will be found to fall; that is, as you will often see it stated in my writings, especially in the " Aids to Reflection : "'. 1. Prothesis, the noun-verb, or verb-substantive, I am, which is the previous form, and implies identity of being and act. 2. Thesis, the noun. 3. Antithesis, the verb. Note, each of these may be converted; that is, they are only opposed to each other. 4. Mesothesis, the infinitive mood, or the indifference of the verb and noun, it being either the one or the other, or both at the same time, in different relations. 5. Synthesis, the participle, or the community of verb and noun; being an acting at once. Now, modify the noun by the verb, that is, by an act, and you have 6. The adnoun, or adjective. Modify the verb by the noun, that is, by being, and you have 7. The adverb. Interjections are parts of sound, not of speech. Conjunctions are the same as propositions; but they are prefixed to a sentence, or to a member of a sentence, instead of to a single word. The inflexions of nouns are modifications as to place; the inflexions of verbs, as to time. The genitive case denotes dependence; the dative, trans West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the extensive territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws, &c. By William Bartram." Philadelphia, 1791. London, 1792. 8vo. The expedition was made at the request of Dr. Fothergill, the Quaker physician, in 1773, and was particularly directed to botanical discoveries.-H. N. C. 1 P. 170, 2nd edition.-H. N. C. mission. It is absurd to talk of verbs governing. In Thucydides, I believe, every case has been found absolute." The inflexions of the tenses of a verb are formed by adjuncts of the verb substantive. In Greek it is obvious. The E is the prefix significative of a past time. JUNE 15, 1827. Magnetism. Electricity.-Galvanism. PERHAPS the attribution or analogy may seem fanciful at first sight, but I am in the habit of realizing to myself Magnetism as length; Electricity as breadth or surface; and Galvanism as depth. JUNE 24, 1827. * Spenser.-Character of Othello.-Hamlet.-Polonius.-Principles and Maxims.-Love.-Measure for Measure.-Ben Jonson.-Beaumont and Fletcher.-Version of the Bible.-Coleridge's Organ of Locality. Craniology.-Spurzheim.—Silence and Wisdom.*- -Epithets.* PENSER'S Epithalamion is truly sublime; and pray mark the swan-like movement of his exquisite Prothalamion.1 His attention to metre and rhythm is some 1 Nominative absolute:-9εῶν δὲ φόβος ἢ ἀνθρώπων νόμος οὐδεὶς ἀπεῖργε, τὸ μεν κρίνοντες ἐν δυοίῳ καὶ σέβειν καὶ μὴ τῶν δὲ ἁμαρτημάτων οὐδεὶς ἐλπίζων μέχρι τοῦ δίκην γενέσθαι βιοὺς ἄν τὴν τιμωρίαν ἀντιδοῦναι.—Thuc. II. 53. Dative:—εἰργομένοις αὐτοῖς τῆς θαλάσσης καὶ κατὰ γῆν πορθουμένοις ἐνεχείρησαν τινες πρὸς ̓Αθηναίους ἀγαγεῖν τὴν πόλιν. Thuc. VIII. 24, This is the Latin usage. Accusative. I do not remember an instance of the proper accusative absolute in Thucydides; but it seems not uncommon in other authors:ὦ ξεῖνε, μὴ θαύμαζε πρὸς τὸ λιπαρές, τέκν ̓ εἰ φανέντ ̓ ἄελπτα μηκύνω λόγον. Yet all such instances may be nominatives; for I cannot find an example of the accusative absolute in the masculine or feminine gender, where the difference of inflexion would show the case.-H. N. C 1 How well I remember this Midsummer-day! I shall never pass such another. The sun was setting behind Caen Wood, and the calm of the evening was so exceedingly deep that it arrested Mr. Coleridge's attention. We were alone together in Mr. Gillman's drawing-room, and Mr. C. left off talking, and fell into an almost trance-like state for ten times so extremely minute as to be painful even to my ear, and you know how highly I prize good versification. I have often told you that I do not think there is any jealousy, properly so called, in the character of Othello. There is no predisposition to suspicion, which I take to be an essential term in the definition of the word. Desdemona very truly told Emilia that he was not jealous, that is, of a jealous habit, and he says so as truly of himself. Iago's suggestions, you see, are quite new to him; they do not correspond with anything of a like nature previously in his mind. If Desdemona had, in fact, been guilty, no one would have thought of calling Othello's conduct that of a jealous man. He could not act otherwise than he did with the lights he had; whereas jealousy can never be strictly right. See how utterly unlike Othello is to Leontes, in the "Winter's Tale," or even to Leonatus, in "Cymbeline!" The jealousy of the first proceeds from an evident trifle, and something like hatred is mingled with it; and the conduct of Leonatus in accepting the wager, and exposing his wife to the trial, denotes a jealous temper already formed. minutes whilst contemplating the beautiful prospect before us. His eyes swam in tears, his head inclined a little forward, and there was a slight uplifting of the fingers, which seemed to tell me that he was in prayer. I was awe-stricken, and remained absorbed in looking at the man, in forgetfulness of external nature, when he recovered himself, and after a word or two, fell by some secret_link of association upon Spenser's poetry. Upon my telling him that I did not very well recollect the Prothalamion:" Then I must read you a bit of it," said he; and fetching the book from the next room, he recited the whole of it in his finest and most musical manner. I particularly bear in mind the sensible diversity of tone and rhythm with which he gave :— "Sweet Thames! run softly till I end my song," the concluding line of each of the ten strophes of the poem. When I look upon the scanty memorial, which I have alone preserved of this afternoon's converse, I am tempted to burn these pages in despair. Mr. Coleridge talked a volume of criticism that day, which, printed verbatim as he spoke it, would have made the reputation of any other person but himself. He was, indeed, particularly brilliant and enchanting; and I left him at night so thoroughly magnetized, that I could not for two or three days afterwards reflect enough to put anything on paper.-H. N. C. Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should be impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so. A Maxim is a conclusion upon observation of matters of fact, and is merely retrospective: an Idea, or, if you like, a Principle, carries knowledge within itself, and is prospective. Polonius is a man of maxims. Whilst he is descanting on matters of past experience, as in that excellent speech to Laertes before he sets out on his travels,' he is admirable; but when he comes to advise or project, he is a mere dotard. You see Hamlet, as the man of ideas, despises him. A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that eye placed in the back of his head. In the scene with Ophelia, in the third act,2 Hamlet is beginning with great and unfeigned tenderness; but perceiving her reserve and coyness, fancies there are some listeners, and then, to sustain his part, breaks out into all that coarseness. Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action. The qualities of the sexes correspond. The man's courage is loved by the woman, whose fortitude again is coveted by the man. vigorous intellect is answered by her infallible tact. it be true what is so constantly affirmed, that there is no sex in souls ?—I doubt it, I doubt it exceedingly.3 1 Act i. sc. 3.-H. N. C. 2 Sc. 1.-H. N. C. His Can 3 Mr. Coleridge was a great master in the art of love, but he had not studied in Ovid's school. Hear his account of the matter: Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the world, "Measure for Measure" is the single exception to the delightfulness of Shakspere's plays. It is a hateful work, although Shaksperian throughout. Our feelings of justice are grossly wounded in Angelo's escape. Isabella herself contrives to be unamiable, and Claudio is detestable. I am inclined to consider "The Fox" as the greatest of Ben Jonson's works. But his smaller works are full of poetry. "Monsieur Thomas" and "The Little French Lawyer” are great favourites of mine amongst Beaumont and Fletcher's and mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-known ballad, ‘John Anderson, my Jo, John,' in addition to a depth and constancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes a peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature; a constitutional communicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul; a delight in the detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament within, to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But, above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life, even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away, and which in all our lovings is the love; I mean, that willing sense of the unsufficingness of the self for itself, which predisposes a generous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and completion of its own; that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved object modulates, not suspends, where the heart momently finds, and, finding again, seeks on; lastly, when 'life's changeful orb has passed the full,' a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly experience; it supposes, I say, a heartfelt reverence for worth, not the less deep because divested of its solemnity by habit, by familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling of modesty which will arise in delicate minds, when they are conscious of possessing the same, or the correspondent, excellence in their own characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of love appropriates it, can call goodness its playfellow; and dares make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged virtue the caressing fondness that belongs to the innocence of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies which had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty." (Poetical Works, vol. ii. p. 120.)—H. N. C. See Index, under "Love," to Coleridge's "Lectures and Notes on Shakspere, &c." (Standard Library edition.) |