The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Ii Part 47

though they are, and which are symbolized in Hephaistos,--we shall see at once the propriety of the t.i.tle, Prometheus, [Greek: desmotaes].

9. Nature, or 'Zeus' as the [Greek: nomos en nomizomenois], knows herself only, can only come to a knowledge of herself, in man! And even in man, only as man is supernatural, above nature, noetic. But this knowledge man refuses to communicate; that is, the human understanding alone is at once self-conscious and conscious of nature. And this high prerogative it owes exclusively to its being an a.s.sessor of the reason.

Yet even the human understanding in its height of place seeks vainly to appropriate the ideas of the pure reason, which it can only represent by 'idola'. Here, then, the 'Nous' stands as Prometheus [Greek: antipalos], 'renuens'--in hostile opposition to Jupitor 'Inquisitor'.

10. Yet finally, against the obstacles and even under the fostering influences of the 'Nomos', [Greek: tou nomimou], a son of Jove himself, but a descendant from Io, the mundane religion, as contra-distinguished from the sacerdotal 'cultus', or religion of the state, an Alcides 'Liberator' will arise, and the 'Nous', or divine principle in man, will be Prometheus [Greek: heleutheromenos].

Did my limits or time permit me to trace the persecutions, wanderings, and migrations of the Io, the mundane religion, through the whole map marked out by the tragic poet, the coincidences would bring the truth, the unarbitrariness, of the preceding exposition as near to demonstration as can rationally be required on a question of history, that must, for the greater part, be answered by combination of scattered facts. But this part of my subject, together with a particular exemplification of the light which my theory throws both on the sense and the beauty of numerous pa.s.sages of this stupendous poem, I must reserve for a future communication.

NOTES. [3]

v. 15. [Greek: pharaggi]:--'in a coomb, or combe.' v. 17. [Greek: ex'oriazein gar patros logous baru]. [Greek: euoriazein], as the editor confesses, is a word introduced into the text against the authority of all editions and ma.n.u.scripts. I should prefer [Greek: ex'oriazein], notwithstanding its being a [Greek: hapax legomenon]. The [Greek: eu]--seems to my tact too free and easy a word;--and yet our 'to trifle with' appears the exact meaning.

[Footnote 1: I scarcely need say, that I use the word [Greek: allotrionomos] as a participle active, as exercising law on another, not as receiving law from another, though the latter is the cla.s.sical force (I suppose) of the word.]

[Footnote 2: Rhea (from [Greek: rheo], 'fluo'), that is, the earth as the transitory, the ever-flowing nature, the flux and sum of 'phenomena', or objects of the outward sense, in contradistinction from the earth as Vesta, as the firmamental law that sustains and disposes the apparent world! The Satyrs represent the sports and appetences of the sensuous nature ([Greek: phronaema sarkos])--Pan, or the total life of the earth, the presence of all in each, the universal 'organismus' of bodies and bodily energy.]

[Footnote 3: Written in Bp. Blomfield's edition, and communicated by Mr.

Cary. Ed.]

NOTE ON CHALMERS'S LIFE OF DANIEL.

The justice of these remarks cannot be disputed, though some of them are rather too figurative for sober criticism.

Most genuine! A figurative remark! If this strange writer had any meaning, it must be:--Headly's criticism is just throughout, but conveyed in a style too figurative for prose composition. Chalmers's own remarks are wholly mistaken;--too silly for any criticism, drunk or sober, and in language too flat for any thing. In Daniel's Sonnets there is scarcely one good line; while his Hymen's Triumph, of which Chalmers says not one word, exhibits a continued series of first-rate beauties in thought, pa.s.sion, and imagery, and in language and metre is so faultless, that the style of that poem may without extravagance be declared to be imperishable English.

1820.

BISHOP CORBET.

I almost wonder that the inimitable humour, and the rich sound and propulsive movement of the verse, have not rendered Corbet a popular poet. I am convinced that a reprint of his poems, with ill.u.s.trative and chit-chat biographical notes, and cuts by Cruikshank, would take with the public uncommonly well. September, 1823.

NOTES ON SELDEN'S TABLE TALK. [1]

There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer.

OPINION.

Opinion and affection extremely differ. I may affect a woman best, but it does not follow I must think her the handsomest woman in the world.

... Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reason why all the world should think as I think. Affection is a thing wherein I look after the pleasing of myself.

Good! This is the true difference betwixt the beautiful and the agreeable, which Knight and the rest of that [Greek: plaethos atheon]

have so beneficially confounded, 'meretricibus scilicet et Plutoni'.

O what an insight the whole of this article gives into a wise man's heart, who has been compelled to act with the many, as one of the many!

It explains Sir Thomas More's zealous Romanism, &c.

PARLIAMENT.

Excellent! O! to have been with Selden over his gla.s.s of wine, making every accident an outlet and a vehicle of wisdom!

POETRY.

The old poets had no other reason but this, their verse was, sung to music; otherwise it had been a senseless thing to have fettered up themselves.

No one man can know all things: even Selden here talks ignorantly. Verse is in itself a music, and the natural symbol of that union of pa.s.sion with thought and pleasure, which const.i.tutes the essence of all poetry, as contradistinguished from science, and distinguished from history civil or natural. To Pope's Essay on Man,--in short, to whatever is mere metrical good sense and wit, the remark applies.

Ib.

Verse proves nothing but the quant.i.ty of syllables; they are not meant for logic.

True; they, that is, verses, are not logic; but they are, or ought to be, the envoys and representatives of that vital pa.s.sion, which is the practical cement of logic; and without which logic must remain inert.

[Footnote 1: These remarks on Selden, Wheeler, and Birch, were communicated by Mr. Gary. Ed.]

NOTE ON THEOLOGICAL LECTURES OF BENJAMIN WHEELER, D. D.

(Vol. I. p. 77.)

A miracle, usually so termed, is the exertion of a supernatural power in some act, and contrary to the regular course of nature, &c.

Where is the proof of this as drawn from Scripture, from fact recorded, or from doctrine affirmed? Where the proof of its logical possibility,--that is, that the word has any representable sense?

Contrary to 2x2=4 is 2x2=5, or that the same fire acting at the same moment on the same subject should burn it and not burn it.

The course of nature is either one with, or a reverential synonyme of, the ever present divine agency; or it is a self-subsisting derivative from, and dependent on, the divine will. In either case this author's a.s.sertion would amount to a charge of self-contradiction on the Author of all things. Before the spread of Grotianism, or the Old Bailey 'nolens volens' Christianity, such language was unexampled. A miracle is either 'super naturam', or it is simply 'praeter experientiam.' If nature be a collective term for the sum total of the mechanic powers,--that is, of the act first manifested to the senses in the conductor A, arriving at Z by the sensible chain of intermediate conductors, B, C, D, &c.;--then every motion of my arm is 'super naturam'. If this be not the sense, then nature is but a wilful synonyme of experience, and then the first noticed aerolithes, Sulzer's first observation of the galvanic arch, &c. must have been miracles.

As erroneous as the author's a.s.sertions are logically, so false are they historically, in the effect, which the miracles in and by themselves did produce on those, who, rejecting the doctrine, were eye-witnesses of the miracles;--and psychologically, in the effect which miracles, as miracles, are calculated to produce on the human mind. Is it possible that the author can have attentively studied the first two or three chapters of St. John's gospel?

There is but one possible tenable definition of a miracle,--namely, an immediate consequent from a heterogeneous antecedent. This is its essence. Add the words, 'praeter experientiam adhuc', or 'id temporis', and you have the full and popular or practical sense of the term miracle. [1]

[Footnote A: See The Friend, Vol. III. Essay 2. Ed.]