1820.
Among the grounds for recommending the perusal of our elder
writers Hooker Taylor Baxter in short
almost any of the folios composed from Edward VI. to Charles II.
I note:
1. The overcoming the habit of deriving your whole
pleasure passively from the book itself, which can only be
effected by excitement of curiosity or of some passion. Force
yourself to reflect on what you read paragraph by paragraph, and
in a short time you will derive your pleasure, an ample portion
of it, at least, from the activity of your own mind. All else is
picture sunshine.
2. The conquest of party and sectarian prejudices, when
you have on the same table before you the works of a Hammond and
a Baxter, and reflect how many and how momentous their points of
agreement, how few and almost childish the differences, which
estranged and irritated these good men. Let us but imagine what
their blessed spirits now feel at the retrospect of their earthly
frailties, and can we do other than strive to feel as they now
feel, not as they once felt? So will it be with the disputes
between good men of the present day; and if you have no other
reason to doubt your opponent's goodness than the point in
dispute, think of Baxter and Hammond, of Milton and Taylor, and
let it be no reason at all.
3. It will secure you from the narrow idolatry of the
present times and fashions, and create the noblest kind of
imaginative power in your soul, that of living in past ages;
wholly devoid of which power, a man can neither anticipate
the future, nor ever live a truly human life, a life of reason in
the present.
4. In this particular work we may derive a most
instructive lesson, that in certain points, as of religion in
relation to law, the medio tutis simus ibis is
inapplicable. There is no 'medium' possible; and all the attempts
as those of Baxter, though no more were required than 'I believe
in God through Christ,' prove only the mildness of the proposer's
temper, but as a rule would be either equal to nothing, at least
exclude only the two or three in a century that make it a matter
of religion to declare themselves atheists, or else be just as
fruitful a rule for a persecutor as the most complete set of
articles that could be framed by a Spanish Inquisition. For to
'believe' must mean to believe aright and 'God' must mean
the true God and 'Christ' the Christ in the sense and with
the attributes understood by Christians who are truly Christians.
An established church with a liturgy is the sufficient solution
of the problem de jure magistratus. Articles of faith are
in this point of view superfluous; for is it not too absurd for a
man to hesitate at subscribing his name to doctrines which yet in
the more awful duty of prayer and profession he dares affirm
before his Maker! They are therefore, in this sense, merely
superfluous; not worth re-enacting, had they ever been done
away with; not worth removing now that they exist.
5. The characteristic contra-distinction between the
speculative reasoners of the age before the Revolution, and those
since, is this: the former cultivated metaphysics without,
or neglecting empirical, psychology: the latter cultivate a
mechanical psychology to the neglect and contempt of metaphysics.
Both, therefore, are almost equi-distant from true philosophy.
Hence the belief in ghosts, witches, sensible replies to prayer,
&c. in Baxter and in a hundred others. See also Luther's Table
Talk.
6. The earlier part of this volume is interesting as
materials for medical history. The state of medical science in
the reign of Charles I. was almost incredibly low.
1810.
The same arguments that decide the question, whether taste has
any fixed principles, may probably lead to a determination of
what those principles are. First then, what is taste in its
metaphorical sense, or, which will be the easiest mode of
arriving at the same solution, what is there in the primary sense
of the word, which may give to its metaphorical meaning an import
different from that of sight or hearing, on the one hand, and of
touch or smell on the other? And this question seems the more
natural, because in correct language we confine beauty, the main
subject of taste, to objects of sight and combinations of sounds,
and never, except sportively or by abuse of words, speak of a
beautiful flavour or a beautiful scent.
Now the analysis of our senses in the commonest books of
anthropology has drawn our attention to the distinction between
the perfectly organic, and the mixed senses; the first
presenting objects, as distinct from the perception; the
last as blending the perception with the sense of the object. Our
eyes and ears (I am not now considering what is or is not
the case really, but only that of which we are regularly
conscious as appearances,) our eyes most often appear to us
perfect organs of the sentient principle, and wholly in action,
and our hearing so much more so than the three other senses, and
in all the ordinary exertions of that sense, perhaps, equally so
with the sight, that all languages place them in one class, and
express their different modifications by nearly the same
metaphors. The three remaining senses appear in part passive, and
combine with the perception of the outward object a distinct
sense of our own life. Taste, therefore, as opposed to vision and
sound, will teach us to expect in its metaphorical use a certain
reference of any given object to our own being, and not merely a
distinct notion of the object as in itself, or in its independent
properties. From the sense of touch, on the other hand, it is
distinguishable by adding to this reference to our vital being
some degree of enjoyment, or the contrary, some perceptible
impulse from pleasure or pain to complacency or dislike. The
sense of smell, indeed, might perhaps have furnished a metaphor
of the same import with that of taste; but the latter was
naturally chosen by the majority of civilized nations on account
of the greater frequency, importance, and dignity of its
employment or exertion in human nature.
By taste, therefore, as applied to the fine arts, we must be
supposed to mean an intellectual perception of any object blended
with a distinct reference to our own sensibility of pain or
pleasure, or, vice versa, a sense of enjoyment or dislike
co-instantaneously combined with, and appearing to proceed from,
some intellectual perception of the object; intellectual
perception, I say; for otherwise it would be a definition of
taste in its primary rather than in its metaphorical sense.
Briefly, taste is a metaphor taken from one of our mixed senses,
and applied to objects of the more purely organic senses, and of
our moral sense, when we would imply the co-existence of
immediate personal dislike or complacency. In this definition of
taste, therefore, is involved the definition of fine arts,
namely, as being such the chief and discriminative purpose of
which it is to gratify the taste, that is, not merely to
connect, but to combine and unite, a sense of immediate pleasure
in ourselves, with the perception of external arrangement.
The great question, therefore, whether taste in any one of the
fine arts has any fixed principle or ideal, will find its
solution in the ascertainment of two facts: first, whether
in every determination of the taste concerning any work of the
fine arts, the individual does not, with or even against the
approbation of his general judgment, involuntarily claim that all
other minds ought to think and feel the same; whether the common
expressions, 'I dare say I may be wrong, but that is my
particular taste;' are uttered as an offering of courtesy,
as a sacrifice to the undoubted fact of our individual
fallibility, or are spoken with perfect sincerity, not only of
the reason but of the whole feeling, with the same entireness of
mind and heart, with which we concede a right to every person to
differ from another in his preference of bodily tastes and
flavours. If we should find ourselves compelled to deny this, and
to admit that, notwithstanding the consciousness of our liability
to error, and in spite of all those many individual experiences
which may have strengthened the consciousness, each man does at
the moment so far legislate for all men, as to believe of
necessity that he is either right or wrong, and that if it be
right for him, it is universally right, we must then
proceed to ascertain: secondly, whether the source of these
phenomena is at all to be found in those parts of our nature, in
which each intellect is representative of all, and whether
wholly, or partially. No person of common reflection demands even
in feeling, that what tastes pleasant to him ought to produce the
same effect on all living beings; but every man does and must
expect and demand the universal acquiescence of all intelligent
beings in every conviction of his understanding. ...
1818.
The only necessary, but this the absolutely necessary,
pre-requisite to a full insight into the grounds of the beauty in
the objects of sight, is the directing of the attention to
the action of those thoughts in our own mind which are not
consciously distinguished. Every man may understand this, if he
will but recall the state of his feelings in endeavouring to
recollect a name, which he is quite sure that he remembers,
though he cannot force it back into consciousness. This region of
unconscious thoughts, oftentimes the more working the more
indistinct they are, may, in reference to this subject, be
conceived as forming an ascending scale from the most universal
associations of motion with the functions and passions of life,
as when, on passing out of a crowded city into the fields
on a day in June, we describe the grass and king-cups as nodding
their heads and dancing in the breeze, up to the half
perceived, yet not fixable, resemblance of a form to some
particular object of a diverse class, which resemblance we need
only increase but a little, to destroy, or at least injure, its
beauty-enhancing effect, and to make it a fantastic intrusion of
the accidental and the arbitrary, and consequently a disturbance
of the beautiful. This might be abundantly exemplified and
illustrated from the paintings of Salvator Rosa.
I am now using the term beauty in its most comprehensive sense,
as including expression and artistic interest, that is, I
consider not only the living balance, but likewise all the
accompaniments that even by disturbing are necessary to the
renewal and continuance of the balance. And in this sense I
proceed to show, that the beautiful in the object may be referred
to two elements, lines and colours; the first belonging to
the shapely (forma, formalis, formosus), and in this, to
the law, and the reason; and the second, to the lively, the free,
the spontaneous, and the self-justifying. As to lines, the
rectilineal are in themselves the lifeless, the determined ab
extra, but still in immediate union with the cycloidal, which
are expressive of function. The curve line is a modification of
the force from without by the force from within, or the
spontaneous. These are not arbitrary symbols, but the language of
nature, universal and intuitive, by virtue of the law by which
man is impelled to explain visible motions by imaginary causative
powers analogous to his own acts, as the Dryads, Hamadryads,
Naiads, &c.
The better way of applying these principles will be by a brief
and rapid sketch of the history of the fine arts, in which
it will be found, that the beautiful in nature has been
appropriated to the works of man, just in proportion as the state
of the mind in the artists themselves approached to the
subjective beauty. Determine what predominance in the minds of
the men is preventive of the living balance of excited faculties,
and you will discover the exact counterpart in the outward
products. Egypt is an illustration of this. Shapeliness is
intellect without freedom; but colours are significant. The
introduction of the arch is not less an epoch in the fine than in
the useful arts.
Order is beautiful arrangement without any purpose ad
extra; therefore there is a beauty of order, or order
may be contemplated exclusively as beauty.
The form given in every empirical intuition, the stuff,
that is, the quality of the stuff, determines the agreeable: but
when a thing excites us to receive it in such and such a mould,
so that its exact correspondence to that mould is what occupies
the mind, this is taste or the sense of beauty. Whether
dishes full of painted wood or exquisite viands were laid out on
a table in the same arrangement, would be indifferent to the
taste, as in ladies' patterns; but surely the one is far more
agreeable than the other. Hence observe the disinterestedness of
all taste; and hence also a sensual perfection with intellect is
occasionally possible without moral feeling. So it may be in
music and painting, but not in poetry. How far it is a real
preference of the refined to the gross pleasures, is another
question, upon the supposition that pleasure, in some form or
other, is that alone which determines men to the objects of the
former; whether experience does not show that if the latter
were equally in our power, occasioned no more trouble to enjoy,
and caused no more exhaustion of the power of enjoying them by
the enjoyment itself, we should in real practice prefer the
grosser pleasure. It is not, therefore, any excellence in the
quality of the refined pleasures themselves, but the advantages
and facilities in the means of enjoying them, that give them the
pre-eminence.
This is, of course, on the supposition of the absence of all
moral feeling. Suppose its presence, and then there will accrue
an excellence even to the quality of the pleasures themselves;
not only, however, of the refined, but also of the grosser kinds,
inasmuch as a larger sweep of thoughts will be associated
with each enjoyment, and with each thought will be associated a
number of sensations; and so, consequently, each pleasure will
become more the pleasure of the whole being. This is one of the
earthly rewards of our being what we ought to be, but which would
be annihilated, if we attempted to be it for the sake of this
increased enjoyment. Indeed it is a contradiction to suppose it.
Yet this is the common argumentum in circulo, in which the
eudsemonists flee and pursue. ...
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus. Catullus.
My Lesbia, let us love and live,
And to the winds, my Lesbia, give
Each cold restraint, each boding fear
Of age, and all its saws severe!
Yon sun now posting to the main
Will set, but 'tis to rise again;
But we, when once our little light
Is set, must sleep in endless night.
Then come, with whom alone I'll live,
A thousand kisses take and give!
Another thousand! to the store
Add hundreds then a thousand more!
And when they to a million mount,
Let confusion take the account,
That you, the number never knowing,
May continue still bestowing
That I for joys may never pine,
Which never can again be mine! 1
Lugete, O Veneres, Cupidinesque. Catullus
Pity, mourn in plaintive tone
The lovely starling dead and gone!
Weep,ye Loves! and Venus, weep
The lovely starling fall'n asleep!
Venus see with tearful eyes
In her lap the starling lies,
While the Loves all in a ring
Softly stroke the stiffen'd wing.
Moriens superstiti.
"The hour-bell sounds, and I must go;
Death waits again I hear him calling;
No cowardly desires have I,
Nor will I shun his face appalling.
I die in faith and honour rich
But ah! I leave behind my treasure
In widowhood and lonely pain;
To live were surely then a pleasure!
"My lifeless eyes upon thy face
Shall never open more to-morrow;
To-morrow shall thy beauteous eyes
Be closed to love, and drown'd in sorrow;
To-morrow death shall freeze this hand,
And on thy breast, my wedded treasure,
I never, never more shall live;
Alas! I quit a life of pleasure."
Morienti superstes.
"Yet art thou happier far than she
Who feels the widow's love for thee!
For while her days are days of weeping,
Thou, in peace, in silence sleeping,
In some still world, unknown, remote,
The mighty parent's care hast found,
Without whose tender guardian thought
No sparrow falleth to the ground."
My noble old warrior! this heart has beat high,
Since you told of the deeds that our countrymen wrought;
Ah! give me the sabre which hung by thy thigh,
And I too will fight as my forefathers fought!
O, despise not my youth! for my spirit is steel'd,
And I know there is strength in the grasp of my hand;
Yea, as firm as thyself would I move to the field,
And as proudly would die for my dear father-land.
In the sports of my childhood I mimick'd the fight,
The shrill of a trumpet suspended my breath;
And my fancy still wander'd by day and by night
Amid tumult and perils,'mid conquest and death.
My own eager shout in the heat of my trance,
How oft it awakes me from dreams full of glory,
When I meant to have leap'd on the hero of France,
And have dash'd him to earth pale and deathless and gory!
As late through the city with bannerets streaming,
And the music of trumpets the warriors flew by,
With helmet and scymetar naked and gleaming
On their proud trampling thunder-hoof'd steeds did they fly,
I sped to yon heath which is lonely and bare
For each nerve was unquiet, each pulse in alarm,
I hurl'd my mock lance through the objectless air,
And in open-eyed dream prov'd the strength of my arm.
Yes, noble old warrior! this heart has beat high,
Since you told of thedeeds that our countrymen wrought;
Ah! give me the falchion that hung by thy thigh,
And I too will fight as my forefathers fought!
2 His own fair countenance, his kingly forehead,
His tender smiles, love's day-dawn on his lips,
The sense, and spirit, and the light divine,
At the same moment in his steadfast eye
Were virtue's native crest, th' immortal soul's
Unconscious meek self-heraldry, to man
Genial, and pleasant to his guardian angel.
He suffer'd, nor complain'd; tho' oft with tears
He mourn'd th' oppression of his helpless brethren,
Yea, with a deeper and yet holier grief
Mourn'd for the oppressor. In those sabbath hours
His solemn grief, like the slow cloud at sunset,
Was but the veil of purest meditation
Pierced thro' and saturate with the rays of mind.
'Twas sweet to know it only possible!
Some wishes cross'd my mind and dimly cheer'd it,
And one or two poor melancholy pleasures,
Each in the pale unwarming light of hope
Silvering its flimsy wing, flew silent by
Moths in the moonbeam!
Behind the thin
Grey cloud that cover'd, but not hid, the sky,
The round full moon look'd small.
The subtle snow in every passing breeze
Rose curling from the grove like shafts of smoke.
On the broad mountain top
The neighing wild colt races with the wind
O'er fern and heath-flowers.
Like a mighty giantess
Seized in sore travail and prodigious birth,
Sick nature struggled: long and strange her pangs,
Her groans were horrible; but O, most fair
The twins she bore, Equality and Peace.
Terrible and loud
As the strong voice that from the thunder-cloud
Speaks to the startled midnight.
Such fierce vivacity as fires the eye
Of genius fancy-craz'd.
The mild despairing of a heart resign'd.
The sun (for now his orb
'Gan slowly sink)
Shot half his rays aslant the heath, whose flow'rs
Purpled the mountain's broad and level top.
Rich was his bed of clouds, and wide beneath
In darkness I remain'd;-the neighb'ring clock
Told me that now the rising sun at dawn
Shone lovely on my garden.
These be staggerers that, made drunk by power,
Forget thirst's eager promise, and presume,
Dark dreamers! that the world forgets it too!
Perish warmth,
Unfaithful to its seeming!
Old age, 'the shape and messenger of death,'
His wither'd fist still knocking at death's door.
God no distance knows
All of the whole possessing.
With skill that never alchemist yet told,
Made drossy lead as ductile as pure gold.
Guess at the wound and heal with secret hand.
The broad-breasted rock
Glasses his rugged forehead in the sea.
I mix in life, and labour to seem free,
With common persons pleas'd and common things,
While every thought and action tends to thee,
And every impulse from thy influence springs.
Farewell, sweet Love! yet blame you not my truth;
More fondly ne'er did mother eye her child
Than I your form: your's were my hopes of youth,
And as you shaped my thoughts, I sigh'd or smil'd.
While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving
To pleasure's secret haunt, and some apart
Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving,
To you I gave my whole weak wishing heart;
And when I met the maid that realized
Your fair creations, and had won her kindness,
Say but for her if aught on earth I prized!
Your dreams alone I dreamt and caught your blindness.
O grief! but farewell, Love! I will go play me
With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me.
Within these circling hollies, woodbine-clad
Beneath this small blue roof of vernal sky
How warm, how still! Tho' tears should dim mine eye,
Yet will my heart for days continue glad,
For here, my love, thou art, and here am I!
Each crime that once estranges from the virtues
Doth make the memory of their features daily
More dim and vague, till each coarse counterfeit
Can have the passport to our confidence
Sign'd by ourselves. And fitly are they punish'd,
Who prize and seek the honest man but as
A safer lock to guard dishonest treasures.
Grant me a patron, gracious Heaven! whene'er
My unwash'd follies call for penance drear:
But when more hideous guilt this heart infects,
Instead of fiery coals upon my pate,
O let a titled patron be my fate;
That fierce compendium of Egyptian pests!
Right reverend dean, right honourable squire,
Lord, marquis, earl, duke, prince, or if aught higher,
However proudly nicknamed, he shall be Anathema Maránatha to me!
A chance may win what by mischance was lost;
The net that holds not great, takes little fish:
In somethings all, in all things none are crost;
Few all they need, but none have all they wish:
Unmingled joys to no one here befall;
Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all!
1812
I have nothing to say in defence of the French revolutionists,
as far as they are personally concerned in this substitution of
every tenth for the seventh day as a day of rest. It was not only
a senseless outrage on an ancient observance, around which a
thousand good and gentle feelings had clustered; it not only
tended to weaken the bond of brotherhood between France and the
other members of Christendom; but it was dishonest, and robbed
the labourer of fifteen days of restorative and humanizing repose
in every year, and extended the wrong to all the friends and
fellow labourers of man in the brute creation. Yet when I hear
Protestants, and even those of the Lutheran persuasion, and
members of the church of England, inveigh against this change as
a blasphemous contempt of the fourth commandment, I pause, and
before I can assent to the verdict of condemnation, I must
prepare my mind to include in the same sentence, at least as far
as theory goes, the names of several among the most revered
reformers of Christianity. Without referring to Luther, I will
begin with Master Frith, a founder and martyr of the church of
England, having witnessed his faith amid the flames in the year
1533. This meek and enlightened, no less than zealous and
orthodox, divine, in his "Declaration of Baptism" thus expresses
himself:
As for the Sabbath, we be lords of the Sabbath, and may yet change it into Monday, or any other day, as we see need; or we may make every tenth day holy day only, if we see cause why. Neither was there any cause to change it from the Saturday, save only to put a difference between us and the Jews; neither need we any holy day at all, if the people might be taught without it.
"On a scheme of perfect retribution in the moral world"
observed Empeiristes, and paused to look at, and wipe his
spectacles.
"Frogs," interposed Musaello, "must have been experimental
philosophers, and experimental philosophers must all transmigrate
into frogs." "The scheme will not be yet perfect," added Gelon,
"unless our friend Empeiristes, is specially privileged to become
an elect frog twenty times successively, before he reascends into
a galvanic philosopher."
"Well, well," replied Empeiristes, with a benignant smile, "I
give my consent, if only our little Mary's fits do not
recur."
Little Mary was Gelon's only child, and the darling and
god-daughter of Empeiristes. By the application of galvanic
influence Empeiristes had removed a nervous affection of her
right leg, accompanied with symptomatic epilepsy. The tear
started in Gelon's eye, and he pressed the hand of his friend,
while Musaello, half suppressing, half indulging, a similar sense
of shame, sportively exclaimed, "Hang it, Gelon! somehow or other
these philosopher fellows always have the better of us wits, in
the long run!"
The writings of Bishop Jeremy Taylor are a perpetual feast to me. His hospitable board groans under the weight and multitude of viands. Yet I seldom rise from the perusal of his works without repeating or recollecting the excellent observation of Minucius Felix. Fabulas et errores ab imperitis parentibus discimus; et quod est gravius, ipsis studiis et disciplinis elaboramus.
Many of our modern criticisms on the works of our elder writers remind me of the connoisseur, who, taking up a small cabinet picture, railed most eloquently at the absurd caprice of the artist in painting a horse sprawling. "Excuse me, Sir," replied the owner of the piece, "you hold it the wrong way: it is a horse galloping."
Our statesmen, who survey with jealous dread all plans for the
education of the lower orders, may be thought to proceed on the
system of antagonist muscles; and in the belief, that the closer
a nation shuts its eyes, the wider it will open its hands. Or do
they act on the principle, that the status belli is the
natural relation between the people and the government, and that
it is prudent to secure the result of the contest by gouging the
adversary in the first instance? Alas! the policy of the maxim is
on a level with its honesty. The Philistines had put out the eyes
of Samson, and thus, as they thought, fitted him to drudge and
grind
Among the slaves and asses, his comrades,
As good for nothing else, no better service:
With horrible convulsion, to and fro,
He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew
The whole roof after them with burst of thunder,
Upon the heads of all who sat beneath;
Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, and priests,
Their choice nobility.