Wordsworth is always recording phenomena as they are enjoyed; Coleridge as they reconcile themselves with opposing or conflicting phenomena.
W. W.'s social philosophy is surely shallow. It is true the man who has a shallow philosophy under the guidance of Christianity has a profound philosophy. But this apart, such truths as 'He who made the creature will allow for his frailties,' etc., are commonplace.
Invention as a Characteristic of Poets.—I happened this evening (Saturday, August 3rd, '44) to be saying of W. W. to myself: 'No poet is so free from all cases like this, viz., where all the feelings and spontaneous thoughts which they have accumulated coming to an end, and yet the case seeming to require more to finish it, or bring it round, like a peal of church bells, they are forced to invent, and form descants on raptures never really felt. Suddenly this suggested that invention, therefore, so far from being a differential quality of poetry, was, in fact, the polar opposite, spontaneousness being the true quality.
Tragedy.—I believe it is a very useful thing to let young persons cultivate their kind feelings by repeated indulgences. Thus my children often asked when anything was to be paid or given to any person, that they might have the satisfaction of giving it. So I see clearly that young boys or girls allowed to carry abroad their infant brothers and sisters, when the little creature feels and manifests a real dependence upon them in every act and movement, which matre præsente they would not have done, which again seen and felt calls out every latent goodness of the elder child's heart. So again (here I have clipped out the case). However, feeding rabbits, but above all the action upon women's hearts in the enormous expansion given by the relation to their own children, develops a feeling of tenderness that afterwards sets the model for the world, and would die away, or freeze, or degenerate, if it were generally balked. Now just such an action has tragedy, and if the sympathy with calamities caused to noble natures by ignobler, or by dark fates, were never opened or moved or called out, it would slumber inertly, it would rust, and become far less ready to respond upon any call being made. Such sensibilities are not consciously known to the possessor until developed.
Punctuation.—Suppose an ordinary case where the involution of clauses went three deep, and that each was equally marked off by commas, now I say that so far from aiding the logic it would require an immense effort to distribute the relations of logic. But the very purpose and use of points is to aid the logic. If indeed you could see the points at all in this relation
strophe antistrophe
1 2 3 3 2 1
——, ——, ——, apodosis ——, ——, ——,
then indeed all would be clear, but the six commas will and must be viewed by every reader unversed in the logical mechanism of sentences as merely a succession of ictuses, so many minute-guns having no internal system of correspondence, but merely repeating and reiterating each other, exactly as in men, guns, horses, timbrels, baggage-waggons, standards.
Sheridan's Disputatiousness.—I never heard of any case in the whole course of my life where disputatiousness was the author of any benefit to man or beast, excepting always one, in which it became a storm anchor for poor Sheridan, saving him from sudden shipwreck. This may be found in Mr. Moore's life, somewhere about the date of 1790, and in chapter xiii. The book is thirty-seven miles off, which is too far to send for water, or for scandal, or even for 'extract,' though I'm 'fond of extract.' Therefore, in default of Mr. Moore's version, I give my own. The situation was this: Sheridan had been cruising from breakfast to dinner amongst Jews, Christians, and players (men, women, and Herveys),[40] and constantly in the same hackney coach, so that the freight at last settled like the sand-heap of an hour-glass into a frightful record of costly moments. Pereunt et imputantur, say some impertinent time-pieces, in speaking of the hours. They perish and are debited to our account. Yes, and what made it worse, the creditor was an inexorable old Jarvie, who, though himself a creditor, had never heard the idea of credit. A guinea might be owing, and Sheridan, seldom remembering his purse, had but a shilling, which even in a court of Irish law seemed too small a compromise to offer. Black looked the horizon, stormy the offing, and night was coming on, whilst the port of consignment was now within thirty minutes' sail. Suddenly a sight of joy was described. Driving before the wind, on bare poles, was a well-known friend of Sheridan's, Richardson, famed for various talent, but also for an invincible headlong necessity of disputing. To pull the check-string, to take his friend on board, and to rush into fierce polemic conversation was the work of a moment for Sheridan. He well understood with this familiar friend how to bring on a hot dispute. In three minutes it raged, yard-arm to yard-arm. Both grew warm. Sheridan grew purple with rage. Violently interrupting Richardson, he said: 'And these are your real sentiments?' Richardson with solemnity and artificial restraint replied: 'Most solemnly they are.' 'And you stand to them, and will maintain them?' 'I will,' said Richardson, with menacing solemnity and even mournfulness. 'I will to my dying day.' 'Then,' said Sheridan furiously, 'I'm hanged if I'll stay another minute with a man capable of such abominable opinions!' Bang went the door, out he bounced, and Richardson, keeping his seat, pursued him with triumphant explosions. 'Ah, wretch! what? you can't bear the truth. You're obliged to hate the truth. That is why you cut and run before it. Huzza! Mr. Sheridan, M. P. for Stafford, runs like a hare for fear that he should hear the truth.' Precisely so, the truth it was that he ran from. The truth at this particular moment was too painful to his heart. Sheridan had fled; the awful truth amounted to eighteen shillings.
Yes, virtuous Richardson, you were right; truth it was that he fled from; truth had just then become too painful to his infirm mind, although it was useless to tell him so, as by this time he was out of hearing. 'Yes,' said Richardson meditatively to himself, 'the truth has at last become insupportable to this unhappy man.' Right, it had so. And in one minute more it became insupportable even to the virtuous Richardson, when the coachman revealed the odious extent of the truth, viz., that the fare now amounted to two-and-twenty shillings.
As I hate everything that the people love, and above all the odious levity with which they adopt every groundless anecdote, especially where it happens to be calumnious, I beg not to be supposed a believer in the common stories current about Sheridan's carelessness of pecuniary obligations. So far from 'never paying,' which is what public slander has not ceased to report of him, he was (in Mr. Moore's language) 'always paying;' and for once that he paid too little, a thousand times he paid a great deal too much. Had, indeed, all his excesses of payment been gathered into one fund, that fund would have covered his deficits ten times over. It is, however, true that, whilst he was continually paying the hundred-pound demands against him, with all their Jewish accumulations of interest, he was continually unfurnished with money for his 'menus plaisirs' and trifling personal expenses.