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in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but kept exquisitely within the limit of propriety. In the others it is rampant, and most truly "puffeth up," as St. Paul said of it.

What between the sectarians and the political economists, the English are denationalised. England I see as a country, but the English nation seems obliterated. What could redintegrate us again? Must it be another threat of foreign invasion?

I never can digest the loss of most of Origen's works: he seems to have been almost the only very great scholar and genius combined amongst the early Fathers. Jerome was very inferior to him.

JANUARY 20, 1834.1

Some men like Musical Glasses.-Sublime and Nonsense.-Atheist.

SOME men are like musical glasses; to produce their

finest tones, you must keep them wet.

Well! that passage is what I call the sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery-four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense.

How did the Atheist get his idea of that God whom he denies ?

FEBRUARY 22, 1834.

Proof of Existence of God.-Kant's Attempt.—Plurality of Worlds.

ASSUME the existence of God, and then the harmony

and fitness of the physical creation may be shown to correspond with and support such an assumption ;—but to set about proving the existence of a God by such means is a mere circle, a delusion. It can be no proof to a good reasoner, unless he violates all syllogistic logic, and presumes his conclusion.

Kant once set about proving the existence of God, and a 1 Our editor certainly brought away little of value on Jan. 20, 1834. 2 In the same way, the hypothesis of the law of gravitation explains the phenomena, but the phenomena do not prove the existence of the law.

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masterly effort it was.' But in his later great work, the Critique of the Pure Reason," he saw its fallacy, and said of it-that if the existence could be proved at all, it must be on the grounds indicated by him.

I never could feel any force in the arguments for a plurality of worlds, in the common acceptation of that term. A lady once asked me-"What then could be the intention in creating so many great bodies, so apparently useless to us?" I said—I did not know, except, perhaps, to make dirt cheap. The vulgar inference is in alio genere. What in the eye of an intellectual and omnipotent Being is the whole sidereal system to the soul of one man for whom Christ died?

MARCH 1, 1834.
A Reasoner.

I

person

who

AM by the law of my nature a reasoner. A should suppose I meant by that word, an arguer, would not only not understand me, but would understand the contrary of my meaning. I can take no interest whatever in hearing or saying anything merely as a fact-merely as having happened. It must refer to something within me before I can regard it with any curiosity or care. My mind is always energic—I don't mean energetic; I require in everything what, for lack of another word, I may call propriety, that is, a reason, why the thing is at all, and why it is there or then rather than elsewhere or at another time.

MARCH 5, 1834.

Shakspere's Intellectual Action.—Crabbe and Southey.—Peter Simple and Tom Cringle's Log.

SH

HAKSPERE'S intellectual action is wholly unlike that of Ben Jonson or Beaumont and Fletcher. The latter

1 In his essay, "Der einzig mogliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyns Gottes."-"The only possible argument or ground of proof for a demonstration of the existence of God." It was published in 1763; the "Critique" in 1781.-H. N. C.

2 What would the second Jew of July 8, 1830, have thought of this remark? And what becomes of the " may be shown of the first paragraph?

see the totality of a sentence or passage, and then project it entire. Shakspere goes on creating, and evolving B. out of A., and C. out of B., and so on, just as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own body, and seems for ever twisting and untwisting its own strength.'

I think Crabbe and Southey are something alike; but Crabbe's poems are founded on observation and real lifeSouthey's on fancy and books. In facility they are equal, though Crabbe's English is of course not upon a level with Southey's, which is next door to faultless. But in Crabbe there is an absolute defect of the high imagination; he gives me little or no pleasure: yet, no doubt, he has much power of a certain kind, and it is good to cultivate, even at some pains, a catholic taste in literature. I read all sorts of books with some pleasure, except modern sermons and treatises on political economy.

I have received a great deal of pleasure from some of the modern novels, especially Captain Marryat's "Peter Simple." That book is nearer Smollett than any I remember. And "Tom Cringle's Log" in Blackwood is also most excellent.

MARCH 15, 1834.

Chaucer.-Shakspere.-Ben Jonson.-Beaumont and Fletcher.-Daniel. -Massinger.

I

2

TAKE unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my old age. How exquisitely tender he is, and yet how perfectly free from the least touch of sickly melancholy or morbid drooping! The sympathy of the poet with the subjects of his poetry is particularly remarkable in Shakspere and

1 In the first edition follows here an interesting specimen of Shaksperian criticism :- "Perhaps the true reading in Macbeth' is blank height of the dark-and not blanket.' Had Tennyson surmised this, he would probably not have written "a blanket wraps the day."

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2 Eighteen years before, Mr. Coleridge entertained the same feelings

Chaucer; but what the first effects by a strong act of imagination and mental metamorphosis, the last does without any effort, merely by the inborn kindly joyousness of his nature. How well we seem to know Chaucer! How absolutely nothing do we know of Shakspere!

I cannot in the least allow any necessity for Chaucer's poetry, especially the Canterbury Tales, being considered obsolete. Let a few plain rules be given for sounding the final è of syllables, and for expressing the termination of such words as ocean, and nation, &c., as dissyllables,-or let the syllables to be sounded in such cases be marked by a competent metrist. This simple expedient would, with a very few trifling exceptions, where the errors are inveterate, enable any reader to feel the perfect smoothness and harmony of Chaucer's verse. As to understanding his language, if you read twenty pages with a good glossary, you surely can find no further difficulty, even as it is; but I should have no objection to see this done:-Strike out those words which are now obsolete, and I will venture to say that I will replace every one of them by words still in use out of Chaucer himself, or Gower his disciple. I don't want this myself: I rather like to see the significant terms which Chaucer unsuccessfully offered as candidates for admission into our language; but surely so very slight a change of the text may well be pardoned, even by blackletterati, for the purpose of restoring so great a poet to his ancient and most deserved popularity.

Shakspere is of no age. It is idle to endeavour to support his phrases by quotations from Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, &c. His language is entirely his own, and the younger dramatists imitated him. The construction of Shakspere's sentences, whether in verse or prose, is the necessary and homogeneous vehicle of his peculiar manner of thinking. His is not the style of the age. More particularly, Shakspere's blank verse is an absolutely new

towards Chaucer :-"Through all the works of Chaucer there reigns a cheerfulness, a manly hilarity, which makes it almost impossible to doubt a correspondent habit of feeling in the author himself.”—Biog. Lit. vol. i. p. 32.-H. N. C.

creation. Read Daniel'-the admirable Daniel-in his "Civil Wars," and "Triumphs of Hymen." The style and language are just such as any very pure and manly writer of the present day-Wordsworth, for examplewould use; it seems quite modern in comparison with the style of Shakspere. Ben Jonson's blank verse is very masterly and individual, and perhaps Massinger's is even still nobler. In Beaumont and Fletcher it is constantly slipping into lyricisms.

2

I believe Shakspere was not a whit more intelligible in his own day than he is now to an educated man, except for a few local allusions of no consequence. As I said, he is of no age-nor, I may add, of any religion, or party, or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind: his observation and reading, which was considerable, supplied him with the drapery of his figures."

As for editing Beaumont and Fletcher, the task would be one immensi laboris. The confusion is now so great, the errors so enormous, that the editor must use a boldness quite unallowable in any other case. All I can say as to Beaumont and Fletcher is, that I can point out well enough

1

"This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the 'well-languaged Daniel; but, likewise, and by the consent of his contemporaries, no less than all succeeding critics, the 'prosaic Daniel.' Yet those who thus designate this wise and amiable writer, from the frequent incorrespondency of his diction with his metre, in the majority of his compositions, not only deem them valuable and interesting on other accounts, but willingly admit that there are to be found throughout his poems, and especially in his Epistles and in his Hymen's Triumph, many and exquisite specimens of that style, which, as the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to both."-Biog. Lit. vol. ii. p. 82.-H. N. Č.

2 See remarks under Sept. 11, 1831. Wordsworth would hardly have relished being, by innuendo, styled "prosaic," yet whoso has succeeded in reading The Prelude, that "Orphic song, indeed," according to our editor, will feel how true is the epithet.

3 Mr. Coleridge called Shakspere "the myriad-minded man," ävnp μvpiovov a phrase," said he, " which I have borrowed from a Greek monk, who applies it to a patriarch of Constantinople. I might have said, that I have reclaimed, rather than borrowed, it, for it seems to belong to Shakspere de jure singulari, et ex privilegio naturæ." See Biog. Lit. vol. ii. p. 13.-H. N. Č.

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