Chapter VI: Preface (6)

[Footnote 1: All the following remarks in this section were made at the exhibition of ancient masters at the British Gallery in Pall Mall. The recollection of those two hours has made the rooms of that Institution a melancholy place for me. Mr. Coleridge was in high spirits, and seemed to kindle in his mind at the contemplation of the splendid pictures before him. He did not examine them all by the catalogue, but anchored himself before some three or four great works, telling me that he saw the rest of the Gallery _potentially_. I can yet distinctly recall him, half leaning on his old simple stick, and his hat off in one hand, whilst with the fingers of the other he went on, as was his constant wont, figuring in the air a commentary of small diagrams, wherewith, as he fancied, he could translate to the eye those relations of form and space which his words might fail to convey with clearness to the ear. His admiration for Rubens showed itself in a sort of joy and brotherly fondness; he looked as if he would shake hands with his pictures. What the company, which by degrees formed itself round this silver-haired, bright-eyed, music-breathing, old man, took him for, I cannot guess; there was probably not one there who knew him to be that Ancient Mariner, who held people with his glittering eye, and constrained them, like three years' children, to hear his tale. In the midst of his speech, he turned to the right hand, where stood a very lovely young woman, whose attention he had involuntarily arrested;--to her, without apparently any consciousness of her being a stranger to him, he addressed many remarks, although I must acknowledge they were couched in a somewhat softer tone, as if he were soliciting her sympathy. He was, verily, a gentle-hearted man at all times; but I never was in company with him in my life, when the entry of a woman, it mattered not who, did not provoke a dim gush of emotion, which passed like an infant's breath over the mirror of his intellect.--ED.]

[Footnote 2: "Figures shooting at a Target," belonging, I believe, to Lord Bandon.--ED.]

[Footnote 3: This belongs to Sir Robert Peel.--ED.]

[Footnote 4: "Landscape with setting Sun,"--Lord Farnborough's picture.--ED.]

* * * * *

The Italian masters differ from the Dutch in this--that in their pictures ages are perfectly ideal. The infant that Raffael's Madonna holds in her arms cannot be guessed of any particular age; it is Humanity in infancy. The babe in the manger in a Dutch painting is a fac-simile of some real new-born bantling; it is just like the little rabbits we fathers have all seen with some dismay at first burst.

* * * * *

Carlo Dolce's representations of our Saviour are pretty, to be sure; but they are too smooth to please me. His Christs are always in sugar-candy.

* * * * *

That is a very odd and funny picture of the Connoisseurs at Rome[1] by Reynolds.

[Footnote 1: "Portraits of distinguished Connoisseurs painted at Rome,"--belonging to Lord Burlington.--ED.]

* * * * *

The more I see of modern pictures, the more I am convinced that the ancient art of painting is gone, and something substituted for it,--very pleasing, but different, and different in kind and not in degree only. Portraits by the old masters,--take for example the pock-fritten lady by Cuyp[1]--are pictures of men and women: they fill, not merely occupy, a space; they represent individuals, but individuals as types of a species.

Modern portraits--a few by Jackson and Owen, perhaps, excepted--give you not the man, not the inward humanity, but merely the external mark, that in which Tom is different from Bill. There is something affected and meretricious in the Snake in the Grass[2] and such pictures, by Reynolds.

[Footnote 1: I almost forget, but have some recollection that the allusion is to Mr. Heneage Finch's picture of a Lady with a Fan.--ED.]

[Footnote 2: Sir Robert Peel's.--ED.]

July 25. 1831.

CHILLINGWORTH.--SUPERSTITION OF MALTESE, SICILIANS, AND ITALIANS.

It is now twenty years since I read Chillingworth's book[1]; but certainly it seemed to me that his main position, that the mere text of the Bible is the sole and exclusive ground of Christian faith and practice, is quite untenable against the Romanists. It entirely destroys the conditions of a church, of an authority residing in a religious community, and all that holy sense of brotherhood which is so sublime and consolatory to a meditative Christian. Had I been a Papist, I should not have wished for a more vanquishable opponent in controversy. I certainly believe Chillingworth to have been in some sense a Socinian. Lord Falkland, his friend, said so in substance. I do not deny his skill in dialectics; he was more than a match for Knott[2] to be sure.

I must be bold enough to say, that I do not think that even Hooker puts the idea of a church on the true foundation.

[Footnote 1: "The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation; or, an Answer to a Booke entitled 'Mercy and Truth; or, Charity maintained by Catholicks,' which pretends to prove the contrary."]

[Footnote 2: Socinianism, or some inclination that way, is an old and clinging charge against Chillingworth. On the one hand, it is well known that he subscribed the articles of the church of England, in the usual form, on the 20th of July, 1638; and on the other, it is equally certain that within two years immediately previous, he wrote the letter to some unnamed correspondent, beginning "Dear Harry," and printed in all the Lives of Chillingworth, in which letter he sums up his arguments upon the Arian doctrine in this passage:--"In a word, whosoever shall freely and impartially consider of this thing, and how on the other side the ancient fathers' weapons against the Arrians are in a manner only places of Scripture (and these now for the most part discarded as importunate and unconcluding), and how in the argument drawn from the authority of the ancient fathers, they are almost always defendants, and scarse ever opponents, _he shall not choose but confesses or at least be very inclinable to beleeve, that the doctrine of Arrius is eyther a truth, or at least no damnable heresy_." The truth is, however, that the Socinianism of Chillingworth, such as it may have been, had more reference to the doctrine of the redemption of man than of the being of God.

Edward Knott's real name was Matthias Wilson.--ED.]

* * * * *

The superstition of the peasantry and lower orders generally in Malta, Sicily, and Italy exceeds common belief. It is unlike the superstition of Spain, which is a jealous fanaticism, having reference to their catholicism, and always glancing on heresy. The popular superstition of Italy is the offspring of the climate, the old associations, the manners, and the very names of the places. It is pure paganism, undisturbed by any anxiety about orthodoxy, or animosity against heretics. Hence, it is much more good-natured and pleasing to a traveller's feelings, and certainly not a whit less like the true religion of our dear Lord than the gloomy idolatry of the Spaniards.

* * * * *

I well remember, when in Valetta in 1805, asking a boy who waited on me, what a certain procession, then passing, was, and his answering with great quickness, that it was Jesus Christ, _who lives here (sta di casa qui)_, and when he comes out, it is in the shape of a wafer. But, "Eccelenza," said he, smiling and correcting himself, "non è Cristiano."[1]

[Footnote 1: The following anecdote related by Mr. Coleridge, in April, 1811, was preserved and communicated to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge:--"As I was descending from Mount AEtna with a very lively talkative guide, we passed through a village (I think called) Nicolozzi, when the host happened to be passing through the street. Every one was prostrate; my guide became so; and, not to be singular, I went down also. After resuming our journey, I observed in my guide an unusual seriousness and long silence, which, after many _hums_ and _hahs_, was interrupted by a low bow, and leave requested to ask a question. This was of course granted, and the ensuing dialogue took place. Guide. "Signor, are you then a Christian?" Coleridge. "I hope so." G. "What! are all Englishmen Christians?" C. "I hope and trust they are." G. "What! are you not Turks? Are you not damned eternally?" C. "I trust not, through Christ." G. "What! you believe in Christ then?" C. "Certainly." This answer produced another long silence. At length my guide again spoke, still doubting the grand point of my Christianity. G. "I'm thinking, Signor, what is the difference between you and us, that you are to be certainly damned?" C. "Nothing very material; nothing that can prevent our both going to heaven, I hope. We believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." G. (interrupting me) "Oh those damned priests! what liars they are! But (pausing) we can't do without them; we can't go to heaven without them. But tell me, Signor, what _are_ the differences?" C. "Why, for instance, we do not worship the Virgin." G. "And why not, Signor?" C. "Because, though holy and pure, we think her still a woman, and, therefore, do not pay her the honour due to God." G. "But do you not worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand of God?" C. "We do." G. "Then why not worship the Virgin, who sits on the left?" C. "I did not know she did. If you can show it me in the Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship her." "Oh," said my man, with uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingers, "sicuro, Signor! sicuro, Signor!""--ED.]

_July_ 30. 1831.

ASGILL.--THE FRENCH.

Asgill was an extraordinary man, and his pamphlet[1] is invaluable. He undertook to prove that man is literally immortal; or, rather, that any given living man might probably never die. He complains of the cowardly practice of dying. He was expelled from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy and atheism, as was pretended;--really I suspect because he was a staunch Hanoverian. I expected to find the ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen snarlings of an infidel; whereas I found the very soul of Swift--an intense half self-deceived humorism. I scarcely remember elsewhere such uncommon skill in logic, such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of common sense. Each of his paragraphs is in itself a whole, and yet a link between the preceding and following; so that the entire series forms one argument, and yet each is a diamond in itself.

[Footnote 1: "An argument proving, that, according to the covenant of eternal life, revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence, without passing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could not be thus translated, till he had passed through death." Asgill died in the year 1738, in the King's Bench prison, where he had been a prisoner for debt thirty years.--ED.]

* * * * *

Was there ever such a miserable scene as that of the exhibition of the Austrian standards in the French house of peers the other day?[1] Every other nation but the French would see that it was an exhibition of their own falsehood and cowardice. A man swears that the property intrusted to him is burnt, and then, when he is no longer afraid, produces it, and boasts of the atmosphere of "_honour_," through which the lie did not transpire.

Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder,--each by itself smutty and contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed.

[Footnote 1: When the allies were in Paris in 1815, all the Austrian standards were reclaimed. The answer was that they had been burnt by the soldiers at the Hôtel des Invalides. This was untrue. The Marquis de Semonville confessed with pride that he, knowing of the fraud, had concealed these standards, taken from Mack at Ulm in 1805, in a vault under the Luxemburg palace. "An inviolable asylum," said the Marquis in his speech to the peers, "formed in the vault of this hall has protected this treasure from every search. Vainly, during this long space of time, have the most authoritative researches endeavoured to penetrate the secret. It would have been culpable to reveal it, as long as we were liable to the demands of haughty foreigners. No one in this atmosphere of honour is capable of so great a weakness," &c.--ED.]

_August_ 1. 1831.

As there is much beast and some devil in man; so is there some angel and some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never destroyed.

* * * * *

I will defy any one to answer the arguments of a St. Simonist, except on the ground of Christianity--its precepts and its assurances.

_August_ 6. 1831.

THE GOOD AND THE TRUE.--ROMISH RELIGION.

There is the love of the good for the good's sake, and the love of the truth for the truth's sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good's sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman, love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet; without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of the truth,--the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is ultimately identical--is given only to those who love both sincerely and without any foreign ends.

* * * * *

Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action--that the end will sanction any means.

_August_ 8. 1831.

ENGLAND AND HOLLAND.

The conduct of this country to King William of Holland has been, in my judgment, base and unprincipled beyond any thing in our history since the times of Charles the Second. Certainly, Holland is one of the most important allies that England has; and we are doing our utmost to subject it, and Portugal, to French influence, or even dominion! Upon my word, the English people, at this moment, are like a man palsied in every part of his body but one, in which one part he is so morbidly sensitive that he cannot bear to have it so much as breathed upon, whilst you may pinch him with a hot forceps elsewhere without his taking any notice of it.

_August_ 8. 1831.

IRON.--GALVANISM.--HEAT.

Iron is the most ductile of all hard metals, and the hardest of all ductile metals. With the exception of nickel, in which it is dimly seen, iron is the only metal in which the magnetic power is visible. Indeed, it is almost impossible to purify nickel of iron.

* * * * *

Galvanism is the union of electricity and magnetism, and, by being continuous, it exhibits an image of life;--I say, an image only: it is life in death.

* * * * *

Heat is the mesothesis or indifference of light and matter.

_August_ 14. 1831.

NATIONAL COLONIAL CHARACTER, AND NAVAL DISCIPLINE.

The character of most nations in their colonial dependencies is in an inverse ratio of excellence to their character at home. The best people in the mother-country will generally be the worst in the colonies; the worst at home will be the best abroad. Or, perhaps, I may state it less offensively thus:--The colonists of a well governed-country will degenerate; those of an ill-governed country will improve. I am now considering the natural tendency of such colonists if left to themselves; of course, a direct act of the legislature of the mother-country will break in upon this. Where this tendency is exemplified, the cause is obvious. In countries well governed and happily conditioned, none, or very few, but those who are desperate through vice or folly, or who are mere trading adventurers, will be willing to leave their homes and settle in another hemisphere; and of those who do go, the best and worthiest are always striving to acquire the means of leaving the colony, and of returning to their native land. In ill-governed and ill-conditioned countries, on the contrary, the most respectable of the people are willing and anxious to emigrate for the chance of greater security and enlarged freedom; and if they succeed in obtaining these blessings in almost any degree, they have little inducement, on the average, to wish to abandon their second and better country. Hence, in the former case, the colonists consider themselves as mere strangers, sojourners, birds of passage, and shift to live from hand to mouth, with little regard to lasting improvement of the place of their temporary commerce; whilst, in the latter case, men feel attached to a community to which they are individually indebted for otherwise unattainable benefits, and for the most part learn to regard it as their abode, and to make themselves as happy and comfortable in it as possible. I believe that the internal condition and character of the English and French West India islands of the last century amply verified this distinction; the Dutch colonists most certainly did, and have always done.

Analogous to this, though not founded on precisely the same principle, is the fact that the severest naval discipline is always found in the ships of the freest nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of the most oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of the Americans is the sharpest; then that of the English;[1] then that of the French (I speak as it used to be); and on board a Spanish ship, there is no discipline at all.

At Genoa, the word "Liberty" is, or used to be, engraved on the chains of the galley-slaves, and the doors of the dungeons.

[Footnote 1: This expression needs explanation. It _looks_ as if Mr. Coleridge rated the degree of liberty enjoyed by the English, _after_ that of the citizens of the United States; but he meant no such thing. His meaning was, that the form of government of the latter was more democratic, and formally assigned more power to each individual. The Americans, as a nation, had no better friend in England than Coleridge; he contemplated their growth with interest, and prophesied highly of their destiny, whether under their present or other governments. But he well knew their besetting faults and their peculiar difficulties, and was most deliberately of opinion that the English had, for 130 years last past, possessed a measure of individual freedom and social dignity which had never been equalled, much less surpassed, in any other country ancient or modern. There is a passage in Mr. Coleridge's latest publication (Church and State}, which clearly expresses his opinion upon this subject: "It has been frequently and truly observed that in England, where the ground-plan, the skeleton, as it were, of the government is a monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the aristocracy (the assertions of its popular character finding a better support in the harangues and theories of popular men, than in state documents, and the records of clear history), afar greater degree of liberty is, and long has been, enjoyed, than ever existed in, the ostensibly freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths of ancient or modern times; greater, indeed, and with a more decisive predominance of the spirit of freedom, than the wisest and most philanthropic statesmen of antiquity, or than the great commonwealth's men,--the stars of that narrow interspace of blue sky between the black clouds of the first and second Charles's reigns--believed compatible, the one with the safety of the state, the other with the interests of morality. Yes! for little less than a century and a half, Englishmen have, collectively and individually, lived and acted with fewer restraints on their free-agency, than the citizens of any known republic, past or present." (p. 120.) Upon which he subjoins the following note: "It will be thought, perhaps, that the United States of North America should have been excepted. But the identity of stock, language, customs, manners, and laws scarcely allows us to consider this an exception, even though it were quite certain both that it is and that it will continue such. It was at all events a remark worth remembering, which I once heard from a traveller (a prejudiced one, I must admit), that where every man may take, liberties, there is little liberty for any man; or, that where every man takes liberties, no man can enjoy any." (p. 121.) See also a passage to the like effect in the _Friend_, vol. i. p. 129--ED.]

August 15. 1831.

ENGLAND.--HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.

I cannot contain my indignation at the conduct of our government towards Holland. They have undoubtedly forgotten the true and well-recognized policy of this country in regard to Portugal in permitting the war faction in France to take possession of the Tagus, and to bully the Portuguese upon so flimsy--indeed, false--a pretext[1] yet, in this instance, something may be said for them.

Miguel is such a wretch, that I acknowledge a sort of morality in leaving him to be cuffed and insulted; though, of course, this is a poor answer to a statesman who alleges the interest and policy of the country. But, as to the Dutch and King William: the first, as a nation, the most ancient ally, the _alter idem_ of England, the best deserving of the cause of freedom and religion and morality of any people in Europe; and the second, the very best sovereign now in Christendom, with, perhaps, the single exception of the excellent king of Sweden[2]--was ever any thing so mean and cowardly as the behaviour of England!

The Five Powers have, throughout this conference, been actuated exclusively by a selfish desire to preserve peace--I should rather say, to smother war --at the expense of a most valuable but inferior power. They have over and over again acknowledged the justice of the Dutch claims, and the absurdity of the Belgian pretences; but as the Belgians were also as impudent as they were iniquitous,--as they would not yield _their_ point, why then--that peace may be preserved--the Dutch must yield theirs! A foreign prince comes into Belgium, pending these negotiations, and takes an unqualified oath to maintain the Belgian demands:--what could King William or the Dutch do, if they ever thereafter meant to call themselves independent, but resist and resent this outrage to the uttermost? It was a crisis in which every consideration of state became inferior to the strong sense and duty of national honour. When, indeed, the French appear in the field, King William retires. "I now see," he may say, "that the powers of Europe are determined to abet the Belgians. The justice of such a proceeding I leave to their conscience and the decision of history. It is now no longer a question whether I am tamely to submit to rebels and a usurper; it is no longer a quarrel between Holland and Belgium: it is an alliance of all Europe against Holland,--in which case I yield. I have no desire to sacrifice my people."

[Footnote 1: Meaning, principally, the whipping, so richly deserved, inflicted on a Frenchman called Bonhomme, for committing a disgusting breach of common decency in the cathedral of Coimbra, during divine service in Passion Week.--ED.];

[Footnote 2: "Every thing that I have heard or read of this sovereign has contributed to the impression on my mind, that he is a good and a wise man, and worthy to be the king of a virtuous people, the purest specimen of the Gothic race."--_Church and State_, p. 125. n.--ED.]

* * * * *

When Leopold said that he was called to "_reign over_ four millions of noble Belgians," I thought the phrase would have been more germane to the matter, if he had said that he was called to "_rein in_ four million restive asses."

_August_ 20. 1831.

GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE.----HOBBISM.

O. P. Q. in the Morning Chronicle is a clever fellow. He is for the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number, and for the longest possible time! So am I; so are you, and every one of us, I will venture to say, round the tea-table. First, however, what does O. P. Q. mean by the word _happiness_? and, secondly, how does he propose to make other persons agree in _his_ definition of the term? Don't you see the ridiculous absurdity of setting up _that_ as a principle or motive of action, which is, in fact, a necessary and essential instinct of our very nature--an inborn and inextinguishable desire? How can creatures susceptible of pleasure and pain do otherwise than desire happiness? But, _what_ happiness? That is the question. The American savage, in scalping his fallen enemy, pursues _his_ happiness naturally and adequately. A Chickasaw, or Pawnee Bentham, or O. P. Q., would necessarily hope for the most frequent opportunities possible of scalping the greatest possible number of savages, for the longest possible time. There is no escaping this absurdity, unless you come back to a standard of reason and duty, imperative upon our merely pleasurable sensations. Oh! but, says O. P. Q., I am for the happiness of _others!_ Of others! Are you, indeed? Well, I happen to be one of those _others_, and, so far as I can judge from what you show me of your habits and views, I would rather be excused from your banquet of happiness. _Your_ mode of happiness would make _me_ miserable. To go about doing as much _good_ as possible to as many men as possible, is, indeed, an excellent object for a man to propose to himself; but then, in order that you may not sacrifice the real good and happiness of others to your particular views, which may be quite different from your neighbour's, you must do _that_ good to others which the reason, common to all, pronounces to be good for all. In this sense your fine maxim is so very true as to be a mere truism.

* * * * *

So you object, with old Hobbes, that I do good actions _for_ the pleasure of a good conscience; and so, after all, I am only a refined sensualist! Heaven bless you, and mend your logic! Don't you see that if conscience, which is in its nature a consequence, were thus anticipated and made an antecedent--a party instead of a judge--it would dishonour your draft upon it--it would not pay on demand? Don't you see that, in truth, the very fact of acting with this motive properly and logically destroys all claim upon conscience to give you any pleasure at all?

August 22. 1831.

THE TWO MODES OF POLITICAL ACTION.

There are many able and patriotic members in the House of Commons--Sir Robert Inglis, Sir Robert Peel, and some others. But I grieve that they never have the courage or the wisdom--I know not in which the failure is-- to take their stand upon duty, and to appeal to all men as men,--to the Good and the True, which exist for _all_, and of which _all_ have an apprehension. They always set to work--especially, his great eminence considered, Sir Robert Peel--by addressing themselves to individual interests; the measure will be injurious to the linen-drapers, or to the bricklayers; or this clause will bear hard on bobbin-net or poplins, and so forth. Whereas their adversaries--the demagogues--always work on the opposite principle: they always appeal to men as men; and, as you know, the most terrible convulsions in society have been wrought by such phrases as _Rights of Man_, _Sovereignty of the People_, _&c_., which no one understands, which apply to no one in particular, but to all in general.[1]

The devil works precisely in the same way. He is a very clever fellow; I have no acquaintance with him, but I respect his evident talents. Consistent truth and goodness will assuredly in the end overcome every thing; but inconsistent good can never be a match for consistent evil. Alas! I look in vain for some wise and vigorous man to sound the word Duty in the ears of this generation.

[Footnote 1: "It is with nations as with individuals. In tranquil moods and peaceable times we are quite _practical_; facts only, and cool common sense, are then in fashion. But let the winds of passion swell, and straightway men begin to generalize, to connect by remotest analogies, to express the most universal positions of reason in the most glowing figures of fancy; in short, to feel particular truths and mere facts as poor, cold, narrow, and incommensurate with their feelings."--_Statesman's Manual_, p. 18.

"It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a fact that none but the unread in history will deny, that, in periods of popular tumult and innovation, the more abstract a notion is, the more readily has it been found to combine, the closer has appeared its affinity, with the feelings of a people, and with all their immediate impulses to action. At the commencement of the French Revolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was employed in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the physiocratic politicians and economists. The public roads were crowded with armed enthusiasts, disputing on the inalienable sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and the universal constitution, which, as rising out of the nature and rights of man as man, all nations alike were under the obligation of adopting."-- _Statesman's Manual_.]

_August_ 24. 1831.

TRUTHS AND MAXIMS.

The English public is not yet ripe to comprehend the essential difference between the reason and the understanding--between a principle and a maxim-- an eternal truth and a mere conclusion generalized from a great number of facts. A man, having seen a million moss roses all red, concludes from his own experience and that of others that all moss roses are red. That is a maxim with him--the _greatest_ amount of his knowledge upon the subject. But it is only true until some gardener has produced a white moss rose,-- after which the maxim is good for nothing. Again, suppose Adam watching the sun sinking under the western horizon for the first time; he is seized with gloom and terror, relieved by scarce a ray of hope that he shall ever see the glorious light again. The next evening, when it declines, his hopes are stronger, but still mixed with fear; and even at the end of a thousand years, all that a man can feel is a hope and an expectation so strong as to preclude anxiety. Now compare this in its highest degree with the assurance which you have that the two sides of any triangle are together greater than the third. This, demonstrated of one triangle, is seen to be eternally true of all imaginable triangles. This is a truth perceived at once by the intuitive reason, independently of experience. It is and must ever be so, multiply and vary the shapes and sizes of triangles as you may.

* * * * *

It used to be said that four and five _make_ nine. Locke says, that four and five _are_ nine. Now I say, that four and five _are not_ nine, but that they will _make_ nine. When I see four objects which will form a square, and five which will form a pentagon, I see that they are two different things; when combined, they will form a third different figure, which we call nine. When separate they _are not_ it, but will _make_ it.

_September_ 11. 1831.

DRAYTON AND DANIEL.

Drayton is a sweet poet, and Selden's notes to the early part of the Polyolbion are well worth your perusal. Daniel is a superior man; his diction is pre-eminently pure,--of that quality which I believe has always existed somewhere in society. It is just such English, without any alteration, as Wordsworth or Sir George Beaumont might have spoken or written in the present day.

Yet there are instances of sublimity in Drayton. When deploring the cutting down of some of our old forests, he says, in language which reminds the reader of Lear, written subsequently, and also of several passages in Mr. Wordsworth's poems:--

----"our trees so hack'd above the ground,
That where their lofty tops the neighbouring countries
crown'd,
Their trunks (like aged folks) now bare and naked stand,
_As for revenge to Heaven each held a wither'd hand._" [1]

That is very fine.

[Footnote 1: Polyol VII.

"He (Drayton) was a poet by nature, and carefully improved his talent; one who sedulously laboured to deserve the approbation of such as were capable of appreciating and cared nothing for the censures which others might pass upon him." 'Like me that list,' he says,

----'my honest rhymes
Nor care for critics, nor regard the times.'

And though he is not a poet _virum volitarc per ora_, nor one of those whose better fortune it is to live in the hearts of their devoted admirers,--yet what he deemed his greatest work will be preserved by its subject; some of his minor poems have merit enough in their execution to ensure their preservation; and no one who studies poetry as an art will think his time misspent in perusing the whole, if he have any real love for the art he is pursuing. The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a feeling of respect and gratitude for those elder poets, who by their labours have prepared the way for him, is not likely to produce any thing himself that will be held in remembrance by posterity."-_The Doctor_, &c. c. 36. P.I.

I heartily trust that the author or authors, as the case may be, of this singularly thoughtful and diverting book will in due time continue it. Let some people say what they please, there has not been the fellow of it published for many a long day.--ED.]

_September_ 12. 1831.

MR. COLERIDGE'S SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY.

My system, if I may venture to give it so fine a name, is the only attempt, I know, ever made to reduce all knowledges into harmony. It opposes no other system, but shows what was true in each; and how that which was true in the particular, in each of them became error, _because_ it was only half the truth. I have endeavoured to unite the insulated fragments of truth, and therewith to frame a perfect mirror. I show to each system that I fully understand and rightfully appreciate what that system means; but then I lift up that system to a higher point of view, from which I enable it to see its former position, where it was, indeed, but under another light and with different relations;--so that the fragment of truth is not only acknowledged, but explained. Thus the old astronomers discovered and maintained much that was true; but, because they were placed on a false ground, and looked from a wrong point of view, they never did, they never could, discover the truth--that is, the whole truth. As soon as they left the earth, their false centre, and took their stand in the sun, immediately they saw the whole system in its true light, and their former station remaining, but remaining as a part of the prospect. I wish, in short, to connect by a moral _copula_ natural history with political history; or, in other words, to make history scientific, and science historical--to take from history its accidentality, and from science its fatalism.

* * * * *

I never from a boy could, under any circumstances, feel the slightest dread of death as such. In all my illnesses I have ever had the most intense desire to be released from this life, unchecked by any but one wish, namely, to be able to finish my work on Philosophy. Not that I have any author's vanity on the subject: God knows that I should be absolutely glad, if I could hear that the thing had already been done before me.

* * * * *

Illness never in the smallest degree affects my intellectual powers. I can _think_ with all my ordinary vigour in the midst of pain; but I am beset with the most wretched and unmanning reluctance and shrinking from action. I could not upon such occasions take the pen in hand to write down my thoughts for all the wide world.

_October 26._ 1831.

KEENNESS AND SUBTLETY.

Few men of genius are keen; but almost every man of genius is subtle. If you ask me the difference between keenness and subtlety, I answer that it is the difference between a point and an edge. To split a hair is no proof of subtlety; for subtlety acts in distinguishing differences--in showing that two things apparently one are in fact two; whereas, to split a hair is to cause division, and not to ascertain difference.

_October_ 27. 1831.

DUTIES AND NEEDS OF AN ADVOCATE.

There is undoubtedly a limit to the exertions of an advocate for his client. He has a right, it is his bounden duty, to do every thing which his client might honestly do, and to do it with all the effect which any exercise of skill, talent, or knowledge of his own may be able to produce. But the advocate has no right, nor is it his duty, to do that for his client which his client _in foro conscientiae_ has no right to do for himself; as, for a gross example, to put in evidence a forged deed or will, knowing it to be so forged. As to mere confounding of witnesses by skilful cross-examination, I own I am not disposed to be very strict. The whole thing is perfectly well understood on all hands, and it is little more in general than a sort of cudgel-playing between the counsel and the witness, in which, I speak with submission to you, I think I have seen the witness have the best of it as often as his assailant. It is of the utmost importance in the administration of justice that knowledge and intellectual power should be as far as possible equalized between the crown and the prisoner, or plaintiff and defendant. Hence especially arises the necessity for an order of advocates,--men whose duty it ought to be to know what the law allows and disallows; but whose interests should be wholly indifferent as to the persons or characters of their clients. If a certain latitude in examining witnesses is, as experience seems to have shown, a necessary mean towards the evisceration of the truth of matters of fact, I have no doubt, as a moralist, in saying, that such latitude within the bounds, now existing is justifiable. We must be content with a certain quantum in this life, especially in matters of public cognizance; the necessities of society demand it; we must not be righteous overmuch, or wise overmuch; and, as an old father says, in what vein may there not be a plethora, when the Scripture tells us that there may under circumstances be too much of virtue and of wisdom?

Still I think that, upon the whole, the advocate is placed in a position unfavourable to his moral being, and, indeed, to his intellect also, in its higher powers. Therefore I would recommend an advocate to devote a part of his leisure time to some study of the metaphysics of the mind, or metaphysics of theology; something, I mean, which shall call forth all his powers, and centre his wishes in the investigation of truth alone, without reference to a side to be supported. No studies give such a power of distinguishing as metaphysical, and in their natural and unperverted tendency they are ennobling and exalting. Some such studies are wanted to counteract the operation of legal studies and practice, which sharpen, indeed, but, like a grinding-stone, narrow whilst they sharpen.

_November_ 19. 1831.

ABOLITION OF THE FRENCH HEREDITARY PEERAGE.

I cannot say what the French peers _will_ do; but I can tell you what they _ought_ to do. "So far," they might say, "as our feelings and interests, as individuals, are concerned in this matter--if it really be the prevailing wish of our fellow-countrymen to destroy the hereditary peerage--we shall, without regret, retire into the ranks of private citizens: but we are bound by the provisions of the existing constitution to consider ourselves collectively as essential to the well-being of France: we have been placed here to defend what France, a short time ago at least, thought a vital part of its government; and, if we did not defend it, what answer could we make hereafter to France itself, if she should come to see, what we think to be an error, in the light in which we view it? We should be justly branded as traitors and cowards, who had deserted the post which we were specially appointed to maintain. As a House of Peers, therefore,--as one substantive branch of the legislature, we can never, in honour or in conscience, consent to a measure of the impolicy and dangerous consequences of which we are convinced.

"If, therefore, this measure is demanded by the country, let the king and the deputies form themselves into a constituent assembly; and then, assuming to act in the name of the total nation, let them decree the abolition. In that case we yield to a just, perhaps, but revolutionary, act, in which we do not participate, and against which we are, upon the supposition, quite powerless. If the deputies, however, consider themselves so completely in the character of delegates as to be at present absolutely pledged to vote without freedom of deliberation, let a concise, but perspicuous, summary of the ablest arguments that can be adduced on either side be drawn up, and printed, and circulated throughout the country; and then, after two months, let the deputies demand fresh instructions upon this point. One thing, as men of honour, we declare beforehand--that, come what will, none of us who are now peers will ever accept a peerage created _de novo_ for life."

_November_ 20. 1831.

CONDUCT OF MINISTERS ON THE REFORM BILL.--THE MULTITUDE.

The present ministers have, in my judgment, been guilty of two things preeminently wicked, _sensu politico_, in their conduct upon this Reform Bill. First, they have endeavoured to carry a fundamental change in the material and mode of action of the government of the country by so exciting the passions, and playing upon the necessary ignorance of the numerical majority of the nation, that all freedom and utility of discussion, by competent heads, in the proper place, should be precluded. In doing this they have used, or sanctioned the use of, arguments which may he applied with equal or even greater force to the carrying of any measure whatever, no matter how atrocious in its character or destructive in its consequences. They have appealed directly to the argument of the greater number of voices, no matter whether the utterers were drunk or sober, competent or not competent; and they have done the utmost in their power to rase out the sacred principle in politics of a representation of interests, and to introduce the mad and barbarizing scheme of a delegation of individuals. And they have done all this without one word of thankfulness to God for the manifold blessings of which the constitution as settled at the Revolution, imperfect as it may be, has been the source or vehicle or condition to this great nation,--without one honest statement of the manner in which the anomalies in the practice grew up, or any manly declaration of the inevitable necessities of government which those anomalies have met. With no humility, nor fear, nor reverence, like Ham the accursed, they have beckoned, with grinning faces, to a vulgar mob, to come and insult over the nakedness of a parent; when it had become them, if one spark of filial patriotism had burnt within their breasts, to have marched with silent steps and averted faces to lay their robes upon his destitution!

Secondly, they have made the _king_ the prime mover in all this political wickedness: they have made the _king_ tell his people that they were deprived of their rights, and, by direct and necessary implication, that they and their ancestors for a century past had been slaves: they have made the king vilify the memory of his own brother and father. Rights! There are no rights whatever without corresponding duties. Look at the history of the growth of our constitution, and you will see that our ancestors never upon any occasion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their privileges, an abstract right inherent in themselves; you will nowhere in our parliamentary records find the miserable sophism of the Rights of Man. No! they were too wise for that. They took good care to refer their claims to custom and prescription, and boldly--sometimes very impudently--asserted them upon traditionary and constitutional grounds. The Bill is bad enough, God knows; but the arguments of its advocates, and the manner of their advocacy, are a thousand times worse than the Bill itself; and you will live to think so.

I am far, very far, from wishing to indulge in any vulgar abuse of the vulgar. I believe that the feeling of the multitude will, in most cases, be in favour of something good; but this it is which I perceive, that they are always under the domination of some one feeling or view;--whereas truth, and, above all, practical wisdom, must be the result of a wide comprehension of the more and the less, the balance and the counter- balance.

_December_ 3. 1831.

RELIGION.

A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy;-- nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are the symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded, for then it would be mere History.

_December_ 17. 1831.

UNION WITH IRELAND.--IRISH CHURCH.

I am quite sure that no dangers are to be feared by England from the disannexing and independence of Ireland at all comparable with the evils which have been, and will yet be, caused to England by the Union. We have never received one particle of advantage from our association with Ireland, whilst we have in many most vital particulars violated the principles of the British constitution solely for the purpose of conciliating the Irish agitators, and of endeavouring--a vain endeavour--to find room for them under the same government. Mr. Pitt has received great credit for effecting the Union; but I believe it will sooner or later be discovered that the manner in which, and the terms upon which, he effected it, made it the most fatal blow that ever was levelled against the peace and prosperity of England. From it came the Catholic Bill. From the Catholic Bill has come this Reform Bill! And what next?

* * * * *

The case of the Irish Church is certainly anomalous, and full of practical difficulties. On the one hand, it is the only church which the constitution can admit; on the other, such are the circumstances, it is a church that cannot act as a church towards five sixths of the persons nominally and legally within its care.

_December_ 18. 1831.

A STATE.--PERSONS AND THINGS.--HISTORY.

The difference between an inorganic and an organic body lies in this:--In the first--a sheaf of corn--the whole is nothing more than a collection of the individual parts or phenomena. In the second--a man--the whole is the effect of, or results from, the parts; it--the whole--is every thing, and the parts are nothing.

A State is an idea intermediate between the two--the whole being a result from, and not a mere total of, the parts, and yet not so merging the constituent parts in the result, but that the individual exists integrally within it. Extremes, especially in politics, meet. In Athens each individual Athenian was of no value; but taken altogether, as Demus, they were every thing in such a sense that no individual citizen was any thing. In Turkey there is the sign of unity put for unity. The Sultan seems himself the State; but it is an illusion: there is in fact in Turkey no State at all: the whole consists of nothing but a vast collection of neighbourhoods.

* * * * *

When the government and the aristocracy of this country had subordinated _persons to things_, and treated the one like the other,--the poor, with some reason, and almost in self-defence, learned to set up _rights_ above _duties_. The code of a Christian society is, _Debeo, et tu debes_--of Heathens or Barbarians, _Teneo, teneto et tu, si potes_.[1]

[Footnote 1: "And this, again, is evolved out of the yet higher idea of _person_ in contradistinction from _thing_, all social law and justice being grounded on the principle that a person can never, but by his own fault, become a thing, or, without grievous wrong, be treated as such; and the distinction consisting in this, that a thing may be used altogether, and merely as the _means_ to an end; but the person must always be included in the _end_; his interest must always form a part of the object,--a _mean_ to which he, by consent, that is, by his own act, makes himself. We plant a tree, and we fell it; we breed the sheep, and we shear, or we kill it,--in both cases wholly as means to _our_ ends: for trees and animals are things. The woodcutter and the hind are likewise employed as _means_; but on agreement, and that too an agreement of reciprocal advantage, which includes them as well as their employer in the _end_; for they are persons. And the government under which the contrary takes place is not worthy to be called a state, if, as in the kingdom of Dahomey, it be unprogressive; or only by anticipation, where, as in Russia, it is in advance to a better and more _manworthy_ order of things."--_Church and State_, p. 10.]

* * * * *

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!

_December_ 27. 1831.

BEAUTY.--GENIUS.

The old definition of beauty in the Roman school of painting was, _il più nell' uno_--multitude in unity; and there is no doubt that such is the principle of beauty. And as one of the most characteristic and infallible criteria of the different ranks of men's intellects, observe the instinctive habit which all superior minds have of endeavouring to bring, and of never resting till they have brought, into unity the scattered facts which occur in conversation, or in the statements of men of business. To attempt to argue any great question upon facts only, is absurd; you cannot state any fact before a mixed audience, which an opponent as clever as yourself cannot with ease twist towards another bearing, or at least meet by a contrary fact, as it is called. I wonder why facts were ever called stubborn things: I am sure they have been found pliable enough lately in the House of Commons and elsewhere. Facts, you know, are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premisses, but in the nature and parts of premisses. The truth depends on, and is only arrived at, by a legitimate deduction from _all_ the facts which are truly material.

* * * * *

_December_ 28. 1831.

CHURCH.--STATE.--DISSENTERS.

Even to a church,--the only pure democracy, because in it persons are alone considered, and one person _à priori_ is equal to another person,--even to a church, discipline is an essential condition. But a state regards classes, and classes as they represent classified property; and to introduce a system of representation which must inevitably render all discipline impossible, what is it but madness-the madness of ignorant vanity, and reckless obstinacy?

* * * * *

I have known, and still know, many Dissenters, who profess to have a zeal for Christianity; and I dare say they have. But I have known very few Dissenters indeed, whose hatred to the Church of England was not a much more active principle of action with them than their love for Christianity. The Wesleyans, in uncorrupted parts of the country, are nearly the only exceptions. There never was an age since the days of the apostles, in which the catholic spirit of religion was so dead, and put aside for love of sects and parties, as at present.

* * * * *

_January_ 1. 1832.

GRACEFULNESS OF CHILDREN.--DOGS.

How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance!

* * * * *

There seems a sort of sympathy between the more generous dogs and little children. I believe an instance of a little child being attacked by a large dog is very rare indeed.

_January_ 28. 1832.

IDEAL TORY AND WHIG.