The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 30

S. 39. This is a most admirable pa.s.sage. Yes,--the history of a man for the nine months preceding his birth, would, probably, be far more interesting, and contain events of greater moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it.

(S. 48.) This is made good by experience, which can from the ashes of a plant revive the plant, and from its cinders recall it into its stalks and leaves again.

Stuff. This was, I believe, some lying boast of Paracelsus, which the good Sir T. B. has swallowed for a fact.

(Part II. s. 2.) I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the will and command of my G.o.d.

We ought not to relieve a poor man merely because our own feelings impel us, but because these feelings are just and proper feelings. My feelings might impel me to revenge with the same force with which they urge me to charity. I must therefore have some rule by which I may judge my feelings,--and this rule is G.o.d's will.

(S. 5, 6.) I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved my friend as I do virtue, my soul, my G.o.d.

We cannot love a friend as a woman; but we may love a woman as a friend.

Friendship satisfies the highest parts of our nature; but a wife, who is capable of friendship, satisfies all. The great business of real unostentatious virtue is--not to eradicate any genuine instinct or appet.i.te of human nature; but--to establish a concord and unity betwixt all parts of our nature, to give a feeling and a pa.s.sion to our purer intellect, and to intellectualize our feelings and pa.s.sions. This a happy marriage, blest with children, effectuates in the highest degree, of which our nature is capable, and is therefore chosen by St. Paul as the symbol of the union of the church with Christ; that is, of the souls of all good men with G.o.d. "I scarcely distinguish," said once a good old man, "the wife of my old age from the wife of my youth; for when we were both young, and she was beautiful, for once that I caressed her with a meaner pa.s.sion, I caressed her a thousand times with love--and these caresses still remain to us." Besides, there is another reason why friendship is of somewhat less value than love, which includes friendship, it is this--we may love many persons, all very dearly; but we cannot love many persons all equally dearly. There will be differences, there will be gradations. But our nature imperiously asks a summit, a resting-place; it is with the affections in love as with the reason in religion, we cannot diffuse and equalize; we must have a supreme, a one, the highest. What is more common than to say of a man in love, 'he idolizes her,' 'he makes a G.o.d of her?' Now, in order that a person should continue to love another better than all others, it seems necessary, that this feeling should be reciprocal. For if it be not so, sympathy is broken off in the very highest point. A. (we will say by way of ill.u.s.tration) loves B. above all others, in the best and fullest sense of the word, love, but B. loves C. above all others. Either, therefore, A. does not sympathize with B. in this most important feeling; and then his love must necessarily be incomplete, and accompanied with a craving after something that is not, and yet might be; or he does sympathize with B. in loving C. above all others--and then, of course, he loves C. better than B. Now it is selfishness, at least it seems so to me, to desire that your friend should love you better than all others--but not to wish that a wife should.

(S. 6.) Another misery there is in affection, that whom we truly love like ourselves, we forget their looks, nor can our memory retain the idea of their faces; and it is no wonder: for they are ourselves, and our affection makes their looks our own.

A thought I have often had, and once expressed it in almost the same language. The fact is certain, but the explanation here given is very unsatisfactory. For why do we never have an image of our own faces--an image of fancy, I mean?

(S. 7.) I can hold there is no such thing as injury; that if there be, there is no such injury as revenge, and no such revenge as the contempt of an injury; that to hate another, is to malign himself, and that the truest way to love another is to despise ourselves.

I thank G.o.d that I can, with a full and unfeigning heart, utter Amen to this pa.s.sage.

(S. 10.) In brief, there can be nothing truly alone, and by itself, which is not truly one; and such is only G.o.d.

Reciprocity is that which alone gives stability to love. It is not mere selfishness that impels all kind natures to desire that there should be some one human being, to whom they are most dear. It is because they wish some one being to exist, who shall be the resting place and summit of their love; and this in human nature is not possible, unless the two affections coincide. The reason is, that the object of the highest love will not otherwise be the same in both parties.

(S. 11.) I thank G.o.d for my happy dreams, &c.

I am quite different from Sir T. B. in this; for all, or almost all, the painful and fearful thoughts that I know, are in my dreams;--so much so, that when I am wounded by a friend, or receive an unpleasant letter, it throws me into a state very nearly resembling that of a dream.

(S. 13.) Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth without any poverty, take away the object of our charity, not only not understanding the commonwealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecies of Christ.

O, for shame! for shame! Is there no fit object of charity but abject poverty? And what sort of a charity must that be which wishes misery in order that it may have the credit of relieving a small part of it,--pulling down the comfortable cottages of independent industry to build alms-houses out of the ruins!

This book paints certain parts of my moral and intellectual being, (the best parts, no doubt,) better than any other book I have ever met with;--and the style is throughout delicious.

[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Wordsworth. Ed.]

NOTES ON JUNIUS. 1807.

'Stat nominis umbra'.

As he never dropped the mask, so he too often used the poisoned dagger of an a.s.sa.s.sin.

'Dedication to the English nation'.

The whole of this dedication reads like a string of aphorisms arranged in chapters, and cla.s.sified by a resemblance of subject, or a cento of points.

(Ib.) If an honest, and I may truly affirm a laborious, zeal for the public service has given me any weight in your esteem, let me exhort and conjure you never to suffer an invasion of your political const.i.tution, however minute the instance may appear, to pa.s.s by, without a determined persevering resistance.

A longer sentence and proportionately inelegant.

(Ib.) If you reflect that in the changes of administration which have marked and disgraced the present reign, although your warmest patriots have, in their turn, been invested with the lawful and unlawful authority of the crown, and though other reliefs or improvements have been held forth to the people, yet that no one man in office has ever promoted or encouraged a bill for shortening the duration of parliaments, but that (whoever was minister) the opposition to this measure, ever since the septennial act pa.s.sed, has been constant and uniform on the part of government.

Long, and as usual, inelegant. Junius cannot manage a long sentence; it has all the 'ins' and 'outs' of a snappish figure-dance.

Preface.

An excellent preface, and the sentences not so snipt as in the dedication. The paragraph near the conclusion beginning with "some opinion may now be expected," &c. and ending with "relation between guilt and punishment," deserves to be quoted as a master-piece of rhetorical ratiocination in a series of questions that permit no answer; or (as Junius says) carry their own answer along with them. The great art of Junius is never to say too much, and to avoid with equal anxiety a commonplace manner, and matter that is not commonplace. If ever he deviates into any originality of thought, he takes care that it shall be such as excites surprise for its acuteness, rather than admiration for its profundity. He takes care? say rather, that nature took care for him. It is impossible to detract from the merit of these Letters: they are suited to their purpose, and perfect in their kind. They impel to action, not thought. Had they been profound or subtle in thought, or majestic and sweeping in composition, they would have been adapted for the closet of a Sidney, or for a House of Lords such as it was in the time of Lord Bacon; but they are plain and sensible whenever the author is in the right, and whether right or wrong, always shrewd and epigrammatic, and fitted for the coffee-house, the exchange, the lobby of the House of Commons, and to be read aloud at a public meeting. When connected, dropping the forms of connection, desultory without abruptness or appearance of disconnection, epigrammatic and ant.i.thetical to excess, sententious and personal, regardless of right or wrong, yet well-skilled to act the part of an honest warm-hearted man, and even when he is in the right, saying the truth but never proving it, much less attempting to bottom it,--this is the character of Junius;--and on this character, and in the mould of these writings must every man cast himself, who would wish in factious times to be the important and long remembered agent of a faction. I believe that I could do all that Junius has done, and surpa.s.s him by doing many things which he has not done: for example,--by an occasional induction of startling facts, in the manner of Tom Paine, and lively ill.u.s.trations and witty applications of good stories and appropriate anecdotes in the manner of Horne Tooke. I believe I could do it if it were in my nature to aim at this sort of excellence, or to be enamoured of the fame, and immediate influence, which would be its consequence and reward. But it is not in my nature. I not only love truth, but I have a pa.s.sion for the legitimate investigation of truth. The love of truth conjoined with a keen delight in a strict and skillful yet impa.s.sioned argumentation, is my master-pa.s.sion, and to it are subordinated even the love of liberty and all my public feelings--and to it whatever I labour under of vanity, ambition, and all my inward impulses.

Letter I. From this Letter all the faults and excellencies of Junius may be exemplified. The moral and political aphorisms are just and sensible, the irony in which his personal satire is conveyed is fine, yet always intelligible; but it approaches too nearly to the nature of a sneer; the sentences are cautiously constructed without the forms of connection; the 'he' and 'it' everywhere subst.i.tuted for the 'who' and 'which'; the sentences are short, laboriously balanced, and the ant.i.theses stand the test of a.n.a.lysis much better than Johnson's. These are all excellencies in their kind;--where is the defect? In this;--there is too much of each, and there is a defect of many things, the presence of which would have been not only valuable for their own sakes, but for the relief and variety which they would have given. It is observable too that every Letter adds to the faults of these Letters, while it weakens the effect of their beauties.

L. III. A capital letter, addressed to a private person, and intended as a sharp reproof for intrusion. Its short sentences, its witty perversions and deductions, its questions and omissions of connectives, all in their proper places, are dramatically good.

(L. V.) For my own part, I willingly leave it to the public to determine whether your vindication of your friend has been as able and judicious as it was certainly well intended; and you, I think, may be satisfied with the warm acknowledgements he already owes you for making him the princ.i.p.al figure in a piece in which, but for your amicable a.s.sistance, he might have pa.s.sed without particular notice or distinction.

A long sentence and, as usual, inelegant and c.u.mbrous. This Letter is a faultless composition with exception of the one long sentence.

(L. VII.) These are the gloomy companions of a disturbed 'imagination'; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the 'inspiration'.

The rhyme is a fault. 'Fancy' had been better; though but for the rhyme, imagination is the fitter word.

(Ib.) Such a question might perhaps discompose the gravity of his muscles, but I believe it would little affect the tranquillity of his conscience.

A false ant.i.thesis, a mere verbal balance; there are far, far too many of these. However, with these few exceptions, this Letter is a blameless composition. Junius may be safely studied as a model for letters where he truly writes letters. Those to the Duke of Grafton and others, are small pamphlets in the form of letters.

(L. VIII.) To do justice to your Grace's humanity, you felt for Mac Quick as you ought to do; and, if you had been contented to a.s.sist him indirectly, without a notorious denial of justice, or openly insulting the sense of the nation, you might have satisfied every duty of political friendship, without committing the honour of your sovereign, or hazarding the reputation of his government.

An inelegant cl.u.s.ter of 'withouts'. Junius asks questions incomparably well;--but 'ne quid nimis'.

L. IX. Perhaps the fair way of considering these Letters would be as a kind of satirical poems; the short, and for ever balanced, sentences const.i.tute a true metre; and the connection is that of satiric poetry, a witty logic, an a.s.sociation of thoughts by amusing semblances of cause and effect, the sophistry of which the reader has an interest in not stopping to detect, for it flatters his love of mischief, and makes the sport.

L. XII. One of Junius's arts, and which gives me a high notion of his genius, as a poet and satirist, is this:--he takes for granted the existence of a character that never did and never can exist, and then employs his wit, and surprises and amuses his readers with a.n.a.lyzing its incompatibilities.

L. XIV. Continual sneer, continual irony, all excellent, if it were not for the 'all;'--but a countenance, with a malignant smile in statuary fixure on it, becomes at length an object of aversion, however beautiful the face, and however beautiful the smile. We are relieved, in some measure, from this by frequent just and well expressed moral aphorisms; but then the preceding and following irony gives them the appearance of proceeding from the head, not from the heart. This objection would be less felt, when the Letters were first published at considerable intervals; but Junius wrote for posterity.

L. XXIII. Sneer and irony continued with such gross violation of good sense, as to be perfectly nonsense. The man who can address another on his most detestable vices in a strain of cold continual irony, is himself a wretch.

(L. x.x.xV.) To honour them with a determined predilection and confidence in exclusion of your English subjects, who placed your family, and, in spite of treachery and rebellion, have supported it upon the throne, is a mistake too gross even for the unsuspecting generosity of youth.

The words 'upon the throne', stand unfortunately for the harmonious effect of the balance of 'placed' and 'supported.'

This address to the king is almost faultless in composition, and has been evidently tormented with the file. But it has fewer beauties than any other long letter of Junius; and it is utterly undramatic. There is nothing in the style, the transitions, or the sentiments, which represents the pa.s.sions of a man emboldening himself to address his sovereign personally. Like a Presbyterian's prayer, you may subst.i.tute almost every where the third for the second person without injury. The newspaper, his closet, and his own person were alone present to the author's intention and imagination. This makes the composition vapid. It possesses an Isocratic correctness, when it should have had the force and drama of an oration of Demosthenes. From this, however, the paragraph beginning with the words "As to the Scotch," and also the last two paragraphs must be honourably excepted. They are, perhaps, the finest pa.s.sages in the whole collection.

NOTES ON BARCLAY'S 'ARGENIS'. 1803. [1]