Chapter IX: Epilogue: To the Rash Conjuror (4)

What was of use to know,
What best to say could say, to do had done.
His actions to his words agreed, his words
To his large heart gave utterance due, his heart
Contain'd of good, wise, fair, the perfect shape;

and he left the imperishable total, as a bequest to the ages coming, in the 'Paradise Lost'. [2]

Difficult as I shall find it to turn over these leaves without catching some passage, which would tempt me to stop, I propose to consider, 1st, the general plan and arrangement of the work; 2ndly, the subject with its difficulties and advantages; 3rdly, the poet's object, the spirit in the letter, the [Greek (transliterated): enthumion en muthps], the true school-divinity; and lastly, the characteristic excellencies of the poem, in what they consist, and by what means they were produced.

1. As to the plan and ordonnance of the Poem.

Compare it with the 'Iliad', many of the books of which might change places without any injury to the thread of the story. Indeed, I doubt the original existence of the 'Iliad' as one poem; it seems more probable that it was put together about the time of the Pisistratidae. The 'Iliad'--and, more or less, all epic poems, the subjects of which are taken from history--have no rounded conclusion; they remain, after all, but single chapters from the volume of history, although they are ornamental chapters. Consider the exquisite simplicity of the Paradise Lost. It and it alone really possesses a beginning, a middle, and an end; it has the totality of the poem as distinguished from the 'ab ovo' birth and parentage, or straight line, of history.

2. As to the subject.

In Homer, the supposed importance of the subject, as the first effort of confederated Greece, is an after-thought of the critics; and the interest, such as it is, derived from the events themselves, as distinguished from the manner of representing them, is very languid to all but Greeks. It is a Greek poem. The superiority of the 'Paradise Lost' is obvious in this respect, that the interest transcends the limits of a nation. But we do not generally dwell on this excellence of the 'Paradise Lost', because it seems attributable to Christianity itself;--yet in fact the interest is wider than Christendom, and comprehends the Jewish and Mohammedan worlds;--nay, still further, inasmuch as it represents the origin of evil, and the combat of evil and good, it contains matter of deep interest to all mankind, as forming the basis of all religion, and the true occasion of all philosophy whatsoever.

The FALL of Man is the subject; Satan is the cause; man's blissful state the immediate object of his enmity and attack; man is warned by an angel who gives him an account of all that was requisite to be known, to make the warning at once intelligible and awful; then the temptation ensues, and the Fall; then the immediate sensible consequence; then the consolation, wherein an angel presents a vision of the history of men with the ultimate triumph of the Redeemer. Nothing is touched in this vision but what is of general interest in religion; any thing else would have been improper.

The inferiority of Klopstock's 'Messiah' is inexpressible. I admit the prerogative of poetic feeling, and poetic faith; but I cannot suspend the judgment even for a moment. A poem may in one sense be a dream, but it must be a waking dream. In Milton you have a religious faith combined with the moral nature; it is an efflux; you go along with it. In Klopstock there is a wilfulness; he makes things so and so. The feigned speeches and events in the 'Messiah' shock us like falsehoods; but nothing of that sort is felt in the 'Paradise Lost', in which no particulars, at least very few indeed, are touched which can come into collision or juxta-position with recorded matter.

But notwithstanding the advantages in Milton's subject, there were concomitant insuperable difficulties, and Milton has exhibited marvellous skill in keeping most of them out of sight. High poetry is the translation of reality into the ideal under the predicament of succession of time only. The poet is an historian, upon condition of moral power being the only force in the universe. The very grandeur of his subject ministered a difficulty to Milton. The statement of a being of high intellect, warring against the supreme Being, seems to contradict the idea of a supreme Being. Milton precludes our feeling this, as much as possible, by keeping the peculiar attributes of divinity less in sight, making them to a certain extent allegorical only. Again, poetry implies the language of excitement; yet how to reconcile such language with God? Hence Milton confines the poetic passion in God's speeches to the language of scripture; and once only allows the 'passio vera', or 'quasi-humana' to appear, in the passage, where the Father contemplates his own likeness in the Son before the battle:--

Go then, thou Mightiest, in thy Father's might,
Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels
That shake Heaven's basis, bring forth all my war,
My bow and thunder; my almighty arms
Gird on, and sword upon thy puissant thigh;
Pursue these sons of darkness, drive them out
From all Heaven's bounds into the utter deep:
There let them learn, as likes them, to despise
God and Messiah his anointed king.

(B. VI. v. 710.)

3. As to Milton's object:--

It was to justify the ways of God to man! The controversial spirit observable in many parts of the poem, especially in God's speeches, is immediately attributable to the great controversy of that age, the origination of evil. The Arminians considered it a mere calamity. The Calvinists took away all human will. Milton asserted the will, but declared for the enslavement of the will out of an act of the will itself. There are three powers in us, which distinguish us from the beasts that perish;--1, reason; 2, the power of viewing universal truth; and 3, the power of contracting universal truth into particulars. Religion is the will in the reason, and love in the will.

The character of Satan is pride and sensual indulgence, finding in self the sole motive of action. It is the character so often seen 'in little' on the political stage. It exhibits all the restlessness, temerity, and cunning which have marked the mighty hunters of mankind from Nimrod to Napoleon. The common fascination of men is, that these great men, as they are called, must act from some great motive. Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. To place this lust of self in opposition to denial of self or duty, and to show what exertions it would make, and what pains endure to accomplish its end, is Milton's particular object in the character of Satan. But around this character he has thrown a singularity of daring, a grandeur of sufferance, and a ruined splendour, which constitute the very height of poetic sublimity.

Lastly, as to the execution:--

The language and versification of the 'Paradise Lost' are peculiar in being so much more necessarily correspondent to each than those in any other poem or poet. The connexion of the sentences and the position of the words are exquisitely artificial; but the position is rather according to the logic of passion or universal logic, than to the logic of grammar. Milton attempted to make the English language obey the logic of passion as perfectly as the Greek and Latin. Hence the occasional harshness in the construction.

Sublimity is the pre-eminent characteristic of the Paradise Lost. It is not an arithmetical sublime like Klopstock's, whose rule always is to treat what we might think large as contemptibly small. Klopstock mistakes bigness for greatness. There is a greatness arising from images of effort and daring, and also from those of moral endurance; in Milton both are united. The fallen angels are human passions, invested with a dramatic reality.

The apostrophe to light at the commencement of the third book is particularly beautiful as an intermediate link between Hell and Heaven; and observe, how the second and third book support the subjective character of the poem. In all modern poetry in Christendom there is an under consciousness of a sinful nature, a fleeting away of external things, the mind or subject greater than the object, the reflective character predominant. In the 'Paradise Lost' the sublimest parts are the revelations of Milton's own mind, producing itself and evolving its own greatness; and this is so truly so, that when that which is merely entertaining for its objective beauty is introduced, it at first seems a discord.

In the description of Paradise itself you have Milton's sunny side as a man; here his descriptive powers are exercised to the utmost, and he draws deep upon his Italian resources. In the description of Eve, and throughout this part of the poem, the poet is predominant over the theologian. Dress is the symbol of the Fall, but the mark of intellect; and the metaphysics of dress are, the hiding what is not symbolic and displaying by discrimination what is. The love of Adam and Eve in Paradise is of the highest merit--not phantomatic, and yet removed from every thing degrading. It is the sentiment of one rational being towards another made tender by a specific difference in that which is essentially the same in both; it is a union of opposites, a giving and receiving mutually of the permanent in either, a completion of each in the other.

Milton is not a picturesque, but a musical, poet; although he has this merit that the object chosen by him for any particular foreground always remains prominent to the end, enriched, but not incumbered, by the opulence of descriptive details furnished by an exhaustless imagination. I wish the Paradise Lost were more carefully read and studied than I can see any ground for believing it is, especially those parts which, from the habit of always looking for a story in poetry, are scarcely read at all,--as for example, Adam's vision of future events in the 11th and 12th books. No one can rise from the perusal of this immortal poem without a deep sense of the grandeur and the purity of Milton's soul, or without feeling how susceptible of domestic enjoyments he really was, notwithstanding the discomforts which actually resulted from an apparently unhappy choice in marriage. He was, as every truly great poet has ever been, a good man; but finding it impossible to realize his own aspirations, either in religion, or politics, or society, he gave up his heart to the living spirit and light within him, and avenged himself on the world by enriching it with this record of his own transcendant ideal.

[Footnote 1: Table Talk, vol. ii. p. 264.]

[Footnote 2: Here Mr. C. notes: "Not perhaps here, but towards, or as, the conclusion, to chastise the fashionable notion that poetry is a relaxation or amusement, one of the superfluous toys and luxuries of the intellect! To contrast the permanence of poems with the transiency and fleeting moral effects of empires, and what are called, great events." Ed.]

NOTES ON MILTON. 1807. [1]

(Hayley quotes the following passage:--)

"Time serves not now, and, perhaps, I might seem too profuse to give
any certain account of what the mind at home, in the spacious circuits
of her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself, though of highest
hope and hardest attempting; whether that epic form, whereof the two
poems of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a
diffuse, and the Book of Job' a brief, model," p. 69.

These latter words deserve particular notice. I do not doubt that Milton intended his 'Paradise Lost' as an epic of the first class, and that the poetic dialogue of the 'Book of Job' was his model for the general scheme of his 'Paradise Regained'. Readers would not be disappointed in this latter poem, if they proceeded to a perusal of it with a proper preconception of the kind of interest intended to be excited in that admirable work. In its kind it is the most perfect poem extant, though its kind may be inferior in interest--being in its essence didactic--to that other sort, in which instruction is conveyed more effectively, because less directly, in connection with stronger and more pleasurable emotions, and thereby in a closer affinity with action. But might we not as rationally object to an accomplished woman's conversing, however agreeably, because it has happened that we have received a keener pleasure from her singing to the harp? 'Si genus sit probo et sapienti viro hand indignum, et si poema sit in suo genere perfectum, satis est. Quod si hoc auctor idem altioribus numeris et carmini diviniori ipsum per se divinum superaddiderit, mehercule satis est, et plusquam satis'. [2] I cannot, however, but wish that the answer of Jesus to Satan in the 4th book, (v. 285.)--

Think not but that I know these things;
Or think I know them not,
Not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought, &c.

had breathed the spirit of Hayley's noble quotation rather than the narrow bigotry of Gregory the Great. The passage is, indeed, excellent, and is partially true; but partial truth is the worst mode of conveying falsehood.

Hayley, p. 75. "The sincerest friends of Milton may here agree with
Johnson, who speaks of 'his controversial merriment as
disgusting'."

The man who reads a work meant for immediate effect on one age with the notions and feelings of another, may be a refined gentleman, but must be a sorry critic. He who possesses imagination enough to live with his forefathers, and, leaving comparative reflection for an after moment, to give himself up during the first perusal to the feelings of a contemporary, if not a partizan, will, I dare aver, rarely find any part of Milton's prose works disgusting.

(Hayley, p. 104. Hayley is speaking of the passage in Milton's Answer to Icon Basilice, in which he accuses Charles of taking his Prayer in captivity from Pamela's prayer in the 3rd book of Sidney's Arcadia. The passage begins,--

"But this king, not content with that which, although in a thing holy,
is no holy theft, to attribute to his own making other men's whole
prayers, &c." Symmons' ed. 1806, p. 407.)

Assuredly, I regret that Milton should have written this passage; and yet the adoption of a prayer from a romance on such an occasion does not evince a delicate or deeply sincere mind. We are the creatures of association. There are some excellent moral and even serious lines in Hudibras; but what if a clergyman should adorn his sermon with a quotation from that poem! Would the abstract propriety of the verses leave him "honourably acquitted?" The Christian baptism of a line in Virgil is so far from being a parallel, that it is ridiculously inappropriate,--an absurdity as glaring as that of the bigotted Puritans, who objected to some of the noblest and most scriptural prayers ever dictated by wisdom and piety, simply because the Roman Catholics had used them.

(Hayley, p. 107.) "The ambition of Milton," &c.

I do not approve the so frequent use of this word relatively to Milton. Indeed the fondness for ingrafting a good sense on the word "ambition," is not a Christian impulse in general.

(Hayley, p. 110.) "Milton himself seems to have thought it allowable in
literary contention to vilify, &c. the character of an opponent; but
surely this doctrine is unworthy," &c.

If ever it were allowable, in this ease it was especially so. But these general observations, without meditation on the particular times and the genius of the times, are most often as unjust as they are always superficial.

(Hayley, p. 133. Hayley is speaking of Milton's panegyric on Cromwell's government:-)

Besides, however Milton might and did regret the immediate necessity,
yet what alternative was there? Was it not better that Cromwell should
usurp power, to protect religious freedom at least, than that the
Presbyterians should usurp it to introduce a religious
persecution,--extending the notion of spiritual concerns so far as to
leave no freedom even to a man's bedchamber?

(Hayley, p. 250. Hayley's conjectures on the origin of the 'Paradise Lost':--)

If Milton borrowed a hint from any writer, it was more probably from
Strada's Prolusions, in which the Fall of the Angels is pointed out as
the noblest subject for a Christian poet.[1] The more dissimilar the
detailed images are, the more likely it is that a great genius should
catch the general idea.

(Hayl. p. 294. Extracts from the 'Adamo' of Andreini:)

"Lucifero. Che dal mio centre oscuro
Mi chiama a rimirar cotanta luce?"

"Who from my dark abyss
Calls me to gaze on this 'excess of light?'"

The words in italics (single quotation marks: text Ed.) are an unfair translation. They may suggest that Milton really had read and did imitate this drama. The original is 'in so great light.' Indeed the whole version is affectedly and inaccurately Miltonic.

(p Ib. v. 11.)
Che di fango opre festi--
Forming thy works of 'dust' (no, dirt.--)

(Ib. v. 17.)
Tessa pur stella a stella
V'aggiungo e luna, e sole.--

Let him unite above Star upon star, moon, sun.
Let him weave star to star, Then join both moon and sun!

(Ib. v. 21.)
Ch'al fin con biasmo e scorno
Vana l'opra sara, vano il sudore!

Since in the end division
Shall prove his works and all his efforts vain.

Since finally with censure and disdain
Vain shall the work be, and his toil be vain!

1796. [3]

The reader of Milton must be always on his duty: he is surrounded with sense; it rises in every line; every word is to the purpose. There are no lazy intervals; all has been considered, and demands and merits observation. If this be called obscurity, let it be remembered that it is such an obscurity as is a compliment to the reader; not that vicious obscurity, which proceeds from a muddled head.

[Footnote 1: These notes were written by Mr. Coleridge in a copy of Hayley's Life of Milton, (4to. 1796), belonging to Mr. Poole. By him they were communicated, and this seems the fittest place for their publication. Ed. ]

[Footnote 2: The reference seems generally to be to the 5th Prolusion of
the 1st Book.
'Hic arcus ac tela, quibus olim in magno illo Superum tumultu
princeps armorum Michael confixit auctorem proditionis; hic fulmina
humanae mentis terror. In nubibus armatas bello legiones instruam,
atque inde pro re nata auxiliares ad terram copias evocabo. Hic mihi
Caelites, quos esse ferunt elementorum tutelares, prima ilia corpora
miscebunt'.
(sect. 4.) Ed. ]

[Footnote 3: From a common-place book of Mr. C.'s, communicated by Mr. J. M. Gutch. Ed.]

LECTURE XI. [1]

ASIATIC AND GREEK MYTHOLOGIES--ROBINSON CRUSOE--USE OF WORKS OF IMAGINATION IN EDUCATION.

A confounding of God with Nature, and an incapacity of finding unity in the manifold and infinity in the individual,--these are the origin of polytheism. The most perfect instance of this kind of theism is that of early Greece; other nations seem to have either transcended, or come short of, the old Hellenic standard,--a mythology in itself fundamentally allegorical, and typical of the powers and functions of nature, but subsequently mixed up with a deification of great men and hero-worship,--so that finally the original idea became inextricably combined with the form and attributes of some legendary individual. In Asia, probably from the greater unity of the government and the still surviving influence of patriarchal tradition, the idea of the unity of God, in a distorted reflection of the Mosaic scheme, was much more generally preserved; and accordingly all other super or ultra-human beings could only be represented as ministers of, or rebels against, his will. The Asiatic genii and fairies are, therefore, always endowed with moral qualities, and distinguishable as malignant or benevolent to man. It is this uniform attribution of fixed moral qualities to the supernatural agents of eastern mythology that particularly separates them from the divinities of old Greece.

Yet it is not altogether improbable that in the Samothracian or Cabeiric mysteries the link between the Asiatic and Greek popular schemes of mythology lay concealed. Of these mysteries there are conflicting accounts, and, perhaps, there were variations of doctrine in the lapse of ages and intercourse with other systems. But, upon a review of all that is left to us on this subject in the writings of the ancients, we may, I think, make out thus much of an interesting fact,--that 'Cabiri', impliedly at least, meant 'socii, complices,' having a hypostatic or fundamental union with, or relation to, each other; that these mysterious divinities were, ultimately at least, divided into a higher and lower triad; that the lower triad, 'primi quia infimi,' consisted of the old Titanic deities or powers of nature, under the obscure names of 'Axieros, Axiokersos,' and 'Axiokersa,' representing symbolically different modifications of animal desire or material action, such as hunger, thirst, and fire, without consciousness; that the higher triad, 'ultimi quia superiores,' consisted of Jupiter, (Pallas, or Apollo, or Bacchus, or Mercury, mystically called 'Cadmilos') and Venus, representing, as before, the [Greek (transliterated): nous] or reason, the [Greek: logos] or word or communicative power, and the [Greek: eros] or love;-that the 'Cadmilos' or Mercury, the manifested, communicated, or sent, appeared not only in his proper person as second of the higher triad, but also as a mediator between the higher and lower triad, and so there were seven divinities; and, indeed, according to some authorities, it might seem that the 'Cadmilos' acted once as a mediator of the higher, and once of the lower, triad, and that so there were eight Cabeiric divinities. The lower or Titanic powers being subdued, chaos ceased, and creation began in the reign of the divinities of mind and love; but the chaotic gods still existed in the abyss, and the notion of evoking them was the origin, the idea, of the Greek necromancy.

These mysteries, like all the others, were certainly in connection with either the Phoenician or Egyptian systems, perhaps with both. Hence the old Cabeiric powers were soon made to answer to the corresponding popular divinities; and the lower triad was called by the uninitiated, Ceres, Vulcan or Pluto, and Proserpine, and the 'Cadmilos' became Mercury. It is not without ground that I direct your attention, under these circumstances, to the probable derivation of some portion of this most remarkable system from patriarchal tradition, and to the connection of the Cabeiri with the Kabbala.

The Samothracian mysteries continued in celebrity till some time after the commencement of the Christian era. [2] But they gradually sank with the rest of the ancient system of mythology, to which, in fact, they did not properly belong. The peculiar doctrines, however, were preserved in the memories of the initiated, and handed down by individuals. No doubt they were propagated in Europe, and it is not improbable that Paracelsus received many of his opinions from such persons, and I think a connection may be traced between him and Jacob Behmen.

The Asiatic supernatural beings are all produced by imagining an excessive magnitude, or an excessive smallness combined with great power; and the broken associations, which must have given rise to such conceptions, are the sources of the interest which they inspire, as exhibiting, through the working of the imagination, the idea of power in the will. This is delightfully exemplified in the 'Arabian Nights' Entertainments', and indeed, more or less, in other works of the same kind. In all these there is the same activity of mind as in dreaming, that is--an exertion of the fancy in the combination and recombination of familiar objects so as to produce novel and wonderful imagery. To this must be added that these tales cause no deep feeling of a moral kind--whether of religion or love; but an impulse of motion is communicated to the mind without excitement, and this is the reason of their being so generally read and admired.

I think it not unlikely that the 'Milesian Tales' contained the germs of many of those now in the Arabian Nights; indeed it is scarcely possible to doubt that the Greek empire must have left deep impression on the Persian intellect. So also many of the Roman Catholic legends are taken from Apuleius. In that exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche, the allegory is of no injury to the dramatic vividness of the tale. It is evidently a philosophic attempt to parry Christianity with a 'quasi'-Platonic account of the fall and redemption of the soul.

The charm of De Foe's works, especially of 'Robinson Crusoe', is founded on the same principle. It always interests, never agitates. Crusoe himself is merely a representative of humanity in general; neither his intellectual nor his moral qualities set him above the middle degree of mankind; his only prominent characteristic is the spirit of enterprise and wandering, which is, nevertheless, a very common disposition. You will observe that all that is wonderful in this tale is the result of external circumstances--of things which fortune brings to Crusoe's hand.

[Footnote 1: Partly from Mr. Green's note. 'Ed.']

[Footnote 2: In the reign of Tiberius, A. D. 18, Germanicus attempted to visit Samothrace;--'illum in regressu sacra Samothracum visere nitentem obvii aquilones depulere.' Tacit. 'Ann.' II. e. 54. Ed.]

NOTES ON ROBINSON CRUSOE. [1]

(Vol. i. p. 17.)
But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing could
resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason, and
my more composed judgment to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I
know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret
overruling decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own
destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it
with our eyes open.

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them. Robinson Crusoe was not conscious of the master impulse, even because it was his master, and had taken, as he says, full possession of him. When once the mind, in despite of the remonstrating conscience, has abandoned its free power to a haunting impulse or idea, then whatever tends to give depth and vividness to this idea or indefinite imagination, increases its despotism, and in the same proportion renders the reason and free will ineffectual. Now, fearful calamities, sufferings, horrors, and hair-breadth escapes will have this effect, far more than even sensual pleasure and prosperous incidents. Hence the evil consequences of sin in such cases, instead of retracting or deterring the sinner, goad him on to his destruction. This is the moral of Shakspeare's 'Macbeth', and the true solution of this paragraph,--not any overruling decree of divine wrath, but the tyranny of the sinner's own evil imagination, which he has voluntarily chosen as his master.

Compare the contemptuous Swift with the contemned De Foe, and how superior will the latter be found! But by what test?--Even by this; that the writer who makes me sympathize with his presentations with the whole of my being, is more estimable than he who calls forth, and appeals but to, a part of my being--my sense of the ludicrous, for instance. De Foe's excellence it is, to make me forget my specific class, character, and circumstances, and to raise me while I read him, into the universal man.

(P. 80.)
I smiled to myself at the sight of this money: "O drug!" said I aloud,
&c. 'However, upon second thoughts, I took it away'; and wrapping
all this in a piece of canvass, &c.

Worthy of Shakspeare!--and yet the simple semicolon after it, the instant passing on without the least pause of reflex consciousness, is more exquisite and masterlike than the touch itself. A meaner writer, a Marmontel, would have put an (!) after 'away,' and have commenced a fresh paragraph. 30th July, 1830.

(P. 111.)
And I must confess, my religious thankfulness to God's providence
began to abate too, upon the discovering that all this was nothing
but what was common; though I ought to have been as thankful for so
strange and unforeseen a providence, as if it had been miraculous.

To make men feel the truth of this is one characteristic object of the miracles worked by Moses;-in them the providence is miraculous, the miracles providential.

(1 P. 126.) The growing up of the corn, as is hinted in my Journal,
had, at first, some little influence upon me, and began to affect me
with seriousness, as long as I thought it had something miraculous in
it, &c.

By far the ablest vindication of miracles which I have met with. It is indeed the true ground, the proper purpose and intention of a miracle.

(P. 141.) To think that this was all my own, that I was king and lord
of all this country indefeasibly, &c.

By the by, what is the law of England respecting this? Suppose I had discovered, or been wrecked on an uninhabited island, would it be mine or the king's?

(P. 223.)
I considered--that as I could not foresee what the ends of divine
wisdom might be in all this, so I was not to dispute his sovereignty,
who, as I was his creature, had an undoubted right, by creation, to
govern and dispose of me absolutely as he thought fit, &c.

I could never understand this reasoning, grounded on a complete misapprehension of St. Paul's image of the potter, Rom. ix., or rather I do fully understand the absurdity of it. The susceptibility of pain and pleasure, of good and evil, constitutes a right in every creature endowed therewith in relation to every rational and moral being,--a' fortiori', therefore, to the Supreme Reason, to the absolutely good Being. Remember Davenant's verses;--

Doth it our reason's mutinies appease
To say, the potter may his own clay mould
To every use, or in what shape he please,
At first not counsell'd, nor at last controll'd?

Power's hand can neither easy be, nor strict
To lifeless clay, which ease nor torment knows,
And where it cannot favour or afflict,
It neither justice or injustice shows.

But souls have life, and life eternal too:
Therefore, if doom'd before they can offend,
It seems to show what heavenly power can do,
But does not in that deed that power commend.

(Death of Astragon. st. 88, &c. P. 232-3.)

And this I must observe with grief too, that the discomposure of my
mind had too great impressions also upon the religious parts of my
thoughts,--praying to God being properly an act of the mind, not of
the body.

As justly conceived as it is beautifully expressed. And a mighty motive for habitual prayer; for this cannot but greatly facilitate the performance of rational prayer even in moments of urgent distress.

(P. 244.)
That this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards in all their
barbarities practised in America.

De Foe was a true philanthropist, who had risen above the antipathies of nationality; but he was evidently partial to the Spanish character, which, however, it is not, I fear, possible to acquit of cruelty. Witness the Netherlands, the Inquisition, the late Guerilla warfare, &c.

(P. 249.)
That I shall not discuss, and perhaps cannot account for; but
certainly they are a proof of the converse of spirits, &c.

This reminds me of a conversation I once over heard. "How a statement so injurious to Mr. A. and so contrary to the truth, should have been made to you by Mr. B. I do not pretend to account for;--only I know of my own knowledge that B. is an inveterate liar, and has long borne malice against Mr. A.; and I can prove that he has repeatedly declared that in some way or other he would do Mr. A. a mischief."

(P. 254.)
The place I was in was a most delightful cavity or grotto of its kind,
as could be expected, though perfectly dark; the floor was dry and
level, and had a sort of small loose gravel on it, &c.

How accurate an observer of nature De Foe was! The reader will at once recognize Professor Buckland's caves and the diluvial gravel.

(P. 308.)
I entered into a long discourse with him about the devil, the original
of him, his rebellion against God, his enmity to man, the reason of
it, his setting himself up in the dark parts of the world to be
worshipped instead of God, &c.

I presume that Milton's 'Paradise Lost' must have been bound up with one of Crusoe's Bibles; otherwise I should be puzzled to know where he found all this history of the Old Gentleman. Not a word of it in the Bible itself, I am quite sure. But to be serious. De Foe did not reflect that all these difficulties are attached to a mere fiction, or, at the best, an allegory, supported by a few popular phrases and figures of speech used incidentally or dramatically by the Evangelists,--and that the existence of a personal, intelligent, evil being, the counterpart and antagonist of God, is in direct contradiction to the most express declarations of Holy Writ. '"Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?"' Amos, iii. 6. '"I make peace and create evil."' Isa. xlv. 7. This is the deep mystery of the abyss of God.

(Vol. ii. p. 3.)
I have often heard persons of good judgment say, ... that there is no
such thing as a spirit appearing, a ghost walking, and the like, &c.

I cannot conceive a better definition of Body than "spirit appearing," or of a flesh-and-blood man than a rational spirit apparent. But a spirit 'per se' appearing is tantamount to a spirit appearing without its appearances. And as for ghosts, it is enough for a man of common sense to observe, that a ghost and a shadow are concluded in the same definition, that is, visibility without tangibility.

(P. 9.)
She was, in a few words the stay of all my affairs, the centre of all
my enterprises, &c.

The stay of his affairs, the centre of his interests, the regulator of his schemes and movements, whom it soothed his pride to submit to, and in complying with whose wishes the conscious sensation of his acting will increased the impulse, while it disguised the coercion, of duty!--the clinging dependent, yet the strong supporter--the comforter, the comfort, and the soul's living home! This is De Foe's comprehensive character of the wife, as she should be; and, to the honour of womanhood be it spoken, there are few neighbourhoods in which one name at least might not be found for the portrait.

The exquisite paragraphs in this and the next page, in addition to others scattered, though with a sparing hand, through his novels, afford sufficient proof that De Foe was a first-rate master of periodic style; but with sound judgment, and the fine tact of genius, he has avoided it as adverse to, nay, incompatible with, the every-day matter of fact realness, which forms the charm and the character of all his romances. The Robinson Crusoe is like the vision of a happy night-mair, such as a denizen of Elysium might be supposed to have from a little excess in his nectar and ambrosia supper. Our imagination is kept in full play, excited to the highest; yet all the while we are touching, or touched by, common flesh and blood.

(P. 67.)
The ungrateful creatures began to be as insolent and troublesome as
before, &c.

How should it be otherwise? They were idle; and when we will not sow corn, the devil will be sure to sow weeds, night-shade, henbane, and devil's-bit.

(P. 82.)
That hardened villain was so far from denying it, that he said it was
true, and ---- him they would do it still before they had done with
them.

Observe when a man has once abandoned himself to wickedness, he cannot stop, and does not join the devils till he has become a devil himself. Rebelling against his conscience he becomes the slave of his own furious will.

One excellence of De Foe, amongst many, is his sacrifice of lesser interest to the greater because more universal. Had he (as without any improbability he might have done) given his Robinson Crusoe any of the turn for natural history, which forms so striking and delightful a feature in the equally uneducated Dampier;--had he made him find out qualities and uses in the before (to him) unknown plants of the island, discover, for instance, a substitute for hops, or describe birds, &c.--many delightful pages and incidents might have enriched the book;--but then Crusoe would have ceased to be the universal representative, the person, for whom every reader could substitute himself. But now nothing is done, thought, suffered, or desired, but what every man can imagine himself doing, thinking, feeling, or wishing for. Even so very easy a problem as that of finding a substitute for ink, is with exquisite judgment made to baffle Crusoe's inventive faculties. And in what he does, he arrives at no excellence; he does not make basket work like Will Atkins; the carpentering, tailoring, pottery, &c. are all just what will answer his purposes, and those are confined to needs that all men have, and comforts that all men desire. Crusoe rises only to the point to which all men may be made to feel that they might, and that they ought to, rise in religion,--to resignation, dependence on, and thankful acknowledgement of, the divine mercy and goodness.

In the education of children, love is first to be instilled, and out of love obedience is to be educed. Then impulse and power should be given to the intellect, and the ends of a moral being be exhibited. For this object thus much is effected by works of imagination;--that they carry the mind out of self, and show the possible of the good and the great in the human character. The height, whatever it may be, of the imaginative standard will do no harm; we are commanded to imitate one who is inimitable. We should address ourselves to those faculties in a child's mind, which are first awakened by nature, and consequently first admit of cultivation, that is to say, the memory and the imagination. The comparing power, the judgment, is not at that age active, and ought not to be forcibly excited, as is too frequently and mistakenly done in the modern systems of education, which can only lead to selfish views, debtor and creditor principles of virtue, and an inflated sense of merit. In the imagination of man exist the seeds of all moral and scientific improvement; chemistry was first alchemy, and out of astrology sprang astronomy. In the childhood of those sciences the imagination opened a way, and furnished materials, on which the ratiocinative powers in a maturer state operated with success. The imagination is the distinguishing characteristic of man as a progressive being; and I repeat that it ought to be carefully guided and strengthened as the indispensable means and instrument of continued amelioration and refinement. Men of genius and goodness are generally restless in their minds in the present, and this, because they are by a law of their nature unremittingly regarding themselves in the future, and contemplating the possible of moral and intellectual advance towards perfection. Thus we live by hope and faith; thus we are for the most part able to realize what we will, and thus we accomplish the end of our being. The contemplation of futurity inspires humility of soul in our judgment of the present.

I think the memory of children cannot, in reason, be too much stored with the objects and facts of natural history. God opens the images of nature, like the leaves of a book, before the eyes of his creature, Man--and teaches him all that is grand and beautiful in the foaming cataract, the glassy lake, and the floating mist.

The common modern novel, in which there is no imagination, but a miserable struggle to excite and gratify mere curiosity, ought, in my judgment, to be wholly forbidden to children. Novel-reading of this sort is especially injurious to the growth of the imagination, the judgment, and the morals, especially to the latter, because it excites mere feelings without at the same time ministering an impulse to action. Women are good novelists, but indifferent poets; and this because they rarely or never thoroughly distinguish between fact and fiction. In the jumble of the two lies the secret of the modern novel, which is the 'medium aliquid' between them, having just so much of fiction as to obscure the fact, and so much of fact as to render the fiction insipid. The perusal of a fashionable lady's novel is to me very much like looking at the scenery and decorations of a theatre by broad daylight. The source of the common fondness for novels of this sort rests in that dislike of vacancy and that love of sloth, which are inherent in the human mind; they afford excitement without producing reaction. By reaction I mean an activity of the intellectual faculties, which shows itself in consequent reasoning and observation, and originates action and conduct according to a principle. Thus, the act of thinking presents two sides for contemplation,--that of external causality, in which the train of thought may be considered as the result of outward impressions, of accidental combinations, of fancy, or the associations of the memory,--and on the other hand, that of internal causality, or of the energy of the will on the mind itself. Thought, therefore, might thus be regarded as passive or active; and the same faculties may in a popular sense be expressed as perception or observation, fancy or imagination, memory or recollection.

[Footnote 1: These notes were written by Mr. C. in Mr. Gillman's copy of Robinson Crusoe, in the summer of 1830. The references in the text are to Major's edition, 1831. Ed.]

LECTURE XII.

DREAMS--APPARITIONS--ALCHEMISTS--PERSONALITY OF THE EVIL BEING--BODILY IDENTITY.

It is a general, but, as it appears to me, a mistaken opinion, that in our ordinary dreams we judge the objects to be real. I say our ordinary dreams;--because as to the night-mair the opinion is to a considerable extent just. But the night-mair is not a mere dream, but takes place when the waking state of the brain is recommencing, and most often during a rapid alternation, a twinkling, as it were, of sleeping and waking;--while either from pressure on, or from some derangement in, the stomach or other digestive organs acting on the external skin (which is still in sympathy with the stomach and bowels,) and benumbing it, the sensations sent up to the brain by double touch (that is, when my own hand touches my side or breast,) are so faint as to be merely equivalent to the sensation given by single touch, as when another person's hand touches me. The mind, therefore, which at all times, with and without our distinct consciousness, seeks for, and assumes, some outward cause for every impression from without, and which in sleep, by aid of the imaginative faculty, converts its judgments respecting the cause into a personal image as being the cause,--the mind, I say, in this case, deceived by past experience, attributes the painful sensation received to a correspondent agent,--an assassin, for instance, stabbing at the side, or a goblin sitting on the breast. Add too that the impressions of the bed, curtains, room, &c. received by the eyes in the half-moments of their opening, blend with, and give vividness and appropriate distance to, the dream image which returns when they close again; and thus we unite the actual perceptions, or their immediate reliques, with the phantoms of the inward sense; and in this manner so confound the half-waking, half-sleeping, reasoning power, that we actually do pass a positive judgment on the reality of what we see and hear, though often accompanied by doubt and self-questioning, which, as I have myself experienced, will at times become strong enough, even before we awake, to convince us that it is what it is--namely, the night-mair.

In ordinary dreams we do not judge the objects to be real;--we simply do not determine that they are unreal. The sensations which they seem to produce, are in truth the causes and occasions of the images; of which there are two obvious proofs: first, that in dreams the strangest and most sudden metamorphoses do not create any sensation of surprise: and the second, that as to the most dreadful images, which during the dream were accompanied with agonies of terror, we merely awake, or turn round on the other side, and off fly both image and agony, which would be impossible if the sensations were produced by the images. This has always appeared to me an absolute demonstration of the true nature of ghosts and apparitions--such I mean of the tribe as were not pure inventions. Fifty years ago, (and to this day in the ruder parts of Great Britain and Ireland, in almost every kitchen and in too many parlours it is nearly the same,) you might meet persons who would assure you in the most solemn manner, so that you could not doubt their veracity at least, that they had seen an apparition of such and such a person,--in many cases, that the apparition had spoken to them; and they would describe themselves as having been in an agony of terror. They would tell you the story in perfect health. Now take the other class of facts, in which real ghosts have appeared;--I mean, where figures have been dressed up for the purpose of passing for apparitions:--in every instance I have known or heard of (and I have collected very many) the consequence has been either sudden death, or fits, or idiocy, or mania, or a brain fever. Whence comes the difference? evidently from this,--that in the one case the whole of the nervous system has been by slight internal causes gradually and all together brought into a certain state, the sensation of which is extravagantly exaggerated during sleep, and of which the images are the mere effects and exponents, as the motions of the weathercock are of the wind;--while in the other case, the image rushing through the senses upon a nervous system, wholly unprepared, actually causes the sensation, which is sometimes powerful enough to produce a total check, and almost always a lesion or inflammation. Who has not witnessed the difference in shock when we have leaped down half-a-dozen steps intentionally, and that of having missed a single stair. How comparatively severe the latter is! The fact really is, as to apparitions, that the terror produces the image instead of the contrary; for 'in omnem actum perceptionis influit imaginatio,' as says Wolfe.

O, strange is the self-power of the imagination--when painful sensations have made it their interpreter, or returning gladsomeness or convalescence has made its chilled and evanished figures and landscape bud, blossom, and live in scarlet, green, and snowy white (like the fire-screen inscribed with the nitrate and muriate of cobalt,)--strange is the power to represent the events and circumstances, even to the anguish or the triumph of the 'quasi'-credent soul, while the necessary conditions, the only possible causes of such contingencies, are known to be in fact quite hopeless;--yea, when the pure mind would recoil from the eve-lengthened shadow of an approaching hope, as from a crime;-and yet the effect shall have place, and substance, and living energy, and, on a blue islet of ether, in a whole sky of blackest cloudage, shine like a firstling of creation!

To return, however to apparitions, and by way of an amusing illustration of the nature and value of even contemporary testimony upon such subjects, I will present you with a passage, literally translated by my friend, Mr. Southey, from the well known work of Bernal Dias, one of the companions of Cortes, in the conquest of Mexico:

Here it is that Gomara says, that Francisco de Morla rode forward on a
dappled grey horse, before Cortes and the cavalry came up, and that
the apostle St. Iago, or St. Peter, was there. I must say that all our
works and victories are by the hand of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that
in this battle there were for each of us so many Indians, that they
could have covered us with handfuls of earth, if it had not been that
the great mercy of God helped us in every thing. And it may be that he
of whom Gomara speaks, was the glorious Santiago or San Pedro, and I,
as a sinner, was not worthy to see him; but he whom I saw there and
knew, was Francisco de Morla on a chestnut horse, who came up with
Cortes. And it seems to me that now while I am writing this, the whole
war is represented before these sinful eyes, just in the manner as we
then went through it. And though I, as an unworthy sinner, might not
deserve to see either of these glorious apostles, there were in our
company above four hundred soldiers, and Cortes, and many other
knights; and it would have been talked of and testified, and they
would have made a church, when they peopled the town, which would have
been called Santiago de la Vittoria, or San Pedro de la Vittoria, as
it is now called, Santa Maria de la Vittoria. And if it was, as Gomara
says, bad Christians must we have been, when our Lord God sent us his
holy apostles, not to acknowledge his great mercy, and venerate his
church daily. And would to God, it had been, as the Chronicler
says!--but till I read his Chronicle, I never heard such a thing from
any of the conquerors who were there.

Now, what if the odd accident of such a man as Bernal Dias' writing a history had not taken place! Gomara's account, the account of a contemporary, which yet must have been read by scores who were present, would have remained uncontradicted. I remember the story of a man, whom the devil met and talked with, but left at a particular lane;--the man followed him with his eyes, and when the devil got to the turning or bend of the lane, he vanished! The devil was upon this occasion drest in a blue coat, plush waistcoat, leather breeches and boots, and talked and looked just like a common man, except as to a particular lock of hair which he had. "And how do you know then that it was the devil?"--"How do I know," replied the fellow,--"why, if it had not been the devil, being drest as he was, and looking as he did, why should I have been sore stricken with fright, when I first saw him? and why should I be in such a tremble all the while he talked? And, moreover, he had a particular sort of a kind of a lock, and when I groaned and said, upon every question he asked me, Lord have mercy upon me! or, Christ have mercy upon me! it was plain enough that he did not like it, and so he left me!"--The man was quite sober when he related this story; but as it happened to him on his return from market, it is probable that he was then muddled. As for myself, I was actually seen in Newgate in the winter of 1798;--the person who saw me there, said he had asked my name of Mr. A. B. a known acquaintance of mine, who told him that it was young Coleridge, who had married the eldest Miss----. "Will you go to Newgate, Sir?" said my friend; "for I assure you that Mr. C. is now in Germany." "Very willingly," replied the other, and away they went to Newgate, and sent for A. B. "Coleridge," cried he, "in Newgate! God forbid!" I said, "young Col ---- who married the eldest Miss ----." The names were something similar. And yet this person had himself really seen me at one of my lectures.

I remember, upon the occasion of my inhaling the nitrous oxide at the Royal Institution, about five minutes afterwards, a gentleman came from the other side of the theatre and said to me,--"Was it not ravishingly delightful, Sir?"--"It was highly pleasurable, no doubt."--"Was it not very like sweet music?"--"I cannot say I perceived any analogy to it."--"Did you not say it was very like Mrs. Billington singing by your ear?"--"No, Sir, I said that while I was breathing the gas, there was a singing in my ears."

To return, however, to dreams, I not only believe, for the reasons given, but have more than once actually experienced that the most fearful forms, when produced simply by association, instead of causing fear, operate no other effect than the same would do if they had passed through my mind as thoughts, while I was composing a faery tale; the whole depending on the wise and gracious law in our nature, that the actual bodily sensations, called forth according to the law of association by thoughts and images of the mind, never greatly transcend the limits of pleasurable feeling in a tolerably healthy frame, unless where an act of the judgment supervenes and interprets them as purporting instant danger to ourselves.