Anima Poetae Part 24

[Sidenote: CHILDREN OF A LARGER GROWTH]

Try to contemplate mankind as children. These we love tenderly, because they are beautiful and happy; we know that a sweet-meat or a top will transfer their little love for a moment, and that we shall be repelled with a grimace. Yet we are not offended.

[Sidenote: CHYMICAL a.n.a.lOGIES]

I am persuaded that the chymical technology, as far as it was borrowed from life and intelligence, half-metaphorically, half-mystically, may be brought back again (as when a man borrows of another a sum which the latter had previously borrowed of him, because he is too polite to remind him of a debt) to the use of psychology in many instances, and, above all, [may be re-adapted to] the philosophy of language, which ought to be experimentative and a.n.a.lytic of the elements of meaning--their double, triple, and quadruple combinations, of simple aggregation or of composition by balance of opposition.

Thus innocence is distinguished from virtue, and _vice versa_. In both of them there is a positive, but in each opposite. A decomposition must take place in the first instance, and then a new composition, in order for innocence to become virtue. It loses a positive, and then the base attracts another different positive, by the higher affinity of the same base under a different temperature for the latter.

I stated the legal use of the innocent as opposed to mere _not guilty_ (he was not only acquitted, but was proved innocent), only to shew the existence of a _positive_ in the former--by no means as confounding this use of the word with the moral pleasurable feeling connected with it when used of little children, maidens, and those who in mature age preserve this sweet fragrance of vernal life, this mother's gift and so-seldom-kept keepsake to her child, as she sends him forth into the world. The distinction is obvious. Law agnizes actions alone, and character only as presumptive or ill.u.s.trative of particular action as to its guilt or non-guilt, or to the commission or non-commission. But our moral feelings are never pleasurably excited except as they refer to a state of being--and the most glorious actions do not delight us as separate acts, or, rather, facts, but as representatives of the being of the agent--mental stenographs which bring an indeterminate extension within the field of easy and simultaneous vision, diffused being rendered visible by condensation. Only for the hero's sake do we exult in the heroic act, or, rather, the act abstracted from the hero would no longer appear to us heroic. Not, therefore, solely from the advantage of poets and historians do the deeds of ancient Greece and Rome strike us into admiration, while we relate the very same deeds of barbarians as matters of curiosity, but because in the former we refer the deed to the individual exaltation of the agent, in the latter only to the physical result of a given state of society. Compare the [heroism of that] Swiss patriot, with his bundle of spears turned towards his breast, in order to break the Austrian pikemen, and that of the Mameluke, related to me by Sir Alexander Ball, who, when his horse refused to plunge in on the French line, turned round and _backed_ it on them, with a certainty of death, in order to effect the same purpose. In the former, the state of mind arose from reason, morals, liberty, the sense of the duty owing to the independence of his country, and its continuing in a state compatible with the highest perfection and development; while the latter was predicative only of mere animal habit, ferocity, and unreasoned antipathy to strangers of a different dress and religion.

[Sidenote: BOOKS IN THE AIR]

If, contrary to my expectations--alas! almost, I fear, to my wishes--I should live, it is my intention to make a catalogue of the Greek and Latin Cla.s.sics, and of those who, like the author of the _Argenis_ [William Barclay, 1546-1605], and Euphormio, Fracastorius, Flaminius, etc., deserve that name though moderns--and every year to apply all my book-money to the gradual completion of the collection, and buy no other books except German, if the continent should be opened again, except Ma.s.singer, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Jonson. The two last I have, I believe, but imperfect--indeed, B. and F. worthless, the best plays omitted. It would be a pleasing employment, had I health, to translate the Hymns of Homer, with a disquisitional attempt to settle the question concerning the _personality_ of Homer. Such a thing in two volumes, _well done_, by philosophical notes on the mythology of the Greeks, distinguishing the sacerdotal from the poetical, and both from the philosophical or allegorical, fairly grown into two octavos, might go a good way, if not all the way, to the Bipontine Latin and Greek Cla.s.sics.

[Sidenote: A TURTLE-Sh.e.l.l FOR HOUSE-HOLD TUB]

I almost fear that the alteration would excite surprise and uneasy contempt in Verbidigno's mind (towards one less loved, at least); but had I written the sweet tale of the "Blind Highland Boy," I would have subst.i.tuted for the washing-tub, and the awkward stanza in which it is specified, the images suggested in the following lines from Dampier's Travels, vol. i. pp. 105-6:--"I heard of a monstrous green turtle once taken at the Port Royal, in the Bay of Campeachy, that was four feet deep from the back to the belly, and the belly six feet broad. Captain Rock's son, of about nine or ten years of age, went in it as in a boat, on board his father's ship, about a quarter of a mile from the sh.o.r.e."

And a few lines before--"The green turtle are so called because their sh.e.l.l is greener than any other. It is very thin and clear, and better clouded than the Hawksbill, but 'tis used only for _inlays_, being _extraordinary_ thin." Why might not some mariners have left this sh.e.l.l on the sh.o.r.e of Loch Leven for a while, about to have transported it inland for a curiosity, and the blind boy have found it? Would not the incident be in equal keeping with that of the child, as well as the image and tone of romantic uncommonness?

["In deference to the opinion of a friend," this subst.i.tution took place. A promise made to Sara Coleridge to re-instate the washing-tub was, alas! never fulfilled. See _Poetical Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1859, pp. 197, and 200 _footnote_.]

[Sidenote: THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE GOOD]

Tremendous as a Mexican G.o.d is a strong sense of duty--separate from an enlarged and discriminating mind, and gigantic ally disproportionate to the size of the understanding; and, if combined with obstinacy of self-opinion and indocility, it is the parent of tyranny, a promoter of inquisitorial persecution in public life, and of inconceivable misery in private families. Nay, the very virtue of the person, and the consciousness that _it_ is sacrificing its own happiness, increases the obduracy, and selects those whom it best loves for its objects. _Eoque immitior quia ipse tolerat_ (not _toleraverat_) is its inspiration and watchword.

[Sidenote: HINTS FOR "THE FRIEND"]

A nation of reformers looks like a scourer of silver-plate--black all over and dingy, with making things white and brilliant.

A joint combination of authors leagued together to declaim for or against liberty may be compared to Buffon's collection of smooth mirrors in a vast fan arranged to form one focus. May there not be gunpowder as well as corn set before it, and the latter will not thrive, but become cinders?

A good conscience and hope combined are like fine weather that reconciles travel with delight.

Great exploits and the thirst of honour which they inspire, enlarge states by enlarging hearts.

The rejection of the love of glory without the admission of Christianity is, truly, human darkness lacking human light.

Heaven preserve me from the modern epidemic of a proud ignorance!

Hypocrisy, the deadly crime which, like Judas, kisses h.e.l.l at the lips of Redemption.

Is't then a mystery so great, what G.o.d and the man, and the world is?

No, but we hate to hear! Hence a mystery it remains.

The ma.s.sy misery so prettily hidden with the gold and silver leaf--_bracteata felicitas_.

[Sidenote: CONCERNING BELLS]

If I have leisure, I may, perhaps, write a wild rhyme on the _Bell_, from the mine to the belfry, and take for my motto and Chapter of Contents, the two distichs, but especially the latter--

Laudo Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum: Defunctos ploro, pestem fugo, festa decoro.

Funera plango, fulgura frango, sabbata pango: Excito lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos.

The waggon-horse _celsa cervice eminens clarumque jactans tintinnabulum_. Item, the cattle on the river, and valley of dark pines and firs in the Hartz.

The army of Clotharius besieging Sens were frightened away by the bells of St. Stephen's, rung by the contrivance of Lupus, Bishop of Orleans.

For ringing the largest bell, as a Pa.s.sing-bell, a high price was wont to be paid, because being heard afar it both kept the evil spirits at a greater distance, and gave the chance of the greater number of prayers _pro mortuo_, from the pious who heard it.

Names of saints were given to bells that it might appear the voice of the Saint himself calling to prayer. Man will humanise all things.

[It is strange that Coleridge should make no mention of Schiller's "Song of the Bell," of which he must, at any rate, have heard the t.i.tle.

Possibly the idea remained though its source was forgotten. The Latin distichs were introduced by Longfellow in his "Golden Legend."

Of the cow-bells in the Hartz he gives the following account in an unpublished letter to his wife. April-May, 1799. "But low down in the valley and in little companies on each bank of the river a mult.i.tude of green conical fir-trees, with herds of cattle wandering about almost every one with a cylindrical bell around its neck, of no inconsiderable size. And as they moved, scattered over the narrow vale, and up among the trees of the hill, the noise was like that of a great city in the stillness of the Sabbath morning, where all the steeples, all at once are ringing for Church. The whole was a melancholy scene and quite new to me."]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote E:

[O heaven, 'twas frightful! now run down and stared at By shapes more ugly than can be remembered-- Now seeing nothing and imagining nothing, But only being afraid--stifled with Fear!

And every goodly, each familiar form Had a strange somewhat that breathed terrors on me!

(_From my MS. tragedy_ [S. T. C.]) _Remorse_, iv. 69-74--but the pa.s.sage is omitted from _Osorio_, act iv. 53 _sq. P. W._, pp. 386-499]].

CHAPTER VII