[THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED]
In The Examiner for March 3, 1816 appeared the following note:—‘A correspondent who signs himself J.W. thinks we ought to bring proofs of Mr. Locke’s want of originality as the founder of a system. We recommend him, if he is curious on this subject, to read the first eighty pages of Hobbes’s Leviathan, if the name does not alarm him. After that, if he is not satisfied and repeats his request, perhaps we may attend to it.’ On March 31 (Round Table No. XXXIV.) Hazlitt brings forward his proofs in a long paper which consists chiefly of extracts from Locke, Hobbes and other philosophers. The essay begins as follows:—
‘We have been required to give proof of Mr. Locke’s want of originality as a metaphysical reasoner, and of the claims of Hobbes to be considered as the founder of the modern system of the philosophy of the human mind.
‘Here then it is. But at the same time we would observe, that we do not think ourselves bound to give this proof to those who have demanded it (somewhat impatiently) at our hands. It was sufficient for us to have stated our opinion on this subject, and to have referred the curious expressly to the sources from which they might satisfy themselves of the truth or hollowness of our assertion. To our readers in general we owe some apology for alluding to such subjects at all. But to the point.—We have said that the principles of the modern school of metaphysics are all to be found, pure, entire, connected, and explicitly stated, in the writings of Hobbes: that Mr. Locke borrowed the leading principle of that philosophy from Hobbes, without understanding or without admitting the system in general, concerning which he always seems to entertain two opinions: that succeeding writers have followed up Mr. Locke’s general principle into its legitimate consequences, and have arrived at exactly the same conclusions as Hobbes, but that being ignorant of the name and writings of Hobbes, they have with one accord and with great injustice attributed the merit of the original discovery of that system to Mr. Locke, as having made the first start, and having gone further in it than any one else before him.
‘The principles of the modern system, of which Mr. Locke is the reputed and Mr. Hobbes the real founder, are chiefly the following:—
1. That all our ideas are derived from external objects, by means of the senses alone, and are merely repetitions of our sensible impressions.
2. That as nothing exists out of the mind but matter and motion, so the mind itself, with all its operations, is nothing but matter and motion.
3. That thoughts are single, or that we can have only one idea at a time; in other words, that there are no complex ideas in the mind.
4. That we have no general or abstract ideas.
5. That the only principle of connection between one idea and another is association, or their previous connection in sense.
6. That reason and understanding are resolvable entirely into the mechanism of language.
7. and 8. That the sense of pleasure and pain is the sole spring of action, and self-interest the source of all our affections.
9. That the mind acts from necessity, and consequently is not a moral or accountable agent.
[The manner of stating and reasoning on this last point, viz. the moral and practical consequences of the doctrine of necessity is the only circumstance of importance, in which the modern philosophers differ from Hobbes.]
10. That there is no such thing as genius, or a difference in the natural capacities or dispositions of men, the mind being originally alike passive to all impressions, and becoming whatever it is from circumstances &c., &c.
‘That these are the most striking positions of the moderns with respect to the human mind, is what every one, familiar with the writers since Locke, as Berkeley, Hartley, Hume, Priestley, Horne Tooke, Beddoes, among ourselves, and Helvetius, Condillac, Mirabaud, Condorcet &c., among the French, will readily allow: that most of them are to be found in the Essay on Human Understanding, mixed up in a state of inextricable confusion with common-place and common sense notions, now advanced, now retracted, the arguments on one side of the question now prevailing through an endless labyrinth of explanation, now those on the other, and now both opinions asserted and denied in the same sentence is what is equally well known to the readers of Locke and his commentators. That the same system came from the mind of Hobbes, not hesitating, stammering, puling, drivelling, ricketty, a sickly half birth, to be brought up by hand, to be nursed and dandled into common life and existence, but just the reverse of all this, full grown, completely proportioned and articulated, compact, stamped in all its lineaments, with the vigour and decision of the author’s mind, is what we have now to shew.’
The extracts follow, interspersed with brief comments by Hazlitt, and the essay concludes as follows:—
‘To what Mr. Hobbes has written on this subject [Liberty and Necessity] nothing has been added nor can be taken away. We agree to every word of it, and the more heartily, because it is the only one of all the points which have been stated on which we do. In speaking of the popular notions of liberty, in his controversy with a foolish Bishop of that day (Bramhall), he says, “In fine, that freedom which men commonly find in books, that which the poets chaunt in the theatres, and the shepherds on the mountains, that which the pastors teach in the churches, and the doctors in the universities, and that which the common people in the markets, and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto, is the same that I assent unto, namely, that a man hath freedom to do if he will; but whether he hath freedom to will, is a question which it seems neither the Bishop nor they ever thought on.” Hobbes was as superior to Locke as a writer, as he was as a reasoner. He had great powers both of wit and imagination. In short he was a great man, not because he was a great metaphysician, but he was a great metaphysician because he was a great man.
‘It has been thought, that the neglect into which Hobbes’s metaphysical speculations have fallen was originally owing to the obloquy excited by the irreligious and despotical tendency of his other writings. But in this he has also been unfairly dealt with. Locke borrowed his fundamental ideas of government from him; and there is not a word directly levelled at religion in any of his works. At least, his aristocratical notions and his want of religion must have, in some measure, balanced one another; and Charles II. had his picture hanging in his bed-room, though the Bishops wished to have him burnt. The true reason of the fate which this author’s writings met with was, that his views of things were too original and comprehensive to be immediately understood, without passing through the hands of several successive generations of commentators and interpreters. Ignorance of another’s meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear produces hatred: hence arose the rancour and suspicion of his adversaries, who, to quote some fine lines of Spenser,
——‘Stood all astonished like a sort of steers
’Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign race
Unawares is chanced far straying from his peers;
So did their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears.’[[73]]
COLERIDGE’S ‘CHRISTABEL’
On June 2, 1816, The Examiner published a review of Coleridge’s Christabel, as to the authorship of which there has been some discussion. See Notes and Queries, 9th Ser. XI. pp. 171 and 271. Mr. Dykes Campbell (The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 606) is disposed to attribute the review to Hazlitt. As in the case of the Edinburgh Review notice of Christabel (see vol. X. of the present edition, pp. 411–418), Hazlitt’s authorship cannot be regarded as absolutely certain. The review is as follows:—
‘The fault of Mr. Coleridge is, that he comes to no conclusion. He is a man of that universality of genius, that his mind hangs suspended between poetry and prose, truth and falsehood, and an infinity of other things, and from an excess of capacity, he does little or nothing. Here are two unfinished poems, and a fragment. Christabel, which has been much read and admired in manuscript, is now for the first time confided to the public. The Vision of Kubla Khan still remains a profound secret; for only a few lines of it ever were written.[[74]]
‘The poem of Christabel sets out in the following manner:
“’Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awaken’d the crowing cock;
Tu—whit! Tu—whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.
Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
From her kennel beneath the rock
She makes answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters and twelve for the hour;
Ever and aye, moonshine or shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say, she sees my lady’s shroud.”
‘We wonder that Mr. Murray, who has an eye for things, should suffer this “mastiff bitch” to come into his shop. Is she a sort of Cerberus to fright away the critics? But—gentlemen, she is toothless.
‘There is a dishonesty as well as affectation in all this. The secret of this pretended contempt for the opinion of the public, is that it is a sorry subterfuge for our self-love. The poet, uncertain of the approbation of his readers, thinks he shews his superiority to it by shocking their feelings at the outset, as a clown, who is at a loss how to behave himself, begins by affronting the company. This is what is called throwing a crust to the critics. If the beauties of Christabel should not be sufficiently admired, Mr. Coleridge may lay it all to two lines which he had too much manliness to omit in complaisance to the bad taste of his contemporaries.
‘We the rather wonder at this bold proceeding in the author, as his courage has cooled in the course of the publication, and he has omitted, from mere delicacy, a line which is absolutely necessary to the understanding the whole story. The Lady Christabel, wandering in the forest by moonlight, meets a lady in apparently great distress, to whom she offers her assistance and protection, and takes her home with her to her own chamber. This woman,
——“beautiful to see,
Like a lady of a far countree,”
is a witch. Who she is else, what her business is with Christabel, upon what motives, to what end her sorceries are to work, does not appear at present; but this much we know, that she is a witch, and that Christabel’s dread of her arises from her discovering this circumstance, which is told in a single line, which line, from an exquisite refinement in efficiency,[[75]] is here omitted. When the unknown lady gets to Christabel’s chamber, and is going to undress, it is said—
“Then drawing in her breath aloud
Like one that shuddered, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast:
Her silken robe and inner vest
Dropt to her feet, and full in view
Behold! her bosom and half her side—
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
And she is to sleep by Christabel!”
‘The manuscript runs thus, or nearly thus:—
“Behold her bosom and half her side—
Hideous, deformed, and pale of hue.”
‘This line is necessary to make common sense of the first and second part. “It is the keystone that makes up the arch.”[[76]] For that reason Mr. Coleridge left it out. Now this is a greater physiological curiosity than even the fragment of Kubla Khan.
‘In parts of Christabel there is a great deal of beauty, both of thought, imagery, and versification; but the effect of the general story is dim, obscure, and visionary. It is more like a dream than a reality. The mind, in reading it, is spell-bound. The sorceress seems to act without power—Christabel to yield without resistance. The faculties are thrown into a state of metaphysical suspense and theoretical imbecility. The poet, like the witch in Spenser, is evidently
“Busied about some wicked gin.”[[77]]
But we do not foresee what he will make of it. There is something disgusting at the bottom of his subject, which is but ill glossed over by a veil of Della Cruscan sentiment and fine writing—like moon-beams playing on a charnel-house, or flowers strewed on a dead body. Mr. Coleridge’s style is essentially superficial, pretty, ornamental, and he has forced it into the service of a story which is petrific. In the midst of moonlight, and fluttering ringlets, and flitting clouds, and enchanted echoes, and airy abstractions of all sorts, there is one genuine outburst of humanity, worthy of the author, when no dream oppresses him, no spell binds him. We give the passage entire:—’
[Here follow ll. 403–430 of Christabel, beginning ‘But when he heard the lady’s tale.’]
‘Why does not Mr. Coleridge always write in this manner, that we might always read him? The description of the Dream of Bracy the bard, is also very beautiful and full of power.
‘The conclusion of the second part of Christabel, about “the little limber elf,” is to us absolutely incomprehensible. Kubla Khan, we think, only shews that Mr. Coleridge can write better nonsense verses than any man in England. It is not a poem, but a musical composition.
“A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play’d,
Singing of Mount Abora.”
‘We could repeat these lines to ourselves not the less often for not knowing the meaning of them.’
In a sketch of Coleridge which appeared in The Examiner for Oct. 21, 1821, Leigh Hunt quotes the lines from Kubla Khan (‘A damsel with a dulcimer,’ etc.) and says: ‘We could repeat such verses ... down a green glade, a whole summer’s morning’; but in spite of this and a few other verbal similarities, a comparison of the sketch with the review does not support the theory that the latter was written by Leigh Hunt. Possibly he wrote a few lines here and there, but the review as a whole is far more suggestive of Hazlitt.