Coleridge and Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads & Other Poems. William Wordsworth

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      CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

       1802-1803

      "In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds,

       And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark,

       That singest like an angel in the clouds!"

      S. T. C.

      THOUGHTS AND FANCIES

      No one can leap over his own shadow, but poets leap over death.

      The old world begins a new year. That is ours, but this is from God.

      We may think of time as threefold. Slowly comes the Future, swift the Present passes by, but the Past is unmoveable. No impatience will quicken the loiterer, no terror, no delight rein in the flyer, and no regret set in motion the stationary. Wouldst be happy, take the delayer for thy counsellor; do not choose the flyer for thy friend, nor the ever-remainer for thine enemy.

      LIMBO

      Vastum, incultum, solitudo mera, et incrinitissima nuditas.

      [Crinitus, covered with hair, is to be found in Cicero, nuditas in Quintilian, but incrinitissima is, probably, Coleridgian Latinity.]

      [An old man gloating over his past vices may be compared to the] devil at the very end of hell, warming himself at the reflection of the fire in the ice.

      Dimness of vision, mist, &c., magnify the powers of sight, numbness adds to those of touch. A numb limb seems twice its real size.

      Take away from sounds the sense of outness, and what a horrible disease would every minute become! A drive over a pavement would be exquisite torture. What, then, is sympathy if the feelings be not disclosed? An inward reverberation of the stifled cry of distress.

      Metaphysics make all one's thoughts equally corrosive on the body, by inducing a habit of making momently and common thought the subject of uncommon interest and intellectual energy.

      A kind-hearted man who is obliged to give a refusal or the like which will inflict great pain, finds a relief in doing it roughly and fiercely. Explain this and use it in Christabel.

      The unspeakable comfort to a good man's mind, nay, even to a criminal, to be understood—to have some one that understands one—and who does not feel that, on earth, no one does? The hope of this, always more or less disappointed, gives the passion to friendship.

      October,1802

      Hartley, at Mr. Clarkson's, sent for a candle. The seems made him miserable. "What do you mean, my love?" "The seems, the seems. What seems to be and is not, men and faces, and I do not [know] what, ugly, and sometimes pretty, and these turn ugly, and they seem when my eyes are open and worse when they are shut—and the candle cures the seems."

      Great injury has resulted from the supposed incompatibility of one talent with another, judgment with imagination and taste, good sense with strong feeling, &c. If it be false, as assuredly it is, the opinion has deprived us of a test which every man might apply. [Hence] Locke's opinions of Blackmore, Hume's of Milton and Shakspere.

      October 25, 1802

      I began to look through Swift's works. First volume, containing "Tale of a Tub," wanting. Second volume—the sermon on the Trinity, rank Socinianism, purus putus Socinianism, while the author rails against the Socinians for monsters.

      The first sight of green fields with the numberless nodding gold cups, and the winding river with alders on its banks, affected me, coming out of a city confinement, with the sweetness and power of a sudden strain of music.

      Mem. to end my preface with "in short, speaking to the poets of the age, 'Primus vestrûm non sum, neque imus.' I am none of the best, I am none of the meanest of you."—Burton.

      "Et pour moi, le bonheur n'a commencé que lorsque je l'ai eu perdu. Je mettrais volontiers sur la porte du Paradis le vers que le Dante a mis sur celle de l'Enfer.

      'Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate.'"

      Were I Achilles, I would have had my leg cut off, and have got rid of my vulnerable heel.

      In natural objects we feel ourselves, or think of ourselves, only by likenesses—among men, too often by differences. Hence the soothing, love-kindling effect of rural nature—the bad passions of human societies. And why is difference linked with hatred?

      TRANSCRIPTS FROM MY VELVET-PAPER POCKET-BOOKS

      Regular post—its influence on the general literature of the country; turns two-thirds of the nation into writers.

      Socinianism, moonlight; methodism, a stove. O for some sun to unite heat and light!

      Nov. 25, 1802

      I intend to examine minutely the nature, cause, birth and growth of the verbal imagination, in the possession of which Barrow excels almost every other writer of prose.

      Sunday, December 19

      Remember the pear trees in the lovely vale of Teme. Every season Nature converts me from some unloving heresy, and will make a Catholic of me at last.

      A fine and apposite quotation, or a good story, so far from promoting, are wont to damp the easy commerce of sensible chit-chat.

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