aiversity of Califl Southern Regio] Library Faciliti THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES I'/ i^: \^^ f ^lLhA^-*'^ ^^'^'^ v..i ^.'•/.^ ''''" '^ I, .^ ,.,,/ ^,.. '^'"^' I r , L i.^^^. '^^'- -^^^ 'T / ' , ;{ 3-'ci< Jtn^.^f^ THE LITERARY REMAINS OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE COLLECTED AND EDITED BY HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A. VOLUME THE FIRST z- ) 'jT' AI. !)1 LONDOiN WILLIAM PICKERING 1836 \ CD co PR, CO'' tyj 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. .-/ „-» I ^ ■ M . 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. 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 APOOTLE G ' CREE& T n ot p rf hbn ]>] p from ^vhnt j s ^ found in ri^h