The sky, or rather say, the æther at Malta, with the sun apparently suspended in it, the eye seeming to pierce beyond and, as it were, behind it--and, below, the æthereal sea, so blue, so _ein zerflossenes_, the substantial image, and fixed real reflection of the sky! O! I could annihilate in a deep moment all possibility of the needle-point, pin's-head system of the _atomists_ by one submissive gaze!
A dewdrop, the pearl of Aurora, is indeed a true _unio_. I would that _unio_ were the word for the dewdrop, and the pearl be called _unio marinus_.
O for the power to persuade all the writers of Great Britain to adopt the _ver_, _zer_, and _al_ of the German! Why not verboil, zerboil; verrend, zerrend? I should like the very words _verflossen_, _zerflossen_, to be naturalised:
And as I looked now feels my soul creative throes, And now all joy, all sense _zerflows_.
I do not know, whether I am in earnest or in sport while I recommend this _ver_ and _zer_; that is, I cannot be sure whether I feel, myself, anything ridiculous in the idea, or whether the feeling that seems to imply this be not the effect of my anticipation of and sympathy with the ridicule of, perhaps, all my readers.
To you there are many like me, yet to me there is none like you, and you are always like yourself. There are groves of night-flowers, yet the night-flower sees only the moon.
Yea, oft alone, Piercing the long-neglected holy cave The haunt obscure of old Philosophy, He bade with lifted torch its starry walls Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage.
If one thought leads to another, so often does it blot out another. This I find when having lain musing on my sofa, a number of interesting thoughts having suggested themselves, I conquer my bodily indolence, and rise to record them in these books, alas! my only confidants. The first thought leads me on indeed to new ones; but nothing but the faint memory of having had these remains of the other, which had been even more interesting to me. I do not know whether this be an idiosyncrasy, a peculiar disease, of _my_ particular memory--but so it is with _me_--my thoughts crowd each other to death.
Quære--whether we may not, _nay_ ought not, to use a neutral pronoun relative, or representative, to the word "Person," where it hath been used in the sense of _homo_, _mensch_, or noun of the common gender, in order to avoid particularising man or woman, or in order to express either sex indifferently? If this be incorrect in syntax, the whole use of the word Person is lost in a number of instances, or only retained by some stiff and strange position of words, as--"not letting the _person_ be aware, _wherein offence has been given_"--instead of--"wherein he or she has offended." In my [judgment] both the specific intention and general _etymon_ of "Person" in such sentences, fully authorise the use of _it_ and _which_ instead of he, she, him, her, who, whom.