Poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood. It was so by me with Gray's "Bard" and Collins' Odes. The "Bard" once intoxicated me, and now I read it without pleasure. From this cause it is that what I call metaphysical poetry gives me so much delight.
[Compare Lecture vi. 1811-12, Bell & Co., p. 70; and Table Talk, Oct. 23, 1833, Bell & Co., p. 264.]
COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS
Poetry which excites us to artificial feelings makes us callous to real ones.
The whale is followed by waves. I would glide down the rivulet of quiet life, a trout.
Australis [Southey] may be compared to an ostrich. He cannot fly, but he has such other qualities that he needs it not.
Mackintosh intertrudes not introduces his beauties.
Snails of intellect who see only by their feelers.
Pygmy minds, measuring others by their own standard, cry What a monster, when they view a man!
Our constitution is to some like cheese—the rotten parts they like the best.
Her eyes sparkled as if they had been cut out of a diamond-quarry in some Golconda of Fairyland, and cast such meaning glances as would have vitrified the flint in a murderer's blunderbuss.
[A task] as difficult as to separate two dew-drops blended together on a bosom of a new-blown rose.
I discovered unprovoked malice in his hard heart, like a huge toad in the centre of a marble rock.
Men anxious for this world are like owls that wake all night to catch mice.
At Genoa the word Liberty is engraved on the chains of the galley slaves and the doors of prisons.
Gratitude, worse than witchcraft, conjures up the pale, meagre ghosts of dead forgotten kindnesses to haunt and trouble [his memory].
The sot, rolling on his sofa, stretching and yawning, exclaimed, "Utinam hoc esset laborare."
Truth still more than Justice [is] blind, and needs Wisdom for her guide.
OF THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE
[A Proof of] the severity of the winter—the kingfisher [by] its slow, short flight permitting you to observe all its colours, almost as if it had been a flower.
Little daisy—very late Spring, March. Quid si vivat? Do all things in faith. Never pluck a flower again! Mem.
May 20, 1799
The nightingales in a cluster or little wood of blossomed trees, and a bat wheeling incessantly round and round! The noise of the frogs was not unpleasant, like the humming of spinning wheels in a large manufactory—now and then a distinct sound, sometimes like a duck, and, sometimes, like the shrill notes of sea-fowl.
[This note was written one day later than S. T. C.'s last letter from Germany, May 19, 1799.]
O Heavens! when I think how perishable things, how imperishable thoughts seem to be! For what is forgetfulness? Renew the state of affection or bodily feeling [so as to be the] same or similar, sometimes dimly similar, and, instantly, the trains of forgotten thoughts rise from their living catacombs!
[Sockburn] October 1799
Few moments in life are so interesting as those of our affectionate reception from a stranger who is the dear friend of your dear friend! How often you have been the subject of conversation, and how affectionately!
[The note commemorates his first introduction to Mary and Sarah Hutchinson.]
Friday evening, Nov, 27, 1799
The immoveableness of all things through which so many men were moving—a harsh contrast compared with the universal motion, the harmonious system of motions in the country, and everywhere in Nature. In the dim light London appeared to be a huge place of sepulchres through which hosts of spirits were gliding.
Ridicule the rage for quotations by quoting from "My Baby's Handkerchief." Analyse the causes that the ludicrous weakens memory, and laughter, mechanically, makes it difficult to remember a good story.
Sara sent twice for the measure of George's1 neck. He wondered that Sara should be such a fool, as she might have measured William's or Coleridge's—as "all poets' throttles were of one size."
Hazlitt, the painter, told me that a picture never looked so well as when the pallet was by the side of it. Association, with the glow of production.
Mr. J. Cairns, in the Gentleman's Diary for 1800, supposes that the Nazarites, who, under the law of Moses, had their heads [shaved] must have used some sort of wigs!
Slanting pillars of misty light moved along under the sun hid by clouds.
Leaves of trees upturned by the stirring wind in twilight—an image of paleness, wan affright.
A child scolding a flower in the words in which he had been himself scolded and whipped, is poetry—passion past with pleasure.
July 20, 1800
Poor fellow at a distance—idle? in this hay-time when wages are so high? [We] come near [and] then [see that he is] pale, can scarce speak or throw out his fishing rod.
[This incident is fully described by Wordsworth in the last of the four poems on "Naming of Places."
—Poetical Works of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 144.]
September 1, [1800]
The beards of thistle and dandelions flying about the lonely mountains like life—and I saw them through the trees skimming the lake like swallows.
["And, in our vacant mood,
Not seldom did we stop to watch some tuft
Of dandelion seed or thistle's beard,
That skimmed the surface of the dead calm lake,
Suddenly halting now—a lifeless stand!
And starting off again with freak as sudden;
In all its sportive wanderings, all the while,
Making report of an invisible breeze
That was its wings, its chariot and its horse,
Its playmate, rather say, its moving soul."
Ibid. p. 143.]
Luther—a hero, fettered, indeed, with prejudices—but with those very fetters he would knock out the brains of a modern Fort Esprit.
Comment. Frightening by his prejudices, as a spirit does by clanking his chains.
Not only words, as far as relates to speaking, but the knowledge of
