The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Ii Part 53

Hutchinson in her Memoirs of her husband?

Book I. c. 8. s. 1. The veracity and credibility of Herodotus have increased and increase with the increase of our discoveries. Several of his relations deemed fabulous, have been authenticated within the last thirty years from this present 1808.

Ib. s. 2.

Sir John Mandevill left a book of travels:--herein he often attesteth the fabulous relations of Ctesias.

Many, if not most, of these Ctesian fables in Sir J. Mandevill were monkish interpolations.

Ib. s. 13.

Carda.n.u.s--is of singular use unto a prudent reader; but unto him that only desireth 'hoties', or to replenish his head with varieties,--he may become no small occasion of error.

'Hoties'--[Greek: hoti s]--'whatevers,' that is, whatever is written, no matter what, true or false,--'omniana'; 'all sorts of varieties,' as a dear young lady once said to me.

Ib. c. ix.

If Herac.l.i.tus with his adherents will hold the sun is no bigger than it appeareth.

It is not improbable that Herac.l.i.tus meant merely to imply that we perceive only our own sensations, and they of course are what they are;--that the image of the sun is an appearance, or sensation in our eyes, and, of course, an appearance can be neither more nor less than what it appears to be;--that the notion of the true size of the sun is not an image, or belonging either to the sense, or to the sensuous fancy, but is an imageless truth of the understanding obtained by intellectual deductions. He could not possibly mean what Sir T. B.

supposes him to have meant; for if he had believed the sun to be no more than a mile distant from us, every tree and house must have shown its absurdity.

In the following books I have endeavoured, wherever the author himself is in a vulgar error, as far as my knowledge extends, to give in the margin, either the demonstrated discoveries, or more probable opinions, of the present natural philosophy;--so that, independently of the entertainingness of the thoughts and tales, and the force and splendor of Sir Thomas Browne's diction and manner, you may at once learn from him the history of human fancies and superst.i.tions, both when he detects them, and when he himself falls into them,--and from my notes, the real truth of things, or, at least, the highest degree of probability, at which human research has. .h.i.therto arrived.

Book II. c. i. Production of crystal. Cold is the attractive or astringent power, comparatively uncounteracted by the dilative, the diminution of which is the proportional increase of the contractive.

Hence the astringent, or power of negative magnetism, is the proper agent in cold, and the contractive, or oxygen, an allied and consequential power. 'Crystallum, non ex aqua, sed ex substantia metallorum communi confrigeratum dico'. As the equator, or mid point of the equatorial hemispherical line, is to the centre, so water is to gold. Hydrogen is to the electrical azote, as azote to the magnetic hydrogen.

Ib.

Crystal--will strike fire--and upon collision with steel send forth its sparks, not much inferiourly to a flint.

It being, indeed, nothing else but pure flint.

C. iii.

And the magick thereof (the lodestone) is not safely to be believed, which was delivered by Orpheus, that sprinkled with water it will upon a question emit a voice not much unlike an infant.

That is:--to the twin counterforces of the magnetic power, the equilibrium of which is revealed in magnetic iron, as the substantial, add the twin counterforces or positive and negative poles of the electrical power, the indifference of which is realized in water, as the superficial--(whence Orpheus employed the term 'sprinkled,' or rather affused or superfused)--and you will hear the voice of infant nature;--that is, you will understand the rudimental products and elementary powers and constructions of the phenomenal world. An enigma this not unworthy of Orpheus, 'quicunque fuit', and therefore not improbably ascribed to him.

N. B. Negative and positive magnetism are to attraction and repulsion, or cohesion and dispersion, as negative and positive electricity are to contraction and dilation.

C. vii. s. 4.

That camphire begets in men [Greek: taen anaphrodisian], observation will hardly confirm, &c.

There is no doubt of the fact as to a temporary effect; and camphire is therefore a strong and immediate antidote to an overdose of 'cantharides'. Yet there are, doubtless, sorts and cases of [Greek: anaphrodisia], which camphire might relieve. Opium is occasionally an aphrodisiac, but far oftener the contrary. The same is true of 'bang', or powdered hemp leaves, and, I suppose, of the whole tribe of narcotic stimulants.

Ib. s. 8.

The yew and the berries thereof are harmless, we know.

The berries are harmless, but the leaves of the yew are undoubtedly poisonous. See Withering's British Plants. Taxus.

Book III. c. xiii.

For although lapidaries and 'questuary' enquirers affirm it, &c.

'Questuary'--having gain or money for their object.

B. VI. c. viii.

The river Gihon, a branch of Euphrates and river of Paradise.

The rivers from Eden were, perhaps, meant to symbolize, or rather expressed only, the great primary races of mankind. Sir T.B. was the very man to have seen this; but the superst.i.tion of the letter was then culminant.

Ib. c. x.

The chymists have laudably reduced their causes--(of colors)--unto 'sal', 'sulphur', and 'mercury', &c.

Even now, after all the brilliant discoveries from Scheele, Priestley, and Cavendish, to Berzelius and Davy, no improvement has been made in this division,--not of primary bodies (those idols of the modern atomic chemistry), but of causes, as Sir T.B. rightly expresses them,--that is, of elementary powers manifested in bodies. Let mercury stand for the bi-polar metallic principle, best imaged as a line or 'axis' from north to south,--the north or negative pole being the cohesive or coherentific force, and the south or positive pole being the dispersive or incoherentific force: the first is predominant in, and therefore represented by, carbon,--the second by nitrogen; and the series of metals are the primary and, hence, indecomponible 'syntheta' and proportions of both. In like manner, sulphur represents the active and pa.s.sive principle of fire: the contractive force, or negative electricity--oxygen--produces flame; and the dilative force, or positive electricity--hydrogen--produces warmth. And lastly, salt is the equilibrium or compound of the two former. So taken, salt, sulphur, and mercury are equivalent to the combustive, the combustible, and the combust, under one or other of which all known bodies, or ponderable substances, may be cla.s.sed and distinguished.

The difference between a great mind's and a little mind's use of history is this. The latter would consider, for instance, what Luther did, taught, or sanctioned: the former, what Luther,--a Luther,--would now do, teach, and sanction. This thought occurred to me at midnight, Tuesday, the 16th of March, 1824, as I was stepping into bed,--my eye having glanced on Luther's Table Talk.

If you would be well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of you;--if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable opinion of himself.

It is not common to find a book of so early date as this (1658), at least among those of equal neatness of printing, that contains so many gross typographical errors;--with the exception of our earliest dramatic writers, some of which appear to have been never corrected, but worked off at once as the types were first arranged by the compositors. But the grave and doctrinal works are, in general, exceedingly correct, and form a striking contrast to modern publications, of which the late edition of Bacon's Works would be paramount in the infamy of multiplied unnoticed 'errata', were it not for the unrivalled slovenliness of Anderson's British Poets, in which the blunders are, at least, as numerous as the pages, and many of them perverting the sense, or killing the whole beauty, and yet giving or affording a meaning, however low, instead.

These are the most execrable of all typographical errors. 1808.

[The volume from which the foregoing notes have been taken, is inscribed in Mr. Lamb's writing--

'C. Lamb, 9th March, 1804. Bought for S.T. Coleridge.' Under which in Mr. Coleridge's hand is written--

'N.B. It was on the 10th; on which day I dined and punched at Lamb's, and exulted in the having procured the 'Hydriotaphia', and all the rest 'lucro apposita'. S.T.C.'

That same night, the volume was devoted as a gift to a dear friend in the following letter.-Ed.]

10th, 1804,

Sat. night, 12 o'clock.