind of Petrarch's having posses-
sed a true poetic genius. Utinam deleri possint
secjuentia: —
L. 17 — 19. e la soave fiamma
Ch' ancor, lasso ! m' infiamma
Essendo spenta, or che fea dunque ardendo ?
L. 54 — 56. ov* erano a tutt' ore
Disposti gli ami ov' io fui preso, e I'esca
Ch' i' bramo sempre.
L. 76 — 79. onde V accese
Saette uscivan d' invisibil foco,
E ragion temean poco ;
Che contra '1 ciel non val difesa umana.
And the lines 86, 87.
Poser' in dubbio, a cui
Devesse il pregio di piu laude darsi —
are rather flatly worded.
86 COURSE OF LECTUUES.
LuiGI PULCI.
Born at Florence, 1431. — Died about 1487.
Piilci was of one of the noblest families in
Florence, reported to be one of the Prankish
stocks which remained in that city after the
departure of Charlemagne : —
Pulcia Gallorum soboles descendit in urbem,
Clara quidem bello, sacris nee inhospita Musis.
Verino De illustrat. Cort. Flor. III. v. 118.
Members of this family were five times elected
to the Priorate, one of the highest honours of
the republic. Pulci had two brothers, and one
of their wives, Antonia, wlio were all poets : —
Carminibus patriis notissima Pulcia proles;
Quis non banc urbem Musarum dicat araicam,
Si tres producat fratres domus una poetas ?
lb. II. V. 241.
Luigi married Lucrezia di Uberto, of the Al-
bizzi family, and was intimate with the great
men of his time, but more especially with
Angelo Politian, and Lorenzo the Magnificent.
His Morgan te has been attributed, in ^^art at
least,* to the assistance of Marsilius Ficinus,
and by others the whole has been attributed to
Politian, The first conjecture is utterly im-
probable ; the last is possible, indeed, on ac-
count of the licentiousness of the poem ; but
* Meaning the 25th cantu. Ed.
LECTURE III.
87
there are no direct grounds for believing it.
The Morgante Maggiore is the first proper
romance; although, perhaps, Pulci had the
Teseide before him. The story is taken from
the fabulous history of Turpin ; and if the
author had any distinct object, it seems to
have been that of making himself merry with
the absurdities of the old romancers. The
Morgante sometimes makes you think of Ra-
belais. It contains the most remarkable guess
or allusion upon the subject of America that
can be found in any book published before the
discovery.* The well known passage in the
tragic Seneca is not to be compared with it.
The copia verbornm of the mother Florentine
tongue, and the easiness of his style, afterwards
brought to perfection by Berni, are the chief
merits of Pulci ; his chief demerit is his heart-
* The reference is, of course, to the following stanzas: —
Disse Astarotte : un error lungo e fioco
Per molti secol non ben conosciuto,
Fa che si dice d' Ercol le colonne,
E che pill la molti periti sonne.
Sappi che questa opinione e vana ;
Perch^ pill oltre navicar si puote,
Pero che 1' acqua in ogni parte e piana,
Benche la terra abbi forma di mote :
Era pill grossa allor la gente humana;
Falche potrebbe arrosirne le gote
Ercule ancor d' aver posti que' segni,
Perche piii oltre passeranno i legni.
E puossi andar giii ne 1' altro emisperio,
Pero che al centro ogni cosa reprime ;
Si che la terra per divin niistcrio
88 COURSE Ol' LECTURES.
less spirit of jest and buffoonery, by which
sovereigns and their courtieis were flattered
by the degradation of nature, and the impoa-
sihilijication of a pretended virtue.
Chaucer.
Born in London, i;528.— Died 1 400.1
Chaucer must be read with an eye to the
Norman-French Trouveres, of whom he is the
best representative in English. He had great
powers of invention. As in Shakspeare, his
characters represent classes, but in a different
manner; Shakspeare's characters are the re-
presentatives of the interior nature of huma-
nity, in which some element has become so
predominant as to destroy the health of the
Sospesa sta fra le stelle sublime,
E la giu son citta, castella, e imperio;
Ma nol cognobbon quelle genti prime :
Vedi che il sol di camminar s' affretta,
Dove io ti dico che la giu s' aspetta.
E come un segno surge in Oriente,
Un altro cade con mirabil arte,
Come si vede qua ne 1' Occidente,
Pero che il ciel giustamente comparte ;
Antipodi appellata e quella gente ;
Adora il sole e Jupiterre e Marte,
E piante e animal come voi hanno,
E spesso insieme gran battaglie fanno.
C. XXV. St. 228, &c.
The Morgan te was printed in 1488. Ed.
t From Mr. Green's note. Ed.
LECTURE III. 89
mind ; whereas Chaucer's are rather represen-
tatives of classes of manners. He is therefore
more led to individualize in a mere personal
sense. Observe Chaucer's love of nature ; and
how happily the subject of his main work is
chosen. When you reflect that the company
in the Decameron have retired to a place of
safety from the raging of a pestilence, their
mirth provokes a sense of their unfeelingness ;
whereas in Chaucer nothing of this sort occurs,
and the scheme of a party on a pilgrimage,
with different ends and occupations, aptly al-
lows of the greatest variety of expression in
the tales.
Spenser.
Born in London, 1553. — Died 1599.
There is this difference, among many others,
between Shakspeare and Spenser: — Shaks-
peare is never coloured by the customs of his
age ; what appears of contemporary character
in him is merely negative ; it is just not some-
thing else. He has none of the fictitious real-
ities of the classics, none of the grotesquenesses
of chivalry, none of the allegory of the middle
ages ; there is no sectarianism either of politics
or religion, no miser, no witch, — no common
witch, — no astrology — nothing impermanent
of however long duration ; but he stands like
the yew tree in Lorton vale, which has known
90 COURSK OF LECTURES.
SO many ages that it belongs to none in par-
ticular ; a living image of endless self-repro-
duction, like the immortal tree of Malabar.
In Spenser the spiiit of chivalry is entirely
predominant, although with a much greater
infusion of the poet's own individual self into
it than is found in any other writer. He has the
wit of the southern with the deeper inwardness
of the northern genius.
No one can appreciate Spenser without some
reflection on the nature of allegorical writing.
The mere etymological meaning of the word,
allegory, — to talk of one thing and thereby con-
vey another, — is too wide. The true sense is
this, — the employment of one set of agents and
images to convey in disguise a moral meaning,
with a likeness to the imagination, but with a
difference to the understanding, — those agents
and images being so combined as to form a
homogeneous whole. This distinguishes it
from metaphor, which is part of an allegory.
But allegory is not properly distinguishable
from fable, otherwise than as the first includes
the second, as a genus its species ; for in a
fable there must be nothing but what is uni-
versally known and acknowledged, but in an
allegory there maybe that which is new and not
previously admitted. The pictures of the great
masters, especially of the Italian schools, are
genuine allegories. Amongst the classics, the
multitude of their gods either precluded alle-
gory altogether, or else made every thing alle-
LECTURE III. 91
gory, as in the Hesiodic Theogonia; for you
can scarcely distinguish between power and
the personification of power. The Cupid and
Psyche of, or found in, Apuleius, is a phseno-
menon. It is the Platonic mode of accounting
for the fall of man. The Battle of the Soul* by
Prudentius is an early instance of Christian
allegory.
Narrative allegory is distinguished from my-
thology as reality from symbol ; it is, in short,
the proper intermedium between person and
personification. Where it is too strongly in-
dividualized, it ceases to be allegory ; this is
often felt in the Pilgrim's Progress, where the
characters are real persons with nick names.
Perhaps one of the most curious warnings
against another attempt at narrative allegory
on a great scale, may be found in Tasso's
account of what he himself intended in and by
his Jerusalem Delivered.
As characteristic of Spenser, I would call
your particular attention in the first place to the
indescribable sweetness and fluent projection
of his verse, very clearly distinguishable from
the deeper and more inwoven harmonies of
Shakspeare and Milton. This stanza is a
good instance of what I mean : —
Yet she, most faithful! ladie, all this while
Forsaken, wofull, solitarie mayd,
Far from all peoples preace, as in exile,
In wildernesse and wastfuU deserts strayd
* Psychomachia, Ed.
92 COUKSK OF LECTURES.
To seeke her knight; who, subtily betrayd
Through that late vision which th' enchaunter wrought,
Had her abandond ; she, of nought affrayd.
Through woods and wastnes wide him daily sought,
Yet wished tydinges none of him unto her brought.
F. Qu. B. I. c. 3. St. 3.
2. Combined with this sweetness and fluency,
the scientific construction of the metre of the
Faery Queene is very noticeable. One of
Spenser's arts is that of alUteration, and he
uses it with great effect in doubling the im-
pression of an image : —
In wildernesse and wastful deserts, —
Through woods and ?/;astnes wilde, —
They passe the bitter waves of Acheron,
Where many soules sit wailing woefully,
And come to^ery^ood of PAlegeton,
Whereas the damned ghosts in torments fry.
And with sharp shrilling shrieks doth bootlesse cry, — &c.
He is particularly given to an alternate allite-
ration, which is, perhaps, when well used, a
great secret in melody : —
A ramping lyon rushed suddenly, —
And sad to see her sorrowful constraint, —
And on the grasse her ofaintie Zimbes did /ay, — &c.
You cannot read a page of the Faery Queene,
if you read for that purpose, without perceiv-
ing the intentional alliterativeness of the words ;
and yet so skilfully is this managed, that it
never strikes any unwarned ear as artificial,
or other than the result of the necessary move-
ment of the verse.
LECTUKE III. 93
3. Spenser displays great skill in harmo-
nizing his descriptions of external nature and
actual incidents with the allegorical character
and epic activity of the poem. Take these two
beautiful passages as illustrations of what I
mean : —
By this the northerne wagoner had set
His sevenfol teme behind the stedfast starre
That was in ocean waves yet never wet,
But firrae is fixt, and sendeth light from farre
To all that in the wide deepe wandring arre ;
And chearefuU chaunticlere with his note shrill
Had warned once, that Phoebus' fiery carre
In hast was climbing up the easterne hill,
Full envious that Night so long his roome did fill ;
Whe7i those accursed messengers of hell,
That feigning dreame, and that faire-forged spright
Came, &c, B, I. c. 2. st. 1.
* * *
At last, the golden orientall gate
Of greatest Heaven gan to open fayre ;
And Phoebus, fresh as brydegrome to his mate,
Came dauncing forth, shaking his deawie hayre ;
And hurld his glistring beams through gloomy ayre.
Which when the wakeful Elfe perceiv'd, streightway
He started up, and did him selfe prepayre
In sunbright armes and battailons array ;
For with that Pagan proud he combat will that day.
lb. c. 5. St. 2.
Observe also the exceeding vividness of
Spenser's descriptions. They are not, in the
true sense of the word, picturesque ; but are
composed of a wondrous series of images, as in
our dreams. Compare the following passage
94 COURSE OF LECTURES.
with any thing you may remember in pari
materia in IMiUon or Shakspeare : —
His liaughtie helmet, horrid all with gold,
Both glorious brightnesse and great terrour bredd
For all the crest a dragon did enfold
With greedie pawes, and over all did spredd
His golden winges ; his dreadfuU hideous hcdd,
Close couched on the bever, sccmd to throw
From flaming mouth bright sparkles fiery redd,
That suddeine horrour to faint hartes did show ;
And scaly tayle was stretcht adowne his back full low.
Upon the top of all his loftie crest
A bounch of haires discolourd diversly.
With sprinkled pearle and gold full richly drest,
Did shake, and seemd to daunce for jollitie ;
Like to an almond tree ymounted hye
On top of greene Selinis all alone,
With blossoms brave bedecked daintily,
Whose tender locks do tremble every one
At everie little breath that under heaven is blowne.
lb. c. 7. St. 31-2.
4. You will take especial note of the marvel-
lous independence and true imaginative ab-
sence of all particular space or time in the
Faery Queene. It is in the domains neither
of history or geography ; it is ignorant of all
artificial boundary, all material obstacles ; it is
truly in land of Faery, that is, of mental space.
The poet has placed you in a dream, a charm-
ed sleep, and you neither wish, nor have the
power, to inquire where you are, or how you
got there. It reminds me of some lines of my
own : —
LECTURE III. 95
Oh ! would to Alia !
The raven or the sea-mew were appointed
To bring me food ! — or rather that my soul
Might draw in life from the universal air!
It were a lot divine in some small skifF
Along some ocean's boundless solitude
To float for ever with a careless course
And think myself the only being alive !
Remorse, Act iv. sc. 3.
Indeed Spenser himself, in the conduct of his
great poem, may be represented under the
same image, his symbolizing purpose being his
mariner's compass : —
As pilot well expert in perilous wave,
That to a stedfast starre his course hath bent,
When foggy mistes or cloudy tempests have
The faithfull light of that faire lampe yblent,
And coverd Heaven with hideous dreriment ;
Upon his card and compas tirmes his eye,
The maysters of his long experiment,
And to them does the steddy helme apply,
Bidding his winged vessell fairely forward fly.
B. II. c. 7. St. I.
So the poet through the realms of allegory.
5. You should note the quintessential cha-
racter of Christian chivalry in all his cha-
racters, but more especially in his women.
The Greeks, except, perhaps, in Homer, seem
to have had no way of making their women
interesting, but by unsexing them, as in the
instances of the tragic Medea, Electra, &c.
Contrast such characters with Spenser's Una,
who exhibits no prominent feature, has nopar-
ticularization, but produces the same feeling
9G COURSK OF LECTURKS.
that a statue does, when contemplated at a
distance : —
From her fayre head her fillet she iindight,
And layd her stole aside : her angels face,
As the great eye of Heaven, shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place;
Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace.
B. I. c. 3. St. 4.
6. In Spenser we see the brightest and
purest form of that nationality which was so
common a characteristic of our elder poets.
There is nothing unamiable, nothing con-
temptuous of others, in it. To glorify their
country — to elevate England into a queen, an
empress of the heart — this was their passion
and object; and how dear and important an
object it was or may be, let Spain, in the re-
collection of her Cid, declare ! There is a great
magic in national names. AVhat a damper to
all interest is a list of native East Indian mer-
chants ! Unknown names are non-conductors ;
they stop all sympathy. No one of our poets
has touched this string more exquisitely than
Spenser ; especially in his chronicle of the
British Kings (B. II. c. 10.), and the marriage
of the Thames with the Medway (B. IV. c. 1 1 .),
in both which passages the mere names con-
stitute half the pleasure we receive. To the
same feeling we must in particular attribute
Spenser's sweet reference to Ireland : —
Ne thence the Irishe rivers absent were ;
Sith no lesse famous than the rest they be, &c. lb.
» * *
And MuUa mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep. lb.
LECTURE III. 97
And there is a beautiful passage of the same
sort ill the Colin Clout's Come Home Again : —
" One day," quoth he, " I sat, as was my trade,
Under the foot of Mole," &c.
Lastly, the great and prevailing character of
Spenser's mind is fancy under the conditions
of imagination, as an ever present but not
always active power. He has an imaginative
fancy, but he has not imagination, in kind or
degree, as Shakspeare and Milton have ; the
boldest effort of his powers in this way is the
character of Talus.* Add to this a feminine
tenderness and almost maidenly purity of
feeling, and above all, a deep moral earnest-
ness which produces a believing sympathy
and acquiescence in the reader, and you have
a tolerably adequate view of Spenser's intel-
lectual being.
LECTURE VIL
BEN JONSON, BEAUMONT AND FLETCHEK, AND
MASSINOER.
A CONTEMPORARY is rather an ambiguous
term, when applied to authors. It may simply
mean that one man lived and wrote while
another was yet alive, however deeply the
* B. 5. Legend of Artegall. Ed.
VOL. I. H
98 COURSE OF LECTURES.
Ibrmer may have been indebted to the latter
as liis model. There have been instances in
the literary world that might remind a botanist
of a singular sort of parasite plant, which
rises above ground, independent and unsup-
ported, an apparent original ; but trace its
roots, and you will find the fibres all termi-
nating in the root of another plant at an
unsuspected distance, which, perhaps, from
want of sun and genial soil, and the loss of sap,
has scarcely been able to peep above the
ground. — Or the word may mean those whose
compositions were contemporaneous in such a
sense as to preclude all likelihood of the
one having borrowed from the other. In the
latter sense I should call Ben Jonson a con-
temporary of Shakspeare, though he long sur-
vived him ; while I should prefer the phrase
of immediate successors for Beaumont and
Fletcher, and Massinger, though they too
were Shakspeare's contemporaries in the for-
mer sense.
Ben Jonson.*
Born, 1574.— Died, 1637.
Ben Jonson is original ; he is, indeed, the
only one of the great dramatists of that day
who was not either directly produced, or very
* From Mr. Green's note. Ed.
LECTURE VII. 99
greatly modified, by Shakspeare. In truth,
he differs from our great master in every
thing — in form and in substance — and betrays
no tokens of his proximity. He is not original
in the same way as Shakspeare is original ;
but after a fashion of his own, Ben Jonson is
most truly original.
The characters in his plays are, in the
strictest sense of the term, abstractions. Some
very prominent feature is taken from the whole
man, and that single feature or humour is made
the basis upon which the entire character is
built up. Ben Jonson 's dramatis personce are
almost as fixed as the masks of the ancient
actors ; you know from the first scene — some-
times from the list of names — exactly what
every one of them is to be. He was a very
accurately observing man ; but he cared only
to observe what was external or open to, and
likely to impress, the senses. He individual-
izes, not so much, if at all, by the exhibition of
moral or intellectual differences, as by the
varieties and contrasts of manners, modes of
speech and tricks of temper ; as in such cha-
racters as Puntarvolo, Bobadill, &c.
I believe there is not one whim or affectation
in common life noted in any memoir of that
age which may not be found drawn and framed
in some corner or other of Ben Jonson 's dra-
mas ; and they have this merit, in common
with Hogarth's prints, that not a single cir-
cumstance is introduced in them which does
100 COURSE OF LECTURES.
not play upon, and help to bring out, the
dominant humour or humours of the piece.
Indeed I ought very particularly to call your
attention to the extraordinary skill shown by
Ben Jonson in contriving situations for the
display of his characters. In fact, his care
and anxiety in this matter led him to do what
scarcely any of the dramatists of that age did
— that is, invent his plots. It is not a first
perusal that suffices for the full perception of
the elaborate artifice of the plots of the Alche-
mist and the Silent Woman ; — that of the
former is absolute perfection for a necessary
entanglement, and an unexpected, yet natural,
evolution .
Ben Jonson exhibits a sterling English dic-
tion, and he has with great skill contrived
varieties of construction ; but his style is rarely
sweet or harmonious, in consequence of his
labour at point and strength being so evident.
In all his works, in verse or prose, there is an
extraordinary opulence of thought ; but it is
the produce of an amassing power in the au-
thor, and not of a growth from within. In-
deed a large proportion of Ben Jon son's
thoughts may be traced to classic or obscure
modern writers, by those who are learned and
curious enough to follow the steps of this
robust, surly, and observing dramatist.
LECTURE VII. 101
Beaumont. Born, 1580. — Died, 1616.
Fletcher. Bom, 1576.— Died, 1625.
Mr. Weber, to whose taste, industry, and
appropriate erudition we owe, I will not say
the best, (for that would be saying little,) but
a good, edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, has
complimented the Philaster, which he himself
describes as inferior to the Maid's Tragedy by
the same writers, as but little below the noblest
of Shakspeare's plays, Lear, Macbeth, Othello,
&c. and consequently implying the equality,
at least, of the Maid's Tragedy ; — and an emi-
nent living critic, — who in the manly wit, strong
sterling sense, and robust style of his ori-
ginal works, had presented the best possible
credentials of office as charge d'affaires of lite-
rature in general, — and who by his edition of
Massinger — a work in which there was more
for an editor to do, and in which more was ac-
tually well done, than in any similar work
within my knowledge — has proved an especial
right of authority in the appreciation of dra-
matic poetry, and hath potentially a double
voice with the public in his own right and in
that of the critical synod, where, as princeps
senatits, he possesses it by his prerogative, — has
affirmed that Shakspeare's superiority to his
contemporaries rests on his superior wit alone,
while in all the other, and, as I should deem.
10-2 couusi: OF lectures.
higher excellencies of the drama, character,
pathos, depth of thought, &c. he is equalled
by Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and
Massinger !*
Of wit I am engaged to treat in another
Lecture. It is a genus of many species ; and
at present I shall only say, that the species
which is predominant in Sliakspeare, is so
completely Shakspearian, and in its essence so
interwoven with all his other characteristic
excellencies, that I am equally incapable of
comprehending, both how it can be detached
from his other powers, and how, being dispa-
rate in kind from the wit of contemporary dra-
matists, it can be compared with theirs in
degree. And again — the detachment and the
practicability of the comparison being granted
— I should, I confess, be rather inclined to con-
cede the contrary ; — and in the most common
species of wit, and in the ordinary application
of the term, to yield this particular palm to
Beaumont and Fletcher, whom here and here-
after I take as one poet with two names, —
leaving undivided what a rare love and still
rarer congeniality have united. At least, 1
have never been able to distinguish the pre-
sence of Fletcher during the life of Beaumont,
nor the absence of Beaumont during the sur-
vival of Fletcher.
But waiving, or rather deferring, this ques-
* See Mr. Gifford's introduction to his edition of Massin-
ger, Ed.
LECTURK \'II. 103
tion, I protest against the remainder of the po-
sition in toto. And indeed, whilst I can never,
I trust, show myself blind to the various merits
of Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Mas-
singer, or insensible to the greatness of the
merits which they possess in common, or to
the specific excellencies which give to each of
the three a worth of his own, — I confess, that
one main object of this Lecture was to prove
that Shakspeare's eminence is his own, and
not that of his age; — even as the pine-apple,
the melon, and the gourd may grow on the
same bed ; — yea, the same circumstances of
warmth and soil may be necessary to their
full development, yet do not account for the
golden hue, the ambrosial flavour, the perfect
shape of the pine-apple, or the tufted crown on
its head. Would that those, who seek to twist
it off, could but promise us in this instance to
make it the germ of an equal successor !
What had a grammatical and logical con-
sistency for the ear, — what could be put to-
gether and represented to the eye — these poets
took from the ear and eye, unchecked by any
intuition of an inward impossibility ; — ^justasa
man might put together a quarter of an orange,
a quarter of an apple, and the like of a lemon
and a pomegranate, and make it look like one
round diverse-coloured fruit. But nature, which
works from within by evolution and assimi-
lation according to a law, cannot do so, nor
could Shakspeare \ for he too worked in the
J 04 COURSE OF LECTURES.
spirit of nature, by evolving the germ from
within by the imaginative power according to
an idea. For as the power of seeing is to
lighl, so is an idea in mind to a law in nature.
They are correlatives, which suppose each
other.
The plays of Beaumont and Fletcher are
mere aggregations without unity ; in the Shaks-
pearian drama there is a vitality which grows
and evolves itself from within, — a key note
which guides and controls the harmonies
throughout. What is Lear? — It is storm and
tempest — the thunder at first grumbling in the
far horizon, then gathering around us, and at
length bursting in fury over our heads, — suc-
ceeded by a breaking of the clouds for a while,
a last flash of lightning, the closing in of
night, and the single hope of darkness ! And
Romeo and Juliet? — It is a spring day, gusty
and beautiful in the morn, and closing like an
April evening with the song of the nightingale ;
-—whilst Macbeth is deep and earthy, — com-
posed to the subterranean music of a troubled
conscience, which converts every thing into
the wild and fearful !
Doubtless from mere observation, or from
the occasional similarity of the writer's own
character, more or less in Beaumont and
Fletcher, and other such writers will happen
to be in correspondence with nature, and still
more in apparent compatibility with it. But
yet the false source is always discoverable,
LECTURE VII. 105
first by the gross contradictions to nature in so
many other parts, and secondly, by the want
of the impression which Shakspeare makes,
that the thing said not only might have been
said, but that nothing else could be substi-
tuted, so as to excite the same sense of its ex-
quisite propriety. I have always thought the
conduct and expressions of Othello and lago
in the last scene, when lago is brought in
prisoner, a wonderful instance of Shakspeare's
consummate judgment : —
0th. I look down towards his feet ; — but that's a fable.
If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee.
lago. I bleed, Sir; but not kill'd.
0th. I am not sorry neither.
Think what a volley of execrations and de-
fiances Beaumont and Fletcher would have
poured forth here !
Indeed Massinger and Ben Jonson are both
more perfect in their kind than Beaumont and
Fletcher; the former in the story and affecting-
incidents ; the latter in the exhibition of man-
ners and peculiarities, whims in language, and
vanities of appearance.
There is, however, a diversity of the most
dangerous kind here. Shakspeare shaped his
characters out of the nature within ; but we
cannot so safely say, out of his own nature as
an individual person. No! this latter is itself
but a natura natnrata, — an effect, a product,
not a power. It was Siiakspeare's prerogative
106 COURSE OK LECTURES.
to have the universal, which is potentially in
each particular, opened out to him, the homo
geueralis, not as an abstraction from observation
of a variety of men, but as the substance ca-
pable of endless modifications, of which his
own personal existence was but one, and to
use this one as the eye that beheld the other,
and as the tongue that could convey the dis-
covery. There is no greater or more common
vice in dramatic writers tlian to draw out of
themselves. How I — alone and in the self-
sufficiency of my study, as all men are apt to
be proud in their dreams — should like to be
talking king ! Shakspeare, in composing, had
no /, but the / representative. In Beaumont
and Fletcher you have descriptions of cha-
racters by the poet rather than the characters
themselves ; we are told, and impressively
told, of their being; but we rarely or never
feel that they actually are.
Beaumont and Fletcher are the most lyrical
of our dramatists. I think their comedies the
best part of their works, although there are
scenes of very deep tragic interest in some of
their plays. I particularly recommend Mon-
sieur Thomas for good pure comic humor.
There is, occasionally, considerable license
in their dramas ; and this opens a subject
much needing vindication and sound exposi-
tion, but which is beset with such difficulties
for a Lecturer, that I must pass it by. Only
as far as Shakspeare is concerned, I own, 1
LECTURE VII. 107
can with less pain admit a fault in him than
beg an excuse for it. I will not, therefore,
attempt to palliate the grossness that actually
exists in his plays by the customs of his age, or
by the far greater coarseness of all his contem-
poraries, excepting Spenser, who is himself not
wholly blameless, though nearly so;— for I
place Shakspeare's merit on being of no age.
But I would clear away what is, in my judg-
ment, not his, as that scene of the Porter* in
Macbeth, and many other such passages, and
abstract what is coarse in manners only, and
all that which from the frequency of our own
vices, we associate with his words. If this
were truly done, little that could be justly re-
prehensible would remain. Compare the vile
comments, offensive and defensive, on Pope's
Lust thro' some gentle strainers, &c.
with the M'orst thing in Shakspeare, or even
in Beaumont and Fletcher ; and then consider
how unfair the attack is on our old dramatists ;
especially because it is an attack that cannot
be properly answered in that presence in which
an answer would be most desirable, from the
painful nature of one part of the position ;
but this very pain is almost a demonstration
of its falsehood !
* Act ii. sc. 3.
108 course of lectures.
Massinger.
Born at Salisbury, 1584. — Died, 1610.
With regard to Massinger, observe,
1 . The vein of satire on the times ; but this
is not as in Shakspeare, where the natures
evolve themselves according to their incidental
disproportions, from excess, deficiency, or mis-
location, of one or more of the component
elements ; but is merely satire on what is at-
tributed to them by others.
2. His excellent metre — a better model for
dramatists in general to imitate than Shaks-
peare's, — even if a dramatic taste existed in
the frequenters of the stage, and could be gra-
tified in the present size and management, or
rather mismanagement, of the two patent
theatres. I do not mean that Massinger's
verse is superior to Shakspeare's or equal to it.
Far from it ; but it is much more easily con-
structed and may be more successfully adopted
by writers in the present day. It is the
nearest approach to the language of real life
at all compatible with a fixed metre. In
Massinger, as in all our poets before Dryden,
in order to make harmonious verse in the
reading, it is absolutely necessary that the
meaning should be understood ;— when the
meaning is once seen, then the harmony is
perfect. Whereas in Pope and in most of the
LECTURE VII. 109
writers who followed in his school, it is the
mechanical metre which determines the sense.
3. The impropriety, and indecorum of de-
meanour in his favourite characters, as in Ber-
toldo in the Maid of Honour, who is a swag-
gerer, talking to his sovereign what no sove-
reign could endure, and to gentlemen what
no gentleman would answer without pulling
his nose.
4. Shakspeare's Ague-cheek, Osric, &c. are
displayed through others, in the course of social
intercourse, by the mode of their performing-
some office in which they are employed ; but
Massinger's Sylli come forward to declare
themselves fools ad aihitrium auctoris, and so
the diction always needs the suhiritelligitur
(' the man looks as if he thought so and so,')
expressed in the language of the satirist, and
not in that of the man himself: —
Sylli. You may, madam,
Perhaps, believe that I in this use art
To make you dote upon me, by exposing
My more than most rare features to your view ;
But I, as I have ever done, deal simply,
A mark of sweet simplicity, ever noted
In the family of the Syllis. Therefore, lady,
Look not with too much contemplation on me ;
If you do, you are in the suds.
Maid of Honour, act i. sc. 2.
The author mixes his own feelings and judg-
ments concerning the presumed fool ; but the
man himself, till mad, tights up against them,
and betrays, by his attempts to modify them,
no COURSE OF LECTURliS.
that he is no fool at all, but one gifted with
activity and copiousness of thought, image and
expression, which belong not to a fool, but to
a man of wit making himself merry with his
own character.
5. There is an utter want of preparation in
the decisive acts of Massinger's characters, as
in Cainiola and Aurelia in the Maid of Honour.
Why? Because the dramatis personce were all
planned each by itself. Whereas in Shaks-
peare, the play is syiigenesia; each character
has, indeed, a life of its own, and is an indivi-
dmim of itself, but yet an organ of the whole,
as the heart in the human body. Shakspeare
was a great comparative anatomist.
Hence Massinger and all, indeed, but Shaks-
peare, take a dislike to their own characters,
and spite themselves upon them by making
them talk like fools or monsters ; as Fulgentio
in his visit to Camiola, (Act ii. sc. 2.) Hence
too, in Massinger, the continued flings at kings,
courtiers, and all the favourites of fortune, like
one who had enough of intellect to see injus-
tice in his own inferiority in the share of the
good things of life, but not genius enough to
rise above it, and forget himself. Beaumont
and Fletcher have the same vice in the oppo-
site pole, a servility of sentiment and a spirit
of partizanship with the monarchical faction.
0. From the want of a guiding point in Mas-
singer's characters, you never know what they
are about. In fact they have no character.
7. Note the faultiness of his soliloquies, with
LECTURE VII. 11 I
connectives and arrangements, that have no
other motive but the fear lest the audience
should not understand him.
8. A play of Massinger's produces no one
single effect, whether arising from the spirit of
the whole, as in the As You Like It ; or from
any one indisputably prominent character as
Hamlet. It is just " which you like best, gen-
tlemen !"
9. The unnaturally irrational passions and
strange whims of feeling which Massinger
delights to draw, deprive the reader of all
sound interest in the characters ; — as in Ma-
thias in the Picture, and in other instances.
10. The comic scenes in Massinger not only
do not harmonize with the tragic, not only in-
terrupt the feeling, but degrade the characters
that are to form any part in the action of the
piece, so as to render them unfit for any tragic
interest. At least, they do not concern, or act
upon, or modify, the principal characters. As
when a gentleman is insulted by a mere black-
guard,— it is the same as if any other accident
of nature had occurred, a pig run under his
legs, or his horse thrown him. There is no
dramatic interest in it.
I like Massinger's comedies better than his
tragedies, although where the situation requires
it, he often rises into the truly tragic and pa-
thetic. He excells in narration, and for the
most part displays his mere story with skill.
But he is not a poet of high imagination ; he is
like a Flemish painter, in whose delineations
112 COURSE OF LECTURES.
objects appear as they do in nature, have the
same force and truth, and produce the same
effect upon the spectator. But Shakspeare is
beyond this ; — he always by metaphors and
figures involves in the thing considered a uni-
verse of past and possible experiences; he
mingles earth, sea and air, gives a soul to
every thing, and at the same time that he in-
spires hiniian feelings, adds a dignity in his
imaaes to human nature itself: —
'O'
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye ;
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy, &c.
33rd Sonnet.
Note. — Have I not over-rated Gifford's edi-
tion of Massinger? — Not, — if I have, as but just
is, main reference to the restitution of the text ;
but yes, perhaps, if I were talking of the notes.
These are more often wrong than right. In
the Maid of Honour, Act i. sg. 5. Astutio de-
scribes Fulgentio as " A gentleman, yet no
lord." Gifford supposes a transposition of
the press for " No gentleman, yet a lord."
But this would have no connection with what
follows ; and we have only to recollect that
** lord" means a lord of lands, to see that the
after lines are explanatory. He is a man of
high birth, but no landed property ; — as to the
former, he is a distant branch of the blood
royal ; — as to the latter, his whole rent lies in
LECTURE VII. 1 13
a narrow compass, the king's ear ! In the same
scene the text stands :
Bert. No ! they are useful
For your imitation ; — I remember you, &c. ; —
and Gifford condemns Mason's conjecture of
'initiation' as void of meaning and harmony.
Now my ear deceives me if ' initiation' be not
the right word. In fact, ' imitation' is utterly im-
pertinent to all that follows. Bertoldo tells An-
tonio that he had been initiated in the manners
suited to the court by two or three sacred
beauties, and that a similar experience would
be equally useful for his initiation into the
camp. Not a word of his imitation. Besides,
I say the rhythm requires ' initiation,' and is
lame as the verse now stands.
LECTURE VIII.
Don Quixote.
Cervantes.
Born at Madrid, 1547 ; — Shakspeare, 1564;
both put off mortality on the same day, the
23rd of April, 1616, — the one in the sixty-
ninth, the other in the fifty-second, year of his
life. The resemblance in their physiognomies
is striking, but with a predominance of acute-
ness in Cervantes, and of reflection in Shaks-
VOL. I. I
114 COUnSE OF LECTURES.
peare, which is the specific difference between
the Spanish and English characters of mind.
I. The nature and eminence of Symbolical
writing ; —
II. Madness, and its different sorts, (consi-
dered without pretension to medical science) ; —
To each of these, or at least to my own
notions respecting them, I must devote a few
words of explanation, in order to render the
after critique on Don Quixote, the master work
of Cervantes' and his country's genius easily
and throughout intelligible. This is not the
least valuable, though it may most often be felt
by us both as the heaviest and least entertain-
ing portion of these critical disquisitions : for
without it, I must have foregone one at least of
the two appropriate objects of a Lecture, that
of interesting you during its delivery, and of
leaving behind in your minds the germs of
after-thought, and tlie materials for future en-
joyment. To have been assured by several of
my intelligent auditors that they have re-
perused Hamlet or Othello with increased
satisfaction in consequence of the new points
of view in which I had placed those characters
— is the highest compliment I could receive or
desire ; and should the address of this evening
open out a new source of pleasure, or enlarge
the former in your perusal of Don Quixote, it
will compensate for the failure of any personal
or temporary object.
I. The Symbolical cannot, perhaps, be
LECTURR VIII. 115
better defined in distinction from the Allego-
rical, than that it is always itself a part of that,
of the whole of which it is the representative.
— " Here comes a sail," — (that is, a ship)
is a symbolical expression. " Behold our
lion ! " when we speak of some gallant soldier,
is allegorical. Of most importance to our pre-
sent subject is this point, that the latter (the
allegory) cannot be other than spoken con-
sciously ; — whereas in the former (the symbol)
it is very possible that the general truth repre-
sented may be working unconsciously in the
writer's mind during the construction of the
symbol ; — and it proves itself by being pro-
duced out of his own mind, — as the Don
Quixote out of the perfectly sane mind of
Cervantes, and not by outward observation, or
historically. The advantage of symbolical
writing over allegory is, that it presumes no
disjunction of faculties, but. simple predomi-
nance.
11. Madness may be divided as —
1. hypochondriasis; or, the man is out
of his senses.
2. derangement of the understanding ;
or, the man is out of his wits.
3. loss of reason.
4. frenzy, or derangement of the sensa-
tions.
Cervantes's own preface to Don Quixote is
a perfect model of the gentle, every where
intelligible, irony in the best essays of the
116 COURSE OF LECTURES.
Tatler and the Spectator. Equally natural
and easy, Cervantes is more spirited than
Addison ; whilst he blends with the terseness
of Swift, an exquisite flow and music of style,
and above all, contrasts with the latter by the
sweet temper of a superior mind, which saw
the follies of mankind, and was even at the
moment suffering severely under hard mis-
treatment;* and yet seems every where to
have but one thought as the undersong —
" Brethren ! with all your faults I love you
still!" — or as a mother that chides the child
she loves, with one hand holds up the rod, and
with the other wipes off each tear as it drops!
Don Quixote was neither fettered to the
earth by want, nor holden in its embraces by
wealth ; — of which, with the temperance na-
tural to his country, as a Spaniard, he had
both far too little, and somewhat too much, to
be under any necessity of thinking about it.
His age too, fifty, may be well supposed to
prevent his mind from being tempted out of
itself by any of the lower passions ; — while his
habits, as a very early riser and a keen sports-
man, were such as kept his spare body in
serviceable subjection to his will, and yet by
the play of hope that accompanies pursuit,
* Bien como quien se engendro en una carcel, donde toda
incomodidad tiene su assiento, y todo triste ruido hace su
habitacion. Like one you may suppose born in a prison,
where every inconvenience keeps its residence, and every dis-
mal sound its liabitation. Pref. Jarvis's Tr. Ed.
LECTURE VIII. 117
not only permitted, but assisted, his fancy in
shaping what it would. Nor must we omit
his meagerness and entire featureliness, face
and frame, which Cervantes gives us at once :
" It is said that his surname was Quixada or
Quesacla,'' &c. — even in this trifle showing an
exquisite judgment ; — just once insinuating the
association of lantern-jmcs into the reader's
mind, yet not retaining it obtrusively like the
names in old farces and in the Pilgrim's Pro-
gress,— but taking for the regular appellative
one which had the no meaning of a proper
name in real life, and which yet was capable
of recalling a number of very difterent, but all
pertinent, recollections, as old armour, the
precious metals hidden in the ore, &c. Don
Quixote's leanness and featureliness are happy
exponents of the excess of the formative or
imaginative in him, contrasted with Sancho's
plump rotundity, and recipiency of external
impression.
He has no knowledge of the sciences or
scientific arts which give to the meanest por-
tions of matter an intellectual interest, and
which enable the mind to decypher in the
world of the senses the invisible agency — that
alone, of which the world's phenomena are the
effects and manifestations, — and thus, as in a
mirror, to contemplate its own reflex, its life
in the powers, its imagination in the symbolic
forms, its moral instincts in the final causes,
and its reason in the laws of material nature:
1 18 COURSE or LliCTURES.
but — estranged i'roui all the motives to obser-
vation from self-iiiterest — the persons that sur-
round him too few and too familiar to enter
into any connection with his thoughts, or to
require any adaptation of his conduct to their
particular characters or relations to himself —
his judgment lies fallow, with nothing to ex-
cite, nothing to employ it. Yet, — and here is
the point, where genius even of the most per-
fect kind, allotted but to few in the course of
many ages, does not preclude the necessity in
part, and in part counterbalance the craving
by sanity of judgment, without which genius
either cannot be, or cannot at least manifest
itself, — the dependency of our nature asks for
some confirmation from without, though it be
only from the shadows of other men's fictions.
Too uninformed, and with too narrow a
sphere of power and opportunity to rise into
the scientific artist, or to be himself a patron of
art, and with too deep a principle and too
much innocence to become a mere projector,
Don Quixote has recourse to romances : —
His curiosity and extravagant fondness herein arrived at
that pitch, that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase
books of knight-errantry, and carried home all he could lay
hands on of that kind ! CI.
The more remote these romances were from
the language of common life, the more akin
on that very account were they to the shapeless
dreams and strivings of his own mind; — a
LECTURE VIII, 11')
mind, which possessed not the highest order of
genius which lives in an atmosphere of power
over mankind, but that minor kind which, in
its restlessness, seeks for a vivid representative
of its own wishes, and substitutes the move-
ments of that objective puppet for an exercise
of actual power in and by itself. The more
wild and improbable these romances were, the
more were they akin to his will, which had
been in the habit of acting as an unlimited
monarch over the creations of his fancy !
Hence observe how the startling of the remain-
ing common sense, like a glimmering before its
death, in the notice of the impossible-impro-
bable of Don Belianis, is dismissed by Don
Quixote as impertinent : —
He had some doubt* as to the dreadful wounds which
Don Belianis gave and received : for he imagined, that not-
withstanding the most expert surgeons had cured him, his
face and whole body must still be full of seams and scars.
Nevertheless ^ he commended in his author the concluding
his book with' a promise of that unfinishable adventure! C. 1.
Hence also his first intention to turn author;
but who, with such a restless struggle within
him, could content himself with writing in a
remote village among apathists and ignorants?
During his colloquies with the village priest
and the barber surgeon, in which the fervour
of critical controversy feeds the passion and
* No estaba muy bieii con. Ed.
f Pero con todo. Ed,
120 (OUUSE OF LECTURES.
gives retility to its object — what more natural
than that the mental striving should become
an eddy ? — madness may perhaps be defined as
the circling in a stream which should be pro-
gressive and adaptive : Don Quixote grows at
length to be a man out of his wits; his under-
standing is deranged ; and hence without the
least deviation from the truth of nature, with-
out losing the least trait of personal individu-
ality, he becomes a substantial living allegory,
or personification of the reason and the moral
sense, divested of the judgment and the un-
derstanding. Sancho is the converse. He is
the common sense without reason or imagina-
tion ; and Cervantes not only shows the excel-
lence and power of reason in Don Quixote, but
in both him and Sancho the mischiefs result-
ing from a severance of the two main consti-
tuents of sound intellectual and moral action.
Put him and his master together, and they
form a perfect intellect ; but they are separated
and M'ithout cement ; and hence each having
a need of the other for its own completeness,
each has at times a mastery over the other.
For the common sense, although it may see
the practical inapplicability of the dictates of
the imagination or abstract reason, yet cannot
help submitting to them. These two cha-
racters possess the world, alternately and in-
terchangeably the cheater and the cheated.
To impersonate them, and to combine the per-
manent with the individual, is one of the
highest creations of genius, and has been
LECTURE VIII. 121
achieved by Cervantes and Shakspeare, almost
alone.
Observations on particular passages,
B. I. c. 1. But not altogether approving of his having
broken it to pieces with so much ease, to secure himself from
the like danger for the future, he made it over again, fencing
it with small bars of iron within, in such a manner, that he
rested satisfied of its strength ; and luithout caring to make
afresh experiment on it, he approved and looked upon it as
a most excellent helmet.
His not trying his improved scull-cap is an
exquisite trait of human character, founded
on the oppugnancy of the soul in such a state
to any disturbance by doubt of its own brood-
ings. Even the long deliberation about his
horse's name is full of meaning ; — for in these
day-dreams the greater part of the history
passes and is carried on in words, which look
forward to other words as what will be said of
them.
lb. Near the place where he lived, there dwelt a very
comely country lass, with whom he had formerly been in
love; though; as it is supposed, she never knew it, nor
troubled herself about it.
The nascent love for the country lass, but
without any attempt at utterance, or an oppor-
tunity of knowing her, except as the hint — the
on Uti — of the inward imagination, is happily
conceived in both parts ; — first, as confirmative
of the shrinking back of the mind on itself, and
its dread of having a cherished image destroyed
122 COURSE OF LECTURES.
by its own judgment ; and secondly, as show-
ing how necessarily love is the passion of
novels. Novels are to love as fairy tales to
dreams. I never knew but two men of taste
and feeling who could not understand why I
was delighted with the Arabian Nights' Tales,
and they were likewise the only persons in my
knowledge who scarcely remembered having
ever dreamed. Magic and war — itself a ma-
gic— are the day-dreams of childhood ; love is
the day-dream of youth and early manhood.
C. 2. " Scarcely had ruddy Phoebus spread the golden
tresses of his beauteous hair over the face of the wide and
spacious earth ; and scarcely had the little painted birds,
with the sweet and mellifluous harmony of their forked
tongues, saluted the approach of rosy Aurora, who, quitting
the soft couch of her jealous husband, disclosed herself to
mortals through the gates of the Mauchegan horizon ; when
the renowned Don Quixote," &c.
How happily already is the abstraction
from the senses, from observation, and the
consequent confusion of the judgment, mar-
ked in this description ! The knight is de-
scribing objects immediate to his senses and
sensations without borrowing a single trait
from either. Would it be difficult to find pa-
rallel descriptions in Dryden's plays and in
those of his successors ?
C. 3. The host is here happily conceived as
one who from his past life as a sharper, was
capable of entering into and humouring the
knight, and so perfectly in character, that he
LECTURE VIII. 123
precludes a considerable source of improba-
bility in the future narrative, by enforcing
upon Don Quixote the necessity of taking-
money with him.
C. 3. " Ho, there, whoever thou art, rash knight, that ap-
proachest to touch the arms of the most valorous adventurer
that ever girded sword," &c.
Don Quixote's high eulogiums on himself —
" the most valorous adventurer !"— butitis not
himself that he has before him, but the idol of
his imagination, the imaginary being whom he
is acting. And this, that it is entirely a third
person, excuses his heart from the otherwise
inevitable charge of selfish vanity ; and so by
madness itself he preserves our esteem, and
renders those actions natural by which he, the
first person, deserves it.
C. 4. Andres and his master.
The manner in which Don Quixote redressed
this wrong, is a picture of the true revolution-
ary passion in its first honest state, while it is
yet only a bewilderment of the understanding.
You have a benevolence limitless in its prayers,
which are in fact aspirations towards omnipo-
tence ; but between it and beneficence the
bridge of judgment— that is, of measurement
of personal power — intervenes, and must be
passed. Otherwise you will be bruised by the
leap into the chasm, or be drowned in the
revolutionary river, and drag others with you
to the same fate.
124 COURSE OF Li:cTURi:s.
C. 4. Mercliants of Toledo.
When they were come so near as to be seen and heard,
Don Quixote raised his voice, and with arrogant air cried
out: " Let the whole world stand; if tlie whole world does
not confess that there is not in the whole world a damsel more
beautiful than," &c.
Now mark the presumption which follows
the self-complacency of the last act ! That
was an honest attempt to redress a real wrong ;
this is an arbitrary determination to enforce a
Brissotine or Rousseau's ideal on all his fellow
creatures.
Let the whole world stand !
* If there had been any experience in proof of
the excellence of our code, where would be
our superiority in this enlightened age?'
" No! the business is that without seeing her, you believe,
confess, affirm, swear, and maintain it ; and if not, I challenge
you all to battle.^'*
Next see the persecution and fury excited
by opposition however moderate ! The only
words listened to are those, that without their
context and their conditionals, and transformed
into positive assertions, might give some sha-
dow of excuse for the violence shown ! This
rich story ends, to the compassion of the men
in their senses, in a sound rib-roasting of the
idealist by the muleteer, the mob. And happy
for thee, poor knight ! that the mob were
* Donde no, coninigo sois en batalla, yente descomunal !
Ed.
LECTURE VIII. 125
against thee ! For had they been with thee, by
the change of the moon and of them, thy head
would have been off.
C. 5. first part — The idealist recollects the
causes that had been accessary to the reverse
and attempts to remove them — too late. He
is beaten and disgraced.
C. 6. This chapter on Don Quixote's library
proves that the author did not wish to destroy
the romances, but to cause them to be read as
romances — that is, for their merits as poetry.
C. 7. Among other things, Don Quixote told him, he
should dispose himself to go with him willingly ; — for some
time or other such an adventure might present, that an island
might be won, in the turn of a hand, and he be left governor
thereof.
At length the promises of the imaginative
reason begin to act on the plump, sensual, ho-
nest common sense accomplice, — butunhappily
not in the same person, and without the copula
of the judgment, — in hopes of the substantial
good things, of which the former contemplated
only the glory and the colours.
C. 7. Sancho Panza went riding upon his ass, like any
patriarch, with his wallet and leathern bottle, and with a ve-
hement desire to find himself governor of the island which his
master had promised him.
The first relief from regular labour is so
pleasant to poor Sancho !
C. 8. " I no gentleman ! I swear by the great God, thou
liest, as I am a Christian. Biscainer by land, gentleman by
120 COURSK OF LECTURES.
sea, g-entleinan for the devil, and thou liest : look (hen it' thou
hast any thing else to say."
This Biscainer is an excellent image of the
prejudices and bigotry provoked by the ideal-
ism of a speculator. This story happily detects
tlie trick which our imagination plays in the
description of single combats : only change the
preconception of the magnificence of the com-
batants, and all is gone.
B. II. c. 2. " Be pleased, my lord Don Quixote, to bestow
upon me the government of that island," &c.
Sancho's eagerness for his government, the
nascent lust of actual democracy, or isocracy !
C. 2. " But tell me, on your life, have you ever seen a more
valorous knight than I, upon the whole face of the known
earth? Have you read in story of any other, who has, or ever
had, more bravery in assailing, more breath in holding out, more
dexterity in wounding, or more address in giving a fall ?" —
'* The truth is," answered Sancho, *' that I never read any
history at all ; for I can neither read nor write ; but what I
dare affirm is, that I never served a bolder master," &c.
This appeal to Sancho, and Sancho's an-
swer are exquisitely humorous. It is impos-
sible not to think of the French bulletins and
proclamations. Remark the necessity under
which we are of being sympathized with, fly
as high into abstraction as we may, and how
constantly the imagination is recalled to the
ground of our common humanity ! And note a
little further on, the knight's easy vaunting
of his balsam, and his quietly deferring the
making and application of it.
LECTURE VIII. 127
C. .'J. The speech before the goatherds :
" Happy times and happy ages," &c.*
Note the rhythm of this, and the admirable
beauty and wisdom of the thoughts in them-
selves, but the total want of judgment in Don
Quixote's addressing them to such an audience.
B. III. c. 3. Don Quixote's balsam, and the
vomiting and consequent relief; an excellent hit
at panacea nostrums, which cure the patient by
his being himself cured of the medicine by
revolting nature.
C. 4. " Peace ! and have patience; the day will come," &c.
The perpetual promises of the imagination !
lb. " Your Worship," said Sancho, " would make a better
preacher than knight errant !"
Exactly so. This is the true moral.
C. 6. The uncommon beauty of the descrip-
tion in the commencement of this chapter.
In truth, the whole of it seems to put all nature
in its heights and its humiliations, before us.
lb. Sancho's story of the goats :
" Make account, he carried them all over," said Don
Quixote, " and do not be going and coming in this manner ;
for at this rate, you will not have done carrying them over in
a twelvemonth." " How many are passed already?" said
Sancho, &c.
Observe the happy contrast between the all-
generalizing mind of the mad knight, and
• Dichosa edad y sighs dichosos aquellos, ^c. Ed.
12S COURSE OF LECTURES.
Sancho's all-pcirticiilariziiig memory. How
admirable a symbol of the dependence of all
copula on the higher powers of the mind, with
the single exception of the succession in time
and the accidental relations of space. Men of
mere common sense have no theoi*y or means
of making one fact more important or promi-
nent than the rest ; if they lose one link, all is
lost. Compare Mrs. Quickly and the Tapster.*
And note also Sancho's good heart, when his
master is about to leave him. Don Quixote's
conduct upon discovering the fuUing-hammers,
proves he was meant to be in his senses. No-
thing can be better conceived than his fit of
passion at Sancho's laughing, and his sophism
of self-justification by the courage he had
shown.
Sancho is by this time cured, through expe-
rience, as far as his own errors are concerned ;
yet still is he lured on by the unconquerable
awe of his master's superiority, even when he
is cheating him.
C. 8. The adventure of the Galley-slaves.
I think this is the only passage of moment in
which Cervantes slips the mask of his hero,
and speaks for himself.
C. 9. Don Quixote desired to have it, and bade him take
the money, and keep it for himself. Sancho kissed his hands
for the favour, drc.
Observe Sancho's eagerness to avail himself
* See the Friend, vol. iii. p. 138. Ed.
LECTURE VIII. 129
of the permission of his master, who, in the
war sports of knight-errantry, had, without
any selfish dishonesty, overlooked the meum
and tuum. Sancho's selfishness is modified
by his involuntary goodness of heart, and Don
Quixote's flighty goodness is debased by the
involuntary or unconscious selfishness of his
vanity and self- applause.
C. 10. Cardenio is the madman of passion,
who meets and easily overthrows for the mo-
ment the madman of imagination. And note
the contagion of madness of any kind, upon
Don Quixote's interruption of Cardenio's story.
C. 11. Perhaps the best specimen of San-
cho's proverbial izing is this :
" And I (Don Q.) say again, they lie, and will lie two
hundred times more, all who say, or think her so." " I nei-
ther say, nor think so," answered Sancho ; " let those who
say it, eat the lie, and swallow it with their bread : whether
they were guilty or no, they have given an account to God
before now : I come from my vineyard, I know nothing ; I
am no friend to inquiring into other men's lives; for he that
buys and lies shall find the lie left in his purse behind ; be-
sides, naked was I born, and naked I remain; I neither win
nor lose ; if they were guilty, what is that to me ? Many think
to find bacon, where there is not so much as a pin to hang it
on : but who can hedge in the cuckoo? Especially, do they
spare God himself?"
lb. " And it is no great matter, if it be in another hand ;
for by what I remember, Dulcinea can neither write nor
read," &c.
The wonderful twilight of the mind ! and
mark Cervantes's courage in daring to present
VOL. I. K
J 30 COUKSE OF LECTURES.
it, and trust to a distant posterity for an appre-
ciation of its truth to nature.
P. II. B. III. c. 9. Sanclio's account of what
he had seen on Clavileno is a counterpart in his
style to Don Quixote's adventures in the cave
of Montesinos. This last is the only impeach-
ment of the knight's moral character ; Cer-
vantes just gives one instance of the veracity
failing before the strong cravings of the ima-
gination for something real and external ; the
picture would not have been complete without
this ; and yet it is so well managed, that the
reader has no unpleasant sense of Don Quixote
having told a lie. It is evident that he hardly
knows whether it was a dream or not ; and
goes to the enchanter to inquire the real nature
of the adventure.
SUMMARY ON CERVANTES.
A Castilian of refined manners ; a gentle-
man, true to religion, and true to honour.
A scholar and a soldier, and fought vuider
the banners of Don John of Austria, at Le-
panto, lost his arm and was captured.
Endured slavery not only with fortitude, but
with mirth ; and by the superiority of nature,
mastered and overawed his barbarian owner.
Finally ransomed, he resumed his native
destiny, the awful task of achieving fame;
and for that reason died poor and a prisoner,
while nobles and kings over their goblets of
LECTURE Mil. 131
gold gave relish to their pleasures by the
charms of his divine genius. He was the in-
ventor of novels for the Spaniards, and in his
Persilis and Sigismunda, the English may find
the germ of their Robinson Crusoe.
The world was a drama to him. His own
thoughts, in spite of poverty and sickness, per-
petuated for him the feelings of youth. He
painted only what he knew and had looked
into, but he knew and had looked into much
indeed ; and his imagination was ever at hand
to adapt and modify the world of his experi-
ence. Of delicious love he fabled, yet with
stainless virtue.
LECTURE IX.
ON THE DISTINCTIONS OF THE WITTY, THE DROLL,
THE ODD, AND THE HUMOUROUS ;
THE NATURE AND CONSTITUENTS OF HUMOUR ; —
RABELAIS SWIFT — STERNE.
I. Perhaps the most important of our intel-
lectual operations are those of detecting the dif-
ference in similar, and the identity in dissimilar,
things. Out of the latter operation it is that wit
arises ; and it, generically regarded, consists in
presenting thoughts or images in an unusual
connection with each other, for the purpose of
exciting pleasure by the surprise. This con-
132 COURSE OF LECTUnr.S.
nection may be real ; ami there is in fact a
scientific wit; though where the object, con-
sciously entertained, is truth, and not amuse-
ment, we commonly give it some higher name.
But in wit }3opular]y understood, the connec-
tion may be, and for the most part is, apparent
only, and transitory ; and this connection may
be by thoughts, or by words, or by images.
The first is our Butler's especial eminence;
the second, Voltaire's; the third, which we
oftener call fancy, constitutes the larger and
more peculiar part of the wit of Shakspeare.
You can scarcely turn to a single speech of
Falstaff's without finding instances of it. Nor
does wit always cease to deserve the name by
being transient, or incapable of analysis. I
may add that the wit of thoughts belongs emi-
nently to the Italians, that of words to the
French, and that of images to the English.
II. Where the laughable is its own end, and
neither inference, nor moral is intended, or
where at least the writer M^ould wish it so
to appear, there arises what we call drollery.
The pure, unmixed, ludicrous or laughable be-
longs exclusively to the understanding, and
must be presented under the form of the senses ;
it lies within the spheres of the eye and the
ear, and hence is allied to the fancy. It does
not appertain to the reason or the moral sense,
and accordingly is alien to the imagination.
I think Aristotle has already excellently de-
fined the laughable, to yjXorov, as consisting of,
LECTURE IX. 133
or depending on, what is out of its proper time
and place, yet without danger or pain. Here
the impropriety — to utottov — is the positive qua-
lification ; the da7igerless7iess — to o.kiv'^vvov — the
negative. Neither the understanding without
an object of the senses, as for example, a mere
notional error, or idiocy ; — nor any external
object, unless attributed to the understanding,
can produce the poetically laughable. Nay,
even in ridiculous positions of the body laugh-
ed at by the vulgar, there is a subtle personi-
fication always going on, which acts on the,
perhaps, unconscious mind of the spectator as
a symbol of intellectual character. And hence
arises the imperfect and awkward effect of
comic stories of animals ; because although
the understanding is satisfied in them, the
senses are not. Hence too, it is, that the
true ludicrous is its own end. When serious
satire commences, or satire that is felt as seri-
ous, however comically drest, free and genuine
laughter ceases; it becomes sardonic. This
you experience in reading Young, and also
not unfrequently in Butler. The true comic
is the blossom of the nettle.
III. When words or images are placed in
unusual juxta-position rather than connection,
and are so placed merely because the juxta-
position is unusual— we have the odd or the
grotesque ; the occasional use of which in the
minor ornaments of architecture, is an in-
teresting problem for a student in the psycho-
logy of the Fine Arts.
134 COURSE OF LECTURES.
IV. In the simply laughable there is a mere
disproportion between a definite act and a
definite purpose or end, or a disproportion of
the end itself to the rank or circumstances of
the definite person ; but humour is of more
difficult description. I must try to define it in
the first place by its points of diversity from
the former species. Humour does not, like
the different kinds of wit, which is imper-
sonal, consist wholly in the understanding and
the senses. No combination of thoughts,
words, or images will of itself constitute hu-
mour, unless some peculiarity of individual
temperament and character be indicated there-
by, as the cause of the same. Compare the
comedies of Congreve with the FalstafF in
Henry IV. or with Sterne's Corporal Trim,
Uncle Toby, and Mr. Shandy, or with some
of Steele's charming papers in the Tatler,
and you will feel the difference better than I
can express it. Thus again, (to take an in-
stance from the different works of the same
writer), in Smollett's Strap, his Lieutenant
Bowling, his Morgan the honest Welshman,
and his Matthew Bramble, we have exquisite
humour, — while in his Peregrine Pickle we
find an abundance of drollery, which too often
degenerates into mere oddity ; in short, we
feel that a number of things are put together
to counterfeit humour, but that there is no
growth from within. And this indeed is the
origin of the word, derived from the humoral
LECTURE IX. 135
pathology, and excellently described by Ben
Jonson :
So in every human body,
The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood,
By reason that they flow continually
In some one part, and are not continent,
Receive the name of humours. Now thus far
It may, by metaphor, apply itself
Unto the general disposition :
As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers.
In their confluctions, all to run one way.
This may be truly said to be a humour.*
Hence we may explain the congeniality of
humour with pathos, so exquisite in Sterne
and Smollett, and hence also the tender feeling
which we always have for, and associate with,
the humours or hobby-horses of a man. First,
we respect a humourist, because absence of
interested motive is the ground-work of the
character, although the imagination of an inte-
rest may exist in the individual himself, as if
a remarkably simple-hearted man should pride
himself on his knowledge of the world, and how
well he can manage it : — and secondly, there
always is in a genuine humour an acknowledg-
ment of the hollowness and farce of the world,
and its disproportion to the godlike within us.
And it follows immediately from this, that
whenever particular acts have reference to
* Every Man Out Of His Humour. Prologue.
130 COUKSK OF LECTURES,
particular selfisli motives, tlie Inimourous bursts
into the indignant and abhorring ; \vhilst all
follies not selfish are pardoned or palliated.
The danger of this habit, in respect of pure
morality, is strongly exemplified in Sterne.
This would be enough, and indeed less than
this has passed, for a sufficient account of
humour, if we did not recollect that not every
predominance of character, even where not
precluded by the moral sense, as in criminal
dispositions, constitutes what we mean by a
humourist, or the presentation of its produce,
humour. What then is it ? Is it manifold? Or
is there some one hiunorific point common to
all that can be called humourous?— I am not
prepared to answer this fully, even if my time
permitted; but I think there is; — and that it
consists in a certain reference to the general
and the universal, by which the finite great is
brought into identity with the little, or the little
with the finite great, so as to make both no-
thing in comparison with the infinite. The
little is made great, and the great little, in
order to destroy both ; because all is equal in
contrast with the infinite. " It is not without
reason, brother Toby, that learned men write
dialogues on long noses."* I would suggest,
therefore, that whenever a finite is contem-
plated in reference to the infinite, whether con-
sciously or unconsciously, humour essentially
* Tiist. Sh. Vol. iii. c. 37.
LECTURE IX. . 137
arises. In the highest humour, at least, there
is always a reference to, and a connection
with, some general power not finite, in the
form of some finite ridiculously disproportion-
ate in our feelings to that of which it is, never-
theless, the representative, or by which it is to
be displayed. Humourous writers, therefore,
as Sterne in particular, delight, after much
preparation, to end in nothing, or in a direct
contradiction.
That there is some truth in this definition,
or origination of humonr, is evident ; for you
cannot conceive a humourous man who does not
give some disproportionate generality, or even
a imiversality to his hobby-horse, as is the case
with Mr. Shandy ; or at least there is an
absence of any interest but what arises from
the humour itself, as in my Uncle Toby, and
it is the idea of the soul, of its undefined capa-
city and dignity, that gives the sting to any
absorption of it by any one pursuit, and this
not in respect of the humourist as a mere
member of society for a particular, however
mistaken, interest, but as a man.
The English humour is the most thoughtful,
the Spanish the most etherial — the most ideal
— of modern literature. Amongst the classic
ancients there was little or no humour in the
foregoing sense of the term. Socrates, or Plato
under his name, gives some notion of humour
in the Banquet, when he argues that tragedy
and comedy rest upon the same ground. But
138 COURSE OF LECTURES.
liumour properly took its rise in the middle
ages ; and the Devil, the Vice of the mys-
teries, incorporates the modern humour in its
elements. It is a spirit measured by dispro-
portionate finites. The Devil is not, indeed,
perfectly humourous ; but that is only because
he is the extreme of all humour.
Rabelais.*
Born at Chinon, 1483-4.— Died 1553.
One cannot help regretting that no friend of
Rabelais, (and surely friends he must have
had), has left an authentic account of him.
His buffoonery was not merely Brutus' rough
stick, which contained a rod of gold ; it was
necessary as an amulet against the monks and
bigots. Beyond a doubt, he was among the
deepest as well as boldest thinkers of his age.
Never was a more plausible, and seldom, I am
persuaded, a less appropriate line than the
thousand times quoted,
Rabelais laughing in his easy chair —
of Mr. Pope. The caricature of his filth and
zanyism proves how fully he both knew and felt
the danger in which he stood. I could write a
* No note remains of that part of this Lecture which treated
of Rabelais. This seems, therefore, a convenient place for
the reception of some remarks written by Mr. C. in Mr. Gill-
man's copy of Rabelais, about the year 1825. See Table
Talk, vol. i. p. 177. Ed.
LECTURE IX. 139
treatise in proof and praise of the morality and
moral elevation of Rabelais' work which would
make the church stare and the conventicle
groan, and yet should be the truth and nothing
but the truth. I class Rabelais withlhe crea-
tive minds of the world, Shakspeare, Dante,
Cervantes, &c.
All Rabelais' personages are phantasmagoric
allegories, but Panurge above all. He is
throughout the Travovpyia, — the wisdom, that is,
the cunning of the human animal, — the under-
standing, as the faculty of means to purposes
without ultimate ends, in the most comprehen-
sive sense, and including art, sensuous fancy,
and all the passions of the understanding. It
is impossible to read Rabelais without an ad-
miration mixed with wonder at the depth and
extent of his learning, his multifarious know-
ledge, and original observation beyond what
books could in that age have supplied him
with.
B. III. c. 9. How Panurge asketh counsel of Pantagruel,
whether he should marry, yea or no.
Note this incomparable chapter. Pantagruel
stands for the reason as contradistinguished
from the understanding and choice, that
is, from Panurge ; and the humour consists
in the latter asking advice of the former on a
subject in which the reason can only give
the inevitable conclusion, the syllogistic ergo^
from the premisses provided by tlie under-
140 COURSE OI LECTURES.
standing itself, which puts each case so as of
necessity to predetermine the verdict thereon.
This chapter, independently of the allegory, is
an exquisite satire on the spirit in which
people commonly ask advice.
Swift.*
Born in Dublin, 1067.— Died 1745.
In Swift's writings there is a false misan-
thropy grounded upon an exclusive contem-
plation of the vices and follies of mankind, and
this misanthropic tone is also disfigured or
brutalized by his obtrusion of physical dirt
and coarseness. 1 think Gulliver's Travels
the great work of Swift. In the voyages to
Lilliput and Brobdingnag he displays the little-
ness and moral contemptibility of human
nature ; in that to t!:e Houyhnhnms he repre-
sents the disgusting spectacle of man with the
understanding only, without the reason or the
moral feeling, and in his horse he gives the
misanthropic ideal of man— that is, a being
virtuous from rule and duty, but untouched by
the principle of love.
* From Mr. Green's note. Ed.
LECTURK iX. 141
Sterne.
Born at Clonmel, 1713.— Died 1708.
With regard to Sterne, and the charge of
licentiousness which presses so seriously upon
his character as a writer, I would remark that
there is a sort of know ingness, the wit of which
depends — 1st, on the modesty it gives pain to ;
or, 2dly, on the innocence and innocent igno-
rance over which it triumphs ; or, 3dly, on a
certain oscillation in the individual's own mind
between the remaining good and the encroach-
ing evil of his nature — a sort of dallying with
the devil — a fluxionary act of combining cou-
rage and cowardice, as when a man sn lifts a
candle with his fingers for the first time, or
better still, perhaps, like that trembling daring
with which a child touches a hot tea urn, be-
cause it has been forbidden ; so that the mind
has in its own white and black anoel the same
or similar amusement, as may be supposed
to take place between an old debauchee and
a prude,— she feeling resentment, on the one
hand, from a prudential anxiety to preserve
appearances and have a character, and, on the
other, an inward sympathy with the enemy.
We have only to suppose society innocent,
and then nine-tenths of this sort of wit would
be like a stone that falls in snow, making no
142 COURSE OF LECTURES.
sound because excitinp^ no resistance ; the re-
mainder rests on its being an offence against
the good manners of human nature itself.
This source, unworthy as it is, may doubtless
be combined with wit, drollery, fancy, and
even humour, and we have only to regret the
misalliance ; but that the latter are quite dis-
tinct from the former, may be made evident
by abstracting in our imagination the morality
of the characters of Mr. Shandy, my Uncle
Toby, and Trim, which are all antagonists
to this spurious sort of wit, from the rest of
Tristram Shandy, and by supposing, instead
of them, the presence of two or three callous
debauchees. The result will be pure disgust.
Sterne cannot be too severely censured for thus
using the best dispositions of our nature as the
panders and condiments for the basest.
The excellencies of Sterne consist —
1. In bringing forward into distinct con-
sciousness those minutiae of thought and feel-
ing which appear trifles, yet have an impor-
tance for the moment, and which almost every
man feels in one way or other. Thus is pro-
duced the novelty of an individual peculiarity,
together with the interest of a something that
belongs to our common nature. In short,
Sterne seizes happily on those points, in which
every man is more or less a humourist. And,
indeed, to be a little more subtle, the propen-
sity to notice these things does itself constitute
the humourist, and the superadded power of so
LECTURE IX. 143
presenting them to men in general gives us the
man of humour. Hence the difference of the
man of humour, the effect of whose portraits
does not depend on the felt presence of him-
self, as a humourist, as in the instances of
Cervantes and Shakspeare — nay, of Rabelais
too ; and of the humourist, the effect of whose
works does very much depend on the sense of
his own oddity, as in Sterne's case, and per-
haps Swift's; though Swift again would require
a separate classification.
2. In the traits of human nature, which so
easily assume a particular cast and colour
from individual character. Hence this excel-
lence and the pathos connected with it quickly
pass into humour, and form the ground of it.
See particularly the beautiful passage, so well
known, of Uncle Toby's catching and libera-
ting the fly :
" Go," — says he, one day at dinner, to an overgrown one
which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly
all dinner-time, and which, after infinite attempts, he had
caught at last, as it flew by him ; — " I'll not hurt thee," says
my Uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the
room, with the fly in his hand, — " I'll not hurt a hair of thy
head : — Go," says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his
hand as he spoke, to let it escape ; — " go, poor devil, get thee
gone, why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide
enough to hold both thee and me." Vol. ii. ch. 12.
Observe in this incident how individual cha-
racter may be given by the mere delicacy of
presentation and elevation in degree of a com-
144 COURSE OF LECTURES.
nioii good quality, hmnanily, which in itself
Mould not be characteristic at all.
.3. In Mr. Shandy's character, — the essence of
which is a craving for sympathy in exact jjro-
portion to the oddity and iinsympathizability
of what he proposes; — this coupled with an
instinctive desire to be at least disputed with,
or rather both in one, to dispute and yet to
agree — and holding as worst of all — to acqui-
esce without either resistance or sympatliy.
This is charmingly, indeed, profoundly con-
ceived, and is psychologically and ethically
true of all Mr. Shandies. Note, too, how the
contrasts of character, which are always either
balanced or remedied, increase the love be-
tween the brothers.
4. No writer is so happy as Sterne in the
unexaggerated and truly natural representation
of that species of slander, which consists in
gossiping about our neighbours, as whetstones
of our moral discrimination ; as if they were
conscience-blocks which we used in our ap-
prenticeship, in order not to waste such pre-
cious materials as our own consciences in the
trimming and shaping of ourselves by self-exa-
mination : —
Alas o'day ! — -had Mrs. Shandy (poor g'entlewoman !) had
but her wish in going- up to town just to lie in and come down
again ; which, they say, she begged and prayed for upon her
bare knees, and which, in my opinion, considering the fortune
which Mr. Shandy got with her, was np such mighty matter
to have complied with, the lady and her babe might both of
them have been alive at this hour. Vol. i. c. 18.
LECTURE IX. 145
5, When you have secured a man's likings
and prejudices in your favour, you may then
safely appeal to his impartial judgment. In
the following passage not only is acute sense
shrouded in wit, but a life and a character
are added which exalt the whole into the
dramatic : — ■
" I see plainly, Sir, by your looks'" (or as the case happened)
my father would say — " that you do not heartily subscribe to
this opinion of mine — which, to those," he would add, " who
have not carefully sifted it to the bottom, — I own has an air
more of fancy than of solid reasoning in it; and yet, my dear
Sir, if ' I may presume to know your character, I am morally
assured, I should hazard little in stating a case to you, not as
a party in the dispute, but as a judge, and trusting my appeal
upon it to your good sense and candid disquisition in this
matter; you are a person free from as many narrow preju-
dices of education as most men ; and, if I may presume to
penetrate farther into you, of a liberality of genius above
bearing down an opinion, merely because it wants friends.
Your son, — your dear son, — from whose sweet and open
temper you have so much to expect, — your Billy, Sir !—
would you, for the world, have called him Judas ? Would
you, my dear Sir," he would say, laying his hand upon your
breast, with the genteelest address, — and in that soft and ir-
resistible piar«> of voice which the nature of the arguynentum
ad ho?nine?n absolutely requires, — " Would you, Sir, if a Jew
of a godfather had proposed the name for your child, and of-
fered you his purse along with it, would you have consented
to such a desecration of him ? O my God !" he would say,
looking up, " if I know your temper rightly. Sir, you are inca-
pable of it; — you would have trampled upon the offer; — you
would have thrown the temptation at the tempter's head with
abhorrence. Your greatness of mind in this action, which I
admire, with that generous contempt of money, which you
show me in the whole transaction, is really noble ; — and what
renders it more so, is the principle of it ; — the workings of a
parent's love upon the truth and conviction of this very hypo-
VOL. I. L
146 COURSE OF LECTURES.
thesis, namely, tliat were your son called Jiulas, — the sordid
and treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have
accompanied him through life like his shadow, and in the end
made a miser and a rascal of him, in spite, Sir, of your ex-
ample." Vol. i. c. 19.
0. There is great physiognomic tact in
Sterne. See it particularly displayed in his
descri})tion of Dr. Slop, accompanied with all
that happiest use of drapery and attitude,
M'hich at once give reality by individualizing
and vividness by unusual, yet probable, com-
binations:—
Imagine to yourself a little squat, nncourtly figure of a
Doctor Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular
height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly,
which might have done honour to a Serjeant in the horse-
guards.
* * * «
Imagine such a one; — for such I say, were the outlines of
Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling
through the dirt upon the vertehree of a little diminutive pony,
of a pretty colour — but of strength, — alack ! scarce able to
have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads
been in an ambling condition; — they were not. Imagine to
yourself Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-
horse, pricked into a fidl gallop, and making all practicable
speed the adverse way. Vol. ii. c. 9.
7. T think there is more humour in the
single remark, which I have quoted before —
" Learned men, brother Toby, don't write dia-
logues upon long noses for nothing !" — than in
the whole Slawkenburghian tale that follows,
which is mere oddity interspersed with drol-
lery.
LECTURE IX. 147
8. Note Sterne's assertion of, and faith in,
a moral good in the characters of Trim, Toby,
&c. as contrasted with the cold scepticism of
motives which is the stamp of the Jacobin
spirit. Vol. V. c. 9.
9. You must bear in mind, in order to do
justice to Rabelais and Sterne, that by right
of humoristic universality each part is essen-
tially a whole in itself. Hence the digressive
spirit is not mere wantonness, but in fact the
very form and vehicle of their genius. The
connection, such as was needed, is given by
the continuity of the characters.
Instances of different forms of wit, taken
largely :
1. Why are you reading romances at your age?" — " Why,
I used to be fond of history, but I have given it up, — it was
so grossly improbable."
2. " Pray, sir, do it !— although yoa have promised me."
3. The Spartan mother's —
" Return with, or on, thy shield."
" My sword is too short!" — " Take a step forwarder."
4. The Gasconade : —
" I believe you, Sir! but you will excuse my repeating it
on account of my provincial accent."
5. Pasquil on Pope Urban, who had em-
ployed a committee to rip up the old errors
of his predecessors.
Some one placed a pair of spurs on the heels
148 COURSE OF LECTURES.
of the statue of St. Peter, and a label from the
opposite statue of St. Paul, on the same
bridge ; —
St. Paul. " Whither then are you bound?"
St. Peter. *' I apprehend danger here; — they'll soon call
me in question for denying my Master."
5*^ Paul. " Nay, then, I had better be off too ; for they'll
question me for having persecuted the Christians, before my
conversion."
0. Speaking of the small German poten-
tates, I dictated the phrase, — ojficious for equi-
valents. This my amanuensis wrote,— Jishhio-
for elephants; — which, as I observed at the
time, was a sort of Noah's angling, that could
hardly have occurred, except at the commence-
ment of the Deluge.
LECTURE X.
donne — dante — milton paradlse lost.
Donne.*
Born in London, 1573.— Died, 1()31.
I.
With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
* Nothing remains of what was said on Donne in this Lec-
ture. Here, therefore, as in previous like instances, the gap
is filled up with some notes written by Mr. Coleridge in a
volume of Chalmers's Poets, belonging to Mr. Gillman. The
verses were added in pencil to the collection of commendatory
LECTURE X. 149
II.
See lewdness and theology combin'd, —
A cynic and a sycophantic mind ;
A fancy shar'd party per pale between
Death's heads and skeletons and Aretine ! —
Not his peculiar defect or crime,
But the true current mintage of the time.
Such were the establish'd signs and tokens given
To mark a loyal churchman, sound and even,
Free from papistic and fanatic leaven.
The wit of Donne, the wit of Butler, Uie wit
of Pope, the wit of Congreve, the wit of Sheri-
dan— how many disparate things are here
expressed by one and tlie same m ord, Wit ! —
Wonder-exciting vigour, intenseness and pecu-
liarity of thought, using at will the almost
boundless stores of a capacious memory, and
exercised on subjects, where we have no right
to expect it — this is the wit of Donne ! The
four others I am just in the mood to describe
and inter-distinguish ; — what a pity that the
marginal space will not let me !
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,.
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can w& find two fitter hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Good-Morrow, v. 15, &c.
The sense is ; — Our mutual loves may in
many respects be fitly compared to correspond-
lines; No. I. is Mr. C.'s ; the publication of No. II. I trust
the all-accomplished author will, under the circumstances,
pardon. Numerous and elaborate notes by Mr. Coleridjj,e on
Donne's Sermons are in existetice, and will be published here-
after. Ed.
150 COURSE OF LECTURES.
ing hemispheres; but as no simile squares
{riihil simile est idem), so here the simile fails,
for there is nothing in our loves that corres-
ponds to the cold north, or the declining west,
which in two hemispheres must necessarily be
supposed. But an ellipse of such length will
scarcely rescue the line from the charge of non-
sense or a bull. January, 1829.
Woman's constancy.
A misnomer. The title ought to be —
Mutual Inconstancy.
Whether both ih' Indias of spice and mine, &c.
Sun Rising, v. 17.
And see at night thy western land of mine, &c.
Progress of the Soul, 1 Song, 2. st.
This use of the word mi7ie specifically for
mines of gold, silver, or precious stones, is, 1
believe, peculiar to Donne.
Dante.
Born at Florence, 1265.— Died, 1.321.
As I remarked in a former Lecture on a
different subject (for subjects the most diverse
in literature have still their tangents), the
Gothic character, and its good and evil fruits,
appeared less in Italy than in any other part
of European Christendom. There was accord-
ingly much less romance, as that word is com-
monly understood ; or, perhaps, more truly
LECTURE X. 151
stated, there was romance instead of chivalry.
In Italy, an earlier imitation of, and a more
evident and intentional blending with, the Latin
literature took place than elsewhere. The
operation of the feudal system, too, was incal-
culably weaker, of that singular chain of inde-
pendent interdependents, the principle of which
was a confederacy for the preservation of indi-
vidual, consistently with general, freedom. In
short, Italy, in the time of Dante, was an after-
birth of eldest Greece, a renewal or a reflex of
the old Italy nnder its kings and first Roman
consuls, a net-work of free little republics, with
the same domestic feuds, civil wars, and party
spirit, — the same vices and virtues produced
on a similarly narrow theatre, — the existing
state of things being, as in all small demo-
cracies, under the working and direction of
certain individuals, to whose will even the laws
were swayed ; — whilst at the same time the
singular spectacle was exhibited amidst all
this confusion of tlie flourishing of commerce,
and the protection and encouragement of let-
ters and arts. Never was the commercial spirit
so well reconciled to the nobler principles of
social polity as in Florence. It tended there
to union and permanence and elevation, — not
as the overbalance of it in England is now
doing, to dislocation, change and moral de-
gradation. The intensest patriotism reigned in
these communities, but confined and attached
exclusively to the snuiU locality of the patriot's
152 COURSE OF LECTURES.
birth and residence ; Avhereas in the true
Gothic feudalism, country was nothing but
the preservation of personal independence.
But then, on the other hand, as a counter-
balance to these disuniting elements, there m as
in Dante's Italy, as in Greece, a much greater
uniformity of religion common to all than
amongst the northern nations.
Upon these hints the history of the repub-
lican seras of ancient Greece and modern
Italy ought to be written. There are three
kinds or stages of historic narrative; — 1. that
of the annalist or chronicler, who deals merely
in facts and events arranged in order of time,
having no principle of selection, no plan of
arrangement, and whose work properly consti-
tutes a supplement to the poetical writings of
romance or heroic legends: — 2. that of the
writer who takes his stand on some moral
point, and selects a series of events for the ex-
press purpose of illustrating it, and in whose
hands the narrative of the selected events is
modified by the principle of selection ;— as
Thucydides, whose object was to describe the
evils of democratic and aristocratic partizan-
ships ; — or Polybius, whose design was to show
the social benefits resulting from the triumph
and grandeur of Rome, in public institutions
and military discipline ; — or Tacitus, whose
secret aim was to exhibit the pressure and
corruptions of despotism ;— in all which writers
and others like them, the ground-object of the
LECTURE X. 153
historian colours with artificial lights the facts
which he relates : — 3. and which in idea is the
grandest— the most truly founded in philo-
sophy— there is the Herodotean history, which
is not composed with reference to any parti-
cular causes, but attempts to describe human
nature itself on a great scale as a portion of
the drama of providence, the free will of man
resisting the destiny of events, — for the indi-
viduals often succeeding against it, but for the
race always yielding to it, and in the resistance
itself invariably affording means towards the
completion of the ultimate result. Mitford's
history is a good and useful work ; but in his
zeal against democratic government, Mitford
forgot, or never saw, that ancient Greece was
not, nor ought ever to be considered, a perma-
nent thing, but that it existed, in the dispo-
sition of providence, as a proclaimer of ideal
truths, and that everlasting proclamation being
made, that its functions were naturally at an
end.
However, in the height of such a state of
society in Italy, Dante was born and flourished ;
and was himself eminently a picture of the age
in which he lived. But of more importance
even than this, to a right understanding of
Dante, is the consideration that the scholastic
philosophy was then at its acme even in itself;
but more especially in Italy, where it never
prevailed so exclusively as northward of the
Alps. It is impossible to understand the geniu;?
154 COURSE OV LECTUUES.
of Dtiiite, and ditiicult to luiderstaiKl his poem,
without some knowledge of the characters,
studies, and writings of the schoohnen of the
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.
For Dante was the living link between religion
and philosophy ; he philosophized the religion
and christianized the philosophy of Italy ; and,
in this poetic union of religion and philosophy,
he became the ground of transition into the
mixed Platonism and Aristotelianism of the
Schools, under which, by numerous minute
articles of faith and ceremony, Christianity
became a craft of hair-splitting, and was ulti-
mately degraded into a complete fetisch wor-
ship, divorced from philosophy, and made up
of a faith without thought, and a credulity
directed by passion. Afterwards, indeed, phi-
losophy revived under condition of defending
this very superstition ; and, in so doing, it
necessarily led the way to its subversion, and
that in exact proportion to the influence of the
philosophic schools. Hence it did its work
most completely in Germany, then in England,
next in France, then in Spain, least of all in
Italy. We must, therefore, take the poetry
of Dante as christianized, but without the
further Gothic accession of proper chivalry.
It was at a somewhat later period, that the
importations from the East, through the Ve-
netian commerce and the crusading arma-
ments, exercised a peculiarly strong influence
on Italy.
LECTURE X. 155
In studying Dante, therefore, we must
consider carefully the difterences produced,
first, by allegory being substituted for poly-
theism ; and secondly and mainly, by the op-
position of Christianity to the spirit of pagan
Greece, which receiving the very names of its
gods from Egypt, soon deprived them of all
that was universal. The Greeks changed the
ideas into finites, and these finites into an-
thropomorphic or forms of men. Hence their
religion, their poetry, nay, their very pictures,
became statuesque. With them the form was
the end. The reverse of this was the natural
effect of Christianity ; in which finites, even
the human form, must, in order to satisfy the
mind, be brought into connexion with, and be
in fact symbolical of, the infinite; and must
be considered in some enduring, however sha-
dowy and indistinct, point of view, as the ve-
hicle or representative of moral truth.
Hence resulted two great effects; a com-
bination of poetry with doctrine, and, by turn-
ins: the mind inward on its own essence instead
of letting it act only on its outward circum-
stances and communities, a combination of
poetry with sentiment. And it is this inward-
ness or subjectivity, which principally and
most fundamentally distinguishes all the classic
from all the modern poetry. Compare the
passage in the Iliad (Z'. vi. 1 19 — 236.) in which
Diomed and Glaucus change arms, —
loG COUKSK OF LLCTUKES.
XtipaQ r aWijXioy Xa/^tVjjj' kciI TrirTTwrravro —
They took each other by the hand, and pledged friendship —
with the scene in Ariosto (Orhmdo Furioso,
c. i. St. 20-22.), where Rinaldo and Ferrauto
fight and afterwards make it up : —
Al Pagan la proposta non dispiacque :
Cos! fu differita la tenzone ;
E tal tregua tra lor subito nacque,
Si r odio e r ira va in oblivi'one,
Che '1 Pagano al partir dalle fresclie acque
Non lascio a piede il buon figliuol d' Anione :
Con preghi invita, e al fin lo toglie in groppa,
E per r orrae d' Angelica galoppa.
Here Homer would have left it. But the
Christian poet has his own feelings to express,
and goes on : —
Oh gran bonta de' cavalieri antiqui !
Eran rivali, eran di fe diversi,
E si sentian degli aspri colpi iniqui
Per tutta la persona anco dolersi ;
E pur per selve oscure e calli obbliqui
Insieme van senza sospetto aversi !
And here you will observe, that the reaction of
Ariosto's own feelings on the image or act is
more fore-grounded (to use a painter's phrase)
than the image or act itself.
The two different modes in which the ima-
gination is acted on by the ancient and modern
poetry, may be illustrated by the parallel
effects caused by the contemplation of the
Greek or Roman-Greek architecture, com-
pared with the Gothic. In the Pantheon, the
whole is perceived in a perceived harmony with
LECTURE X. 157
the parts which compose it ; and generally you
will remember that where the parts preserve
any distinct individuality, there simple beauty,
or beauty simply, arises ; but where the parts
melt undistinguished into the whole, there
majestic beauty, or majesty, is the result. In
York Minster, the parts, the grotesques, are in
themselves very sharply distinct and separate,
and this distinction and separation of the parts
is counterbalanced only by the multitude and
variety of those parts, by which the attention is
bewildered ; — whilst the whole, or that there
is a whole produced, is altogether a feeling in
which the several thousand distinct impressions
lose themselves as in a universal solvent. Hence
in a Gothic cathedral, as in a prospect from
a mountain's top, there is, indeed, a unity, an
awful oneness ; — but it is, because all distinc-
tion evades the eye. And just such is the dis-
tinction between the Antigone of Sophocles
and the Hamlet of Shakspeare.
The Divina Commedia is a system of moral,
political, and theological truths, with arbi-
trary personal exemplifications, which are not,
in my opinion, allegorical. I do not even
feel convinced that the punishments in the In-
ferno are strictly allegorical. I rather take
them to have been in Dante's mind quasi-^\]e-
gorical, or conceived in analogy to pure alle-
gory.
I have said, that a combination of poetry
with doctrines, is one of the characteristics of
1">8 COURSE OF LECTURES.
the Christian iiiiise; but I think Dante has
not succeeded in effecting this combination
nearly so well as Milton.
This comparative failure of Dante, as also
some other peculiarities of his mind, in malam
partem, must be innnediately attributed to
the state of North Italy in his time, which is
vividly represented in Dante's life ; a state
of intense democratical partizanship, in which
an exaggerated importance was attached to in-
dividuals, and which whilst it afforded a vast
field for the intellect, opened also a boundless
arena • for the passions, and in which envy,
jealousy, hatred, and other malignant feelings,
could and did assume the form of patriotism,
even to the individual's own conscience.
All this common, and, as it were, natural
partizanship, was aggravated and coloured by
the Guelf and Ghibelline factions; and, in
part explanation of Dante's adherence to the
latter, you must particularly remark, that the
Pope had recently territorialized his authority
to a great extent, and that this increase of ter-
ritorial power in the church, was by no means
the same beneficial movement for the citizens
of free republics, as the parallel advance in
other countries was for those who groaned as
vassals under the oppression of the circumja-
cent baronial castles.*
* Mr. Coleridge here notes : ** I will, if I can, here make
an historical movement, and pay a proper compliment to Mr.
Hallam." Ed.
LECTURE X. 159
By way of preparation to a satisfactory pe-
rusal of the Diviiia Commedia, I will now pro-
ceed to state what I consider to be Dante's
chief excellences as a poet. And I begin with
I. Style — the vividness, logical connexion,
strength and energy of which cannot be sur-
passed. In this I think Dante superior to
Milton ; and his style is accordingly more imi-
table than Milton's, and does to this day exer-
cise a greater influence on the literature of his
country. You cannot read Dante without
feeling a gush of manliness of thought within
you. Dante was very sensible of his own ex-
cellence in this particular, and speaks of poets
as guardians of the vast armory of language,
which is the intermediate something between
matter and spirit : —
Or se' tu quel Virgilio, e quella fonte,
Che spande di parlar si largo fiume ?
Risposi lui con vcrgognosa fronte.
O degli altri poeti onore e lume,
Vagliami '1 lungo studio e '1 grande amore,
Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume.
Tu se' lo mio maestro, e '1 mio autore ;
Tu se' solo colui, da cu io tolsi
Lo hello stile, chc rn ha fatto onore.
Inf. c. 1. V. 79.
" And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring,
From which such copious floods of eloquence
Have issued ?" I, with front abash'd, replied :
" Glory and light of all the tuneful train !
May it avail me, that I long with zeal
Have sought thy volume, and with love immense
100 COURSE OF LECTURES.
Have conn'd it o'er. My master, thou, and guide!
Thou he from whom I have alone derivd
That style, which for its beauty into fame
Exalts me." Cauy.
Indeed there was a passion and a miracle of
words in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
afterthe long slumber of language in barbarism,
which gave an almost romantic character, a
virtuous quality and power, to what was read
in a book, independently of the thoughts or
images contained in it. This feeling is very
often perceptible in Dante.
II. The Images in Dante are not only taken
from obvious nature, and are all intelligible to
all, but are ever conjoined with the universal
feeling received from nature, and therefore af-
fect the general feelings of all men. And in
this respect, Dante's excellence is very great,
and may be contrasted with the idiosyncracies
of some meritorious modern poets, who attempt
an eruditeness, the result of particular feelings.
Consider the simplicity, I may say plainness,
of the following simile, and how differently we
should in all probability deal with it at the
jjresent day :
Quale i fioretti dal notturno gelo
Chinati e cbiusi, poi die '1 sol gl' imbianca,
Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo, —
Fal mi fee' io di mia virtute stanca ;
Inf. c. 2. V. 127.
As florets, by the frosty air of nigbt
Bent down and clos'd, when day has blanch'd their leaves,
LECTURE X. 101
Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems, —
So was my fainting vigour new restor'd.
Gary
*
III. Consider the wonderful profoundness of
the whole third canto of the Inferno ; and es-
pecially of the inscription over Hell gate :
Per me si va, &c. —
which can only be explained by a meditation
on the true nature of religion ; that is, — reason
plus the understanding. I say profoundness
rather than sublimity ; for Dante does not so
much elevate your thoughts as send them down
deeper. In this canto all the images are dis-
tinct, and even vividly distinct ; but there is a
total impression of infinity ; the wholeness is
not in vision or conception, but in an inner
feeling of totality, and absolute being.
IV. In picturesqueness, Dante is beyond all
other poets, modern or ancient, and more in
the stern style of Pindar, than of any other.
Michel Angelo is said to have made a design
for every page of the Divina Commedia. As
superexcellent in this respect, I would note the
conclusion of the third canto of the Inferno :
Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave
Un vecchio bianco per antico pelo
Gridando : guai a voi anime prave : &c.
Ver. 82. &c.
* Mr. Coleridge here notes : " Here to speak of Mr. Gary's
translation." — Ed.
VOL. I. M
IG'2 COURSE OF LECTURES.
And lo ! toward us in a bark
Comes on an old man, hoary white with eld.
Crying, " Woe to you wicked spirits !"
*******
Gary
Caron dimonio con occhi di bragia
Loro accennando, tutte le raccoglie :
Batte col remo qualunque s' adagia.
Come d' autunno si levan le foglie
L' una appresso dell altra, infin che '1 ramo
Rende alia terra tutte le sue spoglie ;
Similemente il mal seme d' Adamo,
Gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una
Per cenni, com' augel per suo richiamo.
Ver. 100, &c.
Charon, demoniac form,
With eyes of burning coal, collects them all,
Beck'ning, and each that lingers, with his oar
Strikes. As fall off the light autumnal leaves,
One still another following, till the bough
Strews all its honours on the earth beneath ; —
E'en in like manner Adam's evil brood
Cast themselves one by one down from tlie shore
Each at a beck, as falcon at his call. Cary.
And this passage, which I think admirably
picturesque :
Ma poco valse, che 1' ale al sospetto
Non potero avanzar : quegli ando sotto,
E quel drizz6, volando, suso il petto ;
Non altrimenti 1' anitra di botto,
Quando '1 falcon s' appressa, gii\ s' attuffa,
Ed ei ritorna su crucciato e rotto.
Irato Calcabrina della buffa,
Volando dietro gli tenne, invaghlto,
Che quei campasse, per aver la zuffa :
E come '1 barattier fu disparito,
LECTURE X. 163
Cosl volse gli artigli al suo compagno,
E fu con lui sovra '1 fosso ghermito.
Ma r altro fu bene sparvier grifagno
Ad artigliar ben lui, e amedue
Cadder nel mezzo del bollente stagno.
Lo caldo sghermidor subito fue :
Ma peio di levarsi era niente,
Si aveano inviscate 1' ale sue.
Infer, c. xxii. ver. 127, &c.
But little it avail'd : terror outstripp'd
His following flight : the other plung'd beneath,
And he with upward pinion rais'd his breast :
E'en thus the water- fowl, when she perceives
The falcon near, dives instant down, while he
Enrag'd and spent retires. That mockery
In Calcabrina fury stirr'd, who flew
After him, with desire of strife inflara'd ;
And, for the barterer had 'scap'd, so turn'd
His talons on his comrade. O'er the dyke
In grapple close they join'd ; but th' other prov'd
A goshawk, able to rend well his foe ;
And in the boiling lake both fell. The heat
Was umpire soon between them, but in vain
To lift themselves they strove, so fast were glued
Their pennons. Gary.
V. Very closely connected with this pictu-
resqueness,isthe topographic reality of Dante's
journey through Hell. You should note and
dwell on this as one of his great charms, and
which gives a striking peculiarity to his poetic
power. He thus takes the thousand delusive
forms of a nature worse than chaos, having no
reality but from the passions which they
excite, and compels them into the service of
the permanent. Observe the exceeding truth
of these lines :
104 COURSK OF LECTURES.
Noi ricidemmo '1 cercliio all' altra liva,
Sovr' una foiitc die bolle, e riversa,
Per un fossato die da lei diriva.
L' acqua era buja niolto piu die persa :
E noi in compagnia dell' onde bige
Entraninio gii\ per una via diversa.
Una palude fa, ch' ha noma Stige,
Questo tristo ruscel, quando ^ disceso
A\ pie delle maligne piagge grige.
Ed io die di niirar mi stava inteso, —
Vidi genti fangose in quel pantano
Ignude tutte, e con senibiante offeso.
Questi si percotean non pur con mano,
Ma con la testa, e col petto, e co' piedi,
Troncandosi co' denti a brano a brano.
* * * * *
Cos! girammo della lorda pozza
Grand' arco tra la ripa secca e '1 mezzo,
Con gli ocelli volti a clii del fango ingozza :
Venimmo appic d' una torre al dassezzo.
C. vii. ver. 100 and 127.
We the circle cross'd
To the next steep, arriving at a well.
That boiling pours itself down to a foss
Sluic'd from its source. Far murkier was the wave
Than sablest grain : and we in company
Of th' inky waters, journeying by their side,
Enter'd, though by a different track, beneath.
Into a lake, the Stygian nam'd, expands
The dismal stream, when it hath reach'd the foot
Of the grey wither'd cliffs. Intent I stood
To gaze, and in the marish sunk, descried
A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks
Betok'ning rage. They with their hands alone
Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet,
Cutting each other piecemeal with their fangs.
*****
Our route
Thus compass'd, we a segment widely stretch'd
LECTURE X. 165
Between the dry embankment and the cove
Of the loath'd pool, turning meanwhile our eyes
Downward on those who gulp'd its muddy lees ;
Nor stopped, till to a tower s loiv base we came.
Gary.
VI. For Dante's power, — his absolute mas-
tery over, although rare exhibition of, the pa-
thetic, I can do no more than refer to the pas-
sages on Francesca di Rimini (Infer. C. v. ver.
7.3 to the end.) and on Ugolino, (Infer. C. xxxiii.
ver. 1. to 75.) They are so well known, and
rightly so admired, that it would be pedantry
to analyze their composition ; but you will note
that the first is the pathos of passion, the se-
cond that of affection ; and yet even in the
first, you seem to perceive that the lovers have
sacrificed their passion to the cherishing of a
deep and rememberable impression.
VII. As to going into the endless subtle
beauties of Dante, that is impossible ; but I
cannot help citing the first triplet of the 2.9th
canto of the Inferno :
La molta gente e le diverse piaghe
Avean le luci mie si inebriate,
Che dello stare a piangere eran vaghe.
So were mine eyes inebriate with the view
Of the vast multitude, whom various wounds
Disfigur'd, that they long'd to stay and weep.
Gary.
Nor have I now room for any specific compa-
rison of Dante with Milton. But if I had, 1
1G6 COURSE OF LECTURES.
would institute it upon the ground of the last
canto of the Inferno from the 1st to the 69th
line, and from the lOOth to the end. And in
this comparison I should notice Dante's occa-
sional fault of becoming grotesque from being
too graphic without imagination ; as in his
Lucifer compared with Milton's Satan. Indeed
he is sometimes horrible rather than terrible, —
falling into the /«ctj/tov instead of the ^avov of
Longinus ;* in other words, many of his images
excite bodily disgust, and not moral fear. But
here, as in other cases, you may perceive that
the faults of great authors are generally excel-
lencies carried to an excess.
Milton.
Born in London, 1608.— Died, 1674.
If we divide the period from the accession of
Elizabeth to the Protectorate of Cromwell into
two unequal jiortions, the first ending with the
death of James I. the other comprehending
the reign of Charles and the brief glories of
the Republic, we are forcibly struck with a
difference in the character of the illustrious
actors, by whom each period is rendered
severally memorable. Or rather, the diffe-
rence in the characters of the great men in
each period, leads us to make this division =
* De Subl. 1. ix.
LECTURE X. 167
Eminent as the intellectual powers were that
were displayed in both ; yet in the number of
great men, in the various sorts of excellence,
and not merely in the variety but almost diver-
sity of talents united in the same individual,
the age of Charles falls short of its predecessor;
and the stars of the Parliament, keen as their
radiance was, in fulness and richness of lustre,
yield to the constellation at the court of Eliza-
beth ; — which can only be paralleled by Greece
in her brightest moment, when the titles of the
poet, the philosopher, the historian, the states-
man and the general not seldom formed a gar-
land round the same head, as in the instances
of our Sidneys and Raleighs. But then, on the
other hand, there was a vehemence of will, an
enthusiasm of principle, a depth and an ear-
nestness of spirit, which the charms of indi-
vidual fame and personal aggrandisement could
not pacify ,^ — an aspiration after reality, perma-
nence, and general good, — in short, a moral
grandeur in the latter period, with which the
low intrigues, Machiavellic maxims, and selfish
and servile ambition of the former, stand in
painful contrast.
The causes of this it belongs not to the pre-
sent occasion to detail at length ; but a mere
allusion to the quick succession of revolutions
in religion, breeding a political indifference in
the mass of men to religion itself, the enor-
mous increase of the royal power in conse-
quence of the humiliation of the nobility and
108 COURSE OF LFXTURES.
the clergy — the transference of the papal au-
thority to the crown, — the unfixed state of
Elizabeth's own opinions, whose inclinations
were as popish as her interests were protestant
— the controversial extravagance and practical
imbecility of her successor — will help to ex-
plain the former period ; and the persecutions
that had given a life and soid-interest to the
disputes so imprudently fostered by James, —
the ardour of a conscious increase of power in
the commons, and the greater austerity of
manners and maxims, the natural product and
most formidable weapon of religious disputa-
tion, not merely in conjunction, but in closest
combination, with newly awakened political
and republican zeal, these perhaps account for
the character of the latter aera.
In the close of the former period, and during
the bloom of the latter, the poet Milton was
educated and formed ; and he survived the
latter, and all the fond hopes and aspirations
which had been its life ; and so in evil days,
standing as the representative of the combined
excellence of both periods, he produced the
Paradise Lost as by an after- throe of nature.
" There are some persons (observes a divine, a
contemporary of Milton's) of whom the grace
of God takes early hold, and the good spirit
inhabiting them, carries them on in an even
constancy through innocence into virtue, their
Christianity bearing equal date with their man-
hood, and reason and religion, like warp and
LECTURE X. 1C9
woof, riiiiniiig together, make up one web of a
wise and exemplary life. This (he adds) is a
most happy case, wherever it happens; for,
besides that there is no sweeter or more lovely
thing on earth than the early buds of piety,
which drew from our Saviour signal affection
to the beloved disciple, it is better to have no
wound than to experience the most sovereign
balsam, which, if it work a cure, yet usually
leaves a scar behind." Although it was and is
my intention to defer the consideration of Mil-
ton's own character to the conclusion of this
Lecture, yet I could not prevail on myself to
approach the Paradise Lost without impressing
on your minds the conditions under which
such a work was in fact producible at all, the
original genius having been assumed as the
immediate agent and efficient cause ; and these
conditions I find in the character of the times
and in his own character. The age in which
the foundations of his mind were laid, was
congenial to it as one golden oera of profound
erudition and individual genius ; — that in
which the superstructure was carried up, was
no less favourable to it by a sternness of disci-
pline and a show of self-control, highly flatter-
ing to the imaginative dignity of an heir of
fame, and which won Milton over from the
dear-loved delights of academic groves and
cathedral aisles to the anti-prelatic party. It
acted on him, too, no doubt, and modified his
studies by a characteristic controversial spirit,
170 COURSE OF LECTUUES.
(his presentation of God is tinted with it)— a
spirit not less busy indeed in political than in
theological and ecclesiastical dispute, but car-
rying on the former almost always, more or
less, in the guise of the latter. And so far as
Pope's censure* of our poet, — that he makes
God the Father a school divine — is just, we
must attribute it to the character of his age,
from which the men of genius, who escaped,
escaped by a worse disease, the licentious in-
difference of a Frenchified court.
Such was the nidus or soil, which consti-
tuted, in the strict sense of the word, the cir-
cumstances of Milton's mind. In his mind
itself there were purity and piety absolute ; an
imagination to which neither the past nor the
present were interesting, except as far as they
called forth and enlivened the great ideal, in
which and for which he lived ; a keen love of
truth, which, after many weary pursuits, found
a harbour in a sublime listening to the still
voice in his own spirit, and as keen a love of
his country, which, after a disappointment
still more depressive, expanded and soared
into a love of man as a probationer of immor-
tality. These were, these alone could be, the
conditions under whidi such a work as the
Paradise Lost could be conceived and accom-
plished. By a life-long study Milton had
known —
* Table Talk, vol. ii. p. 264.
\
LECTIJUK X. 171
What was of use to know,
What best to say could say, to do had done.
His actions to his words agreed, his words
To his large heart gave utterance due, his heart
Contain'd of good, wise, fair, the perfect shape ;
and he left the imperishable total, as a bequest
to the ages coming, in the Paradise Lost.*
Difficult as I shall find it to turn over these
leaves without catching some passage, which
would tempt me to stop, I propose to consider,
1st, the general plan and arrangement of the
work ; — 2ndly, the subject with its difficulties
and advantages; — 3rdly, the poet's object, the
spirit in the letter, the evSv/^uov Iv /.wOm, the true
school-divinity ; and lastly, the characteristic
excellencies of the poem, in what they consist,
and by what means they were produced.
1. As to the plan and ordonnance of the
Poem.
Compare it with the Iliad, many of the books
of which might change places without any in-
jury to the thread of the story. Indeed, I
doubt the original existence of the Iliad as one
poem ; it seems more probable that it was put
together about the time of the Pisistratidse.
The Iliad — and, more or less, all epic poems,
the subjects of which are taken from history —
* Here Mr. C. notes : " Not perhaps here, but towards, or
as, the conclusion, to chastise the fashionable notion that
poetry is a relaxation or amusement, one of the superfluous
toys and luxuries of the intellect! To contrast the perma-
nence of poems with the transiency and fleeting moral effects
of empires, and what are called, great events." Ed.
172 COURSE OF LECTURES.
have no rounded conclusion ; they remain,
after all, but single chapters from the volume
of history, although they are ornamental
chapters. Consider the exquisite simplicity of
the Paradise Lost. It and it alone really
possesses a beginning, a middle, and an end ;
it has the totality of the poem as distinguished
from the ah ovo birth and parentage, or
straight line, of history.
2. As to the subject.
In Homer, the supposed importance of the
subject, as the first effort of confederated
Greece, is an after-thought of the critics ; and
the interest, such as it is, derived from the events
themselves, as distinguished from the manner
of representing them, is very languid to all but
Greeks. It is a Greek poem. The superiority
of the Paradise Lost is obvious in this respect,
that the interest transcends the limits of a na-
tion. But we do not generally dwell on this
excellence of the Paradise Lost, because it
seems attributable to Christianity itself; — yet in
fact the interest is wider than Christendom, and
comprehends the Jewish and Mohammedan
worlds ; — nay, still further, inasmuch as it re-
presents the origin of evil, and the combat of
evil and good, it contains matter of deep interest
to all mankind, as forming the basis of all re-
ligion, and the true occasion of all philosophy
whatsoever.
The Fall of Man is the subject ; Satan is
the cause ; man's blissful state the immediate
LECTURE X. 173
object of his enmity and attack ; man is warned
by an angel who gives him an account of all
that was requisite to be known, to make the
warning at once intelligible and awful ; then
the temj^tation ensues, and the Fall ; then the
immediate sensible consequence ; then the
consolation, wherein an angel presents a vision
of the history of men with the ultimate triumph
of the Redeemer. Nothing is touched in this
vision but what is of general interest in re-
ligion ; any thing else would have been im-
proper.
The inferiority of Klopstock's Messiah is
inexpressible. I admit the prerogative of
poetic feeling, and poetic faith ; but I cannot
suspend the judgment even for a moment. A
poem may in one sense be a dream, but it
must be a waking dream. In Milton you have
a religious faith combined with the moral
nature ; it is an efflux ; you go along with it.
In Klopstock there is a wilfulness ; he makes
things so and so. The feigned speeches and
events in the Messiah shock us like false-
hoods ; but nothing of that sort is felt in the
Paradise Lost, in M^hich no particulars, at least
very few indeed, are touched which can come
into collision or juxta-position with recorded
matter.
But notwithstanding the advantages in Mil-
ton's subject, there were concomitant insupe-
rable difficulties, and Milton has exhibited
marvellous skill in keeping most of them out
174 COURSE OF LECTURES.
of sight. High poetry is tlie translation of
reality into the ideal under the predicament of
succession of time only. The poet is an
historian, upon condition of moral power being
the only force in the universe. The very gran-
deur of his subject ministered a difficulty to
Milton. The statement of a being of high in-
tellect, warring against the svipreme Being,
seems to contradict the idea of a supreme
Being. Milton precludes our feeling this, as
much as possible, by keeping the peculiar at-
tributes of divinity less in sight, making them
to a certain extent allegorical only. Again,
poetry implies the language of excitement ; yet
how to reconcile such language with God .'
Hence Milton confines the poetic passion in
God's speeches to the language of scripture ;
and once only allows the passio vera, or quasi-
humana to appear, in the passage, where the
Father contemplates his own likeness in the
Son before the battle : —
Go then, thou Mightiest, in thy Father's might,
Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels
That shake Heaven's basis, bring forth all my war,
My bow and thunder ; my almighty arms
Gird on, and sword upon thy puissant thigh;
Pursue these sons of darkness, drive them out
From all Heaven's bounds into the utter deep :
There let them learn, as likes them, to despise
God and Messiah his anointed king.
B. VI. V. 710.
3. As to Milton's object : —
LECTURE X. 175
It was to justify the ways of God to man !
The controversial spirit observable in many
parts of the poem, especially in God's speeches,
is immediately attributable to the great con-
troversy of that age, the origination of evil.
The Arminians considered it a mere calamity.
The Calvinists took away all human will.
Milton asserted the will, but declared for the
enslavement of the will out of an act of the will
itself. There are three powers in us, whicli
distinguish us from the beasts that perish ; —
1 , reason ; 2, the power of viewing universal
truth ; and 3, the power of contracting uni-
versal truth into particulars. Religion is the
will in the reason, and love in the will.
The character of Satan is pride and sensual
indulgence, finding in self the sole motive of
action. It is the character so often seen in
little on the political stage. It exhibits all the
restlessness, temerity, and cunning which have
marked the mighty hunters of mankind from
Nimrod to Napoleon. The common fascina-
tion of men is, that these great men, as they
are called, must act from some great motive.
Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the
intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism,
which would rather reign in hell than serve in
heaven. To place this lust of self in opposition
to denial of self or duty, and to show what ex-
ertions it would make, and what pains endure
to accomplish its end, is Milton's particular
object in the character of Satan. But around
17G COURSE OF LECTURES.
this character he has thrown a singuhirity of
daring, a grandeur of sufterance, and a ruined
splendour, which constitute the very height of
poetic sublimity.
Lastly, as to the execution : —
The language and versification of the Para-
dise Lost are peculiar in being so much more
necessarily correspondent to each than those in
any other poem or poet. The connexion of
the sentences and the position of the words are
exquisitely artificial ; but the position is rather
according to the logic of passion or universal
logic, than to the logic of grammar. Milton
attempted to make the English language obey
the logic of passion as perfectly as the Greek
and Latin. Hence the occasional harshness
in the construction.
Sublimity is the pre-eminent characteristic
of the Paradise Lost. It is not an arithmetical
sublime like Klopstock's, whose rule always is
to treat what we might think large as con-
temptibly small. Klopstock mistakes bigness
for greatness. There is a greatness arising
from images of effort and daring, and also from
those of moral endurance ; in Milton both are
united. The fallen angels are human pas-
sions, invested with a dramatic reality.
The apostrophe to light at the commence-
ment of the third book is particularly beautiful
as an intermediate link between Hell and
Heaven ; and observe, how the second and third
book support the subjective character of the
^^ECTUUi: X. 177
poem. Ill all modern poetry in Christendom
there is an under consciousness of a sinful
nature, a fleeting away of external things, the
mind or subject greater than the object, the
reflective character predominant. In the Pa-
radise Lost the sublimest parts are the reve-
lations of Milton's own mind, producing itself
and evolving its own greatness ; and this is so
truly so, that when that which is merely enter-
taining for its objective beauty is introduced,
it at first seems a discord
' In the description of Paradise itself you
have Milton's sunny side as a man ; here his
descriptive powers are exercised to the utmost,
and he draws deep upon his Italian resources.
In the description of Eve, and throughout this
part of the poem, the poet is predominant over
the theologian. Dress is the symbol of the
Fall, but the mark of intellect ; and the meta-
physics of dress are, the hiding what is not
symbolic and displaying by discrimination
what is. The love of Adam and Eve in Pa-
radise is of the highest merit — not phanto-
matic, and yet removed from every thing de-
grading. It is the sentiment of one rational
being towards another made tender by a spe-
cific difterence in that which is essentially the
same in both ; it is a union of opposites, a
giving and receiving mutually of the perma-
nent in either, a completion of each in the
other.
Milton is not a picturesque, but a musical,
VOL. I. N
178 COURSK OF LECTURES.
poet ; althougli he has this merit that the oh-
ject chosen by him for any particular fore-
ground always remains prominent to the end,
enriched, but not incumbered, by the opulence
of descriptive details furnished by an exhaust-
less imagination. I wish the Paradise Lost
were more carefully read and studied than I
can see any ground for believing it is, es^^e-
cially those parts which, from the habit of al-
ways looking for a story in poetry, are scarcely
read at all, — as for example, Adam's vision of
future events in the 11th and 12th books. No
one can rise from the perusal of this immortal
poem without a deep sense of the grandeur and
the purity of Milton's soul, or without feeling
how susceptible of domestic enjoyments he
really was, notwithstanding the discomforts
which actually resulted from an apparently
unhappy choice in marriage. He was, as
every truly great poet has ever been, a good
man ; but finding it impossible to realize his
own aspirations, either in religion, or politics, or
society, he gave up his heart to the living spirit
and light within him, and avenged himself on
the world by enriching it with this record of
his own transcendant ideal.
lEOTUUE X. 179
NOTES ON MILTON. 1807.*
(Hayley quotes the following passage : — )
" Time serves not now, and, perhaps, I might seem too
profuse to give any certain account of what the mind at home,
in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose
to herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting;
whether that epic form, Avhereof the two poems of Homer, and
those other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the
Book of Job a bnef, model.'^ p. 69.
These latter words deserve particular no-
tice. I do not doubt that Milton intended his
Paradise Lost as an epic of the first class, and
that the poetic dialogue of the Book of Job
was his model for the general scheme of his
Paradise Regained. Readers would not be
disappointed in this latter poem, if they pro-
ceeded to a perusal of it with a proper precon-
ception of the kind of interest intended to be
excited in that admirable work. In its kind
it is the most perfect poem extant, though its
kind may be inferior in interest — being in its
essence didactic— to that other sort, in which
instruction is conveyed more effectively, be-
cause less directly, in connection with stronger
and more pleasurable emotions, and thereby
* These notes were written by Mr. Coleridge in a copy of
Hayley 's Life of Milton, (4to. 1796), belonging to Mr. Poole.
By him they were communicated, and this seems the fittest
place for their publication. Ed,
180 COURSE OF LECTURES.
in a closer aflniity with action. But might wc
not as rationally object to an accomplislud
woman's conversing, however agreeably, be-
canse it has happened that wc have received a
keener pleasure from her singing to the harp?
Si genus sit proho et sapienti viro hand indig-
7ium^ et si poetna sit in suo gen ere perfectum,
satis est. Quod si hoc auctor idem alliorihns
numeris et carmini diviniori ipsnm jier se divi-
num sicperaddiderit, mehcrcule satis est, ct plus-
quam satis. I cannot, however, but wish that
the answer of Jesus to Satan in the 4th book,
(v. 285.)—
Think not but that I know these things ; or think
I know them not, not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought, &c.
had breathed the spirit of Hayley's noble
quotation rather than the narrow bigotry of
Gregory the Great. The passage is, indeed,
excellent, and is partially true ; but partial
truth is the worst mode of conveying false-
hood.
Hayley, p. 75. " The sincerest friends of Milton may
here agree with Johnson, who speaks of his controversial
merriment as disgusting."
The man who reads a work meant for imme-
diate effect on one age with the notions and
feelings of another, may be a refined gentle-
man, but must be a sorry critic. He who
possesses imagination enough to live with his
forefathers, and, leaving comparative reflection
LECTURE X. 181
for an after moment, to give himself up during*
the first perusal to the feelings of a contempo-
rary, if not a partizan, will, I dare aver, rarely
find any part of Milton's prose works disgust-
ing.
(Hayley, p. 104. Hayley is speaking of the
passage in Milton's Answer to Icon Basilice,
in which he accuses Charles of taking his
Prayer in captivity from Pamela's prayer in
the 3rd book of Sidney's Arcadia. The pas-
sage begins, —
" But this king, not content with that which, although in a
thing holy, is no holy theft, to attribute to his own making
other men's whole prayers, &c. Symmons' ed. 1806, p. 407.)
Assuredly, I regret that Milton should have
written this passage ; and yet the adoption of a
prayer from a romance on such an occasion
does not evince a delicate or deeply sincere
mind. We are the creatures of association.
There are some excellent moral and even
serious lines in Hudibras ; but what if a clergy-
man should adorn his sermon with a quotation
from that poem ! Would the abstract propriety
of the verses leave him " honourably ac-
qiutted?" The Christian baptism of a line in
Virgil is so far from being a parallel, that it is
ridiculously inappropriate, — an absurdity as
glaring as that of the bigotted Puritans, who
objected to some of the noblest and most scrip-
tural prayers ever dictated by wisdom and
piety, simply because the Roman Catholics
had used them.
182 COURSE or lectures.
Hayley, p. 107. " The ambition of Milton," &c.
I do not approve the so frequent use of this
word rehitively to Milton. Indeed the fondness
for ingrafting a good sense on the word " am-
bition," is not a Christian impulse in general.
Hayley, p. 110. " Milton himself seems to have thought
it allowable in literary contention to vilify, &c. the character
of an opponent; but surely this doctrine is unworthy," &c.
If ever it were allowable, in this case it was
especially so. But these general observations,
\vithout meditation on the particular times and
the genius of the times, are most often as un-
just as they are always superficial.
(Hayley, p. 133. Hayley is speaking of
Milton's panegyric on CromwelFs govern-
ment : — )
Besides, however Milton might and did re-
gret the immediate necessity, yet what alter-
native was there? Was it not better that
Cromwell should usurp power, to protect re-
ligious freedom at least, than that the Presby-
terians should usurp it to introduce a religious
persecution, — extending the notion of spiritual
concerns so far as to leave no freedom even to
a man's bedchamber?
(Hayley, p. '250. Hayley's conjectures on
the origin of the Paradise Lost : — )
If Milton borrowed a hint from any writer,
it was more probably from Strada's Prolusions,
in which the Fall of the Angels is pointed out
LECTURE X. 183
as the noblest subject for a Christian poet.*
The more dissimilar the detailed images are,
the more likely it is that a great genius should
catcli the general idea.
(Hayl. p. 294. Extracts from the Adamo of
Andreini :)
" Lucifero. Che dal mio centre oscuro
Mi chiaina a rimirar cotanta luce ?
Who from my dark abyss
Calls me to gaze on this excess of light ?"
The words in italics are an unfair transla-
tion. They may suggest that Milton really
had read and did imitate this drama. The
original is ' in so great light.' Indeed the whole
version is affectedly and inaccurately Miltonic.
lb. V. 1 1 . Che di fango opre festi —
Forming thy works of dust (nO, dirt. — )
lb. V. 17. Tessa pur stella a stella
V aggiungo e luna, e sole. —
Let him unite above
Star upon star, moon, sun.
Let him weave star to star,
Then join both moon and sun !
* The reference seems generally to be to the 5th Prolusion
of the 1st Book. Hie arcus ac tela, quibus olim in magno
illo Sujierum tumultu pj'ijiceps armorum Michael confixit
auctorem proditionis ; hie fulmina humancB mentis terror. *
* * *. hi nuhibus armatas bello legiones instruam,
atque inde pro re 7iata auxiliares ad ten-am copias evocabo.
* * *. Hie mihi Ccelites, quos esse ferunt elementorum
tutelares, jjrima ilia corpora miscebunt. sect. 4. Ed.
184 COURSE or lectures.
lb, V. 21. Ch 'al fin con biasmo e scorno
Vana 1* opra sara, vano il siidore !
Since in the end division
Shall prove his works and all his efforts vain.
Since finally with censure and disdain
Vain shall the work be, and his toil be vain !
1790.*
The reader of Milton must be always on his
duty : he is surrounded with sense ; it rises in
every line ; every word is to the purpose.
There are no lazy intervals ; all has been con-
sidered, and demands and merits observation.
If this be called obscurity, let it be remem-
bered that it is such an obscurity as is a com-
pliment to the reader ; not that vicious obscu-
rity, which proceeds from a muddled head.
LECTURE Xl.t
ASIATIC AND GREEK MYTHOLOGIES — ROBINSON
CRUSOE — USE OF WORKS OF IMAGINA-
TION IN EDUCATION.
A CONFOUNDING of God witli Nature, and an
incapacity of finding unity in the manifold and
infinity in the individual, — these are the origin
of polytheism. The most perfect instance of
* From a common-place book of Mr. C.'s, communicated
by Mr. J. M. Gutch. Ed.
t Partly from Mr. Green's note. Ed.
LECTURE XI. 185
this kind of theism is that of early Greece;
other nations seem to have either transcended,
or come short of, the old Hellenic standard, — a
mythology in itself fundamentally allegorical,
and typical of the powers and functions of
nature, but subsequently mixed up with a
deification of great men and hero-worship, —
so that finally the original idea became inex-
tricably combined with the form and attributes
of some legendary individual. In Asia, pro-
bably from the greater unity of the govern-
ment and the still surviving influence of patri-
archal tradition, the idea of the unity of God,
in a distorted reflection of the Mosaic scheme,
was much more generally preserved ; and ac-
cordingly all other super or ultra-human beings
coukl only be represented as ministers of, or
rebels against, his will. The Asiatic genii and
fairies are, therefore, always endowed with
moral qualities, and distinguishable as malig-
nant or benevolent to man. It is this uniform
attribution of fixed moral qualities to the super-
natural agents of eastern mythology that parti-
cularly separates them from the divinities of
old Greece.
Yet it is not altogether improbable that in
the Samothracian or Cabeiric mysteries the
link between the Asiatic and Greek popular
schemes of mythology lay concealed. Of
these mysteries there are conflicting accounts,
and, perhaps, there were variations of doctrine
in tlie lapse of ages and intercourse with
18G COURSE or lectures.
other systems. But, upon a review of all
that is left to us on this subject in the writings
of the ancients, we may, I think, make out
thus much of an interesting fact, — that Ca-
biri, impliedly at least, meant socii, com-
plices, having a hypostatic or fundamental
union with, or relation to, each other ; that
these mysterious divinities were, ultimately at
least, divided into a higher and lower triad ;
that the lower triad, pri mi quia injimi, consisted
of the old Titanic deities or powers of nature,
under the obscure names of Axieros, Axioker-
sos, and Axiokersa, representing symbolically
different modifications of animal desire or ma-
terial action, such as hunger, thirst, and fire,
without consciousness ; that the higher triad,
ultimi quia superiores, consisted of Jupiter,
(Pallas, or Apollo, or Bacchus, or Mercury,
mystically called Cadmilos) and Venus, repre-
senting, as before, the vovq or reason, the Xo-yo<;
or M'ord or communicative power, and the i^^q
or love ; — that the Cadmilos or Mercury, the
manifested, communicated, or sent, appeared
not only in his proper person as second of the
higher triad, but also as a mediator between
the higher and lower triad, and so there were
seven divinities ; and, indeed, according to
some authorities, it might seem that the Cad-
milos acted once as a mediator of the higher,
and once of the lower, triad, and that so there
were eight Cabeiric divinities. The lower or
Titanic powers being subdued, chaos ceased,
LECTURE XI. 187
and creation began in the reign of the divi-
nities of mind and love ; but the chaotic gods
still existed in the abyss, and the notion of
evoking them was the origin, the idea, of the
Greek necromancy.
These mysteries, like all the others, were
certainly in connection with either the Phceni-
cian or Egyptian systems, perhaps with both.
Hence the old Cabeiric powers were soon made
to answer to the corresponding popular divi-
nities ; and the lower triad was called by the
uninitiated, Ceres, Vulcan or Pluto, and Pro-
serpine, and the Cadmilos became Mercury.
It is not without ground that I direct your at-
tention, under these circumstances, to the pro-
bable derivation of some portion of this most
remarkable system from patriarchal tradition,
and to the connection of the Cabeiri with the
Kabbala.
The Samothracian mysteries continued in
celebrity till some time after the commence-
ment of the Christian era.* But they gra-
dually sank with the rest of the ancient system
of mythology, to which, in fact, they did not
properly belong. The peculiar doctrines, how-
ever, were preserved in the memories of the
initiated, and handed down by individuals.
No doubt they were propagated in Europe, and
* In the reign of Tiberius, A. D. 18,Germanicus attempted
to visit Samotluace ; — ilium in rccjressu sacra Samotkracuvi
visere nitentem obvii aquiluncs dcjmlcre. Tacit. Ann. II. c.
54. Ed.
188 COURSE OK LECTURES.
it is not improbable that Paracelsus received
many of his opinions from such persons, and I
think a connection may be traced between
him and Jacob Behmen.
The Asiatic supernatural beings are all pro-
duced by imagining an excessive magnitude,
or an excessive smallness combined with great
power ; and the broken associations, which
must have given rise to such conceptions, are
the sources of the interest which they inspire,
as exhibiting, through the working of the ima-
gination, the idea of power in the will. This
is delightfully exemplified in the Arabian
Nights' Entertainments, and indeed, more or
less, in other works of the same kind. In all
these there is the same activity of mind as in
dreaming, that is — an exertion of the fancy in
the combination and recombination of familiar
objects so as to produce novel and wonderful
imagery. To this must be added that these
tales cause no deep feeling of a moral kind —
whether of religion or love ; but an impulse of
motion is communicated to the mind without
excitement, and this is the reason of their
being so generally read and admired.
I think it not unlikely that the Milesian
Talcs contained the germs of many of those
now in the Arabian Nights; indeed it is
scarcely possible to doubt that the Greek em-
pire must have left deep impression on the
Persian intellect. So also many of the Roman
Catholic legends are taken from Apuleius, In
LECTURE XI. 189
that exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche, the
allegory is of no injury to the dramatic vivid-
ness of the tale. It is evidently a philosophic
attempt to parry Christianity with a quasi-Ph\-
tonic account of the fall and redemption of
the soul.
The charm of De Foe's works, especially of
Robinson Crusoe, is founded on the same prin-
ciple. It always interests, never agitates.
Crusoe himself is merely a representative of
humanity in general ; neither his intellectual
nor his moral qualities set him above the mid-
dle degree of mankind ; his only prominent
characteristic is the spirit of enterprise and
wandering, which is, nevertheless, a very com-
mon disposition. You will observe that all
that is wonderful in this tale is the result of
of external circumstances — of things which
fortune brings to Crusoe's hand.
NOTES ON ROBINSON CRUSOE.*
Vol. i. p. 17. But my ill fate pushed me on now with an
obstinacy that nothing could resist ; and though I had several
times loud calls from my reason, and my more composed
judgment to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know
not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret over-
ruling decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of our
own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we
rush upon it with our eyes open.
* These notes were written by Mr. C. in Mr. Gillman's
copy of Robinson Crusoe, in the summer of 1830. The refe-
rences in the text are to Major's edition, 1831. £d.
100 COURSE OF LECTURES.
The wise only possess ideas ; the greater
part of mankind are possessed by them. Ro-
binson Crusoe was not conscious of the master
impulse, even because it was his master, and
had taken, as he says, full possession of him.
When once the mind, in despite of the remon-
strating conscience, has abandoned its free
power to a haunting impulse or idea, then
whatever tends to give depth and vividness to
this idea or indefinite imagination, increases its
despotism, and in the same proportion renders
the reason and free will ineffectual. Now,
fearful calamities, sufferings, horrors, and hair-
breadth escapes will have this effect, far more
than even sensual pleasure and prosperous in-
cidents. Hence the evil consequences of sin
in such cases, instead of retracting or deterring
the sinner, goad him on to his destruction.
This is the moral of Shakspeare's Macbeth,
and the true solution of this paragraph, — not
any overruling decree of divine wrath, but the
tyranny of the sinner's own evil imagination,
which he has voluntarily chosen as his master.
Compare the contemptuous Swift with the
contemned De Foe, and how superior will the
latter be found ! But by what test? — Even by
this ; that the writer who makes me sympa-
thize with his presentations with the whole of
my being, is more estimable than lie who calls
forth, and appeals but to, a part of my being —
my sense of the ludicrous, for instance. De
Foe's excellence it is, to make me forget my
LECTURE XI. 191
specific class, character, and circumstances,
and to raise me while 1 read him, into the uni-
versal man.
P. 80. I smiled to myself at the sight of this money :
" O drug !" said I aloud, &c. However, iqjon second thoughts ^
I took it away ; and wrapping all this in a piece of canvass, Sec.
Worthy of Shakspeare ! — and yet the simple
semicolon after it, the instant passing on with-
out the least pause of reflex consciousness, is
more exquisite and masterlike than the touch
itself. A meaner writer, a Marmontel, would
have put an (!) after ' away,'' and have com-
menced a fresh paragraph. 30th July, 1830.
P. 111. And I must confess, my religious thankfulness to
God's providence began to abate too, upon the discovering
that all this was nothing but what was common ; though I
ought to have been as thankful for so strange and unforeseen
a providence, as if it had been miraculous.
To make men feel the truth of this is one
characteristic object of the miracles worked
by Moses ; — in them the providence is mira-
culous, the miracles providential.
P. 126. The growing up of the corn, as is hinted in my
Journal, had, at first, some little influence upon me, and be-
gan to affect me with seriousness, as long as I thought it had
something miraculous in it, &c.
By far the ablest vindication of miracles
which I have met with. It is indeed the true
ground, the proper purpose and intention of a
miracle.
192 COURSE OF LFXTURKS.
P. 141 . To think that this was all my own, that I was king
and lord of all tliis country indcfeasibly, &c.
By the by, what is the law of England res-
pecting this? Suppose I had discovered, or
been wrecked on an uninhabited island, would
it be mine or the king's ?
P. 223. I considered — that as I could not foresee what
the ends of divine wisdom might be in all this, so I was not
to dispute his sovereignty, who, as I was his creature, had an
undoubted right, by creation, to govern and dispose of me ab-
solutely as he thought fit, &c.
I could never understand this reasoning,
grounded on a complete misapprehension of
St. PauFs image of the potter, Rom. ix., or
rather I do fully understand the absurdity
of it. The susceptibility of pain and plea-
sure, of good and evil, constitutes a right in
every creature endowed therewith in relation
to every rational and moral being, — a fortiori,
therefore, to the Supreme Reason, to the abso-
lutely good Being. Remember Davenant's
verses ; —
Doth it our reason's mutinies appease
To say, the potter may his own clay mould
To every use, or in what shape he please,
At first not counsell'd, nor at last controU'd?
Power's hand can neither easy be, nor strict
To lifeless clay, which ease nor torment knows,
And where it cannot favour or afflict.
It neither justice or injustice shows.
But souls have life, and life eternal too:
Therefore, if doom'd before they can offend,
LECTURE XI. 193
It seems to show what heavenly power can do,
But does not in that deed that power commend.
Death of Astragon. st. 88, &c.
P. 232-3. And this I must observe with grief too, that the
discomposure of my mind had too great impressions also upon
the religious parts of my thoughts, — praying to God being
properly an act of the mind, not of the body.
As justly conceived as it is beautifully ex-
pressed. And a mighty motive for habitual
prayer ; for this cannot but greatly facilitate
the performance of rational prayer even in
moments of urgent distress.
P. 244. That this would justify the conduct of the Spa-
niards in all their barbarities practised in America.
De Foe was a true philanthropist, who had
risen above the antipathies of nationality ; but
he was evidently partial to the Spanish cha-
racter, which, however, it is not, I fear, pos-
sible to acquit of cruelty. Witness the Nether-
lands, the Inquisition, the late Guerilla war-
fare, &c.
P. 249. That I shall not discuss, and perhaps cannot ac-
count for ; but certainly they are a proof of the converse of
spirits, &c.
This reminds me of a conversation I once
over heard. " How a statement so injurious
to Mr. A. and so contrary to the truth, should
have been made to you by Mr. B. I do not
pretend to account for ; — only I know of my
own knowledge that B. is an inveterate liar,
and has long borne malice against Mr. A. ;
and I can prove that he has repeatedly dc-
VOL. I. o
194 COURSE OF LECTURES.
clared that in some way or other he would do
Mr. A. a mischief."
P. 254. The place I was in was a most delightful cavity
or grotto of its kind, as could be expected, though perfectly
dark ; the floor was dry and level, and had a sort of small
loose gravel on it, &c.
How accurate an observer of nature De
Foe was ! The reader will at once recognize
Professor Buckland's caves and the diluvial
gravel.
P. 308. I entered into a long discourse with him about
the devil, the original of him, his rebellion against God, his
enmity to man, the reason of it, his setting himself up in the
dark parts of the world to be worshipped instead of God, &c.
I presume that Milton's Paradise Lost must
have been bound up with one of Crusoe's
Bibles : otherwise I should be puzzled to know
where he found all this history of the Old
Gentleman. Not a word of it in the Bible
itself, I am quite sure. But to be serious. De
Foe did not reflect that all these difficulties are
attached to a mere fiction, or, at the best, an
allegory, supported by a few popular phrases
and figures of speech used incidentally or dra-
matically by the Evangelists, — and that the
existence of a personal, intelligent, evil being,
the counterpart and antagonist of God, is in
direct contradiction to the most express decla-
rations of Holy Writ. " Shall there he evil
in a city, and the Lord hath not done it ?"
Amos, iii. 6. " / make peace and create evil.''
Isa. xlv. 7. This is the deep mystery of the
abyss of God.
LECTURE XI. 195
Vol. ii. p. 3. I have often heard persons of good judgment
say, * * * that there is no such thing as a spirit appear-
ing, a ghost walking, and the like, &c.
I cannot conceive a better definition of Body
than " spirit appearing," or of a flesh-and-blood
man than a rational spirit apparent. But a
spirit 2^er se appearing is tantamount to a spirit
appearing without its appearances. And as for
ghosts, it is enough for a man of common sense
to observe, that a ghost and a shadow are con-
cluded in the same definition, that is, visibility
without tangibility.
P. 9. She was, in a few words the stay of all ray affairs,
the centre of all my enterprises, &c.
The stay of his affairs, the centre of his in-
terests, the regulator of his schemes and move-
ments, whom it soothed his pride to submit to,
and in complying Avith whose wishes the con-
scions sensation of his acting will increased the
impulse, while it disguised the coercion, of
duty ! — the clinging dependent, yet the strong
supporter — the comforter, the comfort, and the
soul's living home ! This is De Foe's compre-
hensive character of the wife, as she should be;
and, to the honour of womanhood be it spo-
ken, there are few neighbourhoods in which
one name at least might not be found for the
portrait.
The exquisite paragraphs in this and the
next page, in addition to others scattered,
though with a sparing hand, through his novels.
lOG (OURSE OF LECTURES.
afford sufficient proof that De Foe was a first-
rate master of periodic style ; but with sound
nidgment, and the fine tact of genius, he has
avoided it as adverse to, nay, incompatible
with, the every-day matter of fact realness,
which forms the charm and the character of all
his romances. The Robinson Crusoe is like the
vision of a happy night-mair, such as a denizen
of Elysium might be supposed to have from a
little excess in his nectar and ambrosia supper.
Our imagination is kept in full play, excited to
the highest ; yet all the while we are touching,
or touched by, common flesh and blood.
P. 67. The ungrateful creatures began to be as insolent
and troublesome as before, &c.
How should it be otherwise? They were
idle ; and when we will not sow corn, the
devil will be sure to sow weeds, night-shade,
henbane, and deviFs-bit.
P, 82. That hardened villain was so far from denying it,
that he said it was true, and him they would do it
still before they had done with them.
Observe when a man has once abandoned
himself to wickedness, he cannot stop, and
does not join the devils till he has become a
devil himself. Rebelling against his consci-
ence he becomes the slave of his own furious
will.
One excellence of De Foe, amongst many, is
his sacrifice of lesser interest to the greater
because more miiversal. Had he (as without
LECTURE XI. 197
any improbability he might have done) given
his Robinson Crusoe any of the turn for na-
tural history, which forms so striking and de-
lightful a feature in the equally uneducated
Dampier ; — had he made him find out qualities
and uses in the before (to him) unknown plants
of the island, discover, for instance, a substi-
tute for hops, or describe birds, &c. — many
delightful pages and incidents might have
enriched the book; — but then Crusoe would
have ceased to be the universal representative,
the person, for whom every reader could sub-
stitute himself. But now nothing is done,
thought, suffered, or desired, but what every
man can imagine himself doing, thinking, feel-
ing, or wishing for. Even so very easy a
problem as that of finding a substitute for ink,
is with exquisite judgment made to bafile Cru-
soe's inventive faculties. And in what he
does, he arrives at no excellence ; he does not
make basket work like Will Atkins ; the car-
pentering, tailoring, pottery, &c. are all just
Avhat will answer his purposes, and those are
confined to needs that all men have, and com-
forts that all men desire. Crusoe rises only
to the point to which all men may be made to
feel that they might, and that they ought to,
rise in religion, — to resignation, dependence
on, and thankful acknowledgment of, the
divine mercy and goodness.
198 COURSE OF LECTUUES.
Ill the education of children, love is first to
be instilled, and out of love obedience is to be
educed. Then impulse and power should be
given to the intellect, and the ends of a moral
being be exhibited. For this object thus much
is effected by works of imagination ; — that they
carry the mind out of self, and show the pos-
sible of the good and the great in the human
character. The height, whatever it may be,
of the imaginative standard will do no harm ;
we are commanded to imitate one who is
inimitable. We should address ourselves to
those faculties in a child's mind, which are
first awakened by nature, and consequently
first admit of cultivation, that is to say, the
memory and the imagination. The comparing
power, the judgment, is not at that age active,
and ought not to be forcibly excited, as is too
frequently and mistakenly done in the modern
systems of education, which can only lead to
selfish views, debtor and creditor principles
of virtue, and an inflated sense of merit. In
the imagination of man exist the seeds of
all moral and scientific improvement ; che-
mistry was first alchemy, and out of astrology
sprang astronomy. In the childhood of those
sciences the imagination opened a way, and
furnished materials, on which the ratioci-
native powers in a maturer state operated m ith
success. The imagination is the distinguish-
ing characteristic of man as a progressive
being ; and I repeat that it ought to be care-
LECTURE XI. 199
fully guided and strengthened as the indispen-
sable means and instrument of continued ame-
lioration and refinement. Men of genius and
goodness are generally restless in their minds
in the present, and this, because they are by a
law of their nature unremittingly regarding
themselves in the future, and contemplating
the possible of moral and intellectual advance
towards perfection. Thus we live by hope
and faith ; thus we are for the most part able
to realize what we will, and thus we accom-
plish the end of our being. The contempla-
tion of futurity inspires humility of soul in our
judgment of the present.
1 think the memory of children cannot, iii
reason, be too much stored with the objects
and facts of natural history. God opens the
images of nature, like the leaves of a book,
before the eyes of his creature, Man — and
teaches him all that is grand and beautiful in
the foaming cataract, the glassy lake, and the
floating mist.
The common modern novel, in which there
is no imagination, but a miserable struggle to
excite and gratify mere curiosity, ought, in my
judgment, to be wholly forbidden to children.
Novel-reading of this sort is especially injurious
to the growth of the imagination, the judg-
ment, and the morals, especially to the latter,
because it excites mere feelings without at the
same time ministering an impulse to action.
Women are good novelists, but indilierent
200 C OURSE OF LECTURES.
poets ; and this because they rarely or never
tlioroughly disthiguish between fact and fiction.
In the jumble of the two lies the secret of the
modern novel, which is the medium aliquid
between them, having just so much of fiction
as to obscure the fact, and so much of fact as
to render the fiction insipid. The perusal of a
fashionable lady's novel is to me very much
like looking at the scenery and decorations of
a theatre by broad daylight. The source of
the common fondness for novels of this sort
rests in that dislike of vacancy and that love of
sloth, which are inherent in the human mind ;
they afford excitement without producing re-
action. By reaction I mean an activity of the
intellectual faculties, which shows itself in
consequent reasoning and observation, and ori-
ginates action and conduct according to a prin-
ciple. Thus, the act of thinking presents two
sides for contemplation, — that of external caus-
ality, in which the train of thought may be
considered as the result of outward impressions,
of accidental combinations, of fancy, or the
associations of the memory, — and on the other
hand, that of internal causality, or of the
energy of the will on the mind itself. Thought,
therefore, might thus be regarded as passive or
active; and the same faculties may in a popular
sense be expressed as perception or obser-
vation, fancy or imagination, memory or recol-
lection.
201
LECTURE XII.
DREAMS — APPARITIONS — ALCHEMISTS — PER-
SONALITY OF THE EVIL BEING
BODILY IDENTITY.
It is a general, but, as it appears to me, a
mistaken opinion, that in our ordinary dreams
we judge the objects to be real. I say our
ordinary dreams ; — because as to the night-
mair the opinion is to a considerable extent
just. But the night-mair is not a mere dream,
but takes place when the waking state of the
brain is recommencing, and most often during
a rapid alternation, a twinkling, as it were, of
sleeping and waking ; — while either from pres-
sure on, or from some derangement in, the
stomach or other digestive organs acting on
the external skin (which is still in sympathy
with the stomach and bowels,) and benumbing
it, the sensations sent ujd to the brain by double
touch (that is, when my own hand touches my
side or breast,) are so faint as to be merely
equivalent to the sensation given by single
touch, as when another person's hand touches
me. The mind, therefore, which at all times,
with and without our distinct consciousness,
seeks for, and assumes, some outward cause
202 COURSE OF LECTURES.
Ibr every impression from without, and which
in sleep, by aid of the imaginative faculty,
converts its judgments respecting the cause
into a personal image as being the cause, —
the mind, I say, in this case, deceived by
past experience, attributes the painful sensa-
tion received to a correspondent agent, — an
assassin, for instance, stabbing at the side, or
a goblin sitting on the breast. Add too that
the impressions of the bed, curtains, room, &c.
received by the eyes in the half-moments of
their opening, blend with, and give vividness
and appropriate distance to, the dream image
which returns w hen they close again ; and
thus we unite the actual perceptions, or their
immediate reliques, with the phantoms of the
inward sense ; and in this manner so confound
the half-waking, half-sleeping, reasoning power,
that we actually do pass a positive judgment
on the reality of what we see and hear, though
often accompanied by doubt and self-question-
ing, which, as I have myself experienced, will
at times become strong enough, even before
we awake, to convince us that it is what it is —
namely, the night-mair.
In ordinary dreams we do not judge the
objects to be real ; — we simply do not deter-
mine that they are unreal. The sensations
which they seem to produce, are in truth the
causes and occasions of the images ; of which
there are two obvious proofs: first, that in
dreams the strangest and most sudden meta-
LECTURE XII. 203
morphoses do not create any sensation of sur-
prise: and the second, that as to the most
dreadful images, which during the dream were
accompanied with agonies of terror, we merely
awake, or turn round on the other side, and
off fly both image and agony, which would
be impossible if the sensations were produced
by the images. This has always appeared to
me an absolute demonstration of the true na-
ture of ghosts and apparitions — such I mean
of the tribe as were not pure inventions.
Fifty years ago, (and to this day in the ruder
parts of Great Britain and Ireland, in almost
every kitchen and in too many parlours it is
nearly the same,) you might meet persons who
would assure you in the most solemn manner,
so that you could not doubt their veracity
at least, that they had seen an apparition of
such and such a person, — in many cases, that
the apparition had spoken to them ; and they
would describe themselves as having been in
an agony of terror. They would tell you the
story in perfect health. Now take the other
class of facts, in which real ghosts have ap-
peared ; — I mean, where figures have been
dressed up for the purpose of passing for appa-
ritions : — in every instance I have known or
heard of (and I have collected very many)
the consequence has been either sudden death,
or fits, or idiocy, or mania, or a brain fever.
Whence comes the difference ? evidently from
this, — that in the one case the whole of the
204 COURSE OF LECTURES.
nervous system has been by slight internal
causes gradually and all together brought into
a certain state, the sensation of which is extra-
vagantly exaggerated during sleep, and of
which the images are the mere effects and
exponents, as the motions of the weather-
cock are of the wind ; — while in the other
case, the image rushing through the senses
upon a nervous system, wholly unprepared,
actually causes the sensation, which is some-
times j^owerful enough to produce a total
check, and almost always a lesion or inflamma-
tion. Who has not witnessed the difference in
shock when we have leaped down half-a-dozen
steps intentionally, and that of having missed
a single stair. How comparatively severe the
latter is ! The fact really is, as to apparitions,
that the terror produces the image instead of
the contrary ; for in omnem actum pe?'ceptioms
injiuit imagiuatio, as says Wolfe.
O, strange is the self-power of the imagina-
tion— when painful sensations have made it
their interpreter, or returning gladsomeness
or convalescence has made its chilled and
evanished figures and landscape bud, blossom,
and live in scarlet, green, and snowy white
(like the fire-screen inscribed with the nitrate
and muriate of cobalt,)— strange is the power to
represent the events and circumstances, even
to the anguish or the triumph of the quasi-cre-
dent soul, while the necessary conditions, the
only possible causes of such contingencies,
LECTURE XII. 205
are known to be in fact quite hopeless ; — yea,
when the pure mind would recoil from the
eve-lengthened shadow of an approaching
hope, as from a crime ; — and yet the eftect
shall have place, and substance, and living
energy, and, on a blue islet of ether, in a whole
sky of blackest cloudage, shine like a firstling
of creation !
To return, however to apparitions, and by
way of an amusing illustration of the nature
and value of even contemporary testimony
upon such subjects, I will present you with a
passage, literally translated by my friend, Mr.
South ey, from the well known work of Bernal
Dias, one of the companions of Cortes, in the
conquest of Mexico :
Here it is that Gomara says, that Francisco de Morla rode
forward on a dappled grey horse, before Cortes and the
cavalry came up, and that the apostle St. lago, or St. Peter,
was there. I must say that all our works and victories are
by the hand of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that in this battle
there were for each of us so many Indians, that they could
have covered us with handfuls of earth, if it had not been that
the great mercy of God helped us in every thing. And it
may be that he of whom Gomara speaks, was the glorious
Santiago or San Pedro, and I, as a sinner, was not worthy to
see him ; but he whom I saw there and knew, was Francisco
de Morla on a chesnut horse, who came up with Cortes.
And it seems to me that now while I am writing this, the
whole war is represented before these sinful eyes, just in the
manner as we then went through it. And though I, as an
unworthy sinner, might not deserve to see either of these glo-
rious apostles, there were in our company above four hundred
soldiers, and Cortes, and many other knights ; and it would
have been talked of and testified, and they would have made
'200 COURSE OF LECTURES.
a churcli, wlien they peopled the town, which would have
been called Santiago de la Vittoria, or San Pedro de la
Vittoria, as it is now called, Santa Maria de la Vittoria. And
if it was, as Gomara says, bad Christians must we have been,
when our Lord God sent us his holy apostles, not to acknow-
ledge his great mercy, and venerate his church daily. And
would to God, it had been, as the Chronicler says ! — but till
I read his Chronicle, I never heard such a thing from any of
the conquerors who were there.
Now, what if the odd accident of such a
man as Bernal Dias' writing a history had not
taken place ! Gomara's account, the account of
a contemporary, which yet must have been
read by scores who were present, would
have remained uncontradicted. I remember
the story of a man, whom the devil met and
talked with, but left at a particular lane ; — the
man followed him with his eyes, and when the
devil got to the turning or bend of the lane, he
vanished ! The devil was upon this occasion
drest in a blue coat, plush waistcoat, leather
breeches and boots, and talked and looked just
like a common man, except as to a particular
lock of hair which he had. " And how do you
know then that it was the devil?" — " How do
I know," replied the fellow, — " why, if it had
not been the devil, being drest as he was, and
looking as he did, why should I have been
sore stricken with fright, when I first saw him ?
and why should I be in such a tremble all the
while he talked? And, moreover, he had a
particular sort of a kind of a lock, and when
I groaned and said, upon every question he
asked me. Lord have mercy upon me ! or,
LECTURE XII. 207
Christ have mercy upon me! it was plain
enough that he did not like it, and so he left
nie !"— The man was quite sober when he re-
lated this story ; but as it happened to him on
his return from market, it is probable that he
was then muddled. As for myself, I was
actually seen in Newgate in the winter of
1798 . — the person who saw me there, said he
had asked my name of Mr. A. B. a known ac-
quaintance of mine, who told him that it was
young Coleridge, who had married the eldest
j\Iiss . " Will you go to Newgate, Sir ?"
said my friend ; " for I assure yon that Mr. C.
is now in Germany." " Very willingly," re-
plied the other, and away they went to New-
gate, and sent for A. B. " Coleridge," cried
he, " in Newgate ! God forbid !" I said, '* young
Col who married the eldest Miss ."
The names were something similar. And yet
this person had himself really seen me at one
of my lectures.
I remember, upon the occasion of my inha-
ling the nitrous oxide at the Royal Institution,
about five minutes afterwards, a gentleman
came from the other side of the theatre and
said to me, — " Was it not ravishingly delight-
ful, Sir?" — " It was highly pleasurable, no
doubt." — " Was it not very like sweet music ?"
— " I cannot say I perceived any analogy to
it." — " Did you not say it was very like Mrs.
Billington singing by your ear?" — " No, Sir,
I said that while I was breathing the gas,
there was a singing in my ears."
208 COURSE OF LECTURES.
To return, however, to dreams, I not only
believe, for the reasons given, but have more
than once actually experienced that the most
fearful forms, when produced simply by asso-
ciation, instead of causing fear, operate no
other effect than the same would do if they
had passed through my mind as thoughts,
while I was composing a faery tale ; the
whole depending on the wise and gracious law
in our nature, that the actual bodily sensations,
called forth according to the law of association
by thoughts and images of the mind, never
greatly transcend the limits of pleasurable
feeling in a tolerably healthy frame, unless
where an act of the judgment supervenes and
interprets them as purporting instant danger
to ourselves.
* There have been very strange and incredible
stories told of and by the alchemists. Per-
haps in some of them there may have been a
specific form of mania, originating in the con-
stant intension of the mind on an imaginary
end, associated with an immense variety of
means, all of them substances not familiar to
men in general, and in forms strange and un-
like to those of ordinary nature. Sometimes,
it seems as if the alchemists wrote like the
Pythagoreans on music, imagining a meta-
physical and inaudible music as the basis of
the audible. It is clear that by sulphur they
* From Mr. Green's note. Ed.
LECTUKE XII. 209
meant the solar rays or light, and by mercury
the principle of ponderability, so that their
theory was the same with that of the Hera-
clitic physics, or the modern German Natnr-
phUosophie, which deduces all things from light
and gravitation, each being bipolar ; gravi-
tation =north and south, or attraction and re-
pulsion ; light=east and west, or contraction
and dilation ; and gold being the tetrad, or in-
terpenetration of both, as water was the dyad
of light, and iron the dyad of gravitation.
It is, probably, unjust to accuse the alche-
mists generally of dabbling with attempts at
maffic in the common sense of the term. The
supposed exercise of magical power always
involved some moral guilt, directly or indi-
rectly, as in stealing a piece of meat to lay on
warts, touching humours with the hand of an
executed person, &c. Rites of this sort and
other practices of sorcery have always been
regarded with trembling abhorrence by all
luitions, even the most ignorant, as by the
Africans, the Hudson's Bay people and others.
The alchemists were, no doubt, often consi-
dered as dealers in art magic, and many of
them were not unwilling that such a belief
should be prevalent; and the more earnest
among them evidently looked at their asso-
ciation of substances, fumigations, and other
chemical operations as merely ceremonial, and
seem, therefore, to have had a deeper meaning,
that of evoking a latent power. Tt would be
VOL, I. V
210 COURSK OF LECTURES.
])rofitable to make a collection of all the cases
of cures by magical charms and incantations ;
much useful information might, probably, be
derived from it ; for it is to be observed that
such rites are the form in which medical
knowledge would be preserved amongst a bar-
barous and ignorant people.
Note.* June, 1827.
The apocryphal book of Tobit consists of
a very simple, but beautiful and interesting,
family-memoir, into which some later Jewish
poet or fabulist of Alexandria wove the ridicu-
lous and frigid machinery, borrowed from the
popular superstitions of the Greeks (though,
probably, of Egyptian origin), and accommo-
dated, clumsily enough, to the purer mono-
theism of the Mosaic law. The Rape of the
Lock is another instance of a simple tale thus
enlarged at a later period, though in this case
by the same author, and with a very different
result. Now unless Mr. Hillhouse is Romanist
enough to receive this nursery-tale garnish of
a domestic incident as grave history and holy
writ, (for which, even from learned Roman
Catholics, he would gain more credit as a very
obedient child of the Church than as a biblical
critic), he will find it no easy matter to sup-
port this assertion of his by the passages of
Scripture here referred to, consistently with
* Written in a copy of Mr. Hillhouse's Hadad. Ed.
LECTURE XII. 2] 1
any sane interpretation of their import and
purpose.
I. The Fallen Spirits.
This is the mythological form, or, if yon
will, the symbolical representation, of a pro-
found idea necessary as the pr(e-stippositum of
the Christian scheme, or a postulate of reason,
indispensable, if we would render the existence
of a world of finites compatible with the as-
sumption of a super-mundane God, not one
with the world. In short, this idea is the con-
dition under which alone the reason of man
can retain the doctrine of an infinite and abso-
lute Being, and yet keep clear of pantheism
as exhibited by Benedict Spinosa.
II. The Egyptian Magicians.
This whole narrative is probably a relic of
the old diplomatic lingua- arcana, or state-sym-
bolique — in which the prediction of events is
expressed as the immediate causing of them.
Thus the prophet is said to destroy the city,
the destruction of which he predicts. The
word which our version renders by '' enchant-
ments" signifies " flames or burnings," by
which it is probable that the Egyptians were
able to deceive the spectators, and substitute
serpents for staves. See Parkhurst in voce.
And with regard to the possessions in the
Gospels, bear in mind first of all, that spirits
are not necessarily souls or Is {ich-heiten or
self- consciousnesses), and that the most ludicrous
absurdities would follow from takinix them as
212 COURSK OF LECTURES.
sucli in the Gospel instances ; and secondly,
that the Evangelist, who lias recorded the
most of these incidents, himself speaks of one
of these possessed persons as a lunatic ; —
((TfXj/vto^srHi — i^i]X^£v air avrov to ^at/uovtov. Matt.
xvii. 15. 18.) while St. John names them not at
all, but seems to include them under the descrip-
tion of diseased or deranged persons. That
madness may result from spiritual causes, and
not only or principally from physical ailments,
may readily be admitted. Is not our will
itself a spiritual power? Is it not the spirit of
the man? The mind of a rational and respon-
sible being (that is, of a free- agent) is a spirit,
though it does not follow that all spirits are
minds. Who shall dare determine what spiri-
tual influences may not arise out of the col-
lective evil wills of wicked men ? Even the
bestial life, sinless in animals and their nature,
may when awakened in the man and by his
own act admitted into his will, become a spiri-
tual influence. He receives a nature into his
will, which by this very act becomes a corrupt
w ill ; and vice versa, this will becomes his
nature, and thus a corrupt nature. This may
be conceded ; and this is all that the recorded
words of our Saviour absolutely require in
order to receive an appropriate sense ; but
this is altogether different from making spirits
to be devils, and devils self-conscious indi-
viduals.
LECTURE Xll. 213
Notes.* March, 1824.
A Christian's conflicts and conquests, p. 459. By the
devi! we are to understand that apostate spirit which fell from
God, and is always designing to hale down others from God
also. The Old Dragon (mentioned in the Revelation) with
his tail drew down the third part of the stars of heaven and
cast them to the earth.
How much is it to be regretted, that so
enlightened and able a divine as Smith, had
not philosophically and scripturally enucleated
this so difficult yet important question, — res-
pecting the personal existence of the evil prin-
ciple ; that is, whether as to Beiov of paganism
is o deog in Christianity, so the to noviipov is to be
o TTovrjpog, — and whether this is an express
doctrine of Christ, and not merely a Jewish
dogma left undisturbed to fade away under the
increasing light of the Gospel, instead of as-
suming the former, and confirming the position
by a verse from a poetic tissue of visual sym-
bols,— a verse alien from the subject, and by
which the Apocalypt enigmatized the Neronian
persecutions and the apostacy through fear
occasioned by it in a large number of converts.
lb. p. 463. When we say, the devil is continually busy
with us, I mean not only some apostate spirit as one parti-
cular being, but that spirit of apostacy which is lodged in all
* Written in a copy of" Select Discourses by John Smith,
of Queen's College, Cambridge, 1660," and communicated
by the Rev. Edward Coleridge, Ed.
214 COURSE OF LECTURES.
men's natures ; and this may seem particularly to be aimed at
in this place, if we observe the context: — as the scripture
speaks of Christ not only as a particular person, but as a
divine principle in holy souls.
Indeed the devil is not only the name of one particular thing,
but a nature.
May I not venture to suspect that this was
Smith's own belief and judgment? and that
his conversion of the Satan, that is, circuitor, or
minister of police (what our Sterne calls the
accusing angel) in the prologue to Job into the
devil was a mere condescension to the prevail-
ing prejudice? Here, however, he speaks Uke
himself, and like a true religious philosopher,
who felt that the personality of evil spirits
is a trifling question, compared with the per-
sonality of the evil principle. This is indeed
most momentous.
NOTE ON A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF HENRY
EARL OF MORLAND. 20th JuUC, 1827.
The defect of this and all similar theories
that I am acquainted with, or rather, let me
say, the desideratum, is the neglect of a pre-
vious definition of the term " body." What
do you mean by it? The immediate grounds
of a man's size, visibility, tangibility, &C'? — But
these are in a continual flux even as a column
of smoke. The material particles of carbon,
nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, lime, phosphorus.
LECTURE XII. 215
sulphur, soda, iron, that constitute the ponder-
able organism in May, 1827, at the moment of
Pollio's death in his 70th year, have no better
claim to be called his " body," than the nume-
rical particles of the same names that consti-
tuted the ponderable mass in May, 1787, in
Pollio's prime of manhood in his 30th year ; —
the latter no less than the former go into the
grave, that is, suffer dissolution, the one in a
series, the other simultaneously. The result
to the particles is precisely the same in both,
and of both therefore we must say with holy
Paul, — " Thou fool! that ivhich thou soivest,
thou soivest not that hody that shall be,' &c.
Neither this nor that is the body that abideth.
Abideth, I say ; for that which riseth again
must have remained, though perhaps in an
inert state. — It is not dead, but sleepeth ; —
that is, it is not dissolved any more than the
exterior or phenomenal organism appears to
us dissolved when it lieth in apparent inacti-
vity during our sleep.
Sound reasoning this, to the best of my
judgment, as far as it goes. But how are we
to explain the reaction of this fluxional body on
the animal? In each moment the particles by
the informing force of the living principle con-
stitute an organ not only of motion and sense,
but of consciousness. The organ plays on
the organist. How is this conceivable ? The
solution requires a depth, stillness, and sub-
tlety of spirit not only for its discovery, but
21G COURSE OF LF.CTUUES.
even for the understanding of it when disco-
vered, and in the most appropriate words
enunciated. I can merely give a hint. The
particles themselves must have an interior and
gravitative being, and the multeity must be a
removable or at least suspensible accident.
LECTURE XIII.
ON POESY OR AR'l'.
Man communicates by articulation of sounds,
and paramountly by the memory in the ear ;
nature by the impression of bounds and sur-
faces on the eye, and through the eye it gives
significance and appropriation, and thus the
conditions of memory, or the capability of be-
ing remembered, to sounds, smells, &c. Now
Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture,
architecture and music, is the mediatress be-
tween, and reconciler of, nature and man. It
is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature,
of infusing the thoughts and passions of man
into every thing whicli is the object of his
contemplation ; colour, form, motion and sound
are the elements which it combines, and it
stamps them into unity in the mould of a
moral idea.
The primary art is writing ; — primary, if we
regard the purpose abstracted from the diffe-
rent modes of realizing it, those steps of pro-
LECTURE XIII. 217
gression of which the instances are still visible
in the lower degrees of civilization. First,
there is mere gesticulation ; then rosaries or
wampim ; then picture-language ; then hie-
roglyphics, and finally alphabetic letters.
These all consist of a translation of man into
nature, of a substitution of the visible for the
audible.
The so called music of savage tribes as little
deserves the name of art for the understanding
as the ear warrants it for music. Its lowest
state is a mere expression of passion by sounds
which the passion itself necessitates;— the
highest amounts to no more than a voluntary
reproduction of these sounds in the absence of
the occasioning causes, so as to give the plea-
sure of contrast, — for example, by the various
outcries of battle in the song of security and
triumph. Poetry also is purely human ; for
all its materials are from the mind, and all its
products are for the mind. But it is the apo-
theosis of the former state, in which by excite-
ment of the associative power passion itself
imitates order, and the order resulting pro-
duces a pleasurable passion, and thus it elevates
the mind by making its feelings the object of
its reflexion. So likewise, whilst it recalls the
sights and sounds that had accompanied the
occasions of the original passions, poetry im-
pregnates them with an interest not their own
by means of the passions, and yet tempers the
passion by the calming power which all dis-
'218 COURSE OF LECTUUES.
tinct images exert on the human soul. In this
way poetry is the preparation for art, inasmuch
as it avails itself of the forms of nature to re-
call, to express, and to modify the thoughts
and feelings of the mind. Still, however,
poetry can only act through the intervention
of articulate speech, which is so peculiarly
human, that in all languages it constitutes the
ordinary phrase by which man and nature are
contradistinguished. It is the original force
of the word ' brute,' and even ' mute,' and
' dumb' do not convey the absence of sound,
but the absence of articulated sounds.
As soon as the human mind is intelligibly
addressed by an outward image exclusively of
articulate speech, so soon does art commence.
But please to observe that I have laid parti-
cular stress on the words ' human mind,' — mean-
ing to exclude thereby all results common to
man and all other sentient creatures, and con-
sequently confining myself to the effect pro-
duced by the congruity of the animal impres-
sion with the reflective powers of the mind ;
so that not the thing presented, but that which
is re-presented by the thing shall be the source
of the pleasure. In this sense nature itself is
to a religious observer the art of God ; and for
the same cause art itself might be defined as
of a middle quality between a thought and a
thing, or as I said before, the union and recon-
ciliation of that which is nature with that
which is exclusively human. It is the figured
LECTUUE XIII. 2 1 9
language of thought, and is distinguished from
nature by the unity of all the parts in one
thought or idea. Hence nature itself would
give us the impression of a work of art if we
could see the thought which is present at once
in the whole and in every part ; and a work of
art will be just in proportion as it adequately
conveys the thought, and rich in proportion
to the variety of parts which it holds in unity.
If, therefore, the term ' mute' be taken as
opposed not to sound but to articulate speech,
the old definition of painting will in fact be
the true and best definition of the Fine Arts in
general, that is, muta poesis, mute poesy, and so
of course poesy. And, as all languages perfect
themselves by a gradual process of desyn-
onymizing words originally equivalent, I have
cherished the wish to use the word ' poesy' as
the generic or common term, and to distinguish
that species of poesy which is not 7nuta poesis
by its usual name ' poetry ;' while of all the
other species which collectively form the Fine
Arts, there would remain this as the common
definition,— that they all, like poetry, are to
express intellectual purposes, thoughts, con-
ceptions, and sentiments which have their
origin in the human mind, — not, however, as
poetry does, by means of articulate speech,
but as nature or the divine art does, by form,
colour, magnitude, proportion, or by sound, that
is, silently or musically.
Well ! it may be said — but who has ever
220 couKsE or lectures.
thought otherwise? We all know that art is
the iniitatress of nature. And, doubtless, the
truths which I hope to convey would be barren
truisms, if all men meant the same by the
words ' imitate' and ' nature.' But it would
be flattering mankind at large, to presume
that such is the fact. First, to imitate. The
impression on the wax is not an imitation, but
a copy, of the seal ; the seal itself is an imi-
tation. But, further, in order to form a philo-
sophic conception, we must seek for the kind,
as the heat in ice, invisible light, &c. whilst,
for practical purposes, we must have reference
to the degree. It is sufficient that philoso-
phically we understand that in all imitation
two elements must coexist, and not only co-
exist, but must be perceived as coexisting.
These two constituent elements are likeness
and unlikeness, or sameness and difference,
and in all genuine creations of art there must
be a union of these disparates. The artist
may take his point of view where he pleases,
provided that the desired effect be perceptibly
produced, — that there be likeness in the diffe-
rence, difference in the likeness, and a recon-
cilement of both in one. If there be likeness
to nature without any check of difference, the
result is disgusting, and the more complete the
delusion, the more loathsome the effect. Why
are such simulations of nature, as wax-work
figures of men and women, so disagreeable?
Because, not finding the motion and the life
LECTURE XIII. 221
which we expected, we are shocked as by a
falsehood, every circumstance of detail, which
before induced us to be interested, making the
distance from truth more palpable^ You set
out with a supposed reality and are disap-
pointed and disgusted with the deception ;
whilst, in respect to a work of genuine imita-
tion, you begin with an acknowledged total
difference, and then every touch of nature
gives you the pleasure of an approximation to
truth. The fundamental principle of all this
is undoubtedly the horror of falsehood and the
a/
love of truth inherent in the human breast.
The Greek tragic dance rested on these prin-
ciples, and I can deeply symi3athize in imagi-
nation with the Greeks in this favourite part
of their theatrical exhibitions, when I call to
mind the pleasure 1 felt in beholding the combat
of the Horatii and Curiatii most exquisitely
danced in Italy to the music of Cimarosa.
Secondly, as to nature. We must imitate
nature ! yes, but what in nature, — all and every
thing ? No, the beautiful in nature. And
what then is the beautiful ? What is beauty ?
It is, in the abstract, the unity of the manifold,
the coalescence of the diverse ; in the concrete,
it is the union of the shapely (formosum) with
the vital. In the dead organic it depends on
regularity of form, the first and lowest species
of which is the triangle with all its modifica-
tions, as in crystals, architecture, &c. ; in the
living organic it is not mere regularity of form,
222 COURSE OF LECTURES.
which would jnoduce a sense of formality ; nei-
ther is it subservient to any thing beside itself.
It may be present in a disagreeable object, in
which the proportion of the parts constitutes a
whole ; it docs not arise from association, as
the agreeable does, but sometimes lies in the
rupture of association ; it is not different to
different individuals and nations, as has been
said, nor is it connected with the ideas of the
good, or the fit, or the useful. The sense of
beauty is intuitive, and beauty itself is all that
inspires pleasure without, and aloof from, and
even contrarily to, interest.
If the artist copies the mere nature, the
natura natiirata, what idle rivalry ? If he pro-
ceeds only from a given form, which is sup-
posed to answer to the notion of beauty, what
an emptiness, what an unreality there always
is in his productions, as in Cipriani's pictures !
Believe me, you must master the essence, the
natura natiwans, which presupposes a bond
between nature in the higher sense and the
soul of man.
The wisdom in nature is distinguished from
that in man by the co-instantaneity of the
plan and the execution ; the thought and the
product are one, or are given at once ; but
there is no reflex act, and hence there is no
moral responsibility. In man there is reflexion,
freedom, and choice ; he is, therefore, the head
of the visible creation. In the objects of na-
ture are presented, as in a mirror, all the pos-
LECTURE XIII. 223
sible elements, steps, and processes of intellect
antecedent to consciousness, and therefore to
the full development of the intelligential act ;
and man's mind is the very focus of all the
rays of intellect which are scattered through-
out the images of nature. Now so to place
these images, totalized, and fitted to the limits
of the human mind, as to elicit from, and to
superinduce upon, the forms themselves the
moral reflexions to which they approximate,
to make the external internal, the internal
external, to make nature thought, and thought
nature, — this is the mystery of genius in the
Fine Arts. Dare I add that the genius must
act on the feeling, that body is but a striving
to become mind, — that it is mind in its es-
sence !
In every work of art there is a reconcile-
ment of the external with the internal ; the
conscious is so impressed on the vmconscious
as to appear in it ; as compare mere letters in-
scribed on a tomb with figures themselves con-
stituting the tomb. He who combines the two
is the man of genius ; and for that reason he
must partake of both. Hence there is in
genius itself an unconscious activity ; nay,
that is the genius in the man of genius. And
this is the true exposition of the rule that the
artist must first eloign himself from nature in
order to return to her with full effect. Why
this? Because if he were to begin by mere
painful copying, he woidd produce masks only,
224 COURSE OF LECTURES.
not forms breathing life. He must out of his
own mind create forms according to the severe
h^^A s of the intellect, in order to generate in
himself that co-ordination of freedom and law,
that involution of obedience in the prescript,
and of the prescript in the impulse to obey,
which assimilates him to nature, and enables
him to luiderstand her. He merely absents
himself for a season from her, that his own
Sjjirit, which has the same ground w ith nature,
may learn her unspoken language in its main
radicals, before he approaches to her endless
compositions of them. Yes, not to acquire
cold notions — lifeless technical rules — but living
and life-producing ideas, which shall contain
their own evidence, the certainty that they
are essentially one with the germinal causes
in nature — his consciousness being the focus
and miiTor of both, — for this does the artist for
a time abandon the external real m order to
return to it with a complete sympathy with its
internal and actual. For of all we see, hear,
feel and touch the substance is and must be in
ourselves ; and therefore there is no alternative
in reason between the dreary (and thank hea-
ven ! almost impossible) belief that every thing
around us is but a phantom, or that the life
which is in us is in them likewise ; and that to
know is to resemble, when v.e speak of objects
out of ourselves, even as within ourselves to
learn is, according to Plato, only to recollect; —
the only effective answer to which, that I have
LECTURE XIII. 225
been fortunate to meet with, is that which
Pope has consecrated for future use in theline —
And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin !
The artist must imitate that which is within
the thing, that which is active through form
and figure, and discourses to us by symbols —
the Natur-geist, or spirit of nature, as we uncon-
sciously imitate those whom we love ; for so
only can he hope to produce any work truly
natural in the object and truly human in the
effect. The idea which puts the form together
cannot itself be the form. It is above form,
and is its essence, the universal in the indivi-
dual, or the individuality itself, — the glance and
the exponent of the indwelling power.
Each thing that lives has its moment of
self-exposition, and so has each period of each
thing, if we remove the disturbing forces of
accident. To do this is the business of ideal
art, whether in images of childhood, youth, or
age, in man or in woman. Hence a good
portrait is the abstract of the personal ; it is
not the likeness for actual comparison, but for
recollection. This explains why the likeness
of a very good portrait is not always recog-
nized ; because some persons never abstract,
and amongst these aie especially to be num-
bered the near relations and friends of the
subject, in consequence of the constant pres-
sure and check exercised on their minds by
the actual presence of the original. And each
VOL. I. Q
226 COURSE OF LECTURES.
thing that only appears to live has also its pos-
sible position of relation to life, as natnre her-
self testifies, who, where she cannot be, pro-
phecies her being in the crystallized metal,
or the inhaling plant.
The charm, the indispensable requisite, of
sculpture is unity of effect. But painting-
rests in a material remoter from nature, and
its compass is therefore greater. Light and
shade give external, as well internal, being
even with all its accidents, whilst sculpture is
confined to the latter. And here I may ob-
serve that the subjects chosen for works of art,
whether in sculpture or painting, should be
such as really are capable of being expressed
and conveyed within the limits of those arts.
Moreover they ought to be such as will affect
the spectator by their truth, their beauty, or
their sublimity, and therefore they may be
addressed to the judgment, the senses, or the
reason. The peculiarity of the impression
which they may make, may be derived either
from colour and form, or from proportion and
fitness, or from the excitement of the moral
feelings ; or all these may be combined. Such
works as do combine these sources of effect
must have the preference in dignity.
Imitation of the antique may be too exclu-
sive, and may produce an injurious effect on
modern sculpture; — 1st, generally, because
such an imitation cannot fail to have a ten-
dency to keep the attention fixed on externals
LECTURE XIII. 227
rather than on the thought within ; — 2ndly,
because, accordingly, it leads the artist to rest
satisfied with that which is always imperfect,
namely, bodily form, and circumscribes his
views of mental expression to the ideas of
power and grandeur only ; — 3rdly, because it
induces an effort to combine together two in-
congruous things, that is to say, modern feel-
ings in antique forms; — 4thly, because it
speaks in a language, as it were, learned and
dead, the tones of which, being unfamiliar,
leave the common spectator cold and unim-
pressed ; — and lastly, because it necessarily
causes a neglect of thoughts, emotions and
images of profounder interest and more exalted
dignity, as motherly, sisterly, and brotherly
love, piety, devotion, the divine become hu-
man,— the Virgin, the Apostle, the Christ.
The artist's principle in the statue of a great
man should be the illustration of departed
merit; and I cannot but think that a skilful
adoption of modern habiliments would, in
many instances, give a variety and force of
effect which a bigotted adherence to Greek or
Roman costume precludes. It is, I believe,
from artists finding Greek models unfit for
several important modern purposes, that we
see so many allegorical figures on monuments
and elsewhere. Painting was, as it were, a
new art, and being unshackled by old models
it chose its own subjects, and took an eagle's
flight. And a new field seems opened for mo-
228 COURSE OF LECTURES.
(lern sculpture in the syuibolical expression of
the ends of life, as in Guy's monument, Chant-
rey's children in Worcester Cathedral, &c.
Architecture exhibits the greatest extent of
the difierence from nature which may exist in
works of art. It involves all the powers of
design, and is sculpture and painting inclu-
sively. It shews the greatness of man, and
should at the same time teach him humility.
Music is the most entirely human of the
tine arts, and has the fewest analoga in nature.
Its first delightfulness is simple accordance
with the ear ; but it is an associated thing, and
recalls the deep emotions of the past with an
intellectual sense of proportion. Every human
feeling is greater and larger than the exciting
cause, — a proof, I think, that man is designed
for a higher state of existence ; and this is
deeply implied in music in which there is
always something more and beyond the im-
mediate expression.
With regard to works in all the branches
of the fine arts, I may remark that the plea-
sure arising from novelty must of course be
allowed its due place and weight. This plea-
sure consists in the identity of two opposite
elements, that is to say — sameness and variety.
If in the midst of the variety there be not
some fixed object for the attention, the un-
ceasing succession of the variety will prevent
the mind from observing the difference of the
LECTUUi-: xiii. 229
individual objects; and the only thing re-
mainins: will be the succession, which will
then produce precisely the same effect as
sameness. This we experience when we let
the trees or hedges pass before the fixed eye
during a rapid movement in a carriage, or on
the other hand, when we suffer a file of soldiers
or ranks of men in procession to go on before
us without resting the eye on any one in par-
ticular. In order to derive pleasure from the
occupation of the mind, the principle of unity
must always be present, so that in the midst
of the multeity the centripetal force be never
suspended, nor the sense be fatigued by the
predominance of the centrifugal force. This
unity in multeity I have elsewhere stated as
the principle of beauty. It is equally the source
of pleasure in variety, and in fact a higher term
including both. What is the seclusive or dis-
tinguishing term between them ?
Remember that there is a difference between
form as proceeding, and shape as superin-
duced ; — the latter is either the death or the
imprisonment of the thing; — the former is its
self-witnessing and self-effected sphere of
agency. Art would or should be the abridg-
ment of nature. Now the fulness of nature is
without character, as water is purest when
without taste, smell, or colour; but this is the
highest, the apex only, — it is not the whole.
The object of art is to give the whole ad
230 COURSE Ol' LE('TUUi:S.
Iiominem ; hence each step of nature hath its
ideal, and hence the possibility of a climax up
to the perfect form of a harmonized chaos.
To the idea of life victory or strife is neces-
sary ; as virtue consists not simply in the ab-
sence of vices, but in the overcoming of them.
So it is in beauty. The sight of what is subor-
dinated and conquered heightens the strength
and the pleasure ; and this should be exhibited
by the artist either inclusively in his figure, or
else out of it and beside it to act by way of
supplement and contrast. And with a view
to this, remark the seeming identity of body
and mind in infants, and thence the loveliness
of the former ; the commencing separation in
boyhood, and the struggle of equilibrium in
youth : thence onward the body is first simply
indifferent ; then demanding the translucency
of the mind not to be worse than indifferent ;
and finally all that presents the body as body
becoming almost of an excremental nature.
LECTURE XIV.
ON STYLE.
I HAVE, I believe, formerly observed with re-
gard to the character of the governments of
the East, that their tendency was despotic,
that is, towards unity ; whilst that of the Greek
LECTURE XIV. 231
governments, on the other hand, leaned to the
manifold and the popular, the unity in them
being purely ideal, namely of all as an identi-
fication of the whole. In the northern or Go-
thic nations the aim and purpose of the go-
vernment were the preservation of the rights
and interests of the individual in conjunction
with those of the whole. The individual in-
terest was sacred. In the character and ten-
dency of the Greek and Gothic languages
there is precisely the same relative difference.
In Greek the sentences are long, and the struc-
ture architectural, so that each part or clause
is insignificant when compared with the whole.
The result is every thing, the steps and pro-
cesses nothing. But in the Gothic and, gene-
rally, in what we call the modern, languages,
the structure is short, simple, and complete in
each part, and the connexion of the parts with
the sum total of the discourse is maintained by
the sequency of the logic, or the community of
feelings excited between the writer and his
readers. As an instance equally delightful
and complete, of what may be called the Go-
thic structure as contra-distinguished from that
of the Greeks, let me cite a part of our famous
Chaucer's character of a parish priest as he
should be. Can it ever be quoted too often ?
A good man ther was of religioun
That was a poure Parsone of a toun,
But riche he was of holy thought and werk ;
He was also a Icrned man, a clerk,
232 COURSE OF LECTURES.
That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche ;
His parishensi devoutly wolde he teche ;
Benigne he was, and wonder^ diligent,
And in adversite ful patient,
And swiche'' he was ypreved"* often sithes*;
Ful loth were him to cursen for his tithes,
But rather wolde he yeven^ out of doute
Unto his poure parishens aboute
Of his offring, and eke of his substance ;
He coude in litel thing have suffisance :
Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder.
But he ne^ left nought for no rain ne« thonder,
In sikenesse and in mischief to visite
The ferrest9 in his parish moche and lite*"
Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf :
This noble ensample to his shepe he yaf,*'
That first he wrought, and afterward he taught.
Out of the gospel he the wordes caught,
And this figure he added yet thereto,
That if gold ruste, what should iren do.
He sette not his benefice to hire,
And lette'2 his shepe accombred i"* in the mire.
And ran unto London unto Seint Poules,
To seken him a chanterie for soules.
Or with a brotherhede to be withold,
But dwelt at home, and kepte wel his fold.
So that the wolf ne made it not miscarie :
He was a shepherd and no mercenarie;
And though he holy were and vertuous,
He was to sinful men not dispitous,!^
Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne,i5
But in his teching discrete and benigne,
To drawen folk to heven with fairenesse,
By good ensample was his besinesse;
A Parishioners. ~ Wondrous. ■'' Such.
4 Proved. ^ Times. ^ Give or have given.
7 Not. ^ Nor. 9 Farthest.
10 Great and small, i* Gave. ^~ Left.
13 Encumbered. '* Despiteous. '^ Proud.
LECTURE XIV. 233
But it were any persona obstinat,
What so he were of high or low estat,
Him wolde he snibben^^ sharply for the nones:
A better preest I trowe that no wher non is ;
He waited after no ponipe ne reverence,
He maked him no spiced conscience,
But Cristes love and his apostles' twelve
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve.*
Such change as really took place in the
style of our literature after Chaucer's time is
with difficulty perceptible, on account of the
dearth of writers, during the civil wars of the
15th century. But the transition was not very
great ; and accordingly we find in Latimer
and our other venerable autliors about the time
of Edward VI. as in Luther, the general cha-
racteristics of the earliest manner; — that is,
every part popular, and the discourse addressed
to all degrees of intellect ; — the sentences short,
the tone vehement, and the connexion of the
whole produced by honesty and singleness of
purpose, intensity of passion, and pervading
importance of the subject.
Another and a very different species of style
is that which was derived from, and founded
on, the admiration and cultivation of the clas-
sical writers, and which was more exclusively
addressed to the learned class in society. I
have previously mentioned Boccaccio as the
original Italian introducer of this manner, and
the great models of it in English are Hooker,
Bacon, Milton, and Taylor, although it maybe
1'? Reprove. * Prologue to Canterbury Tales.
234 ( OURSE OF LECTURES.
traced in many other authors of that age. In
all these the language is dignified but plain,
genuine English, although elevated and bright-
ened by superiority of intellect in the writer.
Individual words themselves are always used
by them in their precise meaning, without either
affectation or slipslop. The letters and state
papers of Sir Francis Walsingham are re-
markable for excellence in style of this de-
scription. In Jeremy Taylor the sentences are
often extremely long, and yet are generally
so perspicuous in consequence of their logical
structure, that they require no reperusal to be
understood ; and it is for the most part the
same in Milton and Hooker.
Take the following sentence as a specimen
of the sort of style to which I have been al-
luding : —
Concerning Faith, the principal object whereof is that eter-
nal verity which hath discovered the treasures of hidden wis-
dom in Christ ; concerning Hope, the highest object whereof
is that everlasting goodness which in Christ doth quicken the
dead ; concerning Charity, the final object whereof is that in-
comprehensible beauty which shineth in the countenance of
Christ, the Son of the living God : concerning these virtues,
the first of which beginning here with a weak apprehension
of things not seen, endeth with the intuitive vision of God in
the world to come ; the second beginning here with a tremb-
ling expectation of things far removed, and as yet but only
heard of, endeth with real and actual fruition of that which no
tongue can express ; the third beginning here with a weak in-
clination of heart towards him unto whom we are not able to
approach, endeth with endless union, the mystery whereof is
higher than the reach of the thoughts of men ; concerning
that Fiiith, Hope, and Charity, without which there can be no
LECTURE XIV. 235
salvation, was there ever any mention made saving only in
that Law which God himself hath from Heaven revealed?
There is not in the world a syllable muttered with certain truth
concerning any of these three, more than hath been superna-
turally received from the mouth of the eternal God,
Eccles. Pol. I. s. 11.
The unity in these writers is produced by
the unity of the subject, and the perpetual
growth and evolution of the thoughts, one ge-
nerating, and explaining, and justifying, the
place of another, not, as it is in Seneca, where
the thoughts, striking as they are, are merely
strung together like beads, without any causa-
tion or progression. The words are selected
because they are the most appropriate regard
being had to the dignity of the total impres-
sion, and no merely big phrases are used where
plain ones would have sufficed, even in the
most learned of their works.
There is some truth in a remark, which I
believe was made by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
that the greatest man is he who forms the taste
of a nation, and that the next greatest is he
who corrupts it. The true classical style of
Hooker and his fellows was easily open to
corruption ; and Sir Thomas Brown it was,
who, though a writer of great genius, first ef-
fectually injured the literary taste of the nation
by his introduction of learned words, merely
because they were learned. It would be diffi-
cult to describe Brown adequately ; exuberant
in conception and conceit, dignified, hyper-
latinistic, a quiet and sublime enthusiast; yet a
236 COURSE OF LECTURKS.
fantast, a humourist, a brain with a twist; ego-
tistic Hke Montaigne, yet with a feeling heart
and an active curiosity, which, however, too
often degenerates into a hunting after oddities.
In Iiis Hydriotaphia and, indeed, ahnost all his
works the entireness of his mental action is very
observable ; he metamorphoses every thing, be
it what it may, into the subject under conside-
ration. But Sir Thomas Brown with all his
faults had a genuine idiom ; and it is the exis-
tence of an individual idiom in each, that
makes the principal writers before the Resto-
ration the great patterns or integers of En-
glish style. In them the precise intended
meaning of a word can never be mistaken ;
whereas in the later writers, as especially in
Pope, the use of words is for the most part
purely arbitrary, so that the context will rarely
show the true specific sense, but only that some-
thing of the sort is designed. A perusal of the
authorities cited by Johnson in his dictionary
under any leading word, w^ill give you a lively
sense of this declension in etymological truth
of expression in the writers after the Restora-
tion, or perhaps, strictly, after the middle of
the reign of Charles II.
The general characteristic of the style of our
literature down to the period which I have just
mentioned, was gravity, and in Milton and
some other writers of his day there are percep-
tible traces of the sternness of republicanism.
Soon after the Restoration a material change
LECTURE XIV. 237
took place, and the cause of royalism was
graced, sometimes disgraced, by every shade of
lightness of manner. A free and easy style
was considered as a test of loyalty, or at all
events, as a badge of the cavalier party ; you
may detect it occasionally even in Barrow,
who is, however, in general remarkable for
dignity and logical sequency of expression ;
but in L'Estrange, Collyer, and the writers of
that class, this easy manner was carried out to
the utmost extreme of slang and ribaldry. Yet
still the works, even of these last authors, have
considerable merit in one point of view ; their
language is level to the understandings of all
men ; it is an actual transcript of the colloqui-
alism of the day, and is accordingly full of life
and reality. Roger North's life of his brother
the Lord Keeper, is the most valuable sjjeci-
men of this class of our literature ; it is delight-
ful, and much beyond any other of the writings
of his contemporaries.
From the common opinion that the English
style attained its greatest perfection in and
about Queen Ann's reign I altogether dissent;
not only because it is in one species alone in
which it can be pretended that the writers of
that age excelled their predecessors, but also
because the specimens themselves are not
equal, upon sound principles of judgment, to
much that had been produced before. The
classical structure of Hooker — the impetuous,
thought-agglomerating, flood of Taylor — to
238 COURSE OF LECTURES.
these tliere is no pretence of a parallel ; and
for mere ease and grace, is Cowley inferior to
Addison, being as he is so much more thought-
ful and full of fancy ? Cowley, with the omis-
sion of a quaintness here and there, is probably
the best model of style for modern imitation in
general. Taylor's periods have been frequently
attempted by his admirers ; you may, perhaps,
just catch the turn of a simile or single image,
but to write in the real manner of Jeremy Tay-
lor would require as mighty a mind as his.
Many parts of Algernon Sidney's treatises af-
ford excellent exemplars of a good modern
practical style ; and Dryden in his prose
works, is a still better model, if you add a
stricter and purer grammar. It is, indeed,
worthy of remark that all our great poets have
been good prose writers, as Chaucer, Spenser,
Milton ; and this probably arose from their
just sense of metre. For a true poet will
never confound verse and prose ; whereas it is
almost characteristic of indifferent prose wri-
ters that they should be constantly slipping
into scraps of metre. Swift's style is, in its line,
perfect ; the manner is a complete expression
of the matter, the terms appropriate, and the
artifice concealed. It is simplicity in the true
sense of the word.
After the Revolution, the spirit of the nation
became much more commercial, than it had
been before ; a learned body, or clerisy, as
such, gradually disappeared, and literature in
LECTURE XIV. 239
general began to be addressed to the common
miscellaneous public. That public had become
accustomed to, and required, a strong stimu-
lus ; and to meet the requisitions of the public
taste, a style was produced which by com-
bining triteness of thought with singularity
and excess of manner of expression, was cal-
culated at once to soothe ignorance and to
flatter vanity. The thought was carefully
kept down to the immediate apprehension of
the commonest understanding, and the dress
was as anxiously arranged for the purpose of
making the thought appear something very
profound. The essence of this style consisted
in a mock antithesis, that is, an opposition of
mere sounds, in a rage for personification, the
abstract made animate, far-fetched metaphors,
strange plirases, metrical scraps, in every thing,
in short, but genuine prose. Style is, of course,
nothing else but the art of conveying the mean-
ing appropriately and with perspicuity, what-
ever that meaning may be, and one criterion of
style is that it shall not be translateable with-
out injury to the meaning. Johnson's style
has pleased many from the very fault of being
perpetually translateable ; he creates an im-
pression of cleverness by never saying any
thing in a common way. The best specimen
of this manner is in Junius, because his anti-
thesis is less merely verbal than Johnson's.
Gibbon's manner is the worst of all ; it has
every fault of which this peculiar style iscapa-
240 COURSE OF LECTURES,
ble. Tacitus is an example of it in Latin ; in
coming from Cicero you feel the falsetto imme-
diately.
In order to form a good style, the primary
rule and condition is, not to attempt to express
ourselves in language before we thoroughly
know our own meaning ; — when a man per-
fectly understands himself, appropriate diction
will generally be at his command either in wri-
ting or speaking. In such cases the thoughts
and the words are associated. In the next place
preciseness in the use of terms is required, and
the test is whether you can translate the phrase
adequately into simpler terms, regard being-
had to the feeling of the whole passage. Try
this upon Shakspeare, or Milton, and see if
you can substitute other simpler words in any
given passage without a violation of the mean-
ing or tone. The source of bad writing is the
desire to be something more than a man of
sense, — the straining to be thought a genius ;
and it is just the same in speech making. If
men would only say what they have to say in
plain terms, how much more eloquent they
would be ! Another rule is to avoid converting-
mere abstractions into persons. I believe you
will very rarely find in any great writer before
the Revolution the possessive case of an inani-
mate noun used in prose instead of the depen-
dent case, as ' the watch's hand,' for ' the hand
of the watch.' The possessive or Saxon geni-
tive was confined to persons, or at least to ani-
LECTURE XIV. 24 i
inated subjects. And I cannot conclude this
Lecture without insisting on the importance of
accuracy of style as being near akin to veracity
and truthful habits of mind ; he wlio thinks
loosely will write loosely, and, perhaps, there
is some moral inconvenience in the common
forms of our grammars which give children so
many obscure terms for material distinctions.
Let me also exhort you to careful examination
of what you read, if it be worth any perusal at
all ; such examination will be a safeguard
from fanaticism, the universal origin of which
is in the contemplation of phenomena without
investigation into their causes.
NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWn\s RELIGIO MEDICI.
1 802
*
Strong feeling and an active intellect con-
joined, lead almost necessarily, in the first
stage of philosophising, to Spinosism. Sir T.
Brown was a Spinosist without knowing it.
If I have not quite all the faith that the au-
thor of the Religio Medici possessed, I have
all the inclination to it ; it gives me pleasure to
believe.
The postscript at the very end of the book is
well worth reading. Sir K. Digby's observa-
tions, however, are those of a pedant in his
* Cotnmunirated bv Mr. Wnrdswortli. EJ.
VOL. I. R
242 NOTKS ON HELIGIO IMKDK I.
own system and opinion. He ought to have
considered the R. M. in a dramatic, and not
in a metaphysical, view, as a sweet exhibition
of character and passion, and not as an expres-
sion, or investigation, of positive truth. The
R. M. is a fine portrait of a liandsome man in
his best clothes ; it is much of what he was at
all times, a good deal of what he was only in
his best moments. I have never read a book
in which I felt greater similarity to my own
make of mind — active in inquiry, and yet with
an appetite to believe — in short an affectionate
visionary ! But then I should tell a different
tale of my own heart ; for I would not only en-
deavour to tell the truth, (which I doubt not
Sir T. B. has done), but likewise to tell the
whole truth, which most assuredly he has not
done. However, it is a most delicious book.
His own character was a fine mixture of
humourist, genius, and pedant. A library was
a living world to him, and every book a man,
absolute flesh and blood ! and the gravity
with which he records contradictory opinions
is exquisite.
Part I. sect. 9. Now contrarily, I bless myself, and am
thankful that I lived not in the days of miracles, that I never
saw Christ nor his disciples, &c.
So say I.
S. 15. I could never content my contemplation with those
general pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea, the
increase of Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north ;
and have studied to match and parallel those in the more ob-
NOTES ON IJF.LIGIO ^[EDiri. 243
vious and neglected pieces of nature ; which without further
travel I can do in the cosmography of myself; we carry with
U3 the wonders we seek without us. There is all Africa and
her prodigies in us ; we are that bold and adventurous piece
of nature, which he that studies wisely learns in a compen-
dium what others labour at in a divided piece and endless
volume.
This is the true characteristic of geiiius ;
our destiny and instinct is to unriddle the
world, and he is the man of genius who feels
this instinct fresh and strong in his nature ;
who perceiving the riddle and the mystery of
all things even the commonest, needs no
strange and out-of-the-way tales or images to
stimulate him into wonder and a deep interest.
S. 16, 17. All this is very fine philosophy,
and the best and most ingenious defence of
revelation. Moreover, I do hold and believe
that a toad is a comely animal ; but neverthe-
less a toad is called ugly by almost all men,
and it is the business of a philosopher to ex-
plain the reason of this.
S. 19. This is exceedingly striking. Had
SirT. B. lived now-a-days, he would probably
have been a very ingenious and bold infidel in
his real opinions, though the kindness of his
nature would have kept him aloof from vulgar
prating obtrusive infidelity.
S. 35. An excellent burlesque on parts of
the Schoolmen, though I believe an uninten-
tional one.
S. 36. Truly sublime— and in Sir T. B.'s
very best manner.
244 NOTF.S ON RI'-LKilO MKDlCI.
S. .39. This is a most admirable passage.
Yes,— the history of a man for the nine months
preceding his birth, would, probably, be far
more interesting, and contain events of greater
moment than all the three score and ten years
that follow it.
S. 48. This is made good by experience, which can from
the ashes of a plant revive the plant, and from its cinders re-
call it into its stalks and leaves again.
Stuff. This was, I believe, some lying boast
of Paracelsus, which the good Sir T. B. has
swallowed for a fact.
Part II. s. 2. I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my
brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the will and command of
my God.
We ought not to relieve a poor man merely
because our own feelings impel us, but because
these feelings are just and proper feelings.
My feelings might impel me to revenge with
the same force with which they urge me to
charity. I must therefore have some rule by
which I may judge my feelings,— and this rule
is God's will.
S. 5, 6. I never yet cast a true aflPection on a woman ;
but I have loved my friend as I do virtue, my soul, my God.
We cannot love a friend as a woman ; but
we may love a woman as a friend. Friendship
satisfies the highest parts of our nature ; but a
wife, who is capable of friendship, satisfies all.
The great business of real unostentatious virtue
NOTES ON RELIGIO MEDICI. 245
is — not to eradicate any genuine instinct or
appetite of human nature ; but — to establish
a concord and unity betwixt all parts of our
nature, to give a feeling and a passion to our
purer intellect, and to intellectualize our feel-
ings and passions. This a happy marriage,
blest with children, effectuates in the highest
degree, of which our nature is capable, and is
therefore chosen by St. Paul as the symbol of
the union of the church with Christ ; that is, of
the souls of all good men with God. " I scarcely
distinguish," said once a good old man, " the
wife of my old age from the wife of my youth ;
for when we were both young, and she was
beautiful, for once that 1 caressed her with a
meaner passion, I caressed her a thousand times
with love — and these caresses still remain to
us." Besides, there is another reason why
friendship is of somewhat less value than love,
which includes friendship, it is this — we may
love many persons, all very dearly ; but we
cannot love many persons all equally dearly.
There will be differences, there will be grada-
tions. But our nature imperiously asks a
summit, a resting-place ; it is with the affec-
tions in love as with the reason in religion, we
cannot diffuse and equalize ; we must have a
supreme, a one, the highest. What is more
common than to say of a man in love, ' he ido-
lizes her,' ' he makes a god of her?' Now, in
order that a person should continue to love
another better than all others, it seems neces»
24G NOTES ON KKLKilO MEDICI.
sary, that this I'eehiig should be reciprocal.
For if it be not so, sympathy is broken oft' in
the very highest point. A. (we will say by
way of illustration) loves B. above all others, in
the best and fullest sense of the word, love, but
B. loves C. above all others. Either, there-
fore, A. does not sympathize with B. in this
most important feeling ; and then his love
nnist necessarily be incomplete, and accompa-
nied with a craving after something that is not,
and yet might be ; or he does sympathize with
B. in loving C. above all others — and then, of
course, he loves C. better than B. Now it is
selfishness, at least it seems so to me, to desire
that your friend should love you better than all
others — but not to wish that a wife should.
S, 6, Another misery there is in affection, that whom we
truly love like ourselves, we forget their looks, nor can our
memory retain the idea of their faces ; and it is no wonder :
for they are ourselves, and our affection makes their looks our
own.
A thought 1 have often had, and once ex-
pressed it in almost the same language. The
fact is certain, but the explanation here given
is very unsatisfactory. For why do we never
have an image of our own faces — an image of
fancy, I mean ?
S. 7. I can hold there is no such thing as injury; that if
there be, there is no such injury as revenge, and no such re-
venge as the contempt of an injury; that to hate another, is
to malign himself, and that the truest way to love another is
to despise ourselvei..
NOTES ON llELIGIO MEDICI. 247
I thank God that I can, with a full and
unfeigning heart, utter Amen to this passage.
S. 10. In brief, there can be nothing truly alone, and by
itself, which is not truly one ; and such is only God.
Reciprocity is that which alone gives sta-
bility to love. It is not mere selfishness that
impels all kind natures to desire that there
should be some one human being, to whom they
are most dear. It is because they wish some
one being to exist, who shall be the resting-
place and summit of their love ; and this in
human nature is not possible, unless the two
affections coincide. The reason is, that the ob-
ject of the highest love will not otherwise be
the same in both parties.
S. 11 . I thank God for my happy dreams, &c.
I am quite different from Sir T. B. in this ;
for all, or almost all, the painful and fearful
thoughts that I know, are in my dreams ; — so
much so, that when I am wounded by a friend,
or receive an unpleasant letter, it throws me
into a state very nearly resembling that of a
dream.
S. 13. Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth
without any poverty, take away the object of our charity, not
only not understanding the commonwealth of a Christian, but
forgetting the prophecies of Christ.
O, for shame ! for shame ! Is there no fit
object of charity but abject poverty ? And what
sort of a charity must that be which wishes
248 KOTES ON JUNIUS.
misery in order that it may have the credit of
relieving a small part of it, — pulling down the
comfortable cottages of independent industry
to build alms-houses out of the ruins !
This book paints certain parts of my moral
and intellectual being, (the best parts, no
doubt,) better than any other book I have ever
met with ; — and the style is throughout de-
licious.
NOTES ON JUNIUS. 1807.
Stat nominis umhra.
As he never dropped the mask, so he too often
used the poisoned dagger of an assassin.
Dedication to the English nation.
The whole of this dedication reads like a
string of aphorisms arranged in chapters, and
classified by a resemblance of subject, or a
cento of points.
lb. If an honest, and I may truly affirm a laborious, zeal
for the public service has given me any weight in your esteem,
let me exhort and conjure you never to suffer an invasion of
your political constitution, however minute the instance may
appear, to pass by, without a determined persevering resist-
ance.
A longer sentence and proportionately in-
elegant.
lb. II' you reflect that in the changes of administration
NOTES ON JUNIUS. 249
which have marked and disgraced the present reign, although
your warmest patriots have, in their turn, been invested with
the lawful and unlawful authority of the crown, and though
other reliefs or improvements have been held forth to the
people, yet that no one man in office has ever promoted or en-
couraged a bill for shortening the duration of parliaments, but
that (whoever was minister) the opposition to this measure,
ever since the septennial act passed, has been constant and
uniform on the part of government.
Long, and as usual, inelegant. Junius can-
not manage a long sentence ; it has all the ins
and outs of a snappish figure-dance.
Preface.
An excellent preface, and the sentences not
so snipt as in the dedication. The paragraph
near the conclusion beginning with " some
oj^inion may now be expected," &c. and ending
with " relation between guilt and punishment,"
deserves to be quoted as a master-piece of rhe-
torical ratiocination in a series of questions
that permit no answer; or (as Junius says)
carry their own answer along with them. The
great art of Junius is never to say too much,
and to avoid with equal anxiety a common-
place manner, and matter that is not common-
place. If ever he deviates into any originality
of thought, he takes care that it shall be such
as excites surprise for its acuteness, rather
than admiration for its profundity. He takes
care ? say rather, that nature took care for
him. It is impossible to detract from the me-
rit of these Letters : they are suited to their
250 NOTES ON JUNIUS.
l)iirpose, and perfect in their kind. They im-
pel to action, not thought. Had they been
profound or subtle in thought, or majestic and
sweeping in composition, they would have
been adapted for the closet of a Sidney, or for
a House of Lords such as it was in the time of
Lord Bacon ; but they are plain and sensible
whenever the author is in the right, and whe-
ther right or wrong, always shrewd and epi-
grammatic, and fitted for the coffee-house, the
exchange, the lobby of the House of Commons,
and to be read aloud at a public meeting. When
connected, dropping the forms of connection,
desultory without abruptness or appearance of
disconnection, epigrammatic and antithetical
to excess, sententious and personal, regardless
of right or wrong, yet well-skilled to act the
part of an honest warm-hearted man, and even
when he is in the right, saying the truth but
never proving it, much less attempting to bot-
tom it, — this is the character of Junius; — and
on this character, and in the mould of these
writings must every man cast himself, who
would wish in factious times to be the impor-
tant and long remembered agent of a faction.
1 believe that I could do all that Junius has
done, and surpass him by doing many things
which he has not done : for example, — by an
occasional induction of startling facts, in the
manner of Tom Paine, and lively illustrations
and witty applications of good stories and ap-
propriate anecdotes in the manner of Home
NOTES ON JUNIUS. 251
Tooke. I believe I could do it if it were in my
nature to aim at this sort of excellence, or to be
enamoured of the fame, and immediate influ-
ence, which would be its consequence and re-
Avard. But it is not in my nature. I not only
love truth, but I have a passion for the legiti-
mate investigation of truth. The love of truth
conjoined with a keen delight in a strict and
skilful yet impassioned argumentation, is my
master-passion, and to it are subordinated even
the love of liberty and all my public feelings—
and to it whatever I labour under of vanity,
ambition, and all my inward impulses.
Letter I. From this Letter all the faults
and excellencies of Junius may be exemplified.
The moral and political aphorisms are just and
sensible, the irony in which his personal satire
is conveyed is fine, yet always intelligible ; but
it approaches too nearly to the nature of a
sneer ; the sentences are cautiously constructed
without the forms of connection ; the he and it
everywhere substituted for the wlw and which;
the sentences are short, laboriously balanced,
and the antitheses stand the test of analysis
much better than Johnson's. These are all
excellencies in their kind; — where is the defect?
In this ; — there is too much of each, and there is
a defect of many things, the presence of which
would have been not only valuable for their
own sakes, but for the relief and variety which
they would have given. It is observable too
that every Letter adds to the faults of these
252 NOTES ON JUNIUS.
Letters, while it weakens the effect of their
beauties.
L. III. A capital letter, addressed to a
private person, and intended as a sharp reproof
for intrusion. Its short sentences, its witty
perversions and deductions, its questions and
omissions of connectives, all in their proper
places, are dramatically good.
L. V. For my own part, I willingly leave it to the public
to determine whether your vindication of your friend has been
as able and judicious as it was certainly well intended ; and
you, I think, may be satisfied with the warm acknowledgments
he already owes you for making him the principal figure in a
piece in which, but for your amicable assistance, he might have
passed without particular notice or distinction.
A long sentence and, as usual, inelegant and
cumbrous. This Letter is a faultless com-
position with exception of the one long sen-
tence.
L. Vll. These are the gloomy companions of a disturbed
imagination ; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the
inspiration.
The rhyme is a fault. ' Fancy' had been
better ; though but for the rhyme, imagination
is the fitter word.
lb. Such a question might perhaps discompose the gravity
of his muscles, but 1 believe it would little affect the tranquil-
lity of his conscience.
A false antithesis, a mere verbal balance ;
there are far, far too many of these. However,
with these few exceptions, this Letter is a
NOTES ON JUNIUS. 253
blameless composition. Junius may be safely
studied as a model for letters where he truly
writes letters. Those to the Duke of Grafton
and others, are small pamphlets in the form of
letters.
L. VIII. To do justice to your Grace's humanity, you felt
for Mac Quick as you ought to do ; and, if you had been con-
tented to assist him indirectly, without a notorious denial of
justice, or openly insulting the sense of the nation, you might
have satisfied every duty of political friendship, without com-
mitting the honour of your sovereign, or hazarding the reputa-
tion of his government.
An inelegant cluster of withouts. Junius
asks questions incomparably well ; — but ne
quid nimis.
L. IX. Perhaps the fair way of considering
these Letters would be as a kind of satirical
poems ; the short, and for ever balanced, sen-
tences constitute a true metre ; and the con-
nection is that of satiric poetry, a witty logic,
an association of thoughts by amusing sem-
blances of cause and effect, the sophistry of
which the reader has an interest in not stop-
ping to detect, for it flatters his love of mischief,
and makes the sport.
L. XII. One of Junius's arts, and which
gives me a high notion of his genius, as a poet
and satirist, is this : — he takes for granted the
existence of a character that never did and
never can exist, and then employs his wit, and
surprises and amuses his readers with analy-
zing its incompatibilities.
254 NOTES ON JUNIUS.
L. XIV. Continual sneer, continual irony,
all excellent, if it were not for the ' all;' — but
a countenance, with a malignant smile in sta-
tuary fixure on it, becomes at length an object
of aversion, however beautiful the face, and
however beautiful the smile. We are relieved,
in some measure, from this by fretiuent just
and well expressed moral aphorisms ; but then
the preceding and following irony gives them
the appearance of proceeding from the head,
not from the heart. This objection would be
less felt, when the Letters were first published
at considerable intervals ; but Junius wrote
for posterity.
L. XXIII. Sneer and irony continued
with such gross violation of good sense, as to
be perfectly nonsense. The man who can ad-
dress another on his most detestable vices in a
strain of cold continual irony, is himself a
wretch.
L. XXXV. To honour them with a determined predilection
and confidence in exclusion of your English subjects, who
placed your family, and, in spite of treachery and rebellion,
have supported it upon the throne, is a mistake too gross even
for the unsuspecting generosity of youth.
The words ' upon the throne,' stand unfor-
tunately for the harmonious effect of the ba-
lance of ' placed' and ' supported.'
This address to the king is almost faultless in
composition, and has been evidently tormented
with the file. But it has fewer beauties than
any other long letter of Junius ; and it is ut-
NOTES OX BARCLAY S ARGENIS. 255
terly undramatic. There is nothing in the
style, the transitions, or the sentiments, which
represents the passions of a man emboldening
himself to address his sovereign personally.
Like a Presbyterian's prayer, you may sub-
stitute almost every where the third for the
second person without injury. The news-
paper, his closet, and his own person were
alone present to the author's intention and
imagination. This makes the composition
vapid. It possesses an Isocratic correctness,
when it should have had the force and drama
of an oration of Demosthenes. From this,
however, the paragraph beginning with the
words ' As to the Scotch,' and also the last two
paragraphs must be honourably excepted.
They are, perhaps, the finest passages in the
whole collection.
NOTES ON BARCLAY'S ARGENIS. 1803.*
Heaven forbid that this work should not exist
in its present form and language ! Yet I can-
not avoid the wish that it had, during the
reign of James I., been moulded into an heroic
poem in English octave stanza, or epic blank
verse ; — which, however, at that time had not
been invented, and which, alas ! still remains
* Communicated by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. Ed.
2oG NOTES ON Barclay's argenis.
the sole property of the inventor, as if the
Muses had given him an unevadible patent
for it. Of dramatic blank verse we have many
and various specimens ; — for example, Shaks-
peare's as compared with Massinger's, both
excellent in their kind :— of lyric, and of what
may be called Orphic, or philosophic, blank
verse, perfect models may be found in Words-
worth : of colloquial blank verse there are ex-
cellent, though not perfect, examples in Cow-
per; — but of epic blank verse, since Milton,
there is not one.
It absolutely distresses me when I reflect
that this work, admired as it has been by
great men of all ages, and lately, I hear, by the
poet Cowper, should be only not unknown to
general readers. It has been translated into
English two or three times — how, I know not,
wretchedly, I doubt not. It affords matter for
thought that the last translation (or rather, in
all probability, miserable and faithless abridg-
ment of some former one) was given under
another name. What a mournful proof of the
incelebrity of this great and amazing work
among both the public and the people ! For
as Wordsworth, the greater of the two great
men of this age, — (at least, except Davy and
him, I have known, read of, heard of, no others)
— for as Wordsworth did me the honour of
once observing to me, the people and the
public are two distinct classes, and, as things
go, the former is likely to retain a better taste,
NOTES ON Barclay's arc en is. 257
the less it is acted oii by the latter. Yet Tele-
machus is in every mouth, in every school-
boy's and school-girls hand ! It is awful to say
of a work, like the Argenis, the style and
Latinity of which, judged (not according to
classical pedantry, which pronounces every
sentence right which can be found in any book
prior to Boetius, however vicious the age, or
affected the author, and every sentence wrong,
how'ever natural and beautiful, which has
been of the author's own combination, — but)
according to the universal logic of thought as
modified by feeling, is equal to that of Tacitus
in energy and genuine conciseness, and is as
perspicuous as that of Livy, whilst it is free
from the affectations, obscurities, and lust to
surprise of the former, and seems a sort of an-
tithesis to the slowness and prolixity of the
latter; — (this remark does not, however, im-
peach even the classicality of the language,
which, when the freedom and originality, the
easy motion and perfect command of the
thoughts, are considered, is truly wonderful) : —
of such a work it is awful to say, that it would
have been well if it had been written in En-
glish or Italian verse ! Yet the event seems to
justify the notion. Alas! it is now^ too late.
What modern work, even of the size of the
Paradise Lost — much less of the Faery Queene
— would be read in the present day, or even
bought or be likely to be bought, unless it
were an instructive work, as the phrase is, like
VOL. I. s
258 NOTE IN casaubon's pkrsius.
Roscoe's quartos of Leo X., or entertaining
like Bosweirs tliree of Dr. Johnson's conver-
sations. It may be fairly objected — what work
of surpassing merit has given the proof? — Cer-
tainly, none. Yet still there are ominous facts,
sufficient, I fear, to afford a certain prophecy
of its reception, if such were produced.
NOTE IN CASAUBON'S PERSIUS. 1807.
There are six hundred and sixteen pages in
this volume, of which twenty-two are text ;
and five hundred and ninety-four commentary
and introductory matter. Yet when I recol-
lect, that I have the whole works of Cicero,
Livy, and Quinctilian, with many others, — the
whole works of each in a single volume, either
thick quarto with thin paper and small yet
distinct print, or thick octavo or duodecimo of
the same character, and that they cost me in
the proportion of a shilling to a guinea for the
same quantity of worse matter in modern
books, or editions, — I a poor man, yet one
whom |3(|3Atti)v KTrjcrewc bk Trai^aplov Suvog eKpaTr](Te
TToBoq, feel the liveliest gratitude for the age,
which produced such editions, and for the edu-
cation, which by enabling me to understand
and taste the Greek and Latin writers, has
thus put it in my power to collect on my own
shelves, for my actual use, almost all the best
NOTES ON chapman's HOMER. 259
])Ooks ill spite of my small income. Some-
what too I am indebted to the ostentation of
expense among the rich, which has occasioned
these cheap editions to become so dispropor-
tionately cheap.
NOTES ON CHAPMAN'S HOMER.
EXTRACT OF A LETTER SENT WITH THE VOLUME.* 1807,
Chapman I have sent in order that you might
read the Odyssey ; the Iliad is fine, but less
equal in the translation, as well as less inte-
resting in itself. What is stupidly said of
Shakspeare, is really true and appropriate of
Chapman ; mighty faults counterpoised by
mighty beauties. Excepting his quaint epi-
thets which he affects to render literally from
the Greek, a language above all others blest in
the happy marriage of sweet words, and which
in our language are mere printer's compound
epithets— such as quaffed divine joy-in-the-
heart'of-man-inf using wine, (the undermarked
is to be one word, because one sweet mellifluous
word expresses it in Homer) ; — excepting this,
it has no look, no air, of a translation. It is
as truly an original poem as the Faery
Queene ; — it will give you small idea of Homer,
* Commuricated ihrouo-h Mr. Wordsworth. Ed.
2n0 NOTKS ON chapman's HOMEK.
though a far truer one than Pope's epigrams,
or Cowper's cumbersome most anti-Homeric
Miltonism. For Chapman writes and feels as a
poet, — as Homer might have written had he
lived in Enghmd in the reign of Queen EUza-
beth. In short, it is an exquisite poem, in spite
of its frequent and perverse quaintnesses and
harshnesses, which are, however, amply repaid
by almost unexampled sweetness and beauty
of language, all over spirit and feeling. In
the main it is an English heroic poem, the tale
of which is borrowed from the Greek. The
dedication to the Iliad is a noble copy of verses,
especially those sublime lines beginning, —
O ! 'tis wondrous much
(Though nothing priscle) that the right vertuous touch
Of a well written soule, to vertue moves.
Nor haue we soules to purpose, if their loves
Of fitting objects be not so inflam'd.
How much then, were this kingdome's maine soule maim'd.
To want this great inflamer of all powers
That move in humane soules ! All realmes but yours,
Are honor'd with him ; and hold blest that state
That have his workes to reade and contemplate.
In which, humanitie to her height is raisde ;
Which all the world (yet, none enough) hath praisde.
Seas, earth, and heaven, he did in verse comprize;
Out sung the Muses, and did equalise
Their king Apollo ; being so farre from cause
Of princes light thoughts, that their gravest lawes
May finde stufFe to be fashiond by his lines.
Through all the pompe of kingdomes still he shines
And graceth all his gracers. Then let lie
Your lutes, and viols, and more loftily
NOTES ON chapman's homeu. 26 E
Make the heroiques of your Homer sung,
To drums and trumpets set his Angels tongue :
And with the princely sports of haukes you use,
Behold the kingly flight of his high Muse :
And see how like the Phoenix she renues
Her age, and starrie feathers in your sunne ;
Thousands of yeares attending ; everie one
Blowing the holy fire, and throwing in
Their seasons, kingdomes, nations that have bin
Subverted in them ; lawes, religions, all
OfFerd to change, and greedie funerall ;
Yet still your Homer lasting, living, raigning. —
and likewise the 1st, the 11 th, and last but one,
of the prefatory sonnets to the Odyssey. Could
I have foreseen any other speedy opportunity,
I should have begged your acceptance of the
volume in a somewhat handsomer coat ; but
as it is, it will better represent the sender, — to
quote from myself —
A man disherited, in form and face,
By nature and mishap, of outward grace.
Chapman in his moral heroic verse, as in this Dedication to
dedication and the prefatory sonnets to his P"'^*^® ^®^'"y
Odyssey, stands above Ben Jonson ; there is
more dignity, more lustre, and equal strength ;
but not midway quite between him and the
sonnets of Milton. I do not know whether I
give him the higher praise, in that he reminds
me of Ben Jonson with a sense of his superior
excellence, or that he brings Milton to memory
notwithstanding his inferiority. His moral
poems are not quite out of books like Jonson's,
262
NOTES ON CHAPMAN S HOMER.
Epistle Dedi-
catorie to the
Odyssey.
K])istle ])edi-
fdtorie to tJie
Batrachomyo-
machia.
nor yet do the sentiments so wholly grow up
out of" his own natural habit and grandeur of
thought, as in Milton. The sentiments have
been attracted to him by a natural affinity of
his intellect, and so combined; — but Jonson
has taken them by individual and successive
acts of choice.
All this and the preceding is well felt and
vigorously, though harshly, expressed, respect-
ing sublime poetry in genere; but in reading-
Homer 1 look about me, and ask how does all
this apply here. For surely never was there
plainer writing ; there are a thousand charms
of sun and moonbeam, ripple, and wave, and
stormy billow, but all on the surface. Had
Chapman read Proclus and Porphyry? — and
did he really believe them, — or even that they
believed themselves? They felt the immense
power of a Bible, a Shaster, a Koran. There
was none in Greece or Rome, and they tried
therefore by subtle allegorical accommodations
to conjure the poem of Homer into the jSt/SAtov
0£O7rap«Sorov of Greek faith.
Chapman's identification of his fate with Ho-
mer's, and his complete forgetful ness of the
distinction between Christianity and idolatry,
under the general feeling of some religion, is
very interesting. It is amusing to observe, how
familiar Chapman's fancy has become with
Homer, his life and its circumstances, though
the very existence of any such individual, at
least with regard to the Iliad and the Hymns,
NOTE IN Baxter's life of himself. 263
is more than problematic. N. B. The rude
engraving in the page was designed by no
vulgar hand. It is full of spirit and passion.
I am so dull, that neither in the original nor Es.dofthe
in any translation could I ever find any wit or Katrachomy-
wise purpose in this poem. The whole humour
seems to lie in the names. The frogs and
mice are not frogs or mice, but men, and yet
they do nothing that conveys any satire. In
the Greek there is much beauty of language,
but the joke is very flat. This is always the
case in rude ages ; — their serious vein is inimi-
table,— their comic low and low indeed. The
psychological cause is easily stated, and copi-
ously exemplifiable.
NOTE IN BAXTER'S LIFE OF HIMSELF. 1820.
Amqnct the grounds for recommending the pe-
rusal of our elder writers — Hooker — Taylor-
Baxter — in short almost any of the folios com-
posed from Edward VI. to Charles II. I note
1. The overcoming the habit of deriving
your whole pleasure passively from the book
itself, which can only be effected by excite-
ment of curiosity or of some passion. Force
yourself to reflect on what you read paragraph
by paragraph, and in a short time you will
derive your pleasure, an ample portion of it, at
least, from the activity of your own mind. All
f3lse is picture sunshine.
264 NOTE IN BA\I"i:irs LIFE OF HIMSELF.
'2. The coiKiiiest of party and sectarian pre-
indices, when you have on the same table
before you the works of a Hammond and a Bax-
ter, and reflect how many and how momentous
their points of agreement, how few and ahiiost
childish the differences, which estranged and
irritated these good men. Let us but imagine
what tiieir blessed spirits now feel at the retro-
spect of their earthly frailties, and can we
do other than strive to feel as they now feel,
not as they once felt? So will it be with the
disputes between good men of the present
day ; and if you have no other reason to doubt
your opponent's goodness than the point in dis-
pute, think of Baxter and Hammond, of Mil-
ton and Taylor, and let it be no reason at all.
3. It will secure you from the narrow ido-
latry of the present times and fashions, and
create the noblest kind of imaginative power
in your soul, that of living in past ages ; —
wholly devoid of which power, a man can nei-
ther anticipate the future, nor ever live a truly
human life, a life of reason in the present.
4. In this particular work we may derive a
most instructive lesson, that in certain points,
as of religion in relation to law, the medio tutis-
simus ibis, is inapplicable. There is no medium
possible ; and all the attempts as those of
Baxter, though no more were lequired than
* I believe in God through Christ,' prove only
the mildness of the proposer's temper, but as a
rule would be either equal to nothing, at least
NOTE IN Baxter's life oe himself. 265
exclude only the two or three in a century
that make it a matter of religion to declare
themselves atheists, or else be just as fruitful a
rule for a persecutor as the most complete set
of articles that could be framed by a Spanish
Inquisition. For to ' believe' must mean to
believe aright — and ' God' must mean the true
God — and ' Christ' the Christ in the sense and
with the attributes understood by Christians
who are truly Christians. An established
church with a liturgy is the sufficient solution
of the problem cle jure mag istratus. Articles of
faith are in this point of view superfluous ; for
is it not too absurd for a man to hesitate at
subscribing his name to doctrines which yet in
the more awful duty of prayer and profession
he dares affirm before his Maker ! They are
therefore, in this sense, merely superfluous ; —
not worth re-enacting, had they ever been
done away with ; — not worth removing now that
they exist.
5. The characteristic contra-distinction be-
tween the speculative reason ers of the age be-
fore the Revolution, and those since, is this:— the
former cultivated metaphysics without, or neg-
lecting empirical, psychology : — the latter cul-
tivate a mechanical psychology to the neglect
and contempt of metaphysics. Both, therefore,
are almost equi-distant from true philosophy.
Hence the belief in ghosts, witches, sensible
replies to prayer, &c. in Baxter and in a hun-
dred others. See also Luther's Table Talk.
266 FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON TASTE.
(j. The earlier part of tliis volume is interest-
ing as materials for medical history. The
state of medical science in the reign of Charles
I. was almost incredibly low.
FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON TASTE. 1810.
The same arguments that decide the question,
whether taste has any fixed principles, may
probably lead to a determination of what those
principles are. First then, what is taste in its
metaphorical sense, or, which will be the
easiest mode of arriving at the same solution,
what is there in the primary sense of the word,
which may give to its metaphorical meaning
an import different from that of sight or hear-
ing, on the one hand, and of touch or smell on
the other? And this question seems the more
natural, because in correct language we confine
beauty, the main subject of taste, to objects of
sight and combinations of sounds, and never,
except sportively or by abuse of words, speak
of a beautiful flavour or a beautiful scent.
Now the analysis of our senses in the com-
monest books of anthropology has drawn our
attention to the distinction between the per-
fectly organic, and the mixed senses ; — the
first presenting objects, as distinct from the
perception ; — the last as blending the percep-
tion with the sense of the object. Our eyes
MiAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON TASTE. 267
and ears — (I am not now considering what is
or is not the case really, but only that of which
we are regularly conscious as appearances,)
our eyes most often appear to us perfect organs
of the sentient principle, and wholly in action,
and our hearing so much more so than the
three other senses, and in all the ordinary ex-
ertions of that sense, perhaps, equally so with
the sight, that all languages place them in one
class, and express their different modifications
by nearly the same metaphors. The three re-
maining senses appear in part passive, and
combine with the perception of the outward
object a distinct sense of our own life. Taste,
therefore, as opposed to vision and sound, will
teach us to expect in its metaphorical use a
certain reference of any given object to our
own being, and not merely a distinct notion of
the object as in itself, or in its independent
properties. From the sense of touch, on the
other hand, it is distinguishable by adding
to this reference to our vital being some degree
of enjoyment, or the contrary, — some percep-
tible impulse from pleasure or pain to com-
placency or dislike. The sense of smell, in-
deed, might perhaps have furnished a meta-
phor of the same import with that of taste ; but
the latter was naturally chosen by the majority
of civilized nations on account of the greater
frequency, importance, and dignity of its em-
ployment or exertion in human nature.
By taste, therefore, as applied to the fine
2G8 FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON TASTE.
arts, we must be supposed to mean an intel-
lectual perception of any object blended with
a distinct reference to our own sensibility of
pain or pleasure, or, vice versa, a sense of en-
joyment or dislike co-instantaneously combined
with, and appearing to proceed from, some in-
tellectual perception of theobject ; — intellectual
perception, 1 say ; for otherwise it would be
a definition of taste in its primary rather than
in its metaphorical sense. Briefiy, taste is a
metaphor taken from one of our mixed senses,
and applied to objects of the more purely or-
ganic senses, and of our moral sense, when we
would imply the co-existence of immediate
personal dislike or complacency. In this defi-
nition of taste, therefore, is involved the defi-
nition of fine arts, namely, as being such the
chief and discriminative purpose of which it is
to gratify the taste, — that is, not merely to con-
nect, but to combine and unite, a sense of im-
mediate pleasure in ourselves, with the per-
ception of external arrangement.
The great question, therefore, whether taste
in any one of the fine arts has any fixed prin-
ciple or ideal, will find its solution in the ascer-
tainment of two facts : — first, whether in every
determination of the taste concerning any work
of the fine arts, the individual does not, with
or even against the approbation of his general
judgment, involuntarily claim that all other
minds ought to think and feel the same ; whe-
ther the common expressions, ' 1 dare S9y I
FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON TASTE. 2G9
may be wrong, but that is my particular
taste;' — are uttered as an offering of courtesy,
as a sacrifice to the undoubted fact of our indi-
vidual fallibility, or are spoken with perfect
sincerity, not only of the reason but of the
whole feeling, with the same entireness of
mind and heart, with which we concede a
right to every person to differ from another in
his preference of bodily tastes and flavours.
If we should find ourselves compelled to deny
this, and to admit that, notwithstanding the
consciousness of our liability to error, and in
spite of all those many individual experiences
which may have strengthened the conscious-
ness, each man does at the moment so far le-
gislate for all men, as to believe of necessity
that he is either right or wrong, and that if
it be right for him, it is universally right, — we
must then proceed to ascertain : — secondly,
whether the source of these phenomena is at
all to be found in those parts of our nature, in
which each intellect is representative of all, —
and whether wholly, or partially. No person
of common reflection demands even in feeling,
that what tastes pleasant to him ought to pro-
duce the same effect on all living beings ; but
every man does and must expect and demand
the universal acquiescence of all intelligent be-
ings in every conviction of his understanding.
*****
270
FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON BEAUTY. 1818.
The only necessary, but this the absolutely
necessary, pre-requisite to a full insight into
the grounds of the beauty in the objects of sight,
is — the directing of the attention to the action
of those thoughts in our own mind which are
not consciously distinguished. Every man may
understand this, if he will but recall the state
of his feelings in endeavouring to recollect a
name, which he is quite sure that he remem-
bers, though he cannot force it back into con-
sciousness. Thisregion of unconscious tlioughts,
oftentimes the more working the more indistinct
they are, may, in reference to this subject, be
conceived as forming an ascending scale from
the most universal associations of motion with
the functions and passions of life, — as when,
on passing out of a crowded city into the fields
on a day in June, we describe the grass and
king-cups as nodding their heads and dancing
in the breeze,— up to the half perceived, yet
not fixable, resemblance of a form to some par-
ticular object of a diverse class, which resem-
blance we need only increase but a little, to
destroy, or at least injure, its beauty-enhanc-
ing effect, and to make it a fantastic intrusion
of the accidental and the arbitrary, and con-
sequently a disturbance of the beautifid. This
FRAGMENT OI- AN ESSAY ON BEAUTY. 271
might be abundantly exemplified and illus-
trated from the paintings of Salvator Rosa.
I am now using the term beauty in its most
comprehensive sense, as including expression
and artistic interest, — that is, I consider not
only the living balance, but likewise all the
accompaniments that even by disturbing are
necessary to the renewal and continuance of
the balance. And in this sense I proceed to
show, that the beautiful in the object may be
referred to two elements, — lines and colours ;
the first belonging to the shapely (forma ^ for-
malism formosus), and in this, to the law, and
the reason ; and the second, to the lively, the
free, the spontaneous, and the self-justifying.
As to lines, the rectilineal are in themselves
the lifeless, the determined ah extra, but still
in innnediate union with the cycloidal, which
are expressive of function. The curve line is
a modification of the force from without by the
force from within, or the spontaneous. These
are not arbitrary symbols, but the language of
nature, universal and intuitive, by virtue of
the law by which man is impelled to explain
visible motions by imaginary causative powei'S
analogous to his own acts, as the Dryads, Ha-
madryads, Naiads, &c.
The better way of applying these principles
will be by a brief and rapid sketch of the his-
tory of the fine arts,— in which it will be found,
that the beautiful in nature has been appro-
priated to the works of man, just in proportion
272 FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON BEAUTY.
as the state of tlie mind in tlie artists tlieni-
selves approached to the subjective beauty.
Determine what predominance in the minds of
the men is preventive of the living balance of
excited faculties, and you will discover the
exact counterpart in the outward products.
Egypt is an illustration of this. Shapeliness
is intellect without freedom ; but colours are
significant. The introduction of the arch is
not less an epoch in the fine than in the useful
arts.
Order is beautiful arrangement without any
purpose ad extra; — therefore there is a beauty
of order, or order may be contemplated exclu-
sively as beauty.
The form given in every empirical intuition,
— the stuff, that is, the quality of the stuff, de-
termines the agreeable : but when a thing ex-
cites us to receive it in such and such a mould,
so that its exact correspondence to that mould
is what occupies the mind, — this is taste or the
sense of beauty. Whether dishes full of painted
wood or exquisite viands were laid out on a
table in the same arrangement, would be indif-
ferent to the taste, as in ladies' patterns ; but
surely the one is far more agreeable than the
other. Hence observe the disinterestedness of
all taste ; and hence also a sensual perfection
with intellect is occasionally possible without
moral feeling. So it may be in music and
painting, but not in poetry. How far it is a
real preference of the refined to the gross plea-
FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON BEAUTY. 273
siires, is another question, upon the supposition
that pleasure, in some form or other, is that alone
which determines men to the objects of the
former; — \Yhether experience does not show-
that if the latter were equally in our power,
occasioned no more trouble to enjoy, and caused
no more exhaustion of the power of enjoying
them by the enjoyment itself, we should in real
practice prefer the grosser pleasure. It is not,
therefore, any excellence in the quality of the
refined pleasures themselves, but the advan-
tages and facilities in the means of enjoying
them, that give them the pre-eminence.
This is, of course, on the supposition of the
absence of all moral feeling. Suppose its
presence, and then there will accrue an excel-
lence even to the quality of the pleasures them-
selves ; not only, however, of the refined, but
also of the grosser kinds, — inasmuch as a
larger sweep of thoughts will be associated
with each enjoyment, and with each thought
will be associated a number of sensations ; and
so, consequently, each pleasure will become
more the pleasure of the whole being. This
is one of the earthly rewards of our being what
we ought to be, but which would be annihi-
lated, if we attempted to be it for the sake of
this increased enjoyment. Indeed it is a con-
tradiction to suppose it. Yet this is the com-
mon argumentmn in ciicido, in which the eu-
dsemonists flee and pursue.
* # * *
VOL. I. T
POEMS AND POETICAL FRAGMENTS.
Vivamtis, mea Lesbia, atque amemus. Catullus.
My Lesbia, let us love and live,
And to the winds, my Lesbia, give
Each cold restraint, each boding fear
Of age, and all its saws severe !
Yon sun now posting to the main
Will set, — but 'tis to rise again ; —
But we, when once our little light
Is set, must sleep in endless night.
Then come, with whom alone I'll live,
A thousand kisses take and give !
Another thousand ! — to the store
Add hundreds — then a thousand more !
And when they to a million mount.
Let confusion take the account, —
That you, the number never knowing,
May continue still bestowing —
That I for joys may never pine.
Which never can again be mine !*
Lugete, O Veneres, Cupidinesque. Catullus.
Pity, mourn in plaintive tone
The lovely starling dead and gone !
Pity mourns in plaintive tone
The lovely starling dead and gone.
* Tliis and the following poems and fragments, with the exception of
those marked with an asterisk, were communicated by Mr. Gutch. Ed.
POETICAL FRAGMENTS. 275
Weep, ye Loves ! and Venus, weep
The lovely starling fall'n asleep !
Venus see with tearful eyes —
In her lap the starling lies,
While the Loves all in a ring-
Softly stroke the stiffen'd wing.
Moriens sttperstiti.
" The hour-bell sounds, and I must go ;
Death waits — again I hear him calling; —
No cowardly desires have I,
Nor will I shun his face appalling.
I die in faith and honour rich —
But ah ! I leave behind my treasure
In widowhood and lonely pain ; —
To live were surely then a pleasure !
" My lifeless eyes upon thy face
Shall never open more to-morrow ; "*
To-morrow shall thy beauteous eyes
Be closed to love, and drown'd in sorrow ;
To-morrow death shall freeze this hand.
And on thy breast, my wedded treasure,
I never, never more shall live ; —
Alas ! I quit a life of pleasure."
Morienti superstes.
" Yet art thou happier far than she
Who feels the widow's love for thee !
For while her days are days of weeping.
Thou, in peace, in silence sleeping,
III some still world, unknown, remote,
276 POETICAL FRAGMENTS.
The mighty parent's care hast found,
Without whose tender guardian thought
No sparrow falleth to the ground."
THE STRIPLING'S WAR SONG.
IMITATED FROM STOLBERG.
My noble old warrior ! this lieart has beat high,
Since you told of the deeds that our countrymen wrought ;
Ah ! give me the sabre which hung by thy thigh,
And I too will fight as my forefathers fought !
O, despise not my youth ! for my spirit is steel'd,
And I know there is strength in the grasp of my hand ;
Yea, as firm as thyself would I move to the field.
And as proudly would die for my dear father-land.
In the sports of my childhood I mimick'd the fight, — -
The shrill of a trumpet suspended my breath ;
And my fancy still wander'd by day and by night
Amid tumult and perils, 'mid conquest and death.
My own eager shout in the heat of my trance.
How oft it awakes me from dreams full of glory,
When I meant to have leap'd on the hero of France,
And have dash'd him to earth pale and deathless and
gory !
As late through the city with bannerets streaming,
And the music of trumpets the warriors flew by, —
With helmet and scymetar naked and gleaming
On their proud trampling thunder-hoof 'd steeds did
they fly,—
I sped to yon heath which is lonely and bare —
For each nerve was unquiet, each pulse in alarm, —
POETICAL FRAGMENTS. 277
I huiTd my mock lance through the objectless air,
And in open-eyed dream prov'd the strength of my arm.
Yes, noble old warrior ! this heart has beat high.
Since you told of the deeds that our countrymen wrought;
Ah ! give me the falchion that hung by thy thigh.
And I too will fight as my forefathers fought !
*His own fair countenance, his kingly forehead,
His tender smiles, love's day-dawn on his lips.
The sense, and spirit, and the light divine.
At the same moment in his steadfast eye
Were virtue's native crest, th' immortal soul's
Unconscious meek self-heraldry, — to man
Genial, and pleasant to his guardian angel.
He sufFer'd, nor complain'd ; — tho' oft with tears
He mourn'd th' oppression of his helpless brethren, —
Yea, with a deeper and yet holier grief
Moui'n'd for the oppressor. In those sabbath hours
His solemn grief, like the slow cloud at sunset.
Was but the veil of purest meditation
Pierced thro' and saturate with the rays of mind.
'Twas sweet to know it only possible !
Some wishes cross'd my mind and dimly cheer'd it,
And one or two poor melancholy pleasures,
Each in the pale unwarming light of hope
Silvering its flimsy wing, flew silent by —
Moths in the moonbeam ! —
— Behind the thin
Grey cloud that cover'd, but not hid, the sky.
The round full moon look'd small.
278 POETICAL FRAGMENTS.
The subtle snow in every passing breeze
Rose curling; from the c;rove like shafts of smoke.
— On the broad mountain top
The neighing wild colt races with the wind
O'er fern and heath-flowers.
— Like a mighty giantess
Seized in sore travail and prodigious birth,
Sick nature struggled : long and strange her pangs,
Her groans were horrible ; — but O, most fair
The twins she bore, Equality and Peace.
— Terrible and loud
As the strong voice that from the thunder-cloud
Speaks to the startled midnight.
Such fierce vivacity as fires the eye
Of genius fancy-craz'd.
The mild despairing of a heart resign 'd.
FOR THE HYMN ON THE SUN.
— The sun (for now his orb
'Gan slowly sink) —
Shot half his rays aslant the heath, whose flow'rs
Purpled the mountain's broad and level top.
Rich was his bed of clouds, and wide beneath
Expecting ocean smil'd with dimpled face.
POETICAL FRAGMENTS. 279
FOR THE HYMN ON THE MOON.
In a cave in the mountains of Cashmeer there is an
image of ice, which makes its appearance thus: Two
days before the new moon there appears a bubble of ice,
which increases in size every day till the fifteenth, by
which time it is an ell or more in height ; — then as the
moon wanes, the image decreases till it vanishes away.
In darkness I remain'd ; — the neighb'ring clock
Told me that now the rising sun at dawn
Shone lovely on my garden.
These be staggerers that, made drunk by power,
Forget thirst's eager promise, and presume.
Dark dreamers ! that the world forgets it too !
— Perish warmth,
Unfaithful to its seeming !
Old age, ' the shape and messenger of death,'
His wither'd fist still knocking at death's door.
— God no distance knows
All of the whole possessing.
With skill that never alchemist yet told.
Made drossy lead as ductile as pure gold.
Guess at the wound and heal with secret hand.
280 POETICAL FRAGMENTS.
The broad-breasted rock.
Glasses his rugged forehead in the sea.
I mix in hfe, and labour to seem free,
With common persons pleas 'd and common things,
While every thought and action tends to thee,
And every impulse from thy influence springs.
FAREWELL TO LOVE.
* Farewell, sweet Love ! yet blame you not my truth ;
More fondly ne'er did mother eye her child
Than I your form : your's were my hopes of youth.
And as you shaped my thoughts, I sigh'd or smil'd.
While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving
To pleasure's secret haunt, and some apart
Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving.
To you I gave my whole weak wishing heart ;
And when I met the maid that realized
Your fair creations, and had won her kindness.
Say but for her if aught on earth I prized !
Your dreams alone I dreamt and caught your blindness.
O grief! — but farewell, Love ! I will go play me
With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me.
* Within these circling hollies, woodbine-clad —
Beneath this small blue roof of vernal sky —
How warm, how still ! Tho' tears should dim mine eye,
Yet will my heart for days continue glad.
For here, my love, thou art, and here am I !
rOETICAL FRAGMENTS. 281
* Each crime that once estrang-es from the virtues
Doth make the memory of their features daily
More dim and vague, till each coarse counterfeit
Can have the passport to our confidence
Sign'd by ourselves. And fitly are they punish'd,
Who prize and seek the honest man but as
A safer lock to guard dishonest treasures.
Grant me a patron, gracious Heaven ! whene'er
My unwash'd follies call for penance drear :
But when more hideous guilt this heart infects,
Instead of fiery coals upon my pate,
O let a titled patron be my fate ; —
That fierce compendium of Egyptian pests !
Right reverend dean, right honourable squire.
Lord, marquis, earl, duke, prince, — or if aught higher,
However proudly nicknamed, he shall be
Anathema Maranatha to me !
A SOBER STATEMENT OF HUMAN LIFE,
OR THE TRUE MEDIUM.
*A chance may win what by mischance was lost;
The net that holds not great, takes little fish :
In somethings all, in all things none are crost;
Few all they need, but none have all they wish :
Unmingled joys to no one here befall;
Who least, hath some ; who most, hath never all !
OMNIANA. 1812.
THE FRENCH DECADE.
I HAVE nothing to say in defence of the French
revolutionists, as far as they are personally
concerned in this substitution of every tenth
for the seventh day as a day of rest. It was
not only a senseless outrage on an ancient ob-
servance, around which a thousand good and
gentle feelings had clustered ; it not only ten-
ded to weaken the bond of brotherhood be-
tween France and the other members of Chris-
tendom ; but it was dishonest, and robbed the
labourer of fifteen days of restorative and
humanizing repose in every year, and ex-
tended the wrong to all the friends and fellow
labourers of man in the brute creation. Yet
when I hear Protestants, and even those of
the Lutheran persuasion, and members of the
church of England, inveigh against this change
as a blasphemous contempt of the fourth com-
mandment, I pause, and before I can assent to
the verdict of condemnation, I must prepare
my mind to include in the same sentence, at
least as far as theory goes, the names of se-
veral among the most revered reformers of
OMNIANA. 283
t
Christianity. Without referring to Luther, I
will begin with Master Frith, a founder and
martyr of the church of England, having wit-
nessed his faith amid the flames in the year
1533. This meek and enlightened, no less
than zealous and orthodox, divine, in his " De-
claration of Baptism" thus expresses himself;
Our forefathers, which were in the beginning of the
Church, did abrogate the sabbath, to the intent that men
might have an example of Christian Hberty. Howbeit, be-
cause it was necessary that a day should be reserved in which
the people should come together to hear the word of God,
they ordained instead of the Sabbath, which was Saturday,
the next following which is Sunday. And although they
might have kept the Saturday with the Jew as a thing indif-
ferent, yet they did much better.
Some three years after the martyrdom of
Frith, in 1536, being the 27th of Henry VIII.
suffered Master Tindal in the same glorious
cause, and this illustrious martyr and translator
of the word of life, likewise, in his " Answer
to Sir Thomas More," hath similarly resolved
this point :
As for the Sabbath, we be lords of the Sabbath, and may
yet change it into Monday, or any other day, as we see need ;
or we may make every tenth day holy day only, if we see
cause why. Neither was there any cause to change it from
the Saturday, save only to put a difference between us and
the Jews; neither need we any holy day at all, if the people
might be taught without it.
This great man believed that if Christian
nations should ever become Christians indeed,
there would every day be so many hours
taken from the labour for the perishable body,
284 OMNIANA.
to the service of the souls and the understand-
ings of mankind, both masters and servants, as
to supersede the necessity of a particular day.
At present our Sunday may be considered as
so much Holy Land, rescued from the sea of
oppression and vain luxury, and embanked
against the fury of their billows.
RIDE AND TIE.
" On a scheme of perfect retribution in the
moral world"— observed Empeiristes,and paused
to look at, and wipe his spectacles.
" Frogs," interposed Musaello, " must have
been experimental philosophers, and experi-
mental philosophers must all transmigrate into
frogs."
*' The scheme will not be yet perfect," ad-
ded Gelon, " unless our friend Empeiristes, is
specially privileged to become an elect frog-
twenty times successively, before he reascends
into a galvanic philosopher."
" Well, well," replied Empeiristes, with a
benignant smile, " I give my consent, if only
our little Mary's fits do not recur."
Little Mary was Gel on 's only child, and the
darling and god-daughter of Empeiristes. By
the application of galvanic influence Empei-
ristes had removed a nervous affection of her
right leg, accompanied with symptomatic epi-
lepsy. The tear started in Gelon's eye, and
-OMNIANA. 285
he pressed the hand of his friend, while Musa-
ello, half suppressing, half indulging, a similar
sense of shame, sportively exclaimed, " Hang
it, Gelon ! somehow or other these philosopher
fellows always have the better of us wits, in
the long run !"
JEREMY TAYLOR.
The writings of Bishop Jeremy Taylor are a
perpetual feast, to me. His hospitable board
groans under the weight and multitude of
viands. Yet I seldom rise from the perusal of
his works without repeating or recollecting the
excellent observation of Minucius Felix.
Fahulas et errores ah imperitis parentibus disci-
mns ; et quod est gravius, ipsis stndiis et disci-
plinis elaboramus.
CRITICISM.
Many of our modern criticisms on the works
of our elder writers remind me of the connois-
seur, who, taking up a small cabinet picture,
railed most eloquently at the absurd caprice
of the artist in painting a horse sprawling.
" Excuse me. Sir," replied the owner of the
piece, " you hold it the wrong way : it is a
horse galloping."
286 OMNIANA.
PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.
Our statesmen, who survey with jealous dread
all plans for the education of the lower orders,
may be thought to proceed on the system of
antagonist muscles ; and in the belief, that the
closer a nation shuts its eyes, the wider it will
open its hands. Or do they act on the prin-
ciple, that the status helli is the natural relation
between the people and the government, and
that it is prudent to secure the result of the
contest by gouging the adversary in the first
instance ? Alas ! the policy of the maxim is
on a level with its honesty. The Philistines
had put out the eyes of Samson, and thus, as
they thought, fitted him to drudge and grind
Among the slaves and asses, his comrades,
As good for nothing else, no .better service : —
But his darkness added to his fury without
diminishing his strength, and the very pillars
of the temple of oppression — ■
With horrible convulsion, to and fro,
He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew
The whole roof after them with burst of thunder.
Upon the heads of all who sat beneath ;
Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, and priests,
Their choice nobility.
The error might be less unpardonable with
a statesman of the continent;— but with En-
OMNIANA. 287
glishmen, who have Ireland in one direction,
and Scotland in another; the one in igno-
rance, sloth, and rebellion,— in the other ge-
neral information, industry, and loyalty, verily
it is not error merely, but infatuation.
PICTURESQUE WORDS.
Who is ignorant of Homer's IlTJXtov hvook^vWovI
Yet in some Greek manuscript hexameters I
have met with a compound epithet, which may
compare with it for the prize of excellence in
flashing on the mental eye a complete image.
It is an epithet of the brutified archangel, and
forms the latter half of the verse,^ —
KfjJ/co/cepwviiva 2aTav.
Ye youthful bards ! compare this word with
its literal translation, " tail-horn-hoofed Satan,"
and be shy of compound epithets, the compo-
nents of which are indebted for their union
exclusively to the printer's hyphen. Henry
More, indeed, would have naturalized the word
without hesitation, and cercoceronychous would
have shared the astonishment of the English
reader in the glossary to his Song of the Soul
with Achronycul, Anaisthsesie, &c. &c.
288 OMNIANA.
TOLERATION.
The state, with respect to the different sects of
religion under its protection, should resemble
a well drawn portrait. Let there be half a
score individuals looking at it, every one sees
its eyes and its benignant smile directed to-
wards himself.
The framer of preventive laws, no less than
private tutors and school-masters, should re-
member, that the readiest way to make either
mind or body grow awry, is by lacing it too
tight.
WAR.
It would have proved a striking part of a vision
presented to Adam the day after the death of
Abel, to have brought before his eyes half a
million of men crowded together in the space
of a square mile. When the first father had
exhausted his wonder on the multitude of his
offspring, he would then naturally inquire of
his angelic instructor, for what purposes so
vast a multitude had assembled ? what is the
common end ? Alas ! to murder each other, —
all Cains, and yet no Abels !
OMNIANA. 289
PARODIES.
Parodies on new poems are read as satires ;
on old ones, — the soliloquy of Hamlet for in-
stance— as compliments. A man of genius
may securely laugh at a mode of attack by
which his reviler, in half a century or less, be-
comes his encomiast.
M. DUPUIS.
Among the extravagancies of faith which have
characterized many infidel writers, who would
swallow a whale to avoid believing that a
whale swallowed Jonas, — a high rank should be
given to Dupuis, who, at the commencement of
the French Revolution, published a work in
twelve volumes, octavo, in order to prove that
Jesus Christ was the sun, and all Christians,
worshippers of Mithra. His arguments, if ar-
guments they can be called, consist chiefly of
metaphors quoted from the Fathers. What
irresistible conviction would not the following
passage from South's sermons (vol. v. p. 165.)
have flashed on his fancy, had it occurred in
the writings of Origen or Tertullian ! and how
complete a confutation of all his grounds does
not the passage afford to those humble souls,
who, gifted with common sense alone, can boast
VOL. I. u
290 OIMNIANA.
of no additional light received through a crack
in their upper apartments : —
Christ the great sun of righteousness and saviour of the
world, having by a glorious rising, after a red and I)loody set-
ting, proclaimed his deity to men and angels ; and by a com-
plete triumph over the two grand enemies of mankind, sin
and death, set up the everlasting gospel in the room of all
false religions, has now changed the Persian superstition into
the Christian doctrine, and without the least approach to the
idolatry of the former, made it henceforward the duty of all
nations, Jews and Gentiles, to worship the rising sun.
This one passage outblazes the whole host
of Diipuis' evidences and extracts. In the
same sermon, the reader will meet with Hume's
argument against miracles anticipated, and put
in Thomas's mouth.
ORIGIN OF THE WORSHIP OF HYMEN.
The origin of the worship of Hymen is thus
related by Lactantius. The story would fur-
nish matter for an excellent pantomime. Hy-
men was a beautiful youth of Athens, who for
the love of a young v' '"gin disguised himself, and
assisted at the Eleusinian rites : and at this
time he, together with his beloved, and divers
other young ladies of that city, was surprized
and carried off by pirates, who supposing him
to be what he appeared, lodged him with his
mistress. In the dead of the night when the
robbers were all asleep, he arose and cut their
throats. Thence making hasty way back to'
OMNIANA. 291
Athens, he bargained with the parents that he
would restore to them their daughter and all her
companions, if they would consent to her mar-
riage with him. They did so, and this mar-
riage proving remarkably happy, it became
the custom to invoke the name of Hymen at
all nuptials.
EGOTISM.
It is hard and uncandid to censure the great
reformers in philosophy and religion for their
egotism and boastfulness. It is scarcely pos-
sible for a man to meet with continued personal
abuse, on account of his superior talents, with-
out associating more and more the sense of the
value of his discoveries or detections with his
own person. The necessity of repelling imjust
contempt, forces the most modest man into a
feeling of pride and self-consciousness. How
can a tall man help thinking of his size, when
dwarfs are constantly on tiptoe beside him ? —
Paracelsus was a braggart and a quack ; so
was Cardan ; but it was their merits, and not
their follies, which drew upon them that tor-
rent of detraction and calumny, which com-
pelled them so frequently to think and write
concerning themselves, that at length it became
a habit to do so. Wolff too, though not a
boaster, was yet persecuted into a habit of
egotism botli in his prefaces and in his ordi-
292 OMNI AN A.
nary conversation , and the same holds good
of the founder of the Brunonian system, and
of his great namesake Giordano Bruno. The
more decorous manners of the present age have
attached a disproportionate opprobrium to this
foible, and many therefore abstain with cau-
tious prudence from all displays of what they
feel. Nay, some do actually flatter themselves,
that they abhor all egotism, and never betray
it either in their writings or discourse. But
watch these men narrowly ; and in the greater
number of cases you will find their thoughts,
feelings, and mode of expression, saturated
with the passion of contempt, which is the con-
centrated vinegar of egotism.
Your very humble men in company, if they
produce any thing, are in that thing of the
most exquisite irritability and vanity.
When a man is attempting to describe ano-
ther person's character, he may be right or he
may be wrong ; but in one thing he Avill always
succeed, that is, in describing himself. If, for
example, he expresses simple approbation, he
praises from a consciousness of possessing si-
milar qualities ; — if he approves with admira-
tion, it is from a consciousness of deficiency.
A. " Ay ! he is a sober man." B. " Ah ! Sir,
what a blessing is sobriety!" Here A. is a
man conscious of sobriety, who egotizes in
tuism ;— B. is one who, feeling the ill effects of
a contrary habit, contemplates sobriety with
blameless envy. Again : — A. " Yes, he is a
OMNIANA. 293
warm man, a moneyed fellow ; you may rely
upon him." B. " Yes, yes, Sir, no wonder !
he has the blessing of being well in the world."
This reflection might be introduced in defence
of plaintive egotism, and by way of preface to
an examination of all the charges against it,
and from what feelings they proceed. 1800
*
Contempt is egotism in ill humonr. Appe-
tite without moral affection, social sympathy,
and even without passion and imagination —
(in plain English, mere lust,) — is the basest
form of egotism, — and being infra human, or
below humanity, should be pronounced with
the harsh breathing, as he-goat-ism. 1820.
CAP OF LIBERTY.
TtTosE who hoped proudly of human nature,
and admitted no distinction between Chris-
tians and Frenchmen, regarded the first con-
stitution as a colossal statue of Corinthian brass,
formed by the fusion and commixture of all
metals in the conflagration of the state. But
there is a common fungus, which so exactly
represents the pole and cap of liberty, that it
seems offered by nature herself as the appro-
priate emblem of Gallic republicanism, — mush-
room patriots, with a mushroom cap of liberty.
* From Mr. Gutch's comniotiplace book. Ed.
294 OMNIANA.
BULLS.
Novi ego aliquem qui dormitabundus aliquando
pulsari horam quartam midiverit, et sic numera-
vit, una, una, una, una; ac turn prce rei ahsur-
ditate,quam anima concipiehat, exclamavit. Nee!
delirat horologium! Quater pulsavit horam
unayn.
I knew a person, who, during imperfect sleep,
or dozing, as we say, listened to the clock
as it was striking four, and as it struck, he
counted the four, one, one, one, one ; and
then exclaimed, " Why, the clock is out of its
wits ; it has struck one four times over !"
This is a good exemplification of the nature
of Sulls, which will be found always to contain
in them a confusion of what the schoolmen
would have called — objectivity with subjec-
tivity ; — in plain English, the impression of a
thing as it exists in itself, and extrinsically,
with the image which the mind abstracts from
the impression. Thus, number, or the total of
a series, is a generalization of the mind, an
ens rationis not an ens reale. I have read many
attempts at a definition of a JBidl, and lately
in the Edinburgh Review ; but it then ap-
peared to me that the definers had fallen into
the same fault with Miss Edgeworth, in her
delightful essay on Bulls, and given the defi-
nition of the genus. Blunder, for that of the
OMNIANA. 295
particular species. I will venture, therefore,
to propose the following : a Bull consists in a
mental juxta-position of incongruous images
or thoughts with the sensation, but without the
sense, of connection. The psychological con-
ditions of the possibility of a Bull, it would not
be difficvdt to determine ; but it would require
a larger space than can be afforded here, at
least more attention than my readers would be
likely to afford.
There is a sort of spurious Bull which con-
sists wholly in mistake of language, and which
the closest thinker may make, if speaking in a
language of which he is not master.
WISE IGNORANCE.
It is impossible to become either an eminently
great, or truly pious man, without the courage
to remain ignorant of many things. This im-
portant truth is most happily expressed by the
elder Scaliger in prose, and by the younger in
verse ; the latter extract has an additional
claim from the exquisite terseness of its diction,
and the purity of its Latinity. I particularly
recommend its perusal to the commentators on
the Apocalypse.
Quare ulterior disquisitio morosi atque sata-
gentis animi est ; humancE etiim sapientice jjars
est, qu<jedam aquo animo nesclre velle.
J. C. Scalig. Ex. 307. s. 29.
296 OMNIANA.
Ne curiosus queer e causas ojnnium,
QucECunque lihris vis prophetarum irididit,
Afflata ccelo, plena veraci Deo ;
Ncc operta sacri snpparo silenfii
Irrumperc audc ; sed prudenter prceteri !
Ncscire velle quce magister optimus
Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est.
Josep. Scalig.
ROUGE.
Triumphant generals in Rome wore rouge.
The ladies of France, and their fair sisters and
imitators in Britain, conceive themselves al-
ways in the chair of triumph, and of course
entitled to the same distinction. The custom
originated, perhaps, in the humility of the con-
querors, that they might seem to blush conti-
nually at their own praises. Mr. Gilpin fre-
quently speaks of a " picturesque eye :" with
something less of solecism, I may affirm that
our fair ever blushing triumphants have se-
cured to themselves the charm of picturesque
cheeks, every face being its own portrait.
"ETTEa Trrepdeyra. HASTY WORDS.
I CRAVE mercy (at least of my contemporaries :
for if these Omniana should outlive the present
generation, the opinion will not need it) but I
could not help writing in the blank page of a
OMNIANA. 297
very celebrated work* the following passage
from Picus Mirandula :—
Movent mihi stomachum grammatlstcB quidam, qui cum
duas tenuerint vocahulorum origines, ita seostentant, ita ven-
ditant, ita circumferunt jactabundi, tit prce ipsis pro nihilo
habendos jjhilosophos arbitrentur. Epist. ad Hcrniol. Barb.
MOTIVES AND IMPULSES.
It is a matter of infinite difficulty, but fortu-
nately of comparative indifference to determine
what a man's motive may have been for this
or that particular action. Rather seek to learn
what his objects in general are. What does
he habitually wish, habitually pursue? and
thence deduce his impulses which are com-
monly the true efficient causes of men's con-
duct ; and without which the motive itself
would not have become a motive. Let a
haunch of venison represent the motive, and
the keen appetite of health, and exercise the
impulse : then place the same or some more
favourite dish before the same man, sick, dys-
peptic, and stomach-worn, and we may then
weigh the comparative influences of motives
and impulses. Without the perception of
this truth, it is impossible to understand the
character of lago, who is represented as now
assigning one, and then another, and again a
* Diversions of Piirley. Ed.
298 OMNIANA.
third motive for his conduct, all alike the mere
fictions of his own restless natm'e, distempered
by a keen sense of his intellectual superiority,
and haunted by the love of exerting power on
those especially who are his superiors in prac-
tical and moral excellence. Yet how many
among our modern critics have attributed to
the profound author this the appropriate in-
consistency of the character itself
A second illustration : — Did Curio, the quon-
dam patriot, reformer, and semi-revolutionist,
abjure his opinion, and yell the foremost in
the hunt of persecution against his old friends
and fellow-philosophists, with a cold clear pre-
determination, formed at one moment, of mak-
ing £5000 a year by his apostacy ? — I neither
know nor care. Probably not. But this I
know, that to be thought a man of consequence
by his contemporaries, to be admitted into the
society of his superiors in artificial rank, to
excite the admiration of lords, to live in splen-
dour and sensual luxury, have been the objects
of his habitual wishes. A flash of lightning
has turned at once the polarity of the compass
needle : and so, perhaps, now and then, but as
rarely, a violent motive may revolutionize a
man's opinions and professions. But more
frequently his honesty dies away imperceptibly
from evening into twilight, and from twilight
into utter darkness. He turns hypocrite so
gradually, and by such tiny atoms of motion,
that by the time he has arrived at a given point,
OMNIANA. 299
he forgets his own hypocrisy in tlie impercep-
tible degrees of his conversion. The difference
between such a man and a bolder bar, is
merely that between the hour hand, and that
which tells the seconds, on a watch. Of the
former you can see only the past motion ; of
the latter both the past motion and the present
moving. Yet there is, perhaps, more hope of
the latter rogue : for he has lied to mankind
only and not to himself — the former lies to his
own heart, as well as to the public.
INWARD BLINDNESS.
Talk to a blind man — he knows he wants the
sense of sight, and willingly makes the proper
allowances. But there are certain internal
senses, which a man may want, and yet be
wholly ignorant that he wants them. It is
most unpleasant to converse with such persons
on subjects of taste, philosophy, or religion.
Of course there is no reasoning with them : for
they do not possess the facts, on which the
reasoning must be grounded. Nothing is pos-
sible, but a naked dissent, which implies a sort
of unsocial contempt ; or, what a man of kind
dispositions is very likely to fall into, a heart-
less tacit acquiescence, which borders too
nearly on duplicity.
300 OMNIANA.
THE VICES OF SLAVES NO EXCUSE FOR
SLAVERY.
It often happens, that the slave himself has
neither the power nor the wish to be free.
He is then brutified ; but this apathy is the
dire effect of slavery, and so far from being a
justifying cause, that it contains the grounds of
its bitterest condemnation. The Carlovingian
race bred up the Merovingi as beasts ; and then
assigned their un worthiness as the satisfactory
reason for their dethronement. Alas ! the hu-
man being is more easily Meaned from the
habit of commanding than from that of abject*
obedience. The slave loses his soul when he
loses his master ; even as the dog that has lost
himself in the street, howls and whines till he
has found the house again, where he had been
kicked and cudgelled, and half starved to
boot. As we, however, or our ancestors must
have inoculated our fellow-creature with this
wasting disease of the soul, it becomes our duty
to cure him ; and though we cannot immedi-
ately make him free, yet we can, and ought
to, put him in the way of becoming so at some
future time, if not in his own person, yet in
that of his children. The French, you will say,
are not capable of freedom. Grant this ; — but
does this fact justify the ungrateful traitor,
whose every measure has been to make them
still more incapable of it ?
OMNI AN A.
301
CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
The ancients attributed to the blood the same
motion of ascent and descent which really
takes place in the sap of trees. Servetus dis-
covered the minor circulation from the heart
to the lungs. Do not the following passages of
Giordano Bnmo (published in 1591) seem to
imply more? I put the question, pauperisforma,
with unfeigned diffidence.
" De Immenso et Innumerabili" lib. vi. cap. 8.
Ut in nostro corpore sanguis per totum circumcursat et re-
^cursat, sic in toto munclo, astro, tellure.
Quare non aliter quam nostro in corpore sanguis
Hinc meat, hinc remeat, yieque ad inferiora Jluit vi
Majors, ad supera a pedibus quam deinde recedat : —
and still more plainly, in the ninth chapter of
the same book,
Quid esset
Quodam ni gyro nature cuncta redirent
Ortus ad proprios rursum ; si sorheat omnes
Pontus aquas, totum non restituatque perenni
Ordine ; qua possit rerum consistere vita ?
Tanquam si totus concurrat sanguis in unam.
In qua consistat, partem, nee prima revisat
Ordia, et antiquos cursus non hide resumat.
It is affirmed in the " Supplement to the
Scotch Encyclopoedia Britannica," that Des
Cartes was the first who in defiance of Aris-
totle and the Schools, attributed infinity to
302 OMNIANA.
the universe. The very title of Bruno's poem
proves, tliat this honour belongs to him.
Feyjoo lays claim to a knowledge of the
circulation of the blood for Francisco de la
Reyna, a farrier, who published a work upon his
own art at Burgos, in 1 564. The passage which
he quotes is perfectly clear. Por manera, que
la sangre anda en tortio, y en rueda po?- todos los
mietnbros, excluye toda duda. Whether Reyna
himself claimed any discovery, Feyjoo does
not mention ; — but, these words seem to refer
to some preceding demonstration of the fact.
I am inclined to think that this, like many
other things, was known before it was disco-
vered ; just as the preventive powers of the
vaccine disease, the existence of adipocire in
graves, and certain principles in grammar and
in population, upon which bulky books have
been written and great reputations raised in
our days.
PERITUR.E PARCERE CHARTS.
What scholar but must at times have a feeling
of splenetic regret, when he looks at the list
of novels, in two, three, or four volumes each,
published monthly by Messrs. Lane, &c. and
then reflects that there are valuable works of
Cudworth, prepared by himself for the press,
yet still unpublished by the University which
possesses them, and which ought to glory in
OMNIANA.
303
the name of their great author ! and that there
is extant in manuscript a folio volume of un-
printed sermons by Jeremy Taylor. Surely,
surely, the patronage of our many literary
societies might be employed more beneficially
to the literature and to the actual literati of
the country, if they would publish the valu-
able manuscripts that lurk in our different
public libraries, and make it worth the while of
men of learning to correct and annotate the
copies, instead of , but it is treading on
hot embers !
TO HAVE AND TO BE.
The distinction is marked in a beautiful senti-
ment of a German poet: Hast thou any thing?
share it with me and I will pay thee the
worth of it. Art thou any thing ? O then let
us exchange souls !
The following is offered as a mere playful
illustration :
" Women have no souls," says prophet Ma-
homet.
Nay, dearest Anna ! why so grave ?
I said you had no soul, 'tis true :
For what you are, you cannot have —
'Tis I, that have one, since I first had you.
304 OMNIANA.
PARTY PASSION.
" Well, Sir !'^ exclaimed a lady, the vehe-
ment and impassionate partizan of Mr. Wilkes,
in the day of his glory, and during the broad
blaze of his patriotism, " Well, Sir ! and will
you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a great man,
and an eloquent man ?" — " Oh ! by no means.
Madam ! I have not a doubt respecting Mr.
Wilkes's talents!"— "Well, but. Sir! and is
he not a fine man, too, and a handsome man ?"
— " Why, Madam ! he squints, doesn't he?" —
" Squints ! yes to be sure he does. Sir ! but
not a bit more than a gentleman and a man of
sense ought to squint !"
GOODNESS OF HEART INDISPENSABLE TO
A MAN OF GENIUS.
If men will imjmrtially, and not asquint, look
toivard the offices and function of a poet, they
ivill easily conclude to themselves the iinpossihility
of any 7nans being the good poet ivithout being
first a good man. Dedication to the Fox.
Ben Jonson has borrowed this just and noble
sentiment from Strabo.
H Se (^dpeTTi) 7roir}TOv avvet^vKTCU ry tov avOptoirov'
Kai ov\ oiovTS ayaOov yevtaOcu 7roir)Tr]v, jin] irpoTEpov
yevvOivra avcpa ayaOov. Liib. 1. p. 3»>. lOllO.
OMNIANA. 305
MILTON AND BEN JONSON.
Those who have more faith in paralleUsm than
myself, may trace Satan's address to the sun in
Paradise Lost to the first Unes of Ben Jonson's
Poetaster :
" Light ! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves.
Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness !"
But even if Milton had the above in his mind,
his own verses would be more fitly entitled an
apotheosis of Jonson's lines than an imitation.
STATISTICS.
We all remember Burke's curious assertion
that there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in
England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise
in the number of beggars, prostitutes, and
thieves in the City of London. Mercetinus,
who wrote under Lewis XV. seems to have af-
forded the precedent ; he assures his readers,
that by an accurate calculation there were
50,000 incorrigible atheists in the City of
Paris ! Atheism then may have been a co-cause
of the French revolution ; but it should not be
burthened on it, as its monster-child.
VOL. I. X
306 OMNIANA.
MAGNANIMITY.
The following ode was written by Giordano
Bruno, under prospect of that martyrdom which
he soon after suft'ered at Rome, for atheism :
that is, as is proved by all his works, for a
lofty and enlightened piety, which was of
course unintelligible to bigots and dangerous
to an apostate hierarchy. If the human mind
be, as it assuredly is, the sublimest object which
nature affords to our contemplation, these lines
which portray the human mind under the ac-
tion of its most elevated affections, have a fair
claim to the praise of sublimity. The work
from which they are extracted is exceedingly
rare (as are, indeed, all the works of the Nolan
philosopher), and I have never seen them
quoted : —
Dcedaleas vacuis pliimas nectere humeris
Concupiant alii; aut vi suspendi nubium
Alis, ventorumve appelant remigium ;
Aut orbilcE Jlammanlis raptari alveo ;
Bellerophontisve alilem.
Nos vero illo donali sumus genio,
Ut falum inlrepedi objectasque umbras cernimus,
Ne ccEci ad lumen solis, ad jiersjncuas
Naturce voces surdi, ad Divum munera
Ingrato adsimus pec fore.
Non curamus stultorum quid opinio
De nobis ferat, aut queis dignetur sedibus.
OMNIANA. 307
Alls ascendimus sursum melioribus !
Quid nubes ultra, ventorum ultra est semita.
Vidimus, quantum satis est.
Illuc conscendent plurimi, nobis ducibus,
Per scalam propria erectam et firmam in pectore,
Quam Deus, et vegeti sors dabit ingeni ;
Non manes, pluma, ignis, ventus, nubes, spiritus,
Divinantum 2)hantasmata.
Non sensus vegetans, non me ratio arguet,
Non indoles exculti clara ingenii ;
Sed perjidi sycophants supercilium
Absque lance, statera, trutiyia, oculo,
Miraculum armati segete.
Versijicantis grammatistce eiicomium,
Buglossce Grcecissantum, et epistolia
Lectorem libri salutantum a limine,
Latrantum adversum Zoilos, Memos, mastiges,
Hinc absint testimonia !
Procedat nudus, quern non ornant nubila,
Sol ! Non conveniunt quadrupedum phalera
'Humano dorso I Porro veri species
QucEsita, inventa, et patefacta me efferat !
Etsi nidlus intelligat,
Si cum natura sapio, et sub numine.
Id vere plus quam satis est.
The conclusion alludes to a charge of impe-
netrable obscurity, in which Bruno shares one
and the same fate with Plato, Aristotle, Kant,
and in truth with every great discoverer and
benefactor of the human race ; excepting only
when the discoveries have been capable of
being rendered palpable to the outward senses,
and have therefore come under the cognizance
30R OMNIANA.
of our "sober judicious critics," the men of
" sound common sense ;" that is, of those
snails in intellect, who wear their eyes at the
tips of their feelers, and cannot even see unless
they at the same time touch. When these
finger-philosophers affirm that Plato, Bruno,
&c. must have been " out of their senses," the
just and proper retort is, — " Gentlemen ! it is
still worse with you ! you have lost your rea-
son !
By the by, Addison in the Spectator has
grossly misrepresented the design and tendency
of Bruno's Bestia Triomphante; the object of
which was to show of all the theologies and
theogonies which have been conceived for the
mere purpose of solving problems in the mate-
rial universe, that as they originate in fancy, so
they all end in delusion, and act to the hind-
rance or prevention of sound knowledge and
actual discovery. But the principal and most
important truth taught in this allegory is, that in
the concerns of morality all pretended know-
ledge of the will of Heaven which is not re-
vealed to marrthrough his conscience ; that all
commands which do not consist in the uncon-
ditional obedience of the will to the pure rea-
son, without tampering with consequences
(which are in God's power, not in ours) ; in
short, that all motives of hope and fear from
invisible powers, which are not immediately
derived from, and absolutely coincident with,
the reverence due to the supreme reason of the
OMNIANA. 309
universe, are all alike dangerous superstitions.
The worship founded on them, whether offered
by the Catholic to St. Francis, or by the poor
African to his Fetish differ in form only, not
in substance. Herein Bruno speaks not only
as a philosopher, but as an enlightened Chris-
tian ; — the Evangelists and Apostles every
Avhere representing their moral precepts not as
doctrines then first revealed, but as truths im-
planted in the hearts of men, whicli their vices
only could have obscured.
NEGROS AND NARCISSUSES.
There are certain tribes of Negros who take
for the deity of the day the first thing they see
or meet with in the morning. Many of our
fine ladies, and some of our very fine gentle-
men, are followers of the same sect ; though
by aid of the looking-glass they secure a con-
stancy as to the object of their devotion.
AN ANECDOTE.
We here in England received a very high cha-
racter of Lord during his stay abroad.
" Not unlikely, Sir," replied the traveller ; " a
dead dog at a distance is said to smell like
musk."
oiO OlMNIANA.
THE PHAROS AT ALEXANDRIA.
Certain full and highly-wrought dissuasivcs
from sensual indulgencies, in the works of the-
ologians as well as of satirists and story-writers,
may, not unaptly, remind one of the Pharos ;
the many lights of which appeared at a dis-
tance as one, and this as a polar star, so as more
often to occasion wrecks than prevent them.
At the base of the Pharos the name of the
reigning monarch was engraved, on a compo-
sition, which the artist well knew would last no
longer than the king's life. Under this, and
cut deep in the marble itself, was his own name
and dedication : " Sostratos of Gyndos, son of
Dexiteles to the Gods, protectors of sailors !" —
So will it be with the Georgimn Sidus the Fer-
dinancUa, &c. &c. — Flattery's plaister of Paris
will crumble away, and under it we shall read
the names of Herschel, Piozzi, and their com-
peers.
SENSE AND COMMON SENSE.
I HAVE noticed two main evils in philosophi-
zing. The first is, the absurdity of demanding
proof for the very facts which constitute the
nature of him who demands it, — a proof for
those primary and unceasing revelations of
OMNIANA. 311
self-consciousness, which every possible proof
must pre-suppose ; reasoning, for instance, joro
and con, concerning the existence of the power
of reasoning. Other truths may be ascer-
tained ; but these are certainty itself (all at
least which we mean by the word), and are the
measure of every thing else which we deem
certain. The second evil is, that of mistaking
for such facts mere general prejudices, and
those opinions that, having been habitually
taken for granted, are dignified with the name
of common sense. Of these, the first is the
more injurious to the reputation, the latter more
detrimental to the progress of philosophy. In
the affairs of common life we very properly
appeal to common sense ; but it is absurd to
reject the results of the microscope from the
negative testimony of the naked eye. Knives
are sufficient for the table and the market ; —
but for the purposes of science we must dissect
with the lancet.
As an instance of the latter evil, take that
truly powerful and active intellect, Sir Thomas
Brown, who, though he had written a large
volume in detection of vulgar errors, yet
peremptorily pronounces the motion of the
earth round the sun, and consequently the
whole of the Copernican system unworthy of
any serious confutation, as being manifestly re-
pugnant to common sense ; which said com-
mon sense, like a miller's scales, used to weigh
gold or gasses, may, and often does, become
312 OMNIANA.
very gross, though unfortunately not very un-
common, nonsense. And as for the former,
which may be called Logica Prcepostera, I
have read in metaphysical essays of no small
fame, arguments drawn ah extra in proof and
disproof of personal identity, which, ingenious
as they may be, were clearly anticipated by the
little old woman's appeal to her little dog, for
the solution of the very same doubts, occa-
sioned by her petticoats having been cut round
about : —
If it is not me, he'll bark and he'll rail,
But if I be I, he'll wag his little tail.
TOLERATION.
1 DARE confess that Mr. Locke's treatise on
Toleration appeared to me far from being a
full and satisfactory answer to the subtle and
oft-times plausible arguments of Bellarmin,
and other Romanists. On the whole, I was
more pleased with the celebrated W. Penn's
tracts on the same subject. The following ex-
tract from his excellent letter to the king of
Poland appeals to the heart rather than to the
head, to the Christian rather than to the phi-
losopher ; and, besides, overlooks the ostensible
object of religious penalties, which is not so
much to convert the heretic, as to prevent the
spread of heresy. The thoughts, however, are
so just in themselves, and expressed with so
OMMANA. 313
much life and simplicity, that it well deserves a
place in these Omniana : —
Now, O Prince ! give a poor Christian leave to expostu-
late with thee. Did Christ Jesus or his holy followers endea-
vour, by precept or example, to set up their religion with a
carnal sword ? Called he any troops of men or angels to defend
him? Did he encourage Peter to dispute his right with the
sword ? But did he not say, Put it up ? Or did he countenance
his over-zealous disciples, when they would have had fire from
heaven to destroy those that were not of their mind ? No !
But did not Christ rebuke them, saying. Ye know not what
spirit ye are of? And if it was neither Christ's spirit, nor their
own spirit that would have fire from heaven — Oh ! what is
that spirit that would kindle fire on earth to destroy such as
peaceably dissent upon the account of conscience !
O King! when did the true religion persecute? When
did the true church oflTer violence for religion ? Were not her
weapons prayers, tears, and patience ? did not Jesus conquer
by these weapons, and vanquish cruelty by suffering? can
clubs, and staves, and swords, and prisons, and banishments
reach the soul, convert the heart, or convince the understand-
ins: of man ? When did violence ever make a true convert, or
bodily punishment, a sincere Christian? This maketh void
the end of Christ's coming. Yea, it robbeth God's spirit of its
office, which is to convince the world. That is the sword by
which the ancient Christians overcame.
The theory of persecution seems to rest on
the following assumptions. 1. A duty implies
a right. We have a right to do whatever it is
our duty to do. 2. It is the duty and conse-
quently the right of the supreme power in a
state to promote the greatest possible sum of
well-being in that state. 3. This is impossible
without morality. 4. But morality can neither
be produced or preserved in a people at large
without true religion. 5. Relative to the duties
314 OMNIANA.
of the legislature or governors, that is the true
religion which they conscientiously believe to
be so. G. As there can be but one true reli-
gion, at the same time, this one it is their duty
and right to authorize and protect. 7. But the
established religion cannot be protected and
secured except by the imposition of restraints
or the influence of penalties on those, who pro-
fess and propagate hostility to it. 8. True re-
ligion, consisting of precepts, counsels, com-
mandments, doctrines, and historical narra-
tives, cannot be effectually proved or defended,-
but by a comprehensive view of the whole as a
system. Now this cannot be hoped for from
the mass of mankind. But it may be attacked,
and the faith of ignorant men subverted by
particular objections, by the statement of diffi-
culties without any counter-statement of the
greater difficulties whicli would result from the
rejection of the former, and by all the otlier
stratagems used in the desultory warfare of
sectaries and infidels. This is, however, mani-
festly dishonest and dangerous, and there must
exist, therefore, a power in the state to prevent,
suppress, and punish it. 9. The advocates of
toleration have never been able to agree among
themselves concerning the limits to their own
claims ; liave never established any clear rules,
as to what shall and what shall not be admitted
under tlie name of religion and conscience.
Treason and the grossest indecencies not only
may be, but fiave been, called by tliese names :
OMNIANA. 315
as among the earlier Anabaptists. 10. And
last, it is a petitio piincipii, or begging the
question, to take for granted that a state has
no power except in case of overt acts. It is its
duty to prevent a present evil, as much at least
as to punish the perpetrators of it. Besides,
preaching and publishing are overt acts. Nor
has it yet been proved, though often asserted,
that a Christian sovereign has nothing to do
with the eternal happiness or misery of the
fellow creatures entrusted to his charge.
HINT FOR A NEW SPECIES OF HISTORY.
" The very knowledge of the opinions and customs of so
considerable a part of mankind as the Jews now are, and
especially have been heretofore, is valuable both for pleasure
and use. It is a very good piece of history, and that of the
best kind, namely, of human nature, and of that part of it
whi'ch is most different from us, and commonly the least known
to us. And, indeed, the principal advantage which is to be
made by the wiser sort of men of most writings, is rather to
see what men think and are, than to be informed of the na-
tures and truth of things; to observe what thoughts and pas-
sions have occupied men's minds, what opinions and manners
they are of. In this view it becomes of no mean importance
to notice and record the strangest ignorance, the most putid
fables, impertinent, trilling, ridiculous disputes, and more ridi-
culous pugnacity in the defence and retention of the subjects
disputed." Publisher's preface to the reader in Lightfoot's
Works, vol. i.
I\ the thick volume of title pages and chapters
of contents (composed) of large and small
310 OMNI ANA.
works correspondent to each (proposed) by a
certain owjw/-pregnant, 7ti hi I i-pnitwricnt genius
of my acquaintance, not the least promising is,
— " A History of the morals and (as connected
therewith) of the manners of the English Na-
tion from the Conquest to the present time."
From the chapter of contents it appears, that
my friend is a steady believer in the uninter-
rupted progression of his fellow countrymen ;
that there has been a constant growth of wealth
and well-being among us, and with these an
increase of knowledge, and with increasing
knowledge an increase and diffusion of prac-
tical goodness. The degrees of acceleration,
indeed, have been different at different periods.
The moral being has sometimes crawled, some-
times strolled, sometimes walked, sometimes
run ; but it has at all times been moving on-
ward. If in any one point it has gone back-
ward, it has been only in order to leap forward
in some other. The work was to commence
with a numeration table, or catalogue, of those
virtues or qualities which make a man happy
in himself, and which conduce to the happiness
of those about him, in a greater or lesser sphere
of agency. The degree and the frequency in
which each of these virtues manifested them-
selves, in the successive reigns from William
the Conqueror inclusively, were to be illustrated
by apposite quotations from the works of con-
temporary writers, not only of historians and
chroniclers, but of the poets, romance writers,
OMNIANA. 317
and theologians, not omitting the correspon-
dence between literary men, the laws and
regulations, civil and ecclesiastical, and what-
ever records the industry of antiquarians has
brought to light in their provincial, municipal,
and monastic histories : — tall tomes and huge !
undegenerate sons of Anak, which look down
from a dizzy height on the dwarfish progeny of
contemporary wit, and can find no associates in
size at a less distance than two centuries ; and
in arranging which the puzzled librarian must
commit an anachronism in order to avoid an
anatopism.
Such of these illustrations as most amused or
impressed me, when I heard them (for alas !
even his very title pages and contents my
friend composes only in air !) I shall pro-
bably attempt to preserve in different parts of
these Omniana. At present I shall cite one
article only which I found wafered on a blank
leaf of his memorandum book, superscribed :
" Flattering news for Anno Domini 2000,
whenever it shall institute a comparison be-
tween itself and the 17th and 18th centuries."
It consists of an extract, say rather, an exsec-
tion from the Kingston Mercantile Advertiser,
from Saturday, August the 15th, to Tuesday,
August 18th, 1801. This paper which con-
tained at least twenty more advertisements of
the very same kind, was found by accident
among the wrapping-papers in the trunk of
an officer just returned from the West India
318 OMNIANA.
station. Tliey stand here exactly as in the
original, from which they are reprinted : —
King-ston, July 30, 1801.
Run away, about three weeks ago, from a penn near Half-
way Tree, a negro wench, named Nancy, of the Chamba
country, strong made, an ulcer on her left leg, marked D. C.
diamond between. She is supposed to be harboured by her
husband, Dublin, who has the direction of a wherry working
between this town and Port Royal, and is the property of Mr.
Fishley, of that place ; the said negro man having concealed
a boy in his wherry before. Half a joe will be paid to any
person apprehending the above described wench, and deliver-
ing to Mr. Archibald M' Lea, East end ; and if found secreted
by any person, the law will be put in force.
Kingston, August 13, 1801.
Strayed on Monday evening last, a negro boy of the Moco
country, named Joe, the property of Mr. Thomas Williams,
planter, in St. John's, who had sent him to town under the
charge of a negro man, with a cart for provisions. The said
boy is, perhaps, from 15 to 18 years of age, about twelve
months in the country, no mark, speaks little English, but
can tell his owner's name; had on a long Oznaburg frock.
It is supposed he might have gone out to vend some pears and
lemon-grass, and have lost himself in the street. One pistole
will be paid to any person apprehending and bringing him to
this ofiice.
Kingston, July 1, 1801.
Forty Shillings Reward.
Strayed on Friday evening last, (and was seen going up
West Street the following morning), a small bay
HORSE,
the left ear lapped, flat rump, much scored from the saddle on
his back, and marked on the near side F. M. with a diamond
between. Whoever will take up the said horse, and deliver
him to W. Balantine, butcher, back of West Street, will re-
ceive the above reward.
Kingston, July 4, 1801.
Strayed on Sunday morning last, from the subscriber's
house, in East Street, a bright dun He-Mule, the mane lately
OMNI AN A. 319
cropped, a large chafe slightly skinned over on the near but-
tock, and otherwise chafed from the action of the harness in
his recent breaking. Half a joe will be paid to any person
taking up and bringing this mule to the subscriber's house, or
to the Store in Harbour Street. John Walsh.
Kingston, July 2, 1801.
Ten pounds Reward,
Ran away
About two years ago from the subscriber, a Negro woman
named
DORAH,
purchased from Alexander M'Kean, Esq. She is about 20
years of age, and 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high ; has a mark on
one of her shoulders, about the size of a quarter dollar, occa-
sioned, she says, by the yaws ; of a coal black complexion,
very artful, and most probably passes about the country with
false papers and under another name; if that is not the case,
it must be presumed she is harboured about Green pond, where
she has a mother and other connexions.
What a history ! horses and negros ! negros
and horses ! It makes me tremble at my own
nature. Surely, every religious and conscien-
tious Briton is equally a debtor in gratitude to
Thomas Clarkson and his fellow labourers with
every African : for on the soul of every indivi-
dual among us did a portion of guilt rest, as
long as the Slave Trade remained legal.
A few years back the public was satiated
with accounts of the happy condition of the
slaves in our colonies, and the great encourage-
ments and facilities afforded to such of them,
as by industry and foresight laboured to better
their situation. With what truth this is stated
as the general tone of feeling among our plan-
ters, and their agents, may be conjectured from
320 OMNIANA.
the following- sentences, which made part of
what in England we call the leading paragraph
of the same newspaper : —
Strange as it may appear, we are assured as a fact, that a
number of slaves in this town have purchased lots of land, and
are absolutely in possession of the fee simple of lands and te-
nements. Neither is it uncommon for the men slaves to pur-
chase or manumize their wives, and vice versa, the wives their
husbands. To account for this, we need only look to the de-
predations daily committed, and the impositions practised to
the distress of the community and ruin of the fair trader.
Negro yards too, under such direction, will necessarily prove
the asylum of runaways from the country.
TEXT SPARRING.
When I hear (as who now can travel twenty
miles in a stage coach without the probability
of hearing) an ignorant religionist quote an
unconnected sentence of half a dozen words
from any part of the Old or New Testament,
and resting on the literal sense of these words
the eternal misery of all who reject, nay, even
of all those countless myriads, who have never
had the opportunity of accepting this, and
sundry other articles of faith conjured up by
the same textual magic ; I ask myself what
idea these persons form of the Bible, that they
should use it in a way in which they themselves
use no other book? They deem the whole
written by inspiration. Well ! but is the very
essence of rational discourse, that is, connec-
OMNIANA. 321
tion and dependency done away, because the
discourse is infallibly rational ? The mysteries,
which these spiritual lynxes detect in the sim-
plest texts, remind me of the 500 nondescripts,
each as large as his own black cat, which Dr.
Katterfelto, by aid of his solar microscope, dis-
covered in a drop of transparent water.
But to a contemporary who has not thrown
his lot in the same helmet with them, these
fanatics think it a crime to listen. Let them
then, or far rather, let those who are in danger
of infection from them, attend to the golden
aphorisms of the old and orthodox divines.
" Sentences in scripture (says Dr. Donne) like
hairs in horses' tails, concur in one rootof beauty
and strength ; but being plucked out, one by
one, serve only for springes and snares."
The second I transcribe from the preface to
Lightfoot's works. " Inspired writings are an
inestimable treasure to mankind ; for so many
sentences, so many truths. But then the true
sense of them must be known : otherwise,
so many sentences, so many authorized false-
hoods."
PELAGIANISM.
Our modern latitudinarians will find it diffi-
cult to suppose, that any thing could have been
said in the defence of Pelagianism equally
absurd with the facts and arguments which
VOL. I. Y
322 OMNIANA.
have been adduced in favour of original sin,
(sin being taken as guilt ; that is, observes a
Socinian wit, the crime of being born). But in
the connnent of Rabbi Akibah on Ecclesiastes
xii. 1 . we have a story of a mother, who must
have been a most determined believer in the
uninheritability of sin. For having a sickly
and deformed child, and resolved that it should
not be thought to have been punished for any
fault of its parents or ancestors, and yet having
nothing else for which to blame the child, she
seriously and earnestly accused it before the
judge of having kicked her unmercifully du-
ring her pregnancy.
I am firmly persuaded that no doctrine was
ever widely diftused among various nations
through successive ages and under difterent
religions, (such as is the doctrine of original
sin, and redemption, those fundamental articles
of every known religion professing to be re-
vealed,) which is not founded either in the na-
ture of things or in the necessities of our nature.
In the language of the schools, it cariies with
it presumptive evidence that it is either objec-
tively or subjectively true. And the more
strange and contradictory such a doctrine may
appear to the understanding, or discursive fa-
culty, the stronger is the presumption in its
favour. For whatever satirists may say, and
sciolists imagine, the human mind has no pre-
dilection for absurdity. I do not, however,
mean that such a doctrine shall be always the
OMNIANA. 323
best possible representation of the truth on
which it is founded ; for the same body casts
strangely different shadows in different places,
and different degrees of light, but that it always
does shadow out some such truth, and derive
its influence over our faith from our obscure
perception of that truth. Yea, even where the
person himself attributes his belief of it to the
miracles, with which it was announced by the
founder of his religion.
THE SOUL AND ITS ORGANS OF SENSE.
It is a strong presumptive proof against mate-
rialism, that there does not exist a language on
earth, from the rudest to the most refined, in
which a materialist can talk for five minutes
together, without involving some contradiction
in terms to his own system. Objection. Will
not this apply equally to the astronomer?
Newton, no doubt, talked of the sun's rising
and setting, just like other men. What should
we think of the coxcomb who should have ob-
jected to him, that he contradicted his own
system ? Ansiver — No ! it does not apply
equally ; say rather, it is utterly inapplicable
to the astronomer and natural philosopher.
For his philosophic, and his ordinary language
speak of two quite different things, both of
which are equally true. In his ordinary lan-
guage he refers to a fact of appearance, to a
324 OMNI AN A.
phenomenon common and necessary to all per-
sons in a given situation ; in his scientific lan-
guage he determines that one position or figure,
wliich being supposed, the appearance in ques-
tion would be the necessary result, and all ap-
pearances in all situations maybe demonstrably
foretold. Let a body be suspended in the air,
and strongly illuminated. What figure is here?
A triangle. But what here? A trapezium; — and
so on. The same question put to twenty men,
in twenty different positions and distances,
would receive twenty different answers : each
would be a true answer. But what is that one
figure which, being so placed, all these facts of
appearance must result according to the law of
perspective ? — Ay ! this is a different question,
this is a new subject. The words which answer
this would be absurd if used in reply to the
former.*
Thus, the language of the scripture on natu-
ral objects is as strictly philosophical as that of
the Newtonian system. Perhaps more so.
For it is not only equally true, but it is universal
among mankind, and unchangeable. It de-
scribes facts of appearance. And what other
language would have been consistent with the
divine wisdom ? The inspired writers must
have borrowed their terminology, either from
the crude and mistaken philosophy of their
own times, and so have sanctified and perpe-
* See Church and State. Appendix, p. 231. Ed.
OMNIANA. 325
tiiated falsehood, unintelligible meantime to all
but one in ten thousand ; or they must have
anticipated the terminology of the true system,
without any revelation of the system itself, and
so have become unintelligible to all men ; or
lastly, they must have revealed the system
itself, and thus have left nothing for the exer-
cise, developement, or reward of the human
understanding, instead of teaching that moral
knowledge, and enforcing those social and civic
virtues, out of which the arts and sciences will
spring up in due time and of their own accord.
But nothing of this applies to the materialist ;
he refers to the very same facts, of which the
common language of mankind speaks : and
these too are facts that have their sole and
entire being in our own consciousness ; facts, as
to which esse and conscire are identical. Now,
whatever is common to all languages, in all
climates, at all times, and in all stages of civi-
lization, must be the exponent and consequent
of the common consciousness of man as man.
Whatever contradicts this universal language,
therefore, contradicts the universal conscious-
ness, and the facts in question subsisting ex-
clusively in consciousness, whatever contradicts
the consciousness contradicts the fact.
I have been seduced into a dry discussion
where I had intended only a iew amusing facts,
in proof, that the mind makes the sense far
more than the senses make the mind. If I
have life, and health, and leisure, I purpose to
32G OMNIANA.
compile from the works, memoirs, and trans-
actions of the different philosophical societies
in Europe, from magazines, and the rich store
of medical and psychological publications, fur-
nished by the English, French, and German
press, all the essays and cases that relate to
the human faculties under unusual circum-
stances, (for pathology is the crucible of phy-
siology), excluding such only as are not intel-
ligible without the symbols or terminology of
science. These I would arrange under the
different senses and powers : as the eye, the
ear, the touch, &c. ; the imitative power, vo-
luntary and automatic ; the imagination, or
shaping and modifying power; the fancy or
the aggregative and associative power; the
understanding, or the regulative, substantiating,
and realizing power; the speculative reason,
vis theoretica et scientijica, or the power, by
which we produce, or aim to produce, unity,
necessity, and a universality in all our know-
ledge by means of principles, *a priori; the
will or practical reason ; the faculty of choice,
* This phrase, a priori, is, in common, most grossly misun-
derstood, and an absurdity burthened on it which it does not
deserve. By knowledge a priori, we do not mean that we
can know any thing previously to experience, which would be
a contradiction in terms ; but having once known it by occa-
sion of experience (that is, something acting upon us from
without) we then know, that it must have pre-existed, or the
experience itself would have been impossible. By experience
only I know, that I have eyes ; but then my reason convinces
me, that 1 must have had eyes in order to the experience.
OMNIANA. 327
(Willkiilir), and (distinct both from the moral
will, and the choice), the sensation of volition
which I have found reason to include under the
head of single and double touch. Thence I
propose to make a new arrangement of mad-
ness, whether as defect, or as excess, of any of
these senses or faculties ; and thus by appro-
priate cases to shew the difference between ; —
1. a man having lost his reason but not his
senses or understanding — that is, when he sees
things as other men see them,— adapts means
to ends as other men would adapt them, and
not seldom, with more sagacity, — but his final
end is altogether irrational : 2. his having lost
his wits, that is, his understanding or judicial
power ; but not his reason or the use of his
senses, — (such was Don Quixote ; and, there-
fore, we love and reverence him, while we des-
pise Hudibras) : 3. his being out of his senses,
as in the case of a hypochondriac, to whom his
limbs appear to be of glass, although all his
conduct is both rational, or moral, and prudent :
4. Or the case may be a combination of all
three, though I doubt the existence of such a
case, or of any two of them : 5. And lastly,
it may be merely such an excess of sensation,
as overpowers and suspends all, which is frenzy
or raving madness.
A diseased state of an organ of sense, or of
the inner organs connected with it, will perpe-
tually tamper with the understanding, and un-
less there be an energetic and watchful counter-
328 OMNIANA.
action of the judo;ment (of whicli I have known
more than one instance, in which the compa-
ring and reflecting judgment has obstinately,
though painfully, rejected the full testimony of
the senses,) will finally overpower it. But when
the organ is obliterated, or totally suspended,
then the mind applies some other organ to a
double use. Passing through Temple Sow-
erby, in Westmorland, some ten years back, I
was shewn a man perfectly blind ; and blind
from his infancy. Powell was his name. This
man's chief amusement was fishing on the wild
and uneven banks of the River Eden, and up
the different streams and tarns among the
mountains. He had an intimate friend, like-
wise stone blind, a dexterous card player, who
knows every gate and stile far and near
throughout the country. These two often
coursed together, and the people here, as
every where, fond of the marvellous, affirm
that they were the best beaters up of game in
the whole country. The every way amiable
and estimable John Gough of Kendal is not
only an excellent mathematician, but an infal-
lible botanist and zoologist. He has frequently
at the first feel corrected the mistakes of the
most experienced sportsman with regard to the
birds or vermin which they had killed, when
it chanced to be a variety or rare species so
completely resembling the common one, that
it required great steadiness of observation to
detect the difference, even after it had been
OMNIANA. 329
pointed out. As to plants and flowers, the ra-
pidity of his touch appears fully equal to that
of sight ; and the accuracy greater. Good
heavens ! it needs only to look at him ! Why
his face sees all over ! It is all one eye ! I al-
most envied him ; for the purity and excellence
of his own nature, never broken in upon by
those evil looks, (or features, which are looks
become fixtures), with which low cunning,
habitual cupidity, presumptuous sciolism, and
heart-hardening vanity, coarsen the human
face, — it is the mere stamp, the undisturbed
eciypoii of his own soul ! Add to this that he
is a Quaker, with all the blest negatives, with-
out any of the silly and factious positives, of
that sect, which, with all its bogs and hollows,
is still the prime sun-shine spot of Christendom
in the eye of the true philosopher. When I
was in Germany in the year 1798, I read at
Hanover, and met with two respectable per-
sons, one a clergyman, the other a physician,
who confirmed to me, the account of the upper-
stall master at Hanover, written by himself,
and countersigned by all his medical atten-
dants. As far as I recollect, he had fallen
from his horse on his head, and in consequence
of the blow lost both his sight and hearing for
nearly three years, and continued for the
greater part of this period in a state of nervous
fever. His understanding, however, remained
miimpaired and unaffected, and his entire con-
sciousness, as to outward impressions, being
330 OMNIANA.
confined to the sense of touch, he at length
became capable of reading any book (if printed,
as most German books are, on coarse paper)
with his lingers, in much the same manner in
which the piano-forte is played, and latterly
with an almost incredible rapidity. Likewise
by placing his hand with the fingers all ex-
tended, at a small distance from the lips of any
person that spoke slowly and distinctly to him,
he learned to recognize each letter by its difie-
rent effects on his nerves, and thus spelt the
words as they were uttered. It was particularly
noticed both by himself from his sensations, and
by his medical attendants from observation,
that the letter R, if pronounced full and strong,
and recurring once or more in the same word,
produced a small spasm, or twitch in his hand
and fingers. At the end of three years he re-
covered both his health and senses, and with
the necessity soon lost the power, which he had
thus acquired.
SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE, ETC.
Often and often had I read Gay's Beggar's
Opera, and always delighted with its poignant
wit and original satire, and if not without noti-
cing its immorality, yet without any offence
from it. Some years ago, I for the first time
saw it represented in one of the London the-
OMNIANA. 331
atres ; and such were the horror and disgust
with which it impressed me, so grossly did it
outrage all the best feelings of my nature, that
even the angelic voice, and perfect science of
Mrs. Billington, lost half their charms, or rather
increased my aversion to the piece by an addi-
tional sense of incongruity. Then I learned
the immense difference between reading and
seeing a play ; — and no wonder, indeed ; for
who has not passed over with his eye a hundred
passages without offence, which he yet could
not have even read aloud, or have heard so
read by another person, without an inward
struggle ? — In mere passive silent reading the
thoughts remain mere thoughts, and these too
not our own, — phantoms with no attribute of
place, no sense of appropriation, that flit over
the consciousness as shadows over the grass or
young corn in an April day. But even the
sound of our own or another's voice takes them
out of that lifeless, twilight, realm of thought,
which is the confine, the intermimclium, as it
were, of existence and non-existence. Merely
that the thoughts have become audible by
blending with them a sense of outness gives
them a sort of reality. What then, — when by
every contrivance of scenery, appropriate dres-
ses, according and auxiliary looks and ges-
tures, and the variety of persons on the stage,
realities are employed to carry the imitation of
reality as near as possible to perfect delusion ?
332 OMNIANA.
If a manly modesty shrinks from uttering an
indecent phrase before a wife or sister in a
private room, what must be the effect when a
repetition of such treasons (for all gross and
libidinous allusions are emphatically treasons
against the very foundations of human society,
against all its endearing charities, and all the
mother virtues,) is hazarded before a mixed
multitude in a public theatre? When every
innocent woman must blush at once Avith pain
at the thoughts she rejects, and with indignant
shame at those, which the foul hearts of others
may attribute to her !
Thus too with regard to the comedies of
Wycherly, Vanburgh, and Etherege, I used to
please myself with the flattering comparison of
the manners universal at present among all
classes above the lowest with those of our an-
cestors even of the highest ranks. But if for
a moment I think of those comedies as having
been acted, I lose all sense of comparison in
the shame, that human nature could at any
time have endured such outrages to its dignity ;
and if conjugal affection and the sweet name
of sister were too weak, that yet filial piety, the
gratitude for a mother's holy love, should not
have risen and hissed into infancy these traitors
to their own natural gifts, who himpooned the
noblest passions of humanity, in order to pan-
der for its lowest appetites.
As far, however, as one bad thing can be
palliated by comparison with a worse, this may
OMNIANA.
333
be said, in extenuation of these writers ; that
the mischief, which they can do even on the
stage, is trifling compared with that stile of
writing whichbegan in the pest-house of French
literature, and has of late been imported by
the Littles of the age, which consists in a perpe-
tual tampering with the morals without offend-
ing the decencies. And yet the admirers of
these publications, nay, the authors themselves
have the assurance to complain of Shakspeare
(for I will not refer to one yet far deeper blas-
phemy)— Shakspeare, whose most objection-
able passages are but grossnesses against lust,
and these written in a gross age ; while three
fourths of their whole works are delicacies for
its support and sustenance. Lastly, that I
may leave the reader in better humour with the
name at the head of this article, I shall quote
one scene from Etherege's Love in a Tub,
which for exquisite, genuine, original humour,
is worth all the rest of his plays, though two
or three of his witty contemporaries were
thrown in among them, as a make weight.
The scene might be entitled, the different ways
in which the very same story may be told
without any variation in matter of fact ; for
the least attentive reader will perceive the per-
fect identity of the footboy's account with the
Frenchman's own statement in contradiction
to it.
334 OMNIANA.
SCENE IV.
Scene — Sir Frederick's Lodging.
Enter Dufoy and Clakk.
Clark. I wonder Sir Frederick stays out so late.
Dufoy. Dis is noting; six, seven o'clock in the morning
is ver good hour.
Clark. I hope he does not use these hours often.
Dufoy. Some six, seven time a veek ; no oftiner.
Clark. My Lord commanded me to wait his coming.
Dufoy. Matre Clark, to divertise you, I vill tell you, how I
did get be acquainted vid dis Bedlam Matre. About two,
tree year ago me had for my convenience discharge myself
from attending (Enter afoot boy) as Matre D'ostel to a per-
son of condition in Parie ; it hapen after de dispatch of my
little affaire.
Foot B. That is, after h'ad spent his money, Sir.
Difoy. Jan foutre de lacque; me vil have vip and de
belle vor your breeck, rogue.
Foot B. Sir, in a word, he was a Jack-pudding to a moun-
tebank, and turned off for want of wit : my master picked him
up before a puppet-show, mumbling a half-penny custard, to
send him with a letter to the post.
Dufoy. Morbleu, see, see de insolence of de foot boy
English, bogre, rascale, you lie, begar I vill cutteyour troate.
\^Exit Foot Boy.
Clark. He's a rogue ; on with your story. Monsieur.
Dufoy. Matre Clark, I am your ver humble serviteur ; but
begar me have no patience to be abuse. As I did say, after
de dispatche of my affaire, von day being idele, vich does pro-
duce the mellanchollique, I did valke over de new bridge in
Parie, and to divertise de time, and my more serious toughte,
me did look to see de marrionete, and Ae jack-pudding , vich
did play hundred pretty tricke; time de collation vas come;
and vor I had no company, I vas unvilling to go to de Caba-
rete, but did buy a darriole, littel custarde vich did satisfie my
appetite ver vel : in dis time young Monsieur de Grandvil (a
jentelman of ver great quality, van dat vas my ver good
friende, and has done me ver great and insignal faveure) come
OMNIANA.
335
by in his caroche vid dis Sir Frolick, who did petition at the
same academy, to learn de language, de bon mine, de great
horse, and many oder tricke. Monsieur seeing me did make
de bowe and did becken me to come to him : he did telle me
dat de Englis jentelman had de lettre vor de poste, and did
entreate me (if I had de opportunity) to see de lettre delivere :
he did telle me too, it void be ver great obligation : de memory
of de faveurs I had received from his famelye, beside de incli-
nation I naturally have to serve de strangere, made me returne
de complemen vid ver great civility, and so I did take de lettre
and see it delivere. Sir Frollick perceiving (by de manage-
ment of dis affaire) dat I vas man d'esprit, and of vitte, did
entreate me to be his serviteur ; me did take d'affection to his
persone, and was coritente to live vid him, to counsel and
advise him. You see now de lie of de bougre de lacque En-
glishe, morbleu.
EVIDENCE.
When I was at Malta, 1805, there happened
a drunken squabble on the road from Valette
to St. Antonio, between a party of soldiers
and another of sailors. They were brought
before me the next morning, and the great
effect which their intoxication had produced
on their memory, and the little or no effect on
their courage in giving evidence, may be seen
by the following specimen. The soldiers swore
that the sailors were the first aggressors, and
had assaulted them with the following words :
" your eyes ! who stops the line of march
there?" The sailors with equal vehemence and
unanimity averred, that the soldiers were the
first aggressors, and had burst in on them cal-
ling out — " Heave to, you lubbers ! or we'll
run you down."
336 OMNIANA.
FORCE OF HABIT.
An Emir had bought a left eye of a glass eye-
maker, supposing that he would be able to see
with it. The man begged him to give it a little
time : he could not expect that it would see all
at once as Mell as the right eye, which had
been for so many years in the habit of it.
PHCENIX.
The Phoenix lives a thousand years, a secular
bird of ages ; and there is never more than one
at a time in the world. Yet Plutarch very
gravely informs us, that the brain of the Phoe-
nix is a pleasant bit, but apt to occasion the
head ache. By the by, there are few styles
that are not fit for something. I have often
wished to see Claudian's splendid poem on the
Phoenix translated into English verse in the
elaborate rhyme and gorgeous diction of Dar-
win. Indeed Claudian throughout would bear
translation better than any of the ancients.
MEMORY AND RECOLLECTION.
Beasts and babies remember, that is, recog-
nize : man alone recollects. This distinction
was made by Aristotle.
OMNIANA. 337
A liquid ex Nihilo.
In answer to the iii/iil e nihilo of the atheists,
and their near relations, the aimna-muudi men,
a humourist pointed to a white blank in a rude
wood-cut, which very ingeniously served for
the head of hair in one of the figures.
BREVITY OF THE GREEK AND ENGLISH
COMPARED.
As an instance of compression and brevity in
narration, unattainable in any language but the
Greek, the following distich was quoted :
^pvffoi' uy))p evpojy, kXnre jjpo-^oy' avrap 6 ^putroj',
o*' XiTTtP, ovk: evpiji', ij\piv, vv £vpe, f^po'^or.
This was denied by one of the company, who
instantly rendered the lines in English, con-
tending with reason that the indefinite article
in English, together with the pronoun " his,"
&c. should be considered as one word with the
noun following, and more than counterbalanced
by the greater number of syllables in the Greek
words, the terminations of which are in truth
only little words glued on to them. The En-
glish distich follows, and the reader will recol-
lect that it is a mere trial of comparative bre-
vity, wit and poetry quite out of the question :
Jack finding gold left a rope on the ground ;
Bill missing his gold used the rope, which lie found.
VOL. 1. Z
338 OMNIANA.
ia09— 1816.
THE WILL AND THE DEED.
The will to the deed, — the inward principle to
the outward act, — is as the kernel to the shell ;
but yet, in the first place, the shell is necessary
for the kernel, and that by which it is commonly
known ; — and, in the next place, as the shell
comes first, and the kernel grows gradually and
hardens within it, so is it with the moral prin-
ciple in man. Legality precedes morality in
every individual, even as the Jewish dispensa-
tion preceded the Christian in the education
of the world at large.
THE WILL FOR THE DEED.
When may the will be taken for the deed ? —
Then when the will is the obedience of the
whole man ; — when the will is in fact the deed,
that is, all the deed in our power. In every
other case, it is bending the bow without shoot-
ing the arrow. The bird of Paradise gleams
on the lofty branch, and the man takes aim,
and draws the tough yew into a crescent with
might and main,- — and lo ! there is never an
arrow on the string.
OMNI AN A. 339
SINCERITY.
The first great requisite is absolute sincerity.
Falsehood and disguise are miseries and mi-
sery-makers, under whatever strength of sym-
pathy, or desire to prolong happy thoughts in
others for their sake or your own only as sym-
pathizing with theirs, it may originate. All
sympathy, not consistent with acknowledged
virtue, is but disguised selfishness.
TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD.
The pre-eminence of truth over falsehood,
even when occasioned by that truth, is as a
gentle fountain breathing from forth its air-let
into the snow piled over and around it, which
it turns into its own substance, and flows with
greater murmur; and though it be again ar-
rested, still it is but for a time , — it awaits only
the change of the wind to awake and roll on-
wards its ever increasing stream : —
/ semplici pastori
Sul Vesolo nevoso,
Fatti curvi e canuti,
D' alto stupor son muti,
Mirando al fonte ombroso
II Pa con pochi umori ;
Poscia udendo gV onori
DelV urna angusta e stretta,
340 OMNIANA.
Che 'I Adda, che 7 Tesino
Soverchia il suo cammino,
Che ampio al mar s" affretta,
Che si spuma, e si suona,
Che gli si dd. corona !
Chiabrera, Rime, xxviii.
But falsehood is fire in stubble ; — it likewise
turns all the light stuff' around it into its own
substance for a moment, one crackling blazing
moment, — and then dies ; and all its converts
are scattered in the wind, without place or evi-
dence of their existence, as viewless as the
wind which scatters them.
RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES.
A MAN may look at glass, or through it, or
both. Let all earthly things be unto thee as
glass to see heaven through ! Religious cere-
monies should be pure glass, not dyed in the
gorgeous crimsons and purple blues and greens
of the drapery of saints and saintesses.
ASSOCIATION.
Many a star, which we behold as single, the
astronomer resolves into two, each, perhaps,
the centre of a separate system. Oft are the
flowers of the bind-weed mistaken for the
growth of the plant, which it chokes with its
intertwine. And many are the unsuspected
OMNIANA. 341
double stars, and frequent are the parasite
weeds, which the philosopher detects in the
received opinions of men : — so strong is the
tendency of the imagination to identify what
it has long consociated. Things that have
habitually, though, perhaps, accidentally and
arbitrarily, been thought of in connection with
each other, we are prone to regard as insepa-
rable. The fatal brand is cast into the fire,
and therefore Meleager must consume in the
flames. To these conjunctions of custom and
association — (the associative power of the mind
which holds the mid place between memory
and sense,) — we may best apply Sir Thomas
Brown's remark, that many things coagulate
on commixture, the separate natures of which
promise no concretion.
CURIOSITY.
The curiosity of an honourable mind willingly
rests there, where the love of truth does not
urge it farther onward, and the love of its
neighbour bids it stop ; — in other words, it
willingly stops at the point, where the inte-
rests of truth do not beckon it onward, and
charity cries. Halt !
342 OMNIANA.
NEW TRUTHS.
To all new truths, or renovation of old truths,
it must be as in the ark between the destroyed
and the about-to-be renovated world. The
raven must be sent out before the dove, and
ominous controversy must precede peace and
the olive- wreath.
VICIOUS PLEASURES.
Gentries, or wooden frames, are put under
the arches of a bridge, to remain no longer
than till the latter are consolidated. Even so
pleasures are the devil's scaffolding to build a
habit upon ; — that formed and steady, the
pleasures are sent for fire-wood, and the hell
begins in this life.
MERITING HEAVEN,
Virtue makes us not worthy, but only wor-
thier, of happiness. Existence itself gives a
claim to joy. Virtue and happiness are in-
commensurate quantities. How much virtue
must I have, before I have paid off the old
debt of my happiness in infancy and child-
hood ! O ! We all outrun the constable with
OMNIANA. 343
heaveirs justice ! We have to earn the earth,
before we can think of earning heaven.
DUST TO DUST.
We were indeed, —
iravra koviq, koX Travra yiXiog, Kai Trctvra to fjirjbey —
if we did not feel that we were so.
HUMAN COUNTENANCE.
There is in every human countenance either a
history or a prophecy, which must sadden, or
at least soften, every reflecting observer.
LIE USEFUL TO TRUTH.
A LIE accidentally useful to the cause of an
oppressed truth : Thus was the tongue of a dog
made medicinal to a feeble and sickly Lazarus.
SCIENCE IN ROMAN CATHOLIC STATES.
In Roman Catholic states, where science has
forced its way, and some light must follow, the
devil himself cunningly sets up a shop for
common sense at the sign of the Infidel.
344 OMNIANA.
VOLUNTARY BELIEF.
" It is possible," says Jeremy Taylor, " for a
man to bring liimself to believe any thing he
hath a mind to." But what is this belief? —
Analyse it into its constituents ; — is it more
than certain passions or feelings converging
into the sensation of positiveness as their focus,
and then associated with certain sounds or
images? — Nemo eiiim, says Augustin, Imic evi-
denticB contraclicet, nisi quem plus defensare de-
lectat, quod sentit, qumn, quid sentiendmn sit^
invenire.
AMANDA.
Lovely and pure — no bird of Paradise, to feed
on dew and flower-fragrance, and never to
ahght on earth, till shot by death with pointless
shaft ; but a rose, to fix its roots in the genial
earth, thence to suck up nutriment and bloom
strong and healthy, — not to droop and fade
amid sunshine and zephyrs on a soilless rock !
Her marriage was no meagre prose comment
on the glowing and gorgeous poetry of her
wooing ; — nor did the surly over-browing rock
of reality ever cast the dusky shadow of this
earth on the soft moonlight of her love's first
phantasies.
OMNI ANA. 345
HYMEN'S TORCIL
The torch of love may be blown out wholly,
but not that of Hymen. Whom the flame and
its cheering light and genial warmth no longer
bless, him the smoke stifles ; for the spark is
inextinguishable, save by death : —
nigro circumvelatus amictu
Mceret Hymeri, fumantque atrce sine lumine tcedce.
YOUTH AND AGE.
Youth beholds happiness gleaming in the
prospect. Age looks back on the happiness
of youth ; and instead of hopes, seeks its enjoy-
ment in the recollections of hope.
DECEMBER MORNING.
The giant shadows sleeping amid the wan
yellow light of the December morning, looked
like wrecks and scattered ruhis of the long,
long night.
346 OMNIANA.
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON.
Next to the inspired Scriptures, — yea, and as
the vibration of that once struck hour remain-
ing on the air, stands Leighton's Commentary
on the first Epistle of Peter.
CHRISTIAN HONESTY.
" O ! that God, ' says Carey in his Journal in
Hindostan, " would make the Gospel success-
ful among them ! That would undoubtedly
miake them honest men, and I fear nothing
else ever will." Now this is a fact, — spite of
infidels and psilosophizing Christians, a fact.
A perfect explanation of it would require and
would show the psychology of faith, — the dif-
ference between the whole soul's modifying an
action, and an action enforced by modifications
of the soul amid prudential motives or favour-
ing impulses. Let me here remind myself of
the absolute necessity of having my whole
faculties awake and imaginative, in order to
illustrate this and similar truths; — otherwise
my writings will be no other than pages of
algebra.
OMNIANA. 347
INSCRIPTION ON A CLOCK IN CHEAPSIDE.
What now thou do'st, or art about to do,
Will help to give thee peace, or make thee rue;
When hov'ring o'er the hue this hand will tell
The last dread moment — 'twill be heaven or hell.
Read for the last two lines —
When wav'ring o'er the dot this hand shall tell
The moment that secures thee heaven or hell !
RATIONALISM IS NOT REASON.
Vens:eance is mijie, saith the Lord. An awful
text ! Now because vengeance is most wisely
and lovingly forbidden to us, hence we have
by degrees, under false generalizations and
puny sensibilities, taken up the notion that
vengeance is no where. In short, the abuse of
figurative interpretation is endless; — instead of
being applied, as it ought to be, to those
things which are the most comprehensible,
that is, sensuous, and which therefore are the
parts likely to be figurative, because such lan-
guage is a condescension to our weakness, — it
is applied to rot away the very pillars, yea, to
fret away and dissolve the very corner stones
of the temple of religion. O, holy Paul ! O,
beloved John ! full of light and love, whose
348 OMNIANA.
books are full of intuitions, as those of Paul
are books of energies, — the one uttering to
sympathizing angels what the other toils to
convey to weak-sighted yet docile men :— O
Luther! Calvin! Fox, with Penn and Bar-
clay! O Zinzendorf! and ye too, whose out-
Mard garments only have been singed and
dishonoured in the heathenish furnace of Ro-
man apostacy, Francis of Sales, Fenelon ; —
yea, even Aquinas and Scotus ! — ^With what
astoundment would ye, if ye were alive with
your merely human perfections, listen to the
creed of our, so called, rational religionists !
Rational ! — They, who in the very outset deny
all reason, and leave us nothing but degrees to
distinguish us from brutes ; — a greater degree
of memory, dearly purchased by the greater
solicitudes of fear which convert that memory
into foresight. O ! place before your eyes the
island of Britain in the reign of Alfred, its un-
pierced woods, its wide morasses and dreary
heaths, its blood-stained and desolated shores,
its untaught and scanty population ; behold
the monarch listening now to Bede, and now
to John Erigena ; and then see the same realm,
a mighty empire, full of motion, full of books,
Avhere the cotter's son, twelve years old, has
read more than archbishops of yore, and pos-
sesses the opportunity of reading more than our
Alfred himself; — and then finally behold this
mighty nation, its rulers and its wise men lis-
tening to Paley and to Malthus ! It
is mournful, mournful.
OMNIANA. 349
INCONSISTENCY.
How strange and sad is the laxity with which
men in these days suffer the most inconsistent
opinions to lie jumbled lazily together in their
minds, — holding the antimoralism of Paley and
the hypophysics of Locke, and yet gravely, and
with a mock faith, talking of God as a pure
spirit, of passing out of time into eternity, of a
peace which passes all understanding, of loving
our neighbour as ourselves, and God above all,
and so forth ! — Blank contradictions ! — What
are these men's minds but a huge lumber-
room of hilly, that is, of incompatible notions
brought together by a feeling without a sense
of connection ?
HOPE IN HUMANITY.
Consider the state of a rich man perfectly
Adam Smithed, yet with a naturally good
heart ; — then suppose him suddenly convinced,
vitally convinced, of the truth of the blessed
system of hope and confidence in reason and
humanity ! Contrast his new and old views
and reflections, the feelings with which he
would begin to receive his rents, and to con-
template his increase of power by wealth, the
study to relieve the labour of man from all
350 OMNI ANA.
mere annoy and disgust, the preclusion in liis
own mind of all cooling down from the expe-
rience of individual ingratitude, and his con-
viction that the true cause of all his disappoint-
ments was, that his plans were too narrow, too
short, too selfish !
Wenn das Elend viel ist aiif der Erde, so
beruhet der gnind davou, nach Abzug des theils
ertr'dglichen, theils verbesserlichen, theils einge-
bildeten Uebels der Naturivelt, ganz allein in
den moralischen Haiidlimgen der Menschen*
O my God ! What a great, inspiriting, heroic
thought ! Were only a hundred men to com-
bine even my clearness of conviction of this,
with a Clarkson and Bell's perseverance,
what might not be done ! How awful a duty
does not hope become ! What a nurse, yea,
mother of all other the fairest virtues! We
despair of others' goodness, and thence are our-
selves bad. O ! let me live to show the errors
of the most of those who have hitherto attempt-
ed this work, — how they have too often put the
intellectual and the moral, yea, the moral and
the religious, faculties at strife with each other,
and how they ought to act with an equal eye
to all, to feel that all is involved in the perfec-
tion of each ! This is the fundamental position.
* Although the misery on the earth is great indeed, yet the
foundation of it rests, after deduction of the partly bearable,
partly removable, and partly imaginary, evil of the natural
world, entirely and alone on the moral dealings of men. Ed.
OMNIANA. 351
SELF-LOVE IN RELIGION.
The unselfishness of self-love in the hopes and
fears of religion consists ;— first, — in the pre-
vious necessity of a moral energy, in order so
far to subjugate the sensual, which is indeed
and properly the selfish, part of our nature, as
to believe in a state after death, on the grounds
of the Christian religion : — secondly, — in the
abstract and, as it were, unindividual nature of
the idea, self, or soul, when conceived apart
from our present living body and the world of
the senses. In my religious meditations of
hope and fear, the reflection that this course of
action will purchase heaven for me, for my
soul, involves a thought of and for all men who
pursue the same course. In worldly blessings,
such as those promised in the Old Law, each
man might make up to himself his own favou-
rite scheme of happiness. " I will be strictly
just, and observe all the laws and ceremonies
of my religion, that God may grant me such a
woman for my wife, or wealth and honour,
with which I will purchase such and such an
estate," &c. But the reward of heaven admits
no day-dreams ; its hopes and its fears are too
vast to endure an outline. " I will endeavour
to abstain from vice, and force myself to do
such and such acts of duty, in order that I may
make my«elf capable of that freedom of moral
352 OMNIANA.
being, without which heaven would be no
heaven to me." Now this very thought tends
to annihilate self. For what is a self not dis-
tinguished from any other self, but like an in-
dividual circle in geometry, uncoloured, and
the representative of all other circles. The
circle is differenced, indeed, from a triangle or
square; so is a virtuous soul from a vicious
soul, a soul in bliss from a soul in misery, but
no wise distinguished from other souls under
the same predicament. That selfishness whicli
includes, of necessity, the selves of all my
fellow-creatures, is assuredly a social and gene-
rous principle. I speak, as before observed,
of the objective or reflex self; — for as to the
subjective self, it is merely synonymous with
consciousness, and obtains equally whether I
think of me or of him ; — in both cases it is I
thinking.
Still, however, I freely admit that there nei-
ther is, nor can be, any such self-oblivion in
these hopes and fears when practically re-
flected on, as often takes place in love and acts
of loving kindness, and the habit of which con-
stitutes a sweet and loving nature. And this
leads me to the third, and most important reflec-
tion, namely, that the soul's infinite capacity of
pain and of joy, through an infinite duration,
does really, on the most high-flying notions of
love and justice, make my own soul and the
most anxious care for the character of its
future fate, an object of emphatic duty. What
OMNI AN A. 353
can be the object of human virtue but tlie
happiness of sentient, still more of moral,
beings ? But an infinite duration of faculties,
infinite in progression, even of one soul, is so
vast, so boundless an idea, that we are unable
to distinguish it from the idea of the whole
race of mankind. If to seek the temporal
welfare of all mankind be disinterested virtue,
much more must the eternal welfare of my
own soul be so ; — for the temporal welfare of
all mankind is included within a finite space
and finite number, and my imagination makes
it easy by sympathies and visions of outward
resemblance ; but myself in eternity, as the
object of my contemplation, differs unimagi-
nably from my present self. Do but try to
think of yourself in eternal misery ! — you will
find that you are stricken with horror for it,
even as for a third person ; conceive it in ha-
zard thereof, and you will feel commiseration
for it, and pray for it with an anguish of sym-
pathy very different from the outcry of an
immediate self-suffering.
Blessed be God ! that which makes us ca-
pable of vicious self-interestedness, capacitates
us also for disinterestedness. That I am ca-
pable of preferring a smaller advantage of my
own to a far greater good of another man, —
this, the power of comparing the notions of
*' him and me" objectively, enables me like-
wise to prefer — at least furnishes the condition
of my preferring — a greater good of another to
VOL. I. A A
354 OMNIANA.
a lesser good of my own ; — nay, a pleasure of
his, or external advantage, to an equal one of
my own. And thus too, that I am capable of
loving my neighbour as myself, empowers me
to love myself as my neighbour, — not only as
much, but in the same way and with the very
same feeling.
This is the great privilege of pure religion.
By diverting self-love to our self under those
relations, in which alone it is worthy of our
anxiety, it annihilates self, as a notion of diver-
sity. Extremes meet. These reflections sup-
ply a forcible, and, I believe, quite new argu-
ment against the purgatory, both of the Ro-
manists, and of the modern Millennarians, and
final Salvationists. Their motives do, indeed,
destroy the essence of virtue.
The doctors of self-love are misled by a
wrong use of the words, — " We love ourselves !"
Now this is impossible for a finite and created
being in the absolute meaning of self; and in
its secondary and figurative meaning, self sig-
nifies only a less degree of distance, a narrow-
ness of moral view, and a determination of
value by measurement. Hence the body is in
this sense our self, because the sensations have
been habitually appropriated to it in too great
a proportion ; but this is not a necessity of our
nature. There is a state possible even in this
life, in which we may truly say, " My self
loves," — freely constituting its secondary or
objective love in what it wills to love, com-
OMNI ANA. 355
mands what it wills, and wills what it com-
mands. The difference between self-love, and
self that loves, consists in the objects of the
former as given to it according to the law of
the senses, while the latter determines the ob-
jects according to the law in the spirit. The
first loves because it must ; the second, because
it ought ; and the result of the first is not in
any objective, imaginable, comprehensible, ac-
tion, but in that action by which it abandoned
its power of true agency, and willed its own
fall. This is, indeed, a mystery. How can it
be otherwise ? — For if the will be unconditional,
it must be inexplicable, the understanding
of a thing being an insight into its conditions
and causes. But whatever is in the will is the
will, and must therefore be equally inexpli-
cable.
In a word, the difference of an unselfish
from a selfish love, even in this life, consists
in this, that the latter depends on our trans-
ferring our present passion or appetite, or ra-
ther on our dilating and stretching it out in
imagination, as the covetous man does ; — while
in the former we carry ourselves forward un-
der a very different state from the present, as
the young man, who restrains his appetites in
respect of his future self as a tranquil and
healthy old man. This last requires as great
an effort of disinterestedness as, if not a greater
than, to give up a present enjoyment to another
person who is present to us. The alienation
35G
OMNIANA.
from distance in time and from diversity of
circumstance, is greater in the one case than
in the other. And let it be remembered, that
a Christian may exert all the virtues and vir-
tuous charities of humanity in any state ; yea,
in the pan^s of a wounded conscience, he may
feel for the future periods of his own lost spirit,
just as Adam for all his posterity.
O magical, sympathetic, anima ! principium
hylarcliicum! rationes spermaticce ! Xoyoi ttou^tikoi!
O formidable words ! And O man ! thou mar-
vellous beast-angel ! thou ambitious beggar !
How pompously dost thou trick out thy very
ignorance with such glorious disguises, that
thou may est seem to hide it in order only to
worship it !
LIMITATION OF LOVE OF POETRY.
A MAN may be, perhaps, exclusively a poet, a
poet Inost exquisite in his kind, though the
kind must needs be of inferior worth ; I say,
may be ; for I cannot recollect any one instance
in which I have a right to suppose it. But,
surely, to have an exclusive pleasure in poetry,
not being yourself a poet; — to turn away from
all effort, and to dwell wholly on the images of
another's vision, — is an unworthy and effemi-
nate thing. A jeweller may devote his whole
time to jewels unblamed ; but the mere ama-
teur, who grounds his taste on no chemical or
OMNI AN A. 357
geological idea, cannot claim the same exemp-
tion from despect. How shall he fully enjoy
Wordsworth, who has never meditated on the
truths which Wordsworth has wedded to im-
mortal verse ?
HUMILITY OF THE AMIABLE.
It is well ordered by nature, that the amiable
and estimable have a fainter perception of
their own qualities than their friends have ; —
otherwise they would love themselves. And
though they may fear flattery, yet if not jus-
tified in suspecting intentional deceit, they
cannot but love and esteem those who love and
esteem them, only as lovely and estimable, and
give them proof of their having done well,
where they have meant to do well.
TEMPER IN ARGUMENT.
All reasoners ought to be perfectly dispassionate, and ready
to allow all the force of the arguments, they are to confute.
But more especially those, who are to argue in behalf of Chris-
tianity, ought carefully to preserve the spirit of it in their man-
ner of expressing themselves, I have so much honour for the
Christian clergy, that I had much rather hear them railed at,
than hear them rail ; and I must say, that I am often griev-
ously offended with the generality of them for their method
of treating all who differ from them in opinion.
Mrs. Chapone.
Besides, what is the use of violence ? None.
358 OMNIANA.
What is the harm ? Great, very great ; — chief-
ly, in the confirmation of error, to which no-
thing so much tends, as to find your opinions
attacked with weak arguments and unworthy
feelings. A generous mind becomes more at-
tached to principles so treated, even as it
would to an old friend, after he had been gross-
ly calumniated. We are eager to make com-
pensation.
PATRIARCHAL GOVERNMENT.
The smooth words used by all factions, and
their wide influence, may be exemplified in all
the extreme systems, as for instance in the
patriarchal government of Filmer. Take it in
one relation, and it imports love, tender anxiety,
longer experience, and superior wisdom, border-
ing on revelation, especially to Jews and
Christians, who are in the life-long habit of
attaching to patriarchs an intimacy with the
Supreme Being. Take it on the other side,
and it imports, that a whole people are to be
treated and governed as children by a man
not so old as very many, not older than very
many, and in all probability not wiser than
the many, and by his very situation precluded
from the same experience.
OMNIANA. 359
CALLOUS SELF-CONCEIT.
The most hateful form of self-conceit is the
callous form, when it boasts and swells up on
the score of its own ignorance, as implying ex-
emption from a folly. " We profess not to
understand ;" — " We are so unhappy as to be
quite in the dark as to the meaning of this
writer ;" — " All this may be very fine, but we
are not ashamed to confess that to us it is
quite unintelligible:" — then quote a passage
without the context, and appeal to the Public,
whether they understand it or not ! — Wretches !
Such books were not written for your public.
If it be a work on inward religion, appeal to
the inwardly religious, and ask them ! — If it be
of true love and its anguish and its yearnings,
appeal to the true lover ! What have the public
to do with this ?
A LIBRARIAN.
He was like a cork, flexible, floating, full of
pores and openings, and yet he could neither
return nor transmit the waters of Helicon, much
less the light of Apollo. The poet, by his side,
was like a diamond, transmitting to all around,
yet retaining for himself alone, the rays of the
god of day.
360 OMNI AN A,
TRIMMING.
An upright shoe may fit both feet ; but never
saw I a glove that would fit both hands. It is
a man for a mean or mechanic office, that can
be employed equally well under either of two
opposite parties.
DEATH.
Death but supplies the oil for the inextin-
guishable lamp of life.
LOVE AN ACT OF THE WILL.
Love, however sudden, as when we fall in love
at first sight, (which is, perhaps, always the
case of love in its highest sense,) is yet an act
of the will, and that too one of its primary, and
therefore ineffable acts. This is most impor-
tant ; for if it be not true, either love itself is
all a romantic hum, a mere connection of de-
sire with a form appropriated to excite and
gratify it, or the mere repetition of a day-
dream ; — or if it be granted that love has a
real, distinct, and excellent being, I know not
how we could attach blame and immorality to
inconstancy, when confined to the affections
OMMANA. 361
and a sense of preference. Either, therefore,
we must brutalize our notions with Pope : —
Lust, thro' some certain strainers well refin'd,
Is gentle love and charms all woman-kind :
or we must dissolve and thaw away all bonds
of morality by the irresistible shocks of an
irresistible sensibility with Sterne.
WEDDED UNION.
The well-spring of all sensible communion is
the natural delight and need, which unde-
praved man hath to transfuse from himself
into others, and to receive from others into
himself, those things, wherein the excellency
of his kind doth most consist ; and the emi-
nence of love or marriage communion is, that
this mutual transfusion can take place more
perfectly and totally in this, than in any other
mode.
Prefer person before money, good-temper
with good sense before person ; and let all,
wealth, easy temper, strong understanding and
beauty, be as nothing to thee, unless accompa-
nied by virtue in principle and in habit.
Suppose competence, health, and honesty ;
then a happy marriage depends on four things :
— 1. An understanding proportionate to thine,
that is, a recipiency at least of thine : — 2. na-
362 UMNIANA.
tural sensibility and lively sympathy in gene-
ral : — 3. steadiness in attaching and retaining
sensibility to its proper objects in its proper
proportions : — 4. mutual liking ; including per-
son and all the thousand obscure sympathies
that determine conjugal liking, that is, love
and desire to A. rather than to B. This seems
very obvious and almost trivial : and yet all
unhappy marriages arise from the not honestly
putting, and sincerely answering each of these
four questions : any one of them negatived, mar-
riage is imperfect, and in hazard of discontent.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOBBES AND SPINOSA.
In the most similar and nearest points there is
a difference, but for the most part there is an
absolute contrast, between Hobbes and Spi-
nosa. Thus Hobbes makes a state of war the
natural state of man from the essential and
ever continuing nature of man, as not a moral,
but only a frightenable, being :—Spinosa makes
the same state a necessity of man out of soci-
ety, because he must then be an undeveloped
man, and his moral being dormant; and so on
through the whole.
OMNIANA. 363
THE END MAY JUSTIFY THE MEANS.
Whatever act is necessary to an end, and as-
certained to be necessary and proportionate
both to the end and the agent, takes its nature
from that end. This premised, the proposition
is innocent that ends may justify means. Re-
member, however, the important distinction : —
TJniusfacti cliversi fines esse possimt : unius ac-
tionis non possimt.
I have somewhere read this remark : — Omne
meritum est voluntaritim, aut voluntate originis,
aut origine voluntatis. Quaintly as this is ex-
pressed, it is well worth consideration, and
gives the true meaning of Baxter's famous
saying, — " Hell is paved with good intentions."
NEGATIVE THOUGHT.
On this calm morning of the 13th of Novem-
ber, 1 809, it occurs to me, that it is by a nega-
tion and voluntary act of no thinking that we
think of earth, air, water, &c. as dead. It is
necessary for our limited powers of conscious-
ness, that we should be brought to this negative
state, and that this state should pass into custom ;
but it is likewise necessary that at times we
should awake and step forward ; and this is
effected by those extenders of our conscious-
364 OMNIANA.
ness — sorrow; sickness, poetry, and religion.
The truth is, we stop in the sense of life just
when we are not forced to go on, and then
adopt a permission of our feelings for a precept
of our reason.
MAN'S RETURN TO HEAVEN.
Heaven bestows light and influence on this
lower world, which reflects the blessed rays,
though it cannot recompense them. So man
may make a return to God, but no requital.
YOUNG PRODIGIES.
Fair criticism on young prodigies and Ros-
ciuses in verse, or on the stage, is arraigned, —
as the envious sneaping frost
That bites the first-born infants of the spring.
If there were no better answer, the following a
good heart would scarcely admit ; — but where
nine-tenths of the applause have been mere
wonderment and miracle-lust (Wundursucht)
these verses are an excellent accompaniment
to other arguments : —
Well, say it be ! — Yet why of summer boast,
Before the birds have natural cause to sing?
Why should we joy in an abortive birth ?
OMNI ANA. 365
At Christmas I no more desire a rose, •
Than wish a snow in May's new budding shows ;
But like of each thing that in reason grows.
Loves Labour s Lost.*'
WELCH NAMES.
The small number of surnames, and those
Christian names and patronymics, not derived
from trades, &c. is one mark of a country
either not yet, or only recently, unfeudalized.
Hence in Scotland the Mackintoshes, Macau-
lays, and so on. But the most remarkable
show of this I ever saw, is the list of subscri-
bers to Owen's Welch Dictionary. In letter
D. there are 31 names, 21 of which are Davis
or Davies, and the other three are not Welch-
men. In E. there are 30; 10 Evans; 6 Ed-
tcards ; 1 Edmonds ; 1 Egan, and the remain-
der Ellis. In G. two-thirds are Griffiths. In
H. all are Hughes and Howell. In I. there are
Q(j ; all Jonesses. In L. 3 or 4 Leivises ; 1
Eewellyn; all the rest Lloyds. M, four-fifths
Morgans. O. entirely Owen. R. all Roberts
or Richards. T. all Thomases. V. all Vaugh-
ans; — and W. 64 names, 5(S of them Williams.
* Slightly altered. Ed.
36G OMNIANA.
GERMAN LANGUAGE.
The real value of melody in a language is con-
siderable as subadditive ; but when not j utting
out into consciousness under the friction of
comparison, the absence or inferiority of it is,
as privative of pleasure, of little consequence.
For example, when I read Voss's translation
of the Georgics, I am, as it were, reading the
original poem, until something particularly
well expressed occasions me to revert to the
Latin ; and then I find the superiority, or at
least the powers, of the German in all other
respects, but am made feelingly alive, at the
same time, to its unsmooth mixture of the
vocal and the organic, the fluid and the sub-
stance, of language. The fluid seems to have
been poured in on the corpuscles all at once,
and the whole has, therefore, curdled, and col-
lected itself into a lumpy soup full of knots of
curds inisled by interjacent whey at irregular
distances, and the curd lumpets of various
sizes.
It is always a question how far the apparent
defects of a language arise from itself or from
the false taste of the nation speaking it. Is
the practical inferiority of the English to the
Italian in the power of passing from grave to
light subjects, in the manner of Ariosto, the
OMNIANA. 367
fault of the language itself? Wieland in his
Oberon, broke successfully through equal dif-
ficulties. It is grievous to think how much
less careful the English have been to preserve
than to acquire. Why have we lost, or all but
lost, the ver ov for as a prefix, — -fordone, for-
wearied, &c. ; and the zer or to, — zerreisseii, to-
rend, &c. Jugend, Jihigling : youth, youngling ;
why is that last word now lost to common use,
and confined to sheep and other animals ?
'Ev rw (jjpoveiy fjirj^EV rj^ierroe fiiog. Soph.
His life was playful from infancy to death,
like the snow which in a calm day falls, but
scarce seems to fall, and plays and dances in
and out till the very moment that it gently
reaches the earth.
THE UNIVERSE.
It surely is not impossible that to some infi-
nitely superior being the whole universe may
be as one plain, the distance between planet
and planet being only as the pores in a grain
of sand, and the spaces between system and
system no greater than the intervals between
one grain and the grain adjacent.
3G8 OMNIANA.
HARBEROUS.
HarbcroKs, that is, harbourous, is the old ver-
sion of St. Paul's (piXo^tvoQ, and a beautiful
word it is. Koa/niog should be rendered a gen-
tleman in dress and address, in appearance and
demeanour, a man of the world in an innocent
sense. The Latin mimduslms the same double
force in it ; only that to the rude early Ro-
mans, to have a clean pair of hands and a
clean dress, was to be drest ; just as we say to
boys, " Put on your clean clothes!"
The different meanings attached to the same
word or phrase in different sentences, will,
of course, be accompanied with a different
feeling in the mind ; this will affect the pro-
nunciation, and hence arises a new word. We
should vainly try to produce the same feeling in
our minds by a7id he as by tuho; for the diffe-
rent use of the latter, and its feeling having now
coalesced. Yet tvho is properly the same word
and pronunciation, as o with the digammate
prefix, and as qui Kal o.
AN ADMONITION.
There are two sides to every question. If
thou hast genius and poverty to thy lot, dwell
on the foolish, f)erplexing, imprudent, dange-
rous, and even immoral, conduct of promise-
OMNIANA. 369
breach in small things, of want of punctuality,
of procrastination in all its shapes and dis-
guises. Force men to reverence the dignity of
thy moral strength in and for itself, — seeking
no excuses or palliations from fortune, or sick-
ness, or a too full mind that, in opulence of con-
ception, overrated its powers of application.
But if thy fate should be different, shouldest
thou possess competence, health and ease of
mind, and then be thyself called upon to judge
such faults in another so gifted, — O ! then,
upon the other view of the question, say, Am I
in ease and comfort, and dare I wonder that he,
poor fellow, acted so and so? Dare I accuse
him ? Ought I not to shadow forth to myself
that, glad and luxuriating in a short escape
from anxiety, his mind over-promised for itself;
that, want combating with his eager desire to
produce things worthy of fame, he dreamed of
the nobler, when he should have been pro-
ducing the meaner, and so had the meaner
obtruded on his moral being, when the no-
bler was making full way on his intellectual?
Think of the manifoldness of his accumulated
petty calls ! Think, in short, on all that should
be like a voice from heaven to warn thyself
against this and this, and call it all up for pity
and for palliation ; and then draw the balance.
Take him in his whole, — his head, his heart,
his wishes, his innocence of all selfish crime,
and a hundred years hence, what will be the
result ? The good, — were it but a single volume
VOL. I. B B
370 OMNIANA.
It
that made truth more visible, and goodness
more lovely, and pleasure at once more akin
to virtue and, self- doubled, more pleasurable !
and the evil, — while he lived, it injured none
but himself; and where is it now? in his grave.
Follow it not thither.
TO THEE CHERUBIM AND SERAPHIM
CONTINUALLY DO CRY.
The mighty kingdoms angelical, like the thin
clouds at dawn, receiving and hailing the first
radiance, and singing and sounding forth their
blessedness, increase the rising joy in the heart
of God, spread wide and utter forth the joy
arisen, and in innumerable finite glories inter-
pret all they can of infinite bliss.
DEFINITION OF MIRACLE.
A phjEnomenon in no connection with any
other phaenomenon, as its immediate cause, is
a miracle ; and what is believed to have been
such, is miraculous for the person so believing.
When it is strange and surprising, that is, with-
out any analogy in our former experience — it
is called a miracle. The kind defines the
thing : — the circumstances the word.
To stretch out my arm is a miracle, unless
the materialists should be more cunning than
OMNIANA. 371
they have proved themselves hitherto. To
reanimate a dead man by an act of the will,
no intermediate agency employed, not only is,
but is called, a miracle. A scripture miracle,
therefore, must be so defined, as to express,
not only its miracular essence, but likewise the
condition of its appearing miraculous ; add
therefore to the preceding, the words prcEter
omnem prio?'em experieutiam.
It might be defined likewise an effect, not
having its cause in any thing congenerous.
That thought calls up thought is no more mira-
culous than that a billiard ball moves a billiard
ball ; but that a billiard ball should excite a
thought, that is, be perceived, is a miracle, and,
were it strange, would be called such. For
take the converse, that a thought should call up
a billiard ball ! Yet where is the difference,
but that the one is a common experience, the
other never yet experienced ?
It is not strictly accurate to affirm, that
every thing would appear a miracle, if we were
wholly uninfluenced by custom, and saw things
as they are : — for then the very ground of all
miracles would probably vanish, namely, the
heterogeneity of spirit and matter. For the
quid ulterius ? of wonder, we should have the
ne plus ultra of adoration.
Again — the word miracle has an objective,
a subjective, and a popular meaning; — as ob-
jective,— the essence of a miracle consists in
the heterogeneity of the consequent and its
372 OMNIANA.
causative antecedent ; — as subjective, — in the
assumption of the heterogeneity. Add tlie
wonder and surprise excited, when the conse-
quent is out of the course of experience, and
we know the popular sense and ordinary use
of the word.
DEATH, AND GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN A
FUTURE STATE.
It is an important thought, that death, judged
of by corporeal analogies, certainly implies
discerption or dissolution of parts ; but pain
and pleasure do not ; nay, they seem incon-
ceivable except under the idea of concentra-
tion. Therefore the influence of the body on
the soul will not prove the common destiny of
both. I feel myself not the slave of nature
(nature used here as the mundns sensihilis) in
the sense in which animals are. Not only my
thoughts and aft'ections extend to objects trans-
natural, as truth, virtue, God ; not only do my
powers extend vastly beyond all those, which
I could have derived from the instruments and
organs, with which nature has furnished me ;
but I can do what nature per se cannot. I
ingraft, I raise heavy bodies above the clouds,
and guide my course over ocean and through
air. I alone am lord of fire and light ; other
creatures are but their alms-folk, and of all the
so called elements, water, earth, air, and all
their compounds (to speak in the ever-endu-
OiMNIANA. 373
ring language of the senses, to which nothing-
can be revealed, but as compact, or fluid, or
aerial), I not merely subserve myself of them,
but I employ them. Ergo, there is in me, or
rather I am, a praeter-natural, that is, a super-
sensuous thing : but what is not nature, why
should it perish with nature? why lose the
faculty of vision, because my spectacles are
broken ?
Now to this it will be objected, and very for-
cibly too ; — that the soul or self is acted upon by
nature through the body, and water or caloric,
diffused through or collected in the brain, will
derange the faculties of the soul by deranging
the organization of the brain ; the sword can-
not touch the soul ; but by rending the flesh,
it will rend the feelings. Therefore the vio-
lence of nature may, in destroying the body,
mediately destroy the soul ! It is to this objec-
tion that my first sentence applies ; and is an
important, and, I believe, a new and the only
satisfactory reply I have ever heard.
The one great and binding ground of the
belief of God and a hereafter, is the law of con-
science : but as the aptitudes, and beauty, and
grandeur, of the world, are a sweet and benefi-
cent inducement to this belief, a constant fuel to
our faith, so here we seek these arguments, not
as dissatisfied with the one main ground, not as
of little faith, but because, believing it to be, it
is natural we should expect to find traces of it,
374 OMNIANA.
and as a noble way of employing and develop-
ing, and enlarging the faculties of the soul,
and this, not by way of motive, but of assimi-
lation, producing virtue. 2d April, 1811.
HATRED OF INJUSTICE.
It is the mark of a noble nature to be more
shocked with the unjust condemnation of a bad
man than of a virtuous one ; as in the instance
of Strafford. For in such cases the love of
justice, and the hatred of the contrary, are felt
more nakedly, and constitute a strong passion
per se, not only unaided by, but in conquest of,
the softer self-repaying sympathies. A wise
foresight too inspires jealousy, that so may prin-
ciples be most easily overthrown. This is the
virtue of a wise man, which a mob never pos-
sesses, even as a mob never, perhaps, has the
malignant Jiuis uUimus, which is the vice of
a man.
RELIGION.
Amonost the great truths are these : —
I. That religion has no speculative dogmas ;
that all is practical, all appealing to the will,
and therefore all imperative. / am the Lord
thy God: Thou shall have none other gods
but me.
OMNIANA. 375
II. That, therefore, miracles are not the
proofs, but the necessary results, of revelation.
They are not the key of the arch and roof of
evidence, though they may be a compacting
stone in it, which gives while it receives
strength. Hence, to make the intellectual faith
a fair analogon or unison of the vital faith, it
ought to be stamped in the mind by all the
evidences duly co-ordinated, and not designed
by single pen-strokes, beginning either here
or there.
III. That, according to No. I., Christ is not
described primarily and characteristically as
a teacher, but as a doer ; a light indeed, but
an effective light, the sun which causes what
it shows, as well as shows what it first causes.
IV. That a certain degree of morality is
presupposed in the reception of Christianity ;
it is the substratum of the moral interest which
substantiates the evidence of miracles. The
instance of a profligate suddenly converted, if
l^roperly sifted, will be found but an apparent
exception.
V. That the being of a God, and the immor-
tality of man, are every where assumed by
Christ.
VI. That Socinianism is not a religion, but
a theory, and that, too, a very pernicious, or a
very unsatisfactory, theory. Pernicious, — for
it excludes all our deep and awful ideas of the
perfect holiness of God, his justice and his
mercy, and thereby makes the voice of con-
376 OMNI AN A.
science a delusion, as having no correspondent
in the character of the legislator; regarding
God as merely a good-natured pleasure-giver,
so happiness be produced, indifferent as to the
means ; — Unsatisfactory, for it promises for-
giveness without any solution of the difficulty
of the compatibility of this with the justice of
God ; in no way explains the fallen condition
of man, nor offers any means for his regenera-
tion. " If you will be good, you will be
happy," it says : that may be, but my will is
weak ; I sink in the struggle.
VII. That Socinianism never did and never
can subsist as a general religion. For 1. It
neither states the disease, on account of which
the human being hungers for revelation, nor
prepares any remedy in general, nor ministers
any hope to the individual. 2. In order to
make itself endurable on scriptural grounds, it
must so weaken the texts and authority of
scripture, as to leave in scripture no binding
ground of proof of any thing. 3. Take a pious
Jew, one of the Maccabees, and compare his
faith and its grounds with Priestley's; and
then, for what did Christ come?
VIII. That Socinianism involves the shock-
ing thought that man will not, and ought not
to be expected to, do his duty as man, unless
he first makes a bargain with his Maker, and
his Maker with him. Give me, the individual
me, a positive proof that I shall be in a state of
pleasure after my death, if I do so and so, and
OMNIANA. 377
then I will do it, not else ! And the proof asked
is not one dependent on, or flowing from, his
moral nature and moral feelings, but wholly
extra-mom], namely, by his outward senses,
the subjugation of which to faith, that is, the
passive to the actional and self-created belief,
is the great object of all religion !
IX. That Socinianism involves the dreadful
reflection, that it can establish its probability
(its certainty being wholly out of the question
and impossible, Priestley himself declaring that
his own continuance as a Christian depended
on a contingency,) only on the destruction of
all the arguments furnished for our permanent
and essential distinction from brutes ; that it
must prove that we have no grounds to obey,
but, on the contrary, that in wisdom we ought
to reject and declare utterly null, all the com-
mands of conscience, and all that is implied in
those commands, reckless of the confusion in-
troduced into our notions of means and ends by
the denial of truth, goodness, justice, mercy,
and the other fundamental ideas in the idea of
God ; and all this in order to conduct us to a
Mahomet's bridge of a knife's edge, or the
breadth of a spear, to salvation. And, should
we discover any new documents, or should an
acuter logician make plain the sophistry of the
deductions drawn from the present documents
(and surely a man who has passed from ortho-
doxy to the loosest Arminianism, and thence to
Arianism, and thence to direct Humanism, has
378 OMNIANA.
no right from his experience to deny the pro-
bability of this) — then to fall off into the hope-
less abyss of atheism. For the present life, we
know, is governed by fixed laws, which the
atheist acknowledges as well as the theist ; and
if there be no spiritual world, and no spiritual
life in a spiritual world, what possible bearing
can the admission or rejection of this hypo-
thesis have on our practice or feelings ?
Lastly, the Mosaic dispensation was a scheme
of national education ; the Christian is a world-
religion ; and the former was susceptible of
evidence and probabilities which do not, and
cannot, apply to the latter. A savage people
forced, as it were, into a school of circum-
stances, and gradually in the course of gene-
rations taught the vmity of God, first and for
centuries merely as a practical abstinence from
the worship of any other, — how can the prin-
ciples of such a system apply to Christianity,
which goes into all nations and to all men,
the most enlightened, even by preference?
Writing several years later than the date of
the preceding paragraphs, I commend the mo-
dern Unitarians for their candour in giving up
the possible worshipability of Christ, if not
very God, — a proof that truth will ultimately
prevail. The Arians, then existing, against
whom Waterland wrote, were not converted ;
but in the next generation the arguments
made their way. This is fame versus reputa-
tion.
OMNIANA.
^
THE APOOTLEG' CREE&T
not prfhbn]>]p from ^vhnt js^ found in
ri^h<os of Cyril, Eusebius, Cyprian, ii'iar
elliis oi. Ancyra and others, that our present
[Apostles' \^reed is not the very Smnbolum
Fidei, whicnVwas not to be written, /but was
always repeated at baptism ? For this Fatter cer-
tainly contained\he doctrine of the eternal ge
neration of the Logos ; and, therefore, it seem
likely that the present Apostles' creed was a
introductory, and, asVit were,/alphabeticaj,
creed for young catechimiens in their first el
mentation. Is it to be beiieved that the Spji
bolmn Fidei contained notWig but the more
history of Jesus, without ajay of the peculiar
doctrines, or that, if it didr not contain sonie-
thing more, the great and/vehement defend 3rs
of the Trinity would s^ak of m so magnifi-
cently as they do, eveivpreferring its author ty
to that of the scriptures? — Beside!^ does iiot
Austin positively say that our presentM.postl 3s'
creed was gathered out of the scriptures?
Whereas the Snmholmn Fidei was elde\ tlikn
the Gospels, aiid probably contained onlVthe
three doctrhl^s of the Trinity, the Redemptt^)n,
and the Jjnity of the Church. May it iV)t
have h^pened, when baptism was admima-
tere^|/so early, and at last even to infants, tiiai
trhi — iSi/mbvium — Fidni becailie gradually
SSET
OMNIANA.
SjufsikiUum, no bciug^ippropriatpd-. to nduk
prdseli^tes from Judai^iit-oiJ^agaiiism? Tnia
/en mon; than pi^^le ; for|in\
the nuvority of bcrn oYei:ccn-\
W^ns
t(
nie e
propoittioiixio
\jerte4) Christi^Trs-mrrgrjthe cfBgd-djjyisti-ucti on
an thaTof "dtKte*
tjavc been
,,ju^i|ession.
[ofeTreqiient than
A GOOD HEART.
There is in Abbt's Essays an attempt to de-
termine the true sense of this phrase, at least
to unfold (auseinmidersetzen) what is meant and
felt by it. I was much pleased with the re-
marks, I remember, and with the counterpo-
sition of Tom Jones and Sir Charles Grandi-
son. Might not Luther and Calvin serve?
But it is made less noticeable in these last by
its cb-existence with, and sometimes real, more
often apparent, subordination to fixed con-
scious principles, and is thus less naturally
characteristic. Parson Adams contrasted with
Dr. Harrison in Fielding's Amelia would do.
Then there is the suppression of the good
heart and the substitution of principles or mo-
tives for the good heart, as in Laud, and the
whole race of conscientious persecutors. Such
principles constitute the virtues of the Inqui-
sition. A good heart contrasts with the Pha-
risaic righteousness. This last contemplation
of the Pharisees, the dogmatists, and the rigo-
OMNIANA. ^*8^
rists in toto genere, serves to reconcile me to
the fewness of the men who act on fixed prin-
ciples. For unless there exist intellectual
power to determine aright what are the princi-
pia jam fixa et formata, and unless there be
the wisdom of love preceding the love of wis-
dom, and unless to this be added a graciousness
of nature, a loving kindness, — these rigorists
are but bigots often to errors, and active, yea,
remorseless in preventing or staying the rise
and progress of truth. And even when bigotted
adherents to true principles, yet they render
truth unamiable, and forbid little children to
come thereunto. As human nature now is,
it is well, perhaps, that the number should be
few, seeing that of the few, the greater part
are pre-maturities.
The number of those who act from good
hearted impulses, a kindly and cheerful mood,
and the play of minute sympathies, continuous
in their discontinuity, like the sand-thread of
the hour-glass, and from their minuteness and
transiency not calculated to stiffen or inflate
the individual, and thus remaining unendan-
gered by egotism, and its unhandsome vizard
contempt, is far larger : and though these tem-
peramental j97o-virtues will too often fail, and
are not built to stand the storms of strong
temptation ; yet on the whole they carry on
the benignant scheme of social nature, like the
other instincts that rule the animal creation.
But of all the most numerous are the men, who
^ /
JB2 omniana. .
have ever more their own dearHesl beloved
self, as the only or main goal or butt of their
endeavours straight and steady before their
eyes, and whose whole inner world turns on the
great axis of self-interest. These form the ma-
jority, if not of mankind, yet of those by whom
the business of life is carried on ; and most ex-
pedient it is, that so it should be ; nor can we
imagine any thing better contrived for the ad-
vantage of society. For these are the most in-
dustrious, orderly, and circumspect portion of
society, and the actions governed by this prin-
ciple with the results, are the only materials on
which either the statesman, or individuals can
safely calculate.
There is, indeed, another sort, (a class they
can scarcely be called), who are below self-
interest ; who live under the mastery of their
senses and appetites ; and whose selfishness is
an animal instinct, a goad a tergo, not an at-
traction, a re prospecta, or (so to speak) from a
projected self. In fact, such individuals can-
not so properly be said to have a self, as to be
machines for the self of nature : and are as
little capable of loving themselves as of loving
their neighbours. Such there are. Nay, (if
we were to count only without weighing) the
aggregate of such persons might possibly form
a larger number than the class preceding. But
they may safely be taken up into the latter,
for the main ends of society, as being or sure
to become its materials and tools. Their folly
OMNIANA.
is the stuff in which the sound sense of the
worldly-wise is at once manifested and remu-
nerated ; their idleness of thought, with the
passions, appetites, likings and fancies, which
are its natural growth, though weeds, give di-
rection and employment to the industry of
the other. The accidents of inheritance by
birth, of accumulation of property in partial
masses, are thus counteracted, — and the aneu-
risms in the circulating system prevented or
rendered fewer and less obstinate, — whilst ani-
mal want, the sure general result of idleness
and its accompanying vices, tames at length
the selfish host, into the laborious slaves and
mechanic implements of the self-interested.
Thus, without public spirit, nay, by the predo-
minance of the opposite quality, the latter are
the public benefactors : and, giving steadfast-
ness and compactness to the whole, lay in the
ground of the canvass, on which minds of finer
texture may impress beauty and harmony.
Lastly, there is in the heart of all men a
working principle, — call it ambition, or vanity,
or desire of distinction, the inseparable adjunct
of our individuality and personal nature, and
flowing from the same source as language
— the instinct and necessity in each man of
declaring his particular existence, and thus of
singling or singularizing himself. In some
this principle is far stronger than in others,
while in others its comparative dimness may
pass for its non-existence. But in thoughts at
3^" OMNIANA.
least, and secret fancies there is in all men
(idiocy of conrse excepted) a wish to remain
the same and yet to be something else, and
something more, or to exhibit what they are,
or imagine they might be, somewhere else and
to other spectators. Now, though this desire
of distinction, when it is disproportionate to the
powers and qualities by which the individual
is indeed distinguished, or when it is the go-
verning passion, or taken as the rule of con-
duct, is but a " knavish sprite," yet as an at-
tendant and subaltern spirit, it has its good
purposes and beneficial effects : and is not
seldom
sent with broom before,
To sweep the dust behuid the door.
Though selfish in its origin, it yet tends to ele-
vate the individual from selfishness into self-
love, under a softer and perhaps better form
than that of self-interest, the form of self-res-
pect. Whatever other objects the man may
be pursuing, and with whatever other inclina-
tions, he is still by this principle impelled and
almost compelled to pass out of himself in
imagination, and to survey himself at a suffi-
cient distance, in order to judge what figure he
is likely to make in the eyes of his fellow men.
But in thus taking his station as at the apex of
a triangle, while the self is at one angle of the
base, he makes it possible at least that the
image of his neighbour may appear at the
OMNTANA.
385
Other, whether by spontaneous association, or
placed there for the purposes of comparison ;
and so both be contemplated at equal distance.
But this is the first step towards disinterested-
ness ; and though it should never be reached,
the advantage of the appearance is soon learnt,
and the necessity of avoiding the appearance
of the contrary. But appearances cannot be
long sustained without some touch of the rea-
lity. At all events there results a control over
our actions ; some good may be produced, and
many a poisonous or offensive fruit will be pre-
vented. Courtesy, urbanity, gallantry, munifi-
cence ; the outward influence of the law shall
I call it, or rather fashion of honour— these
are the handsome hypocrisies that spring from
the desire of distinction. I ask not the genius
of a Machiavel, a Tacitus, or a Swift;— it
needs only a worldly experience and an obser-
ving mind, to convince a man of forty that
there is no medium between the creed of mis-
anthropy and that of the gospel.
A pagan might be as orthodox as Paul on
the doctrine of works. First, — set aside the
large portion of them that have their source in
the constitutional temperament, — the merit of
which, if any, belongs to nature, not to the in-
dividual agent ; and of the remaining number
of good works, nine are derived from vices
for one that has its origin in virtue. I have
often in looking at the water-works, and com-
plex machinery of our manufactories, indulged
VOL. 1. c c
386 OMNIANA.
a humorous mood by fancying that the ham-
mers, cogs, fly-wheels, &c. were each actuated
by some appetite, or passion — hate, rage, re-
venge, vanity, cupidity, &c. while the general
result was most benignant, and the machine,
taken as a whole, the product of power, know-
ledge, and benevolence ! Such a machine does
the moral world, the world of human nature,
appear — and to those who seem ever more to
place the comparison and the alternative be-
tween hell and earth, and quite overlook the
opposition between earth and heaven, I re-
commend this meditation.
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY.*
I. Miracles — as precluding the contrary evi-
dence of no miracles.
II. The material of Christianity, its exis-
tence and history.
III. The doctrines of Christianity, and the
correspondence of human nature to those doc-
trines,— illustrated, 1 st, historically — as the ac-
tual production of a new world, and the depen-
dence of the fate of the planet upon it ; — 2nd,
individually — from its appeal for its truth to
an asserted fact, — which, whether it be real or
not, every man possessing reason has an equal
* Dictated to, and communicated by, Dr. Brabant of De-
vizes. Ed.
I
OMNIANA. 387
power of ascertaining within himself; — name-
ly, a will which has more or less lost its free-
dom, though not the consciousness that it
ought to be and may become free ; — the con-
viction that this cannot be achieved without
the operation of a principle connatural with
itself; — the evident rationality of an entire
confidence in that principle, being the condi-
tion and means of its operation ; — the experi-
ence in his own nature of the truth of the pro-
cess described by Scripture as far as he can
place himself within the process, aided by the
confident assurances of others as to the effects
experienced by them, and which he is striving
to arrive at. All these form a practical Chris-
tian. Add, however, a gradual o^^ening out of
the intellect to more and more clear percep-
tions of the strict coincidence of the doctrines
of Christianity, with the truths evolved by the
mind, from reflections on its own nature. To
such a man one main test of the objectivity,
the entity, the objective truth of his faith, is its
accompaniment by an increase of insight into
the moral beauty and necessity of the process
which it comprises, and the dependence of that
proof on the causes asserted. Believe, and if
thy belief be right, that insight which gradu-
ally transmutes faith into knowledge will be
the reward of that belief. The Christian, to
whom, after a long profession of Christianity,
the mysteries remain as much mysteries as
before, is in the same state as a schoolboy with
388 OMNIANA.
regard to his arithmetic to whom the facit at
the end of the examples in his cyphering book
is the whole ground for his assuming that such
and such figures amount to so and so.
3rd. In the above I include the increasing
discoveries in the correspondence of the his-
tory, the doctrines and the promises of Chris-
tianity, M ith the past, present, and probable
future of human nature ; and in this state a
fair comparison of the religion as a divine phi-
losophy, with all other religions which have
j^retended to revelations and all other systems
of philosophy ; both with regard to the totality
of its truth and its identification with the mani-
fest march of affairs.
I should conclude that, if we suppose a man
to have convinced himself that not only the
doctrines of Christianity, which may be con-
ceived independently of history or time, as the
Trinity, spiritual influences, &c. are coincident
with the truths which his reason, thus strength-
ened, has evolved from its own sources, but
that the historical dogmas, namely, of the in-
carnation of the creative Logos, and his be-
coming a personal agent, are themselves foun-
ded in philosophical necessity ; then it seems
irrational, that such a man should reject the
belief of the actual appearance of a religion
strictly correspondent therewith, at a given time
recorded, even as much as that he should re-
ject Caesar's account of his wars in Gaul, after
he has convinced himself « j^Woyz of their pro-
bability.
OMNIANA. 389
As the result of these convictions he will
not scruple to receive the particular miracles
recorded, inasmuch as it would be miraculous
that an incarnate God should not work what
must to mere men appear as miracles; inas-
much as it is strictly accordant with the ends
and benevolent nature of such a being, to
commence the elevation of man above his
mere senses by attracting and enforcing atten-
tion, first through an appeal to those senses.
But with equal reason will he expect that no
other or greater force should be laid on these
miracles as such ; that they should not be
spoken of as good in themselves, much less as
the adequate and ultimate proof of that reli-
gion ; and likewise he will receive additional
satisfaction, should he find these miracles so
wrought, and on such occasions, as to give
them a personal value as symbols of important
truths when their miraculousness was no longer
needful or efficacious.
CONFESSIO FIDEL Nov. 3, 1816.
I.
I. 1 BELIEVE that I am a free-agent, inasmuch
as, and so far as, I have a will, which renders
me justly responsible for my actions, omissive
as well as commissive. Likewise that I pos-
sess reason, or a law of right and wrong, which.
390 OMNIANA.
uniting with my sense of moral responsibility,
constitutes the voice of conscience.
II. Hence it becomes my absolute duty to
believe, and I do believe, that there is a God,
that is, a Being, in whom supreme reason and
a most holy will are one with an infinite power ;
and that all holy will is coincident with the
will of God, and therefore secure in its ulti-
mate consequences by His omnipotence ; — ^hav-
ing, if such similitude be not unlawful, such a
relation to the goodness of the Almighty, as a
perfect time-piece will have to the sun.
COROLLARY.
The wonderful works of God in the sensible
world are a perpetual discourse, reminding me
of his existence, and shadowing out to me his
perfections. But as all language presupposes
in the intelligent hearer or reader those pri-
mary notions, which it symbolizes ; as well as
the power of making those combinations of
these primary notions, which it represents and
excites us to combine, — even so I believe, that
the notion of God is essential to the human
mind ; that it is called forth into distinct con-
sciousness principally by the conscience, and
auxiliarly by the manifest adaptation of means
to ends in the outward creation. It is, there-
fore, evident to my reason, that the existence
of God is absolutely and necessarily insuscep-
tible of a scientific demonstration, and that
OMNIANA. 391
Scriptuie has so represented it. For it com-
mands us to believe in one God. / am the
LiOrd thy God : thou shalt have none other gods
but me. Now all commandment necessarily
relates to the w ill ; whereas all scientific de-
monstration is independent of the will, and is
apodictic or demonstrative only as far as it is
compulsory on the mind, volentem, nolentem.
III. My conscience forbids me to propose to
myself the pains and pleasures of this life, as
the primary motive, or ultimate end, of my
actions ; — on the contrary, it makes me per-
ceive an utter disproportionateness and hetero-
geneity between the acts of the spirit, as virtue
and vice, and the things of the sense, such as
all earthly rewards and punishments must be.
Its hopes and fears, therefore, refer me to a
different and spiritual state of being : and I be-
lieve in the life to come, not through argu-
ments acquired by my understanding or dis-
cursive faculty, but chiefly and effectively, be-
cause so to believe is my duty, and in obedi-
ence to the commands of my conscience.
Here ends the first table of my creed, which
would have been my creed, had I been born
with Adam ; and which, therefore, constitutes
what may in this sense be called natural reli-
gion, that is, the religion of all finite rational
beings. The second table contains the creed
of revealed religion, my belief as a Christian.
31)2 OMNIANA.
II.
IV. 1 believe, and hold it as the fLindameii-
tal article of Christianity, that I am a fallen
creature ; that I am of myself capable of
moral evil, but not of myself capable of moral
good, and that an evil ground existed in my
will, previously to any given act, or assignable
moment of time, in my consciousness. I am born
a child of wrath. This fearful mystery 1 pretend
not to understand. I cannot even conceive the
possibility of it, — but I know that it is so. My
conscience, the sole fountain of certainty, com-
mands me to believe it, and would itself be a
contradiction, were it not so — and what is real
must be possible.
V. I receive with full and grateful faith the
assurance of revelation, that the Word, which is
from all eternity with God, and is God, assumed
our human nature in order to redeem me, and
all mankind from this our connate corruption.
My reason convinces me, that no other mode
of redemption is conceivable, and, as did
Socrates, would have yearned after the Re-
deemer, though it would not dare expect so
wonderful an act of divine love, except only as
an effort of my mind to conceive the utmost of
the infinite greatness of that love.
VI. I believe, that this assumption of hu-
manity by the Son of God, was revealed and
realized to us by the Word made flesh, and
manifested to us in Christ Jesus; and that
OMNIANA. 393
his miraculous birth, his agony, his crucifixion,
death, resurrection, and ascension, were all
both symbols of our redemption (<paiv6iuEva tmv
vov/iuviov) and necessary parts of the awful
process.
VII. I believe in the descent and sending
of the Holy Spirit, by whose free grace ob-
tained for me by the merits of my Redeemer,
I can alone be sanctified and restored from my
natural inheritance of sin and condemnation,
be a child of God, and an inheritor of the
kingdom of God.
COROLLARY.
The Trinity of persons in the Unity of the
God would have been a necessary idea of my
speculative reason, deduced from the neces-
sary postulate of an intelligent creator, whose
ideas being anterior to the things, must be
more actual than those things, even as those
things are more actual than our images de-
rived from them ; and who, as intelligent, must
have had co-eternally an adequate idea of
himself, in and through which he created all
things both in heaven and earth. But this
would only have been a speculative idea, like
those of circles and other mathematical figures,
to which we are not authorized by the prac-
tical reason to attribute reality. Solely in
consequence of our Redemption does the Tri-
nity become a doctrine, the belief of which as
394 OMNI AN A.
real is conimniuled by our conscience. But to
Christians it is commanded, and it is false
candour in a Christian, believing in original
sin and redemption therefrom, to admit that
any man denying the divinity of Christ can be
a Christian. The true language of a Christian,
which reconciles humility with truth would
be ; — God and not man is the judge of man :
which of the two is the Christian, he will de-
termine ; but this is evident, that if the tliean-
thropist is a Christian, the psilanthropist can-
not be so ; and vice vei'sa. Suppose, that two
tribes used the same written characters, but
attached different and opposite meanings to
them, so that iiiger, for instance, was used by
one tribe to convey the notion Mack, by the
other, ivhite; — could they, without absurdity,
be said to have the same language ? Even so,
in the instance of the crucifixion, the same
image is present to the theanthropist and to the
psilanthropist or Socinian — but to the latter it
represents a mere man, a good man indeed and
divinely inspired, but still a mere man, even as
Moses or Paul, dying in attestation of the
truth of his preaching, and in order by his re-
surrection to give a proof of his mission, and
inclusively of the resurrection of all men : — to
the former it represents God incarnate taking
upon himself the sins of the world, and himself
thereby redeeming us, and giving us life ever-
lasting, not merely teaching it. The same
difference, that exists between God and man,
OMNIANA. 395
between giving and the declaration of a gift,
exists between the Trinitarian and the Unita-
rian. This might be proved in a few moments,
if we would only conceive a Greek or Roman,
to whom two persons relate their belief, each
calling Christ by a different name. It would
be impossible for the Greek even to guess, that
they both meant the same person, or referred
to the same facts.
END OF VOL. I,
C. Whittingham, Tooks Court, Chancery Lane.
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