Mr. Locke's human understanding. The whole sweep of the best philosophic reflections of French or English fabric in the age of our scholarly bard, was not commensurate with the mighty orb. The little, according to my convictions at least, the very little of proper Platonism contained in the written books of Plato, who himself, in an epistle, the authenticity of which there is no tenable ground for doubting, as I was rejoiced to find Mr. Gray acknowledge, has declared all he had written to be substantially Socratic, and not a fair exponent of his own tenets,* even this little, Mr. Gray has either misconceived or honestly confessed that, as he was not one of the initiated, it was utterly beyond his comprehension. Finally, to repeat the explanation with which I closed the last page of these notes and extracts,

Volsimi

e vidi Plato

(ma non quel Plato)

Che'n quella schiera andò più presso al segno,

Al qual' aggiunge, a chì dal Cielo è dato.†

P. 385. Hippias Major.

S. T. Coleridge, 1819.

We learn from this dialogue in how poor a condition the art of reasoning on moral and abstracted subjects was before the time of Socrates: for it is impossible that Plato should introduce a sophist of the first reputation for eloquence and knowledge in several kinds, talking in a manner below the absurdity and weakness of a child; unless he had really drawn after the life. No less than twenty-four pages are here spent in vain, only to force it into the head of Hippias that there is such a thing as a general idea; and that, before we can dispute on any subject, we should give a definition of it.

Is not this, its improbability out of the question, contradicted by the Protagoras of Plato's own drawing? Are there no authors, no physicians in London at the present moment, of "the first reputation,” ¿. e. whom a certain class cry up for in no other sense is the phrase historically applicable to Hippias, whom a Sydenham redivivus or a new Stahl might not exhibit as pompous ignoramuses? no one Hippias amongst them? But we need not flee to conjectures. The ratiocination assigned by Aristotle and Plato himself to Gorgias and then to the Eleatic school, are posi

* See Plato's second epistle opaoтéov dý σoi di' aivıyμŵv к. T. 2. and towards the end τὰ δε νῦν λεγόμενα Σωκράτους ἐστὶ, κ. τ. λ. See also the 7th Epistle, p. 341.

+ Petrarch's Trionfo della Fama, cap. terz. v. 4–6.

tive proofs that Mr. Gray has mistaken the satire of an individual for a characteristic of an age or class.

May I dare whisper to the reeds without proclaiming that I am in the state of Midas,—may I dare to hint that Mr. Gray himself had not, and through the spectacles of Mr. Locke and his followers, could not have seen the difficulties which Hippias found in a general idea, secundum Platonem ?-S. T. C.

P. 386. Notes 289. Passages of Heraclitus.

Πιθηκῶν ὁ κάλλιστος αἰσχρὸς ἄλλῳ γένει συμβαλεῖν.—Ανθρώπων ὁ σοφώτατος πρὸς Θεὸν πιθηκὸς φανεῖται.

This latter passage is undoubtedly the original of that famous thought in Pope's Essay on Man, b. ii. :—

"And showed a Newton as we show an ape."

I remember to have met nearly the same words in one of our elder Poets.

Pp. 390-391.

That a sophist was a kind of merchant, or rather a retailer of food for the soul, and, like other shopkeepers, would exert his eloquence to recommend his own goods. The misfortune was, we could not carry them off, like corporeal viands, set them by a while, and consider them at leisure, whether they were wholesome or not, before we tasted them: that in this case we have no vessel but the soul to receive them in, which will necessarily retain a tincture, and perhaps, much to its prejudice, of all which is instilled into it.

Query, if Socrates, himself a scholar of the sophists, is accurate, did not the change of ó oogós into ó Zopiors, in the single case of Solon, refer to the wisdom-causing influences of his legislation? Mem.: -to examine whether govtorns was, or was not, more generally used at first in malum sensum, or rather the proper force originally of the termination ιστής, ἀστής—whether (as it is evidently verbal) it imply a reflex or a transitive act. P. 399. 'Οτι 'Αμαθία.

This is the true key and great moral of the dialogue, that knowledge alone is the source of virtue, and ignorance the source of vice; it was Plato's own principle, see Plat. Epist. vii. p. 336. 'Aμalía, ¿§ ñs távta κακὰ πᾶσιν ἐῤῥίζωται καὶ βλαστάνει καὶ εἰς ὕστερον ἀποτελεῖ καρπὸν τοῖς yevvýoaoi πikpóTatov. See also Sophist. pp. 228 and 229, and Euthydemus from pp. 278 to 281, and De Legib. L. iii. p. 688, and probably it was also

the principle of Socrates: the consequence of it is, that virtue may be taught, and may be acquired: and that philosophy alone can point us out the way to it.

More than our word, Ignorance, is contained in the 'Âμaðia of I, however, freely acknowledge, that this was the point of view, from which Socrates did for the most part contemplate moral good and evil. Now and then he seems to have taken a higher station, but soon quitted it for the lower, more generally intelligible. Hence the vacillation of Socrates himself; hence, too, the immediate opposition of his disciples, Antisthenes and Aristippus. But that this was Plato's own principle I exceedingly doubt. That it was not the principle of Platonism, as taught by the first Academy under Speusippus, I do not doubt at all. See the xivth Essay, pp. 96-102 of The Friend. In the sense in which ἀμαθίας πάντα κακὰ ἐῤῥίζωται, κ. τ. λ. is maintained in that Essay, so and no otherwise can it be truly asserted, and so and no otherwise did ὡς εμοί γε δοκεῖ, Plato teach it.

BARRY CORNWALL.*

BARRY CORNWALL is a poet, me saltem judice: and in that sense of the term, in which I apply it to C. Lamb and W. Wordsworth. There are poems of great merit, the authors of which I should yet not feel impelled so to designate.

The faults of these poems are no less things of hope, than theʼ beauties; both are just what they ought to be,—that is, new.

If B. C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn him, that as poetry is the identity of all other knowledges, so a poet can not be a great poet, but as being likewise inclusively an historian and naturalist, in the light, as well as the life, of philosophy all other men's worlds are his chaos.

Hints obiter are :—not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to seduce into effeminacy. Not to permit beauties by repetition to become mannerisms. To be jealous of fragmentary composition, -as epicurism of genius, and apple-pie made all of quinces. Item, that dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and passion,—not thought or passion disguised in the dress of poetry.

* Written in Mr. Lamb's copy of the 'Dramatic Scenes.'-Ed.

Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similes, figures, &c. They will all find their place, sooner or later, each as the luminary of a sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in poetry, because it is language,-ergo processive,-ergo every the smallest star must be seen singly.

There are not five metrists in the kingdom, whose works are known by me, to whom I could have held myself allowed to have spoken so plainly. But B. C. is a man of genius, and it depends on himself—(competence protecting him from gnawing or distracting cares)-to become a rightful poet,-—that is, a great

man.

Oh! for such a man worldly prudence is transfigured into the highest spiritual duty! How generous is self-interest in him, whose true self is all that is good and hopeful in all ages, as far as the language of Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton shall become the mother-tongue!

A map of the road to Paradise, drawn in purgatory, on the confines of Hell, by S. T. C. July 30, 1819.

ON THE MODE OF STUDYING KANT.

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF MR. COLERIDGE TO J. GOODEN, ESQ.

ACCEPT my thanks for the rules of the harmony. I perceive that the members are chiefly merchants; but yet it were to be wished, that such an enlargement of the society could be brought about as, retaining all its present purposes, might add to them the ground-work of a library of northern literature, and by bringing together the many gentlemen who are attached to it to be the means of eventually making both countries better acquainted with the valuable part of each other; especially, the English with the German, for our most sensible men look at the German Muses through a film of prejudice and utter misconception.

With regard to philosophy, there are half a dozen things, good and bad, that in this country are so nicknamed, but in the only accurate sense of the term, there neither are, have been, or ever will be but two essentially different schools of philosophy, the Platonic, and the Aristotelian. To the latter but with a some

* This letter and the following notes on Jean Paul were communicated by Mr. H. C. Robinson.-S. C.

what nearer approach to the Platonic, Emanuel Kant belonged; to the former Bacon and Leibnitz, and, in his riper and better years, Berkeley. And to this I profess myself an adherent-nihil novum, vel inauditum audemus; though, as every man has a face of his own, without being more or less than a man, so is every true philosopher an original, without ceasing to be an inmate of Academus or of the Lyceum. But as to caution, I will just tell you how I proceeded myself twenty years and more ago, when I first felt a curiosity about Kant, and was fully aware that to master his meaning, as a system, would be a work of great labor and long time. First, I asked myself, have I the labor and the time in my power? Secondly, if so, and if it would be of adequate importance to me if true, by what means can I arrive at a rational presumption for or against? I inquired after all the more popular writings of Kant-read them with delight. I then read the Prefaces of several of his systematic works, as the Prolegomena, &c. Here too every part, I understood, and that was nearly the whole, was replete with sound and plain, though bold and to me novel truths; and I followed Socrates' adage respecting Heraclitus: all I understand is excellent, and I am bound to presume that the rest is at least worth the trouble of trying whether it be not equally so. In other words, until I understand a writer's ignorance, I presume myself ignorant of his understanding. Permit me to refer you to a chapter on this subject in my Literary Life.*

Yet I by no means recommend to you an extension of your philosophic researches beyond Kant. In him is contained all that can be learned, and as to the results, you have a firm faith in God, the responsible Will of Man and Immortality; and Kant will demonstrate to you, that this faith is acquiesced in, indeed, nay, confirmed by the Reason and Understanding, but grounded on Postulates authorized and substantiated solely by the Moral Being. They are likewise mine: and whether the Ideas are regulative only, as Aristotle and Kant teach, or constitutive and actual, as Pythagoras and Plato, is of living interest to the philosopher by profession alone. Both systems are equally true, if only the former abstain from denying universally what is denied individually. He, for whom Ideas are constitutive, will in effect be a Platonist; and in those for whom they are regulative only, Biographia Literaria, chap. xii. p. 322.—S. C.

*