Tristram is always
courteous, Lancelot invincible, and so on. The same might be done with the
Spanish romances of the Cid. There is no subjectivity whatever in the
Homeric poetry. There is a subjectivity of the poet, as of Milton, who is
himself before himself in everything he writes; and there is a subjectivity
of the _persona_, or dramatic character, as in all Shakspeare's great
creations, Hamlet, Lear, &c.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge was a decided Wolfian in the Homeric question; but he had
never read a word of the famous Prolegomena, and knew nothing of Wolf's
reasoning, but what I told him of it in conversation. Mr. C. informed me,
that he adopted the conclusion contained in the text upon the first perusal
of Vico's Scienza Nuova; "not," he said, "that Vico has reasoned it out
with such learning and accuracy as you report of Wolf, but Vico struck out
all the leading hints, and I soon filled up the rest out of my own head."--
ED.]
_May_ 14. 1830.
REASON AND UNDERSTANDING.--WORDS AND NAMES OF THINGS.
Until you have mastered the fundamental difference, in kind, between the
reason and the understanding as faculties of the human mind, you cannot
escape a thousand difficulties in philosophy. It is pre-eminently the
_Gradus ad Philosophiam_.
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