Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Essays, Lectures & Letters of S. T. Coleridge (Illustrated)

A TURTLE-SHELL FOR HOUSE-HOLD TUB

I almost fear that the alteration would excite surprise and uneasy contempt in Verbidigno's mind (towards one less loved, at least); but had I written the sweet tale of the "Blind Highland Boy," I would have substituted for the washing-tub, and the awkward stanza in which it is specified, the images suggested in the following lines from Dampier's Travels, vol. i. pp. 105-6:—"I heard of a monstrous green turtle once taken at the Port Royal, in the Bay of Campeachy, that was four feet deep from the back to the belly, and the belly six feet broad. Captain Rock's son, of about nine or ten years of age, went in it as in a boat, on board his father's ship, about a quarter of a mile from the shore." And a few lines before—"The green turtle are so called because their shell is greener than any other. It is very thin and clear, and better clouded than the Hawksbill, but 'tis used only for inlays , being extraordinary thin." Why might not some mariners have left this shell on the shore of Loch Leven for a while, about to have transported it inland for a curiosity, and the blind boy have found it? Would not the incident be in equal keeping with that of the child, as well as the image and tone of romantic uncommonness?

["In deference to the opinion of a friend," this substitution took place. A promise made to Sara Coleridge to re-instate the washing-tub was, alas! never fulfilled. See Poetical Works of W. Wordsworth, 1859, pp. 197, and 200 footnote .]

THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE GOOD

Tremendous as a Mexican god is a strong sense of duty—separate from an enlarged and discriminating mind, and gigantic ally disproportionate to the size of the understanding; and, if combined with obstinacy of self-opinion and indocility, it is the parent of tyranny, a promoter of inquisitorial persecution in public life, and of inconceivable misery in private families. Nay, the very virtue of the person, and the consciousness that it is sacrificing its own happiness, increases the obduracy, and selects those whom it best loves for its objects. Eoque immitior quia ipse tolerat (not toleraverat ) is its inspiration and watchword.

HINTS FOR "THE FRIEND"

A nation of reformers looks like a scourer of silver-plate—black all over and dingy, with making things white and brilliant.

A joint combination of authors leagued together to declaim for or against liberty may be compared to Buffon's collection of smooth mirrors in a vast fan arranged to form one focus. May there not be gunpowder as well as corn set before it, and the latter will not thrive, but become cinders?

A good conscience and hope combined are like fine weather that reconciles travel with delight.

Great exploits and the thirst of honour which they inspire, enlarge states by enlarging hearts.

The rejection of the love of glory without the admission of Christianity is, truly, human darkness lacking human light.

Heaven preserve me from the modern epidemic of a proud ignorance!

Hypocrisy, the deadly crime which, like Judas, kisses Hell at the lips of Redemption.

Is't then a mystery so great, what God and the man, and the world is? No, but we hate to hear! Hence a mystery it remains.

The massy misery so prettily hidden with the gold and silver leaf— bracteata felicitas .

CONCERNING BELLS

If I have leisure, I may, perhaps, write a wild rhyme on the Bell , from the mine to the belfry, and take for my motto and Chapter of Contents, the two distichs, but especially the latter—

Laudo Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum:

Defunctos ploro, pestem fugo, festa decoro.

Funera plango, fulgura frango, sabbata pango:

Excito lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos.

The waggon-horse celsâ cervice eminens clarumque jactans tintinnabulum . Item, the cattle on the river, and valley of dark pines and firs in the Hartz.

The army of Clotharius besieging Sens were frightened away by the bells of St. Stephen's, rung by the contrivance of Lupus, Bishop of Orleans.

For ringing the largest bell, as a Passing-bell, a high price was wont to be paid, because being heard afar it both kept the evil spirits at a greater distance, and gave the chance of the greater number of prayers pro mortuo , from the pious who heard it.

Names of saints were given to bells that it might appear the voice of the Saint himself calling to prayer. Man will humanise all things.

[It is strange that Coleridge should make no mention of Schiller's "Song of the Bell," of which he must, at any rate, have heard the title. Possibly the idea remained though its source was forgotten. The Latin distichs were introduced by Longfellow in his "Golden Legend."

Of the cow-bells in the Hartz he gives the following account in an unpublished letter to his wife. April-May, 1799. "But low down in the valley and in little companies on each bank of the river a multitude of green conical fir-trees, with herds of cattle wandering about almost every one with a cylindrical bell around its neck, of no inconsiderable size. And as they moved, scattered over the narrow vale, and up among the trees of the hill, the noise was like that of a great city in the stillness of the Sabbath morning, where all the steeples, all at once are ringing for Church. The whole was a melancholy scene and quite new to me."]

FOOTNOTES:

5

[O heaven, 'twas frightful! now run down and stared at

By shapes more ugly than can be remembered—

Now seeing nothing and imagining nothing,

But only being afraid—stifled with Fear!

And every goodly, each familiar form

Had a strange somewhat that breathed terrors on me!

( From my MS. tragedy [S. T. C.]) Remorse , iv. 69-74—but the passage is omitted from Osorio , act iv. 53 sq. P. W. , pp. 386-499].

Table of Contents

1810

O dare I accuse

My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen,

Or call my destiny niggard! O no! no!

It is her largeness, and her overflow,

Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so!

S. T. C.

A PIOUS ASPIRATION

My own faculties, cloudy as they may be, will be a sufficient direction to me in plain daylight, but my friend's wish shall be the pillar of fire to guide me darkling in my nightly march through the wilderness.

THOUGHT AND ATTENTION

Thought and attention are very different things. I never expected the former, (viz., selbst-thätige Erzeugung dessen, wovon meine Rede war ) from the readers of The Friend . I did expect the latter, and was disappointed. Jan. 3, 1810.

This is a most important distinction, and in the new light afforded by it to my mind, I see more plainly why mathematics cannot be a substitute for logic, much less for metaphysics, that is, transcendental logic, and why, therefore, Cambridge has produced so few men of genius and original power since the time of Newton. Not only it does not call forth the balancing and discriminating power [ that I saw long ago] but it requires only attention, not thought or self-production.

LAW AND GOSPEL

"The man who squares his conscience by the law" was, formerly, a phrase for a prudent villain, an unprincipled coward. At present the law takes in everything—the things most incongruous with its nature, as the moral motive, and even the feelings of sensibility resulting from accidents of cultivation, novel-reading for instance. If, therefore, at all times, the law would be found to have a much greater influence on the actions of men than men generally suppose, or the agents were themselves conscious of, this influence we must expect to find augmented at the present time in proportion to the encroachments of the law on religion, the moral sense, and the sympathies engendered by artificial rank. Examine this and begin, for instance, with reviews, and so on through the common legal immoralities of life, in the pursuits and pleasures of the higher half of the middle classes of society in Great Britain.