Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

99

"Every thing that I have heard or read of this sovereign has contributed to the impression on my mind, that he is a good and a wise man, and worthy to be the king of a virtuous people, the purest specimen of the Gothic race."—Church and State, p. 125. n.—ED.

100

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

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

101

Polyol VII.

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

——'my honest rhymesNor care for critics, nor regard the times.'

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

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

102

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

103

Verse 4.

104

Mark, ch. iii. ver. 35.

105

I have lost the name which Mr. Coleridge mentioned.—ED.

106

See Michelet's Principes de la Philosophie de l'Histoire, &c. Paris, 1827. An admirable analysis of Vico.—ED.

107

Tractatus Politici, c. vi.

108

Spinosa died in 1677; Fox in 1681.—ED.

109

In his "Dogmas of the Constitution, four Lectures on the Theory and Practice of the Constitution, delivered at the King's College, London," 1832. Lecture I. There was a stiffness, and an occasional uncouthness in Professor Park's style; but his two works, the one just mentioned, and his "Contre-Projet to the Humphreysian Code," are full of original views and vigorous reasonings. To those who wished to see the profession of the law assume a more scientific character than for the most part it has hitherto done in England, the early death of John James Park was a very great loss.—ED.

110

Mr. Coleridge was fond of pressing this proposed publication:—"I can scarcely conceive," he says in the Friend, "a more delightful volume than might be made from Luther's letters, especially those that were written from the Warteburg, if they were translated in the simple, sinewy, idiomatic, hearty mother tongue of the original. A difficult task I admit, and scarcely possible for any man, however great his talents in other respects, whose favourite reading has not lain among the English writers from Edward the Sixth to Charles the First." Vol. i. p. 235. n.– ED.

111

This celebrated man was a Fleming, and a member of the Augustinian society of St. Victor. He died at Paris in 1142, aged forty-four. His age considered, it is sufficient praise for him that Protestants and Romanists both claim him for their own on the subject of transubstantiation.—ED.

112

Perhaps it left letter-writing also. Even if the Platonic epistles are taken as genuine, which Mr. Coleridge, to my surprise, was inclined to believe, they can hardly interfere, I think, with the uniqueness of the truly incomparable collections from the correspondence of Cicero and Pliny.—ED.

113

See "eventuate," in Mr. Washington Irving's "Tour On the Prairies," passim.—ED.

114

Diatribe de Aristobulo Judaeo.—ED.

115

"The true origin of human events is so little susceptible of that kind of evidence which can compel our belief; so many are the disturbing forces which, in every cycle or ellipse of changes, modify the motion given by the first projection; and every age has, or imagines it has, its own circumstances, which render past experience no longer applicable to the present case; that there will never be wanting answers, and explanations, and specious flatteries of hope, to persuade and perplex its government, that the history of the past is inapplicable to their case. And no wonder, if we read history for the facts, instead of reading it for the sake of the general principles, which are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree to its leaves: and no wonder if history so read should find a dangerous rival in novels; nay, if the latter should be preferred to the former, on the score even of probability. I well remember that, when the examples of former Jacobins, as Julius Caesar, Cromwell, and the like, were adduced in France and England, at the commencement of the French consulate, it was ridiculed as pedantry and pedants' ignorance, to fear a repetition of usurpation and military despotism at the close of the enlightened eighteenth century! Even so, in the very dawn of the late tempestuous day, when the revolutions of Corcyra, the proscriptions of the reformers Marius, Cæsar, &c., and the direful effects of the levelling tenets in the peasants' war in Germany (differenced from the tenets of the first French constitution only by the mode of wording them, the figures of speech being borrowed in the one instance from theology, and in the other from modern metaphysics), were urged on the convention and its vindicators; the magi of the day, the true citizens of the world, the plusquam perfecti of patriotism, gave us set proofs that similar results were impossible, and that it was an insult to so philosophical an age, to so enlightened a nation, to dare direct the public eye towards them as to lights of warning."—Statesman's Manual, p. 14.

116

Michael Ignatius Schmidt, the author of the History of the Germans. He died in the latter end of the last century.—ED.

117

Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 206. It is not too much to say of this beautiful poem, and yet it is difficult to say more, that it is at once worthy of the poet, his subject, and his object:—

"An Orphic song indeed,A song divine of high and passionate thoughts,To their own music chanted."—ED.

118

"Forgive me, Freedom! O forgive those dreams!I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament,From bleak Helvetia's icy cavern sent—I hear thy groans upon her blood-stain'd streams!Heroes, that for your peaceful country perish'd,And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain snowsWith bleeding wounds; forgive me, that I cherish'dOne thought that ever blest your cruel foes!To scatter rage and traitorous guilt,Where Peace her jealous home had built;A patriot race to disinheritOf all that made her stormy wilds so dear:And with inexpiable spiritTo taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer—O France, that mockest Heaven, adult'rous, blind,And patriot only in pernicious toils,Are these thy boasts, champion of human-kind?To mix with kings in the low lust of sway,Yell in the hunt and share the murderous prey—To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoilsFrom freemen torn—to tempt and to betray?—The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain,Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad gameThey burst their manacles, and wear the nameOf freedom, graven on a heavier chain!O Liberty! with profitless endeavourHave I pursued thee many a weary hour;But thou nor swell'st the victor's train, nor everDidst breathe thy soul in forms of human power.Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee,(Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee,)Alike from priestcraft's harpy minions,And factious blasphemy's obscener slaves,Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions,The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves!"France, an Ode. Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 130.

119

A soldier of the old cavalier stamp, to whom the King was the symbol of the majesty, as the Church was of the life, of the nation, and who would most assuredly have taken arms for one or the other against all the Houses of Commons or committees of public safety in the world.—ED.

120

Mr. Coleridge used very frequently to insist upon the distinction between belief and faith. He once told me, with very great earnestness, that if he were that moment convinced—a conviction, the possibility of which, indeed, he could not realize to himself—that the New Testament was a forgery from beginning to end—wide as the desolation in his moral feelings would be, he should not abate one jot of his faith in God's power and mercy through some manifestation of his being towards man, either in time past or future, or in the hidden depths where time and space are not. This was, I believe, no more than a vivid expression of what he always maintained, that no man had attained to a full faith who did not recognize in the Scriptures a correspondency to his own nature, or see that his own powers of reason, will, and understanding were preconfigured to the reception of the Christian doctrines and promises.—ED.

121

"He was a man of rarest qualities,Who to this barbarous region had confinedA spirit with the learned and the wiseWorthy to take its place, and from mankindReceive their homage, to the immortal mindPaid in its just inheritance of fame.But he to humbler thoughts his heart inclined:From Gratz amid the Styrian hills he came,And Dobrizhofter was the good man's honour'd name."It was his evil fortune to beholdThe labours of his painful life destroyed;His flock which he had brought within the foldDispers'd; the work of ages render'd void,And all of good that Paraguay enjoy'dBy blind and suicidal power o'erthrown.So he the years of his old age employ'd,A faithful chronicler, in handing downNames which he lov'd, and things well worthy to be known."And thus when exiled from the dear-loved scene,In proud Vienna he beguiled the painOf sad remembrance: and the empress-queen,That great Teresa, she did not disdainIn gracious mood sometimes to entertainDiscourse with him both pleasurable and sage;And sure a willing ear she well might deignTo one whose tales may equally engageThe wondering mind of youth, the thoughtful heart of age."But of his native speech, because well-nighDisuse in him forgetfulness had wrought,In Latin he composed his history;A garrulous, but a lively tale, and fraughtWith matter of delight, and food for thought.And if he could in Merlin's glass have seenBy whom his tomes to speak our tongue were taught,The old man would have felt as pleased, I ween,As when he won the ear of that great empress-queen."Little he deem'd, when with his Indian bandHe through the wilds set forth upon his way,A poet then unborn, and in a landWhich had proscribed his order, should one dayTake up from thence his moralizing lay,And, shape a song that, with no fiction drest,Should to his worth its grateful tribute pay,And sinking deep in many an English breast,Foster that faith divine that keeps the heart at rest." Southey's Tale of Paraguay, canto iii. st. 16.

122

"An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay, From the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer, eighteen Years a Missionary in that Country."—Vol. ii. p. 176.

123

Par. Lost, book vii. ver. 463.

124

——"so much the moreHis wonder was to find unwaken'd EveWith tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek,As through unquiet rest: he on his sideLeaning, half raised, with looks of cordial loveHung over her enamour'd, and beheldBeauty, which, whether waking or asleep,Shot forth peculiar graces; then, with voiceMild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,Her hand soft touching, whisper'd thus: Awake,My fairest," &c.Book v. ver. 8.

125

"But who is this, what thing of sea or land?Female of sex it seems,That so bedeck'd, ornate, and gay,Comes this way sailingLike a stately shipOf Tarsus, bound for the islesOf Javan or Gadire,With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,Sails fill'd, and streamers waving,Courted by all the winds that hold them play;An amber-scent of odorous perfumeHer harbinger, a damsel train behind!"

126

I used to fancy Mr. Coleridge paulo iniquior Virgilio, and told him so; to which he replied, that, like all Eton men, I swore per Maronem. This was far enough from being the case; but I acknowledge that Mr. C.'s apparent indifference to the tenderness and dignity of Virgil excited my surprise.—ED.

127

Acts xxviii. 2. and 4. Mr. C. seemed to think that the Greek words had reference to something more than the fact of the islanders not speaking Latin or Greek; the classical meaning of [Greek: Barbaroi].-ED.

128

Upwards of a century before the reign of Nero, Cicero speaks at considerable length of our Malta in one of the Verrine orations. See Act. ii. lib. iv. c. 46. "Insula est Melita, judices," &c. There was a town, and Verres had established in it a manufactory of the fine cloth or cotton stuffs, the Melitensis vestis, for which the island is uniformly celebrated:—

"Fertilis est Melite sterili vicina CocyraeInsula, quam Libyci verberat unda freti."

Ovid. Fast. iii. 567.

And Silius Italicus has—

——"telaque superba Lanigera Melite."

Punic. xiv. 251.

Yet it may have been cotton after all—the present product of Malta. Cicero describes an ancient temple of Juno situated on a promontory near the town, so famous and revered, that, even in the time of Masinissa, at least 150 years B.C., that prince had religiously restored some relics which his admiral had taken from it. The plunder of this very temple is an article of accusation against Verres; and a deputation of Maltese (legati Melitenses) came to Rome to establish the charge. These are all the facts, I think, which can be gathered from Cicero; because I consider his expression of nudatae urbes, in the working up of this article, a piece of rhetoric. Strabo merely marks the position of Melita, and says that the lap-dogs called [Greek: kunidia Melitaia] were sent from this island, though some writers attribute them to the other Melite in the Adriatic, (lib. vi.) Diodorus, however, a Sicilian himself by birth, gives the following remarkable testimony as to the state of the island in his time, which, it will be remembered, was considerably before the date of St. Paul's shipwreck. "There are three islands to the south of Sicily, each of which has a city or town ([Greek: polin]), and harbours fitted for the safe reception of ships. The first of these is Melite, distant about 800 stadia from Syracuse, and possessing several harbours of surpassing excellence. Its inhabitants are rich and luxurious ([Greek: tous katoikountas tais ousiais eudaimonas]). There are artizans of every kind ([Greek: pantodapous tais exgasias]); the best are those who weave cloth of a singular fineness and softness. The houses are worthy of admiration for their superb adornment with eaves and brilliant white-washing ([Greek: oikias axiologous kai kateskeuasmenas philotimos geissois kai koniamasi pezittotezon])."– Lib. v. c. 12. Mela (ii. c. 7.) and Pliny (iii. 14.) simply mark the position.—ED.

129

The passage which I have cited from Diodorus shows that the origin was much earlier.—ED.

130

Verschwendung, I suppose.—ED.

131

In a marginal scrap Mr. C. wrote:—"What are the essential doctrines of our religion, if not sin and original sin, as the necessitating occasion, and the redemption of sinners by the Incarnate Word as the substance of the Christian dispensation? And can these be intelligently believed without knowledge and steadfast meditation. By the unlearned, they may be worthily received, but not by the unthinking and self-ignorant, Christian."—ED.

132

"Whatever may be thought of the settlement that followed the battle of the Boyne and the extinction of the war in Ireland, yet when this had been made and submitted to, it would have been the far wiser policy, I doubt not, to have provided for the safety of the constitution by improving the quality of the elective franchise, leaving the eligibility open, or like the former, limited only by considerations of property. Still, however, the scheme of exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. The ink was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of the Popish parliament. The crimes of the man were generalized into attributes of his faith; and the Irish catholics collectively were held accomplices in the perfidy and baseness of the king. Alas! his immediate adherents had afforded too great colour to the charge. The Irish massacre was in the mouth of every Protestant, not as an event to be remembered, but as a thing of recent expectation, fear still blending with the sense of deliverance. At no time, therefore, could the disqualifying system have been enforced with so little reclamation of the conquered party, or with so little outrage on the general feeling of the country. There was no time, when it was so capable of being indirectly useful as a sedative in order to the application of the remedies directly indicated, or as a counter-power reducing to inactivity whatever disturbing forces might have interfered with their operation. And had this use been made of these exclusive laws, and had they been enforced as the precursors and negative conditions,—but, above all, as bonâ fide accompaniments, of a process of emancipation, properly and worthily so named, the code would at this day have been remembered in Ireland only as when, recalling a dangerous fever of our boyhood, we think of the nauseous drugs and drenching-horn, and congratulate ourselves that our doctors now-a-days know how to manage these things less coarsely. But this angry code was neglected as an opportunity, and mistaken for a substitute: et hinc illae* lacrymae!"—Church and State, p. 195.

133

"The poem was first published in 1790, and forms the commencement of the seventh volume of Goethe's Schriften, Wien und Leipzig, bey J. Stahel and G. J. Goschen, 1790. This edition is now before me. The poem entitled, Faust, ein Fragment (not Doktor Faust, ein Trauerspiel, as Döring says), and contains no prologue or dedication of any sort. It commences with the scene in Faust's study, antè, p. 17., and is continued, as now, down to the passage ending, antè, p. 26. line 5. In the original, the line—

"Und froh ist, wenn er Regenwürmer findet,"

ends the scene.

The next scene is one between Faust and Mephistopheles, and begins thus:—

"Und was der ganzen Menschheit zugetheilt ist,"

i. e. with the passage (antè, p. 70.) beginning, "I will enjoy, in my own heart's core, all that is parcelled out among mankind," &c. All that intervenes, in later editions, is wanting. It is thenceforth continued, as now, to the end of the cathedral scene (antè, p. (170)), except that the whole scene, in which Valentine is killed, is wanting. Thus Margaret's prayer to the Virgin and the cathedral scene come together, and form the conclusion of the work. According to Düring's Verzeichniss, there was no new edition of Faust until 1807. According to Dr. Sieglitz, the first part of Faust first appeared, in its present shape, in the collected edition of Goethe's works, which was published in 1808.—Hayward's Translation of Faust, second edition, note, p. 215.

134

I believe Mr. Dyce could edit Beaumont and Fletcher as well as any man of the present or last generation; but the truth is, the limited sale of the late editions of Ben Jonson, Shirley, &c., has damped the spirit of enterprise amongst the respectable publishers. Still I marvel that some cheap reprint of B. and F. is not undertaken.—ED.

135

"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 themselves. In the inward assurance of permanent fame, they seem to have been either indifferent or resigned, with regard to immediate reputation."

136

"That the maxims of a pure morality, and those sublime truths of the divine unity and attributes, which a Plato found it hard to learn, and 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; this 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 he who should confine the efficiency of an established church to these, 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 excite, yet sufficiently near to encourage and facilitate imitation; this unobtrusive, continuous agency of a Protestant church establishment, 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, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour and 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 cottage. 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 clamours of the farmers against church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergyman would inevitably at the next lease be paid to the landholder; 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."—Church and State, p. 90.