The World's Greatest Books - Volume 9 Part 15

About public affairs I am more anxious than I can say. I like Curio; I hope Caesar may prove himself an honourable man; for Pompey I would willingly give my life; yet, after all, I love no man so dearly as I love the republic. You do not seem to be taking any very prominent part in these difficulties; but you are somewhat tied by being at once a good patriot and a loyal friend.

_To Atticus, in Rome_ Athens, B.C. 50

I arrived in Athens two days ago on my way home from my province, and received your letter. I have been appalled by what you tell me about Caesar's legions. I beg you, in the name of fortune, to apply all your love for me and all your incomparable wisdom to the consideration of my whole situation. I seem to see a dreadful contest coming, unless some divinity have pity on the republic--such a contest as has never been before. I do not ask you to think of this catastrophe; after all, it is a calamity for all the world as well as for me.

What I want is that you should go into my personal dilemma. It was you who advised me to secure the friendship of both parties; and much I wish that I had attended from the first to your counsels. You persuaded me to embrace the one, because he had done so much for me, and the other, because he was powerful; and so I succeeded in engaging the affection of both.

It seemed then quite clear that a friendship with Pompey need involve no wrong to the republic, and that an allegiance to Caesar implied no hostility to Pompey--such, at that time, was their union. But now, as you show and as I plainly see, there will be a duel to the death; and each, unless one of them is feigning, regards me as his. Pompey has no doubt of it, for he knows that I approve of his political principles.

Moreover, I have a letter from each of them, arriving at the same time as yours, indicating that neither of them values anyone more than me.

What am I to do?

If the worst comes to the worst, I know what to do. In the case of civil war I am clear that it is better to be conquered with the one than to conquer with the other. But I am in doubt how to meet the questions which will be in active discussion when I arrive--whether he may be a candidate in his absence from Rome, whether he must not dismiss his army, and so on. When the president calls my name in the senate--"Speak, Marcus Tullius!" am I to say, "Please wait until I have had a talk with Atticus"?

The time for hedging has pa.s.sed. Shall it be against Caesar? What then becomes of our pledges to one another? Or shall I change my political opinions? I could not face Pompey, nor men and women--you yourself would be the first to reproach me. You may laugh at what I am going to say.

How I wish I were even now back in my province! Though nothing could be more disagreeable. By the way, I ought to tell you that all those virtues which adorned the early days of my government, which your letters praised to the skies, were very superficial. How difficult a thing is virtue!

_To L. Papirius_ Rome, B.C. 46

I am writing at dinner at the house of Volumnius; we lay down at three o'clock; your friends Atticus and Verrius are to my right and left. Are you surprised that we pa.s.s the time of our bondage so gaily? What else should I do? Tell me, student of philosophy! shall I make myself miserable? What good would it serve, or how long would it last? But you say, "Spend your days in reading." As a matter of fact, I do nothing else; it's my only way to keep alive. But one cannot read all day; and when I have put away my books I don't know any better way of spending the evening than at dinner.

I like dining out. I like to talk without restraint, saying just what comes to my tongue, and laughing care and sorrow from my heart. You are no more serious yourself. I heard how you mocked a grave philosopher when he invited questions: you said that the question that haunted your mornings was, "Where shall I dine to-day?" He thought, poor fool, that you were going to ask whether there was one heaven or many.

I give part of the day to reading or writing; then, not to shut myself up from my friends, I dine with them. You need not be afraid of my coming; you will receive a guest of more humour than appet.i.te.

_To L. Minucius Basilus_ Rome, March, B.C. 44

My congratulations! I rejoice with you! I love you! I have your interests at heart! I pray you love me, and let me know how you are, and what is happening. [Written to one of Caesar's a.s.sa.s.sins; apparently, immediately after the event.]

_To Atticus_ May, B.C. 44

I see I have been a fool to take comfort in the Ides of March. We had indeed the courage of men, but no more wisdom than children have. The tree was cut down, but its roots remained, and it is springing up again.

The tyrant was removed, but the tyranny is with us still. Let us therefore return to the "Tusculan Disputations" which you often quote, with their reasons why death is not to be feared.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Biographia Literaria

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born at Ottery St. Mary, in the county of Devon, on October 21, 1772. He was educated at Christ Hospital where Charles Lamb was among his friends. He read very widely but was without any particular ambition or practical bent, and had undertaken to apprentice himself to a shoemaker, when his head-master interfered. He entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1791. During the second year of his residence at the University, he left Cambridge, on account of an unsuccessful love affair, and enlisted in the regiment of dragoons under an a.s.sumed name. He soon secured his discharge from the army and went to Bristol where he met Southey. In 1795 he married Miss Fricker, and removed to Nether Stowey, a village in Somersetshire, where he wrote the "Ancient Mariner"

and the first part of "Christabel." While here he became a close friend of Wordsworth. Coleridge originally intended his "Biographia Literaria" to be a kind of apologia, in other words, to put forth his claims for public recognition; and although he began the book with this intention, it subsequently developed into a book containing some of his most admirable criticism. He gives voice to a crowd of miscellaneous reflections, suggested, as the work got under way, by popular events, embracing politics, religion, philosophy, poetry, and also finally settling the controversy that had arisen in respect of the "Lyrical Ballads." The autobiographical parts of the "Biographia" are confined solely to his intellectual experiences, and the influences to which his life was subjected. As a treatise on criticism, especially on Wordsworth, the book is of supreme importance. "Here," says Princ.i.p.al Shairp, "are canons of judgement, not mechanical, but living." Published in 1817, it was followed shortly after his death by a still more important edition with annotations and an introduction by the poet's daughter Sara.

_I.--The Nature of Poetic Diction_

Little of what I have here written concerns myself personally; the narrative is designed chiefly to introduce my principles of politics, religion, and poetry. But my special purpose is to decide what is the true nature of poetic diction, and to define the real poetic character of the works of Mr. Wordsworth, whose writings have been the subject of so much controversy.

At school I had the advantage of a very sensible though severe master. I learned from him that poetry, even that of the loftiest odes, had a logic of its own as severe as that of science, and more difficult, because more subtle. In the truly great poets, he would say, there is a reason a.s.signable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word. In our English compositions he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words. In fancy, I can almost hear him now exclaiming: "Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean!" Nay, certain introductions, similes, and examples were placed by name on a list of interdiction.

I had just entered my seventeenth year when the sonnets of Mr. Bowles were made known to me, and the genial influence of his poetry, so tender, yet so manly, so natural and real, yet so dignified and harmonious, recalled me from a premature bewilderment in metaphysics and theology. Well were it for me, perhaps, if I had never relapsed into the same mental disease.

The poetry of Pope and his followers, a school of French poetry invigorated by English understanding, which had predominated from the last century, consisted of prose thoughts translated into poetic language. I was led to the conjecture that this style had been kept up by, if it did not wholly arise from, the custom of writing Latin verses.

I began to defend the use of natural language, such as "I will remember thee," instead of "Thy image on her wing, Before my fancy's eye shall memory bring;" and adduced, as examples of simplicity, the diction of Greek poets, and of our elder English poets, from Chaucer to Milton. I arrived at two critical aphorisms, as the criteria of poetic style: first, that not the poem which we have read with the greatest pleasure but that to which we return with the greatest pleasure possesses the genuine power; and, second, that whatever lines can be translated into other words of the same language, without diminution of their significance, are so far vicious in their diction.

One great distinction between even the characteristic faults of our elder poets and the false beauties of the moderns is this. In the former, from Donne to Cowley, we find the most fantastic out-of-the-way thoughts, but the most pure and genuine mother English; in the latter, the most obvious thoughts, in language the most fantastic and arbitrary.

Our faulty elder poets sacrificed the pa.s.sion, and pa.s.sionate flow of poetry, to the subtleties of intellect and to the starts of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual yet broken and heterogeneous imagery. The one sacrificed the heart to the head, the other both heart and head to drapery.

_II.--In Praise of Southey_

Reflect on the variety and extent of his acquirements! He stands second to no man, either as a historian or as a bibliographer; and when I regard him as a popular essayist I look in vain for any writer who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such recondite sources, with as many just and original reflections, in a style so lively yet so uniformly cla.s.sical and perspicuous; no one, in short, who has combined so much wisdom with so much wit; so much truth and knowledge with so much life and fancy.

Still more striking to those who are familiar with the general habits of genius will appear the poet's matchless industry and perseverance in his pursuits, the worthiness and dignity of those pursuits, his generous submission to tasks of transitory interest. But as Southey possesses, and is not possessed by, his genius, even so is he the master even of his virtues. The regular and methodical tenor of his daily labours, which might be envied by the mere man of business, lose all semblance of formality in the dignified simplicity of his manners, in the spring and healthful cheerfulness of his spirit. Always employed, his friends find him always at leisure.

No less punctual in trifles than steadfast in the performance of highest duties, he inflicts none of those small pains and discomforts which irregular men scatter about them, and which in the aggregate so often become formidable obstacles both to happiness and utility. He bestows all the pleasures, and inspires all that ease of mind on those around him, which perfect consistency and absolute reliability cannot but bestow. I know few men who so well deserve the character which an ancient attributes to Marcus Cato--namely, that he was likest virtue, inasmuch as he seemed to act aright, not in obedience to any law or outward motive, but by the necessity of a happy nature which could not act otherwise.

As a son, brother, husband, father, master, friend, he moves with firm yet light steps, alike unostentatious and alike exemplary. As a writer, he has uniformly made his talents subservient to the best interests of humanity, of public virtue, and domestic piety; his cause has ever been the cause of pure religion and of liberty, of national independence and of national illumination.

When future critics shall weigh out his guerdon of praise and censure, it will be Southey the poet only that will supply them with the scanty materials for the latter. They will not fail to record that as no man was ever a more constant friend, never had poet more friends and honourers among the good of all parties, and that quacks in education, quacks in politics, and quacks in criticism, were his only enemies.

_III.--Wordsworth's Early Poems_

During the last year of my residence at Cambridge I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publication, ent.i.tled "Descriptive Sketches," and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced. In the whole poem there is a harshness and acerbity, combined with words and images all aglow, which might recall gorgeous blossoms rising out of a hard and th.o.r.n.y rind and sh.e.l.l, within which the rich fruit was elaborating. The language was not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength. It not seldom, therefore, justified the complaint of obscurity.

I was in my twenty-fourth year when I had the happiness of knowing Mr.

Wordsworth personally, and by that time the occasional obscurities which had arisen from an imperfect control over the resources of his native language had almost wholly disappeared, together with that worse defect of arbitrary and illogical phrases, at once arbitrary and fantastic, which alloy the earlier poems of the truest genius. There was only evident the union of deep feeling with profound thought; and the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with it the depth and height of the ideal world, around forms, incidents, and situations of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the l.u.s.tre, had dried up the sparkle and the dewdrops.

To find no contradiction in the union of old and new, to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all His works With feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative fiat, characterises the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar--this is the character and privilege of genius. And it is the prime merit of genius, and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others that freshness of sensation which is the constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence.

This excellence, which const.i.tutes the character of Mr. Wordsworth's mind, I no sooner felt than I sought to understand. Repeated meditations led me to suspect that fancy and imagination were two distinct and widely different faculties, instead of being, according to the general belief, the lower and higher degree of one and the same power. Milton had a highly imaginative, Cowley a very fanciful, mind. The division between fancy and imagination is no less grounded in nature than that of delirium from mania; or of Otway's