Who is ignorant of Homer's Greek (transliterated): Paelion einosiphullon Yet in some
Greek manuscript hexameters I have met with a compound epithet,
which may compare with it for the prize of excellence in flashing
on the mental eye a complete image. It is an epithet of the
brutified archangel, and forms the latter half of the verse,
Kerkokeronucha Satan
The state, with respect to the different sects of religion
under its protection, should resemble a well drawn portrait. Let
there be half a score individuals looking at it, every one sees
its eyes and its benignant smile directed towards himself.
The framer of preventive laws, no less than private tutors and
school-masters, should remember, that the readiest way to make
either mind or body grow awry, is by lacing it too tight.
It would have proved a striking part of a vision presented to Adam the day after the death of Abel, to have brought before his eyes half a million of men crowded together in the space of a square mile. When the first father had exhausted his wonder on the multitude of his offspring, he would then naturally inquire of his angelic instructor, for what purposes so vast a multitude had assembled? what is the common end? Alas! to murder each other, all Cains, and yet no Abels!
Parodies on new poems are read as satires; on old ones, the soliloquy of Hamlet for instance as compliments. A man of genius may securely laugh at a mode of attack by which his reviler, in half a century or less, becomes his encomiast.
Among the extravagancies of faith which have characterized
many infidel writers, who would swallow a whale to avoid
believing that a whale swallowed Jonas, a high rank should
be given to Dupuis, who, at the commencement of the French
Revolution, published a work in twelve volumes, octavo, in order
to prove that Jesus Christ was the sun, and all Christians,
worshippers of Mithra. His arguments, if arguments they can be
called, consist chiefly of metaphors quoted from the Fathers.
What irresistible conviction would not the following passage from
South's sermons (vol. v. p. 165.) have flashed on his fancy, had
it occurred in the writings of Origen or Tertullian! and how
complete a confutation of all his grounds does not the passage
afford to those humble souls, who, gifted with common sense
alone, can boast of no additional light received through a crack
in their upper apartments:
Christ the great sun of righteousness and saviour of the world, having by a glorious rising, after a red and bloody setting, proclaimed his deity to men and angels; and by a complete triumph over the two grand enemies of mankind, sin and death, set up the everlasting gospel in the room of all false religions, has now changed the Persian superstition into the Christian doctrine, and without the least approach to the idolatry of the former, made it henceforward the duty of all nations, Jews and Gentiles, to worship the rising sun.
The origin of the worship of Hymen is thus related by Lactantius. The story would furnish matter for an excellent pantomime. Hymen was a beautiful youth of Athens, who for the love of a young virgin disguised himself, and assisted at the Eleusinian rites: and at this time he, together with his beloved, and divers other young ladies of that city, was surprized and carried off by pirates, who supposing him to be what he appeared, lodged him with his mistress. In the dead of the night when the robbers were all asleep, he arose and cut their throats. Thence making hasty way back to Athens, he bargained with the parents that he would restore to them their daughter and all her companions, if they would consent to her marriage with him. They did so, and this marriage proving remarkably happy, it became the custom to invoke the name of Hymen at all nuptials.
It is hard and uncandid to censure the great reformers in
philosophy and religion for their egotism and boastfulness. It is
scarcely possible for a man to meet with continued personal
abuse, on account of his superior talents, without associating
more and more the sense of the value of his discoveries or
detections with his own person. The necessity of repelling unjust
contempt, forces the most modest man into a feeling of pride and
self-consciousness. How can a tall man help thinking of his size,
when dwarfs are constantly on tiptoe beside him? Paracelsus
was a braggart and a quack; so was Cardan; but it was their
merits, and not their follies, which drew upon them that torrent
of detraction and calumny, which compelled them so frequently to
think and write concerning themselves,that at length it became a
habit to do so. Wolff too, though not a boaster, was yet
persecuted into a habit of egotism both in his prefaces and in
his ordinary conversation, and the same holds good of the founder
of the Brunonian system, and of his great namesake Giordano
Bruno. The more decorous manners of the present age have attached
a disproportionate opprobrium to this foible, and many therefore
abstain with cautious prudence from all displays of what they
feel. Nay, some do actually flatter themselves, that they abhor
all egotism, and never betray it either in their writings or
discourse. But watch these men narrowly; and in the greater
number of cases you will find their thoughts, feelings, and mode
of expression, saturated with the passion of contempt, which is
the concentrated vinegar of egotism.
Your very humble men in company, if they produce any thing, are
in that thing of the most exquisite irritability and vanity.
When a man is attempting to describe another person's character,
he may be right or he may be wrong; but in one thing he will
always succeed, that is, in describing himself. If, for example,
he expresses simple approbation, he praises from a consciousness
of possessing similar qualities; if he approves with
admiration, it is from a consciousness of deficiency. A. "Ay! he
is a sober man." B. "Ah! Sir, what a blessing is sobriety!" Here
A. is a man conscious of sobriety, who egotizes in tuism;
B. is one who, feeling the ill effects of a contrary habit,
contemplates sobriety with blameless envy. Again: A. "Yes,
he is a warm man, a moneyed fellow; you may rely upon him." B.
"Yes, yes, Sir, no wonder! he has the blessing of being well in
the world." This reflection might be introduced in defence of
plaintive egotism, and by way of preface to an examination of all
the charges against it, and from what feelings they proceed.
1800. 1
Contempt is egotism in ill humour. Appetite without moral
affection, social sympathy, and even without passion and
imagination (in plain English, mere lust,) is the
basest form of egotism, and being infra human, or
below humanity, should be pronounced with the harsh breathing, as
he-goat-ism. 1820.
Footnote
1: From Mr. Gulch's commonplace book. Ed
Those who hoped proudly of human nature, and admitted no distinction between Christians and Frenchmen, regarded the first constitution as a colossal statue of Corinthian brass, formed by the fusion and commixture of all metals in the conflagration of the state. But there is a common fungus, which so exactly represents the pole and cap of liberty, that it seems offered by nature herself as the appropriate emblem of Gallic republicanism, mushroom patriots, with a mushroom cap of liberty.
Novi ego aliquem qui dormitabundus aliquando pulsari horam quartam audiverit, et sic numeravit, una, una, una, una; ac tum præ rei absurditate, quam anima concipiebat, exclamavit, Næ! delirat horologium! Quater pulsavit horam unam.
It is impossible to become either an eminently great, or truly
pious man, without the courage to remain ignorant of many things.
This important truth is most happily expressed by the elder
Scaliger in prose, and by the younger in verse; the latter
extract has an additional claim from the exquisite terseness of
its diction, and the purity of its Latinity. I particularly
recommend its perusal to the commentators on the Apocalypse.
Quare ulterior disquisitio morosi atque satagentis animi est; humanæ enim sapientiae pars est, quædam æquo animo nescire velle.
J. C, Scalig. Ex. 307. s. 29.
Ne curiosus quære causas omnium,
Quæcunque libris vis prophetarum indidit,
Afflata cælo, plena veraci Deo;
Nec operta sacri supparo silentii
Irrumpere aude; sed prudenter praeteri!
Nescire velle quae magister optimus
Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est.
Josep. Scalig.
Triumphant generals in Rome wore rouge. The ladies of France, and their fair sisters and imitators in Britain, conceive themselves always in the chair of triumph, and of course entitled to the same distinction. The custom originated, perhaps, in the humility of the conquerors that they might seem to blush continually at their own praises. Mr. Gilpin frequently speaks of a "picturesque eye:" with something less of solecism, I may affirm that our fair ever blushing triumphants have secured to themselves the charm of picturesque cheeks, every face being its own portrait.
I crave mercy (at least of my contemporaries: for if these
Omniana should outlive the present generation, the opinion will
not need it) but I could not help writing in the blank page of a
very celebrated work 1 the following passage
from Picus Mirandula:-
Movent mihi stomachum grammatistæ quidam, qui cum duas tenuerint vocabulorum origines, ita se ostentant, ita venditant, ita circumferunt jactabundi, ut præ ipsis pro nihilo habendos philosophos arbitrentur. (Epist. ad Hermol. Barb.)
It is a matter of infinite difficulty, but fortunately of
comparative indifference to determine what a man's motive may
have been for this or that particular action. Rather seek to
learn what his objects in general are. What does he habitually
wish, habitually pursue? and thence deduce his impulses which are
commonly the true efficient causes of men's conduct; and without
which the motive itself would not have become a motive. Let a
haunch of venison represent the motive, and the keen appetite of
health, and exercise the impulse: then place the same or some
more favourite dish before the same man, sick, dyspeptic, and
stomach-worn, and we may then weigh the comparative influences of
motives and impulses. Without the perception of this truth, it is
impossible to understand the character of lago, who is
represented as now assigning one, and then another, and again a
third motive for his conduct, all alike the mere fictions of his
own restless nature, distempered by a keen sense of his
intellectual superiority, and haunted by the love of exerting
power on those especially who are his superiors in practical and
moral excellence. Yet how many among our modern critics have
attributed to the profound author this the appropriate
inconsistency of the character itself.
A second illustration: Did Curio, the quondam
patriot, reformer, and semi-revolutionist, abjure his opinion,
and yell the foremost in the hunt of persecution against his old
friends and fellow-philosophists, with a cold clear
predetermination, formed at one moment, of making £5000 a
year by his apostacy? I neither know nor care. Probably
not. But this I know, that to be thought a man of consequence by
his contemporaries, to be admitted into the society of his
superiors in artificial rank, to excite the admiration of lords,
to live in splendour and sensual luxury, have been the objects of
his habitual wishes. A flash of lightning has turned at once the
polarity of the compass needle: and so, perhaps, now and then,
but as rarely, a violent motive may revolutionize a man's
opinions and professions. But more frequently his honesty dies
away imperceptibly from evening into twilight, and from twilight
into utter darkness. He turns hypocrite so gradually, and by such
tiny atoms of motion, that by the time he has arrived at a given
point, he forgets his own hypocrisy in the imperceptible degrees
of his conversion. The difference between such a man and a bolder
liar, is merely that between the hour hand, and that which tells
the seconds, on a watch. Of the former you can see only the past
motion; of the latter both the past motion and the present
moving. Yet there is, perhaps, more hope of the latter rogue: for
he has lied to mankind only and not to himself the former
lies to his own heart, as well as to the public.
Talk to a blind man he knows he wants the sense of sight, and willingly makes the proper allowances. But there are certain internal senses, which a man may want, and yet be wholly ignorant that he wants them. It is most unpleasant to converse with such persons on subjects of taste, philosophy, or religion. Of course there is no reasoning with them: for they do not possess the facts, on which the reasoning must be grounded. Nothing is possible, but a naked dissent, which implies a sort of unsocial contempt; or, what a man of kind dispositions is very likely to fall into, a heartless tacit acquiescence, which borders too nearly on duplicity.
It often happens, that the slave himself has neither the power nor the wish to be free. He is then brutified; but this apathy is the dire effect of slavery, and so far from being a justifying cause, that it contains the grounds of its bitterest condemnation. The Carlovingian race bred up the Merovingi as beasts; and then assigned their unworthiness as the satisfactory reason for their dethronement. Alas! the human being is more easily weaned from the habit of commanding than from that of abject obedience. The slave loses his soul when he loses his master; even as the dog that has lost himself in the street, howls and whines till he has found the house again, where he had been kicked and cudgelled, and half starved to boot. As we, however, or our ancestors must have inoculated our fellow-creature with this wasting disease of the soul, it becomes our duty to cure him; and though we cannot immediately make him free, yet we can, and ought to, put him in the way of becoming so at some future time, if not in his own person, yet in that of his children. The French, you will say, are not capable of freedom. Grant this; but does this fact justify the ungrateful traitor, whose every measure has been to make them still more incapable of it?
The ancients attributed to the blood the same motion of ascent
and descent which really takes place in the sap of trees.
Servetus discovered the minor circulation from the heart to the
lungs. Do not the following passages of Giordano Bruno (published
in 1591) seem to imply more? I put the question, pauperis
forma, with unfeigned diffidence.
"De Immenso et Innumerabili," lib. vi. cap. 8:
Ut in nostro corpore sanguis per totum circumcursat et recursat, sic in toto mundo, astro, tellure.
Quare non aliter quam nostro in corpore sanguis Hinc meat, hinc remeat, neque ad inferiora fluit vi Majore, ad supera a pedibus quam deinde recedat:
Quid esset Quodam ni gyro naturae cuncta redirent Ortus ad proprios rursum; si sorbeat omnes Pontus aquas, totum non restituatque perenni Ordine; qua possit rerum consistere vita? Tanquam si totus concurrat sanguis in unam, In qua consistat, partem, nec prima revisat Ordia, et antiquos cursus non inde resumat.
Por manera, que la sangre anda en torno, y en rueda por todos los miembros, excluye toda duda.
What scholar but must at times have a feeling of splenetic regret, when he looks at the list of novels, in two, three, or four volumes each, published monthly by Messrs. Lane, &c. and then reflects that there are valuable works of Cudworth, prepared by himself for the press, yet still unpublished by the University which possesses them, and which ought to glory in the name of their great author! and that there is extant in manuscript a folio volume of unprinted sermons by Jeremy Taylor. Surely, surely, the patronage of our many literary societies might be employed more beneficially to the literature and to the actual literati of the country, if they would publish the valuable manuscripts that lurk in our different public libraries, and make it worth the while of men of learning to correct and annotate the copies, instead of , but it is treading on hot embers!
The distinction is marked in a beautiful sentiment of a German
poet: Hast thou any thing? share it with me and I will pay thee
the worth of it. Art thou any thing? O then let us exchange
souls!
The following is offered as a mere playful illustration:
"Women have no souls," says prophet Mahomet.
Nay, dearest Anna! why so grave?
I said you had no soul,'tis true:
For what you are, you cannot have
'Tis I, that have one, since I first had you.
"Well, Sir!" exclaimed a lady, the vehement and impassionate partizan of Mr. Wilkes, in the day of his glory, and during the broad blaze of his patriotism, "Well, Sir! and will you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a great man, and an eloquent man?" "Oh! by no means, Madam! I have not a doubt respecting Mr. Wilkes's talents!" "Well, but, Sir! and is he not a fine man, too, and a handsome man?" "Why, Madam! he squints, doesn't he?" "Squints! yes to be sure he does, Sir! but not a bit more than a gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint!"
If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being the good poet without being first a good man.
(Dedication to the Fox).
'h de (haretae) poiaetou sunezeuktai tae tou anthropou kai ouch oionte agathhon genesthai, poiaetaen, mae proteron genaethenta andra agathon.
Those who have more faith in parallelism than myself, may
trace Satan's address to the sun in Paradise Lost to the
first lines of Ben Jonson's Poetaster:
"Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness!"
We all remember Burke's curious assertion that there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in the number of beggars, prostitutes, and thieves in the City of London. Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis XV. seems to have afforded the precedent; he assures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there were 50,000 incorrigible atheists in the City of Paris! Atheism then may have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be burthened on it, as its monster-child.
The following ode was written by Giordano Bruno, under
prospect of that martyrdom which he soon after suffered at Rome,
for atheism: that is, as is proved by all his works, for a lofty
and enlightened piety, which was of course unintelligible to
bigots and dangerous to an apostate hierarchy. If the human mind
be, as it assuredly is, the sublimest object which nature affords
to our contemplation, these lines which portray the human mind
under the action of its most elevated affections, have a fair
claim to the praise of sublimity. The work from which they are
extracted is exceedingly rare (as are, indeed, all the works of
the Nolan philosopher), and I have never seen them
quoted:
Dædaleas vacuis plumas nectere humeris
Concupiant alii; aut vi suspendi nubium
Alis, ventorumve appetant remigium;
Aut orbitæ flammantis raptari alveo;
Bellerophontisve alitem
Nos vero illo donati sumus genio,
Ut fatum intrepedi objectasque umbras cernimus,
Ne cæci ad lumen solis, ad perspicuas
Naturæ voces surdi, ad Divum munera
Ingrato adsimus pectore.
Non curamus stultorum quid opinio
De nobis ferat, aut queis dignetur sedibus.
Alis ascendimus sursum melioribus!
Quid nubes ultra, ventorum ultra est semita,
Vidimus, quantum satis est.
Illuc conscendent plurimi, nobis ducibus,
Per scalam proprio erectam et firmam in pectore,
Quam Deus, et vegeti sors dabit ingeni;
Non manes, pluma, ignis, ventus, nubes, spiritus,
Divinantum phantasmata.
Non sensus vegetans, non me ratio arguet,
Non indoles exculti clara ingenii;
Sed perfidi sycophantæ supercilium
Absque lance, statera, trutina, oculo,
Miraculum armati segete.
Versificantis grammatistæ encomium,
Buglossæ Græcissantum, et epistolia
Lectorem libri salutantum a limine,
Latrantum adversum Zoilos, Momos, mastiges,
Hinc absint testimonia!
Procedat nudus, quern non ornant nubila,
Sol! Non conveniunt quadrupedum phaleræ
Humano dorso! Porra veri species
Quæsita, inventa, et patefacta me efferat!
Etsi nullus intelligat,
Si cum natura sapio, et sub numine,
Id vere plus quam satis est.
There are certain tribes of Negros who take for the deity of the day the first thing they see or meet with in the morning. Many of our fine ladies, and some of our very fine gentlemen, are followers of the same sect; though by aid of the looking-glass they secure a constancy as to the object of their devotion.
We here in England received a very high character of Lord during his stay abroad. "Not unlikely, Sir," replied the traveller; "a dead dog at a distance is said to smell like musk."
Certain full and highly-wrought dissuasives from sensual
indulgencies, in the works of theologians as well as of satirists
and story-writers, may, not unaptly, remind one of the Pharos;
the many lights of which appeared at a distance as one, and this
as a polar star, so as more often to occasion wrecks than prevent
them.
At the base of the Pharos the name of the reigning monarch was
engraved, on a composition, which the artist well knew would last
no longer than the king's life. Under this, and cut deep in the
marble itself, was his own name and dedication: "Sostratos of
Gyndos, son of Dexiteles to the Gods, protectors of sailors!"
So will it be with the Georgium Sidus the
Ferdinandia, &c. &c. Flattery's plaister of Paris
will crumble away, and under it we shall read the names of
Herschel, Piozzi, and their compeers.
I have noticed two main evils in philosophizing. The first is,
the absurdity of demanding proof for the very facts which
constitute the nature of him who demands it, a proof for
those primary and unceasing revelations of self-consciousness,
which every possible proof must pre-suppose; reasoning, for
instance, pro and con, concerning the existence of
the power of reasoning. Other truths may be ascertained; but
these are certainty itself (all at least which we mean by the
word), and are the measure of every thing else which we deem
certain. The second evil is, that of mistaking for such facts
mere general prejudices, and those opinions that, having been
habitually taken for granted, are dignified with the name of
common sense. Of these, the first is the more injurious to the
reputation, the latter more detrimental to the progress of
philosophy. In the affairs of common life we very properly appeal
to common sense; but it is absurd to reject the results of the
microscope from the negative testimony of the naked eye. Knives
are sufficient for the table and the market; but for the
purposes of science we must dissect with the lancet.
As an instance of the latter evil, take that truly powerful and
active intellect, Sir Thomas Brown, who, though he had written a
large volume in detection of vulgar errors, yet peremptorily
pronounces the motion of the earth round the sun, and
consequently the whole of the Copernican system unworthy of any
serious confutation, as being manifestly repugnant to common
sense; which said common sense, like a miller's scales, used to
weigh gold or gasses, may, and often does, become very gross,
though unfortunately not very uncommon, nonsense. And as for the
former, which may be called Logica Praepostera, I have
read in metaphysical essays of no small fame, arguments drawn
ab extra in proof and disproof of personal identity,
which, ingenious as they may be, were clearly anticipated by the
little old woman's appeal to her little dog, for the solution of
the very same doubts, occasioned by her petticoats having been
cut round about:
If it is not me, he'll bark and he'll rail, But if I be I, he'll wag his little tail.