Brighton, 1852-1853
“The finest Sea I have seen is at Valentia (Ireland), without any wind and seemingly without a Wave, but with the momentum of the Atlantic behind it, it dashes up into foam—blue diamond it looked like—all along the rocks—like ghosts playing at Hide and Seek.”
(At some other time on the same subject.)
“When I was in Cornwall it had blown a storm of wind and rain for days—all of a sudden fell into perfect calm; I was a little inland of the cliffs, when, after a space of perfect silence, a long roll of Thunder—from some wave rushing into a cavern, I suppose—came up from the Distance and died away. I never felt Silence like that.”
“This” (looking from Brighton Pier) “is not a grand sea: only an angry curt sea. It seems to shriek as it recoils with its pebbles along the beach.”
“The Earth has light of her own—so has Venus—perhaps all the other Planets—electrical light, or what we call Aurora. The light edge of the dark hemisphere of the moon—the ‘old Moon in the new Moon’s arms.’”
“Nay, they say she has no atmosphere at all.”
(I do not remember when this was said, nor whether I have exactly set it down; therefore must not make A. T. answerable for what he did not say, or for what after-discovery may have caused him to unsay. He had a powerful brain for Physics as for the Ideal. I remember his noticing that the forward-bending horns of some built-up mammal in the British Museum would never force its way through jungle, etc., and I observed on an after-visit that they had been altered accordingly.)
“Sometimes I think Shakespeare’s Sonnets finer than his Plays—which is of course absurd. For it is the knowledge of the Plays that makes the Sonnets so fine.”
“Do you think the Artist ever feels satisfied with his Song? Not with the Whole, I think; but perhaps the expression of parts.”