Part 3 (2/2)

”O Thou! whose fancies from afar are brought.”

[Sidenote: March 17, 1801, Tuesday]

[Sidenote: 1797-1801]

Hartley, looking out of my study window, fixed his eyes steadily and for some time on the opposite prospect and said, ”Will yon mountains _always_ be?” I shewed him the whole magnificent prospect in a looking-gla.s.s, and held it up, so that the whole was like a canopy or ceiling over his head, and he struggled to express himself concerning the difference between the thing and the image almost with convulsive effort. I never before saw such an abstract of _thinking_ as a pure act and energy--of thinking as distinguished from thought.

[Sidenote: GIORDANO BRUNO]

Monday, April 1801, and Tuesday, read two works of Giordano Bruno, with one t.i.tle-page: _Jordani Bruni Nolani de Monade, Numero et Figura liber consequens. Quinque de Minimo, Magno et Mensura. Item. De Innumerabilibus Immenso, et Infigurabili seu de Universo et Mundis libri octo. Francofurti, Apud Joan. Wechelum et Petrum Fischerum consortes_, 1591.

Then follows the dedication, then the index of contents of the whole volume, at the end of which index is a Latin ode, conceived with great dignity and grandeur of thought. Then the work _De Monade, Numero et Figura, secretioris nempe Physicae, Mathematicae, et Metaphysicae elementa_ commences, which, as well as the eight books _De Innumerabili_, &c., is a poem in Latin hexameters, divided (each book) into chapters, and to each chapter is affixed a prose commentary. If the five books _de Minimo_, &c., to which this book is consequent are of the same character, I lost nothing in not having it. As to the work _De Monade_, it was far too numerical, lineal and Pythagorean for my comprehension.

It read very much like Thomas Taylor and Proclus, &c. I by no means think it certain that there is no meaning in these works. Nor do I presume even to suppose that the meaning is of no value (till I understand a man's ignorance I presume myself ignorant of his understanding), but it is for others, at present, not for me. Sir P.

Sidney and Fulk Greville shut the doors at their philosophical conferences with Bruno. If his conversation resembled this book, I should have thought he would have talked with a trumpet.

The poems and commentaries, in the _De Immenso et Innumerabili_ are of a different character. The commentary is a very sublime enunciation of the dignity of the human soul, according to the principles of Plato.

[Here follows the pa.s.sage, ”_Anima Sapiens ----ubique totus_,” quoted in _The Friend_ (_Coleridge's Works_, ii. 109), together with a brief _resume_ of Bruno's other works. See, too, _Biographia Literaria_, chapter ix. (_Coleridge's Works_, iii. 249).]

[Sidenote: OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS]

The spring with the little tiny cone of loose sand ever rising and sinking at the bottom, but its surface without a wrinkle.

[Sidenote: Monday, September 14, 1801]

Northern lights remarkably fine--chiefly a purple-blue--in shooting pyramids, moved from over Ba.s.senthwaite behind Skiddaw. Derwent's birthday, one year old.

[Sidenote: September 15, 1801]

Observed the great half moon setting behind the mountain ridge, and watched the shapes its various segments presented as it slowly sunk--first the foot of a boot, all but the heel--then a little pyramid [py]--then a star of the first magnitude--indeed, it was not distinguishable from the evening star at its largest--then rapidly a smaller, a small, a very small star--and, as it diminished in size, so it grew paler in tint. And now where is it? Unseen--but a little fleecy cloud hangs above the mountain ridge, and is rich in amber light.

I do not wish you to act from those truths. No! still and always act from your feelings; but only meditate often on these truths, that sometime or other they may become your feelings.

The state should be to the religions under its protection as a well-drawn picture, equally eyeing all in the room.

Quaere, whether or no too great definiteness of terms in any language may not consume too much of the vital and idea-creating force in distinct, clear, full-made images, and so prevent originality. For original might be distinguished from positive thought.

<script>