Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Party men always hate a slightly differing friend more than a downright enemy. I quite calculate on my being one day or other holden in worse repute by many Christians than the Unitarians and open infidels. It must be undergone by every one who loves the truth for its own sake beyond all other things.

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Truth is a good dog; but beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

June 10. 1830

SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF BUNYAN.—LAUD.—PURITANS AND CAVALIERS.—PRESBYTERIANS, INDEPENDENTS, AND BISHOPS

Southey's Life of Bunyan is beautiful. I wish he had illustrated that mood of mind which exaggerates, and still more, mistakes, the inward depravation, as in Bunyan, Nelson, and others, by extracts from Baxter's Life of himself. What genuine superstition is exemplified in that bandying of texts and half texts, and demi-semi-texts, just as memory happened to suggest them, or chance brought them before Bunyan's mind! His tract, entitled, "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners"[67 - "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, in a faithful Account of the Life and Death of John Bunyan, &c." Is it not, however, an historical error to call the Puritans dissenters? Before St. Bartholomew's day, they were essentially a part of the church, and had as determined opinions in favour of a church establishment as the bishops themselves.] is a study for a philosopher.

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Laud was not exactly a Papist to be sure; but he was on the road with the church with him to a point, where declared popery would have been inevitable. A wise and vigorous Papist king would very soon, and very justifiably too, in that case, have effected a reconciliation between the churches of Rome and England, when the line of demarcation had become so very faint.

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The faults of the Puritans were many; but surely their morality will, in general, bear comparison with that of the Cavaliers after the Restoration.

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The Presbyterians hated the Independents much more than they did the bishops, which induced them to cooperate in effecting the Restoration.

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The conduct of the bishops towards Charles, whilst at Breda, was wise and constitutional. They knew, however, that when the forms of the constitution were once restored, all their power would revive again as of course.

June 14. 1830

STUDY OF THE BIBLE

Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.

June 15. 1830

RABELAIS.—SWIFT.—BENTLEY.—SUBNET

Rabelais is a most wonderful writer. Pantagruel is the Reason; Panurge the Understanding,—the pollarded man, the man with every faculty except the reason. I scarcely know an example more illustrative of the distinction between the two. Rabelais had no mode of speaking the truth in those days but in such a form as this; as it was, he was indebted to the King's protection for his life. Some of the commentators talk about his book being all political; there are contemporary politics in it, of course, but the real scope is much higher and more philosophical. It is in vain to look about for a hidden meaning in all that he has written; you will observe that, after any particularly deep thrust, as the Papimania[68 - B. iv. c. 48. "Comment Pantagruel descendit en l'Isle de Papimanes." See the five following chapters, especially c. 50.; and note also c. 9. of the fifth book; "Comment nous fut monstré Papegaut à grande difficulté."—ED.] for example, Rabelais, as if to break the blow, and to appear unconscious of what he has done, writes a chapter or two of pure buffoonery.

He, every now and then, flashes you a glimpse of a real face from his magic lantern, and then buries the whole scene in mist. The morality of the work is of the most refined and exalted kind; as for the manners, to be sure, I cannot say much.

Swift was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,—the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place.

Yet Swift was rare. Can any thing beat his remark on King William's motto, —Recepit, non rapuit,—"that the receiver was as bad as the thief?"

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The effect of the Tory wits attacking Bentley with such acrimony has been to make them appear a set of shallow and incompetent scholars. Neither Bentley nor Burnet suffered from the hostility of the wits. Burnet's "History of his own Times" is a truly valuable book. His credulity is great, but his simplicity is equally great; and he never deceives you for a moment.

June 25. 1830

GIOTTO.—PAINTING

The fresco paintings by Giotto[69 - Giotto, or Angiolotto's birth is fixed by Vasari in 1276, but there is some reason to think that he was born a little earlier. Dante, who was his friend, was born in 1265. Giotto was the pupil of Cimabue, whom he entirely eclipsed, as Dante testifies in the well-known lines in the Purgatorio:—"O vana gloria dell'umane posse!Com' poco verde in su la cima dura,Se non e giunta dall' etati grosse!Credette Cirnabue nella pinturaTener lo campo: ed ora ha Giotto il grido,Si che la fama di colui oscura."—C. xi. v. 91.His six great frescos in the cemetery at Pisa are upon the sufferings and patience of Job.—ED.] and others, in the cemetery at Pisa, are most noble. Giotto was a contemporary of Dante: and it is a curious question, whether the painters borrowed from the poet, or vice versa. Certainly M. Angelo and Raffael fed their imaginations highly with these grand drawings, especially M. Angelo, who took from them his bold yet graceful lines.

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People may say what they please about the gradual improvement of the Arts. It is not true of the substance. The Arts and the Muses both spring forth in the youth of nations, like Minerva from the front of Jupiter, all armed: manual dexterity may, indeed, he improved by practice.

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Painting went on in power till, in Raffael, it attained the zenith, and in him too it showed signs of a tendency downwards by another path. The painter began to think of overcoming difficulties. After this the descent was rapid, till sculptors began to work inveterate likenesses of perriwigs in marble,—as see Algarotti's tomb in the cemetery at Pisa,—and painters did nothing but copy, as well as they could, the external face of nature. Now, in this age, we have a sort of reviviscence,—not, I fear, of the power, but of a taste for the power, of the early times.

June 26. 1830

SENECA

You may get a motto for every sect in religion, or line of thought in morals or philosophy, from Seneca; but nothing is ever thought out by him.

July 2. 1830

PLATO.—ARISTOTLE

Every man is born an Aristotelian, or a Platonist. I do not think it possible that any one born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and I am sure no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are the two classes of men, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a third. The one considers reason a quality, or attribute; the other considers it a power. I believe that Aristotle never could get to understand what Plato meant by an idea. There is a passage, indeed, in the Eudemian Ethics which looks like an exception; but I doubt not of its being spurious, as that whole work is supposed by some to be. With Plato ideas are constitutive in themselves.[70 - Mr. Coleridge said the Eudemian Ethics; but I half suspect he must have meant the Metaphysics, although I do not know that all the fourteen books under that title have been considered non-genuine. The [Greek: Aethicha Eusaemeia] are not Aristotle's. To what passage in particular allusion is here made, I cannot exactly say; many might be alleged, but not one seems to express the true Platonic idea, as Mr. Coleridge used to understand it; and as, I believe, he ultimately considered ideas in his own philosophy. Fourteen or fifteen years previously, he seems to have been undecided upon this point. "Whether," he says, "ideas are regulative only, according to Aristotle and Kant, or likewise constitutive, and one with the power and life of nature, according to Plato and Plotinus [Greek:—eg logo zoae aeg, chai ae zoae aeg to phos tog agthwpog] is the highest problem of philosophy, and not part of its nomenclature." Essay (E) in the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual, 1816.—ED.]

Aristotle was, and still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding; the faculty judging by the senses. He was a conceptualist, and never could raise himself into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, and has been so to others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated, and, as it were, looked down upon from the throne of actual ideas, or living, inborn, essential truths.

Yet what a mind was Aristotle's—only not the greatest that ever animated the human form!—the parent of science, properly so called, the master of criticism, and the founder or editor of logic! But he confounded science with philosophy, which is an error. Philosophy is the middle state between science, or knowledge, and sophia, or wisdom.

July 4. 1830

DUKE OF WELLINGTON.—MONEYED INTEREST.—CANNING

I sometimes fear the Duke of Wellington is too much disposed to imagine that he can govern a great nation by word of command, in the same way in which he governed a highly disciplined army. He seems to be unaccustomed to, and to despise, the inconsistencies, the weaknesses, the bursts of heroism followed by prostration and cowardice, which invariably characterise all popular efforts. He forgets that, after all, it is from such efforts that all the great and noble institutions of the world have come; and that, on the other hand, the discipline and organization of armies have been only like the flight of the cannon-ball, the object of which is destruction.[71 - Straight forward goesThe lightning's path, and straight the fearful pathOf the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid,Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches.Wallenstein, Part I, act i, sc. 4]

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The stock-jobbing and moneyed interest is so strong in this country, that it has more than once prevailed in our foreign councils over national honour and national justice. The country gentlemen are not slow to join in this influence. Canning felt this very keenly, and said he was unable to contend against the city trained-bands.

July 6, 1830

BOURRIENNE

Bourienne is admirable. He is the French Pepys,—a man with right feelings, but always wishing to participate in what is going on, be it what it may. He has one remark, when comparing Buonaparte with Charlemagne, the substance of which I have attempted to express in "The Friend"[72 - Vol. i. Essay 12. p. 133.] but which Bourrienne has condensed into a sentence worthy of Tacitus, or Machiavel, or Bacon. It is this; that Charlemagne was above his age, whilst Buonaparte was only above his competitors, but under his age! Bourrienne has done more than any one else to show Buonaparte to the world as he really was,—always contemptible, except when acting a part, and that part not his own.

July 8. 1830