Could you ever discover anything sublime, in our sense of the term, in the classic Greek literature? I never could. Sublimity is Hebrew by birth. I should conjecture that the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes were written, or, perhaps, rather collected, about the time of Nehemiah. The language is Hebrew with Chaldaic endings. It is totally unlike the language of Moses on the one hand, and of Isaiah on the other. Solomon introduced the commercial spirit into his kingdom. I cannot think his idolatry could have been much more, in regard to himself, than a state of protection or toleration of the foreign worship. When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, he is mad. A madman is properly so defined. Charles Lamb translated my motto Sermoni propriora by -properer for a sermon! I was much amused some time ago by reading the pithy decision of one of the Sforzas of Milan, upon occasion of a dispute for precedence between the lawyers and physicians of his capital;-Præcedant fures-sequantur carnifices. I hardly remember a neater thing. THE JULY 28, 1832. Faith and Belief. HE sublime and abstruse doctrines of Christian belief belong to the church; but the faith of the individual, centered in his heart, is or may be collateral to them.1 1 Mr. Coleridge used very frequently to insist upon the distinction between belief and faith. He once told me, with very great earnestness, that if he were that moment convinced-a conviction, the possibility of which, indeed, he could not realize to himself—that the New Testament was a forgery from beginning to end-wide as the desolation in his moral feelings would be, he should not abate one jot of his faith in God's power and mercy through some manifestation of his being towards man, Faith is subjective. I throw myself in adoration before God; acknowledge myself his creature,-simple, weak, lost; and pray for help and pardon through Jesus Christ: but when I rise from my knees, I discuss the doctrine of the Trinity as I would a problem in geometry; in the same temper of mind, I mean, not by the same process of reasoning, of course. I AUGUST 4, 1832. HARDLY know anything more amusing than the honest German Jesuitry of Dobrizhoffer. His chapter on the dialects is most valuable. He is surprised that there is no form for the infinitive, but that they say,-I wish, (go, or either in time past or future, or in the hidden depths where time and space are not. This was, I believe, no more than a vivid expression of what he always maintained, that no man had attained to a full faith who did not recognize in the Scriptures a correspondency to his own nature, or see that his own powers of reason, will, and understanding were preconfigured to the reception of the Christian doctrines and promises.-H. N. C. “He was a man of rarest qualities, Who to this barbarous region had confined But he to humbler thoughts his heart inclined: "It was his evil fortune to behold The labours of his painful life destroyed; His flock which he had brought within the fold Names which he loved, and things well worthy to be known. "And thus when exiled from the dear-loved scene, In proud Vienna he beguiled the pain Of sad remembrance: and the empress-queen, eat, or drink, &c.) interposing a letter by way of copula,forgetting his own German and the English, which are, in truth, the same. The confident belief entertained by the Abipones of immortality, in connection with the utter absence in their minds of the idea of a God, is very remarkable. If Warburton were right, which he is not, the Mosaic scheme would be the exact converse. My dear daughter's translation of this book is, in my judgment, unsurpassed for pure mother English by anything I have read for a long time. 1 AUGUST 6, 1832. Scotch and English.-Criterion of Genius.—Dryden and Pope.—Lamb and Hazlitt.* I HAVE generally found a Scotchman with a little litera- In gracious mood sometimes to entertain The wondering mind of youth, the thoughtful heart of age. "But of his native speech, because well-nigh Disuse in him forgetfulness had wrought, In Latin he composed his history; A garrulous, but a lively tale, and fraught By whom his tones to speak our tongue were taught, "Little he deem'd, when with his Indian band Which had proscribed his order, should one day Southey's Tale of Paraguay, canto iji. st. 16.-H. N. C. 1 "An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay. From the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer, eighteen Years a Missionary in that Country. Vol. ii. p. 176.—H. N. C. Sara Coleridge translated this work under the direction of Southey. a dull Frenchman. The Scotch will attribute merit to people of any nation rather than the English; the English have a morbid habit of petting and praising foreigners of any sort, to the unjust disparagement of their own worthies. You will find this a good gage or criterion of genius,whether it progresses and evolves, or only spins upon itself. Take Dryden's Achitophel and Zimri,-Shaftesbury and Buckingham; every line adds to or modifies the character, which is, as it were, a-building up to the very last verse; whereas, in Pope's Timon, &c., the first two or three couplets contain all the pith of the character, and the twenty or thirty lines that follow are so much evidence or proof of overt acts of jealousy, or pride, or whatever it may be that is satirised. In like manner compare Charles Lamb's exquisite criticisms on Shakspere with Hazlitt's round and round imitations of them. IT AUGUST 7, 1832. Milton's Disregard of Painting. T is very remarkable that in no part of his writings does Milton take any notice of the great painters of Italy, nor, indeed, of painting as an art; whilst every other page breathes his love and taste for music. Yet it is curious that, in one passage in the Paradise Lost Milton has certainly copied the fresco of the Creation in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. I mean those lines now half appear'd The tawny lion, pawing to get free His binder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, 1 an image which the necessities of the painter justified, but which was wholly unworthy, in my judgment, of the enlarged powers of the poet. Adam bending over the sleeping Eve, in the Paradise Lost," and Dalilah approaching 2 1 Par. Lost, book vii. ver. 463.-H. N. C. -so much the more His wonder was to find unwaken'd Eve N Samson, in the Agonistes,' are the only two proper pictures I remember in Milton. I AUGUST 9, 1832. What Baptismal Service.—Jews' Division of the Scripture.—Sanskrit. THINK the baptismal service almost perfect. seems erroneous assumption in it to me, is harmless. None of the services of the Church affect me so much as this. I never could attend a christening without tears bursting forth, at the sight of the helpless innocent in a pious clergyman's arms. The Jews recognised three degrees of sanctity in their Scriptures-first, the writings of Moses, who had the avrovía; secondly, the Prophets; and, thirdly, the Good Books. Philo, amusingly enough, places his works somewhere between the second and third degrees. The claims of the Sanskrit for priority to the Hebrew as a language, are ridiculous. I AUGUST 11, 1832. Hesiod.-Virgil.-Genius Metaphysical.-Don Quixote. LIKE reading Hesiod, meaning the Works and Days. If every verse is not poetry, it is, at least, good sense, which is a great deal to say. With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek, Book v. ver. 8.-H. N. C. 1 "But who is this, what thing of sea or land? Female of sex it seems, That so bedeck'd, ornate, and gay, Comes this way sailing Like a stately ship Of Tarsus, bound for the isles |