Part 26 (1/2)
Faithful, confident reliance on man and on G.o.d is the last and hardest virtue! And wherefore? Because we must first have earned a FAITH in ourselves. Let the conscience p.r.o.nounce: ”Trust in thyself!” Let the whole heart be able to say, ”I trust in myself,” and those whomever we _love_ we shall rely on, in proportion to that love.
A testy patriot might be pardoned for saying with Falstaff, when Dame Quickly told him ”She came from the two parties, forsooth,” ”The Devil take one party and his Dam the other.” John Bull has suffered more for their sake, more than even the supererogatory cullibility of his disposition is able to bear.
Lavater fixed on the simplest physiognomy in his whole congregation, and pitched his sermon to his comprehension. Narcissus either looks at or thinks of his looking gla.s.s, for the same wise purpose I presume.
Reviewers resemble often the English jury and the Italian conclave, they are incapable of eating till they have condemned or craned.
The Pope [may be compared to] an old lark, who, though he leaves off soaring and singing in the height, yet has his spurs grow longer and sharper the older he grows.
Let us not, because the foliage waves in necessary obedience to every breeze, fancy that the tree shakes also. Though the slender branch bend, one moment to the East and another to the West, its motion is circ.u.mscribed by its connection with the unyielding trunk.
[Sidenote: A HINT FOR ”CHRISTABEL”]
My first cries mingled with my mother's death-groan, and she beheld the vision of glory, ere I the earthly sun. When I first looked up to Heaven consciously, it was to look up after, or for, my mother.
[Sidenote: ”ALL THOUGHTS ALL Pa.s.sIONS ALL DELIGHTS”]
The two sweet silences--first in the purpling dawn of love-troth, when the heart of each ripens in the other's looks within the unburst calyx, and fear becomes so sweet that it seems but a fear of losing hope in certainty; the second, when the sun is setting in the calm eve of confident love, and [the lovers] in mute recollection enjoy each other.
”I fear to speak, I fear to hear you speak, so deeply do I now enjoy your presence, so totally possess you in myself, myself in you. The very sound would break the union and separate _you-me_ into you and me. We both, and this sweet room, its books, its furniture, and the shadows on the wall slumbering with the low, quiet fire are all _our_ thought, one harmonious imagery of forms distinct on the still substance of one deep feeling, love and joy--a lake, or, if a stream, yet flowing so softly, so unwrinkled, that its flow is life, not change--that state in which all the individuous nature, the distinction without division of a vivid thought, is united with the sense and substance of intensest reality.”
And what if joy pa.s.s quick away? Long is the track of Hope before--long, too, the track of recollection after, as in the Polar spring the sun [is seen in the heavens] sixteen days before it really rises, and in the Polar autumn ten days after it has set; so Nature, with Hope and Recollection, pieces out our short summer.
[Sidenote: WORDS AND THINGS]
N.B.--In my intended essay in defence of punning (Apology for Paronomasy, _alias_ Punning), to defend those turns of words--
Che l'onda chiara, El'ombra non men cara--
in certain styles of writing, by proving that language itself is formed upon a.s.sociations of this kind--that possibly the _sensus genericus_ of whole cla.s.ses of words may be thus deciphered (as has indeed been attempted by Mr. White, of Clare Hall), that words are not mere symbols of things and thoughts, but themselves things, and that any harmony in the things symbolised will perforce be presented to us more easily, as well as with additional beauty, by a correspondent harmony of the symbols with each other. Thus, _heri vidi fragilem frangi, hodie mortalem mori_; Gestern seh ich was gebrechliches brechen, heute was sterbliches sterben, compared with the English. This the beauty of h.o.m.ogeneous languages. So _Veni, vidi, vici_.
[This note follows an essay on Giambattista Strozzi's Madrigals, together with a transcription of twenty-seven specimens. The substance of the essay is embodied in the text of Chapter xvi. of the ”Biographia Literaria,” and a long footnote. The quotation is from the first madrigal, quoted in the note, which is not included in those transcribed in Notebook 17.--_Coleridge's Works_, iii. (Harper & Brothers, 1853), pp. 388-393.]
[Sidenote: a.s.sOCIATION]
Important suggestion on 4th March, 1810 (Monday night). The law of a.s.sociation clearly begins in common causality. How continued but by a _causative power_ in the soul? What a proof of _causation_ and _power_ from the very law of mind, and cl.u.s.ter of facts adduced by Hume to overthrow it!
[Sidenote: COROLLARY]
It is proud ignorance that, as a disease of the mind, alone superinduces the necessity of the _medium_ of metaphysical philosophy. The errors into which a sound, unaffected mind is led by the nature of things (Thing as the substratum of power)--no errors at all, any more than the motion of the sun. ”So it _appears_”--and that is most true--but when pride will work up these phenomena into a _system_ of _things in themselves_, then they become most pernicious errors, and it is the duty of true mind to examine these with all the virtues of the intellect--patience, humility, etc.
[Sidenote: MOTHER WIT]