Part 18 (1/2)

O the complexities of the ravel produced by time struggling with eternity! _a_ and _b_ are different, and eternity or duration makes them one--this we call modification--the principle of all greatness in finite beings, the principle of all contradiction and absurdity.

[Sidenote: THE Pa.s.sION FOR THE MOT PROPRE August 3, 1805 Sat.u.r.day]

It is worthy notice (shewn in the phrase ”I envy him such and such a thing,” meaning only, ”I regret I cannot share with him, have the same as he, without depriving him of it, or any part of it,”) the instinctive pa.s.sion in the mind for a _one word_ to express _one act_ of feeling--[one] that is, in which, however complex in reality, the mind is _conscious_ of no discursion and synthesis _a posteriori_. On this instinct rest all the improvements (and, on the habits formed by this instinct and [the] knowledge of these improvements, Vanity rears all the Apuleian, Apollonian, etc., etc., corruptions) of style. Even so with our Johnson.

[Sidenote: BULLS OF ACTION]

There are _bulls_ of action equally as of thought, [for] (not to allude to the story of the Irish labourer who laid his comrade all his wages that he would not carry him down in his hod from the top to the bottom of a high house, down the ladder) the feeling of vindictive honour in duelling, and the feudal revenges anterior to duelling, formed a true bull; for they were superst.i.tious Christians, knew it was wrong, and yet knew it was right--they would be d.a.m.ned deservedly if they did, and, if they did not, they thought themselves deserving of being d.a.m.ned.

[Sidenote: PSEUDO-POETS]

The pseudo-poets Campbell, Rogers, etc., both by their writings and moral character tend to bring poetry into disgrace, and, but that men in general are the slaves of the same wretched infirmities, they would [set their seal on this disgrace,] and it would be well. The true poet could not smother the sacred fire (”his heart burnt within him and he spake”), and wisdom would be justified by her children. But the false poet--that is, the no-poet--finding poetry in contempt among the many, of whose praise, whatever he may affirm, he is alone ambitious, would be prevented from scribbling.

[Sidenote: LANDING PLACES]

The progress of human intellect from earth to heaven is not a Jacob's ladder, but a geometrical staircase with five or more landing-places.

That on which we stand enables us to see clearly and count all below us, while that or those above us are so transparent for our eyes that they appear the canopy of heaven. We do not see them, and believe ourselves on the highest.

[”Among my earliest impressions I still distinctly remember that of my first entrance into the mansion of a neighbouring baronet, awefully known to me by the name of the Great House [Escot, near Ottery St. Mary, Devon].... Beyond all other objects I was most struck with the magnificent staircase, relieved at well-proportioned intervals by s.p.a.cious landing-places.... My readers will find no difficulty in translating these forms of the outward senses into their intellectual a.n.a.logies, so as to understand the purport of _The Friend's_ Landing-Places.” _The Friend_, ”The Landing-Place,” Essay iv.

_Coleridge's Works_, Harper & Brothers, 1853, ii. 137, 138.]

[Sidenote: WILLIAM BROWNE OF OTTERY]

In the _Threnae_ or funeral songs and elegies of our old poets, I am often impressed with the idea of their resemblance to hired weepers in Rome and among the Irish, where he who howled the loudest and most wildly was the most capital mourner and was at the head of his trade.

So [too] see William Browne's elegy on Prince Henry (_Britt. Past.

Songs_ v.), whom, perhaps, he never spoke to. Yet he is a dear fellow, and I love him, that W. Browne who died at Ottery, and with whose family my own is united, or, rather, connected and acquainted.

[Colonel James Coleridge, the poet's eldest surviving brother and Henry Langford Browne of Combe-Satchfield married sisters, Frances and Dorothy Taylor, whose mother was one of five co-heiresses of Richard Duke of Otterton.

It is uncertain whether a William Browne of Ottery St. Mary, who died in 1645, was the author of _The Shepherd's Pipe_ and _Britannia's Pastorals_. Two beautiful inscriptions on a tomb in St. Stephen's Chapel in the collegiate church of St. Mary Ottery, were, in Southey's opinion (doubtless at Coleridge's suggestion), composed by the poet William Browne.]

[Sidenote: ”ASCEND A STEP IN CHOOSING A FRIEND” TALMUD]

G.o.d knows! that at times I derive a comfort even from my infirmities, my sins of omission and commission, in the joy of the deep feeling of the opposite virtues in the two or three whom I love in my heart of hearts.

Sharp, therefore, is the pain when I find faults in these friends opposite to my virtues. I find no comfort in the notion of average, for I wish to love even more than to be beloved, and am so haunted by the conscience of my many failings that I find an unmixed pleasure in esteeming and admiring, but, as the recipient of esteem or admiration, I feel as a man, whose good dispositions are still alive, feels in the enjoyment of a _darling_ property on a doubtful t.i.tle. My instincts are so far dog-like that I love beings superior to myself better than my equals. But the notion of inferiority is so painful to me that I never, in common life, feel a man my inferior except by after-reflection. What seems vanity in me is in great part attributable to this feeling. But of this hereafter. I will cross-examine myself.

[Sidenote: A CAUTION TO POSTERITY]