^'■k- J:. BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA ; OR, BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF MY LITERARY LIFE AND OPINIOiNS. BY S. T. COLERIDGE, Es«?> OLUME r. yEJV-YORK: ?I BLLSTIED BY KIRK AND M£RCEI?\ No. 22 Wall-street: 1817. 1p .,...v.,. C. S. Tan Winkle, Pnniei. BIOGRAPHIA L.ITERARIA: OR, BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF MY LITERARY LIFE AND OPINIONSi So wenig er audi bestimmt seya ma^ andere zu belehren, sa wiinscht er dock sich denen mitzutheilen, die er sick gleichg-e- sinnt weiss odor hofft, deren Anzahl aber in der Breite der Welt zerstreut ist : er wiinscht sein Verhaltniss zu den altesteu Freunden wieder anzukniipfen, nnit neuen es fortzusetzen, und in der letzen generation sich wieder andere fiir sein iibrige Lebenszeit zu geivinnen. Er wiinscht der Jug-end die Um- wege zu ersparen, auf denen er sich selbst verirrte. Goethe. Translation. — Little call as he my have to instruct others, he wishes nevertheless to open out his heart to such as he either knows or hopes to be of like mind with himself, but who are widely scattered in the world : he wishes to knit anew his connections with his oldest friends, to continue those recently formed, and to win other friends among- the rising- generation for the remaining course of his life. He wishes to spare the young those circuitous paths, en which he hirr}seli Lad lost his way. BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. CHAPTER I; The motives of the pj^esent work — Reeepiion of the Au' thorns first puhlication — The discipline of his taste at school — TJie effect of coritemporary writers on youthful minds — Bowleses sonnets — Comparison between the Fo" ets before and since Mr. Pope, It has been my lot to have had my name introduced^ both in conversation and in print, more frequently than I find it easy to explain, whether I consider the fewness, unimportance, and limited circulation of my writings, or the retirement and distance in which I have lived, both from the literary and political world. Most often it has been connected with some charge which I could not acknowledge, or some principle which I had never entertained. Nevertheless, had I had no other motive, or incitement, the reader would not have been troubled with this exculpation. What my additional purposes were, yviW be seen in the following pages. It will be found, that the least of what I have written concerns myself personally. I have used the narration chiefly for the purpose of giving a continuity to the work, in part for the sake of the miscellaneous reflections suggested to me by particular events, but still more as introductory to the statement of my principles in politics, religion, and phi- losophy, and the application of the rules, deduced from philosophical principles, to poetry and criticism. But of the objects which 1 proposed to myself, it was not the least important to effect, as far as possible, a settlement of the long continued controversy concjerning the true nature of poetic diction: and, at the same time, to define with th^ Vol. r. 1 utmost impartiality the real poetic character of the poet, Ijy whose writings this controversy was first kindled^ and has been since fuelled and fanned. In 1794, when J had barely passed the verge of man- hood, I publislied a small volume of junvenile poems* They were received with a degree of favour which, young as I was, I well know was bestowed on them not so much for any positive merit, as because they were con- sidered buds ol hope, and promises of better works to come. The critics of that day, the most flattering, equal- ly with the severest, concurred in objecting to ihem, ob- scurity, a general turgidness of diction, and a profusion of new coined double epithets.* The first is the fault which a writer is the least able to detect in his own composi- tions ; and my mind was not then sufficient!}' disciplined to receive the authority of others, as a substitute for my own conviction. Satisfied that the thoughts, such as they were, could not have been expressed otherwise, or at least more perspicuously, 1 forgot to inquire, whether the thoughts themselves did not demand a degree of atten- tion unsuitable to the nature and objects of poetry. This remark however applies chiefly, though not exclusively, to the Religious .Musings. The remainder of the charge I admitted to its full extent, and not without sincere ac- knowledgments to both my private and public censors for their friendly admonitions. In the after editions, I * The authoriU- of Milton and Shakspeare may be usefully pointed out to young- authors. In the Comus, aiul earlier poems of Milton there is a s^upei-fluity of double e})ilhet.s ; while in the Paradise Lost we (Ind verj- few^ in the Paradise J-leg-ained scarce any. The same remark holds almost equally true of the Loa e's Labour Lost, Romeo and Juliet^ Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece, compared with the Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Ham'et of our g-roat dramatist. The rule for the admission of double epithets seems to be this : either that they should be already de- nizens of our lang-uag:e, suc^i as blood-stained, ferror-stricken, serf-ap- plauding : or when a new epithet, or one found in books only, is hazard- ed, that it, at It;ast, be one word, not two words made one by mere virtue of the printer's hyphen. A language which, like the Engfish, is almost without cases, is indeed in its \ ery genius unfitted for compounds. If a writer, e\'erv time a compounded "word suggests itself to him, would seek for some other mode of expressing the same sense, the chances are al- ways greatly in favour of his finding- a better word. '* Tanquam scopu- lum sic vites insoUns veibum," is tlie wise advice of Cfesar to the Roman orators, and the j)i-ecept applies with double force to the writers in our <>wn language. But it must' not be forgotten, that the same Caesar wrote a granunatical treatise for the purpose of reforming the ordinary language hy biinging it to a greater accordance with the principles of logic or uni- versal grunmiar.. pruned the double epithets with no sparing hand, and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of thought and diction ; though, in truth, these parasite plants of youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into my longer poems with such intricacy of union, that I was obliged to omit disentanglin«( the weed, from the fear of snapping the flower From that period to the date of the present work I have published nothing, with my name, which could by any possibility have come before the board of anonymous criticism. Even the three or four poems, printed with the works of a friend, as far as they were censured at all, were charged with the same or si- milar defects, though I am persuaded not with equal jus- tice : with an excess of ornament, in addition to strain- ed AND ELABORATE DICTION. (Vide the criticisms on the '' Ancient Mariner," in the Monthly arid Critical Review- ers ofthefint volume of the Lyrical Ballads.) May I be permitted to add, that, even at the early period of my juvenile poems, 1 saw and admitted the superiority of an austerer, and more natural style, with an insight not less clear, than I at present possess. My judgment was strong- er than were my powers of realizing its dictates ; and the faults of my language, though indeed partly owing to a wrong choice of subjects, and the desire of giving a poetic colouring to abstract and metaphysical truths, in w hich a new world then seemed to open upon me, did yet, in part likewise, originate in unfeigned diffidence of my own comparative talent. During several years of my youth and early manhood, I reverenced those who had re- introduced the manly simplicity of the Grecian, and ot* our own elder poets, with such enthusiasm, as made the hope seem presumptuous of writing successfully in the same style. Perhaps a similar process has happened to others ; but my earliest poems were marked by an ease and simplicity which I have studied, perhaps with infe- rior success, to impress on my later compositions. At school I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master. Le^ early moulded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to * The Rev. .James Bowyer, many years Head Muster of the Grammar sghool, Christ Hospital. 8 Virc^il, and again of Virgil to Ovid. He habituated me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts as I then read) Terence, and, above all, the chaster poems of Catullus, not only with the Roman poets of the, so called, silver and brazen ai^es ; but with even those ot the Augustan era : and on grounds of plain sense and universal logic to see and assert the superiority of the former, in the truth and nativeness, both of their thoughts and diction. At the same time that we were studying the Greek tra- gic poets, he made us read Shakspeare and Milton as les- sons : and they were the lessons too, which required most time and trouble to bring up, so as to escape his censure. 1 learnt from him that poetry, even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science ; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on niore, and more fugitive causes In the truly great poets, he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word ; and I well remember, that availing himself of the synonimies to the Homer of Didymus, he made us attempt to show, with regard to each, why it would not have answered the same purpose ; and wherein consisted the peculiar fitness of the word in the original text. In our own English compositions (at least for the last three years of our school education) he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been con- veyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words. Lute, harp, and lyre, muse, muses, and inspirations, Pe- gasus, Parnassus, and Hipocrene, were all an abomina- tion to him In fancy I can almost hear him now, ex- claiming " Harp? Harp? Lyre ? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse? your JVurse^s daughter, you mean ! Pierian spring ? Oh ""aye ! the cloister-pump, I suppose /" Nay, certain introductions, similies, and ex- amples, were placed by name on a list of interdiction. Among the similies, there was, 1 remember, that of the Manchineel fruit, as suiting equally well with too many subjects ; in which, however, it yielded the palm at once to the example of Alexander and Clytus, which was equally good and apt, whatever might be the theme. Was it ambition ? Alexander and Clytus ! Flattery "^ Alexander and Clytus ! Anger ? — Drunkenness ? Prrde ? Friendship? Ingratitude? Late repentance? Still, still Alexander and Clytus I At length, the praises of agricul- ture having been exemplified in the sagacious observa- tion, that had Alexander been holding the plough he would not have run his friend Clytus through with a spear, this tried, and serviceable old friend was banished by public edict in secula seculorum. I have sometimes ventured to think, that a list of this kind, or an index ex- purgatorious of certain well known and ever returning piirases, both introductory, and transitional, including the large assortment of modest egotisms, and flattering illeisms, &c. Lc. might be hung up in our law-courts, and,., both bouses of parliament, with great advantage to the public, as an important saving of national time, an incal- culable relief to his Majesty's ministers, but, above all, as insuring the thanks of country attorneys and their clients, who have private bills to carry through the house. Be this as it may, there was one custom of our master wh;ch I cannot pass over in silence, because I think it i.ni table and worthy of imitation. He wauld often per- mit our theme exercises, under some pretext of want of time, to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over. Then placing the whole number a^rca^^ on his desk, he would ask the writer, why this or that sen- tence might not have found as appropriate a place under this or that other thesis : and if no satisfying answer could be returned, and two faults of the same kind were found in one exercise, the irrevocable verdict followed, the ex- ercise was torn up, and another on the same subject to be produced, in addition to the tasks of the day. The rea- der will, I trust, excuse this tribute of recollection to a man, v/hose severities, even now, not seldom furnish the dreams, by which the blind fancy would fain interpret to the mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep, but neither lessen nor dim the deep sense of my moral and intellectual obligations. He sent us to the university excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and tolerable Hebra- ists Yet our classical knowledge was the least of the good gifts which we derived from his zealous and con- scientious tutorage. He is now gone to his final reward, full of years, and full of honours, even of those honours which were dearest to his heart, as gratefully bestowed 1* 10 by that school, and still bindrng him to the interests of that school, in which he had been himself educated, and to which during his whole life he was a dedicated thing. From causes, which this is not the place to investigate, no models of past times, however perfect, can have the same vivid effect on the youthful mind, as the productions of contemporary genius. The discipline my mind had undergone, '' Ne falleretur rotundo sono et versuum cursu, cincinnis et floribus ; sed ut inspiceret quidnam subesset, quae sedes, quod firmamentum, quis fundus verbis ; an figurae essent mera ornatura et orationis fucus : vel san- guinis e materiae ipsius corde effluentis rubor quidam na- tivus et incalescentia genuina ;'' removed all obstacles to the appreciation of excellence.- m style without diminish- ing my delight. That 1 was thus prepared for the peru- s'al of Mr. Bowles's sonnets and earlier poems, at once increased their influence and 7ny enthusiasm. The great works of past ages seem, to a young man, things of another race, in respect to which his faculties must remain pas.-ive and submiss, even as to the stars and mountains. But the writings of a contemporary, perhaps not many years el- der than himself, surrounded by the same circumstances, and disciplined by the same manners, possess a reality for him, and inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a man His very admiration is the wind which fans and feeds his hope. The poems themselves assume the pro- perties of flesh and blood. To recite, to extol, to con- tend for them, is but the payment of a debt due to one who exists to receive it. There are indeed modes of teachings which have pro- duced, and are producing, youths of a very diflerent stamp ; modes of teaching, in comparison with which we have been called on to despise our great public schools, and universities, " In whose halls are hung* Armoury of the invincible knights of old" — modes by which children are to be metamorphosed into prodigies. And prodigies with a vengeance have 1 known thus produced! Prodigies of self-conceit, shallowness, arrogance, and infidelity ! Instead of storing the memory^ during the period when the memory is the predominant faculty, with facts for the after exercise of the judgment ^ 11 and instead of awakenino- by the noblest mod<^Is the fond and unmixed Love and Admiration, which is the natural and graceful temper of early youth ; these nurselings of improved pedagogy are taught to dispute and decide ; to suspect all but their own and their lecturer's wisdom ; and to hold nothing sacred from their contempt but their own contemptible arrogance ; boy-graduates in all the technicals, and in all the dirty passions and impudence of anonymous criticism To such dispositions alone can the admonition of Pliny be requisite, " Neque enim de- bet operibus ejus obesse, quod vivit. An si inter eos, quos nunquam vidimus, floruisset, non solum libros ejus, verum etiam imagines conquireremus, ejusdem nunc honor pra.^senlis, et gratia quasi satietate languescet ? At hoc pravum, raalignumque est, non admirari hominem admi- ralione dignissimum, quia videre, complecti, nee laudare tantum, verum etiam amare contingit." Plin. Epist. Lib, L I had just entered on my seventeenth year, when the sonnets of Mr. Bowles, twenty in number, and just then published in a quarto pamphlet, were first made known and presented to me by a schoolfellow who had quitted lis for the university, and who, during the whole time that he was in our first form, (or, in our school language, a Grecian,) had been my patron and protector. I refer to Dr. Middleton, the truly learned, and Q\'efy way ex- cellent Bishop of Calcutta : *' Qui lauiiibus amplis Inpi-enium celebrare meiim, calainumque solebat,. Calcar agens animo valid um. Non omnia terrai Obruta* Vivit amor, vivit dolor! Ora negatur Dulcia conspicere ; at flere et meminisse* relictum est.''~ Peti\ Ep. Lib, L Ep, L It was a double pleasure to me, and still remains a ten- der recollection, that I should have received from a friend so revered the first knowledge of a poet, by whose works, * I am most happy to have the necessity ofinformin^ the reader, that since this passag-e a\ as written, the report of Ih\ Midclleton's death, on- his voyajre to India, has be ill not be v,^hoIly out of place here, and maj', perhaps, amuse the reader. iJi -mateur performer in verse expressed 10 a common friend, a strong desire to be introduced to kie, but hesitated in accepting my friend's immediate offer, on the score that " he was, he must acknowledge, the author of a confounded severe epigram on my ancient mariner j which had given me great pain." I assured my friend that if the epigram was a good one, it would only increase my desire to become acquainted with the author, and begg'd to hear it recited : when, to my no less surprise than amusement, it proved to be one which 1 had myself some time before written and inserted in the Morning Post. To the Author of the Ancient Mariner, Your poem must eternal be, Dear sir .' it cannot fail, For 'tis incomprehensible And without head or tail. 2^1 CHAPTER ir. Supposed Irritability of men of Genius — Brought to the test of Facts — Causes and Occasions of the charge — Its Injustice. I have often thought, that it would be neither uninstruc- tive nor unamusing., to analyze and bring forward into distinct consciousness, that complex feeling, with which readers in general take part against the author- in favour of the critic ; and the readiness with which they apply to all poets the old sarcasm of Horace upon the scribblers of his time, *' Genus irritabile vatum." A debility and dimness of the imaginative power, and a consequent ne- cessity of reliance on. the immediate impressions of the senses, do, we well know, render the mind liable to su- perstition and fanaticism. Having a deficient portion of internal and proper warmth, minds of this class seek in the crowd circuni fana for a warmth in common, which they do not possess singly. Cold and phlegmatic in their own nature, like damp hay, they heat and inflame, by coacervation ; or, like bees, they become restless and ir- ritable through the increased temperature of collected multitudes. Hence the German word for fanaticism (such at least was iis original import) is derived from the swarming of bees, namely, Schwarmen, Schwiirmerey. The passion being in an inverse proportion to the insightj that the nQore vivid as this the less distinct, anger is the inevitable consequence. The absence of all foundation within their own minds for that which they yet believe both true and indispensable for their safety and happiness, cannot but produce an uneasy stat^ of feeling, an involuOf- tary sense of faar, from which nature has no means of res- cuing herself but by anger Experience informs us, that the lirst defence of weak minds is to recriminatCc " There's no Philosopher but sees, That rage and fear are one disease ; Tho' that may burn, and this may treeze,^ They're both alike the ague.'* Mad Ox, 2*^ 22 feut where the ideas are vivid, and there exists an endless power of combining and naodifying them, the feelings and affections blend more easily and intimately with these ideal creations, than with the objects of ihe senses ; the mind is affected by thoughts, rather than by things; and only then feels the requisite interest, even for the most im- portant events and accidents, when by means of medita- tion they have passed into thoughts. The sanity of the mind is between superstition with fanaticism on the one hand, and enthusiasm with indifference and a diseased slowness to action on the other. For the conceptions of the mind may be so vivid and adequate as to preclude that impulse to the realizing of them, which is strongest and most restless in those who possess more than mere talent, (or the faculty of appropriating and applying the knowledge of others,) yet still want something of the creative and self-sufficing power of cibsolute genius. For this reason, therefore, they are men of commanding ge- nius. While the former rest content between thought and reality, as it were in an intermundium, of which their own living spirit supplies the substance, and their imagination the ever varyingybrm; the latter must impress their pre- conceptions on the world without, in order to present them back to their own view with the satisfying degree of clearness, distinctness, and individuality These, in tranquil times, are formed to exhibit a perfect poem in palace, or temple, or landscape-garden • or a tale of ro- mance in canals that join sea with sea, or in walls of rock, which, shouldering back the billows, imitate the power, and supply the benevolence of nature to sheltered navies ; or in aqueducts, that, arching the wide vale from mountain to mountain, give a Palmyra to the desert. But, alas ! in times of tumult, they are the men destined to come forth as the shaping spirit of Ruin, to destroy the wis- dom of ages, in order to substitute the fancies of a day, and to change kings and kingdoms, as the wind shifts and shapes the clouds.'^ The records of biography seem to ' " Of old things all are over okl, Of ^ood things none are good enough : — We'll show that we can help to frame A world of other stuft 23 confirm this theory. The men of the greatest genius, as far as we can judge from their own works, or from the ac- counts of their contempornries, appear to have been of calm and tranquil temper in aM that related to themselves. In the inward assurarice of permanent fame, they seem to have been either indifferent or resigned with regard to immediate reputation. Through all the works of Chau- cer there reigns a cheerfulness, a manly hilarity, which makes it almost impossible to doubt a correspondent ha- bit of feeling in the author himself. Shakspeare's even- ness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial in bis own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative greatness, we have abundant proof in his sonnets, which could scarcely have been known to Mr. Pope,* when he asserted, that our great bard '• grew immortal in his own despite " Speaking of one whom he had celebrated, and contrasting the duration of his works with that of his personal existence, Shakspeare adds : • I too will havo 1113- kino;*, t'lat take From me the sign of lite and death ; Kingdoms shall shilt about like clouds, Obedient to my breath." WoRDSWORTH^S ROB RoY- * Mr. Pope was under the common error of his age, an error far from being sufficiently exploded even at the preisent day. It consists, (as I ex- plained at lar2:e, and proved in detail inmy public lectures.) in mistaking lor the essentials of tfie Greek stage, certain rules which the wise poets imposed upon themselves, in order to render all the remaining parts of the drama consisient with those that }\ad been forced upon tliein by cir- cumstances independent of their will ; out of which circumstances the drama itself arose. The circmnstances in the time of Shakspeare, which it was equally one of his jjo\ver to alter, were different, and such as, in my opinion, allowed a far wider sphere, and a deeper and more human in- terest. Critics are too apt to forget that rnks are but means to an end, consequently, where the ends are diftV rent, the rules must be likewise so. We must have rscertained what the end is before we can determine what the rules might :o he. Judging under this impression, I did not hesitate to declare my full conviction that tiie consummate judoinent of Shaks- peare, not only in the general construction, butinall'thede^ii'Z of his dra- mas, impressed me with greater wonder than even the might of his ge- nius, or the depth of his philosophy. The substance of these lectures I hope soon to publish ; and it is but a debt of I'ustice to mvself and my friends to notice^ that the first < ourse of lectures, whicji dirfered from the following courses only by occasionally varying the illustratioiis of the sam? thoughts, was addressed to very numerous, and, I need not add, re- spectablr^ audiences, at the royal institution, before Mr. Schlegel gave his lectures on the same subjects at Vienna, 24 ** Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Tho' I once gone to all the world must die ; The earth can } ield me but a common grave, When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie. Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read ; And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead : You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen, Where breath most breathes, e'en in the mouth of men.'*^ Sonnet 8 1st. I have taken the first that occurred ; but Shakspeare's readiness to praise his rivals, ore pleno, and the confi- dence of his own equality with those whom he deem'd most worthy of his praise, are alike manifested in the S6.ih sonnet. *' Was it the proud full sail of his great verse^ i Bound for the praise of ail-too precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew ? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch that struck me dead r No, neitiier he, nor his compeers by night Giving him aid, my verse astonished. He, nor that affable familiar ghost, VVliich nightly gulls him with intelligence. As victors of my silence cannot boast; I was not sick of any fear from thence ! But when your countenance fiU'd up his line, Then UckM I matter, that enfeebled mine. In Spencer, indeed, we (race a mind constitutionally tender, delicate, and, in comparison with his three great compeers, [ had almost said, effeminate ; and this addi- tionally saddened by the unjust persecution of Burleigb,^ and the severe calamities which overwhelmed his latter days. These causes have diffused over all his composi- tions ** a melancholy grace,'' and have drawn forth occa-, sional strains, the more pathetic from their gentleness. But no vvbere do we find the least trace of irritability, and still less of quarrelsome or afifected contempt of his censurers. The same calmness, and even greater self possession, may ]^e affirmed of MiltOD, as far as his poems and poetic 25 charac(er are concerned. He reserved his anger lor Ihe enemies of religion, freedom, and his country. My mind is not capable of forming a more august conception, than arises from the contemplation of this great man in his latter days : poor, sick, old, blind, slandered, perse- cuted, ** Darkness before, and dang-er's voice behind," in an age in which he was as little understood by the party, for whom, as by that against whom, he had con- tended ; and among men before whom he strode so far as to cZccar/ himself by the distance ; yet still listening to the music of his own thoughts, or if additionally cheered, yet cheered only by the prophetic faith of two or three solitary individuals, he did nevertheless " Argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope ; but still bore up, and steer'd Right onward." From others only do we derive our knowledge that Mil- ton, in his latter day, had his scorners and detractors ; and even in his day of youth and hope, that he had ene- mies would have been unknown to us, had they not been likewise the enemies of his country. I am well aware, that in advanced stages of literature, when there exists many and excellent models, a high de- gree of talent, combined with taste and judgment, and employed in works of imagination, will acquire for a man the name of a great genius ; though even that analogon of genius, which, in certain states of society, may even render his writings more popular than the absolute reali- ty could have done, would be sought for in vain in the mind and temper of the author himself Yet even in in- stances of this kind, a close examination will often detect that the irritability, which has been attributed to the au- thor's genius as its cause, did really originate in un ill conformation of body, obtuse pain, or const! iUtionhi de- fect of pleasurable sensation. What is cliral theory of |3oetry v.-as the same then as now, ! nad yet exp-^rienced the same sensations myself, and fait almost as if I had been newly < ouch- ed, when by Mr. U'ordswoilh's conversation, I had been induced to re- examine with impartial stri< tness Graves celebrated elegy. I had long before detected the defects in "the Pard;" but "the Elegy" I bad con- sidered as proof ao-ainst all fair attacks ; and to this da\ I cannot read either M'ithout delisht, and a portion of enthusiasm. At all events, whatever pleasure I may have lost b;, the clearer perception of the faults " in certain passasres, has been more than repaid to me, by the additional delisrht with which I read the reniainder. * Especially " in this age of personality, this a^e of literary and po- htical GOSSIPING, when the meanest insects are worsnipped with a sort of Esryptian superstition, if only the brainless head be atoned for by the sting- of personal malignity in the tail ! When the most vapid satires have be- come the objects of" a keen public interest, purely from the number of contemporary characters named in the patchwork notes, (which possess, however, the comparative merit of l)eing more poetical than the text,) and because, to increase the stimulus, the author has sagaciously left his own name for whispers and conjectures I In an aae, when even sermons are published with a double appendix stuiled witli names — in a generation so iiansformed from the characteristic reserve of Britons, that from the ephemeral sheet of a London newspaper, to the everlasting Scotch Pro- fessorial Quarto, almost every publication exhibits or flatters the epidemic di.stemper: that the very * last year's rebuses' in the Ladies' Diary, are answered in a serious elegy ' on my father'*s death' wiih the name and habit:it of the elegiac CRdipus subscribed : and ' other ingeniovs solutions were lik(nione instance, among rnfiny, of deception, by the telling the half of a fact, and omitting the otlier half, when it is from their mutual coun- teraction and neutralization, that the 7vh(jle truth arises, as a tertiam ali- qjiid ditTerent from either. Thus in Drydc-n's famous line " Great wit" (\vhich here means genius) " to madness sure is near allied." i\ow, as far as the profound sensibilitv, which is doubtless one of the components of genius, were alone considered, single and unbalanced, it might be fair- Iv described as exposing the individual to a great.^r chance of mental de- raii2:emint ; h\\{ tnen a more than usual rapidity of association, a more than usual power of passing from thought to thought, and image toiinage, is a c omponent equally essential ; and in the due modification of each by ?he other the qe.mus itself consists; so that it would be just a^ fair to 31 For myself, if from my own feelings, or from the \es& suspicious test of the observations of others, 1 had been made aware of any literary testiness or jealousy, I trust, that I should have been, however, neither silly or arro* gant enough to have burthened the imperfection on genius. But an experience, (and 1 should not need documents in abundance to prove my words, if 1 added,) a tried expe- rience of twenty years has taught me thai the original sin of my character consists in a careless indifference to pub- lic opinion, and to the attacks of those who influence it ; that praise and admiration have become, yearly, less and less desirable, except as marks of sympathy ; nay, that it is difficult and distressing to me, to think with any inter-^ est even about the sale and profit of my works, important as, in my present circumstances, such considerations must needs be. Yet it never occurred to me to believe, or fan- cy, that the quantum of intellectual power bestowed on me by nature or education was in any way connected with this habit of my feelings ; or, that it needed any- other parents, or fosterers, than constitutional indolence^ aggravated into languor by ill-health ; the accumulating embarrassments of procrastination ; the mental cowardice, which is the inseparable companion of procrastination, and which makes us anxious to think and converse on any thing rather than on what concerns ourselves : in fine, all those close vexations, whether chargeable on my faults or my fortunes which leave me but little grief to spare for evils comparatively distant and alien. Indignation at literary wrongs, 1 leave to men borrt under happier stars. I cannot afford it. But so far from condemning those v/ho can, I deem it a writer's duty, and think it creditable to his heart, to feel and express a resentment proportioned to the grossness of the provoca- tion, and the importance of the object. There is no pro- fession on earth which requires an attention so early, so long, orsounintermitting, as that of poetry ; and, indeed, as that of literary composition in general, if it be such as at all satisfies the demands both of the taste and of sound logic. How difficult and delicate fi task even the mere mechanism of verse is, may be conjectured from the describe the earth as in imminent danger of exorbitating-, or of falling into the sun, according as the assertor of the absurdity coryfined his atten- tion either to tke projectile or to the attractive force exclusively. 32 failure of those who have attempted poetry late in lite. Where, then, a man has, from his earliest youth, devoted his whole being to an object whicli, by the admission of all civilized nations in all ages is l)onourable as a pursuit, and glorious as an attainment ; what, of all that relates to himself and his family, if only we except his moral cha- I'acter, can have fairer claims to his protection, or more authorize acts of self-detence than the elaborate products of his intellect, and intellectual industry ? Prudence it- self would command us io shori' even if defect or diver- sion of natural sensibility had prevented us from feeling, a due interest and qualified anxiety for the offspring and representatives of our nobler being. I krfovv it, alas I by woful experience 1 I have laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this wilderness, the world, with ostrich careless- ness and ostrich oblivion. The greater part, indeed , have been trod under foot, and are forgotten ; but yet no small number have crept forth into life, some to furnish feathers for the caps of others, and still more to plume the shafts in the quivers of my enemies j of them that, unprorokcd, have lain in wait against my soul. " Sic vos, noa vobis mellificatis, apes 1" An instance in confirmation of the note, p. 27, occurs to me as I am correcting this sheet, with the Faithful Shepherdess open before me. Mr. Seward first traces Fletcher's lines : ** More foul diseases than e'er yet the hot Sun bred through his burnings, while the dog* Pursues the raging lion, throwing the fog And deadly vapour from his angry breath. Filling the lower world with plague and death. "-•- To Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, ** The rampant lion hunts he fast With dogs of noisome breath, Whose baleful barking brings, in haste, Pyne, plagues, and dreary death I'' He then takes occasion to introduce Horr>er' simile of the sight of Achilles* shield to Priam compared with iJae Du^ Star, lite- rally thus— 33 " For this indeed is most splendid, but it was made an evil sign, and brings many a consuming" disease to wretched mor- tals." Nothing can be more simple as a description, or more accurate as a simile ; which, says Mr. S., is thus Jinely trans- lated by Mr. Pope ; " Terrific Glory ! for his burning breath Taints the red air with fevers, plagues, and death P* Now here (not to mention the tremendous bombast) the Do^ StaVy so called, is turned into a real Dog, a very odd Dog, a fire, lever, plague, and death-breathing, rec?-air-tainting Dog : and the whole visual likeness is lost, while the likeness in the effects is rendered absurd by the exaggeration In Spen- ser and Fletcher the thought is justifiable ; for the images are at least consistent, and it was the intention of the writers to mark the seasons by this allegory of visualized Fun$^ ^ :i4 CHAPTER III; Tlie author's ohligations to critics, and the probable occa' sion — Principles of modern criticism — Air, Southey*s works and character. To anonymous critics in reviews, magazines, and news journals of various name and rank, and to satirists, with or without a name, in verse or prose, or in verse text aided by prose comment, I do seriously believe and profess, that I owe full two thirds of whatever reputation and publicity I happen to possess For when the name of an individual has occurred so frequently, in so many works, for so great a length of time, the readers of these works, (which with a shelf or two of Beauties, Elegant Extracts and Anas, form nine tenths of the reading public)* cannot but be familiar with the name, without distinctly remembering whether it was introduced for an eulogy or for censure. And this becomes the more like- ly, if (as 1 believe) the habit of perusing periodical * For as to the devotees of the circulation libmries, I dare not com- pliment their pass time, or rather kill time, with the name of readipg. Call It rather a sort oi beggarly da} -dreaming, during w^iich the mind of the dreamer furnishes lor itself nothing but laziness and a little mawkish sen- sibility ; while the whole materiel and imagerv* of the doze is supplied ab rxtra by a sort of mental camera obscura manufactured at the printing of- fice, which pro tempore lixes, reflects, and transmits the moving phantasms ufone man's delirium, so as to people the barrenness of an hundred other brains afflicted v, 'th the same trance or suspension of all common sense and all definite purpose. We should, therefore, transfer this species of amusement, (if indeed those can be said to retire a musts, who were never in their <^ompany, or reJ-^xation be attributable to those whose bows are ne^'er bent,) from the genius, reading, to that comprehensive class char-^ actenzedby the power of reconciling the contrary ) et co-existing propen- sities of human nature-, namely, indulgence of sloth and hatred or vacan- cy. In addition to novels an^ tales of chivalry in prose or rh} me, (by rfhich last I mean neither rhythm nor metre,) tliis genus comprises as its .species, gaming, swinging, or swaying on a chair or gate : spitting over abridge; smokine ; snuft'-trking ; "tete-a-tete quarrels after dinner be- tween husband and v^'ife ; conning, word by word, all the advertisements^ of the daily advertiser in a public house on a rainy day, &c. &c. &c. 35 works may be properly added to Averrhoe's* catalogue of A.i\tj-MnEx\!o.vics, or weakeners of the memory. But where this has not been the case, yeA the reader will be apt to suspect, that there must be something more than usually strong and extensive in a reputation, that could either require or stand so merciless and long-continued a cannonading Without any feeling of anger, therefore, (for which, indeed, on my own account, 1 have no pre- text,) 1 may yet be allowed to express some degree of surprise, that after having run the critical gauntlet tor a certain class of faults which \ had, nothing having come before the judgment seat in the interim, I should, year after year, quarter after quarter, month after month, (not to mention sundry petty periodicals of still quicker revo- lution, *' or weekly or diurnal,") have been for at least seventeen years consecutively dragged forth by them inta the foremost ranks of the proscribed, and forced to abide the brunt of abuse, for faults directly opposite, and which I certainly had not. How shall I explain this ? Whatever may have been the case with others, T cer- tainly cannot attribute this persecution to personal dis- like, or to envy, or to feelings of vindictive animosity. Not to the former ; for, with the exception ot a very few who are my intimate friends, and were so before they were known as authors, I have had little other acquaint- ance with literary characters than what may be implied in an accidental introduction, or casual meeting in a loixt company. And, as tar as words and looks can be trust- ed, 1 must believe that, even in these instances, I had excited no unfriendly disposition. t Neither by letter, * Ex. gr. Perliculos e capillis cxcerptos in arcnam jacerc incontusos ; eatin<^ of unripe fruit ; gazing- on the clouds, and (in g-enere) on moveal)le things suspended in the air ; riding among a multitude of camels ; tre- qucnt laughter ; listening to a series of jests and humourous anecdotes, as vvh^n (so to modernise the learned Saracen's meaning) one man's droll storv of an Irishman, inevitably occasions another's droll story ofaJ5cotch- man, which, again, by the same sort of conjunction disjunctive, leads to some etourderie of a VVelclirnan, and that again to some sly hit of a Yorkshireman ; the habit of reading tomb-stones in church-yards. Sic. By-the-by, this catalogue, strange as it may appear, is not insusceptible of a sound pcychological commentary. t Some years ago a gentleman, the chief vrriter and conductor of a ce- lebrated review, distinguished by its hostility to Mr. Southey, spent a day or two at Keswick. That ho was, without diminution on this account, treated with every hospitable attention by Mr. ^^outhey and myself, t trust 1 need not say. I^ut one thing I may venture to notice, that at no period of my life do I remember to have received so many, and such high coloured, comj^liiueiiti in. 50 short a space^of time. He was likewise circmur 36 er in conversation, Lave I ever had dispute or controver' sy be^'ond the common social interchange of opinions. Nay, where 1 had reason to suppose my convictions fun- damentally « different, it has been my habit, and 1 may add, the impulse of my nature, to assign the grounds of my belief, rather than the belief itself; and not to express dissent, tilJ 1 could establish some points of complete stantially informed by what series of accidents it h^d happened, that Mr. Word; worth, Mr. Sou they, and I, had become neig-hbours ; and how ut- terly unfounded was the supposition, that we considered ourselves, as be- lonicing to any common school, but that of good sense, confirmed by the long-established models of the best times of Greece, Rome, Italy, and England, and still more groundless the notion, that Mr. Southey, (for, as to myself, 1 have published so little, and tliat little of so little importance, as to make it almost ludicrous to mention my name at all,) could have beea concerned in the formation of a poetic sect with Mr. Wordsworth, when so many of his works had been published, not only previously to any ac- quaintance between them, but before Mr. VVordsworth himself had writ- ten any thing but in a diction ornate, and uniformly sustained; when, too, the slightest examination will make it evident, that between those and the after writings of Mr. !:>outhey, there exists no other difference than that of a progressive degree of excellence from progressive develop- ment of power, and prop-essive facility from habit and increase of ex- perience. Yet among the first articles which this man wrote after hfs return from Keswick, we were characterized as *' the School of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes." In repl}^ to a let- ter from the same gentleman, in which he had asked me, whether I was in earnest in preferring the style of Hooker to that of Dr. John- son, and Jeremy Taylor to Burke, I stated, somewhat at large, the comparitive excellences and defects which characterised our best prose writers, from the reformation to the first iialf of Gharles IL ; and that of those who had flourished during the present reign, and the preceding one. About twelve months afterwards a review appeared on the same subject, in the concluding paragraph of which the reviewer asserts, that his chief motive for entering into tlie discussion was to.separate a rational and" qualified admiration of our elder writers, from the indiscriminate enthusi- asm of a recent school, who praised what thej' did not understand, and caricatured what they were unable to imitate. And, that no doubt might be left concerning the persons alluded to, the writer annexes the names of Miss Bailie, W. Solthev, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. For hat which follows, (have only ear-say evidence, but yet such as demands my belief; viz. that on being questioned concerninj^ this apparently wanton attack, more especially with reference to Miss Baihe, the writer had stated as his motives, that this lady, when at Edinburgh, had declined a proposal of introdu- ing him to her ; that Mr. Southey had written against liim; andiMr. Wordsworth liad talked contemptuously of him; but that as to Coleridge^ he had noticed him merely because the names of J^outhey and Wordsworth and Cukridge always went together. But if it were worth while to mix together, as ingredients, half the anec dotes which I either myself know to be true, or which J have i*ecoived from men inca- pable of intentional fa'seiiood, concerning the characters, qualifications^ and motives of our anonymous critics, whose decisions are oracles for our reading publi •, [ might safely borrow th€ words of the apocryphal Da-. n'fe! : " Givf mtleaie^ O Sovkreign Pibiic, and J shali slay tins dragovi nithoui sword or ,sto"''* For the compound would I*" as the '' /Htrh, and /af. cn'i hnir, rvhuh Danitl took, and did seethe them together^ and made lumps ihfi^ efy and pnf into the drngon's mouthy and so the diagon burst i^ mndsTi and DanUl saidi lo, toesb. Afi& the Gods y£ woiiaiujR.'^ 37 sympathy, some grounds common to both sides, from nhich to commence its explanation Still less can i place these attacks to the charge of envy. The (ew pages which 1 have published, are of too distant a date ; and the extent of their sale a proof too conclusive against their having been popular at any time, to render probable, 1 had almost said possible, the ex- citement of envy on their account ; and the man who should envy me on any other ^ verily he must be envy- mad! Lastly ; with as little semblance of reason could I sus- pect any animosity towards me from vindictive feelings as the cause. I have before said, that my acquaintance with literary men has been limited and distant; and that I have had neither dispute nor controversy. From my first entrance into life, I have, with few and short inter- vals, lived either abroad or in retirement My different eisays on subjects of national interest, published at dif- ferent times, first in the Mornings Post and then in the Courier, with my courses of lectures on the principles of criticism as applied to Shakspeare and Milton, constitute my whole publicity ; the only occasions on which 1 could offend any member of the republic of letters. With one solitary exception, in which my words were first mis-stated, and then wantonly applied to an individual, I could ne- ver learn that 1 had excited the displeasure of any among my literary contemporaries. Having announced my in- tention to give a course of lectures on the characteristic merits and defects of the English poetry in is different eras ; first, from Chaucer to Milton ; second, from Dry den inclusive to Thompson ; and third, from Cowper to the present day ; I changed my plan, and confined my disqui- sition to the two former eras, that I might furnish no pos- sible pretext for the unthinking to misconstrue, or the ma- lignant to misapply, ray words, and having stampt thefr own meaning on them, to pass them as current coin in the marts of garrulity or detraction. Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the df-seiving ; and it is too irue, and too fre- qu<-nt, that Bacon, Harrington, Machiaval awd Spmosa, are not read> becausi^ Hume, i.ondillac, and Voltaire are But in p^()^liscl^ous company, no prudent laan will oppugn the menU uf a contemporary in Uis own supposed 38 department ; contenting himself with praising in his turn those whom he deems excellent. i[ I should ever deem it my duty at all to oppose the pretensions of individuals, I would oppose them in books which could be weighed and answered, in which 1 could evolve the whole of my reasons and feelings, Vvilh their requisite limits and mo- difications ; not in irrecoverable conversation, where, however strong the reasons might be, the feelings that prompted them would assuredly be attributed by some one or other to envy and discontent. Besides, I well know, and 1 trust, have acted on that knowledge, that it must be the ignorant and injudicious w^ho extol the un- worthy ; and the eulogies of critics without taste or judg- ment are the natural reward of authors without feeling or genius. '' Sint unicuique sua premia." How, then, dismissing, as I do, these three causes, am I to account for attacks, the long continuance and invete- racy of which it would require all three to explain. The solution may seem to have been given, or at least suggest- ed, in a note to a preceding page. / rc^as in habits of intimacy with Mr, Wordsworth and Mr» Southey ! This, however, transfers, rather than removes, the difficulty. Be it, that by an unconscionable extension of the old adage, *' noscitur a socio," my literary friends are never under the water- fall of criticism but 1 must be wet through with the spray ; yet, how came the torrent to de- scend upon them ? First, then, with regard to Mr. Southey. I well re- member tl>e general reception of his earlier publications, viz. the poems published with Mr. Lovell, under the names of Moschus and Bion ; the two volumes of poems under his own name, and the Joan of Arc. The censures of the critics by profession are extant, and may be easily referred to: — careless lines, inequality in the merit of the different poems, and, (in the lighter works,) a predi- lection for the strange and whimsical ; in short, such faults as might have been anticipated in a young and ra- pid writer, were indeed sufficiently enforced. Nor was there, at that time, wanting a party spirit to aggravate the defects of a poet, who, with all the courage of un- corrupted youth, had avowed his zeal for a cause which he deemed that of liberty, and his abhorrence of oppres- sion, by whatever name consecrated. But it was as littfe 59 objected bj others, as dreamt of by the poet himself, that he preferred careless and prosaic lines on rule and of forethought, or, Indeed, that he pretended to any other art or theory of poetic diction beside that which we may all learn from Horace, Quintilian, the admirable dialogue de Causis Corruptoe Eloquentife, or Strada's Prolusions ; if, indeed, natural good sense, and the early study of the best models in his own language, had not infused the same maxims more securely, and, if I may venture the expression, more vitally. All that could have been fairly deduced, was, that in his taste and estiuiation of writers, Mr> Southey agreed far more with VVarton than with Johnson. Nor do I mean to deny that, at all times, Mr. Southey was of the same- mind with Sii* Philip Sydney, in preferring an excellent ballad in the humblest style of poetry, to twenty indifferent poems that strutted in the highest. And by what have his works, published since then, been characterized, each more strikingly than the preceding, but by greater splendour, a deeper pathos, profounder reflections, and a more sustained dignity of language and of metre ? Distant may the period be, but whenever the time shall come when all his works shall be collected by some editor worthy to be his biographer, I trust, that an excerpta of all the passages in which his writings^ name, and character, have been attacked, froi-- the pamphlets and periodical works of the last twenty years, may be an accompaniment. Yet that it would prove medi- cinal in after times f dare not hope ; for as long as there are readers to be delighted with calumny, there will be found reviewers to calumniate j and such readers will become, ia all probability, more numerous in proportion as a still greater diffusion of literature shall produce an increase of sciolists, and sciolism brings with it petulance and presumption. In times ol old, books were as religious" oracles; as literature advanced, they next became vene- rable preceptors ; they then descended to the rank of instructive friends; and, as their numbers increased, they sunk still lower, to that of entertaining companions ; and, at present, they seem degraded into culprits to hold up their hands at the bar of every self-elected, yet not the less peremptory, judge, who chooses to write from hu- mour or interest, from enmity or arrogance, and to abide 40 the decision, (in the words of Jeremy Taylor,) *^ofhiru that rends in malice, or him that reads after dinner." The same gradual retrograde movement may be traced in the relation which the authors themselves have assumed toward their readers From the lofty address of Bacon : *' these are the meditations of Francis of Verulam, which, that posterity should be possessed of, he deemed their interest ;" or from dedication to monarch or pontiff, in which t|ie honour given was asserted in equipoise to the patronage acknowledged from Pindar's 'frr' aKKoi- ndTTTaivt TTopcriov; * ETti cri Tf tStov T\lS x?ovov vanTv, ipii OynKhv, ff^oJpavTov ccf I'av ko^' EA(» -Aavos iovra Tta^iU' Olymp. Od. I. Poets and Philosophers, rendered diffident by their very number, addressed themselves to " /earnet^ readers ;" then aimed to conciliate the graces of " the candid reader ;" till the critic, still rising as the author sunk, the amateurs of literature, collectively, were erected into a municipality of judges, and addressed as the town ! And now, final- ly, all men hems: supposed able to read, and all readers able to judge, the multitudinous public, shaped into per- sonal unity by the magic of abstraction, sits nominal des- pot on the throne of criticism. But, alas ! as in other despotisms, it but echoes the decisions of its invisible ministers, whose intellectual claims to the guardianship of the muses seem, for the greater part, analogous to the physical qualifications which adapt their oriental brethren for the superintendance of the harem Thus it is said that St. Nepomuc was installed the guardian of bridges, because he had fallen over one, and sunk out of sight ; thus, too, St. Cecilia is said to have been first propitiated by musicians, because, having failed in her own attempts, she had taken a dislike to the art, and all its success- ful professors. But 1 shall probably have occasion, hereafter, to deliver my convictions more at large con- 41 ^earning this state of things, and its influences on tastCj genius, and morality. In the '' Thalaba" the '' Madoc,'' and still more eri- dently in the unique'^ ** Cid,'' the *' Kehama," and as last, so best, the '* Don Roderick," Southey has given abundant proof, '* se cogitasse quam sit magnum dare aliquid in manus hominum : nee persuadere sibi posse, non saepe tractandum quod placere et semper et omnibus cupiat." Plin. Ep. Lib. 7. Ep. 17. But, on the other hand, I guess, that Mr Southey was quite unable to com- prehend wherein could consist the crime or mischief of printing half a dozen or more playful poems ; or, to speak more generally, compositions which would be enjoyed or passed over, according as the taste and humour of the reader might chance to be ; provided they contained no- thing immoral. Jn the present age '' periturae parcere chartae" is emphatically an unreasonable demand. The merest trifle he ever sent abroad had tenfold better claims to its ink and paper, than all the silly criticisms which prove no more than that the critic was not one of those for whom the trifle was writien, and than all the grave exhortations to a greater reverence for the public. As if the passive page of a book, by having an epigram or doggerel tale impressed on it, instantly assumed at once loco-motive power and a sort of ubiquity, so as to flutter and buz in the ear of the public to the sore annoy- ance of the said mysterious personage. But what gives an additional and more ludicrous absurdity to these la- mentations is the curious fact, that if in a volume of poetry the critic should find poem or passage which he deems more especially worthless, he is sure to select and reprint it in the review ; by which, on his own grounds, he wastes as much more paper than the author as the copies of a fashionable review are more numerous than those of the original book ; in some, and those the most prominent instances, as ten thousand to five hundred. I know no- * I have ventured to call it ** unique," not only because I knorr no work of the kind in our language (if we except a few chp.pt'^rs of the old translation of Froissart) none which, uniting- the charms of romance and histor}-, kef-ps the imagination so constantly on the wing, and yet leaves so much for after reflection ; but likewise, and chiefly, because it is a com- pilation which, in the various excellencies of translation, selection , and arrangement, required, and proves greater genius in the compiler, as liv- ing in the present state of sociefj> than in the original composers. Vol. L 4 42 thing that surpasses the vileness of deciding on the me- rits of a poet or painter (not by characteristic defects ; for where there is genius, these always point to his char- acteristic beauties ; but) by accidental failures or faulty passages ; except the impudence of defending it, as the proper duty, and most instructive part, of criticism. Omit, or pass slightly over, the expression, grace, and grouping of Raphael'syzo-wres ; but ridicule in detail the knitting-needles and broom-twigs, that are to represent trees in his back grounds ; and never let him hear the last of his galli-pots ! Admit, that the Allegro and Penseroso of Milton are not without merit ; but repay yourself for this concession, by reprinting at length the two poems on the University Carrier ! As a fair specimen of his sonnets, quote '' a book was writ of late called Tetrachordon ;''^ and as characteristic of his rhythm and metre cite his li- teral translation of the first and second psalm ! in order to justify yourself, you need only assert, that had you dwelt chiefly on the beauties and excellencies of the poet, the admiration of these might seduce the attention of fu- ture writers from the objects of their love and wonder, to an imitation of the few poems and passages in which the poet was most unlike himself. But till reviews are conducted on far other principles, and with far other motives ; till in the place of arbitrary dictation and petulant sneers, the reviewers support their decisions by reference to fixed canons of criticism, pre- viously established and deduced from the nature of man, reflecting minds w^ill pronounce it arrogance in them thus to announce themselves to men of letters, as the guides of their taste and judgment. To the purchaser and mere reader, it is, at all events, an injustice. He who tells me that there are defects in a new work, tells me nothing which I should not have taken for granted without his in- formation. But he who points out and elucidates the beauties of an original work, does indeed give me inte- resting information, si^ch as experience would not have authorized me in anticipating. And as to compositions which the authors themselves announce with '' Haec ipsi novimus esse nihil," why should we judi^e by a different rule two printed works, only because the one author w^as alive, and the ovher in his grave ? What literary man has not regretted the prudery of Spratt in refusing to let his 43 Triend Cowley appear in bis slippers and dressing gown ? I am not perhaps the only one who has derived an inno- cent amusement from the riddles, conundrums, tri-syllable lints, &c. &c. of Swift and his conespondents, in hours of languor, when, to have read his more finished works would have been useless to myself, and, in some sort, ail act of injustice to the author. But I am at a loss to con- ceive by what perversity of judgment these relaxations of his genius could be employed to diminish his fame as the writer of '' Gulliver's travels," and the '* Tale of a Tub." Had Mr Southey written twice as many poenvs of inferior merit, or partial interest, as have enlivened the journals of the day, they would have added to his honour with good and wise men, not merely, or prmcipally, as proving the versatility of liis talents, but as evidences of the purity of that mind which, even in its levities, never wrote a line which it need regret on any moral account. I have in imagination transferred to the future biogra- pher the duty of contrasting Soulhey's fixed and well- earned fame, with the abuse and indefatigable hostility of his anonymous critics from hi? early youth to his ri* pest manhood. But I cannot think so ill of human nature as not to believe, that these critics have already taken shame to themselves, whether they consider the object of their abuse in his moral or his literary character. For reflect but on the variety and extent of his acquirements ! He stands second to no man. either as an historian or as a bibliographer; and when 1 regard him as a popular es- sayist, (for the articles of his compositions in the reviews are for the greater part essays on subjects of deep or cu- rious interest rather than criticisms on particular works,*) I look in vain for any writer, who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such recondite sources, with so many just and original reflections, in a style so lively and poignant, yet bO uniformly classical and per- spicuous ; no one, in short, who has combined so much wis- dom with so much wit; so much truth and knowledge with so much life and fancy. His prose is always iniel- ligibie and always entertaining, 'n poetry he has at- tempted almost every species of composition known be- * See the articles on mcth »dism, in the Quarterly Review: the smaH volume of the New System of Education, &c. 44 /ore, and he has added new ones ; and if we except the .highe5:t lyric, (in which how lew, how very few even of the greatest minds have been fortunate,) he has attempted every species successfully : from the political song of the day, thrown off in the playful overflow of honest joy and patriotic exultation, to the wild ballad ;* from epistolary tase and graceful narrative, to austere and impetuous moral declamation ; from the pastoral claims and wild streaming lights of the ^' Thalaba,*' in which sentiment lind imagery have given permanence even to the excite- ment of curiosity ; and from the full blaze of the " Ke- hama," (a gallery of finished pictures in one splendid i'ancy piece, in which, notwithstanding, the moral gran- deur rises gradually above the brilliance of the colouring and the boldness and novelty of the machinery,) to the more sober beauties of the *' Madoc ;" and, lastly, from ihe Madoc to his *' Roderic," in which, retaining all his former excellencies of a poet eminently inventive and picturesque, he has surpassed himself in language and metre, in the construction of the whole, and in the splen- dour of particular passages. Here, then, shall I conclude ? No ! The characters of the deceased, like the encomia on tombstones, as they are described with religious tenderness, so are they read, with allowing sympathy, indeed, but yet with ra- tional deduction. There are men who deserve a higher record ; men with whose characters it is the interest of their contemporaries, no less than that of posterity, to be made acquainted ; while it i? yet possible for impartial censure, and even for quick-sighted envy, to cross exa- mine fl:e tale without offence to the courtesies of humani- ty ; and while the eulogist, detected in exaggeration or falsehood, must pay the full penalty of his baseness in the contempt which brands the convicted flatterer. Publicly has Mr. Soulhey been reviled by nien, who (I would fain hope for the honour of human nature) hurled fire brands against a fissure of their own imagination ; publicly have his talents been depreciated, his principles denounced ; as publicly do I, therefore^ who have known him inti- mately, deem it my duty to leave recorded, that it is * See the incomparable *' Return to Moscow," and the *' Old Woman ♦f Berkeley." 45 Southey's almost unexampled felicity to possess the best gifts of talent and genius free from all their characteristic defects. To those who remember the state of our pub- lie schools and universities some twenty years past, it will appear no ordinary praise in any man to have pass- ed from innocence into virtue not only free from all vi- cious habit, but unstained by one act of intemperance, or the degradations akin to intemperance. That scheme of head, heart, and habitual demeanour, which, in his early manhood and first controversial writings, Milton, claiming the privilege of self-defence, asserts of himself, and challenges his calumniators to disprove ; this will his school-mates, his fellow collegians, and his maturer friends, with a confidence proportioned to the intimacy of their knowledge, bear witness to, as again realized in the life of Robert Southey. But still more striking to those who, by biography, or by their own experience, are familiar with the general habits of industry and per- severance in his pursuits ; the worthiness and dignity of those pursuits ; his generous submission to tasks of transi- tory interest, or such as his genius alone could make otherwise ; and that having thus more than satisfied the claims of affection or prudence, he should yet have made for himself time and power to achieve more, and in more various departments, than almost any other writer has done, though employed wholly on subjects of his own choice and ambition But as Southey possesses, and is not possessed by, his genius, even so is he the master even of his virtues. The regular and methodical tenor of his daily labours, which would be deen'.ed rare in the most mechanical pursuits, and might be e/ivied by the mere man of business, loses all semblance of formality in the dignified simplicity of his manners, in the spring and healthful cheert^ulness of his spirits. Always employed, his friends find him always at leisure. No l*^ss punctual in trifles, than steadfast in the performance of highest duties, he inflicts none of those small pains and dfscom- forts which irregular men scatter about them, and which^ in the aggregate, so often become formidable obstacles both to happiness and utility ; while, on the contrary, he bestows all the pleasures, and inspires all th^t ease of mind on those around him, or connected with him which perfect consistency, and (if such a word might be framed) 4* 46 absolute reUalUity, equally in small as in great concern«,, cannot but inspire aijd bestow : when this, too, is solten- ed without being weakened by kindness and gentleness. I know few men who so well deserve the character which an ancient attributes to Marcus Cato, namely, that he was likest virtue, in as much as he seemed to act aright, not in obedience to an> law or outward motive, but by the necessity of a happy nature, which couM not act other- wise. As son, brother, husband, father, master, friend, he moves with firm, yet Ii£;ht steps, alike unostentatious, and alike exemplary. As a writer, he has uniformly made his talents subserrient to the best interests of humanity, of public virtue, and domestic piety ; his cause has ever been the cause of pure religion and of li- berty, of national independence, and of national illumi- nation. When future critics shall weigh out his guerdon of praise and censure, it will be Southey the poet only, that will supply them with the scanty materials for the latter. They will likewise not fail to record, that as no man was ever a m.ore constant friend, never had poet more friends and honourers among the good of all parties; and that quacks in education, quacks in politics, and quacks in criticism, were his only enemies.* * It is not eas}' to estimate the effects which the example of a young- man, as highly distinsruished for strict purity of disposition and conduct as^or in- tellectual power and literary acquirements, may produce on those of the same age with himself, especially on those of similar pursuits and conge- nial minds. For many years, my opportunities of intercourse with Mr. Southey have been rare, and at long intervals; but 1 dwell with unabated pleasure on the strong and sudden, yet, I trust, not fleetino-, influence, which my moral being ui-derwent on my acquaintance with him at Ox- ford, whither I had gone at the commencemv^nt of cur Cambridge vaca- tion on a visit to an o'd school-fellow Not, indeed, on my moral or re- ligious principles, for they hod never been contaminated : but in awaken- in"g the sense of the duty and dignity of making m.y actions accord with those principles both in word and deed. The iVregularit es on!y not universal among the young men of my stand ng, which I always' fcnc?» to be Tvron^-, I tljcn i*arnt to feel as degrading; learnt to know that an op- posite conduct, which was at that time considered by us as the easv vir- tue of cold and selfish prudence, might originate in tfie noblest emotions, in views the most dismterested and imaginative, h is not, however, from grateful recollections only, that I have teen impelled thus to leave these, my deliberate sentiments, on record: but, in some sense, as a debt of jus- tice to the man whose name has been so often conne« t^d with mine, for evil to which he is a stranger. As a specimen, 1 subjoin part of a note, from " tlie Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin," in which having previously in- formed the public that 1 had been dishonoured at Cambridge for preach- ing- deism, at a time when, for mj vouthful ardour in ('efencc of Christi- anity, J was derrird as a bigot by' the proselytes of French Fhi- (or to sj^ak more truly, Psi-j Icscphy, the writer concludes with thest words : 47 ^ Sifrje this time he has left his native country, commenced citizen of the world, left his poor children fatherless, and his nife destitute. Ex hisdisct^ hisfrienas. Lamb and Southet." With severest truth it may be asserted, that it would not be easy to select two men more exemplary in their do- mestic affections than those whose names were thus printed at full length as in the same rank of morals with a denounced infidel and fugitive, and who had left his children /a//^6W«55, a7id his wife destitute! Is it surprising-, that many good men remained longer than, perhaps, they otherwise woufd have done, adverse to a party which encouraged and openly rewarded the authors of such atrocious calumnies ? Qualis ea, nescio ; sed per qua* les agis, scio et doleo. 48 CHAPTER IV. The Lyrical Ballads with the preface — Mr, Wordsworth^ s earlier poems — On fancy and imaginaiion — The inves- tigation of the distinction important to the fine arts. I hare wandered far from the object in view, but as I fancied to myself readers who would respect the feelings that had tempted me from the main road, so I dare cal- culate on not a few who will warmly sympathise with ihem. At present it will be sufficient for my purpose, if I have proved, that Mr. Southey's writings, no more than my own, furnished the original occasion to this fiction of B.new school of poetry, and of clamours against its suppo- sed founders and proselytes. As little do I believe that " Mr. Wordsw^orth's Ly- rical Ballads" were in themselves the cause 1 speak «-x- clusively of the two volumes so entitled. A careful and repeated examination of these, confirms me in the belief, that the omission of less than an hundred lines would have precluded nine tenths of the criticism on this work. I hazard this declaration, however, on the supposition, that the reader had taken it up, as he would have done any other collection of poems purporting to derive their sub- jects or interests from the incidents of domestic or ordina- ry life, intermingled with higher strains of meditation which the poet utters in his own person and character; with the proviso, that th^y were perused without know- ledge of, or reference to, the author^s peculiar opinions, and that the reader had not had his attention previously directed to those peculiarities. In these, as was actually the case with Mr. Southev's earlier works, the lines and passages which might have oiOfended the general taste, would have been considered as mere inequalities, and at- tributed to inattention, not to perversity of Judgment. The men of business who had passed their lives chiefly in cities, and who might therefore be expected to derive the highest pleasure from acute notices of nien and man- ners, conveyed in easy, yet correct and pointed languiige ; and all those ^vho, reading but little poetry, are most st.i- 4^ mulated with that species of it which seems most distant from prose, would probably have passed by the volume altogether. Ot!iers more catholic in their taste, and yet habituated to be most pleased when most excited, would have contented themselves with deciding, that the author had been successful in proportion to the elevation of his style and subject. Not a few, perhaps, might, by their ad- miration o( *' the lines written near Tintern Abbey," those '* left upon a seat under a Yew Tree," the '' old Cumberland beggar,'' and " Ruth," have been gradually led to peruse with kindred feeling the '^ Brothers," the ** Hart leap well," and whatever other poems in thai collection may be described as holding a middle place between those written in the highest and those in the humblest style ; as, for instance, between the *' Tintern Abbey," and " the Thorn," or the '' Simon Lee." Should their taste submit to no further change, and still remain unreconciled to the colloquial phrases, or the imi- tations of them, that are, more or less, scattered through the class last mentioned ; yet, even from the small number of the latter, they would have deemed them but an incon- siderable subtraction from the merit of the whole work ; or, what is sometimes not unpleasing in the publication of a new writer, as serving to ascertain the natural ten- dency, and, consequently, the proper direction of the au- thor's genius. In the critical remarks, therefore, prefixed and annexed to the " Lyrical Ballads," I believe, that we may safely rest, as the true origin of the unexampled opposition which Mr. Wordsworth's writings have been since doomed to en- counter. The humbler passages in the poems themselves were dwelt on and cited to justify the rejection of the theory. What in and for themselves would have been either forgotten or forgiven as imperfections, or at least comparative failures, provoked direct hostility when an- nounced as intentional, as the result of choice after full deliberation. Thus the poems, adiiiitted by alias excel- lent, joined with those which had pleased the hr greater number, though they formed two-thirds of che whole work, instead ot^ being deemed (as in all right they should have been, even if we take for granted that the reader judged aright) an atonement for the few exceptions, gave wind and fuel to the animosity against both the poems 50 and the poet. In all perplexity there is a portion of fear, which predisposes the mind to an<4er. Not able to deny that the author possessed both genius and a powerful in- tellect, they felt very positive^ but were not quite certain^ that he mi^ht not be in the right, and they themselves in the wron^ ; an unquiet state of mind, which seeks allevi- ation by quarrelling with the occasion of it, and by won- dering at the perverseness of the man who had written along and argumentative essay to persuade them, that " Fair is foul, and f.ul is fair ;" in other words, that they had been all their lives admiring without judgment, and were now about to censure with- out reason."^ That this conjecture is not wide from the mark, T am induced to believe from the noticeable fact, which 1 can Btate on my own knowledge, that the same general cen- * In opinions of long continuance, and in which we had never before been molested by a single doui:»t, to be suddenly convincfA of an error^ is almost like being- comicfed of a fault. There is a state of mind, which is the direct antithesis of that which takes place when we make a butl. The bull, namely, consists in the bringing- tog-ethf^r two incompatible thoug-hts, with th'^ sensatioriy but without the sense of their connexion. The psycho- logical condition, or that whir-h constitutes the possibility of this state, bemg such disproportionate vividness of two distant thoughts, as extin- guishes or obscures the consciousness of the intermediate images or con- ceptions, or whollv abstracts the attention from them. Thus in the well known bull, " / was ajine child, hid they chans^ed mp;" the first conc^^ption expressed in the word " /,'* is that of ju'rsonal identitv — Ego contf.mplans : the second expressed in the word " me," is the visual imag-e or object by which the mind represents to itself its past condition, or rather, its person- al identity under the form in which it imagined itself prtviously to have existed — ^"Kgo contemplatus. JVow, the change of one visual image for another im-olves in itself no absurdity, and iVecomes absurd only by its immediate juxta-position with the first thought, which is rendered possi- ble by the whole attention being successively absorbed in each singly, so as not to notice the interjacent notion, *' changed," which, bv its mcon- gruity with the first thought, " /," constitutesthe Ijull. Add only, that this process is facilitated by tlie circumstance of the words *' )'* and *^ me^'' being sometimes equivalent, and sometimes having a distinct meaiiing; sometimes, namely, signifying the act of self-consciousness, sometimes the external image in and by which the mind represents that act to itsoU, the result and symbol of its individuality. Now, suppose the direct contrary state, and >ou will have a distinct Sv^^nse of the connexion between t^vo conceptions, without that sensation of such connexion which is supplied by h.p.bit. The nvdnftels, as if lie nere Jitandir.g on liis head, thougn he cannot but see, that he is truly standing on his ^ect. This, as a painful sensL-ticni, will of course have a tendrncy to associatei^s/lf with the person w'no occasions it: even as persons, who h: ve been by painful means restored from derangement, are known to feel an inv©lvuitary djs- ilVe towards their physician"^ «1 sure should have been grounded almost by each different person on some different poem. Among those, whose candour and judgment I estimate highly, J distinctly re- member six who expressed iheir objections to the *' Ly- rical Ballads,' almost in the same words, and altogether to the same purport, at the same time admitting, ihat se- veral of the poems had given them great pleasure ; and, strange as it might seem, the composition which one had cited as execrable, another had quoted as his favourite. I am indeed convinced, in my or/n mind, that could the same experiment have been tried with these volumes as was made in the well-known story of the picture, the re- sult would have been the same ; the parts which had been covered by the number of the black spots on the one day, would be found equally albo lapide notatae on the suc- ceeding. However this may be, it is assuredly hard and unjust to fix the attention on a few separate and insulated poems, with as much aversion as it' they had been so many plague-spots on the whole work, instead of passing tliera over in silence, as so much blank paper, or leaves of bookseller's catalogue ; especially, as no one pretends to have found immorality or indelicacy ; and the poems, therefore, at the worst, could only be regarded as so many light or inferior coins in a roleau of gold, not as so much alloy in a weight of bullion. A friend whose talents \ hold in the highest respect, but whos^ judgment 2iud strong sound sense 1 have had almost continued occasion to revere^ making the usual complaints to me concerning both the style and subjects of Mr. Wordsworth's minor poems. I admitted that there were some few of the tales and inci- dents, in which I could not myself find a sufficient cause for their having been recorded in metre, i mentioned " Alice Fell" as an instance ; '' nay," replied my friend, with more than usual quickness of manner, *' I cannot agree with you there I th:n I own does seem to me a re- markably pleasing poem '* In the *' Lyrical Ballads' (for my expt^i'ience doe^^ not ennble me to extend the re- mark equally unqualified to the (wo vsubsequent volumes) 1 have heard, at different times, and from difierent indi- viduals, every single poem extolled and reprobated with the exception of those of loftier kind, which, as was before observed, seem to have won universal praise. This fact 52 of itself would have made me diffident in toy censures, had not a still stronger ground been furnished by the strange contrast of the beat and long continuance of the opposition, with the nature of the faults stated as justify- ing it. The seductive faults, the dulcia \^itia of Cowley, Marini, or Darwin, might reasonably be thought capable of corrupting the public judgment for half a century, and require a twenty years' war, campaign after campaign, in order to dethrrne the usurper, and re-eslablish the legiti- mate taste. But that a downright simpleness, under the affectation of simplicity, prosaic words in feeble metre, silly thoughts in childish phrases, and a preference of mean, degrading, or, at best, trivial associations and cha- racters, should succeed in forming a school of imitators, a company of almost 7'eUgio7is admirers, and this among young men of ardent minds, liberal education, and not " with academic laurels unbestowed ;'* and that this bare and bald counterfeit of poetry, which is characterised as below criticism, should, for nearly twenty years, have well-nigh engrossed criticism as the main, if not the only, butt of review, magazine, pam- phlets, poem, and paragraph ; — this is, indeed, matter of wonder ! Of yet greater i.^ it, that the contest should still continue as* undecided as that between Bacchus and the * Without, however, the apprehensions attributed to the Pagan refor- mer of the poetic republic. If we mav judge from the preface to the re- cent collection of his poems, Mr. W. would have answered with Xan- And pretei Ka» Tojcrfi^as; SAN. s/ia A.', aS^ £q:fovTi(ra. id here let me dare hint to the authors of the numerous parodies and etended imitations of Mr. Wordsvvorth's style, that, at once to convey t and wi-dom in the semblance of folly and dulness, as is done in the clowns and fools, nay, even in the Dogberry, of our Shakspeare, is, doubtless, a proof of genius ; or, at al! events; of satiric talent : but that the attempt to ridicule a silly and childish poem, by writing another still sillier and still more childish, can onl} rrovc, (if it prove any thing at all,) that the parodist is a still greated blockhead than the original writer, and, what is far worse, a 7nalignnnt coxcomJj to boot. The talent for mimicry seems strohiest where the human race are most degraded. The poor, naked, half iiumaji ravages of New Holland, were found excellent mimics : and in civilized society, minds of the \er} lowest stamp alone satirize br copying- At least the difterence, w hich niust blend witn, and balance the liKeness, in order to constitute a just imitation, existing* here merely in caricature, detracts from the libeller's heart, without adding an iota to the credit of hi* understanding. 53 frogs in Aristophanes ; when the former descended to the realms of the departed to brine; back the spirit of old and genuine poesy. X. aXXa ,aTiv x£xja^(?yfc^a X'oTTccrov Ti (pa?i;7f av -nfiecr Xav5avn 5i Ti;i£^aj 3j£xfK£)(€^, xoa|, Jtoaf •' A. TSTOJ 7aj 8 VI)IT1C7fT£. X. e5£ fifv nuaj cru Travtcoj. A. is5f fifv nfifij 7£ 5n /la «5£rroT£' xEx^a^ojittJ 7ap xav /i£ 5ft 5i -niiffaj, £coi dv i;;iu)v fTTixjaTricro^ to) Koa^ ■ X. {i^=^£x£x£|, KOAS, KOAS ! During the last year of my residence at Cambridge, I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publica- tions, entitled '' Descriptive Sketches ;" and sebJ.om, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced. In the form, style, and manner of the whole poem, and in the structure of the particular lines and periods, there is an harshness and an acerbity connected and combin- ed with words and images all a-glow, which might recall those products of the veoretable world, where gorgeous blossoms rise out of the hard and thorny rind and shell, within which the rich fruit was elaborating. The lan- guage was not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength ; while the novelty and struggling crowd of images, acting in conjunction with the difficulties of the style, demand- ed always a greater closeness of attention than poetry, (at all events, than descriptive poetry,) has a right to Vol. I. 6 bi claim. It not seldom, therefore, justified the complaint of obscurity. In the following extract I have sometimes fancied that I saw an emblem of the poem itself, and of the author's genius as it was then displayed. ^* 'Tis storm ; and hid in mist from hour to hour, All day the floods a deepening- murmur pour ; The sky is veiled, and every cheerful sight: Dark is the region as with coming" night ; And yet what frequent bursts of overpowering light ; Triumphant on the bosom of the storm, Glances the fire-clad eagle's wheeling form ; Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine The wood-crowned cliffs that o*er the lake recline ; Wide o'er the Alps a hundred streams unfold, At once to pillars turn'd that flame with gold ; Behind his sail the peasant strives to shun The West, that burns like one dilated sun, Where in a mighty crucible expire The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire.'* The poetic Psyche, in its process to full development, undergoes as many changes as its Greek name-sake, the butterfly.* And it is remarkable how soon genius clears and purifies itself from the faults and errors of its earliest products; faults which, in its earliest compositions, are the more obtrusive and confluent ; because, as heteroge- neous elements which had only a temporary use, they constitute the \evy ferment by which themselves are car- ried off. Or we may compare them to some diseases, ivhich must work on the humours, and be thrown out on the surface, in order to secure the patient from their fu- ture recurrence. 1 was in my twenty- fourth year when 1 had the happiness of kno\ving Mr. Wordsworth person- *The fact, that in Gi-eok P:-\-chp i? the common nnme for the soni, and the buttcrliy, is thus alluded torn tlie fellowing stanza from an unpublished )H)em of the author : ^' The butterfly the ancient Grecians made The soul's fair emblem, and its only name — But of the soul, escaped the slavish "trade Of m.ortal life ! For m this earthly frame Our's is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame, Manifold motions makin;^ little speed, And to deform aud kill the things whereon we f^ed.'^ S. T. €. 55 ally, ^nd while memory lasts, I shall hardly forget the sudden effect produced on my mind, by his recitation of a manuscript poem, which still remains unpublished, but of which the stanza, and tone of style, were the same as those of the *' Female Vagrant,'- as originally printed ia the first volume of the '' Lyrical Ballads." There was here no mark of strained thought or forced diction, no croud or turbulence of imagery; and, as the poet hath himself well described in his lines " on revisiting the Wye," manly reflection, and human associations, had given both variety and an additional interest to natural objects, which, in the passion and appetite of the first love, they had seemed to him neither to Heed or permit. The occasional obscurities which had risen from an im- perfect controul over the resources of his native language^ had almost wholly disappeared, together with that worse defect of arbitrary and illogical phrases, at once hack- neyed and fantastic, which hold so distinguished a place in the technique of ordinary poetry, and vvill, more or Je?s, alloy the earlier poems of the truest genius, unless the attention has been specifically directed to their worth- lessness and incongruity.* 1 did not perceive any thing particular in the mere style of the poem alluded to dur- ing its recitation, except, indeed, such difference as was not separable from the thought and manner ; and the Speucerian stanza, which always, more or less, recalls to the reader's mind Spencer's own style, would doubtless have authorized, in my then opinion, a more frequent descent to the phrases of ordinary life than could, with- * Mr. VVords worth, even in his tw-o earliest, "the Evening Walk and the descriptive Sketches," is more free from this latter defect than most of the young- poets, his contemporaries. It may, however, be exempli- fied—together with the harsh and obscure construction, in which he mor^ often offended— in the following lines : " 'Mid stormy vapours ever driving by, Where ospreys, cormorants, and herons cry; Where hardly given the hopeless waste to cheer, Denied the bread of life the foodful ear, Dwindles the pear on autumn's latest spray, And apple sickens pale in summer'^ ray ; JS'en here content has fixed her smiling reign With independence, child of high disdain.'^ I hope I need not say, that I have quoted these lines for no other purposd a^/" il? ^^^^^ ^y meaning fully understood. It is to be regretted tliat Mr. Wordsworth has not republished these two poems entire. 56 out an ill effect, have been hazarded in the heroic couplet. It was not, however, the freedom from false taste, whe- ther as to common defects, or to those more properly his own, which made so unusual an impression on my feel- ings irnmediately, and subsequently on my judgment. It was the union of deep feeling with profound thought ; the tine balance of truth in observing, with the imaginative faculty in modifying the objects observed ; and, above all, the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere^ and. with it, the depth and height of the ideal world around forms, incidents, and situations, of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle and the dew drops *' To find no contradiction in the union of old and new ; to contem- plate the ANCIENT of days and all his works with feel- ings as fresh as if all had then sprang forth at the first creative fiat ; characterizes the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry oa the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood ; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day, for, perhaps, forty years, had rendered familiar ; *' With sun and moon and stars throughout the year, And man and woman ;" this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish genius from talents. And, therefore, it is the prime merit of genius, and its most un- equivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling concerning them, and that freshness of sensation which is the constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily convalescence. Who has not a thousand times seen snow fall on water ? Who has not watched it with a new feeling from the time that he has read Burn's comparison of sensual pleasure, *' To snow that falls upon a river, A moment white — then gone for ever !^' " In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, ge- nius produces the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal ad- 51 mission. Truths, of all others the most awful and mys- terious, yet being;, at the same lime, of universal interest^ are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the life and efficiency of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dor- mitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors," The Friend,* page 76, No. 5, This excellence, which, in all Mr. Wordsworth's wri- tings, is more or less predominant, and which constitutes the character of his mind, I no sooner felt than I sought to understand. Repeated meditations led me first to sus- pect, (and a more intimate analysis of the human facul- ties, their appropriate marks, functions, and effects, ma- tured my conjecture into full conviction,) that fancy and imagination were two distinct and widely different facul- ties, instead of being, according to the general belief, either two names with one meaning, or, at furthest, the lower and higher degree of one and the same power. If is not, I own, easy to conceive a more opposite transla- tion of the Greek phantasia than the Latin imaginatio ; but it is equally true, that in all societies there exists an instinct of growth, a certain collective, unconscious good sense, working progressively to desynonymizej those * As " the Friend" was printed on stampt sheets, and sent only by the post, to a very h'mited numoer of siubscribers, the author has felt less ob- jection to quote from it, though a work of his own. To the public at larg-e, indeed, it is the same as a volume in manuscript. f This is effected either by g:iving to the one word a j^eneral, and to the other an exclusive use : as, " to put on the back," and " to endorse ;'* cr, by an actual distinction of meanings, as, " naturalist," and '• physi- (ian:" or, by difl'erence of relation, as, " I," and "me;" (each of which liic rustics of our different provinces still use in all the cases singular of the first personal pronoun.) Even the mere difference, or corruption, in tiie primwiciation of the same word, if it have become g^eneral, will pro- duce a new word nilh a distinct signification ; thus, " pronertv," and "propriety;" the latter of which, even to the time of Gliarles H,, was the nriilen word ♦or all the senses of both. Thus, too, " mister," and " master," both hasty pronunciations of the same word, " magister :*' "mistress," and " missj" " if," and " give," &c. &c. There is a sort of minim immortal, among the animalcula infusoria, which has not, natural^ ly, either birth or death, absolute bcainning or absolute end; for, at a certain period, a small point appears on its back, which deepens and lengthens till the creature divides into two^ and the same process recom- mejices in each of the halves now become integral. This may be a fainci' ful, but it is by no means a bad emblem of the formation of words, and may facilitate the conception, how immense a nomenclature may be organized from a few simple sounds by rational beings in a social state. For each new application or excitement of the same sound, will call forth a difi'erent sensation, which cam ot but atl'ect the pronunciation. The after r- (ollec- tion of the sound, without the same vivid sensation, will modify it still fur-- tlivr ; till, at bijgth, all trace of the original likeaess is worn away. 5* 58 words, originally of the same meaning, which the con- flux of dialects had supplied lo the more homogeneous lauiiuages, as the Greek and German : and which the safije cause, joined with accidents of translation from ori- ginal works of different countries, occasion in mixt lan- guages like our own. The first and most important point to be proved, is, that two conceptions perfectly dis- tinct are confused under one and the same word, and, (this dore,) to appr ipriato that word exclusively to one meaning, and the synonyme, (sliould there be one,) to the other- But if, (as will be often the case in the arts and sciences,) no sj^nonyme exists, we must either invent or borrow a word. In the present instance, the appropria- tion had already begun, and been legitimated in the de- rivative adjective : A^ilton had a highly imaginative^ Cowley a yery fanciful mind- If, therefore, I should succeed in establishing the actual existences of two fa- culties i:enerally different, the nomenclature would be at once determined. To the t^aculty by which I had cha- racterized Milton, we should confine the term iinagrna- Hon ; while the other would he contra-distinguished as fancy. Now, were it once fully ascertained, that this division is no less ^rounded in nature than that of delirium from mania, or Ot way's " Lutes, lobsters, seas of milk, and ships of amber,*' from Shakspeare's ** What, have his daughters brought him to this pass r" or from the preceding apostrophe to the elements ; the theory of the fine arts, and of poetry in particular, could jiot. ! thought, but derive some additional and import- ant light- It would, in its immediate effects, furnish a torch of guidance to the philosophical critic; and, uili- mately, to the poet himself. In energetic minds, truth soon changes, by domestication, into power ; and from di- recting in the discrimination and apprc-isa! of the product, becomes influencive in the production. To adniire on principle, is the only way to imitate without loss of ori- ginality. It has been already hinted, that metaphysics and psy- chology have long been my hobby-horse. But to have a 59 hobby-horse, and to be vain of it, are so commonly found together, that they pass ahnost for the same. I trust, therefore, that there will be more good humour than con- tempt, in the smile with which the reader chastises my self complacency, if I confess myself uncertain, whether the satisfaction from the perception of a truth new to my- self, may not have been rendered more poignant, by the conceit that it would be equally so to the public. There was a time, certainly, m which I took some little credit to myself, in the belief that 1 had been the first of my countrymen who had pointed out the diverse meaning of which the two terms were capable, and analyzed the fa- culties to which they should be appropriated. Mr. W, Taylor's recent volumes of synonymes I have not yet seen ;* but his specification of the terms in question has been clearly shown to be both insullftcient and erroneous by Mr. Wordsworth, in the preface added to the late col« * I ought to havr, added, with the exception of a single sheet which I accideutally met with at the printer's. Even from this scanty specimen, I found it impossible to doubt the talent, or not to admire the mgenuity of the author. 'That his distinctions were, for the greater oart, unsatisfac- tory to my mind, proves nothing against their accuracy : nut it may possi- bly be serviceable to him in case of a second edition, if I take this oppor- tunity of suggesting the query, whether he may not have been occasional- ly misled, by having assuniecl, as to me be appeared to have done, the non-existence of any absolute synonymes in our language ? ?vow, I cannot but think, that there are many whi^h remain for our posterity to distin- guish and appropriate, and which I regard as so much reversionary wealth in our mother tongue. When two distinct meanings are confounded un- der one or more words, (and such must be the case, as sure as our know- ledge is progressive, and, of course, imperfect) erroneous consequences will be clrawn, and what is true in one sense of the word, will be affirmed as true in toto. Men of research, startled by the consequences, seek in the things themselves (whether in or out of the mind) for a knowledge of the fact, and having disrovered the difference, remove the equivocation either by the substitution of a new word, or by the appropriation of one of the two or more words, that had before been used promiscuously. When this distinction has been so naturalized and of such general currency that the language itself does, as it were, think for us, ^like the sliding rule, which is the mechanic's safe substitute for arithmetical knowledge,) we then say, that it is evident to common sense. Common sense, therefore, differs in different ages. What was born and christened in the schools, passes bv degrees into the world at lar^e, and becomes the property of the maritet and the tea-table. At least, I can discover no otlicr meajliag of the term, commm sense, if it is to convey any specific difference from sense and judgment in genere, and where it is not used scholastically for the wdversal reason. Thus, in the reign of Charles 11., the philosophic world was called to arms by the moral sophisms of Ilohbs, and- the ablest writers exe;ted themselves' in the detection of an error which a school- boy would now be able to confute by the mere recollection, that compul- sion and obligation conveyed two ideas perfectly disparate, and that what appertained to the one, had- been falsely transferrecl to the other,- by a mere confusioQ of terciss 60 lection of his ^* Lyrical Ballads and other poems.'* The explanation which Mr. Wordsworth has himself given, will be found to differ from mine, chiefly, perhaps, as our objects are different. It could scarcely, indeed, happen otherwise, from the advantage I have enjoyed of frequent conversation with him on a subject to which a poem of his own first directed my attention, and my conclusions concerning which, he had made more lucid to myself by many happy instances drawn from the operation of na- tural objects on the mind. But it was Mr. Wordsworth's purpose to consider the influences of fancy and imagina- tion as they are manifested in poetry, and, from the dif- ferent effects, to conclude their diversity, in kind ; while it is my object to investigate the sem.inal principle, and then,' from the kind, to deduce the degree. My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches, with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots, as far as they lift themselves above ground, and are visi- ble to the naked eye of our common consciousness. Yet, even in this attempt, I am aware that I shall be obliged to draw more largely on the reader's attention,. than so immethodicai a miscellany can authorize ; when in such a work {the Ecclesiastical Policy) of such a mind as Hooker's, the judicious author, though no less admiya- ble for the perspicuity than for the port and dignity of his language ; and though he wrote for men of learning in a learned age ; saw, nevertheless, occasion to anticipate and guard against '' complaints of obscurity," as often as he was to trace his subject " to the highest well-spring and^ fountain." Which, (continues he,) '' because men are not accustomed to, the pains we take are more needful, a great deal, than acceptable ; and the matters we handle seem, by reason of newness, (till the mind grow better- acquainted \vith theun,' dark and intricate." I would gladly, therefore, .-pare both myself and others this labour, if I knew how without it to present an intelligible state- ment of my poetic creed; not as my opinions, which "weigh for nothing, but as deductions from established pre- mises, conveyed in such a form as is calculated either to effect a fundamental conviction, or to receive a funda- mentaj cont\Uation. If 1 may dare once more adopt the^ words of Mooker, *' they, unto whom we shall seem te- dious, are in no wis-e injured by us, because it is in their 61 own hands to spare that labour, which they are not wil- ling to endure." Those at least, let me be permitted to add, who have taken so much pains to render me ridicu- lous for a perversion of taste, and have supported the charge by attributing strange notions to me on no other authority than their own conjectures, owe it to themselves, as well as to me, not to refuse their attention to my own statement of the theory, which 1 do acknowledge ; or shrink from the trouble of examining the grounds on which I rest it, or the arguments which 1 offer in its jus- tification. 62 CHAPTER V. On the law of association — Its history traced from Aristotle to Hartley, There have been men in all ages, who have been in>- pelled, as by an instinct, to propose their own nature as a problem, and who devote their attempts to its solution. The first step was to construct a table of distinctions, which thev seem to have formed on the principle of the absence or presence of the will. Our various sensations, perceptions, and movements were classed as active or passive, or as media partaking of both. A still finer dis- tinction was soon established between the voluntary and the spontaneous. In our perceptions we seem to our- selves merely passive to an external power, whether as a mirror reflecting the landscape, or as a blank canvas on which some unknown hand paints it. For it is worthy of notice, that the latter, or the system of idealism, may be traced to sources equally remote with the former, or tnaterialism ; and Berkeley can boast an ancestry at least as venerable as Gassendi or Hobbs. These conjectures, however, concerning the mode in which our perceptions originated, could not alter the natural difference in things and thoughts In the former, the cause appeared wholly external ; while in the latter, sometimes our will interfered as the producing or determining cause, and sometimes our nature seemed to act by a mechanism of its own, without any conscious efibrt of the will, or even against it. Our inward experiences were thus arranged in three separate classes, the passive sense, or what the school-men call the merely receptive quality of the mind ; the voluntary ; and the spontaneous, which holds the middle place be- tween both But it is not in human nature to meditate on any mode of action, without inquiring after the law that governs it ; and in the explanation of the spontaneous movements of our being, the metaphysician took the lead of the anatomist and natural philosopher. In Egypt, Pa- lestine, Greece, and India, the analysis of the mind had reached its noon find manhood, while experimental re- 63 search was still in its dawn and infancy. For many, very many centuries, it has been difhcult to advance a nevv truth, or even a new error, in the phiJo-ophy of the intellect or morals. With regard, however, to the laws that direct the spontaner)us movements of thought, and the principle of their intellectual mechanism, there exists, it has bten asserted, an important exception, most honoura- ble to the moderns, and in the merit of »vhich our own country claims the largest share. Sir James Mackintosh (who, amid the variety of his talents and attainments, is not of less repute for the depth and accuracy of his phi- losophical inquiries, than for the eloquence with which he is said to render their most ditlicult results perspicuous, and the driest attractive) affirmed, in the lectures deliver- ed by him at Lincoln's Inn Hall, that the law of associa- tion, as established in the contemporaneity of the original impressions, formed the basis of all true phsychology ; and any ontological or metaphysical science, not contained in such (i. e. empirical) phsychology, was but a w^eb of abstractions and generalizations. Of this prolific truth, of tnis great fundamental law, he declared Hobbs to have been the original discoverer, while its full application to the whole intellectual system we owe to David Hartley ;-• who stood in the same relation to Hobbs, as Newton to Kepler ; the law of association being that to the mind, which gravitation is to matter. Of the former clause in this assertion, as it respects the comparative merits of the ancient metaphysicians, inclu- ding their commentators, the school men, and of the mo- dern French and British philosophers, from Hobbs to Hume, Hartley and Condeilac, this is not the place to speak, ^'o wide indeed is the chasm between this gen- tleman's philosophical creed and mine, that so far from being able to join hands, we could scarce make our voices intelligible to each other: and to bridge it over, would require more time, skill, and power, than I believe myself to possess, Bui the latter clause involves for the greater part a mere question of fact and history, and the accuracy of the. statement is to be tried by documents rather than reasoning. First, then, I deny Hobbs's claim in toto : for he had been anticipated by Des Cartes, whose work '' De Me-ho- io" preceded Hobbs's " De Natura Humana," by more 64 than a year. But what is of much more importance, Hobbs builds nothing on the principle which he had an- nounced. He doen not even announce it, as differing in any respect from the general laws of material motion and impact: nor was it, indeed, possible for him so to do, compatibly with his system, which was exclusively mate- rial and mechanical. Far otherwise is it with Des Cartes ; greatly as he too, in his after writings, (and still more egregiously his followers, De la Forge, and others,) ob- scured the truth by their attempts to explain it on the the- ory of nervous fluids and material configurations. But in his interesting work " De Methodo," Des Cartes re- lates the circumstance which first led him to meditate on this subject, and which since then has been often noticed and employed as an instance and illustration of the law. A child who, with its eyes bandaged, had lost several of his fingers by amputation, continued to complain for many days successively of pains, now in his joint, and now in that of the very fingers which had been cut off. Des Cartes was led by this incident to reflect on the uncer- tainty with which we attribute any particular place to any inward pain or uneasiness, and proceeded, after long con- sideration, to establish it as a general law, that contem- poraneous impressions, whether images or sensations, re- cal each other mechanically. On this principle, as a ground work, he built up the whole system of human lan- guage, as one continued process of association. He show- ed in what sense not only general terms, but generic images, (under the name of abstract ideas, )actually exist- ed, and in what consists their nature and power. As one word may become the general exponent of many, so, by association, a simple image may represent a whole class. But in truth, Hobbs himself makes no claims to any dis- covery, and introduces this law of association, or, (in his own language,) discursus mentalis, as an admitted fact, in the solution alone of which this, by causes purely physio- logical, he arrogates any originality. His system is briefly this ; whenever the senses are impinged on by external objects, whether by the rays of light reflected from them, or by effluxes of their finer particles, there results a cor- respondent motion of the innermost and subtlest organs. This motion constitutes a representation^ and there re- mains an impression of the same, or a certain disposition 65 to repeat the same motion. Whenever we feel several objects at the same time, the hnpressions that are left (or, in the language of Mr. Hume, the ideas) are linked to- gether VVhenever, therefore, any one of the movements which constitute a complex impression, are renewed through the senses, the others succeed mechanically. It foHow.^of necessity, therefore, that Hobbs, as well as Hart-* ley. and all others who derive association from the con- nexion and interdependence of the supposed matter, the movements o which constitute our thoughts, must have reduced all its forms to the one law of time. But even the merit of announcing this law with philosophic preci- sion cannot be fairly conceded to him. For the objects of any two ideas* need not have co-existed in the same sensation in order to become mutually associable. The same result will follow, when one only of the two ideas * I here use the word " id^a" in Mr. Hume's sense, on account of its g-enera! currenc}" among the En^rlish metaphysicians, thoug']i ag:ainst my own JL:d2:ment; for I believe that the vague use of this word has been the caus^" of mui h error and moi'e confusion. The word, Idea, in its original sense, as u^f d ])y Pindar, Aristophanes, and in the gospel of Matthew, re- presented the visual abstraction of a distant object, when we see the whole without distinguishing its parts. Plato adopted it as a technical term, and as the antithesis to EioooAa, or sensuous images ; the transient and perishable emblems, or mental words, of ideas. The ideas tlicm- selves he considered as mysterious powers, living, seminal, formative, and exempt from time. In this sense the word became the property of the Platonic school : and it seldom occurs in Aristotle, without some such phrase annexed to it, as according to Plato, or as Plato says. Our En2"lish writers to the end of Charles 2nd's reign, or somewhat later, employed it either in the original sense, Oi' platomcally, or in a sense nearly corres- pondent to our present use of the substantive, Ideal, always, however, op- posing it, more or less, to image, whether of present or absent objects. The reader will not be displeased with the following interesting exempli- fication from bishop Jeremy Taylor. " St. Lewis the king sent Ivo bishop of Chartres on an embasej'^, and he told, that he met a grave and state- ly matron on the way with a censer of fire in one hand, and a vess^^l oi water in the other; and observing her to have a melancholy, religious, and phantastic deportment and look, he asked her what those symbols meant, and what she meant to do with her fire and water; she answered, my purpose is with the fire to burn paradise, and with my water to quench tWQ flames of hell, that men may serve God purely for the love of Cod. But wc rarcl} meet with such s'pirits, wluch love virtue so meta- physically as to ahsircrt her from all sensible compositions^ and love the jpurity (]f the idea/*'* Dea Cartes having introduced into his philosophy the fanci- ful hypothesis of maierial iAeas^ or certain configurations oi" the brain, which v/e re as so memy moulds to the influxes of the extern3l world; Mr. Locke adonted the* term, but extended its signification to whatever is the immediate oojectof the mind's attention or consciousness. Mr. Hume, distinguishing those representations which are accompanied with a sense of a present object, f^om tho?e reproduced by the mind itself, designated the former bv impressionsi and connned the word idea to the latter. Vol. 1. 6 66 bas been represented by the senses, and the other by the memory. Long, however, before either Hobbs or Des Cartes, the Luv of association had been defined, and its important functions set forth by Mehmchthon, Ammerbach, and Lu- dovicus Vives ; more especially by the last. Phantasia, it is to be noticed, is employed by Vives to express the mental power of comprehension, or the active function of the mind ; and imaginatio for the receptivity (vis recep- tiva) of impressions, or for the passive perception. The power of combination he appropriates to the former: — *' quQS singula et simpliciter acceperat imaginatio, ea con- jnngit et disgungit phantasia." And the law by which the thoughts are spontaneously presented follows thus : '* quiB simul sunt a phnntasa comprehensa si alterutnim occurrat, solet secum alterum representare." To time, therefore, he subordinates all the other exciting causes of association. The soul proceeds " a causa ad effectum, ab hoc ad instrumentum, a parte ad totum ;" thence to the place, from place to person, and from this to whatever preceded or followed, all as being parts of a total impres- sion, each of which may recal the other. The apparent springs " Saltus vel transitus etiam longisimos," he ex- plains by the same thought having been a component part of two or more total impressions. Thus " ex Scipi- one venio incogitationem potentiae Turcicas proper victo- rias ejus in ea parte Asins in qua regnabat Antiochus." But from Vives I pass at once to the source of his doc- trines, and (as far as we can judge from the remains yet ^extant of Greek philosophy) as to the first, so to the fullest and most perfect enunciation of the associative principle, viz. to the writino;s of Aristotle ; and of these princi- pally to the books'' De Anima," " De Memoria," and that which is entitled in the old translations *' Parva Natura- lia." In ns much as later writers have either deviated from, or added to his doctrines, they appear to me to have introduced either error or groundless supposition. In the first place, it is to be observed, that Aristotle's positions on this subject are unmixed with fiction. The wise Stairyrite speaks of no successive particles propa- gating motion like billiard balls, (as Hobbs ;) nor of ner- ro -s or anim d spirits, where inanimate and irrational so- lids are thawej down, and distilled, or filtrated by ascen- 67 sion, into living and intelligent fluids, that etch and re-etch engravin2;s on the brain, (as the followers of Des Cartes, and the humoral pathologists in general ;) nor of an os- cillating ether which was to effect the same service for the nerves of the brain considered as solid fibres, as the animal spirits perform for them under the notion of hollow tubes, (as Hartley teaches) — nor finally, (with yet more recent dreamers,) of chemical compositions by elective af- finity, or of an electric light at once the immediate ob- ject and the ultimate organ of inward vision, which rises to the brain hke an Aurora Borealis, and there disporting in various shapes, (as the balance of plus and minus, or negative and positive, is destroyed or re-established,) im- ages out both past and present. Aristotle delivers a just theortj, without pretending to an hypothesis ; or in other words, a comprehensive survey of the different facts, and of their relations to each other, without supposition^ i. e. a fact placed under a number of facts, as their common support and explanation ; though in the mv^jority of in- stances, these hypotheses or suppositions better deserve the name of XTrarromo-crf, or siiffictions. He uses, indeed, the word KivTio-crj, to express what we call representations or ideas, but +ie carefully distinguishes them from mate- rial motion, designating the latter always by annexing the words Ev Torrw, or xara tottov On the Contrary, in his treatise ^* De Anima," he excludes place and motion from all the operations of thought, whether representations or voli- tions, as attributes utterly and absurdly heterogeneous. The. general law of association, or more accurately the common condition under which all exciting causes act, and in which they may be generalized, according to Aristotle, is this. : Ideas, by having been together, acquire a power of recalling each other ; or every partial representation awakes the total representation of which it had been a part. In the practical determination of this common prin- ciple to particular recollections, he admits ^\e agents or occasioning causes : 1st, connection in time, whether simultaneous, preceding or successive ; 2nd, vicinity or connection in space ; 3rd. interdependence or necessary connection, as cause and effect ; 4th, likeness; and 5th, contrast. As an additional solution of the occasional seem- ing chasms in the continuity of reproduction, he proved 6B that movements or ideas possessing one or the other of' these five characters had passed through the mind as in- termediate links, sufficiently clear to recal other parts of the same total impressions with which they had co-existed, though not vivid enough to excite that degree of attention which is requisite for distinct recollection, or as w^e may aptly express it, after-consciousness In association, then, consists the whole mechanism of the reproduction of im- pressions, in the Aristotelian Psychology. It is the uni- versal law of the passive fancy and mechanical memory : that w hich supplies to all other faculties their objects, to all thought the elements of its materials. In consulting the excellent commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Parva Naturalia of Aristotle, I was struck at once with its close resemblance to Hume's essay on association. The main thoughts were the same in both, the orde7' of the thoughts was the same, and even the illustrations differed only by Hume's occasional substitu- tion of more modern examples. I mentioned the cir- cumstance to several of my literary acquanitances, who admitted the closeness of the resemblance, and that it seemed too great to be explained by mere coincidence ; but they thought it improbable that Hume should have held the pages of the angelic Doctor worth turning ov^er. But some time after, Mr. Payne, of the King's mews, showed Sir James Mackintosh some odd volumes of St. Thomas Aquinas, partly perhaps from having heard that Sir James (then Mr.) Mackintosh had in his lectures past a high encomium on this canonized philosopher, but chiefly from the fact, that the volumes had belonged to Mr. Hume, and had here and there marginal marks and notes of reference in his own hand writing. Among these volumes was that which contains the Parva J^^aturalia^ in the old latin version, swathed and swaddled in the commentary afore mentioned ! It remains, then, for me, first, to state wherein Hartley differs from Aristotle ; then, to exhibit the grounds of my conviction, that he differed only to err : and next, as the result, to show, by what influences of the choice and judgment the associative power becomes either meQ:iory or fancy ; and, in conclusion, to appropriate the remain- ing officer of Vhe mincj to tbe reason and the ima|ina- 69 tion. With- my best efforts to be as perspicuous as the nature of language will permit on such a subject, I earn- estly solicit the good wishes and friendly patience of my readers, while I thus go *' sounding on my dim and pe- rilous way.'' 6^ 70 CHAPTER VL That Hartley'' s system, as far as it differs from that of Aristotle, is neither tenable in theory, nor founded in facts. Of Hartley's hypothetical vibrations in his hypotheti- cal oscillating ether of the nerves, which is the first and most obvious distinction between his system and that of Aristotle, I shall say little. This, with all other similar attempts to render that an object of the sight which has no relation to sight, has been already sufficiently expos- ed by the younger Reimarus, Maasse, &-c. as outraging the very axioms of mechanics, in a scheme, the merit of which consists in its being mechanical. Whether any other philosophy be possible, but the mechanical ; and again, whether the m.echanical system can have any claim to be called philosophy ; are questions for another place. It is, however, certain, that as long as we deny the former, and affirm the latter, we must bewilder our- selves, whenever we would pierce into the adyta of causa- tion ; and ail that laborious conjecture can do, is to fill up the gaps of fancy. Under that despotism of the eye (the emancipation from which Pythagoras by his numeral^ and Plato by his musical, symbols, and both by geomet- ric discipline, aimed at, as the first rr^cncudeviixQv of the mind) — under this strong sensuous iniiuence, we are restless, because invisible thmgs are not the objects of virion ;. and metaphysical systems, for the most part, be- come popular, not for their truth, but in proportion as they attribute to causes a susceptibility of being see?2, if only our visual organs were sufficientl}^ powerful. From a hundred possible confutations, let one suffice. According to this system, the idea or vibration a from the external object A becomes associable with the idea or vibration m from the external object M, because the oscillation a propagated itself so as to re-produce the oscillation rn. But the original impression from M was essentially different from the impression A : unless, there- lore, different causes may produce the same effect, the vi- 71 bration a could never produce the vibration m i and this* therefore, could never be the means by which a and m are associated. To understand this, the attentive reader need only be reminded, that the ideas are themselves, in Hartley's system, nothing more than their appropri- ate configurative vibrations. It is a mere delusion of the iancy to conceive the pre-existence of the ideas, in any chain of association, as so many differently coloured billiard-balls in contact, so that when an object, the bil- liard-stick, strikes the first or white ball, the same motion propagates itself through the red, green, blue, black, Lc. and sets the whole in motion. No ! we must sup- pose the very same force, which constitutes the white ball, to constitute the red or black ; or the idea of a cir- cle to constitute the idea of a triangle ; which is impossi- ble. But it may be said, that, by the sensations from the objects A and M, the nerves have acquired a disposition to the vibrations a and m, and therefore a need only be repeated in order to reproduce m. Now we will grant, for a moment, the possibility of such a disposition in a material nerve ; which yet seems scarcely less absurd than to say, that a weather-cock had acquired a habit of turning to the east, from the wind having been so long in that quarter : for if it be replied, that we must take in the circumstance of ///e, what then becomes of the me- chanical philosophy ? And what is the nerve, but the flint which the wag placed in the pot as the first ingredient of his stone-broth, requiring only salt, turnips, and mutton, for the remainder ! But if we waive this, and presup- pose the actual existence of such a disposition, two cases are possible. Either, every idea has its own nerve and correspondent oscillation, or this is not the case. If the latter be the truth, we should gain nothing by these dis- positions ; for then, every nerve having several disposi- tions, when the motion of any other nerve is propagated into it, there will be no ground or cause present, why ex- actly the oscillation ?/i should arise, ra^ther than any other to which it was equally predisposed. But if we take the former, and let e\ery idea have a nerve of its owrh, then every nerve must be capable of propagating its mo- tioa iuto many other nerves j and again, there is no rea- 72 son assignable, why the vibration m should arise, rathet than any oiher ad libitum. It is fashionable to smile at Hartley's vibrations and vibratiuncles ; and his work has been re-edited bjr Priestley, vrith the omission of the material hypothesis. But Hartley was too great a man, too coherent a thinker, for this to have been done, either consistently or to any wise purpose. For all other parts of his system, as far as they are peculiar to that system, once removed from their mechanical basis, not only lose their main support, but the very motive which led to their adoption. Thus the principle oi contemporaneity^ which Aristotle had made the common condition of all the laws of association, Hart- ley was constrained to represent as being itself the sole law. For to what law can the action of material atoms be subject, but that of proximity in place? And to what law can their motions be subjected, but that of time ? Again, from this results inevitably, that the will, the rea- son, the judgment, and the understanding, instead of be- ing the determining causes of association, must needs be represented as its creatures, and among its mechanical effects. Conceive, for instance, a broad stream, winding through a mountainous country, with an indefinite number of currents, varying and running into each other accord- ing as the gusts chance to blow trom the opening of the mountains. The temporary union of several currents in one, so as to form the main current of the moment, would ► present an accurate image of Hartley's theory of the will. Had this been really the case, the consequence would have been, that our whole life would be divided between the despotism of outward impressions, and that of sense- less and passive memory. Take his law in its highest abstraction and most philosophical form, viz. that every partial representation recalls the total representation of which it was a part ; and the law becomes nugatory, were it only from its universality. In practice it would, indeed, be mere lawlessness. Consider how immense must be the sphere of a total impression from the top of St. Paul's church ; and how rapid and continuous the se- ries of such total impressions, if, therefore, we suppose the absence of all interference of the will, reason, and judgment, one or other of two consequences must result. Either the ideas, (or relicts of such impression,) will eX'* 73 aclly iiriitate the order of the impression itself, wbicli would be absolute delirium ; or any one part of that im- pression might recall any other part, and, (as from the law of continuity there must exist, in esery total impres- sion, some one or more parts, which are com.ponents of some other following impression, and soon ad infinitum,) any part of a7iy impression might recal any part of any other, without a cause present to determine ie.7iftnt should be For to bring in the will, or reason, as causes of their own cause, that is, at once causes and effects, can satisfy those only who, in their pretended evidences of a God, having, first, demanded organization as the sole cause and ground of intellect, will, then, coolly demand the pre- existence of intellect as the cause and ground-work of organization. There is, in truth, but one state to which this theory applies at all, namely, that of complete light- headedness ; and even to this it applies but partially, because the will and reason are, perhaps, never wholly suspended. A case of this kind occurred in a Catholic town in Ger many, a year or two before my arrival at Gotlingen, and had not then ceased to be a frequent subject of conversa tion. A young woman of four or five and twenty, who could neither read nor write, was seized with a nervous fever ; during which, according to the asseverations of all the priests and monks of the neighbourhood, she became possessed^ and, as it appeared, by a very learned devil. She continued incessantly talking Latin, Greek, and He- brew, in very pompous tones, and with most distinct enun- ciation. This possession was rendered more probable, by the known fact that she was, or had been, an heretic. Voltaire humourously advises the devil to decline all ac- quaintance with medical men ; and it would have been more to his reputation if he had taken this advice in the present instance. The case had attracted the particular attention of a young physician, and, by his statement, many eminent physiologists and psychologists visited the town and cross-examined the case on the spot. Sheets full of her raviiigs were taken down frbm her own mouth, and were found to consist of sentences coherent and in- telligible each for itself, but with little or no connectioi witli each other Of the Hebrew, a small portion only could be traced to the Bible ; the remainder seemed to 74 be in the rabinical dialect. All trick or conspiracy was out of the question. Not only had the J'oung woman ever been an h trinl^ss, simple creature, but she was evi- dently labouring under a nervous fever. In the town in which she had been resident for many years, as a servant in differeni families, no solution presented itself. The young physician, however, determined to trace her past life step by step; for the patient herself was incapable of returning a rational answer. He, at length, succeed- ed in discovering the place where her parents had Jived ; travelled thither, found thetn dead, but an uncle hurviv- ing ; and from him learnt, that the patient had been cha- ritably taken by an old protestant pastor at nine years old, and had remained with him some years, even till the old man's death Of this pastor the uncle knew no- thing, but that he was a very good man. With great ditficulty, and after much search, our young medical phi- losopher discovered a niece of the pastor's, who had liv- ed with hiin as his house-keeper, and had inherited his effects. She remembered the girl ; related, that her ve- nerable uncle had been too indulgent, and could not bear to hear the girl scolded ; that she was willing to have kept her, but that, after her patron's death, the girl her- self refused to stay. Anxious inquiries were then, of course, made concerning the pastor's habits, and the so- lution of the phenomenon was soon obtained. For it appeared, that it had been the old man's custom for years, to walk up and down a passage of his house, into which the kitchen door opened, and to read to himself, with a loud voice, out of his favourite books. A considerable number of these were still in the niece's possession. She added, that he was a very learned man, and a great He- braist. Among the books were found a collection of rab- binical writings, together with several of the Greek and Latin fathers ; and the physician succeeded in identify- ing so many passages with those taken down at the young woman's bedside, that no doubt could remain in any ra- tional mind, concerning the true origin of the impressions made on her nervous system. This authenticated case furnishes both proof and in- ^tanc*^, that relicks of sensation may exist, for an inde- finite time, in a latent state, in the very same order in which they were originally impressed ; and, as we caja- 75 not rationally suppose the feverish state of the brain to act in any other way than as a stimulus, this fact, (and it would not be difficult to adduce several of the same kini!,) contributes to make it even probable, that all thousjhts are, in themselves imperishable; and that, if the intelligf nt faculty should be rendered rnore com- prehensive it would require only a different and appor- tioned organization, the body celestial instead of the body terrestrial^ to bring before every human soul the collec- tive experience of its whole past existence And this — this, perchance, is the dread book of judgment, in whose mysterious hieroglyphics every idle word is recorded ! Yea, in the very nature of a living spirit, it maybe more possible that heaven and earth should pass away, than that a single act, a single thought, should be loosened, or lost, from that living chain of causes, to all whose links, conscious or unconscious, the free will, our only absolute self^ is co-extensive and co-present. But not now dare I longer discourse of this, waiting for a loftier mood, and a nobler subject, warned from within and from without, that it is profanation to speak of these mysteries* TC?J linJirroTf (pavTacrS-fraiv, coj xaAcv t3 tr\i 5ixa»o(rbVTij irai crw(pjocruvnj ttjo- couTTov, xal Cii atf lairi^oi are ja^oi «toj xaXa. Tov 70,^ ofujvra rrfoj t6 ejc6/x£vov o"Li77fv» xal o^oiov Troi-ncraMfvov 6i\ ittiPolWuv rn {q' bv 'ya^ av ttcj- TTOTJ iJSiv "O^S-aXjjioj IlXiov TiKiotidiM fin 'yr/Evh^ievoSy hS( to Ka\ov av Mtj ^uxn /^^ "olXt) 7ivofiiv7i. Plotinus. * *' To those to whose imag-ination it has never been presented, how beautiful is the countenance of justi( e and wisdom ; and tiiat neither the morning- nor the evening' star are so fair. For, in ordt^r to direct the view arig-ht, it behoves that the beholder should have made himself congene- rous and similar to the object beheld. Never could the eye have beheld th*^ sun, had not its own e->sence l)een soliform," (thrit ?,s, pre-conjigured to light by a shnilnrily f]f ea^emre with thai of lighl^) "neither can a soul not beautiful attain to an intuition of beautv," 76 CHAPTER VI!. Of the necessary cojisequeyices of the Hartlcian theory^ — Cff the original mistake or equivocation zchich procured ad- mission for the theory — Alemoria Technica, We will pass b}^ the utter incompatibility of such a law, (if law it may be called, which would itself be the slave of chances,) with even W\^i appearance of rationality for- ced upon us by the outward phenomena of human con-, duct, abstracted from our own consciousness. We will agree to forget this for the moment, in order to fix our attention on that subordination of tinal to efficient causes in the human being, which flows of necessity from the as- sumption, that the will, and with the will all acts of thought and attention, are parts and products of this blind mechanism, instead of being distinct powers, whose func- tion it is to control, determine, and modify the phantas- ma chaos of association. The soul becomes a mere ens logicum ; for as a real separable being, it would be more worthless and ludicrous, than the Grimalkins in the Cat- harpsichord, described in the Spectator. For these did form a part of the process ; but in Hartley's scheme the soul is present only to be pinched or stroked^ while the very squeals or purring are produced by an agency wholly independent and alien. It involves all the diffi- culties, all the incomprehensibility (if it be not indeed, c6r fjioiye 5jx?i, the absurdity) of intercommunion between substances that have no one property in common, with- out any of the convenient consequences that bribed the judgment to the admission of the dualistic hypothesis. Accordingly, this caput mortuum of the Hartleian process has been rejected by his followers, and the consciousness considered as a result^ as a tune, the common product of the breeze and the harp : though this again is the mere re- motion of one absurdity, to make way for another equally preposterous. For what is harmony but a mode of rela tion, the very esse of which is percipi ? An ens rationale, which presupposes the power, that by perceiving creates it ? The razor's ed^ge becomes a saw to the armed vision : 77 and the delicious melodies of Purcell or Cimarosa miglit be disjointed stammerings to a hearer, whose partition of time should be a thousand times subtler thap ours. But this obstacle too let us imagine ourselves to have sur- mounted, and *' at one bound high overleap all bound !'* Yet, according to this hypothesis, the disquisition, to which I am at present soliciting the reader's attention, may be as truly said to be written by Saint Paul's church, as by me ; for it is the mere motion of my muscles and nerves : and these again are set in motion from external causes equally passive, which external causes stand themselves in interdependent connection with every thing that^xists or has existed. Thus the whole universe co-operates to produce the minutest stroke of every letter, save only that I myself, and I alone, have nothing to do with it, but merely the causeless and eff^ectless beholding of it when it is done. Yet scarcely can it be called a beholding ; for it is neither an act nor an effect ; but an impossible crea- tion of a sonicthing-notJiing out of its very contrary I It is the mere quick-silver plating behind a looking-glass ; and in this alone consists the poor worthless I ! The sum total of my moral and intellectual intercourse dis- solved into its elements are reduced to extension^ motion^ degrees of velocity^ and those diminished copies of con- figurative motion, which form what we call notions, and notions of notions. Of such philosophy well might But- ler say — " The metaphysics but a puppet motion That goes with screws, the notioQ of a notion ; The copy of a copy, and lame drauo^ht Unnaturally taken from a thought : That counterfeits all pantommiic tricks, And tuins the eyes, like an old crucifix; That counterchanges whatsoe'er it calls B' another name, and makes it true or false ; Turns truth to falsehood, falsehood into truth, By virtue of the Babylonian's tooth." Miscellaneous Thoughts. The inventor of the watch did not in reality invent it ; he only looked on, while the bhnd causes, the only true artists, were unfolding themselves. So must it have been too with my friend Allston, when he sketched his pic- Vol. I. 7 78 ture of the dead man revived by the bones of the pro- phet Ehjah. r^j must it have been with Mr. Southey and Lord Byron, when the one fancied himself compos- ing his '' Roderick," and the other his " Childe Ha- rold." The same must hold good of all systems of phi- losophy ; of all arts, governments, wars by sea and by land; in short, of all things that ever have been or that ever will be produced. For, according to this system, it is not the affections and passions that are at work, in as far as they are s€7isations or thoughts. We only fancy ^ that we act from rational resolves, or prudent motives, or from impulses of anger, love, or generosity. In all these cases the real agent is Si soinething-nothing-every'thing^ which does all of which we know, and knows nothing of all that itself does. The existence of an infinite spirit, of an intelligent and holy will, must, on this system, be mere articulated mo- j tions of the air. For as the function of the human under- standing is no other than merely (to appear to itself) to combine and to apply the phaenomena of the association ; and as these derive all their reality from the primary sensations ; and the sensations again all their reality from the impressions ab extra ; a God not visible, audible, or tangible, can exist only in the sounds and letters that form his name and attributes. If in ourselves there be no such faculties as those of the will, and the scientific reason, we must either have an innate idea of them, which would overthrow the whole system, or we can have no idea at all. The process, by which Hume degraded the notion of cause and effect into a blind product of delusion and babit, into the mere sensation of proceeding life (nisus vitahs) associated with the images of the memory ; this same process must be repeated to the equal degradation jk>f e\evy fundamental idea in ethics or theology. Far, very far, am 1 from burthening with the odium of these consequences the moral characters of those who first formed, or have since adopted the system ! It is most noticeable-..ldered as niateriaL At the atmost, it is to jhovzhi the iame as the law of gravitatioa is to loco-moiion. In ererj volantarj moTement we first couDienct gravita- tion, in order to avail oarselves of it. It must exist, that there may he a something to be counteracted, and which by its re-action, aids the force that is exerted to resist it. Let OS consider what we da when we leap. We drst reiist the gravitating power by an act purely vo- lantary, and then by another act. vcluntan in part, we vie]d to it in order to light on the spot which we had previonsly proposed to oarselves Now, let a man waicti his misid while he is composing; or, to take a -liil more common case, while be is trying to recollect ^ name ; and be will find the process completely analo- ^as. Most of my readers will have observed a small water insect on the surface of riTulets, which throws a ' inqne-spotted shadow, firinged with prismatic colours, od the siiRDT bottom of the brook ; and will have noticed, how the little animal wins its way up against the stream, by alternate pulses of active and passive motion, now resistinsT the current, and now yielding to it in order to o^ather strength and a momentaryyv/crMm for a farther propulsion. This is no unapt emblem of the mind's self- experience in the act of thinking. There are evident- ly two powers at work, which relatively to each other are active and passive ; and this is not possible without an intermediate faculty, which is at once both active and passire. (In philosophical language, we roust denomi- nate this intermediate faculty in all its degrees and de- -terminations, the iMAGiirATioy. But in common lan- guage, and especially on the subject of poetry, we ap- propriate the name to a superior degree of the Acuity, joined to a superior voluntary cootrol over it.) Contemporaneity then, beii^ the common condition of afithe laws of association, and a component element in all ihe inateria subjecta, the parts of which arc to be ssic^- 81 ciated, must needs be co-present with all. Nothing, therefore, can be more easy than to pass off on an incau- tious mind this constant companion of each, for the essen- tial substance of all. But if we appeal to our own con- sciousness, we shall find that even time itself, as the cause of a particular act of association, is distinct from contemporaneity, as the co7zc?zVionofcf/Z association. See- ing a mackarel, it may happen that I immediately think of gooseberries, because I at the same time ate mackarel with gooseberries as the sauce. The first syllable of the latter word, being that which had co-existed with the im- age of the bird so called, I may then think of a goose. In the next moment the image of a swan may arise before me, though I had never seen the two birds together. In the two former instances, I am conscious that their co- existence in time was the circumstance that enabled me to recollect them ; and equally conscious am I, that the latter was recalled to me by the joint operation of like- ness and contrast. So it is with cause and effect ; so too- with order. So am I able to distinguish whether it was proximity in time, or continuity in space, that occasioned me to recall B. on the mention of A They cannot be indeed separated from contemporaneity ; for that would be to se- parate them from the mind itself The act of conscious- ness is indeed identical with r/me, considered in its essence, (1 mean time perse, as contra-distinguished from our notion of time ; for this is always blended with the idea of space, which, as the contrary o^iime^ is therefore its measure.^ Nevertheless, the accident of seeing two objects at the same moment, acts as a distinguishable cause from that of having seen them in the same place : and the true prac- tical general law of association is this ; that whatever makes certain parts of a total impression more vivid or distinct than the rest, will determine the mind to recall these, in preference to others equally linked together by the common condition of contemporaneity, or (what I deem a more appropriate and philosophical term) of con- tinuity. But the will itself, by confining and intensify ing"*^' * I am aware, that this word occurs neither in Johnson''s Dictionary nor m any classical writer. But the word, " tf) inlemW'' which N^vvtori ami ©thers before him employ in this sense, is now so cornyjletely appropriated lo another meaning", that 1 coukl not use it without ambiguity : v/hile to ^'jiruphraae the sense, as bv render inicnsej ^"fould .often, bi-eak up the jcrv- 1^ 82 the attention, may arbitrarily give vividness or distinctness to any object whatsoever ; and from hence we may de- duce the uselessness, if not the absurdity, of certain recent schemes, which promise an artificial memory^ but which in reality can only produce a confusion and debasement of the/cx7ic//. Sound logic, as the habitual subordination of the individual to the species, and of the species to the genus ; philosophical knowledge of facts under the rela- tion of cause and effect ; a cheerful and communicative temper, that disposes us to notice the similarities and con- trasts of things, that we may be able to illustrate the one by the other ; a quiet conscience ; a condition free from anxieties ; sound health, and, above all, (as far as relates to passive remembrance,) a healthy digestion ; these are the best — these are the only Arts of Memory. tence, and destroy that harmony of the position of the words with the logi- cal position of the thoughts, which is a beauty in all composition, and more especially desirable in a close philosophical investigation. I have there- fore hazarded the word vnitnsi/y ; tiliough 1 confess it sounds uncouth tft cwy owo ©au. 53 CHAPTER VIII. The system of Dualism, introduced by Des Cartes — Re- fined Jirst by Spinoza^ and after awards by Leibnitz, into the doctrine of Harmonia proestabilita — Hylosoism — Ma- terialism — Neither of these systems, on any possible theory of association, supplies or supersedes a theory of percep- tion, or explains the formation of the associable. To the best of my knowledge, Des Cartes was the first philosopher, who introduced the absolute and essential he- terogeneity of the soul as intelligence, and the body as mat- ter. The assumption, and the form of speaking, have re- mained, though the denial of all other properties to matter but that of extension, on which denial the whole system of dualism is grounded, has been long exploded. For since impenetrabiUty is intelligible only as a mode of resistance, its admission places the essence o^ matter in an act or pow- er, which it possesses in common with spirit ; and body and spirit are therefore no longer absolutely heterogeneous,- but may, without any absurdity, be supposed to be different modes or degrees in perfection, of a^common substratum. To this possibility, however, it was not the fashion to ad- vert. The soul was a thinking substance ; and body a space-filling substance. Yet the apparent action of each on the other pressed heavy on the philosopher, on the one hand ; and no less heavily, on the other hcmd, pressed the evident truth, that the law of casuality holds only be- tween homogeneous things, i.e. thins^s having some com- mon property, and cannot extend from one world into another, its opposite. A close analysis evinced it to be no less absurd, than the question, whether a man's aifection for his wife lay North-east or South-west of the love he bore towards his child ? Leibnitz's doctrine of a pre-esta» blished harmony, which he certainly borrowed from Spi- noza, who had himself taken the hint from Des Cartes's animal machines, was in its common interpretation too strange to survive the inventor — too repugnant to our eommon sense (which is not indeed entitled to a judicial voice in the courts of scientific philosophy -^ but whos^ 84 whispers still exert a strong secret influence.) Even Wolf, the admirer, and illustrious systematizer of the Le- ibnitzian doctrine, contents himself with defending the possibility of the idea, but does not adopt it as a part of the edilice. The hypothesis of Hylozoism, on the other side, is the death of all rational physiology, and, indeed, of all phy- sical science ; for that requires a limitation of terms, and cannot consist with the arbitrary power of multiplying attributes by occult qualities. Besides, it answers no purpose ; unless, indeed, a difficulty can be solved by multiplj'ing it, or that we can acquire a clearer notion of our soul, by being told that we have a million souls, and that every atom of our bodies has a soul of its own. Far more prudent is it to admit the difficulty once for all, and then let it lie at rest. There is a sediment, in- deed, at the bottom of the vessel, but all the water above it is clear and transparent. The Hylozoist only shakes it up, and renders the whole turbid. But it is not either the nature of man, or the duty of the philosopher, to despair, concerning any important problem, until, as in the squaring of the circle, the impos- sibility of a solution has been demonstrated. How the esse assumed as originally distinct from the scire, can ever unite itself with it ; how being can transform itself into a knorving, becomes conceivable on one only condi- tion ; namely, if it can be shown that the vis representa^ tiva, or the sentient, is itself a species of being; i. e. either as a property or attribute, or as an hy^postasis or* self subsistence. The former is, indeed, the assumption f;f materialism ; a system which could not but be patroni- zed by the philosopher, if only it actually performed what it promises. But how any affection from without can metamorphose itself into perception or will, the ma- terialist has hitherto left, not only as incomprehensible as he found it, but has aggravated it into a comprehensible absurdity. For, grant that an object from without could act upon the conscious self, as on a consubstantial object ; yet such an affection could only engender something homogeneous with itself Motion could only propagate motion. Matter has no inward. We remove one slir- face but to meet with another. We can but divide a par- ticle into particles ^ and each atom comprehends in ite^ 85 the properties of the material universe. Let any re- flecting mind make the experiment of explaining to itself the evidence of our sensuous intuitions, from the hypo- tliesis that in any given perception there is a something which has been communicated to it by an impact or an impression ab extra. In the first place, by the impact on the percepient or ens representans, not the object itself, but only its action or effect, will pass into the same. Not the iron tongue, but its vibrations pass into the me- tal of the bell. Now in our immediate perception, it is not the mere power or act of the object, but the object itself, which is immediately present. We might, indeed, attempt to explain this result by a chain of deductions and conclusions ; but that, first, the very faculty of deducing and concluding would equally demand an explanation ; and, secondly, that there exists, in fact, no such interme- diation by logical notions, such as those of cause and effect. It is the object itself, not the product of a syllo- gism, which is present to our consciousness. Or would we explain this supervention of the object to the sensa- tion, by a productive faculty set in motion by an im- pulse ; still the transition, into the percepient, of the ob- ject itself, from w^hich the impulse proceeded, assumes a. power that can permeate and wholly possess the soul, " And, like a God, by spiritual art. Be all iu all, and all in every part." Cowley. And how came the percepient here ? And what is become of the wonder-promising matter, that was to perform all these marvels by force of mere figure, weight, and mo- tion ? The most consistent proceeding of the dogmatic materialist is to fall back into the common rank of soul- and-hodyists ; to affect the mysterious, and declare the whole process a revelation given, and not to be under- stood, which it would be profane to examine too closely. Datur non intelligitur. But a revelation unconfirmed by miracles, and a faith not commanded by the conscience, a philosopher may venture to pass by, without suspect- ing himself of any irreligious tendency. 86 Thus, as materialism has been generally taught, it is utterly unintelligible, and owes all its proselytes to the propensity so common among men, to mistake distinct images for clear conceptions ; and, vice versa, to reject as inconceivable whatever from its own nature is unima- ginable. But as soon as it becomes intelligible, it ceases to be materialism. In order to explain thinking, as a ma- terial phenomenon, it is necessary to refine matter into a mere modification of intelligence, with the two-fold func- tion (ji appearing dind perceiving. Even so did Priestley . in his controversy with Price ! He stript matter of all its material properties ; substituted spiritual powers, and when we expected to find a body, behold ! we had nothing but its ghost! the apparition of a defunct substance ! I shall not dilate further on this subject: because it will (if God grant health and permission) be treated of at large, and systematically, in a work, which I have many years been preparing, on the Productive Logos human and divine ; with, and, as the introduction to, a full com- mentary on the Gospel of St. John To make myself in- telligible as far as my present subject requires, it will be sufficient briefly to observe — 1. That all association de- mands and presupposes the existence of the thoughts and images to be associated. — 2. The hypothesis of an exter- nal world exactly correspondent to those images or modi- fications of our own being, which alone (according to this system,) we actually behold, is as thorough idealism as Berkeley's, inasmuch as it equally (perhaps, in a more perfect degree) removes all reality and immediateness of perception, and places us in a dream-world of phantoms and spectres, the inexplicable swarm and equivocal gene- ration of motions in our own brains. 3. That this hypo- thesis neither involves the explanation, nor precludes the necessity, of a mechanism an€l co-adequate forces in the percepient, which at the more than magic touch of the impulse from without, is to create anew for itself the cor- i'cspondent object. The formation of a copy is not solv- ed by the mere pre-existence of an original : the copyist of Raphael's Transfiguration must repeat more or less perfectly the process of Raphael It would be ep-^y to explain a thought from the image on the retina, anc: that from the geometry of ii^ht, if this very light did n-.)i pre- sent the very same difficulty. We might as rationally 87 chant the Brahmin creed of the tortoise that supported the bear, that supported the elephant, that supported the world, to the tune of " This is the house that Jack built.'' The sic Deo placitum est we all admit as the sufficient cause, and the divine goodness as the sufficient reason ; Itut an answer to the whence ? and why ? is no answer to the how ? which alone is the physiologist's concern. It is a mere sophisma pigrum, and (as Bacon hath said) the arrogance of pusillanimity which lifts up the idol of a mortal's fancy, and commands us to fall down and worship it, as a work of divine wisdom, an ancile or palladium fallen from heaTen By the very same argument the sup-<- porters of the Ptolemaic system might have rebuffed the Newtonian, and pointing to the sky with self-complacent^ grin, have appealed to common sense, whether the sun did not move, and the earth stand still. * " And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin..*' Pop^* 86 CHAPTER IX. Js philosophy possible as a science, and what are its con- ditions ? — Giordano Bruno — Literary aristocracy^ or ike existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a pri» vileged order — The authors obligations to the Mystics ; — to Emanuel Kant — The difference between the letter and the spirit of Kanfs writings, and a vindication of prudence in the teaching of philosophy — Fichte^s attempt to complete the critical system — Its partial success and ultimate failure — Obligations to Schelling ; and, among English writers, to Saumarez, After I had successively studied in Ibe schools of Locke, Berkeley, Leibnitz, and Hartley, and could find in neither of them an abiding place for my reason, I be- gan to ask myself, is a system of philosophy, as different from mere history and historic classification, possible ? If possible, what are its necessary conditions ? I was for a while disposed to answer the first question in the negative, and to admit that the sole practicable employment for the human mind v/as to observe, to collect, and to classify. But I soon felt, that human nature itself fought up against this wilful resignation of intellect ; and as soon did 1 find, that the scheme, taken with all its consequences, and cleared of all inconsistencies, was not less impracticable, than contra-natural. Assume, in its full extent, the position, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensa, without Leib- nitz's qualifying prceter ipsum intellectum, and in the same sense in which it was understood by Hartley and Con- dillac, and what Hume had demonstratively deduced from this concession concerning cause and effect, will ap- ply with equal and crushing force to all the* other eleven categorical forms, and the logical functions corresponding to them. How can we make bricks without straw ? Or * Videlicet ; quantity, quality, relation, and mode, each consisting of three subdivisions. Vide Kritik der reineu Vernunft, p, 95, and 106. Sec too the judicioui remarks in Locke and Hume. 89 build without cement? We learn all things indeed by oc- casion of experience ; but the very facts so learnt, force us inward on the antecedents, that must be pre-supposed in order to render experience itself possible The first book of Locke's Essays (if the supposed error, which it labours to subvert, be not a mere thing of straw ; an ab- surdity, which, no man ever did, or, indeed, ever could believe) is formed on a S(^(pio-fia Erff o^nT-naiwr, and involves the old mistake of cum hoc : ergo, propter hoc The term Philosophy, defines itself as an affectionate seeking after the truth ; but Truth is the correlative of Being. This again is no way conceivable, but by assum- ing as a postulate, that both are, ab initio, identical and co- inherent ; that intelligence and being are reciprocally each others Substrate. I presumed that this was a pos- sible conception (i. e. that it involved no logical inconso- nance) from the length of time during which the scholas- tic definition of the Supreme Beings as actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate, was received in the schools of Theology, both by the Pontifician and the Reformed, di- vines. The early study of Plato and Plotinus, with the commentaries and the Theologia Platonica, of the illus- trious Florentine ; of Proclus, and Gemistius Pletho : and, at a later period, of the '' De Immense et Innu- merabili," and the *' De la causa, principio et uno,^^ of the philosopher of Nola, who could boast of a Sir Philip Sidney, and Fulke Greville among his patrons, and whom the^olaters of Rome burnt as an atheist in the year 1660 ; had all contributed to prepare my mind for the re- ception and welcoming of the Cogito quia sum, et sum quia Cogito ; a philosophy of seeming hardihood, but certainly the most ancient, and therefore presumptively, the most natural. Why need I be afraid ? Say rather how dare I be ashamed of the Teutonic theosophist, Jacob Behmen ? Many, indeed, and gross were his delusions ; and such as furnish frequent and ample occasion for the triumph of the learned over the poor ignorant shoemaker, who had dared to think for himself. But while we remember that these delusions were such as might be anticipated from his utter want of all intellectual discipline, and from his ignorance of rational psychology, let it not be forgotten that the latter defect he had in common with the most Vol. I, 8 90 learned theologians of his age. Neither with books, nor with book-learned men was he conversant. A meek and shy quietist, his intellectual powers were never stimu- lated into fev'rous energy by crowds of proselytes, or by the ambition of proselyting. Jacob Behmen was an en- thusiast, in the strictest sense, as not merely distinguished, but as contra-distinguished, from a fanatic. While I in part translate the following observations from a contem- porary writer of the Continent, let me be permitted to premise, that I might have transcribed the substance from memoranda of my own, which were written many years before his pamphlet was given to the world ; and that I prefer another's words to my own, partly as a tri- bute due to priority of publication, but still more from the pleasure of sympathy, in a case where coincidence only was possible. Whoever is acquainted with the history of philosophy, during the two or three last centuries, cannot but admit, Uiat there appears to have existed a sort of secret and ta- cit compact among the learned, not to pass beyond a cer- tain limit in speculative science. The privilege of free thought, so highly extolled, has at no time been held va- lid in actual practice, except within this limit ; and not a single stride beyond it has ever been ventured without bringing obloquy on the transgressor. The few men of genius among the learned class, who actually did overstep this boundary, anxiously avoided the appearance of having so done. Therefore, the true depth of sciRice, and the penetration to the inmost centre, from which all the lines of knowledge diverge, to their ever distant cir- cumference, was abandoned to the illiterate and the sim- ple, whom unstilled yearning, and an original ebulliency of spirit, had urged to the investigation of the indwelling and living ground of all things. These, then, because their names had never been inrolled in the guilds of the learned, were persecuted by the registered livery-men as interlopers on their rights and privileges. All, without distinction, were branded as fanatics and phantasts ; not only those whose wild and exorbitant imaginations had actually engendered only extravagant and grotesque phan- tcsms, and whose productions were, for the most part, poor aopies and gross caricatures of genuine inspiration ; but the truly inspired likewise, the originals themselves ! And n this for no other reason but because they were the wi- learned men of humble and obscure occupations. When, and from whom among the Hterati by profession, have we ever heard the divine doxology repeated, " 1 thank thee O Father ! Lord of Heaven and Earth ! because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes ?" No ! the haughty priests of learning, not only banished from the schools and marts of science all who had dared draw living waters from the fountain, but drove them out of the very temple, which, mean time, *' buyers, and sellers, and money 'Chan- gers^^ were suffered to make *' a den of thieves,''^ And yet it would not be easy to discover any substan- tial ground for this contemptuous pride in those literati, who have most distinguished themselves by their scorn of Behmen, De Thoyras, George Fox, &,c. ; unless if be, that they could write orthographically, make smooth periods, and had the fashions of authorship almost literal- ly at their fingers^ ends, while the latter, in simplicity of soul, made their words immediate echoes of their feel- ings. Hence the frequency of those phrases among them, which have been mistaken for pretences to immediate inspiration ; as for instance, " it zvas delivered unto me,^* " / strove not to speak,^^ " I said, I will be silent,"*"* " b^U the TiDord was in heart as a burtiing Jire,^"' ^^ and I could not forbear,''^ Hence, too, the unwillingness to give of- fence ; hence the foresight, and the dread of the cla- mours, which would be raised against them, so frequent- ly avowed in the writings of these men, and expressed, as was natural, in the words of the only book with which they were familiar. '* Woe is me that I am become a man of strife, and a man of contention — I love peace : the souls of men are dear unto me : yet because 1 seek for light every one of them doth curse me !" O ! it requires deeper feeling, and a stronger imagination, than belong to most of those to whom reasoning and fluent expression have been as a trade learnt in boyhood, to conceive with what might, with what inward strivings and commotion, the perception of a new and vital truth takes possession of an uneducated man of genius. His meditations are almost inevitably employed on the eter* nal, or the everlasting ; for " the world is not his friend, nor the world's law.'"* Need we then be surprised^ that 92 under an excitement at once so strong and so unusual, the man's body should sympathize with the struggles" of his mind ; or that he should «t times be so far deluded as to mistake the tumultuous sensations of his nerv^es, and the co-existing spectres of his fancy, as parts or symbols of the truths which were opening on him ? It has indeed been plausibly observed, that in order to de- rive any advantage, or to collect any intelligible meaning, from the writings of these ignorant mystics, the reader must bring with him a spirit and judgment superior to that of the writers themselves : ** And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?" Paradise Regained. —A sophism, which I fully agree with Warburton, is un- worthy of Milton ; how much more so of the awful per- son, in whose mouth he has placed it ? One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own experi- ence, that ther'j exist folios on the human understanding, and the nature of man, which would have a far juster claim to their hidi rank and celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much fulness of heart and intellect as burst forth in many a simple page of George Fox, Jacob Behmen, and even of Behmen's commentator, the pious and fervid William Law. The feeling of gratitude which 1 cherish towards these men has caused me to digress further than I had foreseen or proposed ; but to have passed them over in an historical sketch of my literary life and opinions, would have seeiued to me like the denial of a debt, the con- cealment of a boon. For the writings of these mystics acted in no slight degree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned within the outline of any single dogmatic system. They contributed to keep alive the heart in the head ; gave me an indistinct, yet stirring and work- ing presentment, that all the products of the mere re- ^flective faculty partook of death, and were as the rat- tling twigs and sprays in winter, into which a sap was yet to be propelled from some root to which I had not })enetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food or shelter. If they were too often a moving cloud of smoke to me by day, yet they were always a pillar of tire throughout the night, during my wanderings through the 03 wilderness of doubt, and enabled me to skirt, without crossing, the sandy deserts of utter unbelief. That the system is capable of being conv^erted into an irreligious Pantheism, I well know. The Ethics of Spinoza may, or may not, be an instance. But, at no time could I be- lieve, that in itself, and essentially^ it is incompatible with religion, natural or revealed : and, now I am most thoroughly persuaded of the contrary. The writings of the illustrious sage of Konigsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding. The ori- ginality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance, of the distinctions ; the adamantine chain of the logic ; and, I will venture to add, (paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant, from Reviewers and Frenchmen,) the clearness and evidence of the '' Critique of the Pure Reason ;" of the Judg- ment ; of the " Metaphisical Elements of Natural Philosophy," and of his " Religion within the bounds OF Pure Reason," took possession of me as with a giant's hand. After fifteen years familiarity with them, 1 still read these and all his other productions with un- diminished delight and increasing admiration. The few passages that remained obscure to me, after due efforts of thought, (as the chapter on original apperception,) and the apparent contradictions which occur, 1 soon found were hints and insinuations referring to ideas, which Kant either did not think it prudent to avow, or which he considered as consistently left behind in a pure analj'sis, not of human nature in toto, but of the specu- lative intellect alone. Here, therefore, he was con- strained to commence at the point of reflection, or natural consciousness : while in his moral system he was per- mitted to assume a higher ground (the autonomy of the will) as a postulate deducible from the unconditional command, or (in the technical language of his school) the categorical imperative, of the conscience, lie had been in imminent danger of persecution during the reign of the late king of Prussia, that stri:nge compound of lawless debauchery, and priest-ridden superstition : and it is probable that he had little inchnation, in his old age. Id act over again the fortunes and hair-breadth escapes^ 94 of Wolf. The expulsion of the first among Kant's dis- ciples, who attempted to complete his system, from the university of Jena, with the confiscation and prohibition of the obnoxious work, by the joint efforts of the courts of Saxony and Hanover, supplied experimental proof, that the venerable old man's caution was not groundless. In spite, therefore, of his own declarations, 1 could never believe, it was possible for him to have meant no more by his Noume'non^ or Thing in Itself, than his mere words express ; or, that in his own conception he con- fined the whole plastic power to the forms of the intel- lect, leaving for the external cause, for the materiale of our sensations, a matter without form, which is doubtless inconceivable. 1 entertained doubts likewise, whether, in his own mind, he even Icjid all the stress, which he appears to do, on the moral postulates. An IDEA, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a syinbol ; and, except in geometry, all symbols of necessity involve an apparent contrr.diction. 4)wvticrf SuviToicTcv : and for those who could not pierce through this symbolic husk, hii writings were not intended* Questions which can not be fiill}^ answered without ex- posing the respondent to personal danger, are not enti» tied to a fair answer ; and yet to say this openly, would in many cases furnish the very advantage which the ad- versary is insidiously seeking after. Veracitv does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth ; and the philosopher who cannot utter the whole truth without conveying falsehood, and at the same time, perhaps, exciting the most malignant passions, is con- strained to express himself either mythically or equivo* cally. When Kant, therefore, was importuned to settle the disputes of his commentators himself, by declaring what he meant, how could he decline the honours of martyrdom with less offence than by simply replying, * 1 meant what I said, and at the age of near four score, I have something else, and more important to do, than to write a commentary on my own works." Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, or Lore of Ultimate Sci- ence, was to add the key-stone of the arch ; and by com- mencing with an aci, instead of a thi^ig or substance^ Fichte assuredly gave the first mortal blow to-Spinozism, SIS taught by Spinoza himself : and supplied the idea of 95 a system truly metaphysical, and of a metaphysique truly systematic : (i. e. having its spring and principle within itself,) But this fundamental idea he overbuilt with a heavy mass of mere notions, and psychological acts of ar- bitrary reflection. Thus his theory degenerated into a crude egoismus,* a boastful and hyperstoic hostility to Nature, as lifeless, godless, and altogether unholy : while his religion consisted in the assumption of a mere ORDO ORDINANS, wbich we were permitted exoterice to call God ; and his ethics in an ascetic, and almost monk- ish mortification of the natural passions and desires. In Schelling's ** Natur-Philosophie," and the " Sys- tem DES TRANSCENDENTALEN IdEALISMUS," I first fouud a genial coincidence with much Ihat 1 had toiled out for myself, and a powerful assistance in what I had yet to do^ * The following- burlesque on the Fichtean Egoismus mar, perhaps, be amusing- to the few who have studied the system, and to' those who are unacquainted with it, may convey as tolerable a likeness of Fichte's idealism as can be expected trom anavowed c?.ricature. The categroricai imoerative, or the annunciation of the new Teutonic God, EraENKAinAN : adithyrambic Ode, by Qukkkopf Von Kluf- STicf, Grammarian, and Subrector inGjmnasio.**** Eu ! Dei vices g-erens, ipse Divus, (Speak English, Friend !) the God Imperativus, Here on this market-cross aloud I cry : I, I, J! I itself I ! The form and the substance, the what and the why. The when and the where, and the low and the high, The inside and outside, the earth and tlie sky, I, vou, and he, and he, you and I, All souls and all bodies are I itself I ! AllI itself I ! (Fools ! a truce with this startling .') All my I ! all my I ! He's a heretic dog who but adds Be'tt} Martin I Thus cried the God with high imperial tone : In robe of stiffest state, that scoff M at beauty, A pronoun-verb imp-^rative he shone — Then substantive and plural-singular grown He thus spake on ! Behold in I alone (For ethics boast a syntax of their own) Or if in ye, yet as I doth depute ye. In O ! I, you, the vocative of duty I I of the world's whole Lexicon the root .' Of the whole universe of touch, sound, sight The genitive and ablative to boot : The ac usative of wrong, the nom'native of rightf And in all cases the case absolute ! Self-construed, I all other moods decline ; Imperative, from nothing we derive us \ Yet as a supr-r-postulate of mine, Unconstrued antecedence I assign To X, Y, Z, the God infinitivu^ r 96 I have introduced this statement, as appropriate to the narrative nature of this sketch ; yet rather in reference to tlie work which I have announced in a preceding page, than to niy present subject. It would be but a mere act of justice to tnyself, were I to warn my future readers, that an identity of thought, or even similarity of phrase -will not be at all times a certain proof that the passage has been borrowed from ScheUing, or that the concep- tions were originally learnt from him. In this instance, as in the dramatic lectures of Schlegel to which i have before alluded,, from the same motive of self defence against the charge of plagiarism, many of the most strik- ing resemblances ; indeed, all the main and fundamental ideas, were born and matured in my mind before I had ever seen a single page of the German Philosopher^ and T might, indeed, affirm with truth, before the more im- portant works of Schelling had been written^ or at least made public. Nor is this coincidence at all to be w^on- dered at. We had studied in the same school ; been disciplined by the same preparatory philosophy, namely, the writings of Kant ; we had both equal obligations to the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of Giordano Bruno ; and Schelling has lately, and, as of recent acqui- sition, avowed that same affectionate reverence for the labours of Behmen, and other mysticS; which I had formed at a much earlier period. The coincidence of Schel- ling's system with certain general ideas of Behmen, he declares to have been mere coincidence ; while my obli- gations have been more direct. He needs give to Beh- men only feelings of sympathy ; while I owe him a debt of gratitude. God forbid ! that I should be sus- pected of a wish to enter into a rivalry with Schelling for the honours so unequivocally his right, not only as a great and original genius, but as the founder of the Philosophy of Nature, and as the most successful im- prover of the Dynamic System,* which, begun by Bru- * It would be an act of hi^h and almost criminal injustice to pass over in silence the name of Mr, Richard Salmahiz, a gentlemen equally well known as a medical man and as a philanthropist, but who demands notice on the present occasion as the author of" a new System of Physiolog-y" in two volumes octavo, published 1797 : and in 1312' of *' An Examination of the natural and artificial Systems of Philosophy which now prevail," in one volume octavo, entitled, '^ The Principles of physiolosrical and physical science." The latter work is not quite equal to the former in style or arrangement ; and there is a greater necessity of distinguishing the prin^ 97 no, was re-introduced (in a more philosophical form, and freed from all its impurities and visionary accompani- ments) by Kant ; in whom it was the native and neces- sary growth of his own system. Kant's followers, howr ever, on whom (for the greater part) their master's cloak had fallen, without, or with a very scanty portion of, his spirit, had adopted his dynamic ideas only as a more refined species of mechanics. With exception of one or two fundamental ideas, which cannot be withheld from FiGHTE, to ScHELLiNG wc owe the Completion, and the most important victories, of this revolution in philosophy. To me it vnW be happiness and honor enough, should I succeed in rendering the system itself intelligible to my countrymen, and in the application of it to the most aw- ful of subjects for the most important of purposes. Whether a work is the offspring of a man's own spirit, and the product of original thinking, will be discovered by those who are its sole legimate judges, by better tests than the mere reference to dates. For readers in general, let whatever shall be found in this, or any future work of mine, that resembles, or coincides with, the doctrines of my German predecessor, though contem- ciples of the author's philosophy from his conjectures concerning colour, the atmospheric matter, comets, <&c. which, whether iust or erroneous, are by no means necessary consequences of that philosophy. Yet even in this department of this volume, which I regard as comparatively the inferior work, the reasonings by which Mr. Saumarez invalidates the immanence of an infinite power in any finite substance are the offspring of no common mind ; and the experiment on the expansibility of the air is at least plausi- ble and highly ingenious. But the merit, which will secure both to the book and to the writer a high and honorable name with posterity, consists in the masterly force of reasoning, and the copiousness of induction, with which he has assailed, and (in my opinion) subverted the tyranny of the mechanic system in physiology ; established not only the existence of final causes, but their necessity and efficiency in every system that merits the name of phylosophical ; and substituting life and progressive power, for the contradictory inert force, lias a right to be known and remembered as the first instaurator of the dynamic philosophy in England. The au- thor's views, as far as concers himself, are unborrowed and completely his own, as he neither possessed, nor do his writings discover, the least acquaintance with the works of Kant, in which the germs ofphyloso- phv exist, and his volumes were published many years before the full de- velopment of these germs bv Schelling. Mr. Saiimarez's detection of the Brunonian system was no fight or ordinary service at the time : and I scarcely remember in anv work on any subject a confutation so thorough- ly satisfactory. It is sufficient at this time to have stated the fact; as in the preHice to the work, which I have already announced on the Logos, I have exhibited in detail the merits of this writer and genuine philosopher, who needed onlv have taken his foundations somewhat deeper and widet" to have superseded a considerable part of my labour?. 98 porary, be wholly attributed to him : provided, that the absence of distinct references to his books, which I could not at all times make with truth as designating citations or thoughts actually derived from him, and which, I trust, would, after this general acknowledgment, be super- fluous, be not charged on me as an ungenerous conceal- ment or intentional plagiarism. I have not indeed (eheu ! res angusta domi I) been hitherto able to pro- cure more than two of his books, viz. the first volume of his collected Tracts, and his System of Transcendental Idealism ; to which, however, I must add a small pam- phlet against Fichte, the spirit of which was to my feelings painfully incongruous with the principles, and which (with the usual allowance afforded to an antithesis) displayed the love of wisdom rather than the wisdom of love. I regard truth as a divine ventriloquist : I care not from whose mouth the sounds are supposed to proceed, if only the word? are audible and intelligible. *' Albeit, I must confess to be half in doubt, whether I should bring it forth or no, it being so contrary to the eye of the world, and the world so potent in most men's hearts, that I shall endanger either not to be regarded or not to be understood." — Milton : Reason of Church Government, And to conclude the subject of citation, with a cluster of citations, which ns taken from books not in common use, may contribute to the reader's amusement, as a volun- tary before a sermon. '' Dolet mihi quidem deliciis li- terarum inescatos subito jam homines adeo esse, praeser- | tim qui Christianos se profitentur, et legere nisi quod ' ad delectationem fiicit, sustineant nihil : unde et disci- plinas severiores et philosophia ipsa jam fere prorsus etiam a doctis negliguntur. Quod quidem propositura studiorum, nisi mature corrigitur, tarn magnum rebus in- commodum dabit, quam dedit Barbaries olim. Pertinax res Barbaries est, fateor : sed minus potest tamen, quam ilia molhties et persuasa prudejitia literarum, quae si ratione caret, sapiential virtutisque specie mortales misere circumducit. Succedet igitur, ut arbitror, baud ita multo post, pro rusticana seculi nostri ruditate captatrix ilia communiloqucjitia robur animi virilis omne, omnem virtutem masculam prot^igatura, nisi cavetur." Simon GRVNiEus, candido lectori, prefixed to the Latin translation of Plato, by Marsilius Ficiaus. Lugduni, 1 557. 99 A too prophetic remark, which has been in fulfihnent from the year 1680 to the present, 1815. JV. B, By *' persuasa prudentia," Gryna^us means self-complacent common sense as opposed to science and philosophic rea- son. ** Est medius ordo et velut equestris Tngeniorum qui- dem sagacium et rebus humanis commodorum, non tamen in primam magnitudinem patentium. Eorum homimim, ut i(a dicam, major annona est. Sedulum esse, nihil teme- re ioqui, assuescere labori, et imagine prudentiae et mo- destiae tegere angustiores partes captus dum exercitatio- nem et usum. quo isti in civilibus rebus pollent, pro natu* ra et magnitudine ingenn plerique accipiunt." Barclaii Argenis, p. 71. ** As, therefore, physicians are many times forced to leave such methods of curing as themselves know to be fittest, and, being over-ruled by the sick man's impatience, are fain to try the best they can ; in like sort, consider- ing how the case dotli stand with the present age, full of tongue and weak of brain, behold we would, (if our sub' jecl permitted it J yield to the stream thereof That way we would be contented to prove our thesis, which, being the worse in itself, notwithstanding, is now, by reason of common imbecility, the fitter and likelier to be brook- ed." — Hooker. If this fear could be rationally entertained in the con- troversial age of Hooker, under the then robust discipline of the scholastic logic, pardonably may a writer of the present times anticipate a scanty audience for abstrusest themes, and truths that can neither be communicated nor received without effort of thought, as well as patience of attention. •* Che s'io non erro al calcular de' punti, Par ch' Asinini Stella a noi predomini, E'l Somaro e'l castron si sian conginnti. II tempo d'Apuleio pin non si nomini : Che se allora uq sol Huom sembrava un Asino, Mille Asini a raiei di rassembran Huomini !" Di Salva-torRosa, Satir. I. 1, 10. 100 CHAPTER X. d chapter of digression and anecdotes^ as an interlude preceding that on the nature and genesis of the imagi- nation or plastic pother — On pedantry and pedantic ex- pressions — Advice to young authors respecting publ'ca* tion — Various anecdotes of the author's literary life^ and the progress of his opinions in religion and politics. . • ** EsempJastic. The word is not in Johnson^ nor have I 7net with it elsewhere " Neither have I! I constructed it myself from the Greek words, tn fv nKaneiv i. e. to shape into one ; because, having to convey a new sen.«e, I thought that a new term would both aid the recollection of my meaning, and prevent its be^ng confounded with the usual import of the word imaginatiion. " But this is pedantry !^^ Not necessarily so, I hope. If I am not misinformed, pedantry consists in the use of words un- suitable to the time, place, and company. The language of the market would be in the schools as pedantic, though, it might not be reprobated by that name, as the language of the schools in the market. The mere man of the world, who insists that no other terms but such as occur in com* mon conversation should be employed in a scientific dis-^ quisition, and, with no greater precision, is as truly a pedant as the man of letters, who, either over-rating the acquirements of his auditors, or misled by his own fa- miliarity with technical or scholastic terms, converses at the wine-table with his mind fixed on his musaeum or Ia«4j| boratory ; even though the latter pedant, instead of de-K siring his wife to make the tea, should bid her add to thfi quant, sufif. of thea sinensis the oxyd of hydrogen satu-' rated with caloric. To use the colloquial, (and, in tiutb, somewhat vulgar,) metaphor, if the pedant of the cloys- ter, and the pedant of the lobby, both smetl equally of I ^ the shop, yet the odour from the Russian binding of good * old authentic-looking folios and quartos, is less annoying' ^ than the steams from the tavern or bagnio. Nay, though 101 the pedantry of the scholar should betray a little osten- tation, yet a well-conditioned mind would more easily, methinks, tolerate the Jbx brush of learned vanity, than the sans culotterie of a contemptuous ignorance, that as- sumes a merit from mutilation in the self-consoling sneer at the pompous incumbrance of tails. The first lesson of philosophic discipline is to wean the student's attention from the degrees of things, which alone form the v^ocabulary of common life, and to direct it to the KIND, abstracted from degree. Thus the chemi- cal student is taught not to be startled at disquisitions on the heat in ice, or on latent and fixible liglit. In such discourse, the instructor has no other alternative than either to use old words with new meanings, (the plan adopted by Darwin in his Zoonomia,) or to introduce new terms, after the example of Linnaeus, and the framers of the present chemical nomenclature. The latter mode is evidently preferable, were it only that the former de- mands a two-fold exertion of thought in one and the same act. For the reader (or hearer) is required not only to learn and bear in mind thejnew definition ; but to unlearn, and keep out of his view, the old and habitual meaning ; a far more difficult and perplexing task, and for which the mere semblance of eschewing pedantry seems to me an inadequate compensation. Where, indeed, it is in our power to recall an appropriate term that had, without suf- ficient reason, become obsolete, it is doubtless a less evil to restore than to coin anew. Thus, to express in one word all that appertains to the perception considered as passive, and merely recipient, I have adopted from our elder classics the word sensuous ; because sensual is noi at present used except in a bad senise, or at least as a mo- ral distinction, while sensitive and sensible would each convey a different moarjing. Thus, too, 1 have followed Hooker, Sanderson, Milton, &:c. in deisunating the irnme- diateness of any act or object of knowledge by the word intuition^ used sometimes subjectively, sometimes objec- tively, even as we use the word, thought ; now as thfi thought, or act of thinking, and now^ as a thought, or the object of our reflection; and we do this without confusion or obscurity. The very words objective and subjective^ of such consonant recurrence in the schools of yore, l have ventured to reintroduce, because I could not so Vol. I. 9 102 briefly, or conveniently, by any more familiar term§, dis- tinguish the percipere from the percipi. Lastly, 1 have cautiously discriminated the terms, the reason, and the UNDERSTANDING, encouragcd and confirmed by the au- thority of our genuine divines and philosophers, before the revolution : , «» both life, and sense. Fancy, and understanding : whence the soul Reason receives, and reason is her beings DiscussTVE or intuitive. Discourse* Is oftest your's, the latter most is our's, DiiFering but in degree^ in kind the same." PARADisi: Lost, Book V. I say, that I was confirmed by authority so venerable ; for I had previous and higher motives in my own convic- tion of the importance, nay, of the necessity of the dis- " tinction, as both an indispensable condition and a vital part of all sound speculation in metaphysics, ethical or theo- logical. To establish this distinction was one main ob- ject of The Friend ; if even in a biography of my own literary life I can with propriety refer to a work which was printed rather than published, or so published that it had been well for the unfortunate author if it had remained in manuscript ! I have even at this time bitter cause for remembering that which a number of my sub- scribers have but a trifling motive for forgetting. This effusion might have been spared ; but I would fain flatter myself that the reader will be less austere than an orien- tal professor of the bastinado, who, during an attempt to extort per argumentum baculinum a full confession from a culprit, ihterrapted his outcry of pain by reminding him that it was " a mere digression T' All this noise. Sir 1 is nothing to the point, and no sort of answer to my QUESTIONS ! Ah ! hut (replied the suff'erer) it is the most pertinent reply in nature to your blows, * But for sundry notes on Shakspeare, fee. which have fallen in my war, I should have deemed it unnecessary to observe, thsii discourse here, or else- where, does not mean what we rwrv call discoursing ; but the diicursion of the mindy the processes ofgenerali/alion and sul)Sumi5tion, of deduction and conclusion. Tiius. philosophy has hitherto been discursive, while Geo- metry is alwaySf aod essenMlr/f intiitive. 103 An imprudent man, of common goodness of heart, can- not but wish to turn even his imprudences to the benefit of others, as far as this is possible. If, therefore, any one of the readers of this semi-narrative should be preparing or intending a periodical work, I warn him, in the first place, against trusting in the number of names on his sub- scription list. For he cannot be certain that the names were put down by sufficient authority ; or should that be ascertained, it still remains to be known, whether they were not extorted by some over zealous friend's impor- tunity ; whether the subscriber had not yielded his name merely from want of courage to answer no ! and with the intention of dropping the work as soon as possible. One gentleman procured me nearly a hundred names for The Friend, and not only took frequent opportunity to re- mind me of his success in his canvas, but laboured to im- press my mind with the sense of the obligation I was un- der to the subscribers ; for (as he very pertinently ad* monished me) ^'Jifty-two shillings a year was a large sum to be bestowed on one individual, where there were so many objects of charity with strong claims to the assistance of the benevolent." Of these hundred patrons ninety threw up the publication before the fourth number, with- out any notice ; though it was well known to them, that in consequence of the distance, and tlowness and irregu- larity of the conveyance, I was compelled to lay in a stock of stamped paper for at least eight weeks before- hand ; each sheet of which stood me in five pence pre- vious to its arrival at my printer's ; though the subscrip- tion money was not to be received till the twenty-first week after the commencement of the work ; and lastly, though it was in nine cases out often impracticable for me to receive the money for two or three numbers, without paying an equal sum for the postage. In confirmation of my first caveat, I will select one fact among many. On my list of subscribers, among a considerable number of names equally flattering, was that of an Earl of Cork, with his address. He might as well have been an Earl of Bottle, for aught / knew of him, who had been content to reverence the peerage in abstracto, rather than in concretis. Of course, The Friend was regularly sent as far, if I remember rights as the eighteenth number, i, e. till a fortnight before 104 the subscription was to be paid. And lo I just at this time I received a letter from his lordship, reproving me in language far more lordly than courteous, for my impu- dence in directing my pamphlets to him, who knew no- thing of me or my work ! Seventeen or eighteen numbers of which, however, his lordship was pleased to retain, probably for the cuhnary or post-cuhnary conveniences of his servants. Secondly, I warn all others from the attempt to devi- ate from the ordinary mode of publishing a work by the trade. I thought, indeed, that to the purchaser it was indifferent, whether thirty per cent, of the purchase- money went to the booksellers or to the government ; and that the convenience of receiving the work by the post at his own door would give the preference to the jatter. It is hard, I own, to have been labouring for years, in collecting and arranging the materials ; to have spent every shilling that could be spared ai\er the neces- saries of life had been furnished, in buying books, or in journies for the purpose of consulting them, or of acquir- ing facts at the fountain head ; then to buy the paper, pay for the printing, ^o. all at least fifteen per cent, be- yond what the trade would have paid ; and then, after all, to give thirty per cent, not of the nett protits, but of the gross results of the gale, to a man who has merely to give the books shelf or warehouse room, and permit his ap- prentice to hand them over the counter to those who may ask for them ; and this too, copy by copy, although if the work be on any philosophical or scientific subject, it may be years before the edition is sold off. All this, I confess, must seem a hardship, and one to which the pro- ducts of industry in no other mode of exertion are sub- ject. Yet even this is better, far better, than to attempt in any way to unite the functions of author and publisher. But the most prudent mode is to sell the copy-right, at least of one or more editions, for the most that the trade will offer. By few, only, can a large remuneration be expected ; but fifty pounds and ease of mind are of more real advantage to a literary man, than the chance of five hundred, with the certainty of insult and degrading anxie- ties. 1 shall have been grievously misunderstood, if this statement should be interpreted as written with the de- sire of detracting from the character of booksellers o^ 105 publishers. The individuals did not make the laws and customs of their trade ; but, as in every other trade, take them as they find them. Till the evil can be proved to be removable, and without the substitution of an equal or greater inconvenience, it were neither wise nor manly even to complain of it. But to use it as a pretext for speaking*, or even for thinking, or feeling, unkindly or opprobriously of the tradesmen, as individuals, would be something worse than unwise or even than unmanly ; it would be immoral and calumnious ! My motives point in a far different di- rection, and to far other objects, as will be seen in the conclusion of the chapter. A learned and exemplary old clergyman, who many years ago went to his reward, followed by the regrets and blessings of his flock, published, at his own expense, two volumes octavo, entitled, a new Theory of Redemption. The work was most severely handled in the Monthly or Critical Review, I forget which ; and this unprovoked hostility became the good old man's favourite topic of con- versation among his friends. Well ! (he used to exclaim,) in the sEcoxD edition, I shall have an opportunity of exposing both the ignorance and the malignity of the anonymous critic. Two or three years, however, passed by without any tidings from the bookseller, who had undertaken the printing and publication of the work, and who was per- fectly at his ease, as the author was known to be a maa of large property. At length the accounts were written for ; and in the course of a few weeks they were present- ed by the rider for the house, in person. My old friend put on his spectacles, and holding the scroll with no very firm hand, began — Paper, so much: O moderate enough — not at all beyond my expectation ! Printing, so much : Well I moderate enough ! Stiching, covers, advertisements, carriage, 4*c. so much. — Still nothing amiss. Selleridge, (for orthography is no necessary part of a bookseller's iiteraiy acqmrements,) £3. 3s. Bless me ! only three guineas for the what d'ye call it ? the selleridge ? No more. Sir I replied the rider. Nay, but that is too mo- derate ! rejoined my old friend. Only three guineas for selling a thousand copies of a work in two volumes ? O Sir ! (cries the young traveller,) you have mistaken the word. There have been none ofthemso/f?; they have been sent back from London long ago ; and this £3. 3^. 9* 106 js lor the cellandge^ ov warehouse-room in our book cel- lar. The work was in consequence preferred froixj the ominous cellar of the pubhsher to the author's garret ; and oD presenting a copy to an acquaintance, the old gen- tlerncU3 used to tell the anecdote with great humour, and still greater good nature. With equal lack of worldly knowledge, 1 was a far more than equal sufferer for it, at the very outset of my authorship. Toward ihe close ot the iirst year troin the time that, in an inaub|»icious hour I left the friendly cluis- ters, and the iiappy grove oi quiet, ever honoured Jesus College, Cambridi^e, i \\m persuaded by sundry Philan- thropists and Anii-p(''emists to set on foot a periodical work, entitled The Watchman, that (according to the general motto ot the work) all might know the truths and ihat the truth might rnakt us free ! In order to exempt it from the sihiiip tax, and likewise to contribute as little as possible to the supposed guilt of a war against freedom, it v^a^ to be pablihhed on every eighth day, thirty-two page§, lar^'e octavo, closely printed, and price only four- PFNCE. Accordingly, witti a flaming prospectus '' Know* ledge is t'ower^'* 4'C. to try the state of the political at' mosphere^ and so forth, 1 set oft' on a tour to the north, from Bristt>l to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring €u>tomer6, preaching by the way in most of the great towns, as an hirele^i volualeer, in a blue coal and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on me. For 1 was at that time, and long after, though a Trinitarian (i. e. ad normam Flatonis) in philo- sophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in religion ; more accu- | rately, I was a psilanthropist, one of those who believe our Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and who lay the main stress on the resurrection rather than on the crucifixion O ! never can I remeiJiber those days with eiiiier shame or regret. For f was most sincere, most disinterested ! My opinions were, indeed, in many and most important points erroneous ; but my heart was sm- gle. M eaith, rank, life itself, then seemed cheap to me, compared with the interests ot (what I believed to be) the truth and the will of my n)aker. I cannot even ac- cuse myself of havina bet n actuated by vanity; for in the expansion of my enlbubiasm, i did not think of myself atitU. 107 My campaign comraenced at Birmingham ; and my first attack was on a rigid Calvinist, a tallow chandler by trade- He was a tall dingy man, in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed for a foundery poker O that face ! a face KOTfi^^pao-iv ! 1 have it be.'ore nje at this moment. The lank, black, twine-like halr.pingui nitescent^ cut in a strait line along the black stubble of his thin gunpowder eye brows, that looked like a scorched after-math from a last week's shaving. His coat collar behind in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse yet glib cordage, that 1 suppose he called his hair, and which, with a bend in- ward at the nape of the neck, (the only approach to flex- ure in his whole figure,) slunk in behind his waistcoat ; while the countenance, lank, dark, very hard and with strong perpendicular furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one looking at me through a used gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron ! But he was one of the thorough bred, a true lover of liberty, and (1 was informed; had proved to the satisfaction of many, that Mr. Pitt was one of the horns of the second beast in the Revelations, that spoke like a dragon. A person, to whoni one of my letters of recommendation had been addressed, was my introducer. It was a new event in my life, my first stroke in the new business 1 had undertakeii of an author, yea, and of an author trading on his own account. My companion, after soiiie imperfect sentences, and a multitude of hums and haas, abandoned the cause to his client ; and f commenced an harangue of half an hour to Ihileleutheros, the tallow- chandler, varying my notes through the whole gamut of ^ eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and in the latter from the pathetic to the indignant 1 argued, I described, i promised, 1 prophecied ; and beginning with the ca[)tivity of nations, 1 ended with the near ap- proach o\' the milienium, finishing the whole with some of my own v erses describing that glorious state oul of the Religious Musings ; • Such delights, As float to earth, permitted visitants^! When ill some huui of solemti jubdee The massive gales of Paradise are thrown "Wide open: and fortiicome in fragmeuls wild 108 Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies, And odours snatch'd from beds of Amaranth, And they that from tlie chrystal river of life Spring up on freshen'd wing-s, ambrosial gales ! Religious Musings^ 1. 356 My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praise-worthy patience, though (as I was afterwards told on complaining of certain gales that were not altogether ambrosial) it v/as a melting day with him. And what, Sir! (he said after a short pause) might the cost be ? Only FOUR-PENCE, (O ! how I felt the anti-climax, the abysmal bathos o{ \\\:ii four -pence t) only four pence ^ Sir, each number , to be published on every eighth day. That comes to a deal of money at the end of a year. And how much did you say there was to be for the money ? Thirty-two pages. Sir ! large octave, closely pnnted. Thirty and two pages ? Bless me, why except what 1 does in a family way^ on the Sabbath, that's more than 1 ever reads, Sir ! all the year round. 1 am as great a one, as any man in Brummagem, Sir ! for liberty and truth, and all them sort of things, but as to this (no offence, I hope. Sir !) I must beg to be excused. So ended my first canvass ; from causes that I shall presently mention, I made but one other application in person. This took place at Manchester, to a stately and opulent wholesale dealer in cottons. He took my letter of introduction, and having perused it, measured me from head to foot, and again from foot to head, and then asked if 1 had any bill or invoice of the thing ; 1 presented my prospectus to him ; he rapidly^ skimmed and hummed over the first side, and still more rapidly the second and concluding page ; crushed it within his fingers and the palm of his hand ; then, most deliberately and signiji- cantly rubbed and smoothed one part against the other ; and, lastly, putting it into his pocket, turned his back on me w^ith an '* over rim with these articles !" and so with- out another syllable, retired into his counting-house ; and, I can truly say, to my unspeakable amusement. This, I have said, was my secon 1 and last attempt. On returning baffled from the first, in which I had vainly essay^ed to repeat the miracle of Orpheus with the Brum- inagem patriot, I dined with the tradesman who had in" 109 troduced me to him. After dinner, be importuned me to smoke a pipe with him, and two or three other illuminati of the same rank I objected, both because 1 was en- gaged to spend the evening with a minister and his friends, and because { had never smoked except once or twice in my life lime, and then it was herb tobacco mixed with Oronooko, On the assurance, however, that the tobacco \V3S equally mild, ^nd seeing, too, that it was of a ytl* low colour ; (not forgetting the lamentable difficulty I have alwaj^s experienced in saying no! and in abstain- ing from what the people about me were doing,) I took half a pipe, filling the lower half of the bowl w'ith salt. I was soon, however, compelled to resign it in conse- quence of a giddiness and distressful feeling in my eyes^ which, as I had drank but a single glass of ale must, I knew, have been the effect of the tobacco. Soon after, deeming myself recovered, f sallied forth to my engage- ment, but the waik and the fresh air brought on all the symptoms again, and 1 had scarcely entered the minis- ter's drawing room, and opened a small pacquet of letters, which he had received from Bristol for me. ere 1 sunk back on the sofa in a sort of swoon rather than sleep. Fortunately, I had found just time enough to inform him of the confused state of my feelmgs, and of the occa- sion. For here and thus I lay, my face like a wo 11 that is white-washing, deathly pale, and with the cold drops of perspiration running down it from my forehead, while, one after anolher, there dropt in the diflerent gentlemen who had been invited to meet and spend the evening with me, to the number of from fifteen to twenty. As the j:;oison of tobacco acts but for a short time, I at length awoke from insensibility, and Jooked round on the par- ty, my eyes dazzled by the candles which had been lighted in the interim. By way of relieving my embar- rassment, one of the gentlemen began the conversation, with '' Have you seen a paper to day, Mr. Coleridge ?^^ Sir I ^'I replied rubbing my eyes,) " I am far from con- vinced, that a christian is permitted to read either news- papers or any other works of merely, political and tem- porary interest. This remark, so ludicrously inapposite to, or, rather, incongruous with, the purpose for which I was known to have visited Birmingha .», and to assist me in which they were all then met, produced an involunla- 110 ry and general burst of laughter ; and seldom, indeed, Lave I passed so many delightful hours, as 1 enjoyed in that room from the moment of that laugh to an early hour the next morning. Never, perhaps, in so mixed and nu- merous a party, have I since heard conversation sustained with such animation, enriched with such variety of in- formation, and enlivened with such a flow of anecdote. Both then and afterwards, they all joined in dissuading me from proceeding with my scheme ; assured me, in the most friendly, and yet most flattering expressions, that the employment was neither fit for me, nor 1 fit for the employment. Yet if I had determined on persevering in it, they promised to exert themselves to the utmost to procure subscribers, and insisted that I should make no more applications in person, but carry on the canvass by proxy. 1 he same hospitable reception, the same dissua- sion, and, (that failing,) the same kind exertions in my behalf, I met with at Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield, indeed, at every place in which I took up my sojourn I often recall with affectionate pleasure the ma- ny respectable n>en who interested themselves for me, a perfect stranger to them, not a few of whom I can still name among my friends They will bear witness forme, how opposite even then mj principles were to those of jacobinism or even of democracy, and can attest the strict accuracy of the statement which 1 have left on re- cord in the i 0th and llth numbers of The Friend. From this rememberable tour I returned with nearly a thousand names on the subscriptign list of the Watch- man ; yet more than half convinced, that prudence dic- tated the abandonment of the scheme. But for this very reason I persevered in it ; for 1 was at that period of my life so completeh hag-ridden by the fear of being influ- enced by selfish motives, that to know a mode of conduct to be the dictate of prudence^ was a sort of presumptive proof to my feelings, that the contrary was the dictate ©f duty. Accordingly, I commenced the work, which was announced in London by long bills, in letters larger than had ever been seen before, and which (I have been informed, for I did not see them myself) eclipsed the glories even of the lottery puffs. But, alas! the publi- cation of the very first number w-as delayed beyond the day anuQunced for its appearance. In the second num- Ill ber an essay against fast days, with a most censurable ap- plication of a text from Isaiah for its motto, lost me near live hundred of my subscribers at one blow. In the two following numbers I made enemies of all my Jacobin and Democratic patrons ; for disgusted by their infideli- ty, and their adoption of French morals with French philosophy ; and perhaps thinking, that charity ought to begin nearest home ; instead of abusing the Government and the Aristocrats chiefly or entirely, as had been ex- pected of me, I levelled my attacks at ^'modern patri- otism,'^ and even ventured to declare my behef, that whatever the motives of ministers might have been for the sedition (or as it was then the fashion to call them, the gagging) bills, yet the bills themselves would pro- duce an effect to be desired by all the true friends of freedom, as far as they should contribute to deter men from openly declaiming on subjects, the principles of which they had never bottomed, and from '' pleading to the poor and ignorant, instead of pleading Jfor them.'* At tho same time I avowed my conviction, that national education, and a concurring spread of the gospel, were the indispensable condition of any true political amelio- ration. Thus, by the time the seventh number was pub- lished, I had the mortification (but why should 1 say this, when, in truth, 1 cared too little for any thing that concerned my worldly interests to be at all mortified about it ?) of seeing the preceding numbers exposed in sundry old iron shops for a penny a piece. At the ninth number I dropt the work. But from the London pub- lisher 1 could not obtain a shilling ; he was a — and set me at defiance. From other places I procured but little, and after such delays as rendered that little worth nothing : and I should have been inevitably thrown into jail by my Bristol printer, who refused to wait even for a month for a sum between eighty and ninety pounds, if the money had not been paid for me by a man by no means affluent, a dear friend who attached himself to me from my first arrival at Bristol, who has continued my friend with a fidelity unconquered by time or even by my own appa- rent neglect ; a friend from whom I never received an advice that was not wise, or a remonstrance that was not gentle and affectionate. 112 Conscientiously an opponent of the first reTolutionary war, yet vvitli my eyes thoroughly opened to the true character and impotence of the favourers of revolutionary principles in England, principles which I held in abhor- rence (for it was part of my political creed, that whoever ceased to act as an individual by making himself a mem- ber of any society not sanctioned by his government, for- feited the rights of a citizen) — a vehement anti-ministe- rialist, but after the invasion of Switzerland a more vehement anti-gallican, and still more intensely an anti- jacobin, I retired to a cottage at Stowey, and provided for my scanty maintenance by writino- verses for a Lon- don Morning Paper. 1 saw pLiinly, that literature was not a profession by which 1 could expect to live ; for I could not disguise from myself, that whatever my talents might or might not be in other respects, yet they w^ere not of the sort that could enable me to become a popu- lar writer ; and that whatever my opinions might be in themselves, they w^ere almost equi-distant from all the three prominent pnrties, the Pittites, the Foxites, and the Democrats. Of the unsaleable nature of my writings I had an amusing memento one morning from our own servant girl. For happening to rise at an earlier hour than usual, I observed her putting an extravagant quan- tity of paper into the grate in order to light the fire, and mildly checked her for her wastefulness ; la. Sir ! (re- plied poor Nanny) why, it is only "^ Watchmen." I now devoted myself to poetry and to the study of ethics and psychology ; and so profound was my admira- tion at this time of Hartley's Essays on Man, that 1 gave his name to my first born. In addition to the gentle- man, my neighbour, whose garden joined on to my little orchard, and the cultivation of whose friendship had been my sole motive in choosing Stowey for my resi- dence, \ was so fortunate as to acquire, shortly after my settlement tbere, an invaluable blessing in the society and neighbourhood of one, to whom I could look up with equal reverence, whether 1 regarded him as a poet, a philosopher, or a man. His conversation extended to almost all subjects, except physics and pohtics ; with the latter he never troubled himself Yet neither my retirement nor my utter abstraction from all the disputes of the day could secure me in those jealous times from 113 suspicion and obloquy, ivhich did not stop at me, but ex- tended to my excellent friend, whose perfect innocence was even adduced as a proof of his guilt. One of the many busy sycophants^ of that day (1 here use the word sycophant in its original sense, ^s a wretch who flatters the prevaihng party by informing against his neighbours, under pretence that they are exporters of prohibited Jigs or fancies ! for the moral apphcation of the term it matters not which) — one of these sycophantic law-mon- grels, discoursing on the politics of the neighbourhood, uttered the following deep remark : *' As to Coleridge, there is not so much harm in hiniy for he is a whirl- brain that talks whatever comes uppermost ; but that I he is the dark traitor. You never heard him ^ay a syllable on the subject. ^^ Now that the hand of Providence has disciplined all Europe into sobriety, as men tame wild elephants, by alternate blows and caresses ; now that Englishmen of all classes are restored to their old English notions and feel- ings, it will with difficulty be credited, how great an in- fluence was at that time possessed and exerted by the spirit of secret defamation, (the too constant attendant on party zeal 1) during the restless interim from 1793 to the commencement of the Addington administration, or the year before the truce of Amiens. For by the latter period the minds of the partizans, exhausted by excess of stimu- lation, and humbled by mutual disappointment, had become languid. The same causes that inclined the nation to peace, disposed the individuals to reconciliation. Both parties had found themselves in the wrong. The one had confessedly mistaken the moral character of the revolution, and the other had miscalculated both its moral and its physical resources. The experiment was made at the price of great, almost we m^y say, of humiliating sacrifices ; and wise men foresaw that it would fail, at least in its direct and ostensihle object. Yet it w^as pur- cba? throughout Europe have reason to be thankful, that - ho went on refining And thcu^dit of convincing-, while they thought of dininj;. 116 Our very sign boards (snid an illustrious friend to me^ give evidence that there has been a Titian in the world. In like manner, not only the debates in parliament ; not only our proclamations and state papers, but the essays and leading paragraphs of our journals arc so many re- niernbrancers of Edmlnd Burke. Of this the reader may easily convince himself, if either by recollection or refer- ence he will compare the opposition newspapers at the commencement and during the five or six following years of the French revolution, with the sentiments, and grounds of argument assumed in the same class of Jour- iiajs at present, and for some 3^ears past. Whether the spirit of jacobinism, which the writings of Burke exorcised from the higher and from the literary classes, may not, like the ghost in TIamlet, be heard mo- ving and mining in the underground chambers with an ac- tivity the more dangerous because less noisy, may admit of a question. I have given my opinions on this point, and the grounds of them, in my letters to Judge Fletcher, occasioned by his charge to the Wexford grand jury, and published in the Courier, Be this as it may, the evil spirit of jealousy, and w^ith it the cerberean whelps of feud and slander no longer walk their rounds in culti- vated society. Far different were the days to which these anecdotes have carried me back. The dark guesses of some zeal- ous quidnunc met with so congenial a soil in the grave alarm of a titled Dogberry of our neighbourhood, that a SPY was actually sent down from the government pour surveillance of myself and friend. There must have been not only abundance, but variety of these *' honorable men," at the disposal of Ministers : for this proved a very honest fellow. After three week's truly Indian perseverance in tracking us, (for we were commonly to- irether) during all which time seldom w^ere we out of doors, but he contrived to be within hearing (and all the time utterly unsuspected : how indeed could such a sus- picion enter our fancies ?) he not only rejected Sir Dog- bei ry's request that he would try yet a little longer, but declared to him his behef, that both my friend and myself were as good subjects, for aught he could discover to the contrary, as any in His Majesty's dominions. He had repeatedly hid himself, he said, for hours together, behi^nd 117 a bank at the sea-side, (our favourite seat) and'overheard our conversation. At first he fancied that we were aware of our danger ; for he often heard me talk of one Spy Nozij^ which he was inchned to interpret of himself, and of a remarkable feature belonging to him ; but he wa^ speedily convinced that it was a man who had made a book, and lived long ago. Our talk ran most upon books^ and we were perpetually desiring each other to look at this and to listen to that ; but he could not catch a word about politics. Once he had joined me on the road ; (this occurred, as 1 was returning home alone from my friend's house, which was about three miles from my own cottage) and passing himself oil as a traveller, he had entered into conversation with me, and talked, of purpose, in a demo- crat way in order to draw me out. The result, it ap- pears, not only convinced him that I was no friend of ja- cobinism ; but (he added) I had " plainly made it out to be such a silly as well as wicked thing, that he felt asham- ed, though he had only pw^ it 07i.^^ I distinctly remem- bered the occurrence, and had mentioned it immediatel}'' on my return, repeating what the traveller, with his Bar- dolph nose had said, with my own answer ; and so little did I suspect the true object of my "tempter ere accuser, "" that I expressed, with no small pleasure, my hope and he- lief that the conversation had been of some service to the poor misled malcontent. This incident, therefore, prevented all doubt as to the truth of the report, which, through a friendly medium, came to me from the master of the village inn, who had been ordered to^ entertain the government gentleman in his best manner, but, above all, to be silent concerning such a person being " in bis house. At length he received Sir Dogberry's com- mands to accompany his guest at the final interview ; and after the absolving suffrage of the gentleman ho7ioiired with the confidence of ministers^ answered, as follows, to the following queries ? D. Well, landlord ! and what do you know of the person in question ? L. 1 see him often pass by with maislcr , my landlord, (z. e the owner of the house,) and sometimes with the new-comers at Hol- ford ; but 1 never said a word to him, or he to me. D. But do you not know, that he has distributed papers and band-bills of a seditious nature among the common peo- ple I L. No, your honour! I never heard of such a thmg. 118 £). Hare you not seen this Mr. Coleridge, or heard of hFs haranguing and talking to knots, and clusters of the in- habitants ? — What are you grinning at, Sir ? L. Beg your honour's pardon ! but I was only thinking, how they'd have stared at him. !f what [ have heard be true, your honour! they would not have understood a word he said. "U'hen our vicar was here, Dr. L.,the master of the great school, and canon of Windsor, there was a great dinner party at maister 's ; and one of the farmers^ that was there, told us that he and the doctor talked real Hebrew Greek at each other for an hour together after dinner D Answer the question. Sir! Does he ever ha- rangue the people ? L. 1 hope your honour an't angry with me. I can say no more than I know. I never saw him talking wiih any one but my landlord, and our cu* rate, and the strange gentleman. D. Has he not been seen wandering on the hills towards the channel, and along the shore,»with books and papers in his hand, taking charts and maps of the country ? L. Why, as to that, your honour! I own, I have heard ; I am sure, I would not Tvish to say ill' of any body ; but it is certain, that I have lieard — D Speak out, man ! don't be afraid, you are doing; your duty to your king and goveriHnent. What have you, heard ? L. Why, .^olks do say, your honour ! as how that lie is a poet, and that he is going to put Quantock and all about here in print ; and as they be so much together, I suppose that the strange gentleman has some consarn in the business. So ended this formidable inquisition, the latter part of which alone require? explanation, and, at the same time, entitles the anecdote to a place in my literary Jiie. I had considered it as a defect in the admirable poem of the Task, that the subject, which gives the tftle to the work, was not, and indeed could not be, carried on beyond the three or four first pages, and that throughout the poem the connexions are frequently aukward, and the transitions abrupt and arbitrary i sought for a subject that should give equal room and freedom for description^ incident, and impassioned reflections on men, nature, and society, yet supply, in itself, a natural connexion to the parts, and unity to the whole Such a subject I co- ceiv- ed myself to have found in a stream, traced from its source in the hills among the yellow-red moss and conical glnss- ?haped tufts of Bt'Ut, to the first break or fall, where it^- 119 if drops became audible, and it begins to form a channel ; thence to the peat and turf barn, itself built of the same dark squares as it sheltered ; to the sheep-fold, to the first cultivated plot of ground, to the lo^lely cottage and its bleak garden won from the heath : to the hamlet, the villages, the market-town, the manufactories, and the sea- port. My walks, therefore, were almost daily on the top of Quantock, and among its sloping coouibs. With my pencil and memorandum book in my hand, 1 was making studies^ as the artists call them, and often mould- ing my thoughts into verse, with the objects and imagery immediately before my senses. Many circumstances, evil and good, intervened to prevent the couipietion of the poem, which was to have been entitled ''TheBrook.'^ Had I finished the work, it was my purpose, in the heat of the moment, to have dedicated it to our then conimit- tee of public safety, as containing the charts and maps, with ^vhich I was to have supplied the French govern- ment in aid of their plans of invasion. And these, too, for a tract of coast that from i levedon to Minehead scarcely permits the approach of a fishing boat ! All my experience, from my first entrance into life to the present hour, is in favour of the warning maxim, that the man who opposes in toto the political or religious zealots of his age, is safer from their obloquy, than he who differs from them in one or two points, or, perhaps, only in degree By that transfer of the feelings of private life- into the discussion of public questions, which is the queen bee in the hive of party fanaticism, the partizan has more sympathy with an intemperate opposite than with a moderate friend. We new enjoy an intermission, and long may it continue ! In addiHon to far higher and more important merits, our present bible societies, and clher numerous associations for national or charitable objects, may serve perhaps lo carry off the superfluous activity, and fervour oi stirring minds in innocent hyperboles and the bustle of management. But the poison-tree is not dead, though the sap may, for a season, have subsided to its roots At least, let us not be lulled into such a notion of our entire security, as not to keepvvatch and ward,, even on our best feelings. I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of toleration ; sectarian antipathy most oblruaively displayed iu the promotion of an undistiR- 120 guishiiig comprehension of sects ; and acts of cruelty, (I had almost said of treachery,) committed in furtherance of an object vitally important to the cause of humanity; ^nd all this by men, too, of naturally kind disposHions and exemplary conduct. The magic rod of fanaticism is preserved in the very adyta of human nature ; and needs only the re-exciting warmth of a master hand to bud forth afresh, and pro- duce the old fruits. The horror of the peasant's war in Germany, and the direful effects of the Anabaptist's ten- ets (which differed only from those of jacobinism by the substitution of theological for philosophical jargon) struck all Europe for a time with affright. Yet little more than a century was sufficient to obliterate all effective memo- ry of these events. The same principles, with similar, though less dreadful consequences, were again at work^ from the imprisonment of the first Charles to the resto- ration of his son. The flmatic maxim of extirpating fa- naticism by persecution produced a civil war. The war ended in the victor}^ of the insurgents ; but the temper survived, and Milton had abundant grounds for asserting^ that " Presbyter was but Old Prifst writ large !" One good result, thank heaven! of this zealotry was the re- establishment of the church. And now it might have been hoped, that the mischievous spirit would have been bound for a season, " and a seal set upon him that he might deceive the nation no more." But no ! The ball of persecution was taken up with undiminished vigour by the persecuted. The same fanatic principle, that under the solemn oath and covenant had turned cathedrals into stables, destroyed the rarest trophies of art and ancestral piety, and hunted the brightest ornaments of learning and religion into holes and corners, now marched under epis- copal banners : and having first crowded the prisons of England, emptied its whole vial of wrath on the misera- ble covenanters of Scotland. (Laing^s Histor}^ of Scot- land. — Walter Scott^s Bard's Ballads, Lc) A merciful pro- vidence at length constrained both parties to join against a common enemy. A wise government followed ; and the established church became, and now is, not only the brightest example, but our best and only sure bulwark, of toleration ! The true and indispensable bank against a r,€w inundation of persecuting zeal — Esto perpetua ! 121 A lon^ interval of quiet succeeded ; or, ratlier, the ex- haustion had produced a cold tit of the ague, which was sjnitoiDatized by indiilerence among the many, and a tendency to infidelity or scepticism in the educated classes. At length those feelings of disgust and hatred, which, for a brief while, the multitude had attached to the crimes and absurdities of sectarian and democra- tic fanaticism, were transferred to the oppressive privi- leges of the noblesse, and the luxury, intrigues, and fa- voritism of the continental courts. The same principleSp dressed in the ostentatious garb of a fasliionable philoso- phy, once more rose triumphant, and ellected the French revolution. And have we not, within tiie last three or four years, had reason to apprehend, that the detestable maxims and correspondent measures of the late French despotism had already bedimmed the public recollections of democratic phrenzy ; had drawn off, to other objects, the electric force of the feelings which had massed and upheld those recollections ; and that a favourable con- currence of occasions was alone wanting to awaken the thunder, and precipitate the lightning, from the opposite quarter of the political heaven ? (See The Friend, P- I'o.) ... . ■ . In part from constitutional indolence, which, in the very hey-dey of hope, had kept my enthusiasm in check, but still more from the habits and influences of a classical education and academic pursuits, scarcely had a year elaps- ed from the commencement of my literary and political adventures before my mind sunk into a state of thorough disgust and des{)ondency, both with regard to the disputes and the parties disputant. VV^ith more than poetic feelr. ing I exclaimed : •• The sensual and the dark rebel in vain, Slaves by their own compulsion ! In mad game They break their manacles, to vrcar t)ie name Of freedom, graven ou a heavier chain. O liberty ! with profitless endeavour, Have I pursued thee manv a weary hour; Bat thou nor swell'st the victor's pomp, nor ever Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human powerl Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee (Nor prayer nor boastful name delays theo} 122 From superstition's harpy minions And factious bJaspbemy's obscener slaves, Thou speedest on thy cherub pinions. The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves! Fkance, a Palinodia. I retired to a cottage in Somersetshire at the foot of ' Quantock, and devoted my thoughts and studies to the foundations of religion and morals. Here I found my- self all afloat. Doubts rushed in ; broke upon me "-'•from the fountains of the great deep^^ and fell '^fromthe windows cf heaven, "^^ The fontal truths of natural religion, and the books of Revelation, alike contributed to the flood ; and it was long ere my ark touched on an Ar- arat, an-d rested. The idea of the Supreme Being ap- peared to me to be as necessarily implied in all parti- cular modes of being as the idea of infinite space in all the geometrical figures by which space is limited I was pleased with the Cartesian opinion, that the idea of God is distinguished from all other ideas by involving its reality ; but I was not wholly satisfied. I began then to ask myself, what proof I had of the outward existence of any thing ? Of this sheet of paper, for instance, as a thing in itself, separate from the phosnomenon or image in my perception. I saw, that in the nature of things such proof is impossible ; and that of all modes of be- ing, that are not objects of the senses, the existence is assumed by a logical necessity arising from the consti- tution oftiie miiui itself, by the absence of all motive to doubt it, not from any absolute contradiction in the sup- position of the contrary. Still, the existence of a being, the ground of all existence, was not yet the existence of a moral creator and governor. '' In the position, that all reality is either contained in the necessary being as an attribute^ or exists through him, as its ground^ it remains undecided wliether the properties of intelhgence and will are to be referred to the Supreme Being in the for- mer, or only in the latter sense ; as inherent attributes, or only as consequences that have existence in other things through him. Thus, organization and motion, are re- garded 2isfrom God, not in God. Were the latter the truth, then, notwithstanding all the pre-eminence which must be assigned to the Eternal First from the suffi- ciency, unity, and independence of his being, as the 123 dread ground of the universe, his nature would yet fall fiiv short of that which we are bou!ul to conipreheud in the idea of God. For without any knowledge of deter- mining resolve of its own, it would ordy be a blind ne- cesbdry ground of other things and other spirits ; and thus would be distinguished from the fate of certain an- cient philosophers in no respect, but that of being more definitely and intelligibly described" Kant's einzig inoglicher Beweisgrund : verinischte Schriften, Znveiter Band^ § 102 and 103. For a very long time, indeed, I could not reconcile personality with infinity ; and my head was with Spino- za, though my whole heart remained with Paul and John. Yet there had dawned upon me, even before 1 had met with the Critique of the Pure Reason, a certain guiding li2;ht. If the mere intellect could make no certain dis- covery of a holy and intelligent first cause, it might yet supply a demonstration, that no legitimate argument could be drawn from the intellect against its truth. And what is this more than St. Paul's assertion, that by wis- dom (more properly translated, by the powers of reason- ing) no man ever arrived at the knowledge of God ? What more than the sublimest, and, probably, the oldest book on earth, has taught us, Silver and gold man searcbeth rrt : Bringeth the ore out of the earth, anw darkness into light* But where findeth he wisdom ? Where is the place of understanding? The abyss crieth ; it is not in ine ! Ocean ecboeth back; not in me 1 Whence then cometh wisdom ? Where dwelleth understanding ? Hidden from the eyes of the living : Kept secret from the fowls of heaven ! Hell and death answer : We have heard the rumour thereof from afar I God marketh out the road to it ; God knoweth its abiding place! 124 He beholileth the ends of the earth ; He surveyeth what is b^^neath the heavens ! I And as he weip:hed out the winds, and measured the sea, And appointed laws to the rain, And a path to t^e thunder, A path to the flashes of the lightningi Then did he see it, And he counted it ; He stjarched into the depth thereof, And with a line did he compass it round ! But to man he said, The fear of the J^ord is wisdom for thee I And to avoid evil, That is thy understanding. Job, Chap. 28th. I became convinced, that religion, as both the corner- stone and the key-stone "of morality, mnst have a moral origin ; so far at least, that the evidence of its doctrines could not, like the truths of abstract science, be wholly in- dependent of the will. It were therefore lo be expect- ed, that lis fundamental truth would be such as might be idenied ; though only, by the /oo/, and even by the fool from the madness of the heart alone I The question then concerning our faith in the exist- ence of a God, not only as the ground of the univ erse by his essence, but as its maker and judge by his wisdom and holy will, appeared to stand thus : The sciential reason, whose objects are purely theoretical, remains neutral, as long as its name and semblance are not usurp- ed by the opponents of the doctrine. But it then be- comes an effective ally by exposing the false show of demonstration, or by evincing the equal demonstrability of the contrary from premises equally logical. 7\he un- derstanding mean time suggests, the analog;, of experi- ence facilitates, the belief. Natur.3 excites i-^d retiUs it, «g by a perpet hil revelation. Our feelings almost ne-; cessitate it ; and the law of conscience peremptorily commands it The arg-nroents, that at all ap{ I3 to it, are in its favour ; and there is notbinof ag:airie^i it, bi-tits own subhmity. It could not be inteliectuaiiy more evi- 125 dent without becoming morally less effective ; ■without countera' ting its own end, by s.^criiicing the life of faith to the cold mechanism of ;i worthless, because compulso- ry assent. The belief of a God and a future state (if a passive acquiescence may be flattered with the name of belief) does not indeed always beget a good heart ; but a good heart so naturally begets the belief, that the very ^Qw exceptions must be regarded as strange anomalies from strange and unfortunate circumstances. From these premises I proceeded to draw the following conclusions. First, that having once fully admitted the existence of an infinite yet self-conscious Creator, we are not allowed to ground the irrationality of any other arti- cle of faith on arguments which would equally prove that to be irrational which we had allowed to be real. Se- condly, that whatever is deducible from the admission of a self comprehending and creative spirit, may be legiti- mately used in proof of the possibiuty of any further mys- tery concerning the divine nature, Possibilitatem myste- riorum, (Trinitatis, &c.,) contra insultus Infidelium et Hereticorum a contradictionibus vindico ; baud quidem ve- ritatem^ quee revelatione sola stabiliri possit ; says Leib- nitz, in a letter to his Duke. He then adds the follow- ing just and important remark : *' In vain will tradition or texts of scripture be adduced in support of a doctrine, donee clava impossibilitatis et contradictionis e manibus horum Herculum extorta fuerit. For the heretic will still reply, that texts, the literal sense of which is not so much above as directly against all reason, must be under- stood ^^?/rarrc)e/i/, as Herod is a fox, &c." These principles I hc\d, philosophically, while, in re- spect of revealed religion, 1 remained a zealous Unita- iian. I considered the idea of the Trinity a fair scho- lastic inference from the being of God, as a creative in- telligence ; and that it was, therefore, entitled to the rank of an esoteric doctrine of natural religion. But seeing in the same no practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the scl^ols of philosophy. The admission of the logos, as hypostasized, (i. e. neither a mere attribute or a per- sonification,) in no respect removed tuy doubts concern- ing the incarnation and the redemption by the cross ; which I could neither reconcile in reason with the im- passiveness of the Divine Being, nor, in my moral feel- VoL. L 11 126 ^ngs, with the sacred distinction between thfngs and per- sons, the vicarious payment of a debt, and the vicarious expiation of guilt. A more thorough revolution in my philosophic principles, and a deeper insight into my own heart, were yet wanting. Nevertheless, I cannot doubt, that the difference of my metaphysical notions from those of Unitarians in general, contributed (o my final re-con- version to the whole truth in Christ ; even as, according to his own confession, the books of certain Platonic phi- losophers, [Ubri quorundam Platonicorum,) commenced the rescue of St. Augustine's faith from the same error, aggravated by the far darker accompaniment of the Ma- nicha^an heresy. While my mind was thus perplexed, by a gracious pro- vidence, for which I can never be slifficiently grateful, the generous and munificent patronage of Mr. Josiah, and Mr. Thomas Wedgewood, enabled me to finish my edu- cation in Germany. Instead of troubling others with my own crude notions and juvenile compositions, I was thence- forward better employed in attempting to store my own head with the wisdom of others. I made the best use of my time and means ; and there is, therefore, no period of my life on which I can look back with such unmingled satisfaction. After acquiring a tolerable sufficiency in the German language^ at Ratzeburg, which, with my voy- * To tho.ee who design to acquire the lan^iage of a country in the arket, concerning this 127 age and journey thither, I have described in The Friend^ I proceeded through Hanover to Gottingen. Here I regularly attended the lectures on physiology in the naorniiig, and on natural history in the evening, un- der Blumenbach, a name as dear to every Englishman who has studied at that university, as it is venerable to men of science throughout Europe ! Eichhorn's lectures on the New Testament were repeated to me from notes hf a student from Ratzeburg, a young man of sound learning and indefatigable industry ; who is now, I be- lieve, a professor of the oriental languages at Heidelberg.. But my chief efforts were directed towards a grounded knowledge of the German language and literature. From professor Tychsen, I received as many lessons m the Gothic of Ulphilas as sufficed to make me acquainted with its grammar, and the radical words of most frequent occurrence ; and with the occasional assistance oi the bame philosophical linguist, I read through Ottfried's^ yea, and look at the moves of their mouths while they are talking, and thereafter interpret. They understand you then, and'mark that one talks German with them. * This paraphrase, written about the time of Charlemag^ne, is by no means deficient in occasional passages of considerable poetic merit. Therr^ is a flow, and a tender enthusiasm in the following- lines, (at the conclusion of Chapter Y.) which even in the translation. Mill not, 1 flatter Diyself, fail to interest the reader. Ottfried is describing the circumstaft- c by an accusation which has not only been advanced in reviews of the widest circulation, not only registered in the btilk- iest works of periodical literature, but, by frequency of repetition, has become an admitted fact in private litera- ry circles, and thoughtlessly repeated by too many who call themselves my friends, and whose own recollections ought to have suggested a contrary testimony. Would that the criterion of a scholar's utility were the number and moral value of the truths which he has been the means of throwing into the general circulation ; or the number and value of the minds, whom, by his conversa- i tion or letters, he has excited into activity, and sTipplied I with the germs of their aftergrowth I A distinguished rank might not, indeed, even then, be awarded to my exertions, but I should dare look forward with confidence i to an honourable acquittal, i should dare appeal to the I numerous and respectable audiences, which, at diiierent times, and in different places, honoured my lecture-rooms with their attendance, whether the points of view from which the subjects treated of were surveyed, whether the grounds of my reasoning were such, as they had heard or read elsewhere, or have since found in previ- ous publications. I can conscientiously declare, that the complete success of the Remorse on the first night of its representation, did not give me as great or as heart-felt a pleasure, as the observation that the pit and boxes w^ere crowded with faces familiar to me, though of indi- viduals whose names i did not know, and of whom I knew nothing, but that they had attended one or other ofmy (ourses of lectures. It is an excellent, though perhaps somewhat vulgar proverbj that there are cases 137 where a man may be ^s well " in for a pound as for a p€7iny.''^ To those, who from ignorance of the serious injury I have received from this rumour of having dreamt away my life to no purpose, injuries which 1 \inwillingly remember at ail, much less am disposed to record in a sketch of my literarj^ life ; or to those, who from their own feelings, or the gratification they derive from thinking contemptuously of others, would, like Job's comforters, attribute these complaints, extorted from me by the sense of wrong, to self-conceit or presumptuous vanity, I have already furnished such ample materi ds, that I shall gain nothing by witholding the remainder. I will not, therefore, hesitate to ask the consciences of those, who, from their long acquaintance with me and with the circumstances, are best qualified to decide, or be my judges, whether the restitution of the suum cuique would increase or detract from my literary reputation. In this exculpation, I hope to be understood as speaking of myself comparatively, and in proportion to the claims which others are entitled to make on my time or my talents. By what I have efiected, am I to be judged by my fellow men ; what I coidd have done, is a question for my own conscience. On my own account I may perhaps have had sufficient reason to lament my deficien- cy in self-controul, and the neglect of concentreing my powers to the realization of some permanent work. But to verse rather than to prose, if to either, belongs the voice of mourning" for Keen pangs of love awakening as a babe, Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart, And fears self-will'd thatshunn'd the eye of hope, And hope that scarce would know itself from fear; Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain And genius given and knowledge won in vain, And all which 1 had culPd in wood-walks wild, And all which patient toil had rear'd, and all Commune with thee had open'd out — but flowers Strew'd on my corpse, and borne upon my bier In the same coffin, for the self-same grave ! S. T. C. These wil) exist, for the future, I trust, only in the po- etic strains, which the feelings at the time called forth. In those only, gentle readerj Vol. L 12 138 Affectus animi varies, bellumque sequacis Perlegis iovidiae ; curasque revolvis inanes ; Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in asvo. Ferlegis et lacrymas, et quod pharetralus acut^ Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus. Omnia paulatim consumit long tor jet as VivEyDoq^vE simul morimur bapimurque manendo. Ipse mihi collatus enim nou iile videbor ; FroDS alia est, moresque alii, nova mentis imago, Vox aliudque sonat. Jamque observatio vil^ Multa dedit j— lug-ere nihil, ferre omnia ; jamque Paulatim lacrymas rerura experientia tersit. 13» CHAPTER XL dn affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel* themselves disposed to become authors. It was a favourite remark of the late Mr. Whitbread, that no man does any thing from a single motire. The separate motives, or, rather, moods of mind, which pro- duced the preceding reflections and anecdotes have been laid open to the reader in each separate instance But^ an interest in the welfare of those who. at the present time, may be in circumstances not dissimilar to my own at my first entrance into life, has been the constant ac- companiment, and, (as it were,) the under-song of all my feelings. Whitehead, exerting the prerogative of his laureatship, addressed to youthful poets a poetic charge, which is perhaps the best, and certainly the most inte- resting of his works. With no other privilege than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes, 1 would address an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, ground- ed on my own experience. It will be but short ; for the beginning, middle, and end, converge to one charge : NEVER PURSUE LITERATURE AS A TRADE. With the ex- ception of one extraordinary man, I have never known an individual, least of all an individual of genius, healthy or happy without a profession^ i. e. some regular employ- ment which does not depend on the will of the moment, and which can be carried on so far mechanically , that an average quantum only of health, spirits, and intellectual exertion, are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three hours of leisure, unannoyed hy any alien anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a change and recrea- tion, will suffice to realize in literature a larger product of what is truly genial^ than weeks of compulsion. Mo- ney and immediate reputation, form only an arbitrary and accidental end of literary labour. The hope of increas- ing them by any given exertion, will often prove a stimu- lant to industry ; but the necessity of acquiring them, will, in a]] works of genius, convert the stimulant into a narcotic. Motives by excess reverse their very nature^ 140 '^nd. instead of exciting, stun and stupify the mind. For it is one contradistinction of genius from talent, that ils predominant end is always comprised in the means ; and Ihis is one of the many points which establish an analogy between genius and virtue. Now, though talents may exist without genius^ yet as genius cannot exist, certainly not manifest itself, without talents, I would advise every scholar who feels the genial power working within him, so far to make a division between the two, as that he , should devote his talents to the acquirement of compe- tence in some known trade or profession, and his genius to objects of his tranquil and unbiassed choice ; while the consciousness of being actuated in both alike by the sin- cere desire to perform his duty, wmII alike ennoble both. My dear young friend, (1 would say,) " suppose your- self €v-tablished in any honourable occupation. From the manufactory, or counting-house, from ihe law court or from having visited your last patient, you return at even- ing, ** Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of home Is sweetest — — " to your family, prepared for its social enjoyments, with the very countenances of your wife and children bright- ened, and their voice of welcome, made doubly welcome by the knowledge that, as far as they are concerned, you have satisfied the demands of the day by the labour of the day. Then, when you retire into your study, in the books on your shelves, you revisit so many venerable friends witli whom you can converse. Your own spirit, scarcely less free from perj?onal anxieties than the great minds that, in those books, are still living for you ! Even your writing desk, with its blank paper, and all its other" implements, will appear as a chain of flowers, capable of linking your feelings, as well as thoughts, to events and characters past or to come ; not a chain of iron, which binds you down to think of the future, and the remote, by recalling the claims and feelings of the peremptory pre- .sent. But why should 1 say retire ? The habits of ac- tive life and daily intercourse with the stir of the world, will tend to give you such self-command, that the pre- sence of your family will be no interruption Nay, the aocial silence or undisturbing voices of a wife or sister. 141 will be like a restorati^'e atmosphere, or soft music, which moulds a dream without becoming its object. If facts are required, to prove the possibility of combining weighty performances in literature with full and independent em- ployment, the works of Cicero and Xenophon among the ancients, of Sir Thomas Moore, Bacon, Baxter, or, to refer, at once, to later and contemporary instances, Dar- win and RoscoE, are at once decisive of the question. But all men may not dare promise themselves a suffi- ciency of self-controul for the imitation of those exam- ples ; though strict scrutiny should always be made, whether indolence, restlessness, or a vanity impatient for immediate gratification, have not tampered with the judg- ment, and assumed the vizard of humility, for the pur» poses of self-delusion. Still the church presents to every man of learning and genius a profession, in which he may cherish a rational hope of being able to unite the wildest schemes of literary utility with the strictest performance of professional duties. Among the numerous blessings of Christianity, the introduction of an established church makes an especial claim on the gratitude of scholars and philosophers ; in England, at least, where the principles of protestantism, have conspired with the freedom of the government, to double all its salutary powers by the re- moval of its abuses. That not only the maxims, but the grounds of a pure morality, the mere fragments of which, " the lofty grave tragedians taught In chorus or iambic, teachers best Of moral prudence, with delight received In brief sententious precepts ;" Paradise Regained* and that the sublime truths of the divine unity and attri- butes, which a Plato found most hard to learn, and deem- ed it still more difficult to reveal ; that these should have become the almost hereditary property of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop ; that, even to the unlettered, they sound as coimnon place ^ is a phenomenon, which must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the services even of the pulpit and the reading desk. Yet those, who confine the effi 13^ 142 ciency of an established church (o Ms public office?, can hardly be placet! in a much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the kingdom there is transplanted a germ of civilization ; th^t in the remotest villages there is a nucleus, round whi^ch the capabilities of the place may crystallize and brighten ; a model, suf- ficiently superior to excite, yet, sufficiently near to en- courage and facilitate imitation ; this, the inobtrusive, continuous agency of a protestant church establishment, this it is, which the patriot, and the philanthropist, who ^ould fain unite the love of peace with the faith in the progressive ameUoration of mankind, cannot estimate at too high a price. " It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No men- tion shall be made of coral or of pearls, for the price of wisdom is above rubies." The clergyman is with his f)arishioners, and among them ; he is neither in the clois- tered cell or in the wilderness, but a neighbour and a family-man, whose education and rank admit him to the mansion of the rich landholder, while his duties make him the frequent visiter of the farm-house and the cottage. He is, or he may become, connected with the families of his parish, or its vicinity, by marriage. And among the instances of the blindness, or at best, of the short sight- edness, which it is the nature of cupidity to inflict, I know ievf moi'^ striking than the clamours of the far- m^^rs against church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergyman W'ould inevitably at the next lease be paid to the landholder ; while, as the case at present stand?, the revenues of the church are, in some sor\ the reversionary property of every family, that may have a member edu- cated for the church, or a daughter that may marry a clergyman, instead of being ^brec/os^c/ and immovable, it is in fact the only species of landed property that is essentially moving and circulative. That there exist no inconveniences, who will pretend to assort ? But I have yet to expect the proof, that the inconveniences are great- er in this than in any otner species; or, that either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter to become Q\{he.v Trullibers. ox salaried p/aee.'?ien. Nay, r do not hesitate to declare my firm persuasion, that >vb'atever reason of discontent the farmers may assign the true catise is this; that they may cheat ihG parson^ but 143 cannot cheat the steward ; and they are disappointed, if they shoul'i have been able to withhold only two pounds less than the legal claim, having expected to withhold five. At all events, considered relatively to the encour- agement of learning and genius, the establishment pre- sents a patronage, at once so effective and unburthensome, that it would be impossible to afford the like, or equal, in any but a christian and protestant country There is scarce a department of human knowledge, without some bearing on the various critical, historical, philosophical, and moral truths, in which, the scholar must be interested as a clergyman; no one pursuit worthy of a man of ge- nius, which may ^not be followed without incongruityo To give the history of the bible as a book, would be liUle less than to relate the origin, or first excitement, of all the literature and science, that we now possess. The very decorum, which the profession imposes, is favourable to the best purposes of genius, and- tends to counteract its most frequent defects. Finally, that man must be defi- cient in sensibility, who would not find an incentive to emulation in the great and burning lights, which, in a long series have illustrated the church of England ; who would not hear from within an echo to the voice from their sacred shrines, " Et Pater ^Eneas et avunculus excitat Hector." But, w^hatever be the profession or trade chosen, the advantages are many and important, compared with the stato of a mere literary maw, who, in any degree, depends on the sale of his works for the necessaries and comfi^rtS^ of iite. In the former a man lives in sympathy with the world in which he lives. At l^ast, he acquires a better and quicker tact tor the knowledge of that with which men in general can sympathize. He learns to manage his genius more prudently and efficaciously. His pow- ers and acquirements gain him likewise more real admi- ration, for they surpass the legitimate expectations of others. He is something besides an author, and is not therefore considered merel)^^ as an^ author. The hearts of men are open to him, as to one of their own class ; and whether he exerts himself or not in the conversa- tional circles ot bis acquaintaace^ his silence is not at- 144 tributed to pride, nor Lis communicativeness to vanity. To tliese advantages 1 wiil venture to add a superior chance of happiness in domestic Hfe, w^ere it only that it is as natural for the man to be out of the circle of his household during the day, as it is meritorious for tiie woman to remain for the most part within it. But this subject involves points of consideration so numerous and so delicate, and would not only permit, but require such ample documents from the biography of literary men, that 1 now merely allude to it in transitu. When the same circumstance has occurred at very diflerent times to very different persons, all of whom have some one thing in common, there is reason to suppose that such circumstance is not merely attributable to the persons concerned, but is, in some measure, occasioned by the one point in common to them all. Instead of the vehe- ment and almost slanderous dehortation from marriage, which the Misogyne, Boccaccio (^Vita e Cost u mi di Dante, p. 12. 16.) addresses to literary men, I vt^ould substitute the simple advice : be not merely a man of letters ! Let literature be an honourable augmentation to your arms, but not constitute the coat, or till the escutchion ! To objections from conscience 1 can of course answer in no other wa}^, than by requesting the youthful ob- jector (as I have already done on a former occasion) to ascertain with strict self-examination, whether other in- fluences may not be at work ; whether spirits, " not of healih^'^ and with whispers *' not from heaven,^^ may not be walking in the ticilight of his consciousness. Let him catalogue his scruples, and reduce them to a distinct in- telligible form ; let him be certain, that he has read with *a docile mind and favourable dispositions the best and most fundamental works on the subject ; that he has had both mind and heart opened to the great and illustrious quah- ties of the many renowned characters, who had doubted like himself, and whose researches had ended in the clear conviction, that their doubts had been groundless, or at least in no proportion to the counter-weight. Hap- py will it be for such a man, if, among his contempora- ries elder than himself, he should meet with one, who with similar powers, and feelings as acute as his own, had entertained the same scruples ; had acted upon them ; and who, by after-research (when the step was, ala§ ' 145 if retrievable, but for that very reason his research un- deniably disinterested) had discovered himself to have quarrelled with received opinions only to embrace er- rors, to have left the direction tracked out for him on the high road of honourable exertion, only to deviate in to a labyrinth, where, wlien he had wandered, till his head w^as giddy, his best good fortune was finally to have found his way out again, too late for prudence, though not too late for conscience or for truth ! Time spent in such delay is time won ; for manhood in the mean time is advancing, and with it increase of knowledge, strength of judgment, and, above all, temperance of feel- ings. And even if these should effect no change, vet the delay will at least prevent the final approval of the decision from being alloyed by the inward censure of the rashness and vanity, by which it had been precipitated. It would be a sort of irreligion, and scarcely less than a libel on human nature, to believe that there is any esta- blished and reputable profession or employment, in which a man may not continue to act with honesty and honour ; and, doubtless, there is likewise none, which may not at times, present temptations to the contrary. But woful- 1}' will that man find himself mistaken, who imagines that the profession of literature, or (to speak more plain- ly) the trade of authorship, besets its members with few- er or with less insidious temptations, than the church, the law, or the different branches of commerce. But I have treated sufficiently on this unpleasant subject in an early chapter of this volume. I will conclude the pre- sent, therefore, with a short extract from Herder, whose name I might have added to the illustrious list of those, who have combined the successful pursuit of the muses, not only with the faithful discharge, but with the highest honours and honourable emoluments of an established profession. The translation the reader will find in a note below.* '' Am sorgfaltigsten, nieiden sie die Au- torschaft. Zu friih oder unmassig gebraucht, macht sie den Kopf wiiste und das Herz leer ; wenn sie auch sonst ^Translation. — "With the greatest possible solicitude avoid author- ship. Too early, or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty ; even were there no other worse consequences. A per- son, who reads' only to print, in eill probability i^eads amiss j and he, who 14(j keine uble Folgen gkbe. Ein Mensch, der nur liesei urn zu driicken, iieset wahrscheinlich iibel ; und wer jeden Gedanken, der ihm aufstosst, darch Feder und Fresse versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt, und wird bald ein blosser Diener der Druckerey, ein Buchstabensetzer vverden^ Herder. sfends awav^ throai^h the pen and the press, every thoug-ht, the moment it- occurs to fiim, wih in a short time have sent all a'way, and will become a mere journeyman of the printing-olTice, a compositor.''^ To which I may add from myself, that what medical physiolog:ists af^ firm of certain secretions, applies equally to our thoughts ; Ihey too must be taken up again into the circulation, and be again and again re-secret- ed, in order to ensure a h^^altlitul vigour, both to the mind and to its iiitel^ lectuai offs|)ring» 147 CHAPTER Xn. j1 Chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal or omission of the chapter thatfoUoTvs, In the perusal of philosophical works, I have been greatly benefitted by a resolve, which, in the antithetic form, and with the allowed quaintness of an adage or max- im, 1 have been accustomed to word thus : " until you un- derstand a writer^s ignorance, presume yoursef ignorant of his understanding,'^^ This golden ride of mine does, I own, resemble those of Pythagoras, in its obscurit}^ rather than in its depth. If, however, the reader will permit me to be my own Hierocles, I trust that he will find its meaning fully explained by the following instances. I have now before me a treatise of a religious fanatic, full of dreams aud supernatural experiences, I see clearly the writer's grounds, and their hollowness. I have a com- plete insight into the causes, which, through the medium of his body, had acted on his mind ; and by applica- tion of received and ascertained laws, I can satisfactorily explain to my own reason all the strange incidents which the tvriter records of himself And this I can do without suspecting him of any intentionrtl falsehood. As when in broad day-light a man tracks tlie ste])s of a traveller, who had lost his way in a fog, or by treacherous moonshine ; even so, and with the same tranquil sense of certainty, can I follow the traces of this bevvildered visionary. I UNDERSTAND HIS IGNORANCE. On the other hand, I have been re-perusing, with the best energies of my mind, the Timaeus of Plato. What- ever 1 comprehend, impresses me with a reverential sense of the author's genius ; but there is a considerable portion of the work, to which \ can attach no consistent meaning. In other treatises of the same philosopher, in- tended for the average comprehensions of men, 1 have been delighted with the masterly go^od sense, with the perspicuity of the language, and tlie aptness of the induc- tions. I recollect, likewise, that numerous passages ia •this author, which I thoroughly compreliend^ were for- 148 merly no less unintelligible to me, than the passages now in q lestion. U would, 1 am -nware, be qrite fashionahle to dismiss them at once as^Phitonic Jarsjon Bat this I cannot do, with satisfaction to my own mind, because I have sought in Vr>in for causes adequate to the solution of the assumed inconsistency. 1 have no insi-rht into the possibility of a man so eminently wise, usin^ ^\ords with such nalf-meanincrs to himself, as must perforce pass into no-meaning to his readers. When, in addition to the mo- tives thus suggested by my own reason, I bring into dis- tinct remembrance the number and the series of great men, who, after long and zealous study of these works, had joined in honouring the name of Plato with epithets, that almost transcend humanity, 1 feel that a contemptuous verdict on my part might argue want of modesty, but would hardly be received by the judicious, as evidence of superior penetration. Therefore, utterly baffled in all my attempts to understand the ignorance of Plato, 1 con- clude MYSELF IGNORANT OF HIS UNDERSTANDirTG. In lieu of the various requests, which t'*e anxiety of authorship addresses to the unknown reader, I advance but this one ; that he will either pass over the following chapter altogether, or read the whole connectedly. The fairest part of the most beautiful body will appear deform- ed and monstrous, if dissevered from its place in the or- ganic whole. Na}^ on delicate subjects, where a seem- inaly trilling difference of more or less may constitute a difference in kiiid^ even ^faithful display of th^ main and supporting ideas, if yet they are separated from the forms by which they are at once cloathed and modified, may perchance present a skeleton indeed ; but a skeleton to alarm and deter. Though I might find numerous precedents, I shall not desire the reader to strip his mind of all prejudi- ces, or to keep all prior systems out of view during his exa- mination of the present. For, in truth, such requests appear to me not much unlike the advice given to hypochondriacal patients in Dr. Buchan's domestic medicine; videlicet, to preserve themselves uniformly tranquil and in good spi- rits.- Till I had discovered the art of destroying the me- memory a parte post, without injury to its future opera- tions, and without detriment to the judgment, I should suppress the request as premature ; and, therefore, how- ever much I n:)ay u-ish to be read with an iJrt^Meiudiced 149 m«nd, I do wet presume to state it as a necessary coii- dition. The extent of my daring is to suggest one criterion, by which it may be rationally conjectured before-hand, whether or no a reader would lose his time, and perhaps his temper, in the perusal of this, or any other treatise constructed on similar principles. But it would be cru- elly misinterpreted, as implying the least disrespect either for the moral or intellectual qualities of the individuals thereby precluded. The criterion is this : if a man re- ceives as fundamental facts, and therefore of course in- demonstrable, and incapable of further analysis, the gene- ral notions of matter, soul, bod}^ action, passiveness, time, space, cause and effect, consciousness, perception, memory and habit ; if he feels his mind completely at rest concerning all these, and is satisfied if only he can analyse all other notions into some one or more of these supposed elements, with plausible subordination and apt arrangement : to such a mind I would as courteousl}^ as possible convey the hint, that for him the chapter wns not written. Vir bonus es, doctus, prudens ; ast hand lihi spiro. For these terms do, in truth, include all the difficulties wbich the human mind can propose for solution. Taking them, therefore, in mass, and unexamined, it requires only a decent apprenticeship in logic, to draw forth their contents in all forms and colours, as the professors of legerdemain at our village fairs, pull out ribbon after ribbon from their mouths. And not more difficult is it to reduce them back again to their different genera. But though this analysis is highly useful in rendering our knowledge more distinct, it does not really add to it. It does not increase, though it gives us a greater mastery over, the wealth which we before possessed. For forensic purposes, for all the established professions of society, this is sufficient. But for philosophy in its high- est sense, as the science of ultimate truths, and therefor scientia scientiarum, this mere analysis of terms is prepa- rative only, though, as a preparative discipline, indispensa- ble. Vol. W 13 150 Stiillessdare a fayonrable perusal be uuticipated from ?.he proselytes of that coriipendious philosophy, which talking of mind but thinkino; of brick and moilar, or other images equally abstracted Irom bod}', contrives a theory of spirit by nicknaming matter, and in a few hours can -qualify its dullest disciples to explain the omne scibile by reducing all things to impressions, ideas, and sensa- fions. But it is time to tell the truth ; though it requires •some courage to avow it in an age and country, in whicli disquisitions on all subjects, not privileged to adopt technical terms or scientific symbols, must be addressed to the PUBLIC. I say then, that it is neither possible or necessary for all men, or for man}^ to be philosophers. There is a philosophic, (and inasnauch as it is actualized by an eflbrt of freedom, an artificial) cojiscioiisness^whicii lies beneath, or, (as it were,) behind the spontaneous /consciousness natural to all reflecting beings. As the older Romans distinguished their northern provinces into Cis-Alpine and Trans-Alpine, so may we divide all the objects of human knowledge into those on this side, and those on the other side of the spontaneous consciousness ; citra et trans conscientiam communern. The latter is exclusively the domain of pure philosophjs which is, therefore, properly entitled transcendenial, in order to discriminate it at once, both from mere reflection and re- presentation on the one hand, and on the other from those flights of lawless speculation, which, abandoned by all distinct consciousness, because transgressing the bounds and p^jrposes of our intellectual faculties, are justly condemned, as transcendent,^ The first range of * Tiiis distinction, l^etn'eentranscendpntal and transcendent, is observed by our eldv-r divines and philosophers, whenever they express themselves ^tholdsiimlly. Dr. Johnson, indeed, has confounded' the two worda ; but his own authorities do not bear him out. Of this celebrated dictionary, I will venture to remark, once for all, that I should suspect the man of a jiioro.-;;* disposition, who should speak of it without respect and gratitude, as a most 'instructive and entertaining booky and liitherto, unfortunately, an indispensable book: but I confess, that I should be surprised at hear- in;^ ii:om a philosophic and thorough scholar, any but very qualilied^ praises of it, as a dictionary, I am not now alluding to the number of j^cnuine words otn-ttcd ; Vor this i.s, (and, perhaps, to a great extent,) "tru^., as jSIr. Wakefield has noticed, of our best Greek Lexicons : and this, too, after the successive labours of so many giants in learning. I refnr, at present, both to oniissions and < ommissions of a more important nature. What these are, me saltern judice, will be stated at full ui The FiiiiiNn, re-publiihed and completed. * 151 Iiiils, that cncirde's the scanty vale of human hfe, is the Iiorizon for the majority of its inhabitants. On its ridge? the common sun is born and departs. From tkem the stars rise, and touching ^/^em the}^ vanish. By the many, even this range, the natural limit and bulwark of the vale, is but imperfectly known. Its higher ascents are too often hidden by mists and clouds from uncultivated swamps, which few have courage or curiosity to pene trate. To the multitude below these vapours appear, now, as the dark haunts of tcrri(ic agents, on which none ma}^ intrude with impunity ; and now all a-glow, with colours not their own, they are gazed at as the splendid palaces of happiness and power. But in all ages there have been a few who, measuring and sounding the rivers of the vale at the feet of their furthest inaccessible falls, have learnt, that the sources must be far higher and far inward ; a few, who even in the level streams have de- tected elements, which neither the vale itself or the sur- rounding mountains contained or could supply. How and whence to these thoughts, these strong probabili- T had never heard of the correspondence betwf»en WakefieM and Fox, flU I saw the account of it this morning-, TlHth Septeniher, 1815,) iji the Monthly Review. I was not a little grratified at findiniTj that Mr. Wake- tield had proposed to himself nearly the same plan for a Greek and En- gl sh Dictionary, which I liad formed, and hegftn to exf^cute, now ten years ago. But far, far more i^rieved am I, that he did not hVe to conspleat It. I cannot but think it a subject of most serious reo'ret, that the s-\m^' hea\-y expenditure, which is now cmplovin^" in tho rcpuhlicntion of Ste- piiAXus aug-mented, had not been applied to^a new Ij'-xicon, on a mor^ philojiophical plan, with the English, (jerman, and French Synonirnes, as well as the Latin. In almost every in-^tance, the nrecise individual mc^in- ing might be given in an English or (jerman va orc(: whereas, iu Latin, we must too often be coiitented with a mere general and inclusive term. How, indeed, can it be otherwise, wlicn we attempt to render the rno?t copious language of the world, the rao^t admirable for the tineness of it«^ distinctions, into one of the pooievt and most vague lanji-uages ? Espe- cially, when vve reHect on the comparative number of the works, still ex- tant, written while the Greek and Latin were living lan«-uage«. Were I asked, what I deemed the greatest and most unmixt benefit, which a wealthy individual, or an association of wealthy individuals, could be- stow on their country and on mankind, I should not hesitate to answer, *' a philosophical English dictionary, with the Greek, Latin, German, French, Spanish and Italian synonimes, and «»- ith ccn'responding indexes.'" That the learned languages might thereby be acquired better, in hali" the time, is ^ut a part, and' not the most important part, of the advantages which would accrue from such a work. O .' if it should be permitted, by providence, that, without detriment to freedom' and independorsce, our government might be enabled to become more than a committee for war and revenue! There was a time when every thing was to be done by govemmeat. Have we not llown ott to the contrary extreme.'' 1.'52 t'ie<, the ascertaining vision, the intuitive kfiowled2;e, may finally supervene, can be learnt only by the fact. 1 niiii'ht oppose to the question the words with which Flotinus* supposes nature to answer a similar difficulty. *' Should any one interrogate her how she works, if gra- ciously she vouchsafe to listen and speak, she will replj-, it behooves thee not to disquiet me with interrogatories, but to understand in silence, even as I am silent, and work witliont words." Likewise, in the iifth book of the fifth Ennead, speak- ing of the highest and intuitive knowledge as distinguish- ed from t!ie discursive, or, in the language of Wordsworth^ '' The vision and the faculty divine ;-' he says : *' it is not lavvful to inquire from w- hence it sprang, as if it were a thing subject to place and motioa, for it neither approached hither, nor again departs from hence to some other place ; but it either appears to us, or it does not appear. So that we ought not to pursue it with a view of detecting its secret source, but to watch in quiet till it suddenly shines upon us ; preparing our- selves for the blessed spectacle, as the eye waits patient- ly for the rising sun." They, and they only, can acquire the philosophic imagination, the sacred power of self-in- tuition, who, within themselves, can interpret and under- stand the symbol, that the wings of the air-sylph are forming within the skin of the caterpillar; those only, who feel in their own spirits, the same instinct which im- pels the crysalis of the horned fly to leave room in its invo- lucrum for antennae yet to come. They know and fee>, * Ennead iii. 1, 8. c. 3. The force of the Greek crvvnvai is imperfectly i'xpressed by '* understand :" our own idiomatic phrase " to go along nUTi :.ne," comes nearest to it. The passa^ce that follows, full of profound sens-?, appears to me evidently corrupt ; and, in fact, no writer more wants, better deserves, or is less likely to obtain, a new and more correct edition: — t1 5v c-jiitval ; 8ti to 7f vc|i£vov jjj S-^a^ia i^jv, criwrrricrij {mallem, ^iaiia, t^S o-icottco- oris,) xa\ (picrsi 7Evo;ifvov Sri'pnfia xa\ /ioi yEvcpLivn U 9-£wpi'af lU w'5i', rfv (pCciv 5x£'v (piAo^ci^ova vTrapmi {mallem^ >idi \io\ -ht 7£vojiivn \h I>fx'piaj doryij to5iJ.) ** what then ^re we to understand ? That whatever is produced is an in- tuition, I silent ; and that, which is thus generated, is by its nature a theo- rem, or foi-m of contemplation ; and the" birth, which results to me iroia this contemplation, attains to have a contemplative nature." So Synesi- us ; D.b\i »pa, Appina To\d. The after comparison of the process of the natura naturans with thut of the geometrician ^3 drawn iroiii the vei-^ heart of philosophy. 153 that the potential works ii^, them, even as the actual works on them ! In short, all the organs of sense are framed for a corresponding world of sense ; and we have it. All the organs of spirit are framed for a correspond- ent world of spirit : tho' the latter organs are not devel- oped in all alike. But they exist in all, and their first appearance discloses itself in the moral being. How else could it be, that even worldlings, not wholly debas- ed, will contemplate the man of simple and disinterested goodness with contradictory feelings of pity and respect ? " Poor man ! he is not made for this world." Oh 1 herein they utter a prophecy of universal fulfilment ; for man must either rise or sink. It is the essential mark of the true philosopher to rest satisfied with no imperfect light, as long as the impossi- bility of attaining a fuller knowledge has not been demon- strated. That the common consciousness itself will fur- nish proofs by its own direction, that it is connected with master-currents below the surface, I shall merely assume as a postulate pro tempore. This having been granted, though but in expectation of the argument, I can safely deduce from it the equal truth of my former assertion, that philosophy cannot be intelligible to all, even of the most learned and cultivated classes. A system, the first principle of which it is to render the mind intuitive of the spiritual in man, (i. e. of that which lies on the other side of our natural consciousness,) must needs have a great obscurity for those who have never disciplined and strengthened this ulterior consciousness. It must, in truth., be a land of darkness, a perfect .^nte-Gosheri, for men to whom the noblest treasures of their own being are reported only through the imperfect translation of lifeless and sightless notions : perhaps, in great part, through words which are but the shadows of notions ; even as the notional understanding itself, is but the sha- dowy abstraction of living and actual truth. On the im- mediate, which dwells in every man, and on the original intuition, or absolute afiirmation of it> (which is likewise in every man,, but does not in every man rise into con- sciousness,) all the certainty of our knowledge depends ; and this becomes intelligible to no man by the ministeiy of mere words from without. The medium, by which spi- rits understand each other, is not the surroanding air j 151 h-Oi the freedom ^vhich tliey po.ssess in common, as the common ethereal element of their being, the tremulous reciprocations of which propagate themselves even to the inmost of the soul. Where the spirit of a man is noi filled, with the consciousness of freedom, (were it only from its restlessness, as of one still struggling in bondage,) all spiritual intercourse is interrupted, not only with others, but even with himself No wonder, then, that he remains incomprehensible to himself as well as to others. No wonder, that in the fearful desert of his consciousness, he wearies himself out with empty words, to which no friendly echo answers, either from his own heart, or the heart of a fellow being; or bewilders him- self in the pursuit of woz'zo?2aZ phantoms, the mere refrac- tions from unseen and distant truths, through the distort- ing medium of his own unenlivened and stagnant under- standing ! To remain unintelligible to such a mind, ex- clainjs Schelling, on a like occasion, is honour and a good name before God and man. The history of philosophy, (the same writer observes,) contains instances of systems which, for successive gene- rations, have remained enrgm-L^.tic. Such he deems the system of Leibnitz, (whom another writer, rashly 1 think, and invidiously,) extols as the only philosopher who was himself deeply convinced of his own doctrines. As hither- to interpreted, however, they have not produced the ef- fect which Leibnitz himself, in a most instructive passage, Jescribes as the criterion of a true philosophy ; namely^ ihat it would at once explain and collect the fragments of truth scattered through systems apparently the most in- congruous. The truth, says he, is diffused more widely than is commonly believed ; but it is often painted, yet oftener masked, and is sometimes mutilated, and some- times, alas ! in close alliance with mischievous errors. The deeper, however, we penetrate into the ground of tilings, the more truth we discover in the doctrines of the ■greater number of the philosophical sects. The want of ,^uhstantl^l reality in the objects of the senses, according to the sceptics ; the harmonies or numbers, the proto- fypes and ideas, to which the Pythagoreans and Platonists ^jduced all things j the q^e and ali^ of Fa.rmeiif'ies a^d 155 Plotinus, \rithout Splnozism ;^ the necessary corinectioii of things according to the Stoics, reconcilable with the spontaneity of the other schools ; the vital philosophy of the Cabalists and Hermetists, who assumed the univer- sality of sensation ; the substantial forms and entelechies of Aristotle and the schoolmen, together with the me- chanical solution of all particular phenomena according to Democritus and the recent philosophers ; all these we shall find unfted in one perspective central point, which shows regularity and a coincidence of all the parts in the very object which, from every other point of view, must appear confused and distorted. The spirit of see* tarianism has been hitherto our fault, and the cause of our failures. We have imprisoned our own conceptions by the lines which we have drawn in order to exclude the conceptions of others. J'ai trouve que la plupart des * This is happily effected in three Hnes by Svnesics, in his Fourth Hymn : 'Ev nai ITttiTfl — (taken by itself) si Spinosism. 'Ev 6' 'Attclvtcov — a mere anima Mimdi 'Ev T£ TTjo TTOvTcov — is mechanical Theism. But unite all three, and the result is the Theism of St. Paul and Chris- tianity. Syiiesius was censured for his doctrine of the pre-existence of the Soul; but' never, that I can find, arraigned or deemed heretical for his Pan- theism, though neither Giordano Bruno, or Jacob Behmen, ever avowed it more broadly Mtjsaj 5i iVoo?, Ttt Tf xal Ttt Aiyti, B63-OV appriTov Aji^pixop^uwv. Xu TO Ti xTov tpuy,, Su TO TlXT0|i£V0V* Ei) TO ir J, Newton, Locke &l.) who must say from whom we had our being, and with it, life and the. powers of life. 168 an act, and it follows, therefore, that intelligence or self-consciousness is impossible, except by and in a will. The self-conscious spirit, therefore, is a will ; and free- dom must be assumed as a ground of philosophy, and can never be deduced from it. Thesis VIII. — Whatever in its origin is objective, is likewise as such necessarily finite. Therefore, since the spirit is not originally an object, and as the subject ex- ists in antithesis to an object, the spirit cannot originally be finite. But neither can it be a subject without be- coming an object, and as it is originally the identity of both, it can be conceived neither as infinite or finite, ex- clusively, but as the most original union of both. In the existence, in the reconciling, and the recurrence of this contradiction, consists the process and mystery of pro- duction and life. Thesis IX. — This principium commune essendi et cognoscendi, as subsisting in a will, or primary act of self-duplication, is the mediate or indirect principle of every science ; but it is the immediate and direct princi- ple of the ultimate science alone, i. e. of transcendental philosophy alone. For it mus-t be remembered, that all these Theses refer solely to one of the two Polar Sciences, namely, to that which commences with, and rigidly confines itself within the subjective, leaving the objective, (as far as it is exclusively objective,) to natu- ral philosojih}^ which is its opposite pole. In its very idea, therefore, as a systematic knowledge of our collec- tive KNOWING, (scientia scientiae,) it involves the neces- sity of some one highest principle of knowing, as at once the source and the accompanying form in all particular acts of intellect and perception. This, it has been shown, can be found only in the act and evolution of self- consciousness. We are not investigating an absolute principium essendi ; for then, I admit, many valid ob- jections might be started against eur theory ; but an ab- solute principium cognoscendi. The result of both the sciences, or their equatorial point, would be the principle of a total and undivided philosophy, as, for prudential reasons, 1 have chosen to anticipate in the Scholium to Thesis VL and the note subjoined. In other words, phf- 169 losophy would pass into religion, and religion become in* elusive of philosophy. We begin with the I know myself, in order to end with the absolute I am. We proceed from the SELF, in order to lose and find all self in God. Thesis X. — -The transcendental philosopher does not inquire, what ultimate ground of our knowledge there may lie out of our knowing, but what is the last in our knowing itself, beyond which 'we cannot pass. The prin- ciple of our knowing is sought within the sphere of our knowing. It must be something, therefore, which can itself be known. It is asserted, only, that the act of self-consciousness is for us the source and principle of all our possible knowledge. Whether, abstracted from us, there exists any thing higher and beyond this primary self-knowing, v/hich is for us the form of all our knowing, must be decided by the result. That the self-consciousness is the fixt point, to which for us all is morticed and annexed, needs no further proof. But that the self-consciousness may be the modification of a higher form of being, perhaps of a higher conscious- ness, and this again of a yet higher, and so on in an infi- nite regressus ; in short, that self-consciousness may be itself something explicable into something, which must lie beyond the possibility of our knowledge, because the whole synthesis of our intelligence is first formed in and through the self-consciousness, does not at all concern us as transcendental philosophers. For to us the self-conscious^ nessis not a kind of being, but a kind of knoxsoing, and that tpothe highest and farthest that exists for us. It may how- ever be shown, and has in part already been shown, in pages 74-75, * that even when the Objective is assumed as the first, we yet can never pass beyond the principle of self consciousness. Should we attempt it, we must be driven back from ground to ground, each of which would cease to be a ground the moment we pressed on it. We must be whirled down the gulph of an infinite series. But this would make our reason baiSle the end and purpose of all reason, namely, unity and system. Or we must break off the system arbitrarily, and affirm an absolute something that is in and of itself at once cause and effect, {causa sui) subject and object, or, rather, the absolute identity of both. But as this is inconceivable, except in a self-consciousness, it follows, that even ^ natural phi.- 170 fosophers we must arrive at the same principle from which as transcendental philosophers we set out ; that is, in a self-consciousness in which the principium essendi does not stand to the principium cognoscendi in the re- lation of cause to effect, but both the one and the other are co-inherent and ihdentical. Thns the true system of natural philosophy places the sole reality of things in an ABSOLUTE, which is at once causa sui et effectus, ^a''^? aulonalc^Si Xios eavh—in the absolute identity of subject and object, which it calls nature, and which in its highest power is nothing else but self-conscious will or intelli- gence. In this sense the position of Malbranche, that we see all things in God, is a strict philosophical truth ; and equally true is the assertion of Hobbes, of Hartley, and of their masters in ancient Greece, that all real know- ledge supposes a prior sensation. For sensation itself is but vision nascent, not the cause of intelligence, but in- telligence itself revealed as an earlier power in the pro» cess of self construction. Mcixa?, rxa9t jio» ! Ei Traftt )to(Tfiov, El Traftt jioipav TuJv cru3v Ihyov I Bearing then this in mind, that intelligence is a sell^ development, not a quality supervening to a substance, we may abstract from all degree, and for the purpose of philosophic construction reduce it to kiiid, under the idea of an indestructible power, with two opposite and counter- acting forces, which by a metaphor borrowed from astro- nomy, we may call the centrifugal and centripedal forces... The intelligence in the one tends io ohjectize itself, and I in the other to know itself in the object. It will be here- after my business to construct, by a series of intuitions, the progressive schemes that must follow from such a power with such forces, till I arrive at the fulness of the human intelligence. For my present purpose, I assume such a power as my principle, in order to deduce from it a fa- culty, the generation, agency, and application of which form the contents of the ensuing chapter. In a preceding page I have justified the use of tech- nical terms in philosophy, whenever they tend to pre- 171 dude confusion of thought, and when they assist the me- mory by the exclusive singleness of their meaning more than they may, for a short time, bewilder the attention by their strangeness. I trust, that I have not extended this privilege beyond the grounds on which I have claim- ed it ; namely^Jhe conveniency of the scholastic phrase to distinguish the kind from all degrees, or rather to ex- press the kind with the abstraction of degree, as, for in- stance, multeity instead of multitude ; or, secondly, for the sake of correspondence in sound and interdependent or antithetical terms, as subject and object ; or, lastly, to avoid the wearying recurrence of circumlocutions and de- tinitions. Thus 1 shall venture to use potence, in order to express a specific degree of a power, in imitation of the algebraists. I have even hazarded the new verb potenziate, with its derivatives, in order to express the combination or transfer of powers. It is with new or unusual terms, as with privileges in courts of justice or legislature ; there can be no legitimate privilege^ where there already exists a positive law adequate to the pur- pose ; and when there is no law in existence, the privi- lege is to be justified by its accordance with the end, or final cause of all law. Unusual and nev/-coined words are doubtless an evil; but vagueness, confusion, and im- perfect conveyance of our thoughts, are a far greater. Every system, which is under the necessity of using terms not familiarized by the metaphysics in fashion, will be described as written in an unintelligible style, and the author must expect the charge of having substituted learn- ed jargon for clear conception ; while, according to the creed of our modern philosophers, nothing is deemed a clear conception, but what is representable by a distinct image. Thus the conceivable is reduced within the bounds of the picturable. Hinc patet, qut fiat ut, cum irreprcEsentable et impossibile vulgo ejusdem significatus habeantur, conceptus tarn Continui^ quam infiniti, a plu- rimis rejeciantur, quippe quorum, secundum leges cogni- tionis iiituitivce, repra^sentatio est impossililis. Quan- quamautem harum e non p.-nicis scholis explosarum noti- oanm, pra^sertim prions, causam hie hon gero, maximi tamen momenti p.rit monuisse : gravissimo illos errore la- bi, qui tam perversa argumentnndi patione utuntur. Quic- quid enim repugnat legibus intellectiis et rationis, utique 172 est impossibile ; quod autem, cum rationis puras sit ob- jectum, legibus cognitionis intuitivae tantummodo non sub- est^ non item. Nam liinc dissensus inter facultatem sen- sitivam et intellectualem^ (quarem indole m mox exponam) nihil indigitat, nisi, quas mens ah intellectu accerptas fert ideas abstractas^ illas in concreto exequi, et in Intuitus com- mutare sctpemimero non posse, Haec autem reluctantia subjectiva mentitur, ut plurimum, repugnantiam aliquam objectivarn, et incautos facile fallit, limitibus, quibus mens fiumana circuscribitnr, pro iis habitis, quibus ipsa rerum essentia continetur.* Kant de Mundi Sensibilis atque fntelligibilis forma et principiis, 1770. Critics, who are most ready to bring this charge of pe- dantry and unintelliii;ibility, are the most apt to overlook the important fact, that beside the language of words, there is a language of spirits (sermo interior) and that the former is only the vehicle of the latter. Consequently, their assurance, that the}^ do not understand the philoso- phic writer, intead of proving any thing against the phi- losophy, may furnish an equal and (caeteris paribus) even a stronger presumption against their own philosophic talent. * Trnmlation. — *-' Hence it is clear, from what cause many reject the iiotion of the continuous and the infinite. They take, namely, the words irrepresentable ai.d impo>sit>le, in one and the same meaning;; and, ac- cording to the forms- of sensuous evidence, the notion of the continuous and the infinite is doubtless impossible. 1 am not now pleading the cause of these lans, which not a few schools have thought proper to ex- plode, especially the former (the law of continuity.) But it is of^the high- est importance to admonish the reader, that those who adopt so perverted a mode of reasoning, are under a grievous errer. Whatever opposes the formal principles of the understanding and the reason is confessedly im- possible but not therefore that vviiich is therefore not amenable to the i'ovms of sensuous evidence, because it is exclusively an object of pure intel- lect. For this non -coincidence of the sensuous and the mtellectual, (the nature of which 1 shall presently lay open) proves nothing more but that the mind cannot always adeo,uately represent in the concrete, and trans- form iito distinct images, abstract notions derived from the pure intellect. But this contradiction, which is in itself merely subjective, (i. e. an incapa- city in the nature of man) too often passes for an incongruity or impossi- bilty in the object (i. e. the notions themselves) and seduce the incau- tious to mistake the limitations of the human faculties for the limits of things, as they really exist." I take this occasion to observe that here and elsewhere, Kant uses the terms intuition, and the verb active intueri, fgermanic^, anschaueji) for which we have unfortunately no corres))ondent word, ex'lusively for that which can be represented in space and time He therefore consistently, and rightly, denies the possibihty of intellectual intuitions. But as I see no adequate reason for this exclusive sense of the term, I have reverted to its wider signification authorized by our elder theologians and meta- physicians, according to whom the term comiDrehends all truths known to u,$ without a medium. 173 Great indeed are the obstacles which an English meta- physician has to encounter. Amongst his most respect- able and intelligent judges, there will be many who have devoted their attention exclusively to the concerns and interests of human life, and who bring with them to the perusal of a philosophic system an habitual aversion to all speculations, the utihty and application of which are not evident and immediate. To these I would, in the first instance, merely oppose an authority which they them- selves hold venerable, that of Lord Bacon : non inutile scientioB existimande sunt, quarum in se nullus est usus, si ingenia acuant et ordinent. There are others, whose prejudices are still more for- midable, inasmuch as they are grounded in their moral feelings and religious principles, which had been alarmed and shocked by the impious and pernicious tenets de- defended by Hume, Priestly, and the French fatalists or necessitarians ; some of whom had perverted metaphy- sical reasonings to the denial of the mysteries, and, in- deed, of all the peculiar doctrines of Christianity ; and others even to the subversion of all distinction between right and wrong. I would request such men to consider what an eminent and successful defender of the christian faith has observed, that true methaphysics are nothing else but true divinity, and that in fact the writers who have given them such just offence, were sophists, who had taken advantage of the general neglect into which the science of logic has unhappily fallen, rather than meta- physicians, a name, indeed, which those writers were the first to explode as unmeaning. Secondly, I would re- mind them, that as long as there are men in the world to whom the Tvw^i aiavrov is an instinct and a command from their own nadure, so long will there be metaphysicians and metaphysical speculations ; that false metaphysics can be effectually counteracted by true metaphysics alone ; and that if the reasoning be clear, solid, and pertinent, the truth deduced can never be the less valuable on account of the depth from which it may have been drawn. A third class profess themselves friendly to metaphysics, and beUeve that they are themselves metaphysicians. They have no objection to system or terminology, provided it be the method and the nomenclature to which they have been familiarized in the writings of Locke, Hume; Hart- VoL. I. 15 174 ley, Condiliac, or, perhaps, Dr. Reid and Professor Stew- art. To objections from this cause, it is a sufficient an- swer, that one main object of my attempt was to demon- strate the vagueness or insufficiency of the terms used in the metaphysical schools of France and Great Britain since the revolution, and that the errors which I pro- pose to attack cannot subsist, except as they are con- cealed behind the mask of a plausible and indefinite no- menclature. But the worst and widest impediment still remains. It is the predominance of a popular philosophy, at once the counterfeit and the mortal enemy of all true and manly metaphysical research. It is that corruption, in- troduced by certain immethodical aphorisming Eclectics, who, dismissing, not only all system, but all logical con- nexion, pick and choose whatever is most plausible and showy ; who select whatever words can have some semblance of sense attached to them without the least expenditure of thought ; in short, whatever may enable men to talk of what they do not understand, with a care- ful avoidance of every thing that might awaken them to a moment'^ suspicion of their ignorance. This, alas I is an irremediable disease, for it brings with it, not so much an indisposition to any particular system, but an utter loss of taste and faculty for all system and for all philosophy. Like echos, that beget each other amongst the mountains, the praise or blame of such men rolls in volleys long after the report from the original blunder- buss. Sequacitas est potius et coitio quam consensus : et tamen (quod pessimum est) pusillanimitas ista non sine arrogantia et fastidio si offert. Novum Organum, I shall now proceed to the nature and genesis of the imagination ; but I must first take leave to notice, that after a more accurate perusal of Mr. Wordsworth's re- marks on the imagination in his preface to the new edi- tion of his poems, I find that my conclusions are not so consentient with his, as, I confess, 1 had taken for grant- ed. In an article contributed by me to Mr. Southey's Omniana, on the soul and its organs of sense, are the fol- lowing sentences. " These (the human faculties) I would arrange under the different senses and powers ; as the eye, the ear, the touch, &c. ; the imitative power, vo- luntary aud automatic ; the imagination, or shaping and 175 modifying power ; the fancy, or the aggregative and as- sociative power ; the understanding, or the regulative, substantiating and reahzing power ; the speculative rea- son — vis theoretica et scientiiica, or the power by which we produce, or aim to produce unity, necessity, and uni- versality in all our knowledge by means of principles a priori ;* the will, or practical reason ; the faculty of choice (Germanice^ Willkiihr) and (distinct both from the moral will and the choice) the sensation of volition, which I have found reason to include under the head of single and double touch." To this, as far as it relates to the subject in question, namely, the words {the aggregative and associative pozcer) Mr. Wordsworth's '' only objec- tion is that the definition is too general. To aggregate and to associate, to evoke and combine, belong as well to the imagination as the fancy." 1 reply, that if by the power of evoking and combining, Mr. W. means the same as, and no more than, 1 meant by the aggregative and associative, I continue to deny, that it belongs at all to the imagination ; and I am disposed to conjecture, that he has mistaken the co-presence of fancy with im- agination for the operation of the latter singly. A man may work with two very difterent tools at the same mo- ment ; each has its share in the work, but the work ef- fected by each, is distinct and different. But it will probably appear in the next Chapter, that deeming it necessary to go back much further than Mr. Words- worth's subject required or permitted, 1 have attached a meaning to both fancy and imagination, which he had not in view, at least w^hile he w^as writing that preface. He will judge. Would to heaven, I might meet with many such readers. I will conclude w^ith the words of Bishop Jeremy Taylor : he to whom all things are one, who draweth all things to one, and seeth all things in one, may enjoy true peace and rest of spirit. (J. I'ay- lor^s Via Pacis.) ^ This phrase, a priori^ is in common most grossly misunderstood, and an absurdity burthcned on it, whic h it does not deserve ! By knowledge, aprioriy we do not mean, that we ran know any thing" proviousl} to ex- perience, which would be a contradiction in terras ; but, thathavin^ receives. And reason is her beings Discursive or intuitive. Par. Lost, b. v. *^ Sane si res corporales nil nisi materiale continerent, ve- rissime dicerentur in fluxu consistere neque habere substan- liale quicquam, quemadinodum et Platonici olim recte agno- vere. — Hinc igitur, praeter pure mathematica et phantasies subjecta, collegi qucedam metaphysica solaque mente percep- tibilia, esse admittenda : et massi materiali />Wnc?*piwm quod- dam siiperius et, ut sic dicam, formale addendum : quando- quidem omnes veritates rerum corporearum ex solis axioma- tibus logisticis et geometricis, nempe de magno et parvo, toto et parte, figura el situ, colligi non pobsint ; sod alia de causa et eiFectu, adioneqiie et passioncy accederc debeant, quibus 177 ordinis rerum rationes salventur. Td principium rerum, aa ivlEKex'iiCiv an vim appelemus, non refert, modo meminerimus, per solam Virium notionem intelligibiliter explicari." Leibnitz : Op. T. II. P. IL p. 53.— T. III. p, 321. Xa)?6. TI MESON SvxEsii, HijmnUL I 231. Des Cartes, speaking as a naturalist, and in imitation of Archimedes, said, give ine matter and motion and I will construct you the universe. We must of course understand him to have meant : I will render the con- struction of the universe intelligible. In the same sense the transcendental philosopher says, grant me a nature having two contrary forces, the one of which tends to expand infinitely, while the other strives to apprehend or Jind itself in this inanity, and I will cause the world of intelligences with the whole system of their repre- sentations to riae up before you. Every other science pre-supposes intelligence as already existing and com- plete : the philosopher contemplates it in its growth, and, as it were, represents its history to the mind from its birth to its maturity. The venerable Sage of Koenigsberg has preceded the march of this master-thought as an effective pioneer in his essay on the introduction of negative quantities into philosophy, published 1763. In this, he has show^n, that instead of assailing the science of mathem-ritics by meta« physics, as Berkley did in his Analyst, or of sophisticat- ing it, as Wolff did, by the vain attempt of deducing the first principles of geometry from supposed deeper grounds of ontology, it behooved the metaphysician rather 15* 178 lo examine whether the only province of knowledge, which man has succeeded in erecting into a pure sci- enr.e, might not furnish materials, or at least hints for establishing and pacifying the unsettled, warring, and embroiled domain of philosophy. An imitation of the mathematical method^ had indeed b'^en attempted with no better success than attended the essay of David to wear the armour of Saul. Another use, however, is possible, and of far greater promise, namely, the actual application of the positions which had so wonderfully en- larged the discoveries of geometry, mutatis mutandis, to j)hilosophical subjects. Kant, having briefly illustrated the utility of such an attempt in the questions of space, motion, and infinitely small quantities, as employed by the mathematician, proct(^ds to the idea of negative quan- tities and the transfer of them to metaphysical invest'ga- tion. Opposites, he well observes, are of two kinds, either logical, i. e. such as are absolutely incompatible ; or real, without being contradictory. The former, he denominates Nihil negativum irrepraesentabile, the con- nexion of which produces nonsense. A body in motion is something — Aliquid cogitabile ; but a body, at one and the same time in motion and not in motion, is nothing, or, at most, air articulated into nonsense. But a motory force of a body in one direction, and an equal force of the same body in an opposite direction is not incompati- ble, and the result, namely, rest, is real and representa- ble. For the purposes of mathematical calculus it is indifferent, which force we term negative, and which positive, and consequently, we appropriate the latter to that which happens to be the principal object in our thoughts. Thus, if a man's capital be ten and his debts eight, the subtraction will be the same, whether we call the capital negative debt, or the debt negative capital- But in as much as the latter stands practically in refer- ence to the former, we of course represent the sum as 10 — 8. It is equally clear, that two equal forces acting in opposite directions, both being finite, and each distin- guished from the other by its direction only, must neu- tralize or reduce each other to inaction. Now the tran- scendental philosophy demands, first, that two forces should be conceived which counteract each other by their essential nature ; not only not in consequence of 179 the accidental direction of each, but as prior to all di- rection, nay, as the primary forces from which the con- ditions of all possible directions are derivative and de- duvible : secondly, that these forces should be assumed to be both alike infinite, both alike indestructible. The problem will then be to discover the result or product of two such forces, as distinguished from the result of those forces which are finite, and derive their difference solely from the circumstance of their direction. When we have formed a scheme or outline of these two dif- ferent kinds of force, and of their different results by the process of discursive reasoning, it will then remain for us to elevate the Thesis from notional to actual, by con- templating intuitively this one power with its two inhe- rent, indestructible, yet counteracting forces, and the re- sults or generations to which their inter-penetration gives existence, in the living principle, and in the pro- cess of our own self-consciousness. By what instru- ment this is possible the solution itself will discover, at the same time that it will reveal to, and for whom it is possible. Non omnia possumes omnes. There is a phi- losophic, no less than a poetic genius, which is differ- enced from the highest perfection of talent, not by de- gree, but by kind. The counteraction, then, of the two assumed forces, does not depend on their meeting from opposite directions; the power which acts in them is indestructible ; it is, therefore, inexhaustibly re-ebullient ; and as something must be the result of these two forces, both alike infinite, and both alike indestructible ; and, as rest or neutraliza- tion cannot be this result, no other conception is possible, but that the product must be a tertium aliquid, or finite generation. Consequently, this conception is necessary. Now this tertium aliquid can be no other than an inter- penetration of the counteracting powers partaking of both Thus far had the work been transcribed for the press^ w^hen I received the following letter from a friend, whose practical judgment I have had ample Yeason to estimate and revere, and whose taste and sensibility preclude all the excuses which my self-love might possibly hav^. 180 prompted me to setup in plea against the decision of ad- visers of equal good sense, but with less tact and feeling. ''Dear C, " You ask my opinion concerning rjoxir chapter on the imagination^ both as to the impressions it made on mijself^ and as to those which I think it will make on the public, /'. e. that part of the public who, from the title of the work, and from its forming a sort of introduction to a volume of poems, are likely to constitute the great majority of your readers* ''As to myself and stating, in the first place, the eff'ect on my understanding, your opinions, and method of argu- vient, were not only so new to me, but so directly the reverse of all I had ever been accustomed to consider as truth, that, even if I had comprehended your premises sufficiently tx) have admitted them, and had seen the necessity of your conclusions, I should still have been in that state of mind^ which, in your note, p, 50, you have so ingeniously evolved, as the antithesis to that in which a man is when he makes a bull. In your own Zi)ords, I shoidd have felt as if I had been standing on my head, '* The eff'ect on my feelings, on the other hand, I can^iot better represent, than by supposing myself to have known only our light, airy, modern chapels of ease, and then, for the first time, to have beeti placed, and left alone, in one of our largest Gothic cathedrals, in a gusty moonlight niglit of autumn. " JVow in glimmer, and noxo in gloom ;" often in palpable darkness, 7iot W'ithout a chilly sensation of terror ; then suddenly emerging into broad, yet visionary^ lights with coloured shadows of fantastic shapes, yet all decked with holy insignia and mystic symbols ; and, ever and anon, coming out full upon pictures, and stone-work images of great men, W'ith wJwse names I was familiar, hut which looked upon me with countenances and an expres- sion, the most dissimilar to all I had been in the habit of connecting with those names. Those whom I had been taught to venerate as almost super-human in magnitude of intel- lect, J found perched in little fret-work niches, as grotesque dwarfs ; zvhile the grotesques, in my hitherto belief, stood guarding the high altar with all fh^ characters of Apothe- ms. In short, zvhat I had supposed substances^ were thinned 181 away into shadows, whilcy every where, shadows were deep- ened into substances : If substance may be called what shadow seem'd, For each seemM either ! Milton. *' Yet, after all, I could not but repeat the lines which you had quoted from a MS, poem of your own in the Friendj and applied to a work of Mr, Wordsworth'' Sy though with a few of the words altered : An Orphic tale indeed. A tale obscure of high and passionate thoughts To a strange music cbaunted !" ** Be assured, however, that I look forward anxiously to your great book on the constructive philosophy, which you have promised and announced : and that I will do my best to understand it. Only, I will not promise to descend into the dark cave of Trophonius with you, there to rub my own eyes, in order to make the sparks and figured flashes which I am required to see. *' So much for myself But, as for the public, I do not hesitate a tnoment in advising and urging you to zmthdraza) the chapter from, the present work^ and to reserve it for your announced treatises on the Logos or communicative intel- lect in Man and Deity. First, because, impterfectly as I understand the present chapter, I see clearly that you have done too much, and yet not enough. You have been obliged to omit so many links from the necessity of compressioUy that what remains, looks, {if I may recur to my former iU lustration,^ like the fragmetits of the winding steps of an old ruined tower. Secondly, a still stronger argument, (^at least, one that I am sure will be more forcible with you^\ is, that your readers will have both right and reason to complain of you. This chapter, which cannot, when it is printed, amount to so little as an hundred pages, will, of necessity, greatly increase the expense of the work ; and every reader who, like myself is neither prepared, or, per- haps, calculated for the study of so abstruse a subject so abstrusely treated, will, as I have before hinted, be almost entitled to accuse you of a sort of imposition on him. For T^'hoj he might truly observe, could, from your title-page^ 182 tiz., '*g^p ijtaar? lift anu ©pinionig," pnhhshed, too, as introductory to a volume of miscellaneous poems, have an- ticipated, or even conjectured, a long treatise on ideal Re- ahstn, rvhich holds the same relation, in abstruseness, to . Plotinus, as Plotinus does to Plato, It unll he zvell if, al- ready, you have not too much of metaphysical disquisition in your work, though, as the larger part of the disquisition IS historical, it will, doubtless, be both interesting and in- structive to many, to whose unprepared minds your specu- lations on the esemplastic powder would be utterly unintelli- gible. Be assured, if you do publish this chapter in tlie present work, you will be reminded of Bishop Berkley's Siris, announced as an Essay on Tar-water, zcJiich, begin- ning with tar, ends with the Trinity, the omne scibile form- ing the interspace, I say in the present work. In that greater work to which you have devoted so many years, and study so intense and various, it will be ?n its proper place. Your prospectus will have described a?id announced both its eontents and their nature ; and if ajiy persons purchase it, who feel no interest in the subjects of which it treats, they will have themselves only to blame, ^^ I coidd add, to these arguments, one derived from pe- cuniary motives, and particularly from the probable eff'ects on the sale of yc^jr present publication ; but they would ''weigh little with you, compared with the preceding. Be- sides, I have long observed, that ars:uments drazim from your own personal interests, more often act on you as nar- cotics than as stimulants, and that, in money concerns, you have some small portioti of pig-nature in yotir moral idio- syncracy,and, like these amiable creatures, must, occasional- ly, be pulled backward from the boat in order to make you enter it. All success attend you, for if hard thinking and hard reading arc merits, you have deserved it. Your affectionate, tj-c." In consequence of this very judicious letter, which produced complete conviction on n)y mind, \ shall con- tent myself for the present with stating the main result of the Chapter, which I have reserved for that future publication, a detailed prospectus of Vvhich the reader will find at the close of the second volume. The IMAGINATION, then, 1 consider either as primary pr secondary. The primary imagii\ation I bold to be 183 the living Power and prime Agent of all human Percep- tion, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, jet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree^ and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dis- sipates, in order to re-create ; or, where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to idealize and to unify, it is essentially vital, even as all objects, {as objects,) are essentially fixed and dead. Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is, indeed, no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the or- der of time and space, and blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will which we ex- press by the word choice. But, equally with the ordi- nary memory, it must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association. Whatever, more than this, I shall think it ^i to declare, concerning the powers and privileges of the imagination, in the present work, will be found in the critical essay on the uses of the supernatural in poetry, and the prin- ciples that regulate its introduction ; which the reader will find prefixed to the poem of %\)% indent Spanitfr. BND OF VOLUME FIRST. BIOGRAPHIA LITERAEIA; OR BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF MY LITERARY LIFE AND OPINIONS. BY S. T. COLERIDGE, E&Q, VOLUME IL NEW YORK. PUBLISHED BY KIRK AND iMERCEiN, No. 22 Wall-street. 1817- BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. CHAPTER XIV. Occanon of the Lyrical Ballads, and the objects originally proposed — Prejace to the second edition — The ensuing controversy, its causes and acrimony — Philosophic defi- nitions of a poem, and poetry with scholia. During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty, by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sun-set, diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicabi- lity of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself, (to which of us i do not re- collect,) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural ; and the excellence aimed at, was to consist in the interesting of the affec- tions by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordina- ry li.e ; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them^ when they present themselves. In this idea originated the plan of the '* Lyrical Bal- lads ;" in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatu- j:al, or at least, romantic ; yet so as to transfer from eur inward nature a human interest, and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that williflg suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself, as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and direct- ing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world be- fore us ; an inexhaustible treasure, but for w hich, in con- sequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitudCj we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts^ that neither feel nor understand. With this view, I wrote the '* Ancient Mariner," and was preparing, among other poems, the " Dark Ladie," and the " Christobel," in which I should have mere nearly realized my ideal, than I had done in my first at- tempt. But Mr, Wordsworth's industry, had proved so much more successful, and the number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heteroge- iieous matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three po- ems written in his own character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction, which is characteristic of his genius. In this form the '' Lyrical Ballads" w^ere pub- lished ; and weri^ presented by him, as an experiment ^ whether subjects, which, from their nature, rejected the Visual ornaments and extra-colloquial style of poems in general, might not be so managed in the language of ordinary life, as to produce the pleasurable interest which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart. To the second edition he added a preface of considera- ble length ; in which, notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary import, he was understood to con- tend for the extension of this style to poetry of all kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases and forms of style that were not included, in what he (unfor- tunately, I think, adopting an equivocal expression,) cal- led the language of real life. From this preface, prefix- ed to poems in which it was impoi^sible to deny the pre- sence of original genius, however mistaken its direction might be deemed, arose the whole long continued contro- Tersy. For from the conjunction of perceived power with supposed heresy, I explain the inveteracy, and, in some instances, I grieve to say, the acrimonious passions, with which the controversy has beea conducted by the assailants. Had Mr. Wordsworth's poems been the silly, the child- ish things, which they were for a long time described as being; had they been really distinguished from the com- positions of other poets, merely by meanness of language and inanity of thought ; had they, indeed, contained nothing more than what is found in the parodies, and pretended imitations of them ; they must have sunk at once, a dead weight, into the slough of oblivion, and have dragged the preface along with them^ But year after year increased the number of Mr. Wordworth's admirers. They were found, too, not in the lower classes of the reading public, but chiefly among youug men of strong sensibility and meditative minds ; and their admiration (inflamed, perhaps, in some degree by opposition) was distinguished by its intensity, 1 might almost say, by its religious fervour. These facts, and the intellectual ener- gy of the author, which was more or less consciously felt, where it was outwardly and even boisterously de- nied ; meeting with sentiments of aversion to his opinions, and of alarm at their consequences, produced an eddy of criticism, which would, of itself, have borne up the poems by the violence with which it whirled them round and round. With many parts of this preface, in the sense attributed to them, and which the words undoubtedly seem to authorize, I never concurred ; but, on the con trary, objected to them as erroneous in principle, and as contradictory (in appearance at least) both to other parts of the same preface, and to the author's own prac- tice in the greater number of the poems themselves. Mr. Wordsworth, in his recent collection, has, I find, degraded this prefatory disquisition to the end of his second volume,, to be read or not at the reader's choice. But he has not, as far as 1 can discover, announced any change in his po- etic creed. At all events, considering it as the source of a controversy, in which I have been honoured more than 1 deserve, by the frequent conjunction of my name with his, 1 think it expedient to declare, once for all, in what points 1 coincide with his opinions, and in what points I 1* 6 altogether differ. But in order to render myself intelli- gible, 1 must previously, in as few words as possible, ex- plain my ideas, first, of a poem ; and, secondly, of poetry itself, in kind^ and in essence. The office of philosophical disquisition consists in just distinction ; while it is the privilege of the philosopher to preserve himself constantly aw^are, that distinction is not division. In order to obtain adequate notions of any truth, we must intellectually separate its distinguishable parts ; and this is the technical process of philosophy. But having so done, we must then restore them in our conceptions to the unity, in which they actually co-ex- ist ; and this is the result of philosophy. A poem con- tains the same elements as a prose composition ; the dif- ference, therefore, must consist in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object proposed. j\ccording to the difference of the object will be the dif- ference of the combination. It is possible, that the ob- ject may be merely to facilitate the recollection of any given facts or observations, by artificial arrangement ; and the composition will be a poem, merely because it is distinguished from prose by metre, or by rhyme, or by both conjointly. In this, the lowest sense, a man might attribute the name of a poem to the well-know^n enume- ration of the days in the several months: ** Thirty days hath September, ApriJ, June, and jNovember, &c." and others of the same class and purpose. And as a par- ticular pleasure is found in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities, all compositions that have this charm superadded, whatever be their contents, may be entitled poems. >So much for the superficiaiybrm. A difference of ob- ject and contents s\jpplies an additional ground of dis- tinction. The immediate purpose may be the communi- cation of truths ; either of truth absolute and demonstra- ble, as in works of science ; or of facts experienced and recorded, as in history Pleasure, and that of the high- est and most permanent kind, may result from the attain^ ment of the end ; but it is not itself the immediate end. In other works the communication of pleasure may be tlie immediate purpose ; and though truth, either moral or inteJlectual, ought to be the ultimate end, jet this will distinguish the character of the author, not the class to which the work belongs. Blest, indeed, is that state of society, in which the immediate purpose would be baf- fled by the perversion of the proper ultimate end ; in which no charm of diction or imagery could exempt the Bathyllus even of an Anacreon, or the Alexis of Virgil, from disgust and aversion ! But the communication of pleasure may be the imme- diate object of a work not metrically composed ; and that object may have been in a high degree attained, as in novels and romances. Would then the mere superaddi- tion of metre, with or without rhyme, entitle these to the name of poems ? The answer is, that nothing can perma- nently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. \i metre be superadded, ail other parts must be made consonant with it. They must be such as to justify the perpetual and distinct at- tention to each part, which an exact correspondent recur- rence of accent and sound are calculated to excite. The final definition, then, so deduced, may be thus worded : A poem is that species of composit.on, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth ; and from all other species (having this object in common with it,) it is discriminated by pro- posing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compa- tible with a distinct gratification from each component part. Controversy is not seldom excited, in consequence of the disputants attaching each a different meaning to the same word ; and in iew instances has this been more striking than in disputes concerning the present subject. If a man chooses to call every composition a poem, which is rhyme, or measure, or both, 1 must leave his opinion uncontroverted. The distinction is at least com- petent to characterize the writer's intention. If it were subjoined, that the whole is likewise entertaining or afF< ct- ing, as a tale, or as a series of interesting reflections, I of course admit this as another fit ingr^edient of a poem, and an additional merit. But if the definition sought for be that of a legitimate poem, [ answer, it must be one, the parts of which mutually support and explain each 8 Other; all in their proportion harmonizing with, and sup- porting the purpose and known influences of metrical ar- rangement. The philosophic critics of all ages coincide with the ultimate judgment of all countries, in equally denying the praises of a just poem, on the one hand, to a series of striking lines or distichs, each of which, ab- sorbing the whole attention of the reader to itself, dis- joins it from its context, and makes it a separate whole, instead of an harmonizing part ; and on the other hand, to an unsustained composition, from which the reader collects rapidly the general result, unattracted by the component parts. The reader should be carried forward, not merely, or chiefly, bv the mechanical impulse of cu- riosity, or by a restless desire to arri?e at the final solu- tion ; but by the pleasurable activity of mind, excited by the attractions of the journey itself. Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the emblem of intellectual power ; or like the path of sound through the air J at every step he pauses, and half recedes, and, from the retrogressive movement, collects the force which again carries him onward. Precipitandus est liber spiri- tus^ says Petronius Arbiter, most happily. The epithet, liber, here balances the preceding verb ; and, it is not easy to conceive more meaning, condensed in fewer words. But if this should be admitted as a satisfactory charac- ter of a poem, we have still to seek for a definition of poetry. The writings of Plato, and Bishop Taylor^ and the Theoria Sacra of Burnet, furnish undeniable truths that poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre, and even without the contra-distinguishing objects oi a poem. The first chapter of Isaiah, (indeed a very large portion of the whole book,) is poetry in the most emphatic sense ; yet it would be not less irrational than strange to assert, that pleasure, and not truth, was the immediate object of the prophet. In short, whatever specific import we attach to the word, poetry, there will be found involved in it, as a necessary consequence, that a poem of any length, neither can be, or ought to be, all poetry. Yet if an harmonious whole is to be pro- duced, the remaining parts must be preserved in keeping with the poetry ; and this can be no otherwise effected than by such a studied selection and artificial arrange- ment, as will partake of 07ie, though not di peculiar, pro- perty of poetry. And this, again, can be no other thin the property of exciting a more continuous and equal at- tention, than the language of prose aims at, whether colloquial or written. My own conclusions on the nature of poetry, in the strictest use of the word, have been, in part, anticipated in the preceding disquisition on the f^incy and imagination. What is poetry ? is so nearly the same question with, what is a poet ? that the answer to the one is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction re- sulting from the poetic genius itself, v/hich sustains and modifies the images, thoughts and emotions of the poet'fi own mind. The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the sub- ordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and, (as it were,) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagi- nation. This power, first put in action by the will and understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, controul, {^laxis effxrtur ha- benis,) reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities ; of sameness, with dif- ference ; of the general, with the concrete ; the idea, with the image ; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects ; a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order ; judgment, ever awake, and steady self possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or ve- hement ; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature ; the manner to the matter : and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry. *' Doubtless," as Sir John Davies observes of the soul^ (and his words may, with slight alteration, be applied, and even more appropriately, to the poetic imagination :) " Doubtless this could not be, but that^she turns Bodies to spirit by ^ablimation strange. As fire converts to fire the things it burns. As we our food into our nature change. 10 From their gross matter she abstracts their forms. And draws a kind of quintessence from things : Which to her proper nature she transforms, To bear them light on her celestial wings. Thus does she, when from individual states She doth abstract the universal kinds ; Which then, re-clothed in divers names and fates, Steal access through our senses to our minds." Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fan- cy its DRAPERY, motion its LIFE, and imagination the SOUL, that is every where, and in each ; and forms aM into one graceful and intelligent whole. 11 CHAPTER XV. The specific symptoms of poetic pozi)er elucidated in a critical analysis of Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece, In the application of these principles to purposes of practical criticism, as employed in the appraisal of works more or less imperfect, 1 have endeayoured to discover nhat the qualities in a poem are, which may be deemed promises and specific symptoms of poetic power, as dis- tinguished from general talent determined to poetic com- position by accidental motives, by an act of the will, rather than by the inspiration of a genial and productive nature. In this in^ estigation, I could not, 1 thought, do better than keep before me the earliest work of the greatest genius that, perhaps, human nature has yet pro- duced, our myriad- minded^ Shakspeare. I mean the *' Venus and Adonis," and the " Lucrece ;" works which give at once strong promises of the strength, and yet ob- vious proofs of the immaturity of his genius. From these I abstracted the following marks, as characteristics of original poetic genius in general. 1. In the " Venus and Adonis," the first and most ob- vious excellence, is the perfect sweetness of the versifi- cation ; its adaptation to the subject ; and the power displayed in varying the march of the words without passing into a loftier and more majestic rhythm than was demanded by the thoughts, or permitted by the propriety of preserving a sense of melody "predominant. The de- light in richness and sweetness of sound, even to a faulty excess, if it be evidently original, and not the result of an ensily imitable mechanism, I regard as a highly favoura- ble promise in the compositions of a young man. * The man that hath not music in his soul," can, indeed, never be a genuine poet. Imagery (even taken from nature, * 'AvT)(3 jiujiovSj, a phrase which I have borrowed from a Greek monk, nho applies it to a Patriarch of Cocstfiiitinople. I might have said, thai I have reclaimed, rather than borrowed it ; for it seems to belong to Shak- speare, de jure singuiari, et ex privileg^io naturae. 12 1 much more when transplanted from books, as travels, Toyages, and works of natural history) affecting incidents ; jiist thoughts ; interesting personal or donae^tic feelings.; and with these the art of their comhination or intertex- ture in the form of a poem ; may all, bv incessant effort, be acquired as a trade, by a man of talents and much reading, who, as I once before observed, has mistaken aa intense desire of poetic reputation for a natural poetic genius ; the love of the arbitrary end for a possession of the peculiar means. But the .^ense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift of imagination ; and this, together with the power of j educing multitude into unity of effect, and modifjing a series of thoughts by some one predominant thought or feeling, may be culti- rated and improved, but can never be learnt. It is in these that " Poeta nascitur non fit." 2. A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects very remote from the private interests and circumstan- ces of the writer himself. At least I have found, that where the subject is taken immediately from the author's personal sensations and experiences, the exc' Hence of a particular poem is but an equivocal maik, and often a fallacious pledge, of genuine poetic power. We may, perhaps, remember the tale of the statuary, who had ac- quired considerable reputation for the lej^s of his god- desses, though the rest of the statue accorded but indiffe- rently with ideal beauty, till his wife, elated by her hus- band's praises, modestly acknowledged, that she herself had been his constant model. In the Venus and Adonis, this proof of poetic power exists even to excess. It is throughout as if a superior spirit, more intuitive, more intimately conscious, even than the characters them- selves, not only of every outward look and act, but of the flux and reflux of the mind in all its subtlest thoughts and feelings, were placing thejvhole before our view ; himself, meanwhile, un participating in the passions, and actuated only by that pleasurable excitement, which had resfjklted from the energetic fervor of his own spirit in so vividly exhibiting what it had so accurately and profound- ly contemplated. I think I should have conjectured from these poems, that even then the great instinct, which impelled the poet to the drama, was secretly workinq; in him, prompting him by a series and never-broken chain 13 of imagery, always vivid and because unbroken, oflen minute ; by the highest effort of the picturesque in words, of which words are capable, higher, perhaps, than w^as ever realized by any other poet, even Dante not excepted ; to provide a substitute for that visual lan- guage, that constant intervention and running comment, by tone, look and gesture, which in his dramatic works he was entitled to expect from the players. His '* Ve- nus and Adonis" seem at once the characters themselves, and the whole representation of those characters by the most consummate actors. You seem to be told nothing, but to see and hear every thing. Hence it is, that from the perpetual activity of attention required on the part of the reader ; from the rapid flow, the quick change, and the playful nature of the thoughts and images ; and, above all, from the alienation, and, if I may hazard such an ex- pression, the utter aloofness of the poet's own feelings, from those of which he is at once the painter and the analyst ; that though the very subject cannot but detract from the pleasure of a delicate mind, yet never was poem less dangerous on a moral account. Instead of doing as Ariosto, and as, still more offensively, Wieland has done ; instead of degrading and deforming passion into appetite, the trials of love into the struggles of concupis- cence, Shakespeare has here represented the animal impulse itself, so as to preclude all sympathy with it, by dissipating the reader's notice among the thousand out- ward images, and now beautiful, now fanciful circumstan- ces, which form its dresses and its scenery ; or by di- verting our attention from the main subject by those fre- quent witty or profound reflections, which the poet's ever active mind has deduced from, or connected with, the imagery and the incidents. The reader is forced into too much action to sympathize with the merely passive of our nature. As little can a mind thus roused and awakened be brooded on by mean and indis- tinct emotion, as the low, lazy mist can creep upon the surface of a lake, while a strong gale is driving it onward in waves and billows. 3. It has been before observed, that images, however beautiful, though faithfully copied from nature, and as accurately represeated in words, do not of themselves characterize the poet. They become proofs of original 14 s^enius ouly, as far as they are moiJtlied by a predomi- nant passion ; or by associated thoughts or images awa- kened by that passion ; or, when they have the effect of reducing multitude to unity, or succession to an in- stant ; or, lastly, when a human and intellectual life is transferred to them from the poet's own spirit, ** Which shoots its being* through earth, sea, and air." In the two following lines, for instance, there is nothing objectionable, nothing which would preclude them from forming, in their proper place, part of a descriptive poem : ** Behold yon row of pines, that, shorn and bow'd, Bend from the sea-blast, seen at twilight eve." But with the small alteration of rhythm, the same words would be equally in their place in a book of topography, or in a descriptive tour. The same image will rise in- to a semblance of poetry if thus conveyed ; *^ Yon row of bleak and visionary pines. By twiiig-ht-glimpse discerned, mark ! how they flee From the fierce sea-blast, all their tresses wild Streaming before them." I have given this as an illustration, by no means as an "instance, of that particular excellence which I had in view, and in which Shakspeare, even in his earliest, as in his latest works, surpasses all other poets. It is by this, that he still gives a dignity and a passion to the ob- jects which he presents. Unaided by any previous ex- citement, they burst upon us at once in life and in power. ** Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye.*^ Shakspeaie's Sonnet 33rd. " Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come — The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd. 19 And the sad augurs mock their own presag-e ; Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd, And peace proclaims olives of endless ag^e. 2Vow with the drops of this most balmy time My Love looks fresh : and Death to me subscribes* Since spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme. While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes. And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrant's crests, and tombs of brass are spent. Sonnet lor. As of higher worth, so doubtless still more character- istic of poetic genius does the imagery become, when it moulds and colours itself to the circumstances, passion, or character, present and foremost in the mind. For unrivalled instances of this excellence, rhe reader's own memory will refer him to the Lear, Othello, in short, to which not of the ^^ great, ever living, dead mail's''' dra- matic works ? Inopem me copia fecit. How true it is to nature, he has himself finely expressed in the instance of love in Sonnet 98. ** From you have I been absent in the spring, : When proud pied April, drest in all its trim. Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing*; That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him. Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Oi different flowers in odour and in hue, Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap phick them, where they. grew ? iVor did I wonder at the lilies white. Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose ; They were, tho' sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seemM it winter still, and you away, As with your shadow I with these did filay I Scarcely less sure, or if a less valuable, not less in- dispensable mark Fovi^« ptv IT0ITIT8- -ccriJ jnpta ycvvaiovAaxoi, Will the imagery supply, when, with jnore than the pow- er of the painter, the poet gives us the liveliest image of succession with the feehng of simultaneousness 1 16 With this he breaketli from the sweet embrace Of those fair aims, tliat held him to her heart. And homeward throug-h the dark lawns runs apace : Look hoin a br':ght star shooteth from the sky ! So glides he through the night from Venus' eye, 4. The last character I shall mention, which would prove indeed but little, except as taken conjointly with the former ; yet, without which the former could scarce exist in a high degree, and (even if this were possible) would give promises only of transitory flashes and a me- teoric power, is depth, and energy of thought. No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, hu- man thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. In Shakspeare's |}0€m5, the creative power, and the intellec- tual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems lo threaten the extinction of the other. At length, in the drama they were reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other. Or, like two rapid streams, that at their first meeting within narrow and rocky banks, mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly and in tu- mult ; but soon finding a wider channel and more yield- ing shores, blend, and dilate, and flow on in one current and with one voice. The Venus and Adonis did not, perhaps, allow the display of the deeper passions. But the story of Lucretia seems to favour, and even demand their intensest workings. And yet we find in Shakspeare^s management of the tale neither pathos, nor any other dramatic quality. There is the same minute and faith- ful imagery as in the former poem, in the same vivid colours, inspirited by the same impetuous vigour of thought, and diverging and contracting with the same ac- tivity of the assimilative and of the modifying faculties ; and with a yet larger displiy, a yet wider range of know- ledge and reflection ; and, lastly, with the same perfect dominion, often domination^ over the whole world of language. What then shall we say ? even this ; that Shakspeare, no mere child of nature ; no automaton of genius ; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it ; first studied patiently, me- ditated deeply, understood minutely, uU koQwledge, be- 17 come habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feehngs, and at length gave birth to that stupendous pow- er, by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class ; to that power, which seated him on one of the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic moun- tain, with Milton as his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of tlje fire and the flood ; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton ; while Shakspeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself. O what great men hast thou not produced, England ! my country ! truly indeed — Must we be free or die, who speak the tongue, Which Shakspeare spake ; the faith and morals hold, Which Milton held. In every thing we are spruDg Of earth's first bloodj have titles manifold ! Wordsworth, ^ IB CHAPTER XVI. Striking points of dijference between the Poets of the present age and those of the \5th and \6ih centuries — Wish ex- pressed for the union of the characteristic merits of both, Christendom, from its first settlement on feudal rights^ has been so far one great body, however imperfectly organized, that a similar spirit will be found in each pe- riod to have been acting in all its members. The study of Shakspeare's poems (I do not include his dramatic U'orks, eminently as they too deserve that title) led me to a more careful examination of the contemporary poets both in this and in other countries. But my attention was especially fixed on those of Italy, from the birth to the death of Shakspeare ; that being the country in which the fine arts had been most sedulously, and, hi- therto, most successfully cultivated. Abstracted from the degrees and peculiarities of individual genius, the pro- perties common to the good writers of each period seem to establish one striking point of difference between the poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and that of the present age. The remark may, perhaps, be ex- tended to the sister art of painting. At least, the latter will serve to illustrate the former. In the present age, &\e poet (I would wish to be understood as speaking ge- nerally, and without allusion to individual names) seems to propose to himself as his main object, and as that which is the most characteristic of his art, new and striking images, with incidents that interest the affec- tions or excite the curiosity. Both his characters and his descriptions he renders, as much as possible, spe- cific and individual, even to a degree of portraiture. In his diction and metre, on the other hand, he is compa- ratively careles?. The measure is either constructed on no previous system, and acknowledges no justifying prin- ciple but that of the writer's convenience ; or else some mechanical movement is adopted, of which one couplet or stanza is so far an adequate specimen, as that the oc- casional differences appear evidently to arise from acci- dent, or the cj^ualities of the language itself, not from me- 19 ditation and an intelligent purpose. And the language from " Pope's translation of Homer," to *' Darwin's Tem- ple of Nature," may, notwithstanding some illustrious exceptions, be too faithtV.lly characterized, as claiming to be poetical for no better reason, than that it would be intolerable in conversation or in prose. Though alas ! even our prose writings, nay, even the stile of our more set discourses, strive to be in the fashion, and trick them- selves out in the soiled and over-worn finery of the me- retricious muse. It is true, that of late a great improve- ment in this respect is observable in our most popular writers. But it is equally true, that this recurrence to plain sense, and genuine mother English, is far from be- ing general ; and that the composition of our novels, magazines, public harangues, &c- is commonly as trivial in thought, and enigmatic in expression, as if Echo and Sphinx had laid their heads together to construct it. Nay, even of those who have most rescued themselves from this contagion, I should plead inwardly guilty to the charge of duplicity or cowardice, if I withheld my conviction, that fev/ have guarded the purity of their na- tive tongue with that jealous care which the sublime Dante, in his tract '* De la nobile volgare eloquenza," declares to be the first duty of a poet. For language is the armoury of the human mind ; and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests. '' Animadverte, quam sit ab improprietate verborum pronum hominibus prolabi in errores circa res !" HoBBES : Exam, et Exmend, hod. Math. — " Sat vero, in hac vitae brevitate et naturae obscuritate, rerum est, quibus cognoscendis tempus impendatur, ut confusis et multivocis sermonibus intelligendis illud consumere Hon opus est. Eheu ! quantas strages paravere verba nubila, quae tot dicunt, ut nihil dicunt — nubes potius, e quibus et in rebus politicis et in ecclesia turbines et tonitrua erumpunt ! Et proinde recte dictum putamus a Platone in Gorgia : oj av to ovojiaTa fi^ei, iccrai xa» ra iT^a, Se non pace, io ritrove; E so ben dove — Oh vag-o, mansueto Sguardo, oh labbrad'ambrosia, oh rider lieto! MADRIGALE* ^ Hor come un Scog^lio stassi, IHor come un Rio se'n fug-^e Ed hor crud' Orsa rugge, Horcanta Angelo pio : ma che non fassi ? E che non fammi, O Sassi, O Rivi, o belve, o Dii, questa mia vaga Non so, se Niofa, o Mag-a, Non so, se Donna, o Dea, Non so, se dolce 6 rear* MADRTGALEo Piang-endo mi baciaste, E ridendo il neg-aste : Indoglia hebbivi pia, In festa hebbivi ria : Nacque Gioia di pianti, Dolor di riso : O amanti Miseri, habbiate iusierniB OffnorPaurae Speme- 24 Dour to our own times, and to those of our immediate predecessors. MADRIGALE. Bel Fior, tu mi rimembri La riigiadosa g^uancia del bel vise ; E si vera I'assembri, Che'n te sovente, come in lei m'affiso : Ed hor dell vago riso, Hor dell sereno s^^uardo lo purcieco risg-uardo. Ma qual fugge, O Rosa, il maltin lieve ? E chi te, come neve, E'l raio cor teco, e la mia vita strugge. i MADRIGALE. I Anna mia, Anna dolce, oh sempre nuovo E pin chiaro conceoto. Quanta dolcezza sento In sol Ant^a dicendo? lomi par pruovo, Ne qui tra noi ritruo\:o, jVe tra cieli armonia, Cbe del bel nome suo piu dolce sia : Altro il Cielo, altro Amore, Altro non suona i'Eco del mio core. MADRIGALE. Horche'l prato, e la selva si scolora, Al tuo Sereno ombroso Muovine, alto Riposo ! Deh ch 'io riopsi una sol notte, un bora ! Han le fere, e gh augelli, ognun talora Ha qualcbe pace ; io quando, Lasso ! non vonne errando, E non piango, enon grido? equal pur forte f Ma poiche non sente egli, odine, Morte i MADRIGALE. Risi e piansi d'Amor ; ne per6 mai Se non in fiamma, 6 'n onda, 6 'n vento scrissi ; Spesso merce trovai Crudel ; sempre in me morto, in altri vissi ! Hor da' piu scuri abyssi al Ciel m'alzai, Hor ne pur caddi giuso : Stanco al fin qui son chiuso ! CHAPTER XVIi. Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr Wordswofih-^ Rustic life {above all^ low and rustic life,) especially unfavourable to the formation of a human diction — The best parts of language the product of philosophers^ not clowns or shepherds — Poetry essentially ideal and gene- ric — The language of Milton as much the language of real life, yea^ incomparably more so than that of the cottager. As far, then, as Mr. Wordsworth in bis preface contend- ed, and most ablj contended, for a reformation in our po- etic diction, as far as he has evinced the truth of passion, and the dramatic propriety of those figures and meta- phors in the original poets, which, stript of their justifying reason*, and converted into mere artitices of connexion or ornament, constitute the characteristic falsity in the poetic style of the moderns ; and, as far as he has, with equal acuteness and clearness, pointed out the process in which this change was effected, and the resemblances be- tween that state into which the reader's mind is thrown by the plea.^urable confusion of thought, from an unac- customed train of words and images ; and that state which is induced by the natural language of empassioned feel- ing ; he undertook a useful task, and deserves all praise, both for the attempt, and for the execution. The provo- cations to this remonstrance, in behalf of truth and nature, were still of perpetual recurrence, before, and after the publication of this preface I cannot, likewise, but add, that the comparison of such poems of merit, as have been given to the public, within the last ten or twelve years, with the majority of those produced previously to the appearance of that preface, leave no doubt on my mind, that Mr Wordsworth is fully justified in believing bis ef forts to have been by no means ineffectual. Not only in the verses of those who have professed their admira- tion of his eenius, but even of those who have distinguish- ed themselves by hostility to his theory, and dcpreciatioD Vol. II. 3 26 ^ of his writings, are the impressions of his principles plain- \y visible It is possible, that with these principles others jnay have been blended, which are not equally evident ; and some which are unsteady and subvertible from the narrowness or imperfection of their basis. But it is more than possible, that these errors of defect or exaggeration^ by kindling and feeding the controversy, may have con- duced, not only to the wider propagation of the accompa- nying truths, but that, by their frequent presentation to the mind in an excited state, they may have won for them ^a more permanent and practical result A man will bor- row a part from his opponent, the more easily, if he feels himself justified in continuing to reject a part. While there remain important points, in which he can still feel himself in the right, in which he still finds firm footing for continued resistance, he will gradually adopt those opi- nions which were the least remote from his own convic- tions, as not less congruous with his own theory than with that which he reprobates. In like manner, with a kind ef instinctive prudence, he will abandon by little and lit- tle his weakest posts, till at length he seems to forget that they had ever belonged to him, or affects to consider them at most, as accidental and '' petty annexments," the re- moval of which leaves the citadel unhurt and unendau- gered. My own differences, from certain supposed parts of Mr. Wordsworth's theory, ground themselves on the assump- tion, that his words had been rightly interpreted, as pur- porting that the proper diction for poetry in general con- sists altogether in a language taken, with due exceptions, from the mouths of men in real life, a language which actually constitutes the natural conversation of nitn under the influence of natural feelings. My objection is, first, that in an?/ sense this rule is applicable only to certain classes of poetry ; secondly, that even to these classes it is not applicable, except in such a sense, as hath never, by any one, (as far as \ know or have read,) been denied or doubted ; and, lastly, that as far as, and in that degree in which it \s j^racficable ; yet asari//e it is useless, if not injurious, and therefore, either need not, or ought not to be practised. The poet informs his reader, that he had generally chosen loii' and rustic life ; but not as low and rustic^ or in order to repeat that pleasure of doubtful mo* 27 ral e^ect, which persons of elevated rank, anrl of supe? rior refinement oftentimes derive from a happy imitation, oi the rude unpolished manners, and discourse of their inferiors. For the pleasure so derived may be traced to three exciting causes. The first is the naturalness, in/act^ of the things represented The second is the apparent naturalness of the representation, as raised and qualified by an imperceptible infusion of the author's own know* ]ed<^e and talent, which infusion does, indeed, constitute it an imitation as distinguished from a mere copy. The third cause may be found in the reader's conscious feel- ing of his superiority, awakened by the contrast ,)resent- ed to him ; even as, for the same purpose, the kings and great barons of yore retained sometimes actual clowna and fools, but mere frequently shrewd and witty fellows in that character. These, however, were not Mr. Woids- worth's objects. He chose low and rustic life, " because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil, in which they caa attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more em- phatic language ; because in that condition of life, our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simpli- city, and, consequently, maybe more accurately contem- plated, and more forcibly communicated ; because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural oc- cupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable ; and, lastly, because, in that condition the pas- sions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." Now it is clear to me, that in the most interesting of the poems, in which the author is more or less dramatic, as the '' Brothers," '' Michael," *^ Ruth," the '^ Mad Mother," &c. the persons introduced are by no means taken /ro7/i low or rustic life in the common acceptation of those words ; and it is not less clear, that the senti- ments and language, as far as they can be conceived to have been really transferred from the minds and conver- sation of such persons, are attributable to causes and cir^ cumstaHces not necessarily connected with '* their occu- pations and abode." The thoughts^ leelings, language, and manners of the shepherd-farmers in the vales oi Cum- •berlancl and Westmoreland, as far as they are actually adopted in those poems, may be accounted for from causes which will, and do produce the same results in every state of lifC; whether in town or country. As the two principal 1 rank that fndependfnce, which raises a man above servitude, or daily toil, for the profit of others, yet not above the necessity of industry, and a frugal sim- plicity of domestic life ; and fhe accompanying unam- bitious, but solid and religious education, which ha.^ ren- dered (ew books familiar but the bible, and the liturgy or hymn book. To this latter cause, indeed, which is s6 far accidental., that it is the blessing of particular coun- tries, and a particular age, not the product of particular places or employments, the poet owes the show of proba- bility, that his personages might really feel, think, and talk, with any tolerable resemblance to his representation. It is an excellent remark of Dr. Henry More's (! ntbu- siasmus triumphatus, sec xxxv.) that '' a man of confined education, but of good parts, by constant reading of the bible, wiii naturally form a more w^inning and command- ing rhetoric than those that are learned; the intermixture of tongues and of artificial phrases debasing their style/' It is, moreover, to be considered, ibat to the lormation of healthy feelings, and a reflecting mind, negations in- volve impediments, not less fornjidable than sophistica- tion and vicious intermixture. 1 am convinced, that for the human soul to prosper in rustic life, a certain van- tage-ground is- pre-requisite. It is not every man that is likely to be improved by a country life, or by country labours. Education, or original sensibility, or both, must pre-exist, if the ch.^nges, forms, and incidents of nature are to prove a sufficient stimulant. And where these are not sufi&cient, the mind contracts and hardens by want of Stimulants ; and the man becomes selfish, sensual, gross, and hard-hearted Let the management of the f'ooR Law^s in Liverpool, Manchester, or Bristol, be compared with the ordinary dispensation of the poor rates in agri- cultural villages, where the farmers are the overseers and guardians of the poor. If my own experience have not been particularly unfortunate, as well as that of the many respectable country clergymen, with whom I have conversed on the subject, the result would engender more than scepticism, concerning the desirable influen- 29 ces of low and rustic life in and for itself. WbateVev may be concluded on the other side, from the stronger local attachments and enterprizing spirit of the Swiss, and other mountaineers, appHes to a particular mode of pastoral life, under forms of property, that permit and beget manners truly republican, not to rustic life in gene- ral, or to the absence of artificial cultivation. On the contrary, the mountaineers, whose manners have beei> so often eulogized, are, in general, better educated, and greater readers than men of equal rank elsewhere. But where this is not the case, as among the peasantry of North Wales, the ancient mountains, with all their ter- rors and all their glories, are pictures to the blind, and music to the djeaf. I should not have entered so much into detail upon thiis passage, but, here seems to be tbe point to which all the lines of difference converge as to their source and centre. (I mean, as far as, and in whatever respect, my poetic creed does differ from the doctrines promulged in this preface.) 1 adopt, with full faith, the principle of Aristotle, that poetry, as poetry, is essentially ideal^^ that it avoids and excludes all accident j' that its apparent individualities of * Say not that I am recommending abstractions, for these class-charac* teristicsx, which constitute the instructiveness of a character, are so mo- dified and parti culariz«=^^d in each person of the Shaksperian Drama, that life itself does not excite more distmctly that sense of individuality which beionacs to real existence. Paradoxical as it may somid, one of the es- sential properties of geonry^try is not less essential to dramatic excellence ; and Aristotle has, according-ly, required of the poet an involution of the universal in the individual. Tlie chief differences are, that in geometrijr it is the universal truth which is uppermost in the consciousness ; in po- etry the individual form, in which the truth is clothed. With the an- cients, and not less with the elder drcim-atists of England and France, both comedy and tragedy were considered as kinds of poetry. They neither sought, in comedy, to make us laugh merrily; much less to make us laugh by wry faces, accidents of jargon, slang phrases for the day, or the clothing of common-place morals in metaphors drawn from the shops^ or mechanic occupations of their characters. Nor did they condescend, in tragedy, to wheedle away the applause of the spectators, by represent- ing before them fac-similies of their own mean selves in all their existing meanness, or to work on their sluggish sympathies by a pathos not a whit more respectable than the maudlin tears of drunkenness. Their tragic scenes were meant to dff^d us indeed ; but yet within the bounds of" pleasure, and in union with the activity both of our understanding and imagination. They wished to transport the mind to a sense of its possi- ble greatness, and to implant the germs of that greatness, during the tt^mporary oblivion of the worthless "thing we are," and of the peculiar state in which each man happens to be, suspending our individual recollec- , tiG»s, and luUinf them to sleep amid the music of nobler thoughts. Friind, Pages 251,2^% 3* 30 rank, character, or occupation, must be representative of a class ; and that the persons of poetry must be clothed with generic attributes, with the common attributes of the class ; not with such as one gifted individual might pos' sibly possess, but such as iro'u his situation, it is most probable before-hand, that he would possess. l( my premises are righ% and my deductions legitimate, it fol- lows that there can be no poetic medium between the swains of Theocritus and those of an imaginary golden age. The characters of the vicar and the shepherd mariner, in the poem of the " Brothers," those of the shepherd of Green head Gill in the *' Michael," have all the veri- similitude and representative quality that the purposes of poetry can require. They are persons of a known and abiding class, and their manners and sentiments the natu- ral product of circumstances common to the class. Take ** Michael," for instance : An old man stout of heart, and strong of limb ; His bodily frome had been from youth to ag-e Of an unusual strength : his mind was keen, Intense and frugal, apt for all affairs, And in his shepherd's calling he was prompt And watchful more than ordinary men. Hence, he had learnt the meaning of all winds, Of blasts of every tone, and oftentimes When others heeded not, he heard the south Make subterraneous music, like the noise Of bagpipers on distant highland hills. The shepherd, at such warning, cf his flock Bethought him, and he to himself wou](] say, The winds are now devising work for me ! And truly at all times the storm, that drives The traveller to a shelter, summoned him Up to the mountains. He had been alone Amid the heart of many thousatid mists. That came to him and led him on the heights. So liv'd he, till his eightieth year was pa'^s'd. And grossly that man errs, who should suppose That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks^ "Were things indifferent to the sheplierds thoughts. Fields, where with cheerful sj^irits he had breath'd Tii2 common air ; the hills which he so oft Had climb'd with vigorous steps ; which had impress'^ So maoy incidents upon his mind 31 Of hardship, skill, or courage, joy or fear: Which, like a book, preserved tlie memory Of the dumb animals wliom he had sav'd. Had fed, or shelter'd, Jinking- to such ads, So grateful in themselves, the certainty Of honourable g-ains ; these fields, these hills, Which were his living being", even more Than his own blood'— what coukl they less ? — had laid Strong- hold on his ain^ctions— were to him A pleasurable feelinc^ of blind love, The pleasure which there is in life itself. On the other hand, in the poems which are pitched a a lowernote as the " Harry Gi-ll," '- Idiot Bov," &c., the feelings are tfiose of human nature in general, though the poet has judiciously laid the scene in the country, in order to place himself \n the vicinity of interesting ima- 2;es, without the necessity of ascribing a sentimental per- ception of their beauty to the persons of his drama In the '* Idiot Boy," indeed, the mothers character is not so much a real and native product of a •' situation where the essential passions of the heart find a better scdl, in which they can attain their maturity, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language." as it is an impersonation of an instinct abandonment by judgment Hence, the two following charges seem to me not wholly groundless ; at least, they are the only plausible o])jections which I have heard to that fine poem The one is, that the au- thor has not, in the poem itself, taken sufficient care to preclude from the reader's fancy the disgusting images of crdlnary^ morbid idiocy, which yet it was by no means his intention to represent. He has even by the '' burr, burr, burr," uncounteracted by any preceding descrip- tion of the boy's beauty, assisted in recalling them. The other is, that the idiocy of the hoy is so evenly balanced by the folly of the mother^ as to present to the general reader rather a laughable burlesque on the l)lindness of anile dotage, than an analytic display of maternal afFec* tion in its ordinary workings. In the *' Thorn," the poet himself acknowledges, in a note, the necessity of an introductory poem, in which he should have portrayed the character of the person from whom the words of the poem are supposed to proceed : a superstitious man; moderately imaginative^ of slow fa- 32 cultles, and deep feelings ; '' a captain of a sir.all trading, vessel, for example, who, being past the middle age of life, had retired upon an annuity, or small independent income, to some village or country town, of which he was not a native, or in which he had not been accustom- ed to live. Such men, havms; nothing to do, become cre- dulous and talkative from indolence." Bui in a poem, still more in a lyric poem, (and the nursk in Shakspeare's Ixomeo and Juliet alone prevents me from extending the remark even to dramatic jioc/r?/, if indeed the Nurse it- self can be deemed altogether a case in point,) it is not possible to imitate truly a dull and garrulous cliscourser, without repeating the effects of dullness and garrulity. However this may be, I dare assert, that the parts, (and these form the far larger portion of the whole,) which might as well, or still better, have- proceeded from the poet's own imagination, and have been spoken in his own cha- racter, are those which have given, and which will con- tinue to give, universal delight ; and that the passages exclusively appropriate lo the supposed narrator, such as the last couplet of the third stanza ;* the seven last lines of the tenth ;t and the five following stanzas, with th« * " I've measured it from side to side ; 'Tis three feet long-, and two feet wide.'* f " Nay, rack your brain — 'tis all in vain, 9 I'll tell you every thing 1 know ; * But to the Thorn, and to the Pond, Which is a little step beyond, I wish that you would go: Perhaps, when you are at the place^ You something of her tale may trace, V\\ give you the best help lean : Before you up the mountain go, ITp to the dreary mountain-lop, ril tell you all I know. ^Tis now some two-and-twenty years Since she, (her name is Martha Ray,). Gave, with a maiden's true good will. Her company to Stephen Hill ; And she v/as blithe and gay, ''' And she was happy, happy still, Wheae'er she thought of Stephen HilE- 33 exception of (he four admirable lines at the commence- ment of tlie fourteenth, are felt by many unprejudiced and unsophisticated hearts, as sudden and unpleasant sinkings from the height to which the poet had previously lifted them, and to which he again re-elevates both him- self and his reader. And the}^ had fix'd the wedding-day, 7'ie morning- that must wed them both; But Stephen to another maid Had gwora another oath ; And with this other rriaid to church Unthinking Stephen went — Poor Martha ! on that woful day A pang of pitiless dismay Into her soul was sent ; A fire was kindled in her breast, Which might not burn itself to rest. They say, full six months after this, "While yet the summer leaves were greens- She to the mountain top would go, And there was often seen. 'Tis said a child was in her womb, As now to any eye was plain; She was with child, and she was mad ; Yet often she was sober sad From her exceeding pain. Oh me! ten thousand rimes I'd rather That he had died, that cruel father! *:¥****:;^^ Last Christmas, when we talked of this. Old fanner Siirspson did maintain. That in tier womh the infant wrought About its mother's lieart, and brought Her senses back again : And when at last her time drew near, Her looks were calm, her senses clear* No more I know, 1 wish I did, s ~ And I would tell it all to you ; ' For what became of this poor child There's none that ever knew : 34 If then I am compelled to doubt the theory by which ,1 the choice of characters was to be directed not only a ptnori, from grounds of reason, but both from the few instances in which the poet himself need be supposed to have been governed by it, and from the comparative in- feriority of those instances ; still more must I hesitate in my assent to the sentence which immediately follows Ihe former citation ; and which i can neithc;r admit as particular fact, or as general rule. " The language, too, of these men is adopted, (purified, indeed, from what ap- pears to be its real defects from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust,) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived ; and because, from their rank in society, and the sameness and nar- row circle of their intercourse, being less under the action of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simpleand unelaboratedexpressions. Tothisi reply, that a rustic's language, purified from all provincialism and grossness, and so far re-constructed as to be made con- sistent with the rules of grammar, (which are. in essence, no other than he laws of universal logic applied to Psy- chological materials,) will not differ from the language of any other man of common sense, however learned or refined he may be, except as far as the notions which the rustic has to convey are fewer and more indiscrimi- nate. This will become still clearer if we add the con- sideration, equally important, though less obvious,) that the rustic, from the more imperfect development of his faculties, and from the lower state of their cultivation, aims almost solely to convey insulated facts ^ either those of bis scanty experience or his traditional belief; while the educated man chiefly seeks to discover and express those connections of things, or those relative bearings of fact to fact, from which some more or less general law And if a child was born or no. There's no one that could ever tell; And if 'twas born alive or dead. There's no one knovvs, as I have said ; But soiiie remember well, That Martl-.a Rav, about this time Would up the mountaia often clirnb.'' 35 is (leducible. For facts are valuable to a wise maiii^ chiefly as they lead to the discovery of the in-dvveliing law, which is the true being of things, the sole solution of their modes of existence, and in the knowledge of which consists our dignity and our power. As little can I agree with the assertion, that from the objects with which the rustic hourly communicates, the best part of language is formed Fox, first, if to couimu- nicate willi an object implies such an acquaintance with it, as renders it capable of being discriminately reflected on ; the distinct knowledge of an uneducated rustic would furnish a very scanty vocabuiar}^ I'he few things, and modes of action, requisite for his bodily conveniences^ would alone be individualized, while all the rest of na- ture would be expressed by a small number of confused, general terms. Secondly, 1 den}^ that the words, and com- binations of words derived from the objects, with which the rustic is fmnlinr, whether with distinct or confused knowledge, can be justly said to form the best part of language. It is more than probable, that man}^ classes of the brute creation possess discriminating sounds, by which they can convey to each other notices of such objects as concern their food, shelter, or safety. Yet we hesitate to call the aggregate of such sounds a language, otherwise than metaphorically. The best part of liuman language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself It is formed by a voluntary appropriation of fixed symbols to internal acts, to processes and results of imagination, the greater part of which have no place in the consciousness of uneducated man ; though, in civilized so- ciety, by imitation and passive remembrance of what they hear from their reli<4ious instructors and other superiors^ the most uneducated share in the harvest, v/hich they nei- ther sowed or reaped. If the history of the phrases in hour- ly currency among our peasants were traced, a person not previously aware of the fact would be surprized at find- ing so large a number, w^hich, three or four centuries ago, were the exclusive property of the universities and the schools ; and, at the commencement of the Reformation, had been transferred from the school to the pulpit, and thus gradually passed into common life. The extreme difficulty, and often the impossibility, of finding words for the simplest moral and intellectual processes in the la»- 36 guas;Gs of uncivilized tribes has proved, perhaps, the weightiest obstacle to the progress of our most zealous and adroit missionaries. Yet these tribes are surrounded hy the same nature, as our peasants are ; but in still more impressive forms ; and they are, moreover, oblig- ed to particularize many more of them. When, there- fore, Mr. Wordsworth adds, " accordingly, such a lan- guage," (meaning, as before, the language of rustic liife, purified from provincialism,) " arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more piiilosophical language, than that Avhich is frequently substituted for it by poets, who think thej are conferring honour upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they indiilge in .arbitrary and capricious habits of expression ;" it ma}'- be answered, that the lan- guage which he has in view can be attributed to rustics with no greater right than the style of Hooker or Bacon to Tom Brown or Sir Roger L'Estrange. Doubtless, if what is pecuHar to each were omitted in each, the re- sult must needs be the same. Further, that the poet, who uses an illogical diction, or a style fitted to excite only the low and changeable plea-ure of wonder, by means of groundless noveltjs substitutes a language of fol- ly and vanity, not for that of the rustic, but for that of good sense and natural feeling. Here let be permitted to remind the reader, that the positions, which I controvert, are contained in the senten- ces — '' a selection of the real language of men ;" — '' the lan- guage of these men, (i. e. men in low and rustic life,) 1 pro- pose to mysef to imitate, and, as far as possible, to adopt the very language of men ^"^ ^' Between the language of prose and thai f metrical composition, there neither is, nor can be, any essential di^erence.''' It is against these exclusively, that my opposition is directed. I object, in the very first instance, to an equivocation iti the use of the word " real." Every man's langua:;e va- ries according to the extent of his knowledge, the activity of his faculties, and the depth or quickness of his feelings. Every man's language has, first, its individiwlities ; se- condly, the common properties of the class to which he belongs ; atid thirdly, word? and phrases of umver3ct( use. The languM^e of Hooker, Bacon, Bishop Taylor, and Burke, differ from the common language of the learned 37 tl(\S3 only by the superior luiinber and novelty of the thoughts and relations which they had to convey. The language of Algernon Sidney differs not at all from that v/hich every well educated gentleman would wish to write, . and (with due allowances for the undeliberateness*, and less connected train, of thinking natural and proper to conversation,) such he would wish to talk. Neither one or the other differ half as much from the general lan- guage of cultivated society, as the language of Mr. Words- worth's homliest composition differs from that of a com- mon peasant. For ** real," therefore, we must substi^ tute ordinary or lingua communis. And this, we have proved, is no more to be found in the phraseology of low and rustic life, than in that of any other class. Omit the peculiarities of each, and the result, of course, must be common to all. And, assuredly, the omissions and chan- ges to be made in the language of rustics, before it could be transferred to any species of poem, except the drama or other professed imitation, are at least as numerous and weighty as would be required in adapting to the same purpose the ordinary language of tradesmen and manu- facturers. Not to mention, that the language so highly extolled by Mr. Wordsworth varies in every county, nay, in every village, according to the accidental charac- ter of the clergyman ; the existence or non-existence of schools ; or even, perhaps, as the exciseman, publican, or barber happen to be, or not to be, zealous politicians, and readers of the v/eekly newspaper pro bono publico. Anterior to cultivation the lingua communis of every country, as Dante has well observed, exists every where in parts, and no where as a whole. Neither is the case rendered at all more tenable by the addition of the words, '* in a state of exciteraent.^'^ For the nature of a man's words, when he is strongly affected by joy, grief, or anger, must necessarily depend on the number and quality of the general truths, conceptions, and images, and of the words expressing them, with which his mind has been previously stored. For the property of passion is not to create ; but to set in in- creased activity. At least, whatever new connections of thoughts or images, or (which is equally, if not more than equally, the appropriate effect of strong excitement) Vol; U. 4 38 whatever generalizations of truth or experience the heat of passion may produce, yet, the terms of their con- veyance must have pre-existed in his former conversa- tions, and are only collected and crowded together by the unusual stimulation. It is, indeed, very possible to adopt in a poem the unmeaning repetitions, habitual phrases, and other blank counters, which an unfurnished or confused understanding interposes at short intervals, in order to keep hold of his subject, which is still slipping from him, and to give him time for recollection ; or, in mere aid of vacancy, as in the scanty companies of a country stage, the same player pops backwards and for- wards, in order to prevent the appearance of empty spaces in the procession of Macbeth, or Henry Vlllth. But what assistance to the poet, or ornament to the poem, these can supply, I am at a loss to conjecture. Nothing, assuredly, can differ either in origin or in mode more widely from the apparent tautologies of intense and tur- bulent feeling, in which the passion is greater, and of longer endurance, than to be exhausted or satisfied by a single representation of the image or incident exciting it. Such repetitions I admit to be a beauty of the highest kind, as illustrated by Mr. Wordsworth himself from the song of Deborah. *' At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bozved, there he fell down dead J "^ 39 CHAPTER XVIIL Language of metrical composition, why and wherein es- - sentially dif event from that of prose — Origin and ele- ments of metre — Its necessary consequences, and the con- ditions thereby imposed an the metrical writer in the choice of his diction, T conclude, therefore, that the attempt is impractica- ble ; and that, were it not impracticable, it would still be iiseless. For the very power of making the selection implies the previous possession of the language selected. Or where can the poet have lived ? And by what rules could he direcHlis chaice, which would not have ena- bled him to select and arrange his words by the light of his own judgment ? We do not adopt the language of a class by the mere adoption of such words exclusively, as that class would use, or at least understand ; bat, likewise, by following the order in which the words of such men are wont to succeed each other. Now. this order, ia the intercourse of uneducated men. is distin- guished from the diction of their superiors in knowledge and power, by the greater disjunction and separation in the component parts of that, whatever it be, which they wish to communicate. There is a want of that prospec- tiveness of mind, that surview\ which enables a man to foresee the whole of what he is to convey, appertaining to any one point ; and, by this means, so to subordinate and arrange the different parts according to their rela- tive importance, as to convey it at once, and as an organ- ized whole. Now i will take the first stanza, on which I have chanced to open, in the Lyrical Ballads. It is one of the most simple and the least peculiar in its language^ ** In distant countries I have been. And yet I have not often seen A healthy man, a man full grown, Weep in the public road alone. 40 Cut sucl) a one, on Eng-lisb ground, And in the broad highway 1 met ; Along the broad highway he came, His cheeks with tear? were wet. Sturdy he seein'd, though he ^v'as sad, And in his arms a lamb he had." The words here are doubtless such as are current in all ranks of life ; and, of course, not less so, in the ham- let and cottage, than in the shop, manufactory, college, or palace. But is this the order in which the rustic would have placed the words ? 1 am grievously deceiv- ed, if the following less compact mode of commencing the ;game tale be not a flir more faithful copy. " 1 have been in a many parts far and near, and 1 don't know thati ever saw before a man crying by himself in the |>ublic road ; a grown man I mean, that was neither sick nor- hurt," ^c. &:c. But when I turn to the following stanza la **The Thorn-.'' *' At all times of the day and night This wretched womian thither goes, And she is known to every star And every wind that blows : And there beside the thorn she sits. When the blue day-light's in the skies;' And when the whirlwind's on the hiH, Or frosty air is keen and still ; And to herself she cries. Oh nTiisery ! Oh misery ! Oh wo is me J Oh misery !*' And compare this with the language of ordinary men ; or with that which I can conceive at all likely to pro- ceed, in real life, from such a narrator, as is supposed in the note to the poem ; compare it either in the succes- sion of the images or of the sentences, I am reminded of the sublime prayer and hymn of praise, which Milton, in opposition to an estabhshed liturgy, presents as a fair "specimen of common extemy)orary devotion, and such as we might expect to hear from every self-inspired minis- ter of a conventicle ! And I reflect with delight, how little a mere theory, though of his own workmanship, interferes with the processes of genuine imagination in a 41 man of true poetic genius, who possesses, as Mr. Words- worth, if ever man did, most assuredly does possess, **The Vision and the Faculty divine." One point, then, alone remains, but that the most im- portant ; its examination having been, Indeed, my chief inducement for the preceding inquisition* " There nei- ther is or can he any essential dijfererice between the Ian* guage of prose arid metrical composition,''^ Such is Mr. Wordsworth's assertion. Now, prose itself, at least, in all argumentative and consecutive works, differs, and ought to differ, from the language of conversation ; even as reading ought to differ from talking.* Unless, there- fore, the difference denied be that of the mere words^- as materials common to all styles of writing, and not of the style itself in the universally admitted sense of the term, it might be naturally presumed that there must exist a still greater between the ordonnance of poetic composition and that of prose, than is expected to dis- tinguish prose from ordinary conversation.- There are not, indeed, examples wanting in the histo- ry of literature, of apparent paradoxes that have sum- moned the public wonder, as new and startling truths, *It is no less an error in teachers, than a torment to the poor children, to inforce the necessity of reading- as they would talk. In order to cure them of singings as it is called ; that is, of too great a difference. The child is made to repeat the words with his eyesfrom ofl' the book ; and, then indeed, liis tones resemble talking, as far as his fears, tears, and trem- bling* will permit. But, as soon as the eye is again directed to the printed page, ibo spelh begins anew ; for an instinctive sense tells the child's feel- ings, that to utter its own momentary tiioughts, and to recite the written thoughts of another, as of another, and a far wiser than himself, are twa widely different things ; and, as the two acts are accompanied with wide-* iv different feelings, so must they justify different modes of enunciation. Joseph Lancaster, among his other sophistications of the excellent Dr. i^elPs invaluable system, cures this fault of 5ir^o^r7g, by hanging fetters and cha ns on the c.bild, to the music of which one of his school fellow-? who walks before, dolefully chaunts out the child's last speech and con- fes!!^ion, birth, parentage, and education. And this soul-benumbing igno-i miny, this unholy and heart-hardening burlesque on the last fearful in- fliction of outraged law, in pronouncing the sentence, to which the stern ^nd iarniliari^ed judge not seldom bursts into tears, has been extolled as a happy and ingenious method of remedying — what.'' and how? — why one extreme in order to introduce another, scarce less distant from good sense, and certainly likely to have worse moral effects, by enforciiig a semblance of petulant ease and self-sufficiency, in repression, and possi- ble after-per /ersion of the natural feelings, fhave to beg Dr Bell's par- don for this connexion of the two names, but he knows that contrast is no >esr powerful a cause of association than likeness. 4^ 42 but which, on examination, have shrunk nito tame and harmless truisms ; as the eyes of a cat, seen in the dark, have been mistaken for flames of fire. But Mr. Words- worth is among the last men, to whom a delusion of this kind would be attributed by any one who had enjoyed the slightest opportunity of understanding his mind and character. Whjere an objection has been anticipated by- such an author as natural, his answer to it must needs be interpreted in some sense, which either is, or has been, or is capable of being, controverted. My object iheix must be to discover some other meaning for the term *' essential difference^'' in this place, exclusive of the in- distinction and community of the words themselves. For whether there ought to exist a class of words in the English, in any degree resembling the poetic dialect of the Greek and Italian, is a question of very subordinate importance. The number of such words would be small indeed, in our language, and even in the Italian and Greek ; they consist not so much of different words, as of slight differences in the /orms of declining and conju- gating the same words ; forms, doubtless, which having been, at some period more or less remote, the common grammatic flexions of some tribe or province, had been accidentally appropriated to poetry by the general ad- miration of certain master intellects, the first established lights of inspiration, to whom that dialect happened to be native. Essence, in its primary signification, means the prin- ciple of individuation^ the inmost principle of the possi- bility of any thing, as that particular thing. It is equi- volant to the idea of a thing, whenever we use the word idea with philosophic precision. Existence, on the other hand, is distinguished from essence, by the super- induction oi reality. Thus we speak of the essence, and essential properties of a circle ; but we do not there*- fore assert, that any thing which really exists, is mathe- matically circular. Thus, too, without any tautology, we contend for the existence of the Supreme Being ; that is, for a reality correspondent to the idea. There is, next, a secondary use of the word essence, in which it signifies the point or ground of contra-distinction between two modifications of the same substance or subject. Thus we should be allowed to say, that the stjle of architect- 43 ure of Westminister Abbey is essentially difterent from that of Saint Paul, even though both had been built with blocks cut into the same form, and from the same quar- ry. Only in this latter sense of the term must it have been denied by Mr. Wordsworth (for in this sense alone is it affirmed by the general opinion) that the language of poetry (i. e. the formal construction, or architecture of the words and phrases) is essentially different from that of prose. Now the burthen of the proof lies with the oppugner, not with the supporters of the common belief. Mr. Wordsworth, in consequence, assigns, as the proof of his position, "•' that not only the language of a large portion of every good poem, even of the most elevated character, must necessarily, except with reference to the metre,*in no respect differ from that of good prose ; but, likewise, that some of the most interesting parts of the best poems will be found to he strictly the language of prose, wh.en prose is well written. The truth of this assertion might be demonstrated by innumerable passa- ges from almost all the poetical writings even of Miltoa himself." He then quotes Gray's sonnet — *' In vain to me the smihog" morninf^s shine. And reddening Phoebus bfts his golden fire ; The birds in vain their amorous descant joins Or cheerful fields resume their gi cen attire ; These ears, alas ! for other notes repine ; A different object do these eyes require ; My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine^ And in my breast the imperfect joys expire ! Yet morning smiles, the bu$y race to cheer, And new-born pleasure brings to happier men : The fields to all their wonted tributes bear. To warm their little loves the birds complain. 1 fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear. And loeep the more, because I v:eep in vain ;" and adds the following remark ^ — '' It will easily be per- ceived, that the only part of this Sonnet which is of any vakie, is the lines printed in italics. It is equally obvi- ous, that except in the rhyme, and in the use of the single word ''fruitless" for fruitlessly, which is so far a defect, the language of these lines does in no respeqt differ from that of prose." 41 An idealist defending his system by the fact, that wheu asleep we often beheve ourselves awake, was well an- swered by his plain neighbour, " Ah, but when awake do we ever believe ourselves asleep ?" — Things identi- cal must be convertible. The preceding passage seems to rest on a similar sophism. For the question is not, whether there may not occur in prose an order of words, which would be equally proper in a poem ; nor whether there are not beautiful lines and sentences of frequent occurrence in gv3od poems, which would be equally be- coming, as well as beautiful, in good prose ; for neither the one or the other has ever been either denied ^ doubted by any one. The true question must be, whether there are not modes of expression, a constrnctiGn, diDd iin order of sentences, which are in their fit and natural place in a serious prose composition, but would be dis- proportionate and heterogeneous in metrical poetry ; and, vice versa, whether in the language of a serious poem there may not be an arrangement both of wordi^ and sentences, and a use and selection of (what are call- ed) figures of speech, both as to their kind, their frequen- cy, and their occasions, which, on a subject of equal weight, would be vicious and alien in correct and manly prose. I contend, that in both cases, this unfitness of each for the place of the other frequently will and ought to exist. "And, first, from the origin of metre. This I would trace to the balance in the mind efl'ected by that sponta- neous effort which strives to hold in check the working* of passion. It might be easily explained, likewise, in what manner this salutary antagonism is assisted by the very state which it counteracts, and how this balance of antagonists became organized into metre ^ (in the usual ac- ceptation of that term,) by a supervening act of the will and judgment, consciously, and for the foreseen purpose of pleasure. Assuming these principles, as the data of our argument, we deduce from them two legitimate con- ditions, which the critic is entitled to expect in every metrical work. First ; that as the chmcuis of metre owe their existence to a state of increased excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the natural lan- guage of excitement. Secondly ; that as these elements are formed into metre artif daily, by a voluntary act, with the design, and for the purpose of blending delight Tvith 45 emotion, so the traces of present ro^?7ion should, throiigli- out the metrical langua^^e, be proportionally discernible. Now, these two conditions must be reconciled and co- present. There must be, not only a partnership, but a union ; an interpenetration of passion and will, of 5/3o;ito- neous impulse and of voluntary purpose. Again ; this union can be manifested only in a frequency of forms and figures of speech, (ori«;inal!y the oiTspring of passion, but now the adopted children of power,) greater than would be desired or endured where the emotion is not voluntarily encouraged, and kept up for the sake of that pleasure which such emotion, so tempered and master- ed by the will, is found capable of communicating. It not only dictates, but of itself tends to produce a more fre- quent employment of picturesque and vivifying language, than would be natural in any other casein which there did not exist, as there" does in the present, a previous and well understood, though tacit, compact between the poet and his reader, that the latter is entitled to expect, and the former bound to supply this species and degree of pleasurable excitement. We may, m some measure, apply to this union, the answ^er of Polixenes, in the Winter's Tale, to Perdita's neglect of the streaked gilly-flowers, because she had heard it said, ** There is an art which in their piedness shares. *' With great creating nature. Pol : Say there be : ** Yet nature is made better by no mean, ** But nature makes that mean. So cv'n that art, *' Which you say adds to nature, is an art " That nature makes ! You see, sweet maid, we marry " A gentler scyon to the wildest stock : *' And make conceive a bark of ruder kind ** By bud of nobler race. This is an art, *' Which does mend nature — change it rather; but *' The art itself is nature.'' Secondly, I argue from the effects of metre. As far* as metre acts in and for itself, it tends to increase the vi- vacity 3nd susceptibility both of the general feelings and of the attention. This effect it produces by the continued excitement of surprise, and by the quick re.ciprocations 46 erf curiosity, still gratified and sail re-excited, which are' loo slight, indeed, to be at any one moment objects of dis iinct consciousness, yet become considerable in their ag^ grcgatc inliuence. As a medicated atmosphere, or ai wine, during animated conversation, they act powerfully though themselves unnoticed. Where, therefore, cor- respondent food and appropriate matter are not provided for the attention and feelings, thus roused, there must needs be a disappointment felt; like that of leaping ir the dark from the last step of a stair-case, when we had prepared our muscles for a leap of three or four. The discussion on the powers of metre in the preface is hio'hly ingenious, and touches at all points on truth. But I cannot find any statement of its powers considered abstractly and separately. On the contrary, Mr. Words- worth seems always to estimate metre by the powers which it exerts during (and, as I think, in consequence of ) its combination with other elements of poetry. Thus, the previous difficulty is left unanswered, zi^hat the elements are with which it must be combined, in order to produce its own effects to any pleasurable purpose. Double and trisyllable rhymes, indeed, form a lower species of wit, and attended to, exclusively for their own sake, may be- come a source of momentary amusement ; as in poor Smart's distich to the Welch 'Squire, who had promised him a hare : *' Tell me, thou son of great Cadwallader ! Hast sent the hare ? or bast thou swallov»''d her ? But, for nny poetic purposes, metre resembles (if the aptness of the simile may excuse its meanness) yest, worthless or disagreeable by itself, but giving vivacity and spirit to the liquor with which it is proportionally combined. The referrence to the *' Children of the Wood," by no means satisfies my judgment. We all willingly throw ourselves back for a while into the feelings of our child- hood. This ballad, therefore, we read under such recollections of our own childish feelings, as would equal- ly jendear to us poems which Mr. Wordsworth himself .n^ould regard as faulty in the opposite ej|reme of gaudT iiid technical oniaiiient, Before the invention of print- er, and in a still greater clegree, before the introduc- ion of writing, metre, especially alliterative metre, 'whether nlliterative at the beginning of the words, as in ■* Pierce Plouman," or at the end, as in rhymes,) possess- ed an independent value, as assisting the recollection, ind, consequently, the preservation of (vn?/ series of truths or incidents. But 1 am not convinced by the collation of ^acts, that the " Children in the WoocV owes either its ^reservation or its popularity to its metrical form. Mr. iVIarshai's repository affords a number of tales in prose nferior to pathos and general merit, some of as old a late, and many as widely popular. Tom Hickathrift, L\CK THE Giant-killer, Goody Two-shoes, and Little itED RiDiXG-HOOD, are formidable rivals. And that they lave continued in prose, cannot be fairly explained by he assumption, that the comparative meanness of their houghts and images precluded even the humblest forms A metre. The scene of Goody Tw^o-shoes in the :hurdi is perfectly susceptible of metrical narration ; ind among the (daoixaya B-avAasorara, even of the present age, do not recollect a more astonishing image than that of he " ii'holc rookery, that fiew out of the gianVs beard,''' icared by the tremendous voice with which this monster mswered the challenge of the heroic Tom Kicka- rHRIFT '! If from these we turn to compositions, universally and ndependently of all early associations, beloved and ad- nired, would the Maria, The Moick, or The Poor Man's Ass of Sterne, be read with more delight, or vdve a better chance of immortalit}^ had they, without my change in the diction, been composcKl in rhyme, ban in the present state ? If I am not grossly mistaken, .he general reply would be in the negative. Nay, I m\\ confess, that in Mr. Wordsworth's owm volumes, the \necdote for Fathers, Simon Lee, Alice Fell, The Beggars, and The Sailor's Mother, notwithstanding he beauties which are to be found in each of them, tvhere the poet interposes the music of his own thoughts, ivould have been more delightful to m^ in prose, told md managed, as by Mr. Wordsw^orth they would have been, in a moral essay, or pedestrian tour. 48 I\]etre in ilself is sirnpl}^ a stimulant of the .attention, urn] therefore excites the question, Why is the atten- tion to be thus stimulated ? Now the question cannot be answered by the yjleasure of the metre itself; for thi^ we have shown to l)e conditional,, and dependent on the appropriateness of the thoughts and expressions, to which tlie metrical, form is superadded. Neither can I conceive any other ansv/er that can be rationally given, j? 52 i,t 1s not. WhoeveF should decide in the affirmaiive, would request him to re-peruse any one poem, of any con| fessedJy great poet from Homer to Milton, or from Eschyj Jus to Shakspeare, and to strke out (in thought I rr.ean,1 every instance of this kind. \{ the number of these fan-* cied erasures did not startle him, or if he continued to deem the work improved by their total omission, he must advance reasons of no ordinary strength and evidence — reasons grounded in the essence of human nature ; other- wise I should not hesitate to consider him as a man not so much proof against all authority, as dead to it. The second line, *' And reddening Phosbus lifts his golden fire.** has indeed almost as many faults as words. But then it is a bad line, not because the language is distinct from that of prose ; but because it conveys incongruous ima- g<;s, because it confounds the cause and the effect, the peal thing with the personified representative of the thing ; in short, because it diSers from the language of good SENSE ! That the ** Phcebus" is hacknied, and a school- boy image, is an accidental fault, dependent on the age in which the author wrote, and not deduced from the nature of the thing. That it is part of an exploded mythology, is an objection more deeply grounded. Yet when the torch of ancient learning was re-kindled, so cheering were its beams, that our eldest poets, cut off by Christianity from ail accredited machinery, and deprived of all ac- knowledged guardians and symbols of the great objects of nature, were naturally induced to adopt, as sl poetic lan- guage, those fabulous personages, those forms of the su- pernatural in nature,* which had given them such dear de- light in the poems of their great masters. Nay, even at this day, what scholar of genial taste will not so far sym- pathise with them, as to read with pleasure in Petrach, Chaucer, or Spenser, what he would perhaps condemn as puerile in a modern poet? * But still more by the mechanical system of philosophy which has fieedlessly infected otir theolog^ical opinions; and teaching" us to consider the world: in its relation to God, as of a building to its masoji, leaves the idea of oamipresence a mere abati-act notiea ki the state-room of o-^r teasocK 53 I remember no poet whose writings would safelier stand the test of Mr. Wordsworth's theory, than Spknser. Yet will Mr. Wordsworth say, that the style of the fol- lowing stanzas is either undistinguished from prose, and the language of ordinary life ? Or, that it is vicious, and that the stanzas are blots in the Faery Queen ? " By this the northern wagg'oner had set His sevenfold teme behind the steadfast starre. That was in ocean waves yet never wet, But firm is fixtand sendeth lig-ht from farre To all that in the wild deep wandering are. And cheerful chanticleer with his note shrill Had warned once that Phoebus's fiery carre In haste was climbing up the eastern hill, Full envious that night so long his room did fill.*' Book /. Can. 2, St. £. ** At last the golden orientall gate Of greatest heaven gan to open fay re. And Phoebus fresh as brydegrome to his mate, Came dauncing- forth, shaking his deawie hayre, And hurl'd his glist'ring" beams through gloomy ayre ; Which when the wakeful elfe perceived, streightway He started up, and did him selfe prepay re In sun-bright armes, and battailous array ; For with that pagan proud he combat will that day.'* J5. /. Can. 5, St. £. On the contrary, to how many passages, both in hymn books and in blank verse poems, could 1 (were it not in- vidious,) direct the reader's attention, the style of which is most unpoetic, because, and only because, it is the style €>f prose? lie will not suppose me capable of having in my mind such verses, as ** I put my hat upon my head And walk'd into the strand ; And there I met another raan- Whose hat was in his hand." To such specimens it would indeed be a fair and full reply, that these lines are not bad, because they a»e un- £oetic : but because they are empty of all sense and^ 5* 34 f^elingc and that it were an idle attempt to prove thai an ape is not a Newton, when it i?i evident that he is not a man. But the sense shall be good and weighty, the language correct and dignified, the subject interesting and treated with feeling ; and yet the style shall, not- withstanding all these merits, be justly blamable as prO' saic, and solely because the words and the order of (he words would find their appropriate place in prose, but are not suitable to metrical composition. The '' Civil Wars" of Daniel is an instructive, and even interesting Work ; but take the following stanzas, (and from the hun- dred instances which abound I might probably have se- lected others far more striking.) ** And to the end we may with better ease Discern the true discourse, vouchsafe to show What were the times foregoing near to these, That these we may with better profit know. Tell how the world fell into this disease ; And how so great disteraperature did grow; So shall we see with what degrees it came ; How things at full do soon wax out of frame.** •* Ten kings had from the Norman conqu'ror reign'd With intermixt and variable fate. When England to her greatest height attain'd Of power, dominion, g"lcry, wealth, and state ; After it had with nmch ado sustain'd The violence of princes with debate For titles, and the often mutinies Of nobles for their ancient liberties." •* For first the Norman, conqu'ring all by might. By might was forced to keep what he had got ; Mixing our customs and the form of right With foreign constitutions, he had brought ; Mastering the mighty, humbling- the poorer wight. By all severest means that could be wrought ; And making the succession doubtful rent llis new-got state and left it turbulent *' B, I. St VIL VIIL 4' IX, Will it be contended, on the one side, that these lines are mean and senseless ? Or on the other, that they are not prosaic, and for that reason unpoetic ? This poet's well -merited epithet is that of the *' well'languaged Daniel ;" but likewise, and by the consent of his contempo - raries no less than of all succeeding critics, the '' prosaic Daniel/' Yet those, who thus designate this wise and amiable writer from the frequent incorrespondency of his diction to his metre in the majority of his compositions, not only deem them valuable and interesting on other ac- counts, but willingly admit, that there are to be found throughout his poems, and especially in his Epistles and in his Hyjnen's Triumph, many and exquisite specimens of that style which, as the neutral ground of prose and -verse, is common to both. A fine, and almost faultless extract, eminent as for other beauties, so for its perfec- tion in this species of diction, may be seen in Lamb's Dramatic Specimens, &c. a work of various interests from the nature of the selections themselves (all from the plays of Shakspeare's contemporaries) and deriving a high additional value from the notes, which are full of just and original criticism, expressed with all the fresh- ness of originality. Among the possible effects of practical adherence to a theory, that aims to identify the style of prose and verse, (if it does, indeed, claim for the latter a yet nearer re- semblance to the average style of men in the viva voce intercourse of real life) we might anticipate the following, as not the least likely to occur. It will happen, as I have indeed before observed, that the metre itself, the sole acknowledged difference, will occasionally become metre to the eye only. The existence of prosaisms, and that they detract from the merit of a poem, must at length be conceded, when a number of successive lines can be rendered, even to the most delicate ear, unrecog- nizable as verse, or as having even been intended for verse, by simply transcribing them as prose ; when, if the poem be in blank verse, this can be effected without any alteration, or at most by merely restoring one or , two words to their proper places, from which they had been transplanted* for no assignable cause or reason, but * As the inpfenious gentleman, under the influence of the Tragic Muse contrived to dislocate, " I wish you a good morning-, Sir, ! Thank } ou, Sir, and I wish you the same,'" into two'blank- verse heroics : — To you a morning good, good Sir .' I \vish. You, Sir ! I thank : to you the same wish I. In those parts of Mr. Wordsworth's works, which 1 have thoroughlj ■studied, I find fewer instances ia which this would be practicable than ^ 56 that of the author's convenience ; but if it be in rhyme,, by the mere exchange of the final word of each hne for some other of the same meaning, equally appropriate, dignified and euphonic. The answer or objection in the preface to the antici- pated remark ''that metre paves the way to other dis- tinctions," is contained in the following words. '' The distinction of rhyme and metre is voluntary and uniform, and not like that produced by (what is called) poetic dic- tion, arbitrary, and subject to infinite caprices, upon which no calculation whatever can be made. In the one case the reader is utterly at the mercy of the poet respecting what imagery or diction he may choose to connect with the passion." But is this apoe^, of whom a poet is speak- ing ? No surely ! rather of a fool or madman ; or, at best, of a vain or ignorant phantast ! And might not brains so wild and so deficient make just the same havock with rhymes and metres, as they are supposed to effect with modes and figures of speech ? How is the reader at the mercy of such men ? If he continue to read their non- sense, is it not his own fault ? The ultimate end of criti- cism is much more to establish the principles of writing, than to furnish rules how to pass judgment on what has been written by others ; if indeed it were possible that the two could be separated. But if it be asked, by what principles the poet is to regulate his own style, if he do not adhere closely to the sort and order of words which have met in many poems, where an approximation of prose has been sedulously, and on system, guarded against. Indeed, excepting the stanzas already quoted from the Sailor^s Mother^ I can recollect but one instance ; viz. a short passage of four or five lines in The Brothers, that model of English pastoral, which I never yet read with unclouded eye. — " James, pointing to its summit, over which they had all purposfdto return together, informed them that he would wait for them there. They p. • ted, and hi« comrades passed that way some two hours after, but they did not find him at the appointed place, a circumstance of which they took no keed . but one of them going by chance into the house, which at this time was Jumes's house, learnt Mere, that nobody had seen him all that day.'* The only charge which has been made is in the position of the little word there in two instances, the position in the original being clearlj'^ such as is not adopted in ordinar)-- conversation. The other words printed in italics, were so marked because, though good and geiiiiine English, they are not the phraseology of common conversation eitiier in the word put in appo- sition, or in the connection by the genitive pronoun. Men in aeneral would have said, " but that was a circumstance they paid no attention to, or took no notice of," and the language is, on the theory of the preface, justified only by the narrator's being the Vicar. Yet if any ear coidd suspect, that these sentences were ever printed as metre, on those very nords aJone could the suspicion have been grounded. 5r Be hears in the market, wake, high-road, or plough-field ? I reply ; by principles, the ignorance or neglect of which would convict him of being no poet, but a silly or pre-^ sumptuous usurper of the name I By the principles of grammar, logic, psychology ! In one word, by such a knowledge of the facts, material and spiritual, that most appertain to his art, as if it have been governed and ap- phed by good sense, and rendered instinctive by habit, becomes the representative and reward of our past con- scious reasonings, insights, and conclusions, and acquires the name of taste. By what rule that does not leave the reader at the poet's mercy, and the poet at his own, is the latter to distinguish between the language suitable to suppressed, and the language which is characteristic of indulged, anger ? Or between that of rage and that of jealousy ? Is it obtained by wandering about in search of angry or jealous people in uncultivated society, in order to copy their words ? Or not far rather by the power of imagination proceeding upon the all in each of human nature ? By meditation, rather than by observa- tion ? And by the latter in consequence only of the former ? As eyes, for which the former has pre-deter- mined their field of vision, and to which, as to its organ, it communicates a microscopic power ? There is not, I iirmly believe, a man now living, who has from his own inward experience a clearer intuition than Mr. Words- worth himself, that the last mentioned are the true sour- ces of genial discrimination. Through the same protess, and by the same creative agency, will the poet distin- guish the degree and kind of the excitement produced by the very act of poetic composition. As intuitively will he know, whatdifl'erences of style it at once inspires and justifies ; what intermixture of conscious volition is natu- ral to that state ; and in what instances such figures and colours of speech degenerate into mere creatures of an arbitrary purpose, cold technical artifices of ornament or connection. For even as truth is its own light and evi- denc/5, discovering at once itself and falsehood, so is it the prerogative of poetic genius to distinguish, by paren- tal instinct, its proper offspring from the changelings which the gnomes of vanity or the fairies of fashion may have laid in its cradle, or called by its names. Could a vule be given from unthout, poetry would cease to be 38 poetry, and sink into a mechanical art. It would be jioy(j:te genius, have, from a mistaken theory, deluded both themselves and others in the opposite extreme. I once read to a company of sensible and well-educated women the in- troductory period of Cowley's preface to his ''Pindaric Odes, written in imitation of the style and manner of the odes ef Pindar,"" " If (says Cowley) a man should un- dertake to translate Pindar, word for word, it would be thought that one madman had translated another ; as may appear, when he, that understands not the or^ji'^^^* reads the verbal traduction of him into Latin prose, than which nothing seems more raving." I then proceeded with his own free version of the second Olympic, com- posed for the charitable purpose of rationalizing the Theban Eagle. " Queen of all harmonious things, DanciDg" words and speaking strings. What God, what hero, wilt thou sing ? What happy man to equal glories bring? Begin, begin thy noble choice. And let the hills around reflect the image of thy voice* Pisa does to Jove belong, Jove and Pisa claim thy song. The fair first-fruits of war, th' Olympic games, Alcides offer'd up to Jove ; Alcides too thy strings may move ! But oh ! what man to join with these can worthy prove? Join Theron boldly to their sacred names ; Tl^jeron the next honour claims ; Theron to no man gives place ; Is first in Pisa's and in Virtue's race ;' Theron there, and he alone, E'en his own swift forefathers has outgone.*' One of the company exclaimed, with the full assent of the rest, that if the original were madder than this, it must be incurably mad. 1 then translated the ode from the Greek, and, as nearly as possible, word for word ; and the impression was, that in the general movement of the periods, in the form of the conqiections and transi- tions, and in the sober majesty of lofty sense, it appeared ^Q them to approacti more aearly than any other poetry 60 ihey had heard, to the st} le of our bible in the prophetri. books. The tirst strophe will suffice as a specimen. '< Ye harp-controulin^ hymns ! (or) ye hymns the sovereigns of harps ! What God ? what Hero ? What man shall we celebrate ? Truly Pisa is of Jove, But the Olympiad (or the Olympic games) did Hercules establish. The first fruits of the spoils of war. But Theron for the four-horsed car, That bore victory to him, It behooves us now to voice aloud ; The Just, the Hospitable, The Bulwark of Agrigentum, Of renowned fathers The Flower, even him Who preserves kis native city erect and safe.'* But are such rhetorical caprices condemnable only for Iheir deviation from their language of real life ? and are they by no other means to be precluded, but by the re- jection of all distinctions betw^een prose and verse, save that of metre ? Surely good sense, and a moderate in- sight into the constitution of the human mind, would be amply sufficient to prove, that such language and such combinations are the native produce neither of the fancy nor of the imagination ; that their operation consists in .the excitement of surprize by the juxta-position and ap- parent reconciliation of widely diflerent or incompatible things. As when, for instance, the hills are made to re- flect the image of a voice. Surely, no unusual taste is requisite to see clearly, and that this compulsory juxta- position is not produced by the presentation of impressive or delightful forms to the inward vision, nor by any sympathy with the modifying powers with which the ge- nius of the poet had united and inspirited all the objects of his thought ; that it is therefore a species of wit, a pure work of the will, and implies a leisure and self-pos- session both of thought and of feeling, incompatible with the steady fervour of a mind possessed and filled with the grandeur of its subject. 'I'o sum up the whole in one sentence : When a poem, or a part of a poem, shall be adduced, which^is evidently vicious in the figures and 61 contexture of its style, yet for the condemnation of which no reason can be assigned, except that it differs from the style in which men actually converse ; then, and not till then, can I hold this theory to be either plausible or practicable, or capable of furaishing either rule, guidance, er precaution, that might not, more easily and more safely, as well as more naturally, have been deduced in the author's own mind, from considerations of grammar, logic, and the truth and nature of things, confirmed by the authority of works, whose fame is not of one country, nor of ONE age. Vol, II. 62 CHAPTER XIX. Continuation — Concerning the real object whichi it is pro- bable, Mr. Wordsrvorih had before him in his critical preface — Elucidation and application of this. It mii^ht appear from some passages in the former part of Mr. Wordsworth's preface, that he mean: to confine his theory of style, and the necessity of a close accordance with the actual language of men, to those particular sub- jects from low and rustic life, which, by way of experi- ment, he had purposed to naturalize as a new species in our English poetry. But from the train of argument that follow^s ; from the reference to Milton ; and from the :?pirit of his critique on Gray's sonnet, those sentences appear to have been rather courtesies of modesty than actual limitations of his system. Yet so groundless does this system appear on a close examination ; and so strange and overwhelming in its consequences,^ that I cannot, and I do not, believe that the poet did ever himself adopt it in the unqualified sense in which his expressions have been understood by others, and which, indeed, according to all the common laws of interpretation, they seem to bear. What then did he mean ? I apprehend, that in the clear perception, not unaccompanied with disgust or contempt, to the gaudy affectations of a style which passed too cur- rent with too many for poetic diction, (though, in truth, it had as little pretensions to poetry as to logic or common sense,) he narrowed his view for the time ; and feel- ing a justifiable preference for the language of nature * I had in my mind the striking but untranslatable epithet, which the celebrated Mendelssohn applied to the great founder of the Critical Phy- losophy ^^ Der allessermalmetide.KAisiTj^'' i.e. the all-becrushing, or ra- ther the all-to-nothing- crushing Kant. In the facility and force of com^ pound epithets, the German, from the number of its cases and inflections, approaches to the Greek : that language so ** Bless'd in the happy marriage of sweet words." It is in the woful harshness of its sounds alone that the German need shrink from the comparison. 63 aiitl of good sense, even in its humblest and least ornameiil^ ed forms, he suffered himself to express, in terms at once too large and too exclusive, his predilection for a style the most remote possible from the false and showy splen- dor which he wished to explode. It is possible, that this predilection, at first merely comparative, deviated fora'tima into direct partiahty. But the real object which he had in view was, I doubt not, a species of ex- cellence which had been long before most happily cha- racterized by the judicious and amiable Garve, whose works are so justly beloved and esteemed by the Ger- mans, in his remarks on Gellert, (see Sammlung Eini- ger Abhandtunged von Christian Garve) from which the following is hterally translated, *' The talent that is required in order to make excellent verses, is perhaps- greater than the philosopher is ready to admit, or would find it in his power to acquire : the talent to seek only the apt expression of the thought, and yet to find at the same time with it the rhyme and the metre. Gellert pos- sessed this happy gift, if ever any one of our poets possess- ed it ; and nothing perhaps contributed more to the great and universal impression which his fables made on their tirst publication, or conduces more to their conUi:ried popularity. It was a strange and curious phenomenon, and such as, in Germany, had been previousl}^ unheard off to read verses in which every thing was expressed, just as one would wish to talk, and yet all dignified, attrac- tive, and interesting ; and all at the same time perfectly correct as to the measure of the syllables and the rhyme. It is certain that poetry, when it has attained this excel- lence, makes a fir greater impression than prose. So much so, indeed, that even the gratification which the very rhymes afford, becomes then no longer a contempt- ible or trifling gratification." However novel this phenomenon may have been in Germany at the time of Gellert, it is by no means new, nor yet of recent existence in our language. Spite of the licentiousness with which Spencer occasionally compels the orthography of his words into a subservience to his rhymes, the whole Fairy Queen is an almost continued in- stance of this beauty. Waller's song; " Go, lovely Rose, &c." is doubtless familiar to most of my readers ; but if I had happened to have had by me the Poems of Cotton, 64 more, but far less deservedly, celebrated as the author of the Virgil travestied, I should have indulged myself, and, i think, have gratified many who are not acquainted with his serious works, by selecting some admirable spe- cimens of this style. There are not a few poems in that^ volume, replete with every excellence of thought, im* age, and passion, which we expect or desire io the po- j etry of the milder muse ; and yet so worded, that the reader sees no one reason either in the selection or the order of the words, why he might not have said the very same in an appropriate conversation, and cannot conceive how indeed he could have expressed such thoughts otherwise, without loss or injury to his meaning. But, in truth, our language is, and^ from the first dawn of poetrjs ever has been, particularly rich in composi- tions distinguished by thij: excellence. The final e, which is now mute, in Chaucer's age was either sounded or dropt indifferently. We ourselves still use either beloved or be^ lov\J, according as the rhyme, or measure, or the purpose of more or less solemnity may require. Let the reader, then, only adopt the pronunciation of the poet, and of the court at which he lived, both with respect to the final e and to the accentuation of the last syllable, I would then venture to ask what, even in the colloquial language of elegant and unaffected women, (who are the peculiar mistresses of '* pure English, and undefiled,") what could we hear more natural, or seemingly more unstudied, than the following stanzas from Chaucer's Troilus and Cre- geide. '* And after this forth to the gate he went, Ther as Creseide out rode a full gode paas : And up and doun there made he many a wente^ And to hiraselfe full oft he said, Alas ! Fro hennis rode my bhsse and my solas : As wouldd blisful God now for bis joie, I might her sene agen come in to Troie J And to the yonder hill I gan her guide, Alas ! and there I took of her my leave : And yond I saw her to her fathir ride ; For sorrow of which mine hearte shall to-cleve ; And hithir home I came when it was eve ; And here I dwel; out-cast from alle joie, And shall, til I maie sene her efte in Troie. 65 And of himse^fe imag"inid he ofte Tx) ben defaitid, pale and waxen lesse Than he was wonte, and that men saidin softe, What may it be? who can the sothe guess, Why Troilus hath al this heviness ? And al this n' as but his melancholia, That he had of hiraselfe suche fantasie. Another time imaginin he would That every wight, that past him by the wey Had of him routhe, and that they saien should, lam rig-ht sorry, Troilus will die ! And thus he drove a dale yet forth or twey, As ye have herde : suche life gan he to lede As he that stode betwixin hope and drede : For which him likid in his songis shewe Th' eucbeson of his wo as he best might, And made a songe of wordis but a fewe, Somwhat his woefull herte for to light, And when he was from every mann'is sight With softe voice he of his lady dere. That absent was, gan sing as ye may hear : This song when he thus songin had, full soott He fell agen into his sighis olde : And every night, as was his wonte to done, He stode the bright moone to beholde And all his sorrowe to the moone he tolde. And said : I wis, when thou art hornid newe, I shall be giad, if al the world be trewe !" Another exquisite master of this species of style, where fhe scholar and the poet supplies the material, but the perfect well-bred gentleman the expressions and the ar- rangement, is George Herbert, As from the nature of the subject, and the too frequent quaintwess of the thoughts, his '* Temple, or Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations," are comparatively but little known, I shall extract two poems. The first is a sonnet, equally admirable for the weight, number, and expression of the thoughts, and for the siiTiple dignity of the language. (Unless, indeed, a fastidious taste should object to the latter half of the sixth line.) The second is a poem of greater length, which I have chosen not only for the present purpose, but, like- wise, as a striking example and illustration of an asser- tion hazarded in a former page of these sketches : namely ,• fkat the characteristic fault of our elder poets is the re- 6* 66 ferse of that which distinguishes too many of our more recent versifiers ; the one conveying the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct and natural language ; the other in the most fantastic language conveying the most trivial thoughts. The latter is a riddle of words ; the former an enigma of thoughts. The one reminds me of an odd passage in Drayton's Ideas : Sonnet IX. As other men, so I myself do muse, Why in this sort I wrest invention so; And why these giddy metaphors I use, Leaving the path the greater part do go ? I will resolve you : / am lunatic I The other recalls a still odder passage in the *' Syna- gogue ; or the Shadow of the Temple^'' a connected se- -ries of poems in imitation of Herbert's " Temple," and in some editions annexed to it. O how my mind Is gravellM ! Not a thought, That I can find, But's ravell'd All to nought ! Short ends of threds, And narrow shreds Of lists ; Knot's snarled ruffs, Loose broken tufts Of twists; Are my torn meditations ragged clothing, Which wound, and woven shape a sute for nothing; One while I think, and then I am in pain , To think how to unthink that thought again ! Immediately after these burlesque passages, I cannot proceed to the extracts promised, without changing the ludicrous tone of feeling by the interposition of the three following stanzas of Herbert's : 67 VIRTUE. Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright. The bridal of the earth and sky : The dew shall weep thy fall to night, For thou must dye ! Sweet rose, whose hue ang-ry and brave Bids the rash g-azer wipe his eye : Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must dye l Sweet spring", full of sweet days and rosesi A nest, where sweets compacted lie .• My rausick shows ye have your closes, And all must dye ! THE BOSOM SIN ! Ji Sonnet^ by George Herbert. Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round ? Parents first season us ; then schoolmasters Deliver us to laws ; they send us bound To rules of reason, holy mess^ingers. Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin, Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, Bibles laid open, millions of surprises ; Blessings before hand, ties of gratefulness, The sound of glory ringing in our ears : Without, our shame ; within, our consciences ; Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears ! Yet all these fences, and their whole array, One cunning bosom- sin blows quite away. LOVE unknown. Dear friend, sit down, the tale is long and sad : And in my faintings, I presume, your love Will more comply than help. A Lord I had, And have of whom some grounds, which may improve, I hold for two lives, and both lives in me.^ To him I brought a dish of fruit one day And in the middle placed my beabt. But he (I sigh to say> 68 Lookt on a servant who did know bis eye, Belter than you knew me, or (which is one) Than I myself. The servant instantly, Quitting the fruit, seiz/d on my heart alone, And threw it in a font, wherein did fall A stream of bl/)od, which issued from the side Of a g-reat rock : I well remember all, And have g-ood cause : there it was dipt and dy'd, And washt, and wrun^! the very wringing" yet Enforceth tears. Your heart wasfoul^ I fear* Indeed 'tis true. T did and do commit Many a fault, more than my lease v/ill bear ; Yet still ask'd pardon, and was not deny'd. But you shall hear. After my heart was well, And clean and fair, as I one eventide, (I sigh to tell,) Walkt by myself abroad, I saw a larg-e And spacious furnace flaming, and thereon A boiling caldron, round about whose verge Was in great letters set AFFLICTION. The greatness show'd the owner. So I went To fetch a sacrifice out of my fold. Thinking with that, which I did thus present, To warm his love, which, I did fear, grew cold. But as m}^ heart did tender it, the man Who was to take it from me, slipt his hand. And threw my heart into the scalding* pan ; My heart that brought it Cdo you understand ?) The offever'^s heart- Your heart was hard, I fear* Indeed 'tis true. I found a callous matter Began to spread and to expatiate there: But v/ith a richer drug than scalding" water I bath'd it often, e'en with holy blood, Which at a board, while many drank bare wine. A friend did steal into my cup for g"ood, E'en taken inwardly, and most divine To supple hardnesses. But at the length Out of the caldron getting, soon i fled Unto my house, where to repair the strecg-tli Which I had lost, I hasted to n\y bed ; But when I thought to sleep out all these faults, (I siL^h to speak,) I found that some had stufTd the bed with thoughts, I would say thorns. Dear, could my hc?art not break. When with my pleasures even my rest v^ as gone ? Full well I understood who had been there : For I had given the key to none but one ; It must be he. Your heart v;as dulL J f:<:n\ 69 Indeed a slack and sleepy state of mind Did oft possess me ; so that when I pray'd, Thoug-h my lips went, my heart did stay behind. But all my scores were by another paid, Who took my guilt upon him. Truly ^friend; For oiig'ht I hear^ your master shows to you jVTore favour than you wot of, Mark the end .' The font did only to hat was old renew ; The caldron suppled what was grovm too hard ^ The thorns did quicken what was grown too dulli All did but strive to mend what you had marr'^d. Wherefore he cheer'd, and praise him to the full Each day^ each hour, each moment of the weck^ Who fain would have you be newy tender, quicfe ( 70 CHAPTER XX. Tlie former subject continued — The neutral style, or that common to I'rose and Poetry, exemplified by specimen!^ from Chaucer, Herbert^ 4'C. I have no fear in declaring my conviction, that, the ex- cellence defined and exemplified in the preceding Chap- ter is not the characteristic excellence of Mr. Words- worth's style ; because I can add with equal sincerity, that it is precluded by higher powers. The praise of uniform adherence to genuine, logical English, is un- doubtedly his ; nay, laying the main emphasis on the word uniform, I will dare add, that of all contemporary poets, it is his alone. For in a less absolute sense of the word, I should certainly include Mr, Bowles, Lord Bvron, and, as to all his later writings, Mr. Southey, the ex- ceptions in their works being so (^\w and unimportant. But of the specific excellence described in the quotation from Garfe, I appear to find more, and more undoubted specimens in the work of others ; for instance, among the minor poems of Mr. Thomas Moore, and of our illus- trious Laureate. To me it will always remain a singu- lar and noticeable fact, that a theory which would es- tablish this lingua communis, not only as the best, but as the only commendable style, should have proceeded from a poet whose diction, next to that of Shakspeare and Milton, appears to me of all others the most individual' ized and characteristic. And let it be remembered, too, that I am now interpreting the controverted passages of Mr. W.'s critical preface hy the purpose and object which he may be supposed to have intended, rather than by the sense which the words themselves must convey, if they are taken without this allowance. A person of any taste, who had but studied three or four of Shakspeare's principal plays, would, without the name affixed, scarcely fail to recognize as Shakspeare's, a quotation from any other play, though but of a few lines. A similar peculiarity, though in a less degree. 71 attends Mr. Wordsworth's style, whenever he speaks in his own person ; or whenever, though under a feigned nanie, it is clear that he himself is .still speaking, as in the different drainatis personae of the '* Recllse ' Even in the other poems in which he purposes to be most dra- mptic there are few in which it does not occasionally burst forth. The reader might often address the poet in his own words with reference to the persons introduced : *' It seems, as T retrace the ballad line by line That but halt of it is their's, and the better half is thine." Who, having been previously acquainted with any considerable portion of Mr. Wordsworth s publications, and having studied them with a full feeling of the author's genius, would not at once claim as Wordsworthian the little poem on the rainbow ? *' The child is father of the man, i&c." Or in the " Lucy Gray ? *' No mate, no comrade Lucy knew ; She dwelt on a wide moor ; T'/ie sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door.^'' Or in the " Idle Shepherd-boys V ** Along the river's stony marg-e The sand-lark chaunts a joyous song ; The thrush is busy in the wood, And carols loud and strong. A thousand lambs are en the rock All newly born ! both earth and sky Keep jubilee, and more than all. Those boys with their green coronal, They never hear the cry, ^ That plaintive cry which up the hill Comes from the depth of Dungeon Gill.'* Need I mention the exquisite description of the Sea Lock in the *' Blind Highland Boy." ^ Who but a poet tells a tale in such language to the little ones by the fire- side as — 72 •** Yet bad he many a restless dream Both when he heard the eagle's scream. And when he heard the torrents roar. And heard the water beat the shore Near where their cottage stood. Beside a lake their cottage stood, Not small like our*s a peaceful flood ? But one of mighty size, and strange That rough or smooth is full or change And stirring in its bed. For to this lake by night and day, The great sea- water finds its way Through long, long windings of the hills, And drinks up all the pretty rills ; And rivers large and strong : Then hurries back the road it came— Returns on errand still the same ; This did it when the earth was new j -And this for evermore will do, As long as earth shall last. And with the coming of the tide, Come boats and ships that sweetly ride, Between the woods and lofty rocks ; And to the shepherd with their flocks Bring tales of distant lands.'* I might quote almost the w^hole of his ** Ruth,'' but take the following stanzas : •* But as you have before been told, This stripling, sportive gay and bold, And with his dancing crest, So beautiful, through savage lands Had roam'd about with vagrant bands Of Indians in the West. The wind, the tempest roaring higfci, The tumult of a tropic sky. Might well be dangerous food For him, a youth to whom was given So much of earth, so much of heaven^ And such impetuous blood. 73 Whatever in those climes he found Irregular ia sight or sound, Did to his mind impart A kindred impulse ; seemM allied To his own powers, and justified The workings of his heart. Nor less to feed voluptuous thought The beauteous forms of nature wrought, Fair trees and lovely flowers ; The breezes their own languor lent, The stars had feelings, which they sent Into those magic bowers. Yet in his worst pursuits, I ween. That sometimes there did intervene Pure hopes of high intent . For passions, link'd to forms so fair And stately, needs must have their share Of noble sentiment." But from Mr. Wordsworth's more elevated composi- tions, irhich already form three-fourths of his works; an 81 that it is no giant but a windmill ; there it stands on it-^ own place, and its own hillock, never goes out of its way to attack any one, and to none aii('. from none either gives or a5kt3 assistance. When the public press has poured in any part of its produce between its n^iill-stones, it grinds it off, one man's sack the same as another, and with whatever wind may happen to be then blowing. Ail the two-and-thirty winds are alike its friend.?. Of the whole wide atmosphere it does not desire a single finger-breadth more than what is necessary for its sails to turn round in. But this space must be left free and unimpeded. Gnats, beetles, wasps, butterflies, and the whole tribe of ephemerals and insignificants, may flit in and out and between ; may hum, and buzz, and jarr ; may shrill their tiny pipes, and wind their p^iny horns, unchastised and unnoticed. But idlers and bravadoes of larger size and prouder show must beware how they place themselves within its sweep. Much less may they presume to lay hands on the sails, the strength of which is neither greater nor less than as the v/ind is, which drives them round. Whomsoever the remorseless arm slings aloft, or whirls along with it in the air, he has him- self alone to blame ; though when the same arm throws him from it, it will more often double than break the force of his fall. Putting aside the too manifest and too frequent inter- ference of NATIONAL PARTY, and evcu PERSONAL predi- lection or aversion ; and reserving for deeper feelings those worse and m.ore criminal intrusions into the sa- credness of private life, which not seldom merit legal rather than literary chastisement, the two principal ob- jects and occasions which 1 tind for blame and regret in the conduct of the review in question are : flrst, its un- faithfulness to its own announced and excellent plan, by subjecting to criticism works neither indecent or immo- ral, yet of such trifling importance even in point of size and according to the critic's ov»n verdict, so devoid of all merit, as must excite in the most candid mind the suspi- cion, either that dislike or vindictive feelings were at work, or that there was a cold prudential pre-determi- nation to increase the sale of the ReView by flattering the malignant passions of human nature. Th;-t 1 may not myself become subject to the charge, which 1 am 82 bringing against others, by an accusation without proof, I refer to the article on Dr. Rennell's sermon in the very first number of the Ec^inburgh Review as an illustration of my meaning. If in looking through all the succeed- ing volumes the reader should find this a solitary in- stance, 1 must submit to that painful forfeiture of esteem, which awaits a groundless or exaggerated charge. The second point of objection belongs to this review only in common with all other works of periodical criti- cism ; at least, it applies in common to the general sys- tem of all, whatever exception there may be in favour of particular articles. Or if it attaches to the Edinburgh Review, and to its only corrival, (the Quarterly,) with any peculiar force ; this results from the superiority of talent, acquirement, and information, which both have so undeniably displayed ; and which doubtless deepens the regret, though not the blame. I am referring to the substitution of assertion for argument ; to the frequency of arbitrary, and sometimes petulant verdicts, not seldom unsupported even by a single quotation from the work condemned, which might at least have explained the cri- tic's meaning, if it did not prove the justice of his sen- tence. Ev^en where this is not the case, the extracts are too often made, without reference to any general grounds or rules, from v/hich the faultiness or inadmissibility of the qualities attributed, may be deduced ; and without any attempt to show, that the qualities are attributable to the passage extracted. I have met with such extracts from Mr. Wordsworth's poems, annexed to such asser- tions, as led me to imagine that the reviewer, having written his critique before he had read the work, had then pricked with a pin for passages, wherewith to illus- trate the various branches of his preconceived opinions. By what principle of rational choice can we suppose a critic to have been directed (at least in a christian coun- try, and himself, we hope, a christian) who gives the following lines, portraying the fervour of solitary devo- tion excited by the magnificent display of the Almighty's works, as a proof and example of an author's tendency to downright ravings, and absolute unintelligibility. '* O then what soul was his, 'when on the tops Of the high mountains he beheld the sun 83 Rise up, and bathe the world in light ! He looked— Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth, And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touch'd. And in their silent faces did he read Unutterable love ! Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy : his spirit drank The spectacle ! sensation, soul, and form, AH melted into him. They swallowed up His animal bein§ ; in them did he live, And by them did he live : they were his life. (Excursion.) Can it be expected, that either the author or his ad- mirers, should be induced to pay any serious attention to decisions which prove nothing but the pitiable state of the critic's own taste and sensibihty ? On opening the Review they see a favorite passage, of the force and truth of which they had an intuitive certainty in their own inward experience confirmed, if confirmation it could receive, by the sympathy of their most enlightened friends ; some of whom, perhaps, even in the world's opinion, hold a higher intellectual rank than the critic himself would presume to claim. And this very passage they find selected as the characteristic effusion of a mind deserted by reason ; as furnishing evidence that the wri- ter was raving, or he could not have thus strung words together without sense or purpose ! No diversity of taste seems capable of explaining such a contrast in judg- ment. That I had over^rated the merit of a passage or poem ; that I had erred concerning the degree of its excellence, I might be easily induced to believe or apprehend. But that lines, the sense of which I had analysed and found consonant with all the best convictions of my understand- ing ; and the imagery and diction of which had collected round those convictions my noblest, as well as my most delightful feelings ; that I should admit such lines to be mere nonsense or lunacy, is too much for the most in- genious arguments to effect. But that such a revolution of taste should be brought about by a^ few broad asser- tions, seems httle less than impossible. On the contra- ry, it would require an effort of charity not to dismiss the 81 criticism with the aphorism of the wise man, in animaj malevolam sapientia hj-iid intrare potest. What, then, if this very critic J?Jiould have cited a larg number of single lin^ ^, and even of long paragraphs, whici he himself acknowledges to possess eniincnt and original beauty ? What if he himself has owiied, that beauties as great are scattered in abi^ndance tnrougjiout the whole book? And yet, though under this impression, should have commenced his critique in vnlg cr exultation, with a prophecy meant to secure its own fulfilment ? With a •* This won't do !" What ? if after such acknowledg- ments, extorted from his own judgment, he should pro- ceed from charge to chare of tameness, and raving ; flights and flatness ; and at length, consigning the author to the house of incurables, should conclude with a strain of ru- dest contempt, evidently grounded in the distempered state of his own moral associations ? Suppose, too, all this done without a single leading principle established or even announced, and without any one attempt at ar- gumentative deduction, though the poet had presented a more than usual opportunity for it, by having previously made public his ov/n principles of judgment in poetry, and supported them by a connected train of reasoning ! The oflice and duty of the poet is to select the most dignified as well as " The happiest, gayest, attitude of things." The reverse, for in all cases a reverse is possible, is the appropriate business of burlesque and travesty, a pre- dominant taste for which has been always deemed a mark of a low and degraded mind. When 1 was at Rome, a- mong many other visits to the tomb of Julius II., I went thither once with a Prussian artist, a man of genius and great vivacity of feeling. As we were gazing on Michael Angelo's Moses, our conversation turned on the horns and beard of that stupendous statue ; of the necessit}^ of each to support the other ; of the super-human effect of the former, and the necessity of the existence of both to give a harmony and integrity both to the image and the feeling excited by it. Conceive them removed, and the statue would become «/i-natural, without being .^fw^^er- ?3atural. We called to mind the horns of the rising sun, 85 and I repeated the noble passage from Taylor's Holy Dying. That horns were the emblem of power and sovereignty among the Eastern nations, anJ are still re- tained as such in Abyssinia ; the Achelous of the ancient Greeks ; and the probable ideas and feelings, that origi- nally suggested the mixture of the human and the brute form in the figure, by which they realized the idea of their mysterious Pan, as representing intelligence blend- ed with a darker power, deeper, mightier, and more universal than the concious intellect of man ; than intel- ligence ; — all these thoughts and recollections passed in procession before our minds. My companion, who pos- sessed more than his share of the hatred which his countrymen bore to the French, had just observed to me, *• a Frenchman^ Sir ! is the only animal in the human shape, that by no possibility can lift itself up to religion or poe- try r^ When, lo ! two French officers of distinction and rank entered the church ! Mark you^ whispered the Prussian, " the first thing which those scoundrels will notice^ {for they will begin by instantly noticing the statue in parts ^ without one momenfs pause of admiration impress- ed by the whole,) wi'J be the horns and the beard. And the associations, which they will immediately connect with them, will be those of a he-goat and a cuckold.'' Never did man guess more luckily. Had he inherited a por- tion of the great legislator's prophetic powers, whose statue we had been contemplating, he could scarcely have uttered words more coincident with the result ; for even as he had said, so it came to pass. In the Excursion, the poet has introduced an old man, born in humble, but not abject circumstances, who had enjoyed more than usual advantages of education, both from books and from the more awful discipline of nature. This person he represents, as having been driven by the restlessness of ferved feehngs, and from a craving intel- lect, to an itinerant life ; and as having in consequence passed the larger portion of his time, from earliest man- hood, in villages and hamlets from door to door, '* A vagrant merchant bent beneath his load." Now, whether this be a character appropriate to a lofty didactic poem, is, perhaps, questionable. It presents a Vol. II. 8 86 lair subject for controversy ; and the question is to be de- termined by the congruity or incongruity of such a cha- racter, with what shall be proved to be the essential constituents of poetry. But surely the critic, who, pas- sing by all the opportunities which such a mode of life would present to such a man ; ail the advantages of the liberty of nature, of solitude and of solitary thought ; all the varieties of places and seasons, through which his track had lain, with all the varying imagery they bring with them ; and, lastly, all the observations of men, *< Their manners, their eDJoyments and pursuits, Their passions and their feelings, which the memory of these yearly journeys must have given and recalled to such a mind — the critic, I say, who from the multitude of possible associations should pass by all these, in order to fix his attention exclusively on the pin papers, and stay-tapes, which might have been among the wares of his pack ; this critic^ in my opinion, cannot be thought to possess a much higher or much healther state of moral feehng, than the Frenchman? above recorded. 87 CHAPTER XXII. TIte characteristic defects of Wordsworth'' s poetry, with the^ principles from which the judgment, that they are de^ fects, is deduced — Their proportion to the beauties — For the greatest part characteristic of his theory only. If Mr. Wordsworth have set forth principles of poetry which his arguments are insufficient to support, let him and those who have adopted his sentiments be set right by the confutation of those arguments, and by the sub- stitution of more philosophical principles. And still let the due credit be given to the portion and importance or the truths which are blended with his theory ; truths, the too exclusive attention to which had occasioned its errors, by tempting him to carry those truths beyond their proper limits. If his mistaken theory have at all in- fluenced his poetic compositions, let the effects be point- ed out, and the instances given. But let it likewise be shown, how far the influence has acted : whether diffu- sively, or only b}^ starts ; whether the number and im- portance of the poems and passages thus infected be great or triding compared with the sound portion ; and, lastly, whether they are inwoven into the texture of his works, or are loose and separable. The result of such .i trial would evince, beyond a doubt, what it is high time to aa- no'juce decisively and aloud, that the supposed character- istics of Mr Wordsworth's poetry, whether admired or reprobated ; whether they are simplicity or simplenv-^ss ; faithful adherence to essential nature, or wilful selections from human nature of its meanest forms and under the least attractive associations ; are as little the real charac- teristics of his poetry at large, as of his genius and the constitution of his miud. In a comparatively small number of poems, he chose to try an experiment ; and this experiment we will sup- pose to have failed. Yet even in these poems it is im- possible not to perceive, that the natliral tendency of the poet's mind is to great objects and elevated conceptions. The poem entitled '* Fidelity," is, for the greater pj^rt, 88 written in language as unraised and naked as any perhaps in the two vol :mes. Yet take the following stanza, and compare' it with the preceding stanzas of the same poem : *' There sometimes does a leaping- fish Bend through the tarn a lonely cheer ; The crag-s repeat the Kaven's croak In symphony anstere ; Thither the rainhoir comes — the cloud, And mists that spread the flying shroud ; And sun-beams : and the sounding blast, That if it could Would hurry past, But that enormous barrier binds it fast." Or compare the four last lines of the concluding stan- za with the former half : ** Yet proof vvas plain that since the day On which the traveller thus had died, The dog had watch'd about the spot, Or by his master's side : How nourish' d there for such long time He knows who gave that love svbfime^ And gave that strength of feeling great Above all human eHimale, Can any candid and intelligent mind hesitate in deter- mining, which of these best represents the tendency and native character of the poet's genius ; Will he not de- cide that the one was written because the poet would so write, and the other because he could not so entirely re- press the force and grandeur of his mind, but that he must in some part or other of every composition write otherwise ? In short, that his only disease is the being out of his element ; like the swan, that having amused himself, for a while, with crushing the weeds on the river's bank, soon returns to his own majestic move- ments on its reflecting and sustaining surface. Let it be observed, that I am here supposing the imagined judge, to whom I appeal, to have already decided against the poet's theory, as far as it is different from the prin- ciples of the art, generally acknowledged. I cannot here enter into a detailed examination of Mr. Wordsworth's works ; but 1 will attempt to give the 89 tnain results of my own judgment, after an acquaintance of many y6ars, and repeated perusals. And though, to appreciate the defects of a great mind, it is necessary to understand previously its characteristic excellences, yet 1 have already expressed myself with sufficient fulness, to preclude most of the ill effects that might arise from my pursuing a contrary arrangement. I will therefore commence with what I deem the prominent defects of his poems hitherto pubhshed The first characteristic^ though only occasional, defect, which I appear to myself to find in those poems is the INCONSTANCY of the stylc. Under this name I refer to the sudden and unprepared transitions from lines or sen- tences of peculiar felicity, (at all events striking and ori- ginal) to a style, not only unimpassioned but undistin- guished. He sinks too often and too abruptly to that style which I should place in the second division of lan- guage, dividing it into the three species ; Jirst, that which is pecular to poetry ; second, that which is only proper in prose ; and, third , the neutral, or common ta both. There have been works, such as Cowley's essay on Cromwell, in which prose and verse are intermixed (not as in the Consolation of Boetius or the Argenis of Bar- clay, by the insertion of poems, supposed to have been spoken or composed on occasions previously related in prose, but) the poet passing from one to the other, as the nature of his thoughts or his own feelings dictated. Yet this mode of composition does not satify a cultivated taste. There is something unpleasant in the being thus obliged to alternate states of feeling so dissimilar, and this too in a species of writing, the pleasure from which is in part derived from the preparation and previous expect- ation of the reader. A portion of that awkwardness is felt which hangs upon the introduction of so^^^s in our modern comic operas ; and to prevent which the judi- cious Metastasio (as to whose exquisite taste there can be no hesitation, whatever doubts may be entertained as to his poetic genius) uniformly placed the aria at the end of the scene, at the same time that he almost always raises and impassions the style of the recitative immedi- ately preceding. Even in real life, the difference is great and evident between words used a^ the arbitrary marks a£ thought^ oui^sBiootli market-coin of intercourse with^ 8* 9a the image and superscription worn out by cui*rency, and those which convey pictures, either borrowed from oiie outward object to enliven and particularize some other ; or used allegorically to body forth the inward state of the person speaking ; or such as are at least the exponents of his peculiar turn and unusual extent of faculty. So much so indeed, that in the social circles of private life we often find a striking use of the latter put a stop to the general flow of conversation, and by the excitement arising from concentered attention, produce a sort of damp and interruption for some minutes after. But in the perusal of works of literary art, we prepare ourselves for such language ; and the business of the writer, like that of a painter whose subject requires unusual splen- dour and prominence, is so to raise the lower and neu- tral tints that what in a different style would be the com- manding colours, are here used as the means of that gen- tle gradation requisite in order to produce the effect of a zn'hole. Where this is not achieved in a poem, the metre merely reminds the reader of his claims, in or- der to disappoint them ; and where this defect occurs frequently, his feelings are alternately startled by anti- climax and hyperclimax. I refer the reader to the exquisite stanzas cited for another purpose from the blind Highland Boy ; and then annex, as being, in my opinion, instances of this dzs- harmony in style, the two following : " And one, the rarest, was a shell. Which he, poor child^ had studied well : The shell of a green turtle, thin And hollow ; — you might sit therein, It was so wide and deep." *'^iOur Highland boy oft visited The house which held this prize, and led B}' choice or chance did thither come One day, when no one was at home, And found the door unbarred." Or page 172, vol. I. ** 'Tis j:one forp^otten, let me do My best. There was a smile or two— 91 I can remember them, I see The smiles worth all the world to me. Dt'ar Baby, I must lay thee down : - Thou Iroublesi, me v/ith strange alarms * Smiles hast thou, sweet ones of thine own ; I cannot keep thee in my arms. For they confound me : as it is, I have forgot those smiles of his ! Or page 269, vol. I. *' Thou hast a nest, for thy love and thy rest, And though httle troubled with sloth Drunken lark ! thou would'st be loth To be such a traveller as I. Happy, happy liver, JVith a soul as strong as a mountain river Pouring out praise to tlV ^^Imighty giver, Joy and jollity be with us both, Hearing thee or else some other, As merry a brother I on the earth will go plodding on By myself cheerfully till the day is done.-' The incongruity, which I appear to find in this pas- sage, is that of the two noble lines in italics with the preceding and following. So, vol. II. page 30. *• Close by a pond, upon the further side He stood alone , a minute's space I guess, I watch'd him. he continuing motionless ; To the pooPs further margin then I drew ; He being all the while before me full in view.'* Compare this with the repetition of the same image, jn the next stanza but two. *• And still as I drew near with gentle pace. Beside the little pond or moorish flood Motionless as a cloud the old man stood ; That heareth not the loud winds as the>^ call And moveth altogether, if it move at all." Or, lastly, the second of tbe three following stanza^^ compared both with the first and the third. 92 My former thoughts returned, the fear that kills, And hope that is unwilling to be (ed ; Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills ; And mighty poets in their misery dead. But now, perplex'd by what the old man had said, My question eagerly did I renew, How is it that you live, and what is it you do ? He with a smile did then his tale repeat ; And said, that, gathering leeches far and wide He travelled : stirring thus about his feet The waters of the ponds wiiere they abide. *' Once I could meet with them on every side, ^' But they have dwindled long by slow decay ; '' Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may." While he was talking thus, the lonely place. The old man's shape, and speech, all troubled me : In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace About the weary moors continually, Wandering about alone and silently.'* Indeed, this fine poem is especially characteristic of the author. There is scarce a defect or excellence in his writings of which it would not present a specimen. But it would be unjust not to repeat that this defect is only occasional. From a careful reperusal of the two vo- lumes of poems, I doubt whether the objectionable pas- sages would amount in the whole to one hundred lines ; not the eighth part of the number of pages. In the Ex- cuRsiOxX the feeling of incongruity is seldom excited by the diction of any passage considered in itself, but by the sudden superiority of some other passage forming the context. The second defect I could generalize with tolerable accuracy, if the reader will pardon an uncouth and new- coined word. There is, I should soy, not seldom a mat- ter-of'factness in certain poems. This may be divided into, first, a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the re- presentation of objects, and their positions, as they ap- peared to the poet himself; secondly , the insertion of accidental circumstances, in order to the full explanation of his living characters, their dispositions and actions ; which circumstances might be necessary to establish the probability of a statement in real life, where nothing is taken for granted by the hearer, but appears superfluous' 93 in poetry, where the reader is willing to believe for his own sake. To this accidentalitij 1 object, as contraveh- inj>; the essence of poetry, which Aristotle proniiounces to be (rTrsSaioTGTov ;air of black swans on a lake, in a fancy-landscape. When I 97 think how many, and how much better books than Ho- mer, or even than Herodotus, Pindar or Eschjlus, could have read, are in the power of almost every man, in a country where almost every man is instructed to read and write ; and how restless, how difficultly hidden, the powers of genius are ; and yet find even in situations the most favourable, according to Mr. Wordsworth, for the formation of a pure and poetic language ; in situa- tions which ensure familiarity with the grandest objects of the imagination ; but one Burns, among the shepherds of Scotland, and not a single poet of humble life among those of English lakes and mountains ; I conclude, that Poetic Genius is not only a very delicate but a very jare plant. But be this as it may, the feelings with which, ** I think of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul, that perish'd in his pride : Of Burns, that walk'd in glory and in joy Behind his plough upon the mountain-side" — are widely different from those with which I should read a poem^ where the author, having occasion for the cha- racter of a poet and a philosopher in the fable of his nar- ration, had chosen to make him a chimney sweeper ; and then, in order to remove all doubts on the subject, had invented an account of his birth, parentage, and educa- tion, with all the strange and fortunate accidents which had concurred in making him at once poet, philosopher, and sweep I Nothing but biography can justify this. If h be admissible even in a Novell it must be one in the manner of De Foe's, that were meant to pass for histories, not in the manner of Fielding's ; in the life of Moll Flan- ders, or Colonel Jack, not in a Tom Jones, or even a Jo- seph Andrews. Much less, then, can it be legitimately- introduced in a poem, the characters of which, amid the strongest individualization, must still remain representa- tive. The precepts of Horace, on this point, are ground- ed on the nature both of poetry and of the human mind. They are not more peremptory than wise and prudent* For, in the first place, a deviation^ from them perplexes the reader's feelings, and all the circumstances which are feigned, in order to make such accidents less improbable, Vot. II. 9 98 divide and disquiet his faith, rather than aid and support it. Spite of all attempts, the fiction -ivill appear, and, un- fortunately, not zsjictidous^ but diS false. The reader not only knows, that the sentiments and language are the poet's own, and his own too, in his artificial character as poei ; but, by the fruitless endeavours to make him think the contrary, he is not even suffered to forget it. The effect is similar to that produced by an epic poet, when the fable and the characters are derived from Scripture history, as in the Messiah of Klopstock, or in Cumber^ land's Calvary ; and not merely suggested by it as in the Paradise Lost of Milton. That illusion, contradistin- guished from delusion, that negative faith which simply permits the images presented to work by their ow^n force, without either denial or affirmation of their real existence by the judgment, is rendered impossible by their imme- diate neighbourhood to words and facts of known and ab- solute truth. A faith which transcends even historic be- lief, must absolutely put out this mere poetic A»alagon of faith, as the summer sun is said to extinguish our household fires when it shines full upon them. What would otherwise have been yielded to as pleasing fiction, is repelled as revolting falsehood. The effect produced in this latter case by the solemn belief of the reader, is in a less degree brought about, in the instances to which I have been objecting, by the baffled attempts of the au- thor to make him believe. Add to all the foregoing, the seeming uselessness both of the project and of the anecdotes from which it is to derive support. Is there one word, for instance, attri- buted to the pedlar in the Excursion, characteristic of a pedlar? One sentiment that might not more plausibly, even without the aid of any previous explanation, have proceeded from any wise and beneficent oW man, of a rank or j-rofession in which the language of learning and refinement are Jiatural, and to be expected ? Need the rank have been at all particularized, where nothing fol- lows which the knowledge of that rank is to explain or illustrate ? When, on the contrary, this information ren- ders the man's language, feelings, sentiments, and infor- mation, a riddle which must itself be solved by episodes of anecdote ? Finally, when this, and this alone, could have induced a genuine poet to inweave in a poem of the 99 loftiest style, and on subjects the loftiest and of most universal interest, such minute matters of fact, (not un- like those furnished for the obituary of a magazine by the friends of some obscure ornament of society lately de- ceased in some obscure town, as, *' Among' the hills of Athol he was born. There, on a small hereditary farm, An unproductive slip of rugged ground, His Father dwelt, and died, in poverty ; While he, whose lowly fortune I retrace, 1 iie youngest of three sons, was yet a babe, A lUlle oae^-unconscious of their loss. But *ere he had outgrown his infant days, His widow'd mother, for a second mate. Espoused the teacher of the Village School ; Who on her offspring zealously bestowed Needful instruction." " From his sixth year, the boy of whom I speak, In summer, tended cattle on the hills ; But through the inclement and the perilous days Of long-continuing winter, he repaired To his step-father's school." — &o. For all the admirable passages interposed in this nar- ration, might, with trifling alterations, have been far more appropriately, and with far greater verisimilitude, told of a poet in the character of a poet ; and without incurring another defect which I shall now mention, and a sufficient illustration of which will have been here anticipated. Third ; an undue predilection for the dramatic form in certain poems, from which one or other of two evils re- sult. Cither the thoughts and diction are different from that of the poet, and then there arises an incongruity of style ; or they are the same and indistinguishable, and then it presents a species of ventriloquism, where two are represented as talking^ while, in truth, one man only speaks. The fourth class of defects is closely connected with the former; but yet are such as arise likewise from an intensity of feeling disproportionate to such knowledge and value of the objects described; as can be fairly anti- cipated of men in general, even of the most cultivated classes; and with which, therefore, few only, and those 100 lew particularly circumstanced, can be supposed to sym^ pathise. In this class I comprise occasional prolixity,! repetition, and an eddying instead of progression of thought. As instances, see page 27, 28, and 62, of the Poems, Vol. I., an«l the first eighty lines of the Sixth Book of the Excursion. Fifth, and last ; thoughts and images too great for the subject. This is an approximation to what might be called mental bombast, as distinguished from verbal ; for, as in the latter, there is a dispro[)ortion of the expres- sions to the thoughts, so, in this, there is a disproportion of thou;^,ht to the circumstance and occasion. This, by- th^ by, is a fault of which none but a man of geniun is capable. It is the awkwardness and strength of Hercules with the distaff of Omphale. It is a well-known fact, that bright colours in motion both make and leave the strongest impressions on the eye. Nothing is more likely, too, than that a vivid image, or visual spectrum, thus originated, may become the link of association in recalling the feelings and images ihat had accompanied the original impression. But, if we tlescribe this in such lines as " They flash upon that inward eye^ Which is the bliss of solitude !" in w^hat words shall we describe the joy of retrospection, when the images and virtuous actions of a whole well- spent life, pass before that conscience which is, indeed, the inward eye ; which is, indeed, the ** bliss of solitude ?^^ Assuredly we seem to sink most abruptly, not to say bur- iesquely, and almost as in a medly from this couplet to — " And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils,'^' Vol. I., p. 320. The second instance is from Vol. II., page 12, where the poet, having gone out for a day's tour of pleasure, meets, early in the morning, with a knot of gypsies^ who had pitched their blanket tents and straw-beds, together with their children and asses, in some field by the road- side. At the close of the day, on his return, our tourist found them in the same place. *' Twelve hours," says he. 101 *'• Twelve hours, twelve bounteous hours, are gone while I Have been a traveller under open sk}', IVluch witnessing" of cbang-e and cheer, Yet as I left I find them here !" Whereat the poet, without seeming to reflect that the poor tawny wanderers might probably have been tramp- ing, for weeks together, through road lane, over moor and mountain, and, consequently, must have been right glad to rest themselves, their children, and cattle, for one whole day ; and overlooking the obvious truth, that such repose m.ight be quite as necessary for them as a walk of ihe same continuance was pleasing or healthful for the more fortunate poet ; expresses his indignation in a se- ries of lines, the diction and imagery of which would have been rather above than below the mark, had they been applied to the immense empire of China, impro- gressive for thirty centuries : " The weary Sun betook himself to rest. Then issued Vesper from the fulgent west» Outshining, like a visible God, The glorious path in which he trod ! And now ascending, after one dark hour. And one night's diminution of her power. Behold the mighty Moon ! this way She looks, as if at them— but they Regard not her — Oh, better wrong and strife,^ Better vain deeds or evil than such life ! The silent Heavens have goings on : The Stars have tasks ! — but these have none !'* The last instance of this defect, (for I know no other than these already cited,) is from the Ode, page 351, Vol. II., where, speaking of a child, ' a six year's dar- ling of a pigmy size," he thus addresses him : *' Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage ! Thou eye among the blind. That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep; Haunted for ever by the Eternal Mind- Mighty Prophet ! Seer blest ! On whom those truths do rest, ^ Which we are toiling all our lives to find I Thou, over whom thy immortality 9^ 10-2 Broods like the day, a master o'er the slav^ A presence that is not to be put by !*' Now here, not to stop at the daring spirit of metaphor which connects the epithets ''deat'and silent/' with the apostrophized eye : or (if we are to refer it to the pre- ceding word, philosopher,) the faulty and equivocal syn- tax of the passage ; and without examining the propriety | of making a *' master 6rooc? o'er a slave," or the day 1 hrood at all ; we will merely ask, what does aM this mean ? In what sense is a child of that age a philoso- pher / In what sense does he read ""the eternal deep?" In what sense is he declared to be ''for ever haunted by the Supreme Beins: ?*' or so inspired as to deserve the splendid lilies of a jiu'ghty prophet, sl blessed seer / By ret^ection ? by knowledge ? by conscious intuition ? or by any form or inoditication of consciousness?'* Tbese would be tidings indeed ; but, such as would pre-suppose an immediate revelation to the inspired communicator, 2nd require miracles to authenticate his inspiration. Children, at this age, give us no such intormation of them- selves ; and at what time were we dipt in the Lethe, \Thich has produced such utter oblision of a state so god- like ? There are Oiany of us that still possess some re- membrances, more or less distinct, respecting themselves at six years old ; pity that the worthless straws only should float, while treasures, compared with which all the mines of Golconda and Mexico were but straws, should be absorbed by some unknown gulf into some unknown abyss But if this be too wild and exorbitant to be suspected as having been the poet's meaning ; if these mysterious gi-fts, faculties, and operations, are no: accomp.mied with consciousness ; who else is conscious of them ? or how can it be ciUled the child, if it be no part of the child's conscious being ? For aught I know, the thinking Spirit T\ithin me may be substamially one with the princi}>le of life, and of vital operation. For aught I know, it may be emploved as a secondary agent in the marvellous organi- zation and organic movements of my body. But, surely, it would be strauiie language to say. that / construct my heart ! or that / propel the finer intluences through my nenesJ or that /compress my brain, and draw the 103 curtains of sleep round my own eyes ! Spinoza and Beh- MEN were, on different systems, both Pantheists ; and among the ancients there were philosophers, teachers of the EN K \I TIaNj w^ho not only taught, that God was All, but that this All constituted God. Yet not even these would confound the part^ as a part with the whole, as the whole. Nay, in no system is the distinction be- tween the individual and God, between the Modification, and the one only Substance, more sharply drawn, than in that of Spinoza. Jacobi, indeed, relates of Lessing, that after a conversation with him at the house of the poet, Gleim, (the Tyrtaeus and Anacreon of the Ger- man Parnassus,) in which conversation L. had avowed privately to Jacobi his reluctance to admit any personal existence of the Supreme Being, or the possibility of per- sonality except in a finite Intellect, and while they were sitting at table, a shower of rain came on unexpectedly,- Gleim expressed his regret at the circumstance, because they had meant to drink their wine in the garden ; upon which Lessing, in one of his half-earnest, half-joking moods, nodded to Jacobi, and said, '* It is /, perhaps, that am doing i/ia^," i. e. raining ! and J. answered, " or perhaps I ;" Gleim contented himself with staring at them both, without asking for any explanation. So with regard to this passage. In what sense can the magnificent attributes, above quoted, be appropriated to a child, which would not make them equally suitable to a bee, or a dog, or afield of corn ; or even to a ship, or to the wind and waves that propel it ? The omni present Spirit works equally in them, as in the child ; and the child is equally unconscious of it as they. It cannot surely be, that the four lines, immediately follow- iug, are to contain the explanation ? *' To whom the grave Is but a lonely bed without the sense or j-Ight Of day or ilie warm light, A place of thought where we in waitiug lie.'* Surely, it cannot be that this wonder-rousing apostro- phe is but a comment on the little poem of '' We are Seven ?" that the whole meaning of the passage is redu- cible to the assertion, that a child, who by the bye at six 104 years old would have been better instructed in most christian families, has no other notion of death than that of lying in a dark, cold place ? And still, I hope, not as in a place of thought ! not the frightful notion of lying awake in his grave ! The analogy between death and sleep is too simple, too natural, to render so horrid a belief possible for children ; even had they not been in the habit, as all christian children are, of hearing the latter term used to express the former. But if the child's belief be only, that '* he is not dead, but sleepeth ;" wherein does it differ from that of his father and mother, or any other adult and instructed person ? To form an idea of a thing's becoming nothing, or of nothing beco- ming a thing, is impossible to all finite beings alike, of whatever age, and however educated or uneducated. Thus it is with splendid paradoxes in general. If the words are taken in the common sense, they convey an absurdity ; and if, in contempt of dictionaries and custom, they are so interpreted as to avoid the absurdity, the meaning dwindles into some bald truism. Thus you must at once understand the words coiitrary to their com- mon import, in order to arrive at any sense ; and accor- ding to their common import, if you are to receive from them any feeling oi suhlimity or admiration. Though the instances of this defect in Mr. Words- worth's poems are so i^e^w^ that for themselves it would have been scarcely just to attract the reader's attention toward them ; yet 1 have dwelt on it, and perhaps the more for this very reason. For being so very few, they cannot sensibly detract from the reputation of an author, who is even characterized by the number of profound truths in his writings, which will stand the severest analy- sis ; and yei, few as they are, they are exactly those passages which his blind admirers would be most likely and best able, to imitate. But Wordsworth, where he is indeed Wordsworth, may be mimicked by copyists, he may be plundered by pagiarists ; but he can not be imitated, except by those who are not born to be imitators. For without his depth of feeling and his imaginative pow- er, his sense would want its vital warmth and peculiarity ; and without his strong sense, his mysticism would become sickly — mere fog and dimness ! 105 To these defects, which, as appears by the extracts, are only occasional, i may oppose, with far less fsar of encounterini^ the dissent of any candid and intellii^ent reader, the following (for the most part correspondent) excellencies. First, an austere purity of language, both grammatically and logically ; in short, a perfect appro- priateness of the words to the meaning. Of how high value I deem this, and how particularly estimable I hold the example at the present day, has been already stated : and in part, too, the reasons on which 1 ground both the moral and intellectual importance of habituating ourselves to a strict accuracy of expression. It is noticeable, how limited an acquaintance with the masterpieces of art will suffice to form a correct, and even a sensitive taste, where none but master-pieces have been seen and ad- mired : while, on the other hand, the most correct no- tions, and the widest acquaintance with the works of excellence of all ages and countries, will not perfectly secure us against the contagious familiarity with the far more numerous ofTspring of tastelessness or of a pervert- ed taste. If this be the case, as it notoriously is, with the arts of music and painting, much more difficult will it be to avoid the infection of multiplied and daily examples in the practice of an art, which uses words, and words only, as its instruments. In poetry, in which every line, every phrase, may pass the ordeal of dehbe- ration and deliberate choice, it is possible, and barely possible, to attain that ultimatum which I have ventured to propose as the infallible test of a blameless style : namely, its untranslatahleness in words of the same language without injury to the meaning. Be it observed, however, that I include in the meaning of a word not only its correspondent object, but likewise all the asso- ciations which it recalls. For language is framed to con- vey not the object alone, but likewise the character, mood, and intentions of the person who is representing it. In poetry it is practicable to preserve the diction, uncorrupted by the aflectations and misappropiiations, which promiscuous authorship, and reading not promis- cuous, onl}^ because it is disproportioualiy most conver- sant with the compositions of the day, have rendered general. Yet, even to the poet, composing in his own province, it is an arduous work : and as the result and 106 pledi^e of a watchful good sense, of tine and lumino distinction, and of complete self-possession, may justly claim all the hononr which belongs to an attainment equally difficult and valuable, and the more - aluable for being rare. It is at all times the proper food of the un- derstanding ; but, in an age of corrupt eloquence, it is both food and antidote. In prose, I doubt whether it be even possible to pre- serve our style, v*^holly unalloyed by the vicious phrase- elogy which meets us every where, from the sermon to the newspaper, from the harangue of the legislator to the speech from the convivial chair, announcing a toast or sentiment. Our chains rattle, even v*^hile we are com- plaining of them. The poems of Boetius rise high in our estimation when we compare them with those of his con- temporaries, as Sidonius Apollinaris, &c. They might even be referred to a purer age, but that the prose in which they are set as jewels in a crown of lead or iron, betrays the true age of the writer. Much, however, juay be effected by education. I believe, not only from grounds of reason, but from having, in great measure, as- sured myself of the fact by actual though limited expe- rience, that, to a youth, led from his first boyhood to in- vestigate the meaning of every word, and the reason of its choice and position, logic presents itself as an old ac- quaintance under new names. On some future occasion more especially demanding such disquisition, I shall attempt to prove the close con- nection between veracity and habits of mental accuracy ; the beneficial after-eflects of verbal precision in the pre- clusion of fanaticism, which masters the feelings more especially by indistinct watch-words ; and to display the advantages which language alone, at least which language with incomparably greater ease and certainty than any other means, presents to the instructor of impressing modes of intellectual energy so constantly, so impercep- tibly, and, as it were, by such elements and atoms as to secure in due time the formation of a second nature. When we reflect, that the cultivation of the judg- ment is a positive command of the moral law, since the reason can give the principle alone, and the conscience bears witness only to the motive^ while the application and effects must depend on the judgment ; when we con- sider, that the greater part cf our success and comfort 107 in life depemls on distinguishing the similar from the same, that which is pecuhar -in each thing from that which it has in common with others, so as still to select the most probable, instead of the merely possible or positively unfit, we shall learn to value earnestly, and with a practical seriousness, a mean already prepared for us by nature and- society, of teaching the young mind to think well and wisely by the same unremembered process, and with the same never forgotten results, as those by w^hich it is taught to speak aud converse. Now, how much v/armer the interest, how much more genial the feelings of reality and practicability, and thence how much stronger the impulses to imitation are, which a contem- 2^orary writer, and especially acontempory poe/J, excites in youth and commencing manhood, has been treated of in the earlier pages of these sketches. I have only to add, that all the praise which is due to the exertion of such influence for a purpose so important, joined with that which riiust be claimed for the infrequency of the same excellence in the same perfection, belongs in full ri^ht to Mr. Wordsworth. I am far, however, from den}^- ing that we have poets whose general style possesses the same excellence as Mr. Moore, Lord Byron, Mr. Bowles, and, in all his later and more important works, our lau- rel-honouring Laureate. But there are none, in whose works I do not appear to myself to find more excep- tions than in those of Wordsworth. Quotations or specimens would here be wholly out of place, and must be left for the critic who doubts and would invalidate the justice of this eulogy so applied. The second characteristic excellence of Mr. W's works is, a correspondent wiight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments — won, not from books, but — from the poet's own meditative observation. They are fresh, and have the dew upon them. His muso, at least when in her strength of wing, and when she hovers aloft in her proper element, Makes audible a linked lay of truth, Of truth profound a sweet continuous lay, Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes ! S. T. C. 108 Even throughout his smaller poems there is scarce! one wliich is not rendered valuable by some just an(3l ori2;in'l reilection. See pa^e 26, vol. 2nd ; or the two following passages In one of his humblest compositions. *' O Reader ! had you in 5our mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Hearder 1 yuu would find A tale in every thing." and *' T have heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning : Alas! the gratitude of men Has oftener left me mourning." or in a still higher strain the six beautiful quatrains, page 134. " Thus fares it still in our decay : And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind. The Blackbird in the summer trees, The lark upon the hill, Let loose their carols when they pleas^e, Are quiet when the}' will. With nature never do they wage A foolish strife ; they see A happy youth, and their old age Is beautiful and free ! But we are pressed by heavy laws ; And often, glad no more. We wear a face of joy, because | We have been glad of yore. If there is one, who need bemoan His kindred laid in earth, The household hearts that were his own, It is the man of mirth. My days, my Friend, are almost gone, My life has been approved. And many love me ; but by none Am I enough beloved." 109 t>r the sonnet on Bonaparte, page 202, vol. 2 ; or finally^ (for a volume would scarce suffice to exhaust the instan- ces,) the last stanza of the poem on the withered Celan- dine, vol. 2, p. 212. To be a prodigal's favourite— then, worse truth, A miser's pensioner— behold our lot ' Oh man ! that from thy fair and shining youth Age might but take the things, youth needed not." Both in respect of this and of the former excellence^ Mr. Wordsworth strikingly resembles Samuel Daniel, one of the golden writers of our golden Elizabethian age, now most causelessly neglected : Samuel Daniel, whose diction bears no mark of time, no distinction of age, which has been, and as long as our language shall last, will be, so far the language of the to-day and for ever, as that it is more intelligible to us than the transitory fash- ions of our own particular age. A similar praise is due to his sentiments. No frequency of perusal can deprive them of their freshness. For though they are brought into the full day-hght of every reader's comprehension ; yet are they drawn up from depths which few in any age are privileged to visit, into which few in any age have courage or inclination to descend. If Mr. Wordsworth is not equally with Daniel alike intelligible to all readers of average understanding in all passages of his works, the comparative difficulty does not arise from the greater im- purity of the ore, but from the nature and uses of the metal. A poem is not necessarily obscure, because it does not aim to be popular. It is enough, if a work be perspicuous to those for whom it is written, and, '* Fit audience find, though few." To the ** Ode on the intimation of immortality from recollections of early childhood," the poet might have prefixed the lines which Dante addresses to one of his own Canzoni — " Canzon, io credo, cbe saranno radi Che tua ragione intendan bene : Tanto lor sei faticoso ed alto." Vol. II. 10 110 " lyric song, there will be few, think I, Who may thy import understand arig-ht : Thou art for them so arduous and so high ! But the ode was intended for such readers only as ha^ been accustomed to watch the flux and reflux of their in- most nature, to venture at times into the twilight realms of consciousness, and to feel a deep interest in modes of inmost being, to which they know that the attributes of time and space are inapplicable and alien, but which yet cannot be conveyed, save in simbols of time and space. For such readers the sense is sufficiently plain, and they ' will be as little disposed to charge Mr. Wordsworth with believing the platonic pre-existence in the ordinary in- terpretation of the words, as I am to believe that Plato himself ever meant or taught it. — voj coxia (itX-n ■Ev5ov £VTi qraphpaf Owvavra cruvErorcriV CJ Ai TO rrav tp/iTivtcoj Xari^fi. Xlo(p»s 6 voK" — Kah5oi (pua* Ma^ovTfj 5f, Attpfoj • ITa77A.iocro-ia, xopaxf i u9 'AkfavTa ya^virov Aioj TT^oj Of v(xa ^£rov. Third ; (and wherein he soars far above Daniel ;) the sinewy strength and originality of single lines and para- graphs : the frequent curiosa fehcitas of his diction, of which I need not here give specimens, having anticipated them in a preceding page. This beauty, and as emi- nently characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry, his rudest assailants have felt themselves compelled to acknowledge and admire. Fourth ; the perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions, as taken immediately from nature, and pro- ving a long and genial intim icy with the very spirit which £;ives the physiognomic expression to all the works of nature. Like a green field reflected in a calm and perfectly transparent lake, the image is distinguished from the reality only by its greater softness and lustre. Like the moisture or the polish on a pebble, genius neither distorts nor false-colours its objects ; but, on the contrary > brings out many a vein and many a tint, which Itl escape the eye of common observation, thus raisings to the rank of gems what had been often kicked away by the hurrying foot of the traveller on the dusty high road of custom. Let me refer to the whole description of skating, vol. I, page 42 to 47, especially to the lines, *• So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle : with the din Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud ; The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron ; while the distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melanc holly, not unnoticed, while Ae stars Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west The orange sky of evening died away," Or to the poem on the green linnet, vol. I. p. 244. What can be more accurate, yet more lovely, than tb^ two concluding stanzas ? '* Upon yon tuft of hazel trees, That twinkle to the gusty breeze^ Behold him perched in ecstacies, Yet seeming still to hover, There ! where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings Shadows andsuny glimmerings That cover him all over. While thus before my eyes he gleam's, A brother of the leaves he seems ; When in a moment forth he teems His little song in gushes : As if it pleased him to disdain And mock the form when he did feign While he was dancing with the train Of leaves among the bushes." Or the description of the blue cap, and of the noon- tide silence, p. 284 ; or the poem to the cuckoo, page 299 ; or, lastly, though I might multiply the references to ten times the number, to the poem so completely Wordsworth's, commencing ^* Three years she grew in sun and shower,*' &e. 112 Fifth ; a meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtle' thougnt \rith sensibility ; a sympathy with man as man ; ■ the sympathy indeed of a contemplator, rather than a fel- low sufferer or co-mate, (spectator baud particeps) but ofl a contemplator, from whose view no difference of rank conceals the sameness of the nature ; no injuries of wind or weather, of toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine. The superscription and the im- age of the Creator still remain legible to him under the dark lines witb which guilt or calamity had cancelled or cross-barred it. Here the man and *^y poet lose an(J find themselves in each other, the one as glorified, the latter as substantiated. In this mikf and philosophic pa- thos, Wordsworth appears to me without a compeer. Such he ts : so he writes. See vol. 1 page 134 to 136, or that most affecting composition, the '* Affliction of Mar- garet — —of ," page 165 to 168, w^hich no mother, and, if I may judge by my own experience, no parent can read without a tear. Or turn to that genuine lyric, in the former edition, entitled, the " Mad Mother," page 174 to 178, of which I cannot refrain from quoting two of the stanzas, both of them for their pathos, and the former for the fine transition in the two concluding lines of the stanza, so expressive of that deranged state, in which, from the increased sensibility, the sufferer's attention is abruptly drawn off by every trifle, and in the same instant plucked back again by the one despotic thought, and bringing home with it, by the blending, fusing power of Imagination and Passion, the alien object to which it had been so abruptly diverted, no longer an alien, but an ally and an inmate. ^* Suck, little babe, oh suck again f It cools my blood ; it cools my brain : Thy lips, I feel them, baby ! they Draw from my heart the pain away. Oh ! press me with thy httie h^nd ; It loosens something at my chest ; About that tight and deadly band 1 feel thy little fingers prest. The breeze I see is in the tree ! It comes to cool my babe and me." *' Thy father cares not lor my breast, - 'Tis thine, sweet baby, there to rest* 113 ^is all thine own !— and, if its hue, Be changed, that was so fair to view, 'Tis fair enough for thee, my dove ! My beauty, little child, is flown, But thou wilt live with me in love, And what if my poor cheek be brown ? *Tis well for me, thou can'st not see How pale and wan it else would be." Last, and pre-eminently I challenge for this poet the gift of Imagination in the highest and strictest sense of the word. In the play of ^ncy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is not always graceful, and sometimes recondite. The likeness is occasionally too strange, or demands too peculiar a point of view, or is such as appears the crea- ture of predetermined research, rather than spontaneous presentation. Indeed, his fancy seldom displays itself, as mere and unmodified fancy. But in imaginative power, he stands nearest of all modern writers to Shakspeare and Milton : and yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his own. To employ his own words, which are at once an instance and an illustration, he does indeed to all thoughts and to all objects — " ■ ■ add the gleam. The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration, and the poet's dream.'* I shall select a few examples as most obviously maui- festing this faculty ; but if 1 should ever be fortunate enough to render my analysis of imagination, its origin and characters, thoroughly intelligible to the reader, he will scarcely open on a page of this poet's works without recognising, more or less, the presence and the influences of this faculty. From the poem on the Yew Trees, vol. I. page 30S, 304. ** But worthier still of note Are those fraternal four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove : Huge trunks ! — and each particular trunk a growCfe Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and ioveterately convolved— Not uninformed with phantasy, and looks 114 That threaten the prophane ; — a pillared shade, Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue. By sheddings from the pinal umbrag-e tinged Perennially — beneath whose sable roof Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked With unrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes May meet at noontide — Fear and trembling HoPE>. Silence and Foresight — Death, the skeleton, And Time, the shadow — there to celebrate, As in a natural temple scattered o'er With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, United worship ; or in mute repose To lie, and listen to the mountain flood Murmuring from Glanamara's inmost caves." The eflFect of the old man's figure in the poem of Re- signation and Independence, vol. II. page 33. •' While he was talking thus, the lonely place The old man's shape, and speech, all troubled me: In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace About the weary moors continually, Wandering about alone and silently." Or the 8th, 9th, 19th, 26th, 31st, and 33d, in the col- lection of miscellaneous sonnets — the sonnet on the sub- jugation of Switzerland, page 210, or the last ode from which I especially select the two following stanzas or paragraphs, page 349 to 350. " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : The soul that rises with us, our life's star Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetful ness, And not in utter nakedress, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God who is our home : Heaven lies about us in our infancy f Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy ; But he beholds the light, and whence it flows ; He sees it in his joy ! The youth who daily further from the east Must travel, still is nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended ; At length the man perceives it die away. And fade into the light of common day." 115 And page 352 to 354 of the same ode. ♦« O joy that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive ! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benedictions : not in deed For that which is most worthy to be blest Delight and liberty the simple creed Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering ia his breast-^— Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise ; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realizedr High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised ! But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections. Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; Uphold us — cherish — and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence ; truths that wake To perish never ; Which neither hstlessness, nor mad endeavour Nor man nor boy Nor all that is at enmity with joy Can utterly abolish or destroy ! Hence, in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be. Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither — And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." And since it would be unfair to conclude with an ex- tract, which, though highly characteristic, must yet, from the nature of the thoughts and the subject be interesting, or perhaps intelligible, to but a limited number of read- ers, I will add from the poet's last published work a pas- sage equally Wordsworthian j of the beauty of whicb^ 116 and of the imaginative power displayed therein, there can be but one opinion, and one feelin». See White Doe, page 5, ** Fast the church-yard fills ; anon Look again and they are g"one ; The cluster round the porch, and the folk Who sate in the shade of the prior's oak ! And scarcely have they disappeared Ere the prelusive hymn is heard : — With one consent the people rejoice, Filling the church with a lofty voice ! They sing a service which they feel, For 'tis the sun-rise of their zeal, And faith and hope are in their prime In great Eliza's golden time." A moment ends the fervent din And all is hushed without and within ; For though the priest more tranquilly Recites the holy liturgy, The only voice which you can hear Is the river murmuring- near. When soft ! — the dusky trees between And down the path through the open green^ Where is do living thing to be seen ; And through yon gateway, where is found, Beneath the arch with ivy bound, Free entrance to the church-yard ground ; And right across the verdant sod Towards the very house of God ; Comes gliding in with lovely gleam, Comes gliding in serene and slow. Soft and silent as a dream, A solitary doe ! White she is as lilly of June, And beauteous as the silver moon When out of sight the clouds are drireu And she is left alone in heaven ! Or hke a ship some gentle day In sunshine sailing far away — A glittering ship that hath the plain Of ocean for her own domain * -ft it- if- if- * * * "What harmonious pensive changes Wait upon her as she ranges Round and round this pile of state Overthrown and desolate ? U7 Kow a stop or two her way Is throug-h space of open day, Where the enamoured sunny h'ght Brig-htens her that was so brig'ht ? Now doth a dehcate shadow fail, Falls upon her like a breath From some lofty arch or wall. As she passes underneath. The following ana!o2:y will,! ana apprehensive, appear dim and fantastic, but in reading Bartram's Travels I could not help transcribing the following lines as a sort of allegory, or connected simile and metaphor of Words- worth's intellect and genius. ** The soil is a deep, rich, ^' dark mould, on a deep stratum of tenacious clay ; and ** that on a foundation of rocks, which often break through *' both strata, lifting their back above the surface. The ** trees which chiefly grow here are the gigantic, black *' oak ; magnolia magnifloria ; fraximus excelsior; pla- " tane ; and a few stately tulip trees." What Mr. Wordsworth will produce, it is not for me to prophecy : but I could pronounce with the liveliest convictions what he is capable of producing. It is the First Genuine Philosophic Poem. The preceding criticism will not, I am aware, avail to overcome the prejudices of those who have made it a business to attack and ridicule Mr. Wordsworth's compo- sitions. Truth and prudence might be imaged as concentric circles. The poet may perhaps have passed beyond the latter, but he has confined himself far within the bounds of the former, in designating these critics, as too petu- lant to be passive to a genuine poet, and too feeble to grapple with him ; — " men of palsied imaginations, in ** whose minds all healthy action is languid ; — who, there- ** fore, feel as the many direct them, or with the many '* are greedy after vicious provocatives." Let not Mr. Wordsworth be charged with having ex» pressed himself too indignMutly, till the wantonness and the systematic and malignant perseverance of the ag- gressions have been taken into far consideration. I my- self heard the commander in chief of this unmanly war- fare make a boast of his private admiration of Words- worth's genius. 1 have heard him declare, that whoeveir 118 came into his room would probably find the Lyrical Bal- lads lying open on his table, and that (speaking exclu- sively of those written by Mr. VVordsworih himself,) he could nearly repeat the whole of them by heart. But a Review, in order to be a saleable article, must be per- sonal, sharp, and pointed: and, since then, the Poet has made himself, and with himself all who were, or were supposed to be, his friends and admirers, the object of the critic's revenge — how ? by having spoken of a work so conducted in the terms which it deserved ! I once heard a clergyman in boots and buckskin avow, that he would cheat his own father in a horse. A moral system of a similar nature seems to have been adopted by too many anonymous critics. As we used to say at school, in reviewing they make being rogues : and he, who com- plains, is to be laughed at for his ignorance of the game. With the pen out of their hand they are honourable men. They exert, indeed, power (which is to that of the in- jured party who should attempt to expose their glaring perversions and mis-statements, as twenty to one) to write down, and (where the author's circumstances permit) to impoverish the man, whose learning and genius they themselves in private have repeatedly admitted. They knowingly strive to make it impossible for the man even to publish* any future work, without exposing himself to all the wretchedness of debt and embarrassment. But this is all in their vocation, and bating what they do in their vocation, '' zi-ho can say that black is the xvhite of their eye .?" So much for the detractors from Wordsworth's merits. On the other hand, much as I might wish for their fuller sympathy, I dare not flatter myself, that the freedom with which I have declared my opinions concerning both his theory and his defects, most of which are more or less connected with his theory either as cause or effect, will be satisfactory or pleasing to all the poet's admirers and advocates. More indiscriminate than mine their ad- miration may be ; deeper and more sincere it cannot be. ♦ N'otniany montlis ag-o, an eminent bookseller was asked what he thou«-ht of ? The answer was, " I have heard his pow- ers very hio-hly spoken of by some? of our first-rate men ; but I would not have a worTv of hi.'^ ifany one would ffivc it me: for he is spoken but slightly of, or not at all,' in the Quarterly Review : and the Edinburgh^ , you know, is decided, to cut him up !" — 119 But I hate advanced no opinion either for praise or cen- sure, other than as texts introductory to the reasons which compel me to form it. Above all, I was fully convinced that such a criticism was not only wanted ; but that, if executed with adequate ability, it must conduce in no mean degree to Mr. Wordsworth's reputation. Uiifame belongs to another age, and can neither be accelerated or retarded. How small the proportion of the defects are to the beauties, I have repeatedly declared ; and that no one of them originates in deficiency of poetic genius. Had they been more and greater, 1 should still, as a friend to his literary character in the present age, consider an analytic display of them as pure gain ; if only it removed, as surely to all reflecting minds even the foregoing an- alysis must have removed, the strange mistake so slight- ly grounded, j'et so widely and industriously propagated, of Mr. Wordsworth's turn for simplicity I 1 am not half as much irritated by hearing his enemies abuse him for vulgarity of style, subject, and conception, as I am disgusted with the gilded side of the same meaning, as displayed by some affected admirers with whom he is, forsooth, a szveet, simple poet ! and 50 natural, that little master Charles, and his younger sister, are so charmed with them, that they play at " Goody Blake," or at " Johnny and Betty Foy !" Were the collection of poems published with these biographical sketches, important enough, (which I am not vain enough to believe) to deserve such a distinc- tion : EVEN AS r HAVE DONE, SO WOULD I BE DONE UNTO. For more than eighteen months have the volume of Poems, entitled Sibylline Leaves, and the present volumes up to this page been printed, and ready for publication. But ere I speak of myself in the tones, which are alone natural to me under the circumstances of late 3 ears, I would fain present myself to the Reader as I was in the first dawn of my literary life : When Hope grew round me, like the climbing vine, And fruits and foliage not m)' own seem'd mine ! For this purpose, I have selected from the letters w hich I wrote home from Germany, those which appeared likely to be most interesting, and at the same time most pertinent to the title of this work. 120 SATYRANE's LETTERS; LETTER I. On Sunday morning, September 16, 1798, the Ham- burg Pacqaet set sail from Yarmouth : and I, for the first time in my life, beheld my native land retiring from rae. At the moment of its disappearance — in all the kirks, churches, chapels, and meeting-houses, in which the greater number, I hope, of my countrymen were at that time assembled, 1 will dare question whether there was one more ardent prayer offered up to heaven than that which I then preferred for my country. Now, then, (said I to a gentleman who was standing near me,) we are out of our country. Not yet, not yet ! he replied, and pointed to the sea ; '* This, too, is a Briton's coun- try." This bon mot gave a fillip to my spirits, I rose and looked round on my fellow-passengers, who were all on the deck. We were eighteen in number, videlicet, five Englishmen, an English lady, a French gentleman and his servant, an Hanoverian and his servant, a Prussian, a Swede, two Danes, and a Mulatto boy, a German tailor and his wife (the smallest couple I ever beheld) and a Jew. We were all on the deck ; but in a short time I observed marks of dism:jy. The lady retired to the cabin in some confusion, and many of the faces round me assumed a very doleful and frog-coloured appearance ; and within an hour the number of those on deck was lessened by one half. I was giddy, but not sick, and the giddiness soon went away, but left a feverishness and want of appetite, which I attributed, in great mea- sure, to the s(£Ta mephitis of the bilge-water ; and it was certainly not decreased by the exportations from the cabin. However, I was well enough to join the able- bodied passengers, one of whom observed, not inaptly, 121 that Momus migbt have discovered an easier way ta see a man's inside than by placing a window in his breast. He needed only have taken a salt-water trip in a pac- quet-boat. I am inclined to believe, that a pacquet is far superior to a stage-coach, as a means of making men open out to each other. In the latter, the uniformity of posture disposes to dozing, and the definiteness of the period at which the company will separate makes each individual think more of those to whom he is going, than of those with whom he is going. But at sea, more curiosity is excited, if only on this account, that the pleasant or unpleasant qua- lities of your companions are of greater importance to you, from the uncertainty how long you may be obliged to house with them. Besides, if you are countrymen, that now begins to form a distinction and a bond of bro- therhood ; and, if of dififerent countries, there are new incitements of conversation, more to ask and more to commanicate. I found that I had interested the Danes in no common degree. I had crept into the boat on the deck and fallen asleep ; but was awaked by one of them about three o'clock in the afternoon, who told me that they had been seeking me in every hole and corner, and insisted that I should join their party and drink with them. He talked English with such fluency, as left me wholly unable to account for the singular and even ludicrous in- correctness with which he spoke it. I went, and found some excellent wines and a desert of grapes with a pine apple. The Danes had christened me Doctor Theology, and dressed as I was all in black, with large shoes and black worsted stockings, I might certainly have passed very well for a Methodist missionary. However, I dis- claimed my title. What then may you be ? A man of fortune ? No ! — A merchant ? No ! A merchant's travel- ler ? No ! — A clerk ? No ! un Philosophe, perhaps ? It was at that time in my life, in which, of all possible names and characters I had the greatest disgust to that of *' un Philosophe." But I was weary of being questioned, and rather than be nothing, or at best only the abstract idea of a man, I submitted by a bow, even to the aspersion implied in the word '* un philosophe." — The Dane then informed me, that all in the present party were philoso.- VoL. II. U 122 J)hers likewise. Certes we were not of the stoic school. For we driink and talked and sung, till we talked and sung all together ; and then we rose, and danced on the deck a set of dances, which in one sense of the word at least, were very intelligibly and appropriately entitled reels. The passengers who hy in the cabin below, in all the agonies of sea-sickness, must have found our bac- chanalian merriment -a tune Harsh and of dissonant mood for iheir complaint. .1 thought so at the time ; and (by way, I suppose, of suppoiting my newly-assumed philosophical character) I thought too, how closely the greater number of our virtues are connected with the fear of death, and how little sympathy we bestow on pain, where there is no danger. The two Danes were brothers. The one was a man ^ith a clear white complexion, white hair, and white eye-brows, looked silly, and nothing that he uttered gave the lie to his looks. The other, whom, by way of emi- nence, i hare called the Dane, had hkewise white hair, but was much shorter than his brother, with slender limbs, and a very thin face slightly pock-fretten. This man convinced me of the justice of an old remark, that many a faithful portrait in our novels and farces has been i^ashly censured for an outrageous caricature, or perhaps nonentity. 1 had retired to my station in the boat ; he came and seated himself by my side, and appeared not a little tipsy. He commenced the conversation in the most magnific style, and as a sort of pioneering to his own vanity, he flattered me with such grossness ! The parasites of the old comedy were modest in the compa- rison. His language and accentuation were so exceed- ingly singular, that 1 determined, for once in my life, to take notes of a conversation. Here it follows, somewhat abridged indeed, but in all other respects as accurately as my memory permitted. The Dane. Vat imagination ! vat language! vat vast science ! and vat eyes ! vat a milk-vite forehead ! — O ;'my heafen ! vy, you're a Got I Answz' R. You do me too much honour, Sir^ 123 The Dane. O me ! if you should dink I is flattering you ! — No, no, no ! I haf ten tou^and a year — yes, ten tousand a year — yes, ten tousand pound a year ♦ Veil — • and vat is dhat ? a mere trifle ! i 'ouldnl gif my sincere heart for ten times dhe money. — Yes, you're a Got ! I a mere man ! But, my dear friend 1 dhink of me as a man ! Is, is — I ?nean to ask you now, my dear friend — is 1 not very eloquent? Is I not speak [ nglish very fine? Answ. Most admirably ! Believe me. Sir ! 1 have sel- dom heard even a native talk so fluently The Dane, (squeezing my hand with great vehemence,) My dear friend ! vat an affection and fidelity we have for each odher ' But tell me, do tell me — Is I not, now and den, speak some fault ? Is t not in sonae wrong? Answ. Why, 8ir, perhaps it might be observed by nice critics in the English language, that you occasionally use the word ■' is" instead of *' am," In our best com- panies we generally say I am, and not I is, or ise. Ex- cuse me. Sir! it is a mere trifle. The Dane. O! — is, is, am, am, am. Yes, yes— I know, I know. Ansav. I am, thou art, he is, we are, ye are, they are. The Dane. Yes, ves, — I know, I know — Am, am^ am, is dbe presens, and is is dhe perfectum — yes, yes — and are is dhe plusquam perfectum. Avsw. Aod " art," Sir is The Dane. My dear friend ! it is dhe plusquam per- fectum, no, no — dhat is a great lie. '* Are" is the p'us- quam perfectum — and ^^ art " is dhe plusquam plueper- fectum — {then swinging iny hand to and fro, and cocking his little bright hazle eyes at me, that danced with vanity and wine) You see, my dear friend! that I too have some lehrning. Answ^. Learning, Sir ? Who dares suspect it ? Who can listen to you for a minute ; who can even look at you, ■\vithout perceiving the extent of it ? The Dane. My dear friend ! — {then, with a would-be humble look^ and in a tone ofv&ice as if he 7vas reason^ ing) — I could not talk so of presens and imperfectum, and futurum and plusquamplue perfectum, and all dhat, my dear friend ! without some lehrning ? 121 Answ. Sir ! a man like you cannot talk on any sub* ject without discovering the depth of his information. The Daj^e, Dhe grammatic Greek, my friend ! ha ! ha ! ha ! {laughing^ and swinging my hand to and fro^ — then, with a sudden transiiion to great solemnity^ Now I will tell you, my dear friend ! Dhere did happen about me vat de whole historia of Denmark record no instance about nobody else. Dhe bishop did ask me all dhe ques- tions about all dhe religion in dhe Latin grammar Ansvv. The grammar, Sir? The language 1 presume — The Dane, (a little (ffended,) Grammar is language^ and Jansjuage is grammar — Answ. Ten thousand pardons ! The Dane. Veil, and 1 was only fourteen years— Answ. Only fourteen years old ? The Dane. No more. I was fourteen years old— and he asked me all questions, religion and philosophy, and all in dhe Latin language — and 1 answered him all every one, my dear friend ! all in dhe Latin language. Answ. A prodigy! an absolute prodigy ! The Dane. No, no, no 1 he was a bishop, a great superintendant. Answ. Yes ! a bishop. The Dane. A bishop — not a mere predicant, not a prediger — Answ. My dear Sir ! we have misunderstood each other. I said that your answering in Latin at so early an age, was a prodigy, that is, a thing that is wonderful, that does not often happen. The Dane. Often ! Dhere is not von instance record- ed in dhe whole historia of Denmark. Answ And since then Sir ? The Dane. I was sent ofer to dhe Vest Indies—to our island, and dhere \ had no more to do vid books. No ! no ! I put my genius another way — and I haf made ten tousand pound a year. Is not dhat ghenius, my dear friend ! — But vat is money I I dhink the poorest man alive my equal. Yes, my dear friend ! my little fortune is pleasant to my generous heart, because I can do good —no man with so little a fortune ever did so much gene- rosity — no person, no man person, no woman person ever denies it But we are all Got's children. 12^ Here tlie Hanoverian interrupted bim. and the other Dane, the Swede, and the Prussian, joined us, together with a young Englishman who spoke the German fluently, and interpreted to me many of the Prussian's jokes. The Prussian was a travelling merchant, turned of three- score, a hale man, tall, strong, and stout, full of stories, gesticulations, and buffoonery, with the soul, as well aS the look, of a mountebank, who, while he is making you laugh, picks your pocket. Amid all his droll looks and droll gestures, there remained one look untouched by laughter ; and that one look was the true face, the others were but its mask. The Hanoverian was a pale, fat, bloated j^oung man, whose father had made a large for- tune in London, as an army-contractor. He seemed to emulate the manners of young Englishmen of fortune. He was a good-natur'd fellow, not without information or literature, but a most egregious coxconib. He had been in the habit of attending the House of Commons, and had once spoken, as he informed me, with great applause in a debating society. For this he appeared to have quali- fied himself with laudable industry, for he was perfect in Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary, and with an accent which forcibly reminded me of the Scotchman in Rode- ric Random, who professed to teach the English pronun- ciation, he was constantly deferring to my superior judg- ment, whether or no 1 had pronounced this or that word with propriety, or '' the true delicacy." When he spoke, though it were only half a dozen sentences, he always rose ; for which ) could detect no other motive than his partiality to that elegant phrase so liberally introduced in the orations of our British legislators, '' While I am on my legs." The Swede, whom for reasons that will soon appear, 1 shall distinguish by the name of " Nobili- ty," was a strong featured, scurvy faced man, his com- plexion resembling in colour, a red hoi poker bc^ginnuig to cool. He appeared miserably dependent on the Dane, but was, however, incomparably, the best intormed and most rational of the party. Indeed, his manners and con- versation discovered him to be both a man of the world and a gentleman. The Jew was in the hold ; the t reach gentleman wai? lying on the deck, so ill that I could ob- serve nothing concerning him, except the afftxtionate at- tentions of his servant to him. The poor fellow was ve« 126 ry sick himself, and every now and then ran to the side of the vessel, still keeping his eye on his master, but re- turned in a moment and seated himself again by him, now supporting his head, now wiping his forehead, and talking to him, all the while, in the most soothing tones. There had been a matrimonial squabble of a very ludi- crous kind in the cabin, between the little German tailor and his little wife. He had secured two beds, one for him- self, and one for her. This had struck the little woman as a very cruel action ; she insisted upon their having but one, and assured the mate, in the most piteous tones, that she was his lawful wife. The mate and the cabin boy de- cided in her favour, abused the little man for his want of tenderness with much humour, and hoisted him into the same compartment with his sea-sick wife. This quarrel was interesting to me, as it procured me a bed, which I otherwise should not have had. In the evening, a 7 o'clock, the sea rolled higher, and the Dane, by means of the greater agitation, eliminated enough of what he had been swallowing to make room for a great deal more. His favourite potation was sugar and brandy, i. e. a very little warm water with a large quan- tity of brandy, sugar, and nutmeg. His servant boy, a black-eyed Mulatto, had a good-natured round face, ex- actly the colour of the skin of the walnut-kernel. The Dane and I were again seated, tete-a-tete, in the ship's boat. The conversation, which was now, inde.ed, rather an oration than a dialogue, became extravagant beyond all that I ever hoard. He told me that he had made a large fortune in the island of Santa Cruz, and was now returning to Denmark to enjoy it. He expatiated on the style in which he meant to live, and the great under- takinijs which he proposed to himself to commence, till the brandy, aiding his vanity, and his vanity and garru- lity aiding the brandy, he talked like a madman — en- treated me to accompany him to Denmark — there I should «ee his influence with the government, and he would in- troduce me to the king, &c. &c. Thus he weiU on dream- ing aloud, and then passing with a very lyrical transition to the subject of general politics, he declaimed, like a memoer ot the Corresponaing Society, about, ^not con* cerning,) the Rights of Man, and assured me that, not- withstanding his fortune, he thought the poorest man 127 alive Lis equal. " All are equal, my dear friend ! all are equal I Ve are all Got's children. The poorest man hat' the same rights with me Jack ! Jack 1 some more sugar and brandy. Dhere is dhat fellow now ! He is a a Mulatto — but he is my equal. That's right, Jack ! (taking the sugar and brandy,) Here, you Sir! shake hands with dhis gentleman! Shake hands with me, you dog ! Dhere, dhere ! — We are all equal my dear friend ! Do I not speak like Socrates, and Plato, and Cato — they were all philosophers, my dear philosophe ! all very great men ! — and so was Homer and Virgil — but they were poets, yes, yes ! I know all about it ! — But what can any body sa^ more than this? we are all equal, all Got's children. I haf ten tousand a year, but I am no more than the meanest man alive. I haf no pride; and yet, my dear friend I 1 can say do ! and it is done. Ha ! ha ! ha ! my dear friend ! Now dhere is dhat gentleman, (pointing io "Nobility.") he is a Swedish baron — you shall see. Ho ! (calling to the Swede,) get me, will you, a bottle of wine trom the cabin. Swede. — Here, Jack 1 go and get your master a bottle of wine from the cabin. Dane. No, no, no ! do you go now — you go yourself-^ you go now ! Szvede Pah ! — Dane. Now go ? Go, I pray you. And the Swe:de w^ent! ! After this the Dane commenced an harangue on reli- gion, and mistaking me for " un philosophe" in the con- tinental sense of the word, he talked of Deity in a decla- matory style, very much resembling the devotional rants of that rude blunderer, Mr. Thomas Paine, in his Age of Reason, and whispered in my ear, what damned hypocrism all Jesus Christ's business was. I dare aver, that few men have less reason to charge themselves with indul- ging in persiflage than myself I should hate it if it were only that it is a Frenchman's vice, and feel a pride in avoiding it because our own language is too honest to have a word to express it. But in this instance the temp- tation had been too powerful, and I have placed it on the list of my offences. Pericles answered one of his dearest friends, who had solicited him on a case of life and death, to take an equivocal oath for his preservation : Debeo arnicis opitulari, sed usqtie ad Deos.^ Friendship * Translation. It behooves me to side with my friends, but onlv as fa^ as the god». 128 herself must place her last and boldest step on this side the altar. What Pericles would not do to save a friend's life, you may be assured 1 would not hazard, merely to mill the chocolate-pot of a drunken fool's vanity till it frothed over. Assuming a serious look, 1 professed my- self a believer, and sunk at once an hundred fathoms in his good graces. He retired to his cabin, and I wrapped myself up in my great coat, and looked at the water. A beautiful white cloud of foam, at momently intervals coursed by the side of the vessel with a roar, and little stars of flame danced and sparkled, and went out in it : and every now and then, light detachments of this white cloud-like foam darted off from the vessel's side, each with its own small constellation, over the sea, and scour- ed out of sight, like a Tartar troop over a wilderness. It was cold, the cabin was at open war with my olfac- tories, and I found reason to rejoice in my great coat, a weighty high-caped, respectable rug, the collar of which turned over, and played the part of a nightcap very passably. In looking up at two or three bright stars, which oscillated with the motion of the sails, I fell asleep, but was awakened at one o'clock, Monday morning, by a shower of rain. I found myself compelled to go down into the cabin, where I slept very soundly, and awoke with a very good appetite at breakfast time, my nostrils, the most placable of ail the senses, reconciled to, or, in- deed, insensible of the mephitis. Monday, September 17th, I had a long conversation with the Swede, who spoke with the most poignant con- tempt of the Dane, whom he described as a fool, purse- mad ; but he confirmed the boasts of the Dane respect- ing the largeness of his fortune, which he had acquired in the first instance as an advocate, and afterwards as a planter. From the Dane, and from himself, I collected that he was indeed a Swedish nobleman, who had squan- dered a fortune that was never very large, and had made over his property to the Dane, on whom he was now ut- terly dependent. He seemed to suffer very little pain from the Dane's insolence. He was in high degree hu- mane and attentive to the Englisd lady, who suffered most fearfully, and for whom he performed many little offices with a tenderness and delicacy which seemed to prove real goodness of heart. Indeed, his general man- 129 nei^ and conversation were not only pleasing, but even interesting ; and I struggled to believe his insensibility, respecting the Dane, philosophical fortitude. For, though the Dane was now quite sober, his character oozed out of him at every pore. And after dinner, when he was again flushed with wine, every quarter of an hour, or perhaps oftener, he would shout out to the Swede, *' Ho ! Nobility, go — do such a thing ! Mr. Nobility ! tell the gentlemen such a story, and so forth," with an inso- lence which must have excited disgust and detestation, if his vulgar rants on the sacred rights of equality, joined to this wild havoc of general grammar, no less than of the English language, had not rendered it so irresistibly laughable. At four o'clock, I observed a wild duck swimming on the waves, a single soHtary wild duck. It is not easy to con« ceive,howinterestingathing,it looked in that round object- less desert of waters, I had associated such a feeling of immensity with the ocean, that I felt exceedingly disap- pointed, when I was out of sight of all land, at the nar- rowness and nearness^ as it were, of the circle of the hori- zon. So little are images capable of satisfying the ob- $cure feelings connected with words. In the evening the sails were lowered, lest we should run foul of the land» which can be seen only at a small distance. At four o'clock, on Tuesday morning, 1 vvas awakened by the cry of land ! land ! it was an ugly island, rock at a distance on our left, called Heiligeland, well known to many pas- sengers from Yarmouth to Hamburg, who have been obliged, by stormy weather, to pass weeks and weeks in weary captivity on it, stripped of all their money by the exhorbitant demands of the wretches who inhabit it So, at least, the sailors informed me. About nine o'clock we saw the main land, which seemed scarcely able to hold its head above water, low, flat, and dreary, with light-houses and land-marks, which seemed to give a character and language to the dreariness. We entered the mouth of the Elbe, passing Neu-werk ; though as yet, the right bank only of the river was visible to us. "On this 1 saw a church, and thanked God for my safe vo}^- age, not without affectionate thoughts of those 1 had left in England. At eleven o'clock on the same movning, we arrive^ at Cuxhaven, the ship dropped anchor, and the 130 boat was hoisted out, to carry the Hanoverian and a few others on shore. The captain agreed to take ns, who remained, to Hiimburii;h for ten guineas, to which the Dane contributed so largely/, that tl»e other passengers paid but half a guinea each. Accordingly, we haled an- chor, and passed gently up the river. At Cuxhaven both sides of the river may be seen in clear weather ; we could now see the rii^ht bank only. We passed a mul- titude of Enghsh traders that had been waiting many weeks for a wind. In a short time both banks became viJ^ible, both flrU and evidencing the labour of human hands, by their extreme neatness. On the left bank I saw a church or two in the distance ; on the right bank we passed by steeple and windmill, and cottage, and wind- mill and single house, windmill and windmill, and neat «ingle house, and steeple. These were the objects, and in t\ie succession. 1 he shores were rery green and planted with trees not inelegantly. Thirty-five miles from Cuxhaven, the night came on us, and as the naviga- tion of the Elbe is perilous, we dropped anchor. Over what place, thought I, does the moon hang to your eye, my dearest friend ? To me it hung over the left bank of the Elbe. Close above the moon was a huge volume of deep black cloud, while a very thin fillet cross- ed the middle of the orb, as narrow, and thin, and black as a ribbon of crape. The long trembling road of moon- light, which lay on the water, and reached to the stern of our vessel, glimmered dimly and obscurely. We saw two or three lights from the right bank, probably from bed-rooms. I felt the striking contrast between the si- lence of this m jpstic stream, whose banks are populous with men and women and children, and flocks and herds — between tlie silence by night of this peopled river, and the ceaseless noise, and uproar, and loud agitations of the desolate solitude of the ocean. The passengers be- low had all retired to their beds ; and I felt the interest of this quiet scene the more deeply, from the circum- stance of having just quitted them. For the Prussian had during the whole of the evening, displayed all his talents to captivate the Dane, who had ad nutted him into the train of his deperid.mts. The young Englishman continu- ed to interpret the Prussians jokes to me. They were all, without exception, profane and abominable, but some 131 sufficiently witty, and a few inciilents, which he related in hi? own person, were valuable as illustraUng the in^an- ners of the countries in which tbe^- had tdken uiace. Five o'clock on VVednoslay morning we ha^jled the anchor, but were soon obliged to drop it ag iin in conse- quence of a thick fog, which our cnplain f r-ired would continue the whole (hy : but al>out nine it cleared off, and we sailed slowly along, clos^ hy the shore of a very beautiful island, forty miles froai Cuxh iven, the wind continuing slick. This holme or island is about a mile and a half in length, wedge-shaped, well wooded, with glades of the liveliest green, and rendered more inte- resting by the remarkably neat firm house on it. It seemed made for retirement without solitude — a place that would allure one's friends while it precluded the impertinent calls of mere visiters. The shores of the Elbe now became more beautiful, with rich meadows and trees rimning like a low wall along the river's edge ; and peering over them, neat houses and (especially oq the lii^ht bank) a profusion of steeple-spires, white, black, or red. An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches in flat countries with spire-steeples^ which as they cannot be referred to any other object, point as with silent linger to the sky and stars, and sometimes when they reflect the brazen light of a rich though rainy simset, appear like a pyramid of flame burn- ing heavenward. I remember once, and once only, to have seen a spire in a narrow valley of a mountainous country. The effect was not only mean but ludicrous, and reminded me, against my will, of an extinguisher ; the close neighbourhood of the high mountain, at the foot of which it stood, had so completely dwarfed it, and depriv- ed it of all connection with the sky or clouds. Forty six English miles from Cuxhaven, and sixteen from Ham- burgh, the Danish village Veder ornaments the left bank with its black steeple, and close by it the wild and pas- toral hamlet of Schulau. Hitherto, both the right and left bank, green to the very brink, and level with the river, resembled the shores of a park canal. The trees and houses were alike low ; sometimes the low trees overtopping the yet lower houses ; sometimes the low houses rising above the yet lower trees. But at Schu^ hu the left bank rises at once forty or fifl;y feet, aui 132 atares on the river with its perpendicular fassade of sand, thinly patched with tufts of green. The Elbe continued to present a more and more lively spectacle from the multitude of fishing boats and the flocks of sea gulls wheeling round them, the clamorous rivals and compan- ions of the fishermen ; till we came to Blankaness, a most interesting village scattered amid scattered trees, over three hills in three divisions. Each of the three hills stares upon the river, with faces of bare sand with which the boats, with their bare poles, standing in files along the banks, made a sort of fantastic harmony. Be- tween each fassade lies a green and woody dell, each deeper than the other. In short, it is a large village made up of individual cottages, each cottage in the cen- tre of its own little wood or orchard, and each with its own separate path : a village with a labyrinth of paths, or rather a neighbourhood of houses ! It is inhabited by fishermen and boat-makers, the Blankanese boats being in great request through the whole navigation of the Elbe. Here first we saw the spires of Hamburg, and from hence as far as Altona the left bank of the Elbe is uncommonly pleasing, considered as the vicinity of an industrious and republican city ; in that style of beauty, or rather prettiness, that might tempt the citizen into the country, and yet gratify the taste which he had ac- quired in the town. Summer houses and Chinese show- work are every where scattered along the high and green banks ; the boards of the farm-houses left unplais- tered and gaily painted with green and yellow ; and scarcely a tree not cut into shapes, and made to remind the human being of his own power and intelligence in- stead of the wisdom of nature. Still, however, these are links of connection between town and country, and far better than the affectation of tastes and enjoyments for "which men's habits have disquahfied them. Pass them by on Saturdays and Sundays with the burgers of Hamburgh smoking their pipes, the women and children feasting in the alcoves of box and yew, and it be- comes a nature of its own. On Wednesday, four o'clock, we left the vessel, and passing with trouble through the huge mas«es of shipping that seemed to choke the wide Elbe from Altona upward we were at length landed at the Boom House. Hamburg. I 133 LETTER II. X'^o a Lady.) Ratzeburg. 31eine liebe Freundin, See hoTi) natural the German comes from me, though I have not yet been six weeks in the country I — almost as fluently as Enolish from my neighbour the Amptschreiber (or public secretary) who, as often as w^e meet, though it shouhl be half a dozen times in the same day, never fails to greet me with — '* * * ddam your ploot unt eyes, my dearest En gland er ! vhee goesit !'"* — which is Certainly a proof of great generosity on his part, these words being hi* whole stock of English. I had, however, a better reason than the desire of displaying my proficien- cy ; for I wished to ptit you in good humour with a lan- guage, from the acquirment of which. I have promised myself much edification, and the means, too, of commu^ nicating a new pleasure to you and your sister, during our winter readings. And how can I do this better than by pointing out its gallant attention to the ladies ? Our Ensj:Hsh affix, ess, is, I believe, confined either to words derived from the Latin, as actress, directress, &c. or from the French, as mistress, duchess, and the like. But the German, in, enables us to designate the sex in every possible relation of life. Thus the Amptman's lady is the Frau Amptman??i — the secretary's wife (by-the-by the handsomest woman I have yet seen in Germany) is Die allerliebste Frau Amptschreiben'n — the colonePs lady, Die Frau Obristm or colonel/m — and even the parson's wife, die frau pastonVi. But 1 am especially pleased with their freundin, which, unlike the arnica of the Romans, is seldom used but in its best and purest sense. Now, I know it will be said, that a friend is al- ready something more than a friend, when a man feels an anxiety to express to himself that this friend is a female ; but this I deny — in that sense, at least, in which the ob- jection will be made. I would hazard the impeachment of heresy, rather than abandon my belief that there is a sex in our souls as well as in their perishable garments ; and he who does not feel it, never truly loved a sister— Vol. U. 12 131 ilay, IS not capable even of loving a wife as slie deserve:^ to beloved, if she indeed be worthy of thcjt holj name. Now, I know, my gentle friend, what you are mur- muring to yourself — '' This is so like him I running away after the first bubble that chance has blown olf from the surface of his fancy ; when one is anxious to learn where he is, and what he has seen." Well then ! that I am settled at Ratzeburg, with my motives and the particulars of my journey hither, will inform you. My iirst letter to him, with which, doubtless, he has edi- fied your w^hole fireside, left me safely landed at Hamburg, on the Elbe Stairs, at the Boom House. While standing on the stairs, I was amused by the contents of the pas- sage boat which crosses the river once or twice a day from Hamburg to Haarburg. It was stowed close with all people of all nations, in all sorts of dresses ; the men all with pipes in their mouths, and these pipes of jiil shapes and fancies — straight and wreathed, simple and complex, long and short, cane, clay, porcelain, wood, tin, silver, and ivory ; most of them with silver chains and silver bole-covers. Pipes and boots are the first univer- ^1 characteristic of the male Kam.burgers that would strike the eye of a raw traveller. But 1 forget my promise of journalizing as much as possible. — Therefore, Sepiemher 19th, afternoon. — My companion, who, you recollect, speaks the French language with unusual pro- priety, had formed a kind of confidential acquaintance with the emigrant, who appeared to be a man of sense, and whose manners were those of a perfect gentleman. He seemed about fifty, or rather more. Whatever is unpleasant in French manners from excess in the degree, had been softened down by age or affliction ; and all that is delightful in the Jcuid, alacrity and delicacy in little attentions, &c. remained, and without bustle, gesticula- tion, or disproportionate eagerness. His demeanor ex- hibited the minute philanthrophy of a polished French- man, tempered by the sobriety of the English character, disunited from its reserve. There is something strangely attractive in the character of a ^e/z^/e'ma/i when 3' ou ap[>ly the word emphatically, and yet in that sense of the term which it is more easy to feel than to define. It neither includes the possession of high moral excellence, nor of 135 necessity even the ornamental graces of manner. I have now in my mind's eye, a person whose hfe would scarcely stand scrutiny, even in the court of honour, much less, in that of conscience ; and his manners, if nicely obser- ved, would, of the two, excite an idea of awkwardness rather than of elegance ; and yet, every one who con- versed with him, felt and acknowledged the gentleman. The secret of the matter, I believe to be this — we feel the gentlemanly character present to us, whenever, un- der all the circumstances of social intercourse, the trivial not less than the important, through the whole detail of his manners and deportment, and with the ease of a • habit, a person shows respect to others in such a way,-^ as at the same time implies, in his own feelings, an ha^. bitual and assured anticipation of reciprocal respect from . them to himself. In short, the gentlemanly character arises out of the feeling of Equality acting, as a Habit, yet flexible to the varieties of Rank, and modified with-.. out being disturbed or superseded by them. This des*. cription will, perhaps, explain to you the ground of one of your x)wn remarks, as I was Englishing to you the* interesting dialogue concerning the causes^ of the corrup-.' tion of eloquence. " What perfect gentlemen these old: Romans must have been 1 I was impressed, I remember, with the same feeling at the time I was reading a trans* lation of Cicero's j)hilosophical dialoe'^es, and of his epis- tolary correspondence : while in Plitvy's Letters I seemed to have a different feeling — he gave me the no- tion of a very y^?ie gentleman." You uttered the words as if you had felt that the adjunct had injured the sub- stance, and the increased de^rree altered the kind, Pliny was the courtier of an absolute monarch — Cicero, an aristocratic republican. For this reason the charac- ter of gentleman, in the sense to which I have confined it, is frequent in England, rare in France, and found, where it is found, in age or k^.e latest period of manhood ; while in Germany the character is almost unknown. But I the proper antipode of a gentleman is to be sought for •among the Anglo-American democrats. I owe this digression, as an act of justice, to this ami- able Frenchman, and of humiliation for myself For in a little controversy between us on the subject of 1^ rench poetry, he made me feel my own ill behaviour by the 136^ Siilent reproof of contrast, and when I afterwards apol'o> gized to him for the warmth of my language, he answer- ed me with a cheerful expression of surprise, and an im- mediate compliment, which a gentleman might both make wilh dignity, and receive with pleasure. I was pleased, therefore, to find it agreed on, that we shouki, if possible, take lip our quarters in the same house. My friend went vrith him in searcii of an hotel, and 1 to deliver my letters ♦>f recon.mendation. i walked onward at a brisk pace, enlivened not so UJt'ch by any thing 1 actually saw, as by the confused sense that I was for the first lime in my life on the con- tinent ii( our planet. 1 seemed to myself like a liberated !>ird that had been hatched in an aviary, who now after his Inst soar of freedom poises himself in the upper air. Very naturally ] began to wonder at all things, some for being so like and some for being so unlike the things in England — Dutch women w^th large umbrelfa hats shoot- ing out half a yard before ihem, with a prodigal plump- ness of petticoat behind — the women of Hamburg with caps plated on the caul with silver or gold, or both, bor- tlered round with stiffened lace, which stood out before Iheir eyes, but not lower, so that the eyes sparkled iljrough it — the Hanoverian women with the fore part of ihe head bare, then a stiff lace standing up like a wall J erpendicular on the cap, and the cap behind tailed with an enormous quantity of ribbon which lies or tosses oh fhe back: *' Their visncmies seem'd like a goodly banner Spread in defiance of all enemies." Spenser. -—The ladies all in English dresses, all rouged^ and all with bad teeth: which yon notice instantly from their contrast to the almost animaL too glossy mothcr-of-pearl whiteness, and the regularity of the teeth of the laughing, loud-talking country-women and servant girls, who with Iheir clean white stockings and with slippers without heel-quarters, tripped along the dirty streets, as if ihey were secured by a charm from the dirt; with a lightness ^oo, which surprised me, who had always consideied it as one of the annoyances of sleeping in an Inn, that i had to clatter up stairs ia a pair of them. The streets 137 narrow ; to my English nose sufSciently offensive, and explaining at iiist sight the universal use of boots ; with- out any appropriate path for the foot-passengers; the g.'^ble enda of the houses all towards the street, some ia the ordinary triangular form and entirey as the botanists say, but the ga'eater number notched and scolloped with more than Chinese grotesqueness. Above all, I was struck with the profusion of windows, so large and so many, that the houses look all glass. Mr. Pitt's Window- tax, with its pretty little additional s s\iro\x\.\ug out from it like young toadlets on the back of a Surinam toad, wouki cerlainly improve the appeaiance of the Hamburg houses, uhich have a slight summer look, not in keeping with tiic ir size, incongruous with the climate, and precluding' that feeling of retirement and self-content, which one v» ishes to associate with a house in a noisy city. But a conflagration would, I fear, be the previous requisite to the production ot* any architectural beauty in Hamburg: for verily it is a filthy town. 1 moved on and crossed a multitude of ugly bridges, with huge black deformities of water v. heels close by them. The water intersects the city every where, and would have furnished to the genius of Italy tlie capabilities of all that is most beauti- iul and magnificeiU in architecture. It might have been the rival of Venice, and it is huddle and ugliness, stench and stagnation. The Jungfcr Stieg (i. e. young Ladies Walkj to vhich my letters directed me, made an excep- tion. It is a w alk or promenade planted with treble rows of elm trees, which being yearly pruned and cropped, re- main slim and dwarf-like. This walk occupies one side of a square piece of water, with njany swans on it per- iectly tame, and, moving among the swans, showy plea- sure boats with ladies in them, rowed by their husbands r>Y lovers *^*-***'^-^"***- (Some paragraphs have heeii here omitted.) Ihus embarrassed by sad and solemn politeness, still more than by broken English, it sounded like the voice of an old friend when 1 heard tlie emigrant's servant inquijing after me. lie had come for the purpose of guiding me to our hotel. Through streets and streets 1 pressed on as happy as a child, and, I doubt not, witU a childish expression of wonderment in my busy eyes> amused by the wicker waggons with moveable benches. 12* 138 across them, one behind the other, (these were the hackney coaches ;) amused by the sign-boards of the shops, on which all the articles sold within are paint- ed, and that too very exactly, thou2;h in a grotesque confusion ; (a useful substitute for language in this great mart of nations ;) amused with the incessant tinkling of the shop and house door bells, the bell hanging over each door, and struck with a smalJ iron rod at every entrance and exit; — and finally, amused by looking in at the \vin- dows, as I passed along ; the ladres and gentlemen drink- ing coffee or playing cards, and the gentlemen all smok- ing. I wished myself a painter, that 1 might have sent you a sketch of one of the card parlies. The long pipe of one gentleman rested on the table, its bole half a yard from his mouth, fuming like a censer b) the fish pool — the other gentleman, who was dealing the cards, and of course had both hands employed, held his pipe in his teeth, which hanging down between his knees, smoked beside his ancles. Hogarth himseH' never drew a more ludicrous distortion both of attitude and physiognomy, than this effort occasioned ; nor was there u^anting beside it one of those beautiful female faces which the same Ho- garth, in whom the satyrist never extinguished that love of beauty which belonged to him as a poet, so often and so gladly introduces as the central figure in a crowd of humourous deformities, which figure (such is the power of true genius !) neither acts, nor is meant to act as a contrast ; but diffuses through all^ and over each of the group, a spirit of reconciliation and human kindness ; and even when the attention is no longer consciously^ di- rected to the cause of this feeling, still blends its tender- ness with our laughter: and thus prevents the instructive merriment at the whi/ns of nature, or the foibles or hu- mours of our fellow-men, from degenerating into the*heart- poison of contempt or hatred. Our hotel die wilde man, (the sign of which was no bad likeness of the landlord, who had engrafted on a very grim face a restless grin, that was at every man's service, and which indeed, like an actor rehearsing to himself, he kt-pt playing in expectation of an occasion lor it) — neither ^ur hotel, I say, nor its landlord, were of the genteelest cla^s. But it has one great advantage for a stranger, by being in the market place, and the next neighbour of the kuge church of St. >«'icholas : a church witii shops and 139 bouses burit up against it, out of which '-^-siis and urarts its high massy steeple rises, necklaced near the top with a round of large g'ilt balls. A better pole-star couM scarce!/ be desired. Long shall I retain the injpression made on my mind by the awful echo, so loud and long and tremu- lous, of the deep-toned clock within this church, which awoke me at two in the morning from adistresstul dream, occasioned, I believe, by the leather bed, which is used here instead of bed clothes. 1 will rather carry my blanket about with me like a wild Indian, than submit to thi^ abominable custom. Our emigrant acquaintance was, we found, an intimate friend of the celebrated Abbe de Lisle : and from the large fortune which he possessed under the monarchy, had rescued sufficient r.ot only for independence, but for respectability. He had offended some of his fellow-emigrants in London, whom he had obliged with considerable sums, by a refusal to make fur- ther advances, and in consequence of their intrigues had received an order to quit the kingdom. . I thought it one proof of his innocence, that he attached no blame either to the alien act, or to the minister who had exerted it again3t him ; and a etill greater, that he spoke of London with rapture, and of his favourite niece, who had married and settled in England, with all the fervour and all the- pride of a fond parent. A man sent by force out of a country, obliged to sell out of the stocks at a great loss^ and exiled from those pleasures and that style of society which Ijabit had rendered essential to his happiness^ whose predominant feelings were yet all of a private na- ture, resentment for friendship outraged, and anguish for domestic affections interrupted — such a man, i think, I could dare warrant guiltless of espoinage in any service, most of all in that of the present French Directory. He spoke with extacy of Paris under the monarchy: and yet the particular facts, which made up his description, left as deep a conviction on my mind, of French worrh- fessness, as his own tale had done of emigrant ingrati- tude. Since my arrival in Germany, I have not met a single person, even among those who abhoFthe revolution, that spoke with favour, or even charity, of the French emigrants Though the belief of their influence in the origination of this disastrous war, (from the horrors of which, North Germany deems itself only reprieved, not ^cured) may have «ome siiare in the general aversion 110 ivi(i) whioli fiiey nre reii;rn\lt:(l ; yet I am deeply per- su:uied ihat the ijv git^ater part 'i$ owing to their own piofligacy, ta their li'frachcjy and hard- hearted nefs to each other, and the domestic misery or corrupt princi- ples \vhich so many of tliem have carried into the tami- lies of their protectors. My heart dilated with honest l>ride, as I recalled to mind the stern yet amiable cha- racters of tlie English patriots, v.-iio sought refuge oa the Continent at the restoration ! O let not our civil war under the first Charles, be par.dlelled with the French revolution ! In the former, the chalice overtloued iVoni excess of princi[de ; in the latter, from the tennentatiou of the dregs ! The former, was a civil war between the viitijes ti!rl virtnons prejudices of the two parties ; the latter, between ih? vices. The Venetian glass of the French monarcl.v shivered and tlew asunder with the working* of a dcu,^'e poison. K Sept. 20th. 1 Was introduced to Mr. Kiopstock, the brother of the poet, -vho again introduced me to protes- sor Ebeling, an intelligent and lively man, thougli deaf : «o deaf, indeed, that ic vv^is a painful eilort to talk with hi.ai, as we were obliged to drop all our pearls into a huge ear-trumpet. From this courteous and kiad-hearted man of letters, (i hope the Geimaij liteniti in general ma}' re- semble this first specimen,) I lieard a tolerable Italian jjiin, and an interesting ;xnecdote. When Bonaparte was in Italy, having been irrilc^ted by some instance of per- fidy, he said in a loud and vehement tone, in a public company — " 'tis a true proverb, gli liuJiam Uiili ladroni (i. e. the Italians all plvndcrcrs.) A Lady had the courage to reply, *' iCon tutti ; ma buona parte." (wot all^ but a go(jd part, or Buonaparte.) This, I conle:-?, sounded to /yiT/cars, as one of the many good things that might hacc 6ec/z said. The anecdote.i? more valuable : for it instan- ces the ways and means of Fjench insinuation. liociiE had received much iiiformatlon concerning the face of the country from a map of unusual fulncsssand accuracy, the maker of which, he heard, resided at Dusseldorf. At the storming of Dusseldorf by the French a^m3^ Iloche previously ordered, that the house and property of this man should be preserved, and entrusted the per- formance of the order to an oflicer on whose troop he could rely. Finding afterwards that the man had escaped bc,- /ore Ihe storming coaimenccuj lloche exclaimed. '* Hk i 141 had no reason to llee ! it is for such men, not ogaitust' them, that the French nation makes war. and consents lo shed the blood of its children." You remember Milton'e sonnet — *' T^ie great Emathian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindiirus, when temple and lower Went to the ground" Now, though the Dusseldorf map-maker may stand in the same relation to the Theban bard, as the snail that marks its path by lines of film on the whII it crteps over, to the eagle that soars sunward, and beats the temj^est with its wings ; it does not therefore follow, that the Jacobin of France may not be as valiant a general and as good a po- litician, as the madman of Macedon. From Professor Ebeling's, Mr. Klopstock accompanied my friend and me to his own house, where I saw a tine bust of his brother. There was a solemn and heavy greatness in his countenance, which corresponded to mf preconceptions of his style and genius. I saw there, likewise, a very fine portrait of Lessing, whose works are at present the chief object of my admiration. Flis eyes were uncommonly like mine ; if any thing, rather larger and more prominent. But the lower part of his face and his nose — O what an exquisite expression of ele- gance and sensibihty I — There appeared no depth, weight, or comprehensiveness, in the forehead. — The whole face seemed to say, that Lessing was a m?n of quick and voluptuous feelings ; of an active, but light fancy ; acute ; yet acute not in the observdion of actual life, but in the arrangements and management of the ideal w orld, i. e. in taste and iu metaphysics. 1 assure you, that I wrote these very words in my memoran(hnn book, with the portrait before my eyes, and when I knew ro- thing of Lessing but his name, and that he was a Gcrmaa writer of eminence. We consumed two hours and more over a bad dinner, at the table d'Hote. *' Patience at a Ger/non orduwry, smiling at tlme.''^ The Germans aie the worst cooks in Europe. There is placed for every two persons a bottle-^ of common wine — Rhenish and Claret rdternately ; bat in the houses of the opulent, during. tlie many and long ijitervals of the dicner, the servants hand rcuod glassei^. H-2 of richer wines. At the Lord of Culpin's they came \n this order. Bnrgnndy — Madeira — Port — Frontiniac — ^ Pacchiarctti Old Hock Mountain Champagne Hock again — Bishop, and lastly, Punch. A tolerahle quantum, rnethinks ! The last dish at the ordinary, viz. Slices of roast pork, (for all the larger dishes are hrought in, cut up, and first handed round, and then set on the table) with stewed prunes and other sweet fruits, and this followed by cheese and butter, with plates of apples, reminded nie of Shakespeare,* and Shakespeare put it in my head to go to the French comedy. :i(- 'M- -fi- Bless me I Why it is worse than our modern English plays ! The first act informed me, that a court martial is to be held on a Count Vatron,. who had drawn his sword on the Colonel, his brother-in-law. The oJTicers plead in his behalf — in vain I — His wife, the Colonel's sister, pleads with most tempestuous agonies — in vain ! She falls into hysterics and fliints away, to the dropping of the inner curtain 1 In the second act sentence of death is passed on the Count — his wife, as frantic and hysteri- cal as before : more so (good industrious creature !) she could not be. The third and last act, the wife still fran- tic, very frantic indeed ! the soldiers just about to fire, the handkerchief actually dropped, when reprieve ! re- prieve is heard from behind the scenes : and in comes Prince somebody, pardons the Count, and the wife is still frantic, only with joy ; that was all ! O dear lady ! this is one of the cases, in which laugh- ter is followed by melancholy : for such is the Jdnd of drama which is now substituted every where for Shak- speare and Racine. You well know, that 1 offer violence to my own feelings in joining these names. But, how- ever meanly I may think of the French serious drama, even in ks mort perfect epecimens ; and with whatever right I may complain of its perpetual falsification of the language, and of the connections and transitions of thought, which Nature has appropriated to states of passion ; still, however, the French tragedies are consistent works of art, and the osffpring of great intellectual power. * ** Slender. I br^jiscd my shin \wUh plajm^ witli sword and daera'er Ibr a dish of stevvod prunes, aiid by my troth T cannot abide the smell of hot meat sincr-." So a^ain ; Emns. '* I will Laake an ead of my diuni?r r there's pippl is nnd cheese yei to ccme.*' I 113 l^'reservuig a fitness in the parts, and a harmony in the whole, they form a nature of their own, though a false nature. Slill tliey excite the minds of the spectators to active ti^onght, to a striving after ideal excellence. The soul is not stupified into mere sensations, hy a worthless sympathy with oar own ordinary sulTerings, or an empty curiosity for the surprising:, undignified hy the language, or the situations w^hich avve and delight tlie imagination. What, (I would ask of the crowd, iiiat press forward to the pantomimic tnigedies and weeping comedies of Kot- zebue and his imitators,) what are you seeking ? Is it comedy ? But in the comedy of Shakespeare and Moliere, the more accurate my knowledge, and the more pro- foundly I think, the greater is the satisfaction that min- gles witii my laughter. For though the qualities which these writers ])ourtray are ludicrous indeed, either from the kind or the excess, and exquisitely ludicrous, yet are they the natural growth of the human mind, and such as, with more or less change in the drapery, i can apply to my own heart, or, at least, to whole classes of my fellow-creatures. Plow often are not the morajist and the metaphysician obliged for the hnppiest illustrations of general truths, and the subordinate laws of human thought and action, to quotations not only from the tragic charac- ters, but equally from the Jacques, Falstaff, and even from the fools and clowns of Shakspeare, or lYom the Miser, Hypochondriast, and Hypocrite, of Moliere! Say not, that I am recommending abstractions : for these class-characteristics, which constitute the instructiveness of a character, are so modified and particularized in each person of the Shaksperian Drama, that life itself docs not excite more distinctly that sense of individuality which belongs to real existence. Paradoxical as it may sound, one of the essential properties of geometry is not less essential to dramatic excellence, and (if 1 may men- tion his name without pedantry to a lady) Aristotle has liccordingly required of the poet an involution of the uni- versal in the individual. The chief diierences are, that in geometry it is the universal truth itself, wl»ich is 'uppermost in the consciousness, in Poetry the individual form in which the truth is clothed. With the Ancients, and not less with the elder dramatists of Engliind and France, both comedy and tragedy were considered as kinds of poetry. They neither sought m comedy to make 141 m hutrh merely, m\:ch less to m^ike us Irjgh by wry fires, accidents of jir^on, slana; phrases for the day, or the clothin;^ of common-plice morals in metaphors, drawn from the shops or mechanic occupations of their characters ; nor did they condescend in tragedy to whee- dle away the applause of the spectators, by representing before th-Mn fic-similies of their own mean selves in all their ex'istinc^ meanness, or to work on their shi2:^ish sympathies by a p.uhos not a whit more respectable than the maudlin tears of drunkenness. Their tragic scenes ^vere meant to affect us indeed, but within the bounds of pleasure, and in union with the activity both of our un- derstanding and imagination. They wished to transport the mind to a sense of its possible greatness, and to im- plant the sperms of that greatness during the temporary' oblivion of the woithless '' thing we are,'' and of the pe- cuhar state, in which each man happens to be ; suspend- ing our individual recollections, and lulling them to sleep amid the music of nobler thoiights. Hold! (methinks 1 hear the spokesman of the crowd reply, and we will listen to him. I am the plaintiff, and be he the defendant.) Defrndant. Hold ! are not our modern sentimental plays tilled with the best Christian morality ? Plaintiff. Yes ! just as much of it, and just that part of it which you can exercise without a single Chris- tian virtue — without a single sacritice that is really pain- ful to you ! — just as much ^sjlatters you, sends you away pleased with your own hearts, and quite reconciled to your vices, which can never be thought very ill of, when they keep such good company, and walk hand in hand with so much compassion and generosity ; adula- tion so loathsome, that you would spit in the man's face who dared offer it to you in a private company, unless 3^ou interpreted it as insulting irony, you appropriate with infinite satisfaction, when you share the garbage with the whole stye, and gobble it ou;t of a common trough. No Caesar must pace your boards — no Antony, no royal Dane, no Orestes, no Andromache ! — D. No ; or as few of them as pos-ible. What has a plain citizen of London, or Hamburg, to do with your kings and queens, and your old school-boy Pagan heroes ? Besides, every body knows the stories : and what curiosity cfkn we fee! -* us F. What, Sir, not for the manner ? not for the delight- ful language of the poet ? not for the situations, the ac- tion and reaction of the passions ? D. You are hasty, Sir ! the only curiosity, we feel, is in the story : and how can we be anxious con- cerning the end of a play, or be surprized by it, when we know how it will turn out ? P. Your pardon, for having interrupted you ! we now understand e^ch other. You seek, then, in a tragedy, which wise men of old held for the highest effort of hu- man genius, the same gratification as that you receive from a new novel, the last German romance, and other dainties of the day, which canhe enjoyed but once. If you carry these feehngs to the sister art of Painting, IVli- chael Angelo's Sestine Chapel, and the Scripture Gallery of Raphael, can expect no favour from you. You know all about them beforehand. ; and are, doubtless, more fa- miliar with the subjects of those paintings than with the tragic tales of the historic or heroic ages. There is a consistency, therefore, in your preference of contempo- rary writers : for the great men of former times, those at least who were deemed great by our ancestors, sought so litle to gratify this kind of curiosity, that they seemed to have regarded the siory in a not much higher light than the painter regards his canvass ; as that o/i, not 6y, which they were to display their appropriate excellence^ No work, resembling a tale or romance, can well show less variety of invention in the incidents, or less anxiety in weaving them toget'^er than the Don Q,uixote of Cer- vantes, Its adiainus feel ihe disposition to go back and re-peruKe some preced'h^" chapter, at least ten times for once th.^t they find ai.y er.^erness to hurry forwards : or open the book on tho^e pHTts which ihey best recollect, ev-n as we visit those frier^ds oftenent whom we love most, and with whose cbar?\crers and actions we are the most intim-diely e« ouDinted. In the divine Ariosto, (as hi?: rountrYmcii call this, their darling poet) I question whether there be e single tale of his own invention, or the ek-ments of which, ^ere not familiar to the readers of*' old romance." I will pass, by the ancient Greeks, who thou2-ht it even necessary to the fable of a tragedy, that its sobstance should be previously known. That there had been at least fifty tragedies with the same title. Vol* !I. 13 116 tvould be one of the motives which determined Sopho- cles and Euripedes, in the choice of Electra as a sub- ject. But Milton— D. Aye Milton, indeed ! but do not Dr. Johnson, and other great men tell us, that nobody now reads Milton but as a task ? P. So much the worse for them, of whom this can be truly said ! Bat why then do you pretend to admire Skakspeare ? The greater part, if not all, of his dramas were, as fiir as the names and the main incidents are con- corned, already stock plays. All the stories, at least, on v.hich they are built, pre-existed in the chronicles, bal- lads, or translations of contemporary or preceding English writers. WI13, I repeat, do you pretend to admire Shakspeare ? Is it, perhaps, that you only prete7id io ad- mire him ? However, as once for all, you have dismissed the v/ell-known events and personages of history, or the epic muse, what have you taken in their stead ? Whom lias your tragic muse armed with her bowl and dagger ? the sentimental muse, I should have said, whom you have seated in the throne of tragedy ? What heroes has she reared on her buskins ? D. O ! our good friends and next-door-neighbours-^- honest tradesmen, valiant tars, high-spirited half-pay offi- cers, philanthropic Jews, virtuous courtezans, tender- liearted braziers, and sentimental rat-catchers I (a little l)luff or so, but all our very generous, tender-hearted characters are a little rude or misanthropic, and all our misanthropes very tender-hearted.) P. But I pray you, friend, in what actions, great or interesting, can such men be engaged ? D. They give away a great deal of money ; find rich dowries for young men and maidens, who have all other good qualities ; they browbeat lords, baronets, and jus- tices of the peace, (for they are as bold as Hector !) — they rescue stage-coaches at the instant they are falling down precipices ; carry away infants in the sight of op- posing armies ; and some of our performers act a muscu- lar able-bodied man to such perfection, that our dramatic poets, who always have the actoi-s in their eye, seldom fail to make their favourite male character as strong as 8umpson. And then they take such prodigious leaps ! ! And what is done on the stage, is more striking even than what is acted. I once remember sfrch a deafening 147 explosion, that I could not hear a word of the play for half an act after it ; and a little real gunpowder being set fire to at the same time, and «melt by all the specta- tors, the naturalness of the l^cene was quite astonishing ! P. But how ban you connect with such men and such Actions that dependence of thousands on the fate of one, Which gives so lofty an interest to the personages of Shakspeare, and the Greek Tragedians ? How can you connect with them that sublimest of all feelings, the power of destiny and the controlling might of heaven, which seems to elevate the characters which sink beneath its irresistible blow ? D. O mere fancies ! We seek and find on the pre- sent stage our own wants and passions, our own vexatious? , losses, and embarrassments. P. It i? your poor own pettyfogging nature then, which you desire to have represented before you ? not human nature in its height and vigour ? But surely you might find the former, with all its jo^'S and sorrows, more con- veniently in your own houses and parishes. D. True ! but here comes a dilference. Fortune is blind, but the poet has his eyes open, and is besides a? complaisant as fortune is capricious. He makes every thing turn out exactly as we would wish it. He gratifies us by representing those as hateful or contemptible whom we hate and wish to despise. P. [aside) That is, he gratifies your envy by libelling* your superiors. D. He makes all those precise moralists, who affect to be better than their neighbours, turn out at last abject h3^pocrites, traitors and hard-liearted villains ; and }our men of spiiit, who take their girl and their glass with equal freedom, prove the true men of honour, and (thai no part of the audience may remain unsatisfied) reform in the last scene, and leave no doubt on the minds of the ladies, that they will make most faithful and excellent husbands : though it does seem a pity, that they should be obliged to get rid of quahties which had made them so interesting! Besides, the poor become rich all at once i and, in the final matrimonial choice', the opulent and high- born themselves are made to confess, that virtue is the ONLY TRUE NOBILITV, AND THAT A LOVELY WOMAN IS A DOWRY OF HERSELF I ! 148 P. Excellent! But you have forgotten those brilhant ilashes of loyalty, those patriotic praises of the king and old England, which, especially if conveyed in a metaphor from the ship or the shop, so often solicit, and so unfail- ingly receive the public plaudit ! I give your prudence credit for the omission. For the whole system of your drama is a moral and intellectual Jaco^nam of the most dangerous kind, and those common-place rants of loyalty are no better than hypocra(5^ in your play-wrights, and your own sympathy with them a gross self-delusion. For the whole secret of dramatic popularity consists with you, in the confusion and subversion of the natural order of things, their causes and their effects ; in the excitement of surprise, by representing the qualities of liberality, refined feeling, and a nice sense of honour, (those things rather, which pass among ycu for such) in persons and in classes of life where experience teaches us least to expect them ; and in rewarding with all the sympathies? that are the dues of virtue, those criminals whom law, reason, and religion, have excommunicated from our esteem ! And now, good night ! Truly ! I might have written this last sheet without having gone to Germany, but I fancied myself taikin<^* to you by your own fireside, and can 3^ou think it a small pleasure to me to forget, now and tlien, that I am not there. Besides, you and rny other good friends have made up your minds to me as 1 am, and from whatever place I write, you will expect that part of my *• Travels'^ will consist of the excursions in my own mind. LETTER III. Ratzeburcj. No little fish thrown back again into the water, no fly unimprisoned from a child's hand, co\jld more buoyantly enjoy its element, than I this clean and peaceful house, with this lovely view of the town, groves, and lake of Ratzeburg, from the window at which 1 am writing. My spirits, certain^, and my health I fancied, were begin- ning to sink under the noise, dirt, and unwholesome air 149 of our Hamburg hotel. I left it on Sunday, Sept. 23(1, with a letter of introduction from the poet Kiopstock, to the Amptman of Ratzeburg. The Amptman received me with kindness, and introduced me to the worthy pas- tor, who agreed to board and lodge me for any length of time not less than a month. The vehicle, in which I took my place, was considerably larger than ^n English stage-coach, to which it bore much the same proportion and rude resemblance, that an elephant's ear does to the human. Its top was composed of naked boards of different colours, and seeming to have been parts of different wainscots. Instead of windows there were lea- thern curtains with a little eye of glass in each : they perfectly answered the purpose of keeping out the pros- pect, and letting in the cold. I could observe little, therefore, but the inns and farm houses at which we stopped. They were all alike, except in size ; one great room, like a barn, with a hay -loft over it, the straw and hay dangling in tufts through the boards which form- ed the ceiling of the room, and the floor of the left. From this room, which is paved like a street, sometimes one, sometimes two smaller ones, are enclosed at one end. These are commonly floored. In the large room the cattle, pigs, poultry, men, women, and children, live in amicable community ; yet there was an appearance of cleanliness and rustic comfort. One of these houses i measured. It was an hundred feet in length. The apart- menls were taken off from one corner. Between these and the stalls there was a small interspace, and here the breadth was forty eight feet, but thirty-two where the stalls were ; of course, the stalls were on each side eight feet in depth. The faces of the cows, &c. were turned towards the room ; indeed, they were in it, so that they had at least the comfort of seeing each other's faces. Stall-feeding is universal in this part of Germimy, a prac- tice concerning which the agriculturalist and the poet are likely to entertain opposite opinions — or at least, to have very different feelings. The wood work of these build- ings on the outside is left unplastered, as in old houses among us, and being painted red and green, it cuts and tasselates the buildings very gayly. From within three miles of Hamburg almost to Molln, w^hich is thirty miles from it, the country, as far as I could see it, was a dead 13^ 150 flat, only Taried by woods. At Mollfi it became more beautiful. I observed a small lake nearly surrounded with groves, and a palace in view, belonging to the king of Great Britain, and inhVoited by the Inspector of the Fo- rests. We were nearly the same time in travelling the thirty-five miles from Hamburg to Ratzeburg, as we had been in ^oing from London to Yarmouth, one hundred and twenty-six miles. The lake of Ratzeburg runs from south to north, about nine miles in length, and varying in breadth from three miles to half a mile. About a mile from the south- ernmost point it is divided into two, of course very un- equal parts, by an island, which being connected by a bridge and a narrow slip of land with the one shore, and by another bridge of immense length with the other shore, forms a complete isthmus. On this island the town of Ratzeburg is built. The pastor's house or vi- carage, together with the Amptman's, Amptschreiber's, and the church, stands near the summit of a hill, which slopes down to the slip of land and the little bridge, from which, through a superb military gate, you step into the island-town of Ratzeburg. This again is itself a little hill, by ascending and descending which 3^ou arrive at the long bridge, and so to the other shore. The water to the south of the town is called the Little Lake, which however^ almost engrosses the beauties of the whole ; the shores being just often enough green and bare to give the proper eiTect to the magnificent groves which occu- py tse greater part of their circumference. From the turnings, windings, and indentations of the shore, the views vary almost every ten steps, and the whole has a sort of majestic beauty, a feminine grandeur. At the north of the Great Lake, and peeping over it, I see the seven church towers of Lu^ec. at the distance of twelve or thirteen miles, yet as distinctly as if they were not three. The only defect in iiie view is, thiit Ratzeburg is built entirely of red bricks, and all the houses roofed with red tiles. To the eye, therefore, it presents a clump of brick-dust red. Yet this evening, Oct. 10th. twenty minutes past five, I saw the town perfectly beau- tiful, and the whole softened down into complete keeping, if I may borrow a term from the painters. The sky over Ratzeburg and all the east, was a pore evening, blue, while over the west it was covered with light 151 sandy clo'ads. Hence, a deep reel light spread over the whole prospect, in undisturbed harmonj/ with the red town, the brown-red woods, and the yeilow-red reeds on the skirts of the lake. Two or three bor.ts, with single persons paddling them, floated up and down in the rich light, which not only was itself in harmony with all, but brought all into harmony. I should have told you that I went back to Hamburg on Thursday (Sept. 27th) to take leave of my {nend^ who travels southward, and returned hither on the Men- day following. From Empfelde, a village halfway from Ratzeburg, 1 walked to Hamburg through deep sandy roads and a dreary flat : the soil every where white, hungry, and excessively pulverized ; but the approach to the city is pleasing. Light cool country houses, wiiich 3'ou can look through and see the gardens behind them, with arbours and trellis work, and thick vegetable walls, and trees in cloisters and piazzas, each house with neat rails before it, and green seats within the rails. Every object, whether the gror»'th of nature or the work of man, was neat and artificial. It pleased me far better, than if the houses and gardens, and pleasure fields, had been in a nobler taste ; for this nobler taste would have been mere apery. The busy, anxious, money-loving merchant of Hamburg could only have adopted, he could not have enjoyed the simplicity of nature. The mind begins to love nature by imitating human conveniencies in nature ; but this is a step in intellect, though a lovv^ one — and were it not so, yet all around me spoke of inno- cent enjoyment and sensitive comforts, and I entered with unscrupulous sympathy into the enjoyments and comforts even of the busy, anxious, money-loving mer- chants of Hamburg. In this charitable and catholic mood I reached the vast ramparts of the city. These are huge green cushions, one rising above the other, with trees growing in the interspaces, pledges and symbols of a long peace. Of my return I have nothing worth com- municating, except that I took extra post, which answers to posting in England. These north German post-chaises are uncovered wicker carts. An English dust-cart is a piece of finery, a chef d'oeuvre of mechanism, compa- red with them ; and the horses ! a savage might use their ribs instead of his fingers for a aumeration table. Wber- 152 ever we stopped tiis postilion fed his cattle with the brown lye bread of vviiich he eat himself, all breakfast- ing together, only the horses had no gin to their water, and the postillion no water to his gin. Now and hence- forward for subjects of more interest to you, and to the objects in search of which I left you : namely, the hterati and literature of Germany. Believe me, 1 walked with an impression of awe on my spirits, as VV and myself accompanied Mr. Klop- stock to the house of his brother, the poet, which stands about a quarter of a mile from the city gate. It is one of a row of little common-place summer-houses, (for so they looked) with four or five rows of young meagre elm trees before the windows, beyond which is a green, and then a dead llat, intersected with several roads. Whatever beauty (thought 1) may be before the poet's eyes at present, it must certiiinly be purely of his own creation. We waited a few minutes in a neat little par- lour, ornamented w^ith the iigures of two of the muses and with prints, the subjects of which were from Klop- stock's odes. The poet entered ; I was much disappoint- ed in his countenance, and recognized in it no likeness to the bust. There was no comprehension in the fore- head, no weight over the eye-brcvs, no expression of peculiarity, moral or intellectual, on the eyes, nomassive- ness in the geneial countenance. He is, if any thing, rather below the middle size. He wore Ycry large half- boots which his legs filled, so fearfully were they swoln. However, though neither \V— - — nor myself could dis- cover any indications of sublimity or enthusiasm ^\n his physiognomy, we were both equally impressed wjth his liveliness, and his kind and ready courtesy. He talked in French with my friend, and with difficulty spoke a few sentences to me in English. His enunciation was not in the least aiTected by the entire want of his upper teeth. The conversation began on his part by the expression of his rapture at the surrender of the detachment of French troops under General Humbert. Their proceedings in Ireland with regard to the committee which they had appointed, w^th the rest of their organizing system, seemed to have given the poet great entertfdnment. He then declared his sanguine belief in Nelson's victory, and anticipated its conlirmation witb a keen and trium- 153 phant pleasure. His words, tones, looks, implied ibe most vehement Anti-Gailicanism. The suhject changed to literature, and I inquired in Latia concerning the History of German Poetry and the elder German Poets. To my great astonishment he confessed, that he knew very little on the suhject. He had indeed occasionally read one or two of their elder writers, but not so as to enable him to speak of their merits. Professor Ebehng-, he said, would probably give me every information of this kind: the subject had not particularly excited his curiosity. He then talked of Milton and Glover, and thought Glover's blank verse superior to Milton's. W — and myself expressed our surprise : and my fri-dud ga^e his definition and notion of harmonious verse, that it consisted (the Enghsh iambic blank verse above all) in the apt arrangement of pauses, and cadences, an^ the sweep of whole paragraphs, -*' with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out," and not in the even flow, much less in the prominence or antithetic vigour of single lines, which were indeed inju- rious to the total effect, except where the j were introduced for some specific purpose. Klopstock assented, and said that he meant to confine Glover's superiority to single lines. He told us that he had read Miiton, in a prose trans- lation, when he was fourteen,* I understood him thus myself, and W interpreted Kiopstock's French as I had already construed it. He appeared to know \eTy little of Milton — or indeed of our poets in general. He spoke with great indignation of the English prose transla- tion of his Messiah. All the translations had been bad, very bad — but the English was??o translation—there were pages on pages not in the ori*:in3i ; — and half tl^e origi- nal was not to be found in the translation. W-^ told him that I intended to translate a (ew of his odes as spe- cimens of German lyrics — he then said to me in English, * This was accidentally confirmed to me by an old German g-entlemaa at Helmstadt, who had been Klopstock's school and bcd-feiiow^ Among otiier boyish anecdotes, he related that the 3 oun^ poet set a particular Value on a translation of the Paradise Lost, and always slept with it ua- (ier his pillow. 154 '^ I wish you would render into Ensjlish some select pas- sages of the Messiah, and revenge me of your country- man !" It was the liveliest thing which he produced in the whole conversation. He told us, that his first ode was fifty years older than his last, J looked at him with much emotion — I considered him as the venerable father of German poetry ; as a good man ; as a Christian ; se- venty-four years old ; with legs enormously swolii \ yet active, lively, cheerful, and kind, and communicative. My eyes felt as if a tear were swelling into them. In the portrait of Lessing there was a toupee perriwig, which enormously injured the effect of his physiognomy — Klopstock wore the same, powdered and frizzled. By the bye, old men ought never to wear powder — the con- trast between a large snow-white wig and the colour of an old man's skin is disgusting, and wrinkles in such a neighbourhood appear only channels for dirt. It is an honour to poets and great men that you think of them as parts of nature ; and any thing of trick and fashioa wounds you in them as much as when you see venerable yews clipped into miserable peacocks. The author of the Messiah should have worn his own grey hair. His •powder and perriwig were to the eye what Mr. Virgil would be to the ear. Klopstock dwelt much on the superior power which the German language possessed of concentrating mean- ing. He said, he had often translated parts of Homer and Virgil, line by line, and a German line proved al- ways sufficient for a Greek or Latin one. In English you cannot do this. I answered, that in English we could commonly render one Greek heroic line in a line and a half of our common heroic metre, and I, conjectured that ti»rs line and a half would be found to contain no more syllables than one German or Greek hexameter. He did not understand me ;* and I who wished to hear his opinions, not to correct them, vi-xs glad that he did not. * Klopslock's ohsevvation was pa rtiy true and partly erroneous. In the literal sense of his vvord;s, and if wa confuie the coniparison to the average of space required fov the expression of the sF.me thought in the two languar^'es, it is erroneous. I havp translated some German hexarn- T'ters into English hexameters, and find, that on tlie avera-'e, three lines Endish will express four iinrsG-^rrnan. Tlie reason is evident : our lan- guage abounds in moriosvllalu r^ and dissyliahles. The German, not less ihau the Greek, h a polysy^i'^*-''- l^fiS^ai^xi. But ia dnotlicr point of view 155 We now took onr leave. At the beginning of the French Revolution Kh:>pstock wrote odes of con9:at'j]a- tion. He received some honorary presents from the French Repubhc (a golden crown 1 believe) and, like our Priestly, was invited to a seat in the le^^islatnre, which he declined. But when French liberty metamor- phosed herself into a fury, he sent back these presents with a palinodia, declaring his abhorrence of their pro- ceedings ; and since then he has been perhaps more than enough an Anti-Gallican. I mean, that in his ji^st con- tempt and detestation of the crimes and follies of the Re- Tolutionists, he suffers himself to forget that the revolu- tion itself is a process of the Divine Providence ; and that as the folly of men is the wisdom of God, so are their ini- quities instruments of his goodness. From Klopstock's house we walked to the ramparts, discoursing together on the poet and his conversation, till our attention was diverted to the beauty and singularity of the sunset r'.nd its effects on the objects round us. There were woods €ne remark was not without foundation. For the German, possessing the same unlimited privilegp of forming- compounds, both with preposition?, and with epithets as l:he Greek, it can express the richest single Greek "word in a singhi German one, and is tlius freed from tiie necessity of weak or ungraceful paraphrases. I will content myself with one exam- ple at present, viz. the use of the prefixed particles, \er, ser, mf, andiveg: thus, reissen to rend, verreisscn to rend away, zerreissen to rend to pieces, erdrtissen to rend off or out of a thijig-, in the actve ScPse : or schmelzen to melt — ver, zer, ent, schmelzen — find in like manner throug:h all the verbs neuter and active. If you consider only how much we should feel the lo*s of the prefix be, as in bedvopt, besprinkle, besot, especially in our poetical lan^ua'fre, and then think that this sarno mode of composi- tion IS carried through all their simple and compound prepositions, and many of their adverbs; and that with most of these the Germans liave the same privileo-e as we have of dividing- them from the verb a.nd placing; them at the end of the sentence : you will have no difficulty in compre- hending the reality and the cause of this superior power in the German of condcnt^inE: meaning, in which its ^rreat poet exulted. It is imoossible to read half a dozen pages of VVieland without perceiving that In this re- sp.^ct the German has no rival but the Greek. And 3 e t I seem to feel, tnit concentration or condensation is not the happiest'mode of express- ing this f xcellence, which seemri to consist not so much in. the less time requir<'d for conveying an impression, as in the unity and si multr-nt out- ness with which the impression is conveyed. It tends to Hiakc their h'Kvuapre more picturesque : it dspicfures ilnages better. We have ob- taii.f d this power in part by our compound verbs der ved from the Latin; and the sense of its great ('ffect no doubt induced our Milton both to the. use and the abuse of Latin derivatives. But still thes3 prr fixed particles, conveying no sepantte or separable meaning to the mxeie Engl isn reo.de r, cannot possibly act on the mind with the force or lik^f iiness of an original and ho!nogene called a sect, and luckily till the appearance of Kant, about Mteen years ago, Germany had not been pestered by any sect of philosophers whatsoever, but that each maa had se- rei parately pursued his inquiries uncontrolled by the dogv mas of a Master. Kant had appeared ambitious to be the founder of a sect that he had succeeded, but that the Germans were now coming to their senses again. That Nicolai and Engel had in different ways contributed to disenchant the nation ; but, above all, the incomprehensi- biUty of the philosopher and his philosophy. He seemed pleased to hear, that as yet Kant's doctrines had not met with any admirers in England — did not doubt but that we had too much wisdom to be duped by a writer, who set at defiance the common sense and common understandings of men. We talked of tragedy. He seemed to rate high- ly, the power of exciting tears. I said that nothing w^as more easy than to deluge an audience, that it was done every day by the meanest writers." I must remind you, my friend, first, that these notes, &c. are not intended as specimens of Klopstock's intellec- tual power, or even *' colloquial prowessy^ to judge of which, by an pccidental conversation, and this with strangers, and those too foreigners, would be not only unreasonable, but calumnious. Secondly, I attribute lit- tle other interest to the remarks, than what is deriv- ed from the celebrity of the person who made them. Lastly, if you ask me whether I have read the Messiah, and what I think of it ? 1 answer — as yet the first four books only ; and as to my opinion (the reasons of which, hereafter,) you may guess it, from what I could not help muttering to myself, v/hen the good pastor this morning told me, that Klopstock was the German Milton '' a very German Milton indeed I ! ! ^Heaven preserve you, and eSr T. COLCRIDGK U^ 162 CHAPTER XXIII. Quid (^lad prapfafione prapmunierim libellum, oiia conor omiiern of- fendiculi iinsum praecidere? Neque quicquam addubito, quin ea candidis omnibus faciat «;atis. Quid autem facias istis, qui vel ob ingeiiii ptrtina- ciarr sibi satisfieri nolent, vel stiipidiores sint quani ut satisfactioiiem intel- !ig:a!it? Nam quern ad modiim J^inionides dixit, Thessalos hebetiores esse quam ut posbint a se decipi, ita quondam videas stupidiores quam ut placa- ri queant. Adh'dpc, non mirumest, invenire quod calumnietur qui iiinil ali- ud quferit nisi quod calumaietur. Erasmus, ad Dorpium Teologum. In the rifacciamento of The Friend, I have inserted extracts from the Condones ad Populum, printed, though scarcely pubhshed, in the year 1795, in the very heat and height of my antiministerial enthusiam : these in proof that my principles of politics have sustained no change. In the present chapter, I have annexed to my Letters from Germany, with particular reference to that which contains a disquisition on the modern drama, a critique on the Tragedy of Bertram, written within the last twelve months : in proof, that I have been as falsely charged with any fickleness in my principles of taste, — The letter was written to a friend ; and the apparent ab- ruptness with which it begins, is owing to the omission of the introductory sentences. You remember,- my dear Sir, that Mr. Whitbread^ shortly before his death, proposed to the assembly sub- scribers of Drury-Lane Theatre, that the concern .should be farmed to some responsible individual under certain conditions and limitations ; and that his proposal was re* jected, not without indignation, as subversive of the main object, for the attainment of which the enlightened and patriotic assemblage of philo-dramatists had been induced to risk their subscriptions. Now, this object was avowed to be no less than the redemption of the British. stage, not only from horses, dogs, elephants, and the like zoological rarities, but also from the more pernicious bar- barisms and Kotzebuisms in morals and taste. Drury- Lane was to be restored to its furmer classical renown ; Shakspeare, Johnson, and Otway, with the expurgated 163 irif'Ses of Vanburgli, Congreve, and Wycherly, were; tt> ha re-inaugurated in their rightful dominion over British audiences ; and the Herculean process was to commence by exterminating the speaking monsters imported from' the banks of the Danube, compared with which their mute relations, the emigrants from Exeter 'Change, and Polito (late Pidcock's) show-carts, were tame and inof- fensive. Could an heroic project, af once so refined and so arduous, be consistently entrusted to, could its success be rationally expected from a mercenary manager, at whose critical quarantine the lucri bonus ordor would conciliate a bill of health to the plague in pei^son ? No T As the work proposed, such must be the work masters. Rank, fortune, liberal education, and (their natural ac- companiments, or consequences,) critical discernment,, delicate tact, disinterestedness, unsuspected morals, no- torious patriotism, and tried Maca naship, these were the recommendations that influenced the votes of the proprf- tdary subscribers of Drury-Lane Theatre, these the mo- tives that occasioned the election of its Supieme Com-^ niitlee of Management. This circumstance alone would have excited a strong interest in the public mind, re- specting the first production of the Tragic Muse which had been announced under such auspices, and had pai:sed the ordeal of such judgments ; and the Tragedy, oq which you have requested my judgment, was the work on which the great expectations, justified by so many causes, were doomed at length to settle. But before 1 enter on the examinatfon of Bertram, or the Castle of St. Aldehrand^ 1 shall interpose a few words on the phrase German Drama ^ which 1 hold to be alto- gether a misnomer. At the time of Lessing, the Gor- man stage, such as it was, appears to have been a flat and servile copy of the French. It was Lessing who first in- troduced the name and the works of Shakspeare to the admiration of the Germans ; and \ should not, perhaps, go too far, if I add, that it was Lessing who first proved to all thinking men, even to Shakspeare's own country- men, tlie true nature of his apparent irregularities^ These, he demonstrated were deviations only from the Accidents of the Greek Tragedy ; an(i from such acci- dents as hung a heavy weight on the wings of the Greek Poets, and narrowed their flight within the limits of what 164 ne may call the Heroic Opera^ He proved, that in all i\w. essentials of art, no less than in the truth of nature, Ihe plays of S)».akspeare were incomparably more coin- cident with the principles of Aristotle, than the produc- tions of Corneille and Racine, notwithstanding the boast- ed regularity ot the latter. Under these convictions, were Lessing's own dramatic works composed. Their deficiency is in de[)th and in imagination ; their excel- lence is in the construction of the plot, the good sense of the sentin)ents, the sobriety of the morals, and the high polish of the diction and dialogue. In short, his dramas are the very antipodes of all those which it has been the fashion, of late years, at once to abuse and to enjoy under the name of tiie German Drama. Of this latter, Schiller's Robbers was the earliest specimen; the first fruits of his youth, (I had almost said of his boy- hood.) aL'd, as such, the pledge and promise of no ordi- nary genius. Only as such^ did the maturer judgment of the author tolerate the play. During his whole life he expressed himself concerning this production, with more than needful aspeiity, as a monster not less oifeneive to good taste than to sound morals ; and, in his latter years, his indignation at the unwonted popularity of the Rob- bers^ seduced him into contrary extremes, viz. a studied feebleness of interest, (as far as the interest was to be derived from incidents and the excitement of curiosity ;) a diction elaborately metrical ; the affectation of rhymes ; and the pedantry of the chorus. But to understand the true character of the Robbers, and of the countless imi- tations which were its spawn, I must inform you, or, at least, call to your recollection, that about that time, and for some years before it, three of the most popular books In the German language, were, the translations of Young's JS'ighi Thoughts, Hcrvey's Meditations, and Richardcon's Clarissa Harlozi-e. Now, we have only to combine the bloated style and peculiar rhythm of Hervey, v.hich is poetic only on account of its utter untitness for prose, and might a*! appropriately be called prosaic, irom its utler untitness for poetry ; we have only, I repeat, to combine ihese Herveyisms with the strained thoughts, the figura- tive metaphysics and solemn epigrams of Young on the one' hand ; and with the loaded sensibility, the minute detail, the morbid consciousness- of every thought and 165 feeling in the whole flux and reflux of the mind, in short, the self-involuti«>n and dreamlike conlinuity of Richard- son on the other hand ; and then, to add the horrific rn- cidents, and mysterious villains — (geniuses of supernatu- ral intellect, if you will take the author's words for it, but on a level with the meanest rufiSans of the condemned ceils, if we are to judge by their actions and contri- vances) — to add the ruined castles, the dungeons, the trap-doors, the skeletons, the flesh-and-blood ghosts, and the perpetual moon-shine of a modern author, (themselves the literary brocrd of the Castle of Otran- to, the translations of which, with the imitations and improvements aforesaid, were about that time beginning to make as much noise in Germany as their originals were making in England,) — and as the compound oi' these ingredients duly mixed, you v»'i!l recognise the so called German Drama. The Olla Podrida thus cooked up, was denounced, by the best critics in Germany, as the mere cramps of weakness, and orgasms of a sickly imagination, on the part of the author, and the lowest provocation of torpid feeling on that of the readers. The old blunder, however, concerning the irregularity and wildness of Shakspeare, in which the German did but echo the French, who again were but the echoes of eur own critics, was still in vogue, and Shakspeare was quoted as authority for the most anti Shakspearean Dra- ma. We have, indeed, two poets who wrote as one, near the age of Shakspeare, to whom, (as the worst cha- racteristic of their writings,) the Coryphaeus of the pre- sent Drama may challenge the honour of being a poor relation, or impoverished descendant. For if we would charitably consent to forget the comic humour, the vvit, the felicities of style, in other words, a// the poetry, and nine- tenths of all the genius of Beaumont and Fletcher, that which would remain becomes a Kotzebue. The so-called Gennan Drama, therelbre, is English in its origiri, English in its materials^ and English by re- adoption ; and till we can prove that Kotzebue, or any of the whole breed of Kotzebues, whether dramatists or romantic writers, or writers of romantic dramas, were ever admitted to any other shelf in the libraries of v/ell» educated Germans thnn were occupied by their originals^^ and apes' apes in tlieir mother country, we shouM sub- 166 mit to carry onr own brat on our o\x'n shoulders ; or, la- Xher, consider it as a lack-grace returned from transporta- tion with such improvements only in growth and manners a? young transported co vicls usually come home with. I know nothing that contributes more to a clear msight into the true nature of any literary phenomenon, than the comparison of it with some elder production-, the like- ness of which is striking, yet only apparent; while the difference is real. In the present case this opportunity is furnished us by the old Spanish play, ^u\\\\(^^\ Atheista FulmiJiato, formerly, and perhaps still, acted in the churches and monasteries of Spain, and which, under va- rious names, {Don Juan, the Libertine, ».^'C.,) has had its day of favour in every country throughout Europe. A popularity so extensive, and of a work so grotesque and extravagant, claims and merits philosophical attention and investigation. The lirst point to be noticed is, that the play is throughout imaginative. Nothing of it belongs lo the real world but the nan)esof the places and persons. The comic parts equally with the tragic ; the living, equally with the defunct characters, are creatures of the brain ; as little amenable to the rules ot' ordinary proba- bility zs the Satan of Paradise Lost, or the Caliban of the Tempest, and, therefore, to be understood and judged of as impersonat^^d abstractions Rank, fortune, wit, ta- lent, acquired knowldge, and liberal accomplishments, with beauty of person, vigorous health, and constitution- al hardihood — all these advantages, elevated by the ha- bits and syii^pathies of noble birth and national charac- ter, are supposed to have combined in Don Juan, so as to give him the means ot carrying into all lis practical con- sequences the doctrine of a godless nature as the sole ground and efficient cause not only of all things, events, and appearances, but, likewise, of all our thoughts sen- sations, impulses, and actions. Obedience to nature is the only virtue ; the gratification of the passions and ap- petites her only dictate ; each individual's self-will the sole organ through which nature utters her commands^ and " Self-contradiction is the only wrong ! For, by tJie laws of spirit, in the right Is every individual character That acts in strict consistence with itself^*'' 167 That speculative opinions, bowc^ver impious and daring they may be, are not always followed by correspondent conduct, is most true, as well as that they can scarcely, in any instance, be systematically realized, on account of their unsuitabieness to human nature and to the institu- tions of society. It can be hell, only where it is all hell ; and a separate world of devils is necessary for the exis- tence of any one complete devil. But, on the other hand, it is no less clear, nor, with the biography ot Car- rier and his fellow atheists before us, can it be denied, without wilful blindness, that the (so called) syste.a of nature^ (i. e. materialism, with the utter rejection of mo- ral responsibility, of a present providence, and ol both present and future retribution,) may influence the cha- racters and actions of individuals, and even of commu- nities, to a degree that almost does away the distinction between men and devils, and will make the page of the future historian resemble the narration of a madman's dreams. It is not the wickedness o( Don Juan, therefore, which constitutes the character an abstraction, and re- moves it from the rules of probability ; but the rapid succession of the correspondent acts and incidents, his intellectual superiority, and the splendid accumulation of his gifts and desirable qualities, as co-existent with entire wickedness in one and the sam^ person. But this, likewise, is the very circumstance which gives to this strange play its charm and universal interest. Don Juan is, from beginning to end, an intelligible character, as much so as the Satan of Milton. The poet asks only of the reader, wdiat as a poet he is privileged to ask, viz , that sort of negative faith in the existence of such a bein^^, which w^e willingly give to productions professedly ideal^ and a disposition to the same state of feeling as that with which we contemplate the idealized figures of the Apollo Belvidere, and the Farnese Hercules. What the lier- cules is to the eye in corporeal strength, Don Juan is to the mind in strength of character The ideal consiBts in the happy balance of the generic with the individual. The former makes the character representative and sym- bolical, therefore instructive ; because, mutatis mutandis, it is applicable to whole classes of men. The latter gives its living interest ; for nothing lives or is real^ but as definite and individual. To understand this compiiite- IG8 ly, the render need only recollect the specific state of his feelings, when in lookincr at a piclijre of ^he historic, (more propevly of t])e poetic or heroic,) class, he objects to a particular figure a? being too much of 2i portrait; and this interruption of his complacency he feels without the least reference to, or the least acquaintance with, :\wy person in real life whom he might recognise in this figure. It is enough that such a figure is not ideal ; and, therefore, not idc) In fine, the character oi Don John consists in the union of everything desirable to human nature, as means, and which therefore by the well-known law of association be- come at length desirable on their own account, and iiv their own dignity they are here displayed, as being em- ployed to ends so wwhuman, that in the efiect they ap- pear almost as means without an end. The ingredients too are mixed in the happiest proportion, so as to uphold and relieve each other — more especially in that constant interpoise of wit, gayety, and social generosity, which prevents the criminal, even in his nf>ost atrocious moments, from sinking into the mere ruffian, as far at least, as our imagination sits in judgment Above all, the fine suffu- sion through the whole, with the characteristic manners and feelinjis of a highly bred gentleman gives life to the drama. Thus having invited the staUie-ghost of the ;jo- vernor whom he had murdered, to supper, which invita- tion the marble ghost acceptetl by a nod of the head, Don John has prepared a banquet. *' D. JoHN\ — Some wine, sirrah ! Here's to Don Pedro's ghost— he should have been welcome." 172 ** D. Lop. — The rascal is afraid of you after death.*' {One knocks har'd at the door,) " D. John. — {to the servant) --^i^e and do your duty." *' Serv. — Oh the devil, the devil !" {marble ghost enters.) *' D. John.— Ha ! 'tis the g-host ! Let's rise and receive him ! Gome Governor you are welcome, sit there ; if we had thought you would have come, we would have staid for you. * * if- if- * -H- i(- " -k- * Here Governor, your health ! Friends put it about ! Here's ex- cellent meat, taste of this rag-out. Come, I'll help you, come eat and let old quarrels be fcirji^otten." {The g'host threatens him with vengeance,) " D. John. — We are too much confirmed— -curse on this drj' discourse. Come here's to your mistress ; you had one when yon were living- : not forgetting your sweet sister." {devils enter.) " D. John. — Are these some of your retinue ? Devils say you ? I'm sorry I have no burnt brandy to treat 'era with ; that's drink fit for devils." &c. Nor is the s^ene from which we quote interesting in dramatic probability alone ; it is susceptible likewise of a sound moral ; of a moral that has more than common claims on the notice of a too numerous class, who are ready to receive the qualities of gentlemanly courage, and scrupulous honour (in all the recognized laws of honour,) as the substitutes of virtue, instead ot its orna' ments. This, indeed, is the moral value of the play at large, and that which places it at a world's distance from the spirit of modern jacobinism The latter introduces to us clumsy copies of these showy instrumental quali- ties, in order to reconcile us to vice and want of princi- ple ; while the Atheista Fulminato presents an exquisite portraiture of the same qualities, in all their gloss and glow ; but presents them for the sole purpose of display- ing their hollowness, and in order to put us on our guard by demonstrating their utter indifference to vice and vir- tue, whenever these and the like accomplishments are contemplated for themselves alone. Eighteen years ago 1 observed, that the whole secret of the modern Jacobinical drama, (which, and not the German, is its appropriate designation,) and of all its popularity, consists in the confusion and subversion of the natural order of things in their causes and efifects : name- ly, in the excitement of surprise by representing the 173 fjualJties of liberality, refined feeling, and a nice sense of honour (those things rather which pass amongst us for such) in persons and in classes where experience teaches us least to expect them ; and by rewardincj with all the sympathies which are the due of virtue, those criminals whom law, reason, and religion have excommunicated from our esteem. This of itself would lead me back to Bertram^ or the Castle of St, Mdobrand ; but, in my osvn mind, this tra- gedy was brought into connexion with the Libertine^ (Shad well's adaptation of the Atheista Fuiminato to the English stage in the reign of Charles the Second,) by the fact, that our modern drama is (aken, in the substance of it, from the first scene of the third act of the Libertine. But with what palpable superiority of judgment in the original ! Earth and hell, men and spirits, are up in arms against Don John : the two former acts cf the play have not only prepared us for the supernatural, but accustomed us to the prodigious. It is, therefore, neither more nor less than we anticipate when the captain exclaims, " In all the dangers 1 have been, such horrors 1 never knew. I am quite unmanned ;" and when the hermit says, *' that he had beheld the ocean in wildest rage, yet ne'er before saw a storm so dreadful, such horrid flashes oi lightning, and such claps of thunder, were never in my remem- brance." And Don John^s bursts of startling impiety is equally intelligible in its motive, as dramatic in its effect. But what is there to accDunt for the prodigy of the tempest at BertranCs shipwreck ? It is a mere supernatu- ral effect without even a bint of any supernatural agency; a prodigy without any circumstance mentioned that is prodigious; and a miracle introduced without a ground, and ending without a result. Every event and every scene of the play might have taken place as well if jBer- iram and his vessel had been driven in by a common hard gale, or from want of provisions. The first act would have indeed lost its greatest and most sonorous picture ; a scene for the sake of a scene, without a w^ord spoken ; as suck, thei^efore^ (a rarity without a precedent) we must take it, and be thankful ! In the opinion of not a few, it was, in every sense of the word, the best scene in the play. I am quite certain it was the most innocent : and the steady, quiet uprightness of the flame of the 15* 174 wax-candles which the monks held over the roaring bil- lows amid the storm of wind and rain, was really mira- culous. The Sicilian sea coast : a convent of monks : night : a most portentous, unearthly storm : a vessel is wreck- ed : contrary to all human expectation, one man saves himself by his prodijsjious powers as a swimmer, aided by the peculiarity of his destination — Prior " All, all did perish — 1st Monk — Change, change those drenched weeds-— Pfior — I wist not of thenn — every soul did perish — Enter 3d Monk hastily. 3d Monk — No, there was one did battle with the storm With careless desperate force ; full many times His life was won and lost, as tho' he recked not — Ts'o hand did aid him, and he aided none — Alone he breasted the broad wave, alone That man was saved." Well ! This man is led in by the monks, supposed drip- ping wet, and to very natural inquiries he either remains silent, or giVes most brief and surly answers, and after three or four of these half-line courtesies, '* dashing off the monks''' who had saved him, he exclaims in the true sublimity of our modern misanthropic heroism — ** Off! ye are men — there's poison in your touch. But I must >ield, for this {what?) hath left me strengthless." . So end the three first scenes. In the next, (the Castle of St Aldobrand,) we find the servants there equally fright- ened V ith this unearthly storm, though wherein it dif- fered from other violent storms we are not told, except 'that Hugo informs us, page 9 — piet. — " Hugo, well met. Does e'en thy age bear Memor> of so terrible a storm ? H,ioo — They have been frequent lately. Pic ' — They are ever so in Siciiy, Hugo — So it is said. But storms when I was young V/ould still pass o'er like Nature's fitful fevers. And rendered all more wholesome. ISow" their rage Sent thus unsea'-:onab!e and profitless Speaks like threats of heaven.'^ 175 A most perplexing theory of Siciiian storms is this of oKl Hugo! and, what is very remarkable, not apparently founded on any great familiarity of his own uith this troublesome article. For when Pietro asserts the "• ever QHore frequency'^ of tempests in Sicily, the old man pro- fesseo to know nothing more of the fact, but by hearsay. *' So it is said." — But why he assumed this storm to be unseasonable, and on what he grounded his prophecy, (for the storm is still in full furjs) that it would be profitless, and without the physical powers common to all other vio- lent sea- winds in purifying the atmosphere, we are left in the dark ; as well concerning the particular points in which he knew it (during its continuance) to differ from those that he had been acquainted with in his youth. We are at length introduced to the Lady imogine, who, we learn, had not rested '* through^'' the night, not on account of the tempest, for " Lon^ 'ere the storm arose, her restless gestures Forbade all hope to see her blest with sleep." Sitting at a table, and looking at a portrait, she informs us — First, that portrait-painters imy make a portrait from memory — *' The limner's art may trace the absent feature." For surely these words could never mean, that a painter may have a person sit to him, who afterwards may leave the room or perhaps the country ? Second, that a portrait- painter can enable a mourning lady to possess a good likeness of her absent lover, but that the portrait-painter cannot, and who shall — " Kestore the scenes in which Ibey met and parted ?" The natural answer would have been — Why, the scene- painter to be sure ! But this unreasonable lady requires in addition sundry things to be painted that have neithi^i* lines nor colours — " The thoughts, the recollections sweet and bitter Or the Eiysian dreams of lovers when they loved.'* 1 /o VVIiich l;i?i; sentGnce must be supposed to mean ; tthen they zicre present, and m.iking- love la each othe**. — Then, if this portrait couKI speak, U would '' acquit the faith of v/omankind." How ? Ihxd she remained constant ? No, she has been married to another nnan, v/hose wife she now ii. How then ? Why, that in spite of her marriage vow, she had continued to yearn and crave for her for- mer lover — '' This has her body, that her mind : Which has ihe better bargain r" The lover, however, was not contented with this pre- cious arrangement, as we shall soon find. The lady pro- ceeds to inform u-s, that during the many years of their separation, there have happened in the diiferent parts of the world, a nuQiber of'* siicJi things''^ ; even sucli, as in a course of years always have, and, till the millennium, doubtless always will happ€4^ somewhere or other. Yet tiiis passage, both in langnage ;3nd in metre, is perhaps among the best parts of the Play. The Lady's loved companion and most esteemed attendant, Clotilda, noiv enters and explains this love and esteem by proving her- self a most passive and dispassionate listener, as well as a brief and lucky querist, who asks by c/mrice, questions that we should have thought made for the very sake of the answers. In short, she very much reminds us of those puppet-heroines, for whom the showman contrives to dialogue, w^ithout any skill in ventriloquism. This, notwithstanding, is the best scene in the Play, and though crowded with solecisms, corrupt diction, and offences against metre, would possess merits sufficient to out- weigh them, if we could suspend the moral sense during the perusal. It tells well and passionately the prelimi- nary circumstances, and thus overcomes the main diffi- culty of most first acts, viz. that of retrospective narra- tion. It tells us of her having been honourably addressed by a noble youth, of rank and fortune vastly superior to her own : of their mutual love, heightened on her part by- gratitude ; of his loss of his sovereign's favour ; his disgrace, attainder and llight ; that he (thus degraded) sank into a vile ruffian, the chieftain of a murderous banditti ; and that from the habitual indulgence of the most reprobate ha- 177 i)its and ferocious passions, he had become so changed, oven in his appearance and feaiures, *' That she who bore him had recoiled from him, Nor kiio'.vn the alien visage of her ciiiid ; Yetslili she (Imr^ginc) lov'd him." She is compelled by the silent entreaties gi a father, perishing with " bitter shumeful want on the cold earth," to give her hand, with a heart thns irrevocably pre-en- gaged, to Lord Aldobrand, the enemy of her lover, even to the very man who had baiBed his ambitious schemes, and was, at the present time, entrusted with the execution of the sentence of death which had been passed on Ber- tram. Now, the proof of *' woman's love," so industri- ously held forth for the sympathy, if not the esteem of the audience, consists in this, that though Bertram had become a robber and a murderer by trade, a ruffian in manners, yea, with form and features at which h\^ orvn mother co\\\d not but " recoil," yet she, (Lady Imogine,) '' the wife ctf a most noble, honoured Lord," estimable as a man, exemplary and affectionate as a husband, and the fond father of her only child — that she, notwithstanding all this, striking her heart, dares to say to it — " But thou art Bertram's still, and Bertram's ever." A monk now enters, and entreats in his Prior's name for the wonted hospitaiitj/, and *' free noble usage,^' of the Castle of St. Aldobrand for some wretched ship-wrecked souis, and from this we learn, for the first time, to our infinite surprise, that notwithstanding the supernatural- ness of the storm aforesaid, not only Bertram, but the vv^hole of his gang, had been saved, by what means we are left to conjecture, and can only conclude that they had all the same desperate swimming pov/ers, and the same saving destiny as the hero, Bertram himself. So ends the first act, and with it the tale of the events, both those of which the Tragedy be£,ins, and those which had occurred previous to the date of its Commencement. The second disphtys Bertram in disturbed sleep, which the Prior, who hanii:s over him, prefers calhng a " starting trance," and with a strained voice, that would have 178 awakened one of the seven sleepers, observes to the au- dience — •< HoT7 the lip works' How the hare teeth do grind ! And beaded drops course down his writhen brow !"* The dramatic effect of which passage we not only con- cede to the admirers of this Tragedy, bat acknowledge the further advantage of preparing the audience for the most surprising series of wry faces, proflated mouths, and lunatic gestures that were ever '* launched''' on an audi- ence to " sear the sense,''''] Prior — " I will awake him from this horrid trance^ This is no natural sleep ! Ho, vjakc thee^ stranger.*' This is rather a whimsical application of the verb re- tiex we must confess, though we remember a similar transfer of the agent to the patient in a manuscript Tragedy, in which the Bertram of the piece, pros- trating a man with a single blow of his fist, exclaims — ^' Knock me thee down, then ask thee if thou liv'st." — Well, the stranger obeys ; and whatever his sleep might have been, his waking was perfectly natural, for lethargy itself could not withstand the scolding stentorship of Mr. Holland, the Prior. We next learn from the best autho- rity, his own confession, that the misanthropic hero, whose destiny was incompatible with drowning, is Count Bertram, who not only reveals his past fortunes, but * 1' The big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase," says ShaAspeare of a wounded stag-, hanpng his head over a stream : na- turally, from the position of the head, and most beutifully, from the asso- ciation of the preceding" ima^^e, of the cliase, in which ** the poor seques- ter'd stag- from thie hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt." In the supposed position of Eertiam, the metaphor, if not false, loses all the propriety of the orig-inal. f Among- a number of other instance's of words chosen without reason, Imofiine, in the first act, declares that thunder-storms were not able to in- tercept her pra} ers for " the desperate man, in desperate nays who- dmW " Yea, when the launched bolt did sear her sen^e, Her souFs deep orisons were bri;athed for him ;" i e. when a red-hot bolt, launched at her from a thunder-cloud, hftd cau- terized her sense, in plain Enj^'Iish, burnt her eyes cut of her head, »lie kept still prayins, on " Was not iliis love ? Yea, thus doth^oineii love I" 179 avows with open atrocity, his satanic hatred of Imogine's Lord, and his frantic thirst of revenge ; and so the rav- ing character raves, and the scoidins: char^tcter scolds — and M'hat else ? Does not the Prior act ? Does be not • end for a posse of constables or thieftakers, to handcuff the villain, and take him either to Bedlam or Nevv.gate ? Nothing of the kind ; the author preserver the unity of character, and the scolding Prior from first to last does nothing but scold, vvi^^h the exception, indeed, of the last scene ofthi- last act, in which, with a most surprising re- volution, be whmes, weeps and kneels to the tor^demned bla>^pheming assassin out of pure affection to the high- hearted man, the sublimity of whose angel-sin rivals the star-bright apostate, (i. e. who was as proud as Lucifer, and as wicked as the Devil,) and *' iiad ihriiled him" (Prior Holland aforesaid) with wild admiration. Accordingly, in the very next scene, we have this tra- gic Macheath, with his whole gang, in the Castle of St. Aldobrand, without any attempt on the Prior's part either to prevent him, or to put the mistress and servants of the Castle on their guard against their new inmates, though he (the Prior) knew, ;^nd confesses that he knew, that Bertram's *' fearful mates" were assassins so habituated and naturalized to guilt, that — *' When their drenched hold forsook both gold and gear, They griped their daggers with a murderer's instinct ;" and though he also knew, that Bertram was the leader of a band whose trade was blood. To the Castle, how- ever, he goes, thus with the holy Prior's consent, if not with his assistance ; and thither let us follow him. No sooner is our hero safely housed in the castf^ of St. Aldobrand, than he attracts the notice of the lady\and her confidante, by his "- wild and terrible dark eyes," ** muffled form," '' fearful form,"^ " darkly wild," * This sort of repetition is one of this writer's pe«-uHarities, and there is scarce a page vvliich does not furnish one or more instances — E>i. gr. in the f.rstpa^e or two. Act I. hne 7th, " and deemed that I might sleep.'* — Line 10, ^' Did rock and quiver in the bickc^rinj^- ^/;7re." — Lines i4, l5, IB, '* But by the momently glenrns of sheeted blue^ Did the pale marbles glare so siernly on me, I almost daemed thevlived "— Line 37, " The glare of Hell. "—Line 35, " O holy Prior, this 'is no earthly .storm."— Line .38, " This is no earthly siorm.^^ — Line 42, "■ Denling w'tl. us." — Line 43, " Deal thus sterDl7."~Line 44, " Spealt I thou liast something semP'—'' A 180 '* proudly stern," and the like common place indefinites, seasoncL^ l>y nierely verbal antitheses, and, at best, copied, with very slight cliange, from the Conrade of Southey's Joan of Arc. The lady Imo^ine, who has been (as is the case, she tells us, with all soft and solemn spirits) rsjor- shipping the moon on a terrace or rampart within view of tlie castle, insists on having an interview with our hero, and this, too, tete-a-tete. Would the reader learn why and wherefore the confidante is exchided, who very properly remonstrates against such '* conference, alone, at night, with one who bears such fearful form" — the reason foHowi^ — *' wh}^, therefore send him I" I sny^fol- lozf)s, because the next line, *' all things of fear have lost their power over me," is separated from the former by a break or pause, and beside that it is a very poor an- swer to the danger — is no ansv/er at all to the gross indelicacy of this wilful exposure. We must, therefor^, regard it as a mere afterthought, that a little softens the rudeness, but adds nothing to the weight of that exquisite woman's reason aforesaid. And so exit Clotilda and enter Bertram, who " stands without looking at her," that is, with his fower limbs forked, his arms akimbo, his side to the lady's front the whole figure resembling an inverted Y. He is soon, however, roused from the r4at8 surly to the state frantic, and then follow raving, yelling, cursing, she fainting, he relenting, in runs Imogine's child, squeaks "mother I" He snatches it up, and with a " God bless thee, child I Bertram has kissed thy child," — the curtain drops. The third act is short, and short be our account of it. It introduces Lord St. Aldobrand on his road homeward, and next Imogine in the convent, confessing the foulness of her heart to the prior, who first indulges his old humour with a fit of senseless scolding, then leaves her alone with her ruf- fian paramour, with whom she makes at once an infamous appointment, and the curtain drops, that it may be carri- ed into act and consummation. I want w^ords to describe the mingled horror and dis- gust w^ith which 1 witnessed the opening of the fourth act, considering it as a melancholy proof of the deprava- tion of the public mind. The shocking spirit of jacobin- fmrful si^ht /'*— Line 43, " Whathast thou seenf A mteous, fearful sight.''^—^ Line-iS, '•^ (quivering gleams y — Line 50, "In the hollow fQU5es?/, which wc' should be in a ^^reat measure without, were it not for thrs- i\ rks. For my own part, I feel so mach indehted to these Reviewers, that I can very readily foriive them the m- justice and illiberality with which they son j> times treat our country and countryme». We sho'^ld ior k on these |)arts of their work with the same compasoion or con- tempt that we regard the acts of otiter men, who nave the misfortune to be ignorant, or, who are so unhappy as to be under the influence of envy, jealousy, or pride. — We shall by and by, it is to be hoped, have on tliis side the Atlantic, reviews conducted with some portion of the ability which distinguishes the Qiarterly and Edin- burgh, and then Europeans will be better acquainted with us. 1 am, gentlemen, very respectfully, your obedient hiim.ble servant, CADWALLADER D. COLDEX. Extract from a letter from C. A. Rodney, Esq. dated Vfilmington, {Del.) JVov, 18^//, 1816. In this excellent journal, the scholar, the philosopher, and the statesman, may all find lessons of instruction ; and neither of them should be without a copy. To profes- sional men, and to those in the common walk of life, it affords a constant fund of rational entertainment and valu- able information. To the fair sex it is a precious acqui- sition at this enlightened period, w^ien they have been justly admitted to share in the common stock of science and literature. The volumes already published, furnish a library of modern knowledge and late improvements in the arts, united with ancient learning and classical lore ; they al- most complete the circle of the sciences. The merits of the Reviews mentioned in the above statement, are, in my opinion, pre-eminently great, as literary works, and the American publishers are entitled to the public patronage. DE WITT CLINTON. Neu^'York, \^th August, 1812. ^ The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews being superior to all other works of the same kind, I earnestly hope that the proprietors may be encouraged to continue their re- publiCfition in this country. August, 1812. RUFUS KING. I cordially concur in the same recommendation of the repuhHcation of the Edinburt;h and Quarterly Reviews, and in the same opinion of their merits. JAMES KENT. 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