August 9. 1832.

BAPTISMAL SERVICE.-JEWS' DIVISION OF

THE SCRIPTURE.

SANSKRIT.

I THINK the baptismal service almost perfect. What seems erroneous assumption in it to me, is harmless. None of the services of the church affect me so much as this. I never could attend a christening without tears bursting forth at the sight of the helpless innocent in a pious clergyman's arms.

The Jews recognized three degrees of sanctity in their Scriptures: - first, the writings of Moses, who had the autovía; secondly, the Prophets; and, thirdly, the Good Books. Philo, amusingly enough, places his works somewhere between the second and third degrees.

The claims of the Sanskrit for priority to the Hebrew as a language are ridiculous.

HESIOD.

August 11. 1832.

VIRGIL. GENIUS METAPHYSICAL.-DON QUIXOTE.

I LIKE reading Hesiod, meaning the Works and Days. If every verse is not poetry, it is, at least, good sense, which is a great deal to

say.

There is nothing real in the Georgics, except, to be sure, the verse. Mere didactics

of practice, unless seasoned with the personal interests of the time or author, are inexpressibly dull to me. Such didactic poetry as

* I used to fancy Mr. Coleridge paulo iniquior Virgilio, and told him so: to which he replied, that, like all Eton men, I swore per Maronem. This was far enough from being the case; but I acknowledge that Mr. C.'s apparent indifference to the tenderness and dignity of Virgil excited my surprise. —ED.

that of the Works and Days followed naturally upon legislation and the first ordering of municipalities.

All genius is metaphysical; because the ultimate end of genius is ideal, however it may be actualized by incidental and accidental circumstances.

Don Quixote is not a man out of his senses, but a man in whom the imagination and the pure reason are so powerful as to make him disregard the evidence of sense when it opposed their conclusions. Sancho is the common sense of the social mananimal, unenlightened and unsanctified by the reason. You see how he reverences

his master at the very time he is cheating him.

August 12. 1832.

MALTHUSIANISM.

Is it not lamentable— is it not even marvellous that the monstrous practical sophism of Malthus should now have gotten complete possession of the leading men of the kingdom! Such an essential lie in morals such a practical lie in fact as it is too! I solemnly declare that I do not believe that all the heresies and sects and factions which the ignorance and the weakness and the wickedness of man have ever given birth to, were altogether so disgraceful to man as a Christian, a philosopher, a statesman, or citizen, as this abominable tenet. It should be exposed by reasoning in the form of ridicule. Asgill or Swift would have done much; but, like the Popish doctrines, it is so vicious a tenet, so flattering to the cruelty, the avarice, and sordid selfishness of most men, that I hardly know what to think of the result.

sure blessedness accelerated; or, it may be, he is buried in Christ, and there in that mysterious depth grows on to the spirit of a just man made perfect! Could I for a moment doubt this, the grass would become black beneath my feet, and this earthly frame a charnel-house. I never knew any man so illustrate the difference between the feminine and the effeminate.

A loose, slack, not well-dressed youth met and myself in a lane near High

Mr.

gate.

Keats.

knew him, and spoke. It was

He was introduced to me, and staid

a minute or so. After he had left us a little

"Let me

way, he came back, and said: carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having

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