[Compare _Table Talk_, July 6, 1833. H. N. C. _foot-note_. Bell & Co., 1884, p. 240.]
Those only who feel no originality, no consciousness of having received their thoughts and opinions from immediate inspiration are anxious to be thought original. The certainty, the feeling that he is right, is enough for the man of genius, and he rejoices to find his opinions plumed and winged with the authority of several forefathers.
The water-lily in the midst of the lake is equally refreshed by the rain, as the sponge on the sandy sea-shore.
In the next world the souls of dull good men serve for bodies to the souls of the Shaksperes and Miltons, and in the course of a few centuries, when the soul can do without its vehicle, the bodies will by advantage of good company have refined themselves into souls fit to be clothed with like bodies.
How much better it would be, in the House of Commons, to have everything that is, and by the spirit of English freedom must be legal, legal and open! The reporting, for instance, should be done by shorthandists appointed by Government. There are, I see, weighty arguments on the other side, but are they not to be got over?
Co-arctation is not a bad phrase for that narrowing in of breadth on both sides as in my interpolation of Schiller.
"And soon The narrowing line of day-light that ran after The closing door was gone."
_Piccolomini_, ii. sc. 4, _P.W._, p. 257.
[Sidenote: THE DEVIL WITH A MEMORY THE FIRST SINNER]
In order not to be baffled by the infinite ascent of the heavenly angels, the devil feigned that all (the [Greek: tagathon], that is, God himself included) sprang from nothing. And now he has a pretty task to multiply, without paper or slate, the exact number of all the animalcules, and the eggs and embryos of each planet, by some other, and the product by a third and that product by a fourth, and he is not to stop till he has gone through the planets of half the universe, the number of which being infinite, it is considered by the devils in general a great puzzle. A dream in a doze.
A bodily substance, an unborrowed Self--God in God immanent! The Eternal Word! That goes forth yet remains! Crescent and Full and Wane, yet ever entire and one, it dawns, and sets, and crowns the height of heaven. At the same time, the dawning and setting sun, at the same time the zodiac--while each, in its own hour, boasts and beholds the exclusive Presence, a peculiar Orb, each the great Traveller's inn, yet still the unmoving Sun--