Anima Poetae Part 18

O the complexities of the ravel produced by time struggling with eternity! _a_ and _b_ are different, and eternity or duration makes them one--this we call modification--the principle of all greatness in finite beings, the principle of all contradiction and absurdity.

[Sidenote: THE Pa.s.sION FOR THE MOT PROPRE August 3, 1805 Sat.u.r.day]

It is worthy notice (shewn in the phrase "I envy him such and such a thing," meaning only, "I regret I cannot share with him, have the same as he, without depriving him of it, or any part of it,") the instinctive pa.s.sion in the mind for a _one word_ to express _one act_ of feeling--[one] that is, in which, however complex in reality, the mind is _conscious_ of no discursion and synthesis _a posteriori_. On this instinct rest all the improvements (and, on the habits formed by this instinct and [the] knowledge of these improvements, Vanity rears all the Apuleian, Apollonian, etc., etc., corruptions) of style. Even so with our Johnson.

[Sidenote: BULLS OF ACTION]

There are _bulls_ of action equally as of thought, [for] (not to allude to the story of the Irish labourer who laid his comrade all his wages that he would not carry him down in his hod from the top to the bottom of a high house, down the ladder) the feeling of vindictive honour in duelling, and the feudal revenges anterior to duelling, formed a true bull; for they were superst.i.tious Christians, knew it was wrong, and yet knew it was right--they would be d.a.m.ned deservedly if they did, and, if they did not, they thought themselves deserving of being d.a.m.ned.

[Sidenote: PSEUDO-POETS]

The pseudo-poets Campbell, Rogers, etc., both by their writings and moral character tend to bring poetry into disgrace, and, but that men in general are the slaves of the same wretched infirmities, they would [set their seal on this disgrace,] and it would be well. The true poet could not smother the sacred fire ("his heart burnt within him and he spake"), and wisdom would be justified by her children. But the false poet--that is, the no-poet--finding poetry in contempt among the many, of whose praise, whatever he may affirm, he is alone ambitious, would be prevented from scribbling.

[Sidenote: LANDING PLACES]

The progress of human intellect from earth to heaven is not a Jacob's ladder, but a geometrical staircase with five or more landing-places.

That on which we stand enables us to see clearly and count all below us, while that or those above us are so transparent for our eyes that they appear the canopy of heaven. We do not see them, and believe ourselves on the highest.

["Among my earliest impressions I still distinctly remember that of my first entrance into the mansion of a neighbouring baronet, awefully known to me by the name of the Great House [Escot, near Ottery St. Mary, Devon].... Beyond all other objects I was most struck with the magnificent staircase, relieved at well-proportioned intervals by s.p.a.cious landing-places.... My readers will find no difficulty in translating these forms of the outward senses into their intellectual a.n.a.logies, so as to understand the purport of _The Friend's_ Landing-Places." _The Friend_, "The Landing-Place," Essay iv.

_Coleridge's Works_, Harper & Brothers, 1853, ii. 137, 138.]

[Sidenote: WILLIAM BROWNE OF OTTERY]

In the _Threnae_ or funeral songs and elegies of our old poets, I am often impressed with the idea of their resemblance to hired weepers in Rome and among the Irish, where he who howled the loudest and most wildly was the most capital mourner and was at the head of his trade.

So [too] see William Browne's elegy on Prince Henry (_Britt. Past.

Songs_ v.), whom, perhaps, he never spoke to. Yet he is a dear fellow, and I love him, that W. Browne who died at Ottery, and with whose family my own is united, or, rather, connected and acquainted.

[Colonel James Coleridge, the poet's eldest surviving brother and Henry Langford Browne of Combe-Satchfield married sisters, Frances and Dorothy Taylor, whose mother was one of five co-heiresses of Richard Duke of Otterton.

It is uncertain whether a William Browne of Ottery St. Mary, who died in 1645, was the author of _The Shepherd's Pipe_ and _Britannia's Pastorals_. Two beautiful inscriptions on a tomb in St. Stephen's Chapel in the collegiate church of St. Mary Ottery, were, in Southey's opinion (doubtless at Coleridge's suggestion), composed by the poet William Browne.]

[Sidenote: "ASCEND A STEP IN CHOOSING A FRIEND" TALMUD]

G.o.d knows! that at times I derive a comfort even from my infirmities, my sins of omission and commission, in the joy of the deep feeling of the opposite virtues in the two or three whom I love in my heart of hearts.

Sharp, therefore, is the pain when I find faults in these friends opposite to my virtues. I find no comfort in the notion of average, for I wish to love even more than to be beloved, and am so haunted by the conscience of my many failings that I find an unmixed pleasure in esteeming and admiring, but, as the recipient of esteem or admiration, I feel as a man, whose good dispositions are still alive, feels in the enjoyment of a _darling_ property on a doubtful t.i.tle. My instincts are so far dog-like that I love beings superior to myself better than my equals. But the notion of inferiority is so painful to me that I never, in common life, feel a man my inferior except by after-reflection. What seems vanity in me is in great part attributable to this feeling. But of this hereafter. I will cross-examine myself.

[Sidenote: A CAUTION TO POSTERITY]

There are actions which left undone mark the greater man; but to have done them does not imply a bad or mean man. Such, for instance, are Martial's compliments of Domitian. So may we praise Milton without condemning Dryden. By-the-bye, we are all too apt to forget that contemporaries have not the same _wholeness_, and _fixedness_ in their notions of persons' characters, that we their posterity have. They can _hope_ and _fear_ and _believe_ and _disbelieve_. We make up an ideal which, like the fox or lion in the fable, never changes.

[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"]

I have several times seen the stiletto and the rosary come out of the same pocket.

A man who marries for love is like a frog who leaps into a well. He has plenty of water but then he cannot get out.

[Not until national ruin is imminent will Ministers contemplate the approach of national danger]; as if Judgment were overwhelmed like Belgic towns in the sea, and showed its towers only at dead low water.

The superiority of the genus to the particular may be ill.u.s.trated by music. How infinitely more perfect in pa.s.sion and its transition than even poetry, and poetry again than painting! And yet how marvellous is genius in all its implements!

[Compare _Table Talk_, July 6, 1833. H. N. C. _foot-note_. Bell & Co., 1884, p. 240.]

Those only who feel no originality, no consciousness of having received their thoughts and opinions from immediate inspiration are anxious to be thought original. The certainty, the feeling that he is right, is enough for the man of genius, and he rejoices to find his opinions plumed and winged with the authority of several forefathers.

The water-lily in the midst of the lake is equally refreshed by the rain, as the sponge on the sandy sea-sh.o.r.e.

In the next world the souls of dull good men serve for bodies to the souls of the Shaksperes and Miltons, and in the course of a few centuries, when the soul can do without its vehicle, the bodies will by advantage of good company have refined themselves into souls fit to be clothed with like bodies.

How much better it would be, in the House of Commons, to have everything that is, and by the spirit of English freedom must be legal, legal and open! The reporting, for instance, should be done by shorthandists appointed by Government. There are, I see, weighty arguments on the other side, but are they not to be got over?

Co-arctation is not a bad phrase for that narrowing in of breadth on both sides as in my interpolation of Schiller.

"And soon The narrowing line of day-light that ran after The closing door was gone."

_Piccolomini_, ii. sc. 4, _P.W._, p. 257.

[Sidenote: THE DEVIL WITH A MEMORY THE FIRST SINNER]

In order not to be baffled by the infinite ascent of the heavenly angels, the devil feigned that all (the [Greek: tagathon], that is, G.o.d himself included) sprang from nothing. And now he has a pretty task to multiply, without paper or slate, the exact number of all the animalcules, and the eggs and embryos of each planet, by some other, and the product by a third and that product by a fourth, and he is not to stop till he has gone through the planets of half the universe, the number of which being infinite, it is considered by the devils in general a great puzzle. A dream in a doze.

[Sidenote: THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS]

A bodily substance, an unborrowed Self--G.o.d in G.o.d immanent! The Eternal Word! That goes forth yet remains! Crescent and Full and Wane, yet ever entire and one, it dawns, and sets, and crowns the height of heaven. At the same time, the dawning and setting sun, at the same time the zodiac--while each, in its own hour, boasts and beholds the exclusive Presence, a peculiar Orb, each the great Traveller's inn, yet still the unmoving Sun--

Great genial Agent in all finite souls; And by that action puts on finiteness, Absolute Infinite, whose dazzling robe Flows in rich folds, and plays in shooting hues Of infinite finiteness.

[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE." Syracuse, September 26, 1805]

I was standing gazing at the starry heaven, and said, "I will go to bed, the next star that shoots." Observe this, in counting fixed numbers previous to doing anything, and deduce from man's own unconscious acknowledgment man's _dependence_ on something more apparently and believedly subject to regular and certain laws than his own will and reason.