Part 27 (2/2)

for such is the state of moral feeling even with the English public, that an instance of credulity to an ingenious scheme which has failed in the trial will weigh more heavily on a minister's character than to have stifled in the birth half-a-dozen such men as Nelson or Cochrane, or such schemes as that of a floating army. Nelson's life is a perpetual comment on this.

[Sidenote: SERMONS ANCIENT AND MODERN]

Of moral discourses and fine moral discussions in the pulpit--”none of your Methodist stuff for me.” And, yet, most certain it is, that never were either ministers or congregations so strict in all morality as at the time when nothing but fine _moral_ discourses (that is calculations in self-love) would have driven a preacher from the pulpit--and when the clergy thought it their pulpit-duty to preach Christ and Him crucified, and the why and the wherefore--and that the soberest, law-obeying, most prudent nation in the world would need Him as much as a nation of drunkards, thieves and profligates. How was this? Why, I take it, those old parsons thought, very wisely, that the pulpit was the place for truths that applied to all men, humbled all alike (not mortified one or two, and sent the rest home, scandal-talking with pharisaic ”I thank thee, G.o.d, I am not as so and so, but I was glad to hear the parson”), comforted all, frightened all, offended all, because they were all _men_--that private vices depend so much on particular circ.u.mstances, that without making the pulpit a lampoon shop, (or, even supposing the genius of him who wrote Isaac Jenkins, without particulars not suited to the pulpit) that it would be a cold generality affair--and that, therefore, they considered the pulpit as _one_ part of their duty, but to their whole congregation as _men_, and that the other part of their duty, which they thought equally binding on them, was to each and every member of that congregation as John Harris, or James Tomkins, in private conversation--and, like that of Mr. Longford, sometimes to rebuke and warn, sometimes to comfort, sometimes and oftener to instruct, and render them capable of understanding his sermon. In short they would _preach_ as Luther, and would converse as Mr. Longford to Isaac Jenkins.

[_The History of Isaac Jenkins, a Moral Fiction._ By Thomas Beddoes, M.D., 1793].

[Sidenote: HEAVINESS MAY ENDURE FOR A NIGHT]

With a loving generous man whose activity of intellect is exerted habitually on truth and events of permanent, or, at least, general interest still warmed and coloured by benevolent enthusiasm self-unconsciously, and whose heart-movements are all the property of the few, whom he dearly loves--with such a man, for the vast majority of the wrongs met with in life, that at all affect him, a one-night's sleep provides the oblivion and the cure--he awakes from his slumbers and his resentment at the same moment. Yesterday is gone and the clouds of yesterday. The sun is born again, and how bright and joyous! and I am born again! But O! there may be wrongs, for which with our best efforts for the most perfect suppression, with the absence, nay, the impossibility of anger or hate, yet, longer, deeper sleep is required for the heart's oblivion, and thence renewal--even the long total sleep of death.

To me, I dare avow, even this connects a new soothing with the thought of death, an additional l.u.s.tre in antic.i.p.ation to the confidence of resurrection, that such sensations as I have so often had after small wrongs, trifling quarrels, on first awaking in a summer morn after refres.h.i.+ng sleep, I shall experience after death for those few wounds too deep and broad for the _vis medicatrix_ of mortal life to fill wholly up with new flesh--those that, though healed, yet left an unsightly scar which, too often, spite of our best wishes, opened anew at other derangements and indispositions of the mental health, even when they were altogether unconnected with the wound itself or its occasions--even as the scars of the sailor, the relics and remembrances of sword or gun-shot wounds (first of all his bodily frame giving way to ungenial influences from without or from within), ache and throb at the coming in of rain or easterly winds, and open again and bleed anew, at the attack of fever, or injury from deficient or unwholesome food--that even for these I should enjoy the same delightful annihilation of them, as of ordinary wrongs after sleep.

I would say to a man who reminded me of a friend's unkind words or deeds which I had forgiven--Smoking is very well while we are all smoking, even though the head is made dizzy by it and the candle of reason burns red, dim and thick; but, for Heaven's sake, don't put an old pipe to my nose just at breakfast time, among dews and flowers and suns.h.i.+ne.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote F: [”I find all things upon earth, even truth and joy, rather than friends.h.i.+p.”]]

CHAPTER VIII

_1811-1812_

From all that meets or eye or ear, There falls a genial holy fear, Which, like the heavy dew of morn, Refreshes while it bows the heart forlorn!

S. T. C.

[Sidenote: TIME REAL AND IMAGINARY]

How marked the contrast between troubled manhood, and joyously-active youth in the sense of time! To the former, time like the sun in an empty sky is never seen to move, but only to have _moved_. There, there it was, and now 'tis here, now distant! yet all a blank between. To the latter it is as the full moon in a fine breezy October night, driving on amid clouds of all shapes and hues, and kindling s.h.i.+fting colours, like an ostrich in its speed, and yet seems not to have moved at all. This I feel to be a just image of time real and time as felt, in two different states of being. The t.i.tle of the poem therefore (for poem it ought to be) should be time real and time felt (in the sense of time) in active youth, or activity with hope and fullness of aim in any period, and in despondent, objectless manhood--time objective and subjective.

[The riddle is hard to read, but the underlying thought seems to be that in youth the sense of time is like the apparent motion of the moon through clouds, ever driving on, but ever seeming to stand still; whereas the sense of time in manhood is like the sun, which seems to be stationary, and yet, at short intervals, is seen to have moved. This is time _felt_ in two different states of being. Time real is, as it were, sun or moon which move independently of our perceptions of their movements. The note (1811), no doubt, contains the germ of ”Time Real and Imaginary” first published in ”Sibylline Leaves” in 1817, which Coleridge in his Preface describes as a ”school-boy poem,” and interprets thus: ”By imaginary time I meant the state of a schoolboy's mind when, on his return to school, he projects his being in his day-dreams, and lives in his next holidays, six months hence!” The explanation was probably an afterthought. ”The two lovely children” who ”run an endless race” may have haunted his schoolboy dreams, may perhaps have returned to the dreams of his troubled manhood, bringing with them the sense rather than the memory of youth, intermingled with a consciousness that youth was gone for ever, but the composition of the poem dates from 1811, or possibly 1815, when the preparation of the poems for the press would persuade him once more to express his thoughts in verse.]

[Sidenote: TIME REAL AND IMAGINARY; AN ALLEGORY]

On the wide level of a mountain's head, (I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place) Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread, Two lovely children run an endless race, A sister and a brother!

This far outstript the other; Yet ever runs she with reverted face, And looks and listens for the boy behind: For he, alas! is blind!

O'er rough and smooth with even step he pa.s.sed, And knows not whether he be first or last.

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