FOOTNOTES:

——Too wild, too rude and bold of voice!

the skipping spirit, whose thoughts and words reciprocally ranaway with each other;115

———O be them damn'd, inexorable dog!And for thy life let justice be accused!

and the wild fancies that follow, contrasted with Shylock'stranquil 'I stand here for Law'.

Or, to take a case more analogous to the present subject,120should we hold it either fair or charitable to believe it to havebeen Dante's serious wish that all the persons mentioned byhim (many recently departed, and some even alive at the time,)should actually suffer the fantastic and horrible punishments towhich he has sentenced them in his Hell and Purgatory?125Or what shall we say of the passages in which Bishop JeremyTaylor anticipates the state of those who, vicious themselves,have been the cause of vice and misery to their fellow-creatures?Could we endure for a moment to think that a spirit, likeBishop Taylor's, burning with Christian love; that a man130constitutionally overflowing with pleasurable kindliness; whoscarcely even in a casual illustration introduces the image ofwoman, child, or bird, but he embalms the thought with sorich a tenderness, as makes the very words seem beauties andfragments of poetry from Euripides or Simonides;—can we135endure to think, that a man so natured and so disciplined, didat the time of composing this horrible picture, attach a soberfeeling of reality to the phrases? or that he would havedescribed in the same tone of justification, in the same luxuriantflow of phrases, the tortures about to be inflicted on a living140individual by a verdict of the Star-Chamber? or the still moreatrocious sentences executed on the Scotch anti-prelatists andschismatics, at the command, and in some instances under thevery eye of the Duke of Lauderdale, and of that wretched bigotwho afterwards dishonoured and forfeited the throne of Great145Britain? Or do we not rather feel and understand, that theseviolent words were mere bubbles, flashes and electricalapparitions, from the magic cauldron of a fervid and ebullient fancy,constantly fuelled by an unexampled opulence of language?

Were I now to have read by myself for the first time the poem150in question, my conclusion, I fully believe, would be, that thewriter must have been some man of warm feelings and activefancy; that he had painted to himself the circumstances thataccompany war in so many vivid and yet fantastic forms, asproved that neither the images nor the feelings were the result155of observation, or in any way derived from realities. I shouldjudge that they were the product of his own seething imagination,and therefore impregnated with that pleasurable exultationwhich is experienced in all energetic exertion of intellectualpower; that in the same mood he had generalized the causes of160the war, and then personified the abstract and christened it bythe name which he had been accustomed to hear most oftenassociated with its management and measures. I should guessthat the minister was in the author's mind at the moment ofcomposition as completelyἀπαθὴς, ἀναιμόσαρκος, as Anacreon's165grasshopper, and that he had as little notion of a real person offlesh and blood,

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,[Paradise Lost, II. 668.]

as Milton had in the grim and terrible phantom (half person,half allegory) which he has placed at the gates of Hell. I170concluded by observing, that the poem was not calculated to excitepassion in any mind, or to make any impression except onpoetic readers; and that from the culpable levity betrayedat the close of the eclogue by the grotesque union of epigrammaticwit with allegoric personification, in the allusion to the175most fearful of thoughts, I should conjecture that the 'rantin'Bardie', instead of really believing, much less wishing, the fatespoken of in the last line, in application to any human individual,would shrink from passing the verdict even on the Devil himself,and exclaim with poor Burns,180

But fare ye weel, auld Nickie-ben!Oh! wad ye tak a thought an' men!Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken—Still hae a stake—I'm wae to think upon yon den,185Ev'n for your sake!

I need not say that these thoughts, which are here dilated,were in such a company only rapidly suggested. Our kindhost smiled, and with a courteous compliment observed, thatthe defence was too good for the cause. My voice faltered190a little, for I was somewhat agitated; though not so much onmy own account as for the uneasiness that so kind and friendlya man would feel from the thought that he had been theoccasion of distressing me. At length I brought out these words:'I must now confess, sir! that I am author of that poem. It195was written some years ago. I do not attempt to justify mypast self, young as I then was; but as little as I would nowwrite a similar poem, so far was I even then from imaginingthat the lines would be taken as more or less than a sportof fancy. At all events, if I know my own heart, there was200never a moment in my existence in which I should have beenmore ready, had Mr. Pitt's person been in hazard, to interposemy own body, and defend his life at the risk of my own.'

I have prefaced the poem with this anecdote, because to haveprinted it without any remark might well have been understood205as implying an unconditional approbation on my part, and thisafter many years' consideration. But if it be asked why Irepublished it at all, I answer, that the poem had been attributedat different times to different other persons; and what I haddared beget, I thought it neither manly nor honourable not to210dare father. From the same motives I should have publishedperfect copies of two poems, the one entitled The Devil'sThoughts, and the other, The Two Round Spaces on theTombstone, but that the three first stanzas of the former, whichwere worth all the rest of the poem, and the best stanza of the215remainder, were written by a friend [Southey] of deservedcelebrity; and because there are passages in both which mighthave given offence to the religious feelings of certain readers.I myself indeed see no reason why vulgar superstitions andabsurd conceptions that deform the pure faith of a Christian220should possess a greater immunity from ridicule than stories ofwitches, or the fables of Greece and Rome. But there are thosewho deem it profaneness and irreverence to call an ape an ape,if it but wear a monk's cowl on its head; and I would ratherreason with this weakness than offend it.225

The passage from Jeremy Taylor to which I referred is foundin his second Sermon on Christ's Advent to Judgment; whichis likewise the second in his year's course of sermons. Amongmany remarkable passages of the same character in thosediscourses, I have selected this as the most so. 'But when this230Lion of the tribe of Judah shall appear, then Justice shall strike,and Mercy shall not hold her hands; she shall strike sore strokes,and Pity shall not break the blow. As there are treasures ofgood things, so hath God a treasure of wrath and fury, andscourges and scorpions; and then shall be produced the shame235of Lust and the malice of Envy, and the groans of the oppressedand the persecutions of the saints, and the cares of Covetousnessand the troubles of Ambition, and the insolencies of traitors andthe violences of rebels, and the rage of anger and the uneasinessof impatience, and the restlessness of unlawful desires; and by240this time the monsters and diseases will be numerous andintolerable, when God's heavy hand shall press the sanies andthe intolerableness, the obliquity and the unreasonableness, theamazement and the disorder, the smart and the sorrow, theguilt and the punishment, out from all our sins, and pour them245into one chalice, and mingle them with an infinite wrath, andmake the wicked drink off all the vengeance, and force it downtheir unwilling throats with the violence of devils and accursedspirits.'

That this Tartarean drench displays the imagination rather250than the discretion of the compounder; that, in short, thispassage and others of the same kind are in a bad taste, few will denyat the present day. It would, doubtless, have more behovedthe good bishop not to be wise beyond what is written ona subject in which Eternity is opposed to Time, and a Death255threatened, not the negative, but the positive Opposite of Life;a subject, therefore, which must of necessity be indescribableto the human understanding in our present state. But I canneither find nor believe that it ever occurred to any reader toground on such passages a charge against Bishop Taylor's260humanity, or goodness of heart. I was not a little surprisedtherefore to find, in the Pursuits of Literature and other works,so horrible a sentence passed on Milton's moral character, fora passage in his prose writings, as nearly parallel to this ofTaylor's as two passages can well be conceived to be. All his265merits, as a poet, forsooth—all the glory of having written theParadise Lost, are light in the scale, nay, kick the beam,compared with the atrocious malignity of heart, expressed in theoffensive paragraph. I remembered, in general, that Milton hadconcluded one of his works on Reformation, written in the270fervour of his youthful imagination, in a high poetic strain, thatwanted metre only to become a lyrical poem. I rememberedthat in the former part he had formed to himself a perfect idealof human virtue, a character of heroic, disinterested zeal anddevotion for Truth, Religion, and public Liberty, in act and in275suffering, in the day of triumph and in the hour of martyrdom.Such spirits, as more excellent than others, he describes ashaving a more excellent reward, and as distinguished by atranscendant glory: and this reward and this glory he displays andparticularizes with an energy and brilliance that announced the280Paradise Lost as plainly, as ever the bright purple clouds in theeast announced the coming of the Sun. Milton then passes tothe gloomy contrast, to such men as from motives of selfishambition and the lust of personal aggrandizement should, againsttheir own light, persecute truth and the true religion, and285wilfully abuse the powers and gifts entrusted to them, to bringvice, blindness, misery and slavery, on their native country, onthe very country that had trusted, enriched and honoured them.Such beings, after that speedy and appropriate removal fromtheir sphere of mischief which all good and humane men must290of course desire, will, he takes for granted by parity of reason,meet with a punishment, an ignominy, and a retaliation, asmuch severer than other wicked men, as their guilt and itsconsequences were more enormous. His description of thisimaginary punishment presents more distinct pictures to the295fancy than the extract from Jeremy Taylor; but the thoughtsin the latter are incomparably more exaggerated and horrific.All this I knew; but I neither remembered, nor by referenceand careful re-perusal could discover, any other meaning, eitherin Milton or Taylor, but that good men will be rewarded, and300the impenitent wicked, punished, in proportion to theirdispositions and intentional acts in this life; and that if thepunishment of the least wicked be fearful beyond conception, all wordsand descriptions must be so far true, that they must fall shortof the punishment that awaits the transcendantly wicked. Had305Milton stated either his ideal of virtue, or of depravity, as anindividual or individuals actually existing? Certainly not!Is this representation worded historically, or onlyhypothetically? Assuredly the latter! Does he express it as his ownwish that after death they should suffer these tortures? or as310a general consequence, deduced from reason and revelation, thatsuch will be their fate? Again, the latter only! His wish isexpressly confined to a speedy stop being put by Providence totheir power of inflicting misery on others! But did he nameor refer to any persons living or dead? No! But the315calumniators of Milton daresay (for what will calumny not dare say?)that he had Laud and Strafford in his mind, while writing ofremorseless persecution, and the enslavement of a free countryfrom motives of selfish ambition. Now what if a sternanti-prelatist should daresay, that in speaking of the insolencies of320traitors and the violences of rebels, Bishop Taylor must haveindividualised in his mind Hampden, Hollis, Pym, Fairfax,Ireton, and Milton? And what if he should take the liberty ofconcluding, that, in the after-description, the Bishop was feedingand feasting his party-hatred, and with those individuals before325the eyes of his imagination enjoying, trait by trait, horror afterhorror, the picture of their intolerable agonies? Yet thisbigot would have an equal right thus to criminate the one goodand great man, as these men have to criminate the other.Milton has said, and I doubt not but that Taylor with equal330truth could have said it, 'that in his whole life he never spakeagainst a man even that his skin should be grazed.' He assertedthis when one of his opponents (either Bishop Hall or hisnephew) had called upon the women and children in the streetsto take up stones and stone him (Milton). It is known that335Milton repeatedly used his interest to protect the royalists;but even at a time when all lies would have been meritoriousagainst him, no charge was made, no story pretended, that hehad ever directly or indirectly engaged or assisted in theirpersecution. Oh! methinks there are other and far better feelings340which should be acquired by the perusal of our great elderwriters. When I have before me, on the same table, the worksof Hammond and Baxter; when I reflect with what joy anddearness their blessed spirits are now loving each other; itseems a mournful thing that their names should be perverted to345an occasion of bitterness among us, who are enjoying that happymean which the human too-much on both sides was perhapsnecessary to produce. 'The tangle of delusions which stifledand distorted the growing tree of our well-being has been tornaway; the parasite-weeds that fed on its very roots have been350plucked up with a salutary violence. To us there remain onlyquiet duties, the constant care, the gradual improvement, thecautious unhazardous labours of the industrious thoughcontented gardener—to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and oneby one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and355the caterpillar. But far be it from us to undervalue with lightand senseless detraction the conscientious hardihood of ourpredecessors, or even to condemn in them that vehemence, towhich the blessings it won for us leave us now neithertemptation nor pretext. We antedate the feelings, in order to360criminate the authors, of our present liberty, light andtoleration.' (The Friend, No. IV. Sept. 7, 1809.) [1818, i. 105.]

If ever two great men might seem, during their whole lives,to have moved in direct opposition, though neither of them hasat any time introduced the name of the other, Milton and365Jeremy Taylor were they. The former commenced his careerby attacking the Church-Liturgy and all set forms of prayer.The latter, but far more successfully, by defending both.Milton's next work was against the Prelacy and the thenexisting Church-Government—Taylor's in vindication and370support of them. Milton became more and more a stern republican,or rather an advocate for that religious and moral aristocracywhich, in his day, was called republicanism, and which, even morethan royalism itself, is the direct antipode of modern jacobinism.Taylor, as more and more sceptical concerning the fitness of375men in general for power, became more and more attached tothe prerogatives of monarchy. From Calvinism, with a stilldecreasing respect for Fathers, Councils, and for Church-antiquityin general, Milton seems to have ended in an indifference,if not a dislike, to all forms of ecclesiastic government, and to380have retreated wholly into the inward and spiritual church-communionof his own spirit with the Light that lighteth everyman that cometh into the world. Taylor, with a growingreverence for authority, an increasing sense of the insufficiency ofthe Scriptures without the aids of tradition and the consent of385authorized interpreters, advanced as far in his approaches (notindeed to Popery, but) to Roman-Catholicism, as a conscientiousminister of the English Church could well venture. Miltonwould be and would utter the same to all on all occasions: hewould tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the390truth. Taylor would become all things to all men, if by anymeans he might benefit any; hence he availed himself, in hispopular writings, of opinions and representations which standoften in striking contrast with the doubts and convictionsexpressed in his more philosophical works. He appears, indeed,395not too severely to have blamed that management of truth(istam falsitatem dispensativam) authorized and exemplified byalmost all the fathers: Integrum omnino doctoribus et coetusChristiani antistitibus esse, ut dolos versent, falsa verisintermisceant et imprimis religionis hostes fallant, dummodo400veritatis commodis et utilitati inserviant.

The same antithesis might be carried on with the elementsof their several intellectual powers. Milton, austere, condensed,imaginative, supporting his truth by direct enunciation of loftymoral sentiment and by distinct visual representations, and in405the same spirit overwhelming what he deemed falsehood bymoral denunciation and a succession of pictures appalling orrepulsive. In his prose, so many metaphors, so many allegoricalminiatures. Taylor, eminently discursive, accumulative,and (to use one of his own words) agglomerative; still more410rich in images than Milton himself, but images of fancy, andpresented to the common and passive eye, rather than to theeye of the imagination. Whether supporting or assailing, hemakes his way either by argument or by appeals to theaffections, unsurpassed even by the schoolmen in subtlety,415agility, and logic wit, and unrivalled by the most rhetorical ofthe fathers in the copiousness and vividness of his expressionsand illustrations. Here words that convey feelings, and wordsthat flash images, and words of abstract notion, flow together,and whirl and rush onward like a stream, at once rapid and full420of eddies; and yet still interfused here and there we see a tongueor islet of smooth water, with some picture in it of earth or sky,landscape or living group of quiet beauty.

Differing then so widely and almost contrariantly, whereindid these great men agree? wherein did they resemble each425other? In genius, in learning, in unfeigned piety, in blamelesspurity of life, and in benevolent aspirations and purposes forthe moral and temporal improvement of their fellow-creatures!Both of them wrote a Latin Accidence, to render educationmore easy and less painful to children; both of them composed430hymns and psalms proportioned to the capacity of commoncongregations; both, nearly at the same time, set the gloriousexample of publicly recommending and supporting generaltoleration, and the liberty both of the Pulpit and the press!In the writings of neither shall we find a single sentence, like435those meek deliverances to God's mercy, with which Laudaccompanied his votes for the mutilations and loathsomedungeoning of Leighton and others!—nowhere such a pious prayeras we find in Bishop Hall's memoranda of his own life, concerningthe subtle and witty atheist that so grievously perplexed440and gravelled him at Sir Robert Drury's till he prayed to theLord to remove him, and behold! his prayers were heard: forshortly afterward this Philistine-combatant went to London,and there perished of the plague in great misery! In short,nowhere shall we find the least approach, in the lives and445writings of John Milton or Jeremy Taylor, to that guardedgentleness, to that sighing reluctance, with which the holybrethren of the Inquisition deliver over a condemned hereticto the civil magistrate, recommending him to mercy, andhoping that the magistrate will treat the erring brother with450all possible mildness!—the magistrate who too well knows whatwould be his own fate if he dared offend them by acting on theirrecommendation.

The opportunity of diverting the reader from myself tocharacters more worthy of his attention, has led me far beyond my455first intention; but it is not unimportant to expose the falsezeal which has occasioned these attacks on our elder patriots.It has been too much the fashion first to personify the Churchof England, and then to speak of different individuals, who indifferent ages have been rulers in that church, as if in some460strange way they constituted its personal identity. Why shoulda clergyman of the present day feel interested in the defenceof Laud or Sheldon? Surely it is sufficient for the warmestpartisan of our establishment that he can assert withtruth,—when our Church persecuted, it was on mistaken principles465held in common by all Christendom; and at all events, far lessculpable was this intolerance in the Bishops, who weremaintaining the existing laws, than the persecuting spirit afterwardsshewn by their successful opponents, who had no such excuse,and who should have been taught mercy by their own sufferings,470and wisdom by the utter failure of the experiment in their owncase. We can say that our Church, apostolical in its faith,primitive in its ceremonies, unequalled in its liturgical forms; thatour Church, which has kindled and displayed more bright andburning lights of genius and learning than all other protestant475churches since the reformation, was (with the single exceptionof the times of Laud and Sheldon) least intolerant, when allChristians unhappily deemed a species of intolerance theirreligious duty; that Bishops of our church were among the firstthat contended against this error; and finally, that since the480reformation, when tolerance became a fashion, the Church ofEngland in a tolerating age, has shewn herself eminentlytolerant, and far more so, both in spirit and in fact, thanmany of her most bitter opponents, who profess to deemtoleration itself an insult on the rights of mankind! As to485myself, who not only know the Church-Establishment to betolerant, but who see in it the greatest, if not the sole safebulwark of toleration. I feel no necessity of defending orpalliating oppressions under the two Charleses, in order toexclaim with a full and fervent heart, Esto perpetua!490

[1097:1]First published inSibylline Leavesin 1817: included in 1828, 1829, and 1834. The 'Apologetic Preface' must have been put together in 1815, with a view to publication in the volume afterwards namedSibylline Leaves, but the incident on which it turns most probably took place in the spring of 1803, when both Scott and Coleridge were in London. Davy writing to Poole, May 1, 1803, says that he generally met Coleridge during his stay in town, 'in the midst of large companies, where he was the image of power and activity,' and Davy, as we know, was one of Sotheby's guests. In a letter to Mrs. Fletcher dated Dec. 18, 1830 (?), Scott tells the story in his own words, but throws no light on date or period. The implied date (1809) in Morritt's report of Dr. Howley's conversation (Lockhart'sLife of Scott, 1837, ii. 245) is out of the question, as Coleridge did not leave the Lake Country between Sept. 1808 and October 1810. Coleridge set great store by 'his own stately account of this lion-show' (ibid.). In a note in a MS. copy ofSibylline Leavespresented to his son Derwent he writes:—'With the exception of this slovenly sentence (ll. 109-19) I hold this preface to be my happiest effort in prose composition.'

[1097:2]William Sotheby (1756-1838), translator of Wieland'sOberonand theGeorgicsof Virgil. Coleridge met him for the first time at Keswick in July, 1802.

[1097:3]'The compliment I can witness to be as just as it is handsomely recorded,' Sir W. Scott to Mrs. Fletcher,Fragmentary Remains of Sir H. Davy, 1858, p. 113.

[24]he1817,1829.

he1817,1829.

[41]What follows is substantially the same asI then1817,1829.

What follows is substantially the same asI then1817,1829.

[56]realize1817,1829.

realize1817,1829.

[93]outrageous] outrè,1817,1829.

outrageous] outrè,1817,1829.

[95]escape-valves1817,1829.liver1817,1829.

escape-valves1817,1829.

liver1817,1829.

[106]afterwards] afterward1817,1829.

afterwards] afterward1817,1829.

[119]'I . . . Law'1817,1829.

'I . . . Law'1817,1829.

[125]Hell and Purgatory1817,1829.

Hell and Purgatory1817,1829.

[135]a Euripides1817: an Euripides1829.

a Euripides1817: an Euripides1829.

[136]sonatured1817,1829.

sonatured1817,1829.

[172]passion . . . any1817,1829.

passion . . . any1817,1829.

[173]poetic1817,1829.Forbetrayed inr.betrayed by, Errata,1817, p. [xi].

poetic1817,1829.

Forbetrayed inr.betrayed by, Errata,1817, p. [xi].

[174]in the grotesque1817.

in the grotesque1817.

[195]am author] am the author1817.

am author] am the author1817.

[203]my bodyMS. corr. 1817.

my bodyMS. corr. 1817.

[212-3]The . . . Thoughts1817,1829.

The . . . Thoughts1817,1829.

[213-4]The . . . Tombstone1817,1829.

The . . . Tombstone1817,1829.

[238]insolencies]indolence1829.

insolencies]indolence1829.

[238-9]and the . . . rebels1817,1829.

and the . . . rebels1817,1829.

[252]in . . . taste1817,1829.

in . . . taste1817,1829.

[256]positive1817,1829. Opposite] Oppositive1829,1893.

positive1817,1829. Opposite] Oppositive1829,1893.

[264]his1817,1829.

his1817,1829.

[267]Paradise Lost1817,1829.

Paradise Lost1817,1829.

[273]former] precedingMS. corr. 1817.

former] precedingMS. corr. 1817.

[278]and as] asMS. corr. 1817.

and as] asMS. corr. 1817.

[295]pictures1817,1829.

pictures1817,1829.

[296]thoughts1817,1829.

thoughts1817,1829.

[310]wish . . . should1817,1829.

wish . . . should1817,1829.

[312]will be1817,1829.

will be1817,1829.

[316]daresay1817,1829.

daresay1817,1829.

[320]daresay1817,1829.

daresay1817,1829.

[320-1]insolencies . . . rebels1817,1829.

insolencies . . . rebels1817,1829.

[335]him1817,1829.

him1817,1829.

[346]us1817,1829.

us1817,1829.

[347]humantoo-much1817,1829.

humantoo-much1817,1829.

[349]has] have1817.

has] have1817.

Back to Index Next