Kitabı oku: «Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge», sayfa 8

July 4. 1830

DUKE OF WELLINGTON.—MONEYED INTEREST.—CANNING

I sometimes fear the Duke of Wellington is too much disposed to imagine that he can govern a great nation by word of command, in the same way in which he governed a highly disciplined army. He seems to be unaccustomed to, and to despise, the inconsistencies, the weaknesses, the bursts of heroism followed by prostration and cowardice, which invariably characterise all popular efforts. He forgets that, after all, it is from such efforts that all the great and noble institutions of the world have come; and that, on the other hand, the discipline and organization of armies have been only like the flight of the cannon-ball, the object of which is destruction.⁷¹

* * * * *

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

July 6, 1830

BOURRIENNE

Bourienne is admirable. He is the French Pepys,—a man with right feelings, but always wishing to participate in what is going on, be it what it may. He has one remark, when comparing Buonaparte with Charlemagne, the substance of which I have attempted to express in "The Friend"⁷² but which Bourrienne has condensed into a sentence worthy of Tacitus, or Machiavel, or Bacon. It is this; that Charlemagne was above his age, whilst Buonaparte was only above his competitors, but under his age! Bourrienne has done more than any one else to show Buonaparte to the world as he really was,—always contemptible, except when acting a part, and that part not his own.

July 8. 1830

JEWS

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

* * * * *

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

July 24. 1830

THE PAPACY AND THE REFORMATION.—LEO X

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

* * * * *

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

July 27. 1830

THELWALL.—SWIFT.—STELLA

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

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

* * * * *

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

July 28. 1830

INIQUITOUS LEGISLATION

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

July 29. 1830

SPURZHEIM AND CRANIOLOOY

Spurzheim is a good man, and I like him; but he is dense, and the most ignorant German I ever knew. If he had been content with stating certain remarkable coincidences between the moral qualities and the configuration of the skull, it would have been well; but when he began to map out the cranium dogmatically, he fell into infinite absurdities. You know that every intellectual act, however you may distinguish it by name in respect of the originating faculties, is truly the act of the entire man; the notion of distinct material organs, therefore, in the brain itself, is plainly absurd. Pressed by this, Spurzheim has, at length, been guilty of some sheer quackery; and ventures to say that he has actually discovered a different material in the different parts or organs of the brain, so that he can tell a piece of benevolence from a bit of destructiveness, and so forth. Observe, also, that it is constantly found, that so far from there being a concavity in the interior surface of the cranium answering to the convexity apparent on the exterior—the interior is convex too. Dr. Baillie thought there was something in the system, because the notion of the brain being an extendible net helped to explain those cases where the intellect remained after the solid substance of the brain was dissolved in water.⁷³

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

August 20. 1830

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

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

* * * * *

I must say I cannot see much in Captain B. Hall's account of the Americans, but weaknesses—some of which make me like the Yankees all the better. How much more amiable is the American fidgettiness and anxiety about the opinion of other nations, and especially of the English, than the sentiments of the rest of the world.⁷⁴

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

September 8. 1830

ENGLISH REFORMATION

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

September 19. 1830

DEMOCRACY.–IDEA OF A STATE.–CHURCH

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

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

September 20. 1830

GOVERNMENT.–FRENCH GEND'ARMERIE

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

* * * * *

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

September 21. 1830

PHILOSOPHY OF YOUNG MEN AT THE PRESENT DAY

I do not know whether I deceive myself, but it seems to me that the young men, who were my contemporaries, fixed certain principles in their minds, and followed them out to their legitimate consequences, in a way which I rarely witness now. No one seems to have any distinct convictions, right or wrong; the mind is completely at sea, rolling and pitching on the waves of facts and personal experiences. Mr. – is, I suppose, one of the rising young men of the day; yet he went on talking, the other evening, and making remarks with great earnestness, some of which were palpably irreconcilable with each other. He told me that facts gave birth to, and were the absolute ground of, principles; to which I said, that unless he had a principle of selection, he would not have taken notice of those facts upon which he grounded his principle. You must have a lantern in your hand to give light, otherwise all the materials in the world are useless, for you cannot find them; and if you could, you could not arrange them. "But then," said Mr. –, "that principle of selection came from facts!"—"To be sure!" I replied; "but there must have been again an antecedent light to see those antecedent facts. The relapse may be carried in imagination backwards for ever,—but go back as you may, you cannot come to a man without a previous aim or principle." He then asked me what I had to say to Bacon's induction: I told him I had a good deal to say, if need were; but that it was perhaps enough for the occasion to remark, that what he was evidently taking for the Baconian _in_duction was mere _de_duction—a very different thing.⁷⁵

September 22. 1830

THUCYDIDES AND TACITUS.–POETRY.–MODERN METRE

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

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

September 23. 1830

LOGIC

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

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

* * * * *

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

September 24. 1830

VARRO.—SOCRATES.—GREEK PHILOSOPHY.—PLOTINUS.—TERTULLIAN

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

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

September 26. 1830

SCOTCH AND ENGLISH LAKES

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

* * * * *

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

September 27. 1830

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

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

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

Luther has sketched the most beautiful picture of the nature, and ends, and duties of the wedded life I ever read. St. Paul says it is a great symbol, not mystery, as we translate it.⁷⁶

* * * * *

"Most women have no character at all," said Pope⁷⁷ and meant it for satire. Shakspeare, who knew man and woman much better, saw that it, in fact, was the perfection of woman to be characterless.

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

September 28. 1830

MENTAL ANARCHY

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

October 5. 1830

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

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

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

The Brussels riot—I cannot bring myself to dignify it with a higher name —is a wretched parody on the last French revolution. Were I King William, I would banish the Belgians, as Coriolanus banishes the Romans in Shakspeare.⁷⁸

It is a wicked rebellion without one just cause.