“. . . . . Butler denotes the sensual principle, which is subject or subordinate to the intellectual part of the internal man; because every thing which serves for drinking or which is drunk (as wine, milk, water), hath relation to truth, which is of the intellectual part, thus it hath relation to the intellectual part: and whereas the external sensual principle, or that of the body, is what subministers, therefore by Butler is signified that subministering sensual principle, or that which subministers of things sensual.
“Read that paragraph again, Grosvenor. Don’t you understand it? Read it a third time. Try it backwards.
“See if you can make any thing of it diagonally. Turn it upside down.
“Philosophers have discovered that you may turn a polypus inside out, and it will live just as well one way as the other. It is not to be supposed that Nature ever intended any of its creatures to be thus inverted, but so the thing happens. As you can make nothing of this Butler any other way, follow the hint and turn the paragraph inside out. That’s a poozzle.
| Ætat. 30. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 337 |
“Now, then, I will tell you what it is in plain English. It is Swedenborgianism, and I have copied the passage verbatim from a Swedenborgian Dictionary. Allow, at least, that it would make an excellent chapter in your book, if thou hadst enough grace in thee ever to let such a book come forth. Nonsense, sublime nonsense, is what this book ought to be,—such nonsense as requires more wit, more sense, more reading, more knowledge, more learning, than go to the composition of half the wise ones in the world. I do beseech you do not lightly or indolently abandon the idea, for if you will but Butlerise in duodecimo, if you fail of making such a reputation as you would wish, then will I pledge myself to give one of my ears to you, which you may, by the hands of Harry, present to the British Museum. The book ought only to have glimpses of meaning in it, that those who catch them may impute meaning to all the rest by virtue of faith.
“God bless you! I wish you could come to the Lakes, that we might talk nonsense and eat gooseberry pie together, for which I am as famous as ever.
