Chapter 1

light, if superior, consists in nothing more than this,--that I more clearly see that the doctrine of Trinal Unity is an absolute truth transcending my human means of understanding it, or demonstrating it. I may or may not be able to utter the formula of my faith in this mystery in more logical terms than some others; but this I say, Go and ask the most ordinary man, a professed believer in this doctrine, whether he believes in and worships a plurality of Gods, and he will start with horror at the bare suggestion. He may not be able to explain his creed in exact terms; but he will tell you that he _does_ believe in one God, and in one God only,-- reason about it as you may.

* * * * *

What all the churches of the East and West, what Romanist and Protestant believe in common, that I call Christianity. In no proper sense of the word can I call Unitarians and Socinians believers in Christ; at least, not in the only Christ of whom I have read or know any thing.

April 14, 1830.

CONVERSION OF THE JEWS.--JEWS IN POLAND.

There is no hope of converting the Jews in the way and with the spirit unhappily adopted by our church; and, indeed, by all other modern churches. In the first age, the Jewish Christians undoubtedly considered themselves as the seed of Abraham, to whom the promise had been made; and, as such, a superior order. Witness the account of St. Peter's conduct in the Acts [1], and the Epistle to the Galatians.[2] St. Paul protested against this, so far as it went to make Jewish observances compulsory on Christians who were not of Jewish blood, and so far as it in any way led to bottom the religion on the Mosaic covenant of works; but he never denied the birthright of the chosen seed: on the contrary, he himself evidently believed that the Jews would ultimately be restored; and he says,--If the Gentiles have been so blest by the rejection of the Jews, how much rather shall they be blest by the conversion and restoration of Israel! Why do we expect the Jews to abandon their national customs and distinctions? The Abyssinian church said that they claimed a descent from Abraham; and that, in virtue of such ancestry, they observed circumcision: but declaring withal, that they rejected the covenant of works, and rested on the promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In consequence of this appeal, the Abyssinians were permitted to retain their customs.

If Rhenferd's Essays were translated--if the Jews were made acquainted with the real argument--if they were addressed kindly, and were not required to abandon their distinctive customs and national type, but were invited to become Christians _as of the seed of Abraham_--I believe there would be a Christian synagogue in a year's time. As it is, the Jews of the lower orders are the very lowest of mankind; they have not a principle of honesty in them; to grasp and be getting money for ever is their single and exclusive occupation. A learned Jew once said to me, upon this subject:--"O Sir! make the inhabitants of Hollywell Street and Duke's Place Israelites first, and then we may debate about making them Christians."[3]

In Poland, the Jews are great landholders, and are the worst of tyrants. They have no kind of sympathy with their labourers and dependants. They never meet them in common worship. Land, in the hand of a large number of Jews, instead of being, what it ought to be, the organ of permanence, would become the organ of rigidity, in a nation; by their intermarriages within their own pale, it would be in fact perpetually entailed. Then, again, if a popular tumult were to take place in Poland, who can doubt that the Jews would be the first objects of murder and spoliation?

[Footnote 1: Chap. xv.]

[Footnote 2 : Chap. ii.]

[Footnote 3: Mr. Coleridge had a very friendly acquaintance with several learned Jews in this country, and he told me that, whenever he had fallen in with a Jew of thorough education and literary habits, he had always found him possessed of a strong natural capacity for metaphysical disquisitions. I may mention here the best known of his Jewish friends, one whom he deeply respected, Hyman Hurwitz.--ED.]

April 17. 1830.

MOSAIC MIRACLES.--PANTHEISM.

In the miracles of Moses, there is a remarkable intermingling of acts, which we should now-a-days call simply providential, with such as we should still call miraculous. The passing of the Jordan, in the 3d chapter of the book of Joshua, is perhaps the purest and sheerest miracle recorded in the Bible; it seems to have been wrought for the miracle's sake, and so thereby to show to the Jews--the descendants of those who had come out of Egypt-- that the _same_ God who had appeared to their fathers, and who had by miracles, in many respects providential only, preserved them in the wilderness, was _their_ God also. The manna and quails were ordinary provisions of Providence, rendered miraculous by certain laws and qualities annexed to them in the particular instance. The passage of the Red Sea was effected by a strong wind, which, we are told, drove hack the waters; and so on. But then, again, the death of the first-born was purely miraculous. Hence, then, both Jews and Egyptians might take occasion to learn, that it was _one and the same God_ who interfered specially, and who governed all generally.

* * * * *

Take away the first verse of the hook of Genesis, and then what immediately follows is an exact history or sketch of Pantheism. Pantheism was taught in the mysteries of Greece; of which the Samothracian or Cabeiric were probably the purest and the most ancient.

_April_ 18. 1830.

POETIC PROMISE.

In the present age it is next to impossible to predict from specimens, however favourable, that a young man will turn out a great poet, or rather a poet at all. Poetic taste, dexterity in composition, and ingenious imitation, often produce poems that are very promising in appearance. But genius, or the power of doing something new, is another thing. Mr. Tennyson's sonnets, such as I have seen, have many of the characteristic excellencies of those of Wordsworth and Southey.

_April 19. 1830._

It is a small thing that the patient knows of his own state; yet some things he _does_ know better than his physician.

* * * * *

I never had, and never could feel, any horror at death, simply as death.

* * * * *

Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.

_April 30. 1830._

NOMINALISTS AND REALISTS.--BRITISH SCHOOLMEN.--SPINOSA.

The result of my system will be, to show, that, so far from the world being a goddess in petticoats, it is rather the Devil in a strait waistcoat.

* * * * *

The controversy of the Nominalists and Realists was one of the greatest and most important that ever occupied the human mind. They were both right, and both wrong. They each maintained opposite poles of the same truth; which truth neither of them saw, for want of a higher premiss. Duns Scotus was the head of the Realists; Ockham,[1] his own disciple, of the Nominalists. Ockham, though certainly very prolix, is a most extraordinary writer.

[Footnote 1: John Duns Scotus was born in 1274, at Dunstone in the parish of Emildune, near Alnwick. He was a fellow of Merton College, and Professor of Divinity at Oxford. After acquiring an uncommon reputation at his own university, he went to Paris, and thence to Cologne, and there died in 1308, at the early age of thirty-four years. He was called the Subtle Doctor, and found time to compose works which now fill twelve volumes in folio. See the Lyons edition, by Luke Wadding, in 1639.

William Ockham was an Englishman, and died about 1347; but the place and year of his birth are not clearly ascertained. He was styled the Invincible Doctor, and wrote bitterly against Pope John XXII. We all remember Butler's account of these worthies:--

"He knew what's what, and that's as high As metaphysic wit can fly; In school divinity as able As he that hight Irrefragable, A second Thomas, or at once To name them all, another _Dunse_; Profound in all the Nominal And Real ways beyond them all; For he a rope of sand could twist As tough as learned Sorbonist." HUDIBRAS. Part I. Canto I. v. 149.

The Irrefragable Doctor was Alexander Hales, a native of Gloucestershire, who died in 1245. Amongst his pupils at Paris, was Fidanza, better known by the name of Bonaventura, the Seraphic Doctor. The controversy of the Realists and the Nominalists cannot he explained in a note; but in substance the original point of dispute may be thus stated. The Realists held _generally_ with Aristotle, that there were universal _ideas_ or essences impressed upon matter, and covëal with, and inherent in, their objects. Plato held that these universal forms existed as exemplars in the divine mind previously to, and independently of, matter; but both maintained, under one shape or other, the real existence of universal forms. On the other hand, Zeno and the old Stoics denied the existence of these universals, and contended that they were no more than mere tenms and nominal representatives of their particular objects. The Nominalists were the followers of Zeno, and held that universal forms are merely modes of conception, and exist solely in and for the mind. It does not require much reflection to see how great an influence these different systems might have upon the enunciation of the higher doctrines of Christianity.--ED.]

* * * * *

It is remarkable, that two thirds of the eminent schoolmen were of British birth. It was the schoolmen who made the languages of Europe what they now are. We laugh at the quiddities of those writers now, but, in truth, these quiddities are just the parts of their language which we have rejected; whilst we never think of the mass which we have adopted, and have in daily use.

* * * * *

One of the scholastic definitions of God is this,--_Deus est, cui omne quod est est esse omne quod est:_ as long a sentence made up of as few words, and those as oligosyllabic, as any I remember. By the by, that _oligosyllabic_ is a word happily illustrative of its own meaning, _ex opposito_.

* * * * *

Spinosa, at the very end of his life, seems to have gained a glimpse of the truth. In the last letter published in his works, it appears that he began to suspect his premiss. His _unica substantia_ is, in fact, a mere notion, --a _subject_ of the mind, and no _object_ at all.

* * * * *

Plato's works are preparatory exercises for the mind. He leads you to see, that propositions involving in themselves contradictory conceptions, are nevertheless true; and which, therefore, must belong to a higher logic-- that of ideas. They are contradictory only in the Aristotelian logic, which is the instrument of the understanding. I have read most of the works of Plato several times with profound attention, but not all his writings. In fact, I soon found that I had read Plato by anticipation. He was a consummate genius.[1]

[Footnote 1: "This is the test and character of a truth so affirmed (--a truth of the reason, an Idea)--that in its own proper form it is _inconceivable_. For to _conceive_, is a function of the understanding, which can he exercised only on subjects subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of the understanding all truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection, and to be rendered _expressible_. And here we have a second test and sign of a truth so affirmed, that it can come forth out of the moulds of the understanding only in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions, each of which is partially true, and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes the representative or _expression_ (--the _exponent_) of a truth beyond conception and inexpressible. Examples: _before_ Abraham WAS, I AM. God is a circle, the centre of which is every where, and the circumference no where. The soul is all in every part." Aids to Reflection, n. 224.n. See also _Church and State_, p. 12.--ED.]

* * * * *

My mind is in a state of philosophical doubt as to animal magnetism. Von Spix, the eminent naturalist, makes no doubt of the matter, and talks coolly of giving doses of it. The torpedo affects a third or external object, by an exertion of its own will: such a power is not properly electrical; for electricity acts invariably under the same circumstances. A steady gaze will make many persons of fair complexions blush deeply. Account for that. [1]

[Footnote 1: I find the following remarkable passage in p. 301. vol. i. of the richly annotated copy of Mr. Southey's Life of Wesley, which Mr. C. bequeathed as his "darling book and the favourite of his library" to its great and honoured author and donor:--

"The coincidence throughout of all these Methodist cases with those of the Magnetists makes me wish for a solution that would apply to all. Now this sense or appearance of a sense of the distant, both in time and space, is common to almost all the _magnetic_ patients in Denmark, Germany, France, and North Italy, to many of whom the same or a similar solution could not apply. Likewise, many cases have been recorded at the same time, in different countries, by men who had never heard of each other's names, and where the simultaneity of publication proves the independence of the testimony. And among the Magnetisers and Attesters are to be found names of men, whose competence in respect of integrity and incapability of intentional falsehood is fully equal to that of Wesley, and their competence in respect of physio- and psychological insight and attainments incomparably greater. Who would dream, indeed, of comparing Wesley with a Cuvier, Hufeland, Blumenbach, Eschenmeyer, Reil, &c.? Were I asked, what _I_ think, my answer would be,--that the evidence enforces scepticism and a _non liquet_;--too strong and consentaneous for a candid mind to be satisfied of its falsehood, or its solvibility on the supposition of imposture or casual coincidence;--too fugacious and unfixable to support any theory that supposes the always potential, and, under certain conditions and circumstances, occasionally active, existence of a correspondent faculty in the human soul. And nothing less than such an hypothesis would be adequate to the _satisfactory_ explanation of the facts;--though that of a _metastasis_ of specific functions of the nervous energy, taken in conjunction with extreme nervous excitement, _plus_ some delusion, _plus_ some illusion, _plus_ some imposition, _plus_ some chance and accidental coincidence, might determine the direction in which the scepticism should vibrate. Nine years has the subject of Zoo-magnetism been before me. I have traced it historically, collected a mass of documents in French, German, Italian, and the Latinists of the sixteenth century, have never neglected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses, _ex. gr._ Tieck, Treviranus, De Prati, Meyer, and others of literary or medical celebrity, and I remain where I was, and where the first perusal of Klug's work had left me, without having moved an inch backward or forward. The reply of Treviranus, the famous botanist, to me, when he was in London, is worth recording:--'Ich habe gesehen was (ich weiss das) ich nicht würde geglaubt haben auf _ihren_ erzählung,' &c. 'I have seen what I am certain I would not have believed on your telling; and in all reason, therefore, I can neither expect nor wish that you should believe on _mine_.'"--ED.]

_May_ 1. 1830.

FALL OF MAN.--MADNESS.--BROWN AND DARWIN.--NITROUS OXIDE.

A Fall of some sort or other--the creation, as it were, of the non- absolute--is the fundamental postulate of the moral history of man. Without this hypothesis, man is unintelligible; with it, every phenomenon is explicable. The mystery itself is too profound for human insight.

* * * * *

Madness is not simply a bodily disease. It is the sleep of the spirit with certain conditions of wakefulness; that is to say, lucid intervals. During this sleep, or recession of the spirit, the lower or bestial states of life rise up into action and prominence. It is an awful thing to be eternally tempted by the perverted senses. The reason may resist--it does resist--for a long time; but too often, at length, it yields for a moment, and the man is mad for ever. An act of the will is, in many instances, precedent to complete insanity. I think it was Bishop Butler who said, that he was "all his life struggling against the devilish suggestions of his senses," which would have maddened him, if he had relaxed the stern wakefulness of his reason for a single moment.

* * * * *

Brown's and Darwin's theories are both ingenious; but the first will not account for sleep, and the last will not account for death: considerable defects, you must allow.

* * * * *

It is said that every excitation is followed by a commensurate exhaustion. That is not so. The excitation caused by inhaling nitrous oxide is an exception at least; it leaves no exhaustion on the bursting of the bubble. The operation of this gas is to prevent the decarbonating of the blood; and, consequently, if taken excessively, it would produce apoplexy. The blood becomes black as ink. The voluptuous sensation attending the inhalation is produced by the compression and resistance.

_May_ 2. 1830.

PLANTS.--INSECTS.--MEN.--DOG.--ANT AND BEE.

Plants exist _in_ themselves. Insects _by_, or by means of, themselves. Men, _for_ themselves. The perfection of irrational animals is that which is best for _them_; the perfection of man is that which is absolutely best. There is growth only in plants; but there is irritability, or, a better word, instinctivity, in insects.

* * * * *

You may understand by _insect_, life in sections--diffused generally over all the parts.

* * * * *

The dog alone, of all brute animals, has a [*Greek: storgae], or affection _upwards_ to man.

* * * * *

The ant and the bee are, I think, much nearer man in the understanding or faculty of adapting means to proximate ends than the elephant.[1]

[Footnote 1: I remember Mr. C. was accustomed to consider the ant, as the most intellectual, and the dog as the most affectionate, of the irrational creatures, so far as our present acquaintance with the facts of natural history enables us to judge.--ED.]

_May_ 3. 1830.

BLACK COLONEL.

What an excellent character is the black Colonel in Mrs. Bennett's "Beggar Girl!"[1]

If an inscription be put upon my tomb, it may be that I was an enthusiastic lover of the church; and as enthusiastic a hater of those who have betrayed it, be they who they may.[2]

[Footnote 1: This character was frequently a subject of pleasant description and enlargement with Mr. Coleridge, and he generally passed from it to a high commendation of Miss Austen's novels, as being in their way perfectly genuine and individual productions.--ED.]

[Footnote 2: This was a strong way of expressing a deep-rooted feeling. A better and a truer character would be, that Coleridge was a lover of the church, and a defender of the faith! This last expression is the utterance of a conviction so profound that it can patiently wait for time to prove its truth.--ED.]

_May_ 4. 1830.

HOLLAND AND THE DUTCH.

Holland and the Netherlands ought to be seen once, because no other country is like them. Every thing is artificial. You will be struck with the combinations of vivid greenery, and water, and building; but every thing is so distinct and rememberable, that you would not improve your conception by visiting the country a hundred times over. It is interesting to see a country and a nature _made_, as it were, by man, and to compare it with God's nature.[1]

If you go, remark, (indeed you will be forced to do so in spite of yourself,) remark, I say, the identity (for it is more than proximity) of a disgusting dirtiness in all that concerns the dignity of, and reverence for, the human person; and a persecuting painted cleanliness in every thing connected with property. You must not walk in their gardens; nay, you must hardly look into them.

[Footnote 1: In the summer of 1828, Mr. Coleridge made an excursion with Mr. Wordsworth in Holland, Flanders, and up the Rhine, as far as Bergen. He came back delighted, especially with his stay near Bonn, but with an abiding disgust at the filthy habits of the people. Upon Cologne, in particular, he avenged himself in two epigrams. See Poet. Works, vol. ii. p. 144.--ED.]

* * * * *

The Dutch seem very happy and comfortable, certainly; but it is the happiness of _animals_. In vain do you look for the sweet breath of hope and advancement among them. [1]In fact, as to their villas and gardens, they are not to be compared to an ordinary London merchant's box.

[Footnote 1: "For every gift of noble origin Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." _Wordsworth._]

_May 5. 1830._

RELIGION GENTILIZES.--WOMEN AND MEN.--BIBLICAL COMMENTATORS.--WALKERITE CREED.

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will _alone_ gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, _alone_. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners.

* * * * *

A woman's head is usually over ears in her heart. Man seems to have been designed for the superior being of the two; but as things are, I think women are generally better creatures than men. They have, taken universally, weaker appetites and weaker intellects, but they have much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever.

* * * * *

I never could get much information out of the biblical commentators. Cocceius has told me the most; but he, and all of them, have a notable trick of passing _siccissimis pedibus_ over the parts which puzzle a man of reflection.

The Walkerite creed, or doctrine of the New Church, as it is called, appears to be a miscellany of Calvinism and Quakerism; but it is hard to understand it.

* * * * *

_May_ 7, 1830.

HORNE TOOKE.----DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY.----GENDER OF THE SUN IN GERMAN.

Horne Tooke was pre-eminently a ready-witted man. He had that clearness which is founded on shallowness. He doubted nothing; and, therefore, gave you all that he himself knew, or meant, with great completeness. His voice was very fine, and his tones exquisitely discriminating. His mind had no progression or developement. All that is worth any thing (and that is but little) in the Diversions of Purley is contained in a short pamphlet-letter which he addressed to Mr. Dunning; then it was enlarged to an octavo, hut there was not a foot of progression beyond the pamphlet; at last, a quarto volume, 1 believe, came out; and yet, verily, excepting newspaper lampoons and political insinuations, there was no addition to the argument of the pamphlet, It shows a base and unpoetical mind to convert so beautiful, so divine, a subject as language into the vehicle or make-weight of political squibs. All that is true in Horne Tooke's book is taken from Lennep, who gave it for so much as it was worth, and never pretended to make a system of it. Tooke affects to explain the origin and whole philosophy of language by what is, in fact, only a mere accident of the history of one language, or one or two languages. His abuse of Harris is most shallow and unfair. Harris, in the Hermes, was dealing--not very profoundly, it is true,--with the philosophy of language, the moral, physical, and metaphysical causes and conditions of it, &c. Horne Tooke, in writing about the formation of words only, thought he was explaining the philosophy of language, which is a very different thing. In point of fact, he was very shallow in the Gothic dialects. I must say, all that _decantata fabula_ about the genders of the sun and moon in German seems to me great stuff. Originally, I apprehend, in the _Platt-Deutsch_ of the north of Germany there were only two definite articles--_die_ for masculine and feminine, and _das_ for neuter. Then it was _die sonne_, in a masculine sense, as we say with the same word as article, _the_ sun. Luther, in constructing the _Hoch-Deutsch_ (for really his miraculous and providential translation of the Bible was the fundamental act of construction of the literary German), took for his distinct masculine article the _der_ of the _Ober-Deutsch_, and thus constituted the three articles of the present High German, _der, die, das_. Naturally, therefore, it would then have been, _der sonne_; but here the analogy of the Greek grammar prevailed, and as _sonne_ had the arbitrary feminine termination of the Greek, it was left with its old article _die_, which, originally including masculine and feminine both, had grown to designate the feminine only. To the best of my recollection, the Minnesingers and all the old poets always use the sun as masculine; and, since Luther's time, the poets feel the awkwardness of the classical gender affixed to the sun so much, that they more commonly introduce Phoebus or some other synonyme instead. I must acknowledge my doubts, whether, upon more accurate investigation, it can be shown that there ever was a nation that considered the sun in itself, and apart from language, as the feminine power. The moon does not so clearly demand a feminine as the sun does a masculine sex: it might be considered negatively or neuter;--yet if the reception of its light from the sun were known, that would have been a good reason for making her feminine, as being the recipient body.

* * * * *

As our _the_ was the German _die_, so I believe our _that_ stood for _das_, and was used as a neuter definite article.

The _Platt-Deutsch_ was a compact language like the English, not admitting much agglutination. The _Ober-Deutsch_ was fuller and fonder of agglutinating words together, although it was not so soft in its sounds.

_May 8. 1830._

HORNE TOOKE.--JACOBINS.

Horne Tooke said that his friends might, if they pleased, go as far as Slough,--he should go no farther than Hounslow; but that was no reason why he should not keep them company so far as their roads were the same. The answer is easy. Suppose you know, or suspect, that a man is about to commit a robbery at Slough, though you do not mean to be his accomplice, have you a moral right to walk arm in arm with him to Hounslow, and, by thus giving him your countenance, prevent his being taken up? The history of all the world tells us, that immoral means will ever intercept good ends.

* * * * *

Enlist the interests of stern morality and religious enthusiasm in the cause of political liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible; but the Jacobins played the whole game of religion, and morals, and domestic happiness into the hands of the aristocrats. Thank God! that they did so. England was saved from civil war by their enormous, their providential, blundering.

* * * * *

Can a politician, a statesman, slight the feelings and the convictions of the whole matronage of his country? The women are as influential upon such national interests as the men.

* * * * *

Horne Tooke was always making a butt of Mr. Godwin; who, nevertheless, had that in him which Tooke could never have understood. I saw a good deal of Tooke at one time: he left upon me the impression of his being a keen, iron man.

_May_ 9. 1830.

PERSIAN AND ARABIC POETRY.--MILESIAN TALES.

I must acknowledge I never could see much merit in the Persian poetry, which I have read in translation. There is not a ray of imagination in it, and but a glimmering of fancy. It is, in fact, so far as I know, deficient in truth. Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least. The Arabian Nights' Tales are a different thing --they are delightful, but I cannot help surmising that there is a good deal of Greek fancy in them. No doubt we have had a great loss in the Milesian Tales.[1] The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast.

Think of the sublimity, I should rather say the profundity, of that passage in Ezekiel, [2]"Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest." I know nothing like it.

[Footnote 1: The Milesiacs were so called, because written or composed by Aristides of Miletus, and also because the scene of all or most of them was placed in that rich and luxurious city. Harpocration cites the sixth book of this collection. Nothing, I believe, is now known of the age or history of this Aristides, except what may be inferred from the fact that Lucius Cornelius Sisenna translated the tales into Latin, as we learn from Ovid:--

Junxit Aristides _Milesia crimina_ secum--

and afterwards,

Vertit Aristidem Sisenna, nec obfuit illi Historiae turpes inseruisse jocos:--

_Fasti_, ii. 412-445.

and also from the incident mentioned in the _Plutarchian_ life of Crassus, that after the defeat at Carrhae, a copy of the Milesiacs of Aristides was found in the baggage of a Roman officer, and that Surena (who, by the by, if history has not done him injustice, was not a man to be over scrupulous in such a case,) caused the book to be brought into the senate house of Seleucia, and a portion of it read aloud, for the purpose of insulting the Romans, who, even during war, he said, could not abstain from the perusal of such _infamous compositions_,--c. 32. The immoral character of these tales, therefore, may be considered pretty clearly established; they were the Decameron and Heptameron of antiquity.--ED.]

[Footnote 2: Chap. xxxvii. v. 3.]

_May_ 11. 1830.

SIR T. MONRO.--SIR S. RAFFLES.--CANNING.

Sir Thomas Monro and Sir Stamford Raffles were both great men; but I recognise more genius in the latter, though, I believe, the world says otherwise.

* * * * *

I never found what I call an idea in any speech or writing of ----'s. Those enormously prolix harangues are a proof of weakness in the higher intellectual grasp. Canning had a sense of the beautiful and the good; --- rarely speaks but to abuse, detract, and degrade. I confine myself to institutions, of course, and do not mean personal detraction. In my judgment, no man can rightly apprehend an abuse till he has first mastered the idea of the use of an institution. How fine, for example, is the idea of the unhired magistracy of England, taking in and linking together the duke to the country gentleman in the primary distribution of justice, or in the preservation of order and execution of law at least throughout the country! Yet some men never seem to have thought of it for one moment, but as connected with brewers, and barristers, and tyrannical Squire Westerns! From what I saw of Homer, I thought him a superior man, in real intellectual greatness.

* * * * *

Canning flashed such a light around the constitution, that it was difficult to see the ruins of the fabric through it.

_May_ 12. 1830.

SHAKSPEARE.--MILTON.--HOMER.

Shakspeare is the Spinosistic deity--an omnipresent creativeness. Milton is the deity of prescience; he stands _ab extra_, and drives a fiery chariot and four, making the horses feel the iron curb which holds them in. Shakspeare's poetry is characterless; that is, it does not reflect the individual Shakspeare; but John Milton himself is in every line of the Paradise Lost. Shakspeare's rhymed verses are excessively condensed,-- epigrams with the point every where; but in his blank dramatic verse he is diffused, with a linked sweetness long drawn out. No one can understand Shakspeare's superiority fully until he has ascertained, by comparison, all that which he possessed in common with several other great dramatists of his age, and has then calculated the surplus which is entirely Shakspeare's own. His rhythm is so perfect, that you may be almost sure that you do not understand the real force of a line, if it does not run well as you read it. The necessary mental pause after every hemistich or imperfect line is always equal to the time that would have been taken in reading the complete verse.

* * * * *

I have no doubt whatever that Homer is a mere concrete name for the rhapsodies of the Iliad.[1] Of course there was _a_ Homer, and twenty besides. I will engage to compile twelve books with characters just as distinct and consistent as those in the Iliad, from the metrical ballads, and other chronicles of England, about Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I say nothing about moral dignity, but the mere consistency of character. The different qualities were traditional. Tristram is always courteous, Lancelot invincible, and so on. The same might be done with the Spanish romances of the Cid. There is no subjectivity whatever in the Homeric poetry. There is a subjectivity of the poet, as of Milton, who is himself before himself in everything he writes; and there is a subjectivity of the _persona_, or dramatic character, as in all Shakspeare's great creations, Hamlet, Lear, &c.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge was a decided Wolfian in the Homeric question; but he had never read a word of the famous Prolegomena, and knew nothing of Wolf's reasoning, but what I told him of it in conversation. Mr. C. informed me, that he adopted the conclusion contained in the text upon the first perusal of Vico's Scienza Nuova; "not," he said, "that Vico has reasoned it out with such learning and accuracy as you report of Wolf, but Vico struck out all the leading hints, and I soon filled up the rest out of my own head."-- ED.]

_May_ 14. 1830.

REASON AND UNDERSTANDING.--WORDS AND NAMES OF THINGS.

Until you have mastered the fundamental difference, in kind, between the reason and the understanding as faculties of the human mind, you cannot escape a thousand difficulties in philosophy. It is pre-eminently the _Gradus ad Philosophiam_.

* * * * *

The general harmony between the operations of the mind and heart, and the words which express them in almost all languages, is wonderful; whilst the endless discrepancies between the names of _things_ is very well deserving notice. There are nearly a hundred names in the different German dialects for the alder-tree. I believe many more remarkable instances are to be found in Arabic. Indeed, you may take a very pregnant and useful distinction between _words_ and mere arbitrary _names of things_.

_May 15. 1830._

THE TRINITY.--IRVING.

The Trinity is, 1. the Will; 2. the Reason, or Word; 3. the Love, or Life. As we distinguish these three, so we must unite them in one God. The union must be as transcendant as the distinction.

Mr. Irving's notion is tritheism,--nay, rather in terms, tri-daemonism. His opinion about the sinfulness of the humanity of our Lord is absurd, if considered in one point of view; for body is not carcass. How can there be a sinful carcass? But what he says is capable of a sounder interpretation. Irving caught many things from me; but he would never attend to any thing which he thought he could not use in the pulpit. I told him the certain consequence would be, that he would fall into grievous errors. Sometimes he has five or six pages together of the purest eloquence, and then an outbreak of almost madman's babble.[1]

[Footnote 1: The admiration and sympathy which Mr. Coleridge felt and expressed towards the late Mr. Irving, at his first appearance in London, were great and sincere; and his grief at the deplorable change which followed was in proportion. But, long after the tongues shall have failed and been forgotten, Irving's name will live in the splendid eulogies of his friend. See _Church and State_, p. 180. n.--ED.]

_May 16. 1830._

ABRAHAM.--ISAAC.--JACOB.

How wonderfully beautiful is the delineation of the characters of the three patriarchs in Genesis! To be sure, if ever man could, without impropriety, be called, or supposed to be, "the friend of God," Abraham was that man. We are not surprised that Abimelech and Ephron seem to reverence him so profoundly. He was peaceful, because of his conscious relation to God; in other respects, he takes fire, like an Arah sheikh, at the injuries suffered by Lot, and goes to war with the combined kinglings immediately.

* * * * *

Isaac is, as it were, a faint shadow of his father Abraham. Born in possession of the power and wealth which his father had acquired, he is always peaceful and meditative; and it is curious to observe his timid and almost childish imitation of Abraham's stratagem about his wife. [1] Isaac does it before-hand, and without any apparent necessity.

[Footnote 1: Gen. xxvi. 6.]

* * * * *

Jacob is a regular Jew, and practises all sorts of tricks and wiles, which, according to our modern notions of honour, we cannot approve. But you will observe that all these tricks are confined to matters of prudential arrangement, to worldly success and prosperity (for such, in fact, was the essence of the birthright); and I think we must not exact from men of an imperfectly civilized age the same conduct as to mere temporal and bodily abstinence which we have a right to demand from Christians. Jacob is always careful not to commit any violence; he shudders at bloodshed. See his demeanour after the vengeance taken on the Schechemites. [1] He is the exact compound of the timidity and gentleness of Isaac, and of the underhand craftiness of his mother Rebecca. No man could be a bad man who loved as he loved Rachel. I dare say Laban thought none the worse of Jacob for his plan of making the ewes bring forth ring-streaked lambs.

[Footnote 1: Gen. xxxiv.]

_May 17. 1830._

ORIGIN OF ACTS.--LOVE.

If a man's conduct cannot be ascribed to the angelic, nor to the bestial within him, what is there left for us to refer to it, but the fiendish? Passion without any appetite is fiendish.

* * * * *

The best way to bring a clever young man, who has become sceptical and unsettled, to reason, is to make him _feel_ something in any way. Love, if sincere and unworldly, will, in nine instances out of ten, bring him to a sense and assurance of something real and actual; and that sense alone will make him _think_ to a sound purpose, instead of dreaming that he is thinking.

* * * * *

"Never marry but for love," says William Penn in his Reflexions and Maxims; "but see that thou lovest what is lovely."

_May 18. 1830._

LORD ELDON'S DOCTRINE AS TO GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.--DEMOCRACY.

Lord Eldon's doctrine, that grammar schools, in the sense of the reign of Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth, must necessarily mean schools for teaching Latin and Greek, is, I think, founded on an insufficient knowledge of the history and literature of the sixteenth century. Ben Jonson uses the term "grammar" without any reference to the learned languages.

* * * * *

It is intolerable when men, who have no other knowledge, have not even a competent understanding of that world in which they are always living, and to which they refer every thing.

* * * * *

Although contemporary events obscure past events in a living man's life, yet as soon as he is dead, and his whole life is a matter of history, one action stands out as conspicuously as another.

A democracy, according to the prescript of pure reason, would, in fact, be a church. There would he focal points in it, but no superior.

_May 20. 1830._

THE EUCHARIST.--ST. JOHN, xix. 11.--GENUINENESS OF BOOKS OF MOSES.-- DIVINITY OF CHRIST.--MOSAIC PROPHECIES.

No doubt, Chrysostom, and the other rhetorical fathers, contributed a good deal, by their rash use of figurative language, to advance the superstitious notion of the eucharist; but the beginning had been much earlier. [1] In Clement, indeed, the mystery is treated as it was treated by Saint John and Saint Paul; but in Hermas we see the seeds of the error, and more clearly in Irenaeus; and so it went on till the idea was changed into an idol.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge made these remarks upon my quoting Selden's well-known saying (Table Talk), "that transubstantiation was nothing but rhetoric turned into logic."--ED.]

* * * * *

The errors of the Sacramentaries, on the one hand, and of the Romanists on the other, are equally great. The first have volatilized the eucharist into a metaphor; the last have condensed it into an idol.

Jeremy Taylor, in his zeal against transubstantiation, contends that the latter part of the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel has no reference to the eucharist. If so, St. John wholly passes over this sacred mystery; for he does not include it in his notice of the last supper. Would not a total silence of this great apostle and evangelist upon this mystery be strange? A mystery, I say; for it _is_ a mystery; it is the only mystery in our religious worship. When many of the disciples left our Lord, and apparently on the very ground that this saying was hard, he does not attempt to detain them by any explanation, but simply adds the comment, that his words were spirit. If he had really meant that the eucharist should he a mere commemorative celebration of his death, is it conceivable that he would let these disciples go away from him upon such a gross misunderstanding? Would he not have said, "You need not make a difficulty; I only mean so and so?"

* * * * *

Arnauld, and the other learned Romanists, are irresistible against the low sacramentary doctrine.

* * * * *

The sacrament of baptism applies itself, and has reference to the faith or conviction, and is, therefore, only to be performed once;--it is the light of man. The sacrament of the eucharist is a symbol of _all_ our religion;-- it is the life of man. It is commensurate with our will, and we must, therefore, want it continually.

* * * * *

The meaning of the expression, [Greek: ei m_e _en soi didomenon an_othen], "except it were given thee _from above_," in the 19th chapter of St. John, ver. 11., seems to me to have been generally and grossly mistaken. It is commonly understood as importing that Pilate could have no power to deliver Jesus to the Jews, unless it had been given him _by God_, which, no doubt, is true; but if that is the meaning, where is the force or connection of the following clause, [Greek: dia touto], "_therefore_ he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin?" In what respect were the Jews more sinful in delivering Jesus up, _because_ Pilate could do nothing except by God's leave? The explanation of Erasmus and Clarke, and some others, is very dry- footed. I conceive the meaning of our Lord to have been simply this, that Pilate would have had no power or jurisdiction--[Greek: exousian]--over him, if it had not been given by the Sanhedrin, the [Greek: an_o boul_e], and _therefore_ it was that the Jews had the greater sin. There was also this further peculiar baseness and malignity in the conduct of the Jews. The mere assumption of Messiahship, as such, was no crime in the eyes of the Jews; they hated Jesus, because he would not be _their sort_ of Messiah: on the other hand, the Romans cared not for his declaration that he was the Son of God; the crime in _their_ eyes was his assuming to be a king. Now, here were the Jews accusing Jesus before the Roman governor of _that_ which, in the first place, they knew that Jesus denied in the sense in which they urged it, and which, in the next place, had the charge been true, would have been so far from a crime in their eyes, that the very gospel history itself, as well as all the history to the destruction of Jerusalem, shows it would have been popular with the whole nation. They wished to destroy him, and for that purpose charge him falsely with a crime which yet was no crime in their own eyes, if it had been true; but only so as against the Roman domination, which they hated with all their souls, and against which they were themselves continually conspiring!

* * * * *

Observe, I pray, the manner and sense in which the high-priest understands the plain declaration of our Lord, that he was the Son of God. [Footnote: Matt. xxvi. v. 63. Mark, xiv. 61.] "I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God," or "the Son of the Blessed," as it is in Mark. Jesus said, "I am,--and hereafter ye shall see the Son of man (or me) sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Does Caiaphas take this explicit answer as if Jesus meant that he was full of God's spirit, or was doing his commands, or walking in his ways, in which sense Moses, the prophets, nay, all good men, were and are the sons of God? No, no! He tears his robes in sunder, and cries out, "He hath spoken blasphemy. What further need have we of witnesses? Behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy." What blasphemy, I should like to know, unless the assuming to be the "Son of God" was assuming to be of the _divine nature_?

* * * * *

One striking proof of the genuineness of the Mosaic books is this,--they contain precise prohibitions--by way of predicting the consequences of disobedience--of all those things which David and Solomon actually did, and gloried in doing,--raising cavalry, making a treaty with Egypt, laying up treasure, and polygamising. Now, would such prohibitions have been fabricated in those kings' reigns, or afterwards? Impossible.

* * * * *

The manner of the predictions of Moses is very remarkable. He is like a man standing on an eminence, and addressing people below him, and pointing to things which he can, and they cannot, see. He does not say, You will act in such and such a way, and the consequences will be so and so; but, So and so will take place, because you will act in such a way!

May 21. 1830.

TALENT AND GENIUS.--MOTIVES AND IMPULSES.

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.

* * * * *

Motives imply weakness, and the existence of evil and temptation. The angelic nature would act from impulse alone. A due mean of motive and impulse is the only practicable object of our moral philosophy.

_May_ 23. 1830.

CONSTITUTIONAL AND FUNCTIONAL LIFE.--HYSTERIA.--HYDRO-CARBONIC GAS.-- BITTERS AND TONICS.--SPECIFIC MEDICINES.

It is a great error in physiology not to distinguish between what may be called the general or fundamental life--the _principium vitae_, and the functional life--the life in the functions. Organization must presuppose life as anterior to it: without life, there could not be or remain any organization; but then there is also _a_ life in the organs, or functions, distinct from the other. Thus, a flute presupposes,--demands the existence of a musician as anterior to it, without whom no flute could ever have existed; and yet again, without the instrument there can be no music.

* * * * *

It often happens that, on the one hand, the _principium vitae_, or constitutional life, may be affected without any, or the least imaginable, affection of the functions; as in inoculation, where one pustule only has appeared, and no other perceptible symptom, and yet this has so entered into the constitution, as to indispose it to infection under the most accumulated and intense contagion; and, on the other hand, hysteria, hydrophobia, and gout will disorder the functions to the most dreadful degree, and yet often leave the life untouched. In hydrophobia, the mind is quite sound; but the patient feels his muscular and cutaneous life forcibly removed from under the control of his will.

* * * * *

Hysteria may be fitly called _mimosa_, from its counterfeiting so many diseases,--even death itself.

* * * * *

Hydro-carbonic gas produces the most death-like exhaustion, without any previous excitement. I think this gas should be inhaled by way of experiment in cases of hydrophobia.

There is a great difference between bitters and tonics. Where weakness proceeds from excess of irritability, there bitters act beneficially; because all bitters are poisons, and operate by stilling, and depressing, and lethargizing the irritability. But where weakness proceeds from the opposite cause of relaxation, there tonics are good; because they brace up and tighten the loosened string. Bracing is a correct metaphor. Bark goes near to be a combination of a bitter and a tonic; but no perfect medical combination of the two properties is yet known.

* * * * *

The study of specific medicines is too much disregarded now. No doubt the hunting after specifics is a mark of ignorance and weakness in medicine, yet the neglect of them is proof also of immaturity; for, in fact, all medicines will be found specific in the perfection of the science.

_May_ 25. 1830.

EPISTLES TO THE EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS.--OATHS.

The Epistle to the Ephesians is evidently a catholic epistle, addressed to the whole of what might be called St. Paul's diocese. It is one of the divinest compositions of man. It embraces every doctrine of Christianity;-- first, those doctrines peculiar to Christianity, and then those precepts common to it with natural religion. The Epistle to the Colossians is the overflowing, as it were, of St. Paul's mind upon the same subject.

* * * * *

The present system of taking oaths is horrible. It is awfully absurd to make a man invoke God's wrath upon himself, if he speaks false; it is, in my judgment, a sin to do so. The Jews' oath is an adjuration by the judge to the witness: "In the name of God, I ask you." There is an express instance of it in the high-priest's adjuring or exorcising Christ by the living God, in the twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew, and you will observe that our Lord answered the appeal.[1]

You may depend upon it, the more oath-taking, the more lying, generally among the people.

[Footnote 1: See this instance cited, and the whole history and moral policy of the common system of judicial swearing examined with clearness and good feeling, in Mr. Tyler's late work on Oaths.--ED.]

May 27. 1830.

FLOGGING.--ELOQUENCE OF ABUSE.

I had _one_ just flogging. When I was about thirteen, I went to a shoemaker, and begged him to take me as his apprentice. He, being an honest man, immediately brought me to Bowyer, who got into a great rage, knocked me down, and even pushed Crispin rudely out of the room. Bowyer asked me why I had made myself such a fool? to which I answered, that I had a great desire to be a shoemaker, and that I hated the thought of being a clergyman. "Why so?" said he.--"Because, to tell you the truth, sir," said I, "I am an infidel!" For this, without more ado, Bowyer flogged me,-- wisely, as I think,--soundly, as I know. Any whining or sermonizing would have gratified my vanity, and confirmed me in my absurdity; as it was, I was laughed at, and got heartily ashamed of my folly.

* * * * *

How rich the Aristophanic Greek is in the eloquence of abuse!--

[Greek: 'O Bdelyre, kanaischunte, kai tolmaere su, Kai miare, kai pammiare, kai miarotate.][1]

We are not behindhand in English. Fancy my calling you, upon a fitting occasion,--Fool, sot, silly, simpleton, dunce, blockhead, jolterhead, clumsy-pate, dullard, ninny, nincompoop, lackwit, numpskull, ass, owl, loggerhead, coxcomb, monkey, shallow-brain, addle-head, tony, zany, fop, fop-doodle; a maggot-pated, hare-brained, muddle-pated, muddle-headed, Jackan-apes! Why I could go on for a minute more!

[Footnote 1: In The Frogs.--ED.]

_May_ 28. 1830.

THE AMERICANS.

I deeply regret the anti-American articles of some of the leading reviews. The Americans regard what is said of them in England a thousand times more than they do any thing said of them in any other country. The Americans are excessively pleased with any kind or favourable expressions, and never forgive or forget any slight or abuse. It would be better for them if they were a trifle thicker-skinned.

* * * * *

The last American war was to us only something to talk or read about; but to the Americans it was the cause of misery in their own homes.

* * * * *

I, for one, do not call the sod under my feet my country. But language, religion, laws, government, blood,--identity in these makes men of one country.

_May_ 29. 1830.

BOOK OF JOB.

The Book of Job is an Arab poem, antecedent to the Mosaic dispensation. It represents the mind of a good man not enlightened by an actual revelation, but seeking about for one. In no other book is the desire and necessity for a Mediator so intensely expressed. The personality of God, the I AM of the Hebrews, is most vividly impressed on the book, in opposition to pantheism.

* * * * *

I now think, after many doubts, that the passage, "I know that my Redeemer liveth," &c. may fairly be taken as a burst of determination, a _quasi_ prophecy. [1] "I know not _how_ this can be; but in spite of all my difficulties, this I _do_ know, that I shall be recompensed."

[Footnote 1: Chap. xix. 25, 26.]

* * * * *

It should be observed, that all the imagery in the speeches of the men is taken from the East, and is no more than a mere representation of the forms of material nature. But when God speaks, the tone is exalted; and almost all the images are taken from Egypt, the crocodile, the war-horse, and so forth. Egypt was then the first monarchy that had a splendid court.

* * * * *

Satan, in the prologue, does not mean the devil, our Diabolus. There is no calumny in his words. He is rather the _circuitor_, the accusing spirit, a dramatic attorney-general. But after the prologue, which was necessary to bring the imagination into a proper state for the dialogue, we hear no more of this Satan.

* * * * *

Warburton's notion, that the Book of Job was of so late a date as Ezra, is wholly groundless. His only reason is this appearance of Satan.

_May_ 30. 1830.

TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS.

I wish the Psalms were translated afresh; or, rather, that the present version were revised. Scores of passages are utterly incoherent as they now stand. If the primary visual images had been oftener preserved, the connection and force of the sentences would have been better perceived.[1]

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge, like so many of the elder divines of the Christian church, had an _affectionate_ reverence for the moral and evangelical portion of the Book of Psalms. He told me that, after having studied every page of the Bible with the deepest attention, he had found no other part of Scripture come home so closely to his inmost yearnings and necessities. During many of his latter years he used to read ten or twelve verses every evening, ascertaining (for his knowledge of Hebrew was enough for that) the exact visual image or first radical meaning of every noun substantive; and he repeatedly expressed to me his surprise and pleasure at finding that in nine cases out of ten the bare primary sense, if literally rendered, threw great additional light on the text. He was not disposed to allow the prophetic or allusive character so largely as is done by Horne and others; but he acknowledged it in some instances in the fullest manner. In particular, he rejected the local and temporary reference which has been given to the 110th Psalm, and declared his belief in its deep mystical import with regard to the Messiah. Mr. C. once gave me the following note upon the _22d_ Psalm written by him, I believe, many years previously, but which, he said, he approved at that time. It will find as appropriate a niche here as any where else:--

"I am much delighted and instructed by the hypothesis, which I think probable, that our Lord in repeating _Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani_, really recited the whole or a large part of the 22d Psalm. It is impossible to read that psalm without the liveliest feelings of love, gratitude, and sympathy. It is, indeed, a wonderful prophecy, whatever might or might not have been David's notion when he composed it. Whether Christ did audibly repeat the whole or not, it is certain. I think, that he did it mentally, and said aloud what was sufficient to enable his followers to do the same. Even at this day to repeat in the same manner but the first line of a common hymn would be understood as a reference to the whole. Above all, I am thankful for the thought which suggested itself to my mind, whilst I was reading this beautiful psalm, namely, that we should not exclusively think of Christ as the Logos united to human nature, but likewise as a perfect man united to the Logos. This distinction is most important in order to conceive, much more, appropriately to _feel_, the conduct and exertions of Jesus."--ED.]

_May_ 31. 1830.

ANCIENT MARINER.--UNDINE.--MARTIN.--PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired the Ancient Mariner very much, but that there were two faults in it,--it was improbable, and had no moral. As for the probability, I owned that that might admit some question; but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgment the poem had too much; and that the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie starts up, and says he _must_ kill the aforesaid merchant, _because_ one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son.[1]

I took the thought of "_grinning for joy_," in that poem, from my companion's remark to me, when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the constriction, till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to me,--"You grinned like an idiot!" He had done the same.

[Footnote 1: "There he found, at the foot of a great walnut-tree, a fountain of a very clear running water, and alighting, tied his horse to a branch of a tree, and sitting clown by the fountain, took some biscuits and dates out of his portmanteau, and, as he ate his dates, threw the shells about on both sides of him. When he had done eating, being a good Mussulman, he washed his hands, his face, and his feet, and said his prayers. He had not made an end, but was still on his knees, when he saw a genie appear, all white with age, and of a monstrous bulk; who, advancing towards him with a cimetar in his hand, spoke to him in a terrible voice thus:--'Rise up, that I may kill thee with this cimetar as you have killed my son!' and accompanied these words with a frightful cry. The merchant being as much frightened at the hideous shape of the monster as at these threatening words, answered him trembling:--'Alas! my good lord, of what crime can I be guilty towards you that you should take away my life?'--'I will,' replies the genie, 'kill thee, as thou hast killed my son!'--'O heaven!' says the merchant, 'how should I kill your son? I did not know him, nor ever saw him.'--'Did not you sit down when you came hither?' replies the genie. 'Did not you take dates out of your portmanteau, and, as you ate them, did not you throw the shells about on both sides?'--'I did all that you say,' answers the merchant, 'I cannot deny it.'--'If it be so,' replied the genie, 'I tell thee that thou hast killed my son; and the way was thus: when you threw the nutshells about, my son was passing by, and you threw one of them into his eye, which killed him, _therefore_ I must kill thee.'--'Ah! my good lord, pardon me!' cried the merchant.--'No pardon,' answers the genie, 'no mercy! Is it not just to kill him that has killed another?'--'I agree to it,' says the merchant, 'but certainly I never killed your son, and if I have, it was unknown to me, and I did it innocently; therefore I beg you to pardon me, and suffer me to live.'--'No, no,' says the genie, persisting in his resolution, 'I must kill thee, since thou hast killed my son;' and then taking the merchant by the arm, threw him with his face upon the ground, and lifted up his cimetar to cut off his head!"--The Merchant and the Genie. First night.--Ed.]

* * * * *

Undine is a most exquisite work. It shows the general want of any sense for the fine and the subtle in the public taste, that this romance made no deep impression. Undine's character, before she receives a soul, is marvellously beautiful.[1]

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge's admiration of this little romance was unbounded. He read it several times in German, and once in the English translation, made in America, I believe; the latter he thought inadequately done. Mr. C. said that there was something in Undine even beyond Scott,--that Scott's best characters and conceptions were _composed_; by which I understood him to mean that Baillie Nicol Jarvie, for example, was made up of old particulars, and received its individuality from the author's power of fusion, being in the result an admirable product, as Corinthian brass was said to be the conflux of the spoils of a city. But Undine, he said, was one and single in projection, and had presented to his imagination, what Scott had never done, an absolutely new idea--ED.]

* * * * *

It seems to me, that Martin never looks at nature except through bits of stained glass. He is never satisfied with any appearance that is not prodigious. He should endeavour to school his imagination into the apprehension of the true idea of the Beautiful.[1]

The wood-cut of Slay-good[2] is admirable, to be sure; but this new edition of the Pilgrim's Progress is too fine a book for it. It should be much larger, and on sixpenny coarse paper.

The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

This wonderful work is one of the few books which may be read over repeatedly at different times, and each time with a new and a different pleasure. I read it once as a theologian--and let me assure you, that there is great theological acumen in the work--once with devotional feelings--and once as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colours.[3]

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge said this, after looking at the engravings of Mr. Martin's two pictures of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the Celestial City, published in the beautiful edition of the Pilgrim's Progress by Messrs. Murray and Major, in 1830. I wish Mr. Martin could have heard the poet's lecture: he would have been flattered, and at the same time, I believe, instructed; for in the philosophy of painting Coleridge was a master.--ED.]

[Footnote 2: P. 350., by S. Mosses from a design by Mr. W. Harvey. "When they came to the place where he was, they found him with one _Feeble-mind_ in his hand, whom his servants had brought unto him, having taken him in the way. Now the giant was rifling him, with a purpose, after that, to pick his bones; for he was of the nature of flesh eaters."--ED.]

[Footnote 3: I find written on a blank leaf of my copy of this edition of the P.'s P. the following note by Mr. C.:--"I know of no book, the Bible excepted as above all comparison, which I, according to _my_ judgment and experience, could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress. It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best _summa theologiae evangalicae_ ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired." June 14. 1830.--ED.]

_June_ 1. 1830.

PRAYER.--CHURCH-SINGING.--HOOKER.--DREAMS.

There are three sorts of prayer:--1. Public; 2. Domestic; 3. Solitary. Each has its peculiar uses and character. I think the church ought to publish and authorise a directory of forms for the latter two. Yet I fear the execution would be inadequate. There is a great decay of devotional unction in the numerous books of prayers put out now-a-days. I really think the hawker was very happy, who blundered New Form of Prayer into New _former_ Prayers.[1]

I exceedingly regret that our church pays so little attention to the subject of congregational singing. See how it is! In that particular part of the public worship in which, more than in all the rest, the common people might, and ought to, join,--which, by its association with music, is meant to give a fitting vent and expression to the emotions,--in that part we all sing as Jews; or, at best, as mere men, in the abstract, without a Saviour. You know my veneration for the Book of Psalms, or most of it; but with some half dozen exceptions, the Psalms are surely not adequate vehicles of Christian thanksgiving and joy! Upon this deficiency in our service, Wesley and Whitfield seized; and you know it is the hearty congregational singing of Christian hymns which keeps the humbler Methodists together. Luther did as much for the Reformation by his hymns as by his translation of the Bible. In Germany, the hymns are known by heart by every peasant: they advise, they argue from the hymns, and every soul in the church praises God, like a Christian, with words which are natural and yet sacred to his mind. No doubt this defect in our service proceeded from the dread which the English Reformers had of being charged with introducing any thing into the worship of God but the text of Scripture.

[Footnote 1: "I will add, at the risk of appearing to dwell too long on religious topics, that on this my first introduction to Coleridge he reverted with strong compunction to a sentiment which he had expressed in earlier days upon prayer. In one of his youthful poems, speaking of God, he had said--

--'Of whose all-seeing eye Aught to demand were impotence of mind.'

This sentiment he now so utterly condemned, that, on the contrary, he told me, as his own peculiar opinion, that the act of praying was the very highest energy of which the human heart was capable, praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties; and the great mass of worldly men and of learned men he pronounced absolutely incapable of prayer."--_Tait's Magazine_, September, 1834, p. 515.

Mr. Coleridge within two years of his death very solemnly declared to me his conviction upon the same subject. I was sitting by his bedside one afternoon, and he fell, an unusual thing for him, into a long account of many passages of his past life, lamenting some things, condemning others, but complaining withal, though very gently, of the way in which many of his most innocent acts had been cruelly misrepresented. "But I have no difficulty," said he, "in forgiveness; indeed, I know not how to say with sincerity the clause in the Lord's Prayer, which asks forgiveness _as we forgive_. I feel nothing answering to it in my heart. Neither do I find, or reckon, the most solemn faith in God as a real object, the most arduous act of the reason and will. O no, my dear, it is _to pray, to pray_ as God would have us; this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and verily do the thing he pleaseth thereupon--this is the last, the greatest achievement of the Christian's warfare upon earth. _Teach_ us to pray, O Lord!" And then he burst into a flood of tears, and begged me to pray for him. O what a sight was there!--ED.]

* * * * *

Hooker said,--That by looking for that in the Bible which it is impossible that _any book_ can have, we lose the benefits which we might reap from its being the best of all books.

* * * * *

You will observe, that even in dreams nothing is fancied without an antecedent _quasi_ cause. It could not be otherwise.

_June_ 4. 1830.

JEREMY TAYLOR.--ENGLISH REFORMATION.

Taylor's was a great and lovely mind; yet how much and injuriously was it perverted by his being a favourite and follower of Laud, and by his intensely popish feelings of church authority. [1] His Liberty of Prophesying is a work of wonderful eloquence and skill; but if we believe the argument, what do we come to? Why to nothing more or less than this, that--so much can be said for every opinion and sect,--so impossible is it to settle any thing by reasoning or authority of Scripture,--we must appeal to some positive jurisdiction on earth, _ut sit finis controversiarum_. In fact, the whole book is the precise argument used by the Papists to induce men to admit the necessity of a supreme and infallible head of the church on earth. It is one of the works which preeminently gives countenance to the saying of Charles or James II., I forget which:--"When you of the Church of England contend with the Catholics, you use the arguments of the Puritans; when you contend with the Puritans, you immediately adopt all the weapons of the Catholics." Taylor never speaks with the slightest symptom of affection or respect of Luther, Calvin, or any other of the great reformers--at least, not in any of his learned works; but he _saints_ every trumpery monk and friar, down to the very latest canonizations by the modern popes. I fear you will think me harsh, when I say that I believe Taylor was, perhaps unconsciously, half a Socinian in heart. Such a strange inconsistency would not be impossible. The Romish church has produced many such devout Socinians. The cross of Christ is dimly seen in Taylor's works. Compare him in this particular with Donne, and you will feel the difference in a moment. Why are not Donne's volumes of sermons reprinted at Oxford?[2]

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge placed Jeremy Taylor amongst the four great geniuses of old English literature. I think he used to reckon Shakspeare and Bacon, Milton and Taylor, four-square, each against each. In mere eloquence, he thought the Bishop without any fellow. He called him Chrysostom. Further, he loved the man, and was anxious to find excuses for some weak parts in his character. But Mr. Coleridge's assent to Taylor's views of many of the fundamental positions of Christianity was very limited; and, indeed, he considered him as the least sound in point of doctrine of any of the old divines, comprehending, within that designation, the writers to the middle of Charles II.'s reign. He speaks of Taylor in "The Friend" in the following terms:--"Among the numerous examples with which I might enforce this warning, I refer, not without reluctance, to the most eloquent, and one of the most learned, of our divines; a rigorist, indeed, concerning the authority of the church, but a latitudinarian in the articles of its faith; who stretched the latter almost to the advanced posts of Socinianism, and strained the former to a hazardous conformity with the assumptions of the Roman hierarchy." Vol. ii. p. 108.--ED.]

[Footnote 2: Why not, indeed! It is really quite unaccountable that the sermons of this great divine of the English church should be so little known as they are, even to very literary clergymen of the present day. It might have been expected, that the sermons of the greatest preacher of his age, the admired of Ben Jonson, Selden, and all that splendid band of poets and scholars, would even as curiosities have been reprinted, when works, which are curious for nothing, are every year sent forth afresh under the most authoritative auspices. Dr. Donne was educated at both universities, at Hart Hall, Oxford, first, and afterwards at Cambridge, but at what college Walton does not mention--ED.]

* * * * *

In the reign of Edward VI., the Reformers feared to admit almost any thing on human authority alone. They had seen and felt the abuses consequent on the popish theory of Christianity; and I doubt not they wished and intended to reconstruct the religion and the church, as far as was possible, upon the plan of the primitive ages? But the Puritans pushed this bias to an absolute bibliolatry. They would not put on a corn-plaster without scraping a text over it. Men of learning, however, soon felt that this was wrong in the other extreme, and indeed united itself to the very abuse it seemed to shun. They saw that a knowledge of the Fathers, and of early tradition, was absolutely necessary; and unhappily, in many instances, the excess of the Puritans drove the men of learning into the old popish extreme of denying the Scriptures to be capable of affording a rule of faith without the dogmas of the church. Taylor is a striking instance how far a Protestant might be driven in this direction.

_June_ 6. 1830.

CATHOLICITY.--GNOSIS.--TERTULLIAN.--ST. JOHN.

In the first century, catholicity was the test of a book or epistle-- whether it were of the Evangelicon or Apostolicon--being canonical. This catholic spirit was opposed to the gnostic or peculiar spirit,--the humour of fantastical interpretation of the old Scriptures into Christian meanings. It is this gnosis, or _knowingness,_ which the Apostle says puffeth up,--not _knowledge_, as we translate it. The Epistle of Barnabas, of the genuineness of which I have no sort of doubt, is an example of this gnostic spirit. The Epistle to the Hebrews is the only instance of gnosis in the canon: it was written evidently by some apostolical man before the destruction of the Temple, and probably at Alexandria. For three hundred years, and more, it was not admitted into the canon, especially not by the Latin church, on account of this difference in it from the other Scriptures. But its merit was so great, and the gnosis in it is so kept within due bounds, that its admirers at last succeeded, especially by affixing St. Paul's name to it, to have it included in the canon; which was first done, I think, by the council of Laodicea in the middle of the fourth century. Fortunately for us it was so.

* * * * *

I beg Tertullian's pardon; but amongst his many _bravuras_, he says something about St. Paul's autograph. Origen expressly declares the reverse.

* * * * *

It is delightful to think, that the beloved apostle was born a Plato. To him was left the almost oracular utterance of the mysteries of the Christian religion while to St. Paul was committed the task of explanation, defence, and assertion of all the doctrines, and especially of those metaphysical ones touching the will and grace;[1] for which purpose his active mind, his learned education, and his Greek logic, made him pre-eminently fit.

[Footnote 1: "The imperative and oracular form of the inspired Scripture is the form of reason itself, in all things purely rational and moral."--_Statesman's Manual_, p. 22.]

June 7. 1830.

PRINCIPLES OF A REVIEW.--PARTY-SPIRIT.

Notwithstanding what you say, I am persuaded that a review would amply succeed even now, which should be started upon a published code of principles, critical, moral, political, and religious; which should announce what sort of books it would review, namely, works of literature as contradistinguished from all that offspring of the press, which in the present age supplies food for the craving caused by the extended ability of reading without any correspondent education of the mind, and which formerly was done by conversation, and which should really give a fair account of what the author intended to do, and in his own words, if possible, and in addition, afford one or two fair specimens of the execution,--itself never descending for one moment to any personality. It should also be provided before the commencement with a dozen powerful articles upon fundamental topics to appear in succession. You see the great reviewers are now ashamed of reviewing works in the old style, and have taken up essay writing instead. Hence arose such publications as the Literary Gazette and others, which are set up for the purpose--not a useless one--of advertizing new books of all sorts for the circulating libraries. A mean between the two extremes still remains to be taken.

* * * * *

Party men always hate a slightly differing friend more than a downright enemy. I quite calculate on my being one day or other holden in worse repute by many Christians than the Unitarians and open infidels. It must be undergone by every one who loves the truth for its own sake beyond all other things.

* * * * *

Truth is a good dog; but beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

_June_ 10. 1830.

SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF BUNYAN.--LAUD.--PURITANS AND CAVALIERS.--PRESBYTERIANS, INDEPENDENTS, AND BISHOPS.

Southey's Life of Bunyan is beautiful. I wish he had illustrated that mood of mind which exaggerates, and still more, mistakes, the inward depravation, as in Bunyan, Nelson, and others, by extracts from Baxter's Life of himself. What genuine superstition is exemplified in that bandying of texts and half texts, and demi-semi-texts, just as memory happened to suggest them, or chance brought them before Bunyan's mind! His tract, entitled, "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners"[1] is a study for a philosopher.

[Footnote 1: "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, in a faithful Account of the Life and Death of John Bunyan, &c." Is it not, however, an historical error to call the Puritans dissenters? Before St. Bartholomew's day, they were essentially a part of the church, and had as determined opinions in favour of a church establishment as the bishops themselves.

* * * * *

Laud was not exactly a Papist to be sure; but he was on the road with the church with him to a point, where declared popery would have been inevitable. A wise and vigorous Papist king would very soon, and very justifiably too, in that case, have effected a reconciliation between the churches of Rome and England, when the line of demarcation had become so very faint.

* * * * *

The faults of the Puritans were many; but surely their morality will, in general, bear comparison with that of the Cavaliers after the Restoration.

* * * * *

The Presbyterians hated the Independents much more than they did the bishops, which induced them to cooperate in effecting the Restoration.

* * * * *

The conduct of the bishops towards Charles, whilst at Breda, was wise and constitutional. They knew, however, that when the forms of the constitution were once restored, all their power would revive again as of course.

June 14. 1830.

STUDY OF THE BIBLE.

Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being _vulgar_, in point of style.

June 15. 1830.

RABELAIS.--SWIFT.--BENTLEY.--SUBNET.

Rabelais is a most wonderful writer. Pantagruel is the Reason; Panurge the Understanding,--the pollarded man, the man with every faculty except the reason. I scarcely know an example more illustrative of the distinction between the two. Rabelais had no mode of speaking the truth in those days but in such a form as this; as it was, he was indebted to the King's protection for his life. Some of the commentators talk about his book being all political; there are contemporary politics in it, of course, but the real scope is much higher and more philosophical. It is in vain to look about for a hidden meaning in all that he has written; you will observe that, after any particularly deep thrust, as the Papimania[1] for example, Rabelais, as if to break the blow, and to appear unconscious of what he has done, writes a chapter or two of pure buffoonery.

He, every now and then, flashes you a glimpse of a real face from his magic lantern, and then buries the whole scene in mist. The morality of the work is of the most refined and exalted kind; as for the manners, to be sure, I cannot say much.

Swift was _anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco_,--the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place.

Yet Swift was rare. Can any thing beat his remark on King William's motto, --_Recepit, non rapuit_,--"that the receiver was as bad as the thief?"

[Footnote 1: B. iv. c. 48. "Comment Pantagruel descendit en l'Isle de Papimanes." See the five following chapters, especially c. 50.; and note also c. 9. of the fifth book; "Comment nous fut monstré Papegaut à grande difficulté."--ED.]

* * * * *

The effect of the Tory wits attacking Bentley with such acrimony has been to make them appear a set of shallow and incompetent scholars. Neither Bentley nor Burnet suffered from the hostility of the wits. Burnet's "History of his own Times" is a truly valuable book. His credulity is great, but his simplicity is equally great; and he never deceives you for a moment.

_June_ 25. 1830.

GIOTTO.--PAINTING.

The fresco paintings by Giotto[1] and others, in the cemetery at Pisa, are most noble. Giotto was a contemporary of Dante: and it is a curious question, whether the painters borrowed from the poet, or _vice versa_. Certainly M. Angelo and Raffael fed their imaginations highly with these grand drawings, especially M. Angelo, who took from them his bold yet graceful lines.

[Footnote 1: Giotto, or Angiolotto's birth is fixed by Vasari in 1276, but there is some reason to think that he was born a little earlier. Dante, who was his friend, was born in 1265. Giotto was the pupil of Cimabue, whom he entirely eclipsed, as Dante testifies in the well-known lines in the Purgatorio:--

"O vana gloria dell'umane posse! Com' poco verde in su la cima dura, Se non e giunta dall' etati grosse! Credette Cirnabue nella pintura Tener lo campo: ed ora ha Giotto il grido, Si che la fama di colui oscura."--C. xi. v. 91.

His six great frescos in the cemetery at Pisa are upon the sufferings and patience of Job.--ED.]

* * * * *

People may say what they please about the gradual improvement of the Arts. It is not true of the substance. The Arts and the Muses both spring forth in the youth of nations, like Minerva from the front of Jupiter, all armed: manual dexterity may, indeed, he improved by practice.

* * * * *

Painting went on in power till, in Raffael, it attained the zenith, and in him too it showed signs of a tendency downwards by another path. The painter began to think of overcoming difficulties. After this the descent was rapid, till sculptors began to work inveterate likenesses of perriwigs in marble,--as see Algarotti's tomb in the cemetery at Pisa,--and painters did nothing but copy, as well as they could, the external face of nature. Now, in this age, we have a sort of reviviscence,--not, I fear, of the power, but of a taste for the power, of the early times.

_June_ 26. 1830.

SENECA.

You may get a motto for every sect in religion, or line of thought in morals or philosophy, from Seneca; but nothing is ever thought _out_ by him.

_July_ 2. 1830.

PLATO.--ARISTOTLE.

Every man is born an Aristotelian, or a Platonist. I do not think it possible that any one born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and I am sure no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are the two classes of men, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a third. The one considers reason a quality, or attribute; the other considers it a power. I believe that Aristotle never could get to understand what Plato meant by an idea. There is a passage, indeed, in the Eudemian Ethics which looks like an exception; but I doubt not of its being spurious, as that whole work is supposed by some to be. With Plato ideas are constitutive in themselves.[1]

Aristotle was, and still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding; the faculty judging by the senses. He was a conceptualist, and never could raise himself into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, and has been so to others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated, and, as it were, looked down upon from the throne of actual ideas, or living, inborn, essential truths.

Yet what a mind was Aristotle's--only not the greatest that ever animated the human form!--the parent of science, properly so called, the master of criticism, and the founder or editor of logic! But he confounded science with philosophy, which is an error. Philosophy is the middle state between science, or knowledge, and sophia, or wisdom.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge said the Eudemian Ethics; but I half suspect he must have meant the Metaphysics, although I do not know that _all_ the fourteen books under that title have been considered non-genuine. The [Greek: Aethicha Eudaemeia] are not Aristotle's. To what passage in particular allusion is here made, I cannot exactly say; many might be alleged, but not one seems to express the true Platonic idea, as Mr. Coleridge used to understand it; and as, I believe, he ultimately considered ideas in his own philosophy. Fourteen or fifteen years previously, he seems to have been undecided upon this point. "Whether," he says, "ideas are regulative only, according to Aristotle and Kant, or likewise _constitutive_, and one with the power and life of nature, according to Plato and Plotinus [Greek:--eg logo zoae aeg, chai ae zoae aeg to phos tog agthwpog] is the highest problem of philosophy, and not part of its nomenclature." Essay (E) in the Appendix to the _Statesman's Manual_, 1816.--ED.]

_July_ 4. 1830.

DUKE OF WELLINGTON.--MONEYED INTEREST.--CANNING.

I sometimes fear the Duke of Wellington is too much disposed to imagine that he can govern a great nation by word of command, in the same way in which he governed a highly disciplined army. He seems to be unaccustomed to, and to despise, the inconsistencies, the weaknesses, the bursts of heroism followed by prostration and cowardice, which invariably characterise all popular efforts. He forgets that, after all, it is from such efforts that all the great and noble institutions of the world have come; and that, on the other hand, the discipline and organization of armies have been only like the flight of the cannon-ball, the object of which is destruction.[1]

[Footnote 1: Straight forward goes The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid, Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches.

_Wallenstein_, Part I, act i, sc. 4]

* * * * *

The stock-jobbing and moneyed interest is so strong in this country, that it has more than once prevailed in our foreign councils over national honour and national justice. The country gentlemen are not slow to join in this influence. Canning felt this very keenly, and said he was unable to contend against the city trained-bands.

_July_ 6, 1830.

BOURRIENNE.

Bourienne is admirable. He is the French Pepys,--a man with right feelings, but always wishing to participate in what is going on, be it what it may. He has one remark, when comparing Buonaparte with Charlemagne, the substance of which I have attempted to express in "The Friend"[1] but which Bourrienne has condensed into a sentence worthy of Tacitus, or Machiavel, or Bacon. It is this; that Charlemagne was above his age, whilst Buonaparte was only above his competitors, but under his age! Bourrienne has done more than any one else to show Buonaparte to the world as he really was,--always contemptible, except when acting a part, and that part not his own.

[Footnote 1: Vol. i. Essay 12. p. 133.]

_July_ 8. 1830.

JEWS.

The other day I was what you would call _floored_ by a Jew. He passed me several times crying out for old clothes in the most nasal and extraordinary tone I ever heard. At last I was so provoked, that I said to him, "Pray, why can't you say 'old clothes' in a plain way as I do now?" The Jew stopped, and looking very gravely at me, said in a clear and even fine accent, "Sir, I can say 'old clothes' as well as you can; but if you had to say so ten times a minute, for an hour together, you would say _Ogh Clo_ as I do now;" and so he marched off. I was so confounded with the justice of his retort, that I followed and gave him a shilling, the only one I had.

* * * * *

I have had a good deal to do with Jews in the course of my life, although I never borrowed any money of them. Once I sat in a coach opposite a Jew--a symbol of old clothes' bags--an Isaiah of Hollywell Street. He would close the window; I opened it. He closed it again; upon which, in a very solemn tone, I said to him, "Son of Abraham! thou smellest; son of Isaac! thou art offensive; son of Jacob! thou stinkest foully. See the man in the moon! he is holding his nose at thee at that distance; dost thou think that I, sitting here, can endure it any longer?" My Jew was astounded, opened the window forthwith himself, and said, "he was sorry he did not know before I was so great a gentleman."

_July_ 24. 1830.

THE PAPACY AND THE REFORMATION.--LEO X.

During the early part of the middle ages, the papacy was nothing, in fact, but a confederation of the learned men in the west of Europe against the barbarism and ignorance of the times. The Pope was chief of this confederacy; and so long as he retained that character exclusively, his power was just and irresistible. It was the principal mean of preserving for us and for our posterity all that we now have of the illumination of past ages. But as soon as the Pope made a separation between his character as premier clerk in Christendom and as a secular prince; as soon as he began to squabble for towns and castles; then he at once broke the charm, and gave birth to a revolution. From that moment, those who remained firm to the cause of truth and knowledge became necessary enemies to the Roman See. The great British schoolmen led the way; then Wicliffe rose, Huss, Jerome, and others;--in short, every where, but especially throughout the north of Europe, the breach of feeling and sympathy went on widening,--so that all Germany, England, Scotland, and other countries started like giants out of their sleep at the first blast of Luther's trumpet. In France, one half of the people--and that the most wealthy and enlightened-- embraced the Reformation. The seeds of it were deeply and widely spread in Spain and in Italy; and as to the latter, if James I. had been an Elizabeth, I have no doubt at all that Venice would have publicly declared itself against Rome. It is a profound question to answer, why it is, that since the middle of the sixteenth century the Reformation has not advanced one step in Europe.

* * * * *

In the time of Leo X. atheism, or infidelity of some sort, was almost universal in Italy amongst the high dignitaries of the Romish church.

_July_ 27. 1830.

THELWALL.--SWIFT.--STELLA.

John Thelwall had something very good about him. We were once sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks, when I said to him, "Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in!"--"Nay! Citizen Samuel," replied he, "it is rather a place to make a man forget that there is any necessity for treason!"

Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a child's mind by inculcating any opinions before it should have come to years of discretion, and be able to choose for itself. I showed him my garden, and told him it was my botanical garden. "How so?" said he, "it is covered with weeds."--"Oh," I replied, "_that_ is only because it has not yet come to its age of discretion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries."

* * * * *

I think Swift adopted the name of Stella, which is a man's name, with a feminine termination, to denote the mysterious epicene relation in which poor Miss Johnston stood to him.

_July_ 28. 1830.

INIQUITOUS LEGISLATION.

That legislation is iniquitous which sets law in conflict with the common and unsophisticated feelings of our nature. If I were a clergyman in a smuggling town, I would _not_ preach against smuggling. I would not be made a sort of clerical revenue officer. Let the government, which by absurd duties fosters smuggling, prevent it itself, if it can. How could I show my hearers the immorality of going twenty miles in a boat, and honestly buying with their money a keg of brandy, except by a long deduction which they could not understand? But were I in a place where wrecking went on, see if I would preach on any thing else!

_July_ 29. 1830.

SPURZHEIM AND CRANIOLOOY.

Spurzheim is a good man, and I like him; but he is dense, and the most ignorant German I ever knew. If he had been content with stating certain remarkable coincidences between the moral qualities and the configuration of the skull, it would have been well; but when he began to map out the cranium dogmatically, he fell into infinite absurdities. You know that every intellectual act, however you may distinguish it by name in respect of the originating faculties, is truly the act of the entire man; the notion of distinct material organs, therefore, in the brain itself, is plainly absurd. Pressed by this, Spurzheim has, at length, been guilty of some sheer quackery; and ventures to say that he has actually discovered a different material in the different parts or organs of the brain, so that he can tell a piece of benevolence from a bit of destructiveness, and so forth. Observe, also, that it is constantly found, that so far from there being a concavity in the interior surface of the cranium answering to the convexity apparent on the exterior--the interior is convex too. Dr. Baillie thought there was something in the system, because the notion of the brain being an extendible net helped to explain those cases where the intellect remained after the solid substance of the brain was dissolved in water.[1]

That a greater or less development of the forepart of the head is generally coincidedent with more or less of reasoning power, is certain. The line across the forehead, also, denoting musical power, is very common.

[Footnote 1: "The very marked, _positive_ as well as comparative, magnitude and prominence of the bump, entitled _benevolence_ (see Spurzheim's _map of the human skull_) on the head of the late Mr. John Thurtell, has woefully unsettled the faith of many ardent phrenologists, and strengthened the previous doubts of a still greater number into utter disbelief. On _my_ mind this fact (for a _fact_ it is) produced the directly contrary effect; and inclined me to suspect, for the first time, that there may be some truth in the Spurzheimian scheme. Whether future craniologists may not see cause to _new-name_ this and one or two others of these convex gnomons, is quite a different question. At present, and according to the present use of words, any such change would be premature; and we must be content to say, that Mr. Thurtell's benevolence was insufficiently modified by the unprotrusive and unindicated convolutes of the brain, that secrete honesty and common sense. The organ of destructiveness was indirectly _potentiated_ by the absence or imperfect development of the glands of reason and conscience in this '_unfortunate gentleman.'"--_Aids to Reflection_, p. 143. n.]

_August_ 20. 1830.

FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1830.--CAPTAIN R. AND THE AMERICANS.

The French must have greatly improved under the influence of a free and regular government (for such it, in general, has been since the restoration), to have conducted themselves with so much moderation in success as they seem to have done, and to be disposed to do.

* * * * *

I must say I cannot see much in Captain B. Hall's account of the Americans, but weaknesses--some of which make me like the Yankees all the better. How much more amiable is the American fidgettiness and anxiety about the opinion of other nations, and especially of the English, than the sentiments of the rest of the world.[1]

As to what Captain Hall says about the English loyalty to the person of the King--I can only say, I feel none of it. I respect the man while, and only while, the king is translucent through him: I reverence the glass case for the Saint's sake within; except for that it is to me mere glazier's work,-- putty, and glass, and wood.

[Footnote 1: "There exists in England a _gentlemanly_ character, a _gentlemanly_ feeling, very different even from that which is most like it,--the character of a well-born Spaniard, and unexampled in the rest of Europe. This feeling _originated_ in the fortunate circumstance, that the titles of our English nobility follow the law of their property, and are inherited by the eldest sons only. From this source, under the influences of our constitution and of our astonishing trade, it has diffused itself in different modifications through the whole country. The uniformity of our dress among all classes above that of the day labourer, while it has authorized all ranks to assume the appearance of gentlemen, has at the same time inspired the wish to conform their manners, and still more their ordinary actions in social intercourse, to their notions of the gentlemanly the most commonly received attribute of which character is a certain generosity in trifles. On the other hand, the encroachments of the lower classes on the higher, occasioned and favoured by this resemblance in exteriors, by this absence of any cognizable marks of distinction, have rendered each class more reserved and jealous in their general communion; and, far more than our climate or natural temper, have caused that haughtiness and reserve in our outward demeanour, which is so generally complained of among foreigners. Far be it from me to depreciate the value of this gentlemanly feeling: I respect it under all its forms and varieties, from the House of Commons * to the gentleman in the one-shilling gallery. It is always the ornament of virtue, and oftentimes a support; but it is a wretched substitute for it. Its _worth_, as a moral good, is by no means in proportion to its _value_ as a social advantage. These observations are not irrelevant: for to the want of reflection that this diffusion of gentlemanly feeling among us is not the growth of our moral excellence, but the effect of various accidental advantages peculiar to England; to our not considering that it is unreasonable and uncharitable to expect the same consequences, where the same causes have not existed to produce them; and lastly, to our prorieness to regard the absence of this character (which, as I have before said, does, for the greater part, and in the common apprehension, consist in a certain frankness and generosity in the detail of action) as decisive against the sum total of personal or national worth; we must, I am convinced, attribute a large portion of that conduct, which in many instances has left the inhabitants of countries conquered or appropriated by Great Britain doubtful whether the various solid advantages which they have derived from our protection and just government were not bought dearly by the wounds inflicted on their feelings and prejudices, by the contemptuous and insolent demeanour of the English, as individuals."--_Friend_, vol. iii. p, 322.

This was written long before the Reform Act.--ED.]

_September 8. 1830._

ENGLISH REFORMATION.

The fatal error into which the peculiar character of the English Reformation threw our Church, has borne bitter fruit ever since,--I mean that of its clinging to court and state, instead of cultivating the people. The church ought to be a mediator between the people and the government, between the poor and the rich. As it is, I fear the Church has let the hearts of the common people be stolen from it. See how differently the Church of Rome--wiser in its generation--has always acted in this particular. For a long time past the Church of England seems to me to have been blighted with prudence, as it is called. I wish with all my heart we had a little zealous imprudence.

_September 19. 1830._

DEMOCRACY.----IDEA OF A STATE.----CHURCH.

It has never yet been seen, or clearly announced, that democracy, as such, is no proper element in the constitution of a state. The idea of a state is undoubtedly a government [Greek: ek ton aristou]--an aristocracy. Democracy is the healthful life-blood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.

A state, in idea, is the opposite of a church. A state regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, &c. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradation of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy. The church, so considered, and the state, exclusively of the church, constitute together the idea of a state in its largest sense.

_September_ 20. 1830.

GOVERNMENT.----FRENCH GEND'ARMERIE.

All temporal government must rest on a compromise of interests and abstract rights. Who would listen to the county of Bedford, if it were to declare itself disannexed from the British empire, and to set up for itself?

* * * * *

The most desirable thing that can happen to France, with her immense army of gensd'armes, is, that the service may at first become very irksome to the men themselves, and ultimately, by not being called into real service, fall into general ridicule, like our trained bands. The evil in France, and throughout Europe, seems now especially to be, the subordination of the legislative power to the direct physical force of the people. The French legislature was weak enough before the late revolution; now it is absolutely powerless, and manifestly depends even for its existence on the will of a popular commander of an irresistible army. There is now in France a daily tendency to reduce the legislative body to a mere deputation from the provinces and towns.

September 21. 1830.

PHILOSOPHY OF YOUNG MEN AT THE PRESENT DAY.

I do not know whether I deceive myself, but it seems to me that the young men, who were my contemporaries, fixed certain principles in their minds, and followed them out to their legitimate consequences, in a way which I rarely witness now. No one seems to have any distinct convictions, right or wrong; the mind is completely at sea, rolling and pitching on the waves of facts and personal experiences. Mr. ---- is, I suppose, one of the rising young men of the day; yet he went on talking, the other evening, and making remarks with great earnestness, some of which were palpably irreconcilable with each other. He told me that facts gave birth to, and were the absolute ground of, principles; to which I said, that unless he had a principle of selection, he would not have taken notice of those facts upon which he grounded his principle. You must have a lantern in your hand to give light, otherwise all the materials in the world are useless, for you cannot find them; and if you could, you could not arrange them. "But then," said Mr. ----, "_that_ principle of selection came from facts!"--"To be sure!" I replied; "but there must have been again an antecedent light to see those antecedent facts. The relapse may be carried in imagination backwards for ever,--but go back as you may, you cannot come to a man without a previous aim or principle." He then asked me what I had to say to Bacon's induction: I told him I had a good deal to say, if need were; but that it was perhaps enough for the occasion to remark, that what he was evidently taking for the Baconian _in_duction was mere _de_duction--a very different thing.[1]

[Footnote 1: As far as I can judge, the most complete and masterly thing ever done by Mr. Coleridge in prose, is the analysis and reconcilement of the Platonic and Baconian methods of philosophy, contained in the third volume of the Friend, from p. 176 to 216. No edition of the Novum Organum should ever be published without a transcript of it.--ED.]

_September_ 22. 1830.

THUCYDIDES AND TACITUS.----POETRY.----MODERN METRE.

The object of Thucydides was to show the ills resulting to Greece from the separation and conflict of the spirits or elements of democracy and oligarchy. The object of Tacitus was to demonstrate the desperate consequences of the loss of liberty on the minds and hearts of men.

* * * * *

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket: let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection; and trust more to your imagination than to your memory.

* * * * *

Really the metre of some of the modern poems I have read, bears about the same relation to metre properly understood, that dumb bells do to music; both are for exercise, and pretty severe too, I think.

* * * * *

Nothing ever left a stain on that gentle creature's mind, which looked upon the degraded men and things around him like moonshine on a dunghill, which shines and takes no pollution. All things are shadows to him, except those which move his affections.

September 23. 1830.

LOGIC.

There are two kinds of logic: 1. Syllogistic. 2. Criterional. How any one can by any spinning make out more than ten or a dozen pages about the first, is inconceivable to me; all those absurd forms of syllogisms are one half pure sophisms, and the other half mere forms of rhetoric.

All syllogistic logic is--1. _Se_clusion; 2. _In_clusion; 3. _Con_clusion; which answer to the understanding, the experience, and the reason. The first says, this _ought_ to be; the second adds, this _is_; and the last pronounces, this must be so. The criterional logic, or logic of premisses, is, of course, much the most important; and it has never yet been treated.

* * * * *

The object of rhetoric is persuasion,--of logic, conviction,--of grammar, significancy. A fourth term is wanting, the rhematic, or logic of sentences.

_September_ 24. 1830.

VARRO.--SOCRATES.--GREEK PHILOSOPHY.--PLOTINUS.--TERTULLIAN.

What a loss we have had in Varro's mythological and critical works! It is said that the works of Epicurus are probably amongst the Herculanean manuscripts. I do not feel much interest about them, because, by the consent of all antiquity, Lucretius has preserved a complete view of his system. But I regret the loss of the works of the old Stoics, Zeno and others, exceedingly.

* * * * *

Socrates, as such, was only a poetical character to Plato, who worked upon his own ground. The several disciples of Socrates caught some particular points from him, and made systems of philosophy upon them according to their own views. Socrates himself had no system.

* * * * *

I hold all claims set up for Egypt having given birth to the Greek philosophy, to be groundless. It sprang up in Greece itself, and began with physics only.

Then it took in the idea of a living cause, and made pantheism out of the two. Socrates introduced ethics, and taught duties; and then, finally, Plato asserted or re-asserted the idea of a God the maker of the world. The measure of human philosophy was thus full, when Christianity came to add what before was wanting--assurance. After this again, the Neo-Platonists joined theurgy with philosophy, which ultimately degenerated into magic and mere mysticism.

Plotinus was a man of wonderful ability, and some of the sublimest passages I ever read are in his works.

I was amused the other day with reading in Tertullian, that spirits or demons dilate and contract themselves, and wriggle about like worms-- lumbricix similes.

_September_ 26. 1830.

SCOTCH AND ENGLISH LAKES.

The five finest things in Scotland are--1. Edinburgh; 2. The antechamber of the Fall of Foyers; 3. The view of Loch Lomond from Inch Tavannach, the highest of the islands; 4. The Trosachs; 5. The view of the Hebrides from a point, the name of which I forget. But the intervals between the fine things in Scotland are very dreary;--whereas in Cumberland and Westmoreland there is a cabinet of beauties,--each thing being beautiful in itself, and the very passage from one lake, mountain, or valley, to another, is itself a beautiful thing again. The Scotch lakes are so like one another, from their great size, that in a picture you are obliged to read their names; but the English lakes, especially Derwent Water, or rather the whole vale of Keswick, is so rememberable, that, after having been once seen, no one ever requires to be told what it is when drawn. This vale is about as large a basin as Loch Lomond; the latter is covered with water; but in the former instance, we have two lakes with a charming river to connect them, and lovely villages at the foot of the mountain, and other habitations, which give an air of life and cheerfulness to the whole place.

* * * * *

The land imagery of the north of Devon is most delightful.

_September_ 27. 1830.

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP OPPOSED.--MARRIAGE.--CHARACTERLESSNESS OF WOMEN.

A person once said to me, that he could make nothing of love, except that it was friendship accidentally combined with desire. Whence I concluded that he had never been in love. For what shall we say of the feeling which a man of sensibility has towards his wife with her baby at her breast! How pure from sensual desire! yet how different from friendship!

Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.

Luther has sketched the most beautiful picture of the nature, and ends, and duties of the wedded life I ever read. St. Paul says it is a great symbol, not mystery, as we translate it.[1]

[Footnote 1: Greek: ---- ]

* * * * *

"Most women have no character at all," said Pope[1] and meant it for satire. Shakspeare, who knew man and woman much better, saw that it, in fact, was the perfection of woman to be characterless.

Every one wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife,--creatures who, though they may not always understand you, do always feel you, and feel with you.

[Footnote 1: "Nothing so true as what you once let fall-- 'Most women have no character at all,'-- Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, And best distinguish'd by black, brown, and fair." _Epist. to a Lady_, v. I.],

_September_ 28. 1830.

MENTAL ANARCHY.

Why need we talk of a fiery hell? If the will, which is the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel, from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness--a horrid thought!

October 5. 1830.

EAR AND TASTE FOR MUSIC DIFFERENT.----ENGLISH LITURGY.----BELGIAN REVOLUTION.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

* * * * *

An ear for music is a very different thing from a taste for music. I have no ear whatever; I could not sing an air to save my life; but I have the intensest delight in music, and can detect good from bad. Naldi, a good fellow, remarked to me once at a concert, that I did not seem much interested with a piece of Rossini's which had just been performed. I said, it sounded to me like nonsense verses. But I could scarcely contain myself when a thing of Beethoven's followed.

* * * * *

I never distinctly felt the heavenly superiority of the prayers in the English liturgy, till I had attended some kirks in the country parts of Scotland, I call these strings of school boys or girls which we meet near London--walking advertisements.

* * * * *

The Brussels riot--I cannot bring myself to dignify it with a higher name --is a wretched parody on the last French revolution. Were I King William, I would banish the Belgians, as Coriolanus banishes the Romans in Shakspeare.[1]

It is a wicked rebellion without one just cause.

[Footnote 1: "You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men That do corrupt my air, I banish you; And here remain with _your uncertainty!_"