Chapter XXXIV: Act II: Speech of Albertus (2)

Did my limits or time permit me to trace the persecutions, wanderings, and migrations of the Io, the mundane religion, through the whole map marked out by the tragic poet, the coincidences would bring the truth, the unarbitrariness, of the preceding exposition as near to demonstration as can rationally be required on a question of history, that must, for the greater part, be answered by combination of scattered facts. But this part of my subject, together with a particular exemplification of the light which my theory throws both on the sense and the beauty of numerous passages of this stupendous poem, I must reserve for a future communication.

NOTES. [3]

v. 15. [Greek: pharaggi]:--'in a coomb, or combe.' v. 17. [Greek: ex'oriazein gar patros logous baru]. [Greek: euoriazein], as the editor confesses, is a word introduced into the text against the authority of all editions and manuscripts. I should prefer [Greek: ex'oriazein], notwithstanding its being a [Greek: hapax legomenon]. The [Greek: eu]--seems to my tact too free and easy a word;--and yet our 'to trifle with' appears the exact meaning.

[Footnote 1: I scarcely need say, that I use the word [Greek: allotrionomos] as a participle active, as exercising law on another, not as receiving law from another, though the latter is the classical force (I suppose) of the word.]

[Footnote 2: Rhea (from [Greek: rheo], 'fluo'), that is, the earth as the transitory, the ever-flowing nature, the flux and sum of 'phenomena', or objects of the outward sense, in contradistinction from the earth as Vesta, as the firmamental law that sustains and disposes the apparent world! The Satyrs represent the sports and appetences of the sensuous nature ([Greek: phronaema sarkos])--Pan, or the total life of the earth, the presence of all in each, the universal 'organismus' of bodies and bodily energy.]

[Footnote 3: Written in Bp. Blomfield's edition, and communicated by Mr. Cary. Ed.]

NOTE ON CHALMERS'S LIFE OF DANIEL.

The justice of these remarks cannot be disputed, though some of them
are rather too figurative for sober criticism.

Most genuine! A figurative remark! If this strange writer had any meaning, it must be:--Headly's criticism is just throughout, but conveyed in a style too figurative for prose composition. Chalmers's own remarks are wholly mistaken;--too silly for any criticism, drunk or sober, and in language too flat for any thing. In Daniel's Sonnets there is scarcely one good line; while his Hymen's Triumph, of which Chalmers says not one word, exhibits a continued series of first-rate beauties in thought, passion, and imagery, and in language and metre is so faultless, that the style of that poem may without extravagance be declared to be imperishable English.

1820.

BISHOP CORBET.

I almost wonder that the inimitable humour, and the rich sound and propulsive movement of the verse, have not rendered Corbet a popular poet. I am convinced that a reprint of his poems, with illustrative and chit-chat biographical notes, and cuts by Cruikshank, would take with the public uncommonly well. September, 1823.

NOTES ON SELDEN'S TABLE TALK. [1]

There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer.

OPINION.

Opinion and affection extremely differ. I may affect a woman best, but
it does not follow I must think her the handsomest woman in the world.
... Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reason why all the
world should think as I think. Affection is a thing wherein I look
after the pleasing of myself.

Good! This is the true difference betwixt the beautiful and the agreeable, which Knight and the rest of that [Greek: plaethos atheon] have so beneficially confounded, 'meretricibus scilicet et Plutoni'.

O what an insight the whole of this article gives into a wise man's heart, who has been compelled to act with the many, as one of the many! It explains Sir Thomas More's zealous Romanism, &c.

PARLIAMENT.

Excellent! O! to have been with Selden over his glass of wine, making every accident an outlet and a vehicle of wisdom!

POETRY.

The old poets had no other reason but this, their verse was, sung to
music; otherwise it had been a senseless thing to have fettered up
themselves.

No one man can know all things: even Selden here talks ignorantly. Verse is in itself a music, and the natural symbol of that union of passion with thought and pleasure, which constitutes the essence of all poetry, as contradistinguished from science, and distinguished from history civil or natural. To Pope's Essay on Man,--in short, to whatever is mere metrical good sense and wit, the remark applies.

Ib.

Verse proves nothing but the quantity of syllables; they are not meant
for logic.

True; they, that is, verses, are not logic; but they are, or ought to be, the envoys and representatives of that vital passion, which is the practical cement of logic; and without which logic must remain inert.

[Footnote 1: These remarks on Selden, Wheeler, and Birch, were communicated by Mr. Gary. Ed.]

NOTE ON THEOLOGICAL LECTURES OF BENJAMIN WHEELER, D. D.

(Vol. I. p. 77.)

A miracle, usually so termed, is the exertion of a supernatural power
in some act, and contrary to the regular course of nature, &c.

Where is the proof of this as drawn from Scripture, from fact recorded, or from doctrine affirmed? Where the proof of its logical possibility,--that is, that the word has any representable sense? Contrary to 2x2=4 is 2x2=5, or that the same fire acting at the same moment on the same subject should burn it and not burn it.

The course of nature is either one with, or a reverential synonyme of, the ever present divine agency; or it is a self-subsisting derivative from, and dependent on, the divine will. In either case this author's assertion would amount to a charge of self-contradiction on the Author of all things. Before the spread of Grotianism, or the Old Bailey 'nolens volens' Christianity, such language was unexampled. A miracle is either 'super naturam', or it is simply 'praeter experientiam.' If nature be a collective term for the sum total of the mechanic powers,--that is, of the act first manifested to the senses in the conductor A, arriving at Z by the sensible chain of intermediate conductors, B, C, D, &c.;--then every motion of my arm is 'super naturam'. If this be not the sense, then nature is but a wilful synonyme of experience, and then the first noticed aerolithes, Sulzer's first observation of the galvanic arch, &c. must have been miracles.

As erroneous as the author's assertions are logically, so false are they historically, in the effect, which the miracles in and by themselves did produce on those, who, rejecting the doctrine, were eye-witnesses of the miracles;--and psychologically, in the effect which miracles, as miracles, are calculated to produce on the human mind. Is it possible that the author can have attentively studied the first two or three chapters of St. John's gospel?

There is but one possible tenable definition of a miracle,--namely, an immediate consequent from a heterogeneous antecedent. This is its essence. Add the words, 'praeter experientiam adhuc', or 'id temporis', and you have the full and popular or practical sense of the term miracle. [1]

[Footnote A: See The Friend, Vol. III. Essay 2. Ed.]

NOTE ON A SERMON

ON THE PREVALENCE OF INFIDELITY AND ENTHUSIASM, BY WALTER BIRCH, B. D.

In the description of enthusiasm, the author has plainly had in view individual characters, and those too in a light, in which they appeared to him; not clear and discriminate ideas. Hence a mixture of truth and error, of appropriate and inappropriate terms, which it is scarcely possible to disentangle. Part applies to fanaticism; part to enthusiasm; and no small portion of this latter to enthusiasm not pure, but as it exists in particular men, modified by their imperfections--and bad because not wholly enthusiasm. I regret this, because it is evidently the discourse of a very powerful mind;--and because I am convinced that the disease of the age is want of enthusiasm, and a tending to fanaticism. You may very naturally object that the senses, in which I use the two terms, fanaticism and enthusiasm, are private interpretations equally as, if not more than, Mr. Birch's. They are so; but the difference between us is, that without reference to either term, I have attempted to ascertain the existence and diversity of two states of moral being; and then having found in our language two words of very fluctuating and indeterminate use, indeed, but the one word more frequently bordering on the one state, the other on the other, I try to fix each to that state exclusively. And herein I follow the practice of all scientific men, whether naturalists or metaphysicians, and the dictate of common sense, that one word ought to have but one meaning. Thus by Hobbes and others of the materialists, compulsion and obligation were used indiscriminately; but the distinction of the two senses is the condition of all moral responsibility. Now the effect of Mr. Birch's use of the words is to continue the confusion. Remember we could not reason at all, if our conceptions and terms were not more single and definite than the things designated. Enthusiasm is the absorption of the individual in the object contemplated from the vividness or intensity of his conceptions and convictions: fanaticism is heat, or accumulation and direction, of feeling acquired by contagion, and relying on the sympathy of sect or confederacy; intense sensation with confused or dim conceptions. Hence the fanatic can exist only in a crowd, from inward weakness anxious for outward confirmation; and, therefore, an eager proselyter and intolerant. The enthusiast, on the contrary, is a solitary, who lives in a world of his own peopling, and for that cause is disinclined to outward action. Lastly, enthusiasm is susceptible of many degrees, (according to the proportionateness of the objects contemplated,) from the highest grandeur of moral and intellectual being, even to madness; but fanaticism is one and the same, and appears different only from the manners and original temperament of the individual. There is a white and a red heat; a sullen glow as well as a crackling flame; cold-blooded as well as hot-blooded fanaticism. Enthusiasts, [Greek: enthousiastai] from [Greek: entheos, ois ho theos enesi], or possibly from [Greek: en thusiais], those who, in sacrifice to, or at, the altar of truth or falsehood, are possessed by a spirit or influence mightier than their own individuality. 'Fanatici-qui circum fana favorem mutuo contrahunt el afflant'--those who in the same conventicle, or before the same shrine, relique or image, heat and ferment by co-acervation.

I am fully aware that the words are used by the best writers indifferently, but such must be the case in very many words in a composite language, such as the English, before they are desynonymized. Thus imagination and fancy; chronical and temporal, and many others.

FÉNÉLON ON CHARITY.[1]

Note to pages 196,197.

This chapter is plausible, shewy, insinuating, and (as indeed is the character of the whole work) 'makes the amiable.' To many,--to myself formerly,--it has appeared a mere dispute about words: but it is by no means of so harmless a character, for it tends to give a false direction to our thoughts, by diverting the conscience from the ruined and corrupted state, in which we are without Christ. Sin is the disease. What is the remedy? What is the antidote?--Charity?--Pshaw! Charity in the large apostolic sense of the term is the health, the state to be obtained by the use of the remedy, not the sovereign balm itself,--faith of grace,--faith in the God-manhood, the cross, the mediation, and perfected righteousness, of Jesus, to the utter rejection and abjuration of all righteousness of our own! Faith alone is the restorative. The Romish scheme is preposterous;--it puts the rill before the spring. Faith is the source,--charity, that is, the whole Christian life, is the stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect without charity. As wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and strong, was imperfect without heat, or that the sun, however cloudless, was imperfect without beams. The true answer would be:--it is not faith,--but utter reprobate faithlessness, which may indeed very possibly coexist with a mere acquiescence of the understanding in certain facts recorded by the Evangelists. But did John, or Paul, or Martin Luther, ever flatter this barren belief with the name of saving faith? No. Little ones! Be not deceived. Wear at your bosoms that precious amulet against all the spells of antichrist, the 20th verse of the 2nd chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians:--'I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life, which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me'.

Thus we see even our faith is not ours in its origin: but is the faith of the Son of God graciously communicated to us. Beware, therefore, that you do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the Law, then Christ is dead in vain. If, therefore, we are saved by charity, we are saved by the keeping of the Law, which doctrine St. Paul declared to be an apostacy from Christ, and a bewitching of the soul from the truth. But, you will perhaps say, can a man be saved without charity?--The answer is, a man without charity cannot be saved: the faith of the Son of God is not in him.

[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.]

CHANGE OF THE CLIMATES.

The character and circumstances of the animal and vegetable remains discovered in the northern zone, in Siberia and other parts of Russia,--all with scarcely an exception belonging to 'genera' that are now only found in, and require, a tropical climate,--are such as receive no adequate solution from the hypothesis of their having been casually floated thither, and deposited, by the waters of a deluge, still less of the Noachian deluge, as related and described by the great Hebrew historian and legislator. In order to a full solution of this problem, two 'data' are requisite:

1. A total change of climate:

2. That this change shall have been, not gradual, but sudden, instantaneous, and incompatible with the life and subsistency of the animals and vegetables in these high latitudes, at that period, and previously, existing.

Now these 'data' or conditions will be afforded, if we assume a total submersion of the surface of this planet, even of its highest mountains then and now existing, by a sudden contemporaneous mass of waters, and that the evaporation of these waters was aided by a steady wind, especially adapted to this purpose in a peculiarly dry atmosphere, and was (as it must of necessity have been) most rapid and intense at the equator and within the tropics proportionally. For--as it has been demonstrated by Dr. Wollaston's experiment, in which the evaporation, occasioned by boiling water at the mid point of a line of water, froze the fluid at the two ends, that is, at a given distance from the greatest intensity of the evaporative process,--the effect of an evaporation of the supposed power and rapidity would be to produce at certain distances from the 'maximum' point, north and south, a vast barrier of ice,--such as having once taken place, and being of such mass and magnitude as to be only in a small degree diminishable by the ensuing summer, must have become permanent, and beyond the power of all the known and ordinary dissolving agents of nature. That the situation of the magnetic poles of the earth, and the almost certain connection of magnetism with cold, no less than with metallic cohesion, co-operated in determining the distance of the barriers, or two poles, of evaporation, from its centre or the 'maximum' of its activity, is highly probable, and receives a strong confirmation from the open sea and diminished cold, both at the north and south zones, on the ulterior of the barrier, and towards the true or physical poles of the earth.

Now the action of a powerful co-agent in the evaporative process, such as is assumed in this hypothesis, is a fact of history. 'And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged'. Gen. viii. 1. I do not recollect the Hebrew word rendered 'assuaged;' but I will consult my learned friend Hyman Hurwitz on its radical, and its primary sense. At all events, the note by Pyle in Drs. Mant and D'Oyly's Bible is arbitrary, though excusable by the state of chemical science in his time.

The problem of the multitude of 'genera' of animals, and their several exclusive acclimatements at the present period may, likewise, I persuade myself, receive a probable solution by an hypothesis legitimated by known laws and fair analogies. But of this hereafter.

1823.

WONDERFULNESS OF PROSE.

It has just struck my feelings that the Pherecydean origin of prose being granted, prose must have struck men with greater admiration than poetry. In the latter, it was the language of passion and emotion: it is what they themselves spoke and heard in moments of exultation, indignation, &c. But to hear an evolving roll, or a succession of leaves, talk continually the language of deliberate reason in a form of continued preconception, of a 'Z' already possessed when 'A' was being uttered,--this must have appeared godlike. I feel myself in the same state, when in the perusal of a sober, yet elevated and harmonious, succession of sentences and periods, I abstract my mind from the particular passage, and sympathize with the wonder of the common people who say of an eloquent man:--'He talks like a book!'

NOTES ON TOM JONES. [1]

Manners change from generation to generation, and with manners morals appear to change,--actually change with some, but appear to change with all but the abandoned. A young man of the present day who should act as Tom Jones is supposed to act at Upton, with Lady Bellaston, &c. would not be a Tom Jones; and a Tom Jones of the present day, without perhaps being in the ground a better man, would have perished rather than submit to be kept by a harridan of fortune. Therefore this novel is, and, indeed, pretends to be, no exemplar of conduct. But, notwithstanding all this, I do loathe the cant which can recommend Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe as strictly moral, though they poison the imagination of the young with continued doses of 'tinct. lyttae', while Tom Jones is prohibited as loose. I do not speak of young women;--but a young man whose heart or feelings can be injured, or even his passions excited, by aught in this novel, is already thoroughly corrupt. There is a cheerful, sun-shiny, breezy spirit that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted with the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson. Every indiscretion, every immoral act, of Tom Jones, (and it must be remembered that he is in every one taken by surprise--his inward principles remaining firm--) is so instantly punished by embarrassment and unanticipated evil consequences of his folly, that the reader's mind is not left for a moment to dwell or run riot on the criminal indulgence itself. In short, let the requisite allowance be made for the increased refinement of our manners,--and then I dare believe that no young man who consulted his heart and conscience only, without adverting to what the world would say--could rise from the perusal of Fielding's Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, or Amelia, without feeling himself a better man;--at least, without an intense conviction that he could not be guilty of a base act.

If I want a servant or mechanic, I wish to know what he does:--but of a friend, I must know what he is. And in no writer is this momentous distinction so finely brought forward as by Fielding. We do not care what Blifil does;--the deed, as separate from the agent, may be good or ill;--but Blifil is a villain;--and we feel him to be so from the very moment he, the boy Blifil, restores Sophia's poor captive bird to its native and rightful liberty.

Book xiv. ch. 8.

Notwithstanding the sentiment of the Roman satirist, which denies the
divinity of fortune; and the opinion of Seneca to the same purpose;
Cicero, who was, I believe, a wiser man than either of them, expressly
holds the contrary; and certain it is there are some incidents in life
so very strange and unaccountable, that it seems to require more than
human skill and foresight in producing them.

Surely Juvenal, Seneca, and Cicero, all meant the same thing, namely, that there was no chance, but instead of it providence, either human or divine.

Book xv. ch. 9.

The rupture with Lady Bellaston.

Even in the most questionable part of Tom Jones, I cannot but think, after frequent reflection, that an additional paragraph, more fully and forcibly unfolding Tom Jones's sense of self-degradation on the discovery of the true character of the relation in which he had stood to Lady Bellaston, and his awakened feeling of the dignity of manly chastity, would have removed in great measure any just objections, at all events relatively to Fielding himself, and with regard to the state of manners in his time.

Book xvi. ch. 5.

That refined degree of Platonic affection which is absolutely detached
from the flesh, and is indeed entirely and purely spiritual, is a gift
confined to the female part of the creation; many of whom I have heard
declare (and doubtless with great truth) that they would, with the
utmost readiness, resign a lover to a rival, when such resignation was
proved to be necessary for the temporal interest of such lover.

I firmly believe that there are men capable of such a sacrifice, and this, without pretending to, or even admiring or seeing any virtue in, this absolute detachment from the flesh.

[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman, Ed.]

JONATHAN WILD. [1]

Jonathan Wild is assuredly the best of all the fictions in which a villain is throughout the prominent character. But how impossible it is by any force of genius to create a sustained attractive interest for such a groundwork, and how the mind wearies of, and shrinks from, the more than painful interest, the [Greek: mis_eton], of utter depravity,--Fielding himself felt and endeavoured to mitigate and remedy by the (on all other principles) far too large a proportion, and too quick recurrence, of the interposed chapters of moral reflection, like the chorus in the Greek tragedy,--admirable specimens as these chapters are of profound irony and philosophic satire. Chap. VI. Book 2, on Hats,[Footnote 1]--brief as it is, exceeds any thing even in Swift's Lilliput, or Tale of the Tub. How forcibly it applies to the Whigs, Tories, and Radicals of our own times.

Whether the transposition of Fielding's scorching wit (as B. III. c. xiv.) to the mouth of his hero be objectionable on the ground of incredulus odi', or is to be admired as answering the author's purpose by unrealizing the story, in order to give a deeper reality to the truths intended,--I must leave doubtful, yet myself inclining to the latter judgment. 27th Feb. 1832.

[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.]

[Footnote 2: 'In which our hero makes a speech well worthy to be celebrated; and the behaviour of one of the gang, perhaps more unnatural than any other part of this history.']

BARRY CORNWALL.[1]

Barry Cornwall is a poet, 'me saltem judice'; and in that sense of the term, in which I apply it to C. Lamb and W. Wordsworth. There are poems of great merit, the authors of which I should yet not feel impelled so to designate.

The faults of these poems are no less things of hope, than the beauties; both are just what they ought to be,--that is, now.

If B.C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn him, that as poetry is the identity of all other knowledges, so a poet cannot be a great poet, but as being likewise inclusively an historian and naturalist, in the light, as well as the life, of philosophy: all other men's worlds are his chaos.

Hints 'obiter' are:--

not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to seduce into effeminacy.

Not to permit beauties by repetition to become mannerisms.

To be jealous of fragmentary composition,--as epicurism of genius, and
apple-pie made all of quinces.

'Item', that dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and
passion,--not thought or passion disguised in the dress of poetry.

Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similies, figures, &c. They
will all find their place, sooner or later, each as the luminary of a
sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in poetry, because it is
language,--'ergo' processive,--'ergo' every the smallest star must be
seen singly.

There are not five metrists in the kingdom, whose works are known by me, to whom I could have held myself allowed to have spoken so plainly. But B.C. is a man of genius, and it depends on himself--(competence protecting him from gnawing or distracting cares)--to become a rightful poet,--that is, a great man.

Oh! for such a man worldly prudence is transfigured into the highest spiritual duty! How generous is self-interest in him, whose true self is all that is good and hopeful in all ages, as far as the language of Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton shall become the mother-tongue!

A map of the road to Paradise, drawn in Purgatory, on the confines of Hell, by S.T.C. July 30, 1819.

[Footnote 1: Written in Mr. Lamb's copy of the 'Dramatic Scenes'. Ed.]

THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE CROSS. [1]

O! That it were as it was wont to be,
When thy old friends of fire, all full of thee,
Fought against frowns with smiles; gave glorius chace
To persecutions; and against the face
Of death and fiercest dangers durst with brave
And sober pace march on to meet a grave!
On their bold breast about the world they bore thee,
And to the teeth of hell stood up to teach thee,
In centre of their inmost souls they wore thee,
Where racks and torments strove in vain to reach thee!
Powers of my soul, be proud, And speak aloud
To the dear-bought nations this redeeming name,
And in the wealth of one rich word proclaim
New smiles to nature! May it be no wrong,
Blest heavens! to you and your superior song,
That we, dark sons of dust and sorrow, Awhile dare borrow
The name of your delights and your desires,
And fit it to so far inferior lyres!--Our lispings have their music too,
Ye mighty orbs! as well as you; Nor yields the noblest nest
Of warbling cherubs to the ear of love, A melody above
The low fond murmurs from the loyal breast
Of a poor panting turtle dove.
We mortals too
Have leave to do
The same bright business, ye third heavens with you.

[Footnote 1: This poem was found in Mr. Coleridge's hand-writing on a sheet of paper with other passages undoubtedly of his own composition. There is something, however, in it which leads me to think it transcribed or translated from some other writer, though I have been unable from recollection or inquiry to ascertain the fact. It is published here, therefore, expressly under caution. Ed.]

FULLER'S HOLY STATE.

B.I.c.9. Life of Eliezer.

He will not truant it now in the afternoon, but with convenient speed
returns to Abraham, who onely was worthy of such a servant, who onely
was worthy of such a master.

On my word, Eliezer did his business in an orderly and sensible manner; but what there is to call forth this hyper-encomiastic--'who only'--I cannot see.

B.II.c.3. Life of Paracelsus. It is matter of regret with me, that Fuller, (whose wit, alike in quantity, quality, and perpetuity, surpassing that of the wittiest in a witty age, robbed him of the praise not less due to him for an equal superiority in sound, shrewd, good sense, and freedom of intellect,) had not looked through the two Latin folios of Paracelsus's Works. It is not to be doubted that a rich and delightful article would have been the result. For who like Fuller could have brought out and set forth, this singular compound of true philosophic genius with the morals of a quack and the manners of a king of the gypsies! Nevertheless, Paracelsus belonged to his age--the dawn of experimental science: and a well written critique on his life and writings would present, through the magnifying glass of a caricature, the distinguishing features of the Helmonts, Kirchers, &c. in short, of the host of naturalists of the sixteenth century. The period might begin with Paracelsus and end with Sir Kenelm Digby.

N. B. The potential, ([Greek: Logos theanthropos]) the ground of the prophetic, directed the first thinkers, (the 'Mystæ') to the metallic bodies, as the key of all natural science. The then actual blended with this instinct all the fancies and fond desires, and false perspective of the childhood of intellect. The essence was truth, the form was folly: and this is the definition of alchemy. Nevertheless the very terms bear witness to the veracity of the original instinct. The world of sensible experience cannot be more luminously divided than into the modifying powers, [Greek: to allo],--that which differences, makes this other than that; and the [Greek: met allo]--that which is beyond, or deeper than the modification. 'Metallon' is strictly the base of the mode; and such have the metals been determined to be by modern chemistry. And what are now the great problems of chemistry? The difference of the metals themselves, their origin, the causes of their locations, of their co-existence in the same ore--as, for instance, iridium, osmium, palladium, rhodium, and iron with platinum. Were these problems solved, the results who dare limit? In addition to the 'méchanique céleste', we might have a new department of astronomy, the 'chymie céleste', that is, a philosophic astrology. And to this I do not hesitate to refer the whole connection between alchemy and astrology, the same divinity in the idea, the same childishness in the attempt to realize it. Nay, the very invocations of spirits were not without a ground of truth. The light was for the greater part suffocated and the rest fantastically refracted, but still it was light struggling in the darkness. And I am persuaded, that to the full triumph of science, it will be necessary that nature should be commanded more spiritually than hitherto, that is, more directly in the power of the will.

B. IV. c. 19. The Prince.

He sympathizeth with him that by a proxy is corrected for his offence.

See Sir W. Scott's Fortunes of Nigel. In an oriental despotism one would not have been surprised at finding such a custom, but in a Christian court, and under the light of Protestantism, it is marvellous. It would be well to ascertain, if possible, the earliest date of this contrivance; whether it existed under the Plantagenets, or whether first under the Tudors, or lastly, whether it was a precious import from Scotland with gentle King Jamie.

Ib. c. 21. The King.

He is a mortal god.

Compare the fulsome flattery of these and other passages in this volume (though modest to the common language of James's priestly courtiers) with the loyal but free and manly tone of Fuller's later works, towards the close of Charles the First's reign and under the Commonwealth and Protectorate. And doubtless this was not peculiar to Fuller: but a great and lasting change was effected in the mind of the country generally. The bishops and other church dignitaries tried for a while to renew the old king-godding 'mumpsimus'; but the second Charles laughed at them, and they quarrelled with his successor, and hated the hero who delivered them from him too thoroughly to have flattered him with any unction, even if William's Dutch phlegm had not precluded the attempt by making its failure certain.

FULLER'S PROFANE STATE.

B. V. c. 2.

God gave magistrates power to punish them, else they bear the sword in
vain. They may command people to serve God, who herein have no cause
to complain.

And elsewhere. The only serious 'macula' in Fuller's mind is his uniform support of the right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish errors in belief. Fuller would, indeed, recommend moderation in the practice; but of 'upas', 'woorara', and persecution, there are no moderate doses possible.

FULLER'S APPEAL OF INJURED INNOCENCE.