Biographia Literaria
And to conclude the subject of citation, with a cluster of citations,
which as taken from books, not in common use, may contribute to the
reader’s amusement, as a voluntary before a sermon: “Dolet mihi quidem
deliciis literarum inescatos subito jam homines adeo esse, praesertim
qui Christianos se profitentur, et legere nisi quod ad delectationem
facit, sustineant nihil: unde et discipline severiores et philosophia
ipsa jam fere prorsus etiam a doctis negliguntur. Quod quidem propositum
studiorum, nisi mature corrigitur, tam magnum rebus incommodum dabit,
quam dedit barbaries olim. Pertinax res barbaries est, fateor: sed minus
potent tamen, quam illa mollities et persuasa prudentia literarum,
si ratione caret, sapientiae virtutisque specie mortales misere
circumducens. Succedet igitur, ut arbitror, haud ita multo post, pro
rusticana seculi nostri ruditate captatrix illa communi-loquentia robur
animi virilis omne, omnem virtutem masculam, profligatura nisi cavetur.”
A too prophetic remark, which has been in fulfilment from the year
1680, to the present 1815. By persuasa prudentia, Grynaeus means
self-complacent common sense as opposed to science and philosophic
reason.
Est medius ordo, et velut equestris, ingeniorum quidem sagacium, et
commodorum rebus humanis, non tamen in primam magnitudinem patentium.
Eorum hominum, ut sic dicam, major annona est. Sedulum esse, nihil
temere loqui, assuescere labori, et imagine prudentiae et modistiae
tegere angustiores partes captus, dum exercitationem ac usum, quo isti
in civilibus rebus pollent, pro natura et magnitudine ingenii plerique
accipiunt.
“As therefore physicians are many times forced to leave such methods of
curing as themselves know to be the fittest, and being overruled by the
patient’s impatiency, are fain to try the best they can: in like sort,
considering how the case doth stand with this present age, full of
tongue and weak of brain, behold we would (if our subject permitted it)
yield to the stream thereof. That way we would be contented to prove
our thesis, which being the worse in itself, is notwithstanding now by
reason of common imbecility the fitter and likelier to be brooked.”
If this fear could be rationally entertained in the controversial age
of Hooker, under the then robust discipline of the scholastic logic,
pardonably may a writer of the present times anticipate a scanty
audience for abstrusest themes, and truths that can neither be
communicated nor received without effort of thought, as well as patience
of attention.
“Che s’io non erro al calcolar de’ punti,
Par ch’ Asinina Stella a noi predomini,
E’l Somaro e’l Castron si sian congiunti.
Il tempo d’Apuleio piu non si nomini:
Che se allora un sol huom sembrava un Asino,
Mille Asini a’ miei di rassembran huomini!”
CHAPTER X
A chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that on
the nature and genesis of the Imagination or Plastic Power--On
pedantry and pedantic expressions--Advice to young authors respecting
publication--Various anecdotes of the Author’s literary life, and the
progress of his opinions in Religion and Politics.
“Esemplastic. The word is not in Johnson, nor have I met with it
elsewhere.” Neither have, I. I constructed it myself from the Greek
words, eis en plattein, to shape into one; because, having to convey a
new sense, I thought that a new term would both aid the recollection of
my meaning, and prevent its being confounded with the usual import of
the word, imagination. “But this is pedantry!” Not necessarily so, I
hope. If I am not misinformed, pedantry consists in the use of words
unsuitable to the time, place, and company. The language of the market
would be in the schools as pedantic, though it might not be reprobated
by that name, as the language of the schools in the market. The mere
man of the world, who insists that no other terms but such as occur in
common conversation should be employed in a scientific disquisition, and
with no greater precision, is as truly a pedant as the man of letters,
who either over-rating the acquirements of his auditors, or misled by
his own familiarity with technical or scholastic terms, converses at the
wine-table with his mind fixed on his museum or laboratory; even though
the latter pedant instead of desiring his wife to make the tea should
bid her add to the quant. suff. of thea Sinensis the oxyd of hydrogen
saturated with caloric. To use the colloquial (and in truth somewhat
vulgar) metaphor, if the pedant of the cloister, and the pedant of the
lobby, both smell equally of the shop, yet the odour from the Russian
binding of good old authentic-looking folios and quartos is less
annoying than the steams from the tavern or bagnio. Nay, though the
pedantry of the scholar should betray a little ostentation, yet a
well-conditioned mind would more easily, methinks, tolerate the fox
brush of learned vanity, than the sans culotterie of a contemptuous
ignorance, that assumes a merit from mutilation in the self-consoling
sneer at the pompous incumbrance of tails.
The first lesson of philosophic discipline is to wean the student’s
attention from the degrees of things, which alone form the vocabulary of
common life, and to direct it to the kind abstracted from degree. Thus
the chemical student is taught not to be startled at disquisitions on
the heat in ice, or on latent and fixible light. In such discourse the
instructor has no other alternative than either to use old words
with new meanings (the plan adopted by Darwin in his Zoonomia;) or to
introduce new terms, after the example of Linnaeus, and the framers
of the present chemical nomenclature. The latter mode is evidently
preferable, were it only that the former demands a twofold exertion of
thought in one and the same act. For the reader, or hearer, is required
not only to learn and bear in mind the new definition; but to unlearn,
and keep out of his view, the old and habitual meaning; a far more
difficult and perplexing task, and for which the mere semblance of
eschewing pedantry seems to me an inadequate compensation. Where,
indeed, it is in our power to recall an unappropriate term that had
without sufficient reason become obsolete, it is doubtless a less evil
to restore than to coin anew. Thus to express in one word all that
appertains to the perception, considered as passive and merely
recipient, I have adopted from our elder classics the word sensuous;
because sensual is not at present used, except in a bad sense, or at
least as a moral distinction; while sensitive and sensible would each
convey a different meaning. Thus too have I followed Hooker, Sanderson,
Milton and others, in designating the immediateness of any act or
object of knowledge by the word intuition, used sometimes subjectively,
sometimes objectively, even as we use the word, thought; now as the
thought, or act of thinking, and now as a thought, or the object of
our reflection; and we do this without confusion or obscurity. The very
words, objective and subjective, of such constant recurrence in the
schools of yore, I have ventured to re-introduce, because I could not
so briefly or conveniently by any more familiar terms distinguish the
percipere from the percipi. Lastly, I have cautiously discriminated the
terms, the reason, and the understanding, encouraged and confirmed
by the authority of our genuine divines and philosophers, before the
Revolution.
------both life, and sense,
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
Reason receives, and reason is her bring,
Discursive or intuitive: discourse [32]
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing but in degree, in kind the same.
I say, that I was confirmed by authority so venerable: for I had
previous and higher motives in my own conviction of the importance, nay,
of the necessity of the distinction, as both an indispensable condition
and a vital part of all sound speculation in metaphysics, ethical or
theological. To establish this distinction was one main object of
The Friend; if even in a biography of my own literary life I can with
propriety refer to a work, which was printed rather than published, or
so published that it had been well for the unfortunate author, if it
had remained in manuscript. I have even at this time bitter cause for
remembering that, which a number of my subscribers have but a trifling
motive for forgetting. This effusion might have been spared; but I
would fain flatter myself, that the reader will be less austere than an
oriental professor of the bastinado, who during an attempt to extort per
argumentum baculinum a full confession from a culprit, interrupted his
outcry of pain by reminding him, that it was “a mere digression!” “All
this noise, Sir! is nothing to the point, and no sort of answer to my
questions!” “Ah! but,” (replied the sufferer,) “it is the most pertinent
reply in nature to your blows.”
An imprudent man of common goodness of heart cannot but wish to turn
even his imprudences to the benefit of others, as far as this is
possible. If therefore any one of the readers of this semi-narrative
should be preparing or intending a periodical work, I warn him, in the
first place, against trusting in the number of names on his subscription
list. For he cannot be certain that the names were put down by
sufficient authority; or, should that be ascertained, it still remains
to be known, whether they were not extorted by some over zealous
friend’s importunity; whether the subscriber had not yielded his name,
merely from want of courage to answer, no; and with the intention of
dropping the work as soon as possible. One gentleman procured me nearly
a hundred names for THE FRIEND, and not only took frequent opportunity
to remind me of his success in his canvass, but laboured to impress my
mind with the sense of the obligation, I was under to the subscribers;
for, (as he very pertinently admonished me,) “fifty-two shillings a year
was a large sum to be bestowed on one individual, where there were so
many objects of charity with strong claims to the assistance of the
benevolent.” Of these hundred patrons ninety threw up the publication
before the fourth number, without any notice; though it was well known
to them, that in consequence of the distance, and the slowness and
irregularity of the conveyance, I was compelled to lay in a stock of
stamped paper for at least eight weeks beforehand; each sheet of which
stood me in five pence previously to its arrival at my printer’s; though
the subscription money was not to be received till the twenty-first week
after the commencement of the work; and lastly, though it was in nine
cases out of ten impracticable for me to receive the money for two or
three numbers without paying an equal sum for the postage.
In confirmation of my first caveat, I will select one fact among many.
On my list of subscribers, among a considerable number of names equally
flattering, was that of an Earl of Cork, with his address. He might as
well have been an Earl of Bottle, for aught I knew of him, who had been
content to reverence the peerage in abstracto, rather than in concretis.
Of course THE FRIEND was regularly sent as far, if I remember right, as
the eighteenth number; that is, till a fortnight before the subscription
was to be paid. And lo! just at this time I received a letter from his
Lordship, reproving me in language far more lordly than courteous for my
impudence in directing my pamphlets to him, who knew nothing of me or my
work! Seventeen or eighteen numbers of which, however, his Lordship
was pleased to retain, probably for the culinary or post-culinary
conveniences of his servants.
Secondly, I warn all others from the attempt to deviate from the