Part 21 (2/2)

_N.B._--There is a pa.s.sage in the second part of Wallenstein expressing, not explaining, the same feeling. ”The spirits of great events stride on before the events”--it is in one of the last two or three scenes:--

”As the sun, Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits Of great events, stride on before the events.”

[WALLENSTEIN, Part II., act v. sc. 1. _P. W._, 1893, p. 351.]

[Sidenote: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CLERICAL ERRORS]

It is worth noting and endeavouring to detect the Law of the Mind, by which, in writing earnestly while we are thinking, we omit words necessary to the sense. It will be found, I guess, that we seldom omit the material word, but generally the word by which the mind expresses its modification of the _verb.u.m materiale_. Thus, in the preceding page, 7th line, _medium_ is the _materiale_: that was its own brute, inert sense--but the _no_ is the mind's action, its _use_ of the word.

I think this a hint of some value. Thus, _the_ is a word in constant combination with the pa.s.sive or material words; but _to_ is an act of the mind, and I had written _the_ detect instead of _to_ detect. Again, when my sense demanded ”the” to express a distinct modification of some _verb.u.m materiale_, I remember to have often omitted it in writing. The principle is evident--the mind borrows the _materia_ from without, and is pa.s.sive with regard to it as the mere subject ”stoff”--a simple event of memory takes place; but having the other in itself, the inward Having with its sense of security pa.s.ses for the outward Having--or is all memory an anxious act, and thereby suspended by vivid security? or are both reasons the same? or if not, are they consistent, and capable of being co-or sub-ordinated? It will be lucky if some day, after having written on for two or three sheets rapidly and as a first copy, without correcting, I should by chance glance on this note, not having thought at all about it during or before the time of writing; and then to examine every word omitted.

[Sidenote: BIBLIOLOGICAL MEMORANDA]

To spend half-an-hour in Cuthill's shop, examining Stephen's _Thesaurus_, in order to form an accurate idea of its utilities above Scapula, and to examine the _Budaeo-Tusan-Constantine_, whether it be the same or as good as Constantine, and the comparative merits of Constantine with Scapula.

3. To examine Bosc relatively to Brunck, and to see after the new German _Anthologia_.

4. Before I quit town, to buy Appendix (either No. 1430 or 1431), 8_s._ or 18_s._ What a difference! ten s.h.i.+llings, because the latter, the Parma Anacreon, is on large paper, green morocco; the former is neat in red morocco, but the type the same.

5. To have a long morning's ramble with De Quincey, first to Egerton's, and then to the book haunts.

6. To see if I can find that Arrian with Epictetus which I admired so much at Mr. Leckie's.

7. To find out D'Orville's _Daphnis_, and the price. Is there no other edition? no cheap German?

8. To write out the pa.s.sage from Strada's _Prolusions_ at Cuthill's.

9. Aristotle's Works, and to hunt for Proclus.

10. In case of my speedy death, it would answer to buy a 100 worth of carefully-chosen books, in order to attract attention to my library and to give accession to the value of books by their co-existing with co-appurtenants--as, for instance, Plato, Aristotle; Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus: Schoolmen, Interscholastic; Bacon, Hobbes; Locke, Berkeley; Leibnitz, Spinoza; Kant and the critical Fichte, and Wissenschaftslehre, Sch.e.l.ling, &c.

[The first edition of Robert Constantin's _Lexicon Graeco-Lat._ was published at Geneva in 1564. A second ed. _post correctiones_ G. Budaei et J. Tusani, at Basle, in 1584.]

[Sidenote: [Greek: panta rhei]]

Our mortal existence, what is it but a stoppage in the blood of life, a brief eddy from wind or concourse of currents in the ever-flowing ocean of pure Activity, who beholds pyramids, yea, Alps and Andes, giant pyramids, the work of fire that raiseth monuments, like a generous victor o'er its own conquest, the tombstones of a world destroyed! Yet these, too, float adown the sea of Time, and melt away as mountains of floating ice.

[Sidenote: DISTINCTION IN UNION]

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