Sept. 4. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



215 



is [word illegible, but explained as a new invented 

 verb by the Doctors, meaning overgrown] to tlie 

 necrosis or marasmus of the Heason and Ima- 

 gination, while far-sighted (yet oh! how short- 

 sighted) self-interest Ells the place of conscience, 

 would say the same, if they dare." 



Pepys. — Vol. ii. p. 254, ; " To church, and heard a 

 good sermon of Mr. GifFord's at our church, upon 

 ' Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and its righteous- 

 ness, and all things shall be added to you.' He 



shewed, like a wise man, that righteousness is a surer 

 moral way of being rich, than sin and villany." 



Coleridge. — " Highly characteristic. Pepys' 

 only ground of morality was Prudence, a shrewd 

 Understanding in the service of Self-love, his Con- 

 science. He was a Pollai-d man, without the Top 

 (i. e. the Reason, as the source of Ideas, or imme- 

 diate yet not sensuous truths, having their evi- 

 dence in themselves; or, the Imagination, or 

 idealising Power, by symbols mediating between 

 the Reason and the Understanding), but on this 

 account more broadly and luxuriantly branching 

 out from the upper Trunk. For the sobriety and 

 stedfastness of a worldly self-interest substitute 

 inventive Fancy, Will- wantonness {stet pro ratione 

 voluntas), and a humorous sense of the emptiness 

 and dream-likeness of human pursuits — and 

 Pepys would have been the Panurge of the in- 

 comparable Rabelais. — Mem. It is incomprehen- 

 sible to me that this great and general Philosopher 

 should have been a Frenchman, except on my 

 hypothesis of a continued dilution of the Gothic 

 blood from the reign of Henry IV. Des Cartes, 

 Malbranche, Pascal, and Moliere, being the ultinii 

 Gothorum, the last in whom the Gothic predo- 

 minated over the Celtic." 



Pepys. — Vol. ii. p. 260.: "To the fair, to see the 

 play ' Bartholomew Fair ' ; and it is an excellent play 

 .... only the business of amusing the Puritans begins 

 to grow stale and of no use, they being the people 

 that at last will be found the wisest." 



Coleridge. — " Pepys was always a Common- 

 wealth's man in his heart. N. B. Not a democrat ; 

 but even more than the constitutional Whigs, the 

 very antipodes of the modern Jacobins, or Tuil- 

 up, Head-down politicians. A voluptuary, and 

 without a spark of bigotry in his nature, he could 

 not be a Puritan ; but of his free choice he would 

 have preferred Presbyterianism to Prelacy, and a 

 mixed Aristocracy of Wealth and Talent, to a 

 Monarchy or even a mixed Government, such at 

 least as the latter was in his time. But many of 

 the more enlightened Jacobites were Republicans 

 who despaired of a Republic. Si non Brutus, 

 Cwsar." 



Pepys Vol. Ii. p. 319. 



Coleridge. — " Can a more impressive proof be 

 desired of the truth and wisdom of the Earl of 

 Carnarvon's recent remark in the House of Lords, 



that before the reign of Anne, the constitution had 

 but a sort of uterine life, or but partially appeared 

 as in the [illegible'], and that it is unworthy of a 

 British statesman to quote any precedent anterior 

 to the Revolution in 1688 ! Here, an honest, high 

 principled, and patriotic Senator, criminates Lord 

 Clarendon for having prevented Charles II. from 

 making the Crown independent of the Parliament, 

 and this when he knew and groaned under the 

 infamous vices and folly of the king ! Sick and 

 weary of the factious and persecuting temper of 

 the House of Commons, many, the true lovers of 

 their country and its freedom, would gladly have 

 dispensed with Parliaments, and have secure 1 for 

 the King a revenue which, wisely and economically 

 managed, might have sufficed for all ordinary de- 

 mands, could they have discovered any other way 

 of subjecting the Judges to a periodical rigorous 

 account for their administration of the Law. In 

 the Laws and the Rights established by Law, these 

 men placed the proper liberty of the subject. 

 Before the Revolution a Parliament at the com- 

 mencement of a Reign, and of a War, under an 

 economic and decorous [illegible], would have 

 satisfied the People generally." 



Pepys. — Vol. ii. p. 342. : "Thence walked a little 

 with Creed, who tells me be hears how fine my ! orses 

 and coach are, and advises me to avoid being nc; il for 

 it ... . being what I feared," &c. 



Coleridge. — "This struggle between the pru- 

 dence of an Atticus, and the Sir-Piercy-Shaf ton- 

 Taylor-blood working as an instinct in his veins, 

 with extreme sensitiveness to the opinions of men 

 as their combining medium, is very amusing." 



Pepys Vol. ii. p. 348.: Pepys here concludes his 



Diary from threatening blindness. 



Coleridge. — " Truly may it be said that this 

 was a greater and more grievous loss to the mind's 

 eye of his posterity, than to the bodily organs of 

 Pepys himself. It makes me restless and discon- 

 tented to think what a Diary, equal in minuteness 

 and truth of portraiture to the preceding from 

 1669 to 1688 or 1690, would have been for the 

 true causes, process, and character of the Revo- 

 lution." 



Pepys. — Vol. ii. ( Correspondence), p. 65. : " It is a 

 common position among these factious sectaries, that 

 there is no medium between a true Churchman of 

 England and a Roman Catholic," &c. 



Coleridge. — " It is only too probable, that 

 James's bigotry alone baffled his despotism, and 

 that he might have succeeded in suppressing the 

 liberties of his country, if he would — for a time 

 at least — have kept aloof from its Religion. It 

 should be remembered, in excuse for the sup- 

 porters of James II., that the practicability of 

 conducting the affairs of the State with and by a 

 parliament had not yet been demonstrated, nay, 



