Biographia Literaria

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

CHAPTER I.

The motives of the present work—Reception of
the Author’s first publication—The discipline
of his taste at school—The effect of contem-
porary writers on youthful minds—Bowles’s
sonnets—Comparison between the Poets before
and since Mr. Pope.

 
 

IT has been my lot to have had my
name introduced both in conversation, and in
print, more frequently than I find it easy to
explain, whether I consider the fewness, unim-
portance, and limited circulation of my writings,
or the retirement and distance, in which I have
lived, both from the literary and political world.
Most often it has been connected with some
charge, which I could not acknowledge, or
some principle which I had never entertained.
Nevertheless, had I had no other motive, or
incitement, the reader would not have been
troubled with this exculpation. What my ad-
ditional purposes were, will be seen in the fol-
lowing pages. It will be found, that the least
of what I have written concerns myself per-
sonally. I have used the narration chiefly for
the purpose of giving a continuity to the work,
in part for the sake of the miscellaneous reflec-
tions suggested to me by particular events, but
still more as introductory to the statement of
my principles in Politics, Religion, and Phi-
losophy, and the application of the rules, dedu-
ced from philosophical principles, to poetry and
criticism. But of the objects, which I proposed
to myself, it was not the least important to
effect, as far as possible, a settlement of the
long continued controversy concerning the true
nature of poetic diction: and at the same time
to define with the utmost impartiality the real
poetic character of the poet, by whose writings
this controversy was first kindled, and has been
since fuelled and fanned.

 
 

In 1794, when I had barely passed the verge
of manhood, I published a small volume of
juvenile poems. They were received with a
degree of favor, which, young as I was, I well
knew, was bestowed on them not so much for
any positive merit, as because they were consi-
dered buds of hope, and promises of better
works to come. The critics of that day, the
most flattering, equally with the severest,
concurred in objecting to them, obscurity, a general
turgidness of diction, and a profusion of new
coined double epithets.* The first is the fault
which a writer is the least able to detect in
his own compositions: and my mind was not
then sufficiently disciplined to receive the au-
thority of others, as a substitute for my own
conviction. Satisfied that the thoughts, such as
they were, could not have been expressed other-
wise, or at least more perspicuously, I forgot
to enquire, whether the thoughts themselves

 
 

The authority of Milton and Shakspeare may be use-
fully pointed out to young authors. In the Comus, and earlier
Poems of Milton there is a superfluity of double epithets;
while in the Paradise Lost we find very few, in the Paradise
Regained scarce any. The same remark holds almost equally
true, of the Love’s Labour Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Venus
and Adonis, and Lucrece compared with the Lear, Macbeth,
Othello, and Hamlet of our great Dramatist. The rule for
the admission of double epithets seems to be this: either
that they should be already denizens of our Language, such
as blood-stained, terror-stricken, self-applauding: or when
a new epithet, or one found in books only, is hazarded, that
it, at least, be one word, not two words made one by mere
virtue of the printer’s hyphen. A language which, like the
English, is almost without cases, is indeed in its very genius
unfitted for compounds. If a writer, every time a com-
pounded word suggests itself to him, would seek for some
other mode of expressing the same sense, the chances are
always greatly in favor of his finding a better word. "Tan-
quam scopulum sic vites insolens verbum," is the wise advice
of Cæsar to the Roman Orators, and the precept applies
with double force to the writers in our own language. But
it must not be forgotten, that the same Cæesar wrote a gram-
matical treatise for the purpose of reforming the ordinary
language by bringing it to a greater accordance with the
principles of Logic or universal Grammar.

did not demand a degree of attention unsuitable
to the nature and objects of poetry. This re-
mark however applies chiefly, though not ex-
clusively to the Religious Musings. The re-
mainder of the charge I admitted to its full
extent, and not without sincere acknowledg-
ments to both my private and public censors
for their friendly admonitions. In the after
editions, I pruned the double epithets with no
sparing hand, and used my best efforts to tame
the swell and glitter both of thought and dic-
tion; though in truth, these parasite plants of
youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into
my longer poems with such intricacy of union,
that I was often obliged to omit disentangling
the weed, from the fear of snapping the flower.
From that period to the date of the present
work I have published nothing, with my name,
which could by any possibility have come be-
fore the board of anonymous criticism. Even
the three or four poems, printed with the works
of a friend, as far as they were censured at all,
were charged with the same or similar defects,
though I am persuaded not with equal justice:
with an EXCESS OF ORNAMENT, in addition to
STRAINED AND ELABORATE DICTION. (Vide the
criticisms on the "Ancient Mariner," in the
Monthly and Critical Reviews of the first volume
of the Lyrical Ballads.) May I be permitted
to add, that, even at the early period of my
juvenile poems, I saw and admitted the superior-
ity of an austerer, and more natural style, with
an insight not less clear, than I at present pos-
sess. My judgment was stronger, than were
my powers of realizing its dictates; and the
faults of my language, though indeed partly
owing to a wrong choice of subjects, and the
desire of giving a poetic colouring to abstract
and metaphysical truths in which a new world
then seemed to open upon me, did yet, in part
likewise, originate in unfeigned diffidence of my
own comparative talent.—During several years
of my youth and early manhood, I reverenced
those, who had re-introduced the manly sim-
plicity of the Grecian, and of our own elder
poets, with such enthusiasm, as made the hope
seem presumptuous of writing successfully in
the same style. Perhaps a similar process has
happened to others; but my earliest poems
were marked by an ease and simplicity, which
I have studied, perhaps with inferior success,
to impress on my later compositions.

 
At school I enjoyed the inestimable advan-
tage of a very sensible, though at the same
time, a very severe master. He* early moulded
my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to
Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil,

 
 
*The Rev. James Bowyer, many years Head Master of
the Grammar-School, Christ Hospital.

and again of Virgil to Ovid. He habituated
me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts as
I then read) Terence, and above all the chaster
poems of Catullus, not only with the Roman
poets of the, so called, silver and brazen ages;
but with even those of the Augustan era: and
on grounds of plain sense and universal logic
to see and assert the superiority of the former, in
the truth and nativeness, both of their thoughts
and diction. At the same time that we were
studying the Greek Tragic Poets, he made us
read Shakspeare and Milton as lessons: and
they were the lessons too, which required most
time and trouble to bring up, so as to escape
his censure. I learnt from him, that Poetry,
even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of
the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as
severe as that of science; and more difficult,
because more subtle, more complex, and de-
pendent on more, and more fugitive causes.
In the truly great poets, he would say, there is
a reason assignable, not only for every word,
but for the position of every word; and I well
remember, that availing himself of the syno-
nimes to the Homer of Didymus, he made us
attempt to show, with regard to each, why it
would not have answered the same purpose;
and wherein consisted the peculiar fitness of
the word in the original text.

 
 

In our own English compositions (at least for
the last three years of our school education)
he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or
image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where
the same sense might have been conveyed with
equal force and dignity in plainer words. Lute,
harp, and lyre, muse, muses, and inspirations,
Pegasus, Parnassus, and Hipocrene, were all
an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost
hear him now, exclaiming" Harp? Harp? Lyre?
Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse?
your Nurse’s daughter, you mean! Pierian spring?
Oh ‘aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose!" Nay
certain introductions, similies, and examples,
were placed by name on a list of interdiction.
Among the similies, there was, I remember,
that of the Manchineel fruit, as suiting equally
well with too many subjects; in which how-
ever it yielded the palm at once to the example
of Alexander and Clytus, which was equally
good and apt, whatever might be the theme.
Was it ambition? Alexander and Clytus!--
Flattery? Alexander and Clytus!--Anger ?
Drunkenness? Pride? Friendship? Ingratitude?
Late repentance? Still, still Alexander and
Clytus! At length, the praises of agriculture
having been exemplified in the sagacious obser-
vation, that had Alexander been holding the
plough, he would not have run his friend Clytus
through with a spear, this tried, and serviceable
old friend was banished by public edict in
secula seculorum. I have sometimes ventured to
think, that a list of this kind, or an index expur-
gatorius of certain well known and ever return-
ing phrases, both introductory, and transitional,
including the large assortment of modest ego-
tisms, and flattering illeisms, &c. &c. might be
hung up in our law-courts, and both houses of
parliament, with great advantage to the public,
as an important saving of national time, an in-
calculable relief to his Majesty’s ministers, but
above all, as insuring the thanks of country
attornies, and their clients, who have private
bills to carry through the house.

 
 

Be this as it may, there was one custom of
our master’s, which I cannot pass over in si-
lence, because I think it imitable and worthy
of imitation. He would often permit our theme
exercises, under some pretext of want of time,
to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to
be looked over. Then placing the whole num-
ber abreast on his desk, he would ask the
writer, why this or that sentence might not
have found as appropriate a place under this or
that other thesis: and if no satisfying answer
could be returned, and two faults of the same
kind were found in one exercise, the irrevocable
verdict followed, the exercise was torn up, and
another on the same subject to be produced,
in addition to the tasks of the day. The reader
will, I trust, excuse this tribute of recollection
to a man, whose severities, even now, not sel-
dom furnish the dreams, by which the blind
fancy would fain interpret to the mind the pain-
ful sensations of distempered sleep; but neither
lessen nor dim the deep sense of my moral and
intellectual obligations. He sent us to the Uni-
versity excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and
tolerable Hebraists. Yet our classical know-
ledge was the least of the good gifts, which we
derived from his zealous and conscientious
tutorage. He is now gone to his final reward,
full of years, and full of honors, even of those
honors, which were dearest to his heart, as
gratefully bestowed by that school, and still
binding him to the interests of that school, in
which he had been himself educated, and to
which during his whole life he was a dedicated
thing.

 
 

From causes, which this is not the place to
investigate, no models of past times, however
perfect, can have the same vivid effect on the
youthful mind, as the productions of contem-
porary genius. The Discipline, my mind had
undergone, "Ne falleretur rotundo sono et ver-
suum cursu, cincinnis et floribus; sed ut inspi-
ceret quidnam subesset, quæ sedes, quod firma-
mentum, quis fundus verbis; an figuræ essent
mera ornatura et orationis fucus: vel sanguinis
e materiæ ipsius corde effluentis rubor quidam
nativus et incalescentia genuina;" removed all
obstacles to the appreciation of excellence in
style without diminishing my delight. That
I was thus prepared for the perusal of Mr.
Bowles’s sonnets and earlier poems, at once
increased their influence, and my enthusiasm.
The great works of past ages seem to a young
man things of another race, in respect to which
his faculties must remain passive and submiss,
even as to the stars and mountains. But the
writings of a contemporary, perhaps not many
years elder than himself, surrounded by the
same circumstances, and disciplined by the
same manners, possess a reality for him, and
inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a
man. His very admiration is the wind which
fans and feeds his hope. The poems themselves
assume the properties of flesh and blood. To
recite, to extol, to contend for them is but the
payment of a debt due to one, who exists to
receive it.

 
 

There are indeed modes of teaching which
have produced, and are producing, youths of
a very different stamp; modes of teaching, in
comparison with which we have been called
on to despise our great public schools, and
universities

 
 
"In whose halls are hung
Armoury of the invincible knights of old"—

 
 
modes, by which children are to be metamor-
phosed into prodigies. And prodigies with a
vengeance have I known thus produced! Pro-
digies of self-conceit, shallowness, arrogance,
and infidelity! Instead of storing the memory,
during the period when the memory is the
predominant faculty, with facts for the after
exercise of the judgement; and instead of
awakening by the noblest models the fond and
unmixed LOVE and ADMIRATION, which is the
natural and graceful temper of early youth;
these nurselings of improved pedagogy are taught
to dispute and decide; to suspect all, but their
own and their lecturer’s wisdom; and to hold
nothing sacred from their contempt, but their
own contemptible arrogance: boy-graduates in
all the technicals, and in all the dirty passions
and impudence, of anonymous criticism. To
such dispositions alone can the admonition of
Pliny be requisite, "Neque enim debet operi-
"bus ejus obesse, quod vivit. An si inter eos,
"quos nunquam vidimus, floruisset, non solum
"libros ejus, verum etiam imagines conquire-
"remus, ejusdem nunc honor præsentis, et gratia
"quasi satietate languescet? At hoc pravum,
"malignumque est, non admirari hominem admi-
"ratione dignissimum, quia videre, complecti,
"nec laudare tantum, verum etiam amare con-
"tingit." Plin. Epist. Lib. I.

 
 

I had just entered on my seventeenth year
when the sonnets of Mr. Bowles, twenty in
number, and just then published in a quarto
pamphlet, were first made known and pre-
sented to me by a school-fellow who had
quitted us for the University, and who, during
the whole time that he was in our first form
(or in our school language a GRECIAN) had
been my patron and protector. I refer to Dr.
Middleton, the truly learned, and every way
excellent Bishop of Calcutta:

 
"Qui laudibus amplis
"Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat,
"Calcar agens animo validum. Non omnia terræ
"Obruta! Vivit amor, vivit dolor! Ora negatur
"Dulcia conspicere; at flere et meminisse* relictum est."
Petr. Ep. Lib. I. Ep. I.

 
 

It was a double pleasure to me, and still
remains a tender recollection, that I should
have received from a friend so revered the first
knowledge of a poet, by whose works, year
after year, I was so enthusiastically delighted
and inspired. My earliest acquaintances will
not have forgotten the undisciplined eagerness
and impetuous zeal, with which I laboured to
make proselytes, not only of my companions,
but of all with whom I conversed, of whatever
rank, and in whatever place. As my school

 
 

I am most happy to have the necessity of informing the
reader, that since this passage was written, the report of
Middleton’s death on his voyage to India has been proved
erroneous. He lives and long may he live; for I dare pro-
phecy, that with his life only will his exertions for the tem-
poral and spiritual welfare of his fellow men be limited.
finances did not permit me to purchase copies,
I made, within less than a year, and an half,
more than forty transcriptions, as the best pre-
sents I could offer to those, who had in any
way won my regard. And with almost equal
delight did I receive the three or four following
publications of the same author.

 
 

Though I have seen and known enough of
mankind to be well aware, that I shall perhaps
stand alone in my creed, and that it will be
well, if I subject myself to no worse charge
than that of singularity; I am not therefore
deterred from avowing, that I regard, and ever
have regarded the obligations of intellect among
the most sacred of the claims of gratitude.
A valuable thought, or a particular train of
thoughts, gives me additional pleasure, when
I can safely refer and attribute it to the con-
versation or correspondence of another. My
obligations to Mr. Bowles were indeed import-
ant, and for radical good. At a very premature
age, even before my fifteenth year, I had be-
wildered myself in metaphysicks, and in theolo-
gical controversy. Nothing else pleased me.
History, and particular facts, lost all interest
in my mind. Poetry (though for a school-boy
of that age, I was above par in English versi-
fication, and had already produced two or three
compositions which, I may venture to say, with-
out reference to my age, were somewhat above
mediocrity, and which had gained me more
credit, than the sound, good sense of my old
master was at all pleased with) poetry itself,
yea novels and romances, became insipid to
me. In my friendless wanderings on our leave-*
days, (for I was an orphan, and had scarce
any connections in London) highly was I de-
lighted, if any passenger, especially if he were
drest in black, would enter into conversation
with me. For I soon found the means of di-
recting it to my favorite subjects

 
Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate,
Fix’d fate, free will, fore-knowledge absolute,
And found no end in wandering mazes lost.

 
This preposterous pursuit was, beyond doubt,
injurious, both to my natural powers, and to
the progress of my education. It would per-
haps have been destructive, had it been con-
tinued; but from this I was auspiciously with-
drawn, partly indeed by an accidental intro-
duction to an amiable family, chiefly however,
by the genial influence of a style of poetry, so
tender, and yet so manly, so natural and real,
and yet so dignified, and harmonious, as the
sonnets, &c. of Mr. Bowles! Well were it for
me perhaps, had I never relapsed into the same

 
 

The Christ Hospital phrase, not for holidays altogether,
but for those on which the boys are permitted to go beyond
the precincts of the school.
mental disease; if I had continued to pluck
the flower and reap the harvest from the cul-
tivated surface, instead of delving in the un-
wholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic
depths. But if in after time I have sought a
refuge from bodily pain and mismanaged sen-
sibility in abstruse researches, which exercised
the strength and subtlety of the understanding
without awakening the feelings of the heart;
still there was a long and blessed interval, dur-
ing which my natural faculties were allowed
to expand, and my original tendencies to deve-
lope themselves: my fancy, and the love of
nature, and the sense of beauty in forms and
sounds.

 
 

The second advantage, which I owe to my
early perusal, and admiration of these poems
(to which let me add, though known to me
at a somewhat later period, the Lewsdon Hill
of Mr. CROW) bears more immediately on my
present subject. Among those with whom I
conversed, there were, of course, very many
who had formed their taste, and their notions
of poetry, from the writings of Mr. Pope and
his followers: or to speak more generally, in
that school of French poetry, condensed and
invigorated by English understanding, which
had predominated from the last century. I
was not blind to the merits of this school, yet
as from inexperience of the world, and
consequent want of sympathy with the general sub-
jects of these poems, they gave me little plea-
sure, I doubtless undervalued the kind, and
with the presumption of youth withheld from
its masters the legitimate name of poets. I
saw, that the excellence of this kind consisted
in just and acute observations on men and man-
ners in an artificial state of society, as its matter and
substance: and in the logic of wit, con-
veyed in smooth and strong epigramatic cou-
plets, as its form. Even when the subject was
addressed to the fancy, or the intellect, as in
the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on Man;
nay, when it was a consecutive narration, as in
that astonishing product of matchless talent
and ingenuity, Pope’s Translation of the Iliad;
still a point was looked for at the end of each
second line, and the whole was as it were a
sorites, or, if I may exchange a logical for a
grammatical metaphor, a conjunction disjunc-
tive, of epigrams. Meantime the matter and
diction seemed to me characterized not so much
by poetic thoughts, as by thoughts translated
into the language of poetry. On this last point,
I had occasion to render my own thoughts
gradually more and more plain to myself, by
frequent amicable disputes concerning Darwin’s
BOTANIC GARDEN, which, for some years, was
greatly extolled, not only by the reading public
in general, but even by those, whose genius
and natural robustness of understanding ena-
bled them afterwards to act foremost in dis-
sipating these "painted mists" that occasionally
rise from the marshes at the foot of Parnassus.
During my first Cambridge vacation, I assisted
a friend in a contribution for a literary society
in Devonshire: and in this I remember to have
compared Darwin’s work to the Russian pa-
lace of ice, glittering, cold and transitory. In
the same essay too, I assigned sundry reasons,
chiefly drawn from a comparison of passages in
the Latin poets with the original Greek, from
which they were borrowed, for the preference
of Collins’s odes to those of Gray; and of the
simile in Shakspeare

 
 
" How like a younker or a prodigal,
"The skarfed bark puts from her native bay
"Hugg’d and embraced by the strumpet wind!
"How like a prodigal doth she return,
"With over-weather’d ribs and ragged sails,
"Lean, rent, and beggar’d by the strumpet wind!"

 
 

to the imitation in the bard;

"Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows
"While proudly riding o’er the azure realm
"In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,
"YOUTH at the prow and PLEASURE at the helm,
"Regardless of the sweeping whirlwinds sway,
"That hush’d in grim repose, expects it’s evening prey."

 
 
(In which, by the bye, the words "realm" and
" sway" are rhymes dearly purchased.) I pre-
ferred the original on the ground, that in the
imitation it depended wholly in the composi-
tor’s putting, or not putting a small Capital,
both in this, and in many other passages of the
same poet, whether the words should be person-
ifications, or mere abstracts. I mention this,
because in referring various lines in Gray to
their original in Shakspeare and Milton; and in
the clear perception how completely all the
propriety was lost in the transfer; I was, at
that early period, led to a conjecture, which,
many years afterwards was recalled to me from
the same thought having been started in con-
versation, but far more ably, and developed
more fully, by Mr. WORDSWORTH; namely, that
this style of poetry, which I have characterised
above, as translations of prose thoughts into
poetic language, had been kept up by, if it did
not wholly arise from, the custom of writing
Latin verses, and the great importance at-
tached to these exercises, in our public schools.
Whatever might have been the case in the fif-
teenth century, when the use of the Latin
tongue was so general among learned men, that
Erasmus is said to have forgotten his native
language; yet in the present day it is not to be
supposed, that a youth can think in Latin, or
that he can have any other reliance on the force
or fitness of his phrases, but the authority of
the author from whence he has adopted them.
Consequently he must first prepare his thoughts,
and then pick out, from Virgil, Horace, Ovid, or
perhaps more compendiously from his* Gradus,
halves and quarters of lines, in which to embody
them.

 
 

I never object to a certain degree of disputa-
tiousness in a young man from the age of seven-
teen to that of four or five and twenty, provided
I find him always arguing on one side of the
question. The controversies, occasioned by my
unfeigned zeal for the honor of a favorite con-
temporary, then known to me only by his works,
were of great advantage in the formation and
establishment of my taste and critical opinions.
In my defence of the lines running into each
other, instead of closing at each couplet; and
of natural language, neither bookish, nor vulgar,
neither redolent of the lamp, or of the kennel,
such as I will remember thee; instead of the
same thought tricked up in the rag-fair finery of,

 
 
----Thy image on her wing
Before my FANCY’S eye shall MEMORY bring,

 
 

I had continually to adduce the metre and

 

In the Nutricia of Politian there occurs this line:

" Pura coloratos interstrepit unda lapillos."
Casting my eye on a University prize-poem, I met this line,
" Lactea purpureos interstrepit unda lapillos."
Now look out in the Gradus for Purus, and you find as
the first synonime, lacteus; for coloratus and the first sy-
nonime is purpureus. I mention this by way of elucidating
one of the most ordinary processes in the ferrumination of
these centos.

diction of the Greek Poets from Homer to
Theocritus inclusive; and still more of our
elder English poets from Chaucer to Milton.
Nor was this all. But as it was my constant
reply to authorities brought against me from
later poets of great name, that no authority
could avail in opposition to TRUTH, NATURE,
LOGIC, and the LAWS of UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR;
actuated too by my former passion for meta-
physical investigations; I labored at a solid
foundation, on which permanently to ground
my opinions, in the component faculties of the
human mind itself, and their comparative dig-
nity and importance. According to the faculty
or source, from which the pleasure given by
any poem or passage was derived, I estimated
the merit of such poem or passage. As the
result of all my reading and meditation, I ab-
stracted two critical aphorisms, deeming them
to comprize the conditions and criteria of poetic
style; first, that not the poem which we have
read, but that to which we return, with the
greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power,
and claims the name of essential poetry. Second,
that whatever lines can be translated into other
words of the same language, without dimi-
nution of their significance, either in sense,
or association, or in any worthy feeling, are
so far vicious in their diction. Be it however
observed, that I excluded from the list of
worthy feelings, the pleasure derived from mere
novelty, in the reader, and the desire of ex-
citing wonderment at his powers in the author.
Oftentimes since then, in perusing French tra-
gedies, I have fancied two marks of admiration
at the end of each line, as hieroglyphics of the
author’s own admiration at his own cleverness.
Our genuine admiration of a great poet is a
continuous under-current of feeling; it is every
where present, but seldom any where as a se-
parate excitement. I was wont boldly to affirm,
that it would be scarcely more difficult to push
a stone out from the pyramids with the bare
hand, than to alter a word, or the position of a
word, in Milton or Shakspeare, (in their most
important works at least) without making the
author say something else, or something worse,
than he does say. One great distinction, I
appeared to myself to see plainly, between, even
the characteristic faults of our elder poets, and
the false beauty of the moderns. In the former, from
DONNE to COWLEY, we find the most fan-
tastic out-of-the-way thoughts, but in the most
pure and genuine mother English; in the latter,
the most obvious thoughts, in language the
most fantastic and arbitrary. Our faulty elder
poets sacrificed the passion, and passionate
flow of poetry, to the subtleties of intellect, and
to the starts of wit; the moderns to the glare
and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and
heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious
something, made up, half of image, and half of
abstract* meaning. The one sacrificed the heart
to the head; the other both heart and head to
point and drapery.

 
 

The reader must make himself acquainted
with the general style of composition that was
at that time deemed poetry, in order to under-
stand and account for the effect produced on
me by the SONNETS, the MONODY at MATLOCK,
and the HOPE, of Mr. Bowles; for it is pecu-
liar to original genius to become less and less
striking, in proportion to its success in improv-
ing the taste and judgement of its contempora-
ries. The poems of WEST indeed had the
merit of chaste and manly diction, but they
were cold, and, if I may so express it, only
dead-coloured; while in the best of Warton’s
there is a stiffness, which too often gives them
the appearance of imitations from the Greek.
Whatever relation therefore of cause or impulse
Percy’s collection of Ballads may bear to the
most popular poems of the present day; yet in
the more sustained and elevated style, of the

 
 

I remember a ludicrous instance in the poem of a young

tradesman:

" No more will I endure love’s pleasing pain,
Or round my heart’s leg tie his galling chain."
then living poets Bowles and Cowper* were, to
the best of my knowledge, the first who com-
bined natural thoughts with natural diction;
the first who reconciled the heart with the head.

 
 

It is true, as I have before mentioned, that
from diffidence in my own powers, I for a short
time adopted a laborious and florid diction,
which I myself deemed, if not absolutely vici-
ous, yet of very inferior worth. Gradually,
however, my practice conformed to my better
judgement; and the compositions of my twenty-
fourth and twenty-fifth year (ex. gr. the shorter
blank verse poems, the lines which are now
adopted in the introductory part of the VISION
in the present collection in Mr. Southey’s Joan
of Arc, 2nd book, 1st edition, and the Tragedy
of REMORSE) are not more below my present
ideal in respect of the general tissue of the style,
than those of the latest date. Their faults were

 
 

Cowper’s task was published some time before the son-
nets of Mr. Bowles; but I was not familiar with it till many
years afterwards. The vein of Satire which runs through
that excellent poem, together with the sombre hue of its re-
ligious opinions, would probably, at that time, have pre-
vented its laying any strong hold on my affections. The
love of nature seems to have led Thompson to a chearful re-
ligion; and a gloomy religion to have led Cowper to a love
of nature. The one would carry his fellow-men along with
him into nature; the other flies to nature from his fellow-
men. In chastity of diction however, and the harmony of
blank verse, Cowper leaves Thompson unmeasureably below
him; yet still I feel the latter to have been the born poet.
at least a remnant of the former leaven, and
among the many who have done me the honor
of putting my poems in the same class with
those of my betters, the one or two, who have
pretended to bring examples of affected sim-
plicity from my volume, have been able to ad-
duce but one instance, and that out of a copy
of verses half ludicrous, half splenetic, which
I intended, and had myself characterized, as
sermoni propriora.

 
 

Every reform, however necessary, will by
weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself
will need reforming. The reader will excuse
me for noticing, that I myself was the first to
expose risu honesto the three sins of poetry, one
or the other of which is the most likely to beset
a young writer. So long ago as the publica-
tion of the second number of the monthly ma-
gazine, under the name of NEHEMIAH HIGGEN-
BOTTOM I contributed three sonnets, the first of
which had for its object to excite a good-natur-
ed laugh at the spirit of doleful egotism, and at
the recurrence of favorite phrases, with the
double defect of being at once trite, and licen-
tious. The second, on low, creeping language
and thoughts, under the pretence of simplicity.
And the third, the phrases of which were bor-
rowed entirely from my own poems, on the
indiscriminate use of elaborate and swelling
language and imagery. The reader will find
them in the note* below, and will I trust regard
them as reprinted for biographical purposes,
and not for their poetic merits. So general at

 
 

SONNET 1.

PENSIVE at eve, on the hard world I mused,

And my poor heart was sad; so at the MOON
I gazed, and sighed, and sighed; for ah how soon
Eve saddens into night! mine eyes perused
With tearful vacancy the dampy grass

That wept and glitter’d in the paly ray:

And I did pause me, on my lonely way
And mused me, on the wretched ones that pass
O’er the bleak heath of sorrow. But alas!
Most of myself I thought! when it befel,
That the soothe spirit of the breezy wood
Breath’d in mine ear: "All this is very well
But much of ONE thing, is for NO thing good."
Oh my poor heart’s INEXPLICABLE SWELL!

 
 

SONNET II.

OH I do love thee, meek SIMPLICITY!
For of thy lays the lulling simpleness
Goes to my heart, and soothes each small distress,
Distress tho’ small, yet haply great to me,
‘Tis true on Lady Fortune’s gentlest pad
I amble on; and yet I know not why
So sad I am! but should a friend and I
Frown, pout and part, then I am very sad.
And then with sonnets and with sympathy
My dreamy bosom’s mystic woes I pall;
Now of my false friend plaining plaintively,
Now raving at mankind in general;
But whether sad or fierce, ‘tis simple all,
All very simple, meek SIMPLICITY!

 
 

SONNET III.

AND this reft house is that, the which he built,
Lamented Jack! and here his malt he pil’d,
Cautious in vain! these rats, that squeak so wild,
Squeak not unconscious of their father’s guilt.
Did he not see her gleaming thro’ the glade!
Belike ‘twas she, the maiden all forlorn.
What tho’ she milk no cow with crumpled horn,
Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray’d:*
that time, and so decided was the opinion con-
cerning the characteristic vices of my style, that
a celebrated physician (now, alas! no more)
speaking of me in other respects with his usual
kindness to a gentleman, who was about to
meet me at a dinner party, could not however
resist giving him a hint not to mention the
" House that Jack built" in my presence, for
" that I was as sore as a boil about that sonnet ;"
he not knowing, that I was myself the author
of it.

 
 

*

And aye, beside her stalks her amarous knight!
Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,
And thro’ those brogues, still tatter’d and betorn,
His hindward charms glean an unearthly white.
Ah! thus thro’ broken clouds at night’s high Noon
Peeps in fair fragments forth the full-orb’d harvest-moon!

 
 
The following anecdote will not be wholly out of place
here, and may perhaps amuse the reader. An amateur per-
former in verse expressed to a common friend, a strong de-
sire to be introduced to me, but hesitated in accepting my
friend’s immediate offer, on the score that "he was, he must
acknowledge the author of a confounded severe epigram on
my ancient mariner, which had given me great pain. I as-
sured my friend that if the epigram was a good one, it would
only increase my desire to become acquainted with the au-
thor, and begg’d to hear it recited: when, to my no less
surprise than amusement, it proved to be one which I had
myself some time before written and inserted in the Morning
Post.

 

To the author of the Ancient Mariner.

Your poem must eternal be,
Dear-sir! it cannot fail,
For ‘tis incomprehensible
And without head or tail.

 
 
 
 
 

CHAPTER II.

Supposed irritability of men of Genius—Brought
to the test of Facts—Causes and Occasions of
the charge—Its Injustice.

 
 

I have often thought, that it would be neither
uninstructive nor unamusing to analyze, and
bring forward into distinct consciousness, that
complex feeling, with which readers in general
take part against the author, in favor of the
critic; and the readiness with which they apply
to all poets the old sarcasm of Horace upon
the scriblers of his time: "Genus irritabile
vatum." A debility and dimness of the imagi-
native power, and a consequent necessity of
reliance on the immediate impressions of the
senses, do, we well know, render the mind
liable to superstition and fanaticism. Having a
deficient portion of internal and proper warmth,
minds of this class seek in the crowd circum
fana for a warmth in common, which they do
not possess singly. Cold and phlegmatic in their
own nature, like damp hay, they heat and in-
flame by co-acervation; or like bees they be-
come restless and irritable through the increased
temperature of collected multitudes. Hence
the German word for fanaticism (such at least
was its original import) is derived from the
swarming of bees, namely, Schwärmen, Sch-
wärmerey. The passion being in an inverse
proportion to the insight, that the more vivid,
as this the less distinct; anger is the inevitable
consequence. The absence of all foundation
within their own minds for that, which they yet
believe both true and indispensible for their
safety and happiness, cannot but produce an
uneasy state of feeling, an involuntary sense of
fear from which nature has no means of res-
cuing herself but by anger. Experience informs
us that the first defence of weak minds is to
recriminate.

 
" There’s no Philosopher but sees,
That rage and fear are one disease,
Tho’ that may burn, and this may freeze,
They’re both alike the ague."

MAD OX.

But where the ideas are vivid, and there exists
an endless power of combining and modifying
them, the feelings and affections blend more
easily and intimately with these ideal creations,
than with the objects of the senses; the mind
is affected by thoughts, rather than by things;
and only then feels the requisite interest even
for the most important events, and accidents,
when by means of meditation they have passed
into thoughts. The sanity of the mind is be-
tween superstition with fanaticism on the one
hand; and enthusiasm with indifference and a
diseased slowness to action on the other. For
the conceptions of the mind may be so vivid
and adequate, as to preclude that impulse to
the realizing of them, which is strongest and
most restless in those, who possess more than
mere talent (or the faculty of appropriating
and applying the knowledge of others) yet
still want something of the creative, and self-
sufficing power of absolute Genius. For this
reason therefore, they are men of commanding
genius. While the former rest content between
thought and reality, as it were in an intermun-
dium of which their own living spirit supplies
the substance, and their imagination the ever-
varying form; the latter must impress their
preconceptions on the world without, in order
to present them back to their own view with
the satisfying degree of clearness, distinctness,
and individuality. These in tranquil times are
formed to exhibit a perfect poem in palace or
temple or landscape-garden; or a tale of ro-
mance in canals that join sea with sea, or in walls
of rock, which shouldering back the billows
imitate the power, and supply the benevolence
of nature to sheltered navies; or in aqueducts
that arching the wide vale from mountain to
mountain give a Palmyra to the desert. But
alas! in times of tumult they are the men des-
tined to come forth as the shaping spirit of Ruin.
to destroy the wisdom of ages in order to
substitute the fancies of a day, and to change
kings and kingdoms, as the wind shifts and
shapes the clouds.† The records of biography
seem to confirm this theory. The men of the
greatest genius, as far as we can judge from
their own works or from the accounts of their
contemporaries, appear to have been of calm
and tranquil temper, in all that related to them-
selves. In the inward assurance of permanent
fame, they seem to have been either indifferent
or resigned, with regard to immediate reputa-
tion. Through all the works of Chaucer there
reigns a chearfulness, a manly hilarity, which
makes it almost impossible to doubt a corres-
pondent habit of feeling in the author himself.
Shakspeare’s evenness and sweetness of temper
were almost proverbial in his own age. That
this did not arise from ignorance of his own
comparative greatness, we have abundant proof
in his sonnets, which could scarcely have been

 
† "Of old things all are over old,
Of good things none are good enough:--
We’ll show that we can help to frame
A world of other stuff.

 

I too will have my kings, that take

From me the sign of life and death:

Kingdoms shall shift about, like clouds,
Obedient to my breath."

 
 

WORDSWORTH’S ROB ROY.

known to Mr. Pope,* when he asserted, that
our great bard "grew immortal in his own
"despite." Speaking, of one whom he had cele-
brated, and contrasting the duration of his
works with that of his personal existence,

Shakspeare adds:

 

" Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Tho’ I once gone to all the world must die;
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read;
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,

When all the breathers of this world are dead:

You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,
Where breath most breathes, e’en in the mouth of men."

 
 

SONNET 81st.

I have taken the first that occurred; but Shaks-
peare’s readiness to praise his rivals, ore pleno,
and the confidence of his own equality with

 
 

Mr. Pope was under the common error of his age, an
error, far from being sufficiently exploded even at the pre-
sent day. It consists (as I explained at large, and proved in
detail in my public lectures) in mistaking for the essentials of
the Greek stage certain rules, which the wise poets imposed
upon themselves, in order to render all the remaining parts
of the drama consistent with those, that had been forced
upon them by circumstances independent of their will; out
of which circumstances the drama itself arose. The cir-
cumstances in the time of Shakspeare, which it was equally
out of his power to alter, were different, and such as, in my
opinion, allowed a far wider sphere, and a deeper and more
human interest. Critics are too apt to forget, that rules are
but means to an end; consequently where the ends are
those whom he deem’d most worthy of his
praise, are alike manifested in the 86th sonnet.

 
 
" Was it the proud full sail of his great verse
Bound for the praise of all-too-precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb, the womb wherein they grew ?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch that struck me dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost,
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence!
But when your countenance fill’d up his line,
Then lack’d I matter, that enfeebled mine.

 
 

In Spencer indeed, we trace a mind consti-
tutionally tender, delicate, and, in comparison
with his three great compeers, I had almost
said, effeminate; and this additionally sad-
dened by the unjust persecution of Burleigh,

 
 
*different, the rules must he likewise so. We must have ascer-
tained what the end is, before we can determine what the
rules ought to be. Judging under this impression, I did not
hesitate to declare my full conviction, that the consummate
judgement of Shakspeare, not only in the general construc-
tion, but in all the detail, of his dramas impressed me with
greater wonder, than even the might of his genius, or the
depth of his philosophy. The substance of these lectures I
hope soon to publish ; and it is but a debt of justice to my-
self and my friends to notice, that the first course of lectures,
which differed from the following courses only, by occa-
sionally varying the illustrations of the same thoughts, was
addressed to very numerous, and I need not add, respect-
able audiences at the royal institution, before Mr. Schlegel
gave his lectures on the same subjects at Vienna.
and the severe calamities, which overwhelmed
his latter days. These causes have diffused
over all his compositions "a melancholy grace,"
and have drawn forth occasional strains, the
more pathetic from their gentleness. But no
where do we find the least trace of irritability,
and still less of quarrelsome or affected con-
tempt of his censurers.

 
 

The same calmness, and even greater self-
possession, may be affirmed of Milton, as far
as his poems, and poetic character are con-
cerned. He reserved his anger, for the enemies
of religion, freedom, and his country. My
mind is not capable of forming a more august
conception, than arises from the contempla-
tion of this great man in his latter days: poor,
sick, old, blind, slandered, persecuted,

 
 

" Darkness before, and danger’s voice behind,"

 

in an age in which he was as little understood
by the party, for whom, as by that, against
whom he had contended; and among men be-
fore whom he strode so far as to dwarf him-
self by the distance; yet still listening to the
music of his own thoughts, or if additionally
cheered, yet cheered only by the prophetic
faith of two or three solitary individuals, he did
nevertheless

 
 

" Argue not
Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bore up and steer’d
Right onward."
From others only do we derive our knowledge
that Milton, in his latter day, had his scorners
and detractors; and even in his day of youth
and hope, that he had enemies would have been
unknown to us, had they not been likewise the
enemies of his country.

 
 

I am well aware, that in advanced stages of
literature, when there exist many and excellent
models, a high degree of talent, combined with
taste and judgement, and employed in works
of imagination, will acquire for a man the name
of a great genius; though even that analogon of
genius, which, in certain states of society, may
even render his writings more popular than the
absolute reality could have done, would be
sought for in vain in the mind and temper of the
author himself. Yet even in instances of this
kind, a close examination will often detect, that
the irritability, which has been attributed to the
author’s genius as its cause, did really originate
in an ill conformation of body, obtuse pain, or
constitutional defect of pleasurable sensation.
What is charged to the author, belongs to the
man, who would probably have been still more
impatient, but for the humanizing influences of
the very pursuit, which yet bears the blame of
his irritability.

 
 

How then are we to explain the easy cre-
dence generally given to this charge, if the
charge itself be not, as we have endeavoured to
show, supported by experience? This seems
to me of no very difficult solution. In what-
ever country literature is widely diffused, there
will be many who mistake an intense desire to
possess the reputation of poetic genius, for the
actual powers, and original tendencies which
constitute it. But men, whose dearest wishes
are fixed on objects wholly out of their own
power, become in all cases more or less impa-
tient and prone to anger. Besides, though it
may be paradoxical to assert, that a man can
know one thing, and believe the opposite, yet
assuredly, a vain person may have so habitu-
ally indulged the wish, and persevered in the
attempt to appear, what he is not, as to become
himself one of his own proselytes. Still, as this
counterfeit and artificial persuasion must differ,
even in the person’s own feelings, from a real
sense of inward power, what can be more na-
tural, than that this difference should betray
itself in suspicious and jealous irritability ?
Even as the flowery sod, which covers a hol-
low, may be often detected by its shaking and
trembling.

 
 

But, alas! the multitude of books, and the
general diffusion of literature, have produced
other, and more lamentable effects in the world
of letters, and such as are abundant to explain,
tho’ by no means to justify, the contempt with
which the best grounded complaints of injured
genius are rejected as frivolous, or entertained
as matter of merriment. In the days of Chaucer
and Gower, our language might (with due al-
lowance for the imperfections of a simile) be
compared to a wilderness of vocal reeds, from
which the favorites only of Pan or Apollo
could construct even the rude Syrinx; and
from this the constructors alone could elicit
strains of music. But now, partly by the la-
bours of successive poets, and in part by the
more artificial state of society and social inter-
course, language, mechanized as it were into a
barrel-organ, supplies at once both instrument
and tune. Thus even the deaf may play, so as
to delight the many. Sometimes (for it is with
similies, as it is with jests at a wine table, one
is sure to suggest another) I have attempted to
illustrate the present state of our language, in
its relation to literature, by a press-room of
larger and smaller stereotype pieces, which,
in the present anglo-gallican fashion of uncon-
nected, epigrammatic periods, it requires but
an ordinary portion of ingenuity to vary inde-
finitely, and yet still produce something, which,
if not sense, will be so like it, as to do as well.
Perhaps better: for it spares the reader the
trouble of thinking; prevents vacancy, while it
indulges indolence; and secures the memory
from all danger of an intellectual plethora.
Hence of all trades, literature at present
demands the least talent or information; and, of
all modes of literature, the manufacturing of
poems. The difference indeed between these
and the works of genius, is not less than be-
tween an egg, and an egg-shell; yet at a distance
they both look alike. Now it is no less re-
markable than true, with how little examina-
tion works of polite literature are commonly
perused, not only by the mass of readers, but
by men of first rate ability, till some accident
or chance* discussion have roused their atten-

 
 

In the course of my lectures, I had occasion to point out
the almost faultless position and choice of words, in Mr.
Pope’s original compositions, particularly in his satires and
moral essays, for the purpose of comparing them with his
translation of Homer, which, I do not stand alone in re-
garding as the main source of our pseudo-poetic diction.
And this, by the bye, is an additional confirmation of a re-
mark made, I believe, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, that next to
the man who formed and elevated the taste of the public, he
that corrupted it, is commonly the greatest genius. Among
other passages, I analyzed sentence by sentence, and almost
word by word, the popular lines,

 
 

" As when the moon, resplendent lamp of light," &c.

 

much in the same way as has been since done, in an excellent
article on Chalmers’s British Poets in the Quarterly Review.
The impression on the audience in general was sudden and
evident: and a number of enlightened and highly educated
individuals, who at different times afterwards addressed me
on the subject, expressed their wonder, that truth so ob-
vious should not have struck them before; but at the same
time acknowledged (so much had they been accustomed, in
reading poetry, to receive pleasure from the separate images
and phrases successively, without asking themselves whether
the collective meaning was sense or nonsense) that they might
in all probability have read the same passage again twenty*
tion, and put them on their guard. And hence
individuals below mediocrity not less in natural
power than in acquired knowledge; nay, bung-
lers that had failed in the lowest mechanic
crafts, and whose presumption is in due pro-
portion to their want of sense and sensibility;
men, who being first scriblers from idleness and
ignorance next become libellers from envy and
malevolence; have been able to drive a suc-
cessful trade in the employment of the book-
sellers, nay have raised themselves into tempo-
rary name and reputation with the public at
large, by that most powerful of all adulation,

 
 
times with undiminished admiration, and without once re-
flecting, that "asra thaeinen amphi selenen phainet ariprepea"
(i. e. the stars around, or near the full moon, shine pre-
eminently bright) conveys a just and happy image of a moon-
light sky: while it is difficult to determine whether in the
lines,

 
 
"Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber’d gild the glowing pole,"

 
the sense, or the diction be the more absurd. My answer
was; that tho’ I had derived peculiar advantages from my
school discipline, and tho’ my general theory of poetry was
the same then as now, I had yet experienced the same sen-
sations myself, and felt almost as if I had been newly
couched, when by Mr. Wordsworth’s conversation, I had
been induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Grey’s
celebrated elegy. I had long before detected the defects in
" the Bard ;" but "the Elegy" I had considered as proof
against all fair attacks; and to this day I cannot read either,
without delight, and a portion of enthusiasm. At all events,
whatever pleasure I may have lost by the clearer perception
of the faults in certain passages, has been more than repaid
to me, by the additional delight with which I read the
remainder.
the appeal to the bad and malignant passions
of mankind.*But as it is the nature of scorn,
envy, and all malignant propensities to require
a quick change of objects, such writers are
sure, sooner or later to awake from their dream
of vanity to disappointment and neglect with
embittered and envenomed feelings. Even

 
 

Especially "in this AGE OF PERSONALITY, this age of
literary and political GOSSIPING, when the meanest insects
are worshipped with a sort of Egyptian superstition, if only
the brainless head be atoned for by the sting of personal
malignity in the tail! When the most vapid satires have be-
come the objects of a keen public interest, purely from the
number of contemporary characters named in the patch-
work notes (which possess, however, the comparative merit of
being more poetical than the text) and because, to increase
the stimulus, the author has sagaciously left his own name
for whispers and conjectures! In an age, when even ser-
mons are published with a double appendix stuffed with
names—in a generation so transformed from the characteris-
tic reserve of Britons, that from the ephemeral sheet of a
London newspaper, to the everlasting Scotch Professorial
Quarto, almost every publication exhibits or flatters the
epidemic distemper; that the very "last year’s rebuses" in
the Ladies Diary, are answered in a serious elegy " on my
father’s death" with the name and habitat of the elegiac
Œdipus subscribed; and " other ingenious solutions were
likewise given" to the said rebuses—not as heretofore by
Crito, Philander, A, B, Y, &c. but by fifty or sixty plain
English sirnames at full length with their several places of
abode! In an age, when a bashful Philalethes, or Phileleu-
theros is as rare on the title-pages, and among the signatures
of our magazines, as a real name used to be in the days of
our shy and notice-shunning grandfathers! When (more
exquisite than all) I see an EPIC POEM (spirits of Maro and
Mæonides make ready to welcome your new compeer!)
advertised with the special recommendation, that the said
EPIC POEM contains more than an hundred names of living persons."
FRIEND No. 10.
during their short-lived success, sensible in
spite of themselves on what a shifting foundation it
rested, they resent the mere refusal of praise,
as a robbery, and at the justest censures kindle
at once into violent and undisciplined abuse;
till the acute disease changing into chronical,
the more deadly as the less violent, they be-
come the fit instruments of literary detraction,
and moral slander. They are then no longer to
be questioned without exposing the complain-
ant to ridicule, because, forsooth, they are ano-
nymous critics, and authorised as "synodical
individuals"* to speak of themselves plurali
majestatico! As if literature formed a cast, like
that of the PARAS in Hindostan, who, however
maltreated, must not dare to deem themselves
wronged! As if that, which in all other cases
adds a deeper die to slander, the circumstance
of its being anonymous, here acted only to
make the slanderer inviolable! Thus, in part,
from the accidental tempers of individuals (men
of undoubted talent, but not men of genius)
tempers rendered yet more irritable by their
desire to appear men of genius; but still more
effectively by the excesses of the mere counter-
feits both of talent and genius; the number
too being so incomparably greater of those who
are thought to be, than of those who really are

 
 

A phrase of Andrew Marvel’s.
men of real genius; and in part from the natu-
ral, but not therefore the less partial and unjust
distinction, made by the public itself between
literary, and all other property; I believe the
prejudice to have arisen, which considers an
unusual irascibility concerning the reception of
its products as characteristic of genius. It
might correct the moral feelings of a numerous
class of readers, to suppose a Review set on
foot, the object of which was to criticise all the
chief works presented to the public by our rib-
bon-weavers, calico-printers, cabinet-makers,
and china-manufacturers; a Review conducted
in the same spirit, and which should take the
same freedom with personal character, as our
literary journals. They would scarcely, I think,
deny their belief, not only that the "genus
irritabile" would be found to include many
other species besides that of bards; but that the
irritability of trade would soon reduce the re-
sentments of poets into mere shadow-fights
skiomachias in the comparison. Or is wealth the
only rational object of human interest? Or even
if this were admitted, has the poet no property
in his works? Or is it a rare, or culpable
case, that he who serves at the altar of the
muses, should be compelled to derive his main-
tenance from the altar, when too he has per-
haps deliberately abandoned the fairest pros-
pects of rank and opulence in order to devote
himself, an entire and undistracted man, to the
instruction or refinement of his fellow-citizens?
Or should we pass by all higher objects and
motives, all disinterested benevolence, and even
that ambition of lasting praise which is at once
the crutch and ornament, which at once sup-
ports and betrays, the infirmity of human vir-
tue; is the character and property of the in-
dividual, who labours for our intellectual plea-
sures, less entitled to a share of our fellow
feeling, than that of the wine-merchant or mil-
liner? Sensibility indeed, both quick and deep,
is not only a characteristic feature, but may be
deemed a component part, of genius. But it is
no less an essential mark of true genius, that
its sensibility is excited by any other cause
more powerfully, than by its own personal
interests; for this plain reason, that the man
of genius lives most in the ideal world, in which
the present is still constituted by the future
or the past; and because his feelings have been
habitually associated with thoughts and images,
to the number, clearness, and vivacity of which
the sensation of self is always in an inverse
proportion. And yet, should he perchance
have occasion to repel some false charge, or to
rectify some erroneous censure, nothing is more
common, than for the many to mistake the
general liveliness of his manner and language
whatever is the subject, for the effects of
peculiar irritation from its accidental relation to
himself.*

 
 

For myself, if from my own feelings, or from
the less suspicious test of the observations of
others, I had been made aware of any literary
testiness or jealousy; I trust, that I should
have been, however, neither silly or arrogant
enough, to have burthened the imperfection on
GENIUS. But an experience (and I should not
need documents in abundance to prove my
words, if I added) a tried experience of twenty
years, has taught me, that the original sin of
my character consists in a careless indifference
to public opinion, and to the attacks of those
who influence it; that praise and admiration

 
 

This is one instance among many of deception, by the
telling the half of a fact, and omitting, the other half, when
it is from their mutual counteraction and neutralization,
that the whole truth arises, as a tertiam aliquid different
from either. Thus in Dryden’s famous line "Great wit"
(which here means genius) "to madness sure is near allied."
Now as far as the profound sensibility, which is doubtless
one of the components of genius, were alone considered,
single and unbalanced, it might be fairly described as expos-
ing the individual to a greater chance of mental derange-
ment; but then a more than usual rapidity of association, a
more than usual power of passing from thought to thought,
and image to image, is a component equally essential; and
in the due modification of each by the other the GENIUS
itself consists; so that it would be as just as fair to describe
the earth, as in imminent danger of exorbitating, or of falling
into the sun according as the assertor of the absurdity con-
fined his attention either to the projectile or to the attractive
force exclusively.
have become yearly,less and less desirable,
except as marks of sympathy; nay that it is
difficult and distressing to me, to think with
any interest even about the sale and profit of
my works, important, as in my present circum-
stances, such considerations must needs be.
Yet it never occurred to me to believe or fancy,
that the quantum of intellectual power be-
stowed on me by nature or education was in
any way connected with this habit of my feel-
ings; or that it needed any other parents or
fosterers, than constitutional indolence, aggra-
vated into languor by ill-health; the accumulat-
ing embarrassments of procrastination; the
mental cowardice, which is the inseparable
companion of procrastination, and which makes
us anxious to think and converse on any thing
rather than on what concerns ourselves; in
fine, all those close vexations, whether charge-
able on my faults or my fortunes which leave
me but little grief to spare for evils compara-
tively, distant and alien.

 
 

Indignation at literary wrongs, I leave to
men born under happier stars. I cannot afford
it. But so far from condemning those who
can, I deem it a writer’s duty, and think it
creditable to his heart, to feel and express a
resentment proportioned to the grossness of the
provocation, and the importance of the object.
There is no profession on earth, which requires
an attention so early, so long, or so unintermit-
ting as that of poetry; and indeed as that of lite-
rary composition in general, if it be such, as at
all satisfies the demands both of taste and of
sound logic. How difficult and delicate a task
even the mere mechanism of verse is, may be
conjectured from the failure of those, who have
attempted poetry late in life. Where then a
man has, from his earliest youth, devoted his
whole being to an object, which by the admis-
sion of all civilized nations in all ages is hono-
rable as a pursuit, and glorious as an attain-
ment; what of all that relates to himself and
his family, if only we except his moral cha-
racter, can have fairer claims to his protection,
or more authorise acts of self-defence, than the
elaborate products of his intellect, and intel-
lectual industry? Prudence itself would com-
mand us to show, even if defect or diversion of
natural sensibility had prevented us from feel-
ing, a due interest and qualified anxiety for the
offspring and representatives of our nobler being.
I know it, alas! by woeful experience! I have
laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this
wilderness the world, with ostrich careless-
ness and ostrich oblivion. The greater part
indeed have been trod under foot, and are for-
gotten; but yet no small number have crept
forth into life, some to furnish feathers for the
caps of others, and still more to plume the
shafts in the quivers of my enemies, of them
that unprovoked have lain in wait against my
soul.

 

" Sic vos, non vobis mellificatis, apes!"

 
 

An instance in confirmation of the Note, p. 39, occurs to
me as I am correcting this sheet, with the FAITHFUL
SHEPHERDESS open before me. Mr. Seward first traces
Fletcher’s lines;

 
" More soul-diseases than e’er yet the hot
"Sun bred thro’ his burnings, while the dog
"Pursues the raging lion, throwing the fog
"And deadly vapor from his angry breath,
"Filling the lower world with plague and death."—

 

To Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar,

 

" The rampant lion hunts he fast
"With dogs of noisome breath;
"Whose baleful barking brings, in haste,
"Pyne, plagues, and dreary death!"

 
 
He then takes occasion to introduce Homer’s simile of the
sight of Achilles’ shield to Priam compared with the Dog
Star, literally thus—

 
" For this indeed is most splendid, but it was made an
"evil sign, and brings many a consuming disease to wretched
"mortals." Nothing can be more simple as a description, or
more accurate as a simile; which (says Mr. S.) is thus finely
translated by Mr. Pope:

 
 
" Terrific Glory! for his burning breath
Taints the red air with fevers, plagues, and death!"

 
 
Now here (not to mention the tremendous bombast) the
Dog Star, so called, is turned into a real Dog, a very odd
Dog, a Fire, Fever, Plague, and death-breathing, red-air-
tainting Dog: and the whole visual likeness is lost, while the
likeness in the effects is rendered absurd by the exaggeration.
In Spencer and Fletcher the thought is justifiable; for the
images are at least consistent, and it was the intention of the
writers to mark the seasons by this allegory of visualized
Puns.

 
 
 
 

CHAPTER III.

The author’s obligations to critics, and the proba-
ble occasion—Principles of modern criticism—
Mr. Southey’s works and character.

 
 

To anonymous critics in reviews, maga-
zines, and news-journals of various name and
rank, and to satirists with or without a name,
in verse or prose, or in verse-text aided by
prose-comment, I do seriously believe and pro-
fess, that I owe full two thirds of whatever
reputation and publicity I happen to possess.
For when the name of an individual has oc-
curred so frequently, in so many works, for
so great a length of time, the readers of these
works (which with a shelf or two of BEAUTIES,
ELEGANT EXTRACTS and ANAS, form nine-tenths
of the reading of the reading public*) cannot but

 
 

For as to the devotees of the circulating libraries, I dare
not compliment their pass-time, or rather killtime, with the
name of reading. Call it rather a sort of beggarly day-
dreaming, during which the mind of the dreamer furnishes
for itself nothing but laziness and a little mawkish sensibi-
lity; while the whole materiel and imagery of the doze is
supplied ab extra by a sort of mental camera obscura ma-
nufactured at the printing office, which pro tempore fixes,
reflects and transmits the moving phantasms of one man’s*

be familiar with the name, without distinctly
remembering whether it was introduced for
an eulogy or for censure. And this becomes
the more likely, if (as I believe) the habit of
perusing periodical works may be properly
added to Averrhoe’s* catalogue of ANTI-MNE-
MONICS, or weakeners of the memory. But
where this has not been the case, yet the reader

 
 
*delirium, so as to people the barrenness of an hundred other
brains afflicted with the same trance or suspension of all
common sense and all definite purpose. We should there-
fore transfer this species of amusement, (if indeed those can
be said to retire a musis, who were never in their company,
or relaxation be attributable to those, whose bows are never
bent) from the genus, reading, to that comprehensive class
characterized by the power of reconciling the two contrary
yet co-existing propensities of human nature, namely; indul-
gence of sloth, and hatred of vacancy. In addition to novels
and tales of chivalry in prose or rhyme, (by which last I
mean neither rhythm nor metre) this genus comprizes as its
species, gaming, swinging, or swaying on a chair or gate;
spitting over a bridge; smoking; snuff-taking; tete a tete
quarrels after dinner between husband and wife; conning
word by word all the advertisements of the daily advertizer
in a public house on a rainy day, &c. &c. &c.

 
 
*Ex. gr. Pediculos e capillis excerptos in arenam jacere
incontusos; eating of unripe fruit; gazing on the clouds, and
(in genere) on moveable things suspended in the air; riding
among a multitude of camels; frequent laughter; listening
to a series of jests and humourous anecdotes, as when (so to
modernise the learned Saracen’s meaning) one man’s droll
story of an Irishman inevitably occasions another’s droll story
of a Scotchman, which again by the same sort of conjunction
disjunctive leads to some etourderie of a Welchman, and
that again to some sly hit of a Yorkshireman; the habit of
reading tomb-stones in church-yards, &c. By the bye, this
catalogue strange as it may appear, is not insusceptible of a
sound pcychological commentary.
will be apt to suspect, that there must be
something more than usually strong and exten-
sive in a reputation, that could either require or
stand so merciless and long-continued a can-
nonading. Without any feeling of anger there-
fore (for which indeed, on my own account, I
have no pretext) I may yet be allowed to ex-
press some degree of surprize, that after having
run the critical gauntlet for a certain class of
faults which I had, nothing having come before
the judgement-seat in the interim, I should,
year after year, quarter after quarter, month
after month (not to mention sundry petty pe-
riodicals of still quicker revolution, "or weekly
or diurnal") have been for at least 17 years
consecutively dragged forth by them into the
foremost ranks of the proscribed, and forced to
abide the brunt of abuse, for faults directly
opposite, and which I certainly had not. How
shall I explain this?

 
 

Whatever may have been the case with others,
I certainly cannot attribute this persecution to
personal dislike, or to envy, or to feelings of
vindictive animosity. Not to the former, for,
with the exception of a very few who are my
intimate friends, and were so before thencty were
known as authors, I have had little other ac-
quaintance with literary characters, than what
may be implied in an accidental introduction,
or casual meeting in a mixt company. And,
as far as words and looks can be trusted, I
must believe that, even in these instances, I had
excited no unfriendly disposition.* Neither by

 
 

Some years ago, a gentleman, the chief writer and con-
ductor of a celebrated review, distinguished by its hostility
to Mr. Southey, spent a day or two at Keswick. That he
was, without diminution on this account, treated with every
hospitable attention by Mr. Southey and myself, I trust I
need not say. But one thing I may venture to notice; that
at no period of my life do I remember to have received so
many, and such high coloured compliments in so short a space
of time. He was likewise circumstantially informed by what
series of accidents it had happened, that Mr. Wordsworth,
Mr. Southey, and I had become neighbours; and how ut-
terly unfounded was the supposition, that we considered
ourselves, as belonging to any common school, but that of
good sense confirmed by the long-established models of the
best times of Greece, Rome, Italy, and England; and still
more groundless the notion, that Mr. Southey (for as to my-
self I have published so little, and that little, of so little im-
portance, as to make it almost ludicrous to mention my name
at all) could have been concerned in the formation of a poetic
sect with Mr. Wordsworth, when so many of his works had
been published not only previously to any acquaintance be-
tween them; but before Mr. Wordsworth himself had written
any thing but in a diction ornate, and uniformly sustain-
ed; when too the slightest examination will make it evident, that
between those and the after writings of Mr. Southey, there
exists no other difference than that of a progressive degree
of excellence from progressive developement of power, and
progressive facility from habit and increase of experience.
Yet among the first articles which this man wrote after his
return from Keswick, we were characterized as "the School
of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes."

In reply to a letter from the same gentleman, in which he

had asked me, whether I was in earnest in preferring the
style of Hooker to that of Dr. Johnson; and Jeremy Taylor
to Burke; I stated, somewhat at large, the comparative ex-
cellences and defects which characterized our best prose
writers, from the reformation, to the first half of Charles
nd; and that of those who had flourished during the present
reign, and the preceding one. About twelve months
letter, or in conversation, have I ever had dis-
pute or controversy beyond the common social
interchange of opinions. Nay, where I had
reason to suppose my convictions fundament-
ally different, it has been my habit, and I may
add, the impulse of my nature, to assign the
grounds of my belief, rather than the belief
itself; and not to express dissent, till I could

 
 
*afterwards, a review appeared on the same subject, in the con-
cluding paragraph of which the reviewer asserts, that his
chief motive for entering into the discussion was to separate
a rational and qualified admiration of our elder writers, from
the indiscriminate enthusiasm of a recent school, who praised
what they did not understand, and caracatured what they
were unable to imitate, And, that no doubt might be left
concerning the persons alluded to, the writer annexes the
names of Miss BAILIE, W. SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH and
COLERIDGE. For that which follows, I have only ear-say
evidence; but yet such as demands my belief; viz. that on
being questioned concerning this apparently wanton attack,
more especially with reference to Miss Bailie, the writer had
stated as his motives, that this lady when at Edinburgh had
declined a proposal of introducing him to her; that Mr.
Southey had written against him; and Mr. Wordsworth had
talked contemptuously of him; but that as to Coleridge he
had noticed him merely because the names of Southey and
Wordsworth and Coleridge always went together. But if
it were worth while to mix together, as ingredients, half the
anecdotes which I either myself know to be true, or which
I have received from men incapable of intentional falsehood,
concerning the characters, qualifications, and motives of our
anonymous critics, whose decisions are oracles for our read-
ing public; I might safely borrow the words of the apocry-
phal Daniel; "Give me leave, O SOVEREIGN PUBLIC, and I
shall slay this dragon without sword or staff." For the com-
pound would be as the "Pitch, and fat, and hair, which
Daniel took, and did seethe them together, and made lumps
thereof, and put into the dragon’s mouth, and so the dragon
burst in sunder; and Daniel said LO; THESE ARE THE
GODS YE WORSHIP."
establish some points of complete sympathy,
some grounds common to both sides, from
which to commence its explanation.

 
 

Still less can I place these attacks to the
charge of envy. The few pages, which I have
published, are of too distant a date; and the
extent of their sale a proof too conclusive
against their having been popular at any time;
to render probable, I had almost said possible,
the excitement of envy on their account; and
the man who should envy me on any other,
verily he must be envy-mad!

 
 

Lastly, with as little semblance of reason,
could I suspect any animosity towards me from
vindictive feelings as the cause. I have before
said, that my acquaintance with literary men
has been limited and distant; and that I have
had neither dispute nor controversy. From
my first entrance into life, I have, with few and
short intervals, lived either abroad or in retire-
ment. My different essays on subjects of na-
tional interest, published at different times, first
in the Morning Post and then in the Courier,
with my courses of lectures on the principles of
criticism as applied to Shakspeare and Milton,
constitute my whole publicity; the only occa-
sions on which I could offend any member of
the republic of letters. With one solitary ex-
ception in which my words were first mis-
stated and then wantonly applied to an
individual, I could never learn, that I had excited the
displeasure of any among my literary contem-
poraries. Having announced my intention to
give a course of lectures on the characteristic
merits and defects of English poetry in its dif-
ferent æras; first, from Chaucer to Milton;
second, from Dryden inclusive to Thompson;
and third, from Cowper to the present day; I
changed my plan, and confined my disquisition
to the two former æras, that I might furnish no
possible pretext for the unthinking to miscon-
strue, or the malignant to misapply my words,
and having stampt their own meaning on them,
to pass them as current coin in the marts of
garrulity or detraction.

 
 

Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent
minds as robberies of the deserving; and it is
too true, and too frequent, that Bacon, Har-
rington, Machiavel, and Spinosa, are not read,
because Hume, Condilliac, and Voltaire are.
But in promiscuous company no prudent man
will oppugn the merits of a contemporary in
his own supposed department; contenting him-
self with praising in his turn those whom he
deems excellent. If I should ever deem it my
duty at all to oppose the pretensions of indivi-
duals, I would oppose them in books which
could be weighed and answered, in which I
could evolve the whole of my reasons and feel-
ings, with their requisite limits and
modifications; not in irrecoverable conversation, where
however strong the reasons might be, the feel-
ings that prompted them would assuredly be
attributed by some one or other to envy and
discontent. Besides I well know, and I trust,
have acted on that knowledge, that it must be
the ignorant and injudicious who extol the
unworthy; and the eulogies of critics without
taste or judgement are the natural reward of
authors without feeling or genius. "Sint uni-
cuique sua premia."

 
 

How then, dismissing, as I do, these three
causes, am I to account for attacks, the long
continuance and inveteracy of which it would
require all three to explain. The solution may
seem to have been given, or at least suggested,
in a note to a preceding page. I was in habits
of intimacy with Mr. Wordsworth and Mr.
Southey! This, however, transfers, rather than
removes, the difficulty. Be it, that by an un-
conscionable extension of the old adage, "nos-
citur a socio" my literary friends are never
under the water-fall of criticism, but I must be
wet through with the spray; yet how came the
torrent to descend upon them ?

 
 

First then, with regard to Mr. Southey. I
well remember the general reception of his
earlier publications: viz. the poems published
with Mr. Lovell under the names of Moschus
and Bion; the two volumes of poems under his
own name, and the Joan of Arc. The censures
of the critics by profession are extant, and may
be easily referred to:--careless lines, inequality
in the merit of the different poems, and (in the
lighter works) a prediliction for the strange and
whimsical; in short, such faults as might have
been anticipated in a young and rapid writer,
were indeed sufficiently enforced. Nor was
there at that time wanting a party spirit to
aggravate the defects of a poet, who with all
the courage of uncorrupted youth had avowed
his zeal for a cause, which he deemed that of
liberty, and his abhorrence of oppression by
whatever name consecrated. But it was as
little objected by others, as dreamt of by the
poet himself, that he preferred careless and
prosaic lines on rule and of forethought, or in-
deed that he pretended to any other art or
theory of poetic diction, besides that which we
may all learn from Horace, Quintilian, the ad-
mirable dialogue de Causis Corruptæ Eloquen-
tiæ, or Strada’s Prolusions; if indeed natural
good sense and the early study of the best
models in his own language had not infused
the same maxims more securely, and, if I may
venture the expression, more vitally. All that
could have been fairly deduced was, that in his
taste and estimation of writers Mr. Southey
agreed far more with Warton, thall with John-
son. Nor do I mean to deny, that at all times
Mr. Southey was of the same mind with Sir
Philip Sidney in preferring an excellent ballad
in the humblest style of poetry to twenty in-
different poems that strutted in the highest.
And by what have his works, published since
then, been characterized, each more strikingly
than the preceding, but by greater splendor, a
deeper pathos, profounder reflections, and a
more sustained dignity of language and of
metre? Distant may the period be, but when-
ever the time shall come, when all his works
shall be collected by some editor worthy to be
his biographer, I trust that an excerpta of all
the passages, in which his writings, name, and
character have been attacked, from the pamph-
lets and periodical works of the last twenty
years, may be an accompaniment. Yet that it
would prove medicinal in after times, I dare
not hope; for as long as there are readers to
be delighted with calumny, there will be found
reviewers to calumniate. And such readers
will become in all probability more numerous,
in proportion as a still greater diffusion of lite-
rature shall produce an increase of sciolists;
and sciolism bring with it petulance and pre-
sumption. In times of old, books were as reli-
gious oracles; as literature advanced, they next
became venerable preceptors; they then de-
scended to the rank of instructive friends; and
as their numbers increased, they sunk still
lower to that of entertaining companions; and
at present they seem degraded into culprits to
hold up their hands at the bar of every self-
elected, yet not the less peremptory, judge,
who chuses to write from humour or interest,
from enmity or arrogance, and to abide the
decision (in the words of Jeremy Taylor) "of
him that reads in malice, or him that reads after
dinner."

 
 

The same gradual retrograde movement may
be traced, in the relation which the authors
themselves have assumed towards their readers.
From the lofty address of Bacon: "these are
"the meditations of Francis of Verulam, which
"that posterity should be possessed of, he deemed
"their interest :" or from dedication to Monarch
or Pontiff, in which the honor given was as-
serted in equipoise to the patronage acknow-
leged from PINDAR’S

 
 

ep alloi-

  • si dalloi megaloi. to deschaton koru-
  • phoutai basileusi. meketi
    Paptaine porsion.
    Eie se te touton
    Upsou chronon patein, eme
    Te tossade nikarorois
    Omilein, prophanton sorian kad El-

    lanas eonta panta.
     

    OLYMP. OD. I.

    Poets and Philosophers, rendered diffident
    by their very number, addressed themselves to
    "learned readers ;" then, aimed to conciliate
    the graces of "the candid reader ;" till, the critic
    still rising as the author sunk, the amateurs of
    literature collectively were erected into a muni-
    cipality of judges, and addressed as THE TOWN!
    And now finally, all men being supposed able
    to read, and all readers able to judge, the mul-
    titudinous PUBLIC, shaped into personal unity
    by the magic of abstraction, sits nominal des-
    pot on the throne of criticism. But, alas! as
    in other despotisms, it but echoes the decisions
    of its invisible ministers, whose intellectual
    claims to the guardianship of the muses seem,
    for the greater part, analogous to the phy-
    sical qualifications which adapt their oriental
    brethren for the superintendance of the Harem.
    Thus it is said, that St. Nepomuc was installed
    the guardian of bridges because he had fallen
    over one, and sunk out of sight; thus too St.
    Cecilia is said to have been first propitiated by
    musicians, because having failed in her own
    attempts, she had taken a dislike to the art,
    and all its successful professors. But I shall
    probably have occasion hereafter to deliver my
    convictions more at large concerning this state
    of things, and its influences on taste, genius
    and morality.

     

    In the "Thalaba" the "Madoc" and still
    more evidently in the unique* "Cid," the
    "Kehama," and as last, so best, the "Don
    "Roderick;" Southey has given abundant proof,
    "se cogitässe quám sit magnum dare aliquid
    "in manus hominum: nec persuadere sibi posse,
    "non sæpe tractandum quod placere et semper
    "et omnibus cupiat." Plin. Ep. Lib. 7. Ep. 17.
    But on the other hand I guess, that Mr. Southey
    was quite unable to comprehend, wherein could
    consist the crime or mischief of printing half a
    dozen or more playful poems; or to speak
    more generally, compositions which would be
    enjoyed or passed over, according as the taste
    and humour of the reader might chance to be;
    provided they contained nothing immoral. In
    the present age "perituræ parcere chartæ" is
    emphatically an unreasonable demand. The
    merest trifle, he ever sent abroad, had tenfold
    better claims to its ink and paper, than all the
    silly criticisms, which prove no more, than that

     
     

    I have ventured to call it "unique ;" not only because I
    know no work of the kind in our language (if we except a
    few chapters of the old translation of Froissart) none, which
    uniting the charms of romance and history, keeps the imagi-
    nation so constantly on the wing, and yet leaves so much for
    after reflection; but likewise, and chiefly, because it is a
    compilation, which in the various excellencies of translation,
    selection, and arrangement, required and proves greater ge-
    nius in the compiler, as living in the present state of society,
    than in the original composers.
    the critic was not one of those, for whom the
    trifle was written; and than all the grave ex-
    hortations to a greater reverence for the public.
    As if the passive page of a book, by having an
    epigram or doggrel tale impressed on it, in-
    stantly assumed at once loco-motive power and
    a sort of ubiquity, so as to flutter and buz in
    the ear of the public to the sore annoyance of
    the said mysterious personage. But what gives
    an additional and more ludicrous absurdity to
    these lamentations is the curious fact, that if in
    a volume of poetry the critic should find poem
    or passage which he deems more especially
    worthless, he is sure to select and reprint it in
    the review; by which, on his own grounds, he
    wastes as much more paper than the author, as
    the copies of a fashionable review are more
    numerous than those of the original book; in
    some, and those the most prominent instances,
    as ten thousand to five hundred. I know
    nothing that surpasses the vileness of deciding
    on the merits of a poet or painter (not by cha-
    racteristic defects; for where there is genius,
    these always point to his characteristic beauties;
    but) by accidental failures or faulty passages;
    except the impudence of defending it, as the
    proper duty, and most instructive part, of cri-
    ticism. Omit or pass slightly over, the ex-
    pression, grace, and grouping of Raphael’s
    figures; but ridicule in detail the
    knitting-needles and broom-twigs, that are to represent
    trees in his back grounds; and never let him
    hear the last of his galli-pots! Admit, that
    the Allegro and Penseroso of Milton are not
    without merit; but repay yourself for this con-
    cession, by reprinting at length the two poems
    on the University Carrier! As a fair specimen
    of his sonnets, quote " a Book was writ of late
    called Tetrachordon ;" and as characteristic of
    his rhythm and metre cite his literal translation
    of the first and second psalm! In order to
    justify yourself, you need only assert, that had
    you dwelt chiefly on the beauties and excel-
    lencies of the poet, the admiration of these
    might seduce the attention of future writers
    from the objects of their love and wonder, to
    an imitation of the few poems and passages in
    which the poet was most unlike himself.

     
     

    But till reviews are conducted on far other
    principles, and with far other motives; till in
    the place of arbitrary dictation and petulant
    sneers, the reviewers support their decisions by

    reference to fixed canons of criticism, previ-

    ously established and deduced from the nature
    of man; reflecting minds will pronounce it ar-
    rogance in them thus to announce themselves
    to men of letters, as the guides of their taste
    and judgment. To the purchaser and mere
    reader it is, at all events, an injustice. He
    who tells me that there are defects in a new
    work, tells me nothing which I should not
    have taken for granted without his information.
    But he, who points out and elucidates the
    beauties of an original work, does indeed give
    me interesting information, such as experience
    would not have authorised me in anticipating.
    And as to compositions which the authors
    themselves announce with "Hæc ipsi novimus
    esse nihil," why should we judge by a dif-
    ferent rule two printed works, only because
    the one author was alive, and the other in his
    grave? What literary man has not regretted
    the prudery of Spratt in refusing to let his friend
    Cowley appear in his slippers and dressing
    gown? I am not perhaps the only one who
    has derived an innocent amusement from the
    riddles, conundrums, tri-syllable lines, &c. &c.
    of Swift and his correspondents, in hours of
    languor when to have read his more finished
    works would have been useless to myself, and,
    in some sort, an act of injustice to the author.
    But I am at a loss to conceive by what perver-
    sity of judgement, these relaxations of his genius
    could be employed to diminish his fame as the
    writer of "Gulliver’s travels," and the "Tale
    of a Tub." Had Mr. Southey written twice as
    many poems of inferior merit, or partial inte-
    rest, as have enlivened the journals of the day,
    they would have added to his honour with
    good and wise men, not merely or principally
    as proving the versatility of his talents, but as
    evidences of the purity of that mind, which even
    in its levities never wrote a line, which it need
    regret on any moral account.

     
     

    I have in imagination transferred to the future
    biographer the duty of contrasting Southey’s
    fixed and well-earned fame, with the abuse and
    indefatigable hostility of his anonymous critics
    from his early youth to his ripest manhood.
    But I cannot think so ill of human nature as not
    to believe, that these critics have already taken
    shame to themselves, whether they consider the
    object of their abuse in his moral or his literary
    character. For reflect but on the variety and
    extent of his acquirements! He stands second
    to no man, either as an historian or as a biblio-
    grapher; and when I regard him, as a popular
    essayist, (for the articles of his compositions in
    the reviews are for the greater part essays on
    subjects of deep or curious interest rather than
    criticisms on particular works*) I look in
    vain for any writer, who has conveyed so much
    information, from so many and such recondite
    sources, with so many just and original reflec-
    tions, in a style so lively and poignant, yet so
    uniformly classical and perspicuous; no one in
    short who has combined so much wisdom with

     
     

    See the articles on Methodism, in the Quarterly Review;
    the small volume on the New System of Education, &c.
    so much wit; so much truth and knowledge
    with so much life and fancy. His prose is
    always intelligible and always entertaining. In
    poetry he has attempted almost every species
    of composition known before, and he has added
    new ones; and if we except the highest lyric,
    (in which how few, how very few even of the
    greatest minds have been fortunate) he has
    attempted every species successfully: from
    the political song of the day, thrown off in
    the playful overflow of honest joy and pa-
    triotic exultation, to the wild ballad ;* from
    epistolary ease and graceful narrative, to the
    austere and impetuous moral declamation; from
    the pastoral claims and wild streaming lights of
    the "Thalaba," in which sentiment and imagery
    have given permanence even to the excitement
    of curiosity; and from the full blaze of the
    "Kehama," (a gallery of finished pictures in
    one splendid fancy piece, in which, notwith-
    standing, the moral grandeur rises gradually
    above the brilliance of the colouring and the
    boldness and novelty of the machinery) to the
    more sober beauties of the "Madoc;" and
    lastly, from the Madoc to his "Roderic," in
    which, retaining all his former excellencies of a
    poet eminently inventive and picturesque, he has

     
     

    See the incomparable "Return to Moscow," and the
    "Old Woman of Berkeley."
    surpassed himself in language and metre, in
    the construction of the whole, and in the splen-
    dor of particular passages.

     
     

    Here then shall I conclude? No! The cha-
    racters of the deceased, like the encomia on
    tombstones, as they are described with religious
    tenderness, so are they read, with allowing sym-
    pathy indeed, but yet with rational deduction.
    There are men, who deserve a higher record;
    men with whose characters it is the interest of
    their contemporaries, no less than that of poste-
    rity, to be made acquainted; while it is yet pos-
    sible for impartial censure, and even for quick-
    sighted envy, to cross-examine the tale without
    offence to the courtesies of humanity; and while
    the eulogist detected in exaggeration or false-
    hood must pay the full penalty of his baseness
    in the contempt which brands the convicted flat-
    terer. Publicly has Mr. Southey been reviled
    by men, who (I would feign hope for the honor
    of human nature) hurled fire-brands against a
    figure of their own imagination, publicly have
    his talents been depreciated, his principles de-
    nounced; as publicly do I therefore, who have
    known him intimately, deem it my duty to leave
    recorded, that it is SOUTHEY’S almost unexam-
    pled felicity, to possess the best gifts of talent and
    genius free from all their characteristic defects.
    To those who remember the state of our public
    schools and universities some twenty years past,
    it will appear no ordinary praise in any man to
    have passed from innocence into virtue, not only
    free from all vicious habit, but unstained by
    one act of intemperance, or the degradations
    akin to intemperance. That scheme of head,
    heart, and habitual demeanour, which in his
    early manhood, and first controversial writings,
    Milton, claiming the privilege of self-defence,
    asserts of himself, and challenges his calumnia-
    tors to disprove; this will his school-mates, his
    fellow-collegians, and his maturer friends, with
    a confidence proportioned to the intimacy of their
    knowledge, bear witness to, as again realized
    in the life of Robert Southey. But still more
    striking to those, who by biography or by their
    own experience are familiar with the general
    habits of genius, will appear the poet’s match-
    less industry and perseverance in his pursuits;
    the worthiness and dignity of those pursuits;
    his generous submission to tasks of transitory
    interest, or such as his genius alone could make
    otherwise; and that having thus more than sa-
    tisfied the claims of affection or prudence, he
    should yet have made for himself time and
    power, to achieve more, and in more various de-
    partments than almost any other writer has done,
    though employed wholly on subjects of his own
    choice and ambition. But as Southey possesses,
    and is not possessed by, his genius, even so is
    he the master even of his virtues. The regular
    and methodical tenor of his daily labours, which
    would be deemed rare in the most mechanical
    pursuits, and might be envied by the mere man
    of business, loses all semblance of formality in
    the dignified simplicity of his manners, in the
    spring and healthful chearfulness of his spirits.
    Always employed, his friends find him always
    at leisure. No less punctual in trifles, than
    stedfast in the performance of highest duties, he
    inflicts none of those small pains and discom-
    forts which irregular men scatter about them
    and which in the aggregate so often become
    formidable obstacles both to happiness and
    utility; while on the contrary he bestows all the
    pleasures, and inspires all that ease of mind on
    those around him or connected with him, which
    perfect consistency, and (if such a word might
    be framed) absolute reliability, equally in small
    as in great concerns, cannot but inspire and
    bestow: when this too is softened without
    being weakened by kindness and gentleness.
    I know few men who so well deserve the cha-
    racter which an antient attributes to Marcus
    Cato, namely, that he was likest virtue, in as
    much as he seemed to act aright, not in obedi-
    ence to any law or outward motive, but by the
    necessity of a happy nature, which could not
    act otherwise. As son, brother, husband, father,
    master, friend, he moves with firm yet light
    steps, alike unostentatious, and alike exem.
    plary. As a writer, he has uniformly made his
    talents subservient to the best interests of huma-
    nity, of public virtue, and domestic piety; his
    cause has ever been the cause of pure religion
    and of liberty, of national independence and of
    national illumination. When future critics shall
    weigh out his guerdon of praise and censure, it
    will be Southey the poet only, that will supply
    them with the scanty materials for the latter.
    They will likewise not fail to record, that as no
    man was ever a more constant friend, never had
    poet more friends and honorers among the good
    of all parties; and that quacks in education,
    quacks in politics, and quacks in criticism were
    his only enemies.*

     
     

    It is not easy to estimate the effects which the example
    of a young man as highly distinguished for strict purity of
    disposition and conduct, as for intellectual power and lite-
    rary acquirements, may produce on those of the same age
    with himself, especially on those of similar pursuits and con-
    genial minds. For many years, my opportunities of inter-
    course with Mr. Southey have been rare, and at long inter-
    vals; but I dwell with unabated pleasure on the strong and
    sudden, yet I trust not fleeting influence, which my moral
    being underwent on my acquaintance with him at Oxford,
    whither I had gone at the commencement of our Cambridge
    vacation on a visit to an old school-fellow. Not indeed on
    my moral or religious principles, for they had never been
    contaminated; but in awakening the sense of the duty and
    dignity of making my actions accord with those principles,
    both in word and deed. The irregularities only not univer-
    sal among the young men of my standing, which I always
    knew to be wrong, I then learnt to feel as degrading; learnt
    to know that an opposite conduct, which was at that time
    considered by us as the easy virtue of cold and selfish pru-
    dence, might originate in the noblest emotions, in views the*

     
     
     
     
     

    CHAPTER IV.

    The lyrical ballads with the preface—Mr. Words-
    worth’s earlier poems—On fancy and imagi-
    nation—The investigation of the distinction
    important to the fine arts.

     
     

    I have wandered far from the object in view,
    but as I fancied to myself readers who would
    respect the feelings that had tempted me from

     
     
    *most disinterested and imaginative. It is not however from
    grateful recollections only, that I have been impelled thus to
    leave these, my deliberate sentiments on record; but in some
    sense as a debt of justice to the man, whose name has been so
    often connected with mine, for evil to which he is a stranger.
    As a specimen I subjoin part of a note, from "the Beauties
    of the Anti-jacobin," in which, having previously informed
    the public that I had been dishonor’d at Cambridge for
    preaching deism, at a time when for my youthful ardor in
    defence of christianity, I was decried as a bigot by the pro-
    selytes of French Phi- (or to speak more truly, Psi) losophy,
    the writer concludes with these words "since this time he
    has left his native country, commenced citizen of the world,
    left his poor children fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex
    his disce, his friends, LAMB and SOUTHEY. "With severest
    truth it may be asserted, that it would not be easy to select
    two men more exemplary in their domestic affections, than
    those whose names were thus printed at full length as in the
    same rank of morals with a denounced infidel and fugitive,
    who had left his children fatherless and his wife destitute!
    Is it surprising, that many good men remained longer than
    perhaps they otherwise would have done, adverse to a party,
    which encouraged and openly rewarded the authors of such
    atrocious calumnies! Qualis es, nescio; sed per quales
    agis, scio et doleo.
    the main road; so I dare calculate on not a
    few, who will warmly sympathize with them.
    At present it will be sufficient for my purpose,
    if I have proved, that Mr. Southey’s writings
    no more than my own, furnished the original
    occasion to this fiction of a new school of poetry,
    and of clamors against its supposed founders
    and proselytes.

     
     

    As little do I believe that "Mr. WORDS-
    WORTH’S Lyrical Ballads" were in themselves the
    cause. I speak exclusively of the two volumes
    so entitled. A careful and repeated examina-
    tion of these confirms me in the belief, that the
    omission of less than an hundred lines would
    have precluded nine-tenths of the criticism on
    this work. I hazard this declaration, however,
    on the supposition, that the reader had taken it
    up, as he would have done any other collection
    of poems purporting to derive their subjects or
    interests from the incidents of domestic or or-
    dinary life, intermingled with higher strains of
    meditation which the poet utters in his own
    person and character; with the proviso, that
    they were perused without knowledge of, or

    reference to, the author’s peculiar opinions, and

    that the reader had not had his attention previ-
    ously directed to those peculiarities. In these,
    as was actually the case with Mr. Southey’s
    earlier works, the lines and passages which
    might have offended the general taste, would
    have been considered as mere inequalities, and
    attributed to inattention, not to perversity of
    judgement. The men of business who had
    passed their lives chiefly in cities, and who
    might therefore be expected to derive the high-
    est pleasure from acute notices of men and
    manners conveyed in easy, yet correct and
    pointed language; and all those who, reading
    but little poetry, are most stimulated with that
    species of it, which seems most distant from
    prose, would probably have passed by the
    volume altogether. Others more catholic in
    their taste, and yet habituated to be most pleas-
    ed when most excited, would have contented
    themselves with deciding, that the author had
    been successful in proportion to the elevation
    of his style and subject. Not a few perhaps,
    might by their admiration of "the lines written
    near Tintern Abbey," those "left upon a Seat
    under a Yew Tree," the "old Cumberland beg-
    gar," and "Ruth," have been gradually led to
    peruse with kindred feeling the "Brothers," the
    "Hart leap well," and whatever other poems in
    that collection may be described as holding a
    middle place between those written in the high-
    est and those in the humblest style; as for
    instance between the "Tintern Abbey," and
    "the Thorn," or the "Simon Lee." Should
    their taste submit to no further change, and
    sill remain unreconciled to the colloquial
    phrases, or the imitations of them, that are,
    more or less, scattered through the class last
    mentioned; yet even from the small number of
    the latter, they would have deemed them but
    an inconsiderable subtraction from the merit of
    the whole work; or, what is sometimes not
    unpleasing in the publication of a new writer,
    as serving to ascertain the natural tendency,
    and consequently the proper direction of the
    author’s genius.

     
     

    In the critical remarks therefore, prefixed
    and annexed to the "Lyrical Ballads," I be-
    lieve, that we may safely rest, as the true
    origin of the unexampled opposition which
    Mr. Wordsworth’s writings have been since
    doomed to encounter. The humbler passages
    in the poems themselves were dwelt on and
    cited to justify the rejection of the theory.
    What in and for themselves would have been
    either forgotten or forgiven as imperfections, or
    at least comparative failures, provoked direct
    hostility when announced as intentional, as
    the result of choice after full deliberation.
    Thus the poems, admitted by all as excellent,
    joined with those which had pleased the far
    greater number, though they formed two-thirds
    of the whole work, instead of being deemed (as
    in all right they should have been, even if we
    take for granted that the reader judged aright)
    an atonement for the few exceptions, gave wind
    and fuel to the animosity against both the poems
    and the poet. In all perplexity there is a por-
    tion of fear, which predisposes the mind to
    anger. Not able to deny that the author pos-
    sessed both genius and a powerful intellect,
    they felt very positive, but were not quite certain,
    that he might not be in the right, and they
    themselves in the wrong; an unquiet state of
    mind, which seeks alleviation by quarrelling
    with the occasion of it, and by wondering at the
    perverseness of the man, who had written a long
    and argumentative essay to persuade them, that

     
     

    " Fair is foul, and foul is fair ;"

     

    in other words, that they had been all their lives
    admiring without judgement, and were now
    about to censure without reason.*

     

    In opinions of long continuance, and in which we had
    never before been molested by a single doubt, to be sud-
    denly convinced of an error, is almost like being convicted of
    a fault. There is a state of mind, which is the direct anti-
    thesis of that, which takes place when we make a bull. The
    bull namely consists in the bringing together two incompa-
    patible thoughts, with the sensation, but without the sense, of
    their connection. The psychological condition, or that
    which constitutes the possibility of this state, being such
    disproportionate vividness of two distant thoughts, as extin-
    guishes or obscures the consciousness of the intermediate
    images or conceptious or wholly abstracts the attention
    from them. Thus in the well known bull, "I was a fine
    child, but they changed me ;" the first conception expressed
    in the word" I," is that of personal identity—Ego contem-
    plans: the second expressed in the word "me," is the visual
    image or object by which the mind represents to itself its
    past condition, or rather, its personal identity under the
    form in which it imagined itself previously to have existed,--*

     

    That this conjecture is not wide from the
    mark, I am induced to believe from the notice-
    able fact, which I can state on my own know-
    ledge, that the same general censure should
    have been grounded almost by each different
    person on some different poem. Among those,
    whose candour and judgement I estimate highly,
    I distinctly remember six who expressed their
    objections to the "Lyrical Ballads" almost in
    the same words, and altogether to the same
    purport, at the same time admitting, that se-
    veral of the poems had given them great plea-
    sure; and, strange as it might seem, the com-
    position which one had cited as execrable,

     
     
    *Ego contemplatus. Now the change of one visual image for
    another involves in itself no absurdity, and becomes absurd
    only by its immediate juxta-position with the first thought,
    which is rendered possible by the whole attention being suc-
    cessively absorbed in each singly, so as not to notice the in-
    terjacent notion, "changed" which by its incongruity with
    the first thought, "I," constitutes the bull. Add only, that
    this process is facilitated by the circumstance of the words
    "I," and "me," being sometimes equivalent, and sometimes
    having a distinct meaning; sometimes, namely, signifying
    the act of self-consciousness, sometimes the external image
    in and by which the mind represents that act to itself, the
    result and symbol of its individuality. Now suppose the
    direct contrary state, and you will have a distinct sense of
    the connection between two conceptions, without that sen-
    sation of such connection which is supplied by habit. The
    man feels, as if he were standing on his head, though he can-
    not but see, that he is truly standing on his feet. This, as a
    painful sensation, will of course have a tendency to associate
    itself with the person who occasions it; even as persons, who
    have been by painful means restored from derangement, are
    known to feel an involuntary dislike towards their physician.
    another had quoted as his favorite. I am
    indeed convinced in my own mind, that could
    the same experiment have been tried with these
    volumes, as was made in the well known story
    of the picture, the result would have been the
    same; the parts which had been covered by the
    number of the black spots on the one day,
    would be found equally albo lapide notatæ on
    the succeeding.

     
     

    However this may be, it is assuredly hard
    and unjust to fix the attention on a few separate
    and insulated poems with as much aversion, as
    if they had been so many plague-spots on the
    whole work, instead of passing them over in
    silence, as so much blank paper, or leaves of
    bookseller’s catalogue; especially, as no one
    pretends to have found immorality or indeli-
    cacy; and the poems therefore, at the worst,
    could only be regarded as so many light or
    inferior coins in a roleau of gold, not as so much
    alloy in a weight of bullion. A friend whose
    talentsI hold in the highest respect, but whose
    judgement and strong sound sense I have had
    almost continued occasion to revere, making
    the usual complaints to me concerning both the
    style and subjects of Mr. Wordsworth’s minor
    poems; I admitted that there were some few
    of the tales and incidents, in which I could not
    myself find a sufficient cause for their having
    been recorded in metre. I mentioned the "Alice
    Fell" as an instance; "nay," replied my friend
    with more than usual quickness of manner,
    " I cannot agree with you there! that I own
    does seem to me a remarkably pleasing poem."
    In the "Lyrical Ballads" (for my experience
    does not enable me to extend the remark equally
    unqualified to the two subsequent volumes) I
    have heard at different times, and from different
    individuals every single poem extolled and re-
    probated, with the exception of those of loftier
    kind, which as was before observed, seem to
    have won universal praise. This fact of itself
    would have made me diffident in my censures,
    had not a still stronger ground been furnished
    by the strange contrast of the heat and long
    continuance of the opposition, with the nature
    of the faults stated as justifying it. The seduc-
    tive faults, the dulcia vitia of Cowley, Marini,
    or Darwin might reasonably be thought capable
    of corrupting the public judgement for half a
    century, and require a twenty years war, cam-
    paign after campaign, in order to dethrone the
    usurper and re-establish the legitimate taste.
    But that a downright simpleness, under the
    affectation of simplicity, prosaic words in feeble
    metre, silly thoughts in childish phrases, and
    a preference of mean, degrading, or at best
    trivial associations and characters, should suc-
    ceed in forming a school of imitators, a com-
    pany of almost religious admirers, and this too
    among young men of ardent minds, liberal
    education, and not

     
     

    "with academic laurels unbestowed ;"

     

    and that this bare and bald counterfeit of poetry,
    which is characterized as below criticism, should
    for nearly twenty years have well-nigh engrossed
    criticism, as the main, if not the only, butt of
    review, magazine, pamphlets, poem, and para-
    graph;--this is indeed matter of wonder! Of
    yet greater is it, that the contest should still
    continue as* undecided as that between

     
     
     

    Without however the apprehensions attributed to the
    Pagan reformer of the poetic republic. If we may judge
    from the preface to the recent collection of his poems, Mr.
    W. would have answered with Xanthias—

     
     
    Su d ouk edeisas ton psophon ton rematon,
    Kai tas apeilas; XAN. ouma Di, oud ephrontisa.

     
    And here let me dare hint to the authors of the numerous
    parodies, and pretended imitations of Mr. Wordsworth’s
    style, that at once to conceal and convey wit and wisdom in
    the semblance of folly and dulness, as is done in the clowns
    and fools, nay even in the Dogberry, of our Shakespear, is
    doubtless a proof of genius, or at all events, of satiric talent;
    but that the attempt to ridicule a silly and childish poem,
    by writing another still sillier and still more childish, can
    only prove (if it prove any thing at all) that the parodist is a
    still greater blockhead than the original writer, and what is
    far worse, a malignant coxcomb to boot. The talent for
    mimicry seems strongest where the human race are most de-
    graded. The poor, naked, half human savages of New Hol-
    land were found excellent mimics: and in civilized society,
    minds of the very lowest stamp alone satirize by copying.
    At least the difference, which must blend with and balance
    the likeness, in order to constitute a just imitation, existing
    here merely in caricature, detracts from the libeller’s heart,
    without adding an iota to the credit of his understanding.
    Bacchus and the frogs in Aristophanes; when the
    former descended to the realms of the departed
    to bring back the spirit of the old and genuine
    poesy.

     
     
     

    Choros Batrachon; Dionusos

     

    Ch. brekekekex, koax, koax !

    D. all exoloisd auto koax.
    ouden gar esi, e koax.
    oimozet : ou moi melei.

     
    Ch. alla men kekraxomesda
    goposon e pharugx an emon
    chandane di emeras
    brekekekex, koax, koax!

     

    D. touto gar ou nikesete.

    Ch. oude men emas su oantos.

    D. oude men umeis ge de me
    oudepote kekraxomai gar
    kan me dei di emeras,
    eos an umon epikratesoo to Koax!

     

    Ch. brekekekex, KOAX, KOAX!

     
     

    During the last year of my residence at Cam-
    bridge, I became acquainted with Mr. Words-
    worth’s first publication entitled "Descriptive
    Sketches;" and seldom, if ever, was the emer-
    gence of an original poetic genius above the
    literary horizon more evidently announced. In
    the form, style, and manner of the whole poem,
    and in the structure of the particular lines and
    periods, there is an harshness and acerbity
    connected and combined with words and images
    all a-glow, which might recall those products
    of the vegetable world, where gorgeous blos-
    soms rise out of the hard and thorny rind and
    shell, within which the rich fruit was elaborat-
    ing. The language was not only peculiar and
    strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as
    by its own impatient strength; while the no-
    velty and struggling crowd of images acting in
    conjunction with the difficulties of the style,
    demanded always a greater closeness of atten-
    tion, than poetry, (at all events, than descrip-
    tive poetry) has a right to claim. It not seldom
    therefore justified the complaint of obscurity.
    In the following extract I have sometimes fan-
    cied, that I saw an emblem of the poem itself,
    and of the author’s genius as it was then
    displayed.

     
     
    "’Tis storm; and hid in mist from hour to hour,
    All day the floods a deepening murmur pour;

    The sky is veiled, and every cheerful sight:

    Dark is the region as with coming night;
    And yet what frequent bursts of overpowering light!
    Triumphant on the bosom of the storm,
    Glances the fire-clad eagle’s wheeling form;
    Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine
    The wood-crowned cliffs that o’er the lake recline;
    Wide o’er the Alps a hundred streams unfold,
    At once to pillars turn’d that flame with gold;
    Behind his sail the peasant strives to shun
    The West, that burns like one dilated sun,
    Where in a mighty crucible expire
    The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire."

     

    The poetic PSYCHE in its process to full
    developement, undergoes as many changes as
    its Greek name-sake, the* butterfly. And it is
    remarkable how soon genius clears and puri-
    fies itself from the faults and errors of its earliest
    products; faults which, in its earliest compo-
    sitions, are the more obtrusive and confluent,
    because as heterogeneous elements, which had
    only a temporary use, they constitute the very
    ferment, by which themselves are carried off.
    Or we may compare them to some diseases,
    which must work on the humours, and be
    thrown out on the surface, in order to secure
    the patient from their future recurrence. I
    was in my twenty-fourth year, when I had the
    happiness of knowing Mr. Wordsworth per-
    sonally, and while memory lasts, I shall hardly
    forget the sudden effect produced on my mind,
    by his recitation of a manuscript poem, which

     
     

    The fact, that in Greek Psyche is the common name for the soul, and the butterfly, is thus alluded to in the following stanza from an unpublished poem of the author:
     

    " The butterfly the ancient Grecians made
    The soul’s fair emblem, and its only name—
    But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade
    Of mortal life! For in this earthly frame
    Our’s is the reptile’s lot, much toil, much blame,
    Manifold motions making little speed,
    And to deform and kill the things, whereon we feed."

     

    S.T.C.

    still remains unpublished, but of which the
    stanza, and tone of style, were the same as
    those of the "Female Vagrant" as originally
    printed in the first volume of the "Lyrical
    Ballads." There was here, no mark of strained
    thought, or forced diction, no crowd or turbu-
    lence of imagery, and, as the poet hath him-
    self well described in his lines "on re-visiting
    the Wye," manly reflection, and human as-
    sociations had given both variety, and an ad-
    ditional interest to natural objects, which in
    the passion and appetite of the first love they had
    seemed to him neither to need or permit. The
    occasional obscurities, which had risen from an
    imperfect controul over the resources of his na-
    tive language, had almost wholly disappeared,
    together with that worse defect of arbitary and
    illogical phrases, at once hackneyed, and fan-
    tastic, which hold so distinguished a place in
    the technique of ordinary poetry, and will, more
    or less, alloy the earlier poems of the truest
    genius, unless the attention has been specifically
    directed to their worthlessness and incongruity.*
    I did not perceive any thing particular in the
    mere style of the poem alluded to during its
    recitation, except indeed such difference as was

     
     

    Mr. Wordsworth, even in his two earliest "the Evening
    Walk and the Descriptive Sketches," is more free from this
    latter defect than most of the young poets his
    not separable from the thought and manner;
    and the Spencerian stanza, which always, more
    or less, recalls to the reader’s mind Spencer’s
    own style, would doubtless have authorized in
    my then opinion a more frequent descent to the
    phrases of ordinary life, than could without an ill
    effect have been hazarded in the heroic couplet.
    It was not however the freedom from false taste,
    whether as to common defects, or to those more
    properly his own, which made so unusual an
    impression on my feelings immediately, and
    subsequently on my judgement. It was the
    union of deep feeling with profound thought;
    the fine balance of truth in observing with the
    imaginative faculty in modifying the objects
    observed; and above all the original gift of
    spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with

     
     

    *contemporaries. It may however be exemplified, together with the
    harsh and obscure construction, in which he more often
    offended, in the following lines:--

     

    " ‘Mid stormy vapours ever driving by,
    Where ospreys, cormorants, and herons cry;
    Where hardly given the hopeless waste to cheer,
    Denied the bread of life the foodful ear,
    Dwindles the pear on autumn’s latest spray,
    And apple sickens pale in summer’s ray;
    Ev’n here content has fixed her smiling reign
    With independence, child of high disdain."

     
    I hope, I need not say, that I have quoted these lines for no
    other purpose than to make my meaning fully understood.
    It is to be regretted that Mr. Wordsworth has not repub-
    lished these two poems entire.
    it the depth and height of the ideal world
    around forms, incidents, and situations, of
    which, for the common view, custom had be-
    dimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle
    and the dew drops. "To find no contradic-
    tion in the union of old and new; to contemplate
    the ANCIENT of days and all his works with
    feelings as fresh, as if all had then sprang forth
    at the first creative fiat; characterizes the mind
    that feels the riddle of the world, and may
    help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of
    childhood into the powers of manhood; to
    combine the child’s sense of wonder and no-
    velty with the appearances, which every day
    for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar;

     
     
     
    "With sun and moon and stars throughout the year,
    And man and woman ;"

     
     
     
    this is the character and privilege of genius,
    and one of the marks which distinguish genius
    from talents. And therefore is it the prime
    merit of genius and its most unequivocal mode
    of manifestation, so to represent familiar objects
    as to awaken in the minds of others a kin-
    dred feeling concerning them and that freshness
    of sensation which is the constant accompani-
    ment of mental, no less than of bodily, conva-
    lescence. Who has not a thousand times seen
    snow fall on water? Who has not watched it
    with a new feeling, from the time that he has
    read Burn’s comparison of sensual pleasure

     
     
    "To snow that falls upon a river
    A moment white—then gone for ever! "

     
     

    In poems, equally as in philosophic disqui-
    sitions, genius produces the strongest impres-
    sions of novelty, while it rescues the most
    admitted truths from the impotence caused by
    the very circumstance of their universal admis-
    sion. Truths of all others the most awful and
    mysterious, yet being at the same time of uni-
    versal interest, are too often considered as so
    true, that they lose all the life and efficiency of
    truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the
    soul, side by side, with the most despised and ex-
    ploded errors." THE FRIEND,* page 76, No. 5.

     
     

    This excellence, which in all Mr. Words-
    worth’s writings is more or less predominant,
    and which constitutes the character of his mind,
    I no sooner felt, than I sought to understand.
    Repeated meditations led me first to suspect,
    (and a more intimate analysis of the human fa-
    culties, their appropriate marks, functions, and
    effects matured my conjecture into full convic-
    tion) that fancy and imagination were two dis-
    tinct and widely different faculties, instead of
    being, according to the general belief, either
    two names with one meaning, or at furthest,
    the lower and higher degree of one and the

     
     

    As "the Friend" was printed on stampt sheets, and sent
    only by the post to a very limited number of subscribers, the
    author has felt less objection to quote from it, though a work
    of his own. To the public at large indeed it is the same as
    a volume in manuscript.
    same power. It is not, I own, easy to con-
    ceive a more opposite translation of the Greek
    Phantasia, than the Latin Imaginatio; but
    it is equally true that in all societies there
    exists an instinct of growth, a certain collec-
    tive, unconscious good sense working progres-
    sively to desynonymize* those words originally
    of the same meaning, which the conflux of
    dialects had supplied to the more homogeneous
    languages, as the Greek and German: and

     
     

    This is effected either by giving to the one word a gene-
    ral, and to the other an exclusive use; as "to put on the
    back" and "to indorse;" or by an actual distinction of
    meanings as "naturalist," and "physician;" or by difference
    of relation as "I" and "Me;" (each of which the rustics of
    our different provinces still use in all the cases singular of
    the first personal pronoun). Even the mere difference, or
    corruption, in the pronunciation of the same word, if it have
    become general, will produce a new word with a distinct
    signification; thus "property" and "propriety;" the latter
    of which, even to the time of Charles II. was the written
    word for all the senses of both. Thus too "mister" and
    " master" both hasty pronounciations of the same word
    " magister," " mistress," and "miss," "if," and "give,"
    &c. &c. There is a sort of minim immortal among the ani-
    malcula infusoria which has not naturally either birth, or
    death, absolute beginning, or absolute end: for at a certain
    period a small point appears on its back, which deepens and
    lengthens till the creature divides into two, and the same
    process recommences in each of the halves now become inte-
    gral. This may be a fanciful, but it is by no means a bad
    emblem of the formation of words, and may facilitate the
    conception, how immense a nomenclature may be organized
    from a few simple sounds by rational beings in a social state.
    For each new application, or excitement of the same sound,
    will call forth a different sensation, which cannot but affect
    the pronunciation. The after recollection of the sound,
    without the same vivid sensation, will modify it still further;
    till at length all trace of the original likeness is worn away.
    which the same cause, joined with accidents of
    translation from original works of different
    countries, occasion in mixt languages like our
    own. The first and most important point to be
    proved is, that two conceptions perfectly dis-
    tinct are confused under one and the same
    word, and (this done) to appropriate that word
    exclusively to one meaning, and the synonyme
    (should there be one) to the other. But if (as
    will be often the case in the arts and sciences)
    no synonyme exists, we must either invent or
    borrow a word. In the present instance the
    appropriation had already begun, and been
    legitimated in the derivative adjective: Milton
    had a highly imaginative, Cowley a very fanciful
    mind. If therefore I should succeed in estab-
    lishing the actual existences of two faculties
    generally different, the nomenclature would be
    at once determined. To the faculty by which
    I had characterized Milton, we should confine
    the term imagination; while the other would
    be contra-distinguished as fancy. Now were it
    once fully ascertained, that this division is no
    less grounded in nature, than that of delirium
    from mania, or Otway’s

     
     

    " Lutes, lobsters, seas of milk, and ships of amber,"

    from Shakespear’s

     

    " What! have his daughters brought him to this pass ?"

     

    or from the preceding apostrophe to the elements;
    the theory of the fine arts, and of poetry in
    particular, could not, I thought, but derive some
    additional and important light. It would in its
    immediate effects furnish a torch of guidance
    to the philosophical critic; and ultimately to
    the poet himself. In energetic minds, truth
    soon changes by domestication into power; and
    from directing in the discrimination and ap-
    praisal of the product, becomes influencive in
    the production. To admire on principle, is the
    only way to imitate without loss of originality.

     
     

    It has been already hinted, that metaphysics
    and psychology have long been my hobby-horse.
    But to have a hobby-horse, and to be vain of
    it, are so commonly found together, that they
    pass almost for the same. I trust therefore,
    that there will be more good humour than con-
    tempt, in the smile with which the reader chas-
    tises my self-complacency, if I confess myself
    uncertain, whether the satisfaction from the per-
    ception of a truth new to myself may not have
    been rendered more poignant by the conceit,
    that it would be equally so to the public.
    There was a time, certainly, in which I took
    some little credit to myself, in the belief that I
    had been the first of my countrymen, who had
    pointed out the diverse meaning of which the
    two terms were capable, and analyzed the fa-
    culties to which they should be appropriated.
    Mr. W. Taylor’s recent volume of synonimes I
    have not yet seen;* but his specification of the
    terms in question has been clearly shown to be
    both insufficient and erroneous by Mr. Words-
    worth in the preface added to the late collection
    of his "Lyrical Ballads and other poems."
    The explanation which Mr. Wordsworth has
    himself given, will be found to differ from mine,

     
     

    I ought to have added, with the exception of a single
    sheet which I accidentally met with at the printers. Even
    from this scanty specimen, I found it impossible to doubt the
    talent, or not to admire the ingenuity of the author. That
    his distinctions were for the greater part unsatisfactory to
    my mind, proves nothing, against their accuracy; but it may
    possibly be serviceable to him in case of a second edition, if
    I take this opportunity of suggesting the query; whether he
    may not have been occasionally misled, by having assumed,
    as to me he appeared to have done, the non-existence of any
    absolute synonimes in our language? Now I cannot but
    think, that there are many which remain for our posterity to
    distinguish and appropriate, and which I regard as so much
    reversionary wealth in our mother-tongue. When two dis-
    tinct meanings are confounded under one or more words,
    (and such must be the case, as sure as our knowledge is pro-
    gressive and of course imperfect) erroneous consequences
    will be drawn, and what is true in one sense of the word, will
    be affirmed as true in toto. Men of research startled by the
    consequences, seek in the things themselves (whether in or
    out of the mind) for a knowledge of the fact, and having dis-
    covered the difference, remove the equivocation either by the
    substitution of a new word, or by the appropriation of one
    of the two or more words, that had before been used pro-
    miscuously. When this distinction has been so naturalized
    and of such general currency, that the language itself does
    as it were think for us (like the sliding rule which is the me-
    chanics safe substitute for arithmetical knowledge) we then
    say, that it is evident to common sense. Common sense, there-
    fore, differs in different ages. What was born and christened
    in the schools passes by degrees into the world at large, and
    becomes the property of the market and the tea-table. At
    least I can discover no other meaning of the term, common*
    chiefly perhaps, as our objects are different. It
    could scarcely indeed happen otherwise, from
    the advantage I have enjoyed of frequent con-
    versation with him on a subject to which a poem
    of his own first directed my attention, and my
    conclusions concerning which, he had made
    more lucid to myself by many happy instances
    drawn from the operation of natural objects on
    the mind. But it was Mr. Wordsworth’s pur-
    pose to consider the influences of fancy and
    imagination as they are manifested in poetry,
    and from the different effects to conclude their
    diversity in kind; while it is my object to
    investigate the seminal principle, and then from
    the kind to deduce the degree. My friend has
    drawn a masterly sketch of the branches with
    their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk,
    and even the roots as far as they lift themselves
    above ground, and are visible to the naked eye
    of our common consciousness.

     
     

    Yet even in this attempt I am aware, that I
    shall be obliged to draw more largely on the

     
     
    *sense, if it is to convey any specific difference from sense
    and, judgement in genere, and where it is not used scho-
    lastically for the universal reason. Thus in the reign of
    Charles II. the philosophic world was called to arms by the
    moral sophisms of Hobbs, and the ablest writers exerted
    themselves in the detection of an error, which a school-boy
    would now be able to confute by the mere recollection, that
    compulsion and obligation conveyed two ideas perfectly dis-
    parate, and that what appertained to the one, had been
    falsely transferred to the other by a mere confusion of terms.
    reader’s attention, than so immethodical a mis-
    cellany can authorize; when in such a work
    (the Ecclesiastical Policy) of such a mind as
    Hooker’s, the judicious author, though no less
    admirable for the perspicuity than for the port
    and dignity of his language; and though he
    wrote for men of learning in a learned age; saw
    nevertheless occasion to anticipate and guard
    against "complaints of obscurity," as often as
    he was to trace his subject "to the highest
    well-spring and fountain." Which, (continues
    he) "because men are not accustomed to, the
    pains we take are more needful a great deal,
    than acceptable; and the matters we handle,
    seem by reason of newness (till the mind grow
    better acquainted with them) dark and intri-
    cate." I would gladly therefore spare both
    myself and others this labor, if I knew how
    without it to present an intelligible statement
    of my poetic creed; not as my opinions, which
    weigh for nothing, but as deductions from
    established premises conveyed in such a form,
    as is calculated either to effect a fundamental
    conviction, or to receive a fundamental confu-
    tation. If I may dare once more adopt the
    words of Hooker, "they, unto whom we shall
    "seem tedious, are in no wise injured by us,
    "because it is in their own hands to spare that
    "labour, which they are not willing to endure."
    Those at least, let me be permitted to add,
    who have taken so much pains to render me
    ridiculous for a perversion of taste, and have
    supported the charge by attributing strange
    notions to me on no other authority than their
    own conjectures, owe it to themselves as well
    as to me not to refuse their attention to my own
    statement of the theory, which I do acknow-
    ledge; or shrink from the trouble of examining
    the grounds on which I rest it, or the argu-
    ments which I offer in its justification.

     
     
     
     

    CHAPTER V.

    On the law of association—Its history traced
    from Aristotle to Hartley.

     
     

    There have been men in all ages, who have
    been impelled as by an instinct to propose their
    own nature as a problem, and who devote their
    attempts to its solution. The first step was to
    construct a table of distinctions, which they
    seem to have formed on the principle of the
    absence or presence of the WILL. Our various
    sensations, perceptions, and movements were
    classed as active or passive, or as media par-
    taking of both. A still finer distinction was
    soon established between the voluntary and the
    spontaneous. In our perceptions we seem to
    ourselves merely passive to an external power,
    whether as a mirror reflecting the landscape, or
    as a blank canvas on which some unknown
    hand paints it. For it is worthy of notice, that
    the latter, or the system of idealism may be
    traced to sources equally remote with the
    former, or materialism; and Berkeley can boast
    an ancestry at least as venerable as Gassendi or
    Hobbs. These conjectures, however,
    concerning the mode in which our perceptions origin-
    ated, could not alter the natural difference of
    things and thoughts. In the former, the cause
    appeared wholly external, while in the latter,
    sometimes our will interfered as the producing
    or determining cause, and sometimes our na-
    ture seemed to act by a mechanism of its own,
    without any conscious effort of the will, or even
    against it. Our inward experiences were thus
    arranged in three separate classes, the passive
    sense, or what the school-men call the merely
    receptive quality of the mind; the voluntary,
    and the spontaneous, which holds the middle
    place between both. But it is not in human
    nature to meditate on any mode of action,
    without enquiring after the law that governs
    it; and in the explanation of the spontaneous
    movements of our being, the metaphysician
    took the lead of the anatomist and natural
    philosopher. In Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and
    India the analysis of the mind had reached its
    noon and manhood, while experimental re-
    search was still in its dawn and infancy. For
    many, very many centuries, it has been difficult
    to advance a new truth, or even a new error,
    in the philosophy of the intellect or morals.
    With regard, however, to the laws that direct
    the spontaneous movements of thought and the
    principle of their intellectual mechanism there
    exists, it has been asserted, an important
    exception most honorable to the moderns, and in
    the merit of which our own country claims the
    largest share. Sir James Mackintosh (who
    amid the variety of his talents and attainments
    is not of less repute for the depth and accuracy
    of his philosophical enquiries, than for the elo-
    quence with which he is said to render their most
    difficult results perspicuous, and the driest at-
    tractive) affirmed in the lectures, delivered by
    him at Lincoln’s Inn Hall, that the law of
    association as established in the contempora-
    neity of the original impressions, formed the
    basis of all true psychology; and any ontolo-
    gical or metaphysical science not contained in
    such (i. e. empirical) phsychology was but a
    web of abstractions and generalizations. Of
    this prolific truth, of this great fundamental law,
    he declared HOBBS to have been the original
    discoverer, while its full application to the whole
    intellectual system we owe to David Hartley;
    who stood in the same relation to Hobbs as
    Newton to Kepler; the law of association being
    that to the mind, which gravitation is to matter.

     
     

    Of the former clause in this assertion, as it
    respects the comparative merits of the ancient
    metaphysicians, including their commentators,
    the school-men, and of the modern French and
    British philosophers from Hobbs to Hume,
    Hartley and Condeliac, this is not the place to
    speak. So wide indeed is the chasm between
    this gentleman’s philosophical creed and mine,
    that so far from being able to join hands, we
    could scarce make our voices intelligible to
    each other: and to bridge it over, would require
    more time, skill and power than I believe myself
    to possess. But the latter clause involves for
    the greater part a mere question of fact and
    history, and the accuracy of the statement is
    to be tried by documents rather than reasoning.

     
     

    First then, I deny Hobbs’s claim in toto: for
    he had been anticipated by Des Cartes whose
    work "De Methodo" preceded Hobbs’s "De
    Natura Humana," by more than a year. But
    what is of much more importance, Hobbs
    builds nothing on the principle which he had
    announced. He does not even announce it, as
    differing in any respect from the general laws of
    material motion and impact: nor was it, indeed,
    possible for him so to do, compatibly with his
    system, which was exclusively material and
    mechanical. Far otherwise is it with Des
    Cartes; greatly as he too in his after writings
    (and still more egregiously his followers De la
    Forge, and others) obscured the truth by their
    attempts to explain it on the theory of nervous
    fluids, and material configurations. But in his
    interesting work "De Methodo," Des Cartes
    relates the circumstance which first led him to
    meditate on this subject, and which since then
    has been often noticed and employed as an
    instance and illustration of the law. A child
    who with its eyes bandaged had lost several of
    his fingers by amputation, continued to com-
    plain for many days successively of pains, now
    in his joint and now in that of the very fingers
    which had been cut off. Des Cartes was led
    by this incident to reflect on the uncertainty
    with which we attribute any particular place
    to any inward pain or uneasiness, and pro-
    ceeded after long consideration to establish it
    as a general law; that contemporaneous im-
    pressions, whether images or sensations, recal
    each other mechanically. On this principle, as
    a ground work, he built up the whole system
    of human language, as one continued process
    of association. He showed, in what sense not
    only general terms, but generic images (under
    the name of abstract ideas) actually existed,
    and in what consists their nature and power.
    As one word may become the general exponent
    of many, so by association a simple image
    may represent a whole class. But in truth
    Hobbs himself makes no claims to any disco-
    very, and introduces this law of association, or
    (in his own language) discursûs mentalis, as an
    admitted fact, in the solution alone of which, this
    by causes purely physiological, he arrogates any
    originality. His system is briefly this; when-
    ever the senses are impinged on by external ob-
    jects, whether by the rays of light reflected
    from them, or by effluxes of their finer parti-
    cles, there results a correspondent motion of
    the innermost and subtlest organs. This motion
    constitutes a representation, and there remains
    an impression of the same, or a certain disposi-
    tion to repeat the same motion. Whenever we
    feel several objects at the same time, the impres-
    sions that are left (or in the language of Mr.
    Hume, the ideas) are linked together. When-
    ever therefore any one of the movements, which
    constitute a complex impression, are renewed
    through the senses, the others succeed mecha-
    nically. It follows of necessity therefore that
    Hobbs, as well as Hartley and all others who
    derive association from the connection and
    interdependence of the supposed matter, the
    movements of which constitute our thoughts,
    must have reduced all its forms to the one law
    of time. But even the merit of announcing this
    law with philosophic precision cannot be fairly
    conceded to him. For the objects of any two
    ideas* need not have co-existed in the same

     
     

    I here use the word "idea" in Mr. Hume’s sense on ac-
    count of its general currency among the English metaphysi-
    cians; though against my own judgement, for I believe that
    the vague use of this word has been the cause of much error
    and more confusion. The word,Idea, in its original sense
    as used by Pindar, Aristophanes, and in the gospel of
    Matthew, represented the visual abstraction of a distant ob-
    ject, when we see the whole without distinguishing its parts.
    Plato adopted it as a technical term, and as the antithesis to
    Eidola, or sensuous images; the transient and perishable*
    sensation in order to become mutually associa-
    ble. The same result will follow when one
    only of the two ideas has been represented by
    the senses, and the other by the memory.

     
     

    Long however before either Hobbs or Des
    Cartes the law of association had been defined,

     
     
    *emblems, or mental words, of ideas. The ideas themselves he
    considered as mysterious powers, living, seminal, formative,
    and exempt from time. In this sense the word became the pro-
    perty of the Platonic school; and it seldom occurs in Aristotle,
    without some such phrase annexed to it, as according to Plato,
    or as Plato says. Our English writers to the end of Charles
    nd’s reign, or somewhat later, employed it either in the origi-
    nal sense, or platonically, or in a sense nearly correspondent
    to our present use of the substantive, Ideal, always however
    opposing it, more or less, to image, whether of present or ab-
    sent objects. The reader will not be displeased with the
    following interesting exemplification from Bishop Jeremy
    Taylor. "St. Lewis the King sent Ivo Bishop of Chartres
    on an embassy, and he told, that he met a grave and stately
    matron on the way with a censor of fire in one hand, and a
    vessel of water in the other; and observing her to have a
    melancholy, religious, and phantastic deportment and look, he
    asked her what those symbols meant, and what she meant to
    do with her fire and water; she answered, my purpose is with
    the fire to burn paradise, and with my water to quench the
    flames of hell, that men may serve God purely for the love
    of God. But we rarely meet with such spirits which love
    virtue so metaphysically as to abstract her from all sensible
    compositions, and love the purity of the idea." Des Cartes
    having introduced into his philosophy the fanciful hypothesis
    of material ideas, or certain configurations of the brain,
    which were as so many moulds to the influxes of the external
    world; Mr. Lock adopted the term, but extended its signi-
    fication to whatever is the immediate object of the minds
    attention or consciousness. Mr. Hume distinguishing those
    representations which are accompanied with a sense of a
    present object, from those reproduced by the mind itself,
    designated the former by impressions, and confined the word
    idea to the latter.
    and its important functions set forth by Me-
    lanchthon, Ammerbach, and Ludovicus Vives;
    more especially by the last. Phantasia, it is to
    be noticed, is employed by Vives to express
    the mental power of comprehension, or the
    active function of the mind; and imaginatio for
    the receptivity (vis receptiva) of impressions,
    or for the passive perception. The power of
    combination he appropriates to the former:
    " quæ singula et simpliciter acceperat imagi-
    natio, ea conjungit et disjungit phantasia." And
    the law by which the thoughts are spontane-
    ously presented follows thus; "quæ simul sunt
    "a phantasia comprehensa si alterutrum occur
    "rat, solet secum alterum representare." To
    time therefore he subordinates all the other
    exciting causes of association. The soul pro-
    ceeds "a causa ad effectum, ab hoc ad instru-
    "mentum, a parte ad totum ;" thence to the
    place, from place to person, and from this to
    whatever preceded or followed, all as being
    parts of a total impression, each of which may
    recal the other. The apparent springs "Saltus
    "vel transitus etiam longissimos," he explains by
    the same thought having been a component
    part of two or more total impressions. Thus
    " ex Scipione venio in cogitationem potentiæ
    "Turcicæ proper victorias ejus in eâ parte Asiæ
    "in qua regnabat Antiochus."

     
     

    But from Vives I pass at once to the source
    of his doctrines, and (as far as we can judge
    from the remains yet extant of Greek philoso-
    phy) as to the first, so to the fullest and most
    perfect enunciation of the associative principle,
    viz. to the writings of Aristotle; and of these
    principally to the books "De Anima," "De
    Memoria," and that which is entitled in the
    old translations "Parva Naturalia." In as
    much as later writers have either deviated from,
    or added to his doctrines, they appear to me
    to have introduced either error or groundless
    supposition.

     
     

    In the first place it is to be observed, that
    Aristotle’s positions on this subject are unmixed
    with fiction. The wise Stagyrite speaks of no
    successive particles propagating motion like
    billiard balls (as Hobbs;) nor of nervous or
    animal spirits, where inanimate and irrational
    solids are thawed down, and distilled, or fil-
    trated by ascension, into living and intelligent
    fluids, that etch and re-etch engravings on the
    brain, (as the followers of Des Cartes, and the
    humoral pathologists in general ;) nor of an
    oscillating ether which was to effect the same
    service for the nerves of the brain considered
    as solid fibres, as the animal spirits perform for
    them under the notion of hollow tubes (as
    Hartley teaches)--nor finally, (with yet more
    recent dreamers) of chemical compositions by
    elective affinity, or of an electric light at once
    the immediate object and the ultimate organ of
    inward vision, which rises to the brain like an
    Aurora Borealis, and there disporting in various
    shapes (as the balance of plus and minus, or ne-
    gative and positive, is destroyed or re-establish-
    ed) images out both past and present. Aristotle
    delivers a just theory without pretending to an
    hypothesis; or in other words a comprehen-
    sive survey of the different facts, and of their
    relations to each other without supposition,
    i. e. a fact placed under a number of facts, as
    their common support and explanation; tho’
    in the majority of instances these hypotheses
    or suppositions better deserve the name of
    Upopoieseis, or suffictions. He uses indeed the
    word Kineseis, to express what we call represen-
    tations or ideas, but he carefully distinguishes
    them from material motion, designating the
    latter always by annexing the wordsEn topo, or
    kata topon. On the contrary in his treatise "De
    Anima," he excludes place and motion from
    all the operations of thought, whether repre-
    sentations or volitions, as attributes utterly and
    absurdly heterogeneous.

     
     

    The general law of association, or more ac-
    curately, the common condition under which all
    exciting causes act, and in which they may be
    generalized, according to Aristotle is this. Ideas
    by having been together acquire a power of
    recalling each other; or every partial
    representation awakes the total representation of which
    it had been a part. In the practical determina-
    tion of this common principle to particular
    recollections, he admits five agents or occasion-
    ing causes: 1st, connection in time, whether
    simultaneous, preceding or successive; 2nd,
    vicinity or connection in space; 3rd, interde-
    pendence or necessary connection, as cause and
    effect; 4th, likeness; and 5th, contrast. As an
    additional solution of the occasional seeming
    chasms in the continuity of reproduction he
    proves, that movements or ideas possessing one
    or the other of these five characters had passed
    through the mind as intermediate links, suffici-
    ently clear to recal other parts of the same total
    impressions with which they had co-existed,
    though not vivid enough to excite that degree
    of attention which is requisite for distinct re-
    collection, or as we may aptly express it, after-
    consciousness. In association then consists the
    whole mechanism of the reproduction of im-
    pressions, in the Aristolelian Pcychology. It
    is the universal law of the passive fancy and
    mechanical memory; that which supplies to all
    other faculties their objects, to all thought the
    elements of its materials.

     
     

    In consulting the excellent commentary of
    St. Thomas Aquinas on the Parva Naturalia of
    Aristotle, I was struck at once with its close
    resemblance to Hume’s essay on association.
    The main thoughts were the same in both, the
    order of the thoughts was the same, and even
    the illustrations differed only by Hume’s occa-
    sional substitution of more modern examples.
    I mentioned the circumstance to several of my
    literary acquaintances, who admitted the close-
    ness of the resemblance, and that it seemed too
    great to be explained by mere coincidence; but
    they thought it improbable that Hume should
    have held the pages of the angelic Doctor worth
    turning over. But some time after Mr. Payne, of
    the King’s mews, shewed Sir James Mackin-
    tosh some odd volumes of St. Thomas Aquinas,
    partly perhaps from having heard that Sir James
    (then Mr.) Mackintosh had in his lectures past
    a high encomium on this canonized philosopher,
    but chiefly from the fact, that the volumes had
    belonged to Mr. Hume, and had here and there
    marginal marks and notes of reference in his
    own hand writing. Among these volumes was
    that which contains the Parva Naturalia, in the
    old latin version, swathed and swaddled in the
    commentary afore mentioned!

     
     

    It remains then for me, first to state wherein
    Hartley differs from Aristotle; then, to exhibit
    the grounds of my conviction, that he differed
    only to err; and next as the result, to shew,
    by what influences of the choice and judgment
    the associative power becomes either memory
    or fancy; and, in conclusion, to appropriate
    the remaining offices of the mind to the reason,
    and the imagination. With my best efforts to
    be as perspicuous as the nature of language
    will permit on such a subject, I earnestly soli-
    cit the good wishes and friendly patience of
    my readers, while I thus go "sounding on my
    dim and perilous way."

     
     
     
     

     
     

    CHAPTER VI.

    That Hartley’s system, as far as it differs from
    that of Aristotle, is neither tenable in theory,
    nor founded in facts.

     

    Of Hartley’s hypothetical vibrations in his
    hypothetical oscillating ether of the nerves,
    which is the first and most obvious distinction
    between his system and that of Aristotle, I
    shall say little. This, with all other similar
    attempts to render that an object of the sight
    which has no relation to sight, has been alrea-
    dy sufficiently exposed by the younger Reima-
    rus, Maasse, &c. as outraging the very axioms
    of mechanics in a scheme, the merit of which
    consists in its being mechanical. Whether any
    other philosophy be possible, but the mechani-
    cal; and again, whether the mechanical system
    can have any claim to be called philosophy;
    are questions for another place. It is, how-
    ever, certain, that as long as we deny the for-
    mer, and affirm the latter, we must bewilder
    ourselves, whenever we would pierce into the
    adyta of causation; and all that laborious con-
    jecture can do, is to fill up the gaps of fancy.
    Under that despotism of the eye (the
    emancipation from which Pythagoras by his numeral,
    and Plato by his musical, symbols, and both
    by geometric discipline, aimed at, as the first
    propaidentikon of the mind)--under this strong
    sensuous influence, we are restless because
    invisible things are not the objects of vision;
    and metaphysical systems, for the most part,
    become popular, not for their truth, but in
    proportion as they attribute to causes a suscep-
    tibility of being seen, if only our visual organs
    were sufficiently powerful.

     
     

    From a hundred possible confutations let one
    suffice. According to this system the idea or
    vibration a from the external object A becomes
    associable with the idea or vibration m from
    the external object M, because the oscillation
    a propagated itself so as to re-produce the
    oscillation m. But the original impression
    from M was essentially different from the im-
    pression A: unless therefore different causes
    may produce the same effect, the vibration a
    could never produce the vibration m: and this
    therefore could never be the means, by which
    a and m are associated. To understand this,
    the attentive reader need only be reminded,
    that the ideas are themselves, in Hartley’s sys-
    tem, nothing more than their appropriate con-
    figurative vibrations. It is a mere delusion of
    the fancy to conceive the pre-existence of the
    ideas, in any chain of association, as so many
    differently colored billiard-balls in contact, so
    that when an object, the billiard-stick, strikes
    the first or white ball, the same motion propa-
    gates itself through the red, green, blue, black,
    &c. and sets the whole in motion. No! we
    must suppose the very same force, which con-
    stitutes the white ball, to constitute the red or
    black; or the idea of a circle to constitute the
    idea of a triangle; which is impossible.

     
     

    But it may be said, that, by the sensations
    from the objects A and M, the nerves have ac-
    quired a disposition to the vibrations a and m,
    and therefore a need only be repeated in order
    to re-produce m. Now we will grant, for a
    moment, the possibility of such a disposition
    in a material nerve, which yet seems scarcely
    less absurd than to say, that a weather-cock
    had acquired a habit of turning to the east,
    from the wind having been so long in that quar-
    ter: for if it be replied, that we must take in
    the circumstance of life, what then becomes of
    the mechanical philosophy? And what is the
    nerve, but the flint which the wag placed in
    the pot as the first ingredient of his stone-broth,
    requiring only salt, turnips and mutton, for the
    remainder! But if we waive this, and pre-sup-
    pose the actual existence of such a disposition;
    two cases are possible. Either, every idea has
    its own nerve and correspondent oscillation, or
    this is not the case. If the latter be the truth,
    we should gain nothing by these dispositions;
    for then, every nerve having several disposi-
    tions, when the motion of any other nerve is
    propagated into it, there will be no ground or
    cause present, why exactly the oscillation m
    should arise, rather than any other to which it
    was equally pre-disposed. But if we take the
    former, and let every idea have a nerve of its
    own, then every nerve must be capable of pro-
    pagating its motion into many other nerves; and
    again, there is no reason assignable, why the
    vibration m should arise, rather than any other
    ad libitum.

     
     

    It is fashionable to smile at Hartley’s vibra-
    tions and vibratiuncles; and his work has been

    re-edited by Priestley, with the omission of the

    material hypothesis. But Hartley was too
    great a man, too coherent a thinker, for this to
    have been done, either consistently or to any
    wise purpose. For all other parts of his sys-
    tem, as far as they are peculiar to that system,
    once removed from their mechanical basis, not
    only lose their main support, but the very mo-
    tive which led to their adoption. Thus the
    principle of contemporaneity, which Aristotle
    had made the common condition of all the laws
    of association, Hartley was constrained to re-
    present as being itself the sole law. For to
    what law can the action of material atoms be
    subject, but that of proximity in place? And to
    what law can their motions be subjected, but
    that of time? Again, from this results inevita-
    bly, that the will, the reason, the judgment,
    and the understanding, instead of being the de-
    termining causes of association, must needs be
    represented as its creatures, and among its me
    chanical effects. Conceive, for instance, a broad
    stream, winding through a mountainous coun-
    try with an indefinite number of currents, vary-
    ing and running into each other according as
    the gusts chance to blow from the opening of
    the mountains. The temporary union of seve-
    ral currents in one, so as to form the main cur-
    rent of the moment, would present an accurate
    image of Hartley’s theory of the will.

     
     

    Had this been really the case, the consequence
    would have been, that our whole life would be
    divided between the despotism of outward im-
    pressions, and that of senseless and passive me-
    mory. Take his law in its highest abstraction
    and most philosophical form, viz. that every par-
    tial representation recalls the total representa-
    tion of which it was a part; and the law be-
    comes nugatory, were it only from its universa-
    lity. In practice it would indeed be mere law-
    lessness. Consider, how immense must be the
    sphere of a total impression from the top of St.
    Paul’s church; and how rapid and continuous
    the series of such total impressions. If therefore
    we suppose the absence of all interference of
    the will, reason, and judgement, one or other
    of two consequences must result. Either the
    ideas (or relicts of such impression) will exactly
    imitate the order of the impression itself, which
    would be absolute delirium: or any one part
    of that impression might recal any other part,
    and (as from the law of continuity, there must
    exist in every total impression some one or
    more parts, which are components of some
    other following total impression, and so on ad
    infinitum) any part of any impression might
    recal any part of any other, without a cause
    present to determine what it should be. For
    to bring in the will, or reason, as causes of their
    own cause, that is, as at once causes and effects,
    can satisfy those only who in their pretended
    evidences of a God having first demanded or-
    ganization, as the sole cause and ground of
    intellect, will then coolly demand the pre-exist-
    ence of intellect, as the cause and ground-work
    of organization. There is in truth but one state
    to which this theory applies at all, namely, that
    of complete light-headedness; and even to this
    it applies but partially, because the will, and
    reason are perhaps never wholly suspended.

     
     

    A case of this kind occurred in a Catholic
    town in Germany a year or two before my
    arrival at Göttingen, and had not then ceased
    to be a frequent subject of conversation. A
    young woman of four or five and twenty, who
    could neither read, nor write, was seized with
    a nervous fever; during which, according to the
    asseverations of all the priests and monks of
    the neighbourhood, she became possessed, and,
    as it appeared, by a very learned devil. She
    continued incessantly talking Latin, Greek, and
    Hebrew, in very pompous tones and with most
    distinct enunciation. This possession was ren-
    dered more probable by the known fact, that
    she was or had been an heretic. Voltaire hu-
    mourously advises the devil to decline all ac-
    quaintance with medical men; and it would
    have been more to his reputation, if he had
    taken this advice in the present instance. The
    case had attracted the particular attention of a
    young physician, and by his statement many
    eminent physiologists and psychologists visited
    the town, and cross-examined the case on the
    spot. Sheets full of her ravings were taken
    down from her own mouth, and were found to
    consist of sentences, coherent and intelligible
    each for itself, but with little or no connection
    with each other. Of the Hebrew, a small por-
    tion only could be traced to the Bible; the
    remainder seemed to be in the rabinical dialect.
    All trick or conspiracy was out of the question.
    Not only had the young woman ever been an
    harmless, simple creature; but she was evidently
    labouring under a nervous fever. In the town,
    in which she had been resident for many years
    as a servant in different families, no solution
    presented itself. The young physician, how-
    ever, determined to trace her past life step by
    step; for the patient herself was incapable of
    returning a rational answer. He at length suc-
    ceeded in discovering the place, where her pa-
    rents had lived: travelled thither, found them
    dead, but an uncle surviving; and from him
    learnt, that the patient had been charitably
    taken by an old protestant pastor at nine years
    old, and had remained with him some years,
    even till the old man’s death. Of this pastor
    the uncle knew nothing, but that he was a very
    good man. With great difficulty, and after
    much search, our young medical philosopher
    discovered a niece of the pastor’s, who had
    lived with him as his house-keeper, and had
    inherited his effects. She remembered the girl;
    related, that her venerable uncle had been too
    indulgent, and could not bear to hear the girl
    scolded; that she was willing to have kept her,
    but that after her patron’s death, the girl her-
    self refused to stay. Anxious enquiries were
    then, of course, made concerning the pastor’s
    habits; and the solution of the phenomenon
    was soon obtained. For it appeared, that it
    had been the old man’s custom, for years, to
    walk up and down a passage of his house into
    which the kitchen door opened, and to read to
    himself with a loud voice, out of his favorite
    books. A considerable number of these were
    still in the niece’s possession. She added, that
    he was a very learned man and a great Hebraist.
    Among the books were found a collection of
    rabbinical writings, together with several of the
    Greek and Latin fathers; and the physician
    succeeded in identifying so many passages with
    those taken down at the young woman’s bed-
    side, that no doubt could remain in any rational
    mind concerning the true origin of the impres-
    sions made on her nervous system.

     
     

    This authenticated case furnishes both proof
    and instance, that reliques of sensation may
    exist for an indefinite time in a latent state,
    in the very same order in which they were
    originally impressed; and as we cannot ration-
    ally suppose the feverish state of the brain to
    act in any other way than as a stimulus, this
    fact (and it would not be difficult to adduce
    several of the same kind) contributes to make it
    even probable, that all thoughts are in them-
    selves imperishable; and, that if the intelligent
    faculty should be rendered more comprehen-
    sive, it would require only a different and ap-
    portioned organization, the body celestial instead
    of the body terrestrial, to bring before every
    human soul the collective experience of its
    whole past existence. And this, this, perchance,
    is the dread book of judgement, in whose mys-
    terious hieroglyphics every idle word is
    recorded! Yea, in the very nature of a living
    spirit, it may be more possible that heaven and
    earth should pass away, than that a single act,
    a single thought, should be loosened or lost
    from that living chain of causes, to all whose
    links, conscious or unconscious, the free-will,
    our only absolute self; is co-extensive and co-
    present. But not now dare I longer discourse
    of this, waiting for a loftier mood, and a nobler
    subject, warned from within and from without,
    that it is profanation to speak of these mysteries*
    tois medepote phantasdeisin, os kalon to tes dikaiosunes kai
    sophrosunes prosopon, kai os oute esperos oute eoos outo kala.
    Ton lar oronta pros to oromenon suggenes kai omoion poies-
    amenon dei epiballein te ea ou gar an papote eiden Ophthal-
    mos elion elioeides me gegenemenos, oude to Kalon an ide
    psuche me kale genomene. PLOTINUS.

     
     
    *"To those to whose imagination it has never been presented,
    how beautiful is the countenance of justice and wisdom; and
    that neither the morning nor the evening star are so fair.
    For in order to direct the view aright, it behoves that the
    beholder should have made himself congenerous and similar
    to the object beheld. Never could the eye have beheld the
    sun, had not its own essence been soliform," (i. e. pre-con-
    figured to light by a similarity of essence with that of light)
    "neither can a soul not beautiful attain to an intuition of
    beauty."

     
     
     
     
     

    CHAPTER VII.

    Of the necessary consequences of the Hartleian
    theory—Of the original mistake or equivoca-
    tion which procured admission for the theory—
    Memoria Technica.

     

    We will pass by the utter incompatibility of
    such a law (if law it may be called, which would
    itself be the slave of chances) with even that
    appearance of rationality forced upon us by the
    outward phænomena of human conduct, ab-
    stracted from our own consciousness. We will
    agree to forget this for the moment, in order to
    fix our attention on that subordination of final
    to efficient causes in the human being, which
    flows of necessity from the assumption, that
    the will, and with the will all acts of thought
    and attention, are parts and products of this
    blind mechanism, instead of being distinct pow-
    ers, whose function it is to controul, determine,
    and modify the phantasma chaos of association.
    The soul becomes a mere ens logicum; for as
    a real separable being, it would be more worth-
    less and ludicrous, than the Grimalkins in the
    Cat-harpsichord, described in the Spectator.
    For these did form a part of the process; but
    in Hartley’s scheme the soul is present only to
    be pinched or stroked, while the very squeals
    or purring are produced by an agency wholly
    independent and alien. It involves all the dif-
    ficulties, all the incomprehensibility (if it be
    not indeed,os emoige dokei, the absurdity) of in-
    tercommunion between substances that have
    no one property in common, without any of the
    convenient consequences that bribed the judge-
    ment to the admission of the dualistic hypothe-
    sis. Accordingly, this caput mortuum of the
    Hartleian process has been rejected by his fol-
    lowers, and the consciousness considered as a
    result, as a tune, the common product of the
    breeze and the harp: tho’ this again is the mere
    remotion of one absurdity to make way for
    another, equally preposterous. For what is
    harmony but a mode of relation, the very esse
    of which is percipi? An ens rationale, which
    pre-supposes the power, that by perceiving
    creates it? The razor’s edge becomes a saw
    to the armed vision; and the delicious melo-
    dies of Purcell or Cimarosa might be disjointed
    stammerings to a hearer, whose partition of
    time should be a thousand times subtler than
    ours. But this obstacle too let us imagine our-
    selves to have surmounted, and "at one bound
    high overleap all bound!" Yet according to this
    hypothesis the disquisition, to which I am at
    present soliciting the reader’s attention, may
    be as truly said to be written by Saint Paul’s
    church, as by me: for it is the mere motion of
    my muscles and nerves; and these again are
    set in motion from external causes equally pas-
    sive, which external causes stand themselves
    in interdependent connection with every thing
    that exists or has existed. Thus the whole
    universe co-operates to produce the minutest
    stroke of every letter, save only that I myself,
    and I alone, have nothing to do with it, but
    merely the causeless and effectless beholding of
    it when it is done. Yet scarcely can it be
    called a beholding; for it is neither an act
    nor an effect; but an impossible creation of a
    something-nothing out of its very contrary! It
    is the mere quick-silver plating behind a looking-
    glass; and in this alone consists the poor
    worthless I! The sum total of my moral and
    intellectual intercourse dissolved into its ele-
    ments are reduced to extension, motion, degrees
    of velocity, and those diminished copies of con-
    figurative motion, which form what we call
    notions, and notions of notions. Of such phi-
    losophy well might Butler say—
    "The metaphysics but a puppet motion
    "That goes with screws, the notion of a notion;
    "The copy of a copy and lame draught

    "Unnaturally taken from a thought:

    "That counterfeits all pantomimic tricks,
    "And turns the eyes, like an old crucifix;
    "That counterchanges whatsoe’er it calls
    "B’ another name, and makes it true or false;
    "Turns truth to falsehood, falsehood into truth,
    "By virtue of the Babylonian’s tooth."

    MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS.

    The inventor of the watch did not in reality
    invent it; he only look’d on, while the blind
    causes, the only true artists, were unfolding
    themselves. So must it have been too with
    my friend ALLSTON, when he sketched his pic-
    ture of the dead man revived by the bones of
    the prophet Elijah. So must it have been with
    Mr. SOUTHEY and LORD BYRON, when the one
    fancied himself composing his "RODERICK,"
    and the other his "CHILD HAROLD." The
    same must hold good of all systems of philoso-
    phy; of all arts, governments, wars by sea and
    by land; in short, of all things that ever have
    been or that ever will be produced. For ac-
    cording to this system it is not the affections
    and passions that are at work, in as far as they
    areI sensations or thoughts. We only fancy, that
    we act from rational resolves, or prudent mo-
    tives, or from impulses of anger, love, or gene-
    rosity. In all these cases the real agent is a
    something-nothing-every-thing, which does all
    of which we know, and knows nothing of all
    that itself does.

     

    The existence of an infinite spirit, of an intel-
    ligent and holy will, must on this system be
    mere articulated motions of the air. For as the
    function of the human understanding is no other
    than merely (to appear to itself) to combine and
    to apply the phænomena of the association;
    and as these derive all their reality from the
    primary sensations; and the sensations again
    all their reality from the impressions ab extra;
    a God not visible, audible, or tangible, can
    exist only in the sounds and letters that form
    his name and attributes. If in ourselves there
    be no such faculties as those of the will, and
    the scientific reason, we must either have an
    innate idea of them, which would overthrow
    the whole system; or we can have no idea at
    all. The process, by which Hume degraded
    the notion of cause and effect into a blind pro-
    duct of delusion and habit, into the mere sen-
    sation of proceeding life (nisus vitalis) associated
    with the images of the memory; this same pro-
    cess must be repeated to the equal degradation
    of every fundamental idea in ethics or theology.

     

    Far, very far am I from burthening with the
    odium of these consequences the moral charac-
    ters of those who first formed, or have since
    adopted the system! It is most noticeable of
    the excellent and pious Hartley, that in the
    proofs of the existence and attributes of God,
    with which his second volume commences, he
    makes no reference to the principles or results
    of the first. Nay, he assumes, as his founda-
    tions, ideas which, if we embrace the doctrines
    of his first volume, can exist no where but in the
    vibrations of the ethereal medium common to
    the nerves and to the atmosphere. Indeed the
    whole of the second volume is, with the fewest
    possible exceptions, independent of his peculiar
    system. So true is it, that the faith, which
    saves and sanctifies, is a collective energy, a
    total act of the whole moral being; that its liv-
    ing sensorium is in the heart; and that no errors
    of the understanding can be morally arraigned
    unless they have proceeded frum the heart.—
    But whether they be such, no man can be cer-
    tain in the case of another, scarcely perhaps
    even in his own. Hence it follows by inevitable
    consequence, that man may perchance deter-
    mine, what is an heresy; but God only can
    know, who is a heretic. It does not, however,
    by any means follow, that opinions fundament-
    ally false are harmless. An hundred causes
    may co-exist to form one complex antidote.
    Yet the sting of the adder remains venemous,
    though there are many who have taken up the
    evil thing; and it hurted them not! Some in-
    deed there seem to have been, in an unfortunate
    neighbour-nation at least, who have embraced
    this system with a full view of all its moral and
    religious consequences; some—

    "—who deem themselves most free,
    "When they within this gross and visible sphere
    "Chain down the winged thought, scoffing assent,
    "Proud in their meanness; and themselves they cheat
    "With noisy emptiness of learned phrase,
    "Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences,
    "Self-working tools, uncaus’d effects, and all
    "Those blind omniscients, those Almighty slaves,
    "Untenanting Creation of its God!"
    Such men need discipline, not argument; they
    must be made better men, before they can be-
    come wiser.

     

    The attention will be more profitably em-
    ployed in attempting to discover and expose
    the paralogisms, by the magic of which such a
    faith could find admission into minds framed
    for a nobler creed. These, it appears to me,
    may be all reduced to one sophism as their
    common genus; the mistaking the conditions
    of a thing for its causes and essence; and the
    process by which we arrive at the knowledge
    of a faculty, for the faculty itself. The air I
    breathe, is the condition of my life, not its cause.
    We could never have learnt that we had eyes
    but by the process of seeing; yet having seen
    we know that the eyes must have pre-existed
    in order to render the process of sight possible.
    Let us cross-examine Hartley’s scheme under
    the guidance of this distinction; and we shall
    discover, that contemporaneity (Leibnitz’s Lex
    Continui) is the limit and condition of the laws
    of mind, itself being rather a law of matter, at
    least of phænomena considered as material. At
    the utmost, it is to thought the same, as the law
    of gravitation is to loco-motion. In every vo-
    luntary movement we first counteract gravita-
    tion, in order to avail ourselves of it. It must
    exist, that there may be a something to be coun-
    teracted, and which by its re-action, aids the
    force that is exerted to resist it. Let us con-
    sider, what we do when we leap. We first re-
    sist the gravitating power by an act purely vo-
    luntary, and then by another act, voluntary in
    part, we yield to it in order to light on the spot,
    which we had previously proposed to ourselves.
    Now let a man watch his mind while he is com-
    posing; or, to take a still more common case,
    while he is trying to recollect a name; and he
    will find the process completely analogous.
    Most of my readers will have observed a small
    water-insect on the surface of rivulets, which
    throws a cinque-spotted shadow fringed with
    prismatic colours on the sunny bottom of the
    brook; and will have noticed, how the little
    animal wins its way up against the stream, by
    alternate pulses of active and passive motion,
    now resisting the current, and now yielding to
    it in order to gather strength and a momentary
    fulcrum for a further propulsion. This is no
    unapt emblem of the mind’s self-experience in
    the act of thinking. There are evidently two
    powers at work, which relatively to each other
    are active and passive; and this is not possible
    without an intermediate faculty, which is at
    once both active and passive. (In philosophi-
    cal language, we must denominate this inter-
    mediate faculty in all its degrees and determina-
    tions, the IMAGINATION. But in common lan-
    guage, and especially on the subject of poetry,
    we appropriate the name to a superior degree
    of the faculty, joined to a superior voluntary
    controul over it.)

     

    Contemporaneity then, being the common
    condition of all the laws of association. and a
    component element in all the materia subjecta,
    the parts of which are to be associated, must
    needs be co-present with all. Nothing, there-
    fore, can be more easy than to pass off on an
    incautious mind this constant companion of
    each, for the essential substance of all. But
    if we appeal to our own consciousness, we shall
    find that even time itself, as the cause of a par-
    ticular act of association, is distinct from con-
    temporaneity, as the condition of all associa-
    tion. Seeing a mackarel it may happen, that I
    immediately think of gooseberries, because I at
    the same time ate mackarel with gooseberries
    as the sauce. The first syllable of the latter
    word, being that which had co-existed with the
    image of the bird so called, I may then think
    of a goose. In the next moment the image of
    a swan may arise before me, though I had
    never seen the two birds together. In the two
    former instances, I am conscious that their co-
    existence in time was the circumstance, that
    enabled me to recollect them; and equally
    conscious am I, that the latter was recalled to
    me by the joint operation of likeness and con-
    trast. So it is with cause and effect; so too
    with order. So am I able to distinguish whe-
    ther it was proximity in time, or continuity in
    space, that occasioned me to recall B. on the
    mention of A. They cannot be indeed separated
    from contemporaneity; for that would be to
    separate them from the mind itself. The act of
    consciousness is indeed identical with time con-
    sidered in its essence. (I mean time per se, as
    contra-distinguished from our notion of time;
    for this is always blended with the idea of space,
    which as the contrary of time, is therefore its
    measure.) Nevertheless the accident of seeing
    two objects at the same moment acts, as a dis-
    tinguishable cause from that of having seen
    them in the same place: and the true practical
    general law of association is this; that what-
    ever makes certain parts of a total impression
    more vivid or distinct than the rest, will deter-
    mine the mind to recall these in preference to
    others equally linked together by the common
    condition of contemporaneity, or (what I deem
    a more appropriate and philosophical term) of
    continuity. But the will itself by confining and
    intensifying* the attention may arbitrarily give

     

    I am aware, that this word occurs neither in Johnson’s
    Dictionary or in any classical writer. But the word, "to
    intend," which Newton and others before him employ in this
    sense, is now so completely appropriated to another mean-
    ing, that I could not use it without ambiguity: while to pa-
    raphrase the sense, as by render intense, would often break
    up the sentence and destroy that harmony of the position of
    the words with the logical position of the thoughts, which is*

    vividness or distinctness to any object what-
    sover; and from hence we may deduce the
    uselessness if not the absurdity of certain recent
    schemes which promise an artificial memory,
    but which in reality can only produce a con-
    fusion and debasement of the fancy. Sound
    logic, as the habitual subordination of the indi-
    vidual to the species, and of the species to the
    genus; philosophical knowledge of facts under
    the relation of cause and effect; a chearful and
    communicative temper that disposes us to no-
    tice the similarities and contrasts of things, that
    we may be able to illustrate the one by the
    other; a quiet conscience; a condition free from
    anxieties; sound health, and above all (as far
    as relates to passive remembrance) a healthy
    digestion; these are the best, these are the only
    ARTS OF MEMORY.

     
    *a beauty in all composition, and more especially desirable in
    a close philosophical investigation. I have therefore ha-
    zarded the word, intensify; though, I confess, it sounds un-
    couth to my own ear.

     
     
     
     

    CHAPTER VIII.

     
    The system of DUALISM introduced by Des
    Cartes—Refined first by Spinoza and after-
    wards by Leibnitz into the doctrine of Har-
    monia præstabilta—Hylozoism—Materialism

    Neither of these systems on any possible
    theory of association, supplies or supersedes
    a theory of perception, or explains the form-
    ation of the associable.

     
     

    To the best of my knowledge Des Cartes
    was the first philosopher, who introduced the
    absolute and essential heterogeneity of the soul
    as intelligence, and the body as matter. The
    assumption, and the form of speaking, have re-
    mained, though the denial of all other proper-
    ties to matter but that of extension, on which
    denial the whole system of dualism is grounded,
    has been long exploded. For since impenetra-
    bility is intelligible only as a mode of resistance;
    its admission places the essence of matter in an
    act or power, which it possesses in common
    with spirit; and body and spirit are therefore
    no longer absolutely heterogeneous, but may
    without any absurdity be supposed to be dif-
    ferent modes, or degrees in perfection, of a
    common substratum. To this possibility, how-
    er, it was not the fashion to advert. The
    soul was a thinking substance; and body a
    space-filling substance. Yet the apparent ac-
    tion of each on the other pressed heavy on the
    philosopher on the one hand; and no less hea-
    vily on the other hand pressed the evident
    truth, that the law of causality holds only be-
    tween homogeneous things, i. e. things having
    some common property; and cannot extend
    from one world into another, its opposite. A
    close analysis evinced it to be no less absurd,
    than the question whether a man’s affection for
    his wife, lay North-east, or South-west of the
    love he bore towards his child? Leibnitz’s
    doctrine of a pre-established harmony, which
    he certainly borrowed from Spinoza, who had
    himself taken the hint from Des Cartes’s animal
    machines, was in its common interpretation too
    strange to survive the inventor—too repugnant
    to our common sense (which is not indeed enti-
    tled to a judicial voice in the courts of scien-
    tific philosophy; but whose whispers still exert
    a strong secret influence.) Even Wolf the ad-
    mirer, and illustrious systematizer of the Leib-
    nitzian doctrine, contents himself with defend-
    ing the possibility of the idea, but does not
    adopt it as a part of the edifice.

     
     

    The hypothesis of Hylozoism on the other
    side, is the death of all rational physiology, and
    indeed of all physical science; for that requires a
    limitation of terms, and cannot consist with the
    arbitrary power of multiplying attributes by oc-
    cult qualities. Besides, it answers no purpose;
    unless indeed a difficulty can be solved by multi-
    plying it, or that we can acquire a clearer notion
    of our soul, by being told that we have a million
    souls, and that every atom of our bodies has a
    soul of its own. Far more prudent is it to
    admit the difficulty once for all, and then let it
    lie at rest. There is a sediment indeed at the
    bottom of the vessel, but all the water above it
    is clear and transparent. The Hylozoist only
    shakes it up, and renders the whole turbid.

     
     

    But it is not either the nature of man, or the
    duty of the philosopher to despair concerning
    any important problem until, as in the squaring
    of the circle, the impossibility of a solution has
    been demonstrated. How the esse assumed as
    originally distinct from the scire, can ever unite
    itself with it; how being can transform itself
    into a knowing, becomes conceivable on one
    only condition; namely, if it can be shown that
    the vis representativa, or the Sentient, is itself
    a species of being; i. e. either as a property or
    attribute, or as an hypostasis or self subsistence.
    The former is indeed the assumption of mate-
    rialism; a system which could not but be pa-
    tronized by the philosopher, if only it actually
    performed what it promises. But how any
    affection from without can metamorphose itself
    into perception or will; the materialist has
    hitherto left, not only as incomprehensible as
    he found it, but has aggravated it into a com-
    prehensible absurdity. For, grant that an ob-
    ject from without could act upon the conscious
    self, as on a consubstantial object; yet such
    an affection could only engender something
    homogeneous with itself. Motion could only
    propagate motion. Matter has no Inward. We
    remove one surface, but to meet with another.
    We can but divide a particle into particles;
    and each atom comprehends in itself the pro-
    perties of the material universe. Let any re-
    flecting mind make the experiment of explain-
    ing to itself the evidence of our sensuous in-
    tuitions, from the hypothesis that in any given
    perception there is a something which has been
    communicated to it by an impact or an impres-
    sion ab extra. In the first place, by the impact
    on the percepient or ens representans not the
    object itself, but only its action or effect, will
    pass into the same. Not the iron tongue, but
    its vibrations, pass into the metal of the bell.
    Now in our immediate perception, it is not the
    mere power or act of the object, but the object
    itself, which is immediately present. We might
    indeed attempt to explain this result by a chain
    of deductions and conclusions; but that, first,
    the very faculty of deducing and concluding
    would equally demand an explanation; and
    secondly, that there exists in fact no such in-
    termediation by logical notions, such as those
    of cause and effect. It is the object itself, not
    the product of a syllogism, which is present to
    our consciousness. Or would we explain this
    supervention of the object to the sensation, by
    a productive faculty set in motion by an im-
    pulse; still the transition, into the percepient,
    of the object itself, from which the impulse
    proceeded, assumes a power that can permeate
    and wholly possess the soul

     
    " And like a God by spiritual art,
    "Be all in all, and all in every part."

    COWLEY.

    And how came the percepient here? And what
    is become of the wonder-promising MATTER,
    that was to perform all these marvels by force
    of mere figure, weight, and motion? The most
    consistent proceeding of the dogmatic material-
    ist is to fall back into the common rank of
    soul-and-bodyists; to affect the mysterious, and
    declare the whole process a revelation given,
    and not to be understood, which it would be
    prophane to examine too closely. Datur non
    intelligitur. But a revelation unconfirmed by
    miracles, and a faith not commanded by the
    conscience, a philosopher may venture to pass
    by, without suspecting himself of any irreligi-
    ous tendency.

    Thus as materialism has been generally taught,
    it is utterly unintelligible, and owes all its pro-
    selytes to the propensity so common among
    men, to mistake distinct images for clear con-
    ceptions; and vice versa, to reject as incon-
    ceivable whatever from its own nature is un-
    imaginable. But as soon as it becomes intel-
    ligible, it ceases to be materialism. In order
    to explain thinking, as a material phænomenon,
    it is necessary to refine matter into a mere
    modification of intelligence, with the two-fold
    function of appearing and perceiving. Even so
    did Priestley in his controversy with Price!
    He stript matter of all its material properties;
    substituted spiritual powers; and when we
    expected to find a body, behold! we had no-
    thing but its ghost! the apparition of a defunct
    substance!

     
     

    I shall not dilate further on this subject;
    because it will (if God grant health and per-
    mission) be treated of at large and systemati-
    cally in a work, which I have many years been
    preparing, on the PRODUCTIVE LOGOS human
    and divine; with, and as the introduction to,
    a full commentary on the Gospel of St. John.
    To make myself intelligible as far as my pre-
    sent subject requires, it will be sufficient briefly
    to observe--1. That all association demands
    and presupposes the existence of the thoughts
    and images to be associated.--2. The
    hypothesis of an external world exactly correspondent
    to those images or modifications of our own
    being, which alone (according to this system)
    we actually behold, is as thorough idealism as
    Berkeley’s, inasmuch as it equally (perhaps, in
    a more perfect degree) removes all reality and
    immediateness of perception, and places us in
    a dream-world of phantoms and spectres, the
    inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation
    of motions in our own brains.--3. That this
    hypothesis neither involves the explanation, nor
    precludes the necessity, of a mechanism and
    co-adequate forces in the percepient, which at
    the more than magic touch of the impulse from
    without is to create anew for itself the corres-
    pondent object. The formation of a copy is not
    solved by the mere pre-existence of an original;
    the copyist of Raphael’s Transfiguration must
    repeat more or less perfectly the process of
    Raphael. It would be easy to explain a thought
    from the image on the retina, and that from the
    geometry of light, if this very light did not
    present the very same difficulty. We might as
    rationally chant the Brahmin creed of the tor-
    toise that supported the bear, that supported
    the elephant, that supported the world, to the
    tune of "This is the house that Jack built."
    The sic Deo placitum est we all admit as the
    sufficient cause, and the divine goodness as the
    sufficient reason; but an answer to the whence?
    and why? is no answer to the how? which
    alone is the physiologist’s concern. It is a
    mere sophisma pigrum, and (as Bacon hath
    said) the arrogance of pusillanimity, which lifts
    up the idol of a mortal’s fancy and commands
    us to fall down and worship it, as a work of
    divine wisdom, an ancile or palladium fallen
    from heaven. By the very same argument
    the supporters of the Ptolemaic system might
    have rebuffed the Newtonian, and pointing to
    the sky with self-complacent* grin have ap-
    pealed to common sense, whether the sun did
    not move and the earth stand still.

     
     
    *" And Coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a
    grin." Pope.

     
     
     
     

    CHAPTER IX.

    Is philosophy possible as a science, and what are
    its conditions?--Giordano Bruno—Literary
    aristocracy, or the existence of a tacit compact
    among the learned as a privileged order—
    The author’s obligations to the Mystics;--to
    Emanuel Kant—The difference between the
    letter and the spirit of Kant’s writings, and a
    vindication of prudence in the teaching of
    philosophy—Fichte’s attempt to complete the
    critical system—Its partial success and ultimate
    failure—Obligations to Schelling; and among
    English writers to Saumarez.

     

    After I had successively studied in the schools
    of Locke, Berkeley, Leibnitz, and Hartley, and
    could find in neither of them an abiding place
    for my reason, I began to ask myself; is a
    system of philosophy, as different from mere
    history and historic classification possible? If
    possible, what are its necessary conditions? I
    was for a while disposed to answer the first
    question in the negative, and to admit that the
    sole practicable employment for the human
    mind was to observe, to collect, and to classify.
    But I soon felt, that human nature itself fought
    up against this wilful resignation of intellect;
    and as soon did I find, that the scheme taken
    with all its consequences and cleared of all
    inconsistencies was not less impracticable, than
    contra-natural. Assume in its full extent the
    position, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in
    sensa, without Leibnitz’s qualifying præter ip-
    sum intellectum, and in the same sense, in which
    it was understood by Hartley and Condilliac:
    and what Hume had demonstratively deduced
    from this concession concerning cause and ef-
    fect, will apply with equal and crushing force
    to all the* other eleven categorical forms, and
    the logical functions corresponding to them.
    How can we make bricks without straw? Or
    build without cement? We learn all things
    indeed by occasion of experience; but the very
    facts so learnt force us inward on the antece-
    dents, that must be pre-supposed in order to
    render experience itself possible. The first
    book of Locke’s Essays (if the supposed error,
    which it labours to subvert, be not a mere
    thing of straw, an absurdity which, no man
    ever did, or indeed ever could believe) is formed
    on a Sophisma Eteroxeteseos, and involves the old
    mistake of cum hoc: ergo, propter hoc.

     

    Videlicet; quantity, quality, relation, and mode, each
    consisting of three subdivisions. Vide Kritik der reineu
    Vernunft, p. 95, and 106. See too the judicious remarks in
    Locke and Hume.

    The term, Philosophy, defines itself as an
    affectionate seeking after the truth; but Truth
    is the correlative of Being. This again is no
    way conceivable, but by assuming as a postu-
    late, that both are ab initio, identical and
    co-inherent; that intelligence and being are re-
    ciprocally each others Substrate. I presumed
    that this was a possible conception (i. e. that it
    involved no logical inconsonance) from the
    length of time during which the scholastic
    definition of the Supreme Being, as actus pu-
    rissimus sine ullâ potentialitate, was received
    in the schools of Theology, both by the Pon-
    tifician and the Reformed divines. The early
    study of Plato and Plotinus, with the com-
    mentaries and the THEOLOGIA PLATONICA, of
    the illustrious Florentine; of Proclus, and
    Gemistius Pletho; and at a later period of the
    "De Immenso et Innumerabili," and the "De
    causa, principio et uno," of the philosopher
    of Nola, who could boast of a Sir Philip
    Sidney, and Fulke Greville among his patrons,
    and whom the idolaters of Rome burnt as an
    atheist in the year 1660; had all contributed
    to prepare my mind for the reception and
    welcoming of the Cogito quia sum, et sum quia
    Cogito; a philosophy of seeming hardihood, but
    certainly the most ancient, and therefore pre-
    sumptively the most natural.

     

    Why need I be afraid? Say rather how dare
    I be ashamed of the Teutonic theosophist,
    Jacob Behmen? Many indeed, and gross were
    his delusions; and such as furnish frequent and
    ample occasion for the triumph of the learned
    over the poor ignorant shoemaker, who had
    dared think for himself. But while we re-
    member that these delusions were such, as
    might be anticipated from his utter want of all
    intellectual discipline, and from his ignorance of
    rational psychology, let it not be forgotten that
    the latter defect he had in common with the
    most learned theologians of his age. Neither
    with books, nor with book-learned men was
    he conversant. A meek and shy quietist, his
    intellectual powers were never stimulated into
    fev’rous energy by crowds of proselytes, or by
    the ambition of proselyting. JACOB BEHMEN
    was an enthusiast, in the strictest sense, as not
    merely distinguished, but as contra-distin-
    guished, from a fanatic. While I in part trans-
    late the following observations from a contem-
    porary writer of the Continent, let me be per-
    mitted to premise, that I might have trans-
    cribed the substance from memoranda of my
    own, which were written many years before his
    pamphlet was given to the world; and that I
    prefer another’s words to my own, partly as a
    tribute due to priority of publication; but still
    more from the pleasure of sympathy in a case
    where coincidence only was possible.

    Whoever is acquainted with the history of
    philosophy, during the two or three last cen-
    turies, cannot but admit, that there appears to
    have existed a sort of secret and tacit compact
    among the learned, not to pass beyond a certain
    limit in speculative science. The privilege of
    free thought, so highly extolled, has at no time
    been held valid in actual practice, except
    within this limit; and not a single stride beyond
    it has ever been ventured without bringing
    obloquy on the transgressor. The few men
    of genius among the learned class, who actually
    did overstep this boundary, anxiously avoided
    the appearance of having so done. Therefore
    the true depth of science, and the penetration
    to the inmost centre, from which all the lines
    of knowledge diverge to their ever distant cir-
    cumference, was abandoned to the illiterate
    and the simple, whom unstilled yearning, and
    an original ebulliency of spirit, had urged to
    the investigation of the indwelling and living
    ground of all things. These then, because
    their names had never been inrolled in the
    guilds of the learned, were persecuted by the
    registered livery-men as interlopers on their
    rights and priviledges. All without distinction
    were branded as fanatics and phantasts; not
    only those, whose wild and exorbitant imagi-
    nations had actually engendered only extra-
    vagant and grotesque phantasms, and whose
    productions were, for the most part, poor
    copies and gross caricatures of genuine in-
    spiration; but the truly inspired likewise, the
    originals themselves! And this for no other
    reason, but because they were the unlearned,
    men of humble and obscure occupations.
    When, and from whom among, the literati by
    profession, have we ever heard the divine dox-
    ology repeated, "I thank thee O father! Lord
    of Heaven and Earth! because thou hast hid
    these things from the wise and prudent, and
    hast revealed them unto babes." No! the
    haughty priests of learning, not only banished
    from the schools and marts of science all, who
    had dared draw living waters from the fountain,
    but drove them out of the very temple, which
    mean time "the buyers, and sellers, and money-
    changers" were suffered to make " a den of
    thieves."

     

    And yet it would not be easy to discover
    any substantial ground for this contemptuous
    pride in those literati, who have most distin-
    guished themselves by their scorn of BEHMEN,
    DE THOYRAS, GEORGE FOX, &c.; unless it be,
    that they could write orthographically, make
    smooth periods, and had the fashions of author-
    ship almost literally at their fingers ends, while
    the latter, in simplicity of soul, made their
    words immediate echoes of their feelings.
    Hence the frequency of those phrases among
    them, which have been mistaken for pretences
    to immediate inspiration; as for instance, "it
    was delivered unto me," "I strove not to speak,"
    " I said, I will be silent," "but the word was in
    heart as a burning fire," "and I could not
    forbear." Hence too the unwillingness to give
    offence; hence the foresight, and the dread of
    the clamours, which would be raised against
    them, so frequently avowed in the writings of
    these men, and expressed, as was natural, in
    the words of the only book, with which they
    were familiar. "Woe is me that I am become
    a man of strife, and a man of contention,--I
    love peace: the souls of men are dear unto me:
    yet because I seek for Light every one of them
    doth curse me!" O! it requires deeper feeling,
    and a stronger imagination, than belong to most
    of those, to whom reasoning and fluent ex-
    pression have been as a trade learnt in boyhood,
    to conceive with what might, with what inward
    strivings and commotion, the perception of a
    new and vital TRUTH takes possession of an
    uneducated man of genius. His meditations
    are almost inevitably employed on the eternal,
    or the everlasting; for "the world is not his
    friend, nor the world’s law." Need we then be
    surprised, that under an excitement at once
    so strong and so unusual, the man’s body
    should sympathize with the struggles of his
    mind; or that he should at times be so far
    deluded, as to mistake the tumultuous sensa-
    tions of his nerves, and the co-existing spec-
    tres of his fancy, as parts or symbols of the
    truths which were opening on him? It has
    indeed been plausibly observed, that in order
    to derive any advantage, or to collect any in-
    telligible meaning, from the writings of these
    ignorant mystics, the reader must bring with
    him a spirit and judgement superior to that of
    the writers themselves:
    "And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?"

    PARADISE REGAINED.

    burton, is unworthy of Milton; how much
    more so of the awful person, in whose mouth
    he has placed it? One assertion I will venture
    to make, as suggested by my own experience,
    that there exist folios on the human under-
    standing, and the nature of man, which would
    have a far juster claim to their high rank and
    celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there
    could be found as much fulness of heart and
    intellect, as burst forth in many a simple page
    of GEORGE FOX, JACOB BEHMEN, and even of
    Behmen’s commentator, the pious and fervid
    WILLIAM LAW.

     

    The feeling of gratitude, which I cherish
    towards these men, has caused me to digress
    further than I had foreseen or proposed; but
    to have passed them over in an historical sketch
    of my literary life and opinions, would have
    seemed to me like the denial of a debt, the
    concealment of a boon. For the writings of
    these mystics acted in no slight degree to pre-
    vent my mind from being imprisoned within
    the outline of any single dogmatic system.
    They contributed to keep alive the heart in the
    head; gave me an indistinct, yet stirring and
    working presentment, that all the products of
    the mere reflective faculty partook of DEATH,
    and were as the rattling twigs and sprays in
    winter, into which a sap was yet to be propelled,
    from some root to which I had not penetrated,
    if they were to afford my soul either food or
    shelter. If they were too often a moving cloud
    of smoke to me by day, yet they were always
    a pillar of fire throughout the night, during my
    wanderings through the wilderness of doubt,
    and enabled me to skirt, without crossing,
    the sandy deserts of utter unbelief. That the
    system is capable of being converted into an
    irreligious PANTHEISM, I well know. The
    ETHICS of SPINOZA, may, or may not, be an
    instance. But at no time could I believe, that
    in itself and essentially it is incompatible with
    religion, natural, or revealed: and now I am
    most thoroughly persuaded of the contrary.
    The writings of the illustrious sage of Königs-
    berg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy,
    more than any other work, at once invigorated
    and disciplined my understanding. The ori-
    ginality, the depth, and the compression of the
    thoughts; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity
    and importance, of the distinctions; the ada-
    mantine chain of the logic; and I will venture
    to add (paradox as it will appear to those who
    have taken their notion of IMMANUEL KANT,
    from Reviewers and Frenchmen) the clearness
    and evidence, of the "CRITIQUE OF THE PURE
    REASON;" of the JUDGMENT; of the "METAPHI-
    SICAL ELEMENTS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY,"
    and of his "RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS
    OF PURE REASON," took possession of me as
    with a giant’s hand. After fifteen years famili-
    arity with them, I still read these and all his
    other productions with undiminished delight
    and increasing admiration. The few passages
    that remained obscure to me, after due efforts
    of thought, (as the chapter on original apper-
    ception,) and the apparent contradictions which
    occur, I soon found were hints and insinua-
    tions referring to ideas, which KANT either did
    not think it prudent to avow, or which he con-
    sidered as consistently left behind in a pure
    analysis, not of human nature in toto, but of
    the speculative intellect alone. Here therefore
    he was constrained to commence at the point
    of reflection, or natural consciousness: while
    in his moral system he was permitted to assume
    a higher ground (the autonomy of the will) as
    a POSTULATE deducible from the unconditional
    command, or (in the technical language of his
    school) the categorical imperative, of the con-
    science. He had been in imminent danger of
    persecution during the reign of the late king of
    Prussia, that strange compound of lawless
    debauchery, and priest-ridden superstition:
    and it is probable that he had little inclination,
    in his old age, to act over again the fortunes,
    and hair-breadth escapes of Wolf. The expul-
    sion of the first among Kant’s disciples, who at-
    tempted to complete his system, from the
    university of Jena, with the confiscation and
    prohibition of the obnoxious work by the joint
    efforts of the courts of Saxony and Hanover,
    supplied experimental proof, that the venerable
    old man’s caution was not groundless. In spite
    therefore of his own declarations, I could never
    believe, it was possible for him to have meant
    no more by his Noumenon, or THING IN ITSELF,
    than his mere words express; or that in his
    own conception he confined the whole plastic
    power to the forms of the intellect, leaving for
    the external cause, for the materiale of our
    sensations, a matter without form, which is
    doubtless inconceivable. I entertained doubts
    likewise, whether in his own mind, he even laid
    all the stress, which he appears to do on the
    moral postulates.

     

    An IDEA, in the highest sense of that word,
    cannot be conveyed but by a symbol; and,
    except in geometry, all symbols of neces-
    sity involve an apparent contradiction. Phonese
    Sunetoisen: and for those who could not pierce
    through this symbolic husk, his writings were
    not intended. Questions which can not be
    fully answered without exposing the respon-
    dent to personal danger, are not entitled to a
    fair answer; and yet to say this openly, would
    in many cases furnish the very advantage,
    which the adversary is insidiously seeking
    after. Veracity does not consist in saying,
    but in the intention of communicating truth;
    and the philosopher who can not utter the
    whole truth without conveying falsehood, and
    at the same time, perhaps, exciting the most
    malignant passions, is constrained to express
    himself either mythically or equivocally. When
    Kant therefore was importuned to settle the
    disputes of his commentators himself, by de-
    claring what he meant, how could he decline
    the honours of martyrdom with less offence,
    than by simply replying "I meant what I
    "said, and at the age of near four score, I have
    "something else, and more important to do,
    "than to write a commentary on my own works."

     

    FICHTE’S Wissenschaftslehre, or Lore of Ul-
    timate Science, was to add the key-stone of the
    arch: and by commencing with an act, instead
    of a thing or substance, Fichte assuredly gave
    the first mortal blow to Spinozism, as taught by
    Spinoza himself; and supplied the idea of a
    system truly metaphysical, and of a metaphy-
    sique truly systematic: (i. e. having its spring
    and principle within itself.) But this funda-
    mental idea he overbuilt with a heavy mass of
    mere notions, and psychological acts of arbitrary
    reflection. Thus his theory degenerated into a
    crude* egoismus, a boastful and hyperstoic hos-
    tility to NATURE, as lifeless, godless, and alto-
    gether unholy: while his religion consisted in
    the assumption of a mere ORDO ORDINANS, which
    we were permitted exotericé to call GOD; and
    his ethics in an ascetic, and almost monkish,
    mortification of the natural passions and desires.

     

    In Schelling’s "NATUR-PHILOSOPHIE," and
    the "SYSTEM DES TRANSCENDENTALEN IDEAL-
    ISMUS," I first found a genial coincidence with
    much that I had toiled out for myself, and a
    powerful assistance in what I had yet to do.

     

    I have introduced this statement, as appro-
    priate to the narrative nature of this sketch; yet
    rather in reference to the work which I have
    announced in a preceding page, than to my

     
    *The following burlesque on the Fichtean Egoismus may,
    perhaps, be amusing, to the few who have studied the system,
    and to those who are unacquainted with it, may convey as
    tolerable a likeness of Fichte’s idealism as can be expected
    from an avowed caracature.

    The categorical imperative, or the annunciation of the
    new Teutonic God, EGoENKAIPAN: a dithyrambic Ode,*
    present subject. It would be but a mere act
    of justice to myself, were I to warn my future
    readers, that an identity of thought, or even
    similarity of phrase will not be at all times a
    certain proof that the passage has been borrow-
    ed from Schelling, or that the conceptions were
    originally learnt from him. In this instance, as

     

    *by QUERKOPF VON KLUBSTICK, Grammarian, and Subrec-
    tor in Gymnasio. ****

     
     

    Eu! Dei vices gerens, ipse Divus,
    (Speak English, Friend!) the God Imperativus,

    Here on this market-cross aloud I cry:

    I, I, I! I itself I!
    The form and the substance, the what and the why,
    The when and the where, and the low and the high,
    The inside and outside, the earth and the sky,
    I, you, and he, and he, you and I,
    All souls and all bodies are I itself I!
    All I itself I!
    (Fools! a truce with this starting!)
    All my I! all my I!
    He’s a heretic dog who but adds Betty Martin!

    Thus cried the God with high imperial tone:

    In robe of stiffest state, that scoff’d at beauty,
    A pronoun-verb imperative he shone—
    Then substantive and plural-singular grown
    He thus spake on! Behold in I alone
    (For ethics boast a syntax of their own)
    Or if in ye, yet as I doth depute ye,
    In O! I, you, the vocative of duty!
    I of the world’s whole Lexicon the root!
    Of the whole universe of touch, sound, sight

    The genitive and ablative to boot:

    The accusative of wrong, the nom’native of right,
    And in all cases the case absolute!

    Self-construed, I all other moods decline:

    Imperative, from nothing we derive us;
    Yet as a super-postulate of mine,
    Unconstrued antecedence I assign
    To X, Y, Z, the God infinitivus!

    in the dramatic lectures of Schlegel to which I
    have before alluded, from the same motive of
    self-defence against the charge of plagiarism,
    many of the most striking resemblances, indeed
    all the main and fundamental ideas, were born
    and matured in my mind before I had ever seen
    a single page of the German Philosopher; and
    I might indeed affirm with truth, before the
    more important works of Schelling had been
    written, or at least made public. Nor is this
    coincidence at all to be wondered at. We
    had studied in the same school; been discip-
    lined by the same preparatory philosophy,
    namely, the writings of Kant; we had both
    equal obligations to the polar logic and dyna-
    mic philosophy of Giordano Bruno; and Schel-
    ling has lately, and, as of recent acquisition,
    avowed that same affectionate reverence for the
    labors of Behmen, and other mystics, which I
    had formed at a much earlier period. The
    coincidence of SCHELLING’S system with cer-
    tain general ideas of Behmen, he declares to have
    been mere coincidence; while my obligations
    have been more direct. He needs give to Beh-
    men only feelings of sympathy; while I owe
    him a debt of gratitude. God forbid! that I
    should be suspected of a wish to enter into a
    rivalry with SCHELLING for the honors so une-
    quivocally his right, not only as a great and
    original genius, but as the founder of the
    PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, and as the most success-
    ful improver of the Dynamic* System which,
    begun by Bruno, was re-introduced (in a more
    philosophical form, and freed from all its impu-
    rities and visionary accompaniments) by KANT;
    in whom it was the native and necessary growth
    of his own system. KANT’S followers, how-
    ever, on whom (for the greater part) their mas-
    ter’s cloak had fallen without, or with a very
    scanty portion of, his spirit, had adopted his
    dynamic ideas, only as a more refined species
    of mechanics. With exception of one or two
    fundamental ideas, which cannot be with-held
    from FICHTE, to SCHELLING we owe the

    It would be an act of high and almost criminal injustice to
    pass over in silence the name of Mr. RICHARD SAUMAREZ,
    a gentleman equally well known as a medical man and as a
    philanthropist, but who demands notice on the present oc-
    casion as the author of "a new System of Physiology" in two
    volumes octavo, published 1797; and in 1812 of "an Exa-
    mination of the natural and artificial Systems of Philosophy
    which now prevail" in one volume octavo, entitled, "The
    Principles of physiological and physical Science." The latter
    work is not quite equal to the former in style or arrangement;
    and there is a greater necessity of distinguishing the princi-
    ples of the author’s philosophy from his conjectures con-
    cerning colour, the atmospheric matter, comets, &c. which
    whether just or erroneous are by no means necessary conse-
    quences of that philosophy. Yet even in this department
    of this volume, which I regard as comparatively the inferior
    work, the reasonings by which Mr. Saumarez invalidates the
    immanence of an infinite power in any finite substance are
    the offspring of no common mind; and the experiment on
    the expansibility of the air is at least plausible and highly in-
    genious. But the merit, which will secure both to the book
    and to the writer a high and honorable name with posterity,
    consists in the masterly force of reasoning, and the
    completion, and the most important victories, of
    this revolution in philosophy. To me it will be
    happiness and honor enough, should I succeed
    in rendering the system itself intelligible to my
    countrymen, and in the application of it to the
    most awful of subjects for the most important
    of purposes, Whether a work is the offspring
    of a man’s own spirit, and the product of ori-
    ginal thinking, will be discovered by those who
    are its sole legitimate judges, by better tests
    than the mere reference to dates. For readers
    in general, let whatever shall be found in this
    or any future work of mine, that resembles, or
    coincides with, the doctrines of my German

     
    *copiousness of induction, with which he has assailed, and (in my
    opinion) subverted the tyranny of the mechanic system in
    physiology; established not only the existence of final causes,
    but their necessity and efficiency in every system that merits
    the name of philosophical; and substituting life and pro-
    gressive power, for the contradictory inert force, has a right
    to be known and remembered as the first instaurator of the
    dynamic philosophy in England. The author’s views, as far
    as concerns himself, are unborrowed and compleatly his own,
    as he neither possessed nor do his writings discover, the
    least acquaintance with the works of Kant, in which the
    germs of the philosophy exist; and his volumes were pub-
    lished many years before the full developement of these
    germs by Schelling. Mr. Saumarez’s detection of the Brau-
    nonian system was no light or ordinary service at the time;
    and I scarcely remember in any work on any subject a con-
    futation so thoroughly satisfactory. It is sufficient at this
    time to have stated the fact; as in the preface to the work,
    which I have already announced on the Logos, I have ex-
    hibited in detail the merits of this writer, and genuine philo-
    sopher, who needed only have taken his foundations some-
    what deeper and wider to have superseded a considerable
    part of my labours.
    predecessor, though contemporary, be wholly
    attributed to him provided, that the absence
    of distinct references to his books, which I could
    not at all times make with truth as designating
    citations or thoughts actually derived from him;
    and which, I trust, would, after this general ac-
    knowledgment be superfluous; be not charged
    on me as an ungenerous concealment or inten-
    tional plagiarism. I have not indeed (eheu! res
    angusta domi!) been hitherto able to procure
    more than two of his books, viz. the 1st volume
    of his collected Tracts, and his System of Trans-
    cendental Idealism; to which, however, I must
    add a small pamphlet against Fichte, the spirit
    of which was to my feelings painfully incongru-
    ous with the principles, and which (with the
    usual allowance afforded to an antithesis)
    displayed the love of wisdom rather than the
    wisdom of love. I regard truth as a divine
    ventriloquist: I care not from whose mouth the
    sounds are supposed to proceed, if only the
    words are audible and intelligible. "Albeit, I
    "must confess to be half in doubt, whether I
    "should bring it forth or no, it being so contrary
    "to the eye of the world, and the world so po-
    "tent in most men’s hearts, that I shall endanger
    "either not to be regarded or not to be under-
    "stood."

    MILTON: Reason of Church Government.

    And to conclude the subject of citation,
    with a cluster of citations, which as taken
    from books, not in common use, may con-
    tribute to the reader’s amusement, as a vo-
    luntary before a sermon."Dolet mihi qui-
    dem deliciis literarum inescatos subito jam ho-
    mines adeo esse, præsertim qui Christianos se
    profitentur, et legere nisi quod ad delectationem
    facit, sustineant nihil: unde et disciplinæ se-
    veriores et philosophia ipsa jam fere prorsus
    etiam a doctis negliguntur. Quod quidem pro-
    positum studiorum, nisi mature corrigitur, tam
    magnum rebus incommodum dabit, quám dedit
    Barbaries olim. Pertinax res Barbaries est,
    fateor: sed minus potest tamen, quám illa mol-
    lities et persuasa prudentia literarum, quæ si
    ratione caret, sapientiæ virtutisque specie mor-
    tales miserè circumducit. Succedet igitur, ut
    arbitror, haud ita multo post, pro rusticanâ
    seculi nostri ruditate captatrix illa communi-
    loquentia robur animi virilis omne, omnem
    virtutem masculam profligatura, nisi cavetur."

     

    SIMON GRYNÆUS, candido lectori, prefixed to
    the Latin translation of Plato, by Marsilius
    Ficinus. Lugduni, 1557. A too prophetic re-
    mark, which has been in fulfilment from the
    year 1680, to the present 1815. N. B. By
    " persuasa prudentia," Grynæus means self-
    complacent common sense as opposed to science
    and philosophic reason.

    "Est medius ordo et velut equestris Ingeni-
    "orum quidem sagacium et rebus humanis com-
    "modorum, non tamen in primam magnitudinem
    "patentium. Eorum hominum, ut ita dicam,
    "major annona est. Sedulum esse, nihil temerè
    "loqui, assuescere labori, et imagine prudentiæ
    "& modestiæ tegere angustiores partes captûs
    "dum exercitationem et usum, quo isti in civi-
    "libus rebus pollent, pro natura et magnitudine
    "ingenii plerique accipiunt."
    BARCLAII ARGENIS, p. 71.

     

    " As therefore, physicians are many times
    "forced to leave such methods of curing as them-
    "selves know to be fittest, and being over-ruled
    "by the sick man’s impatience, are fain to try
    "the best they can: in like sort, considering how
    "the case doth stand with the present age, full
    "of tongue and weak of brain, behold we would
    "(if our subject permitted it) yield to the stream
    "thereof. That way we would be contented to
    "prove our thesis, which being the worse in
    "itself, notwithstanding is now by reason of com-
    "mon imbecility the fitter and likelier to be
    "brooked."—HOOKER.

     

    If this fear could be rationally entertained in
    the controversial age of Hooker, under the then
    robust discipline of the scholastic logic, par-
    donably may a writer of the present times an-
    ticipate a scanty audience for abstrusest themes,
    and truths that can neither be communicated
    or received without effort of thought, as well
    as patience of attention.

    " Che s’io non erro al calcular de’ punti,
    "Par ch’ Asinina Stella a noi predomini,
    "E’l Somaro e’l castron si sian congiunti.

    "Il tempo d’Apuleio piu non si nomini:

    "Che se allora un sol Huom sembrava un Asino,
    "Mille Asini á miei dì rassembran Huomini!"

    Di SALVATOR ROSA Satir. I. 1. 10.

     
     
     

    CHAPTER X.

     
    A chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an
    interlude preceding that on the nature and
    genesis of the imagination or plastic power—
    On pedantry and pedantic expressions—Ad-
    vice to young authors respecting publication—
    Various anecdotes of the author’s literary life,
    and the progress of his opinions in religion
    and politics.

     
     

    " Esemplastic. The word is not in Johnson,
    nor have I met with it elsewhere." Neither
    have I! I constructed it myself from the Greek
    words, eis en plattein i. e. to shape into one;
    because, having to convey a new sense, I
    thought that a new term would both aid the
    recollection of my meaning, and prevent its
    being confounded with the usual import of
    the word, imagination. "But this is pedantry!"
    Not necessarily so, I hope. If I am not mis-
    informed, pedantry consists in the use of words
    unsuitable to the time, place, and company.
    The language of the market would be in the
    schools as pedantic, though it might not be re-
    probated by that name, as the language of the
    schools in the market. The mere man of the
    world, who insists that no other terms but
    such as occur in common conversation should
    be employed in a scientific disquisition, and
    with no greater precision, is as truly a pedant
    as the man of letters, who either over-rating
    the acquirements of his auditors, or misled by
    his own familiarity with technical or scholastic
    terms, converses at the wine-table with his
    mind fixed on his musæum or laboratory; even
    though the latter pedant instead of desiring his
    wife to make the tea, should bid her add to the
    quant. suff. of thea sinensis the oxyd of hy-
    drogen saturated with caloric. To use the
    colloquial (and in truth somewhat vulgar)
    metaphor, if the pedant of the cloyster, and the
    pedant of the lobby, both smell equally of the
    shop, yet the odour from the Russian binding
    of good old authentic-looking folios and quartos
    is less annoying than the steams from the
    tavern or bagnio. Nay, though the pedantry
    of the scholar should betray a little ostentation,
    yet a well-conditioned mind would more easily,
    methinks, tolerate the fox brush of learned
    vanity, than the sans culotterie of a contemptu-
    ous ignorance, that assumes a merit from
    mutilation in the self-consoling sneer at the
    pompous incumbrance of tails.

     
     

    The first lesson of philosophic discipline
    is to wean the student’s attention from the
    DEGREES of things, which alone form the
    vocabulary of common life, and to direct it to
    the KIND abstracted from degree. Thus the
    chemical student is taught not to be startled at
    disquisitions on the heat in ice, or on latent
    and fixible light. In such discourse the in-
    structor has no other alternative than either to
    use old words uith new meanings (the plan
    adopted by Darwin in his Zoonomia;) or to
    introduce new terms, after the example of
    Linnæus, and the framers of the present che-
    mical nomenclature. The latter mode is evi-
    dently preferable, were it only that the former
    demands a twofold exertion of thought in one
    and the same act. For the reader (or hearer)
    is required not only to learn and bear in mind
    the new definition; but to unlearn, and keep
    out of his view, the old and habitual meaning;
    a far more difficult and perplexing task, and
    for which the mere semblance of eschewing
    pedantry seems to me an inadequate compen-
    sation. Where, indeed, it is in our power to
    recall an appropriate term that had without
    sufficient reason become obsolete, it is doubt-
    less a less evil to restore than to coin anew.
    Thus to express in one word, all that apper-
    tains to the perception considered as passive,
    and merely recipient, I have adopted from our
    elder classics the word sensuous; because sen-
    sual is not at present used, except in a bad
    sense, or at least as a moral distinction, while
    sensitive and sensible would each convey a
    different meaning. Thus too I have followed
    Hooker, Sanderson, Milton, &c. in designating
    the immediateness of any act or object of know-
    lege by the word intuition, used sometimes
    subjectively, sometimes objectively, even as we
    use the word, thought; now as the thought, or
    act of thinking, and now as a thought, or the
    object of our reflection; and we do this without
    confusion or obscurity. The very words, ob-
    jective and subjective, of such constant recur-
    rence in the schools of yore, I have ventured
    to re-introduce, because I could not so briefly,
    or conveniently by any more familiar terms
    distinguish the percipere from the percipi.
    Lastly, I have cautiously discriminated the
    terms, the REASON, and the UNDERSTANDING,
    encouraged and confirmed by the authority of
    our genuine divines, and philosophers, before
    the revolution.

     
     

    "both life, and sense,
    Fancy, and understanding: whence the soul
    Reason receives, and REASON is her being,
    DISCURSIVE or INTUITIVE, Discourse*
    Is oftest your’s, the latter most is our’s,
    Differing but in degree, in kind the same."

     
     

    PARADISE LOST, Book V:

     

    But for sundry notes on Shakspeare, &c. which have

  • fallen in my way, I should have deemed it unnecessary to
    observe, that discourse here, or elswhere does not mean what
    we now call discoursing; but the discursion of the mind, the
    processes of generalization and subsumption, of deduction*
    I say, that I was confirmed by authority so ve-
    nerable: for I had previous and higher motives
    in my own conviction of the importance, nay,
    of the necessity of the distinction, as both an
    indispensable condition and a vital part of all
    sound speculation in metaphysics, ethical or
    theological. To establish this distinction was
    one main object of THE FRIEND; if even in a
    biography of my own literary life I can with
    propriety refer to a work, which was printed
    rather than published, or so published that it
    had been well for the unfortunate author, if it
    had remained in manuscript! I have even at
    this time bitter cause for remembering that,
    which a number of my subscribers have but a
    trifling motive for forgetting. This effusion
    might have been spared; but I would feign
    flatter myself, that the reader will be less aus-
    tere than an oriental professor of the bastinado,
    who during an attempt to extort per argumen-
    tum baculinum a full confession from a culprit,
    interrupted his outcry of pain by reminding him,
    that it was "a mere digression!" All this noise,
    Sir! is nothing to the point, and no sort of
    answer to my QUESTIONS! Ah! but (replied
    the sufferer) it is the most pertinent reply in na-
    ture to your blows.

     
     
    *and conclusion. Thus, Philosophy has hitherto been DISCUR-
    SIVE: while Geometry is always and essentially INTUITIVE.

     

    An imprudent man of common goodness of
    heart, cannot but wish to turn even his impru-
    dences to the benefit of others, as far as this is
    possible. If therefore any one of the readers of
    this semi-narrative should be preparing or in-
    tending a periodical work, I warn him, in the
    first place, against trusting in the number of
    names on his subscription list. For he cannot
    be certain that the names were put down by
    sufficient authority; or should that be ascer-
    tained) it still remains to be known, whether
    they were not extorted by some over zealous
    friend’s importunity; whether the subscriber
    had not yielded his name, merely from want of
    courage to answer, no! and with the intention
    of dropping the work as soon as possible. One
    gentleman procured me nearly a hundred names
    for THE FRIEND, and not only took frequent
    opportunity to remind me of his success in his
    canvas, but laboured to impress my mind with
    the sense of the obligation, I was under to the
    subscribers; for (as he very pertinently admo-
    nished me) "fifty-two shillings a year was a
    large sum to be bestowed on one individual,
    where there were so many objects of charity
    with strong claims to the assistance of the be-
    nevolent." Of these hundred patrons ninety
    threw up the publication before the fourth
    number, without any notice; though it was
    well known to them, that in consequence of
    the distance, and the slowness and irregularity
    of the conveyance, I was compelled to lay in
    a stock of stamped paper for at least eight weeks
    beforehand; each sheet of which stood me in
    five pence previous to its arrival at my printer’s;
    though the subscription money was not to be
    received till the twenty-first week after the com-
    mencement of the work; and lastly, though it
    was in nine cases out of ten impracticable for
    me to receive the money for two or three
    numbers without paying an equal sum for the
    postage.

     
     

    In confirmation of my first caveat, I will se-
    lect one fact among many. On my list of sub-
    scribers, among a considerable number of names
    equally flattering, was that of an Earl of Cork,
    with his address. He might as well have been
    an Earl of Bottle, for aught I knew of him,
    who had been content to reverence the peerage
    in abstracto, rather than in concretis. Of course
    THE FRIEND was regularly sent as far, if I re-
    member right, as the eighteenth number: i. e.
    till a fortnight before the subscription was to be
    paid. And lo! just at this time I received a
    letter from his Lordship, reproving me in lan-
    guage far more lordly than courteous for my
    impudence in directing my pamphlets to him,
    who knew nothing of me or my work! Seven-
    teen or eighteen numbers of which, however,
    his Lordship was pleased to retain, probably
    for the culinary or post-culinary conveniences
    of his servants.

     
     

    Secondly, I warn all others from the attempt
    to deviate from the ordinary mode of publishing
    a work by the trade. I thought indeed, that to
    the purchaser it was indifferent, whether thirty
    per cent. of the purchase-money went to the
    booksellers or to the government; and that the
    convenience of receiving the work by the post
    at his own door would give the preference to
    the latter. It is hard, I own, to have been la-
    bouring for years, in collecting and arranging
    the materials; to have spent every shilling that
    could be spared after the necessaries of life had
    been furnished, in buying books, or in journies
    for the purpose of consulting them or of acquir-
    ing facts at the fountain head; then to buy the
    paper, pay for the printing, &c. all at least fif-
    teen per cent. beyond what the trade would
    have paid; and then after all to give thirty per
    cent. not of the net profits, but of the gross re-
    sults of the sale, to a man who has merely to
    give the books shelf or warehouse room, and
    permit his apprentice to hand them over the
    counter to those who may ask for them; and
    this too copy by copy, although if the work be
    on any philosophical or scientific subject, it
    may be years before the edition is sold off. All
    this, I confess, must seem an hardship, and
    one, to which the products of industry in no
    other mode of exertion are subject. Yet even
    this is better, far better, than to attempt in any
    way to unite the functions of author and pub-
    lisher. But the most prudent mode is to sell
    the copy-right, at least of one or more editions,
    for the most that the trade will offer. By few
    only can a large remuneration be expected;
    but fifty pounds and ease of mind are of more
    real advantage to a literary man, than the chance
    of five hundred with the certainty of insult and
    degrading anxieties. I shall have been griev-
    ously misunderstood, if this statement should
    be interpreted as written with the desire of
    detracting from the character of booksellers or
    publishers. The individuals did not make the
    laws and customs of their trade, but as in every
    other trade take them as they find them. Till
    the evil can be proved to be removable and with-
    out the substitution of an equal or greater in-
    convenience, it were neither wise or manly even
    to complain of it. But to use it as a pretext for
    speaking, or even for thinking, or feeling, un-
    kindly or opprobiously of the tradesmen, as
    individuals, would be something worse than un-
    wise or even than unmanly; it would be im-
    moral and calumnious! My motives point in a
    far different direction and to far other objects,
    as will be seen in the conclusion of the chapter.

     
     

    A learned and exemplary old clergyman,
    who many years ago went to his reward
    followed by the regrets and blessings of his flock,
    published at his own expence two volumes
    octavo, entitled, a new Theory of Redemption.
    The work was most severely handled in the
    Monthly or Critical Review, I forget which,
    and this unprovoked hostility became the good
    old man’s favorite topic of conversation among
    his friends. Well! (he used to exclaim) in the
    SECOND edition, I shall have an opportunity of
    exposing both the ignorance and the malignity
    of the anonymous critic. Two or three years
    however passed by without any tidings from
    the bookseller, who had undertaken the print-
    ing and publication of the work, and who was
    perfectly at his ease, as the author was known
    to be a man of large property. At length the
    accounts were written for; and in the course of
    a few weeks they were presented by the rider
    for the house, in person. My old friend put on
    his spectacles, and holding the scroll with no
    very firm hand, began—Paper, so much: O
    moderate enough—not at all beyond my expec-
    tation! Printing, so much: well! moderate
    enough! Stitching, covers, advertisements, car-
    riage, &c. so much.—Still nothing amiss. Sel-
    leridge (for orthography is no necessary part
    of a bookseller’s literary acquirements) L3. 3s.
    Bless me! only three guineas for the what d’ye
    call it? the selleridge? No more, Sir! replied
    the rider. Nay, but that is too moderate!
    rejoined my old friend. Only three guineas for
    selling a thousand copies of a work in two
    volumes? O Sir! (cries the young traveller)
    you have mistaken the word. There have been
    none of them sold; they have been sent back
    from London long ago; and this L3. 3s. is for
    the cellaridge, or warehouse-room in our book
    cellar. The work was in consequence prefer-
    red from the ominous cellar of the publisher’s,
    to the author’s garret; and on presenting a
    copy to an acquaintance the old gentleman
    used to tell the anecdote with great humor and
    still greater good nature.

     
     

    With equal lack of worldly knowledge, I
    was a far more than equal sufferer for it, at the
    very outset of my authorship. Toward the
    close of the first year from the time, that in an
    inauspicious hour I left the friendly cloysters,
    and the happy grove of quiet, ever honored
    Jesus College, Cambridge, I was persuaded by
    sundry Philanthropists and Anti-polemists to
    set on foot a periodical work, entitled THE
    WATCHMAN, that (according to the general motto
    of the work) all might know the truth, and that
    the truth might make us free! In order to
    exempt it from the stamp-tax, and likewise to
    contribute as little as possible to the supposed
    guilt of a war against freedom, it was to be
    published on every eighth day, thirty-two pa-
    ges, large octavo, closely printed, and price
    only FOUR-PENCE. Accordingly with a flaming,
    prospectus, "Knowledge is Power," &c. to cry the
    state of the political atmosphere, and so forth,
    I set off on a tour to the North, from Bristol
    to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring cus-
    tomers, preaching by the way in most of the
    great towns, as an hireless volunteer, in a blue
    coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the
    woman of Babylon might be seen on me. For
    I was at that time and long after, though a
    Trinitarian (i. e. ad normam Platonis) in philo-
    sophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in Religion;
    more accurately, I was a psilanthropist, one of
    those who believe our Lord to have been the
    real son of Joseph, and who lay the main stress
    on the resurrection rather than on the cruci-
    fixion. O! never can I remember those days
    with either shame or regret. For I was most
    sincere, most disinterested! My opinions were
    indeed in many and most important points er-
    roneous; but my heart was single. Wealth, rank,
    life itself then seemed cheap to me, compared
    with the interests of (what I believed to be) the
    truth, and the will of my maker. I cannot even
    accuse myself of having been actuated by va-
    nity; for in the expansion of my enthusiasm I
    did not think of myself at all.

     
     

    My campaign commenced at Birmingham;
    and my first attack was on a rigid Calvinist, a
    tallow chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy
    man, in whom length was so predominant over
    breadth, that he might almost have been bor-
    rowed for a foundery poker. O that face! a
    face katemphasin! I have it before me at this
    moment. The lank, black, twine-like hair,
    pingui-nitescent, cut in a strait line along the
    black stubble of his thin gunpowder eye brows,
    that looked like a scorched after-math from a last
    week’s shaving. His coat collar behind in per-
    fect unison, both of colour and lustre with the
    coarse yet glib cordage, that I suppose he
    called his hair, and which with a bend inward
    at the nape of the neck (the only approach to
    flexure in his whole figure) slunk in behind
    his waistcoat; while the countenance lank,
    dark, very hard, and with strong perpendicular
    furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one
    looking at me through a used gridiron, all soot,
    grease, and iron! But he was one of the
    thorough-bred, a true lover of liberty, and (I
    was informed) had proved to the satisfaction of
    many, that Mr. Pitt was one of the horns of the
    second beast in the Revelations, that spoke like
    a dragon. A person, to whom one of my letters
    of recommendation had been addressed, was
    my introducer. It was a new event in my life,
    my first stroke in the new business I had under-
    taken of an author, yea, and of an author trad-
    ing on his own account. My companion after
    some imperfect sentences and a multitude of
    hums and haas abandoned the cause to his
    client; and I commenced an harangue of half
    an hour to Phileleutheros, the tallow-chandler,
    varying my notes through the whole gamut of
    eloquence from the ratiocinative to the decla-
    matory, and in the latter from the pathetic to
    the indignant. I argued, I described, I promi-
    sed, I prophecied; and beginning with the cap-
    tivity of nations I ended with the near approach
    of the millenium, finishing the whole with some
    of my own verses describing that glorious state
    out of the Religious Musings:

    Such delights,

    As float to earth, permitted visitants!
    When in some hour of solemn jubilee
    The massive gates of Paradise are thrown
    Wide open: and forth come in fragments wild
    Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,
    And odors snatch’d from beds of Amaranth,
    And they that from the chrystal river of life
    Spring up on freshen’d wings, ambrosial gales!
    Religious Musings, l. 356.

     
     

    My taper man of lights listened with perse-
    verant and praise-worthy patience, though (as
    I was afterwards told on complaining of certain
    gales that were not altogether ambrosial) it was
    a melting day with him. And what, Sir! (he
    said after a short pause) might the cost be?
    Only FOUR-PENCE (O! how I felt the anti-climax,
    the abysmal bathos of that four-pence!) only
    four-pence, Sir, each number, to be published on
    every eighth day. That comes to a deal of
    money at the end of a year. And how much
    did you say there was to be for the money?
    Thirty-two pages, Sir! large octavo, closely
    printed. Thirty and two pages? Bless me,
    why except what I does in a family way on the
    Sabbath, that’s more than I ever reads, Sir!
    all the year round. I am as great a one, as any
    man in Brummagem, Sir! for liberty and truth
    and all them sort of things, but as to this (no
    offence, I hope, Sir!) I must beg to be excused.

     
     

    So ended my first canvas: from causes that
    I shall presently mention, I made but one other
    application in person. This took place at Man-
    chester, to a stately and opulent wholesale
    dealer in cottons. He took my letter of intro-
    duction, and having perused it, measured me
    from head to foot and again from foot to head,
    and then asked if I had any bill or invoice of
    the thing; I presented my prospectus to him;
    he rapidly skimmed and hummed over the first
    side, and still more rapidly the second and
    concluding page; crushed it within his fingers
    and the palm of his hand; then most delibe-
    rately and significantly rubbed and smoothed
    one part against the other; and lastly putting
    it into his pocket turned his back on me with
    an "over-run with these articles!" and so with
    out another syllable retired into his counting-
    house. And I can truly say, to my unspeakable
    amusement.

     

    This I have said, was my second and last
    attempt. On returning baffled from the first,
    in which I had vainly essayed to repeat the
    miracle of Orpheus with the Brummagem pa-
    triot, I dined with the tradesman who had
    introduced me to him. After dinner he im-
    portuned me to smoke a pipe with him, and
    two or three other illuminati of the same
    rank. I objected, both because I was engaged
    to spend the evening with a minister and his
    friends, and because I had never smoked ex-
    cept once or twice in my life time, and then it
    was herb tobacco mixed with Oronooko. On
    the assurance however that the tobacco was
    equally mild, and seeing too that it was of a
    yellow colour; (not forgetting the lamentable
    difficulty, I have always experienced, in saying,
    No! and in abstaining from what the people
    about me were doing) I took half a pipe, filling
    the lower half of the bole with salt. I was soon
    however compelled to resign it, in consequence
    of a giddiness and distressful feeling in my eyes,
    which as I had drank but a single glass of ale,
    must, I knew, have been the effect of the to-
    bacco. Soon after, deeming myself recovered,
    I sallied forth to my engagement, but the walk
    and the fresh air brought on all the symptoms
    again, and I had scarcely entered the minister’s
    drawing-room, and opened a small paquet of
    letters, which he had received from Bristol for
    me; ere I sunk back on the sofa in a sort of
    swoon rather than sleep. Fortunately I had
    found just time enough to inform him of the
    confused state of my feelings, and of the oc-
    casion. For here and thus I lay, my face like
    a wall that is white-washing, deathy pale and
    with the cold drops of perspiration running
    down it from my forehead, while one after
    another there dropt in the different gentlemen,
    who had been invited to meet, and spend the
    evening with me, to the number of from fifteen
    to twenty. As the poison of tobacco acts but
    for a short time, I at length awoke from insen-
    sibility, and looked round on the party, my eyes
    dazzled by the candles which had been lighted
    in the interim. By way of relieving my embar-
    rassment one of the gentlemen began the con-
    versation, with "Have you seen a paper to day,
    Mr. Coleridge?" Sir! (I replied, rubbing my
    eyes) "I am far from convinced, that a chris-
    tian is permitted to read either newspapers or
    any other works of merely political and tem-
    porary interest." This remark so ludicrously
    inapposite to, or rather, incongruous with, the
    purpose, for which I was known to have visited
    Birmingham, and to assist me in which they
    were all then met, produced an involuntary
    and general burst of laughter; and seldom in-
    deed have I passed so many delightful hours,
    as I enjoyed in that room from the moment of
    that laugh to an early hour the next morning.
    Never, perhaps, in so mixed and numerous a
    party have I since heard conversation sustained
    with such animation, enriched with such va-
    riety of information and enlivened with such a
    flow of anecdote. Both then and afterwards
    they all joined in dissuading me from proceed-
    ing with my scheme; assured me in the most
    friendly and yet most flattering expressions,
    that the employment was neither fit for me, nor
    I fit for the employment. Yet if I had deter-
    mined on persevering in it, they promised to
    exert themselves to the utmost to procure sub-
    scribers, and insisted that I should make no
    more applications in person, but carry on the
    canvass by proxy. The same hospitable re-
    ception, the same dissuasion, and (that failing)
    the same kind exertions in my behalf, I met
    with at Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, Shef-
    field, indeed, at every place in which I took
    up my sojourn. I often recall with affectionate
    pleasure the many respectable men who inte-
    rested themselves for me, a perfect stranger to
    them, not a few of whom I can still name among
    my friends. They will bear witness for me,
    how opposite even then my principles were to
    those of jacobinism or even of democracy, and
    can attest the strict accuracy of the statement
    which I have left on record in the 10th and
    11th numbers of THE FRIEND.

     

    From this rememberable tour I returned with
    nearly a thousand names on the subscription
    list of the Watchman; yet more than half con-
    vinced, that prudence dictated the abandon-
    ment of the scheme. But for this very reason I
    persevered in it; for I was at that period of my
    life so compleatly hag-ridden by the fear of
    being influenced by selfish motives that to know
    a mode of conduct to be the dictate of prudence
    was a sort of presumptive proof to my feelings,
    that the contrary was the dictate of duty. Ac-
    cordingly, I commenced the work, which was
    announced in London by long bills in letters
    larger than had ever been seen before, and
    which (I have been informed, for I did not see
    them myself) eclipsed the glories even of the
    lottery puffs. But, alas! the publication of the
    very first number was delayed beyond the day
    announced for its appearance. In the second
    number an essay against fast days, with a most
    censurable application of a text from Isaiah for
    its motto, lost me near five hundred of my sub-
    scribers at one blow. In the two following
    numbers I made enemies of all my Jacobin and
    Democratic Patrons; for disgusted by their in-
    fidelity, and their adoption of French morals
    with French psilosophy; and perhaps thinking,
    that charity ought to begin nearest home; in-
    stead of abusing the Government and the Aris-
    tocrats chiefly or entirely, as had been expected
    of me, I levelled my attacks at " modern pa-
    triotism", and even ventured to declare my be-
    lief that whatever the motives of ministers might
    have been for the sedition (or as it was then the
    fashion to call them, the gagging) bills, yet the
    bills themselves would produce an effect to be
    desired by all the true friends of freedom, as
    far as they should contribute to deter men from
    openly declaiming on subjects, the principles
    of which they had never bottomed, and from
    " pleading to the poor and ignorant, instead of
    pleading for them." At the same time I avowed
    my conviction, that national education and a
    concurring spread of the gospel were the indis-
    pensable condition of any true political amelio-
    ration. Thus by the time the seventh number
    was published, I had the mortification (but
    why should I say this, when in truth I cared
    too little for any thing that concerned my world-
    ly interests to be at all mortified about it?)
    of seeing the preceding numbers exposed in
    sundry old iron shops for a penny a piece. At
    the ninth number I dropt the work. But from
    the London publisher I could not obtain a shil-
    ling; he was a ----- and set me at defiance.
    From other places I procured but little, and
    after such delays as rendered that little worth
    nothing: and I should have been inevitably
    thrown into jail by my Bristol printer, who re-
    fused to wait even for a month, for a sum
    between eighty and ninety pounds, if the money
    had not been paid for me by a man by no means
    affluent, a dear friend who attached himself to
    me from my first arrival at Bristol, who has
    continued my friend with a fidelity unconquered
    by time or even by my own apparent neglect;
    a friend from whom I never received an advice
    that was not wise, or a remonstrance that was
    not gentle and affectionate.

     
     

    Conscientiously an opponent of the first re-
    volutionary war, yet with my eyes thoroughly
    opened to the true character and impotence of
    the favorers of revolutionary principles in Eng-
    land, principles which I held in abhorrence
    (for it was part of my political creed, that who-
    ever ceased to act as an individual by making
    himself a member of any society not sanctioned
    by his Government, forfeited the rights of a
    citizen) -- a vehement anti-ministerialist, but after
    the invasion of Switzerland a more vehement
    anti-gallican, and still more intensely an anti-
    jacobin, I retired to a cottage at Stowey, and
    provided for my scanty maintenance by writing
    verses for a London Morning Paper. I saw
    plainly, that literature was not a profession, by
    which I could expect to live; for I could not
    disguise from myself, that whatever my talents
    might or might not be in other respects, yet
    they were not of the sort that could enable me
    to become a popular writer; and that whatever
    my opinions might be in themselves, they were
    almost equi-distant from all the three prominent
    parties, the Pittites, the Foxites, and the De-
    mocrats. Of the unsaleable nature of my writ-
    ings I had an amusing memento one morning
    from our own servant girl. For happening to
    rise at an earlier hour than usual, I observed
    her putting an extravagant quantity of paper
    into the grate in order to light the fire, and
    mildly checked her for her wastefulness; la,
    Sir! (replied poor Nanny) why, it is only
    "WATCHMEN."

     
     

    I now devoted myself to poetry and to the
    study of ethics and psychology; and so pro-
    found was my admiration at this time of Hart-
    ley’s Essay on Man, that I gave his name to my
    first born. In addition to the gentleman, my
    neighbour, whose garden joined on to my little
    orchard, and the cultivation of whose friend-
    ship had been my sole motive in choosing
    Stowey for my residence, I was so fortunate
    as to acquire, shortly after my settlement there,
    an invaluable blessing in the society and neigh-
    bourhood of one, to whom I could look up with
    equal reverence, whether I regarded him as a
    poet, a philosopher, or a man. His conversa-
    tion extended to almost all subjects, except
    physics and politics; with the latter he never
    troubled himself. Yet neither my retirement
    nor my utter abstraction from all the disputes
    of the day could secure me in those jealous
    times from suspicion and obloquy, which did
    not stop at me, but extended to my excellent
    friend, whose perfect innocence was even ad-
    duced as a proof of his guilt. One of the many
    busy sycophants* of that day (I here use the
    word sycophant, in its original sense, as a
    wretch who flatters the prevailing party by in-
    forming against his neighbours, under pretence
    that they are exporters of prohibited figs or
    fancies! for the moral application of the term
    it matters not which)--one of these sycophan-
    tic law-mongrels, discoursing on the politics of
    the neighbourhood, uttered the following deep
    remark: "As to Coleridge, there is not so much
    harm in him, for he is a whirl-brain that talks
    whatever comes uppermost; but that -----!
    he is the dark traitor. You never hear HIM say
    a syllable on the subject."

     
     

    Now that the hand of providence has dis-
    ciplined all Europe into sobriety, as men tame
    wild elephants, by alternate blows and cares-
    ses; now that Englishmen of all classes are
    restored to their old English notions and feel-
    ings; it will with difficulty be credited, how
    great an influence was at that time possessed
    and exerted by the spirit of secret defamation
    (the too constant attendant on party-zeal!)

     
     
    *Sukous Phainein, to shew or detect figs, the exportation of
    which from Attica was forbidden by the laws.
    during the restless interim from 1793 to the
    commencement of the Addington administra-
    tion, or the year before the truce of Amiens.
    For by the latter period the minds of the
    partizans, exhausted by excess of stimulation
    and humbled by mutual disappointment, had
    become languid. The same causes, that in-
    clined the nation to peace, disposed the indi-
    viduals to reconciliation. Both parties had
    found themselves in the wrong. The one had
    confessedly mistaken the moral character of the
    revolution, and the other had miscalculated both
    its moral and its physical resources. The ex-
    periment was made at the price of great, almost
    we may say, of humiliating sacrifices; and wise
    men foresaw that it would fail, at least in its
    direct and ostensible object. Yet it was pur-
    chased cheaply, and realized an object of equal
    value, and, if possible, of still more vital import-
    ance. For it brought about a national una-
    nimity unexampled in our history since the
    reign of Elizabeth; and providence, never want-
    ing to a good work when men have done their
    parts, soon provided a common focus in the
    cause of Spain, which made us all once more
    Englishmen by at once gratifying and correct-
    ing the predilections of both parties. The sin-
    cere reverers of the throne felt the cause of
    loyalty ennobled by its alliance with that of
    freedom; while the honest zealots of the people
    could not but admit, that freedom itself assumed
    a more winning form, humanized by loyalty
    and consecrated by religious principle. The
    youthful enthusiasts who, flattered by the morn-
    ing rainbow of the French revolution, had made
    a boast of expatriating their hopes and fears,
    now disciplined by the succeeding storms and
    sobered by increase of years, had been taught
    to prize and honor the spirit of nationality as
    the best safeguard of national independence,
    and this again as the absolute pre-requisite and
    necessary basis of popular rights.

     
     

    If in Spain too disappointment has nipt our
    too forward expectations, yet all is not destroyed
    that is checked. The crop was perhaps spring-
    ing up too rank in the stalk, to kern well; and
    there were, doubtless, symptoms of the Gallican
    blight on it. If superstition and despotism have
    been suffered to let in their woolvish sheep to
    trample and eat it down even to the surface,
    yet the roots remain alive, and the second
    growth may prove all the stronger and healthier
    for the temporary interruption. At all events,
    to us heaven has been just and gracious. The
    people of England did their best, and have
    received their rewards. Long may we continue
    to deserve it! Causes, which it had been too
    generally the habit of former statesmen to re-
    gard as belonging to another world, are now
    admitted by all ranks to have been the main
    agents of our success. "We fought from
    heaven; the stars in their courses fought against
    Sisera." If then unanimity grounded on moral
    feelings has been among the least equivocal
    sources of our national glory, that man deserves
    the esteem of his countrymen, even as patriots,
    who devotes his life and the utmost efforts of
    his intellect to the preservation and continuance
    of that unanimity by the disclosure and estab-
    lishment of principles. For by these all opinions
    must be ultimately tried; and (as the feelings
    of men are worthy of regard only as far as they
    are the representatives of their fixed opinions)
    on the knowledge of these all unanimity, not
    accidental and fleeting, must be grounded.
    Let the scholar, who doubts this assertion,
    refer only to the speeches and writings of
    EDMUND BURKE at the commencement of the
    American war, and compare them with his
    speeches and writings at the commencement of
    the French revolution. He will find the prin-
    ciples exactly the same and the deductions the
    same; but the practical inferences almost op-
    posite, in the one case from those drawn in the
    other; yet in both equally legitimate and in
    both equally confirmed by the results. Whence
    gained he this superiority of foresight? Whence
    arose the striking difference, and in most in-
    stances even the discrepancy between the
    grounds assigned by him, and by those who
    voted with him, on the same questions? How
    are we to explain the notorious fact, that the
    speeches and writings of EDMUND BURKE are
    more interesting, at the present day, than they
    were found at the time of their first publica-
    tion; while those of his illustrious confede-
    rates are either forgotten, or exist only to
    furnish proofs, that the same conclusion, which
    one man had deduced scientifically, may be
    brought out by another in consequence of er-
    rors that luckily chanced to neutralize each
    other. It would be unhandsome as a con-
    jecture, even were it not, as it actually is,
    false in point of fact, to attribute this difference
    to deficiency of talent on the part of Burke’s
    friends, or of experience, or of historical know-
    ledge. The satisfactory solution is, that Edmund
    Burke possessed and had sedulously sharpened
    that eye, which sees all things, actions, and
    events, in relation to the laws that determine
    their existence and circumscribe their possibi-
    lity. He referred habitually to principles. He
    was a scientific statesman; and therefore a
    seer. For every principle contains in itself the
    germs of a prophecy; and as the prophetic
    power is the essential privilege of science, so
    the fulfilment of its oracles supplies the outward
    and (to men in general) the only test of its claim
    to the title. Wearisome as Burke’s refinements
    appeared to his parliamentary auditors, yet the
    cultivated classes throughout Europe have rea-
    son to be thankful, that

     
     

    he went on refining,

    And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining.

    Our very sign boards (said an illustrious friend
    to me) give evidence, that there has been a
    TITIAN in the world. In like manner, not
    only the debates in parliament, not only our
    proclamations and state papers, but the essays
    and leading paragraphs of our journals are so
    many remembrancers of EDMUND BURKE. Of
    this the reader may easily convince himself, if
    either by recollection or reference he will com-
    pare the opposition newspapers at the com-
    mencement and during the five or six following
    years of the French revolution with the senti-
    ments, and grounds of argument assumed in
    the same class of Journals at present, and for
    some years past.

     
     

    Whether the spirit of jacobinism, which the
    writings of Burke exorcised from the higher and
    from the literary classes, may not like the ghost
    in Hamlet, be heard moving and mining in the
    underground chambers with an activity the
    more dangerous because less noisy, may admit
    of a question. I have given my opinions on
    this point, and the grounds of them, in my
    letters to Judge Fletcher occasioned by his
    CHARGE to the Wexford grand jury, and pub-
    lished in the Courier. Be this as it may, the
    evil spirit of jealousy, and with it the cerberean
    whelps of feud and slander, no longer walk
    their rounds, in cultivated society.

     
     

    Far different were the days to which these
    anecdotes have carried me back. The dark
    guesses of some zealous Quidnunc met with so
    congenial a soil in the grave alarm of a titled
    Dogberry of our neighbourhood, that a SPY was
    actually sent down from the government pour
    surveillance of myself and friend. There must
    have been not only abundance, but variety of
    these "honorable men" at the disposal of Mi-
    nisters: for this proved a very honest fellow.
    After three week’s truly Indian perseverance in
    tracking us (for we were commonly together) du-
    ring all which time seldom were we out of doors,
    but he contrived to be within hearing (and all
    the while utterly unsuspected; how indeed
    could such a suspicion enter our fancies?) he
    not only rejected Sir Dogberry’s request that
    he would try yet a little longer, but declared to
    him his belief, that both my friend and myself
    were as good subjects, for aught he could dis-
    cover to the contrary, as any in His Majesty’s
    dominions. He had repeatedly hid himself, he
    said, for hours together behind a bank at the
    sea-side (our favorite seat) and overheard our
    conversation. At first he fancied, that we were
    aware of our danger; for he often heard me
    talk of one Spy Nozy, which he was inclined
    to interpret of himself, and of a remarkable
    feature belonging to him; but he was speedily
    convinced that it was the name of a man who
    had made a book and lived long ago. Our
    talk ran most upon books, and we were perpe-
    tually desiring each other to look at this, and
    to listen to that; but he could not catch a word
    about politics. Once he had joined me on the
    road; (this occurred, as I was returning home
    alone from my friend’s house, which was about
    three miles from my own cottage) and passing
    himself off as a traveller, he had entered into
    conversation with me, and talked of purpose in
    a democrat way in order to draw me out. The
    result, it appears, not only convinced him that
    I was no friend of jacobinism; but (he added)
    I had "plainly made it out to be such a silly as
    well as wicked thing, that he felt ashamed,
    though he had only put it on." I distinctly
    remembered the occurrence, and had mentioned
    it immediately on my return, repeating what
    the traveller with his Bardolph nose had said,
    with my own answer; and so little did I sus-
    pect the true object of my "tempter ere ac-
    cuser," that I expressed with no small pleasure
    my hope and belief, that the conversation had
    been of some service to the poor misled malcon-
    tent. This incident therefore prevented all
    doubt as to the truth of the report, which
    through a friendly medium came to me from
    the master of the village inn, who had been
    ordered to entertain the Government Gentleman
    in his best manner, but above all to be silent
    concerning such a person being in his house.
    At length, he received Sir Dogberry’s com-
    mands to accompany his guest at the final in-
    terview; and after the absolving suffrage of
    the gentleman honored with the confidence of
    Ministers answered, as follows, to the follow-
    ing queries? D. Well, landlord! and what do
    you know of the person in question? L. I see
    him often pass by with maister -----, my
    landlord (i. e. the owner of the house) and some-
    times with the new-comers at Holford; but I
    never said a word to him or he to me. D.
    But do you not know, that he has distributed
    papers and hand-bills of a seditious nature
    among the common people! L. No, your
    honor! I never heard of such a thing. D.
    Have you not seen this Mr. Coleridge, or heard
    of, his haranguing and talking to knots and
    clusters of the inhabitants?--What are you
    grinning at, Sir! L. Beg your honor’s pardon!
    but I was only thinking, how they’d have stared
    at him. lf what I have heard be true, your
    honor! they would not have understood a
    word, he said. When our vicar was here,
    Dr. L. the master of the great school and canon
    of Windsor, there was a great dinner party at
    maister -------‘s; and one of the farmers,
    that was there, told us that he and the Doctor
    talked real Hebrew Greek at each other for an
    hour together after dinner. D. Answer the
    question, Sir! Does he ever harangue the peo-
    ple? L. I hope, your honor an’t angry with
    me. I can say no more than I know. I never
    saw him talking with any one, but my land-
    lord, and our curate, and the strange gentle-
    man. D. Has he not been seen wandering on
    the hills towards the Channel, and along the
    shore, with books and papers in his hand,
    taking charts and maps of the country? L.
    Why, as to that, your honor! I own, I have
    heard; I am sure, I would not wish to say ill
    of any body; but it is certain, that I have
    heard—D. Speak out man! don’t be afraid,
    you are doing your duty to your King, and
    Government. What have you heard? L. Why,
    folks do say, your honor! as how that he is a
    Poet, and that he is going to put Quantock and
    all about here in print; and as they be so much
    together, I suppose that the strange gentleman
    has some consarn in the business.—So ended
    this formidable inquisition, the latter part of
    which alone requires explanation, and at the
    same time entitles the anecdote to a place in
    my literary life. I had considered it as a
    defect in the admirable poem of the TASK, that
    the subject, which gives the title to the work,
    was not, and indeed could not be, carried on
    beyond the three or four first pages, and that
    throughout the poem the connections are fre-
    quently awkward, and the transitions abrupt
    and arbitrary. I sought for a subject, that
    should give equal room and freedom for de-
    scription, incident, and impassioned reflections
    on men, nature, and society, yet supply in itself
    a natural connection to the parts, and unity to
    the whole. Such a subject I conceived myself
    to have found in a stream, traced from its source
    in the hills among the yellow-red moss and
    conical glass-shaped tufts of Bent, to the first
    break or fall, where its drops became audi-
    ble, and it begins to form a channel; thence
    to the peat and turf barn, itself built of the
    same dark squares as it sheltered; to the sheep-
    fold; to the first cultivated plot of ground; to
    the lonely cottage and its bleak garden won
    from the heath; to the hamlet, the villages, the
    market-town, the manufactories, and the sea-
    port. My walks therefore were almost daily
    on the top of Quantock, and among its sloping
    coombs. With my pencil and memorandum
    book in my hand, I was making studies, as
    the artists call them, and often moulding my
    thoughts into verse, with the objects and imagery
    immediately before my senses. Many circum-
    stances, evil and good, intervened to prevent
    the completion of the poem, which was to have
    been entitled "THE BROOK." Had I finished
    the work, it was my purpose in the heat of the
    moment to have dedicated it to our then com-
    mittee of public safety as containing the charts
    and maps, with which I was to have supplied
    the French Government in aid of their plans of
    invasion. And these too for a tract of coast
    that from Clevedon to Minehead scarcely per-
    mits the approach of a fishing boat!

     
     

    All my experience from my first entrance
    into life to the present hour is in favor of the
    warning maxim, that the man, who opposes in
    toto the political or religious zealots of his age,
    is safer from their obloquy than he who differs
    from them in one or two points or perhaps only
    in degree. By that transfer of the feelings of
    private life into the discussion of public ques-
    tions, which is the queen bee in the hive of
    party fanaticism, the partizan has more sympa-
    thy with an intemperate Opposite than with a
    moderate Friend. We now enjoy an intermis-
    sion, and long may it continue! In addition
    to far higher and more important merits, our
    present bible societies and other numerous
    associations for national or charitable objects,
    may serve perhaps to carry off the superfluous
    activity and fervor of stirring minds in innocent
    hyperboles and the bustle of management. But
    the poison-tree is not dead, though the sap may
    for a season have subsided to its roots. At
    least let us not be lulled into such a notion of
    our entire security, as not to keep watch and
    ward, even on our best feelings. I have seen
    gross intolerance shewn in support of tolera-
    tion; sectarian antipathy most obtrusively dis-
    played in the promotion of an undistinguishing
    comprehension of sects; and acts of cruelty
    (I had almost said) of treachery, committed in
    furtherance of an object vitally important to
    the cause of humanity; and all this by men
    too of naturally kind dispositions and exem-
    plary conduct.

     
     

    The magic rod of fanaticism is preserved in
    the very adyta of human nature; and needs
    only the re-exciting warmth of a master hand
    to bud forth afresh and produce the old fruits.
    The horror of the peasant’s war in Germany,
    and the direful effects of the Anabaptist’s tenets
    (which differed only from those of jacobinism
    by the substitution of theological for philoso-
    phical jargon) struck all Europe for a time
    with affright. Yet little more than a century
    was sufficient to obliterate all effective memory
    of these events. The same principles with
    similar though less dreadful consequences were
    again at work from the imprisonment of the
    first Charles to the restoration of his son. The
    fanatic maxim of extirpating fanaticism by per-
    secution produced a civil war. The war ended
    in the victory of the insurgents; but the temper
    survived, and Milton had abundant grounds
    for asserting, that "Presbyter was but OLD
    PRIEST writ large!" One good result, thank
    heaven! of this zealotry was the re-establish-
    ment of the church. And now it might have
    been hoped, that the mischievous spirit would
    have been bound for a season, "and a seal set
    upon him that he might deceive the nation no
    more." But no! The ball of persecution was
    taken up with undiminished vigor by the per-
    secuted. The same fanatic principle, that un-
    der the solemn oath and covenant had turned
    cathedrals into stables, destroyed the rarest
    trophies of art and ancestral piety, and hunted
    the brightest ornaments of learning and religion
    into holes and corners, now marched under
    episcopal banners, and having first crowded
    the prisons of England emptied its whole vial of
    wrath on the miserable covenanters of Scotland.
    (Laing’s History of Scotland.—Walter Scott’s
    bards, ballads, &c.) A merciful providence at
    length constrained both parties to join against
    a common enemy. A wise Government fol-
    lowed; and the established church became,
    and now is, not only the brightest example,
    but our best and only sure bulwark, of tolera-
    tion! The true and indispensable bank against
    a new inundation of persecuting zeal—ESTO
    PERPETUA!

     
     

    A long interval of quiet succeeded; or ra-
    ther, the exhaustion had produced a cold fit of
    the ague which was symptomatized by indif-
    rence among the many, and a tendency to
    infidelity or scepticism in the educated classes.
    At length those feelings of disgust and hatred,
    which for a brief while the multitude had at-
    tached to the crimes and absurdities of secta-
    rian and democratic fanaticism, were trans-
    ferred to the oppressive privileges of the no-
    blesse, and the luxury, intrigues and favoritism
    of the continental courts. The same principles
    dressed in the ostentatious garb of a fashionable
    philosophy once more rose triumphant and
    effected the French revolution. And have we
    not within the last three or four years had rea-
    son to apprehend, that the detestable maxims
    and correspondent measures of the late French
    despotism had already bedimmed the public
    recollections of democratic phrensy; had drawn
    off to other objects the electric force of the
    feelings which had massed and upheld those
    recollections; and that a favorable concurrence
    of occasions was alone wanting to awaken
    the thunder and precipitate the lightning from
    the opposite quarter of the political heaven?
    (See THE FRIEND, p. 110.)

     
     

    In part from constitutional indolence, which
    in the very hey-day of hope had kept my en-
    thusiasm in check, but still more from the
    habits and influences of a classical education
    and academic pursuits, scarcely had a year
    elapsed from the commmencement of my literary
    and political adventures before my mind sunk
    into a state of thorough disgust and despon-
    dency, both with regard to the disputes and
    the parties disputant. With more than poetic
    feeling I exclaimed:

     
    "The sensual and the dark rebel in vain,
    "Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game
    "They break their manacles, to wear the name
    "Of freedom, graven on an heavier chain.
    "O liberty! with profitless endeavor
    "Have I pursued thee many a weary hour;
    "But thou nor swell’st the victor’s pomp, nor ever
    "Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power!
    "Alike from all, howe’er they praise thee
    "(Nor prayer nor boastful name delays thee)
    "From superstition’s harpy minions
    "And factious blasphemy’s obscener slaves,
    "Thou speedest on thy cherub pinions,
    "The guide of homeless winds and playmate of the waves!"
    FRANCE, a Palinodia.

     
     

    I retired to a cottage in Somersetshire at the
    foot of Quantock, and devoted my thoughts
    and studies to the foundations of religion and
    morals. Here I found myself all afloat. Doubts
    rushed in; broke upon me "from the fountains
    of the great deep," and fell "from the windows
    of heaven." The fontal truths of natural religion
    and the books of Revelation alike contributed
    to the flood; and it was long ere my ark touched
    on an Ararat, and rested. The idea of the
    Supreme Being appeared to me to be as
    necessarily implied in all particular modes of being
    as the idea of infinite space in all the geometri-
    cal figures by which space is limited. I was
    pleased with the Cartesian opinion, that the
    idea of God is distinguished from all other
    ideas by involving its reality; but I was not
    wholly satisfied. I began then to ask myself,
    what proof I had of the outward existence of
    any thing? Of this sheet of paper for instance,
    as a thing in itself, separate from the phæno-
    menon or image in my perception. I saw, that
    in the nature of things such proof is impossible;
    and that of all modes of being, that are not
    objects of the senses, the existence is assumed
    by a logical necessity arising from the constitu-
    tion of the mind itself, by the absence of all
    motive to doubt it, not from any absolute con-
    tradiction in the supposition of the contrary.
    Still the existence of a being, the ground of all
    existence, was not yet the existence of a moral
    creator, and governor. "In the position, that
    "all reality is either contained in the necessary
    "being as an attribute, or exists through him, as
    "its ground, it remains undecided whether the
    "properties of intelligence and will are to be
    "referred to the Supreme Being in the former or
    "only in the latter sense; as inherent attributes,
    "or only as consequences that have existence in
    "other things through him. Thus organization,
    "and motion, are regarded as from God not in
    "God. Were the latter the truth, then notwith-
    "standing all the pre-eminence which must be
    "assigned to the ETERNAL FIRST from the suf-
    "ficiency, unity, and independence of his being,
    "as the dread ground of the universe, his nature
    "would yet fall far short of that, which we are
    "bound to comprehend in the idea of GOD. For
    "without any knowledge or determining resolve
    "of its own it would only be a blind necessary
    "ground of other things and other spirits; and
    "thus would be distinguished from the FATE of
    "certain ancient philosophers in no respect, but
    "that of being more definitely and intelligibly
    "described." KANT’s einzig möglicher Beweis-
    grund: vermischte Schriften, Zweiter Band,
    § 102, and 103.

     
     

    For a very long time indeed I could not re-
    concile personality with infinity; and my head
    was with Spinoza, though my whole heart re-
    mained with Paul and John. Yet there had
    dawned upon me, even before I had met with
    the Critique of Pure Reason, a certain guid-
    ing light. If the mere intellect could make no
    certain discovery of a holy and intelligent first
    cause, it might yet supply a demonstration,
    that no legitimate argument could be drawn
    from the intellect against its truth. And what
    is this more than St. Paul’s assertion, that by
    wisdom (more properly translated by the powers
    of reasoning) no man ever arrived at the
    knowledge of God? What more than the sublimest,
    and probably the oldest, book on earth has
    taught us,

     
     

    Silver and gold man searcheth out:
    Bringeth the ore out of the earth, and darkness into light.

    But where findeth he wisdom?
    Where is the place of understanding?

     
    The abyss crieth; it is not in me!
    Ocean echoeth back; not in me!

     
    Whence then cometh wisdom?
    Where dwelleth understanding?

     

    Hidden from the eyes of the living:
    Kept secret from the fowls of heaven!

    Hell and death answer;
    We have heard the rumour thereof from afar!

     
    GOD marketh out the road to it;
    GOD knoweth its abiding place!

     
    He beholdeth the ends of the earth;
    He surveyeth what is beneath the heavens!

     
    And as he weighed out the winds, and measured the sea,
    And appointed laws to the rain,
    And a path to the thunder,
    A path to the flashes of lightning!

     
    Then did he see it,
    And he counted it;
    He searched into the depth thereof,
    And with a line did he compass it round!

     
    But to man he said,
    The fear of the Lord is wisdom for THEE!
    And to avoid evil,
    That is thy understanding.

     
     
    JOB, CHAP. 28th
    I became convinced, that religion, as both
    the corner-stone and the key-stone of morality,
    must have a moral origin; so far at least, that
    the evidence of its doctrines could not, like the
    truths of abstract science, be wholly indepen-
    dent of the will. It were therefore to be ex-
    pected, that its fundamental truth would be
    such as MIGHT be denied; though only, by the
    fool, and even by the fool from the madness of
    the heart alone!

     
     

    The question then concerning our faith in
    the existence of a God, not only as the ground
    of the universe by his essence, but as its maker
    and judge by his wisdom and holy will, ap-
    peared to stand thus. The sciential reason,
    whose objects are purely theoretical, remains
    neutral, as long as its name and semblance are
    not usurped by the opponents of the doctrine.
    But it then becomes an effective ally by expos-
    ing the false shew of demonstration, or by
    evincing the equal demonstrability of the con-
    trary from premises equally logical. The un-
    derstanding mean time suggests, the analogy of
    experience facilitates, the belief. Nature ex-
    cites and recalls it, as by a perpetual revela-
    tion. Our feelings almost necessitate it; and
    the law of conscience peremptorily commands
    it. The arguments, that at all apply to it, are
    in its favor; and there is nothing against it, but
    its own sublimity. It could not be
    intellectually more evident without becoming morally
    less effective; without counteracting its own
    end by sacrificing the life of faith to the cold
    mechanism of a worthless because compulsory
    assent. The belief of a God and a future state
    (if a passive acquiescence may be flattered with
    the name of belief) does not indeed always be-
    get a good heart; but a good heart so naturally
    begets the belief, that the very few exceptions
    must be regarded as strange anomalies from
    strange and unfortunate circumstances.

     
     

    From these premises I proceeded to draw
    the following conclusions. First, that having
    once fully admitted the existence of an infinite
    yet self-conscious Creator, we are not allowed
    to ground the irrationality of any other article
    of faith on arguments which would equally
    prove that to be irrational, which we had
    allowed to be real. Secondly, that whatever
    is deducible from the admission of a self-com-
    prehending and creative spirit may be legiti-
    mately used in proof of the possibility of any
    further mystery concerning the divine nature.
    Possibilitatem mysteriorum, (Trinitatis, &c.)
    contra insultus Infidelium et Hereticorum a con-
    tradictionibus vindico; haud quidem verita-
    tem, quæ revelatione solâ stabiliri possit; says
    LEIBNITZ in a letter to his Duke. He then
    adds the following just and important remark.
    " In vain will tradition or texts of scripture be
    "adduced in support of a doctrine, donec clava
    "impossibilitatis et contradictionis e manibus
    "horum Herculum extorta fuerit. For the he-
    "retic will still reply, that texts, the literal sense
    "of which is not so much above as directly
    "against all reason, must be understood figura-
    "tively, as Herod is a fox, &c."

     
     

    These principles I held, philosophically, while
    in respect of revealed religion I remained a
    zealous Unitarian. I considered the idea of
    the Trinity a fair scholastic inference from the
    being of God, as a creative intelligence; and
    that it was therefore entitled to the rank of an
    esoteric doctrine of natural religion. But seeing
    in the same no practical or moral bearing, I
    confined it to the schools of philosophy, The
    admission of the logos, as hypostasized (i. e.
    neither a mere attribute or a personification) in
    no respect removed my doubts concerning the
    incarnation and the redemption by the cross;
    which I could neither reconcile in reason with
    the impassiveness of the Divine Being, nor in
    my moral feelings with the sacred distinction
    between things and persons, the vicarious pay-
    ment of a debt and the vicarious expiation of
    guilt. A more thorough revolution in my phi-
    losophic principles, and a deeper insight into
    my own heart, were yet wanting. Nevertheless,
    I cannot doubt, that the difference of my me-
    taphysical notions from those of Unitarians in
    general contributed to my final re-conversion to
    the whole truth in Christ; even as according
    to his own confession the books of certain
    Platonic philosophers (libri quorundam Plato-
    nicorum) commenced the rescue of St. Augus-
    tine’s faith from the same error aggravated by
    the far darker accompaniment of the Mani-
    chæan heresy.

     
     

    While my mind was thus perplexed, by a
    gracious providence for which I can never be
    sufficiently grateful, the generous and munifi-
    cent patronage of Mr. JOSIAH, and Mr. THOMAS
    WEDGEWOOD enabled me to finish my educa-
    tion in Germany. Instead of troubling others
    with my own crude notions and juvenile com-
    positions I was thenceforward better employed
    in attempting to store my own head with the
    wisdom of others. I made the best use of my
    time and means; and there is therefore no
    period of my life on which I can look back
    with such unmingled satisfaction. After ac-
    quiring a tolerable sufficiency in the German
    language* at Ratzeburg, which with my voyage

     
     

    To those, who design to acquire the language of a coun-
    try in the country itself, it may be useful, if I mention the
    incalculable advantage which I derived from learning all the
    words, that could possibly be so learnt, with the objects
    before me, and without the intermediation of the English
    terms. It was a regular part of my morning studies for the
    first six weeks of my residence at Ratzeburg, to accompany
    the good and kind old pastor, with whom I lived, from the*
    and journey thither I have described in THE
    FRIEND, I proceeded through Hanover to
    Göttingen.

     
     

    Here I regularly attended the lectures on
    physiology in the morning, and on natural his-
    tory in the evening, under BLUMENBACH, a
    name as dear to every Englishman who has
    studied at that university, as it is venerable to
    men of science throughout Europe! Eich-
    horn’s lectures on the New Testament were

     
     
    *cellar to the roof, through gardens, farm yard, &c. and to
    call every, the minutest, thing by its German name. Ad-
    vertisements, farces, jest books, and the conversation of
    children while I was at play with them, contributed their
    share to a more home-like acquaintance with the language,
    than I could have acquired from works of polite literature
    alone, or even from polite society. There is a passage of
    hearty sound sense in Luther’s German letter on interpreta-
    tion, to the translation of which I shall prefix, for the sake
    of those who read the German, yet are not likely to have
    dipt often in the massive folios of this heroic reformer, the
    simple, sinewy idiomatic words of the original. "Denn
    "man muss nicht die Buchstaben in der Lateinischen
    "Sprache fragen wie man soll Deutsch reden; sondern man
    "muss die mutter im Hause, die Kinder auf den Gassen, den
    "gemeinen Mann auf dem Markte, darum fragen: und densel-
    "bigen auf das Maul sehen wie sie reden, und darnach doll-
    "metschen. So verstehen sie es denn, und merken dass man
    "Deutsch mit ihnen redet."

     

    TRANSLATION.

     

    For one must not ask the letters in the Latin tongue, how
    one ought to speak German; but one must ask the mother
    in the house, the children in the lanes and alleys, the common
    man in the market, concerning this; yea, and look at the
    moves of their mouths while they are talking, and thereafter
    interpret. They understand you then, and mark that one
    talks German with them.
    repeated to me from notes by a student from
    Ratzeburg, a young man of sound learning
    and indefatigable industry, who is now, I be-
    lieve, a professor of the oriental languages at
    Heidelberg. But my chief efforts were di-
    rected towards a grounded knowledge of the
    German language and literature. From pro-
    fessor TYCHSEN I received as many lessons in
    the Gothic of Ulphilas as sufficed to make me
    acquainted with its grammar, and the radical
    words of most frequent occurrence; and with
    the occasional assistance of the same philoso-
    phical linguist, I read through* OTTFRIED’s
    metrical paraphrase of the gospel, and the most
    important remains of the THEOTISCAN, or the
    transitional state of the Teutonic language from
    the Gothic to the old German of the Swabian
    period. Of this period (the polished dialect of
    which is analogous to that of our Chaucer, and
    which leaves the philosophic student in doubt,
    whether the language has not since then lost
    more in sweetness and flexibility, than it has
    gained in condensation and copiousness) I read
    with sedulous accuracy the MINNESINGER (or
    singers of love, the provencal poets of the
    Swabian court) and the metrical romances;

     
     
    *This paraphrase, written about the time of Charlemagne,
    is by no means deficient in occasional passages of consider-
    able poetic merit. There is a flow, and a tender enthusi-
    asm in the following lines (at the conclusion of Chapter V.)*
    and then laboured through sufficient specimens
    of the master singers, their degenerate succes-
    sors; not however without occasional pleasure

     
     
    *which even in the translation will not, I flatter myself, fail to
    interest the reader. Ottfried is describing the circumstances
    immediately following the birth of our Lord.

     
     
     
    She gave with joy her virgin breast;
    She hid it not, she bared the breast,
    Which suckled that divinest babe!
    Blessed, blessed were the breasts
    Which the Saviour infant kiss’d;
    And blessed, blessed was the mother
    Who wrapp’d his limbs in swaddling clothes,
    Singing placed him on her lap,
    Hung o’er him with her looks of love,
    And soothed him with a lulling motion.
    Blessed! for she shelter’d him
    From the damp and chilling air;
    Blessed, blessed! for she lay
    With such a babe in one blest bed,
    Close as babes and mothers lie!
    Blessed, blessed evermore,
    With her virgin lips she kiss’d,
    With her arms, and to her breast
    She embraced the babe divine,
    Her babe divine the virgin mother!
    There lives not on this ring of earth
    A mortal, that can sing her praise.
    Mighty mother, virgin pure,
    In the darkness and the night
    For us she bore the heavenly Lord!

     
     
     
    Most interesting is it to consider the effect, when the feel-
    ings are wrought above the natural pitch by the belief of
    something mysterious, while all the images are purely na-
    tural. Then it is, that religion and poetry strike deepest.
    from the rude, yet interesting strains of HANS
    SACHS the cobler of Nuremberg. Of this man’s
    genius five folio volumes with double columns
    are extant in print, and nearly an equal number
    in manuscript; yet the indefatigable bard takes
    care to inform his readers, that he never made a
    shoe the less, but had virtuously reared a large
    family by the labor of his hands.

     
     

    ln Pindar, Chaucer, Dante, Milton, &c. &c.
    we have instances of the close connection of
    poetic genius with the love of liberty and of
    genuine reformation. The moral sense at least
    will not be outraged, if I add to the list the
    name of this honest shoemaker (a trade by the
    bye remarkable for the production of philo-
    sophers and poets.) His poem intitled the
    MORNING STAR, was the very first publication
    that appeared in praise and support of LUTHER;
    and an excellent hymn of Hans Sachs, which
    has been deservedly translated into almost all
    the European languages, was commonly sung,
    in the Protestant churches, whenever the heroic
    reformer visited them.

     
     

    In Luther’s own German writings, and emi-
    nently in his translation of the bible, the German
    language commenced. I mean the language as
    it is at present written; that which is called the
    HIGH GERMAN, as contra-distinguished from the
    PLATT-TEUTSCH, the dialect of the flat or north-
    ern countries, and from the OBER-TEUTSCH,
    the language of the middle and Southern Ger-
    many. The High German is indeed a lingua
    communis, not actually the native language of
    any province, but the choice and fragrancy of
    all the dialects. From this cause it is at once
    the most copious and the most grammatical of
    all the European tongues.

     
     

    Within less than a century after Luther’s
    death the German was inundated with pedantic
    barbarisms. A few volumes of this period I
    read through from motives of curiosity; for it is
    not easy to imagine any thing more fantastic,
    than the very appearance of their pages. Almost
    every third word is a Latin word with a Ger-
    manized ending, the Latin portion being al-
    ways printed in Roman letters, while in the
    last syllable the German character is retained.

     
     

    At length, about the year 1620, OPITZ arose,
    whose genius more nearly resembled that of
    Dryden than any other poet, who at present
    occurs to my recollection. In the opinion of
    LESSING, the most acute of critics, and of
    ADELUNG, the first of Lexicographers, Opitz,
    and the Silesian poets, his followers, not only
    restored the language, but still remain the
    models of pure diction. A stranger has no
    vote on such a question; but after repeated
    perusal of the work my feelings justified the
    verdict, and I seemed to have acquired from
    them a sort of tact for what is genuine in the
    syle of later writers.

     

    Of the splendid era, which commenced with
    Gellert, Klopstock, Ramler, Lessing, and their
    compeers, I need not speak. With the op-
    portunities which I enjoyed, it would have
    been disgraceful not to have been familiar with
    their writings; and I have already said as much,
    as the present biographical sketch requires,
    concerning the German philosophers, whose
    works, for the greater part, I became acquainted
    with at a far later period.

     
     

    Soon after my return from Germany I was
    solicited to undertake the literary and political
    department in the Morning Post; and I ac-
    ceded to the proposal on the condition, that
    the paper should thenceforwards be conducted
    on certain fixed and announced principles, and
    that I should be neither obliged or requested
    to deviate from them in favor of any party or
    any event. In consequence, that Journal be-
    came and for many years continued anti-
    ministerial indeed, yet with a very qualified
    approbation of the opposition, and with far
    greater earnestness and zeal both anti-jacobin
    and anti-gallican. To this hour I cannot find
    reason to approve of the first war either in its
    commencement or its conduct. Nor can I un-
    derstand, with what reason either Mr. Percival
    (whom I am singular enough to regard as the
    best and wisest minister of this reign) or the
    present administration, can be said to have
    pursued the plans of Mr. PITT. The love of their
    country, and perseverant hostility to French
    principles and French ambition are indeed
    honourable qualities common to them and to
    their predecessor. But it appears to me as
    clear as the evidence of facts can render any
    question of history, that the successes of the
    Percival and of the existing ministry have been
    owing to their having pursued measures the
    direct contrary to Mr. Pitt’s. Such for instance
    are the concentration of the national force to
    one object; the abandonment of the subsidizing
    policy, so far at least as neither to goad or
    bribe the continental courts into war, till the
    convictions of their subjects had rendered it a
    war of their own seeking; and above all, in
    their manly and generous reliance on the good
    sense of the English people, and on that loyalty
    which is linked to the very* heart of the nation
    by the system of credit and the interdependence
    of property.

     
     

    Be this as it may, I am persuaded that the
    Morning Post proved a far more useful ally to
    the Government in its most important objects,
    in consequence of its being generally considered

     
     

    Lord Grenville has lately re-asserted (in the House of
    Lords) the imminent danger of a revolution in the earlier
    part of the war against France. I doubt not, that his Lord-
    ship is sincere; and it must be flattering to his feelings to
    believe it. But where are the evidences of the danger, to*
    as moderately anti-ministerial, than if it had
    been the avowed eulogist of Mr. Pitt. (The
    few, whose curiosity or fancy should lead them
    to turn over the Journals of that date, may find
    a small proof of this in the frequent charges
    made by the Morning Chronicle, that such and
    such essays or leading paragraphs had been

     
     
    *which a future historian can appeal? Or must he rest on
    an assertion? Let me be permitted to extract a passage on the
    subject from THE FRIEND. "I have said that to withstand
    "the arguments of the lawless, the Antijacobins proposed to
    "suspend the law, and by the interposition of a particular
    "statute to eclipse the blessed light of the universal sun, that
    "spies and informers might tyrannize and escape in the omin-
    "ous darkness. Oh! if these mistaken men intoxicated and
    "bewildered with the panic of property, which they them-
    "selves were the chief agents in exciting, had ever lived in a
    "country where there really existed a general disposition to
    "change and rebellion! Had they ever travelled through
    "Sicily; or through France at the first coming on of the re-
    "volution; or even alas! through too many of the provinces
    "of a sister island; they could not but have shrunk from their
    "own declarations concerning the state of feeling, and opinion
    "at that time predominant throughout Great Britain. There
    "was a time (heaven grant! that that time may have passed by)
    "when by crossing a narrow strait, they might have learnt the
    "true symptoms of approaching danger, and have secured
    "themselves from mistaking the meetings and idle rant of
    "such sedition, as shrunk appalled from the sight of a consta-
    "ble, for the dire murmuring and strange consternation which
    "precedes the storm or earthquake of national discord. Not
    "only in coffee-houses and public theatres, but even at the
    "tables of the wealthy, they would have heard the advocates
    "of existing Government defend their cause in the language
    "and with the tone of men, who are conscious that they are
    "in a minority. But in England, when the alarm was at its
    "highest, there was not a city, no not a town or village, in
    "which a man suspected of holding democratic principles
    "could move abroad without receiving some unpleasant proof
    "of the hatred, in which his supposed opinions were held by *
    sent from the Treasury.) The rapid and un-
    usual increase in the sale of the Morning Post
    is a sufficient pledge, that genuine impartiality
    with a respectable portion of literary talent will
    secure the success of a newspaper without the
    aid of party or ministerial patronage. But by
    impartiality I mean an honest and enlightened

     
     
    *the great majority of the people; and the only instances of
    popular excess and indignation were in favor of the Govern-
    ment and the Established Church. But why need I appeal
    to these invidious facts? Turn over the pages of history
    and seek for a single instance of a revolution having been
    effected without the concurrence of either the nobles, or the
    ecclesiastics, or the monied classes, in any country, in which
    the influences of property had ever been predominant, and
    where the interests of the proprietors were interlinked!
    Examine the revolution of the Belgic provinces under Philip
    nd; the civil wars of France in the preceding generation;
    the history of the American revolution, or the yet more re-
    cent events in Sweden and in Spain; and it will be scarcely
    possible not to perceive, that in England from 1791 to the
    peace of Amiens there were neither tendencies to confede-
    racy nor actual confederacies, against which the existing
    laws had not provided sufficient safeguards and an ample pu-
    nishment. But alas! the panic of property had been struck
    in the first instance for party purposes; and when it became
    general, its propagators caught it themselves and ended in
    believing their own lie; even as our bulls in Borrowdale
    sometimes run mad with the echo of their own bellowing.
    The consequences were most injurious. Our attention was
    concentrated to a monster, which could not survive the con-
    vulsions, in which it had been brought forth: even the en-
    lightened Burke himself too often talking and reasoning, as if
    a perpetual and organized anarchy had been a possible
    thing! Thus while we were warring against French doc-
    trines, we took little heed, whether the means, by which we
    attempted to overthrow them, were not likely to aid and aug-
    ment the far more formidable evil of French ambition. Like
    children we ran away from the yelping of a cur, and took
    shelter at the heels of a vicious war-horse."
    adherence to a code of intelligible principles
    previously announced, and faithfully referred
    to in support of every judgment on men and
    events; not indiscriminate abuse, not the in-
    dulgence of an editor’s own malignant passions,
    and still less, if that be possible, a determina-
    tion to make money by flattering the envy and
    cupidity, the vindictive restlessness and self-con-
    ceit of the half-witted vulgar; a determination
    almost fiendish, but which, I have been in-
    formed, has been boastfully avowed by one
    man, the most notorious of these mob-syco-
    phants! From the commencement of the
    Addington administration to the present day,
    whatever I have written in the MORNING
    POST, or (after that paper was transferred to
    other proprietors) in the COURIER, has been
    in defence or furtherance of the measures of
    Government.

    Things of this nature scarce survive the night
    That gives them birth; they perish in the sight,
    Cast by so far from after-life, that there
    Can scarcely aught be said, but that they were!

    CARTWRIGHT’S Prol. to the Royal Slave.

     

    Yet in these labors I employed, and in the
    belief of partial friends wasted, the prime and
    manhood of my intellect. Most assuredly,
    they added nothing to my fortune or my
    reputation. The industry of the week supplied the
    necessities of the week. From Government or
    the friends of Government I not only never re-
    ceived remuneration, or ever expected it; but
    I was never honoured with a single acknow-
    legement, or expression of satisfaction. Yet
    the retrospect is far from painful or matter of
    regret. I am not indeed silly enough to take,
    as any thing more than a violent hyperbole of
    party debate, Mr. Fox’s assertion that the late
    war (I trust that the epithet is not prematurely
    applied) was a war produced by the MORNING
    POST; or I should be proud to have the words
    inscribed on my tomb. As little do I regard
    the circumstance, that I was a specified object
    of Buonaparte’s resentment during my residence
    in Italy in consequence of those essays in the
    Morning Post during the peace of Amiens. (Of
    this I was warned, directly, by Baron VON
    HUMBOLDT, the Prussian Plenipotentiary, who
    at that time was the minister of the Prussian
    court at Rome; and indirectly, through his
    secretary, by Cardinal Fesch himself.) Nor
    do I lay any greater weight on the confirming
    fact, that an order for my arrest was sent from
    Paris, from which danger I was rescued by
    the kindness of a noble Benedictine, and the
    gracious connivance of that good old man, the
    present Pope. For the late tyrant’s vindictive
    appetite was omnivorous, and preyed equally
    on a * Duc D’Enghien, and the writer of a
    newspaper paragraph. Like a true† vulture,
    Napoleon with an eye not less telescopic, and
    with a taste equally coarse in his ravin, could de-
    scend from the most dazzling heights to pounce
    on the leveret in the brake, or even on the
    field-mouse amid the grass. But I do derive a
    gratification from the knowledge, that my essays
    contributed to introduce the practice of placing
    the questions and events of the day in a moral
    point of view; in giving a dignity to particular
    measures by tracing their policy or impolicy to
    permanent principles, and an interest to princi-
    ples by the application of them to individual
    measures. In Mr. Burke’s writings indeed the
    germs of almost all political truths may be
    found. But I dare assume to myself the merit
    of having first explicitly defined and analized
    the nature of Jacobinism; and that in distin-
    guishing the jacobin from the republican, the

     
     

    I seldom think of the murder of this illustrious Prince without recollecting the lines of Valerius Flaccus (Argonaut. Lib. I. 30.)
     

    Super ipsius ingens Instat fama viri, virtusque haud læta Tyranno; Ergo ante ire metus, juvenemque exstinguere pergit.
     

    †Thera de kai ton chena kai ten Dorkada,
    Kai ton Lagoon, kai to ton Tauron genos.

     
    PHILE de animal. propriet.
    democrat, and the mere demagogue, I both
    rescued the word from remaining a mere term
    of abuse, and put on their guard many honest
    minds, who even in their heat of zeal against
    jacobinism, admitted or supported principles
    from which the worst parts of that system may
    be legitimately deduced. That these are not
    necessary practical results of such principles,
    we owe to that fortunate inconsequence of our
    nature, which permits the heart to rectify the
    errors of the understanding. The detailed
    examination of the consular Government and
    its pretended constitution, and the proof given
    by me, that it was a consummate despotism in
    masquerade, extorted a recantation even from
    the Morning Chronicle, which had previously
    extolled this constitution as the perfection of a
    wise and regulated liberty. On every great
    occurrence I endeavoured to discover in past
    history the event, that most nearly resembled it.
    I procured, wherever it was possible, the con-
    temporary historians, memorialists, and pamph-
    leteers. Then fairly substracting the points of
    difference from those of likeness, as the balance
    favored the former or the latter, I conjectured
    that the result would be the same or different.
    In the series of * essays entitled "a comparison

     
     

    A small selection from the numerous articles furnished
    by me to the Morning Post and Courier, chiefly as they
    of France under Napoleon with Rome under
    the first Cæsars," and in those which followed
    " on the probable final restoration of the Bour-
    bons," I feel myself authorized to affirm, by the
    effect produced on many intelligent men, that
    were the dates wanting, it might have been
    suspected that the essays had been written
    within the last twelve months. The same plan
    I pursued at the commencement of the Spanish
    revolution, and with the same success, taking
    the war of the United Provinces with Philip
    2nd, as the ground work of the comparison. I
    have mentioned this from no motives of vanity,
    nor even from motives of self-defence, which
    would justify a certain degree of egotism, es-
    pecially if it be considered, how often and
    grossly I have been attacked for sentiments,
    which I had exerted my best powers to confute
    and expose, and how grievously these charges
    acted to my disadvantage while I was in Malta.
    Or rather they would have done so, if my own
    feelings had not precluded the wish of a settled

     
     
    *regard the sources and effects of jacobinism and the connec-
    tion of certain systems of political economy with jacobinical
    despotism, will form part of "THE FRIEND," which I am
    now completing, and which will be shortly published, for I
    can scarcely say republished, with the numbers arranged in
    Chapters according to their subjects.

     
    Accipe principium rursus, corpusque coactum
    Desere; mutata melior procede figura.
    establishment in that island. But I have men-
    tioned it from the full persuasion that, armed
    with the two-fold knowledge of history and the
    human mind, a man will scarcely err in his
    judgement concerning the sum total of any fu-
    ture national event, if he have been able to
    procure the original documents of the past
    together with authentic accounts of the pre-
    sent, and if he have a philosophic tact for what
    is truly important in facts, and in most instances
    therefore for such facts as the DIGNITY OF HIS-
    TORY has excluded from the volumes of our
    modern compilers, by the courtesy of the age
    entitled historians.

     
     

    To have lived in vain must be a painful
    thought to any man, and especially so to him
    who has made literature his profession. I
    should therefore rather condole than be angry
    with the mind, which could attribute to no
    worthier feelings, than those of vanity or self-
    love, the satisfaction which I acknowledge to
    have enjoyed from the republication of my
    political essays (either whole or as extracts)
    not only in many of our own provincial papers,
    but in the federal journals throughout America.
    I regarded it as some proof of my not having
    labored altogether in vain, that from the articles
    written by me shortly before and at the com-
    mencement of the late unhappy war with Ame-
    rica, not only the sentiments were adopted, but
    in some instances the very language, in several
    of the Massachussets state-papers.

     
     

    But no one of these motives nor all conjointly
    would have impelled me to a statement so un-
    comfortable to my own feelings, had not my
    character been repeatedly attacked, by an un-
    justifiable intrusion on private life, as of a man
    incorrigibly idle, and who intrusted not only
    with ample talents, but favored with unusual
    opportunities of improving them, had never-
    theless suffered them to rust away without any
    efficient exertion either for his own good or
    that of his fellow-creatures. Even if the com-
    positions, which I have made public, and that
    too in a form the most certain of an extensive
    circulation, though the least flattering to an
    author’s self-love, had been published in books,
    they would have filled a respectable number of
    volumes, though every passage of merely tem-
    porary interest were omitted. My prose writ-
    ings have been charged with a disproportionate
    demand on the attention; with an excess of
    refinement in the mode of arriving at truths;
    with beating the ground for that which might
    have been run down by the eye; with the length
    and laborious construction of my periods; in
    short with obscurity and the love of paradox.
    But my severest critics have not pretended to
    have found in my compositions triviality, or
    traces of a mind that shrunk from the toil of
    thinking. No one has charged me with trick-
    ing out in other words the thoughts of others,
    or with hashing up anew the crambe jam decies
    coctam of English literature or philosophy.
    Seldom have I written that in a day, the acqui-
    sition or investigation of which had not cost me
    the previous labor of a month.

     
     

    But are books the only channel through which
    the stream of intellectual usefulness can flow?
    Is the diffusion of truth to be estimated by pub-
    lications; or publications by the truth, which
    they diffuse or at least contain? I speak it in the
    excusable warmth of a mind stung by an ac-
    cusation, which has not only been advanced in
    reviews of the widest circulation, not only re-
    gistered in the bulkiest works of periodical
    literature, but by frequency of repetition has
    become an admitted fact in private literary
    circles, and thoughtlessly repeated by too many
    who call themselves my friends, and whose
    own recollections ought to have suggested a
    contrary testimony. Would that the criterion
    of a scholar’s utility were the number and moral
    value of the truths, which he has been the means
    of throwing into the general circulation; or the
    number and value of the minds, whom by his
    conversation or letters, he has excited into acti-
    vity, and supplied with the germs of their after-
    growth! A distinguished rank might not indeed,
    even then, be awarded to my exertions, but I
    should dare look forward with confidence to an
    honorable acquittal. I should dare appeal to
    the numerous and respectable audiences, which
    at different times and in different places ho-
    nored my lecture-rooms with their attendance,
    whether the points of view from which the
    subjects treated of were surveyed, whether the
    grounds of my reasoning were such, as they had
    heard or read elsewhere, or have since found
    in previous publications. I can conscientiously
    declare, that the complete success of the RE-
    MORSE on the first night of its representation
    did not give me as great or as heart-felt a plea-
    sure, as the observation that the pit and boxes
    were crowded with faces familiar to me, though
    of individuals whose names I did not know,
    and of whom I knew nothing, but that they had
    attended one or other of my courses of lectures.
    It is an excellent though perhaps somewhat
    vulgar proverb, that there are cases where a
    man may be as well "in for a pound as for a
    penny." To those, who from ignorance of the
    serious injury I have received from this rumour
    of having dreamt away my life to no purpose,
    injuries which I unwillingly remember at all,
    much less am disposed to record in a sketch of
    my literary life; or to those, who from their own
    feelings, or the gratification they derive from
    thinking contemptuously of others, would like
    Job’s comforters attribute these complaints,
    extorted from me by the sense of wrong, to
    self-conceit or presumptuous vanity, I have
    already furnished such ample materials, that I
    shall gain nothing by with-holding the remain-
    der. I will not therefore hesitate to ask the
    consciences of those, who from their long ac-
    quaintance with me and with the circumstances
    are best qualified to decide or be my judges
    whether the restitution of the suum cuique
    would increase or detract from my literary re-
    putation. In this exculpation I hope to be
    understood as speaking of myself compara-
    tively, and in proportion to the claims, which
    others are intitled to make on my time or my
    talents. By what I have effected, am I to be
    judged by my fellow men; what I could have
    done, is a question for my own conscience.
    On my own account I may perhaps have had
    sufficient reason to lament my deficiency in self-
    controul, and the neglect of concentering my
    powers to the realization of some permanent
    work. But to verse rather than to prose, if to
    either, belongs the voice of mourning" for
    Keen pangs of love awakening as a babe
    Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart,
    And fears self-will’d that shunn’d the eye of hope,
    And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;
    Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain
    And genius given and knowledge won in vain,
    And all which I had cull’d in wood-walks wild
    And all which patient toil had rear’d, and all
    Commune with thee had open’d out—but flowers
    Strew’d on my corpse, and borne upon my bier
    In the same coffin, for the self-same grave! S. T. C.
    These will exist, for the future, I trust only in
    the poetic strains, which the feelings at the time
    called forth. In those only, gentle reader,

     
    Affectus animi varios, bellumque sequacis
    Perlegis invidiæ; curasque revolvis inanes;
    Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in ævo.
    Perlegis et lacrymas, et quod pharetratus acutâ
    Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus.

    OMNIA PAULATIM CONSUMIT LONGIOR ÆTAS

    VIVENDOQUE SIMUL MORIMUR, RAPIMURQUE MANENDO.
    Ipse mihi collatus enim non ille videbor;
    Frons alia est, moresque alii, nova mentis imago,
    Vox aliudque sonat. Jamque observatio vitæ
    Multa dedit:--lugere nihil, ferre omnia; jamque
    Paulatim lacrymas rerum experientia tersit.

     
     
     
     

    CHAPTER XI.

    An affectionate exhortation to those who in early
    life feel themselves disposed to become authors.

     
     

    It was a favorite remark of the late Mr.
    Whitbread’s, that no man does any thing from
    a single motive. The separate motives, or ra-
    ther moods of mind, which produced the pre-
    ceding reflections and anecdotes have been laid
    open to the reader in each separate instance.
    But an interest in the welfare of those, who at
    the present time may be in circumstances not
    dissimilar to my own at my first entrance into
    life, has been the constant accompaniment, and
    (as it were) the under-song of all my feelings.
    WHITEHEAD exerting the prerogative of his
    laureatship addressed to youthful poets a poetic
    CHARGE, which is perhaps the best, and cer-
    tainly the most interesting, of his works. With
    no other privilege than that of sympathy and
    sincere good wishes, I would address an af-
    fectionate exhortation to the youthful literati,
    grounded on my own experience. It will be
    but short; for the beginning, middle, and end
    converge to one charge; NEVER PURSUE LITE-
    RATURE AS A TRADE. With the exception of
    one extraordinary man, I have never known an
    individual, least of all an individual of genius,
    healthy or happy without a profession, i. e.
    some regular employment, which does not
    depend on the will of the moment, and which
    can be carried on so far mechanically that an
    average quantum only of health, spirits, and
    intellectual exertion are requisite to its faithful
    discharge. Three hours of leisure, unannoyed
    by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to
    with delight as a change and recreation, will
    suffice to realize in literature a larger product
    of what is truly, genial, than weeks of compul-
    sion. Money, and immediate reputation form
    only an arbitrary and accidental end of literary
    labor. The hope of increasing them by any
    given exertion will often prove a stimulant to
    industry; but the necessity of acquiring them
    will in all works of genius convert the stimu-
    lant into a narcotic. Motives by excess reverse
    their very nature, and instead of exciting, stun
    and stupify the mind. For it is one contra-
    distinction of genius from talent, that its pre-
    dominant end is always comprized in the
    means; and this is one of the many points,
    which establish an analogy between genius and
    virtue. Now though talents may exist without
    genius, yet as genius cannot exist, certainly
    not manifest itself, without talents, I would
    advise every scholar, who feels the genial power
    working within him, so far to make a division
    between the two, as that he should devote his
    talents to the acquirement of competence in
    some known trade or profession, and his genius
    to objects of his tranquil and unbiassed choice;
    while the consciousness of being actuated in
    both alike by the sincere desire to perform his
    duty, will alike ennoble both. My dear young
    friend (I would say) "suppose yourself estab-
    lished in any honourable occupation. From
    the manufactory or counting-house, from the
    law-court, or from having, visited your last pa-
    tient, you return at evening,

    "Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of home
    Is sweetest—"

    to your family, prepared for its social enjoy-
    ments, with the very countenances of your wife
    and children brightened, and their voice of wel-
    come made doubly welcome, by the knowledge
    that, as far as they are concerned, you have sa-
    tisfied the demands of the day by the labor of
    the day. Then, when you retire into your
    study, in the books on your shelves you revisit
    so many venerable friends with whom you can
    converse. Your own spirit scarcely less free
    from personal anxieties than the great minds,
    that in those books are still living for you!
    Even at your writing desk with its blank paper
    and all its other implements will appear as a
    chain of flowers, capable of linking, your feel-
    ings as well as thoughts to events and charac-
    ters past or to come; not a chain of iron which
    binds you down to think of the future and the
    remote by recalling the claims and feelings of
    the peremptory present. But why should I say
    retire? The habits of active life and daily in-
    tercourse with the stir of the world will tend to
    give you such self-command, that the presence
    of your family will be no interruption. Nay,
    the social silence, or undisturbing voices of a
    wife or sister will be like a restorative atmos-
    phere, or soft music which moulds a dream
    without becoming its object. If facts are re-
    quired to prove the possibility of combining
    weighty performances in literature with full and
    independent employment, the works of Cicero
    and Xenophon among the ancients; of Sir
    Thomas Moore, Bacon, Baxter, or to refer
    at once to later and cotemporary instances,
    DARWIN and ROSCOE, are at once decisive of
    the question.

     
     

    But all men may not dare promise themselves
    a sufficiency of self-controul for the imitation of
    those examples; though strict scrutiny should
    always be made, whether indolence, restless-
    ness, or a vanity impatient for immediate grati-
    fication, have not tampered with the judgement
    and assumed the vizard of humility for the
    purposes of self-delusion. Still the church
    presents to every man of learning and genius a
    profession, in which he may cherish a rational
    hope of being able to unite the widest schemes
    of literary utility with the strictest performance
    of professional duties. Among the numerous
    blessings of christianity, the introduction of an
    established church makes an especial claim on
    the gratitude of scholars and philosophers; in
    England, at least, where the principles of Pro-
    testantism have conspired with the freedom of
    the government to double all its salutary pow-
    ers by the rernoval of its abuses.

     
     

    That not only the maxims, but the grounds
    of a pure morality, the mere fragments of which

     
     
    "—the lofty grave tragedians taught
    "In chorus or iambic, teachers best
    "Of moral prudence, with delight received
    "In brief sententious precepts ;"

     

    PARADISE REGAINED.

    and that the sublime truths of the divine unity
    and attributes, which a Plato found most hard
    to learn and deemed it still more difficult
    to reveal; that these should have become the
    almost hereditary property of childhood and
    poverty, of the hovel and the workshop; that
    even to the unlettered they sound as common
    place, is a phenomenon, which must withhold
    all but minds of the most vulgar cast from
    undervaluing the services even of the pulpit
    and the reading desk. Yet those, who coufine
    the efficiency of an established church to its
    public offices, can hardly be placed in a much
    higher rank of intellect. That to every parish
    throughout the kingdom there is transplanted
    a germ of civilization; that in the remotest
    villages there is a nucleus, round which the
    capabilities of the place may crystallize and
    brighten; a model sufficiently superior to ex-
    cite, yet sufficiently near to encourage and
    facilitate, imitation; this, the inobtrusive, con-
    tinuous agency of a protestant church estab-
    lishment, this it is, which the patriot, and the
    philanthropist, who would fain unite the love
    of peace with the faith in the progressive
    amelioration of mankind, cannot estimate at
    too high a price. "It cannot be valued with
    the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or
    the sapphire. No mention shall be made of
    coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is
    above rubies." The clergyman is with his
    parishioners and among them; he is neither in
    the cloistered cell, or in the wilderness, but a
    neighbour and a family-man, whose education
    and rank admit him to the mansion of the rich
    landholder, while his duties make him the
    frequent visitor of the farm-house and the cot-
    tage. He is, or he may become, connected
    with the families of his parish or its vicinity by
    marriage. And among the instances of the
    blindness, or at best of the short-sightedness,
    which it is the nature of cupidity to inflict, I
    know few more striking, than the clamors of
    the farmers against church property. What-
    ever was not paid to the clergyman would
    inevitably at the next lease be paid to the land-
    holder, while, as the case at present stands, the
    revenues of the church are in some sort the
    reversionary property of every family, that may
    have a member educated for the church, or a
    daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead
    of being foreclosed and immovable, it is in fact
    the only species of landed property, that is
    essentially moving and circulative. That there
    exist no inconveniences, who will pretend to
    assert? But I have yet to expect the proof,
    that the inconveniences are greater in this than
    in any other species; or that either the farmers
    or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the
    latter to become either Trullibers, or salaried
    placemen. Nay, I do not hesitate to declare
    my firm persuasion, that whatever reason of
    discontent the farmers may assign, the true
    cause is this; that they may cheat the parson,
    but cannot cheat the steward; and they are
    disappointed, if they should have been able
    to withhold only two pounds less than the
    legal claim, having expected to withhold five.
    At all events, considered relatively to the en-
    couragement of learning and genius, the estab-
    lishment presents a patronage at once so
    effective and unburthensome, that it would be im-
    possible to afford the like or equal in any but a
    christian and protestant country. There is
    scarce a department of human knowledge with-
    out some bearing on the various critical, histo-
    rical, philosophical, and moral truths, in which
    the scholar must be interested as a clergyman;
    no one pursuit worthy of a man of genius,
    which may not be followed without incon-
    gruity. To give the history of the bible as a
    book, would be little less than to relate the
    origin or first excitement of all the literature
    and science, that we now possess. The very
    decorum, which the profession imposes, is fa-
    vorable to the best purposes of genius, and
    tends to counteract its most frequent defects.
    Finally, that man must be deficient in sensibi-
    lity, who would not find an incentive to emula-
    tion in the great and burning lights, which
    in a long series have illustrated the church of
    England; who would not hear from within an
    echo to the voice from their sacred shrines,
    " Et Æneas et avunculus excitat Hector."

     
     

    But whatever be the profession or trade
    chosen, the advantages are many and import-
    ant, compared with the state of a mere literary
    man, who in any degree depends on the sale
    of his works for the necessaries and comforts
    of life. In the former a man lives in sympathy
    with the world, in which he lives. At least he
    acquires a better and quicker tact for the know-
    ledge of that, with which men in general can
    sympathize. He learns to manage his genius
    more prudently and efficaciously. His powers
    and acquirements gain him likewise more real
    admiration; for they surpass the legitimate ex-
    pectations of others. He is something besides
    an author, and is not therefore considered
    merely as an author. The hearts of men are
    open to him, as to one of their own class; and
    whether he exerts himself or not in the conver-
    sational circles of his acquaintance, his silence
    is not attributed to pride, nor his communica-
    tiveness to vanity. To these advantages I will
    venture to add a superior chance of happiness
    in domestic life, were it only that it is as natural
    for the man to be out of the circle of his house-
    hold during the day, as it is meritorious for the
    woman to remain for the most part within it.
    But this subject involves points of considera-
    tion so numerous and so delicate, and would
    not only permit, but require such ample do-
    cuments from the biography of literary men,
    that I now merely allude to it in transitu.
    When the same circumstance has occurred at
    very different times to very different persons,
    all of whom have some one thing in common;
    there is reason to suppose that such circum-
    stance is not merely attributable to the persons
    concerned, but is in some measure occasioned
    by the one point in common to them all. In-
    stead of the vehement and almost slanderous
    dehortation from marriage, which the Misogyne,
    Boccaccio (Vita e Costumi di Dante, p. 12, 16)
    addresses to literary men, I would substitute
    the simple advice: be not merely a man of
    letters! Let literature be an honourable aug-
    mentation to your arms; but not constitute the
    coat, or fill the escutchion!

     
     

    To objections from conscience I can of course
    answer in no other way, than by requesting the
    youthful objector (as I have already done on a
    former occasion) to ascertain with strict self-
    examination, whether other influences may not
    be at work; whether spirits, " not of health,"
    and with whispers " not from heaven," may not
    be walking in the twilight of his consciousness.
    Let him catalogue his scruples, and reduce
    them to a distinct intelligible form; let him be
    certain, that he has read with a docile mind
    and favorable dispositions the best and most
    fundamental works on the subject; that he
    has had both mind and heart opened to the
    great and illustrious qualities of the many re-
    nowned characters, who had doubted like him-
    self, and whose researches had ended in the
    clear conviction, that their doubts had been
    groundless, or at least in no proportion to the
    counter-weight. Happy will it be for such a
    man, if among his contemporaries elder than
    himself he should meet with one, who with
    similar powers, and feelings as acute as his
    own, had entertained the same scruples; had
    acted upon them; and who by after-research
    (when the step was, alas! irretrievable, but for
    that very reason his research undeniably disin-
    terested) had discovered himself to have quar-
    relled with received opinions only to embrace
    errors, to have left the direction tracked out
    for him on the high road of honorable exertion,
    only to deviate into a labyrinth, where when he
    had wandered, till his head was giddy, his best
    good fortune was finally to have found his way
    out again, too late for prudence though not too
    late for conscience or for truth! Time spent
    in such delay is time won; for manhood in the
    mean time is advancing, and with it increase of
    knowledge, strength of judgement, and above
    all, temperance of feelings. And even if these
    should effect no change, yet the delay will at
    least prevent the final approval of the decision
    from being alloyed by the inward censure of
    the rashness and vanity, by which it had been
    precipitated. It would be a sort of irreligion,
    and scarcely less than a libel on human nature
    to believe, that there is any established and
    reputable profession or employment, in which
    a man may not continue to act with honesty
    and honor; and doubtless there is likewise
    none, which may not at times present tempta-
    tions to the contrary. But woefully will that
    man find himself mistaken, who imagines that
    the profession of literature, or (to speak more
    plainly) the trade of authorship, besets its
    members with fewer or with less insidious
    temptations, than the church, the law, or the
    different branches of commerce. But I have
    treated sufficiently on this unpleasant subject
    in an early chapter of this volume. I will
    conclude the present therefore with a short
    extract from HERDER, whose name I might
    have added to the illustrious list of those, who
    have combined the successful pursuit of the
    muses, not only with the faithful discharge,
    but with the highest honors and honorable
    emoluments, of an established profession. The
    translation the reader will find in a note below. *
    " Am sorgfältigsten, meiden sie die Autors-
    chaft. Zu früh oder unmässig gebraucht, macht
    sie den Kopf wüste und das Herz leer; wenn
    sie auch sonst keine uble Folgen gäbe. Ein
    Mensch, der nur lieset um zu drücken, lieset
    wahrscheinlich übel und wer jeden Gedanken,
    der ihm aufstosst, durch Feder und Presse

     
     

    TRANSLATION.
     

    " With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship.
    "Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head
    "waste and the heart empty; even were there no other worse
    "consequences. A person, who reads only to print, in all
    "probability reads amiss; and he, who sends away through
    "the pen and the press every thought, the moment it occurs*
    versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt,
    und wird bald ein blosser Diener der Druc-
    kerey, ein Buchstabensetzer werden.

     

    HERDER.

     

    *to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will be-
    come a mere journeyman of the printing-office, a compositor."

     
    To which I may add from myself, that what medical phy-
    siologists affirm of certain secretions, applies equally to our
    thoughts; they too must be taken up again into the circulation,
    and be again and again re-secreted in order to ensure a health-
    ful vigor, both to the mind and to its intellectual offspring.

     
     
     
     

    CHAPTER XII.

    A Chapter of requests and premonitions concern-
    ing the perusal or omission of the chapter that
    follows.

     
     

    In the perusal of philosophical works I have
    been greatly benefited by a resolve, which, in
    the antithetic form and with the allowed quaint-
    ness of an adage or maxim, I have been ac-
    customed to word thus: "until you understand
    a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant
    of his understanding." This golden rule of mine
    does, I own, resemble those of Pythagoras in
    its obscurity rather than in its depth. If how-
    ever the reader will permit me to be my own
    Hierocles, I trust, that he will find its meaning
    fully explained by the following instances. I
    have now before me a treatise of a religious
    fanatic, full of dreams and supernatural expe-
    riences. I see clearly the writer’s grounds, and
    their hollowness. I have a complete insight
    into the causes, which through the medium of
    his body had acted on his mind; and by ap-
    plication of received and ascertained laws I
    can satisfactorily explain to my own reason all
    the strange incidents, which the writer records
    of himself. And this I can do without sus-
    pecting him of any intentional falsehood. As
    when in broad day-light a man tracks the steps
    of a traveller, who had lost his way in a fog
    or by treacherous moonshine, even so, and
    with the same tranquil sense of certainty, can
    I follow the traces of this bewildered visionary.
    I UNDERSTAND HIS lGNORANCE.

     
     

    On the other hand, I have been re-perusing
    with the best energies of my mind the Timæeus
    of PLATO. Whatever I comprehend, impresses
    me with a reverential sense of the author’s
    genius; but there is a considerable portion of
    the work, to which I can attach no consistent
    meaning. In other treatises of the same philo-
    sopher intended for the average comprehen-
    sions of men, I have been delighted with the
    masterly good sense, with the perspicuity of
    the language, and the aptness of the inductions.
    I recollect likewise, that numerous passages in
    this author, which I thoroughly comprehend,
    were formerly no less unintelligible to me, than
    the passages now in question. It would, I am
    aware, be quite fashionable to dismiss them at
    once as Platonic Jargon. But this I cannot
    do with satisfaction to my own mind, because
    I have sought in vain for causes adequate to
    the solution of the assumed inconsistency. I
    have no insight into the possibility of a man so
    eminently wise, using words with such half-
    meanings to himself, as must perforce pass
    into no-meaning to his readers. When in ad-
    dition to the motives thus suggested by my
    own reason, I bring into distinct remembrance
    the number and the series of great men, who
    after long and zealous study of these works
    had joined in honoring the name of PLATO
    with epithets, that almost transcend humanity,
    I feel, that a contemptuous verdict on my part
    might argue want of modesty, but would hardly
    be received by the judicious, as evidence of
    superior penetration. Therefore, utterly baffled
    in all my attempts to understand the ignorance
    of Plato, I CONCLUDE MYSELF IGNORANT OF
    HIS UNDERSTANDING.

     
     

    In lieu of the various requests which the
    anxiety of authorship addresses to the unknown
    reader, I advance but this one; that he will
    either pass over the following chapter altoge-
    ther, or read the whole connectedly. The
    fairest part of the most beautiful body will
    appear deformed and monstrous, if dissevered
    from its place in the organic Whole. Nay, on
    delicate subjects, where a seemingly trifling
    difference of more or less may constitute a
    difference in kind, even a faithful display of the
    main and supporting ideas, if yet they are
    separated from the forms by which they are at
    once cloathed and modified, may perchance
    present a skeleton indeed; but a skeleton to
    alarm and deter. Though I might find nume-
    rous precedents, I shall not desire the reader
    to strip his mind of all prejudices, or to keep
    all prior systems out of view during his examin-
    ation of the present. For in truth, such re-
    quests appear to me not much unlike the ad-
    vice given to hypochondriacal patients in Dr.
    Buchan’s domestic medicine; videlicet, to pre-
    serve themselves uniformly tranquil and in good
    spirits. Till I had discovered the art of de-
    stroying the memory a parte post, without in-
    jury to its future operations, and without detri-
    ment to the judgement, I should suppress the
    request as premature; and therefore, however
    much I may wish to be read with an unpre-
    judiced mind, I do not presume to state it as a
    necessary condition.

     
     

    The extent of my daring is to suggest one
    criterion, by which it may be rationally con-
    jectured before-hand, whether or no a reader
    would lose his time, and perhaps his temper,
    in the perusal of this, or any other treatise
    constructed on similar principles. But it would
    be cruelly misinterpreted, as implying the least
    disrespect either for the moral or intellectual
    qualities of the individuals thereby precluded.
    The criterion is this: if a man receives as
    fundamental facts, and therefore of course in-
    demonstrable and incapable of further analysis,
    the general notions of matter, spirit, soul, body,
    action, passiveness, time, space, cause and
    effect, consciousness, perception, memory and
    habit; if he feels his mind completely at rest
    concerning all these, and is satisfied, if only he
    can analyse all other notions into some one or
    more of these supposed elements with plausible
    subordination and apt arrangement: to such a
    mind I would as courteously as possible con-
    vey the hint, that for him the chapter was not
    written.

     

    Vir bonus es, doctus, prudens; ast haud tibi spiro.

     

    For these terms do in truth include all the
    difficulties, which the human mind can propose
    for solution. Taking them therefore in mass,
    and unexamined, it requires only a decent
    apprenticeship in logic, to draw forth their
    contents in all forms and colours, as the pro-
    fessors of legerdemain at our village fairs pull
    out ribbon after ribbon from their mouths.
    And not more difficult is it to reduce them
    back again to their different genera. But though
    this analysis is highly useful in rendering our
    knowledge more distinct, it does not really add
    to it. It does not increase, though it gives us
    a greater mastery over, the wealth which we
    before possessed. For forensic purposes, for
    all the established professions of society, this
    is sufficient. But for philosophy in its highest
    sense, as the science of ultimate truths, and
    therefore scientia scientiarum, this mere analysis
    of terms is preparative only, though as a pre-
    parative discipline indispensable.

     
     

    Still less dare a favorable perusal be antici-
    pated from the proselytes of that compendious
    philosophy, which talking of mind but thinking
    of brick and mortar, or other images equally ab-
    stracted from body, contrives a theory of spirit
    by nicknaming matter, and in a few hours can
    qualify its dullest disciples to explain the omne
    scibile by reducing all things to impressions,
    ideas, and sensations.

     
     

    But it is time to tell the truth; though it
    requires some courage to avow it in an age
    and country, in which disquisitions on all sub-
    jects, not privileged to adopt technical terms
    or scientific symbols, must be addressed to the
    PUBLIC. I say then, that it is neither possible
    or necessary for all men, or for many, to be
    PHILOSOPHERS. There is a philosophic (and
    inasmuch as it is actualized by an effort of
    freedom, an artificial) consciousness, which lies
    beneath or (as it were) behind the spontaneous
    consciousness natural to all reflecting beings.
    As the elder Romans distinguished their north-
    ern provinces into Cis-Alpine and Trans-Alpine,
    so may we divide all the objects of human
    knowledge into those on this side, and those
    on the other side of the spontaneous conscious-
    ness; citra et trans conscientiam communem.
    The latter is exclusively the domain of PURE
    philosophy, which is therefore properly enti-
    tled transcendental, in order to discriminate it
    at once, both from mere reflection and re-
    presentation on the one hand, and on the other
    from those flights of lawless speculation which
    abandoned by all distinct consciousness, be-
    cause transgressing the bounds and purposes
    of our intellectual faculties, are justly con-
    demned, as* transcendent. The first range of

     
     

    This distinction between transcendental and transcendent
    is observed by our elder divines and philosophers, whenever
    they express themselves scholastically. Dr. Johnson indeed
    has confounded the two words; but his own authorities do
    not bear him out. Of this celebrated dictionary I will ven-
    ture to remark once for all, that I should suspect the man of
    a morose disposition who should speak of it without respect
    and gratitude as a most instructive and entertaining book,
    and hitherto, unfortunately, an indispensable book; but I
    confess, that I should be surprized at hearing from a philo-
    sophic and thorough scholar any but very qualified praises
    of it, as a dictionary. I am not now alluding to the number
    of genuine words omitted; for this is (and perhaps to a
    greater extent) true, as Mr. Wakefield has noticed, of our
    best Greek Lexicons, and this too after the successive labors
    of so many giants in learning. I refer at present both to
    omissions and commissions of a more important nature.
    What these are, me saltem judice, will be stated at full in
    THE FRIEND, re-published and completed.

     
    I had never heard of the correspondence between Wake-
    field and Fox till I saw the account of it this morning (16th
    September 1815) in the Monthly Review. I was not a little
    gratified at finding, that Mr. Wakefield had proposed to him-
    self nearly the same plan for a Greek and English Dictionary,
    which I had formed, and began to execute, now ten years
    ago. But far, far more grieved am I, that he did not live to
    compleat it. I cannot but think it a subject of most serious
    regret, that the same heavy expenditure, which is now
    hills, that encircles the scanty vale of human
    life, is the horizon for the majority of its inha-
    bitants. On its ridges the common sun is born
    and departs. From them the stars rise, and
    touching them they vanish. By the many, even
    this range, the natural limit and bulwark of the
    vale, is but imperfectly known. Its higher
    ascents are too often hidden by mists and
    clouds from uncultivated swamps, which few
    have courage or curiosity to penetrate. To
    the multitude below these vapors appear, now

     
     
    *employing in the republication of STEPHANUS augmented, had
    not been applied to a new Lexicon on a more philosophical
    plan, with the English, German, and French Synonimes as
    well as the Latin. In almost every instance the precise in-
    dividual meaning might be given in an English or German
    word; whereas in Latin we must too often be contented with
    a mere general and inclusive term. How indeed can it be
    otherwise, when we attempt to render the most copious lan-
    guage of the world, the most admirable for the fineness of
    its distinctions, into one of the poorest and most vague lan-
    guages? Especially, when we reflect on the comparative
    number of the works, still extant, written, while the Greek and
    Latin were living languages. Were I asked, what I deemed
    the greatest and most unmixt benefit, which a wealthy indi-
    vidual, or an association of wealthy individuals could bestow
    on their country and on mankind, I should not hesitate to
    answer, "a philosophical English dictionary; with the Greek,
    Latin, German, French, Spanish and Italian synomines, and
    with correspondent indexes." That the learned languages
    might thereby be acquired, better, in half the time, is but a
    part, and not the most important part, of the advantages
    which would accrue from such a work. O! if it should be
    permitted by providence, that without detriment to freedom
    and independence our government might be enabled to be-
    come more than a committee for war and revenue! There
    was a time, when every thing was to be done by government.
    Have we not flown off to the contrary extreme?
    as the dark haunts of terrific agents, on which
    none may intrude with impunity; and now all
    a-glow, with colors not their own, they are gazed
    at, as the splendid palaces of happiness and
    power. But in all ages there have been a few,
    who measuring and sounding the rivers of the
    vale at the feet of their furthest inaccessible falls
    have learnt, that the sources must be far higher
    and far inward; a few, who even in the level
    streams have detected elements, which neither
    the vale itself or the surrounding mountains con-
    tained or could supply. How and whence to
    these thoughts, these strong probabilities, the
    ascertaining vision, the intuitive knowledge, may
    finally supervene, can be learnt only by the
    fact. I might oppose to the question the words
    with which * Plotinus supposes NATURE to

     
     

    Ennead iii. l. 8. c. 3. The force of the Greek sunienai is
    imperfectly expressed by "understand;" our own idiomatic
    phrase "to go along with me" comes nearest to it. The
    passage, that follows, full of profound sense, appears to me
    evidently corrupt; and in fact no writer more wants, better
    deserves, or is less likely to obtain, a new and more correct

    edition.—ti oun sunienai; oti to genomenon esi deama emon, siopesis
    ( mallem, deama, emou sioposes,) kai Phusei genomenon deorema kai
    moi genomene ek deorias tes odi, ten phusin echein philodeamona uparkei.

    (mallem, kai moi ee genomene ek deorias autes odias). "what then

    are we to understand? That whatever is produced is
    an intuition, I silent; and that, which is thus generated, is
    by its nature a theorem, or form of contemplation; and
    the birth, which results to me from this contemplation, attains
    to have a contemplative nature." So Synesius;odis ira,
    Arreta Gond. The after comparison of the process of the
    natura naturans with that of the geometrician is drawn from
    the very heart of philosophy.
    answer a similar difficulty. "Should any one
    interrogate her, how she works, if graciously
    she vouchsafe to listen and speak, she will
    reply, it behoves thee not to disquiet me with
    interrogatories, but to understand in silence,
    even as I am silent, and work without words."

     
     

    Likewise in the fifth book of the fifth Ennead,
    speaking of the highest and intuitive knowledge
    as distinguished from the discursive, or in the
    language of Wordsworth,

     
     

    "The vision and the faculty divine;"

    he says: "it is not lawful to enquire from
    "whence it sprang, as if it were a thing subject
    "to place and motion, for it neither approached
    "hither, nor again departs from hence to some
    "other place; but it either appears to us or it
    "does not appear. So that we ought not to pur-
    "sue it with a view of detecting its secret source,
    "but to watch in quiet till it suddenly shines
    "upon us; preparing ourselves for the blessed
    "spectacle as the eye waits patiently for the
    "rising sun." They and they only can acquire
    the philosophic imagination, the sacred power
    of self-intuition, who within themselves can
    interpret and understand the symbol, that the
    wings of the air-sylph are forming within the
    skin of the caterpillar; those only, who feel in
    their own spirits the same instinct, which im-
    pels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave
    room in its involucrum for antennæ yet to
    come. They know and feel, that the potential
    works in them, even as the actual works on
    them! In short, all the organs of sense are
    framed for a corresponding world of sense; and
    we have it. All the organs of spirit are framed
    for a correspondent world of spirit: tho’ the
    latter organs are not developed in all alike.
    But they exist in all, and their first appearance
    discloses itself in the moral being. How else
    could it be, that even worldlings, not wholly
    debased, will contemplate the man of simple
    and disinterested goodness with contradictory
    feelings of pity and respect? "Poor man!
    he is not made for this world." Oh! herein
    they utter a prophecy of universal fulfilment;
    for man must either rise or sink.

     
     

    It is the essential mark of the true philoso-
    pher to rest satisfied with no imperfect light, as
    long as the impossibility of attaining a fuller
    knowledge has not been demonstrated. That
    the common consciousness itself will furnish
    proofs by its own direction, that it is connected
    with master-currents below the surface, I shall
    merely assume as a postulate pro tempore.
    This having been granted, though but in ex-
    pectation of the argument, I can safely deduce
    from it the equal truth of my former assertion,
    that philosophy cannot be intelligible to all,
    even of the most learned and cultivated classes.
    A system, the first principle of which it is to
    render the mind intuitive of the spiritual in
    man (i.e of that which lies on the other side of
    our natural consciousness) must needs have a
    great obscurity for those, who have never dis-
    ciplined and strengthened this ulterior consci-
    ousness. It must in truth be a land of dark-
    ness, a perfect Anti-Goshen, for men to whom
    the noblest treasures of their own being are
    reported only through the imperfect tansla-
    tion of lifeless and sightless notions. Perhaps,
    in great part, through words which are but
    the shadows of notions; even as the notional
    understanding itself is but the shadowy ab-
    straction of living and actual truth. On the
    IMMEDIATE, which dwells in every man, and
    on the original intuition, or absolute affirm-
    ation of it, (which is likewise in every man, but
    does not in every man rise into consciousness)
    all the certainty of our knowledge depends;
    and this becomes intelligible to no man by the
    ministery of mere words from without. The
    medium, by which spirits understand each
    other, is not the surrounding air; but the
    freedom which they possess in common, as the
    common ethereal element in their being, the
    tremulous reciprocations of which propagate
    themselves even to the inmost of the soul.
    Where the spirit of a man is not filled with the
    consciousness of freedom (were it only from
    its restlessness, as of one still struggling in
    bondage) all spiritual intercourse is interrupted,
    not only with others, but even with himself.
    No wonder then, that he remains incomprehen-
    sible to himself as well as others. No won-
    der, that in the fearful desert of his conscious-
    ness, he wearies himself out with empty words,
    to which no friendly echo answers, either from
    his own heart, or the heart of a fellow being;
    or bewilders himself in the pursuit of notional
    phantoms, the mere refractions from unseen and
    distant truths through the distorting medium
    of his own unenlivened and stagnant under-
    standing! To remain unintelligible to such a
    mind, exclaims Schelling on a like occasion,
    is honor and a good name before God and man.

     
     

    The history of philosophy (the same writer
    observes) contains instances of systems, which
    for successive generations have remained enig-
    matic. Such he deems the system of Leibnitz,
    whom another writer (rashly I think, and invi-
    diously) extols as the only philosopher, who
    was himself deeply convinced of his own doc-
    trines. As hitherto interpreted, however, they
    have not produced the effect, which Leibnitz
    himself, in a most instructive passage, describes
    as the criterion of a true philosophy; namely,
    that it would at once explain and collect the
    fragments of truth scattered through systems
    apparently the most incongruous. The truth,
    says he, is diffused more widely than is com-
    monly believed; but it is often painted, yet
    oftener masked, and is sometimes mutilated
    and sometimes, alas! in close alliance with
    mischievous errors. The deeper, however, we
    penetrate into the ground of things, the more
    truth we discover in the doctrines of the greater
    number of the philosophical sects. The want
    of substantial reality in the objects of the senses,
    according to the sceptics; the harmonies or
    numbers, the prototypes and ideas, to which
    the Pythagoreans and Platonists reduced all
    things; the ONE and ALL of Parmenides and
    Plotinus, without * Spinozism; the necessary
    connection of things according to the Stoics,
    reconcileable with the spontaneity of the other
    schools; the vital-philosophy of the Cabalists
    and Hermetists, who assumed the universality
    of sensation; the substantial forms and ente-
    lechies of Aristotle and the schoolmen, together
    with the mechanical solution of all particular

     
     

    This is happily effected in three lines by SYNESIUS, in

    his Fourth Hymn:

     

    En kai Panta--(taken by itself) is Spinosism.
    En d Apanton—a mere anima Mundi.
    En te pro psnton—is mechanical Theism.

     
     
    But all unite all three, and the result is the Theism of Saint
    Paul and Christianity.

     
    Synesius was censured for his doctrine of the Pre-exist-
    ence of the Soul; but never, that I can find, arraigned or*
    phenomena according to Democritus and the
    recent philosophers—all these we shall find
    united in one perspective central point, which
    shows regularity and a coincidence of all the
    parts in the very object, which from every other
    point of view must appear confused and dis-
    torted. The spirit of sectarianism has been
    hitherto our fault, and the cause of our failures.
    We have imprisoned our own conceptions by

     
     
    *deemed heretical for his Pantheism, tho’ neither Giordano
    Bruno, or Jacob Behmen ever avowed it more broadly.

     

    Muras de Noos,
    Ta te kai ta legei,
    Budon arreton
    Amphichoreuon.
    Su to tikton ephus,
    Su to tiktomen on
    Su to photixion,
    Su to lampomenon
    Su to phainomenon,
    Su to kruptomenon
    Idiais augais.
    En kai panta,
    En kad eauto,
    Kai dia panton

     

    Pantheism is therefore not necessarily irreligious or here-
    tical; tho’ it may be taught atheistically. Thus Spinoza
    would agree with Synesius in calling God Phusis en Noerois, the
    Nature in Intelligences; but he could not subscribe to the
    preceding Nous kai Noeros, i. e. Himself Intelligence and intel-
    ligent.

     
    In this biographical sketch of my literary life, I may be
    excused, if I mention here, that I had translated the eight
    Hymns of Synesius from the Greek into English Anacreon-
    tics before my 15th year.
    the lines, which we have drawn, in order to
    exclude the conceptions of others. I’ai trouvé
    que la plupart des sectes ont raison dans une
    bonne partie de ce qúelles avancent, mais non
    pas tant en ce qúelles nient.

     
     

    A system, which aims to deduce the memory
    with all the other functions of intelligence,
    must of course place its first position from
    beyond the memory, and anterior to it, other-
    wise the principle of solution would be itself a
    part of the problem to be solved. Such a po-
    sition therefore must, in the first instance be
    demanded, and the first question will be, by
    what right is it demanded? On this account
    I think it expedient to make some preliminary
    remarks on the introduction of POSTULATES in
    philosophy. The word postulate is borrowed
    from the science of mathematics. (See Schell.
    abhandl. zur Erläuter. des id. der Wissenschaft-
    slehre). In geometry the primary construction
    is not demonstrated, but postulated. This first
    and most simple construction in space is the
    point in motion, or the line. Whether the
    point is moved in one and the same direction,
    or whether its direction is continually changed,
    remains as yet undetermined. But if the di-
    rection of the point have been determined, it is
    either by a point without it, and then there
    arises the strait line which incloses no space;
    or the direction of the point is not determined
    by a point without it, and then it must flow
    back again on itself, that is, there arises a
    cyclical line, which does inclose a space. If
    the strait line be assumed as the positive, the
    cyclical is then the negation of the strait. It
    is a line, which at no point strikes out into the
    strait, but changes its direction continuously.
    But if the primary line be conceived as un-
    determined, and the strait line as determined
    throughout, then the cyclical is the third com-
    pounded of both. It is at once undetermined
    and determined; undetermined through any
    point without, and determined through itself.
    Geometry therefore supplies philosophy with
    the example of a primary intuition, from which
    every science that lays claim to evidence must
    take its commencement. The mathematician
    does not begin with a demonstrable proposi-
    tion, but with an intuition, a practical idea.

     
     

    But here an important distinction presents
    itself. Philosophy is employed on objects of
    the INNER SENSE, and cannot, like geometry
    appropriate to every construction a correspon-
    dent outward intuition. Nevertheless philoso-
    phy, if it arrive at evidence, must proceed
    from the most original construction, and the
    question then is, what is the most original
    construction or first productive act for the
    INNER SENSE. The answer to this question
    depends on the direction which is given to the
    INNER SENSE. But in philosophy the INNER
    SENSE cannot have its direction determined by
    any outward object. To the original construc-
    tion of the line, I can be compelled by a line
    drawn before me on the slate or on sand. The
    stroke thus drawn is indeed not the line itself,
    but only the image or picture of the line. It is
    not from it, that we first learn to know the line;
    but, on the contrary, we bring this stroke to
    the original line generated by the act of the
    imagination; otherwise we could not define it
    as without breadth or thickness. Still how-
    ever this stroke is the sensuous image of the
    original or ideal line, and an efficient mean to
    excite every imagination to the intuition of it.

     
     

    It is demanded then, whether there be found
    any means in philosophy to determine the di-
    rection of the INNER SENSE, as in mathematics
    it is determinable by its specific image or out-
    ward picture. Now the inner sense has its
    direction determined for the greater part only
    by an act of freedom. One man’s conscious-
    ness extends only to the pleasant or unpleasant
    sensations caused in him by external impres-
    sions; another enlarges his inner sense to a
    consciousness of forms and quantity; a third
    in addition to the image is conscious of the
    conception or notion of the thing; a fourth
    attains to a notion of his notions—he reflects
    on his own reflections; and thus we may say
    without impropriety, that the one possesses
    more or less inner sense, than the other. This
    more or less betrays already, that philosophy in
    its first principles must have a practical or
    moral, as well as a theoretical or speculative
    side. This difference in degree does not exist
    in the mathematics. Socrates in Plato shows,
    that an ignorant slave may be brought to un-
    derstand and of himself to solve the most dif-
    ficult geometrical problem. Socrates drew the
    figures for the slave in the sand. The disci-
    ples of the critical philosophy could likewise
    (as was indeed actually done by La Forge and
    some other followers of Des Cartes) represent
    the origin of our representations in copper-
    plates; but no one has yet attempted it, and it
    would be utterly useless. To an Esquimaux
    or New Zealander our most popular philosophy
    would be wholly unintelligible. The sense,
    the inward organ, for it is not yet born in him.
    So is there many a one among us, yes, and
    some who think themselves philosophers too,
    to whom the philosophic organ is entirely
    wanting. To such a man, philosophy is a
    mere play of words and notions, like a theory
    of music to the deaf, or like the geometry of
    light to the blind. The connection of the parts
    and their logical dependencies may be seen
    and remembered; but the whole is groundless
    and hollow, unsustained by living contact,
    unaccompanied with any realizing intuition which
    exists by and in the act that affirms its existence,
    which is known, because it is, and is, because
    it is known. The words of Plotinus, in the
    assumed person of nature, hold true of the
    philosophic energy. Io deoroun mou deorema poiei,
    oster oi Geometrai deorountes graphousin. all emou me
    graphouses, deorouses de, uphisantai ai ton somaton grammai.
    With me the act of contemplation makes the
    thing contemplated, as the geometricians con-
    templating describe lines correspondent; but
    I not describing lines, but simply contemplat-
    ing, the representative forms of things rise up
    into existence.

     
     

    The postulate of philosophy and at the same
    time the test of philosophic capacity, is no
    other than the heaven-descended KNOW THY-
    SELF! (E cælo descendit, Gnodi seauton). And this
    at once practically and speculatively. For as
    philosophy is neither a science of the reason or
    understanding only, nor merely a science of
    morals, but the science of BEING altogether, its
    primary ground can be neither merely specula-
    tive or merely practical, but both in one. All
    knowledge rests on the coincidence of an ob-
    ject with a subject. (My readers have been
    warned in a former chapter that for their con-
    venience as well as the writer’s, the term,
    subject is used by me in its scholastic sense as
    equivalent to mind or sentient being, and as
    the necessary correllative of object or quic-
    quid objicitur menti.) For we can know that
    only which is true: and the truth is universally
    placed in the coincidence of the thought with
    the thing, of the representation with the object
    represented.

     
     

    Now the sum of all that is merely OBJECTIVE,
    we will henceforth call NATURE, confining the
    term to its passive and material sense, as com-
    prising all the phænomena by which its exist-
    ence is made known to us. On the other hand
    the sum of all that is SUBJECTIVE, we may
    comprehend in the name of the SELF or INTEL-
    LIGENCE. Both conceptions are in necessary
    antithesis. Intelligence is conceived of as ex-
    clusively representative, nature as exclusively
    represented; the one as conscious, the other as
    without consciousness. Now in all acts of
    positive knowledge there is required a reci-
    procal concurrence of both, namely of the con-
    scious being, and of that which is in itself
    unconscious. Our problem is to explain this
    concurrence, its possibility and its necessity.

     
     
     
     
     
    During the act of knowledge itself, the ob-
    jective and subjective are so instantly united,
    that we cannot determine to which of the two
    the priority belongs. There is here no first,
    and no second; both are coinstantaneous and
    one. While I am attempting to explain this
    intimate coalition, I must suppose it dissolved.
    I must necessarily set out from the one, to
    which therefore I give hypothetical antece-
    dence, in order to arrive at the other. But as
    there are but two factors or elements in the
    problem, subject and object, and as it is left
    indeterminate from which of them I should
    commence, there are two cases equally possible.
    1. EITHER THE OBJECTIVE IS TAKEN AS
    THE FIRST, AND THEN WE HAVE TO ACCOUNT
    FOR THE SUPERVENTION OF THE SUBJECTIVE,
    WHICH COALESCES WITH IT.

     
     
     
     
     
    The notion of the subjective is not contained
    in the notion of the objective. On the contrary
    they mutually exclude each other. The sub-
    jective therefore must supervene to the objec-
    tive. The conception of nature does not ap-
    parently involve the co-presence of an intel-
    ligence making an ideal duplicate of it, i. e.
    representing it. This desk for instance would
    (according to our natural notions) be, though
    there should exist no sentient being to look at
    it. This then is the problem of natural philo-
    sophy. It assumes the objective or uncon-
    scious nature as the first, and has therefore to
    explain how intelligence can supervene to it,
    or how itself can grow into intelligence. If it
    should appear, that all enlightened naturalists
    without having distinctly proposed the problem
    to themselves have yet constantly moved in the
    line of its solution, it must afford a strong
    presumption that the problem itself is founded in
    nature. For if all knowledge has as it were
    two poles reciprocally required and presup-
    posed, all sciences must proceed from the one
    or the other, and must tend toward the op-
    posite as far as the equatorial point in which
    both are reconciled and become identical.
    The necessary tendence therefore of all natural
    philosophy is from nature to intelligence; and
    this, and no other is the true ground and oc-
    casion of the instinctive striving to introduce
    theory into our views of natural phænomena.
    The highest perfection of natural philosophy
    would consist in the perfect spiritualization of
    all the laws of nature into laws of intuition and
    intellect. The phænomena (the material) must
    wholly disappear, and the laws alone (the
    formal) must remain. Thence it comes, that in
    nature itself the more the principle of law
    breaks forth, the more does the husk drop
    off, the phænomena themselves become more
    spiritual and at length cease altogether in our
    consciousness. The optical phænomena are
    but a geometry, the lines of which are drawn
    by light, and the materiality of this light itself
    has already become matter of doubt. In the
    appearances of magnetism all trace of matter
    is lost, and of the phænomena of gravitation,
    which not a few among the most illlustrious
    Newtonians have declared no otherwise
    comprehensible than as an immediate spiritual in-
    fluence, there remains nothing but its law, the
    execution of which on a vast scale is the me-
    chanism of the heavenly motions. The theory
    of natural philosophy would then be completed,
    when all nature was demonstrated to be iden-
    tical in essence with that, which in its highest
    known power exists in man as intelligence
    and self-consciousness; when the heavens and
    the earth shall declare not only the power of
    their maker, but the glory and the presence of
    their God, even as he appeared to the great
    prophet during the vision of the mount in the
    skirts of his divinity.

     
     

    This may suffice to show, that even natural
    science, which commences with the material
    phænomena as the reality and substance of
    things existing, does yet by the necessity of
    theorising unconsciously, and as it were in-
    stinctively, end in nature as an intelligence; and
    by this tendency the science of nature becomes
    finally natural philosophy, the one of the two
    poles of fundamental science.
    2. OR THE SUBJECTIVE, IS TAKEN AS THE
    FIRST, AND THE PROBLEM THEN IS, HOW
    THERE SUPERVENES TO IT A COINCIDENT OB-
    JECTIVE.

     
     

    In the pursuit of these sciences, our success
    in each, depends on an austere and faithful
    adherence to its own principles with a careful
    separation and exclusion of those, which apper-
    tain to the opposite science. As the natural
    philosopher, who directs his views to the ob-
    jective, avoids above all things the intermixture
    of the subjective in his knowledge, as for in-
    stance, arbitrary suppositions or rather suf-
    fictions, occult qualities, spiritual agents, and
    the substitution of final for efficient causes; so
    on the other hand, the transcendental or intel-
    ligential philosopher is equally anxious to pre-
    clude all interpolation of the objective into the
    subjective principles of his science, as for in-
    stance the assumption of impresses or configu-
    rations in the brain, correspondent to miniature
    pictures on the retina painted by rays of light
    from supposed originals, which are not the
    immediate and real objects of vision, but de-
    ductions from it for the purposes of explana-
    tion. This purification of the mind is effected
    by an absolute and scientific scepticism to which
    the mind voluntary determines itself for the spe-
    cific purpose of future certainty. Des Cartes
    who (in his meditations) himself first, at least
    of the moderns, gave a beautiful example of
    this voluntary doubt, this self-determined inde-
    termination, happily expresses its utter dif-
    ference from the scepticism of vanity or irreli-
    gion: Nec tamen in eo scepticos imitabar, qui
    dubitant tautum ut dubitent, et preter incerti
    tudinem ipsam nihil quærunt. Nam contra
    totus in eo eram ut aliquid certi reperirem.
    DES CARTES, de Methodo. Nor is it less dis-
    tinct in its motives and final aim, than in its
    proper objects, which are not as in ordinary
    scepticism the prejudices of education and cir-
    cumstance, but those original and innate pre-
    judices which nature herself has planted in all
    men, and which to all but the philosopher are
    the first principles of knowledge, and the final
    test of truth.

     
     

    Now these essential prejudices are all redu-
    cible to the one fundamental presumption, THAT
    THERE EXIST THINGS WITHOUT US. As this
    on the one hand originates, neither in grounds
    or arguments, and yet on the other hand re-
    mains proof against all attempts to remove it
    by grounds or arguments (naturam furca expel-
    las tamen usque redibit;) on the one hand lays
    claim to IMMEDIATE certainty as a position at
    once indemonstrable and irresistable, and yet
    on the other hand, inasmuch as it refers to
    something essentially different from ourselves,
    nay even in opposition to ourselves, leaves it
    inconceivable how it could possibly become a
    part of our immediate consciousness; (in other
    words how that, which ex hypothesi is and
    continues to be extrinsic and alien to our being,
    should become a modification of our being) the
    philosopher therefore compels himself to treat
    this faith as nothing more than a prejudice, in-
    nate indeed and connatural, but still prejudice.

     

    The other position, which not only claims
    but necessitates the admission of its immediate
    certainty, equally for the scientific reason of
    the philosopher as for the common sense of
    mankind at large, namely, I AM, cannot so
    properly be intitled a prejudice. It is ground-
    less indeed; but then in the very idea it pre-
    cludes all ground, and separated from the im-
    mediate consciousness loses its whole sense
    and import. It is groundless; but only be-
    cause it is itself the ground of all other cer-
    tainty. Now the apparent contradiction, that
    the former position, namely, the existence of
    things without us, which from its nature can-
    not be immediately certain should be received
    as blindly and as independently of all grounds
    as the existence of our own being, the tran-
    scendental philosopher can solve only by the
    supposition, that the former is unconsciously
    involved in the latter; that it is not only cohe-
    rent but identical, and one and the same thing
    with our own immediate self-consciousness.
    To demonstrate this identity is the office and
    object of his philosophy.

     
     

    If it be said, that this is Idealism, let it be
    remembered that it is only so far idealism, as
    it is at the same time, and on that very account,
    the truest and most binding realism. For
    wherein does the realism of mankind properly
    consist? In the assertion that there exists a
    something without them, what, or how, or
    where they know not, which occasions the
    objects of their perception? Oh no! This is
    neither connatural or universal. It is what a
    few have taught and learnt in the schools, and
    which the many repeat without asking them-
    selves concerning their own meaning. The
    realism common to all mankind is far elder and
    lies infinitely deeper than this hypothetical ex-
    planation of the origin of our perceptions, an
    explanation skimmed from the mere surface of
    mechanical philosophy. It is the table itself,
    which the man of common sense believes him-
    self to see, not the phantom of a table, from
    which he may argumentatively deduce the
    reality of a table, which he does not see. If to
    destroy the reality of all, that we actually be-
    hold, be idealism, what can be more egregiously
    so, than the system of modern metaphysics,
    which banishes us to a land of shadows, sur-
    rounds us with apparitions, and distinguishes
    truth from illusion only by the majority of those
    who dream the same dream? "I asserted that
    the world was mad," exclaimed poor Lee,
    "and the world said, that I was mad, and con-
    found them, they outvoted me."

     
     

    It is to the true and original realism, that I
    would direct the attention. This believes and
    requires neither more nor less, than that the
    object which it beholds or presents itself, is
    the real and very object. In this sense, how-
    ever much we strive against it, we are all
    collectively born idealists, and therefore and
    only therefore are we at the same time realists.
    But of this the philosophers of the schools
    know nothing, or despise the faith as the pre-
    judice of the ignorant vulgar, because they live
    and move in a crowd of phrases and notions
    from which human nature has long ago va-
    nished. Oh, ye that reverence yourselves, and
    walk humbly with the divinity in your own
    hearts, ye are worthy of a better philosophy!
    Let the dead bury the dead, but do you pre-
    serve your human nature, the depth of which
    was never yet fathomed by a philosophy made
    up of notions and mere logical entities.

     
     

    In the third treatise of my Logosophia, an-
    nounced at the end of this volume, I shall give
    (deo volente) the demonstrations and construc-
    tions of the Dynamic Philosophy scientifically
    arranged. It is, according to my conviction,
    no other than the system of Pythagoras and of
    Plato revived and purified from impure mix-
    tures. Doctrina per tot manus tradita tandem
    in VAPPAM desiit. The science of arithmetic
    furnishes instances, that a rule may be useful
    in practical application, and for the particular
    purpose may be sufficiently authenticated by
    the result, before it has itself been fully de-
    monstrated. It is enough, if only it be
    rendered intelligible. This will, I trust, have been
    effected in the following Theses for those of my
    readers, who are willing to accompany me
    through the following Chapter, in which the
    results will be applied to the deduction of the
    imagination, and with it the principles of pro-
    duction and of genial criticism in the fine arts.

     

    THESIS I.

     

    Truth is correlative to being. Knowledge
    without a correspondent reality is no know-
    ledge; if we know, there must be somewhat
    known by us. To know is in its very essence
    a verb active.

     

    THESIS II.

     

    All truth is either mediate, that is, derived
    from some other truth or truths; or immediate
    and original. The latter is absolute, and its
    formula A.A.; the former is of dependent or
    conditional certainty, and represented in the
    formula B.A. The certainty, which inheres
    in A, is attributable to B.

     
     

    SCHOLIUM. A chain without a staple, from
    which all the links derived their stability, or a
    series without a first, has been not inaptly
    allegorized, as a string of blind men, each hold-
    ing the skirt of the man before him, reaching
    far out of sight, but all moving without the
    least deviation in one strait line. It would be
    naturally taken for granted, that there was a
    guide at the head of the file: what if it were
    answered, No! Sir, the men are without num-
    ber, and infinite blindness supplies the place of
    sight?

     
     

    Equally inconceivable is a cycle of equal truths
    without a common and central principle, which
    prescribes to each its proper sphere in the
    system of science. That the absurdity does
    not so immediately strike us, that it does not
    seem equally unimaginable, is owing to a sur-
    reptitious act of the imagination, which, in-
    stinctively and without our noticing the same,
    not only fills at the intervening spaces, and
    contemplates the cycle (of B. C. D. E. F. &c.)
    as a continuous circle (A.) giving to all col-
    lectively the unity of their common orbit; but
    likewise supplies by a sort of subintelligitur the
    one central power, which renders the movement
    harmonious and cyclical.

     

    THESIS III.

     

    We are to seek therefore for some absolute
    truth capable of communcating to ther posi-
    tions a certainty, which it has not itself bor-
    rowed; a truth self-grounded, unconditional
    and known by its own light. In short, we
    have to find a somewhat which is, simply be-
    cause it is. In order to be such, it must be
    one which is its own predicate, so far at least
    that all other nominal predicates must be modes
    and repetitions of itself. Its existence too
    must be such, as to preclude the possibility of
    requiring a cause or antecedent without an
    absurdity.

     

    THESIS IV.

     

    That there can be but one such principle,
    may be proved a priori; for were there two
    or more, each must refer to some other, by which
    its equality is affirmed; consequently neither
    would be self-established, as the hypothesis
    demands. And a posteriori, it will be proved
    by the principle itself when it is discovered, as
    involving universal anticedents in its very con-
    ception.

     
     

    SCHOLIUM. If we affirm of a board that
    it is blue, the predicate (blue) is accidental,
    and not implied in the subject, board. If we
    affirm of a circle that it is equi-radial, the pre-
    dicate indeed is implied in the definition of the
    subject; but the existence of the subject itself
    is contingent, and supposes both a cause and a
    percipient. The same reasoning will apply to
    the indefinite number of supposed indemon-
    strable truths exempted from the prophane ap-
    proach of philosophic investigation by the ami-
    cable Beattie, and other less eloquent and not
    more profound inaugurators of common sense
    on the throne of philosophy; a fruitless at-
    tempt, were it only that it is the two-fold func-
    tion of philosophy to reconcile reason with
    common sense, and to elevate common sense
    into reason.
    THESIS V.

     
     

    Such a principle cannot be any THING or
    OBJECT. Each thing is what it is in conse-
    quence of some other thing. An infinite, inde-
    pendent *thing, is no less a contradiction, than
    an infinite circle or a sideless triangle. Besides
    a thing is that, which is capable of being an
    object of which itself is not the sole percipient.
    But an object is inconceivable without a sub-
    ject as its antithesis.Omne perceptum perci-
    pientem supponit.

     
     

    But neither can the principle be found in a
    subject as a subject, contra-distinguished from
    an object: for unicuique percipienti aliquid
    objicutur perceptum. It is to be found there-
    fore neither in object nor subject taken sepa-
    rately, and consequently, as no other third is
    conceivable, it must be found in that which is
    neither subject nor object exclusively, but
    which is the identity of both.

     

    THESIS VI.

     

    This principle, and so characterised, mani-
    fests itself in the SUM or I AM; which I shall
    hereafter indiscriminately express by the words

     
     

    The impossibility of an absolute thing (substantia unica)
    as neither genus, species, nor individuum: as well as its
    utter unfitness for the fundamental position of a philosophic
    system will be demonstrated in the critique on Spinozism in
    the fifth treatise of my Logosophia.
    spirit, self, and self-consciousness. In this,
    and in this alone, object and subject, being and
    knowing, are identical, each involving and sup-
    posing the other. In other words, it is a sub-
    ject which becomes a subject by the act of
    constructing itself objectively to itself; but
    which never is an object except for itself, and
    only so far as by the very same act it becomes
    a subject. It may be described therefore as
    a perpetual self-duplication of one and the
    same power into object and subject, which pre-
    suppose each other, and can exist only as an-
    titheses.

     
     

    SCHOLIUM. If a man be asked how he knows
    that he is? he can only answer, sum quia sum.
    But if (the absoluteness of this certainty having
    been admitted) he be again asked, how he, the
    individual person, came to be, then in relation
    to the ground of his existence, not to the ground
    of his knowledge of that existence, he might
    reply, sum quia Deus est, or still more philoso-
    phically, sum quia in Deo sum.

     
     

    But if we elevate our conception to the abso-
    lute self, the great eternal I AM, then the prin-
    ciple of being, and of knowledge, of idea, and
    of reality; the ground of existence, and the
    ground of the knowledge of existence, are ab-
    solutely identical, Sum quia sum;* I am,

     
     

    It is most worthy of notice, that in the first revelation
    of himself, not confined to individuals; indeed in the very*
    because I affirm myself to be; I affirm myself
    to be, because I am.

     

    THESIS VII.

     

    If then I know myself only through myself,
    it is contradictory to require any other

     
     
    *first revelation of his absolute being, Jehovah at the same
    time revealed the fundamental truth of all philosophy, which
    must either commence with the absolute, or have no fixed
    commencement; i. e. cease to be philosophy. I cannot but
    express my regret, that in the equivocal use of the word
    that, for in that, or because, our admirable version has ren-
    dered the passage susceptible of a degraded interpretation
    in the mind of common readers or hearers, as if it were a
    mere reproof to an impertinent question, I am what I am,
    which might be equally affirmed of himself by any existent
    being.

     
    The Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum is objectionable, because
    either the Cogito is used extra Gradum, and then it is involv-
    ed in the sum and is tautological, or it is taken as a particu-
    lar mode or dignity, and then it is subordinated to the sum
    as the species to the genus, or rather as a particular modifi-
    cation to the subject modified; and not pre-ordinated as the
    arguments seem to require. For Cogito is Sum Cogitans.
    This is clear by the inevidence of the converse. Cogitat
    ergo est is true, because it is a mere application of the logi-
    cal rule: Quicquid in genere est, est et in specie. Est
    (cogitans) ergo est. It is a cherry tree; therefore it is a
    tree. But, est ergo cogitat, is illogical: for quod est in
    specie, non necessario in genere est. It may be true. I hold
    it to be true, that quicquid vere est, est per veram sui af-
    firmationem; but it is a derivative, not an immediate truth.
    Here then we have, by anticipation the distinction between
    the conditional finite I (which as known in distinct con-
    sciousness by occasion of experience is called by Kant’s
    followers the empirical l) and the absolute I AM, and like-
    wise the dependence or rather the inherence of the former in
    the latter; in whom "we live, and move, and have our
    being," as St. Paul divinely asserts, differing widely from the
    Theists of the mechanic school (as Sir J. Newton, Locke, &c.)
    who must say from whom we had our being, and with it life
    and the powers of life.
    predicate of self, but that of self-consciousness.
    Only in the self-consciousness of a spirit is
    there the required identity of object and of
    representation; for herein consists the essense
    of a spirit, that it is self-representative. If
    therefore this be the one only immediate truth,
    in the certainty of which the reality of our col-
    lective knowledge is grounded, it must follow
    that the spirit in all the objects which it views,
    views only itself. If this could be proved, the
    immediate reality of all intuitive knowledge
    would be assured. It has been shown, that a
    spirit is that, which is its own object, yet not
    originally an object, but an absolute subject
    for which all, itself included, may become an
    object. It must therefore be an ACT; for every
    object is, as an object, dead, fixed, incapable
    in itself of any action, and necessarily finite.
    Again the spirit (originally the identity of object and
    subject) must in some sense dissolve
    this identity, in order to be conscious of it: fit
    alter et idem. But this implies an act, and it
    follows therefore that intelligence or self-con-
    sciousness is impossible, except by and in a
    will. The self-conscious spirit therefore is a
    will; and freedom must be assumed as a ground
    of philosophy, and can never be deduced from it.
    THESIS VIII.

     
     

    Whatever in its origin is objective, is likewise
    as such necessarily finite. Therefore, since
    the spirit is not originally an object, and as the
    subject exists in antithesis to an object, the
    spirit cannot originally be finite. But neither
    can it be a subject without becoming an object and,
    as it is originally the identity of both, it
    can be conceived neither as infinite or finite
    exclusively, but as the most original union of
    both. In the existence, in the reconciling, and
    the recurrence of this contradiction consists
    the process and mystery of production and
    life.

     

    THESIS IX.

     

    This principium commune essendi et cogno-
    scendi, as subsisting in a WILL, or primary ACT
    of self-duplication, is the mediate or indirect
    principle of every science; but it is the im-
    mediate and direct principle of the ultimate
    science alone, i. e. of transcendental philoso-
    phy alone. For it must be remembered, that
    all these Theses refer solely to one of the two
    Polar Sciences, namely, to that which com-
    mences with and rigidly confines itself within,
    the subjective, leaving the objective (as far as
    it is exclusively objective) to natural philoso-
    phy, which is its opposite pole. In its very
    idea therefore as a systematic knowledge of our
    collective KNOWING, (scientia scientiæ) it
    involves the necessity of some one highest prin-
    ciple of knowing, as at once the source and
    the accompanying form in all particular acts of
    intellect and perception. This, it has been
    shown, can be found only in the act and evolu-
    tion of self-consciousness. We are not investi-
    gating an absolute principium essendi; for
    then, I admit, many valid objections might be
    started against our theory; but an absolute
    principium cognoscendi. The result of both
    the sciences, or their equatorial point, would
    be the principle of a total and undivided philo-
    sophy, as for prudential reasons, I have chosen
    to anticipate in the Scholium to Thesis VI. and
    the note subjoined. In other words, philoso-
    phy would pass into religion, and religion be-
    come inclusive of philosophy. We begin with
    the I KNOW MYSELF, in order to end with the
    absolute I AM. We proceed from the SELF, in
    order to lose and find all self in GOD.

     

    THESIS X.

     

    The transcendental philosopher does not
    enquire, what ultimate ground of our know-
    ledge there may lie out of our knowing, but
    what is the last in our knowing itself, beyond
    which we cannot pass. The principle of our
    knowing is sought within the sphere of our
    knowing. It must be something therefore,
    which can itself be known. It is asserted only,
    that the act of self-consciousness is for us the
    source and principle of all our possible know-
    ledge. Whether abstracted from us there exists
    any thing higher and beyond this primary self-
    knowing, which is for us the form of all our
    knowing, must be decided by the result.

     
     

    That the self-consciousness is the fixt point,
    to which for us all is morticed and annexed,
    needs no further proof. But that the self-
    consciousness may be the modification of a
    higher form of being, perhaps of a higher con-
    sciousness, and this again of a yet higher, and
    so on in an infinite regressus; in short, that
    self-consciousness may be itself something ex-
    plicable into something, which must lie beyond
    the possibility of our knowledge, because the
    whole synthesis of our intelligence is first formed
    in and through the self-consciousness, does not
    at all concern us as transcendental philoso-
    phers. For to us the self-consciousness is not
    a kind of being, but a kind of knowing, and
    that too the highest and farthest that exists for
    us. It may however be shown, and has in part
    already been shown in pages 115-116, that even
    when the Objective is assumed as the first, we
    yet can never pass beyond the principle of self-
    consciousness. Should we attempt it, we must
    be driven back from ground to ground, each of
    which would cease to be a Ground the moment
    we pressed on it. We must be whirl’d down
    the gulph of an infinite series. But this would
    make our reason baffle the end and purpose of
    all reason, namely, unity and system. Or we
    must break off the series arbitrarily, and affirm
    an absolute something that is in and of itself at
    once cause and effect (causa sui) subject and
    object, or rather the absolute identity of both.
    But as this is inconceivable, except in a self-
    sciousness, it follows, that even as natural phi-
    losophers we must arrive at the same principle
    from which as transcendental philosophers we
    set out; that is, in a self-consciousness in
    which the principium essendi does not stand to
    the principium cognoscendi in the relation of
    cause to effect, but both the one and the other
    are co-inherent and identical. Thus the true
    system of natural philosophy places the sole
    reality of things in an ABSOLUTE, which is at
    once causa sui et effectus,

     
    pater autopator, Uios
    eautou—

     
    in the absolute identity of subject and
    object, which it calls nature, and which in its
    highest power is nothing else than self-conscious
    will or intelligence. In this sense the position
    of Malbranche, that we see all things in God, is
    a strict philosophical truth; and equally true
    is the assertion of Hobbes, of Hartley, and of
    their masters in ancient Greece, that all real
    knowledge supposes a prior sensation. For
    sensation itself is but vision nascent, not the
    cause of intelligence, but intelligence itself re-
    vealed as an earlier power in the process of
    self-construction.

     
    Makar, iladi moi!
    Pater, iladi moi
    Ei para kosmon,
    Ei para moiran
    Ton son edigon.

     
     
     

    Bearing then this in mind, that intelligence is
    a self-developement, not a quality supervening
    to a substance, we may abstract from all degree,
    and for the purpose of philosophic construc-
    tion reduce it to kind, under the idea of an in-
    destructible power with two opposite and coun-
    teracting forces, which, by a metaphor borrowed
    from astronomy, we may call the centrifugal and
    centripetal forces. The intelligence in the one
    tends to objectize itself, and in the other to
    know itself in the object. It will be hereafter
    my business to construct by a series of intui-
    tions the progressive schemes, that must follow
    from such a power with such forces, till I ar-
    rive at the fulness of the human intelligence.
    For my present purpose, I assume such a
    power as my principle, in order to deduce
    from it a faculty, the generation, agency, and
    application of which form the contents of the
    ensuing chapter.

     
     

    In a preceding page I have justified the use
    of technical terms in philosophy, whenever they
    tend to preclude confusion of thought, and
    when they assist the memory by the exclusive
    singleness of their meaning more than they
    may, for a short time, bewilder the attention by
    their strangeness. I trust, that I have not ex-
    tended this privilege beyond the grounds on
    which I have claimed it; namely, the conveni-
    ency of the scholastic phrase to distinguish the
    kind from all degrees, or rather to express the
    kind with the abstraction of degree, as for in-
    stance multeity instead of multitude; or se-
    condly, for the sake of correspondence in sound
    in interdependent or antithetical terms, as sub-
    ject and object; or lastly, to avoid the weary-
    ing recurrence of circumlocutions and defini-
    tions. Thus I shall venture to use potence, in
    order to express a specific degree of a power,
    in imitation of the Algebraists. I have even
    hazarded the new verb potenziate with its deri-
    vatives in order to express the combination or
    transfer of powers. It is with new or unusual
    terms, as with privileges in courts of justice or
    legislature; there can be no legitimate privi-
    lege, where there already exists a positive law
    adequate to the purpose; and when there is no
    law in existence, the privilege is to be justified
    by its accordance with the end, or final cause,
    of all law. Unusual and new coined words are
    doubtless an evil; but vagueness, confusion,
    and imperfect conveyance of our thoughts, are
    a far greater. Every system, which is under
    the necessity of using terms not familiarized by
    the metaphysicks in fashion, will be described
    as written in an unintelligible style, and the
    author must expect the charge of having sub-
    stituted learned jargon for clear conception;
    while, according to the creed of our modern
    philosophers, nothing is deemed a clear concep-
    tion, but what is representable by a distinct
    image. Thus the conceivable is reduced within
    the bounds of the picturable. Hinc patet, quî
    fiat ut, cum irrepræsentabile et impossibile vulgo
    ejusdem significatus habeantur, conceptus tam
    Continui, quam infiniti a plurimis rejeciantur,
    quippe quorum, secundum leges cognitionis in-
    tuitivæ, repræsentatio est impossibilis. Quan-
    quam autem harum e non paucis scholis explo-
    sarum notionum, præsertim prioris, causam
    hic non gero, maximi tamen momenti erit mo-
    nuisse: gravissimo illos errore labi, qui tam
    perversâ argumentandi ratione utuntur. Quic-
    quid enim repugnat legibus intellectûs et ra-
    tionis, utique est impossibile; quod autem,
    cum rationis puræ sit objectum, legibus cogni-
    tionis intuitivæ tantummodo non subest, non
    item. Nam hinc dissensus inter facultatem
    sensitivam et intellectualem, (quarem indolem
    mox exponam) nihil indigitat, nisi, quas mens
    ab intellectu accerptas fert ideas abstractus, illas
    in concreto exequi, et in Intuitus commutare
    sæpenumero non posse. Hæc autem reluctantia
    subjectiva mentitur, ut plurimum, repugnantiam
    aliquam objectivam, et incautos facile fallit,
    limitibus, quibus mens humana circumscribitur,
    pro iis habitis, quibus ipsa rerum essentia con-
    tinetur. * -->Kant de Mundi Sensibilis atque In-
    telligibilis forma et principiis, 1770.

     
     

    TRANSLATION

    "Hence it is clear, from what cause many reject the
    notion of the continuous and the infinite. They take,
    namely, the words irrepresentable and impossible in one and
    the same meaning; and, according to the forms of sensuous
    evidence, the notion of the continuous and the infinite is
    doubtless impossible. I am not now pleading the cause of
    these laws, which not a few schools have thought proper to
    explode, especially the former (the law of continuity). But
    it is of the highest importance to admonish the reader, that
    those, who adopt so perverted a mode of reasoning, are un-
    der a grievous error. Whatever opposes the former princi-
    ples of the understanding and the reason is confessedly im-
    possible; but not therefore that, which is therefore not
    amenable to the forms of sensuous evidence, because it is
    exclusively an object of pure intellect. For this non-coinci-
    dence of the sensuous and the intellectual (the nature of
    which I shall presently lay open) proves nothing more, but
    that the mind cannot always adequately represent in the con-
    crete, and transform into distinct images, abstract notions
    derived from the pure intellect. But this contradiction,
    which is in itself merely subjective (i.e. an incapacity in the
    nature of man) too often passes for an incongruity or im-
    possibility in the object (i.e. the notions themselves) and
    seduce the incautious to mistake the limitations of the hu-
    man faculties for the limits of things, as they really exist."
    I take this, occasion to observe, that here and elsewhere
    Kant uses the terms intuition, and the verb active (Intueri,
    germanice Auschauen) for which we have unfortunately no
    correspondent word, exclusively for that which can be re-
    presented in space and time. He therefore consistently and
    rightly denies the possibility of intellectual intuitions. But
    as I see no adequate reason for this exclusive sense of the
    term, I have reverted to its wider signification authorized by
    our elder theologians and metaphysicians, according to whom
    the term comprehends all truths known to us without a medium.

     

    Critics, who are most ready to bring this
    charge of pedantry and unintelligibility, are the
    most apt to overlook the important fact, that
    besides the language of words, there is a lan-
    guage of spirits (sermo interior) and that the
    former is only the vehicle of the latter. Con-
    sequently their assurance, that they do not
    understand the philosophic writer, instead of
    proving any thing against the philosophy, may
    furnish an equal, and (cæteris paribus) even a
    stronger presumption against their own philo-
    sophic talent.

     
     

    Great indeed are the obstacles which an Eng-
    lish metaphysician has to encounter. Amongst
    his most respectable and intelligent judges,
    there will be many who have devoted their
    attention exclusively to the concerns and in-
    terests of human life, and who bring with them
    to the perusal of a philosophic system an ha-
    bitual aversion to all speculations, the utility
    and application of which are not evident and
    immediate. To these I would in the first
    instance merely oppose an authority, which
    they themselves hold venerable, that of Lord
    Bacon: non inutiles scientiæ existimande sunt,
    quarum in se nullus est usus, si ingenia acuant
    et ordinent.

     
     

    There are others, whose prejudices are still
    more formidable, inasmuch as they are grounded
    in their moral feelings and religious principles,
    which had been alarmed and shocked by the
    impious and pernicious tenets defended by
    Hume, Priestley, and the French fatalists or
    necessitarians; some of whom had perverted
    metaphysical reasonings to the denial of the
    mysteries and indeed of all the peculiar doc-
    trines of Christianity; and others even to the
    subversion of all distinction between right and
    wrong. I would request such men to consider
    what an eminent and successful defender of the
    Christian faith has observed, that true meta-
    physics are nothing else but true divinity,
    and that in fact the writers, who have given
    them such just offence, were sophists, who
    had taken advantage of the general neglect into
    which the science of logic has unhappily fallen,
    rather than metaphysicians, a name indeed
    which those writers were the first to explode
    as unmeaning. Secondly, I would remind
    them, that as long as there are men in the
    world to whom the Gnodi seauton is an instinct
    and a command from their own nature, so long
    will there be metaphysicians and metaphysical
    speculations; that false metaphysics can be
    effectually counteracted by true metaphysics
    alone; and that if the reasoning be clear, solid
    and pertinent, the truth deduced can never be
    the less valuable on account of the depth from
    which it may have been drawn.

     
     

    A third class profess themselves friendly to
    metaphysics, and believe that they are themselves
    metaphysicians. They have no objection to
    system or terminology, provided it be the method
    and the nomenclature to which they have been
    familiarized in the writings of Locke, Hume,
    Hartley, Condiliac, or perhaps Dr. Reid, and
    Professor Stewart. To objections from this
    cause, it is a sufficient answer, that one main
    object of my attempt was to demonstrate the
    vagueness or insufficiency of the terms used in
    the metaphysical schools of France and Great
    Britain since the revolution, and that the errors
    which I propose to attack cannot subsist, except
    as they are concealed behind the mask of a
    plausible and indefinite nomenclature.

     
     

    But the worst and widest impediment still
    remains. It is the predominance of a popular
    philosophy, at once the counterfeit and the
    mortal enemy of all true and manly metaphy-
    sical research. It is that corruption, introduced
    by certain immethodical aphorisming Eclectics,
    who, dismissing not only all system, but all
    logical connection, pick and choose whatever
    is most plausible and showy; who select, what-
    ever words can have some semblance of sense
    attached to them without the least expenditure
    of thought, in short whatever may enable men
    to talk of what they do not understand, with a
    careful avoidance of every thing that might
    awaken them to a moment’s suspicion of their
    ignorance. This alas! is an irremediable dis-
    ease, for it brings with it, not so much an in-
    disposition to any particular system, but an
    utter loss of taste and faculty for all system and
    for all philosophy. Like echos that beget each
    other amongst the mountains, the praise or
    blame of such men rolls in vollies long after the
    report from the original blunderbuss. Sequa-
    citas est potius et coitio quam consensus: et
    tamen (quod pessimum est) pusillanimitas ista
    non sine arrogantiâ et fastidio se offert. Novum
    Organum.

     
     

    I shall now proceed to the nature and gene-
    sis of the imagination; but I must first take
    leave to notice, that after a more accurate peru-
    sal of Mr. Wordsworth’s remarks on the imagin-
    ation in his preface to the new edition of his
    poems, I find that my conclusions are not so
    consentient with his, as I confess, I had taken
    for granted. In an article contributed by me
    to Mr. Southey’s Omniana, on the soul and its
    organs of sense, are the following sentences.
    "These (the human faculties) I would arrange
    under the different senses and powers; as the
    eye, the ear, the touch, &c.; the imitative power,
    voluntary and automatic; the imagination, or
    shaping and modifying power; the fancy, or
    the aggregative and associative power; the
    understanding, or the regulative, substantiating
    and realizing power; the speculative reason—
    vis theoretica et scientifica, or the power by
    which we produce, or aim to produce unity,
    necessity, and universality in all our knowledge
    by means of principles * a priori; the will, or
    practical reason; the faculty of choice (Ger-
    manice, Willkühr) and distinct both from the
    moral will and the choice) the sensation of
    volition, which I have found reason to include
    under the head of single and double touch."
    To this, as far as it relates to the subject in
    question, namely the words (the aggregative
    and associative power) Mr. Wordsworth’s "only
    "objection is that the definition is too general.
    "To aggregate and to associate, to evoke and
    "combine, belong as well to the imagination as
    "the fancy." I reply, that if by the power of
    evoking and combining, Mr. W. means the
    same as, and no more than, I meant by the
    aggregative and associative, I continue to deny,
    that it belongs at all to the imagination; and I
    am disposed to conjecture, that he has mis-

     
     

    This phrase, a priori, is in common most grossly mis-
    understood, and an absurdity burthened on it, which it does
    not deserve! By knowledge, a priori, we do not mean, that
    we can know any thing previously to experience, which
    would be a contradiction in terms; but that having once
    known it by occasion of experience (i.e. something acting
    upon us from without) we then know, that it must have pre-
    existed, or the experience itself would have been impossible.
    By experience only I know, that I have eyes; but then my
    reason convinces me, that I must have had eyes in order to
    the experience.
    taken the co-presence of fancy with imagination
    for the operation of the latter singly. A man
    may work with two very different tools at the
    same moment; each has its share in the work,
    but the work effected by each is distinct and
    different. But it will probably appear in the
    next Chapter, that deeming it necessary to go
    back much further than Mr. Wordsworth’s
    subject required or permitted, I have attached
    a meaning to both fancy and imagination, which
    he had not in view, at least while he was
    writing that preface. He will judge. Would to
    heaven, I might meet with many such readers.
    I will conclude with the words of Bishop
    Jeremy Taylor: he to whom all things are one,
    who draweth all things to one, and seeth all
    things in one, may enjoy true peace and rest of
    spirit. (J. Taylor’s VIA PACIS.)

     
     
     
     

    CHAPTER XIII.

     

    On the imagination, or esemplastic power.

     

    O Adam! one Almighty is, from whom
    All things proceed, and up to him return
    If not depraved from good: created all
    Such to perfection, one first nature all
    Indued with various forms, various degrees
    Of substance, and in things that live, of life;
    But more refin’d, more spiritous and pure,
    As nearer to him plac’d, or nearer tending.
    Each in their several active spheres assign’d,
    Till body up to spirit work, in bounds
    Proportion’d to each kind. So from the root
    Springs lighter the green stalk: from thence the leaves
    More airy: last, the bright consummate flower
    Spirits odorous breathes. Flowers and their fruit,
    Man’s nourishment, by gradual scale sublim’d,

    To vital spirits aspire: to animal:

    To intellectual!--give both life and sense,
    Fancy and understanding: whence the soul
    REASON receives. And reason is her being.
    Discursive and intuitive.

     
     

    PAR. LOST, b. v.

     

    "Sane si res corporales nil nisi materiale continuerent, ve-
    "rissime dicerentur in fluxu consistere neque habere
    sustantiale quicquam, quemadmodum et Platonici olim recte agno-
    vêre.—Hinc igitur, præter purè mathematica et phantasiæ
    subjecta, collegi quædam metaphysica solâque mente percep-
    tibilia, esse admittenda: et massæ materiali principium quod-
    dam superius et, ut sic dicam, formale addendum: quando-
    quidem omnes veritates rerum coporearum ex solis axioma-
    tibus logisticis et geometricis, nempe de magno et parvo, toto
    et parte, figurâ et situ, colligi non possint; sed alia de causâ
    et effectu, actioneque et passione, accedere debeant, quibus
    ordinis rerum rationes salventur. Id principium rerum, an
    an vim appellurus, non refert, modó memineri-
    mus, per solam Virium notionem intelligibiliter explicari."
    LEIBNITZ: Op. T.II.P.II.p.53.—T.III.p.321.
    Sebomai Noeron
    Kruphian taxin
    Chorei TI MESON
    Ou katachuden.

     
     

    SYNESII, Hymn III.l.231.

     
     
     

    DES CARTES, speaking as a naturalist, and in
    imitation of Archimedes, said, give me matter
    and motion and I will construct you the uni-
    verse. We must of course understand him to
    have meant; I will render the construction of
    the universe intelligible. In the same sense the
    transcendental philosopher says; grant me a
    nature having two contrary forces, the one of
    which tends to expand infinitely, while the
    other strives to apprehend or find itself in this
    infinity, and I will cause the world of intel-
    ligences with the whole system of their repre-
    sentations to rise up before you. Every other
    science pre-supposes intelligence as already ex-
    isting and complete: the philosopher contem-
    plates it in its growth, and as it were represents
    its history to the mind from its birth to its
    maturity.

     
     

    The venerable Sage of Koenigsberg has
    preceded the march of this master-thought as
    an effective pioneer in his essay on the intro-
    duction of negative quantities into philoso-
    phy, published 1763. In this he has shown,
    that instead of assailing the science of mathe-
    matics by metaphysics, as Berkley did in his
    Analyst, or of sophisticating it, as Wolff did,
    by the vain attempt of deducing the first
    principles of geometry from supposed deeper
    grounds of ontology, it behoved the meta-
    physician rather to examine whether the only
    province of knowledge, which man has suc-
    ceeded in erecting into a pure science, might
    not furnish materials or at least hints for estab-
    lishing and pacifying the unsettled, warring, and
    embroiled domain of philosophy. An imitation
    of the mathematical method had indeed been
    attempted with no better success than attended
    the essay of David to wear the armour of Saul.
    Another use however is possible and of far
    greater promise, namely, the actual application
    of the postions which had so wonderfully en-
    larged the discoveries of geometry, mutatis mu-
    tandis, to philosophical subjects. Kant having
    briefly illustrated the utility of such an attempt
    in the questions of space, motion, and infinitely
    small quantities, as employed by the mathema-
    tician, proceeds to the idea of negative quan-
    tities and the transfer of them to metaphysical
    investigation. Opposites, he well observes, are
    of two kinds, either logical, i. e. such as are
    absolutely incompatible; or real without being
    contradictory. The former he denominates
    Nihil negativum irrepræsentabile, the connexion
    of which produces nonsense. A body in mo-
    tion is something—Aliquid cogitabile; but a
    body, at one and the same time in motion and
    not in motion, is nothing, or at most, air articu-
    lated into nonsense. But a motory force of a
    body in one direction, and an equal force of the
    same body in an oppposite direction is not in-
    compatible, and the result, namely rest, is real
    and representable. For the purposes of ma-
    thematical calculus it is indifferent which force
    we term negative, and which positive, and con-
    sequently we appropriate the latter to that,
    which happens to be the principal object in our
    thoughts. Thus if a man’s capital be ten and
    his debts eight, the subtraction will be the same,
    whether we call the capital negative debt, or
    the debt negative capital. But in as much as
    the latter stands practically in reference to the
    former, we of course represent the sum as
    10--8. It is equally clear that two equal forces
    acting in opposite directions, both being finite
    and each distinguished from the other by its
    direction only, must neutralize or reduce each
    other to inaction. Now the transcendental
    philosophy demands; first, that two forces
    should be conceived which counteract each
    other by their essential nature; not only not in
    consequence of the accidental direction of each,
    but as prior to all direction, nay, as the primary
    forces from which the conditions of all possible
    directions are derivative and deducible: se-
    condly, that these forces should be assumed
    to be both alike infinite, both alike indestructi-
    ble. The problem will then be to discover the
    result or product of two such forces, as distin-
    guished from the result of those forces which
    are finite, and derive their difference solely from
    the circumstance of their direction. When we
    have formed a scheme or outline of these two
    different kinds of force, and of their different
    results by the process of discursive reasoning,
    it will then remain for us to elevate the Thesis
    from notional to actual, by contemplating
    intuitively this one power with its two inherent
    indestructible yet counteracting forces, and the
    results or generations to which their inter-pene-
    tration gives existence, in the living principle
    and in the process of our own self-consciousness.
    By what instrument this is possible the solu-
    tion itself will discover, at the same time that it
    will reveal, to and for whom it is possible. Non
    omnia possumes omnes. There is a philoso-
    phic, no less than a poetic genius, which is dif-
    ferenced from the highest perfection of talent,
    not by degree but by kind.

     
     

    The counteraction then of the two assumed
    forces does not depend on their meeting from
    opposite directions; the power which acts in
    them is indestructible; it is therefore inex-
    haustibly re-ebullient; and as something must
    be the result of these two forces, both alike
    infinite, and both alike indestructible; and as
    rest or neutralization cannot be this result; no
    other conception is possible, but that the pro-
    duct must be a tertium aliquid, or finite gene-
    ration. Consequently this conception is ne-
    cessary. Now this tertium aliquid can be no
    other than an inter-penetration of the counter-
    acting powers, partaking of both.

     
     

    * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     
     

    Thus far had the work been transcribed for
    the press, when I received the following letter
    from a friend, whose practical judgement I have
    had ample reason to estimate and revere, and
    whose taste and sensibility preclude all the
    excuses which my self-love might possibly have
    prompted me to set up in plea against the deci-
    sion of advisers of equal good sense, but with
    less tact and feeling.

    "Dear C.

    "You ask my opinion concerning your
    Chapter on the Imagination, both as to the im-
    pressions it made on myself, and as to those which
    I think it will make on the PUBLIC, i. e. that part
    of the public, who from the title of the work and
    from its forming a sort of introduction to a vo-
    lume of poems, are likely to constitute the great
    majority of your readers.

     
    "As to myself, and stating in the first place the
    "effect on my understanding, your opinions and
    "method of argument were not only so new to me,
    "but so directly the reverse of all I had ever been
    "accustomed to consider as truth, that even if I
    "had comprehended your premises sufficiently to
    "have admitted them, and had seen the necessity of
    "your conclusions, I should still have been in that
    "state of mind, which in your note, p. 75, 76, you
    "have so ingeniously evolved, as the antithesis to
    "that in which a man is, when he makes a bull. In
    "your own words, I should have felt as if I had
    "been standing on my head.

     
    "The effect on my feelings, on the other hand,
    "I cannot better represent, than by supposing my-
    self to have known only our light airy modern
    chapels of ease, and then for the first time to have
    been placed, and left alone, in one of our largest
    Gothic cathedrals in a gusty moonlight night of
    autumn. "Now in glimmer, and now in gloom;"
    often in palpable darkness not without a chilly
    sensation of terror; then suddenly emerging into
    broad yet visionary lights with coloured shadows,
    of fantastic shapes yet all decked with holy insig-
    nia and mystic symbols; and ever and anon com-
    ing out full upon pictures and stone-work images
    of great men, with whose names I was familiar,
    but which looked upon me with countenances and
    an expression, the most dissimilar to all I had
    been in the habit of connecting with those names.
    Those whom I had been taught to venerate as
    almost super-human in magnitude of intellect,
    I found perched in little fret-work niches, as
    grotesque dwarfs; while the grotesques, in my
    hitherto belief, stood guarding the high altar
    with all the characters of Apotheosis. In short,
    what I had supposed substances were thinned
    away into shadows, while every where shadows
    were deepened into substances:

    If substance may be call’d what shadow seem’d,
    For each seem’d either!
    MILTON.

     
     

    "Yet after all, I could not but repeat the lines
    which you had quoted from a MS. poem of your
    own in the FRIEND, and applied to a work of
    Mr. Wordsworth’s though with a few of the
    words altered:

    "—An orphic tale indeed,
    "A tale obscure of high and passionate thoughts
    "To a strange music chaunted!"

     
     

    "Be assured, however, that I look forward
    anxiously to your great book on the CONSTRUC-
    TIVE PHILOSOPHY, which you have promised and
    announced: and that I will do my best to under-
    stand it. Only I will not promise to descend
    into the dark cave of Trophonius with you, there
    to rub my own eyes, in order to make the sparks
    and figured flashes, which I am required to see.

     
     

    "So much for myself. But as for the PUBLIC,
    I do not hesitate a moment in advising and urging
    you to withdraw the Chapter from the present
    work, and to reserve it for your announced trea-
    tises on the Logos or communicative intellect in
    Man and Deity. First, because imperfectly as
    I understand the present Chapter, I see clearly
    that you have done too much, and yet not enough.
    You have been obliged to omit so many links,
    from the necessity of compression, that which re-
    mains, looks (if I may recur to my former illus-
    tration) like the fragments of the winding steps
    of an old ruined tower. Secondly, a still stronger
    argument (at least one that I am sure will be
    more forcible with you) is, that your readers will
    have both right and reason to complain of you.
    This Chapter, which cannot, when it is printed,
    amount to so little as an hundred pages, will of
    necessity greatly increase the expense of the work;
    and every reader who, like myself, is neither pre-
    pared or perhaps calculated for the study of so
    abstruse a subject so abstrusely treated, will, as I
    have before hinted, be almost entitled to accuse
    you of a sort of imposition on him. For who,
    he might truly observe, could from your title-
    page, viz. " My Literary Life and Opinions,"
    published too as introductory to a volume of mis-
    cellaneous poems, have anticipated, or even con-
    jectured, a long treatise on ideal Realism, which
    holds the same relation in abstruseness to Ploti-
    nus, as Plotinus does to Plato. It will be well,
    if already you have not too much of metaphysical
    disquisition in your work, though as the larger
    part of the disquisition is historical, it will doubt-
    less be both interesting and instructive to many to
    whose unprepared minds your speculations on
    the esemplastic power would be utterly unintelli-
    gible. Be assured, if you do publish this Chap-
    ter in the present work, you will be reminded of
    Bishop Berkley’s Siris, announced as an Essay
    on Tar-water, which beginning with Tar ends
    with the Trinity, the omne scibile forming the
    interspace. I say in the present work. In that
    greater work to which you have devoted so many
    years, and study so intense and various, it will be
    in its proper place. Your prospectus will have
    described and announced both its contents and
    their nature; and if any persons purchase it, who
    feel no interest in the subjects of which it treats,
    they will have themselves only to blame.

     
     

    "I could add to these arguments one derived
    from pecuniary motives, and particularly from
    the probable effects on the sale of your present
    publication; but they would weigh little with
    you compared with the preceding. Besides, I
    have long observed, that arguments drawn from
    your own personal interests more often act on you
    as narcotics than as stimulants, and that in money
    concerns you have some small portion of pig-
    nature in your moral idiosyncracy, and like these
    amiable creatures, must occasionally be pulled
    backward from the boat in order to make you
    enter it. All success attend you, for if hard
    thinking and hard reading are merits, you have
    deserved it.

     

    Your affectionate, &c."

     

    In consequence of this very judicious letter,
    which produced complete conviction on my
    mind, I shall content myself for the present with
    stating the main result of the Chapter, which I
    have reserved for that future publication, a de-
    tailed prospectus of which the reader will find
    at the close of the second volume.

     
     

    The IMAGINATION then I consider either as
    primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGIN-
    ATION I hold to be the living Power and prime
    Agent of all human Perception, and as a
    repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of
    creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary
    I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing
    with the conscious will, yet still as identical
    with the primary in the kind of its agency,
    and differing only in degree, and in the mode
    of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissi-
    pates, in order to re-create; or where this pro-
    cess is rendered impossible, yet still at all events
    it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is es-
    sentially vital, even as all objects (as objects)
    are essentially fixed and dead.

     
     

    FANCY, on the contrary, has no other coun-
    ters to play with, but fixities and definites. The
    Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Me-
    mory emancipated from the order of time and
    space; and blended with, and modified by that
    empirical phenomenon of the will, which we ex-
    press by the word CHOICE. But equally with
    the ordinary memory it must receive all its ma-
    terials ready made from the law of association.

     
     

    Whatever more than this, I shall think it fit
    to declare concerning the powers and privileges
    of the imagination in the present work, will be
    found in the critical essay on the uses of the
    Supernatural in poetry and the principles that
    regulate its introduction: which the reader
    will find prefixed to the poem of The Ancient
    Mariner.

     
     

    END OF VOLUME FIRST.

    J. M. Gutch, Printer, Bristol.