Of the Quintetta in the Syracuse opera and the pleasure of the voices--one and not one, they leave, seek, pursue, oppose, fight with, strengthen, annihilate each other, awake, enliven, soothe, flatter and embrace each other again, till at length they die away in one tone. There is no sweeter image of wayward yet fond lovers, of seeking and finding, of the love-quarrel, and the making-up, of the losing and the yearning regret, of the doubtful, the complete recognition, and of the total melting union. Words are not interpreters, but fellow-combatants.
Title for a Medical Romance:--The adventures, rivalry, warfare and final union and partnership of Dr. Hocus and Dr. Pocus.
Idly talk they who speak of poets as mere indulgers of fancy, imagination, superstition, etc. They are the bridlers by delight, the purifiers; they that combine all these with reason and order--the true protoplasts--Gods of Love who tame the chaos.
To deduce instincts from obscure recollections of a pre-existing state--I have often thought of it. "Ey!" I have said, when I have seen certain tempers and actions in Hartley, "that is I in my future state." So I think, oftentimes, that my children are my soul--that multitude and division are not [O mystery!] necessarily subversive of unity. I am sure that two very different meanings, if not more, lurk in the word One.
The drollest explanation of instinct is that of Mylius, who attributes every act to pain, and all the wonderful webs and envelopes of spiders, caterpillars, etc., absolutely to fits of colic or paroxysms of dry belly-ache!
This Tarantula-dance of repetitions and vertiginous argumentation _in circulo_, begun in imposture and self-consummated in madness!
While the whole planet (_quoad_ its Lord or, at least, Lord-Lieutenancy) is in stir and bustle, why should not I keep in time with the tune, and, like old Diogenes, roll my tub about?
I cannot too often remember that to be deeply interested and to be highly satisfied are not always commensurate. Apply this to the affecting and yet unnatural passages of the _Stranger_ or of _John Bull_, and to the finest passages in Shakspere, such as the death of Cleopatra or Hamlet.
Saw the limb of a rainbow footing itself on the sea at a small apparent distance from the shore, a thing of itself--no substrate cloud or even mist visible--but the distance glimmered through it as through a thin semi-transparent hoop.