466 Miss O'Neil. Brentano. CHAP.XVII. for the visit. He wanted society, being alone. I abstained from inquiring after his sister, and trust he will appreciate the motive. 1814. Miss O'Neil. The Brentanos. December 23rd.-Saw Miss O'Neil in Isabella. She was, as Amyot well said, "a hugging actress." Sensibility shown in grief and fondness was her forte-her only talent. She is praised for her death scenes, but they are the very opposite of Kean's, of which I have spoken. In Kean, you see the ruling passion strong in death-that is, the passion of the individual. Miss O'Neil exhibits the sufferings that are common to all who are in pain. To imitate death closely is disgusting. December 25th.-I called on George Brentano, and was greatly interested by his account of his family, and especially of my former friend, his brother Christian. During the last ten years Christian has been managing the estates of his family in Bohemia, where, says his brother, he has been practising a number of whimsical absurdities. Among other economical projects, he conceived the plan of driving a number of sheep into a barn and forcing them, by flogging, &c., to tread the grain, instead of using a flail. To show that animals might be made to sustain the remedies which art has discovered for human miseries, he broke the legs of some cocks and hens, in order to make them walk with wooden legs. Of politics George Brentano spoke freely. He is not so warmly anti-Buonapartist as I could have wished, but he is still patriotic. He wishes for a concentration of German power. A Religion of Slavery. 467 1814. December 27th.-Rode to Witham on the outside of CHAP.XVII. the Colchester coach, and amused myself by reading Middleton's "Letter from Rome," a very amusing as well as interesting work. His proof that a great number of the rites and ceremonies of the Romish Church are derived from the Pagan religion is very complete and satisfactory. And he urges his argument against the abuses of the Roman Church with no feelings unfavourable to Christianity. That the earliest Christians voluntarily assimilated the new faith and its rites to the ancient superstition, in order to win souls, and with that accommodating spirit which St. Paul seems to have sanctioned, cannot be doubted. It admits of a doubt how far such a practice is so entirely bad as rigid believers now assert. Certainly these peculiarities are not the most mischievous excrescences which have gradually formed themselves on the surface of the noble and sublimely simple system of Jesus Christ. The worst of these adscititious appendages may be looked upon as bad poetry; but the ineradicable and intolerable vice of Romanism is the infallibility of the Church, and the consequent intolerance of its priests. It is a religion of slavery. 468 CH. XVIII. 1815. Wordsworth and Pantheism. The CHAPTER XVIII. 1815. January 3rd.-My visit to Witham was made partly Review on that I might have the pleasure of reading "The Excur Words worth's Excursion. sion" to Mrs. W. Pattisson. The second perusal of this poem has gratified me still more than the first, and my own impressions were not removed by the various criticisms I became acquainted with. I also read to Mrs. Pattisson the Eclectic Review. It is a highly encomiastic article, rendering ample justice to the poetical talents of the author, but raising a doubt as to the religious character of the poem. It is insinuated that Nature is a sort of God throughout, and consistently with the Calvinistic orthodoxy of the reviewer, the lamentable error of representing a love of Nature as a sort of purifying state of mind, and the study of Nature as a sanctifying process is emphatically pointed out. Mrs. Pattisson further objected that, in Wordsworth, there is a want of sensibility, or rather passion; and she even maintained that one of the reasons why I admire him so much is that I never was in love. We disputed on this head, and it was at last agreed between us that Wordsworth has no power because he has no inclination to describe the passion of an unsuccessful Opinions about "The Excursion." 469 1815. The Edinburgh review of The lover, but that he is eminently happy in his description CH. XVIII. of connubial felicity. We read also the Edinburgh review of the poem. It is a very severe and contemptuous article. Wordsworth is treated as incurable, and the changes are rung on the old keys with great Excursion. vivacity-affectation, bad taste, mysticism, &c. He is reproached with having written more feebly than before. A ludicrous statement of the story is given, which will not impose on many, for Homer or the Bible might be so represented. But though the attack on Wordsworth will do little mischief among those who are already acquainted with Edinburgh Review articles, it will close up the eyes of many who might otherwise have recovered their sight. Perhaps, after all, "The Excursion" will leave Mr. Wordsworth's admirers and contemners where they were. Each will be furnished with instances to strengthen his own persuasions. Certainly I could wish for a somewhat clearer development of the author's opinions, for the retrenchment of some of the uninteresting interlocutory matter, for the exclusion of the tale of the angry, avaricious, and unkind woman, and curtailments in some of the other narratives. But, with these deductions from the worth of the poem, I do not hesitate to place it among the noblest works of the human intellect, and to me it is one of the most delightful. What is good is of the best kind of goodness, and the passages are not few which place the author on a level with Milton. It is true Wordsworth is not an epic poet; but it is also true that what lives in the hearts of readers from the works of Milton is 470 CH. XVIII. 1815. Goethe's Goethe's Zest in Living. not the epic poem. Milton's story has merit unquestionably; but it is rather a lyric than an epic narrative. Wordsworth is purely and exclusively a lyric poet, in the extended use of that term. January 8th.-Called on Mrs. Clarkson (at Bury), and talked with her about "The Excursion." She had received a letter from Wordsworth himself, in which he mentioned the favourable as well as unfavourable opinions he had already heard. January 21st-On my ride to London outside the biography. Bury coach I read part of Goethe's Autobiography (3rd vol.) with great pleasure. It is a delightful work, but must be studied, not read as a mere personal history. His account of the "Système de la Nature" and of his theological opinions is peculiarly interesting. All that respects his own life and feelings is delightfully told. It is a book to make a man wish to live, if life Goethe's zest were a thing he had not already experienced. There is in living. in Goethe such a zest in living. The pleasures of sense and thought, of imagination and the affections, appear to have been all possessed by him in a more exuberant degree than in any man who has ever renewed his life by writing it. He appears in his youth to have had something even of religious enthusiasm. It would be interesting to know how he lost it, but we shall hardly be gratified by a much longer continuance of this incomparable memoir. Erskine. January 23rd.-Called on Amyot. He informs me that Lord Erskine is writing a life of C. J. Fox. This work will determine what is at present doubtful--whether Erskine has any literary talent. I shall be |