Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

June 2. 1824

CRANVILLE PENN AND THE DELUGE.—RAINBOW

I confess I have small patience with Mr. Granville Penn's book against Professor Buckland. Science will be superseded, if every phenomenon is to be referred in this manner to an actual miracle. I think it absurd to attribute so much to the Deluge. An inundation, which left an olive-tree standing, and bore up the ark peacefully on its bosom, could scarcely have been the sole cause of the rents and dislocations observable on the face of the earth. How could the tropical animals, which have been discovered in England and in Russia in a perfectly natural state, have been transported thither by such a flood? Those animals must evidently have been natives of the countries in which they have been found. The climates must have been altered. Assume a sudden evaporation upon the retiring of the Deluge to have caused an intense cold, the solar heat might not be sufficient afterwards to overcome it. I do not think that the polar cold is adequately explained by mere comparative distance from the sun.

* * * * *

You will observe, that there is no mention of rain previously to the Deluge. Hence it may be inferred, that the rainbow was exhibited for the first time after God's covenant with Noah. However, I only suggest this.

* * * * *

The Earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the Past; the Air and Heaven, of Futurity.

June 5. 1824

ENGLISH AND GREEK DANCING.—GREEK ACOUSTICS

The fondness for dancing in English women is the reaction of their reserved manners. It is the only way in which they can throw themselves forth in natural liberty. We have no adequate conception of the perfection of the ancient tragic dance. The pleasure which the Greeks received from it had for its basis Difference and the more unfit the vehicle, the more lively was the curiosity and intense the delight at seeing the difficulty overcome.

* * * * *

The ancients certainly seem to have understood some principles in acoustics which we have lost, or, at least, they applied them better. They contrived to convey the voice distinctly in their huge theatres by means of pipes, which created no echo or confusion. Our theatres—Drury Lane and Covent Garden—are fit for nothing: they are too large for acting, and too small for a bull-fight.

* * * * *

June 7. 1824

LORD BYRON'S VERSIFICATION, AND DON JUAN

How lamentably the art of versification is neglected by most of the poets of the present day!—by Lord Byron, as it strikes me, in particular, among those of eminence for other qualities. Upon the whole, I think the part of Don Juan in which Lambro's return to his home, and Lambro himself, are described, is the best, that is, the most individual, thing in all I know of Lord B.'s works. The festal abandonment puts one in mind of Nicholas Poussin's pictures.¹⁹

June 10. 1824

PARENTAL CONTROL IN MARRIAGE.—MARRIAGE OF COUSINS.—DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER

Up to twenty-one, I hold a father to have power over his children as to marriage; after that age, authority and influence only. Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten that are wretched from other causes.

* * * * *

If the matter were quite open, I should incline to disapprove the intermarriage of first cousins; but the church has decided otherwise on the authority of Augustine, and that seems enough upon such a point.

* * * * *

You may depend upon it, that a slight contrast of character is very material to happiness in marriage.

February 24. 1827

BLUMENBACH AND KANT'S RACES.—IAPETIC AND SEMITIC.—HEBREW.—SOLOMON

Blumenbach makes five races; Kant, three. Blumenbach's scale of dignity may be thus figured:—

1. Caucasian or European.

2. Malay ================= 2. American

3. Negro ========================== 3. Mongolian, Asiatic

There was, I conceive, one great Iapetic original of language, under which Greek, Latin, and other European dialects, and, perhaps, Sanscrit, range as species. The Iapetic race, [Greek: Iaones]; separated into two branches; one, with a tendency to migrate south-west,—Greeks, Italians, &c.; and the other north-west,—Goths, Germans, Swedes, &c. The Hebrew is Semitic.

* * * * *

Hebrew, in point of force and purity, seems at its height in Isaiah. It is most corrupt in Daniel, and not much less so in Ecclesiastes; which I cannot believe to have been actually composed by Solomon, but rather suppose to have been so attributed by the Jews, in their passion for ascribing all works of that sort to their grand monurque.

March 10. 1827

JEWISH HISTORY.—SPINOZISTIC AND HEBREW SCHEMES

The people of all other nations, but the Jewish, seem to look backwards and also to exist for the present; but in the Jewish scheme every thing is prospective and preparatory; nothing, however trifling, is done for itself alone, but all is typical of something yet to come.

* * * * *

I would rather call the book of Proverbs Solomonian than as actually a work of Solomon's. So I apprehend many of the Psalms to be Davidical only, not David's own compositions.

* * * * *

You may state the Pantheism of Spinosa, in contrast with the Hebrew or Christian scheme, shortly, as thus:—

Spinosism.

W-G = 0; i.e. the World without God is an impossible idea.

G-W = 0; i.e. God without the World is so likewise.

Hebrew or Christian scheme.

W-G = 0; i.e. The same as Spinosa's premiss.

But G-W = G; i.e. God without the World is God the self-subsistent.

* * * * *

March 12. 1827

ROMAN CATHOLICS.—ENERGY OF MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS.—SHAKSPEARE IN MINIMIS.—PAUL SARPI.—BARTRAM'S TRAVELS

I have no doubt that the real object closest to the hearts of the leading Irish Romanists is the destruction of the Irish Protestant church, and the re-establishment of their own. I think more is involved in the manner than the matter of legislating upon the civil disabilities of the members of the church of Rome; and, for one, I should he willing to vote for a removal of those disabilities, with two or three exceptions, upon a solemn declaration being made legislatively in parliament, that at no time, nor under any circumstances, could or should a branch of the Romish hierarchy, as at present constituted, become an estate of this realm.²⁰

* * * * *

Internal or mental energy and external or corporeal modificability are in inverse proportions. In man, internal energy is greater than in any other animal; and you will see that he is less changed by climate than any animal. For the highest and lowest specimens of man are not one half as much apart from each other as the different kinds even of dogs, animals of great internal energy themselves.

* * * * *

For an instance of Shakspeare's power in minimis, I generally quote James Gurney's character in King John. How individual and comical he is with the four words allowed to his dramatic life!²¹ And pray look at Skelton's Richard Sparrow also!

Paul Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent deserves your study. It is very interesting.

* * * * *

The latest book of travels I know, written in the spirit of the old travellers, is Bartram's account of his tour in the Floridas. It is a work of high merit every way.²²

* * * * *

March 13. 1827

THE UNDERSTANDING

A pun will sometimes facilitate explanation, as thus;—the Understanding is that which stands under the phenomenon, and gives it objectivity. You know what a thing is by it. It is also worthy of remark, that the Hebrew word for the understanding, Bineh, comes from a root meaning between or distinguishing.

* * * * *

March 18. 1827

PARTS OF SPEECH.—GRAMMAR

There are seven parts of speech, and they agree with the five grand and universal divisions into which all things finite, by which I mean to exclude the idea of God, will be found to fall; that is, as you will often see it stated in my writings, especially in the Aids to Reflection²³:—

Prothesis.

1.

Thesis. Mesothesis. Antithesis.

2. 4. 3.

Synthesis.

5.

Conceive it thus:—

1. Prothesis, the noun-verb, or verb-substantive, I am, which is the previous form, and implies identity of being and act.

2. Thesis, the noun.

3. Antithesis, the verb.

Note, each of these may be converted; that is, they are only opposed to each other.

4. Mesothesis, the infinitive mood, or the indifference of the verb and noun, it being either the one or the other, or both at the same time, in different relations.

5. Synthesis, the participle, or the community of verb and noun; being and acting at once.

Now, modify the noun by the verb, that is, by an act, and you have—

6. The adnoun, or adjective.

Modify the verb by the noun, that is, by being, and you have—

7. The adverb.

Interjections are parts of sound, not of speech. Conjunctions are the same as prepositions; but they are prefixed to a sentence, or to a member of a sentence, instead of to a single word.

The inflections of nouns are modifications as to place; the inflections of verbs, as to time.

The genitive case denotes dependence; the dative, transmission. It is absurd to talk of verbs governing. In Thucydides, I believe, every case has been found absolute.²⁴

Dative:—[Greek: –]

Thuc.VIII. 24. This is the Latin usage.

Accusative.—I do not remember an instance of the proper accusative absolute in Thucydides; but it seems not uncommon in other authors: [Greek: –]

Yet all such instances may be nominatives; for I cannot find an example of the accusative absolute in the masculine or feminine gender, where the difference of inflexion would show the case.—ED.]

The inflections of the tenses of a verb are formed by adjuncts of the verb substantive. In Greek it is obvious. The E is the prefix significative of a past time.

June 15. 1827

MAGNETISM.—ELECTRICITY.—GALVANISM

Perhaps the attribution or analogy may seem fanciful at first sight, but I am in the habit of realizing to myself Magnetism as length; Electricity as breadth or surface; and Galvanism as depth.

June 24. 1827

SPENSER.—CHARACTER Of OTHELLO.—HAMLET.—POLONIUS.—PRINCIPLES AND MAXIMS.—LOVE.—MEASURE FOR MEASURE.—BEN JONSON.—BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.– VERSION OF THE BIBLE.—SPURZHEIM.—CRANIOLOGY

Spenser's Epithalamion is truly sublime; and pray mark the swan-like movement of his exquisite Prothalamion.²⁵ His attention to metre and rhythm is sometimes so extremely minute as to be painful even to my ear, and you know how highly I prize good versification.

* * * * *

I have often told you that I do not think there is any jealousy, properly so called, in the character of Othello. There is no predisposition to suspicion, which I take to be an essential term in the definition of the word. Desdemona very truly told Emilia that he was not jealous, that is, of a jealous habit, and he says so as truly of himself. Iago's suggestions, you see, are quite new to him; they do not correspond with any thing of a like nature previously in his mind. If Desdemona had, in fact, been guilty, no one would have thought of calling Othello's conduct that of a jealous man. He could not act otherwise than he did with the lights he had; whereas jealousy can never be strictly right. See how utterly unlike Othello is to Leontes, in the Winter's Tale, or even to Leonatus, in Cymbeline! The jealousy of the first proceeds from an evident trifle, and something like hatred is mingled with it; and the conduct of Leonatus in accepting the wager, and exposing his wife to the trial, denotes a jealous temper already formed.

* * * * *

Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should he impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so.

* * * * *

A Maxim is a conclusion upon observation of matters of fact, and is merely retrospective: an Idea, or, if you like, a Principle, carries knowledge within itself, and is prospective. Polonius is a man of maxims. Whilst he is descanting on matters of past experience, as in that excellent speech to Laertes before he sets out on his travels, he is admirable; but when he comes to advise or project, he is a mere dotard.²⁶ You see Hamlet, as the man of ideas, despises him.

* * * * *

A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that eye placed in the back of his head.

* * * * *

In the scene with Ophelia, in the third act,²⁷ Hamlet is beginning with great and unfeigned tenderness; but, perceiving her reserve and coyness, fancies there are some listeners, and then, to sustain his part, breaks out into all that coarseness.

Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action. The qualities of the sexes correspond. The man's courage is loved by the woman, whose fortitude again is coveted by the man. His vigorous intellect is answered by her infallible tact. Can it be true, what is so constantly affirmed, that there is no sex in souls?—I doubt it, I doubt it exceedingly.²⁸

Measure for Measure is the single exception to the delightfulness of Shakspeare's plays. It is a hateful work, although Shakspearian throughout. Our feelings of justice are grossly wounded in Angelo's escape. Isabella herself contrives to be unamiable, and Claudio is detestable.

* * * * *

I am inclined to consider The Fox as the greatest of Ben Jonson's works. But his smaller works are full of poetry.

* * * * *

Monsieur Thomas and the little French Lawyer are great favourites of mine amongst Beaumont and Fletcher's plays. How those plays overflow with wit! And yet I scarcely know a more deeply tragic scene any where than that in Rollo, in which Edith pleads for her father's life, and then, when she cannot prevail, rises up and imprecates vengeance on his murderer.²⁹

* * * * *

Our version of the Bible is to be loved and prized for this, as for a thousand other things,—that it has preserved a purity of meaning to many terms of natural objects. Without this holdfast, our vitiated imaginations would refine away language to mere abstractions. Hence the French have lost their poetical language; and Mr. Blanco White says the same thing has happened to the Spanish.

* * * * *

I have the perception of individual images very strong, but a dim one of the relation of place. I remember the man or the tree, but where I saw them I mostly forget.³⁰

* * * * *

Craniology is worth some consideration, although it is merely in its rudiments and guesses yet. But all the coincidences which have been observed could scarcely be by accident. The confusion and absurdity, however, will be endless until some names or proper terms are discovered for the organs, which are not taken from their mental application or significancy. The forepart of the head is generally given up to the higher intellectual powers; the hinder part to the sensual emotions.

* * * * *

Silence does not always mark wisdom. I was at dinner, some time ago, in company with a man, who listened to me and said nothing for a long time; but he nodded his head, and I thought him intelligent. At length, towards the end of the dinner, some apple dumplings were placed on the table, and my man had no sooner seen them, than he burst forth with—"Them's the jockies for me!" I wish Spurzheim could have examined the fellow's head.

* * * * *

Some folks apply epithets as boys do in making Latin verses. When I first looked upon the Falls of the Clyde, I was unable to find a word to express my feelings. At last, a man, a stranger to me, who arrived about the same time, said:—"How majestic!"—(It was the precise term, and I turned round and was saying—"Thank you, Sir! that is the exact word for it"—when he added, eodem flatu)—"Yes! how very pretty!"

* * * * *

July 8. 1827

BULL AND WATERLAND.—THE TRINITY

Bull and Waterland are the classical writers on the Trinity.³¹

In the Trinity there is, 1. Ipseity. 2. Alterity. 3. Community. You may express the formula thus:—

God, the absolute Will or Identity, = Prothesis. The Father = Thesis. The Son = Antithesis. The Spirit = Synthesis.

* * * * *

The author of the Athanasian Creed is unknown. It is, in my judgment, heretical in the omission, or implicit denial, of the Filial subordination in the Godhead, which is the doctrine of the Nicene Creed, and for which Bull and Waterland have so fervently and triumphantly contended; and by not holding to which, Sherlock staggered to and fro between Tritheism and Sabellianism. This creed is also tautological, and, if not persecuting, which I will not discuss, certainly containing harsh and ill-conceived language.

* * * * *

How much I regret that so many religious persons of the present day think it necessary to adopt a certain cant of manner and phraseology as a token to each other. They must improve this and that text, and they must do so and so in a prayerful way; and so on. Why not use common language? A young lady the other day urged upon me that such and such feelings were the marrow of all religion; upon which I recommended her to try to walk to London upon her marrow-bones only.

* * * * *

July 9. 1827

SCALE OF ANIMAL BEING

In the very lowest link in the vast and mysterious chain of Being, there is an effort, although scarcely apparent, at individualization; but it is almost lost in the mere nature. A little higher up, the individual is apparent and separate, but subordinate to any thing in man. At length, the animal rises to be on a par with the lowest power of the human nature. There are some of our natural desires which only remain in our most perfect state on earth as means of the higher powers' acting.³²

July 12. 1827

POPEDOM.—SCANDERBEG.—THOMAS À BECKET.—PURE AGES OF GREEK, ITALIAN, AND ENGLISH.—LUTHER.—BAXTER.—ALGERNON SIDNEY'S STYLE.—ARIOSTO AND TASSO.– PROSE AND POETRY.—THE FATHERS.—RHENFERD.—JACOB BEHMEN

What a grand subject for a history the Popedom is! The Pope ought never to have affected temporal sway, but to have lived retired within St. Angelo, and to have trusted to the superstitious awe inspired by his character and office. He spoiled his chance when he meddled in the petty Italian politics.

* * * * *

Scanderbeg would be a very fine subject for Walter Scott; and so would Thomas à Becket, if it is not rather too much for him. It involves in essence the conflict between arms, or force, and the men of letters.

* * * * *

Observe the superior truth of language, in Greek, to Theocritus inclusively; in Latin, to the Augustan age exclusively; in Italian, to Tasso exclusively; and in English, to Taylor and Barrow inclusively.

* * * * *

Luther is, in parts, the most evangelical writer I know, after the apostles and apostolic men.

* * * * *

Pray read with great attention Baxter's Life of himself. It is an inestimable work.³³ I may not unfrequently doubt Baxter's memory, or even his competence, in consequence of his particular modes of thinking; but I could almost as soon doubt the Gospel verity as his veracity.

* * * * *

I am not enough read in Puritan divinity to know the particular objections to the surplice, over and above the general prejudice against the retenta of Popery. Perhaps that was the only ground,—a foolish one enough.

In my judgment Bolingbroke's style is not in any respect equal to that of Cowley or Dryden. Read Algernon Sidney; his style reminds you as little of books as of blackguards. What a gentleman he was!

* * * * *

Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful seems to me a poor thing; and what he says upon Taste is neither profound nor accurate.

* * * * *

Well! I am for Ariosto against Tasso; though I would rather praise Aristo's poetry than his poem.

* * * * *

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order;—poetry = the best words in the best order.

* * * * *

I conceive Origen, Jerome, and Augustine to be the three great fathers in respect of theology, and Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and Chrysostom in respect of rhetoric.

* * * * *

Rhenferd possessed the immense learning and robust sense of Selden, with the acuteness and wit of Jortin.

* * * * *

Jacob Behmen remarked, that it was not wonderful that there were separate languages for England, France, Germany, &c.; but rather that there was not a different language for every degree of latitude. In confirmation of which, see the infinite variety of languages amongst the barbarous tribes of South America.