September 1806—December 1807

I had a confused shadow rather than an image in my recollection, like that from a thin cloud, as if the idea were descending, though still in some measureless height.

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As when the taper's white cone of flame is seen double, till the eye moving brings them into one space and then they become one—so did the idea in my imagination coadunate with your present form soon after I first gazed upon you.

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In all processes of the understanding the shortest way will be discovered the last and this, perhaps, while it constitutes the great advantage of having a teacher to put us on the shortest road at the first, yet sometimes occasions a difficulty in the comprehension, inasmuch as the longest way is more near to the existing state of the mind, nearer to what if left to myself, on starting the thought, I should have thought next. The shortest way gives me the knowledge best, but the longest makes me more knowing.

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When a party man talks as if he hated his country, saddens at her prosperous events, exults in her disasters and yet, all the while, is merely hating the opposite party, and would himself feel and talk as a patriot were he in a foreign land [he is a party man]. The true monster is he (and such alas! there are in these monstrous days, "vollendeter SÜndhaftigkeit"), who abuses his country when out of his country.

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Oh the profanation of the sacred word the People! Every brutal Burdett-led mob, assembled on some drunken St. Monday of faction, is the People forsooth, and each leprous ragamuffin, like a circle in geometry, is, at once, one and all, and calls its own brutal self, "us the People." And who are the friends of the People? Not those who would wish to elevate each of them, or, at least, the child who is to take his place in the flux of life and death, into something worthy of esteem and capable of freedom, but those who flatter and infuriate them, as they are. A contradiction in the very thought! For if, really, they are good and wise, virtuous and well-informed, how weak must be the motives of discontent to a truly moral being—but if the contrary, and the motives for discontent proportionably strong, how without guilt and absurdity appeal to them as judges and arbiters? He alone is entitled to a share in the government of all, who has learnt to govern himself. There is but one possible ground of a right of freedom—viz., to understand and revere its duties.

[Vide Life of S.T.C., by James Gillman, 1838, p. 223.]

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How villainously these metallic pencils have degenerated, not only in the length and quantity, but what is far worse, in the quality of the metal! This one appears to have no superiority over the worst sort sold by the Maltese shopkeepers.

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Blue sky through the glimmering interspaces of the dark elms at twilight rendered a lovely deep yellow-green—all the rest a delicate blue.

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The hay-field in the close hard by the farm-house—babe, and totterer little more [than a babe]—old cat with her eyes blinking in the sun and little kittens leaping and frisking over the hay-lines.

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What an admirable subject for an Allston would Tycho Brahe be, listening with religious awe to the oracular gabble of the idiot, whom he kept at his feet, and used to feed with his own hands!

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The sun-flower ought to be cultivated, the leaves being excellent fodder, the flowers eminently melliferous, and the seeds a capital food for poultry, none nourishing quicker or occasioning them to lay more eggs.

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Serpentium allapsus timet. QuÆre—allapse of serpents. Horace.—What other word have we? Pity that we dare not Saxonise as boldly as our forefathers, by unfortunate preference, Latinised. Then we should have on-glide, angleiten; onlook anschauen, etc.

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I moisten the bread of affliction with the water of adversity.

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If kings are gods on earth, they are, however, gods of earth.

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Parisatis poisoned one side of the knife with which he carved, and eat of the same joint the next slice unhurt—a happy illustration of affected self-inclusion in accusation.

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It is possible to conceive a planet without any general atmosphere, but in which each living body has its peculiar atmosphere. To hear and understand, one man joins his atmosphere to that of another, and, according to the sympathies of their nature, the aberrations of sound will be greater or less, and their thoughts more or less intelligible. A pretty allegory might be made of this.

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Two faces, each of a confused countenance. In the eyes of the one, muddiness and lustre were blended; and the eyes of the other were the same, but in them there was a red fever that made them appear more fierce. And yet, methought, the former struck a greater trouble, a fear and distress of the mind; and sometimes all the face looked meek and mild, but the eye was ever the same.

[Qu. S. T. C. and De Quincey?]

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Shadow—its being subsists in shaped and definite nonentity.

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Plain sense, measure, clearness, dignity, grace over all—these made the genius of Greece.

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Heu! quam miserum ab illo lÆdi, de quo non possis queri! Eheu! quam miserrimum est ab illo lÆdi, de quo propter amorem non possis queri!

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Observation from Bacon after reading Mr. Sheridan's speech on Ireland: "Things will have their first or second agitation; if they be not tossed on the arguments of council, they will be tossed on the waves of fortune."

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The death of an immortal has been beautifully compared to an Indian fig, which at its full height declines its branches to the earth, and there takes root again.

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The blast rises and falls, and trembles at its height.

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A passionate woman may be likened to a wet candle spitting flame.

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TO LOVE.

It is a duty, nay, it is a religion to that power to shew that, though it makes all things—wealth, pleasure, ambition—worthless, yea, noisome for themselves; yet for itself can it produce all efforts, even if only to secure its name from scoffs as the child and parent of slothfulness. Works, therefore, of general profit—works of abstruse thought [will be born of love]; activity, and, above all, virtue and chastity [will come forth from his presence].

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The moulting peacock, with only two of his long tail-feathers remaining, and those sadly in tatters, yet, proudly as ever, spreads out his ruined fan in the sun and breeze.

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Yesterday I saw seven or eight water-wagtails following a feeding horse in the pasture, fluttering about and hopping close by his hoofs, under his belly, and even so as often to tickle his nostrils with their pert tails. The horse shortens the grass and they get the insects.

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Sic accipite, sic credite, ut mereamini intelligere: fides enim debet prÆcedere intellectum, ut sit intellectus fidei prÆmium.

S. August. Sermones De Verb. Dom.

Yet should a friend think foully of that wherein the pride of thy spirit's purity is in shrine.

[So receive, so believe [divine ideas] that ye may earn the right to understand them. For faith should go before understanding, in order that understanding may be the reward of faith.]

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?te e????s?as?? ep??e?s?? t??a ?e?a? ??e?? d??e? ?a? t? a?t??? ?e?e? p??s?a?e??. Strabo Geographicus.

Though Genius, like the fire on the altar, can only be kindled from heaven, yet it will perish unless supplied with appropriate fuel to feed it; or if it meet not with the virtues whose society alone can reconcile it to earth, it will return whence it came, or, at least, lie hid as beneath embers, till some sudden and awakening gust of regenerating Grace, a?a??p??e?, rekindles and reveals it anew.

[Now the inspiration of genius seems to bear the stamp of Divine assent, and to attain to something of prophetic strain.]

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I trust you are very happy in your domestic being—very; because, alas! I know that to a man of sensibility and more emphatically if he be a literary man, there is no medium between that and "the secret pang that eats away the heart." ... Hence, even in dreams of sleep, the soul never is, because it either cannot or dare not be any one thing, but lives in approaches touched by the outgoing pre-existent ghosts of many feelings. It feels for ever as a blind man with his protruded staff dimly through the medium of the instrument by which it pushes off, and in the act of repulsion—(O for the eloquence of Shakspere, who alone could feel and yet know how to embody those conceptions with as curious a felicity as the thoughts are subtle!)—as if the finger which I saw with eyes, had, as it were, another finger, invisible, touching me with a ghostly touch, even while I feared the real touch from it. What if, in certain cases, touch acted by itself, co-present with vision, yet not coalescing? Then I should see the finger as at a distance, and yet feel a finger touching which was nothing but it, and yet was not it. The two senses cannot co-exist without a sense of causation. The touch must be the effect of that finger [which] I see, and yet it is not yet near to me, and therefore it is not it, and yet it is it. Why it is is in an imaginary pre-duplication!

N.B.—There is a passage in the second part of Wallenstein expressing, not explaining, the same feeling. "The spirits of great events stride on before the events"—it is in one of the last two or three scenes:—

[Wallenstein, Part II., act v. sc. 1. P. W., 1893, p. 351.]

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It is worth noting and endeavouring to detect the Law of the Mind, by which, in writing earnestly while we are thinking, we omit words necessary to the sense. It will be found, I guess, that we seldom omit the material word, but generally the word by which the mind expresses its modification of the verbum materiale. Thus, in the preceding page, 7th line, medium is the materiale: that was its own brute, inert sense—but the no is the mind's action, its use of the word.

I think this a hint of some value. Thus, the is a word in constant combination with the passive or material words; but to is an act of the mind, and I had written the detect instead of to detect. Again, when my sense demanded "the" to express a distinct modification of some verbum materiale, I remember to have often omitted it in writing. The principle is evident—the mind borrows the materia from without, and is passive with regard to it as the mere subject "stoff"—a simple event of memory takes place; but having the other in itself, the inward Having with its sense of security passes for the outward Having—or is all memory an anxious act, and thereby suspended by vivid security? or are both reasons the same? or if not, are they consistent, and capable of being co-or sub-ordinated? It will be lucky if some day, after having written on for two or three sheets rapidly and as a first copy, without correcting, I should by chance glance on this note, not having thought at all about it during or before the time of writing; and then to examine every word omitted.

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To spend half-an-hour in Cuthill's shop, examining Stephen's Thesaurus, in order to form an accurate idea of its utilities above Scapula, and to examine the BudÆo-Tusan-Constantine, whether it be the same or as good as Constantine, and the comparative merits of Constantine with Scapula.

3. To examine Bosc relatively to Brunck, and to see after the new German Anthologia.

4. Before I quit town, to buy Appendix (either No. 1430 or 1431), 8s. or 18s. What a difference! ten shillings, because the latter, the Parma Anacreon, is on large paper, green morocco; the former is neat in red morocco, but the type the same.

5. To have a long morning's ramble with De Quincey, first to Egerton's, and then to the book haunts.

6. To see if I can find that Arrian with Epictetus which I admired so much at Mr. Leckie's.

7. To find out D'Orville's Daphnis, and the price. Is there no other edition? no cheap German?

8. To write out the passage from Strada's Prolusions at Cuthill's.

9. Aristotle's Works, and to hunt for Proclus.

10. In case of my speedy death, it would answer to buy a £100 worth of carefully-chosen books, in order to attract attention to my library and to give accession to the value of books by their co-existing with co-appurtenants—as, for instance, Plato, Aristotle; Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus: Schoolmen, Interscholastic; Bacon, Hobbes; Locke, Berkeley; Leibnitz, Spinoza; Kant and the critical Fichte, and Wissenschaftslehre, Schelling, &c.

[The first edition of Robert Constantin's Lexicon GrÆco-Lat. was published at Geneva in 1564. A second ed. post correctiones G. BudÆi et J. Tusani, at Basle, in 1584.]

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Our mortal existence, what is it but a stoppage in the blood of life, a brief eddy from wind or concourse of currents in the ever-flowing ocean of pure Activity, who beholds pyramids, yea, Alps and Andes, giant pyramids, the work of fire that raiseth monuments, like a generous victor o'er its own conquest, the tombstones of a world destroyed! Yet these, too, float adown the sea of Time, and melt away as mountains of floating ice.

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Has every finite being (or only some) the temptation to become intensely and wholly conscious of its distinctness and, as a result, to be betrayed into the wretchedness of division? Grosser natures, wholly swallowed up in selfishness which does not rise to self-love, never even acquire that sense of distinctness, while, to others, love is the first step to re-union. It is a by-word that religious enthusiasm borders on and tends to sensuality—possibly because all our powers work together, and as a consequence of striding too vastly up the ladder of existence, a great round of the ladder is omitted, namely, love to some, Eine verschiedene, of our own kind. Then let Religion love, else will it not only partake of, instead of being partaken by, and so co-adunated with, the summit of love, but will necessarily include the nadir of love, that is, appetite. Hence will it tend to dissensualise its nature into fantastic passions, the idolatry of Paphian priestesses.

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Time, space, duration, action, active passion passive, activeness, passiveness, reaction, causation, affinity—here assemble all the mysteries known. All is known-unknown, say, rather, merely known. All is unintelligible, and yet Locke and the stupid adorers of that fetish earth-clod take all for granted. By the bye, in poetry as well as metaphysics, that which we first meet with in the dawn of our mind becomes ever after fetish, to the many at least. Blessed he who first sees the morning star, if not the sun, or purpling clouds his harbingers. Thence is fame desirable to a great man, and thence subversion of vulgar fetishes becomes a duty.

Rest, motion! O ye strange locks of intricate simplicity, who shall find the key? He shall throw wide open the portals of the palace of sensuous or symbolical truth, and the Holy of Holies will be found in the adyta. Rest=enjoyment and death. Motion=enjoyment and life. O the depth of the proverb, "Extremes meet"!

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The "break of the morning"—and from inaction a nation starts up into motion and wide fellow-consciousness! The trumpet of the Archangel—and a world with all its troops and companies of generations starts up into a hundredfold expansion, power multiplied into itself cubically by the number of all its possible acts—all the potential springing into power. Conceive a bliss from self-conscience, combining with bliss from increase of action; the first dreaming, the latter dead-asleep in a grain of gunpowder—conceive a huge magazine of gunpowder and a flash of lightning awakes the whole at once. What an image of the resurrection, grand from its very inadequacy. Yet again, conceive the living, moving ocean—its bed sinks away from under and the whole world of waters falls in at once on a thousand times vaster mass of intensest fire, and the whole prior orbit of the planet's successive revolutions is possessed by it at once (Potentia fit actus) amid the thunder of rapture.

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Form is factitious being, and thinking is the process; imagination the laboratory in which the thought elaborates essence into existence. A philosopher, that is, a nominal philosopher without imagination, is a coiner. Vanity, the froth of the molten mass, is his stuff, and verbiage the stamp and impression. This is but a deaf metaphor—better say that he is guilty of forgery. He presents the same sort of paper as the honest barterer, but when you carry it to the bank it is found to be drawn to Outis, Esq. His words had deposited no forms there, payable at sight—or even at any imaginable time from the date of the draft.

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The sky, or rather say, the Æther at Malta, with the sun apparently suspended in it, the eye seeming to pierce beyond and, as it were, behind it—and, below, the Æthereal sea, so blue, so ein zerflossenes, the substantial image, and fixed real reflection of the sky! O! I could annihilate in a deep moment all possibility of the needle-point, pin's-head system of the atomists by one submissive gaze!

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A dewdrop, the pearl of Aurora, is indeed a true unio. I would that unio were the word for the dewdrop, and the pearl be called unio marinus.

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O for the power to persuade all the writers of Great Britain to adopt the ver, zer, and al of the German! Why not verboil, zerboil; verrend, zerrend? I should like the very words verflossen, zerflossen, to be naturalised:

I do not know, whether I am in earnest or in sport while I recommend this ver and zer; that is, I cannot be sure whether I feel, myself, anything ridiculous in the idea, or whether the feeling that seems to imply this be not the effect of my anticipation of and sympathy with the ridicule of, perhaps, all my readers.

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To you there are many like me, yet to me there is none like you, and you are always like yourself. There are groves of night-flowers, yet the night-flower sees only the moon.

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