have understood some principles in acoustics which we have lost, or, at least, they applied them better. They contrived to convey the voice distinctly in their huge theatres by means of pipes, which created no echo or confusion. Our theatres—Drury Lane and Covent Garden—are fit for nothing: they are too large for acting, and too small for a bull-fight.
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June 7. 1824.
LORD BYRON'S VERSIFICATION, AND DON JUAN.
How lamentably the art of versification is neglected by most of the poets of the present day!—by Lord Byron, as it strikes me, in particular, among those of eminence for other qualities. Upon the whole, I think the part of Don Juan in which Lambro's return to his home, and Lambro himself, are described, is the best, that is, the most individual, thing in all I know of Lord B.'s works. The festal abandonment puts one in mind of Nicholas Poussin's pictures.[1]
[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge particularly noticed, for its classical air, the 32d stanza of this Canto (the third):—
"A band of children, round a snow-white ram,
There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers,
While, peaceful as if still an unwean'd lamb,
The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers
His sober head, majestically tame,
Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers
His brow, as if in act to butt, and then
Yielding to their small hands, draws back again."
But Mr. C. said that then, and again, made no rhyme to his ear. Why should not the old form agen be lawful in verse? We wilfully abridge ourselves of the liberty which our great poets achieved and sanctioned for us in innumerable instances.—ED.]
June 10. 1824.
PARENTAL CONTROL IN MARRIAGE.—MARRIAGE OF COUSINS.—DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER.
Up to twenty-one, I hold a father to have power over his children as to marriage; after that age, authority and influence only. Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten that are wretched from other causes.
* * * * *
If the matter were quite open, I should incline to disapprove the intermarriage of first cousins; but the church has decided otherwise on the authority of Augustine, and that seems enough upon such a point.
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You may depend upon it, that a slight contrast of character is very material to happiness in marriage.
February 24. 1827.
BLUMENBACH AND KANT'S RACES.—IAPETIC AND SEMITIC.—HEBREW.—SOLOMON.
Blumenbach makes five races; Kant, three. Blumenbach's scale of dignity may be thus figured:—
1. Caucasian or European.
2. Malay ================= 2. American
3. Negro ========================== 3. Mongolian, Asiatic
There was, I conceive, one great Iapetic original of language, under which Greek, Latin, and other European dialects, and, perhaps, Sanscrit, range as species. The Iapetic race, [Greek: Iaones]; separated into two branches; one, with a tendency to migrate south-west—Greeks, Italians, &c.; and the other north-west—Goths, Germans, Swedes, &c. The Hebrew is Semitic.
* * * * *
Hebrew, in point of force and purity, seems at its height in Isaiah. It is most corrupt in Daniel, and not much less so in Ecclesiastes; which I cannot believe to have been actually composed by Solomon, but rather suppose to have been so attributed by the Jews, in their passion for ascribing all works of that sort to their grand monurque.
March 10. 1827.
JEWISH HISTORY.—SPINOZISTIC AND HEBREW SCHEMES.
The people of all other nations, but the Jewish, seem to look backwards and also to exist for the present; but in the Jewish scheme every thing is prospective and preparatory; nothing, however trifling, is done for itself alone, but all is typical of something yet to come.
* * * * *
I would rather call the book of Proverbs Solomonian than as actually a work of Solomon's. So I apprehend many of the Psalms to be Davidical only, not David's own compositions.
* * * * *
You may state the Pantheism of Spinosa, in contrast with the Hebrew or
Christian scheme, shortly, as thus:—
Spinosism.
W-G = 0; i.e. the World without God is an impossible idea. G-W = 0; i.e. God without the World is so likewise.
Hebrew or Christian scheme.
W-G = 0; i.e. The same as Spinosa's premiss. But G-W = G; i.e. God without the World is God the self-subsistent.
* * * * *
March 12. 1827.
ROMAN CATHOLICS.—ENERGY OF MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS.—SHAKSPEARE IN MINIMIS.—PAUL SARPI.—BARTRAM'S TRAVELS.
I have no doubt that the real object closest to the hearts of the leading Irish Romanists is the destruction of the Irish Protestant church, and the re-establishment of their own. I think more is involved in the manner than the matter of legislating upon the civil disabilities of the members of the church of Rome; and, for one, I should he willing to vote for a removal of those disabilities, with two or three exceptions, upon a solemn declaration being made legislatively in parliament, that at no time, nor under any circumstances, could or should a branch of the Romish hierarchy, as at present constituted, become an estate of this realm.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Church and State, second part, p. 189.]
* * * * *
Internal or mental energy and external or corporeal modificability are in inverse proportions. In man, internal energy is greater than in any other animal; and you will see that he is less changed by climate than any animal. For the highest and lowest specimens of man are not one half as much apart from each other as the different kinds even of dogs, animals of great internal energy themselves.
* * * * *
For an instance of Shakspeare's power in minimis, I generally quote James Gurney's character in King John. How individual and comical he is with the four words allowed to his dramatic life! [1] And pray look at Skelton's Richard Sparrow also!
Paul Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent deserves your study. It is very interesting.
