July 25. 1832
Mr. Coleridge’s Philosophy — Sublimity — Solomon — Madness — C. Lamb — Sforza’s Decision
The pith of my system is to make the senses out of the mind—not the mind out of the senses, as Locke did.
Could you ever discover any thing sublime, in our sense of the term, in the classic Greek literature? never could. Sublimity is Hebrew by birth.
I should conjecture that the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes were written, or, perhaps, rather collected, about the time of Nehemiah. The language is Hebrew with Chaldaic endings. It is totally unlike the language of Moses on the one hand, and of Isaiah on the other.
Solomon introduced the commercial spirit into his kingdom. I cannot think his idolatry could have been much more, in regard to himself, than a state protection or toleration of the foreign worship.
When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, he is mad. A madman is properly so defined.
Charles Lamb translated my motto Sermoni propriora by—properer for a sermon!
I was much amused some time ago by reading the pithy decision of one of the Sforzas of Milan, upon occasion of a dispute for precedence between the lawyers and physicians of his capital;—Paecedant fures—sequantur carnifices. I hardly remember a neater thing.