The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
History
The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Literature -- History and criticism
(C. 4.)
Andres and his master. The manner in which Don Quixote redressed this
wrong, is a picture of the true revolutionary passion in its first
honest state, while it is yet only a bewilderment of the understanding.
You have a benevolence limitless in its prayers, which are in fact
aspirations towards omnipotence; but between it and beneficence the
bridge of judgment--that is, of measurement of personal
power--intervenes, and must be passed. Otherwise you will be bruised by
the leap into the chasm, or be drowned in the revolutionary river, and
drag others with you to the same fate.
(C. 4.)
Merchants of Toledo.
When they were come so near as to be seen and heard, Don Quixote
raised his voice, and with arrogant air cried out: "Let the whole
world stand; if the whole world does not confess that there is not in
the whole world a damsel more beautiful than," &c.
Now mark the presumption which follows the self-complacency of the last
act! That was an honest attempt to redress a real wrong; this is an
arbitrary determination to enforce a Brissotine or Rousseau's ideal on
all his fellow creatures.
Let the whole world stand!
'If there had been any experience in proof of the excellence of our
code, where would be our superiority in this enlightened age?'
"No! the business is that without seeing her, you believe, confess,
affirm, swear, and maintain it; _and if not, I challenge you all to
battle_." [4]
Next see the persecution and fury excited by opposition however
moderate! The only words listened to are those, that without their
context and their conditionals, and transformed into positive
assertions, might give some shadow of excuse for the violence shown!
This rich story ends, to the compassion of the men in their senses, in a
sound rib-roasting of the idealist by the muleteer, the mob. And happy
for thee, poor knight! that the mob were against thee! For had they been
with thee, by the change of the moon and of them, thy head would have
been off.
(C. 5.) first part--The idealist recollects the causes that had been
accessary to the reverse and attempts to remove them--too late. He is
beaten and disgraced.
(C. 6.) This chapter on Don Quixote's library proves that the author did
not wish to destroy the romances, but to cause them to be read as
romances--that is, for their merits as poetry.
(C. 7.)
Among other things, Don Quixote told him, he should dispose himself to
go with him willingly;--for some time or other such an adventure might
present, that an island might be won, in the turn of a hand, and he be
left governor thereof.
At length the promises of the imaginative reason begin to act on the
plump, sensual, honest common sense accomplice,--but unhappily not in
the same person, and without the 'copula' of the judgment,--in hopes of
the substantial good things, of which the former contemplated only the
glory and the colours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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