Title: Biographia Literaria
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Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Biographia Literaria
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Table of Contents
Biographia Literaria ...........................................................................................................................................1
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.........................................................................................................................1
Biographia Literaria
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Biographia Literaria
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER I.
The motives of the present work—Reception of
the Author’s first publication—The discipline
of his taste at school—The effect of contem
porary writers on youthful minds—Bowles’s
sonnets—Comparison between the Poets 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, unim
portance, 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 ad
ditional purposes were, will be seen in the fol
lowing pages. It will be found, that the least
of what I have written concerns myself per
sonally. I have used the narration chiefly for
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the purpose of giving a continuity to the work,
in part for the sake of the miscellaneous reflec
tions 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, dedu
ced from philosophical principles, to poetry and
criticism. But of the objects, which I proposed
to myself, it was not the least important to
effect, as far as possible, a settlement of the
long continued controversy concerning the true
nature of poetic diction: and at the same time
to define with the utmost impartiality the real
poetic character of the poet, by whose writings
this controversy was first kindled, and has been
since fuelled and fanned.
In 1794, when I had barely passed the verge
of manhood, I published a small volume of
juvenile poems. They were received with a
degree of favor, which, young as I was, I well
knew, was bestowed on them not so much for
any positive merit, as because they were consi
dered buds of hope, and promises of better
works to come. The critics of that day, the
most flattering, equally with the severest,
concurred in objecting to them, obscurity, 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 compositions: and my mind was not
then sufficiently disciplined to receive the au
thority of others, as a substitute for my own
conviction. Satisfied that the thoughts, such as
they were, could not have been expressed other
wise, or at least more perspicuously, I forgot
to enquire, whether the thoughts themselves
The authority of Milton and Shakspeare may be use
fully pointed out to young authors. In the Comus, and earlier
Poems of Milton there is a superfluity of double epithets;
while in the Paradise Lost we find very few, in the Paradise
Regained scarce any. The same remark holds almost equally
true, of the Love’s Labour Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Venus
and Adonis, and Lucrece compared with the Lear, Macbeth,
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Othello, and Hamlet of our great Dramatist. The rule for
the admission of double epithets seems to be this: either
that they should be already denizens of our Language, such
as bloodstained, terrorstricken, selfapplauding: or when
a new epithet, or one found in books only, is hazarded, that
it, at least, be one word, not two words made one by mere
virtue of the printer’s hyphen. A language which, like the
English, is almost without cases, is indeed in its very genius
unfitted for compounds. If a writer, every time a com
pounded word suggests itself to him, would seek for some
other mode of expressing the same sense, the chances are
always greatly in favor of his finding a better word. "Tan
quam scopulum sic vites insolens verbum," is the wise advice
of Cæsar to the Roman Orators, and the precept applies
with double force to the writers in our own language. But
it must not be forgotten, that the same Cæesar wrote a gram
matical treatise for the purpose of reforming the ordinary
language by bringing it to a greater accordance with the
principles of Logic or universal Grammar.
did not demand a degree of attention unsuitable
to the nature and objects of poetry. This re
mark however applies chiefly, though not ex
clusively to the Religious Musings. The re
mainder of the charge I admitted to its full
extent, and not without sincere acknowledg
ments to both my private and public censors
for their friendly admonitions. In the after
editions, I pruned the double epithets with no
sparing hand, and used my best efforts to tame
the swell and glitter both of thought and dic
tion; though in truth, these parasite plants of
youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into
my longer poems with such intricacy of union,
that I was often obliged to omit disentangling
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 be
fore 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 similar defects,
though I am persuaded not with equal justice:
with an EXCESS OF ORNAMENT, in addition to
STRAINED AND ELABORATE DICTION. (Vide the
criticisms on the "Ancient Mariner," in the
Monthly and Critical Reviews of the first volume
of the Lyrical Ballads.) May I be permitted
to add, that, even at the early period of my
juvenile poems, I saw and admitted the superior
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ity of an austerer, and more natural style, with
an insight not less clear, than I at present pos
sess. My judgment was stronger, 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 which 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 reintroduced the manly sim
plicity of the Grecian, and of 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 inferior success,
to impress on my later compositions.
At school I enjoyed the inestimable advan
tage of a very sensible, though at the same
time, a very severe master. He* early moulded
my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to
Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil,
*The Rev. James Bowyer, many years Head Master of
the GrammarSchool, Christ Hospital.
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 ages;
but with even those of 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 Tragic Poets, he made us
read Shakspeare and Milton as lessons: and
they were the lessons too, which required most
time and trouble to bring up, so as to escape
his censure. I learnt from him, that Poetry,
even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of
the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as
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severe as that of science; and more difficult,
because more subtle, more complex, and de
pendent on more, 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 syno
nimes 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 conveyed with
equal force and dignity in plainer words. Lute,
harp, and lyre, muse, muses, and inspirations,
Pegasus, Parnassus, and Hipocrene, were all
an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost
hear him now, exclaiming" Harp? Harp? Lyre?
Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse?
your Nurse’s daughter, you mean! Pierian spring?
Oh ‘aye! the cloisterpump, I suppose!" Nay
certain introductions, similies, and examples,
were placed by name on a list of interdiction.
Among the similies, there was, I remember,
that of the Manchineel fruit, as suiting equally
well with too many subjects; in which how
ever 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? Pride? Friendship? Ingratitude?
Late repentance? Still, still Alexander and
Clytus! At length, the praises of agriculture
having been exemplified in the sagacious obser
vation, 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 expur
gatorius of certain well known and ever return
ing phrases, both introductory, and transitional,
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including the large assortment of modest ego
tisms, and flattering illeisms, &c. &c. might be
hung up in our lawcourts, and both houses of
parliament, with great advantage to the public,
as an important saving of national time, an in
calculable relief to his Majesty’s ministers, but
above all, as insuring the thanks of country
attornies, and their clients, who have private
bills to carry through the house.
Be this as it may, there was one custom of
our master’s, which I cannot pass over in si
lence, because I think it imitable and worthy
of imitation. He would often permit 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 num
ber abreast on his desk, he would ask the
writer, why this or that sentence 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 exercise was torn up, and
another on the same subject to be produced,
in addition to the tasks of the day. The reader
will, I trust, excuse this tribute of recollection
to a man, whose severities, even now, not sel
dom furnish the dreams, by which the blind
fancy would fain interpret to the mind the pain
ful sensations of distempered sleep; but neither
lessen nor dim the deep sense of my moral and
intellectual obligations. He sent us to the Uni
versity excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and
tolerable Hebraists. Yet our classical know
ledge was the least of the good gifts, which we
derived from his zealous and conscientious
tutorage. He is now gone to his final reward,
full of years, and full of honors, even of those
honors, which were dearest to his heart, as
gratefully bestowed by that school, and still
binding 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.
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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 contem
porary genius. The Discipline, my mind had
undergone, "Ne falleretur rotundo sono et ver
suum cursu, cincinnis et floribus; sed ut inspi
ceret quidnam subesset, quæ sedes, quod firma
mentum, quis fundus verbis; an figuræ essent
mera ornatura et orationis fucus: vel sanguinis
e materiæ ipsius corde effluentis rubor quidam
nativus et incalescentia genuina;" removed all
obstacles to the appreciation of excellence in
style without diminishing my delight. That
I was thus prepared for the perusal of Mr.
Bowles’s sonnets and earlier poems, at once
increased their influence, and my enthusiasm.
The great works of past ages seem to a young
man things of another race, in respect to which
his faculties must remain passive and submiss,
even as to the stars and mountains. But the
writings of a contemporary, perhaps not many
years elder 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 properties of flesh and blood. To
recite, to extol, to contend for them is but the
payment of a debt due to one, who exists to
receive it.
There are indeed modes of teaching which
have produced, and are producing, youths of
a very different 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 metamor
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phosed into prodigies. And prodigies with a
vengeance have I known thus produced! Pro
digies of selfconceit, 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 judgement; and instead of
awakening by the noblest models 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: boygraduates 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 debet operi
"bus ejus obesse, quod vivit. An si inter eos,
"quos nunquam vidimus, floruisset, non solum
"libros ejus, verum etiam imagines conquire
"remus, ejusdem nunc honor præsentis, et gratia
"quasi satietate languescet? At hoc pravum,
"malignumque est, non admirari hominem admi
"ratione dignissimum, quia videre, complecti,
"nec laudare tantum, verum etiam amare con
"tingit." Plin. Epist. Lib. I.
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 pre
sented to me by a schoolfellow who had
quitted us 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 every way
excellent Bishop of Calcutta:
"Qui laudibus amplis
"Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat,
"Calcar agens animo validum. Non omnia terræ
"Obruta! Vivit amor, vivit dolor! Ora negatur
"Dulcia conspicere; at flere et meminisse* relictum est."
Petr. Ep. Lib. I. Ep. I.
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It was a double pleasure to me, and still
remains a tender recollection, that I should
have received from a friend so revered the first
knowledge of a poet, by whose works, year
after year, I was so enthusiastically delighted
and inspired. My earliest acquaintances will
not have forgotten the undisciplined eagerness
and impetuous zeal, with which I laboured to
make proselytes, not only of my companions,
but of all with whom I conversed, of whatever
rank, and in whatever place. As my school
I am most happy to have the necessity of informing the
reader, that since this passage was written, the report of
Middleton’s death on his voyage to India has been proved
erroneous. He lives and long may he live; for I dare pro
phecy, that with his life only will his exertions for the tem
poral and spiritual welfare of his fellow men be limited.
finances did not permit me to purchase copies,
I made, within less than a year, and an half,
more than forty transcriptions, as the best pre
sents I could offer to those, who had in any
way won my regard. And with almost equal
delight did I receive the three or four following
publications of the same author.
Though I have seen and known enough of
mankind to be well aware, that I shall perhaps
stand alone in my creed, and that it will be
well, if I subject myself to no worse charge
than that of singularity; I am not therefore
deterred from avowing, that I regard, and ever
have regarded the obligations of intellect among
the most sacred of the claims of gratitude.
A valuable thought, or a particular train of
thoughts, gives me additional pleasure, when
I can safely refer and attribute it to the con
versation or correspondence of another. My
obligations to Mr. Bowles were indeed import
ant, and for radical good. At a very premature
age, even before my fifteenth year, I had be
wildered myself in metaphysicks, and in theolo
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gical controversy. Nothing else pleased me.
History, and particular facts, lost all interest
in my mind. Poetry (though for a schoolboy
of that age, I was above par in English versi
fication, and had already produced two or three
compositions which, I may venture to say, with
out reference to my age, were somewhat above
mediocrity, and which had gained me more
credit, than the sound, good sense of my old
master was at all pleased with) poetry itself,
yea novels and romances, became insipid to
me. In my friendless wanderings on our leave*
days, (for I was an orphan, and had scarce
any connections in London) highly was I de
lighted, if any passenger, especially if he were
drest in black, would enter into conversation
with me. For I soon found the means of di
recting it to my favorite subjects
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix’d fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end in wandering mazes lost.
This preposterous pursuit was, beyond doubt,
injurious, both to my natural powers, and to
the progress of my education. It would per
haps have been destructive, had it been con
tinued; but from this I was auspiciously with
drawn, partly indeed by an accidental intro
duction to an amiable family, chiefly however,
by the genial influence of a style of poetry, so
tender, and yet so manly, so natural and real,
and yet so dignified, and harmonious, as the
sonnets, &c. of Mr. Bowles! Well were it for
me perhaps, had I never relapsed into the same
The Christ Hospital phrase, not for holidays altogether,
but for those on which the boys are permitted to go beyond
the precincts of the school.
mental disease; if I had continued to pluck
the flower and reap the harvest from the cul
tivated surface, instead of delving in the un
wholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic
depths. But if in after time I have sought a
refuge from bodily pain and mismanaged sen
sibility in abstruse researches, which exercised
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the strength and subtlety of the understanding
without awakening the feelings of the heart;
still there was a long and blessed interval, dur
ing which my natural faculties were allowed
to expand, and my original tendencies to deve
lope themselves: my fancy, and the love of
nature, and the sense of beauty in forms and
sounds.
The second advantage, which I owe to my
early perusal, and admiration of these poems
(to which let me add, though known to me
at a somewhat later period, the Lewsdon Hill
of Mr. CROW) bears more immediately on my
present subject. Among those with whom I
conversed, there were, of course, very many
who had formed their taste, and their notions
of poetry, from the writings of Mr. Pope and
his followers: or to speak more generally, in
that school of French poetry, condensed and
invigorated by English understanding, which
had predominated from the last century. I
was not blind to the merits of this school, yet
as from inexperience of the world, and
consequent want of sympathy with the general sub
jects of these poems, they gave me little plea
sure, I doubtless undervalued the kind, and
with the presumption of youth withheld from
its masters the legitimate name of poets. I
saw, that the excellence of this kind consisted
in just and acute observations on men and man
ners in an artificial state of society, as its matter and
substance: and in the logic of wit, con
veyed in smooth and strong epigramatic cou
plets, as its form. Even when the subject was
addressed to the fancy, or the intellect, as in
the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on Man;
nay, when it was a consecutive narration, as in
that astonishing product of matchless talent
and ingenuity, Pope’s Translation of the Iliad;
still a point was looked for at the end of each
second line, and the whole was as it were a
sorites, or, if I may exchange a logical for a
grammatical metaphor, a conjunction disjunc
tive, of epigrams. Meantime the matter and
diction seemed to me characterized not so much
by poetic thoughts, as by thoughts translated
into the language of poetry. On this last point,
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I had occasion to render my own thoughts
gradually more and more plain to myself, by
frequent amicable disputes concerning Darwin’s
BOTANIC GARDEN, which, for some years, was
greatly extolled, not only by the reading public
in general, but even by those, whose genius
and natural robustness of understanding ena
bled them afterwards to act foremost in dis
sipating these "painted mists" that occasionally
rise from the marshes at the foot of Parnassus.
During my first Cambridge vacation, I assisted
a friend in a contribution for a literary society
in Devonshire: and in this I remember to have
compared Darwin’s work to the Russian pa
lace of ice, glittering, cold and transitory. In
the same essay too, I assigned sundry reasons,
chiefly drawn from a comparison of passages in
the Latin poets with the original Greek, from
which they were borrowed, for the preference
of Collins’s odes to those of Gray; and of the
simile in Shakspeare
" How like a younker or a prodigal,
"The skarfed bark puts from her native bay
"Hugg’d and embraced by the strumpet wind!
"How like a prodigal doth she return,
"With overweather’d ribs and ragged sails,
"Lean, rent, and beggar’d by the strumpet wind!"
to the imitation in the bard;
"Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows
"While proudly riding o’er the azure realm
"In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,
"YOUTH at the prow and PLEASURE at the helm,
"Regardless of the sweeping whirlwinds sway,
"That hush’d in grim repose, expects it’s evening prey."
(In which, by the bye, the words "realm" and
" sway" are rhymes dearly purchased.) I pre
ferred the original on the ground, that in the
imitation it depended wholly in the composi
tor’s putting, or not putting a small Capital,
both in this, and in many other passages of the
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same poet, whether the words should be person
ifications, or mere abstracts. I mention this,
because in referring various lines in Gray to
their original in Shakspeare and Milton; and in
the clear perception how completely all the
propriety was lost in the transfer; I was, at
that early period, led to a conjecture, which,
many years afterwards was recalled to me from
the same thought having been started in con
versation, but far more ably, and developed
more fully, by Mr. WORDSWORTH; namely, that
this style of poetry, which I have characterised
above, as translations of prose thoughts into
poetic language, had been kept up by, if it did
not wholly arise from, the custom of writing
Latin verses, and the great importance at
tached to these exercises, in our public schools.
Whatever might have been the case in the fif
teenth century, when the use of the Latin
tongue was so general among learned men, that
Erasmus is said to have forgotten his native
language; yet in the present day it is not to be
supposed, that a youth can think in Latin, or
that he can have any other reliance on the force
or fitness of his phrases, but the authority of
the author from whence he has adopted them.
Consequently he must first prepare his thoughts,
and then pick out, from Virgil, Horace, Ovid, or
perhaps more compendiously from his* Gradus,
halves and quarters of lines, in which to embody
them.
I never object to a certain degree of disputa
tiousness in a young man from the age of seven
teen to that of four or five and twenty, provided
I find him always arguing on one side of the
question. The controversies, occasioned by my
unfeigned zeal for the honor of a favorite con
temporary, then known to me only by his works,
were of great advantage in the formation and
establishment of my taste and critical opinions.
In my defence of the lines running into each
other, instead of closing at each couplet; and
of natural language, neither bookish, nor vulgar,
neither redolent of the lamp, or of the kennel,
such as I will remember thee; instead of the
same thought tricked up in the ragfair finery of,
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Thy image on her wing
Before my FANCY’S eye shall MEMORY bring,
I had continually to adduce the metre and
In the Nutricia of Politian there occurs this line:
" Pura coloratos interstrepit unda lapillos."
Casting my eye on a University prizepoem, I met this line,
" Lactea purpureos interstrepit unda lapillos."
Now look out in the Gradus for Purus, and you find as
the first synonime, lacteus; for coloratus and the first sy
nonime is purpureus. I mention this by way of elucidating
one of the most ordinary processes in the ferrumination of
these centos.
diction of the Greek Poets from Homer to
Theocritus inclusive; and still more of our
elder English poets from Chaucer to Milton.
Nor was this all. But as it was my constant
reply to authorities brought against me from
later poets of great name, that no authority
could avail in opposition to TRUTH, NATURE,
LOGIC, and the LAWS of UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR;
actuated too by my former passion for meta
physical investigations; I labored at a solid
foundation, on which permanently to ground
my opinions, in the component faculties of the
human mind itself, and their comparative dig
nity and importance. According to the faculty
or source, from which the pleasure given by
any poem or passage was derived, I estimated
the merit of such poem or passage. As the
result of all my reading and meditation, I ab
stracted two critical aphorisms, deeming them
to comprize the conditions and criteria of poetic
style; first, that not the poem which we have
read, but that to which we return, with the
greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power,
and claims the name of essential poetry. Second,
that whatever lines can be translated into other
words of the same language, without dimi
nution of their significance, either in sense,
or association, or in any worthy feeling, are
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so far vicious in their diction. Be it however
observed, that I excluded from the list of
worthy feelings, the pleasure derived from mere
novelty, in the reader, and the desire of ex
citing wonderment at his powers in the author.
Oftentimes since then, in perusing French tra
gedies, I have fancied two marks of admiration
at the end of each line, as hieroglyphics of the
author’s own admiration at his own cleverness.
Our genuine admiration of a great poet is a
continuous undercurrent of feeling; it is every
where present, but seldom any where as a se
parate excitement. I was wont boldly to affirm,
that it would be scarcely more difficult to push
a stone out from the pyramids with the bare
hand, than to alter a word, or the position of a
word, in Milton or Shakspeare, (in their most
important works at least) without making the
author say something else, or something worse,
than he does say. One great distinction, I
appeared to myself to see plainly, between, even
the characteristic faults of our elder poets, and
the false beauty of the moderns. In the former, from
DONNE to COWLEY, we find the most fan
tastic outoftheway thoughts, but in the most
pure and genuine mother English; in the latter,
the most obvious thoughts, in language the
most fantastic and arbitrary. Our faulty elder
poets sacrificed the passion, and passionate
flow of poetry, to the subtleties of intellect, and
to the starts of wit; the moderns to the glare
and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and
heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious
something, made up, half of image, and half of
abstract* meaning. The one sacrificed the heart
to the head; the other both heart and head to
point and drapery.
The reader must make himself acquainted
with the general style of composition that was
at that time deemed poetry, in order to under
stand and account for the effect produced on
me by the SONNETS, the MONODY at MATLOCK,
and the HOPE, of Mr. Bowles; for it is pecu
liar to original genius to become less and less
striking, in proportion to its success in improv
ing the taste and judgement of its contempora
ries. The poems of WEST indeed had the
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Page No 18
merit of chaste and manly diction, but they
were cold, and, if I may so express it, only
deadcoloured; while in the best of Warton’s
there is a stiffness, which too often gives them
the appearance of imitations from the Greek.
Whatever relation therefore of cause or impulse
Percy’s collection of Ballads may bear to the
most popular poems of the present day; yet in
the more sustained and elevated style, of the
I remember a ludicrous instance in the poem of a young
tradesman:
" No more will I endure love’s pleasing pain,
Or round my heart’s leg tie his galling chain."
then living poets Bowles and Cowper* were, to
the best of my knowledge, the first who com
bined natural thoughts with natural diction;
the first who reconciled the heart with the head.
It is true, as I have before mentioned, that
from diffidence in my own powers, I for a short
time adopted a laborious and florid diction,
which I myself deemed, if not absolutely vici
ous, yet of very inferior worth. Gradually,
however, my practice conformed to my better
judgement; and the compositions of my twenty
fourth and twentyfifth year (ex. gr. the shorter
blank verse poems, the lines which are now
adopted in the introductory part of the VISION
in the present collection in Mr. Southey’s Joan
of Arc, 2nd book, 1st edition, and the Tragedy
of REMORSE) are not more below my present
ideal in respect of the general tissue of the style,
than those of the latest date. Their faults were
Cowper’s task was published some time before the son
nets of Mr. Bowles; but I was not familiar with it till many
years afterwards. The vein of Satire which runs through
that excellent poem, together with the sombre hue of its re
ligious opinions, would probably, at that time, have pre
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Page No 19
vented its laying any strong hold on my affections. The
love of nature seems to have led Thompson to a chearful re
ligion; and a gloomy religion to have led Cowper to a love
of nature. The one would carry his fellowmen along with
him into nature; the other flies to nature from his fellow
men. In chastity of diction however, and the harmony of
blank verse, Cowper leaves Thompson unmeasureably below
him; yet still I feel the latter to have been the born poet.
at least a remnant of the former leaven, and
among the many who have done me the honor
of putting my poems in the same class with
those of my betters, the one or two, who have
pretended to bring examples of affected sim
plicity from my volume, have been able to ad
duce but one instance, and that out of a copy
of verses half ludicrous, half splenetic, which
I intended, and had myself characterized, as
sermoni propriora.
Every reform, however necessary, will by
weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself
will need reforming. The reader will excuse
me for noticing, that I myself was the first to
expose risu honesto the three sins of poetry, one
or the other of which is the most likely to beset
a young writer. So long ago as the publica
tion of the second number of the monthly ma
gazine, under the name of NEHEMIAH HIGGEN
BOTTOM I contributed three sonnets, the first of
which had for its object to excite a goodnatur
ed laugh at the spirit of doleful egotism, and at
the recurrence of favorite phrases, with the
double defect of being at once trite, and licen
tious. The second, on low, creeping language
and thoughts, under the pretence of simplicity.
And the third, the phrases of which were bor
rowed entirely from my own poems, on the
indiscriminate use of elaborate and swelling
language and imagery. The reader will find
them in the note* below, and will I trust regard
them as reprinted for biographical purposes,
and not for their poetic merits. So general at
SONNET 1.
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Biographia Literaria 17
Page No 20
PENSIVE at eve, on the hard world I mused,
And my poor heart was sad; so at the MOON
I gazed, and sighed, and sighed; for ah how soon
Eve saddens into night! mine eyes perused
With tearful vacancy the dampy grass
That wept and glitter’d in the paly ray:
And I did pause me, on my lonely way
And mused me, on the wretched ones that pass
O’er the bleak heath of sorrow. But alas!
Most of myself I thought! when it befel,
That the soothe spirit of the breezy wood
Breath’d in mine ear: "All this is very well
But much of ONE thing, is for NO thing good."
Oh my poor heart’s INEXPLICABLE SWELL!
SONNET II.
OH I do love thee, meek SIMPLICITY!
For of thy lays the lulling simpleness
Goes to my heart, and soothes each small distress,
Distress tho’ small, yet haply great to me,
‘Tis true on Lady Fortune’s gentlest pad
I amble on; and yet I know not why
So sad I am! but should a friend and I
Frown, pout and part, then I am very sad.
And then with sonnets and with sympathy
My dreamy bosom’s mystic woes I pall;
Now of my false friend plaining plaintively,
Now raving at mankind in general;
But whether sad or fierce, ‘tis simple all,
All very simple, meek SIMPLICITY!
SONNET III.
AND this reft house is that, the which he built,
Lamented Jack! and here his malt he pil’d,
Cautious in vain! these rats, that squeak so wild,
Squeak not unconscious of their father’s guilt.
Did he not see her gleaming thro’ the glade!
Belike ‘twas she, the maiden all forlorn.
What tho’ she milk no cow with crumpled horn,
Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray’d:*
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Page No 21
that time, and so decided was the opinion con
cerning the characteristic vices of my style, that
a celebrated physician (now, alas! no more)
speaking of me in other respects with his usual
kindness to a gentleman, who was about to
meet me at a dinner party, could not however
resist giving him a hint not to mention the
" House that Jack built" in my presence, for
" that I was as sore as a boil about that sonnet ;"
he not knowing, that I was myself the author
of it.
*
And aye, beside her stalks her amarous knight!
Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,
And thro’ those brogues, still tatter’d and betorn,
His hindward charms glean an unearthly white.
Ah! thus thro’ broken clouds at night’s high Noon
Peeps in fair fragments forth the fullorb’d harvestmoon!
The following anecdote will not be wholly out of place
here, and may perhaps amuse the reader. An amateur per
former in verse expressed to a common friend, a strong de
sire to be introduced to me, 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, which had given me great pain. I as
sured my friend that if the epigram was a good one, it would
only increase my desire to become acquainted with the au
thor, and begg’d to hear it recited: when, to my no less
surprise than amusement, it proved to be one which I had
myself some time before written and inserted in the Morning
Post.
To the author of the Ancient Mariner.
Your poem must eternal be,
Dearsir! it cannot fail,
For ‘tis incomprehensible
And without head or tail.
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Biographia Literaria 19
Page No 22
CHAPTER II.
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
uninstructive nor unamusing to analyze, and
bring forward into distinct consciousness, that
complex feeling, with which readers in general
take part against the author, in favor of the
critic; and the readiness with which they apply
to all poets the old sarcasm of Horace upon
the scriblers of his time: "Genus irritabile
vatum." A debility and dimness of the imagi
native power, and a consequent necessity of
reliance on the immediate impressions of the
senses, do, we well know, render the mind
liable to superstition and fanaticism. Having a
deficient portion of internal and proper warmth,
minds of this class seek in the crowd circum
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 in
flame by coacervation; or like bees they be
come restless and irritable through the increased
temperature of collected multitudes. Hence
the German word for fanaticism (such at least
was its original import) is derived from the
swarming of bees, namely, Schwärmen, Sch
wärmerey. The passion being in an inverse
proportion to the insight, that the more 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 indispensible for their
safety and happiness, cannot but produce an
uneasy state of feeling, an involuntary sense of
fear from which nature has no means of res
cuing herself but by anger. Experience informs
us that the first defence of weak minds is to
recriminate.
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Biographia Literaria 20
Page No 23
" There’s no Philosopher but sees,
That rage and fear are one disease,
Tho’ that may burn, and this may freeze,
They’re both alike the ague."
MAD OX.
But where the ideas are vivid, and there exists
an endless power of combining and modifying
them, the feelings and affections blend more
easily and intimately with these ideal creations,
than with the objects of the senses; the mind
is affected by thoughts, rather than by things;
and only then feels the requisite interest even
for the most important events, and accidents,
when by means of meditation they have passed
into thoughts. The sanity of the mind is be
tween 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 absolute Genius. For this
reason therefore, they are men of commanding
genius. While the former rest content between
thought and reality, as it were in an intermun
dium of which their own living spirit supplies
the substance, and their imagination the ever
varying form; the latter must impress their
preconceptions 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 landscapegarden; 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 des
tined to come forth as the shaping spirit of Ruin.
to destroy the wisdom of ages in order to
substitute the fancies of a day, and to change
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Page No 24
kings and kingdoms, as the wind shifts and
shapes the clouds.† The records of biography
seem to confirm this theory. The men of the
greatest genius, as far as we can judge from
their own works or from the accounts of their
contemporaries, appear to have been of calm
and tranquil temper, in all that related to them
selves. In the inward assurance of permanent
fame, they seem to have been either indifferent
or resigned, with regard to immediate reputa
tion. Through all the works of Chaucer there
reigns a chearfulness, a manly hilarity, which
makes it almost impossible to doubt a corres
pondent habit of feeling in the author himself.
Shakspeare’s evenness and sweetness of temper
were almost proverbial in his 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
† "Of old things all are over old,
Of good things none are good enough:
We’ll show that we can help to frame
A world of other stuff.
I too will have my kings, that take
From me the sign of life and death:
Kingdoms shall shift about, like clouds,
Obedient to my breath."
WORDSWORTH’S ROB ROY.
known to Mr. Pope,* when he asserted, that
our great bard "grew immortal in his own
"despite." Speaking, of one whom he had cele
brated, and contrasting the duration of his
works with that of his personal existence,
Shakspeare adds:
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Page No 25
" Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Tho’ I once gone to all the world must die;
The earth can yield 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’erread;
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 81st.
I have taken the first that occurred; but Shaks
peare’s readiness to praise his rivals, ore pleno,
and the confidence of his own equality with
Mr. Pope was under the common error of his age, an
error, far from being sufficiently exploded even at the pre
sent day. It consists (as I explained at large, and proved in
detail in my public lectures) in mistaking for the essentials of
the Greek stage certain rules, which the wise poets imposed
upon themselves, in order to render all the remaining parts
of the drama consistent with those, that had been forced
upon them by circumstances independent of their will; out
of which circumstances the drama itself arose. The cir
cumstances in the time of Shakspeare, which it was equally
out of his power to alter, were different, and such as, in my
opinion, allowed a far wider sphere, and a deeper and more
human interest. Critics are too apt to forget, that rules are
but means to an end; consequently where the ends are
those whom he deem’d most worthy of his
praise, are alike manifested in the 86th sonnet.
" Was it the proud full sail of his great verse
Bound for the praise of alltooprecious 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?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
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Page No 26
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost,
Which 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 fill’d up his line,
Then lack’d I matter, that enfeebled mine.
In Spencer indeed, we trace a mind consti
tutionally tender, delicate, and, in comparison
with his three great compeers, I had almost
said, effeminate; and this additionally sad
dened by the unjust persecution of Burleigh,
*different, the rules must he likewise so. We must have ascer
tained what the end is, before we can determine what the
rules ought to be. Judging under this impression, I did not
hesitate to declare my full conviction, that the consummate
judgement of Shakspeare, not only in the general construc
tion, but in all the detail, of his dramas impressed me with
greater wonder, than even the might of his genius, or the
depth of his philosophy. The substance of these lectures I
hope soon to publish ; and it is but a debt of justice to my
self and my friends to notice, that the first course of lectures,
which differed from the following courses only, by occa
sionally varying the illustrations of the same thoughts, was
addressed to very numerous, and I need not add, respect
able audiences at the royal institution, before Mr. Schlegel
gave his lectures on the same subjects at Vienna.
and the severe calamities, which overwhelmed
his latter days. These causes have diffused
over all his compositions "a melancholy grace,"
and have drawn forth occasional strains, the
more pathetic from their gentleness. But no
where do we find the least trace of irritability,
and still less of quarrelsome or affected con
tempt of his censurers.
The same calmness, and even greater self
possession, may be affirmed of Milton, as far
as his poems, and poetic character are con
cerned. He reserved his anger, for the enemies
of religion, freedom, and his country. My
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Page No 27
mind is not capable of forming a more august
conception, than arises from the contempla
tion of this great man in his latter days: poor,
sick, old, blind, slandered, persecuted,
" Darkness before, and danger’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 contended; and among men be
fore whom he strode so far as to dwarf him
self 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 Milton, in his latter day, had his scorners
and detractors; and even in his day of youth
and hope, that he had enemies 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 exist many and excellent
models, a high degree of talent, combined with
taste and judgement, 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 reality could have done, would be
sought for in vain in the mind and temper of the
author himself. Yet even in instances of this
kind, a close examination will often detect, that
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Page No 28
the irritability, which has been attributed to the
author’s genius as its cause, did really originate
in an ill conformation of body, obtuse pain, or
constitutional defect of pleasurable sensation.
What is charged to the author, belongs to the
man, who would probably have been still more
impatient, but for the humanizing influences of
the very pursuit, which yet bears the blame of
his irritability.
How then are we to explain the easy cre
dence generally given to this charge, if the
charge itself be not, as we have endeavoured to
show, supported by experience? This seems
to me of no very difficult solution. In what
ever country literature is widely diffused, there
will be many who mistake an intense desire to
possess the reputation of poetic genius, for the
actual powers, and original tendencies which
constitute it. But men, whose dearest wishes
are fixed on objects wholly out of their own
power, become in all cases more or less impa
tient and prone to anger. Besides, though it
may be paradoxical to assert, that a man can
know one thing, and believe the opposite, yet
assuredly, a vain person may have so habitu
ally indulged the wish, and persevered in the
attempt to appear, what he is not, as to become
himself one of his own proselytes. Still, as this
counterfeit and artificial persuasion must differ,
even in the person’s own feelings, from a real
sense of inward power, what can be more na
tural, than that this difference should betray
itself in suspicious and jealous irritability ?
Even as the flowery sod, which covers a hol
low, may be often detected by its shaking and
trembling.
But, alas! the multitude of books, and the
general diffusion of literature, have produced
other, and more lamentable effects in the world
of letters, and such as are abundant to explain,
tho’ by no means to justify, the contempt with
which the best grounded complaints of injured
genius are rejected as frivolous, or entertained
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Page No 29
as matter of merriment. In the days of Chaucer
and Gower, our language might (with due al
lowance for the imperfections of a simile) be
compared to a wilderness of vocal reeds, from
which the favorites only of Pan or Apollo
could construct even the rude Syrinx; and
from this the constructors alone could elicit
strains of music. But now, partly by the la
bours of successive poets, and in part by the
more artificial state of society and social inter
course, language, mechanized as it were into a
barrelorgan, supplies at once both instrument
and tune. Thus even the deaf may play, so as
to delight the many. Sometimes (for it is with
similies, as it is with jests at a wine table, one
is sure to suggest another) I have attempted to
illustrate the present state of our language, in
its relation to literature, by a pressroom of
larger and smaller stereotype pieces, which,
in the present anglogallican fashion of uncon
nected, epigrammatic periods, it requires but
an ordinary portion of ingenuity to vary inde
finitely, and yet still produce something, which,
if not sense, will be so like it, as to do as well.
Perhaps better: for it spares the reader the
trouble of thinking; prevents vacancy, while it
indulges indolence; and secures the memory
from all danger of an intellectual plethora.
Hence of all trades, literature at present
demands the least talent or information; and, of
all modes of literature, the manufacturing of
poems. The difference indeed between these
and the works of genius, is not less than be
tween an egg, and an eggshell; yet at a distance
they both look alike. Now it is no less re
markable than true, with how little examina
tion works of polite literature are commonly
perused, not only by the mass of readers, but
by men of first rate ability, till some accident
or chance* discussion have roused their atten
In the course of my lectures, I had occasion to point out
the almost faultless position and choice of words, in Mr.
Pope’s original compositions, particularly in his satires and
moral essays, for the purpose of comparing them with his
translation of Homer, which, I do not stand alone in re
garding as the main source of our pseudopoetic diction.
And this, by the bye, is an additional confirmation of a re
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Biographia Literaria 27
Page No 30
mark made, I believe, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, that next to
the man who formed and elevated the taste of the public, he
that corrupted it, is commonly the greatest genius. Among
other passages, I analyzed sentence by sentence, and almost
word by word, the popular lines,
" As when the moon, resplendent lamp of light," &c.
much in the same way as has been since done, in an excellent
article on Chalmers’s British Poets in the Quarterly Review.
The impression on the audience in general was sudden and
evident: and a number of enlightened and highly educated
individuals, who at different times afterwards addressed me
on the subject, expressed their wonder, that truth so ob
vious should not have struck them before; but at the same
time acknowledged (so much had they been accustomed, in
reading poetry, to receive pleasure from the separate images
and phrases successively, without asking themselves whether
the collective meaning was sense or nonsense) that they might
in all probability have read the same passage again twenty*
tion, and put them on their guard. And hence
individuals below mediocrity not less in natural
power than in acquired knowledge; nay, bung
lers that had failed in the lowest mechanic
crafts, and whose presumption is in due pro
portion to their want of sense and sensibility;
men, who being first scriblers from idleness and
ignorance next become libellers from envy and
malevolence; have been able to drive a suc
cessful trade in the employment of the book
sellers, nay have raised themselves into tempo
rary name and reputation with the public at
large, by that most powerful of all adulation,
times with undiminished admiration, and without once re
flecting, that "asra thaeinen amphi selenen phainet ariprepea"
(i. e. the stars around, or near the full moon, shine pre
eminently bright) conveys a just and happy image of a moon
light sky: while it is difficult to determine whether in the
lines,
"Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
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Page No 31
And stars unnumber’d gild the glowing pole,"
the sense, or the diction be the more absurd. My answer
was; that tho’ I had derived peculiar advantages from my
school discipline, and tho’ my general theory of poetry was
the same then as now, I had yet experienced the same sen
sations myself, and felt almost as if I had been newly
couched, when by Mr. Wordsworth’s conversation, I had
been induced to reexamine with impartial strictness Grey’s
celebrated elegy. I had long before detected the defects in
" the Bard ;" but "the Elegy" I had considered as proof
against all fair attacks; and to this day I cannot read either,
without delight, and a portion of enthusiasm. At all events,
whatever pleasure I may have lost by the clearer perception
of the faults in certain passages, has been more than repaid
to me, by the additional delight with which I read the
remainder.
the appeal to the bad and malignant passions
of mankind.*But as it is the nature of scorn,
envy, and all malignant propensities to require
a quick change of objects, such writers are
sure, sooner or later to awake from their dream
of vanity to disappointment and neglect with
embittered and envenomed feelings. Even
Especially "in this AGE OF PERSONALITY, this age of
literary and political GOSSIPING, when the meanest insects
are worshipped with a sort of Egyptian 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 patch
work notes (which possess, however, the comparative merit of
being more poetical than the text) and because, to increase
the stimulus, the author has sagaciously left his own name
for whispers and conjectures! In an age, when even ser
mons are published with a double appendix stuffed with
names—in a generation so transformed from the characteris
tic reserve of Britons, that from the ephemeral sheet of a
London newspaper, to the everlasting Scotch Professorial
Quarto, almost every publication exhibits or flatters the
epidemic distemper; that the very "last year’s rebuses" in
the Ladies Diary, are answered in a serious elegy " on my
father’s death" with the name and habitat of the elegiac
Œdipus subscribed; and " other ingenious solutions were
likewise given" to the said rebuses—not as heretofore by
Crito, Philander, A, B, Y, &c. but by fifty or sixty plain
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Page No 32
English sirnames at full length with their several places of
abode! In an age, when a bashful Philalethes, or Phileleu
theros is as rare on the titlepages, and among the signatures
of our magazines, as a real name used to be in the days of
our shy and noticeshunning grandfathers! When (more
exquisite than all) I see an EPIC POEM (spirits of Maro and
Mæonides make ready to welcome your new compeer!)
advertised with the special recommendation, that the said
EPIC POEM contains more than an hundred names of living persons."
FRIEND No. 10.
during their shortlived success, sensible in
spite of themselves on what a shifting foundation it
rested, they resent the mere refusal of praise,
as a robbery, and at the justest censures kindle
at once into violent and undisciplined abuse;
till the acute disease changing into chronical,
the more deadly as the less violent, they be
come the fit instruments of literary detraction,
and moral slander. They are then no longer to
be questioned without exposing the complain
ant to ridicule, because, forsooth, they are ano
nymous critics, and authorised as "synodical
individuals"* to speak of themselves plurali
majestatico! As if literature formed a cast, like
that of the PARAS in Hindostan, who, however
maltreated, must not dare to deem themselves
wronged! As if that, which in all other cases
adds a deeper die to slander, the circumstance
of its being anonymous, here acted only to
make the slanderer inviolable! Thus, in part,
from the accidental tempers of individuals (men
of undoubted talent, but not men of genius)
tempers rendered yet more irritable by their
desire to appear men of genius; but still more
effectively by the excesses of the mere counter
feits both of talent and genius; the number
too being so incomparably greater of those who
are thought to be, than of those who really are
A phrase of Andrew Marvel’s.
men of real genius; and in part from the natu
ral, but not therefore the less partial and unjust
distinction, made by the public itself between
literary, and all other property; I believe the
prejudice to have arisen, which considers an
unusual irascibility concerning the reception of
its products as characteristic of genius. It
might correct the moral feelings of a numerous
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Page No 33
class of readers, to suppose a Review set on
foot, the object of which was to criticise all the
chief works presented to the public by our rib
bonweavers, calicoprinters, cabinetmakers,
and chinamanufacturers; a Review conducted
in the same spirit, and which should take the
same freedom with personal character, as our
literary journals. They would scarcely, I think,
deny their belief, not only that the "genus
irritabile" would be found to include many
other species besides that of bards; but that the
irritability of trade would soon reduce the re
sentments of poets into mere shadowfights
skiomachias in the comparison. Or is wealth the
only rational object of human interest? Or even
if this were admitted, has the poet no property
in his works? Or is it a rare, or culpable
case, that he who serves at the altar of the
muses, should be compelled to derive his main
tenance from the altar, when too he has per
haps deliberately abandoned the fairest pros
pects of rank and opulence in order to devote
himself, an entire and undistracted man, to the
instruction or refinement of his fellowcitizens?
Or should we pass by all higher objects and
motives, all disinterested benevolence, and even
that ambition of lasting praise which is at once
the crutch and ornament, which at once sup
ports and betrays, the infirmity of human vir
tue; is the character and property of the in
dividual, who labours for our intellectual plea
sures, less entitled to a share of our fellow
feeling, than that of the winemerchant or mil
liner? Sensibility indeed, both quick and deep,
is not only a characteristic feature, but may be
deemed a component part, of genius. But it is
no less an essential mark of true genius, that
its sensibility is excited by any other cause
more powerfully, than by its own personal
interests; for this plain reason, that the man
of genius lives most in the ideal world, in which
the present is still constituted by the future
or the past; and because his feelings have been
habitually associated with thoughts and images,
to the number, clearness, and vivacity of which
the sensation of self is always in an inverse
proportion. And yet, should he perchance
have occasion to repel some false charge, or to
rectify some erroneous censure, nothing is more
common, than for the many to mistake the
general liveliness of his manner and language
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Page No 34
whatever is the subject, for the effects of
peculiar irritation from its accidental relation to
himself.*
For myself, if from my own feelings, or from
the less suspicious test of the observations of
others, I had been made aware of any literary
testiness or jealousy; I trust, that I should
have been, however, neither silly or arrogant
enough, to have burthened the imperfection on
GENIUS. But an experience (and I should not
need documents in abundance to prove my
words, if I added) a tried experience of twenty
years, has taught me, that the original sin of
my character consists in a careless indifference
to public opinion, and to the attacks of those
who influence it; that praise and admiration
This is one instance among many of deception, by the
telling the half of a fact, and omitting, the other half, when
it is from their mutual counteraction and neutralization,
that the whole truth arises, as a tertiam aliquid different
from either. Thus in Dryden’s famous line "Great wit"
(which here means genius) "to madness sure is near allied."
Now as far as the profound sensibility, which is doubtless
one of the components of genius, were alone considered,
single and unbalanced, it might be fairly described as expos
ing the individual to a greater chance of mental derange
ment; but then a more than usual rapidity of association, a
more than usual power of passing from thought to thought,
and image to image, is a component equally essential; and
in the due modification of each by the other the GENIUS
itself consists; so that it would be as just as fair to describe
the earth, as in imminent danger of exorbitating, or of falling
into the sun according as the assertor of the absurdity con
fined his attention either to the projectile or to the attractive
force exclusively.
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 interest even about the sale and profit of
my works, important, as in my present circum
stances, such considerations must needs be.
Yet it never occurred to me to believe or fancy,
that the quantum of intellectual power be
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Page No 35
stowed on me by nature or education was in
any way connected with this habit of my feel
ings; or that it needed any other parents or
fosterers, than constitutional indolence, aggra
vated into languor by illhealth; the accumulat
ing 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 charge
able on my faults or my fortunes which leave
me but little grief to spare for evils compara
tively, distant and alien.
Indignation at literary wrongs, I leave to
men born under happier stars. I cannot afford
it. But so far from condemning those who
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
provocation, and the importance of the object.
There is no profession on earth, which requires
an attention so early, so long, or so unintermit
ting as that of poetry; and indeed as that of lite
rary composition in general, if it be such, as at
all satisfies the demands both of taste and of
sound logic. How difficult and delicate a task
even the mere mechanism of verse is, may be
conjectured from the failure of those, who have
attempted poetry late in life. Where then a
man has, from his earliest youth, devoted his
whole being to an object, which by the admis
sion of all civilized nations in all ages is hono
rable as a pursuit, and glorious as an attain
ment; what of all that relates to himself and
his family, if only we except his moral cha
racter, can have fairer claims to his protection,
or more authorise acts of selfdefence, than the
elaborate products of his intellect, and intel
lectual industry? Prudence itself would com
mand us to show, even if defect or diversion of
natural sensibility had prevented us from feel
ing, a due interest and qualified anxiety for the
offspring and representatives of our nobler being.
I know it, alas! by woeful experience! I have
laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this
wilderness the world, with ostrich careless
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Page No 36
ness and ostrich oblivion. The greater part
indeed have been trod under foot, and are for
gotten; 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, of them
that unprovoked have lain in wait against my
soul.
" Sic vos, non vobis mellificatis, apes!"
An instance in confirmation of the Note, p. 39, occurs to
me as I am correcting this sheet, with the FAITHFUL
SHEPHERDESS open before me. Mr. Seward first traces
Fletcher’s lines;
" More souldiseases than e’er yet the hot
"Sun bred thro’ his burnings, while the dog
"Pursues the raging lion, throwing the fog
"And deadly vapor 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!"
He then takes occasion to introduce Homer’s simile of the
sight of Achilles’ shield to Priam compared with the Dog
Star, literally thus—
" For this indeed is most splendid, but it was made an
"evil sign, and brings many a consuming disease to wretched
"mortals." Nothing can be more simple as a description, or
more accurate as a simile; which (says Mr. S.) is thus finely
translated by Mr. Pope:
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Page No 37
" Terrific Glory! for his burning breath
Taints the red air with fevers, plagues, and death!"
Now here (not to mention the tremendous bombast) the
Dog Star, so called, is turned into a real Dog, a very odd
Dog, a Fire, Fever, Plague, and deathbreathing, redair
tainting Dog: and the whole visual likeness is lost, while the
likeness in the effects is rendered absurd by the exaggeration.
In Spencer 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
Puns.
CHAPTER III.
The author’s obligations to critics, and the proba
ble occasion—Principles of modern criticism—
Mr. Southey’s works and character.
To anonymous critics in reviews, maga
zines, and newsjournals of various name and
rank, and to satirists with or without a name,
in verse or prose, or in versetext aided by
prosecomment, I do seriously believe and pro
fess, that I owe full two thirds of whatever
reputation and publicity I happen to possess.
For when the name of an individual has oc
curred 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 ninetenths
of the reading of the reading public*) cannot but
For as to the devotees of the circulating libraries, I dare
not compliment their passtime, or rather killtime, with the
name of reading. Call it rather a sort of beggarly day
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Page No 38
dreaming, during which the mind of the dreamer furnishes
for itself nothing but laziness and a little mawkish sensibi
lity; while the whole materiel and imagery of the doze is
supplied ab extra by a sort of mental camera obscura ma
nufactured at the printing office, which pro tempore fixes,
reflects and transmits the moving phantasms of one man’s*
be familiar with the name, without distinctly
remembering whether it was introduced for
an eulogy or for censure. And this becomes
the more likely, if (as I believe) the habit of
perusing periodical works may be properly
added to Averrhoe’s* catalogue of ANTIMNE
MONICS, or weakeners of the memory. But
where this has not been the case, yet the reader
*delirium, so as to people the barrenness of an hundred other
brains afflicted with the same trance or suspension of all
common sense and all definite purpose. We should there
fore transfer this species of amusement, (if indeed those can
be said to retire a musis, who were never in their company,
or relaxation be attributable to those, whose bows are never
bent) from the genus, reading, to that comprehensive class
characterized by the power of reconciling the two contrary
yet coexisting propensities of human nature, namely; indul
gence of sloth, and hatred of vacancy. In addition to novels
and tales of chivalry in prose or rhyme, (by which last I
mean neither rhythm nor metre) this genus comprizes as its
species, gaming, swinging, or swaying on a chair or gate;
spitting over a bridge; smoking; snufftaking; tete a tete
quarrels after dinner between husband and wife; conning
word by word all the advertisements of the daily advertizer
in a public house on a rainy day, &c. &c. &c.
*Ex. gr. Pediculos e capillis excerptos in arenam jacere
incontusos; eating of unripe fruit; gazing on the clouds, and
(in genere) on moveable things suspended in the air; riding
among a multitude of camels; frequent laughter; listening
to a series of jests and humourous anecdotes, as when (so to
modernise the learned Saracen’s meaning) one man’s droll
story of an Irishman inevitably occasions another’s droll story
of a Scotchman, which again by the same sort of conjunction
disjunctive leads to some etourderie of a Welchman, and
that again to some sly hit of a Yorkshireman; the habit of
reading tombstones in churchyards, &c. By the bye, this
catalogue strange as it may appear, is not insusceptible of a
sound pcychological commentary.
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Page No 39
will be apt to suspect, that there must be
something more than usually strong and exten
sive in a reputation, that could either require or
stand so merciless and longcontinued a can
nonading. Without any feeling of anger there
fore (for which indeed, on my own account, I
have no pretext) I may yet be allowed to ex
press some degree of surprize, that after having
run the critical gauntlet for a certain class of
faults which I had, nothing having come before
the judgementseat in the interim, I should,
year after year, quarter after quarter, month
after month (not to mention sundry petty pe
riodicals of still quicker revolution, "or weekly
or diurnal") have been for at least 17 years
consecutively dragged forth by them into 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,
I certainly cannot attribute this persecution to
personal dislike, or to envy, or to feelings of
vindictive animosity. Not to the former, for,
with the exception of a very few who are my
intimate friends, and were so before thencty were
known as authors, I have had little other ac
quaintance with literary characters, than what
may be implied in an accidental introduction,
or casual meeting in a mixt company. And,
as far as words and looks can be trusted, I
must believe that, even in these instances, I had
excited no unfriendly disposition.* Neither by
Some years ago, a gentleman, the chief writer and con
ductor of a celebrated review, distinguished by its hostility
to Mr. Southey, spent a day or two at Keswick. That he
was, without diminution on this account, treated with every
hospitable attention by Mr. Southey and myself, I trust I
need not say. But 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 compliments in so short a space
of time. He was likewise circumstantially informed by what
series of accidents it had happened, that Mr. Wordsworth,
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Mr. Southey, and I had become neighbours; and how ut
terly unfounded was the supposition, that we considered
ourselves, as belonging to any common school, but that of
good sense confirmed by the longestablished models of the
best times of Greece, Rome, Italy, and England; and still
more groundless the notion, that Mr. Southey (for as to my
self I have published so little, and that little, of so little im
portance, as to make it almost ludicrous to mention my name
at all) could have been 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 acquaintance be
tween them; but before Mr. Wordsworth himself had written
any thing but in a diction ornate, and uniformly sustain
ed; when too the slightest examination will make it evident, that
between those and the after writings of Mr. Southey, there
exists no other difference than that of a progressive degree
of excellence from progressive developement of power, and
progressive facility from habit and increase of experience.
Yet among the first articles which this man wrote after his
return from Keswick, we were characterized as "the School
of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes."
In reply to a letter 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. Johnson; and Jeremy Taylor
to Burke; I stated, somewhat at large, the comparative ex
cellences and defects which characterized our best prose
writers, from the reformation, to the first half of Charles
nd; and that of those who had flourished during the present
reign, and the preceding one. About twelve months
letter, or in conversation, have I ever had dis
pute or controversy beyond the common social
interchange of opinions. Nay, where I had
reason to suppose my convictions fundament
ally different, it has been my habit, and I may
add, the impulse of my nature, to assign the
grounds of my belief, rather than the belief
itself; and not to express dissent, till I could
*afterwards, a review appeared on the same subject, in the con
cluding paragraph of which the reviewer asserts, that his
chief motive for entering into the discussion was to separate
a rational and qualified admiration of our elder writers, from
the indiscriminate enthusiasm of a recent school, who praised
what they did not understand, and caracatured 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. SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH and
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COLERIDGE. For that which follows, I have only earsay
evidence; but yet such as demands my belief; viz. that on
being questioned concerning this apparently wanton attack,
more especially with reference to Miss Bailie, the writer had
stated as his motives, that this lady when at Edinburgh had
declined a proposal of introducing him to her; that Mr.
Southey had written against him; and Mr. Wordsworth had
talked contemptuously of him; but that as to Coleridge he
had noticed him merely because the names of Southey and
Wordsworth and Coleridge always went together. But if
it were worth while to mix together, as ingredients, half the
anecdotes which I either myself know to be true, or which
I have received from men incapable of intentional falsehood,
concerning the characters, qualifications, and motives of our
anonymous critics, whose decisions are oracles for our read
ing public; I might safely borrow the words of the apocry
phal Daniel; "Give me leave, O SOVEREIGN PUBLIC, and I
shall slay this dragon without sword or staff." For the com
pound would be as the "Pitch, and fat, and hair, which
Daniel took, and did seethe them together, and made lumps
thereof, and put into the dragon’s mouth, and so the dragon
burst in sunder; and Daniel said LO; THESE ARE THE
GODS YE WORSHIP."
establish some points of complete sympathy,
some grounds common to both sides, from
which to commence its explanation.
Still less can I place these attacks to the
charge of envy. The few pages, which I 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, I had almost said possible,
the excitement of envy on their account; and
the man who should envy me on any other,
verily he must be envymad!
Lastly, with as little semblance of reason,
could I suspect 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 intervals, lived either abroad or in retire
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Page No 42
ment. My different essays on subjects of na
tional interest, published at different times, first
in the Morning 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 occa
sions on which I could offend any member of
the republic of letters. With one solitary ex
ception in which my words were first mis
stated and then wantonly applied to an
individual, I could never learn, that I had excited the
displeasure of any among my literary contem
poraries. Having announced my intention to
give a course of lectures on the characteristic
merits and defects of English poetry in its dif
ferent æras; first, from Chaucer to Milton;
second, from Dryden inclusive to Thompson;
and third, from Cowper to the present day; I
changed my plan, and confined my disquisition
to the two former æras, that I might furnish no
possible pretext for the unthinking to miscon
strue, or the malignant to misapply my words,
and having stampt their 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 deserving; and it is
too true, and too frequent, that Bacon, Har
rington, Machiavel, and Spinosa, are not read,
because Hume, Condilliac, and Voltaire are.
But in promiscuous company no prudent man
will oppugn the merits of a contemporary in
his own supposed department; contenting him
self with praising in his turn those whom he
deems excellent. If I should ever deem it my
duty at all to oppose the pretensions of indivi
duals, I would oppose them in books which
could be weighed and answered, in which I
could evolve the whole of my reasons and feel
ings, with their requisite limits and
modifications; not in irrecoverable conversation, where
however strong the reasons might be, the feel
ings that prompted them would assuredly be
attributed by some one or other to envy and
discontent. Besides I well know, and I trust,
have acted on that knowledge, that it must be
the ignorant and injudicious who extol the
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Page No 43
unworthy; and the eulogies of critics without
taste or judgement are the natural reward of
authors without feeling or genius. "Sint uni
cuique sua premia."
How then, dismissing, as I do, these three
causes, am I to account for attacks, the long
continuance and inveteracy of which it would
require all three to explain. The solution may
seem to have been given, or at least suggested,
in a note to a preceding page. I was in habits
of intimacy with Mr. Wordsworth and Mr.
Southey! This, however, transfers, rather than
removes, the difficulty. Be it, that by an un
conscionable extension of the old adage, "nos
citur a socio" my literary friends are never
under the waterfall of criticism, but I must be
wet through with the spray; yet how came the
torrent to descend upon them ?
First then, with regard to Mr. Southey. I
well remember the 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 prediliction for the strange and
whimsical; in short, such faults as might have
been anticipated in a young and rapid 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 uncorrupted youth had avowed
his zeal for a cause, which he deemed that of
liberty, and his abhorrence of oppression by
whatever name consecrated. But it was as
little objected by others, as dreamt of by the
poet himself, that he preferred careless and
prosaic lines on rule and of forethought, or in
deed that he pretended to any other art or
theory of poetic diction, besides that which we
may all learn from Horace, Quintilian, the ad
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mirable dialogue de Causis Corruptæ Eloquen
tiæ, 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 estimation of writers Mr. Southey
agreed far more with Warton, thall with John
son. Nor do I mean to deny, that at all times
Mr. Southey was of the same mind with Sir
Philip Sidney in preferring an excellent ballad
in the humblest style of poetry to twenty in
different 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 splendor, a
deeper pathos, profounder reflections, and a
more sustained dignity of language and of
metre? Distant may the period be, but when
ever 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, from the pamph
lets and periodical works of the last twenty
years, may be an accompaniment. Yet that it
would prove medicinal in after times, I dare
not hope; for as long as there are readers to
be delighted with calumny, there will be found
reviewers to calumniate. And such readers
will become in all probability more numerous,
in proportion as a still greater diffusion of lite
rature shall produce an increase of sciolists;
and sciolism bring with it petulance and pre
sumption. In times of old, books were as reli
gious oracles; as literature advanced, they next
became venerable preceptors; they then de
scended 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 chuses to write from humour or interest,
from enmity or arrogance, and to abide the
decision (in the words of Jeremy Taylor) "of
him that reads in malice, or him that reads after
dinner."
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The same gradual retrograde movement may
be traced, in the relation which the authors
themselves have assumed towards 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 the honor given was as
serted in equipoise to the patronage acknow
leged from PINDAR’S
ep alloi
si dalloi megaloi. to deschaton koru
phoutai basileusi. meketi
Paptaine porsion.
Eie se te touton
Upsou chronon patein, eme
Te tossade nikarorois
Omilein, prophanton sorian kad El
lanas eonta panta.
OLYMP. OD. I.
Poets and Philosophers, rendered diffident
by their very number, addressed themselves to
"learned 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 muni
cipality of judges, and addressed as THE TOWN!
And now finally, all men being supposed able
to read, and all readers able to judge, the mul
titudinous PUBLIC, shaped into personal 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 phy
sical 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
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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 successful professors. But I shall
probably have occasion hereafter to deliver my
convictions more at large concerning this state
of things, and its influences on taste, genius
and morality.
In the "Thalaba" the "Madoc" and still
more evidently in the unique* "Cid," the
"Kehama," and as last, so best, the "Don
"Roderick;" Southey has given abundant proof,
"se cogitässe quám sit magnum dare aliquid
"in manus hominum: nec persuadere sibi posse,
"non sæpe 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 comprehend, 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 nothing immoral. In
the present age "perituræ parcere chartæ" 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
I have ventured to call it "unique ;" not only because I
know no work of the kind in our language (if we except a
few chapters of the old translation of Froissart) none, which
uniting the charms of romance and history, keeps the imagi
nation so constantly on the wing, and yet leaves so much for
after reflection; but likewise, and chiefly, because it is a
compilation, which in the various excellencies of translation,
selection, and arrangement, required and proves greater ge
nius in the compiler, as living in the present state of society,
than in the original composers.
the critic was not one of those, for whom the
trifle was written; and than all the grave ex
hortations to a greater reverence for the public.
As if the passive page of a book, by having an
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Page No 47
epigram or doggrel tale impressed on it, in
stantly assumed at once locomotive power and
a sort of ubiquity, so as to flutter and buz in
the ear of the public to the sore annoyance of
the said mysterious personage. But what gives
an additional and more ludicrous absurdity to
these lamentations 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
nothing that surpasses the vileness of deciding
on the merits of a poet or painter (not by cha
racteristic defects; for where there is genius,
these always point to his characteristic beauties;
but) by accidental failures or faulty passages;
except the impudence of defending it, as the
proper duty, and most instructive part, of cri
ticism. Omit or pass slightly over, the ex
pression, grace, and grouping of Raphael’s
figures; but ridicule in detail the
knittingneedles and broomtwigs, that are to represent
trees in his back grounds; and never let him
hear the last of his gallipots! Admit, that
the Allegro and Penseroso of Milton are not
without merit; but repay yourself for this con
cession, 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 literal 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 excel
lencies of the poet, the admiration of these
might seduce the attention of future 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
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sneers, the reviewers support their decisions by
reference to fixed canons of criticism, previ
ously established and deduced from the nature
of man; reflecting minds will pronounce it ar
rogance 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 information.
But he, who points out and elucidates the
beauties of an original work, does indeed give
me interesting information, such as experience
would not have authorised me in anticipating.
And as to compositions which the authors
themselves announce with "Hæc ipsi novimus
esse nihil," why should we judge by a dif
ferent rule two printed works, only because
the one author was alive, and the other in his
grave? What literary man has not regretted
the prudery of Spratt in refusing to let his friend
Cowley appear in his slippers and dressing
gown? I am not perhaps the only one who
has derived an innocent amusement from the
riddles, conundrums, trisyllable lines, &c. &c.
of Swift and his correspondents, in hours of
languor when to have read his more finished
works would have been useless to myself, and,
in some sort, an act of injustice to the author.
But I am at a loss to conceive by what perver
sity of judgement, 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 poems of inferior merit, or partial inte
rest, as have enlivened the journals of the day,
they would have added to his honour with
good and wise men, not merely or principally
as proving the versatility of his 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
biographer the duty of contrasting Southey’s
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Page No 49
fixed and wellearned fame, with the abuse and
indefatigable hostility of his anonymous critics
from his early youth to his ripest 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 biblio
grapher; and when I regard him, as a popular
essayist, (for the articles of his compositions in
the reviews are for the greater part essays on
subjects of deep or curious 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 reflec
tions, in a style so lively and poignant, yet so
uniformly classical and perspicuous; no one in
short who has combined so much wisdom with
See the articles on Methodism, in the Quarterly Review;
the small volume on the New System of Education, &c.
so much wit; so much truth and knowledge
with so much life and fancy. His prose is
always intelligible and always entertaining. In
poetry he has attempted almost every species
of composition known before, and he has added
new ones; and if we except the highest lyric,
(in which how few, 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 pa
triotic exultation, to the wild ballad ;* from
epistolary ease and graceful narrative, to the
austere and impetuous moral declamation; from
the pastoral claims and wild streaming lights of
the "Thalaba," in which sentiment and imagery
have given permanence even to the excitement
of curiosity; and from the full blaze of the
"Kehama," (a gallery of finished pictures in
one splendid fancy piece, in which, notwith
standing, the moral grandeur 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
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Page No 50
lastly, from the Madoc to his "Roderic," in
which, retaining all his former excellencies of a
poet eminently inventive and picturesque, he has
See the incomparable "Return to Moscow," and the
"Old Woman of Berkeley."
surpassed himself in language and metre, in
the construction of the whole, and in the splen
dor of particular passages.
Here then shall I conclude? No! The cha
racters of the deceased, like the encomia on
tombstones, as they are described with religious
tenderness, so are they read, with allowing sym
pathy indeed, but yet with rational 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 poste
rity, to be made acquainted; while it is yet pos
sible for impartial censure, and even for quick
sighted envy, to crossexamine the tale without
offence to the courtesies of humanity; and while
the eulogist detected in exaggeration or false
hood must pay the full penalty of his baseness
in the contempt which brands the convicted flat
terer. Publicly has Mr. Southey been reviled
by men, who (I would feign hope for the honor
of human nature) hurled firebrands against a
figure of their own imagination, publicly have
his talents been depreciated, his principles de
nounced; as publicly do I therefore, who have
known him intimately, deem it my duty to leave
recorded, that it is SOUTHEY’S almost unexam
pled felicity, to possess the best gifts of talent and
genius free from all their characteristic defects.
To those who remember the state of our public
schools and universities some twenty years past,
it will appear no ordinary praise in any man to
have passed from innocence into virtue, not only
free from all vicious 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 selfdefence,
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Page No 51
asserts of himself, and challenges his calumnia
tors to disprove; this will his schoolmates, his
fellowcollegians, 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 genius, will appear the poet’s match
less industry and perseverance in his pursuits;
the worthiness and dignity of those pursuits;
his generous submission to tasks of transitory
interest, or such as his genius alone could make
otherwise; and that having thus more than sa
tisfied the claims of affection or prudence, he
should yet have made for himself time and
power, to achieve more, and in more various de
partments 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 deemed rare in the most mechanical
pursuits, and might be envied by the mere man
of business, loses all semblance of formality in
the dignified simplicity of his manners, in the
spring and healthful chearfulness of his spirits.
Always employed, his friends find him always
at leisure. No less punctual in trifles, than
stedfast in the performance of highest duties, he
inflicts none of those small pains and discom
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 that ease of mind on
those around him or connected with him, which
perfect consistency, and (if such a word might
be framed) absolute reliability, equally in small
as in great concerns, cannot but inspire and
bestow: when this too is softened without
being weakened by kindness and gentleness.
I know few men who so well deserve the cha
racter which an antient attributes to Marcus
Cato, namely, that he was likest virtue, in as
much as he seemed to act aright, not in obedi
ence to any law or outward motive, but by the
necessity of a happy nature, which could not
act otherwise. As son, brother, husband, father,
master, friend, he moves with firm yet light
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Page No 52
steps, alike unostentatious, and alike exem.
plary. As a writer, he has uniformly made his
talents subservient to the best interests of huma
nity, of public virtue, and domestic piety; his
cause has ever been the cause of pure religion
and of liberty, of national independence and of
national illumination. 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 more constant friend, never had
poet more friends and honorers 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 easy to estimate the effects which the example
of a young man as highly distinguished for strict purity of
disposition and conduct, as for intellectual power and lite
rary acquirements, may produce on those of the same age
with himself, especially on those of similar pursuits and con
genial minds. For many years, my opportunities of inter
course with Mr. Southey have been rare, and at long inter
vals; but I dwell with unabated pleasure on the strong and
sudden, yet I trust not fleeting influence, which my moral
being underwent on my acquaintance with him at Oxford,
whither I had gone at the commencement of our Cambridge
vacation on a visit to an old schoolfellow. Not indeed on
my moral or religious principles, for they had never been
contaminated; but in awakening the sense of the duty and
dignity of making my actions accord with those principles,
both in word and deed. The irregularities only not univer
sal among the young men of my standing, which I always
knew to be wrong, I then learnt to feel as degrading; learnt
to know that an opposite conduct, which was at that time
considered by us as the easy virtue of cold and selfish pru
dence, might originate in the noblest emotions, in views the*
CHAPTER IV.
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Page No 53
The lyrical ballads with the preface—Mr. Words
worth’s earlier poems—On fancy and imagi
nation—The investigation of the distinction
important to the fine arts.
I have wandered far from the object in view,
but as I fancied to myself readers who would
respect the feelings that had tempted me from
*most disinterested and imaginative. It is not however from
grateful recollections only, that I have been impelled thus to
leave these, my deliberate sentiments on record; but in some
sense as a debt of justice to the man, whose name has been so
often connected with mine, for evil to which he is a stranger.
As a specimen I subjoin part of a note, from "the Beauties
of the Antijacobin," in which, having previously informed
the public that I had been dishonor’d at Cambridge for
preaching deism, at a time when for my youthful ardor in
defence of christianity, I was decried as a bigot by the pro
selytes of French Phi (or to speak more truly, Psi) losophy,
the writer concludes with these words "since this time he
has left his native country, commenced citizen of the world,
left his poor children fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex
his disce, his friends, LAMB and SOUTHEY. "With severest
truth it may be asserted, that it would not be easy to select
two men more exemplary in their domestic affections, than
those whose names were thus printed at full length as in the
same rank of morals with a denounced infidel and fugitive,
who had left his children fatherless and his wife destitute!
Is it surprising, that many good men remained longer than
perhaps they otherwise would have done, adverse to a party,
which encouraged and openly rewarded the authors of such
atrocious calumnies! Qualis es, nescio; sed per quales
agis, scio et doleo.
the main road; so I dare calculate on not a
few, who will warmly sympathize with them.
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 a new school of poetry,
and of clamors against its supposed founders
and proselytes.
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Page No 54
As little do I believe that "Mr. WORDS
WORTH’S Lyrical Ballads" were in themselves the
cause. I speak exclusively of the two volumes
so entitled. A careful and repeated examina
tion of these confirms me in the belief, that the
omission of less than an hundred lines would
have precluded ninetenths 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 subjects or
interests from the incidents of domestic or or
dinary life, intermingled with higher strains of
meditation which the poet utters in his own
person and character; with the proviso, that
they were perused without knowledge of, or
reference to, the author’s peculiar opinions, and
that the reader had not had his attention previ
ously directed to those peculiarities. In these,
as was actually the case with Mr. Southey’s
earlier works, the lines and passages which
might have offended the general taste, would
have been considered as mere inequalities, and
attributed to inattention, not to perversity of
judgement. The men of business who had
passed their lives chiefly in cities, and who
might therefore be expected to derive the high
est pleasure from acute notices of men and
manners conveyed in easy, yet correct and
pointed language; and all those who, reading
but little poetry, are most stimulated with that
species of it, which seems most distant from
prose, would probably have passed by the
volume altogether. Others more catholic in
their taste, and yet habituated to be most pleas
ed 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 admiration of "the lines written
near Tintern Abbey," those "left upon a Seat
under a Yew Tree," the "old Cumberland beg
gar," and "Ruth," have been gradually led to
peruse with kindred feeling the "Brothers," the
"Hart leap well," and whatever other poems in
that collection may be described as holding a
middle place between those written in the high
est and those in the humblest style; as for
instance between the "Tintern Abbey," and
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Page No 55
"the Thorn," or the "Simon Lee." Should
their taste submit to no further change, and
sill remain unreconciled to the colloquial
phrases, or the imitations 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 inconsiderable 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 tendency,
and consequently the proper direction of the
author’s genius.
In the critical remarks therefore, prefixed
and annexed to the "Lyrical Ballads," I be
lieve, that we may safely rest, as the true
origin of the unexampled opposition which
Mr. Wordsworth’s writings have been since
doomed to encounter. 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 announced as intentional, as
the result of choice after full deliberation.
Thus the poems, admitted by all as excellent,
joined with those which had pleased the far
greater number, though they formed twothirds
of the whole work, instead of 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
and the poet. In all perplexity there is a por
tion of fear, which predisposes the mind to
anger. Not able to deny that the author pos
sessed both genius and a powerful intellect,
they felt very positive, but were not quite certain,
that he might not be in the right, and they
themselves in the wrong; an unquiet state of
mind, which seeks alleviation by quarrelling
with the occasion of it, and by wondering at the
perverseness of the man, who had written a long
and argumentative essay to persuade them, that
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" Fair is foul, and foul is fair ;"
in other words, that they had been all their lives
admiring without judgement, and were now
about to censure without reason.*
In opinions of long continuance, and in which we had
never before been molested by a single doubt, to be sud
denly convinced of an error, is almost like being convicted of
a fault. There is a state of mind, which is the direct anti
thesis of that, which takes place when we make a bull. The
bull namely consists in the bringing together two incompa
patible thoughts, with the sensation, but without the sense, of
their connection. The psychological condition, or that
which constitutes the possibility of this state, being such
disproportionate vividness of two distant thoughts, as extin
guishes or obscures the consciousness of the intermediate
images or conceptious or wholly abstracts the attention
from them. Thus in the well known bull, "I was a fine
child, but they changed me ;" the first conception expressed
in the word" I," is that of personal identity—Ego contem
plans: the second expressed in the word "me," is the visual
image or object by which the mind represents to itself its
past condition, or rather, its personal identity under the
form in which it imagined itself previously to have existed,*
That this conjecture is not wide from the
mark, I am induced to believe from the notice
able fact, which I can state on my own know
ledge, that the same general censure should
have been grounded almost by each different
person on some different poem. Among those,
whose candour and judgement I estimate highly,
I distinctly remember six who expressed their
objections to the "Lyrical Ballads" almost in
the same words, and altogether to the same
purport, at the same time admitting, that se
veral of the poems had given them great plea
sure; and, strange as it might seem, the com
position which one had cited as execrable,
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Page No 57
*Ego contemplatus. Now the change of one visual image for
another involves in itself no absurdity, and becomes absurd
only by its immediate juxtaposition with the first thought,
which is rendered possible by the whole attention being suc
cessively absorbed in each singly, so as not to notice the in
terjacent notion, "changed" which by its incongruity with
the first thought, "I," constitutes the bull. Add only, that
this process is facilitated by the circumstance of the words
"I," and "me," being sometimes equivalent, and sometimes
having a distinct meaning; sometimes, namely, signifying
the act of selfconsciousness, sometimes the external image
in and by which the mind represents that act to itself, the
result and symbol of its individuality. Now suppose the
direct contrary state, and you will have a distinct sense of
the connection between two conceptions, without that sen
sation of such connection which is supplied by habit. The
man feels, as if he were standing on his head, though he can
not but see, that he is truly standing on his feet. This, as a
painful sensation, will of course have a tendency to associate
itself with the person who occasions it; even as persons, who
have been by painful means restored from derangement, are
known to feel an involuntary dislike towards their physician.
another had quoted as his favorite. I am
indeed convinced in my own mind, that could
the same experiment have been tried with these
volumes, as was made in the well known story
of the picture, the result 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 notatæ on
the succeeding.
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
if they had been so many plaguespots on the
whole work, instead of passing them over in
silence, as so much blank paper, or leaves of
bookseller’s catalogue; especially, as no one
pretends to have found immorality or indeli
cacy; 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
talentsI hold in the highest respect, but whose
judgement and strong sound sense I have had
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Page No 58
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 incidents, in which I could not
myself find a sufficient cause for their having
been recorded in metre. I mentioned the "Alice
Fell" as an instance; "nay," replied my friend
with more than usual quickness of manner,
" I cannot agree with you there! that I own
does seem to me a remarkably pleasing poem."
In the "Lyrical Ballads" (for my experience
does not enable me to extend the remark equally
unqualified to the two subsequent volumes) I
have heard at different times, and from different
individuals every single poem extolled and re
probated, with the exception of those of loftier
kind, which as was before observed, seem to
have won universal praise. This fact of itself
would have made me diffident in my censures,
had not a still stronger ground been furnished
by the strange contrast of the heat and long
continuance of the opposition, with the nature
of the faults stated as justifying it. The seduc
tive faults, the dulcia vitia of Cowley, Marini,
or Darwin might reasonably be thought capable
of corrupting the public judgement for half a
century, and require a twenty years war, cam
paign after campaign, in order to dethrone the
usurper and reestablish the legitimate 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 characters, should suc
ceed in forming a school of imitators, a com
pany of almost religious admirers, and this too
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 characterized as below criticism, should
for nearly twenty years have wellnigh engrossed
criticism, as the main, if not the only, butt of
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Page No 59
review, magazine, pamphlets, poem, and para
graph;this is indeed matter of wonder! Of
yet greater is it, that the contest should still
continue as* undecided as that between
Without however the apprehensions attributed to the
Pagan reformer of the poetic republic. If we may judge
from the preface to the recent collection of his poems, Mr.
W. would have answered with Xanthias—
Su d ouk edeisas ton psophon ton rematon,
Kai tas apeilas; XAN. ouma Di, oud ephrontisa.
And here let me dare hint to the authors of the numerous
parodies, and pretended imitations of Mr. Wordsworth’s
style, that at once to conceal and convey wit and wisdom in
the semblance of folly and dulness, as is done in the clowns
and fools, nay even in the Dogberry, of our Shakespear, is
doubtless a proof of genius, or at all 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
only prove (if it prove any thing at all) that the parodist is a
still greater blockhead than the original writer, and what is
far worse, a malignant coxcomb to boot. The talent for
mimicry seems strongest where the human race are most de
graded. The poor, naked, half human savages of New Hol
land were found excellent mimics: and in civilized society,
minds of the very lowest stamp alone satirize by copying.
At least the difference, which must blend with 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 his understanding.
Bacchus and the frogs in Aristophanes; when the
former descended to the realms of the departed
to bring back the spirit of the old and genuine
poesy.
Choros Batrachon; Dionusos
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Page No 60
Ch. brekekekex, koax, koax !
D. all exoloisd auto koax.
ouden gar esi, e koax.
oimozet : ou moi melei.
Ch. alla men kekraxomesda
goposon e pharugx an emon
chandane di emeras
brekekekex, koax, koax!
D. touto gar ou nikesete.
Ch. oude men emas su oantos.
D. oude men umeis ge de me
oudepote kekraxomai gar
kan me dei di emeras,
eos an umon epikratesoo to Koax!
Ch. brekekekex, KOAX, KOAX!
During the last year of my residence at Cam
bridge, I became acquainted with Mr. Words
worth’s first publication entitled "Descriptive
Sketches;" and seldom, if ever, was the emer
gence 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 acerbity
connected and combined with words and images
all aglow, which might recall those products
of the vegetable world, where gorgeous blos
soms rise out of the hard and thorny rind and
shell, within which the rich fruit was elaborat
ing. The language was not only peculiar and
strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as
by its own impatient strength; while the no
velty and struggling crowd of images acting in
conjunction with the difficulties of the style,
demanded always a greater closeness of atten
tion, than poetry, (at all events, than descrip
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tive poetry) has a right to claim. It not seldom
therefore justified the complaint of obscurity.
In the following extract I have sometimes fan
cied, 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 fireclad eagle’s wheeling form;
Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine
The woodcrowned 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
developement, undergoes as many changes as
its Greek namesake, the* butterfly. And it is
remarkable how soon genius clears and puri
fies itself from the faults and errors of its earliest
products; faults which, in its earliest compo
sitions, are the more obtrusive and confluent,
because as heterogeneous elements, which had
only a temporary use, they constitute the very
ferment, by which themselves are carried off.
Or we may compare them to some diseases,
which must work on the humours, and be
thrown out on the surface, in order to secure
the patient from their future recurrence. I
was in my twentyfourth year, when I had the
happiness of knowing Mr. Wordsworth per
sonally, and while memory lasts, I shall hardly
forget the sudden effect produced on my mind,
by his recitation of a manuscript poem, which
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The fact, that in Greek Psyche is the common name for the soul, and the butterfly, is thus alluded to in the
following stanza from an unpublished poem 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 mortal life! For in this earthly frame
Our’s is the reptile’s lot, much toil, much blame,
Manifold motions making little speed,
And to deform and kill the things, whereon we feed."
S.T.C.
still remains unpublished, but of which the
stanza, and tone of style, were the same as
those of the "Female Vagrant" as originally
printed in the first volume of the "Lyrical
Ballads." There was here, no mark of strained
thought, or forced diction, no crowd or turbu
lence of imagery, and, as the poet hath him
self well described in his lines "on revisiting
the Wye," manly reflection, and human as
sociations had given both variety, and an ad
ditional interest to natural objects, which in
the passion and appetite of the first love they had
seemed to him neither to need or permit. The
occasional obscurities, which had risen from an
imperfect controul over the resources of his na
tive language, had almost wholly disappeared,
together with that worse defect of arbitary and
illogical phrases, at once hackneyed, and fan
tastic, which hold so distinguished a place in
the technique of ordinary poetry, and will, more
or less, alloy the earlier poems of the truest
genius, unless the attention has been specifically
directed to their worthlessness and incongruity.*
I did not perceive any thing particular in the
mere style of the poem alluded to during its
recitation, except indeed such difference as was
Mr. Wordsworth, even in his two earliest "the Evening
Walk and the Descriptive Sketches," is more free from this
latter defect than most of the young poets his
not separable from the thought and manner;
and the Spencerian stanza, which always, more
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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 without an ill
effect have been hazarded in the heroic couplet.
It was not however the freedom from false taste,
whether as to common defects, or to those more
properly his own, which made so unusual an
impression on my feelings immediately, and
subsequently on my judgement. It was the
union of deep feeling with profound thought;
the fine 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
*contemporaries. It may however be exemplified, together with the
harsh and obscure construction, in which he more 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’s ray;
Ev’n 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 purpose than to make my meaning fully understood.
It is to be regretted that Mr. Wordsworth has not repub
lished these two poems entire.
it the depth and height of the ideal world
around forms, incidents, and situations, of
which, for the common view, custom had be
dimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle
and the dew drops. "To find no contradic
tion in the union of old and new; to contemplate
the ANCIENT of days and all his works with
feelings 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 on the feelings of
childhood into the powers of manhood; to
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combine the child’s sense of wonder and no
velty 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 is it the prime
merit of genius and its most unequivocal mode
of manifestation, so to represent familiar objects
as to awaken in the minds of others a kin
dred feeling concerning them and that freshness
of sensation which is the constant accompani
ment of mental, no less than of bodily, conva
lescence. 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 disqui
sitions, genius produces the strongest impres
sions of novelty, while it rescues the most
admitted truths from the impotence caused by
the very circumstance of their universal admis
sion. Truths of all others the most awful and
mysterious, yet being at the same time of uni
versal interest, are too often considered as so
true, that they lose all the life and efficiency of
truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the
soul, side by side, with the most despised and ex
ploded errors." THE FRIEND,* page 76, No. 5.
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This excellence, which in all Mr. Words
worth’s writings 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 suspect,
(and a more intimate analysis of the human fa
culties, their appropriate marks, functions, and
effects matured my conjecture into full convic
tion) that fancy and imagination were two dis
tinct and widely different faculties, 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
As "the Friend" was printed on stampt sheets, and sent
only by the post to a very limited number of subscribers, the
author has felt less objection to quote from it, though a work
of his own. To the public at large indeed it is the same as
a volume in manuscript.
same power. It is not, I own, easy to con
ceive a more opposite translation 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 collec
tive, unconscious good sense working progres
sively to desynonymize* those words originally
of the same meaning, which the conflux of
dialects had supplied to the more homogeneous
languages, as the Greek and German: and
This is effected either by giving to the one word a gene
ral, and to the other an exclusive use; as "to put on the
back" and "to indorse;" or by an actual distinction of
meanings as "naturalist," and "physician;" or by difference
of relation as "I" and "Me;" (each of which the rustics of
our different provinces still use in all the cases singular of
the first personal pronoun). Even the mere difference, or
corruption, in the pronunciation of the same word, if it have
become general, will produce a new word with a distinct
signification; thus "property" and "propriety;" the latter
of which, even to the time of Charles II. was the written
word for all the senses of both. Thus too "mister" and
" master" both hasty pronounciations of the same word
" magister," " mistress," and "miss," "if," and "give,"
&c. &c. There is a sort of minim immortal among the ani
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malcula infusoria which has not naturally either birth, or
death, absolute beginning, 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 recommences in each of the halves now become inte
gral. This may be a fanciful, 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 different sensation, which cannot but affect
the pronunciation. The after recollection of the sound,
without the same vivid sensation, will modify it still further;
till at length all trace of the original likeness is worn away.
which the same cause, joined with accidents of
translation from original works of different
countries, occasion in mixt languages 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 done) to appropriate that word
exclusively to one meaning, and the synonyme
(should there be one) to the other. But if (as
will be often the case in the arts and sciences)
no synonyme exists, we must either invent or
borrow a word. In the present instance the
appropriation had already begun, and been
legitimated in the derivative adjective: Milton
had a highly imaginative, Cowley a very fanciful
mind. If therefore I should succeed in estab
lishing the actual existences of two faculties
generally different, the nomenclature would be
at once determined. To the faculty by which
I had characterized Milton, we should confine
the term imagination; while the other would
be contradistinguished as fancy. Now were it
once fully ascertained, that this division is no
less grounded in nature, than that of delirium
from mania, or Otway’s
" Lutes, lobsters, seas of milk, and ships of amber,"
from Shakespear’s
" What! have his daughters brought him to this pass ?"
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or from the preceding apostrophe to the elements;
the theory of the fine arts, and of poetry in
particular, could not, I thought, but derive some
additional and important light. It would in its
immediate effects furnish a torch of guidance
to the philosophical critic; and ultimately to
the poet himself. In energetic minds, truth
soon changes by domestication into power; and
from directing in the discrimination and ap
praisal of the product, becomes influencive in
the production. To admire on principle, is the
only way to imitate without loss of originality.
It has been already hinted, that metaphysics
and psychology have long been my hobbyhorse.
But to have a hobbyhorse, and to be vain of
it, are so commonly found together, that they
pass almost for the same. I trust therefore,
that there will be more good humour than con
tempt, in the smile with which the reader chas
tises my selfcomplacency, if I confess myself
uncertain, whether the satisfaction from the per
ception of a truth new to myself may not have
been rendered more poignant by the conceit,
that it would be equally so to the public.
There was a time, certainly, in which I took
some little credit to myself, in the belief that I
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 volume of synonimes I
have not yet seen;* but his specification of the
terms in question has been clearly shown to be
both insufficient and erroneous by Mr. Words
worth in the preface added to the late collection
of his "Lyrical Ballads and other poems."
The explanation which Mr. Wordsworth has
himself given, will be found to differ from mine,
I ought to have added, with the exception of a single
sheet which I accidentally met with at the printers. Even
from this scanty specimen, I found it impossible to doubt the
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talent, or not to admire the ingenuity of the author. That
his distinctions were for the greater part unsatisfactory to
my mind, proves nothing, against their accuracy; but it may
possibly be serviceable to him in case of a second edition, if
I take this opportunity of suggesting the query; whether he
may not have been occasionally misled, by having assumed,
as to me he appeared to have done, the nonexistence of any
absolute synonimes in our language? Now I cannot but
think, that there are many which remain for our posterity to
distinguish and appropriate, and which I regard as so much
reversionary wealth in our mothertongue. When two dis
tinct meanings are confounded under one or more words,
(and such must be the case, as sure as our knowledge is pro
gressive and of course imperfect) erroneous consequences
will be drawn, 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 dis
covered 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 pro
miscuously. 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 me
chanics safe substitute for arithmetical knowledge) we then
say, that it is evident to common sense. Common sense, there
fore, differs in different ages. What was born and christened
in the schools passes by degrees into the world at large, and
becomes the property of the market and the teatable. At
least I can discover no other meaning of the term, common*
chiefly perhaps, as our objects are different. It
could scarcely indeed happen otherwise, from
the advantage I have enjoyed of frequent con
versation 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 natural objects on
the mind. But it was Mr. Wordsworth’s pur
pose to consider the influences of fancy and
imagination as they are manifested in poetry,
and from the different effects to conclude their
diversity in kind; while it is my object to
investigate the seminal 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 visible to the naked eye
of our common consciousness.
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Yet even in this attempt I am aware, that I
shall be obliged to draw more largely on the
*sense, if it is to convey any specific difference from sense
and, judgement in genere, and where it is not used scho
lastically for the universal reason. Thus in the reign of
Charles II. the philosophic world was called to arms by the
moral sophisms of Hobbs, and the ablest writers exerted
themselves in the detection of an error, which a schoolboy
would now be able to confute by the mere recollection, that
compulsion and obligation conveyed two ideas perfectly dis
parate, and that what appertained to the one, had been
falsely transferred to the other by a mere confusion of terms.
reader’s attention, than so immethodical a mis
cellany can authorize; when in such a work
(the Ecclesiastical Policy) of such a mind as
Hooker’s, the judicious author, though no less
admirable 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
wellspring 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 with them) dark and intri
cate." I would gladly therefore spare both
myself and others this labor, if I knew how
without it to present an intelligible statement
of my poetic creed; not as my opinions, which
weigh for nothing, but as deductions from
established premises conveyed in such a form,
as is calculated either to effect a fundamental
conviction, or to receive a fundamental confu
tation. If I may dare once more adopt the
words of Hooker, "they, unto whom we shall
"seem tedious, are in no wise injured by us,
"because it is in their own hands to spare that
"labour, which they are not willing to endure."
Those at least, let me be permitted to add,
who have taken so much pains to render me
ridiculous for a perversion of taste, and have
supported the charge by attributing strange
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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 I do acknow
ledge; or shrink from the trouble of examining
the grounds on which I rest it, or the argu
ments which I offer in its justification.
CHAPTER V.
On the law of association—Its history traced
from Aristotle to Hartley.
There have been men in all ages, who have
been impelled 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 they
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 par
taking of both. A still finer distinction was
soon established between the voluntary and the
spontaneous. In our perceptions we seem to
ourselves 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 materialism; and Berkeley can boast
an ancestry at least as venerable as Gassendi or
Hobbs. These conjectures, however,
concerning the mode in which our perceptions origin
ated, could not alter the natural difference of
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 na
ture seemed to act by a mechanism of its own,
without any conscious effort of the will, or even
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against it. Our inward experiences were thus
arranged in three separate classes, the passive
sense, or what the schoolmen call the merely
receptive quality of the mind; the voluntary,
and the spontaneous, which holds the middle
place between both. But it is not in human
nature to meditate on any mode of action,
without enquiring 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, Palestine, Greece, and
India the analysis of the mind had reached its
noon and manhood, while experimental re
search was still in its dawn and infancy. For
many, very many centuries, it has been difficult
to advance a new truth, or even a new error,
in the philosophy of the intellect or morals.
With regard, however, to the laws that direct
the spontaneous movements of thought and the
principle of their intellectual mechanism there
exists, it has been asserted, an important
exception most honorable to the moderns, and in
the merit of which 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 philosophical enquiries, than for the elo
quence with which he is said to render their most
difficult results perspicuous, and the driest at
tractive) affirmed in the lectures, delivered by
him at Lincoln’s Inn Hall, that the law of
association as established in the contempora
neity of the original impressions, formed the
basis of all true psychology; and any ontolo
gical or metaphysical science not contained in
such (i. e. empirical) phsychology was but a
web of abstractions and generalizations. Of
this prolific truth, of this 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
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metaphysicians, including their commentators,
the schoolmen, and of the modern French and
British philosophers from Hobbs to Hume,
Hartley and Condeliac, this is not the place to
speak. So wide indeed is the chasm between
this gentleman’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. But 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 Methodo" preceded Hobbs’s "De
Natura Humana," by more than a year. But
what is of much more importance, Hobbs
builds nothing on the principle which he had
announced. He does 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 material 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) obscured the truth by their
attempts to explain it on the theory of nervous
fluids, and material configurations. But in his
interesting work "De Methodo," Des Cartes
relates 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 com
plain 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 uncertainty
with which we attribute any particular place
to any inward pain or uneasiness, and pro
ceeded after long consideration to establish it
as a general law; that contemporaneous im
pressions, whether images or sensations, recal
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each other mechanically. On this principle, as
a ground work, he built up the whole system
of human language, as one continued process
of association. He showed, in what sense not
only general terms, but generic images (under
the name of abstract ideas) actually existed,
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 disco
very, and introduces this law of association, or
(in his own language) discursûs mentalis, as an
admitted fact, in the solution alone of which, this
by causes purely physiological, he arrogates any
originality. His system is briefly this; when
ever the senses are impinged on by external ob
jects, whether by the rays of light reflected
from them, or by effluxes of their finer parti
cles, there results a correspondent motion of
the innermost and subtlest organs. This motion
constitutes a representation, and there remains
an impression of the same, or a certain disposi
tion to repeat the same motion. Whenever we
feel several objects at the same time, the impres
sions that are left (or in the language of Mr.
Hume, the ideas) are linked together. When
ever therefore any one of the movements, which
constitute a complex impression, are renewed
through the senses, the others succeed mecha
nically. It follows of necessity therefore that
Hobbs, as well as Hartley and all others who
derive association from the connection and
interdependence of the supposed matter, the
movements of 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 precision cannot be fairly
conceded to him. For the objects of any two
ideas* need not have coexisted in the same
I here use the word "idea" in Mr. Hume’s sense on ac
count of its general currency among the English metaphysi
cians; though against my own judgement, for I believe that
the vague use of this word has been the cause of much error
and more confusion. The word,Idea, in its original sense
as used by Pindar, Aristophanes, and in the gospel of
Matthew, represented the visual abstraction of a distant ob
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ject, when we see the whole without distinguishing its parts.
Plato adopted it as a technical term, and as the antithesis to
Eidola, or sensuous images; the transient and perishable*
sensation in order to become mutually associa
ble. The same result will follow when one
only of the two ideas has been represented by
the senses, and the other by the memory.
Long however before either Hobbs or Des
Cartes the law of association had been defined,
*emblems, or mental words, of ideas. The ideas themselves he
considered as mysterious powers, living, seminal, formative,
and exempt from time. In this sense the word became the pro
perty 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 English writers to the end of Charles
nd’s reign, or somewhat later, employed it either in the origi
nal sense, or platonically, or in a sense nearly correspondent
to our present use of the substantive, Ideal, always however
opposing it, more or less, to image, whether of present or ab
sent objects. The reader will not be displeased with the
following interesting exemplification from Bishop Jeremy
Taylor. "St. Lewis the King sent Ivo Bishop of Chartres
on an embassy, and he told, that he met a grave and stately
matron on the way with a censor of fire in one hand, and a
vessel of 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 the
flames of hell, that men may serve God purely for the love
of God. But we rarely meet with such spirits which love
virtue so metaphysically as to abstract her from all sensible
compositions, and love the purity of the idea." Des Cartes
having introduced into his philosophy the fanciful hypothesis
of material ideas, or certain configurations of the brain,
which were as so many moulds to the influxes of the external
world; Mr. Lock adopted the term, but extended its signi
fication to whatever is the immediate object of the minds
attention or consciousness. Mr. Hume distinguishing those
representations which are accompanied with a sense of a
present object, from those reproduced by the mind itself,
designated the former by impressions, and confined the word
idea to the latter.
and its important functions set forth by Me
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lanchthon, Ammerbach, and Ludovicus 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 receptiva) of impressions,
or for the passive perception. The power of
combination he appropriates to the former:
" quæ singula et simpliciter acceperat imagi
natio, ea conjungit et disjungit phantasia." And
the law by which the thoughts are spontane
ously presented follows thus; "quæ simul sunt
"a phantasia comprehensa si alterutrum occur
"rat, solet secum alterum representare." To
time therefore he subordinates all the other
exciting causes of association. The soul pro
ceeds "a causa ad effectum, ab hoc ad instru
"mentum, 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 impression, each of which may
recal the other. The apparent springs "Saltus
"vel transitus etiam longissimos," he explains by
the same thought having been a component
part of two or more total impressions. Thus
" ex Scipione venio in cogitationem potentiæ
"Turcicæ proper victorias ejus in eâ parte Asiæ
"in qua regnabat Antiochus."
But from Vives I pass at once to the source
of his doctrines, and (as far as we can judge
from the remains yet extant of Greek philoso
phy) as to the first, so to the fullest and most
perfect enunciation of the associative principle,
viz. to the writings of Aristotle; and of these
principally to the books "De Anima," "De
Memoria," and that which is entitled in the
old translations "Parva Naturalia." In as
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
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with fiction. The wise Stagyrite speaks of no
successive particles propagating motion like
billiard balls (as Hobbs;) nor of nervous or
animal spirits, where inanimate and irrational
solids are thawed down, and distilled, or fil
trated by ascension, into living and intelligent
fluids, that etch and reetch engravings on the
brain, (as the followers of Des Cartes, and the
humoral pathologists in general ;) nor of an
oscillating 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 affinity, or of an electric light at once
the immediate object and the ultimate organ of
inward vision, which rises to the brain like an
Aurora Borealis, and there disporting in various
shapes (as the balance of plus and minus, or ne
gative and positive, is destroyed or reestablish
ed) images out both past and present. Aristotle
delivers a just theory without pretending to an
hypothesis; or in other words a comprehen
sive 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; tho’
in the majority of instances these hypotheses
or suppositions better deserve the name of
Upopoieseis, or suffictions. He uses indeed the
word Kineseis, to express what we call represen
tations or ideas, but he carefully distinguishes
them from material motion, designating the
latter always by annexing the wordsEn topo, or
kata topon. On the contrary in his treatise "De
Anima," he excludes place and motion from
all the operations of thought, whether repre
sentations or volitions, as attributes utterly and
absurdly heterogeneous.
The general law of association, or more ac
curately, 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
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it had been a part. In the practical determina
tion of this common principle to particular
recollections, he admits five agents or occasion
ing causes: 1st, connection in time, whether
simultaneous, preceding or successive; 2nd,
vicinity or connection in space; 3rd, interde
pendence or necessary connection, as cause and
effect; 4th, likeness; and 5th, contrast. As an
additional solution of the occasional seeming
chasms in the continuity of reproduction he
proves, that movements or ideas possessing one
or the other of these five characters had passed
through the mind as intermediate links, suffici
ently clear to recal other parts of the same total
impressions with which they had coexisted,
though not vivid enough to excite that degree
of attention which is requisite for distinct re
collection, or as we may aptly express it, after
consciousness. In association then consists the
whole mechanism of the reproduction of im
pressions, in the Aristolelian Pcychology. It
is the universal law of the passive fancy and
mechanical memory; that which 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
order of the thoughts was the same, and even
the illustrations differed only by Hume’s occa
sional substitution of more modern examples.
I mentioned the circumstance to several of my
literary acquaintances, who admitted the close
ness 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 over. But some time after Mr. Payne, of
the King’s mews, shewed Sir James Mackin
tosh 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
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marginal marks and notes of reference in his
own hand writing. Among these volumes was
that which contains the Parva Naturalia, 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 shew,
by what influences of the choice and judgment
the associative power becomes either memory
or fancy; and, in conclusion, to appropriate
the remaining offices of the mind to the reason,
and the imagination. With my best efforts to
be as perspicuous as the nature of language
will permit on such a subject, I earnestly soli
cit the good wishes and friendly patience of
my readers, while I thus go "sounding on my
dim and perilous way."
CHAPTER VI.
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
hypothetical 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 alrea
dy sufficiently exposed by the younger Reima
rus, Maasse, &c. as outraging the very axioms
of mechanics in a scheme, the merit of which
consists in its being mechanical. Whether any
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other philosophy be possible, but the mechani
cal; and again, whether the mechanical system
can have any claim to be called philosophy;
are questions for another place. It is, how
ever, certain, that as long as we deny the for
mer, and affirm the latter, we must bewilder
ourselves, whenever we would pierce into the
adyta of causation; and all that laborious con
jecture 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 geometric discipline, aimed at, as the first
propaidentikon of the mind)under this strong
sensuous influence, we are restless because
invisible things are not the objects of vision;
and metaphysical systems, for the most part,
become popular, not for their truth, but in
proportion as they attribute to causes a suscep
tibility of being seen, if only our visual organs
were sufficiently 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 reproduce the
oscillation m. But the original impression
from M was essentially different from the im
pression A: unless therefore different causes
may produce the same effect, the vibration a
could never produce the vibration m: 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 sys
tem, nothing more than their appropriate con
figurative vibrations. It is a mere delusion of
the fancy to conceive the preexistence of the
ideas, in any chain of association, as so many
differently colored billiardballs in contact, so
that when an object, the billiardstick, strikes
the first or white ball, the same motion propa
gates itself through the red, green, blue, black,
&c. and sets the whole in motion. No! we
must suppose the very same force, which con
stitutes the white ball, to constitute the red or
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black; or the idea of a circle to constitute the
idea of a triangle; which is impossible.
But it may be said, that, by the sensations
from the objects A and M, the nerves have ac
quired 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 weathercock
had acquired a habit of turning to the east,
from the wind having been so long in that quar
ter: for if it be replied, that we must take in
the circumstance of life, what then becomes of
the mechanical philosophy? And what is the
nerve, but the flint which the wag placed in
the pot as the first ingredient of his stonebroth,
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 dispositions;
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 exactly the oscillation m
should arise, rather than any other to which it
was equally predisposed. But if we take the
former, and let every idea have a nerve of its
own, then every nerve must be capable of pro
pagating its motion into many other nerves; and
again, there is no reason assignable, why the
vibration m should arise, rather than any other
ad libitum.
It is fashionable to smile at Hartley’s vibra
tions and vibratiuncles; and his work has been
reedited by Priestley, with the omission of the
material hypothesis. But Hartley was too
great a man, too coherent a thinker, for this to
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have been done, either consistently or to any
wise purpose. For all other parts of his sys
tem, as far as they are peculiar to that system,
once removed from their mechanical basis, not
only lose their main support, but the very mo
tive which led to their adoption. Thus the
principle of contemporaneity, which Aristotle
had made the common condition of all the laws
of association, Hartley was constrained to re
present 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 inevita
bly, that the will, the reason, the judgment,
and the understanding, instead of being the de
termining causes of association, must needs be
represented as its creatures, and among its me
chanical effects. Conceive, for instance, a broad
stream, winding through a mountainous coun
try with an indefinite number of currents, vary
ing and running into each other according as
the gusts chance to blow from the opening of
the mountains. The temporary union of seve
ral currents in one, so as to form the main cur
rent 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 im
pressions, and that of senseless and passive me
mory. Take his law in its highest abstraction
and most philosophical form, viz. that every par
tial representation recalls the total representa
tion of which it was a part; and the law be
comes nugatory, were it only from its universa
lity. In practice it would indeed be mere law
lessness. 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 series of such total impressions. If therefore
we suppose the absence of all interference of
the will, reason, and judgement, one or other
of two consequences must result. Either the
ideas (or relicts of such impression) will exactly
imitate the order of the impression itself, which
would be absolute delirium: or any one part
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of that impression might recal any other part,
and (as from the law of continuity, there must
exist in every total impression some one or
more parts, which are components of some
other following total impression, and so on ad
infinitum) any part of any impression might
recal any part of any other, without a cause
present to determine what it should be. For
to bring in the will, or reason, as causes of their
own cause, that is, as at once causes and effects,
can satisfy those only who in their pretended
evidences of a God having first demanded or
ganization, as the sole cause and ground of
intellect, will then coolly demand the preexist
ence of intellect, as the cause and groundwork
of organization. There is in truth but one state
to which this theory applies at all, namely, that
of complete lightheadedness; 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 Germany a year or two before my
arrival at Göttingen, and had not then ceased
to be a frequent subject of conversation. 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
Hebrew, in very pompous tones and with most
distinct enunciation. This possession was ren
dered more probable by the known fact, that
she was or had been an heretic. Voltaire hu
mourously 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 crossexamined the case on the
spot. Sheets full of her ravings were taken
down from her own mouth, and were found to
consist of sentences, coherent and intelligible
each for itself, but with little or no connection
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with each other. Of the Hebrew, a small por
tion only could be traced to the Bible; the
remainder seemed to be in the rabinical dialect.
All trick or conspiracy was out of the question.
Not only had the young woman ever been an
harmless, simple creature; but she was evidently
labouring under a nervous fever. In the town,
in which she had been resident for many years
as a servant in different families, no solution
presented itself. The young physician, how
ever, determined to trace her past life step by
step; for the patient herself was incapable of
returning a rational answer. He at length suc
ceeded in discovering the place, where her pa
rents had lived: travelled thither, found them
dead, but an uncle surviving; and from him
learnt, that the patient had been charitably
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 nothing, but that he was a very
good man. With great difficulty, and after
much search, our young medical philosopher
discovered a niece of the pastor’s, who had
lived with him as his housekeeper, and had
inherited his effects. She remembered the girl;
related, that her venerable 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 enquiries were
then, of course, made concerning the pastor’s
habits; and the solution 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 favorite
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 Hebraist.
Among the books were found a collection of
rabbinical writings, together with several of the
Greek and Latin fathers; and the physician
succeeded in identifying so many passages with
those taken down at the young woman’s bed
side, that no doubt could remain in any rational
mind concerning the true origin of the impres
sions made on her nervous system.
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This authenticated case furnishes both proof
and instance, that reliques of sensation may
exist for an indefinite time in a latent state,
in the very same order in which they were
originally impressed; and as we cannot ration
ally 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 kind) contributes to make it
even probable, that all thoughts are in them
selves imperishable; and, that if the intelligent
faculty should be rendered more comprehen
sive, it would require only a different and ap
portioned organization, the body celestial instead
of the body terrestrial, to bring before every
human soul the collective experience of its
whole past existence. And this, this, perchance,
is the dread book of judgement, in whose mys
terious hieroglyphics every idle word is
recorded! Yea, in the very nature of a living
spirit, it may be 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 freewill,
our only absolute self; is coextensive 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*
tois medepote phantasdeisin, os kalon to tes dikaiosunes kai
sophrosunes prosopon, kai os oute esperos oute eoos outo kala.
Ton lar oronta pros to oromenon suggenes kai omoion poies
amenon dei epiballein te ea ou gar an papote eiden Ophthal
mos elion elioeides me gegenemenos, oude to Kalon an ide
psuche me kale genomene. PLOTINUS.
*"To those to whose imagination it has never been presented,
how beautiful is the countenance of justice and wisdom; and
that neither the morning nor the evening star are so fair.
For in order to direct the view aright, it behoves that the
beholder should have made himself congenerous and similar
to the object beheld. Never could the eye have beheld the
sun, had not its own essence been soliform," (i. e. precon
figured to light by a similarity of essence with that of light)
"neither can a soul not beautiful attain to an intuition of
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beauty."
CHAPTER VII.
Of the necessary consequences of the Hartleian
theory—Of the original mistake or equivoca
tion which procured admission for the theory—
Memoria Technica.
We will pass by the utter incompatibility of
such a law (if law it may be called, which would
itself be the slave of chances) with even that
appearance of rationality forced upon us by the
outward phænomena of human conduct, ab
stracted from our own consciousness. We will
agree to forget this for the moment, in order to
fix our attention on that subordination of final
to efficient causes in the human being, which
flows of necessity from the assumption, 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 pow
ers, whose function it is to controul, determine,
and modify the phantasma chaos of association.
The soul becomes a mere ens logicum; for as
a real separable being, it would be more worth
less and ludicrous, than the Grimalkins in the
Catharpsichord, 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 dif
ficulties, all the incomprehensibility (if it be
not indeed,os emoige dokei, the absurdity) of in
tercommunion between substances that have
no one property in common, without any of the
convenient consequences that bribed the judge
ment to the admission of the dualistic hypothe
sis. Accordingly, this caput mortuum of the
Hartleian process has been rejected by his fol
lowers, and the consciousness considered as a
result, as a tune, the common product of the
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breeze and the harp: tho’ this again is the mere
remotion of one absurdity to make way for
another, equally preposterous. For what is
harmony but a mode of relation, the very esse
of which is percipi? An ens rationale, which
presupposes the power, that by perceiving
creates it? The razor’s edge becomes a saw
to the armed vision; and the delicious melo
dies of Purcell or Cimarosa might be disjointed
stammerings to a hearer, whose partition of
time should be a thousand times subtler than
ours. But this obstacle too let us imagine our
selves to have surmounted, 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 pas
sive, which external causes stand themselves
in interdependent connection with every thing
that exists or has existed. Thus the whole
universe cooperates 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 effectless 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 creation of a
somethingnothing out of its very contrary! It
is the mere quicksilver plating behind a looking
glass; and in this alone consists the poor
worthless I! The sum total of my moral and
intellectual intercourse dissolved into its ele
ments 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 phi
losophy well might Butler say—
"The metaphysics but a puppet motion
"That goes with screws, the notion of a notion;
"The copy of a copy and lame draught
"Unnaturally taken from a thought:
"That counterfeits all pantomimic tricks,
"And turns 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,
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"By virtue of the Babylonian’s tooth."
MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS.
The inventor of the watch did not in reality
invent it; he only look’d on, while the blind
causes, the only true artists, were unfolding
themselves. So must it have been too with
my friend ALLSTON, when he sketched his pic
ture of the dead man revived by the bones of
the prophet Elijah. So must it have been with
Mr. SOUTHEY and LORD BYRON, when the one
fancied himself composing his "RODERICK,"
and the other his "CHILD HAROLD." The
same must hold good of all systems of philoso
phy; 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 ac
cording to this system it is not the affections
and passions that are at work, in as far as they
areI sensations or thoughts. We only fancy, that
we act from rational resolves, or prudent mo
tives, or from impulses of anger, love, or gene
rosity. In all these cases the real agent is a
somethingnothingeverything, which does all
of which we know, and knows nothing of all
that itself does.
The existence of an infinite spirit, of an intel
ligent and holy will, must on this system be
mere articulated motions of the air. For as the
function of the human understanding is no other
than merely (to appear to itself) to combine and
to apply the phænomena 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 pro
duct of delusion and habit, into the mere sen
sation of proceeding life (nisus vitalis) associated
with the images of the memory; this same pro
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cess must be repeated to the equal degradation
of every fundamental idea in ethics or theology.
Far, very far am I from burthening with the
odium of these consequences the moral charac
ters of those who first formed, or have since
adopted the system! It is most noticeable of
the excellent and pious Hartley, that in the
proofs of the existence and attributes of God,
with which his second volume commences, he
makes no reference to the principles or results
of the first. Nay, he assumes, as his founda
tions, ideas which, if we embrace the doctrines
of his first volume, can exist no where but in the
vibrations of the ethereal medium common to
the nerves and to the atmosphere. Indeed the
whole of the second volume is, with the fewest
possible exceptions, independent of his peculiar
system. So true is it, that the faith, which
saves and sanctifies, is a collective energy, a
total act of the whole moral being; that its liv
ing sensorium is in the heart; and that no errors
of the understanding can be morally arraigned
unless they have proceeded frum the heart.—
But whether they be such, no man can be cer
tain in the case of another, scarcely perhaps
even in his own. Hence it follows by inevitable
consequence, that man may perchance deter
mine, what is an heresy; but God only can
know, who is a heretic. It does not, however,
by any means follow, that opinions fundament
ally false are harmless. An hundred causes
may coexist to form one complex antidote.
Yet the sting of the adder remains venemous,
though there are many who have taken up the
evil thing; and it hurted them not! Some in
deed there seem to have been, in an unfortunate
neighbournation at least, who have embraced
this system with a full view of all its moral and
religious consequences; some—
"—who deem themselves most free,
"When they within this gross and visible sphere
"Chain down the winged thought, scoffing assent,
"Proud in their meanness; and themselves they cheat
"With noisy emptiness of learned phrase,
"Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences,
"Selfworking tools, uncaus’d effects, and all
"Those blind omniscients, those Almighty slaves,
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"Untenanting Creation of its God!"
Such men need discipline, not argument; they
must be made better men, before they can be
come wiser.
The attention will be more profitably em
ployed in attempting to discover and expose
the paralogisms, by the magic of which such a
faith could find admission into minds framed
for a nobler creed. These, it appears to me,
may be all reduced to one sophism as their
common genus; the mistaking the conditions
of a thing for its causes and essence; and the
process by which we arrive at the knowledge
of a faculty, for the faculty itself. The air I
breathe, is the condition of my life, not its cause.
We could never have learnt that we had eyes
but by the process of seeing; yet having seen
we know that the eyes must have preexisted
in order to render the process of sight possible.
Let us crossexamine Hartley’s scheme under
the guidance of this distinction; and we shall
discover, that contemporaneity (Leibnitz’s Lex
Continui) is the limit and condition of the laws
of mind, itself being rather a law of matter, at
least of phænomena considered as material. At
the utmost, it is to thought the same, as the law
of gravitation is to locomotion. In every vo
luntary movement we first counteract gravita
tion, in order to avail ourselves of it. It must
exist, that there may be a something to be coun
teracted, and which by its reaction, aids the
force that is exerted to resist it. Let us con
sider, what we do when we leap. We first re
sist the gravitating power by an act purely vo
luntary, and then by another act, voluntary in
part, we yield to it in order to light on the spot,
which we had previously proposed to ourselves.
Now let a man watch his mind while he is com
posing; or, to take a still more common case,
while he is trying to recollect a name; and he
will find the process completely analogous.
Most of my readers will have observed a small
waterinsect on the surface of rivulets, which
throws a cinquespotted shadow fringed with
prismatic colours on the sunny 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,
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now resisting the current, and now yielding to
it in order to gather strength and a momentary
fulcrum for a further propulsion. This is no
unapt emblem of the mind’s selfexperience in
the act of thinking. There are evidently 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 passive. (In philosophi
cal language, we must denominate this inter
mediate faculty in all its degrees and determina
tions, the IMAGINATION. But in common lan
guage, and especially on the subject of poetry,
we appropriate the name to a superior degree
of the faculty, joined to a superior voluntary
controul over it.)
Contemporaneity then, being the common
condition of all the laws of association. and a
component element in all the materia subjecta,
the parts of which are to be associated, must
needs be copresent with all. Nothing, there
fore, can be more easy than to pass off on an
incautious mind this constant companion of
each, for the essential substance of all. But
if we appeal to our own consciousness, we shall
find that even time itself, as the cause of a par
ticular act of association, is distinct from con
temporaneity, as the condition of all associa
tion. Seeing 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 coexisted with the
image 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 likeness and con
trast. So it is with cause and effect; so too
with order. So am I able to distinguish whe
ther 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
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separate them from the mind itself. The act of
consciousness is indeed identical with time con
sidered in its essence. (I mean time per se, as
contradistinguished from our notion of time;
for this is always blended with the idea of space,
which as the contrary of time, is therefore its
measure.) Nevertheless the accident of seeing
two objects at the same moment acts, as a dis
tinguishable cause from that of having seen
them in the same place: and the true practical
general law of association is this; that what
ever makes certain parts of a total impression
more vivid or distinct than the rest, will deter
mine 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
continuity. But the will itself by confining and
intensifying* the attention may arbitrarily give
I am aware, that this word occurs neither in Johnson’s
Dictionary or in any classical writer. But the word, "to
intend," which Newton and others before him employ in this
sense, is now so completely appropriated to another mean
ing, that I could not use it without ambiguity: while to pa
raphrase the sense, as by render intense, would often break
up the sentence and destroy that harmony of the position of
the words with the logical position of the thoughts, which is*
vividness or distinctness to any object what
sover; and from hence we may deduce the
uselessness if not the absurdity of certain recent
schemes which promise an artificial memory,
but which in reality can only produce a con
fusion and debasement of the fancy. Sound
logic, as the habitual subordination of the indi
vidual to the species, and of the species to the
genus; philosophical knowledge of facts under
the relation of cause and effect; a chearful and
communicative temper that disposes us to no
tice the similarities and contrasts 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.
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*a beauty in all composition, and more especially desirable in
a close philosophical investigation. I have therefore ha
zarded the word, intensify; though, I confess, it sounds un
couth to my own ear.
CHAPTER VIII.
The system of DUALISM introduced by Des
Cartes—Refined first by Spinoza and after
wards by Leibnitz into the doctrine of Har
monia præstabilta—Hylozoism—Materialism
Neither of these systems on any possible
theory of association, supplies or supersedes
a theory of perception, or explains the form
ation of the associable.
To the best of my knowledge Des Cartes
was the first philosopher, who introduced the
absolute and essential heterogeneity of the soul
as intelligence, and the body as matter. The
assumption, and the form of speaking, have re
mained, though the denial of all other proper
ties to matter but that of extension, on which
denial the whole system of dualism is grounded,
has been long exploded. For since impenetra
bility is intelligible only as a mode of resistance;
its admission places the essence of matter in an
act or power, 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 dif
ferent modes, or degrees in perfection, of a
common substratum. To this possibility, how
er, it was not the fashion to advert. The
soul was a thinking substance; and body a
spacefilling substance. Yet the apparent ac
tion of each on the other pressed heavy on the
philosopher on the one hand; and no less hea
vily on the other hand pressed the evident
truth, that the law of causality holds only be
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tween homogeneous things, i. e. things having
some common 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 affection for
his wife, lay Northeast, or Southwest of the
love he bore towards his child? Leibnitz’s
doctrine of a preestablished harmony, which
he certainly borrowed from Spinoza, 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 common sense (which is not indeed enti
tled to a judicial voice in the courts of scien
tific philosophy; but whose whispers still exert
a strong secret influence.) Even Wolf the ad
mirer, and illustrious systematizer of the Leib
nitzian doctrine, contents himself with defend
ing the possibility of the idea, but does not
adopt it as a part of the edifice.
The hypothesis of Hylozoism on the other
side, is the death of all rational physiology, and
indeed of all physical science; for that requires a
limitation of terms, and cannot consist with the
arbitrary power of multiplying attributes by oc
cult qualities. Besides, it answers no purpose;
unless indeed a difficulty can be solved by multi
plying 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 indeed 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 impossibility 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
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into a knowing, becomes conceivable on one
only condition; namely, if it can be shown that
the vis representativa, or the Sentient, is itself
a species of being; i. e. either as a property or
attribute, or as an hypostasis or self subsistence.
The former is indeed the assumption of mate
rialism; a system which could not but be pa
tronized 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 materialist has
hitherto left, not only as incomprehensible as
he found it, but has aggravated it into a com
prehensible absurdity. For, grant that an ob
ject 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 surface, but to meet with another.
We can but divide a particle into particles;
and each atom comprehends in itself the pro
perties of the material universe. Let any re
flecting mind make the experiment of explain
ing to itself the evidence of our sensuous in
tuitions, from the hypothesis that in any given
perception there is a something which has been
communicated to it by an impact or an impres
sion 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 metal 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 in
termediation by logical notions, such as those
of cause and effect. It is the object itself, not
the product of a syllogism, which is present to
our consciousness. Or would we explain this
supervention of the object to the sensation, by
a productive faculty set in motion by an im
pulse; still the transition, into the percepient,
of the object itself, from which the impulse
proceeded, assumes a power that can permeate
and wholly possess the soul
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" And like a God by spiritual art,
"Be all in all, and all in every part."
COWLEY.
And how came the percepient here? And what
is become of the wonderpromising MATTER,
that was to perform all these marvels by force
of mere figure, weight, and motion? The most
consistent proceeding of the dogmatic material
ist is to fall back into the common rank of
soulandbodyists; to affect the mysterious, and
declare the whole process a revelation given,
and not to be understood, which it would be
prophane 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 suspecting himself of any irreligi
ous tendency.
Thus as materialism has been generally taught,
it is utterly unintelligible, and owes all its pro
selytes to the propensity so common among
men, to mistake distinct images for clear con
ceptions; and vice versa, to reject as incon
ceivable whatever from its own nature is un
imaginable. But as soon as it becomes intel
ligible, it ceases to be materialism. In order
to explain thinking, as a material phænomenon,
it is necessary to refine matter into a mere
modification of intelligence, with the twofold
function of appearing and 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 no
thing 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 per
mission) be treated of at large and systemati
cally 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 commentary on the Gospel of St. John.
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To make myself intelligible as far as my pre
sent subject requires, it will be sufficient briefly
to observe1. That all association demands
and presupposes the existence of the thoughts
and images to be associated.2. The
hypothesis of an external world exactly correspondent
to those images or modifications 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 dreamworld of phantoms and spectres, the
inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation
of motions in our own brains.3. That this
hypothesis neither involves the explanation, nor
precludes the necessity, of a mechanism and
coadequate forces in the percepient, which at
the more than magic touch of the impulse from
without is to create anew for itself the corres
pondent object. The formation of a copy is not
solved by the mere preexistence of an original;
the copyist of Raphael’s Transfiguration must
repeat more or less perfectly the process of
Raphael. It would be easy to explain a thought
from the image on the retina, and that from the
geometry of light, if this very light did not
present the very same difficulty. We might as
rationally chant the Brahmin creed of the tor
toise 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; but 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 heaven. By the very same argument
the supporters of the Ptolemaic system might
have rebuffed the Newtonian, and pointing to
the sky with selfcomplacent* grin have ap
pealed to common sense, whether the sun did
not move and the earth stand still.
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*" And Coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a
grin." Pope.
CHAPTER IX.
Is philosophy possible as a science, and what are
its conditions?Giordano Bruno—Literary
aristocracy, or the existence of a tacit compact
among the learned as a privileged order—
The author’s obligations to the Mystics;to
Emanuel Kant—The difference between the
letter and the spirit of Kant’s 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 the schools
of Locke, Berkeley, Leibnitz, and Hartley, and
could find in neither of them an abiding place
for my reason, I began 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 was 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 I find, that the scheme taken
with all its consequences and cleared of all
inconsistencies was not less impracticable, than
contranatural. Assume in its full extent the
position, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in
sensa, without Leibnitz’s qualifying præter ip
sum intellectum, and in the same sense, in which
it was understood by Hartley and Condilliac:
and what Hume had demonstratively deduced
from this concession concerning cause and ef
fect, will apply with equal and crushing force
to all the* other eleven categorical forms, and
the logical functions corresponding to them.
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How can we make bricks without straw? Or
build without cement? We learn all things
indeed by occasion of experience; but the very
facts so learnt force us inward on the antece
dents, that must be presupposed 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 absurdity which, no man
ever did, or indeed ever could believe) is formed
on a Sophisma Eteroxeteseos, and involves the old
mistake of cum hoc: ergo, propter hoc.
Videlicet; quantity, quality, relation, and mode, each
consisting of three subdivisions. Vide Kritik der reineu
Vernunft, p. 95, and 106. See too the judicious remarks in
Locke and Hume.
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 assuming as a postu
late, that both are ab initio, identical and
coinherent; that intelligence and being are re
ciprocally each others Substrate. I presumed
that this was a possible conception (i. e. that it
involved no logical inconsonance) from the
length of time during which the scholastic
definition of the Supreme Being, as actus pu
rissimus sine ullâ potentialitate, was received
in the schools of Theology, both by the Pon
tifician and the Reformed divines. The early
study of Plato and Plotinus, with the com
mentaries and the THEOLOGIA PLATONICA, of
the illustrious Florentine; of Proclus, and
Gemistius Pletho; and at a later period of the
"De Immenso et Innumerabili," and the "De
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 idolaters of Rome burnt as an
atheist in the year 1660; had all contributed
to prepare my mind for the reception and
welcoming of the Cogito quia sum, et sum quia
Cogito; a philosophy of seeming hardihood, but
certainly the most ancient, and therefore pre
sumptively the most natural.
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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 think for himself. But while we re
member 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 learned theologians of his age. Neither
with books, nor with booklearned men was
he conversant. A meek and shy quietist, his
intellectual powers were never stimulated into
fev’rous energy by crowds of proselytes, or by
the ambition of proselyting. JACOB BEHMEN
was an enthusiast, in the strictest sense, as not
merely distinguished, but as contradistin
guished, from a fanatic. While I in part trans
late the following observations from a contem
porary writer of the Continent, let me be per
mitted to premise, that I might have trans
cribed 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
tribute 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 cen
turies, cannot but admit, that there appears to
have existed a sort of secret and tacit compact
among the learned, not to pass beyond a certain
limit in speculative science. The privilege of
free thought, so highly extolled, has at no time
been held valid 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 science, 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 simple, whom unstilled yearning, and
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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 liverymen as interlopers on their
rights and priviledges. All without distinction
were branded as fanatics and phantasts; not
only those, whose wild and exorbitant imagi
nations had actually engendered only extra
vagant and grotesque phantasms, and whose
productions were, for the most part, poor
copies and gross caricatures of genuine in
spiration; but the truly inspired likewise, the
originals themselves! And this for no other
reason, but because they were the unlearned,
men of humble and obscure occupations.
When, and from whom among, the literati by
profession, have we ever heard the divine dox
ology repeated, "I 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 "the buyers, and sellers, and money
changers" were suffered to make " a den of
thieves."
And yet it would not be easy to discover
any substantial ground for this contemptuous
pride in those literati, who have most distin
guished themselves by their scorn of BEHMEN,
DE THOYRAS, GEORGE FOX, &c.; unless it be,
that they could write orthographically, make
smooth periods, and had the fashions of author
ship almost literally at their fingers ends, while
the latter, in simplicity of soul, made their
words immediate echoes of their feelings.
Hence the frequency of those phrases among
them, which have been mistaken for pretences
to immediate inspiration; as for instance, "it
was delivered unto me," "I strove not to speak,"
" I said, I will be silent," "but the word was in
heart as a burning fire," "and I could not
forbear." Hence too the unwillingness to give
offence; hence the foresight, and the dread of
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the clamours, which would be raised against
them, so frequently 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 I 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 ex
pression 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 eternal,
or the everlasting; for "the world is not his
friend, nor the world’s law." Need we then be
surprised, that 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 at times be so far
deluded, as to mistake the tumultuous sensa
tions of his nerves, and the coexisting spec
tres 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 derive any advantage, or to collect any in
telligible meaning, from the writings of these
ignorant mystics, the reader must bring with
him a spirit and judgement 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 War
burton, is unworthy of Milton; how much
more so of the awful person, in whose mouth
he has placed it? One assertion I will venture
to make, as suggested by my own experience,
that there exist folios on the human under
standing, and the nature of man, which would
have a far juster claim to their high 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
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WILLIAM LAW.
The feeling of gratitude, which I 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
seemed to me like the denial of a debt, the
concealment of a boon. For the writings of
these mystics acted in no slight degree to pre
vent 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
working presentment, that all the products of
the mere reflective faculty partook of DEATH,
and were as the rattling twigs and sprays in
winter, into which a sap was yet to be propelled,
from some root to which I had not penetrated,
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 fire throughout the night, during my
wanderings through the wilderness of doubt,
and enabled me to skirt, without crossing,
the sandy deserts of utter unbelief. That the
system is capable of being converted into an
irreligious PANTHEISM, I well know. The
ETHICS of SPINOZA, may, or may not, be an
instance. But at no time could I believe, 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 Königs
berg, 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 ada
mantine 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 JUDGMENT; of the "METAPHI
SICAL ELEMENTS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY,"
and of his "RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS
OF PURE REASON," took possession of me as
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with a giant’s hand. After fifteen years famili
arity with them, I still read these and all his
other productions with undiminished delight
and increasing admiration. The few passages
that remained obscure to me, after due efforts
of thought, (as the chapter on original apper
ception,) and the apparent contradictions which
occur, I soon found were hints and insinua
tions referring to ideas, which KANT either did
not think it prudent to avow, or which he con
sidered as consistently left behind in a pure
analysis, not of human nature in toto, but of
the speculative intellect alone. Here therefore
he was constrained to commence at the point
of reflection, or natural consciousness: while
in his moral system he was permitted 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 con
science. He had been in imminent danger of
persecution during the reign of the late king of
Prussia, that strange compound of lawless
debauchery, and priestridden superstition:
and it is probable that he had little inclination,
in his old age, to act over again the fortunes,
and hairbreadth escapes of Wolf. The expul
sion of the first among Kant’s disciples, who at
tempted 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, I could never
believe, it was possible for him to have meant
no more by his Noumenon, or THING IN ITSELF,
than his mere words express; or that in his
own conception he confined the whole plastic
power to the forms of the intellect, leaving for
the external cause, for the materiale of our
sensations, a matter without form, which is
doubtless inconceivable. I entertained doubts
likewise, whether in his own mind, he even laid
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 symbol; and,
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except in geometry, all symbols of neces
sity involve an apparent contradiction. Phonese
Sunetoisen: and for those who could not pierce
through this symbolic husk, his writings were
not intended. Questions which can not be
fully answered without exposing the respon
dent to personal danger, are not entitled to a
fair answer; and yet to say this openly, would
in many cases furnish the very advantage,
which the adversary is insidiously seeking
after. Veracity does not consist in saying,
but in the intention of communicating truth;
and the philosopher who can not utter the
whole truth without conveying falsehood, and
at the same time, perhaps, exciting the most
malignant passions, is constrained to express
himself either mythically or equivocally. When
Kant therefore was importuned to settle the
disputes of his commentators himself, by de
claring what he meant, how could he decline
the honours of martyrdom with less offence,
than by simply replying "I 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 Ul
timate Science, was to add the keystone of the
arch: and by commencing with an act, instead
of a thing or substance, Fichte assuredly gave
the first mortal blow to Spinozism, as taught by
Spinoza himself; and supplied the idea of a
system truly metaphysical, and of a metaphy
sique truly systematic: (i. e. having its spring
and principle within itself.) But this funda
mental idea he overbuilt with a heavy mass of
mere notions, and psychological acts of arbitrary
reflection. Thus his theory degenerated into a
crude* egoismus, a boastful and hyperstoic hos
tility to NATURE, as lifeless, godless, and alto
gether unholy: while his religion consisted in
the assumption of a mere ORDO ORDINANS, which
we were permitted exotericé to call GOD; and
his ethics in an ascetic, and almost monkish,
mortification of the natural passions and desires.
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In Schelling’s "NATURPHILOSOPHIE," and
the "SYSTEM DES TRANSCENDENTALEN IDEAL
ISMUS," I first found a genial coincidence with
much that I had toiled out for myself, and a
powerful assistance in what I had yet to do.
I have introduced this statement, as appro
priate to the narrative nature of this sketch; yet
rather in reference to the work which I have
announced in a preceding page, than to my
*The following burlesque on the Fichtean Egoismus may,
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
from an avowed caracature.
The categorical imperative, or the annunciation of the
new Teutonic God, EGoENKAIPAN: a dithyrambic Ode,*
present subject. It would be but a mere act
of justice to myself, 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 borrow
ed from Schelling, or that the conceptions were
originally learnt from him. In this instance, as
*by QUERKOPF VON KLUBSTICK, Grammarian, and Subrec
tor in Gymnasio. ****
Eu! Dei vices gerens, ipse Divus,
(Speak English, Friend!) the God Imperativus,
Here on this marketcross aloud I cry:
I, I, I! 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 the sky,
I, you, and he, and he, you and I,
All souls and all bodies are I itself I!
All I itself I!
(Fools! a truce with this starting!)
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All my I! all my I!
He’s a heretic dog who but adds Betty Martin!
Thus cried the God with high imperial tone:
In robe of stiffest state, that scoff’d at beauty,
A pronounverb imperative he shone—
Then substantive and pluralsingular 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 of the world’s whole Lexicon the root!
Of the whole universe of touch, sound, sight
The genitive and ablative to boot:
The accusative of wrong, the nom’native of right,
And in all cases the case absolute!
Selfconstrued, I all other moods decline:
Imperative, from nothing we derive us;
Yet as a superpostulate of mine,
Unconstrued antecedence I assign
To X, Y, Z, the God infinitivus!
in the dramatic lectures of Schlegel to which I
have before alluded, from the same motive of
selfdefence against the charge of plagiarism,
many of the most striking 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
I might indeed affirm with truth, before the
more important works of Schelling had been
written, or at least made public. Nor is this
coincidence at all to be wondered at. We
had studied in the same school; been discip
lined by the same preparatory philosophy,
namely, the writings of Kant; we had both
equal obligations to the polar logic and dyna
mic philosophy of Giordano Bruno; and Schel
ling has lately, and, as of recent acquisition,
avowed that same affectionate reverence for the
labors of Behmen, and other mystics, which I
had formed at a much earlier period. The
coincidence of SCHELLING’S system with cer
tain general ideas of Behmen, he declares to have
been mere coincidence; while my obligations
have been more direct. He needs give to Beh
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men only feelings of sympathy; while I owe
him a debt of gratitude. God forbid! that I
should be suspected of a wish to enter into a
rivalry with SCHELLING for the honors so une
quivocally his right, not only as a great and
original genius, but as the founder of the
PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, and as the most success
ful improver of the Dynamic* System which,
begun by Bruno, was reintroduced (in a more
philosophical form, and freed from all its impu
rities and visionary accompaniments) by KANT;
in whom it was the native and necessary growth
of his own system. KANT’S followers, how
ever, on whom (for the greater part) their mas
ter’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 FICHTE, to SCHELLING we owe the
It would be an act of high and almost criminal injustice to
pass over in silence the name of Mr. RICHARD SAUMAREZ,
a gentleman equally well known as a medical man and as a
philanthropist, but who demands notice on the present oc
casion as the author of "a new System of Physiology" in two
volumes octavo, published 1797; and in 1812 of "an Exa
mination of the natural and artificial Systems of Philosophy
which now prevail" in one volume octavo, entitled, "The
Principles of physiological 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 princi
ples of the author’s philosophy from his conjectures con
cerning colour, the atmospheric matter, comets, &c. which
whether just or erroneous are by no means necessary conse
quences 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 plausible and highly in
genious. 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
completion, and the most important victories, of
this revolution in philosophy. To me it will 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 awful of subjects for the most important
of purposes, Whether a work is the offspring
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of a man’s own spirit, and the product of ori
ginal thinking, will be discovered by those who
are its sole legitimate 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
*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 philosophical; and substituting life and pro
gressive power, for the contradictory inert force, has a right
to be known and remembered as the first instaurator of the
dynamic philosophy in England. The author’s views, as far
as concerns himself, are unborrowed and compleatly his own,
as he neither possessed nor do his writings discover, the
least acquaintance with the works of Kant, in which the
germs of the philosophy exist; and his volumes were pub
lished many years before the full developement of these
germs by Schelling. Mr. Saumarez’s detection of the Brau
nonian system was no light or ordinary service at the time;
and I scarcely remember in any work on any subject a con
futation so thoroughly satisfactory. It is sufficient at this
time to have stated the fact; as in the preface to the work,
which I have already announced on the Logos, I have ex
hibited in detail the merits of this writer, and genuine philo
sopher, who needed only have taken his foundations some
what deeper and wider to have superseded a considerable
part of my labours.
predecessor, though contemporary, 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 ac
knowledgment be superfluous; be not charged
on me as an ungenerous concealment or inten
tional plagiarism. I have not indeed (eheu! res
angusta domi!) been hitherto able to procure
more than two of his books, viz. the 1st volume
of his collected Tracts, and his System of Trans
cendental Idealism; to which, however, I must
add a small pamphlet against Fichte, the spirit
of which was to my feelings painfully incongru
ous 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
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ventriloquist: I care not from whose mouth the
sounds are supposed to proceed, if only the
words 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 po
"tent in most men’s hearts, that I shall endanger
"either not to be regarded or not to be under
"stood."
MILTON: Reason of Church Government.
And to conclude the subject of citation,
with a cluster of citations, which as taken
from books, not in common use, may con
tribute to the reader’s amusement, as a vo
luntary before a sermon."Dolet mihi qui
dem deliciis literarum inescatos subito jam ho
mines adeo esse, præsertim qui Christianos se
profitentur, et legere nisi quod ad delectationem
facit, sustineant nihil: unde et disciplinæ se
veriores et philosophia ipsa jam fere prorsus
etiam a doctis negliguntur. Quod quidem pro
positum studiorum, nisi mature corrigitur, tam
magnum rebus incommodum dabit, quám dedit
Barbaries olim. Pertinax res Barbaries est,
fateor: sed minus potest tamen, quám illa mol
lities et persuasa prudentia literarum, quæ si
ratione caret, sapientiæ virtutisque specie mor
tales miserè circumducit. Succedet igitur, ut
arbitror, haud ita multo post, pro rusticanâ
seculi nostri ruditate captatrix illa communi
loquentia robur animi virilis omne, omnem
virtutem masculam profligatura, nisi cavetur."
SIMON GRYNÆUS, candido lectori, prefixed to
the Latin translation of Plato, by Marsilius
Ficinus. Lugduni, 1557. A too prophetic re
mark, which has been in fulfilment from the
year 1680, to the present 1815. N. B. By
" persuasa prudentia," Grynæus means self
complacent common sense as opposed to science
and philosophic reason.
"Est medius ordo et velut equestris Ingeni
"orum quidem sagacium et rebus humanis com
"modorum, non tamen in primam magnitudinem
"patentium. Eorum hominum, ut ita dicam,
"major annona est. Sedulum esse, nihil temerè
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"loqui, assuescere labori, et imagine prudentiæ
"& modestiæ tegere angustiores partes captûs
"dum exercitationem et usum, quo isti in civi
"libus rebus pollent, pro natura et magnitudine
"ingenii plerique accipiunt."
BARCLAII ARGENIS, p. 71.
" As therefore, physicians are many times
"forced to leave such methods of curing as them
"selves know to be fittest, and being overruled
"by the sick man’s impatience, are fain to try
"the best they can: in like sort, considering how
"the case doth stand with the present age, full
"of tongue and weak of brain, behold we would
"(if our subject permitted it) 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 com
"mon imbecility the fitter and likelier to be
"brooked."—HOOKER.
If this fear could be rationally entertained in
the controversial age of Hooker, under the then
robust discipline of the scholastic logic, par
donably may a writer of the present times an
ticipate a scanty audience for abstrusest themes,
and truths that can neither be communicated
or received without effort of thought, as well
as patience of attention.
" Che s’io non erro al calcular de’ punti,
"Par ch’ Asinina Stella a noi predomini,
"E’l Somaro e’l castron si sian congiunti.
"Il tempo d’Apuleio piu non si nomini:
"Che se allora un sol Huom sembrava un Asino,
"Mille Asini á miei dì rassembran Huomini!"
Di SALVATOR ROSA Satir. I. 1. 10.
CHAPTER X.
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A chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an
interlude preceding that on the nature and
genesis of the imagination or plastic power—
On pedantry and pedantic expressions—Ad
vice to young authors respecting publication—
Various anecdotes of the author’s literary life,
and the progress of his opinions in religion
and politics.
" Esemplastic. The word is not in Johnson,
nor have I met with it elsewhere." Neither
have I! I constructed it myself from the Greek
words, eis en plattein i. e. to shape into one;
because, having to convey a new sense, I
thought that a new term would both aid the
recollection of my meaning, and prevent its
being confounded with the usual import of
the word, imagination. "But this is pedantry!"
Not necessarily so, I hope. If I am not mis
informed, pedantry consists in the use of words
unsuitable to the time, place, and company.
The language of the market would be in the
schools as pedantic, though it might not be re
probated 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 common conversation should
be employed in a scientific disquisition, and
with no greater precision, is as truly a pedant
as the man of letters, who either overrating
the acquirements of his auditors, or misled by
his own familiarity with technical or scholastic
terms, converses at the winetable with his
mind fixed on his musæum or laboratory; even
though the latter pedant instead of desiring his
wife to make the tea, should bid her add to the
quant. suff. of thea sinensis the oxyd of hy
drogen saturated with caloric. To use the
colloquial (and in truth somewhat vulgar)
metaphor, if the pedant of the cloyster, and the
pedant of the lobby, both smell equally of the
shop, yet the odour from the Russian binding
of good old authenticlooking folios and quartos
is less annoying than the steams from the
tavern or bagnio. Nay, though the pedantry
of the scholar should betray a little ostentation,
yet a wellconditioned mind would more easily,
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methinks, tolerate the fox brush of learned
vanity, than the sans culotterie of a contemptu
ous ignorance, that assumes a merit from
mutilation in the selfconsoling 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
vocabulary of common life, and to direct it to
the KIND abstracted from degree. Thus the
chemical student is taught not to be startled at
disquisitions on the heat in ice, or on latent
and fixible light. In such discourse the in
structor has no other alternative than either to
use old words uith new meanings (the plan
adopted by Darwin in his Zoonomia;) or to
introduce new terms, after the example of
Linnæus, and the framers of the present che
mical nomenclature. The latter mode is evi
dently preferable, were it only that the former
demands a twofold exertion of thought in one
and the same act. For the reader (or hearer)
is required not only to learn and bear in mind
the new 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 compen
sation. Where, indeed, it is in our power to
recall an appropriate term that had without
sufficient reason become obsolete, it is doubt
less a less evil to restore than to coin anew.
Thus to express in one word, all that apper
tains to the perception considered as passive,
and merely recipient, I have adopted from our
elder classics the word sensuous; because sen
sual is not at present used, except in a bad
sense, or at least as a moral distinction, while
sensitive and sensible would each convey a
different meaning. Thus too I have followed
Hooker, Sanderson, Milton, &c. in designating
the immediateness of any act or object of know
lege by the word intuition, used sometimes
subjectively, sometimes objectively, even as we
use the word, thought; now as the thought, or
act of thinking, and now as a thought, or the
object of our reflection; and we do this without
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confusion or obscurity. The very words, ob
jective and subjective, of such constant recur
rence in the schools of yore, I have ventured
to reintroduce, because I could not so briefly,
or conveniently by any more familiar terms
distinguish the percipere from the percipi.
Lastly, I have cautiously discriminated the
terms, the REASON, and the UNDERSTANDING,
encouraged and confirmed by the authority 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 being,
DISCURSIVE or INTUITIVE, Discourse*
Is oftest your’s, the latter most is our’s,
Differing but in degree, in kind the same."
PARADISE LOST, Book V:
But for sundry notes on Shakspeare, &c. which have
fallen in my way, I should have deemed it unnecessary to
observe, that discourse here, or elswhere does not mean what
we now call discoursing; but the discursion of the mind, the
processes of generalization and subsumption, of deduction*
I say, that I was confirmed by authority so ve
nerable: for I had previous and higher motives
in my own conviction of the importance, nay,
of the necessity of the distinction, as both an
indispensable condition and a vital part of all
sound speculation in metaphysics, ethical or
theological. To establish this distinction was
one main object 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 subscribers have but a
trifling motive for forgetting. This effusion
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might have been spared; but I would feign
flatter myself, that the reader will be less aus
tere than an oriental professor of the bastinado,
who during an attempt to extort per argumen
tum baculinum a full confession from a culprit,
interrupted his outcry of pain by reminding him,
that it was "a mere digression!" All this noise,
Sir! is nothing to the point, and no sort of
answer to my QUESTIONS! Ah! but (replied
the sufferer) it is the most pertinent reply in na
ture to your blows.
*and conclusion. Thus, Philosophy has hitherto been DISCUR
SIVE: while Geometry is always and essentially INTUITIVE.
An imprudent man of common goodness of
heart, cannot but wish to turn even his impru
dences to the benefit of others, as far as this is
possible. If therefore any one of the readers of
this seminarrative should be preparing or in
tending a periodical work, I warn him, in the
first place, against trusting in the number of
names on his subscription list. For he cannot
be certain that the names were put down by
sufficient authority; or should that be ascer
tained) it still remains to be known, whether
they were not extorted by some over zealous
friend’s importunity; 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 remind me of his success in his
canvas, but laboured to impress my mind with
the sense of the obligation, I was under to the
subscribers; for (as he very pertinently admo
nished me) "fiftytwo 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 be
nevolent." Of these hundred patrons ninety
threw up the publication before the fourth
number, without any notice; though it was
well known to them, that in consequence of
the distance, and the slowness and irregularity
of the conveyance, I was compelled to lay in
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a stock of stamped paper for at least eight weeks
beforehand; each sheet of which stood me in
five pence previous to its arrival at my printer’s;
though the subscription money was not to be
received till the twentyfirst week after the com
mencement of the work; and lastly, though it
was in nine cases out of ten 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 se
lect one fact among many. On my list of sub
scribers, 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 I 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 re
member right, as the eighteenth number: i. e.
till a fortnight before the subscription was to be
paid. And lo! just at this time I received a
letter from his Lordship, reproving me in lan
guage far more lordly than courteous for my
impudence in directing my pamphlets to him,
who knew nothing of me or my work! Seven
teen or eighteen numbers of which, however,
his Lordship was pleased to retain, probably
for the culinary or postculinary conveniences
of his servants.
Secondly, I warn all others from the attempt
to deviate 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 purchasemoney 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 latter. It is hard, I own, to have been la
bouring for years, in collecting and arranging
the materials; to have spent every shilling that
could be spared after the necessaries of life had
been furnished, in buying books, or in journies
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for the purpose of consulting them or of acquir
ing facts at the fountain head; then to buy the
paper, pay for the printing, &c. all at least fif
teen per cent. beyond what the trade would
have paid; and then after all to give thirty per
cent. not of the net profits, but of the gross re
sults of the sale, to a man who has merely to
give the books shelf or warehouse room, and
permit his apprentice 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 an hardship, and
one, to which the products of industry in no
other mode of exertion are subject. Yet even
this is better, far better, than to attempt in any
way to unite the functions of author and pub
lisher. But the most prudent mode is to sell
the copyright, 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 anxieties. I shall have been griev
ously misunderstood, if this statement should
be interpreted as written with the desire of
detracting from the character of booksellers or
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 with
out the substitution of an equal or greater in
convenience, it were neither wise or manly even
to complain of it. But to use it as a pretext for
speaking, or even for thinking, or feeling, un
kindly or opprobiously of the tradesmen, as
individuals, would be something worse than un
wise or even than unmanly; it would be im
moral and calumnious! My motives point in a
far different direction 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 expence two volumes
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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 favorite topic of conversation among
his friends. Well! (he used to exclaim) in the
SECOND 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 print
ing and publication of the work, and who was
perfectly at his ease, as the author was known
to be a man of large property. At length the
accounts were written for; and in the course of
a few weeks they were presented 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 expec
tation! Printing, so much: well! moderate
enough! Stitching, covers, advertisements, car
riage, &c. so much.—Still nothing amiss. Sel
leridge (for orthography is no necessary part
of a bookseller’s literary acquirements) L3. 3s.
Bless me! only three guineas for the what d’ye
call it? the selleridge? No more, Sir! replied
the rider. Nay, but that is too moderate!
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 of them sold; they have been sent back
from London long ago; and this L3. 3s. is for
the cellaridge, or warehouseroom in our book
cellar. The work was in consequence prefer
red from the ominous cellar of the publisher’s,
to the author’s garret; and on presenting a
copy to an acquaintance the old gentleman
used to tell the anecdote with great humor and
still greater good nature.
With equal lack of worldly knowledge, I
was a far more than equal sufferer for it, at the
very outset of my authorship. Toward the
close of the first year from the time, that in an
inauspicious hour I left the friendly cloysters,
and the happy grove of quiet, ever honored
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Jesus College, Cambridge, I was persuaded by
sundry Philanthropists and Antipolemists to
set on foot a periodical work, entitled THE
WATCHMAN, that (according to the general motto
of the work) all might know the truth, and that
the truth might make us free! In order to
exempt it from the stamptax, and likewise to
contribute as little as possible to the supposed
guilt of a war against freedom, it was to be
published on every eighth day, thirtytwo pa
ges, large octavo, closely printed, and price
only FOURPENCE. Accordingly with a flaming,
prospectus, "Knowledge is Power," &c. to cry the
state of the political atmosphere, and so forth,
I set off on a tour to the North, from Bristol
to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring cus
tomers, preaching by the way in most of the
great towns, as an hireless volunteer, in a blue
coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the
woman of Babylon might be seen on me. For
I was at that time and long after, though a
Trinitarian (i. e. ad normam Platonis) in philo
sophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in Religion;
more accurately, 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 cruci
fixion. O! never can I remember those days
with either shame or regret. For I was most
sincere, most disinterested! My opinions were
indeed in many and most important points er
roneous; but my heart was single. Wealth, rank,
life itself then seemed cheap to me, compared
with the interests of (what I believed to be) the
truth, and the will of my maker. I cannot even
accuse myself of having been actuated by va
nity; for in the expansion of my enthusiasm I
did not think of myself at all.
My campaign commenced 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 bor
rowed for a foundery poker. O that face! a
face katemphasin! I have it before me at this
moment. The lank, black, twinelike hair,
pinguinitescent, cut in a strait line along the
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black stubble of his thin gunpowder eye brows,
that looked like a scorched aftermath from a last
week’s shaving. His coat collar behind in per
fect unison, both of colour and lustre with the
coarse yet glib cordage, that I suppose he
called his hair, and which with a bend inward
at the nape of the neck (the only approach to
flexure 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
thoroughbred, a true lover of liberty, and (I
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 whom 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 I had under
taken of an author, yea, and of an author trad
ing on his own account. My companion after
some imperfect sentences and a multitude of
hums and haas abandoned the cause to his
client; and I commenced an harangue of half
an hour to Phileleutheros, the tallowchandler,
varying my notes through the whole gamut of
eloquence from the ratiocinative to the decla
matory, and in the latter from the pathetic to
the indignant. I argued, I described, I promi
sed, I prophecied; and beginning with the cap
tivity of nations I ended with the near approach
of the millenium, finishing the whole with some
of my own verses describing that glorious state
out of the Religious Musings:
Such delights,
As float to earth, permitted visitants!
When in some hour of solemn jubilee
The massive gates of Paradise are thrown
Wide open: and forth come in fragments wild
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,
And odors snatch’d from beds of Amaranth,
And they that from the chrystal river of life
Spring up on freshen’d wings, ambrosial gales!
Religious Musings, l. 356.
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My taper man of lights listened with perse
verant and praiseworthy patience, though (as
I was afterwards told on complaining of certain
gales that were not altogether ambrosial) it was
a melting day with him. And what, Sir! (he
said after a short pause) might the cost be?
Only FOURPENCE (O! how I felt the anticlimax,
the abysmal bathos of that fourpence!) only
fourpence, 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?
Thirtytwo pages, Sir! large octavo, closely
printed. Thirty and two pages? Bless me,
why except what I does in a family way on the
Sabbath, that’s more than I ever reads, Sir!
all the year round. I 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 canvas: from causes that
I shall presently mention, I made but one other
application in person. This took place at Man
chester, to a stately and opulent wholesale
dealer in cottons. He took my letter of intro
duction, and having perused it, measured me
from head to foot and again from foot to head,
and then asked if I had any bill or invoice of
the thing; I 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 delibe
rately and significantly rubbed and smoothed
one part against the other; and lastly putting
it into his pocket turned his back on me with
an "overrun 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 second and last
attempt. On returning baffled from the first,
in which I had vainly essayed to repeat the
miracle of Orpheus with the Brummagem pa
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triot, I dined with the tradesman who had
introduced me to him. After dinner he im
portuned me to smoke a pipe with him, and
two or three other illuminati of the same
rank. I objected, both because I was engaged
to spend the evening with a minister and his
friends, and because I had never smoked ex
cept once or twice in my life time, and then it
was herb tobacco mixed with Oronooko. On
the assurance however that the tobacco was
equally mild, and seeing too that it was of a
yellow colour; (not forgetting the lamentable
difficulty, I have always experienced, in saying,
No! and in abstaining from what the people
about me were doing) I took half a pipe, filling
the lower half of the bole with salt. I was soon
however compelled to resign it, in consequence
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 to
bacco. Soon after, deeming myself recovered,
I sallied forth to my engagement, but the walk
and the fresh air brought on all the symptoms
again, and I had scarcely entered the minister’s
drawingroom, and opened a small paquet of
letters, which he had received from Bristol for
me; ere I 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 feelings, and of the oc
casion. For here and thus I lay, my face like
a wall that is whitewashing, deathy pale and
with the cold drops of perspiration running
down it from my forehead, while one after
another there dropt in the different gentlemen,
who had been invited to meet, and spend the
evening with me, to the number of from fifteen
to twenty. As the poison of tobacco acts but
for a short time, I at length awoke from insen
sibility, and looked round on the party, 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 con
versation, with "Have you seen a paper to day,
Mr. Coleridge?" Sir! (I replied, rubbing my
eyes) "I am far from convinced, that a chris
tian is permitted to read either newspapers 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
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Birmingham, and to assist me in which they
were all then met, produced an involuntary
and general burst of laughter; and seldom in
deed have I passed so many delightful hours,
as I enjoyed in that room from the moment of
that laugh to an early hour the next morning.
Never, perhaps, in so mixed and numerous a
party have I since heard conversation sustained
with such animation, enriched with such va
riety of information and enlivened with such a
flow of anecdote. Both then and afterwards
they all joined in dissuading me from proceed
ing with my scheme; assured me in the most
friendly and yet most flattering expressions,
that the employment was neither fit for me, nor
I fit for the employment. Yet if I had deter
mined on persevering in it, they promised to
exert themselves to the utmost to procure sub
scribers, and insisted that I should make no
more applications in person, but carry on the
canvass by proxy. The same hospitable re
ception, the same dissuasion, and (that failing)
the same kind exertions in my behalf, I met
with at Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, Shef
field, indeed, at every place in which I took
up my sojourn. I often recall with affectionate
pleasure the many respectable men who inte
rested themselves for me, a perfect stranger to
them, not a few of whom I can still name among
my friends. They will bear witness for me,
how opposite even then my principles were to
those of jacobinism or even of democracy, and
can attest the strict accuracy of the statement
which I have left on record in the 10th and
11th numbers of THE FRIEND.
From this rememberable tour I returned with
nearly a thousand names on the subscription
list of the Watchman; yet more than half con
vinced, that prudence dictated the abandon
ment of the scheme. But for this very reason I
persevered in it; for I was at that period of my
life so compleatly hagridden by the fear of
being influenced 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 of duty. Ac
cordingly, I commenced the work, which was
announced in London by long bills in letters
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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 publication of the
very first number was delayed beyond the day
announced for its appearance. In the second
number an essay against fast days, with a most
censurable application of a text from Isaiah for
its motto, lost me near five hundred of my sub
scribers at one blow. In the two following
numbers I made enemies of all my Jacobin and
Democratic Patrons; for disgusted by their in
fidelity, and their adoption of French morals
with French psilosophy; and perhaps thinking,
that charity ought to begin nearest home; in
stead of abusing the Government and the Aris
tocrats chiefly or entirely, as had been expected
of me, I levelled my attacks at " modern pa
triotism", and even ventured to declare my be
lief 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 produce 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 for them." At the same time I avowed
my conviction, that national education and a
concurring spread of the gospel were the indis
pensable condition of any true political amelio
ration. Thus by the time the seventh number
was published, I had the mortification (but
why should I say this, when in truth I cared
too little for any thing that concerned my world
ly 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 publisher I could not obtain a shil
ling; 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 re
fused 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
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continued my friend with a fidelity unconquered
by time or even by my own apparent neglect;
a friend from whom I never received an advice
that was not wise, or a remonstrance that was
not gentle and affectionate.
Conscientiously an opponent of the first re
volutionary war, yet with my eyes thoroughly
opened to the true character and impotence of
the favorers of revolutionary principles in Eng
land, principles which I held in abhorrence
(for it was part of my political creed, that who
ever ceased to act as an individual by making
himself a member of any society not sanctioned
by his Government, forfeited the rights of a
citizen) a vehement antiministerialist, but after
the invasion of Switzerland a more vehement
antigallican, and still more intensely an anti
jacobin, I retired to a cottage at Stowey, and
provided for my scanty maintenance by writing
verses for a London Morning Paper. I saw
plainly, that literature was not a profession, by
which I 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 were not of the sort that could enable me
to become a popular writer; and that whatever
my opinions might be in themselves, they were
almost equidistant from all the three prominent
parties, the Pittites, the Foxites, and the De
mocrats. Of the unsaleable nature of my writ
ings 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 quantity of paper
into the grate in order to light the fire, and
mildly checked her for her wastefulness; la,
Sir! (replied poor Nanny) why, it is only
"WATCHMEN."
I now devoted myself to poetry and to the
study of ethics and psychology; and so pro
found was my admiration at this time of Hart
ley’s Essay on Man, that I gave his name to my
first born. In addition to the gentleman, my
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neighbour, whose garden joined on to my little
orchard, and the cultivation of whose friend
ship had been my sole motive in choosing
Stowey for my residence, I was so fortunate
as to acquire, shortly after my settlement there,
an invaluable blessing in the society and neigh
bourhood of one, to whom I could look up with
equal reverence, whether I regarded him as a
poet, a philosopher, or a man. His conversa
tion extended to almost all subjects, except
physics and politics; 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 suspicion and obloquy, which did
not stop at me, but extended to my excellent
friend, whose perfect innocence was even ad
duced as a proof of his guilt. One of the many
busy sycophants* of that day (I here use the
word sycophant, in its original sense, as a
wretch who flatters the prevailing party by in
forming against his neighbours, under pretence
that they are exporters of prohibited figs or
fancies! for the moral application of the term
it matters not which)one of these sycophan
tic lawmongrels, discoursing on the politics of
the neighbourhood, uttered the following deep
remark: "As to Coleridge, there is not so much
harm in him, for he is a whirlbrain that talks
whatever comes uppermost; but that !
he is the dark traitor. You never hear HIM say
a syllable on the subject."
Now that the hand of providence has dis
ciplined all Europe into sobriety, as men tame
wild elephants, by alternate blows and cares
ses; 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 influence was at that time possessed
and exerted by the spirit of secret defamation
(the too constant attendant on partyzeal!)
*Sukous Phainein, to shew or detect figs, the exportation of
which from Attica was forbidden by the laws.
during the restless interim from 1793 to the
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commencement of the Addington administra
tion, or the year before the truce of Amiens.
For by the latter period the minds of the
partizans, exhausted by excess of stimulation
and humbled by mutual disappointment, had
become languid. The same causes, that in
clined the nation to peace, disposed the indi
viduals 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 ex
periment was made at the price of great, almost
we may say, of humiliating sacrifices; and wise
men foresaw that it would fail, at least in its
direct and ostensible object. Yet it was pur
chased cheaply, and realized an object of equal
value, and, if possible, of still more vital import
ance. For it brought about a national una
nimity unexampled in our history since the
reign of Elizabeth; and providence, never want
ing to a good work when men have done their
parts, soon provided a common focus in the
cause of Spain, which made us all once more
Englishmen by at once gratifying and correct
ing the predilections of both parties. The sin
cere reverers of the throne felt the cause of
loyalty ennobled by its alliance with that of
freedom; while the honest zealots of the people
could not but admit, that freedom itself assumed
a more winning form, humanized by loyalty
and consecrated by religious principle. The
youthful enthusiasts who, flattered by the morn
ing rainbow of the French revolution, had made
a boast of expatriating their hopes and fears,
now disciplined by the succeeding storms and
sobered by increase of years, had been taught
to prize and honor the spirit of nationality as
the best safeguard of national independence,
and this again as the absolute prerequisite and
necessary basis of popular rights.
If in Spain too disappointment has nipt our
too forward expectations, yet all is not destroyed
that is checked. The crop was perhaps spring
ing up too rank in the stalk, to kern well; and
there were, doubtless, symptoms of the Gallican
blight on it. If superstition and despotism have
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been suffered to let in their woolvish sheep to
trample and eat it down even to the surface,
yet the roots remain alive, and the second
growth may prove all the stronger and healthier
for the temporary interruption. At all events,
to us heaven has been just and gracious. The
people of England did their best, and have
received their rewards. Long may we continue
to deserve it! Causes, which it had been too
generally the habit of former statesmen to re
gard as belonging to another world, are now
admitted by all ranks to have been the main
agents of our success. "We fought from
heaven; the stars in their courses fought against
Sisera." If then unanimity grounded on moral
feelings has been among the least equivocal
sources of our national glory, that man deserves
the esteem of his countrymen, even as patriots,
who devotes his life and the utmost efforts of
his intellect to the preservation and continuance
of that unanimity by the disclosure and estab
lishment of principles. For by these all opinions
must be ultimately tried; and (as the feelings
of men are worthy of regard only as far as they
are the representatives of their fixed opinions)
on the knowledge of these all unanimity, not
accidental and fleeting, must be grounded.
Let the scholar, who doubts this assertion,
refer only to the speeches and writings of
EDMUND BURKE at the commencement of the
American war, and compare them with his
speeches and writings at the commencement of
the French revolution. He will find the prin
ciples exactly the same and the deductions the
same; but the practical inferences almost op
posite, in the one case from those drawn in the
other; yet in both equally legitimate and in
both equally confirmed by the results. Whence
gained he this superiority of foresight? Whence
arose the striking difference, and in most in
stances even the discrepancy between the
grounds assigned by him, and by those who
voted with him, on the same questions? How
are we to explain the notorious fact, that the
speeches and writings of EDMUND BURKE are
more interesting, at the present day, than they
were found at the time of their first publica
tion; while those of his illustrious confede
rates are either forgotten, or exist only to
furnish proofs, that the same conclusion, which
one man had deduced scientifically, may be
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brought out by another in consequence of er
rors that luckily chanced to neutralize each
other. It would be unhandsome as a con
jecture, even were it not, as it actually is,
false in point of fact, to attribute this difference
to deficiency of talent on the part of Burke’s
friends, or of experience, or of historical know
ledge. The satisfactory solution is, that Edmund
Burke possessed and had sedulously sharpened
that eye, which sees all things, actions, and
events, in relation to the laws that determine
their existence and circumscribe their possibi
lity. He referred habitually to principles. He
was a scientific statesman; and therefore a
seer. For every principle contains in itself the
germs of a prophecy; and as the prophetic
power is the essential privilege of science, so
the fulfilment of its oracles supplies the outward
and (to men in general) the only test of its claim
to the title. Wearisome as Burke’s refinements
appeared to his parliamentary auditors, yet the
cultivated classes throughout Europe have rea
son to be thankful, that
he went on refining,
And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining.
Our very sign boards (said 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 are so
many remembrancers of EDMUND BURKE. Of
this the reader may easily convince himself, if
either by recollection or reference he will com
pare the opposition newspapers at the com
mencement and during the five or six following
years of the French revolution with the senti
ments, and grounds of argument assumed in
the same class of Journals at present, and for
some years past.
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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 Hamlet, be heard moving and mining in the
underground chambers with an activity 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 pub
lished in the Courier. Be this as it may, the
evil spirit of jealousy, and with it the cerberean
whelps of feud and slander, no longer walk
their rounds, in cultivated society.
Far different were the days to which these
anecdotes have carried me back. The dark
guesses of some zealous 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 Mi
nisters: for this proved a very honest fellow.
After three week’s truly Indian perseverance in
tracking us (for we were commonly together) du
ring all which time seldom were we out of doors,
but he contrived to be within hearing (and all
the while utterly unsuspected; how indeed
could such a suspicion enter our fancies?) he
not only rejected Sir Dogberry’s request that
he would try yet a little longer, but declared to
him his belief, that both my friend and myself
were as good subjects, for aught he could dis
cover to the contrary, as any in His Majesty’s
dominions. He had repeatedly hid himself, he
said, for hours together behind a bank at the
seaside (our favorite 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 Nozy, which he was inclined
to interpret of himself, and of a remarkable
feature belonging to him; but he was speedily
convinced that it was the name of a man who
had made a book and lived long ago. Our
talk ran most upon books, and we were perpe
tually desiring each other to look at this, and
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to listen to that; but he could not catch a word
about politics. Once he had joined me on the
road; (this occurred, as I was returning home
alone from my friend’s house, which was about
three miles from my own cottage) and passing
himself off as a traveller, he had entered into
conversation with me, and talked of purpose in
a democrat way in order to draw me out. The
result, it appears, not only convinced him that
I was no friend of jacobinism; but (he added)
I had "plainly made it out to be such a silly as
well as wicked thing, that he felt ashamed,
though he had only put it on." I distinctly
remembered the occurrence, and had mentioned
it immediately on my return, repeating what
the traveller with his Bardolph nose had said,
with my own answer; and so little did I sus
pect the true object of my "tempter ere ac
cuser," that I expressed with no small pleasure
my hope and belief, that the conversation had
been of some service to the poor misled malcon
tent. 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 his house.
At length, he received Sir Dogberry’s com
mands to accompany his guest at the final in
terview; and after the absolving suffrage of
the gentleman honored with the confidence of
Ministers answered, as follows, to the follow
ing queries? D. Well, landlord! and what do
you know of the person in question? L. I see
him often pass by with maister , my
landlord (i. e. the owner of the house) and some
times with the newcomers at Holford; but I
never said a word to him or he to me. D.
But do you not know, that he has distributed
papers and handbills of a seditious nature
among the common people! L. No, your
honor! I never heard of such a thing. D.
Have you not seen this Mr. Coleridge, or heard
of, his haranguing and talking to knots and
clusters of the inhabitants?What are you
grinning at, Sir! L. Beg your honor’s pardon!
but I was only thinking, how they’d have stared
at him. lf what I have heard be true, your
honor! they would not have understood a
word, he said. When our vicar was here,
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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 harangue the peo
ple? L. I hope, your honor an’t angry with
me. I can say no more than I know. I never
saw him talking with any one, but my land
lord, and our curate, and the strange gentle
man. 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 honor! I own, I have
heard; I am sure, I would not wish to say ill
of any body; but it is certain, that I have
heard—D. Speak out man! don’t be afraid,
you are doing your duty to your King, and
Government. What have you heard? L. Why,
folks do say, your honor! as how that he 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 requires explanation, and at the
same time entitles the anecdote to a place in
my literary life. I had considered it as a
defect in the admirable poem of the TASK, that
the subject, which gives the title 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 connections are fre
quently awkward, and the transitions abrupt
and arbitrary. I sought for a subject, that
should give equal room and freedom for de
scription, incident, and impassioned reflections
on men, nature, and society, yet supply in itself
a natural connection to the parts, and unity to
the whole. Such a subject I conceived myself
to have found in a stream, traced from its source
in the hills among the yellowred moss and
conical glassshaped tufts of Bent, to the first
break or fall, where its drops became audi
ble, 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 lonely cottage and its bleak garden won
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from the heath; to the hamlet, the villages, the
markettown, the manufactories, and the sea
port. My walks therefore were almost daily
on the top of Quantock, and among its sloping
coombs. With my pencil and memorandum
book in my hand, I was making studies, as
the artists call them, and often moulding my
thoughts into verse, with the objects and imagery
immediately before my senses. Many circum
stances, evil and good, intervened to prevent
the completion of the poem, which was to have
been entitled "THE BROOK." Had I finished
the work, it was my purpose in the heat of the
moment to have dedicated it to our then com
mittee of public safety as containing the charts
and maps, with which I was to have supplied
the French Government in aid of their plans of
invasion. And these too for a tract of coast
that from Clevedon to Minehead scarcely per
mits the approach of a fishing boat!
All my experience from my first entrance
into life to the present hour is in favor 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 ques
tions, which is the queen bee in the hive of
party fanaticism, the partizan has more sympa
thy with an intemperate Opposite than with a
moderate Friend. We now enjoy an intermis
sion, and long may it continue! In addition
to far higher and more important merits, our
present bible societies and other numerous
associations for national or charitable objects,
may serve perhaps to carry off the superfluous
activity and fervor of stirring minds in innocent
hyperboles and the bustle of management. But
the poisontree 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 keep watch and
ward, even on our best feelings. I have seen
gross intolerance shewn in support of tolera
tion; sectarian antipathy most obtrusively dis
played in the promotion of an undistinguishing
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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; and all this by men
too of naturally kind dispositions and exem
plary conduct.
The magic rod of fanaticism is preserved in
the very adyta of human nature; and needs
only the reexciting warmth of a master hand
to bud forth afresh and produce the old fruits.
The horror of the peasant’s war in Germany,
and the direful effects of the Anabaptist’s tenets
(which differed only from those of jacobinism
by the substitution of theological for philoso
phical jargon) struck all Europe for a time
with affright. Yet little more than a century
was sufficient to obliterate all effective memory
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 restoration of his son. The
fanatic maxim of extirpating fanaticism by per
secution produced a civil war. The war ended
in the victory of the insurgents; but the temper
survived, and Milton had abundant grounds
for asserting, that "Presbyter was but OLD
PRIEST writ large!" One good result, thank
heaven! of this zealotry was the reestablish
ment 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 vigor by the per
secuted. The same fanatic principle, that un
der 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
episcopal banners, and having first crowded
the prisons of England emptied its whole vial of
wrath on the miserable covenanters of Scotland.
(Laing’s History of Scotland.—Walter Scott’s
bards, ballads, &c.) A merciful providence at
length constrained both parties to join against
a common enemy. A wise Government fol
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lowed; and the established church became,
and now is, not only the brightest example,
but our best and only sure bulwark, of tolera
tion! The true and indispensable bank against
a new inundation of persecuting zeal—ESTO
PERPETUA!
A long interval of quiet succeeded; or ra
ther, the exhaustion had produced a cold fit of
the ague which was symptomatized by indif
rence 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 at
tached to the crimes and absurdities of secta
rian and democratic fanaticism, were trans
ferred to the oppressive privileges of the no
blesse, and the luxury, intrigues and favoritism
of the continental courts. The same principles
dressed in the ostentatious garb of a fashionable
philosophy once more rose triumphant and
effected the French revolution. And have we
not within the last three or four years had rea
son to apprehend, that the detestable maxims
and correspondent measures of the late French
despotism had already bedimmed the public
recollections of democratic phrensy; had drawn
off to other objects the electric force of the
feelings which had massed and upheld those
recollections; and that a favorable concurrence
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. 110.)
In part from constitutional indolence, which
in the very heyday of hope had kept my en
thusiasm in check, but still more from the
habits and influences of a classical education
and academic pursuits, scarcely had a year
elapsed from the commmencement of my literary
and political adventures before my mind sunk
into a state of thorough disgust and despon
dency, both with regard to the disputes and
the parties disputant. With more than poetic
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feeling I exclaimed:
"The sensual and the dark rebel in vain,
"Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game
"They break their manacles, to wear the name
"Of freedom, graven on an heavier chain.
"O liberty! with profitless endeavor
"Have I pursued thee many a weary hour;
"But thou nor swell’st the victor’s pomp, nor ever
"Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power!
"Alike from all, howe’er they praise thee
"(Nor prayer nor boastful name delays thee)
"From superstition’s harpy minions
"And factious blasphemy’s obscener slaves,
"Thou speedest on thy cherub pinions,
"The guide of homeless winds and playmate of the waves!"
FRANCE, 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 myself all afloat. Doubts
rushed in; broke upon me "from the fountains
of the great deep," and fell "from the windows
of 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 Ararat, and rested. The idea of the
Supreme Being appeared to me to be as
necessarily implied in all particular modes of being
as the idea of infinite space in all the geometri
cal 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 phæno
menon or image in my perception. I saw, that
in the nature of things such proof is impossible;
and that of all modes of being, that are not
objects of the senses, the existence is assumed
by a logical necessity arising from the constitu
tion of the mind itself, by the absence of all
motive to doubt it, not from any absolute con
tradiction in the supposition of the contrary.
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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 whether the
"properties of intelligence and will are to be
"referred to the Supreme Being in the former 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 regarded as from God not in
"God. Were the latter the truth, then notwith
"standing all the preeminence which must be
"assigned to the ETERNAL FIRST from the suf
"ficiency, unity, and independence of his being,
"as the dread ground of the universe, his nature
"would yet fall far short of that, which we are
"bound to comprehend in the idea of GOD. For
"without any knowledge or determining resolve
"of its own it would only be a blind necessary
"ground of other things and other spirits; and
"thus would be distinguished from the FATE of
"certain ancient philosophers in no respect, but
"that of being more definitely and intelligibly
"described." KANT’s einzig möglicher Beweis
grund: vermischte Schriften, Zweiter Band,
§ 102, and 103.
For a very long time indeed I could not re
concile personality with infinity; and my head
was with Spinoza, though my whole heart re
mained with Paul and John. Yet there had
dawned upon me, even before I had met with
the Critique of Pure Reason, a certain guid
ing light. If the mere intellect could make no
certain discovery 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
wisdom (more properly translated by the powers
of reasoning) no man ever arrived at the
knowledge of God? What more than the sublimest,
and probably the oldest, book on earth has
taught us,
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Silver and gold man searcheth out:
Bringeth the ore out of the earth, and darkness into light.
But where findeth he wisdom?
Where is the place of understanding?
The abyss crieth; it is not in me!
Ocean echoeth back; not in me!
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!
GOD marketh out the road to it;
GOD knoweth its abiding place!
He beholdeth the ends of the earth;
He surveyeth what is beneath the heavens!
And as he weighed out the winds, and measured the sea,
And appointed laws to the rain,
And a path to the thunder,
A path to the flashes of lightning!
Then did he see it,
And he counted it;
He searched into the depth thereof,
And with a line did he compass it round!
But to man he said,
The fear of the Lord is wisdom for THEE!
And to avoid evil,
That is thy understanding.
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Page No 138
JOB, CHAP. 28th
I became convinced, that religion, as both
the cornerstone and the keystone of morality,
must have a moral origin; so far at least, that
the evidence of its doctrines could not, like the
truths of abstract science, be wholly indepen
dent of the will. It were therefore to be ex
pected, that its fundamental truth would be
such as MIGHT be denied; though only, by the
fool, and even by the fool from the madness of
the heart alone!
The question then concerning our faith in
the existence of a God, not only as the ground
of the universe by his essence, but as its maker
and judge by his wisdom and holy will, ap
peared to stand thus. The sciential reason,
whose objects are purely theoretical, remains
neutral, as long as its name and semblance are
not usurped by the opponents of the doctrine.
But it then becomes an effective ally by expos
ing the false shew of demonstration, or by
evincing the equal demonstrability of the con
trary from premises equally logical. The un
derstanding mean time suggests, the analogy of
experience facilitates, the belief. Nature ex
cites and recalls it, as by a perpetual revela
tion. Our feelings almost necessitate it; and
the law of conscience peremptorily commands
it. The arguments, that at all apply to it, are
in its favor; and there is nothing against it, but
its own sublimity. It could not be
intellectually more evident without becoming morally
less effective; without counteracting its own
end by sacrificing the life of faith to the cold
mechanism of a worthless because compulsory
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 be
get a good heart; but a good heart so naturally
begets the belief, that the very few exceptions
must be regarded as strange anomalies from
strange and unfortunate circumstances.
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From these premises I proceeded to draw
the following conclusions. First, that having
once fully admitted the existence of an infinite
yet selfconscious Creator, we are not allowed
to ground the irrationality of any other article
of faith on arguments which would equally
prove that to be irrational, which we had
allowed to be real. Secondly, that whatever
is deducible from the admission of a selfcom
prehending and creative spirit may be legiti
mately used in proof of the possibility of any
further mystery concerning the divine nature.
Possibilitatem mysteriorum, (Trinitatis, &c.)
contra insultus Infidelium et Hereticorum a con
tradictionibus vindico; haud quidem verita
tem, quæ revelatione solâ stabiliri possit; says
LEIBNITZ in a letter to his Duke. He then
adds the following just and important remark.
" In vain will tradition or texts of scripture be
"adduced in support of a doctrine, donec clava
"impossibilitatis et contradictionis e manibus
"horum Herculum extorta fuerit. For the he
"retic will still reply, that texts, the literal sense
"of which is not so much above as directly
"against all reason, must be understood figura
"tively, as Herod is a fox, &c."
These principles I held, philosophically, while
in respect of revealed religion I remained a
zealous Unitarian. I considered the idea of
the Trinity a fair scholastic inference from the
being of God, as a creative intelligence; 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 schools of philosophy, The
admission of the logos, as hypostasized (i. e.
neither a mere attribute or a personification) in
no respect removed my doubts concerning the
incarnation and the redemption by the cross;
which I could neither reconcile in reason with
the impassiveness of the Divine Being, nor in
my moral feelings with the sacred distinction
between things and persons, the vicarious pay
ment of a debt and the vicarious expiation of
guilt. A more thorough revolution in my phi
losophic principles, and a deeper insight into
my own heart, were yet wanting. Nevertheless,
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I cannot doubt, that the difference of my me
taphysical notions from those of Unitarians in
general contributed to my final reconversion to
the whole truth in Christ; even as according
to his own confession the books of certain
Platonic philosophers (libri quorundam Plato
nicorum) commenced the rescue of St. Augus
tine’s faith from the same error aggravated by
the far darker accompaniment of the Mani
chæan heresy.
While my mind was thus perplexed, by a
gracious providence for which I can never be
sufficiently grateful, the generous and munifi
cent patronage of Mr. JOSIAH, and Mr. THOMAS
WEDGEWOOD enabled me to finish my educa
tion in Germany. Instead of troubling others
with my own crude notions and juvenile com
positions I was thenceforward 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 ac
quiring a tolerable sufficiency in the German
language* at Ratzeburg, which with my voyage
To those, who design to acquire the language of a coun
try in the country itself, it may be useful, if I mention the
incalculable advantage which I derived from learning all the
words, that could possibly be so learnt, with the objects
before me, and without the intermediation of the English
terms. It was a regular part of my morning studies for the
first six weeks of my residence at Ratzeburg, to accompany
the good and kind old pastor, with whom I lived, from the*
and journey thither I have described in THE
FRIEND, I proceeded through Hanover to
Göttingen.
Here I regularly attended the lectures on
physiology in the morning, and on natural his
tory in the evening, under BLUMENBACH, a
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name as dear to every Englishman who has
studied at that university, as it is venerable to
men of science throughout Europe! Eich
horn’s lectures on the New Testament were
*cellar to the roof, through gardens, farm yard, &c. and to
call every, the minutest, thing by its German name. Ad
vertisements, farces, jest books, and the conversation of
children while I was at play with them, contributed their
share to a more homelike acquaintance with the language,
than I could have acquired from works of polite literature
alone, or even from polite society. There is a passage of
hearty sound sense in Luther’s German letter on interpreta
tion, to the translation of which I shall prefix, for the sake
of those who read the German, yet are not likely to have
dipt often in the massive folios of this heroic reformer, the
simple, sinewy idiomatic words of the original. "Denn
"man muss nicht die Buchstaben in der Lateinischen
"Sprache fragen wie man soll Deutsch reden; sondern man
"muss die mutter im Hause, die Kinder auf den Gassen, den
"gemeinen Mann auf dem Markte, darum fragen: und densel
"bigen auf das Maul sehen wie sie reden, und darnach doll
"metschen. So verstehen sie es denn, und merken dass man
"Deutsch mit ihnen redet."
TRANSLATION.
For one must not ask the letters in the Latin tongue, how
one ought to speak German; but one must ask the mother
in the house, the children in the lanes and alleys, the common
man in the market, concerning this; 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.
repeated to me from notes by 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 di
rected towards a grounded knowledge of the
German language and literature. From pro
fessor TYCHSEN I received as many lessons in
the Gothic of Ulphilas as sufficed to make me
acquainted with its grammar, and the radical
words of most frequent occurrence; and with
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the occasional assistance of the same philoso
phical linguist, I read through* OTTFRIED’s
metrical paraphrase of the gospel, and the most
important remains of the THEOTISCAN, or the
transitional state of the Teutonic language from
the Gothic to the old German of the Swabian
period. Of this period (the polished dialect of
which is analogous to that of our Chaucer, and
which leaves the philosophic student in doubt,
whether the language has not since then lost
more in sweetness and flexibility, than it has
gained in condensation and copiousness) I read
with sedulous accuracy the MINNESINGER (or
singers of love, the provencal poets of the
Swabian court) and the metrical romances;
*This paraphrase, written about the time of Charlemagne,
is by no means deficient in occasional passages of consider
able poetic merit. There is a flow, and a tender enthusi
asm in the following lines (at the conclusion of Chapter V.)*
and then laboured through sufficient specimens
of the master singers, their degenerate succes
sors; not however without occasional pleasure
*which even in the translation will not, I flatter myself, fail to
interest the reader. Ottfried is describing the circumstances
immediately following the birth of our Lord.
She gave with joy her virgin breast;
She hid it not, she bared the breast,
Which suckled that divinest babe!
Blessed, blessed were the breasts
Which the Saviour infant kiss’d;
And blessed, blessed was the mother
Who wrapp’d his limbs in swaddling clothes,
Singing placed him on her lap,
Hung o’er him with her looks of love,
And soothed him with a lulling motion.
Blessed! for she shelter’d him
From the damp and chilling air;
Blessed, blessed! for she lay
With such a babe in one blest bed,
Close as babes and mothers lie!
Blessed, blessed evermore,
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With her virgin lips she kiss’d,
With her arms, and to her breast
She embraced the babe divine,
Her babe divine the virgin mother!
There lives not on this ring of earth
A mortal, that can sing her praise.
Mighty mother, virgin pure,
In the darkness and the night
For us she bore the heavenly Lord!
Most interesting is it to consider the effect, when the feel
ings are wrought above the natural pitch by the belief of
something mysterious, while all the images are purely na
tural. Then it is, that religion and poetry strike deepest.
from the rude, yet interesting strains of HANS
SACHS the cobler of Nuremberg. Of this man’s
genius five folio volumes with double columns
are extant in print, and nearly an equal number
in manuscript; yet the indefatigable bard takes
care to inform his readers, that he never made a
shoe the less, but had virtuously reared a large
family by the labor of his hands.
ln Pindar, Chaucer, Dante, Milton, &c. &c.
we have instances of the close connection of
poetic genius with the love of liberty and of
genuine reformation. The moral sense at least
will not be outraged, if I add to the list the
name of this honest shoemaker (a trade by the
bye remarkable for the production of philo
sophers and poets.) His poem intitled the
MORNING STAR, was the very first publication
that appeared in praise and support of LUTHER;
and an excellent hymn of Hans Sachs, which
has been deservedly translated into almost all
the European languages, was commonly sung,
in the Protestant churches, whenever the heroic
reformer visited them.
In Luther’s own German writings, and emi
nently in his translation of the bible, the German
language commenced. I mean the language as
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it is at present written; that which is called the
HIGH GERMAN, as contradistinguished from the
PLATTTEUTSCH, the dialect of the flat or north
ern countries, and from the OBERTEUTSCH,
the language of the middle and Southern Ger
many. The High German is indeed a lingua
communis, not actually the native language of
any province, but the choice and fragrancy of
all the dialects. From this cause it is at once
the most copious and the most grammatical of
all the European tongues.
Within less than a century after Luther’s
death the German was inundated with pedantic
barbarisms. A few volumes of this period I
read through from motives of curiosity; for it is
not easy to imagine any thing more fantastic,
than the very appearance of their pages. Almost
every third word is a Latin word with a Ger
manized ending, the Latin portion being al
ways printed in Roman letters, while in the
last syllable the German character is retained.
At length, about the year 1620, OPITZ arose,
whose genius more nearly resembled that of
Dryden than any other poet, who at present
occurs to my recollection. In the opinion of
LESSING, the most acute of critics, and of
ADELUNG, the first of Lexicographers, Opitz,
and the Silesian poets, his followers, not only
restored the language, but still remain the
models of pure diction. A stranger has no
vote on such a question; but after repeated
perusal of the work my feelings justified the
verdict, and I seemed to have acquired from
them a sort of tact for what is genuine in the
syle of later writers.
Of the splendid era, which commenced with
Gellert, Klopstock, Ramler, Lessing, and their
compeers, I need not speak. With the op
portunities which I enjoyed, it would have
been disgraceful not to have been familiar with
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their writings; and I have already said as much,
as the present biographical sketch requires,
concerning the German philosophers, whose
works, for the greater part, I became acquainted
with at a far later period.
Soon after my return from Germany I was
solicited to undertake the literary and political
department in the Morning Post; and I ac
ceded to the proposal on the condition, that
the paper should thenceforwards be conducted
on certain fixed and announced principles, and
that I should be neither obliged or requested
to deviate from them in favor of any party or
any event. In consequence, that Journal be
came and for many years continued anti
ministerial indeed, yet with a very qualified
approbation of the opposition, and with far
greater earnestness and zeal both antijacobin
and antigallican. To this hour I cannot find
reason to approve of the first war either in its
commencement or its conduct. Nor can I un
derstand, with what reason either Mr. Percival
(whom I am singular enough to regard as the
best and wisest minister of this reign) or the
present administration, can be said to have
pursued the plans of Mr. PITT. The love of their
country, and perseverant hostility to French
principles and French ambition are indeed
honourable qualities common to them and to
their predecessor. But it appears to me as
clear as the evidence of facts can render any
question of history, that the successes of the
Percival and of the existing ministry have been
owing to their having pursued measures the
direct contrary to Mr. Pitt’s. Such for instance
are the concentration of the national force to
one object; the abandonment of the subsidizing
policy, so far at least as neither to goad or
bribe the continental courts into war, till the
convictions of their subjects had rendered it a
war of their own seeking; and above all, in
their manly and generous reliance on the good
sense of the English people, and on that loyalty
which is linked to the very* heart of the nation
by the system of credit and the interdependence
of property.
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Be this as it may, I am persuaded that the
Morning Post proved a far more useful ally to
the Government in its most important objects,
in consequence of its being generally considered
Lord Grenville has lately reasserted (in the House of
Lords) the imminent danger of a revolution in the earlier
part of the war against France. I doubt not, that his Lord
ship is sincere; and it must be flattering to his feelings to
believe it. But where are the evidences of the danger, to*
as moderately antiministerial, than if it had
been the avowed eulogist of Mr. Pitt. (The
few, whose curiosity or fancy should lead them
to turn over the Journals of that date, may find
a small proof of this in the frequent charges
made by the Morning Chronicle, that such and
such essays or leading paragraphs had been
*which a future historian can appeal? Or must he rest on
an assertion? Let me be permitted to extract a passage on the
subject from THE FRIEND. "I have said that to withstand
"the arguments of the lawless, the Antijacobins proposed to
"suspend the law, and by the interposition of a particular
"statute to eclipse the blessed light of the universal sun, that
"spies and informers might tyrannize and escape in the omin
"ous darkness. Oh! if these mistaken men intoxicated and
"bewildered with the panic of property, which they them
"selves were the chief agents in exciting, had ever lived in a
"country where there really existed a general disposition to
"change and rebellion! Had they ever travelled through
"Sicily; or through France at the first coming on of the re
"volution; or even alas! through too many of the provinces
"of a sister island; they could not but have shrunk from their
"own declarations concerning the state of feeling, and opinion
"at that time predominant throughout Great Britain. There
"was a time (heaven grant! that that time may have passed by)
"when by crossing a narrow strait, they might have learnt the
"true symptoms of approaching danger, and have secured
"themselves from mistaking the meetings and idle rant of
"such sedition, as shrunk appalled from the sight of a consta
"ble, for the dire murmuring and strange consternation which
"precedes the storm or earthquake of national discord. Not
"only in coffeehouses and public theatres, but even at the
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"tables of the wealthy, they would have heard the advocates
"of existing Government defend their cause in the language
"and with the tone of men, who are conscious that they are
"in a minority. But in England, when the alarm was at its
"highest, there was not a city, no not a town or village, in
"which a man suspected of holding democratic principles
"could move abroad without receiving some unpleasant proof
"of the hatred, in which his supposed opinions were held by *
sent from the Treasury.) The rapid and un
usual increase in the sale of the Morning Post
is a sufficient pledge, that genuine impartiality
with a respectable portion of literary talent will
secure the success of a newspaper without the
aid of party or ministerial patronage. But by
impartiality I mean an honest and enlightened
*the great majority of the people; and the only instances of
popular excess and indignation were in favor of the Govern
ment and the Established Church. But why need I appeal
to these invidious facts? Turn over the pages of history
and seek for a single instance of a revolution having been
effected without the concurrence of either the nobles, or the
ecclesiastics, or the monied classes, in any country, in which
the influences of property had ever been predominant, and
where the interests of the proprietors were interlinked!
Examine the revolution of the Belgic provinces under Philip
nd; the civil wars of France in the preceding generation;
the history of the American revolution, or the yet more re
cent events in Sweden and in Spain; and it will be scarcely
possible not to perceive, that in England from 1791 to the
peace of Amiens there were neither tendencies to confede
racy nor actual confederacies, against which the existing
laws had not provided sufficient safeguards and an ample pu
nishment. But alas! the panic of property had been struck
in the first instance for party purposes; and when it became
general, its propagators caught it themselves and ended in
believing their own lie; even as our bulls in Borrowdale
sometimes run mad with the echo of their own bellowing.
The consequences were most injurious. Our attention was
concentrated to a monster, which could not survive the con
vulsions, in which it had been brought forth: even the en
lightened Burke himself too often talking and reasoning, as if
a perpetual and organized anarchy had been a possible
thing! Thus while we were warring against French doc
trines, we took little heed, whether the means, by which we
attempted to overthrow them, were not likely to aid and aug
ment the far more formidable evil of French ambition. Like
children we ran away from the yelping of a cur, and took
shelter at the heels of a vicious warhorse."
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adherence to a code of intelligible principles
previously announced, and faithfully referred
to in support of every judgment on men and
events; not indiscriminate abuse, not the in
dulgence of an editor’s own malignant passions,
and still less, if that be possible, a determina
tion to make money by flattering the envy and
cupidity, the vindictive restlessness and selfcon
ceit of the halfwitted vulgar; a determination
almost fiendish, but which, I have been in
formed, has been boastfully avowed by one
man, the most notorious of these mobsyco
phants! From the commencement of the
Addington administration to the present day,
whatever I have written in the MORNING
POST, or (after that paper was transferred to
other proprietors) in the COURIER, has been
in defence or furtherance of the measures of
Government.
Things of this nature scarce survive the night
That gives them birth; they perish in the sight,
Cast by so far from afterlife, that there
Can scarcely aught be said, but that they were!
CARTWRIGHT’S Prol. to the Royal Slave.
Yet in these labors I employed, and in the
belief of partial friends wasted, the prime and
manhood of my intellect. Most assuredly,
they added nothing to my fortune or my
reputation. The industry of the week supplied the
necessities of the week. From Government or
the friends of Government I not only never re
ceived remuneration, or ever expected it; but
I was never honoured with a single acknow
legement, or expression of satisfaction. Yet
the retrospect is far from painful or matter of
regret. I am not indeed silly enough to take,
as any thing more than a violent hyperbole of
party debate, Mr. Fox’s assertion that the late
war (I trust that the epithet is not prematurely
applied) was a war produced by the MORNING
POST; or I should be proud to have the words
inscribed on my tomb. As little do I regard
the circumstance, that I was a specified object
of Buonaparte’s resentment during my residence
in Italy in consequence of those essays in the
Morning Post during the peace of Amiens. (Of
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this I was warned, directly, by Baron VON
HUMBOLDT, the Prussian Plenipotentiary, who
at that time was the minister of the Prussian
court at Rome; and indirectly, through his
secretary, by Cardinal Fesch himself.) Nor
do I lay any greater weight on the confirming
fact, that an order for my arrest was sent from
Paris, from which danger I was rescued by
the kindness of a noble Benedictine, and the
gracious connivance of that good old man, the
present Pope. For the late tyrant’s vindictive
appetite was omnivorous, and preyed equally
on a * Duc D’Enghien, and the writer of a
newspaper paragraph. Like a true† vulture,
Napoleon with an eye not less telescopic, and
with a taste equally coarse in his ravin, could de
scend from the most dazzling heights to pounce
on the leveret in the brake, or even on the
fieldmouse amid the grass. But I do derive a
gratification from the knowledge, that my essays
contributed to introduce the practice of placing
the questions and events of the day in a moral
point of view; in giving a dignity to particular
measures by tracing their policy or impolicy to
permanent principles, and an interest to princi
ples by the application of them to individual
measures. In Mr. Burke’s writings indeed the
germs of almost all political truths may be
found. But I dare assume to myself the merit
of having first explicitly defined and analized
the nature of Jacobinism; and that in distin
guishing the jacobin from the republican, the
I seldom think of the murder of this illustrious Prince without recollecting the lines of Valerius Flaccus
(Argonaut. Lib. I. 30.)
Super ipsius ingens Instat fama viri, virtusque haud læta Tyranno; Ergo ante ire metus, juvenemque
exstinguere pergit.
†Thera de kai ton chena kai ten Dorkada,
Kai ton Lagoon, kai to ton Tauron genos.
PHILE de animal. propriet.
democrat, and the mere demagogue, I both
rescued the word from remaining a mere term
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of abuse, and put on their guard many honest
minds, who even in their heat of zeal against
jacobinism, admitted or supported principles
from which the worst parts of that system may
be legitimately deduced. That these are not
necessary practical results of such principles,
we owe to that fortunate inconsequence of our
nature, which permits the heart to rectify the
errors of the understanding. The detailed
examination of the consular Government and
its pretended constitution, and the proof given
by me, that it was a consummate despotism in
masquerade, extorted a recantation even from
the Morning Chronicle, which had previously
extolled this constitution as the perfection of a
wise and regulated liberty. On every great
occurrence I endeavoured to discover in past
history the event, that most nearly resembled it.
I procured, wherever it was possible, the con
temporary historians, memorialists, and pamph
leteers. Then fairly substracting the points of
difference from those of likeness, as the balance
favored the former or the latter, I conjectured
that the result would be the same or different.
In the series of * essays entitled "a comparison
A small selection from the numerous articles furnished
by me to the Morning Post and Courier, chiefly as they
of France under Napoleon with Rome under
the first Cæsars," and in those which followed
" on the probable final restoration of the Bour
bons," I feel myself authorized to affirm, by the
effect produced on many intelligent men, that
were the dates wanting, it might have been
suspected that the essays had been written
within the last twelve months. The same plan
I pursued at the commencement of the Spanish
revolution, and with the same success, taking
the war of the United Provinces with Philip
2nd, as the ground work of the comparison. I
have mentioned this from no motives of vanity,
nor even from motives of selfdefence, which
would justify a certain degree of egotism, es
pecially if it be considered, how often and
grossly I have been attacked for sentiments,
which I had exerted my best powers to confute
and expose, and how grievously these charges
acted to my disadvantage while I was in Malta.
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Or rather they would have done so, if my own
feelings had not precluded the wish of a settled
*regard the sources and effects of jacobinism and the connec
tion of certain systems of political economy with jacobinical
despotism, will form part of "THE FRIEND," which I am
now completing, and which will be shortly published, for I
can scarcely say republished, with the numbers arranged in
Chapters according to their subjects.
Accipe principium rursus, corpusque coactum
Desere; mutata melior procede figura.
establishment in that island. But I have men
tioned it from the full persuasion that, armed
with the twofold knowledge of history and the
human mind, a man will scarcely err in his
judgement concerning the sum total of any fu
ture national event, if he have been able to
procure the original documents of the past
together with authentic accounts of the pre
sent, and if he have a philosophic tact for what
is truly important in facts, and in most instances
therefore for such facts as the DIGNITY OF HIS
TORY has excluded from the volumes of our
modern compilers, by the courtesy of the age
entitled historians.
To have lived in vain must be a painful
thought to any man, and especially so to him
who has made literature his profession. I
should therefore rather condole than be angry
with the mind, which could attribute to no
worthier feelings, than those of vanity or self
love, the satisfaction which I acknowledge to
have enjoyed from the republication of my
political essays (either whole or as extracts)
not only in many of our own provincial papers,
but in the federal journals throughout America.
I regarded it as some proof of my not having
labored altogether in vain, that from the articles
written by me shortly before and at the com
mencement of the late unhappy war with Ame
rica, not only the sentiments were adopted, but
in some instances the very language, in several
of the Massachussets statepapers.
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But no one of these motives nor all conjointly
would have impelled me to a statement so un
comfortable to my own feelings, had not my
character been repeatedly attacked, by an un
justifiable intrusion on private life, as of a man
incorrigibly idle, and who intrusted not only
with ample talents, but favored with unusual
opportunities of improving them, had never
theless suffered them to rust away without any
efficient exertion either for his own good or
that of his fellowcreatures. Even if the com
positions, which I have made public, and that
too in a form the most certain of an extensive
circulation, though the least flattering to an
author’s selflove, had been published in books,
they would have filled a respectable number of
volumes, though every passage of merely tem
porary interest were omitted. My prose writ
ings have been charged with a disproportionate
demand on the attention; with an excess of
refinement in the mode of arriving at truths;
with beating the ground for that which might
have been run down by the eye; with the length
and laborious construction of my periods; in
short with obscurity and the love of paradox.
But my severest critics have not pretended to
have found in my compositions triviality, or
traces of a mind that shrunk from the toil of
thinking. No one has charged me with trick
ing out in other words the thoughts of others,
or with hashing up anew the crambe jam decies
coctam of English literature or philosophy.
Seldom have I written that in a day, the acqui
sition or investigation of which had not cost me
the previous labor of a month.
But are books the only channel through which
the stream of intellectual usefulness can flow?
Is the diffusion of truth to be estimated by pub
lications; or publications by the truth, which
they diffuse or at least contain? I speak it in the
excusable warmth of a mind stung by an ac
cusation, which has not only been advanced in
reviews of the widest circulation, not only re
gistered in the bulkiest works of periodical
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literature, but by frequency of repetition has
become an admitted fact in private literary
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
conversation or letters, he has excited into acti
vity, and supplied with the germs of their after
growth! A distinguished rank might not indeed,
even then, be awarded to my exertions, but I
should dare look forward with confidence to an
honorable acquittal. I should dare appeal to
the numerous and respectable audiences, which
at different times and in different places ho
nored my lecturerooms 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 previous publications. I can conscientiously
declare, that the complete success of the RE
MORSE on the first night of its representation
did not give me as great or as heartfelt a plea
sure, as the observation that the pit and boxes
were crowded with faces familiar to me, though
of individuals whose names I did not know,
and of whom I knew nothing, but that they had
attended one or other of my courses of lectures.
It is an excellent though perhaps somewhat
vulgar proverb, that there are cases where a
man may be as well "in for a pound as for a
penny." 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 I unwillingly remember at all,
much less am disposed to record in a sketch of
my literary 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
selfconceit or presumptuous vanity, I have
already furnished such ample materials, that I
shall gain nothing by withholding the remain
der. I will not therefore hesitate to ask the
consciences of those, who from their long ac
quaintance with me and with the circumstances
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are best qualified to decide or be my judges
whether the restitution of the suum cuique
would increase or detract from my literary re
putation. In this exculpation I hope to be
understood as speaking of myself compara
tively, and in proportion to the claims, which
others are intitled to make on my time or my
talents. By what I have effected, am I to be
judged by my fellow men; what I could have
done, is a question for my own conscience.
On my own account I may perhaps have had
sufficient reason to lament my deficiency in self
controul, and the neglect of concentering 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 selfwill’d that shunn’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 I had cull’d in woodwalks 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 selfsame grave! S. T. C.
These will exist, for the future, I trust only in
the poetic strains, which the feelings at the time
called forth. In those only, gentle reader,
Affectus animi varios, bellumque sequacis
Perlegis invidiæ; curasque revolvis inanes;
Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in ævo.
Perlegis et lacrymas, et quod pharetratus acutâ
Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus.
OMNIA PAULATIM CONSUMIT LONGIOR ÆTAS
VIVENDOQUE SIMUL MORIMUR, RAPIMURQUE MANENDO.
Ipse mihi collatus enim non ille videbor;
Frons alia est, moresque alii, nova mentis imago,
Vox aliudque sonat. Jamque observatio vitæ
Multa dedit:lugere nihil, ferre omnia; jamque
Paulatim lacrymas rerum experientia tersit.
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CHAPTER XI.
An affectionate exhortation to those who in early
life feel themselves disposed to become authors.
It was a favorite remark of the late Mr.
Whitbread’s, that no man does any thing from
a single motive. The separate motives, or ra
ther moods of mind, which produced the pre
ceding 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 accompaniment, and
(as it were) the undersong of all my feelings.
WHITEHEAD exerting the prerogative of his
laureatship addressed to youthful poets a poetic
CHARGE, which is perhaps the best, and cer
tainly the most interesting, of his works. With
no other privilege than that of sympathy and
sincere good wishes, I would address an af
fectionate exhortation to the youthful literati,
grounded on my own experience. It will be
but short; for the beginning, middle, and end
converge to one charge; NEVER PURSUE LITE
RATURE AS A TRADE. With the exception 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 employment, 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
by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to
with delight as a change and recreation, will
suffice to realize in literature a larger product
of what is truly, genial, than weeks of compul
sion. Money, and immediate reputation form
only an arbitrary and accidental end of literary
labor. The hope of increasing them by any
given exertion will often prove a stimulant to
industry; but the necessity of acquiring them
will in all works of genius convert the stimu
lant into a narcotic. Motives by excess reverse
their very nature, and instead of exciting, stun
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and stupify the mind. For it is one contra
distinction of genius from talent, that its pre
dominant end is always comprized in the
means; and this 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 competence 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 sincere desire to perform his
duty, will alike ennoble both. My dear young
friend (I would say) "suppose yourself estab
lished in any honourable occupation. From
the manufactory or countinghouse, from the
lawcourt, or from having, visited your last pa
tient, you return at evening,
"Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of home
Is sweetest—"
to your family, prepared for its social enjoy
ments, with the very countenances of your wife
and children brightened, and their voice of wel
come made doubly welcome, by the knowledge
that, as far as they are concerned, you have sa
tisfied the demands of the day by the labor of
the day. Then, when you retire into your
study, in the books on your shelves you revisit
so many venerable friends with whom you can
converse. Your own spirit scarcely less free
from personal anxieties than the great minds,
that in those books are still living for you!
Even at your writing desk with its blank paper
and all its other implements will appear as a
chain of flowers, capable of linking, your feel
ings as well as thoughts to events and charac
ters 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 present. But why should I say
retire? The habits of active life and daily in
tercourse with the stir of the world will tend to
give you such selfcommand, that the presence
of your family will be no interruption. Nay,
the social silence, or undisturbing voices of a
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wife or sister will be like a restorative atmos
phere, or soft music which moulds a dream
without becoming its object. If facts are re
quired to prove the possibility of combining
weighty performances in literature with full and
independent employment, the works of Cicero
and Xenophon among the ancients; of Sir
Thomas Moore, Bacon, Baxter, or to refer
at once to later and cotemporary instances,
DARWIN and ROSCOE, are at once decisive of
the question.
But all men may not dare promise themselves
a sufficiency of selfcontroul for the imitation of
those examples; though strict scrutiny should
always be made, whether indolence, restless
ness, or a vanity impatient for immediate grati
fication, have not tampered with the judgement
and assumed the vizard of humility for the
purposes of selfdelusion. 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 widest 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 Pro
testantism have conspired with the freedom of
the government to double all its salutary pow
ers by the rernoval 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 ;"
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Page No 158
PARADISE REGAINED.
and that the sublime truths of the divine unity
and attributes, which a Plato found most hard
to learn and deemed 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 common
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 coufine
the efficiency of an established church to its
public offices, can hardly be placed in a much
higher rank of intellect. That to every parish
throughout the kingdom there is transplanted
a germ of civilization; that in the remotest
villages there is a nucleus, round which the
capabilities of the place may crystallize and
brighten; a model sufficiently superior to ex
cite, yet sufficiently near to encourage and
facilitate, imitation; this, the inobtrusive, con
tinuous agency of a protestant church estab
lishment, this it is, which the patriot, and the
philanthropist, who would fain unite the love
of peace with the faith in the progressive
amelioration 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 mention shall be made of
coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is
above rubies." The clergyman is with his
parishioners and among them; he is neither in
the cloistered cell, or in the wilderness, but a
neighbour and a familyman, whose education
and rank admit him to the mansion of the rich
landholder, while his duties make him the
frequent visitor of the farmhouse and the cot
tage. 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 shortsightedness,
which it is the nature of cupidity to inflict, I
know few more striking, than the clamors of
the farmers against church property. What
ever was not paid to the clergyman would
inevitably at the next lease be paid to the land
holder, while, as the case at present stands, the
revenues of the church are in some sort the
reversionary property of every family, that may
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Page No 159
have a member educated for the church, or a
daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead
of being foreclosed 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
assert? But I have yet to expect the proof,
that the inconveniences are greater in this than
in any other species; or that either the farmers
or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the
latter to become either Trullibers, or salaried
placemen. Nay, I do not hesitate to declare
my firm persuasion, that whatever reason of
discontent the farmers may assign, the true
cause is this; that they may cheat the parson,
but cannot cheat the steward; and they are
disappointed, if they should 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 en
couragement of learning and genius, the estab
lishment presents a patronage at once so
effective and unburthensome, that it would be im
possible to afford the like or equal in any but a
christian and protestant country. There is
scarce a department of human knowledge with
out some bearing on the various critical, histo
rical, philosophical, and moral truths, in which
the scholar must be interested as a clergyman;
no one pursuit worthy of a man of genius,
which may not be followed without incon
gruity. To give the history of the bible as a
book, would be little 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 fa
vorable to the best purposes of genius, and
tends to counteract its most frequent defects.
Finally, that man must be deficient in sensibi
lity, who would not find an incentive to emula
tion 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 Æneas et avunculus excitat Hector."
But whatever be the profession or trade
chosen, the advantages are many and import
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ant, compared with the state of a mere literary
man, who in any degree depends on the sale
of his works for the necessaries and comforts
of life. In the former a man lives in sympathy
with the world, in which he lives. At least he
acquires a better and quicker tact for the know
ledge of that, with which men in general can
sympathize. He learns to manage his genius
more prudently and efficaciously. His powers
and acquirements gain him likewise more real
admiration; for they surpass the legitimate ex
pectations of others. He is something besides
an author, and is not therefore considered
merely 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 conver
sational circles of his acquaintance, his silence
is not attributed to pride, nor his communica
tiveness to vanity. To these advantages I will
venture to add a superior chance of happiness
in domestic life, were it only that it is as natural
for the man to be out of the circle of his house
hold during the day, as it is meritorious for the
woman to remain for the most part within it.
But this subject involves points of considera
tion so numerous and so delicate, and would
not only permit, but require such ample do
cuments from the biography of literary men,
that I now merely allude to it in transitu.
When the same circumstance has occurred at
very different times to very different persons,
all of whom have some one thing in common;
there is reason to suppose that such circum
stance is not merely attributable to the persons
concerned, but is in some measure occasioned
by the one point in common to them all. In
stead of the vehement and almost slanderous
dehortation from marriage, which the Misogyne,
Boccaccio (Vita e Costumi di Dante, p. 12, 16)
addresses to literary men, I would substitute
the simple advice: be not merely a man of
letters! Let literature be an honourable aug
mentation to your arms; but not constitute the
coat, or fill the escutchion!
To objections from conscience I can of course
answer in no other way, than by requesting the
youthful objector (as I have already done on a
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former occasion) to ascertain with strict self
examination, whether other influences may not
be at work; whether spirits, " not of health,"
and with whispers " not from heaven," may not
be walking in the twilight of his consciousness.
Let him catalogue his scruples, and reduce
them to a distinct intelligible form; let him be
certain, that he has read with a docile mind
and favorable dispositions the best and most
fundamental works on the subject; that he
has had both mind and heart opened to the
great and illustrious qualities of the many re
nowned characters, who had doubted like him
self, and whose researches had ended in the
clear conviction, that their doubts had been
groundless, or at least in no proportion to the
counterweight. Happy will it be for such a
man, if among his contemporaries 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 afterresearch
(when the step was, alas! irretrievable, but for
that very reason his research undeniably disin
terested) had discovered himself to have quar
relled with received opinions only to embrace
errors, to have left the direction tracked out
for him on the high road of honorable exertion,
only to deviate into a labyrinth, where when he
had wandered, till his head was 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 judgement, and above
all, temperance of feelings. And even if these
should effect no change, yet 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 established and
reputable profession or employment, in which
a man may not continue to act with honesty
and honor; and doubtless there is likewise
none, which may not at times present tempta
tions to the contrary. But woefully will that
man find himself mistaken, who imagines that
the profession of literature, or (to speak more
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plainly) the trade of authorship, besets its
members with fewer 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 present 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 honors and honorable
emoluments, of an established profession. The
translation the reader will find in a note below. *
" Am sorgfältigsten, meiden sie die Autors
chaft. Zu früh oder unmässig gebraucht, macht
sie den Kopf wüste und das Herz leer; wenn
sie auch sonst keine uble Folgen gäbe. Ein
Mensch, der nur lieset um zu drücken, lieset
wahrscheinlich übel und wer jeden Gedanken,
der ihm aufstosst, durch Feder und Presse
TRANSLATION.
" With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship.
"Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head
"waste and the heart empty; even were there no other worse
"consequences. A person, who reads only to print, in all
"probability reads amiss; and he, who sends away through
"the pen and the press every thought, the moment it occurs*
versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt,
und wird bald ein blosser Diener der Druc
kerey, ein Buchstabensetzer werden.
HERDER.
*to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will be
come a mere journeyman of the printingoffice, a compositor."
To which I may add from myself, that what medical phy
siologists affirm of certain secretions, applies equally to our
thoughts; they too must be taken up again into the circulation,
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and be again and again resecreted in order to ensure a health
ful vigor, both to the mind and to its intellectual offspring.
CHAPTER XII.
A Chapter of requests and premonitions concern
ing the perusal or omission of the chapter that
follows.
In the perusal of philosophical works I have
been greatly benefited by a resolve, which, in
the antithetic form and with the allowed quaint
ness of an adage or maxim, I have been ac
customed to word thus: "until you understand
a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant
of his understanding." This golden rule of mine
does, I own, resemble those of Pythagoras in
its obscurity rather than in its depth. If how
ever 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 and supernatural expe
riences. I see clearly the writer’s grounds, and
their hollowness. I have a complete insight
into the causes, which through the medium of
his body had acted on his mind; and by ap
plication of received and ascertained laws I
can satisfactorily explain to my own reason all
the strange incidents, which the writer records
of himself. And this I can do without sus
pecting him of any intentional falsehood. As
when in broad daylight a man tracks the steps
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 bewildered visionary.
I UNDERSTAND HIS lGNORANCE.
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On the other hand, I have been reperusing
with the best energies of my mind the Timæeus
of PLATO. Whatever I comprehend, impresses
me with a reverential sense of the author’s
genius; but there is a considerable portion of
the work, to which I can attach no consistent
meaning. In other treatises of the same philo
sopher intended for the average comprehen
sions of men, I have been delighted with the
masterly good sense, with the perspicuity of
the language, and the aptness of the inductions.
I recollect likewise, that numerous passages in
this author, which I thoroughly comprehend,
were formerly no less unintelligible to me, than
the passages now in question. It would, I am
aware, be quite fashionable to dismiss them at
once as Platonic Jargon. But this I cannot
do with satisfaction to my own mind, because
I have sought in vain for causes adequate to
the solution of the assumed inconsistency. I
have no insight into the possibility of a man so
eminently wise, using words with such half
meanings to himself, as must perforce pass
into nomeaning to his readers. When in ad
dition to the motives thus suggested by my
own reason, I bring into distinct remembrance
the number and the series of great men, who
after long and zealous study of these works
had joined in honoring the name of PLATO
with epithets, that almost transcend humanity,
I 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, I CONCLUDE MYSELF IGNORANT OF
HIS UNDERSTANDING.
In lieu of the various requests which the
anxiety of authorship addresses to the unknown
reader, I advance but this one; that he will
either pass over the following chapter altoge
ther, or read the whole connectedly. The
fairest part of the most beautiful body will
appear deformed and monstrous, if dissevered
from its place in the organic Whole. Nay, on
delicate subjects, where a seemingly trifling
difference of more or less may constitute a
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difference in kind, even a faithful display of the
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 nume
rous precedents, I shall not desire the reader
to strip his mind of all prejudices, or to keep
all prior systems out of view during his examin
ation of the present. For in truth, such re
quests appear to me not much unlike the ad
vice given to hypochondriacal patients in Dr.
Buchan’s domestic medicine; videlicet, to pre
serve themselves uniformly tranquil and in good
spirits. Till I had discovered the art of de
stroying the memory a parte post, without in
jury to its future operations, and without detri
ment to the judgement, I should suppress the
request as premature; and therefore, however
much I may wish to be read with an unpre
judiced mind, I do not presume to state it as a
necessary condition.
The extent of my daring is to suggest one
criterion, by which it may be rationally con
jectured beforehand, 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 cruelly 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 receives as
fundamental facts, and therefore of course in
demonstrable and incapable of further analysis,
the general notions of matter, spirit, soul, body,
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 courteously as possible con
vey the hint, that for him the chapter was not
written.
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Vir bonus es, doctus, prudens; ast haud tibi spiro.
For these terms do in truth include all the
difficulties, which 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 pro
fessors 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 highest
sense, as the science of ultimate truths, and
therefore scientia scientiarum, this mere analysis
of terms is preparative only, though as a pre
parative discipline indispensable.
Still less dare a favorable perusal be antici
pated from the proselytes of that compendious
philosophy, which talking of mind but thinking
of brick and mortar, or other images equally ab
stracted from body, 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 sensations.
But it is time to tell the truth; though it
requires some courage to avow it in an age
and country, in which disquisitions on all sub
jects, 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 many, to be
PHILOSOPHERS. There is a philosophic (and
inasmuch as it is actualized by an effort of
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freedom, an artificial) consciousness, which lies
beneath or (as it were) behind the spontaneous
consciousness natural to all reflecting beings.
As the elder Romans distinguished their north
ern provinces into CisAlpine and TransAlpine,
so may we divide all the objects of human
knowledge into those on this side, and those
on the other side of the spontaneous conscious
ness; citra et trans conscientiam communem.
The latter is exclusively the domain of PURE
philosophy, which is therefore properly enti
tled transcendental, 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, be
cause transgressing the bounds and purposes
of our intellectual faculties, are justly con
demned, as* transcendent. The first range of
This distinction between transcendental and transcendent
is observed by our elder divines and philosophers, whenever
they express themselves scholastically. Dr. Johnson indeed
has confounded the two words; but his own authorities do
not bear him out. Of this celebrated dictionary I will ven
ture to remark once for all, that I should suspect the man of
a morose disposition who should speak of it without respect
and gratitude as a most instructive and entertaining book,
and hitherto, unfortunately, an indispensable book; but I
confess, that I should be surprized at hearing from a philo
sophic and thorough scholar any but very qualified praises
of it, as a dictionary. I am not now alluding to the number
of genuine words omitted; for this is (and perhaps to a
greater extent) true, as Mr. Wakefield has noticed, of our
best Greek Lexicons, and this too after the successive labors
of so many giants in learning. I refer at present both to
omissions and commissions of a more important nature.
What these are, me saltem judice, will be stated at full in
THE FRIEND, republished and completed.
I had never heard of the correspondence between Wake
field and Fox till I saw the account of it this morning (16th
September 1815) in the Monthly Review. I was not a little
gratified at finding, that Mr. Wakefield had proposed to him
self nearly the same plan for a Greek and English Dictionary,
which I had formed, and began to execute, now ten years
ago. But far, far more grieved am I, that he did not live to
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compleat it. I cannot but think it a subject of most serious
regret, that the same heavy expenditure, which is now
hills, that encircles the scanty vale of human
life, is the horizon for the majority of its inha
bitants. On its ridges the common sun is born
and departs. From them the stars rise, and
touching them they 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 penetrate. To
the multitude below these vapors appear, now
*employing in the republication of STEPHANUS augmented, had
not been applied to a new Lexicon on a more philosophical
plan, with the English, German, and French Synonimes as
well as the Latin. In almost every instance the precise in
dividual meaning might be given in an English or German
word; whereas in Latin we must too often be contented with
a mere general and inclusive term. How indeed can it be
otherwise, when we attempt to render the most copious lan
guage of the world, the most admirable for the fineness of
its distinctions, into one of the poorest and most vague lan
guages? Especially, when we reflect on the comparative
number of the works, still extant, written, while the Greek and
Latin were living languages. Were I asked, what I deemed
the greatest and most unmixt benefit, which a wealthy indi
vidual, or an association of wealthy individuals could bestow
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 synomines, and
with correspondent indexes." That the learned languages
might thereby be acquired, better, in half the time, is but 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 independence our government might be enabled to be
come more than a committee for war and revenue! There
was a time, when every thing was to be done by government.
Have we not flown off to the contrary extreme?
as the dark haunts of terrific agents, on which
none may intrude with impunity; and now all
aglow, with colors 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
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and far inward; a few, who even in the level
streams have detected elements, which neither
the vale itself or the surrounding mountains con
tained or could supply. How and whence to
these thoughts, these strong probabilities, the
ascertaining vision, the intuitive knowledge, may
finally supervene, can be learnt only by the
fact. I might oppose to the question the words
with which * Plotinus supposes NATURE to
Ennead iii. l. 8. c. 3. The force of the Greek sunienai is
imperfectly expressed by "understand;" our own idiomatic
phrase "to go along with me" comes nearest to it. The
passage, that follows, full of profound sense, 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.—ti oun sunienai; oti to genomenon esi deama emon, siopesis
( mallem, deama, emou sioposes,) kai Phusei genomenon deorema kai
moi genomene ek deorias tes odi, ten phusin echein philodeamona uparkei.
(mallem, kai moi ee genomene ek deorias autes odias). "what then
are we to understand? That whatever is produced is
an intuition, I silent; and that, which is thus generated, is
by its nature a theorem, or form of contemplation; and
the birth, which results to me from this contemplation, attains
to have a contemplative nature." So Synesius;odis ira,
Arreta Gond. The after comparison of the process of the
natura naturans with that of the geometrician is drawn from
the very heart of philosophy.
answer a similar difficulty. "Should any one
interrogate her, how she works, if graciously
she vouchsafe to listen and speak, she will
reply, it behoves thee not to disquiet me with
interrogatories, but to understand in silence,
even as I am silent, and work without words."
Likewise in the fifth book of the fifth Ennead,
speaking of the highest and intuitive knowledge
as distinguished from the discursive, or in the
language of Wordsworth,
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"The vision and the faculty divine;"
he says: "it is not lawful to enquire from
"whence it sprang, as if it were a thing subject
"to place and motion, 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 pur
"sue it with a view of detecting its secret source,
"but to watch in quiet till it suddenly shines
"upon us; preparing ourselves for the blessed
"spectacle as the eye waits patiently for the
"rising sun." They and they only can acquire
the philosophic imagination, the sacred power
of selfintuition, who within themselves can
interpret and understand the symbol, that the
wings of the airsylph are forming within the
skin of the caterpillar; those only, who feel in
their own spirits the same instinct, which im
pels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave
room in its involucrum for antennæ yet to
come. They know and feel, that the potential
works in 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 correspondent world of spirit: tho’ the
latter organs are not developed 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
debased, 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! herein
they utter a prophecy of universal fulfilment;
for man must either rise or sink.
It is the essential mark of the true philoso
pher to rest satisfied with no imperfect light, as
long as the impossibility of attaining a fuller
knowledge has not been demonstrated. That
the common consciousness itself will furnish
proofs by its own direction, that it is connected
with mastercurrents below the surface, I shall
merely assume as a postulate pro tempore.
This having been granted, though but in ex
pectation of the argument, I can safely deduce
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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 dis
ciplined and strengthened this ulterior consci
ousness. It must in truth be a land of dark
ness, a perfect AntiGoshen, for men to whom
the noblest treasures of their own being are
reported only through the imperfect tansla
tion 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 shadowy ab
straction of living and actual truth. On the
IMMEDIATE, which dwells in every man, and
on the original intuition, or absolute affirm
ation of it, (which is likewise in every man, but
does not in every man rise into consciousness)
all the certainty of our knowledge depends;
and this becomes intelligible to no man by the
ministery of mere words from without. The
medium, by which spirits understand each
other, is not the surrounding air; but the
freedom which they possess in common, as the
common ethereal element in their being, the
tremulous reciprocations of which propagate
themselves even to the inmost of the soul.
Where the spirit of a man is not 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 incomprehen
sible to himself as well as others. No won
der, that in the fearful desert of his conscious
ness, 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 himself in the pursuit of notional
phantoms, the mere refractions from unseen and
distant truths through the distorting medium
of his own unenlivened and stagnant under
standing! To remain unintelligible to such a
mind, exclaims Schelling on a like occasion,
is honor and a good name before God and man.
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The history of philosophy (the same writer
observes) contains instances of systems, which
for successive generations have remained enig
matic. Such he deems the system of Leibnitz,
whom another writer (rashly I think, and invi
diously) extols as the only philosopher, who
was himself deeply convinced of his own doc
trines. As hitherto interpreted, however, they
have not produced the effect, which Leibnitz
himself, in a most instructive passage, describes
as the criterion of a true philosophy; namely,
that it would at once explain and collect the
fragments of truth scattered through systems
apparently the most incongruous. The truth,
says he, is diffused more widely than is com
monly believed; but it is often painted, yet
oftener masked, and is sometimes mutilated
and sometimes, alas! in close alliance with
mischievous errors. The deeper, however, we
penetrate into the ground of things, the more
truth we discover in the doctrines of the greater
number of the philosophical sects. The want
of substantial reality in the objects of the senses,
according to the sceptics; the harmonies or
numbers, the prototypes and ideas, to which
the Pythagoreans and Platonists reduced all
things; the ONE and ALL of Parmenides and
Plotinus, without * Spinozism; the necessary
connection of things according to the Stoics,
reconcileable with the spontaneity of the other
schools; the vitalphilosophy of the Cabalists
and Hermetists, who assumed the universality
of sensation; the substantial forms and ente
lechies of Aristotle and the schoolmen, together
with the mechanical solution of all particular
This is happily effected in three lines by SYNESIUS, in
his Fourth Hymn:
En kai Panta(taken by itself) is Spinosism.
En d Apanton—a mere anima Mundi.
En te pro psnton—is mechanical Theism.
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But all unite all three, and the result is the Theism of Saint
Paul and Christianity.
Synesius was censured for his doctrine of the Preexist
ence of the Soul; but never, that I can find, arraigned or*
phenomena according to Democritus and the
recent philosophers—all these we shall find
united 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 dis
torted. The spirit of sectarianism has been
hitherto our fault, and the cause of our failures.
We have imprisoned our own conceptions by
*deemed heretical for his Pantheism, tho’ neither Giordano
Bruno, or Jacob Behmen ever avowed it more broadly.
Muras de Noos,
Ta te kai ta legei,
Budon arreton
Amphichoreuon.
Su to tikton ephus,
Su to tiktomen on
Su to photixion,
Su to lampomenon
Su to phainomenon,
Su to kruptomenon
Idiais augais.
En kai panta,
En kad eauto,
Kai dia panton
Pantheism is therefore not necessarily irreligious or here
tical; tho’ it may be taught atheistically. Thus Spinoza
would agree with Synesius in calling God Phusis en Noerois, the
Nature in Intelligences; but he could not subscribe to the
preceding Nous kai Noeros, i. e. Himself Intelligence and intel
ligent.
In this biographical sketch of my literary life, I may be
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excused, if I mention here, that I had translated the eight
Hymns of Synesius from the Greek into English Anacreon
tics before my 15th year.
the lines, which we have drawn, in order to
exclude the conceptions of others. I’ai trouvé
que la plupart des sectes ont raison dans une
bonne partie de ce qúelles avancent, mais non
pas tant en ce qúelles nient.
A system, which aims to deduce the memory
with all the other functions of intelligence,
must of course place its first position from
beyond the memory, and anterior to it, other
wise the principle of solution would be itself a
part of the problem to be solved. Such a po
sition therefore must, in the first instance be
demanded, and the first question will be, by
what right is it demanded? On this account
I think it expedient to make some preliminary
remarks on the introduction of POSTULATES in
philosophy. The word postulate is borrowed
from the science of mathematics. (See Schell.
abhandl. zur Erläuter. des id. der Wissenschaft
slehre). In geometry the primary construction
is not demonstrated, but postulated. This first
and most simple construction in space is the
point in motion, or the line. Whether the
point is moved in one and the same direction,
or whether its direction is continually changed,
remains as yet undetermined. But if the di
rection of the point have been determined, it is
either by a point without it, and then there
arises the strait line which incloses no space;
or the direction of the point is not determined
by a point without it, and then it must flow
back again on itself, that is, there arises a
cyclical line, which does inclose a space. If
the strait line be assumed as the positive, the
cyclical is then the negation of the strait. It
is a line, which at no point strikes out into the
strait, but changes its direction continuously.
But if the primary line be conceived as un
determined, and the strait line as determined
throughout, then the cyclical is the third com
pounded of both. It is at once undetermined
and determined; undetermined through any
point without, and determined through itself.
Geometry therefore supplies philosophy with
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the example of a primary intuition, from which
every science that lays claim to evidence must
take its commencement. The mathematician
does not begin with a demonstrable proposi
tion, but with an intuition, a practical idea.
But here an important distinction presents
itself. Philosophy is employed on objects of
the INNER SENSE, and cannot, like geometry
appropriate to every construction a correspon
dent outward intuition. Nevertheless philoso
phy, if it arrive at evidence, must proceed
from the most original construction, and the
question then is, what is the most original
construction or first productive act for the
INNER SENSE. The answer to this question
depends on the direction which is given to the
INNER SENSE. But in philosophy the INNER
SENSE cannot have its direction determined by
any outward object. To the original construc
tion of the line, I can be compelled by a line
drawn before me on the slate or on sand. The
stroke thus drawn is indeed not the line itself,
but only the image or picture of the line. It is
not from it, that we first learn to know the line;
but, on the contrary, we bring this stroke to
the original line generated by the act of the
imagination; otherwise we could not define it
as without breadth or thickness. Still how
ever this stroke is the sensuous image of the
original or ideal line, and an efficient mean to
excite every imagination to the intuition of it.
It is demanded then, whether there be found
any means in philosophy to determine the di
rection of the INNER SENSE, as in mathematics
it is determinable by its specific image or out
ward picture. Now the inner sense has its
direction determined for the greater part only
by an act of freedom. One man’s conscious
ness extends only to the pleasant or unpleasant
sensations caused in him by external impres
sions; another enlarges his inner sense to a
consciousness of forms and quantity; a third
in addition to the image is conscious of the
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conception or notion of the thing; a fourth
attains to a notion of his notions—he reflects
on his own reflections; and thus we may say
without impropriety, that the one possesses
more or less inner sense, than the other. This
more or less betrays already, that philosophy in
its first principles must have a practical or
moral, as well as a theoretical or speculative
side. This difference in degree does not exist
in the mathematics. Socrates in Plato shows,
that an ignorant slave may be brought to un
derstand and of himself to solve the most dif
ficult geometrical problem. Socrates drew the
figures for the slave in the sand. The disci
ples of the critical philosophy could likewise
(as was indeed actually done by La Forge and
some other followers of Des Cartes) represent
the origin of our representations in copper
plates; but no one has yet attempted it, and it
would be utterly useless. To an Esquimaux
or New Zealander our most popular philosophy
would be wholly unintelligible. The sense,
the inward organ, for it is not yet born in him.
So is there many a one among us, yes, and
some who think themselves philosophers too,
to whom the philosophic organ is entirely
wanting. To such a man, philosophy is a
mere play of words and notions, like a theory
of music to the deaf, or like the geometry of
light to the blind. The connection of the parts
and their logical dependencies may be seen
and remembered; but the whole is groundless
and hollow, unsustained by living contact,
unaccompanied with any realizing intuition which
exists by and in the act that affirms its existence,
which is known, because it is, and is, because
it is known. The words of Plotinus, in the
assumed person of nature, hold true of the
philosophic energy. Io deoroun mou deorema poiei,
oster oi Geometrai deorountes graphousin. all emou me
graphouses, deorouses de, uphisantai ai ton somaton grammai.
With me the act of contemplation makes the
thing contemplated, as the geometricians con
templating describe lines correspondent; but
I not describing lines, but simply contemplat
ing, the representative forms of things rise up
into existence.
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The postulate of philosophy and at the same
time the test of philosophic capacity, is no
other than the heavendescended KNOW THY
SELF! (E cælo descendit, Gnodi seauton). And this
at once practically and speculatively. For as
philosophy is neither a science of the reason or
understanding only, nor merely a science of
morals, but the science of BEING altogether, its
primary ground can be neither merely specula
tive or merely practical, but both in one. All
knowledge rests on the coincidence of an ob
ject with a subject. (My readers have been
warned in a former chapter that for their con
venience as well as the writer’s, the term,
subject is used by me in its scholastic sense as
equivalent to mind or sentient being, and as
the necessary correllative of object or quic
quid objicitur menti.) For we can know that
only which is true: and the truth is universally
placed in the coincidence of the thought with
the thing, of the representation with the object
represented.
Now the sum of all that is merely OBJECTIVE,
we will henceforth call NATURE, confining the
term to its passive and material sense, as com
prising all the phænomena by which its exist
ence is made known to us. On the other hand
the sum of all that is SUBJECTIVE, we may
comprehend in the name of the SELF or INTEL
LIGENCE. Both conceptions are in necessary
antithesis. Intelligence is conceived of as ex
clusively representative, nature as exclusively
represented; the one as conscious, the other as
without consciousness. Now in all acts of
positive knowledge there is required a reci
procal concurrence of both, namely of the con
scious being, and of that which is in itself
unconscious. Our problem is to explain this
concurrence, its possibility and its necessity.
During the act of knowledge itself, the ob
jective and subjective are so instantly united,
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that we cannot determine to which of the two
the priority belongs. There is here no first,
and no second; both are coinstantaneous and
one. While I am attempting to explain this
intimate coalition, I must suppose it dissolved.
I must necessarily set out from the one, to
which therefore I give hypothetical antece
dence, in order to arrive at the other. But as
there are but two factors or elements in the
problem, subject and object, and as it is left
indeterminate from which of them I should
commence, there are two cases equally possible.
1. EITHER THE OBJECTIVE IS TAKEN AS
THE FIRST, AND THEN WE HAVE TO ACCOUNT
FOR THE SUPERVENTION OF THE SUBJECTIVE,
WHICH COALESCES WITH IT.
The notion of the subjective is not contained
in the notion of the objective. On the contrary
they mutually exclude each other. The sub
jective therefore must supervene to the objec
tive. The conception of nature does not ap
parently involve the copresence of an intel
ligence making an ideal duplicate of it, i. e.
representing it. This desk for instance would
(according to our natural notions) be, though
there should exist no sentient being to look at
it. This then is the problem of natural philo
sophy. It assumes the objective or uncon
scious nature as the first, and has therefore to
explain how intelligence can supervene to it,
or how itself can grow into intelligence. If it
should appear, that all enlightened naturalists
without having distinctly proposed the problem
to themselves have yet constantly moved in the
line of its solution, it must afford a strong
presumption that the problem itself is founded in
nature. For if all knowledge has as it were
two poles reciprocally required and presup
posed, all sciences must proceed from the one
or the other, and must tend toward the op
posite as far as the equatorial point in which
both are reconciled and become identical.
The necessary tendence therefore of all natural
philosophy is from nature to intelligence; and
this, and no other is the true ground and oc
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casion of the instinctive striving to introduce
theory into our views of natural phænomena.
The highest perfection of natural philosophy
would consist in the perfect spiritualization of
all the laws of nature into laws of intuition and
intellect. The phænomena (the material) must
wholly disappear, and the laws alone (the
formal) must remain. Thence it comes, that in
nature itself the more the principle of law
breaks forth, the more does the husk drop
off, the phænomena themselves become more
spiritual and at length cease altogether in our
consciousness. The optical phænomena are
but a geometry, the lines of which are drawn
by light, and the materiality of this light itself
has already become matter of doubt. In the
appearances of magnetism all trace of matter
is lost, and of the phænomena of gravitation,
which not a few among the most illlustrious
Newtonians have declared no otherwise
comprehensible than as an immediate spiritual in
fluence, there remains nothing but its law, the
execution of which on a vast scale is the me
chanism of the heavenly motions. The theory
of natural philosophy would then be completed,
when all nature was demonstrated to be iden
tical in essence with that, which in its highest
known power exists in man as intelligence
and selfconsciousness; when the heavens and
the earth shall declare not only the power of
their maker, but the glory and the presence of
their God, even as he appeared to the great
prophet during the vision of the mount in the
skirts of his divinity.
This may suffice to show, that even natural
science, which commences with the material
phænomena as the reality and substance of
things existing, does yet by the necessity of
theorising unconsciously, and as it were in
stinctively, end in nature as an intelligence; and
by this tendency the science of nature becomes
finally natural philosophy, the one of the two
poles of fundamental science.
2. OR THE SUBJECTIVE, IS TAKEN AS THE
FIRST, AND THE PROBLEM THEN IS, HOW
THERE SUPERVENES TO IT A COINCIDENT OB
JECTIVE.
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In the pursuit of these sciences, our success
in each, depends on an austere and faithful
adherence to its own principles with a careful
separation and exclusion of those, which apper
tain to the opposite science. As the natural
philosopher, who directs his views to the ob
jective, avoids above all things the intermixture
of the subjective in his knowledge, as for in
stance, arbitrary suppositions or rather suf
fictions, occult qualities, spiritual agents, and
the substitution of final for efficient causes; so
on the other hand, the transcendental or intel
ligential philosopher is equally anxious to pre
clude all interpolation of the objective into the
subjective principles of his science, as for in
stance the assumption of impresses or configu
rations in the brain, correspondent to miniature
pictures on the retina painted by rays of light
from supposed originals, which are not the
immediate and real objects of vision, but de
ductions from it for the purposes of explana
tion. This purification of the mind is effected
by an absolute and scientific scepticism to which
the mind voluntary determines itself for the spe
cific purpose of future certainty. Des Cartes
who (in his meditations) himself first, at least
of the moderns, gave a beautiful example of
this voluntary doubt, this selfdetermined inde
termination, happily expresses its utter dif
ference from the scepticism of vanity or irreli
gion: Nec tamen in eo scepticos imitabar, qui
dubitant tautum ut dubitent, et preter incerti
tudinem ipsam nihil quærunt. Nam contra
totus in eo eram ut aliquid certi reperirem.
DES CARTES, de Methodo. Nor is it less dis
tinct in its motives and final aim, than in its
proper objects, which are not as in ordinary
scepticism the prejudices of education and cir
cumstance, but those original and innate pre
judices which nature herself has planted in all
men, and which to all but the philosopher are
the first principles of knowledge, and the final
test of truth.
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Now these essential prejudices are all redu
cible to the one fundamental presumption, THAT
THERE EXIST THINGS WITHOUT US. As this
on the one hand originates, neither in grounds
or arguments, and yet on the other hand re
mains proof against all attempts to remove it
by grounds or arguments (naturam furca expel
las tamen usque redibit;) on the one hand lays
claim to IMMEDIATE certainty as a position at
once indemonstrable and irresistable, and yet
on the other hand, inasmuch as it refers to
something essentially different from ourselves,
nay even in opposition to ourselves, leaves it
inconceivable how it could possibly become a
part of our immediate consciousness; (in other
words how that, which ex hypothesi is and
continues to be extrinsic and alien to our being,
should become a modification of our being) the
philosopher therefore compels himself to treat
this faith as nothing more than a prejudice, in
nate indeed and connatural, but still prejudice.
The other position, which not only claims
but necessitates the admission of its immediate
certainty, equally for the scientific reason of
the philosopher as for the common sense of
mankind at large, namely, I AM, cannot so
properly be intitled a prejudice. It is ground
less indeed; but then in the very idea it pre
cludes all ground, and separated from the im
mediate consciousness loses its whole sense
and import. It is groundless; but only be
cause it is itself the ground of all other cer
tainty. Now the apparent contradiction, that
the former position, namely, the existence of
things without us, which from its nature can
not be immediately certain should be received
as blindly and as independently of all grounds
as the existence of our own being, the tran
scendental philosopher can solve only by the
supposition, that the former is unconsciously
involved in the latter; that it is not only cohe
rent but identical, and one and the same thing
with our own immediate selfconsciousness.
To demonstrate this identity is the office and
object of his philosophy.
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If it be said, that this is Idealism, let it be
remembered that it is only so far idealism, as
it is at the same time, and on that very account,
the truest and most binding realism. For
wherein does the realism of mankind properly
consist? In the assertion that there exists a
something without them, what, or how, or
where they know not, which occasions the
objects of their perception? Oh no! This is
neither connatural or universal. It is what a
few have taught and learnt in the schools, and
which the many repeat without asking them
selves concerning their own meaning. The
realism common to all mankind is far elder and
lies infinitely deeper than this hypothetical ex
planation of the origin of our perceptions, an
explanation skimmed from the mere surface of
mechanical philosophy. It is the table itself,
which the man of common sense believes him
self to see, not the phantom of a table, from
which he may argumentatively deduce the
reality of a table, which he does not see. If to
destroy the reality of all, that we actually be
hold, be idealism, what can be more egregiously
so, than the system of modern metaphysics,
which banishes us to a land of shadows, sur
rounds us with apparitions, and distinguishes
truth from illusion only by the majority of those
who dream the same dream? "I asserted that
the world was mad," exclaimed poor Lee,
"and the world said, that I was mad, and con
found them, they outvoted me."
It is to the true and original realism, that I
would direct the attention. This believes and
requires neither more nor less, than that the
object which it beholds or presents itself, is
the real and very object. In this sense, how
ever much we strive against it, we are all
collectively born idealists, and therefore and
only therefore are we at the same time realists.
But of this the philosophers of the schools
know nothing, or despise the faith as the pre
judice of the ignorant vulgar, because they live
and move in a crowd of phrases and notions
from which human nature has long ago va
nished. Oh, ye that reverence yourselves, and
walk humbly with the divinity in your own
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hearts, ye are worthy of a better philosophy!
Let the dead bury the dead, but do you pre
serve your human nature, the depth of which
was never yet fathomed by a philosophy made
up of notions and mere logical entities.
In the third treatise of my Logosophia, an
nounced at the end of this volume, I shall give
(deo volente) the demonstrations and construc
tions of the Dynamic Philosophy scientifically
arranged. It is, according to my conviction,
no other than the system of Pythagoras and of
Plato revived and purified from impure mix
tures. Doctrina per tot manus tradita tandem
in VAPPAM desiit. The science of arithmetic
furnishes instances, that a rule may be useful
in practical application, and for the particular
purpose may be sufficiently authenticated by
the result, before it has itself been fully de
monstrated. It is enough, if only it be
rendered intelligible. This will, I trust, have been
effected in the following Theses for those of my
readers, who are willing to accompany me
through the following Chapter, in which the
results will be applied to the deduction of the
imagination, and with it the principles of pro
duction and of genial criticism in the fine arts.
THESIS I.
Truth is correlative to being. Knowledge
without a correspondent reality is no know
ledge; if we know, there must be somewhat
known by us. To know is in its very essence
a verb active.
THESIS II.
All truth is either mediate, that is, derived
from some other truth or truths; or immediate
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and original. The latter is absolute, and its
formula A.A.; the former is of dependent or
conditional certainty, and represented in the
formula B.A. The certainty, which inheres
in A, is attributable to B.
SCHOLIUM. A chain without a staple, from
which all the links derived their stability, or a
series without a first, has been not inaptly
allegorized, as a string of blind men, each hold
ing the skirt of the man before him, reaching
far out of sight, but all moving without the
least deviation in one strait line. It would be
naturally taken for granted, that there was a
guide at the head of the file: what if it were
answered, No! Sir, the men are without num
ber, and infinite blindness supplies the place of
sight?
Equally inconceivable is a cycle of equal truths
without a common and central principle, which
prescribes to each its proper sphere in the
system of science. That the absurdity does
not so immediately strike us, that it does not
seem equally unimaginable, is owing to a sur
reptitious act of the imagination, which, in
stinctively and without our noticing the same,
not only fills at the intervening spaces, and
contemplates the cycle (of B. C. D. E. F. &c.)
as a continuous circle (A.) giving to all col
lectively the unity of their common orbit; but
likewise supplies by a sort of subintelligitur the
one central power, which renders the movement
harmonious and cyclical.
THESIS III.
We are to seek therefore for some absolute
truth capable of communcating to ther posi
tions a certainty, which it has not itself bor
rowed; a truth selfgrounded, unconditional
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and known by its own light. In short, we
have to find a somewhat which is, simply be
cause it is. In order to be such, it must be
one which is its own predicate, so far at least
that all other nominal predicates must be modes
and repetitions of itself. Its existence too
must be such, as to preclude the possibility of
requiring a cause or antecedent without an
absurdity.
THESIS IV.
That there can be but one such principle,
may be proved a priori; for were there two
or more, each must refer to some other, by which
its equality is affirmed; consequently neither
would be selfestablished, as the hypothesis
demands. And a posteriori, it will be proved
by the principle itself when it is discovered, as
involving universal anticedents in its very con
ception.
SCHOLIUM. If we affirm of a board that
it is blue, the predicate (blue) is accidental,
and not implied in the subject, board. If we
affirm of a circle that it is equiradial, the pre
dicate indeed is implied in the definition of the
subject; but the existence of the subject itself
is contingent, and supposes both a cause and a
percipient. The same reasoning will apply to
the indefinite number of supposed indemon
strable truths exempted from the prophane ap
proach of philosophic investigation by the ami
cable Beattie, and other less eloquent and not
more profound inaugurators of common sense
on the throne of philosophy; a fruitless at
tempt, were it only that it is the twofold func
tion of philosophy to reconcile reason with
common sense, and to elevate common sense
into reason.
THESIS V.
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Such a principle cannot be any THING or
OBJECT. Each thing is what it is in conse
quence of some other thing. An infinite, inde
pendent *thing, is no less a contradiction, than
an infinite circle or a sideless triangle. Besides
a thing is that, which is capable of being an
object of which itself is not the sole percipient.
But an object is inconceivable without a sub
ject as its antithesis.Omne perceptum perci
pientem supponit.
But neither can the principle be found in a
subject as a subject, contradistinguished from
an object: for unicuique percipienti aliquid
objicutur perceptum. It is to be found there
fore neither in object nor subject taken sepa
rately, and consequently, as no other third is
conceivable, it must be found in that which is
neither subject nor object exclusively, but
which is the identity of both.
THESIS VI.
This principle, and so characterised, mani
fests itself in the SUM or I AM; which I shall
hereafter indiscriminately express by the words
The impossibility of an absolute thing (substantia unica)
as neither genus, species, nor individuum: as well as its
utter unfitness for the fundamental position of a philosophic
system will be demonstrated in the critique on Spinozism in
the fifth treatise of my Logosophia.
spirit, self, and selfconsciousness. In this,
and in this alone, object and subject, being and
knowing, are identical, each involving and sup
posing the other. In other words, it is a sub
ject which becomes a subject by the act of
constructing itself objectively to itself; but
which never is an object except for itself, and
only so far as by the very same act it becomes
a subject. It may be described therefore as
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a perpetual selfduplication of one and the
same power into object and subject, which pre
suppose each other, and can exist only as an
titheses.
SCHOLIUM. If a man be asked how he knows
that he is? he can only answer, sum quia sum.
But if (the absoluteness of this certainty having
been admitted) he be again asked, how he, the
individual person, came to be, then in relation
to the ground of his existence, not to the ground
of his knowledge of that existence, he might
reply, sum quia Deus est, or still more philoso
phically, sum quia in Deo sum.
But if we elevate our conception to the abso
lute self, the great eternal I AM, then the prin
ciple of being, and of knowledge, of idea, and
of reality; the ground of existence, and the
ground of the knowledge of existence, are ab
solutely identical, Sum quia sum;* I am,
It is most worthy of notice, that in the first revelation
of himself, not confined to individuals; indeed in the very*
because I affirm myself to be; I affirm myself
to be, because I am.
THESIS VII.
If then I know myself only through myself,
it is contradictory to require any other
*first revelation of his absolute being, Jehovah at the same
time revealed the fundamental truth of all philosophy, which
must either commence with the absolute, or have no fixed
commencement; i. e. cease to be philosophy. I cannot but
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express my regret, that in the equivocal use of the word
that, for in that, or because, our admirable version has ren
dered the passage susceptible of a degraded interpretation
in the mind of common readers or hearers, as if it were a
mere reproof to an impertinent question, I am what I am,
which might be equally affirmed of himself by any existent
being.
The Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum is objectionable, because
either the Cogito is used extra Gradum, and then it is involv
ed in the sum and is tautological, or it is taken as a particu
lar mode or dignity, and then it is subordinated to the sum
as the species to the genus, or rather as a particular modifi
cation to the subject modified; and not preordinated as the
arguments seem to require. For Cogito is Sum Cogitans.
This is clear by the inevidence of the converse. Cogitat
ergo est is true, because it is a mere application of the logi
cal rule: Quicquid in genere est, est et in specie. Est
(cogitans) ergo est. It is a cherry tree; therefore it is a
tree. But, est ergo cogitat, is illogical: for quod est in
specie, non necessario in genere est. It may be true. I hold
it to be true, that quicquid vere est, est per veram sui af
firmationem; but it is a derivative, not an immediate truth.
Here then we have, by anticipation the distinction between
the conditional finite I (which as known in distinct con
sciousness by occasion of experience is called by Kant’s
followers the empirical l) and the absolute I AM, and like
wise the dependence or rather the inherence of the former in
the latter; in whom "we live, and move, and have our
being," as St. Paul divinely asserts, differing widely from the
Theists of the mechanic school (as Sir J. Newton, Locke, &c.)
who must say from whom we had our being, and with it life
and the powers of life.
predicate of self, but that of selfconsciousness.
Only in the selfconsciousness of a spirit is
there the required identity of object and of
representation; for herein consists the essense
of a spirit, that it is selfrepresentative. If
therefore this be the one only immediate truth,
in the certainty of which the reality of our col
lective knowledge is grounded, it must follow
that the spirit in all the objects which it views,
views only itself. If this could be proved, the
immediate reality of all intuitive knowledge
would be assured. It has been shown, that a
spirit is that, which is its own object, yet not
originally an object, but an absolute subject
for which all, itself included, may become an
object. It must therefore be an ACT; for every
object is, as an object, dead, fixed, incapable
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in itself of any action, and necessarily finite.
Again the spirit (originally the identity of object and
subject) must in some sense dissolve
this identity, in order to be conscious of it: fit
alter et idem. But this implies an act, and it
follows therefore that intelligence or selfcon
sciousness is impossible, except by and in a
will. The selfconscious spirit therefore is a
will; and freedom 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 exists in antithesis to an object, the
spirit cannot originally be finite. But neither
can it be a subject without becoming an object and,
as it is originally the identity of both, it
can be conceived neither as infinite or finite
exclusively, 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 production and
life.
THESIS IX.
This principium commune essendi et cogno
scendi, as subsisting in a WILL, or primary ACT
of selfduplication, is the mediate or indirect
principle of every science; but it is the im
mediate and direct principle of the ultimate
science alone, i. e. of transcendental philoso
phy alone. For it must be remembered, that
all these Theses refer solely to one of the two
Polar Sciences, namely, to that which com
mences with and rigidly confines itself within,
the subjective, leaving the objective (as far as
it is exclusively objective) to natural philoso
phy, which is its opposite pole. In its very
idea therefore as a systematic knowledge of our
collective KNOWING, (scientia scientiæ) it
involves the necessity of some one highest prin
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ciple 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 evolu
tion of selfconsciousness. We are not investi
gating an absolute principium essendi; for
then, I admit, many valid objections might be
started against our theory; but an absolute
principium cognoscendi. The result of both
the sciences, or their equatorial point, would
be the principle of a total and undivided philo
sophy, as for prudential reasons, I have chosen
to anticipate in the Scholium to Thesis VI. and
the note subjoined. In other words, philoso
phy would pass into religion, and religion be
come inclusive 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
enquire, what ultimate ground of our know
ledge there may lie out of our knowing, but
what is the last in our knowing itself, beyond
which we cannot pass. The principle 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 selfconsciousness is for us the
source and principle of all our possible know
ledge. Whether abstracted from us there exists
any thing higher and beyond this primary self
knowing, which is for us the form of all our
knowing, must be decided by the result.
That the selfconsciousness 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 con
sciousness, and this again of a yet higher, and
so on in an infinite regressus; in short, that
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selfconsciousness may be itself something ex
plicable 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 selfconsciousness, does not
at all concern us as transcendental philoso
phers. For to us the selfconsciousness is not
a kind of being, but a kind of knowing, and
that too the highest and farthest that exists for
us. It may however be shown, and has in part
already been shown in pages 115116, 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 whirl’d down
the gulph of an infinite series. But this would
make our reason baffle the end and purpose of
all reason, namely, unity and system. Or we
must break off the series 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
sciousness, it follows, that even as natural phi
losophers we must arrive at the same principle
from which as transcendental philosophers we
set out; that is, in a selfconsciousness in
which the principium essendi does not stand to
the principium cognoscendi in the relation of
cause to effect, but both the one and the other
are coinherent and identical. Thus the true
system of natural philosophy places the sole
reality of things in an ABSOLUTE, which is at
once causa sui et effectus,
pater autopator, Uios
eautou—
in the absolute identity of subject and
object, which it calls nature, and which in its
highest power is nothing else than selfconscious
will or intelligence. 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
knowledge supposes a prior sensation. For
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sensation itself is but vision nascent, not the
cause of intelligence, but intelligence itself re
vealed as an earlier power in the process of
selfconstruction.
Makar, iladi moi!
Pater, iladi moi
Ei para kosmon,
Ei para moiran
Ton son edigon.
Bearing then this in mind, that intelligence is
a selfdevelopement, not a quality supervening
to a substance, we may abstract from all degree,
and for the purpose of philosophic construc
tion reduce it to kind, under the idea of an in
destructible power with two opposite and coun
teracting forces, which, by a metaphor borrowed
from astronomy, we may call the centrifugal and
centripetal forces. The intelligence in the one
tends to objectize itself, and in the other to
know itself in the object. It will be hereafter
my business to construct by a series of intui
tions the progressive schemes, that must follow
from such a power with such forces, till I ar
rive 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 faculty, the generation, agency, and
application of which form the contents of the
ensuing chapter.
In a preceding page I have justified the use
of technical terms in philosophy, whenever they
tend to preclude confusion of thought, and
when they assist the memory 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 ex
tended this privilege beyond the grounds on
which I have claimed it; namely, the conveni
ency of the scholastic phrase to distinguish the
kind from all degrees, or rather to express the
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kind with the abstraction of degree, as for in
stance multeity instead of multitude; or se
condly, for the sake of correspondence in sound
in interdependent or antithetical terms, as sub
ject and object; or lastly, to avoid the weary
ing recurrence of circumlocutions and defini
tions. Thus I 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 deri
vatives 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 privi
lege, where there already exists a positive law
adequate to the purpose; and when there is no
law in existence, the privilege is to be justified
by its accordance with the end, or final cause,
of all law. Unusual and new coined words are
doubtless an evil; but vagueness, confusion,
and imperfect conveyance of our thoughts, are
a far greater. Every system, which is under
the necessity of using terms not familiarized by
the metaphysicks in fashion, will be described
as written in an unintelligible style, and the
author must expect the charge of having sub
stituted learned jargon for clear conception;
while, according to the creed of our modern
philosophers, nothing is deemed a clear concep
tion, but what is representable by a distinct
image. Thus the conceivable is reduced within
the bounds of the picturable. Hinc patet, quî
fiat ut, cum irrepræsentabile et impossibile vulgo
ejusdem significatus habeantur, conceptus tam
Continui, quam infiniti a plurimis rejeciantur,
quippe quorum, secundum leges cognitionis in
tuitivæ, repræsentatio est impossibilis. Quan
quam autem harum e non paucis scholis explo
sarum notionum, præsertim prioris, causam
hic non gero, maximi tamen momenti erit mo
nuisse: gravissimo illos errore labi, qui tam
perversâ argumentandi ratione utuntur. Quic
quid enim repugnat legibus intellectûs et ra
tionis, utique est impossibile; quod autem,
cum rationis puræ sit objectum, legibus cogni
tionis intuitivæ tantummodo non subest, non
item. Nam hinc dissensus inter facultatem
sensitivam et intellectualem, (quarem indolem
mox exponam) nihil indigitat, nisi, quas mens
ab intellectu accerptas fert ideas abstractus, illas
in concreto exequi, et in Intuitus commutare
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sæpenumero non posse. Hæc autem reluctantia
subjectiva mentitur, ut plurimum, repugnantiam
aliquam objectivam, et incautos facile fallit,
limitibus, quibus mens humana circumscribitur,
pro iis habitis, quibus ipsa rerum essentia con
tinetur. * >Kant de Mundi Sensibilis atque In
telligibilis forma et principiis, 1770.
TRANSLATION
"Hence it is clear, from what cause many reject the
notion of the continuous and the infinite. They take,
namely, the words irrepresentable and impossible in one and
the same meaning; and, according to the forms of sensuous
evidence, the notion of the continuous and the infinite is
doubtless impossible. I am not now pleading the cause of
these laws, which not a few schools have thought proper to
explode, especially the former (the law of continuity). But
it is of the highest importance to admonish the reader, that
those, who adopt so perverted a mode of reasoning, are un
der a grievous error. Whatever opposes the former princi
ples of the understanding and the reason is confessedly im
possible; but not therefore that, which is therefore not
amenable to the forms of sensuous evidence, because it is
exclusively an object of pure intellect. For this noncoinci
dence of the sensuous and the intellectual (the nature of
which I shall presently lay open) proves nothing more, but
that the mind cannot always adequately represent in the con
crete, and transform into distinct images, abstract notions
derived from the pure intellect. But this contradiction,
which is in itself merely subjective (i.e. an incapacity in the
nature of man) too often passes for an incongruity or im
possibility in the object (i.e. the notions themselves) and
seduce the incautious to mistake the limitations of the hu
man 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,
germanice Auschauen) for which we have unfortunately no
correspondent word, exclusively for that which can be re
presented in space and time. He therefore consistently and
rightly denies the possibility 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 metaphysicians, according to whom
the term comprehends all truths known to us without a medium.
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Critics, who are most ready to bring this
charge of pedantry and unintelligibility, are the
most apt to overlook the important fact, that
besides the language of words, there is a lan
guage of spirits (sermo interior) and that the
former is only the vehicle of the latter. Con
sequently their assurance, that they do not
understand the philosophic writer, instead of
proving any thing against the philosophy, may
furnish an equal, and (cæteris paribus) even a
stronger presumption against their own philo
sophic talent.
Great indeed are the obstacles which an Eng
lish metaphysician has to encounter. Amongst
his most respectable and intelligent judges,
there will be many who have devoted their
attention exclusively to the concerns and in
terests of human life, and who bring with them
to the perusal of a philosophic system an ha
bitual aversion to all speculations, the utility
and application of which are not evident and
immediate. To these I would in the first
instance merely oppose an authority, which
they themselves hold venerable, that of Lord
Bacon: non inutiles scientiæ existimande sunt,
quarum in se nullus est usus, si ingenia acuant
et ordinent.
There are others, whose prejudices are still
more formidable, inasmuch as they are grounded
in their moral feelings and religious principles,
which had been alarmed and shocked by the
impious and pernicious tenets defended by
Hume, Priestley, and the French fatalists or
necessitarians; some of whom had perverted
metaphysical reasonings to the denial of the
mysteries and indeed of all the peculiar doc
trines 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 meta
physics are nothing else but true divinity,
and that in fact the writers, who have given
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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 metaphysicians, a name indeed
which those writers were the first to explode
as unmeaning. Secondly, I would remind
them, that as long as there are men in the
world to whom the Gnodi seauton is an instinct
and a command from their own nature, 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 believe 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,
Hartley, Condiliac, or perhaps Dr. Reid, and
Professor Stewart. To objections from this
cause, it is a sufficient answer, that one main
object of my attempt was to demonstrate 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 propose to attack cannot subsist, except
as they are concealed behind the mask of a
plausible and indefinite nomenclature.
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 metaphy
sical research. It is that corruption, introduced
by certain immethodical aphorisming Eclectics,
who, dismissing not only all system, but all
logical connection, pick and choose whatever
is most plausible and showy; who select, what
ever words can have some semblance of sense
attached to them without the least expenditure
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of thought, in short whatever may enable men
to talk of what they do not understand, with a
careful avoidance of every thing that might
awaken them to a moment’s suspicion of their
ignorance. This alas! is an irremediable dis
ease, for it brings with it, not so much an in
disposition 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 vollies long after the
report from the original blunderbuss. Sequa
citas est potius et coitio quam consensus: et
tamen (quod pessimum est) pusillanimitas ista
non sine arrogantiâ et fastidio se offert. Novum
Organum.
I shall now proceed to the nature and gene
sis of the imagination; but I must first take
leave to notice, that after a more accurate peru
sal of Mr. Wordsworth’s remarks on the imagin
ation in his preface to the new edition of his
poems, I find that my conclusions are not so
consentient with his, as I confess, I had taken
for granted. In an article contributed by me
to Mr. Southey’s Omniana, on the soul and its
organs of sense, are the following 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,
voluntary and automatic; the imagination, or
shaping and modifying power; the fancy, or
the aggregative and associative power; the
understanding, or the regulative, substantiating
and realizing power; the speculative reason—
vis theoretica et scientifica, or the power by
which we produce, or aim to produce unity,
necessity, and universality in all our knowledge
by means of principles * a priori; the will, or
practical reason; the faculty of choice (Ger
manice, Willkühr) 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 power) Mr. Wordsworth’s "only
"objection is that the definition is too general.
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"To aggregate and to associate, to evoke and
"combine, belong as well to the imagination as
"the fancy." I reply, that if by the power of
evoking and combining, Mr. W. means the
same as, and no more than, I 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 mis
This phrase, a priori, is in common most grossly mis
understood, and an absurdity burthened on it, which it does
not deserve! By knowledge, a priori, we do not mean, that
we can know any thing previously to experience, which
would be a contradiction in terms; but that having once
known it by occasion of experience (i.e. something acting
upon us from without) we then know, that it must have pre
existed, or the experience itself would have been impossible.
By experience only I know, that I have eyes; but then my
reason convinces me, that I must have had eyes in order to
the experience.
taken the copresence of fancy with imagination
for the operation of the latter singly. A man
may work with two very different tools at the
same moment; each has its share in the work,
but the work effected 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. Wordsworth’s
subject required or permitted, I have attached
a meaning to both fancy and imagination, which
he had not in view, at least while he was
writing that preface. He will judge. Would to
heaven, I might meet with many such readers.
I will conclude with 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. Taylor’s VIA PACIS.)
CHAPTER XIII.
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On the imagination, or esemplastic power.
O Adam! one Almighty is, from whom
All things proceed, and up to him return
If not depraved from good: created all
Such to perfection, one first nature all
Indued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and in things that live, of life;
But more refin’d, more spiritous and pure,
As nearer to him plac’d, or nearer tending.
Each in their several active spheres assign’d,
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds
Proportion’d to each kind. So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk: from thence the leaves
More airy: last, the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes. Flowers and their fruit,
Man’s nourishment, by gradual scale sublim’d,
To vital spirits aspire: to animal:
To intellectual!give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding: whence the soul
REASON receives. And reason is her being.
Discursive and intuitive.
PAR. LOST, b. v.
"Sane si res corporales nil nisi materiale continuerent, ve
"rissime dicerentur in fluxu consistere neque habere
sustantiale quicquam, quemadmodum et Platonici olim recte agno
vêre.—Hinc igitur, præter purè mathematica et phantasiæ
subjecta, collegi quædam metaphysica solâque mente percep
tibilia, esse admittenda: et massæ materiali principium quod
dam superius et, ut sic dicam, formale addendum: quando
quidem omnes veritates rerum coporearum ex solis axioma
tibus logisticis et geometricis, nempe de magno et parvo, toto
et parte, figurâ et situ, colligi non possint; sed alia de causâ
et effectu, actioneque et passione, accedere debeant, quibus
ordinis rerum rationes salventur. Id principium rerum, an
an vim appellurus, non refert, modó memineri
mus, per solam Virium notionem intelligibiliter explicari."
LEIBNITZ: Op. T.II.P.II.p.53.—T.III.p.321.
Sebomai Noeron
Kruphian taxin
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Chorei TI MESON
Ou katachuden.
SYNESII, Hymn III.l.231.
DES CARTES, speaking as a naturalist, and in
imitation of Archimedes, said, give me matter
and motion and I will construct you the uni
verse. We must of course understand him to
have meant; I will render the construction 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 find itself in this
infinity, and I will cause the world of intel
ligences with the whole system of their repre
sentations to rise up before you. Every other
science presupposes intelligence as already ex
isting and complete: the philosopher contem
plates 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 masterthought as
an effective pioneer in his essay on the intro
duction of negative quantities into philoso
phy, published 1763. In this he has shown,
that instead of assailing the science of mathe
matics by metaphysics, as Berkley did in his
Analyst, or of sophisticating it, as Wolff did,
by the vain attempt of deducing the first
principles of geometry from supposed deeper
grounds of ontology, it behoved the meta
physician rather to examine whether the only
province of knowledge, which man has suc
ceeded in erecting into a pure science, might
not furnish materials or at least hints for estab
lishing and pacifying the unsettled, warring, and
embroiled domain of philosophy. An imitation
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of the mathematical method had indeed been
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 postions which had so wonderfully en
larged the discoveries of geometry, mutatis mu
tandis, to philosophical 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 mathema
tician, proceeds to the idea of negative quan
tities and the transfer of them to metaphysical
investigation. 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 irrepræsentabile, the connexion
of which produces nonsense. A body in mo
tion 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 articu
lated into nonsense. But a motory force of a
body in one direction, and an equal force of the
same body in an oppposite direction is not in
compatible, and the result, namely rest, is real
and representable. For the purposes of ma
thematical calculus it is indifferent which force
we term negative, and which positive, and con
sequently 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 reference to the
former, we of course represent the sum as
108. It is equally clear that two equal forces
acting in opposite directions, both being finite
and each distinguished from the other by its
direction only, must neutralize or reduce each
other to inaction. Now the transcendental
philosophy demands; first, that two forces
should be conceived which counteract each
other by their essential nature; not only not in
consequence of the accidental direction of each,
but as prior to all direction, nay, as the primary
forces from which the conditions of all possible
directions are derivative and deducible: se
condly, that these forces should be assumed
to be both alike infinite, both alike indestructi
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ble. The problem will then be to discover the
result or product of two such forces, as distin
guished 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
different 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 contemplating
intuitively this one power with its two inherent
indestructible yet counteracting forces, and the
results or generations to which their interpene
tration gives existence, in the living principle
and in the process of our own selfconsciousness.
By what instrument this is possible the solu
tion 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 philoso
phic, no less than a poetic genius, which is dif
ferenced from the highest perfection of talent,
not by degree 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 inex
haustibly reebullient; and as something must
be the result of these two forces, both alike
infinite, and both alike indestructible; and as
rest or neutralization cannot be this result; no
other conception is possible, but that the pro
duct must be a tertium aliquid, or finite gene
ration. Consequently this conception is ne
cessary. Now this tertium aliquid can be no
other than an interpenetration of the counter
acting powers, partaking of both.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Thus far had the work been transcribed for
the press, when I received the following letter
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from a friend, whose practical judgement I have
had ample reason to estimate and revere, and
whose taste and sensibility preclude all the
excuses which my selflove might possibly have
prompted me to set up in plea against the deci
sion of advisers of equal good sense, but with
less tact and feeling.
"Dear C.
"You ask my opinion concerning your
Chapter on the Imagination, both as to the im
pressions it made on myself, and as to those which
I think it will make on the PUBLIC, i. e. that part
of the public, who from the title of the work and
from its forming a sort of introduction to a vo
lume of poems, are likely to constitute the great
majority of your readers.
"As to myself, and stating in the first place the
"effect on my understanding, your opinions and
"method of argument 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 to
"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. 75, 76, you
"have so ingeniously evolved, as the antithesis to
"that in which a man is, when he makes a bull. In
"your own words, I should have felt as if I had
"been standing on my head.
"The effect on my feelings, on the other hand,
"I cannot better represent, than by supposing my
self to have known only our light airy modern
chapels of ease, and then for the first time to have
been placed, and left alone, in one of our largest
Gothic cathedrals in a gusty moonlight night of
autumn. "Now in glimmer, and now in gloom;"
often in palpable darkness not without a chilly
sensation of terror; then suddenly emerging into
broad yet visionary lights with coloured shadows,
of fantastic shapes yet all decked with holy insig
nia and mystic symbols; and ever and anon com
ing out full upon pictures and stonework images
of great men, with whose names I was familiar,
but which looked upon me with countenances and
an expression, the most dissimilar to all I had
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been in the habit of connecting with those names.
Those whom I had been taught to venerate as
almost superhuman in magnitude of intellect,
I found perched in little fretwork niches, as
grotesque dwarfs; while the grotesques, in my
hitherto belief, stood guarding the high altar
with all the characters of Apotheosis. In short,
what I had supposed substances were thinned
away into shadows, while every where shadows
were deepened into substances:
If substance may be call’d what shadow seem’d,
For each seem’d 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 FRIEND, and applied to a work of
Mr. Wordsworth’s though with a few of the
words altered:
"—An orphic tale indeed,
"A tale obscure of high and passionate thoughts
"To a strange music chaunted!"
"Be assured, however, that I look forward
anxiously to your great book on the CONSTRUC
TIVE PHILOSOPHY, which you have promised and
announced: and that I will do my best to under
stand 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 moment in advising and urging
you to withdraw the Chapter from the present
work, and to reserve it for your announced trea
tises on the Logos or communicative intellect in
Man and Deity. First, because imperfectly as
I understand the present Chapter, I see clearly
that you have done too much, and yet not enough.
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You have been obliged to omit so many links,
from the necessity of compression, that which re
mains, looks (if I may recur to my former illus
tration) like the fragments 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 pre
pared or perhaps 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 who,
he might truly observe, could from your title
page, viz. " My Literary Life and Opinions,"
published too as introductory to a volume of mis
cellaneous poems, have anticipated, or even con
jectured, a long treatise on ideal Realism, which
holds the same relation in abstruseness to Ploti
nus, as Plotinus does to Plato. It will be well,
if already you have not too much of metaphysical
disquisition in your work, though as the larger
part of the disquisition is historical, it will doubt
less be both interesting and instructive to many to
whose unprepared minds your speculations on
the esemplastic power would be utterly unintelli
gible. Be assured, if you do publish this Chap
ter in the present work, you will be reminded of
Bishop Berkley’s Siris, announced as an Essay
on Tarwater, which beginning with Tar ends
with the Trinity, the omne scibile forming 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
in its proper place. Your prospectus will have
described and announced both its contents and
their nature; and if any persons purchase it, who
feel no interest in the subjects of which it treats,
they will have themselves only to blame.
"I could add to these arguments one derived
from pecuniary motives, and particularly from
the probable effects on the sale of your present
publication; but they would weigh little with
you compared with the preceding. Besides, I
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have long observed, that arguments drawn from
your own personal interests more often act on you
as narcotics than as stimulants, and that in money
concerns you have some small portion of pig
nature in your moral idiosyncracy, and like these
amiable creatures, must occasionally be pulled
backward from the boat in order to make you
enter it. All success attend you, for if hard
thinking and hard reading are merits, you have
deserved it.
Your affectionate, &c."
In consequence of this very judicious letter,
which produced complete conviction on my
mind, I shall content myself for the present with
stating the main result of the Chapter, which I
have reserved for that future publication, a de
tailed prospectus of which the reader will find
at the close of the second volume.
The IMAGINATION then I consider either as
primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGIN
ATION I hold to be the living Power and prime
Agent of all human Perception, 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, coexisting
with the conscious will, yet 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, dissi
pates, in order to recreate; or where this pro
cess is rendered impossible, yet still at all events
it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is es
sentially vital, even as all objects (as objects)
are essentially fixed and dead.
FANCY, on the contrary, has no other coun
ters to play with, but fixities and definites. The
Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Me
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mory emancipated from the order 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 ordinary memory it must receive all its ma
terials ready made from the law of association.
Whatever more than this, I shall think it fit
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 principles that
regulate its introduction: which the reader
will find prefixed to the poem of The Ancient
Mariner.
END OF VOLUME FIRST.
J. M. Gutch, Printer, Bristol.
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Bookmarks
1. Table of Contents, page = 3
2. Biographia Literaria, page = 4
3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, page = 4