80 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[Aug. 4. 1855. 



S^Such stories as this make one suspect that the 

 ancients were acquainted with the art of distilling 

 alcohol ; though it is generally believed that this, 

 like gunpowder, is an invention of which the 

 moderns may boast. (P. Q/c, vol. ix. p. 23.) 



It may be said that, in former times, Bacchus 

 was a powerful divinity, and has since been 

 deposed; but I am not quite satisfied with that 

 explanation. F. 



COLERIDGE S LECTURES. 



If I do not greatly mistake, I remember having 

 seen repeatedly in your columns, about nine 

 months since, some references to, and inquiries 

 after, Coleridge's literary lectures in 1811, which 

 it was feared had been lost irrevocably. One of 

 your correspondents, a friend I believe of Cole- 

 ridge's, informed the readers of " N. & Q." that 

 he had some stenographical notes in his possession 

 of the lectures referred to, and shortly after the 

 announcement gratified the admirers of the great 

 man by publishing them.* A few evenings ago, 

 in looking over the file of the Dublin Correspon- 

 dent, a dead-and-gone newspaper, I observed what 

 I now inclose. The journal was edited by a 

 barrister of eminence named Townshend, and 

 generally contained more literary matter, and 

 more special reports of lectures, sermons, &c., 

 than the majority of its cotemporaries. 



" Mr. Coleridge delivered his first lecture at the Hall of 

 the London Philosophical Society, on Monday evening 

 the 25th ult., to a numerous and respectable audience. 

 The subject of this lecture, which was the introductory 

 discourse, was the cause of false criticism, especially in 

 poetry ; and these the speaker divided into incidental and 

 permanent. The incidental he stated to be such as gave 

 to the persons of the present age an undue propensity to 

 decide and condemn, summarilj', beyond the powers of 

 discrimination possessed by the censurer. The permanent 

 causes alleged were, the averseness of the mass of mankind 

 to the exercise of the thinking faculty, the loose and in- 

 accurate use of the terms expressive of excellence or 

 defect, and the vicious propensity of the majority to 

 judge of books by books, instead of consulting the living 

 oracles of nature and man. Mr. Coleridge concluding by 

 disclaiming, in a very animated manner, any inclination 

 to a hasty and intemperate censure of his cotemporaries, 

 to injure any man in his fair fame, to hold up individuals 

 to contempt and scorn, or to involve on any occasion an 

 attack on character with the liberal exercise of cri- 

 ticism." 



« Dec. 17, 1811. 

 " Mr. Coleridge, having concluded the preliminary dis- 

 cussions on the nature of the Shakspearian drama', and 

 the genius of the poet, and briefly noticed Lovers Labour^ 

 Lost, as the link which connected together the poet and 

 the dramatist, proceeded, in his seventh lecture, to an 

 elaborate review of Romeo and Juliet, a play in which are 



[* Mr. Collier's valuable communications on this 

 subject will be found in " N. & Q.," Vol. x., pp. 1. 21. 57. 

 117. — Ed. "N. &Q."] 



No. 301.] 



to be found all the individual excellences of the author, 

 but less happily combined than in his riper productions. 

 This he observed to be the characteristic of genius, that 

 its earliest works are never inferior in beauties, while the 

 merits which taste and judgment can confer are of slow 

 growth. Tibalt and Capulet he showed to be repre- 

 sentatives of classes which he had observed in society, 

 while in Mercutio he exhibited the first character of his 

 own conception; a being formed of poetic elements, 

 which meditation rather than obser^'^ation had revealed 

 to him ; a being full of high fancy and rapid thought, 

 conscious of his own powers, careless of life, generous, 

 noble, a perfect gentleman. On his fate hangs the cata- 

 strophe of the tragedy. In commenting on the character 

 of the Nurse, Mr. Coleridge strenuously resisted the sug- 

 gestion that this is a mere piece of Dutch painting ; a 

 portrait in the style of Gerard Dow. On the contrary, 

 her character is exquisitely generalised, and is subser- 

 vient to the display of fine moral contrasts. Her fondness 

 for Juliet is delightfully pathetic. ' What a melancholy 

 world would this be without children, how inhuman 

 without old age.' Her loquacity is characteristic of a 

 vulgar mind, which recollects merely by coincidence of 

 time and place, while cultivated minds connect their 

 ideas by cause and effect. Having admitted that these 

 lower persons might be suggested to Shakspeare by ob- 

 servation, Mr. Coleridge reverted to his ideal characters, 

 and said, ' I ask, where Shakspeare observed this ? ' (some . 

 heroic sentiments by Othello) ' It was with his inward 

 eye of meditation on his own nature. He became Othello, 

 and therefore spoke like him. Shakspeare became, in 

 fact, all beings but the vicious ; but in drawing his cha- 

 racters he regarded essential not accidental relations. 

 Avarice he never pourtrayed, for avarice is a factitious 

 passion. The Miser of Plautus and Molifere is already 

 obsolete.' Mr. Coleridge entered into a discussion of the 

 nature of fancy; showed how Shakspeare, composing 

 under a feeling of the unimaginable, endeavouring to 

 reconcile opposites by producing a strong working of the 

 mind, was led to those earnest coflceits which are con- 

 sistent with passion, though frigidly imitated by writers 

 without any. He illustrated this part of his subject by 

 a reference to Milton's conception of Death, which the 

 painters absurdly endeavour to strip of its fanciful 

 nature, and render definite by the figure of a skeleton, 

 the dryest of all images, compared with which a square 

 or a triangle is a luxuriant fancy. 



" Mr. Coleridge postponed the examination of the hero 

 and heroine of the piece, but prefaced his inquiry by 

 remarks on the nature of love, which he defined to be 'a 

 perfect desire of the whole being to be united to some 

 thing or being which is felt necessary to its perfection, 

 by the most perfect means that nature permits, and 

 reason dictates ; ' and took occasion with great delicacy 

 to contrast this link of our higher and lower nature, this 

 noblest energy of our humane and social being, with 

 what, b}' a gross misnomer, usurps its name ; and as- 

 serted, that the criterion of honour and worth among 

 men is their habit of sentiment on the subject of love. 



" We ai'e compelled to omit the partial illustration of 

 his in the characters of Romeo and Juliet, the continuation 

 of which we are promised in the succeeding lecture." 



William John Fitzpatbick. 



Booterstown, Dublin. 



REMARKABLE CASE OF LONGEVITY. 



To the instances of longevity already noticed in 

 the pages of " N. & Q.," allow me to add that of 



