LECTURE X. DONNE-DANTE-MILTON-PARADISE LOST. DONNE.* Born in London, 1573.-Died, 1631. I. With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, II. See lewdness and theology combin'd, A cynic and a sycophantic mind; A fancy shar'd party per pale between Death's heads and skeletons, and Aretine !— Not his peculiar defect or crime, But the true current mintage of the time. Such were the establish'd signs and tokens given THE wit of Donne, the wit of Butler, the wit of Pope, the wit of Congreve, the wit of Sheridan-how many disparate things are here expressed by one and the same word, Wit!-Wonderexciting vigor, intenseness and peculiarity of thought, using at will the almost boundless stores of a capacious memory, and exercised on subjects, where we have no right to expect it—this is * Nothing remains of what was said on Donne in this Lecture. Here, therefore, as in previous like instances, the gap is filled up with some notes written by Mr. Coleridge in a volume of Chalmer's Poets, belonging to Mr. Gillman. The verses were added in pencil to the collection of commendatory lines; No. I. is Mr. C.'s; the publication of No. II. I trust the all-accomplished author will, under the circumstances, pardon. Numerous and elaborate notes by Mr. Coleridge on Donne's Sermons are in existence, and will be published hereafter.-Ed. the wit of Donne! The four others I am just in the mood to describe and inter-distinguish ;-what a pity that the marginal space will not let me ! My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, Good-Morrow, v. 15, &c. The sense is -Our mutual loves may in many respects be fitly compared to corresponding hemispheres; but as no simile squares (nihile simile est idem), so here the simile fails, for there is nothing in our loves that corresponds to the cold north, or the declining west, which in two hemispheres must necessarily be supposed. But an ellipse of such length will scarcely rescue the line from the charge of nonsense or a bull. January, 1829. Woman's constancy. A misnomer. The title ought to be--- Mutual Inconstancy. Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine, &c. Sun Rising, v. 17. And see at night thy western land of mine, &c. Progress of the Soul, 1 Song, 2 st. This use of the word mine specifically for mines of gold, silver, or precious stones, is, I believe, peculiar to Donne. DANTE. Born at Florence, 1265.-Died, 1321. As I remarked in a former Lecture on a different subject (for subjects the most diverse in literature have still their tangents), the Gothic character, and its good and evil fruits, appeared less in Italy than in any other part of European Christendom. There was accordingly much less romance, as that word is commonly understood; or, perhaps, more truly stated, there was romance instead of chivalry. In Italy, an earlier imitation of, and a more evident and intentional blending with, the Latin literature took place than elsewhere. The operation of the feudal system, too, was incalculably weaker, of that singular chain of independent interdependents, the principle of which was a confederacy for the preservation of individual, consistently with general, freedom. In short, Italy, in the time of Dante, was an after-birth of eldest Greece, a renewal or a reflex of the old Italy under its kings and first Roman consuls, a net-work of free little republics, with the same domestic feuds, civil wars, and party spirit—the same vices and virtues produced on a similarly narrow theatre-the existing state of things being, as in all small democracies, under the working and direction of certain individuals, to whose will even the laws were swayed;—whilst at the same time the singular spectacle was exhibited amidst all this confusion of the flourishing of commerce, and the protection and encouragement of letters and arts. Never was the commercial spirit so well reconciled to the nobler principles of social polity as in Florence. It tended there to union and permanence and elevation—not as the overbalance of it in England is now doing, to dislocation, change and moral degradation. The intensest patriotism reigned in these communities, but confined and attached exclusively to the small locality of the patriot's birth and residence; whereas in the true Gothic feudalism, country was nothing but the preservation of personal independence. But then, on the other hand, as a counterbalance to these disuniting elements, there was in Dante's Italy, as in Greece, a much greater uniformity of religion common to all than amongst the northern nations. Upon these hints the history of the republican æras of ancient Greece and modern Italy ought to be written. There are three kinds or stages of historic narrative;-1. that of the annalist or chronicler, who deals merely in facts and events arranged in order of time, having no principle of selection, no plan of arrangement, and whose work properly constitutes a supplement to the poetical writings of romance or heroic legends:-2. that of the writer who takes his stand on some moral point, and selects a series of events for the express purpose of illustrating it, and in whose hands the narrative of the selected events is modified by the principle of selection ;-as Thucydides, whose object was to describe the evils of democratic and aristocratic partisanships ;or Polybius, whose design was to show the social benefits resulting from the triumph and grandeur of Rome, in public institu tions and military discipline ;—or Tacitus, whose secret aim was to exhibit the pressure and corruptions of despotism; in all which writers and others like them, the ground-object of the historian colors with artificial lights the facts which he relates: -3. and which in idea is the grandest—the most truly founded in philosophy-there is the Herodotean history, which is not composed with reference to any particular causes, but attempts to describe human nature itself on a great scale as a portion of the drama of providence, the free will of man resisting the destiny of events— for the individuals often succeeding against it, but for the race always yielding to it, and in the resistance itself invariably affording means towards the completion of the ultimate result. Mitford's history is a good and useful work; but in his zeal against democratic government, Mitford forgot, or never saw, that ancient Greece was not, nor ought ever to be considered, a permanent thing, but that it existed, in the disposition of provi dence, as a proclaimer of ideal truths, and that everlasting proclamation being made, that its functions were naturally at an end. However, in the height of such a state of society in Italy, Dante was born and flourished; and was himself eminently a picture of the age in which he lived. But of more importance even than this, to a right understanding of Dante, is the consideration that the scholastic philosophy was then at its acme even in itself; but more especially in Italy, where it never prevailed so exclusively as northward of the Alps. It is impossible to understand the genius of Dante, and difficult to understand his poem, without some knowledge of the characters, studies, and writings of the schoolmen of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. For Dante was the living link between religion and philosophy; he philosophized the religion and Christianized the philosophy of Italy; and, in this poetic union of religion and philosophy, he became the ground of transition into the mixed Platonism and Aristotelianism of the Schools, under which, by numerous minute articles of faith and ceremony, Christianity became a craft of hair-splitting, and was ultimately degraded into a complete fetisch worship, divorced from philosophy, and made up of a faith without thought, and a credulity directed by passion. Afterwards, indeed, philosophy revived under condition of defending this very superstition; and, in so doing, it necessarily led the way to its N VOL. IV. subversion, and that in exact proportion to the influence of the philosophic schools. Hence it did its work most completely in Germany, then in England, next in France, then in Spain, least. of all in Italy. We must, therefore, take the poetry of Dante as Christianized, but without the further Gothic accession of proper chivalry. It was at a somewhat later period, that the importations from the East, through the Venetian commerce and the crusading armaments, exercised a peculiarly strong influence on Italy. In studying Dante, therefore, we must consider carefully the differences produced, first, by allegory being substituted for polytheism; and secondly and mainly, by the opposition of Christianity to the spirit of pagan Greece, which receiving the very names of its gods from Egypt, soon deprived them of all that was universal. The Greeks changed the ideas into finites, and these finites into anthropomorphi, or forms of men. Hence their religion, their poetry, nay, their very pictures, became statuesque. With them the form was the end. The reverse of this was the natural effect of Christianity; in which finites, even the human form, must, in order to satisfy the mind, be brought into connection with, and be in fact symbolical of, the infinite; and must be considered in some enduring, however shadowy and indistinct, point of view, as the vehicle or representative of moral truth. Hence resulted two great effects; a combination of poetry with doctrine, and, by turning the mind inward on its own essence instead of letting it act only on its outward circumstances and communities, a combination of poetry with sentiment. And it is this inwardness or subjectivity, which principally and most fundamentally distinguishes all the classic from all the modern poetry. Compare the passage in the Iliad (Z'. vi. 119-236) in which Diomed and Glaucus change arms, Χειράς τ' ἀλλήγων λαβέτην καὶ πιστώσαντο They took each other by the hand, and pledged friendship— with the scene in Ariosto (Orlando Furioso, c. i. st. 20-22), where Rinaldo and Ferrauto fight and afterwards make it up : Al Pagan la proposta non dispiacque : Così fu differita la tenzone; E tal tregua tra lor subito nacque, Sì l'odio e l' ira va in oblivione, |