Talk at C. Aikin's.

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subjects. What, after all, is there that is delightful or CHAP. XV. soul-elevating in contemplating countless myriads of animals, endowed with marvellous powers, which lead to nothing beyond the preservation of individual existence, or rather the preservation of a race? The effect is rather sad than animating; for the more wonderful their powers are, the more elaborately complex and more curiously fitted to their end, and the more they resemble those of human beings, the less apparent absurdity is there in the supposition that our powers should cease with their present manifestation. For my part, I am convinced that the truths and postulates of religion have their sole origin and confirmation in conscience and the moral sense.

September 21st.-Took tea at C. Aikin's. A chat about Miss Edgeworth. Mrs. Aikin willing to find in her every excellence, whilst I disputed her power of interesting in a long connected tale, and her possession of poetical imagination. In her numerous works she has certainly conceived and executed a number of forms, which, though not representatives of ideas, are excellent characters. Her sketches and her conceptions of ordinary life are full of good sense; but the tendency of her writings to check enthusiasm of every kind is of very problematical value.

Miss

Edgeworth.

Oct. 3rd.—Coleridge walked with me to A. Robinson's Spinoza. for my Spinoza, which I lent him. While standing in

the room he kissed Spinoza's face in

said, "This book is a gospel to me."*

the title-page, and

But in less than a

* Mr. H. C. Robinson's copy of the works of Spinoza is now in the library of Manchester New College, London, with marginalia from the hand of Coleridge. They are limited to the first part of the Ethica, "De Deo ;" and to

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Spinoza. Coleridge.

CHAP. XV. minute he added, "his philosophy is nevertheless false. Spinoza's system has been demonstrated to be false, but only by that philosophy which has demonstrated the falsehood of all other philosophies. Did philosophy commence with an it is, instead of an I am, Spinoza would be altogether true." And without allowing a

some letters in his correspondence, especially with Oldenburg, one of the earliest secretaries of the Royal Society in London. It appears from these marginal notes, that Coleridge heartily embraced Spinoza's fundamental position of the Divine Immanence in all things, as distinguished from the ordinary anthropomorphic conceptions of God, but was anxious to guard it from the pantheistic conclusions which might be supposed to result from it, and to clear it from the necessarian and materialistic assumptions with which he thought Spinoza himself had gratuitously encumbered it. Everywhere Coleridge distinctly asserts the Divine Intelligence and the Divine Will against the vague, negative generality in which Spinoza's overpowering sense of the incommensurability of the Divine and the Human had left them; and strenuously contends for the freedom of human actions as the indispensable basis of a true theory of morals. "It is most necessary," he says, in a note on Propos. xxviii. (of the first part of the Ethics), "to distinguish Spinozism from Spinoza—i.e. the necessary consequences of the immanence in God as the one only necessary Being whose essence involves existence, with the deductions-from Spinoza's own mechanic realistic view of the world." "Even in the latter," he continues, "I cannot accord with Jacobi's assertion, that Spinozism as taught by Spinoza is atheism; for though he will not consent to call things essentially disparate by the same name, and therefore denies human intelligence to Deity, yet he adores his Wisdom, and expressly declares the identity of Love, i.e. perfect virtue or concentric will in the human being, and that with which the Supreme loves himself, as all in all." "Never," he concludes, "has a great man been so hardly and inequitably treated by posterity as Spinoza: no allowances made for the prevalence, nay universality, of dogmatism and the mechanic system in his age; no trial, except in Germany, to adopt the glorious truths into the family of Life and Power. What if we treated Bacon with the same harshness!"

One other note on the same subject (appended to Epist. xxxvi.) is so characteristic, and in so beautiful a spirit, that it ought to be transcribed :—

"The truth is, Spinoza, in common with all the metaphysicians before him (Böhme perhaps excepted), began at the wrong end, commencing with God as an object. Had he, though still dogmatizing objectively, begun with the natura naturans in its simplest terms, he must have proceeded on per intelligentiam' to the subjective, and having reached the other pole = idealism, or the 'I,' he would have reprogressed to the equatorial point, or the identity of subject

Coleridge.

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1812.

breathing time, Coleridge parenthetically asserted, “I, CHAP. XV. however, believe in all the doctrines of Christianity, even the Trinity." A. Robinson afterwards observed, "Coleridge has a comprehensive faith and love." Contrary to my expectation, however, he was pleased with these outbursts, rather than offended by them. They impressed him with the poet's sincerity. Coleridge informs me that his tragedy is accepted at Drury Lane. Whitbread admires it exceedingly, and Arnold, the manager, is confident of its success. Coleridge says he is now about to compose lectures, which are to be the produce of all his talent and power, on education. Each lecture is to be delivered in a state in which it may be sent to the press.

*

Horace
Smith.

October 10th.-Dined at the Hall. A chatty party. James and It is said that Lady invited H. Twiss to dinner, and requested him to introduce an amusing friend or two. He thought of the authors of the "Rejected Addresses,” and invited James Smith and his brother to come in the evening of a day on which he himself was to dine with her ladyship. Smith wrote, in

and object; and would thus have arrived finally not only at the clear idea of God, as absolute Being, the ground of all existents (for so far he did reach, and to charge him with atheism is a gross calumny), but likewise at the faith in the living God, who hath the ground of his own existence in himself. That this would have been the result, had he lived a few years longer, I think his Epist. lxxii. authorizes us to believe; and of so pure a soul, so righteous a spirit as Spinoza, I dare not doubt that this potential fact is received by the Eternal as actual."

In the epistle here referred to, Spinoza expresses his intention, should his life be spared, of defining more clearly his ideas concerning "the eternal and infinite Essence in relation to extension," which he thought Des Cartes had wrongly taken as the definition of Matter. J. J. T.

* Mr. S. Whitbread, M.P., was a propietor of shares in Drury Lane Theatre, and through friendship for Sheridan took an active part in its affairs.

VOL. I.

D D

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William Huntington, S.S.

CHAP. XV. answer, that he was flattered by the polite invitation, but it happened unluckily that both he and his brother had a prior engagement at Bartholomew Fair -he to eat fire and his brother to swallow 200 yards of ribbon.

Hunting

ton.

October 22nd.-Heard W. Huntington preach, the man who puts S. S. (sinner saved) after his name. He has an admirable exterior; his voice is clear and melodious; his manner singularly easy, and even graceful. There was no violence, no bluster, yet there was no want of earnestness or strength. His language was very figurative, the images being taken from the ordinary business of life, and especially from the army and navy. He is very colloquial, and has a wonderful Biblical memory; indeed, he is said to know the whole Bible by heart. I noticed that, though he was frequent in his citations, and always added chapter and verse, he never opened the little book he had in his hand. He is said to resemble Robert Robinson of Cambridge. There was nothing shrewd or original in the sermon to-day, but there was hardly any impropriety. I detected but a single one: Huntington said, "Take my word for it, my friends, they who act in this way will not be beloved by God, or by anybody else."

December 15th.-Hamond mentioned that recently, when he was on the Grand Jury, and they visited New

*He thus explained his adoption of these mysterious letters :-"M.A. is out of my reach for want of learning, D.D. I cannot attain for want of cash, but S.S. I adopt, by which I mean sinner saved." His portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery. He commenced his own epitaph thus: "Here lies the coalheaver, beloved of God, but abhorred of men." He died at Tunbridge Wells in 1813. His published works extend to twenty volumes.

gate prison, he proposed inquiring of Cobbett whether CHAP. XV. he had anything to complain of.* Cobbett answered,

1812.

Hamond said, the

Cobbett.

"Nothing but the being here."
reverent bows his fellow-jurymen made to Cobbett
were quite ludicrous.

December 20th, Sunday.-A large family party at the Bischoff's, of which not the least agreeable circumstance was, that there was a family religious service. There is something most interesting and amiable in family devotional exercise, when, as in this instance, there is nothing austere or ostentatious. Indeed everything almost that is done by a family, as such, is good. Religion assumes a forbidding aspect only when it is mingled with impure feelings, as party animosity, malignant intolerance, and contempt.

Family religion.

Mathews.

Dec. 23rd.-Saw "Bombastes Furioso" and "Midas." Liston and In both Liston was less funny than usual. Is it that he has grown fatter? Droll persons should be very fat or very thin. Mathews is not good as the king in "Bombastes." He is excellent chiefly as a mimic, or where rapidity of transition or volubility is required.

Rem. It was in the early part of this year that Mrs. Bardear Mrs. Barbauld incurred great reproach by writing

a poem entitled "1811." It is in heroic rhyme, and prophesies that on some future day a traveller from the antipodes will, from a broken arch of Blackfriars Bridge, contemplate the ruins of St. Paul's!! This was written more in sorrow than in anger; but there was a dis

• In 1810 Cobbett was tried for publishing certain observations on the flogging of some militiamen at Ely. He was sentenced to pay a fine of £1,000, or be imprisoned for two years; he chose the latter.

bauld's "1811."

Written in 1849.