many narrow prejudices of education as most men; and, if I may presume to penetrate farther into you, of a liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely because it wants friends. Your son,-your dear son,—from whose sweet and open temper you have so much to expect,-your Billy, Sir!-would you, for the world, have called him JUDAS? Would you, my dear Sir," he would say, laying his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest address,—and in that soft and irresistible piano of voice, which the nature of the argumentum ad hominem absolutely requires," Would you, Sir, if a Jew of a godfather had proposed the name for your child, and offered you his purse along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration of him? O my God!" he would say, looking up, "if I know your temper rightly, Sir, you are incapable of it; you would have trampled upon the offer; -you would have thrown the temptation at the tempter's head with abhorrence. Your greatness of mind in this action, which I admire, with that generous contempt of money, which you show me in the whole transaction, is really noble ;-and what renders it more so, is the principle of it ;the workings of a parent's love upon the truth and conviction of this very hypothesis, namely, that were your son called Judas,-the sordid and treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have accompanied him through life like his shadow, and in the end made a miser and a rascal of him, in spite, Sir, of your example." Vol. i. c. 19. 6. There is great physiognomic tact in Sterne. See it particularly displayed in his description of Dr. Slop, accompanied with all that happiest use of drapery and attitude, which at once give reality by individualizing and vividness by unusual, yet probable, combinations: Imagine to yourself a little squat uncourtly figure of a Doctor Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horseguards. Imagine such a one ;-for such, I say, were the outlines of Doctor Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling through the dirt upon the vertebra of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour-but of strength,—alack! scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition;-they were not. Imagine to yourself Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way. Vol. ii. c. 9. 7. I think there is more humour in the single remark, which I have quoted before—“Learned men, brother Toby, don't write dialogues upon long noses for nothing!"-than in the whole Slawkenburghian tale that follows, which is mere oddity interspersed with drollery. 8. Note Sterne's assertion of, and faith in a moral good in the characters of Trim, Toby, &c. as contrasted with the cold scepticism of motives which is the stamp of the Jacobin spirit. Vol. v. c. 9. 9. You must bear in mind, in order to do justice to Rabelais and Sterne, that by right of humoristic universality each part is essentially a whole in itself. Hence the digressive spirit is not mere wantonness, but in fact the very form and vehicle of their genius. The connection, such as was needed, is given by the continuity of the characters. Instances of different forms of wit, taken largely: 1. "Why are you reading romances at your age?"—"Why, I used to be fond of history, but I have given it up,—it was so grossly improbable." 2. " Pray, sir, do it!—although you have promised me." 3. The Spartan mother's "Return with, or on, thy shield." My sword is too short!"-" Take a step forwarder." 4. The Gasconade: : "I believe you, Sir! but you will excuse my repeating it on account of my provincial accent." 5. Pasquil on Pope Urban, who had employed a committee to rip up the old errors of his predeces sors. Some one placed a pair of spurs on the heels of the statue of St. Peter, and a label from the opposite statue of St. Paul, on the same bridge;— St. Paul. "Whither then are you bound?" St. Peter. "I apprehend danger here;-they'll soon call me in question for denying my Master." St. Paul. " Nay, then, I had better be off too; for they'll question me for having persecuted the Christians, before my conversion." 6. Speaking of the small German potentates, I dictated the phrase, officious for equivalents. This my amanuensis wrote,-fishing for elephants; -which, as I observed at the time, was a sort of Noah's angling, that could hardly have occurred, except at the commencement of the Deluge. LECTURE X. Donne-Dante - Milton-Paradise Lost. DONNE.* Born in London, 1573.-Died, 1631. I. With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, II. See lewdness and theology combin'd,— A cynic and a sycophantic mind; A fancy shar'd party per pale between Death's heads and skeletons, and Aretine! Not his peculiar defect or crime, But the true current mintage of the time. Such were the establish'd signs and tokens given HE wit of Donne, the wit of Butler, the wit THE of Pope, the wit of Congreve, the wit of Sheridan-how many disparate things are here expressed by one and the same word, Wit! - Won *Nothing remains of what was said on Donne in this Lecture. Here, therefore, as in previous like instances, the gap is filled up with some notes written by Mr. Coleridge in a volume of Chalmer's Poets, belonging to Mr. Gillman. The verses were added in pencil to the collectien of com der-exciting vigour, intenseness and peculiarity of thought, using at will the almost boundless stores of a capacious memory, and exercised on subjects, where we have no right to expect it-this is the wit of Donne! The four others I am just in the mood to describe and inter-distinguish; - what a pity that the marginal space will not let me ! My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, The sense is; - Our mutual loves may in many respects be fitly compared to corresponding hemispheres; but as no simile squares (nihil simile est idem), so here the simile fails, for there is nothing in our loves that corresponds to the cold north, or the declining west, which in two hemispheres must necessarily be supposed. But an ellipse of such length will scarcely rescue the line from the charge of nonsense or a bull. January, 1829. Woman's constancy. A misnomer. The title ought to be Mutual Inconstancy. mendatory lines; No. I. is Mr. C.'s; the publication of No. II. I trust the all-accomplished author will, under the circumstances, pardon. Numerous and elaborate notes by Mr. Coleridge on Donne's Sermons are in existence, and will be published hereafter. Ed. |