GIORDANO BRUNO
Monday, April 1801, and Tuesday, read two works of Giordano Bruno, with one title-page: Jordani Bruni Nolani de Monade, Numero et Figurâ liber consequens. Quinque de Minimo, Magno et Mensurâ. Item. De Innumerabilibus Immenso, et Infigurabili seu de Universo et Mundis libri octo. Francofurti, Apud Joan. Wechelum et Petrum Fischerum consortes, 1591.
Then follows the dedication, then the index of contents of the whole volume, at the end of which index is a Latin ode, conceived with great dignity and grandeur of thought. Then the work De Monade, Numero et Figurâ, secretioris nempe Physicæ, Mathematicæ, et Metaphysicæ elementa commences, which, as well as the eight books De Innumerabili, &c., is a poem in Latin hexameters, divided (each book) into chapters, and to each chapter is affixed a prose commentary. If the five books de Minimo, &c., to which this book is consequent are of the same character, I lost nothing in not having it. As to the work De Monade, it was far too numerical, lineal and Pythagorean for my comprehension. It read very much like Thomas Taylor and Proclus, &c. I by no means think it certain that there is no meaning in these works. Nor do I presume even to suppose that the meaning is of no value (till I understand a man's ignorance I presume myself ignorant of his understanding), but it is for others, at present, not for me. Sir P. Sidney and Fulk Greville shut the doors at their philosophical conferences with Bruno. If his conversation resembled this book, I should have thought he would have talked with a trumpet.
The poems and commentaries, in the De Immenso et Innumerabili are of a different character. The commentary is a very sublime enunciation of the dignity of the human soul, according to the principles of Plato.
[Here follows the passage, "Anima Sapiens ——ubique totus," quoted in The Friend (Coleridge's Works, ii. 109), together with a brief résumé of Bruno's other works. See, too, Biographia Literaria, chapter ix. (Coleridge's Works, iii. 249).]
OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS
The spring with the little tiny cone of loose sand ever rising and sinking at the bottom, but its surface without a wrinkle.
Monday, September 14, 1801