The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 31

Heaven forbid that this work should not exist in its present form and language! Yet I cannot avoid the wish that it had, during the reign of James I., been moulded into an heroic poem in English octave stanza, or epic blank verse;--which, however, at that time had not been invented, and which, alas! still remains the sole property of the inventor, as if the Muses had given him an unevadible patent for it. Of dramatic blank verse we have many and various specimens;--for example, Shakspeare's as compared with Ma.s.singer's, both excellent in their kind:--of lyric, and of what may be called Orphic, or philosophic, blank verse, perfect models may be found in Wordsworth: of colloquial blank verse there are excellent, though not perfect, examples in Cowper;--but of epic blank verse, since Milton, there is not one.

It absolutely distresses me when I reflect that this work, admired as it has been by great men of all ages, and lately, I hear, by the poet Cowper, should be only not unknown to general readers. It has been translated into English two or three times--how, I know not, wretchedly, I doubt not. It affords matter for thought that the last translation (or rather, in all probability, miserable and faithless abridgment of some former one) was given under another name. What a mournful proof of the incelebrity of this great and amazing work among both the public and the people! For as Wordsworth, the greater of the two great men of this age,--(at least, except Davy and him, I have known, read of, heard of, no others)--for as Wordsworth did me the honour of once observing to me, the people and the public are two distinct cla.s.ses, and, as things go, the former is likely to retain a better taste, the less it is acted out by the latter. Yet Telemachus is in every mouth, in every school-boy's and school-girl's hand! It is awful to say of a work, like the Argenis, the style and Latinity of which, judged (not according to cla.s.sical pedantry, which p.r.o.nounces every sentence right which can be found in any book prior to Boetius, however vicious the age, or affected the author, and every sentence wrong, however natural and beautiful, which has been of the author's own combination),--but, according to the universal logic of thought as modified by feeling, is equal to that of Tacitus in energy and genuine conciseness, and is as perspicuous as that of Livy, whilst it is free from the affectations, obscurities, and l.u.s.t to surprise of the former, and seems a sort of ant.i.thesis to the slowness and prolixity of the latter;--(this remark does not, however, impeach even the cla.s.sicality of the language, which, when the freedom and originality, the easy motion and perfect command of the thoughts, are considered, is truly wonderful:--of such a work it is awful to say, that it would have been well if it had been written in English or Italian verse! Yet the event seems to justify the notion. Alas! it is now too late. What modern work, even of the size of the 'Paradise Lost'--much less of the 'Faery Queene'--would be read in the present day, or even bought or be likely to be bought, unless it were an instructive work, as the phrase is, like Roscoe's quartos of Leo X., or entertaining like Boswell's three of Dr. Johnson's conversations. It may be fairly objected--what work of surpa.s.sing merit has given the proof?--Certainly, none. Yet still there are ominous facts, sufficient, I fear, to afford a certain prophecy of its reception, if such were produced.

[Footnote 1: Communicated by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. Ed.]

NOTE IN CASAUBON'S 'PERSIUS'. 1807.

There are six hundred and sixteen pages in this volume, of which twenty-two are text; and five hundred and ninety-four commentary and introductory matter. Yet when I recollect, that I have the whole works of Cicero, Livy, and Quinctilian, with many others,--the whole works of each in a single volume, either thick quarto with thin paper and small yet distinct print, or thick octavo or duodecimo of the same character, and that they cost me in the proportion of a shilling to a guinea for the same quant.i.ty of worse matter in modern books, or editions,--I a poor man, yet one whom [Greek (transliterated): Biblion ktaeseos ek paidariou deinos ekrataese pothos] feel the liveliest grat.i.tude for the age, which produced such editions, and for the education, which by enabling me to understand and taste the Greek and Latin writers, has thus put it in my power to collect on my own shelves, for my actual use, almost all the best books in spite of my small income. Somewhat too I am indebted to the ostentation of expense among the rich, which has occasioned these cheap editions to become so disproportionately cheap.

NOTES ON CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

EXTRACT OF A LETTER SENT WITH THE VOLUME. [1] 1807.

Chapman I have sent in order that you might read the 'Odyssey'; the 'Iliad' is fine, but less equal in the translation, as well as less interesting in itself. What is stupidly said of Shakspeare, is really true and appropriate of Chapman; mighty faults counterpoised by mighty beauties. Excepting his quaint epithets which he affects to render literally from the Greek, a language above all others blest in the happy marriage of sweet words, and which in our language are mere printer's compound epithets--such as quaffed divine 'joy-in-the-heart-of-man-infusing' wine, (the undermarked is to be one word, because one sweet mellifluous word expresses it in Homer);--excepting this, it has no look, no air, of a translation. It is as truly an original poem as the 'Faery Queene';--it will give you small idea of Homer, though a far truer one than Pope's epigrams, or Cowper's c.u.mbersome most anti-Homeric Miltonism. For Chapman writes and feels as a poet,--as Homer might have written had he lived in England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In short, it is an exquisite poem, in spite of its frequent and perverse quaintnesses and harshnesses, which are, however, amply repaid by almost unexampled sweetness and beauty of language, all over spirit and feeling. In the main it is an English heroic poem, the tale of which is borrowed from the Greek. The dedication to the 'Iliad' is a n.o.ble copy of verses, especially those sublime lines beginning,--

O!'tis wondrous much (Though nothing prisde) that the right vertuous touch Of a well written soule, to vertue moves.

Nor haue we soules to purpose, if their loves Of fitting objects be not so inflam'd.

How much then, were this kingdome's maine soule maim'd, To want this great inflamer of all powers That move in humane soules! All realmes but yours, Are honor'd with him; and hold blest that state That have his workes to reade and contemplate.

In which, humanitie to her height is raisde; Which all the world (yet, none enough) hath praisde.

Seas, earth, and heaven, he did in verse comprize; Out sung the Muses, and did equalise Their king Apollo; being so farre from cause Of princes light thoughts, that their gravest lawes May finde stuffe to be fashiond by his lines.

Through all the pompe of kingdomes still he shines And graceth all his gracers. Then let lie Your lutes, and viols, and more loftily Make the heroiques of your Homer sung, To drums and trumpets set his Angels tongue: And with the princely sports of haukes you use, Behold the kingly flight of his high Muse: And see how like the Phoenix she renues Her age, and starrie feathers in your sunne; Thousands of yeares attending; everie one Blowing the holy fire, and throwing in Their seasons, kingdomes, nations that have bin Subverted in them; lawes, religions, all Offerd to change, and greedie funerall; Yet still your Homer lasting, living, raigning.--

and likewise the 1st, the 11th, and last but one, of the prefatory sonnets to the 'Odyssey'. Could I have foreseen any other speedy opportunity, I should have begged your acceptance of the volume in a somewhat handsomer coat; but as it is, it will better represent the sender,--to quote from myself--

A man disherited, in form and face, By nature and mishap, of outward grace. [2]

Chapman in his moral heroic verse, as in this dedication and the prefatory sonnets to his 'Odyssey', stands above Ben Jonson; there is more dignity, more l.u.s.tre, and equal strength; but not midway quite between him and the sonnets of Milton. I do not know whether I give him the higher praise, in that he reminds me of Ben Jonson with a sense of his superior excellence, or that he brings Milton to memory notwithstanding his inferiority. His moral poems are not quite out of books like Jonson's, nor yet do the sentiments so wholly grow up out of his own natural habit and grandeur of thought, as in Milton. The sentiments have been attracted to him by a natural affinity of his intellect, and so combined;-but Jonson has taken them by individual and successive acts of choice. [3]

All this and the preceding is well felt and vigorously, though harshly, expressed, respecting sublime poetry 'in genere'; but in reading Homer I look about me, and ask how does all this apply here. For surely never was there plainer writing; there are a thousand charms of sun and moonbeam, ripple, and wave, and stormy billow, but all on the surface.

Had Chapman read Proclus and Porphyry?--and did he really believe them,--or even that they believed themselves? They felt the immense power of a Bible, a Shaster, a Koran. There was none in Greece or Rome, and they tried therefore by subtle allegorical accommodations to conjure the poem of Homer into the [Greek (transliterated): biblon theoparadoton] of Greek faith. [4]

Chapman's identification of his fate with Homer's, and his complete forgetfulness of the distinction between Christianity and idolatry, under the general feeling of some religion, is very interesting. It is amusing to observe, how familiar Chapman's fancy has become with Homer, his life and its circ.u.mstances, though the very existence of any such individual, at l east with regard to the 'Iliad' and the 'Hymns', is more than problematic. N. B. The rude engraving in the page was designed by no vulgar hand. It is full of spirit and pa.s.sion. [5]

I am so dull, that neither in the original nor in any translation could I ever find any wit or wise purpose in this poem. The whole humour seems to lie in the names. The frogs and mice are not frogs or mice, but men, and yet they do nothing that conveys any satire. In the Greek there is much beauty of language, but the joke is very flat. This is always the case in rude ages;--their serious vein is inimitable,--their comic low and low indeed. The psychological cause is easily stated, and copiously exemplifiable.

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

[Footnote 2: Dedication to Prince Henry.]

[Footnote 3: 'Epistle Dedicatorie to the Odyssey'.]

[Footnote 4: 'Epistle Dedicatorie to the Batrachomyomachia'.]

[Footnote 5: End of the 'Batrachomyomachia'.]

NOTE IN BAXTER'S 'LIFE OF HIMSELF'. 1820.

Among the grounds for recommending the perusal of our elder writers--Hooker--Taylor--Baxter--in short almost any of the folios composed from Edward VI. to Charles II. I note:

1. The overcoming the habit of deriving your whole pleasure pa.s.sively from the book itself, which can only be effected by excitement of curiosity or of some pa.s.sion. Force yourself to reflect on what you read paragraph by paragraph, and in a short time you will derive your pleasure, an ample portion of it, at least, from the activity of your own mind. All else is picture sunshine.

2. The conquest of party and sectarian prejudices, when you have on the same table before you the works of a Hammond and a Baxter, and reflect how many and how momentous their points of agreement, how few and almost childish the differences, which estranged and irritated these good men.

Let us but imagine what their blessed spirits now feel at the retrospect of their earthly frailties, and can we do other than strive to feel as they now feel, not as they once felt? So will it be with the disputes between good men of the present day; and if you have no other reason to doubt your opponent's goodness than the point in dispute, think of Baxter and Hammond, of Milton and Taylor, and let it be no reason at all.

3. It will secure you from the narrow idolatry of the present times and fashions, and create the n.o.blest kind of imaginative power in your soul, that of living in past ages;--wholly devoid of which power, a man can neither antic.i.p.ate the future, nor ever live a truly human life, a life of reason in the present.

4. In this particular work we may derive a most instructive lesson, that in certain points, as of religion in relation to law, the 'medio tutis--simus ibis', is inapplicable. There is no 'medium' possible; and all the attempts as those of Baxter, though no more were required than 'I believe in G.o.d through Christ,' prove only the mildness of the proposer's temper, but as a rule would be either equal to nothing, at least exclude only the two or three in a century that make it a matter of religion to declare themselves atheists, or else be just as fruitful a rule for a persecutor as the most complete set of articles that could be framed by a Spanish Inquisition. For to 'believe' must mean to believe aright--and 'G.o.d' must mean the true G.o.d--and 'Christ' the Christ in the sense and with the attributes understood by Christians who are truly Christians. An established church with a liturgy is the sufficient solution of the problem 'de jure magistratus'. Articles of faith are in this point of view superfluous; for is it not too absurd for a man to hesitate at subscribing his name to doctrines which yet in the more awful duty of prayer and profession he dares affirm before his Maker! They are therefore, in this sense, merely superfluous;--not worth re-enacting, had they ever been done away with;--not worth removing now that they exist.

5. The characteristic contra-distinction between the speculative reasoners of the age before the Revolution, and those since, is this:--the former cultivated metaphysics without, or neglecting empirical, psychology:--the latter cultivate a mechanical psychology to the neglect and contempt of metaphysics. Both, therefore, are almost equi-distant from true philosophy. Hence the belief in ghosts, witches, sensible replies to prayer, &c. in Baxter and in a hundred others. See also Luther's 'Table Talk'.

6. The earlier part of this volume is interesting as materials for medical history. The state of medical science in the reign of Charles I.

was almost incredibly low.

FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON TASTE. 1810.

The same arguments that decide the question, whether taste has any fixed principles, may probably lead to a determination of what those principles are. First then, what is taste in its metaphorical sense, or, which will be the easiest mode of arriving at the same solution, what is there in the primary sense of the word, which may give to its metaphorical meaning an import different from that of sight or hearing, on the one hand, and of touch or smell on the other? And this question seems the more natural, because in correct language we confine beauty, the main subject of taste, to objects of sight and combinations of sounds, and never, except sportively or by abuse of words, speak of a beautiful flavour or a beautiful scent.

Now the a.n.a.lysis of our senses in the commonest books of anthropology has drawn our attention to the distinction between the perfectly organic, and the mixed senses;--the first presenting objects, as distinct from the perception;--the last as blending the perception with the sense of the object. Our eyes and ears--(I am not now considering what is or is not the case really, but only that of which we are regularly conscious as appearances,) our eyes most often appear to us perfect organs of the sentient principle, and wholly in action, and our hearing so much more so than the three other senses, and in all the ordinary exertions of that sense, perhaps, equally so with the sight, that all languages place them in one cla.s.s, and express their different modifications by nearly the same metaphors. The three remaining senses appear in part pa.s.sive, and combine with the perception of the outward object a distinct sense of our own life. Taste, therefore, as opposed to vision and sound, will teach us to expect in its metaphorical use a certain reference of any given object to our own being, and not merely a distinct notion of the object as in itself, or in its independent properties. From the sense of touch, on the other hand, it is distinguishable by adding to this reference to our vital being some degree of enjoyment, or the contrary,--some perceptible impulse from pleasure or pain to complacency or dislike. The sense of smell, indeed, might perhaps have furnished a metaphor of the same import with that of taste; but the latter was naturally chosen by the majority of civilized nations on account of the greater frequency, importance, and dignity of its employment or exertion in human nature.

By taste, therefore, as applied to the fine arts, we must be supposed to mean an intellectual perception of any object blended with a distinct reference to our own sensibility of pain or pleasure, or, 'vice versa', a sense of enjoyment or dislike co-instantaneously combined with, and appearing to proceed from, some intellectual perception of the object;--intellectual perception, I say; for otherwise it would be a definition of taste in its primary rather than in its metaphorical sense. Briefly, taste is a metaphor taken from one of our mixed senses, and applied to objects of the more purely organic senses, and of our moral sense, when we would imply the co-existence of immediate personal dislike or complacency. In this definition of taste, therefore, is involved the definition of fine arts, namely, as being such the chief and discriminative purpose of which it is to gratify the taste,--that is, not merely to connect, but to combine and unite, a sense of immediate pleasure in ourselves, with the perception of external arrangement.

The great question, therefore, whether taste in any one of the fine arts has any fixed principle or ideal, will find its solution in the ascertainment of two facts:--first, whether in every determination of the taste concerning any work of the fine arts, the individual does not, with or even against the approbation of his general judgment, involuntarily claim that all other minds ought to think and feel the same; whether the common expressions, 'I dare say I may be wrong, but that is my particular taste;'--are uttered as an offering of courtesy, as a sacrifice to the undoubted fact of our individual fallibility, or are spoken with perfect sincerity, not only of the reason but of the whole feeling, with the same entireness of mind and heart, with which we concede a right to every person to differ from another in his preference of bodily tastes and flavours. If we should find ourselves compelled to deny this, and to admit that, notwithstanding the consciousness of our liability to error, and in spite of all those many individual experiences which may have strengthened the consciousness, each man does at the moment so far legislate for all men, as to believe of necessity that he is either right or wrong, and that if it be right for him, it is universally right,--we must then proceed to ascertain:--secondly, whether the source of these phenomena is at all to be found in those parts of our nature, in which each intellect is representative of all,--and whether wholly, or partially. No person of common reflection demands even in feeling, that what tastes pleasant to him ought to produce the same effect on all living beings; but every man does and must expect and demand the universal acquiescence of all intelligent beings in every conviction of his understanding. ...

FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON BEAUTY. 1818.

The only necessary, but this the absolutely necessary, pre-requisite to a full insight into the grounds of the beauty in the objects of sight, is--the directing of the attention to the action of those thoughts in our own mind which are not consciously distinguished. Every man may understand this, if he will but recall the state of his feelings in endeavouring to recollect a name, which he is quite sure that he remembers, though he cannot force it back into consciousness. This region of unconscious thoughts, oftentimes the more working the more indistinct they are, may, in reference to this subject, be conceived as forming an ascending scale from the most universal a.s.sociations of motion with the functions and pa.s.sions of life,--as when, on pa.s.sing out of a crowded city into the fields on a day in June, we describe the gra.s.s and king-cups as nodding their heads and dancing in the breeze,--up to the half perceived, yet not fixable, resemblance of a form to some particular object of a diverse cla.s.s, which resemblance we need only increase but a little, to destroy, or at least injure, its beauty-enhancing effect, and to make it a fantastic intrusion of the accidental and the arbitrary, and consequently a disturbance of the beautiful. This might be abundantly exemplified and ill.u.s.trated from the paintings of Salvator Rosa.

I am now using the term beauty in its most comprehensive sense, as including expression and artistic interest,--that is, I consider not only the living balance, but likewise all the accompaniments that even by disturbing are necessary to the renewal and continuance of the balance. And in this sense I proceed to show, that the beautiful in the object may be referred to two elements,--lines and colours; the first belonging to the shapely ('forma, formalis, formosus'), and in this, to the law, and the reason; and the second, to the lively, the free, the spontaneous, and the self-justifying. As to lines, the rectilineal are in themselves the lifeless, the determined 'ab extra', but still in immediate union with the cycloidal, which are expressive of function. The curve line is a modification of the force from without by the force from within, or the spontaneous. These are not arbitrary symbols, but the language of nature, universal and intuitive, by virtue of the law by which man is impelled to explain visible motions by imaginary causative powers a.n.a.logous to his own acts, as the Dryads, Hamadryads, Naiads, &c.

The better way of applying these principles will be by a brief and rapid sketch of the history of the fine arts,--in which it will be found, that the beautiful in nature has been appropriated to the works of man, just in proportion as the state of the mind in the artists themselves approached to the subjective beauty. Determine what predominance in the minds of the men is preventive of the living balance of excited faculties, and you will discover the exact counterpart in the outward products. Egypt is an ill.u.s.tration of this. Shapeliness is intellect without freedom; but colours are significant. The introduction of the arch is not less an epoch in the fine than in the useful arts.