Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

140

By Hieronimo Mr. Coleridge meant The Spanish Tragedy, and not the previous play, which is usually called The First Part of Jeronimo. The Spanish Tragedy is, upon the authority of Heywood, attributed to Kyd. It is supposed that Ben Jonson originally performed the part of Hieronimo, and hence it has been surmised that certain passages and whole scenes connected with that character, and not found in some of the editions of the play, are, in fact, Ben Jonson's own writing. Some of these supposed interpolations are amongst the best things in the Spanish Tragedy; the style is singularly unlike Jonson's, whilst there are turns and particular images which do certainly seem to have been imitated by or from Shakspeare. Mr. Lamb at one time gave them to Webster. Take this, passage, in the fourth act:—

"HIERON. What make you with your torches in the dark?PEDRO. You bid us light them, and attend you here.HIERON. No! you are deceived; not I; you are deceived.Was I so mad to bid light torches now?Light me your torches at the mid of noon,When as the sun-god rides in all his glory;Light me your torches then.PEDRO. Then we burn day-light.HIERON. Let it be burnt; Night is a murd'rous slut,That would not have her treasons to be seen;And yonder pale-faced Hecate there, the moon,Doth give consent to that is done in darkness;And all those stars that gaze upon her faceAre aglets on her sleeve, pins on her train;And those that should be powerful and divine,Do sleep in darkness when they most should shine.PEDRO. Provoke them not, fair sir, with tempting words.The heavens are gracious, and your miseries and sorrowMake you speak you know not whatHIERON. Villain! thou liest, and thou dost noughtBut tell me I am mad: thou liest, I am not mad;I know thee to be Pedro, and he Jaques;I'll prove it thee; and were I mad, how could I?Where was she the same night, when my Horatio was murder'd!She should have shone then; search thou the book:Had the moon shone in my boy's face, there was a kind of grace,That I know—nay, I do know, had the murderer seen him,His weapon would have fallen, and cut the earth,Had he been framed of nought but blood and death," &c.

Again, in the fifth act:—

"HIERON. But are you sure that they are dead?CASTILE. Ay, slain, too sure.HIERON. What, and yours too?VICEROY. Ay, all are dead; not one of them survive.HIBRON. Nay, then I care not—come, we shall be friends;Let us lay our heads together.See, here's a goodly noose will hold them all.VICEROY. O damned devil! how secure he is!

HIERON. Secure! why dost thou wonder at it? I tell thee, Viceroy, this day I've seen Revenge, d in that sight am grown a prouder monarch Than ever sate under the crown of Spain. Had I as many lives at there be stars,, As many heavens to go to as those lives, I'd give them all, ay, and my soul to boot, But I would see thee ride in this red pool. Methinks, since I grew inward with revenge, I cannot look with scorn enough on death.

KING. What! dost thou mock us, slave? Bring tortures forth.HIERON. Do, do, do; and meantime I'll torture you.You had a son as I take it, and your sonShould have been married to your daughter: ha! was it not so?You had a son too, he was my liege's nephew.He was proud and politic—had he lived,He might have come to wear the crown of Spain:I think 't was so—'t was I that killed him;Look you—this same hand was it that stabb'dHis heart—do you see this hand?For one Horatio, if you ever knew him—A youth, one that they hang'd up in his father's garden—One that did force your valiant son to yield," &c.—ED.

141

"In Shakspeare's Poems the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other. At length, in the drama, they were reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other. Or like two rapid streams, that, at their first meeting within narrow and rocky banks, mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly, and in tumult; but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores, blend, and dilate, and flow on in one current, and with one voice."—Biog. Lit. vol. ii. p. 21.

142

Mr. Coleridge, of course, alluded to Biron and Rosaline; and there are other obvious prolusions, as the scene of the masque with the courtiers, compared with the play in A Midsummer Night's Dream.—ED.

143

See his Introduction to Massinger, vol.i. p. 79., in which, amongst other most extraordinary assertions, Mr. Gifford pronounces that rhythmical modulation is not one of Shakspeare's merits!—ED.

144

This is backing Vico against Spinosa. It must, however, be acknowledged that at present the prophet of democracy has a good right to be considered the favourite.—ED.

145

I have preserved this passage, conscious, the while, how liable it is to be misunderstood, or at least not understood. The readers of Mr. Coleridge's works generally, or of his "Church and State" in particular, will have no difficulty in entering into his meaning; namely, that no investigation in the non-mathematical sciences can be carried on in a way deserving to be called philosophical, unless the investigator have in himself a mental initiative, or, what comes to the same thing, unless he set out with an intuition of the ultimate aim or idea of the science or aggregation of facts to be explained or interpreted. The analysis of the Platonic and Baconian methods in "The Friend," to which I have before referred, and the "Church and State," exhibit respectively a splendid vindication and example of Mr. Coleridge's mode of reasoning on this subject.—ED.

146

They were both born within twelve months of each other, I believe; but Luther's birth was in November, 1484, and that of Rabelais is generally placed at the end of the year preceding.—ED.

147

John Scotus, or Erigena, was born, according to different authors, in Wales, Scotland, or Ireland; but I do not find any account making him an Englishman of Saxon blood. His death is uncertainly placed in the beginning of the ninth century. He lived in well-known intimacy with Charles the Bald, of France, who died about A. D. 874. He resolutely resisted the doctrine of transubstantiation, and was publicly accused of heresy on that account. But the king of France protected him—ED.

148

On his impeachment with the other four members, 1642. See the "Letter to John Murray, Esq. touching Lord Nugent," 1833. It is extraordinary that Lord N. should not see the plain distinction taken by Hampden, between not obeying an unlawful command, and rebelling against the King because of it. He approves the one, and condemns the other. His words are, "to yield obedience to the commands of a King, if against the true religion, against the ancient and fundamental laws of the land, is another sign of an ill subject:"—"To resist the lawful power of the King; to raise insurrection against the King; admit him adverse in his religion; to conspire against his sacred person, or any ways to rebel, though commanding things against our consciences in exercising religion, or against the rights and privileges of the subject, is an absolute sign of the disaffected and traitorous subject."—ED.

149

On Friday, the 26th of April, 1833, Sir William Ingilby moved and carried a resolution for reducing the duty on malt from 28s. 8d. to l0s. per quarter. One hundred and sixty-two members voted with him. On Tuesday following, the 30th of April, seventy-six members only voted against the rescission of the same resolution.—ED.

150

"Charles Lamb ought really not to abuse Scotland in the pleasant way he so often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield; for Scotland loves Charles Lamb; but he is wayward and wilful in his wisdom, and conceits that many a Cockney is a better man even than Christopher North. But what will not Christopher forgive to genius and goodness! Even Lamb, bleating libels on his native land. Nay, he learns lessons of humanity even from the mild malice of Elia, and breathes a blessing on him and his household in their bower of rest."

Some of Mr. Coleridge's poems were first published with some of C. Lamb's at Bristol in 1797. The remarkable words on the title-page have been aptly cited in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1835, p. 198.: "Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitiae et similium junctarumque Camcoenarum,—quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas." And even so it came to pass after thirty seven years more had passed over their heads,—ED.

151

I cannot fix upon any passage in this work, to which it can be supposed that Mr. Coleridge alluded, unless it be the speech of Joabin the Jew; but it contains nothing coming up to the meaning in the text. The only approach to it seems to be:—"As for masculine love, they have no touch of it; and yet there are not so faithful and inviolate friendships in the world again as are there; and to speak generally, as I said before, I have not read of any such chastity in any people as theirs."—ED.

152

"William Earl of Pembroke was next, a man of another mould and making, and of another fame and reputation with all men, being the most universally beloved and esteemed of any man of that age." ……."He indulged to himself the pleasures of all kinds, almost in all excesses."—Hist. of the Rebellion, book i. He died in 1630, aged fifty years. The dedication by T. T. (Thomas Thorpe) is to "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr. W. H." and Malone is inclined to think that William Hughes is meant. As to Mr. W. H. being the only begetter of these sonnets, it must be observed, that at least the last twenty-eight are beyond dispute addressed to a woman. I suppose the twentieth sonnet was the particular one conceived by Mr. C. to be a blind; but it seems to me that many others may be so construed, if we set out with a conviction that the real object of the poet was a woman.—ED.

153

Dryden's Ben Jochanan, in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel. He was born in 1649, and died in 1703. He was a clergyman. In 1686, when the army was encamped on Hounslow Heath, he published "A humble and hearty Address to all English Protestants in the present Army." For this he was tried and sentenced to be pilloried in three places, pay a fine, and be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. An attempt was also made to degrade him from his orders, but this failed through an informality. After the Revolution he was preferred.—ED.

154

Mr. Coleridge visited Cambridge upon the occasion of the scientific meeting there in June, 1833.—"My emotions," he said, "at revisiting the university were at first, overwhelming. I could not speak for an hour; yet my feelings were upon the whole very pleasurable, and I have not passed, of late years at least, three days of such great enjoyment and healthful excitement of mind and body. The bed on which I slept—and slept soundly too—was, as near as I can describe it, a couple of sacks full of potatoes tied together. I understand the young men think it hardens them. Truly I lay down at night a man, and arose in the morning a bruise." He told me "that the men were much amused at his saying that the fine old Quaker philosopher Dalton's face was like All Souls' College." The two persons of whom he spoke with the greatest interest were Mr. Faraday and Mr. Thirlwall; saying of the former, "that he seemed to have the true temperament of genius, that carrying-on of the spring and freshness of youthful, nay, boyish feelings, into the matured strength of manhood!" For, as Mr. Coleridge had long before expressed the same thought,—"To find no contradiction 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 sprung forth at the first creative fiat, this 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 novelty with the appearances which everyday 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 talent. 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 kindred feeling concerning them, and that freshness of sensation which is the constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence. 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 Burns's comparison of sensual pleasure

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

Biog. Lit. vol. i, p. 85.—ED.

155

Greek:

Euíppoy, Xége, tmsde chosasTchoy tà chzátista gãs esaulatdn àxgaeta Kolanón'—ch. t. l. v. 668

156

Greek:

"Exos" Exos, ó chat' ômmáttons tázeos póthon eisagog glycheïanPsuchä cháriu oûs èpithtzateúseimae moi totè sèn chachõ phaneiaesmaeô ãrruthmos ëlthois—x.t.l v.527

157

I take it for granted that Mr. Coleridge alluded to the chorus,—

[Greek: Su men, _o patrhis Ilias t_on aporhth_et_on polis ouketi lexei toion El- lan_on nephos amphi se krhuptei, dorhi d_e, dorhi perhsan—k. t. l.] v. 899.

Thou, then, oh, natal Troy! no moreThe city of the unsack'd shalt be,So thick from dark Achaia's shoreThe cloud of war hath covered thee.Ah! not againI tread thy plain—The spear—the spear hath rent thy pride;The flame hath scarr'd thee deep and wide;Thy coronal of towers is shorn,And thou most piteous art—most naked and forlorn!I perish'd at the noon of night!When sleep had seal'd each weary eye;When the dance was o'er,And harps no moreRang out in choral minstrelsy.In the dear bower of delightMy husband slept in joy;His shield and spearSuspended near,Secure he slept: that sailor bandFull sure he deem'd no more should standBeneath the walls of Troy.And I too, by the taper's light,Which in the golden mirror's hazeFlash'd its interminable rays,Bound up the tresses of my hair,That I Love's peaceful sleep might share.I slept; but, hark! that war-shout dread,Which rolling through the city spread;And this the cry,—"When, Sons of Greece,When shall the lingering leaguer cease;When will ye spoil Troy's watch-tower high,And home return?"—I heard the cry,And, starting from the genial bed,Veiled, as a Doric maid, I fled,And knelt, Diana, at thy holy fane,A trembling suppliant—all in vain.

158

They led me to the sounding shore—Heavens! as I passed the crowded way,My bleeding lord before me lay—I saw—I saw—and wept no more,Till, as the homeward breezes boreThe bark returning o'er the sea,My gaze, oh Ilion, turn'd on thee!Then, frantic, to the midnight air,I cursed aloud the adulterous pair:—"They plunge me deep in exile's woe;They lay my country low:Their love—no love! but some dark spell,In vengeance breath'd, by spirit fell.Rise, hoary sea, in awful tide,And whelm that vessel's guilty pride;Nor e'er, in high Mycene's hall,Let Helen boast in peace of mighty Ilion's fall."

The translation was given to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge.—ED.

159

"The amotion or transposition will alter the thought, or the feeling, or at least the tone. They are as pieces of mosaic work, from which you cannot strike the smallest block without making a hole in the picture."– Quarterly Review, No. CIII. p. 7.

160

But Mr. Coleridge took a great distinction between North and the other writers commonly associated with him. In speaking of the Examen and the Life of Lord North, in the Friend, Mr. C. calls them "two of the most interesting biographical works in our language, both for the weight of the matter, and the incuriosa felicitas of the style. The pages are all alive with the genuine idioms of our mother tongue. A fastidious taste, it is true, will find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we now call slang, which not a few of our writers, shortly after the Restoration of Charles the Second, seem to have affected as a mark of loyalty. These instances, however, are but a trifling drawback. They are not sought for, as is too often and too plainly done by L'Estrange, Collyer, Tom Brown, and their imitators. North never goes out of his way, either to seek them, or to avoid them; and, in the main, his language gives us the very nerve, pulse, and sinew of a hearty, healthy, conversational English."—Vol. ii. p. 307.—ED.

161

Burke, I am persuaded, was not so continuous a talker as Coleridge. Madame de Stael told a nephew of the latter, at Coppet, that Mr. C. was a master of monologue, mais qu'il ne savait pas le dialogue. There was a spice of vindictiveness in this, the exact history of which is not worth explaining. And if dialogue must be cut down in its meaning to small talk, I, for one, will admit that Coleridge, amongst his numberless qualifications, possessed it not. But I am sure that he could, when it suited him, converse as well as any one else, and with women he frequently did converse in a very winning and popular style, confining them, however, as well as he could, to the detail of facts or of their spontaneous emotions. In general, it was certainly otherwise. "You must not be surprised," he said to me, "at my talking so long to you—I pass so much of my time in pain and solitude, yet everlastingly thinking, that, when you or any other persons call on me, I can hardly help easing my mind by pouring forth some of the accumulated mass of reflection and feeling, upon an apparently interested recipient." But the principal reason, no doubt, was the habit of his intellect, which was under a law of discoursing upon all subjects with reference to ideas or ultimate ends. You might interrupt him when you pleased, and he was patient of every sort of conversation except mere personality, which he absolutely hated.—ED.

162

This was said, I believe, to the late Sir James Mackintosh.—ED.

163

This passage, and those following, will evidence, what the readers even of this little work must have seen, that Mr. Coleridge had an eye, almost exclusively, for the ideal or universal in painting and music. He knew nothing of the details of handling in the one, or of rules of composition in the other. Yet he was, to the best of my knowledge, an unerring judge of the merits of any serious effort in the fine arts, and detected the leading thought or feeling of the artist, with a decision which used sometimes to astonish me. Every picture which I have looked at in company with him, seems now, to my mind, translated into English. He would sometimes say, after looking for a minute at a picture, generally a modern one, "There's no use in stopping at this; for I see the painter had no idea. It is mere mechanical drawing. Come on; here the artist meant something for the mind." It was just the same with his knowledge of music. His appetite for what he thought good was literally inexhaustible. He told me he could listen to fine music for twelve hours together, and go away refreshed. But he required in music either thought or feeling; mere addresses to the sensual ear he could not away with; hence his utter distaste for Rossini, and his reverence for Beethoven and Mozart—ED.

164

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born about 1529, and died in 1594. I believe he may be considered the founder or reformer of the Italian church music. His masses, motets, and hymns are tolerably well known amongst lovers of the old composers; but Mr. Coleridge used to speak with delight of some of Palestrina's madrigals which he heard at Rome.

Giacomo Carissimi composed about the years 1640—1650. His style has been charged with effeminacy; but Mr. C. thought it very graceful and chaste. Henry Purcell needs no addition in England.—ED.

165

"The thing attempted in Christabel is the most difficult of execution in the whole field of romance—witchery by daylight—and the success is complete."—Quarterly Review, No. CIII. p. 29.

166

"One constant blunder"—I find it so pencilled by Mr. C. on a margin—"of these New-Broomers—these Penny Magazine sages and philanthropists, in reference to our public schools, is to confine their view to what schoolmasters teach the boys, with entire oversight of all that the boys are excited to learn from each other and of themselves—with more geniality even because it is not a part of their compelled school knowledge. An Eton boy's knowledge of the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Missouri, Orellana, &c. will be, generally, found in exact proportion to his knowledge of the Ilissus, Hebrus, Orontes, &c.; inasmuch as modern travels and voyages are more entertaining and fascinating than Cellarius; or Robinson Crusoe, Dampier, and Captain Cook, than the Periegesis. Compare the lads themselves from Eton and Harrow, &c. with the alumni of the New-Broom Institution, and not the lists of school-lessons; and be that comparison the criterion.—ED.

167

I know not when or where; but are not all the writings of this exquisite genius the effusions of one whose spirit lived in past time? The place which Lamb holds, and will continue to hold, in English literature, seems less liable to interruption than that of any other writer of our day.—ED.

168

I remember Mr. Coleridge used to call Isaiah his ideal of the Hebrew prophet. He studied that part of the Scripture with unremitting attention and most reverential admiration. Although Mr. C. was remarkably deficient in the technical memory of words, he could say a great deal of Isaiah by heart, and he delighted in pointing out the hexametrical rhythm of numerous passages in the English version:—

"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, | O earth: for the Lord hath spoken.I have nourished and brought up children, | and they have rebelled against me.The ox knoweth his owner, | and the ass his master's crib:But Israel doth not know, | my people doth not consider."—ED.

169

I find the same remark in the late most excellent Bishop Sandford's diary, under date 17th December, 1827:—"[Greek: CHairhete en t_o Kurhi_o Kurhios] idem significat quod [Hebrew: —] apud Hebraeos. Hebraei enim nomine [Hebrew: —] sanctissimo nempe Dei nomine, nunquam in colloquio utebantur, sed vice ejus [Hebrew: —] pronuntiabant, quod LXX per [Greek: Kurhios] exprimebant."—Remains of Bishop Sandford, vol. i. p. 207.

Mr. Coleridge saw this work for the first time many months after making the observation in the text. Indeed it was the very last book he ever read. He was deeply interested in the picture drawn of the Bishop, and said that the mental struggles and bodily sufferings indicated in the Diary had been his own for years past. He conjured me to peruse the Memoir and the Diary with great care:—"I have received," said he, "much spiritual comfort and strength from the latter. O! were my faith and devotion, like my sufferings, equal to that good man's! He felt, as I do, how deep a depth is prayer in faith."

In connection with the text, I may add here, that Mr. C. said, that long before he knew that the late Bishop Middleton was of the same opinion, he had deplored the misleading inadequacy of our authorized version of the expression, [Greek: pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os] in the Epistle to the Colossians, i. 15.: [Greek: hos estin eik_on tou THeou tou aoratou, pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os.] He rendered the verse in these words:—"Who is the manifestation of God the invisible, the begotten antecedently to all creation;" observing, that in [Greek: pr_ototokos] there was a double superlative of priority, and that the natural meaning of "first-born of every creature,"—the language of our version,—afforded no premiss for the causal [Greek: hoti] in the next verse. The same criticism may be found in the Stateman's Manual, p. 56. n.; and see Bishop Sandford's judgment to the same effect, vol. i. p. 165.—ED.