C'EST MAGNIFIQUE, MAIS CE N'EST PAS LA POÉSIE
A long line of (!!) marks of admiration would be its aptest symbol! It has given me the eye-ache with dazzlement, the brain-ache with wonderment, the stomach and all-ache with the shock and after-eddy of contradictory feelings. Splendour is there, splendour everywhere—distinct the figures as vivid—skill in construction of events—beauties numberless of form and thought. But there is not anywhere the "one low piping note more sweet than all"—there is not the divine vision of the poet, which gives the full fruition of sight without the effort—and where the feelings of the heart are struck, they are awakened only to complain of and recoil from the occasion. O! it is mournful to see and wonder at such a marvel of labour, erudition and talent concentered into such a burning-glass of factitious power, and yet to know that it is all in vain—like the Pyramids, it shows what can be done, and, like them, leaves in painful and almost scornful perplexity, why it was done, for what or whom.
SILENCE IS GOLDEN September 29th, 1812
Grand rule in case of quarrels between friends or lovers—never to say, hint, or do anything in a moment of anger or indignation or sense of ill-treatment, but to be passive—and even if the fit should recur the next morning, still to delay it—in short, however plausible the motive may be, yet if you have loved the persons concerned, not to say it till their love has returned toward you, and your feelings are the same as they were before. And for this plain reason—you knew this before, and yet because you were in kindness, you never felt an impulse to speak of it—then, surely, not now when you may perpetuate what would otherwise be fugitive.
THE DEVIL: A RECANTATION
"That not one of the peculiarities of Christianity, no one point in which, being clearly different from other religions or philosophies, it would have, at least, the possibility of being superior to all, is retained by the modern Unitarians." This remark is occasioned by my reflections on the fact that Christianity exclusively has asserted the positive being of evil or sin, "of sin the exceeding sinfulness"—and thence exclusively the freedom of the creature, as that, the clear intuition of which is, both, the result and the accompaniment of redemption. The nearest philosophy to Christianity is the Platonic, and it is observable that this is the mere antipodes of the Hartleio-Lockian held by the Unitarians; but the true honours of Christianity would be most easily manifested by a comparison even with that "nec pari nec secundo," but yet "omnibus aliis propriore," the Platonic! With what contempt, even in later years, have I not contemplated the doctrine of a devil! but now I see the intimate connection, if not as existent person, yet as essence and symbol with Christianity—and that so far from being identical with Manicheism, it is the surest antidote (that is, rightly understood).
CHAPTER IX
1814-1818
Lynx amid moles! had I stood by thy bed,
Be of good cheer, meek soul! I would have said:
I see a hope spring from that humble fear.
S. T. C.
SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
The first man of science was he who looked into a thing, not to learn whether it could furnish him with food, or shelter, or weapons, or tools, or ornaments, or playwiths, but who sought to know it for the gratification of knowing; while he that first sought to know in order to be was the first philosopher. I have read of two rivers passing through the same lake, yet all the way preserving their streams visibly distinct—if I mistake not, the Rhone and the Adar, through the Lake of Geneva. In a far finer distinction, yet in a subtler union, such, for the contemplative mind, are the streams of knowing and being. The lake is formed by the two streams in man and nature as it exists in and for man; and up this lake the philosopher sails on the junction-line of the constituent streams, still pushing upward and sounding as he goes, towards the common fountain-head of both, the mysterious source whose being is knowledge, whose knowledge is being—the adorable I am in that I am.
PETRARCH'S EPISTLES
I have culled the following extracts from the First Epistle of the First Book of Petrarch's Epistle, that "Barbato Salmonensi." [Basil, 1554, i. 76.]
Vultûs, heu, blanda severi
Majestas, placidæque decus pondusque senectæ!
Non omnia terræ
Obruta! vivit amor, vivit dolor! Ora negatum
Dulcia conspicere; at flere et meminisse relictum est.
Jamque observatio vitæ
Multa dedit—lugere nihil, ferre omnia; jamque
Paulatim lacrymas rerum experientia tersit.
[Heu! et spem quoque tersit]
Pectore nunc gelido calidos miseremur amantes,
Jamque arsisse pudet. Veteres tranquilla tumultus
Mens horret, relegensque alium putat esse locutum.
But, indeed, the whole of this letter deserves to be read and translated. Had Petrarch lived a century later, and, retaining all his substantiality of head and heart, added to it the elegancies and manly politure of Fracastorius, Flaminius, Vida and their corrivals, this letter would have been a classical gem. To a translator of genius, and who possessed the English language as unembarrassed property, the defects of style in the original would present no obstacle; nay, rather an honourable motive in the well-grounded hope of rendering the version a finer poem than the original.
[Twelve lines of Petrarch's Ep. Barbato Salmonensi are quoted in the Biog. Liter. at the end of chapter x.; and a portion of the same poem was prefixed as a motto to "Love Poems" in the Sibylline Leaves, 1817, and the editions of P. W., 1828-9. Coleridge's Works, Harper & Brother, 1853, iii. 314. See, too, P. W., 1893, Editor's Note, pp. 614, 634.]
CORRUPTIO OPTIMI PESSIMA
A fine writer of bad principles or a fine poem on a hateful subject, such as the "Alexis" of Virgil or the "Bathyllus" of Anacreon, I compare to the flowers and leaves of the Stramonium. The flowers are remarkable sweet, but such is the fetid odour of the leaves that you start back from the one through disgust at the other.
A BLISS TO BE ALIVE
Zephyrs that captive roam among these boughs,
Strive ye in vain to thread the leafy maze?
Or have ye lim'd your wings with honey-dew?
Unfelt ye murmur restless o'er my head
And rock the feeding drone or bustling bees
That blend their eager, earnest, happy hum!
WHAT MAN HAS MADE OF MAN
Gravior terras infestat Echidna,
Cur sua vipereæ jaculantur toxica linguæ
Atque homini sit homo serpens. O prodiga culpæ
Germina, naturæque uteri fatalia monstra!
Queis nimis innocuo volupe est in sanguine rictus
Tingere, fraternasque fibras cognataque per se
Viscera, et arrosæ deglubere funera famæ.
Quæ morum ista lues!
25th Feb. 1819 Five years since the preceding lines were written on this leaf!! Ah! how yet more intrusively has the hornet scandal since then scared away the bee of poetic thought and silenced its "eager, earnest, happy hum"!
SAVE ME FROM MY FRIENDS
The sore evil now so general, alas! only not universal, of supporting our religion, just as a keen party-man would support his party in