He was a conceptualist, and never could raise himself into that higher state which was natural to Plato, and has been so to others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated, and, as it were, looked down upon from the throne of actual ideas, or living, in- 5 born, essential truths.-Table Talk, vi. 336.

Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a child's mind by inculcating any opinions before it should have come to years of discretion and be able to choose for itself. I showed him my garden, and told him it was 10 my botanical garden. "How so?" said he; "it is covered with weeds." "Oh," I replied, "that is only because it has not come to its age of discretion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice 15 the soil toward roses and strawberries."-Table Talk,

vi. 339.

Much as the Romans owed to Greece in the beginning, while their mind was, as it were, tuning itself to an after-effort of its own music; it suffered more in 20 proportion by the influence of Greek literature subsequently, when it was already mature, and ought to have worked for itself. It then became a superfetation upon, and not an ingredient in, the national character. With the exception of the stern pragmatic his- 25 torian and the moral satirist, it left nothing original to the Latin Muse. - Table Talk, vi. 397.

It is extraordinary that the Germans should not have retained or assumed the two beautifully discriminated

sounds of the soft and hard theta; as in, thy thoughts— the thin ether that, etc. How particularly fine the hard theta is in an English termination, as in that grand word-Death—for which the Germans gutturize a 5 sound that puts you in mind of nothing but a loathsome toad.-Table Talk, vi. 399.

Could you ever discover anything sublime, in our sense of the term, in the classic Greek literature? I never could. Sublimity is Hebrew by birth.- Table 10 Talk, vi. 406.

The free class in a slave state is always, in onc sense, the most patriotic class of people in an empire; for their patriotism is not simply the patriotism of other people, but an aggregate of lust of power, and distinc15 tion, and supremacy.- Table Talk, vi. 441.

20

25

The Romans would never have subdued the Italian tribes if they had not boldly left Italy and conquered foreign nations; and so, at last, crushed their next-door neighbors by external pressure.-Table Talk, vi. 445.

The principle of the Gothic architecture is Infinity made imaginable. It is no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it depends much more on execution for its effect.― Table Talk, vi. 461.

Imitation is the mesothesis of Likeness and Difference. The difference is as essential to it as the like

ness; for without the difference, it would be a Copy or Fac-simile. But, to borrow a term from astronomy, it is a librating mesothesis: for it may verge more to likeness, as in painting, or more to difference, as in sculpture.-Table Talk, vi. 468.

5

NOTES.

3:6. ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOËTIUS, or Boëthius, was a Roman poet and philosopher, born about 470–75, A. D. He was executed by order of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths; and while imprisoned in the baptistry of the church at Ticinum (Pavia), wrote his famous work, De Consolatione Philosophia. This was a dialogue, in alternate verse and prose, between the author and Philosophy. It was a favorite manual of morality during the Middle Ages, and was translated into English by King Alfred. Boëthius is usually regarded as the last "classical" Latin writer. 3:8. Caius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius was a Gallo-Roman author of verse and prose, born, probably, at Lyons about 431 A. D.; died about 482. His prose writings consist of 147 letters in very barbarous Latin. His poems, which include panegyrics to several successive Roman emperors, are said to be superior, in their latinity, to his epistles, but characterized by over-subtlety of thought and an obscure and figurative style.

4:31. The Rev. Wm. Lisle Bowles was an English clergyman and poet. He wrote much on antiquarian and ecclesiastical subjects, but his most memorable publications were a volume of Sonnets (1789), which had great influence on Coleridge (see Biographia Literaria, iii. 149–63); and his edition of Pope (1806), which led to a celebrated controversy with Byron and Campbell. His sister Caroline was Southey's second wife.

5:1. Robert Southey was Poet Laureate from 1813 to 1843. 5:21. Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) was the author of many poems, historical, contemplative, and dramatic; the longest of which was his Civil Wars of York and Lancaster; and the best, his Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland, a favorite with Wordsworth, He

137

was called by his contemporaries

well-languaged Daniel." "Writing two hundred and fifty years ago," says Lowell, "he stands in no need of a glossary, and I have noted scarce a dozen words, and not more turns of phrase, in his works, that have become obsolete." "No writer of the period," says Saintsbury, "has such a command of pure English" (History of Elizabethan Literature).

7:3. The lines upon which this charge rests are chiefly the following:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.

(Stanza v.)

Hence in a season of calm weather,

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither.

(Stanza ix.)

In his note on the "Ode" (Centenary Edition, v. 103), Wordsworth protested against the conclusion that he meant to inculcate belief in a prior state of existence. "It is far too shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith, as more than an element in our instincts of immortality. But let us bear in mind that, though the idea is not advanced in revelation, there is nothing there to contradict it, and the fall of man presents an analogy in its favor. Accordingly a pre-existent state has entered into the popular creeds of many nations; and, among all persons acquainted with classic literature, is known as an ingredient in Platonic philosophy... I took hold of the notion of pre-existence as having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorizing me to make for my purpose the best use of it I could as a poet." For the Platonic doctrine of reminiscence see especially Meno, Jowett's translation, i. 269 (1st ed.), Phædrus, i. 584, and Phado, i. 418-24.

10:9. The dramatic unities, or so-called "rules of Aristotle,"