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is contained in the mythological account of the cure effected on two daughters of Proteus, King of Argos, who, for preferring their beauty to that of Juno, were afflicted with madness, and fancied themselves two cows! This is perhaps the oldest allusion to actual hallucination which the history of insanity furnishes.

The ancient Romans, too, had their Ceriti-so called because it was supposed that Ceres sometimes deprived her worshipers of their senses; and their Lymphati, whom the nymphs (fruitful source of mental disquiet then as now) had caused to go mad, and who, like the Greek pythonesses, were believed to possess the attribute of presaging future

events.

There is no more curious chapter in Grecian biography than the story of Socrates and his familiar demon; which sometimes unseen, and at other times, as he asserted, assuming human shape, acted as his mentor; which preserved his life after the disastrous battle of Delium, by pointing out to him the only secure line of retreat, while the lives of his friends, who disregarded his entreaties to accompany him, were sacrificed; and which again, when the crisis of his fate approached, twice dissuaded him from defending himself before his accusers, and in the end encouraged him to quaff the poisoned cup presented to his lips by an ungrateful people.

The character of his contemporary, Democritus, exhibits a still stranger admixture of wisdom and folly. Although he has been described by Hippocrates as "a little man, very melancholy by nature," he is known to us as the "laughing philosopher," in contrast to Heraclitus, distinguished as the "weeping philosopher." Curious inconsistency; one philosopher laughing at the follies and vices of his neighbors, while another wept! The ingenious author of The Querist puts the question, "whether fools do not make rules, and wise men follow them?" and as the followers of Democritus are unquestionably more numerous than those of his opponent he must consequently be accounted as the greater fool. It is doubtful, however, from the variety and excellence of his works, whether his was

"The loud laugh, that speaks the vacant mind," or only the other, and more pleasing sen sation which is experienced, as an old physiologist observes, when " pleasant vapors tickle the midriff."

The people of Abdera, however, with whose follies Democritus made merry, could perceive no indications of wisdom in such an indulgence; nor could they be satisfied of his sanity until he had been visited and pronounced sane by Hippocrates. And the people of Abdera were not far wrong, if it be true, as related by Sabellicus, that in order the more effectually to enjoy the pleasure of contemplation, he actually reduced himself to blindness, by putting out his eyes.

The life of Diogenes-the embodiment of cynical wisdom-presents traits of character no less singular. Who has not heard of his tub, his wallet, and his bowl? which latter he is said to have thrown away, as superfluous, on seeing a boy drinking water out of the palm of his hand. The consistent attachment to his principles, which procured for him the respect of the Athenians, may still inspire a feeling of reverence for his memory; but in this utilitarian age we should hold but of little account the wisdom of the man who would, like Diogenes, prefer rags and vagrancy to the glory of Alexander the Great. Plato, his contemporary and rival, pronounced him to be a Socrates run mad; and his death by his own hand confirms the latter part of the verdict.

Even the wise Solon is accused of having played the fool-but there was a method in his madness; for when, crowned with a fool's cap, and affecting the air and manner of a lunatic, he appeared in the Forum before a multitude of Athenians-among whom reports of his insanity had been industriously circulated for days before-it was to excite his countrymen to the recovery of Salamis; which, animated by his impassioned discourse, they determined to effect. In fact his simulation of insanity was only intended to evade the punishment decreed, by the laws then in force, against any one who dared to introduce in public a subject so humiliating to Athenian pride as the loss of Salamis.

Among the numerous examples which ancient history furnishes of great men

who-whether the victims of hallucination, of enthusiasm, or fanaticism, amounting to what toxologists term "exaltative insanity," or actuated by the motives of the impostor, have controlled the destinies of nations, and transmitted to the present time their laws, their doctrines, and systems of religion-may be enumerated Numa, Pythagoras, Mahomet, Sertorious, and Ennus the Sicilian. Numa may have had faith in his Egeria, Sertorious in his hind, as Socrates in his demon; and the heavenly mission of his Gabriel may have been a matter of conviction with Mahomet; but the story of the pigeon trained to pick peas out of the "Prophet's" ear, and to pass for an angelic visitor dictating to him (which the Moslems preserved for the credulous Christians, and the Christians for the Moslems), has been dismissed by Grotius as destitute of proof. Nevertheless, a distinguished modern critic has asserted the reality of their belief in the supernatural agencies reported to have been exercised in their regard, on the ground that men endowed with such genius as their lives exhibit, must have had penetration enough to perceive that fraud could never entirely succeed.

As religion opens such a boundless horizon to the mind, in which conjectures, hopes, and fears assume every variety of form which the imagination can lend them, it is in this domain, perhaps, that we are to look for the most fantastical creations of disordered reason. Strange and whimsical, indeed, are the freaks of eccentric theologians! We read for instance, of a sermon published by a celebrated English divine, named Baxter, entitled "Hooks and Eyes for Believers' Breeches;" of a titillating preparation described as a "Spiritual Snuff-box,to make Devout Souls Sneeze." Another divine furnishes a medico-theological appliance, in book form, called "A Spiritual Seringue for devotionally constipated Souls." The ingenious John Fry supplies "A pair of Bellows to blow off the Dust cast upon him by hostile Sectaries" while about the same time the English public were awakened to repentance by "A Sigh of Sorrow, breathed out of a Hole in the Wall of an earthen Vessel known among men as Samuel Fish!"

We may smile at the extravagance of the Italian theologian, Paoletti, who, in the seventeenth century, among other extraordinary works, published one in which he demonstrated to his own satisfaction, if not to that of his readers, that the aboriginal races of North America were the direct descendants of Satan by one of Noah's daughters, and that consequently it was impossible they could ever obtain grace or salvation; but we are moved to pity at the extravagant folly of Guillaume Postel, who, in the century preceding that in which Paoletti wrote, issued two large volumes, in which he strenuously maintained that the Christian dispensation applied only to men, and that the redemption of the female sex was destined to be effected through the instrumentality of an old Roman matron of his acquaintance, and of more than doubtful character. The inconceivable absurdity of Postel's doctrine should have sufficed, one would think, to render him unworthy of further notice than that to which he was entitled, as a lunatic, at the hands of the humane; yet it is reported in the theological histories of the period that his vagaries elicited the angry contradictions of a host of learned writers.

The ridiculous aspect is well represented in the person of the Frenchman, Geoffrey Vallee, the contemporary of Postel, who possessed a shirt for every day in the year (including, of course, an additional garment for leap year), which he was in the habit of sending all the way from Paris to Flanders, to be washed in a stream in that country, remarkable for the limpidity of its waters. Having promulgated certain views inconsistent with the dogmas of the Sorbonne, his eccentricities did not save him from the punishment which offences against religion then entailed, and the unfortunate Vallee was burned in Paris, with his books, in the year 1574.

The extravagance of Postel was equaled, if not surpassed, by another and contemporary theologian, an enthusiastic Frenchman named Parizot, whose flagrant impiety contributed largely to cover the materialists of his time with ridicule. The elements of the Trinity, according to Parizot, were reducible to the three natural substances of salt, mercury, and sulphur salt, as a generating agent, rep

resenting the First Person; and mercury, by its extreme fluidity, corresponding to the all-pervading influence of the Second the attributes of the Third Person being represented by the property which sulphur possesses of uniting salt and mercury. Fortunately for the sake of religion and morality, the progress of Parizot as a teacher was cut short, for his books -notwithstanding that he had presumptuously dedicated them, first, to the Supreme Being, and in the next place to the French Sovereign-were deservedly condemned, and publicly burned.

it."

In the literary division of eccentricity we should not perhaps expect so much extravagance as obtains in the theological; for the purely literary mind occupies itself more with the form of expres sion of common ideas, than with the ele mental nature of the ideas themselves. Yet what numberless examples does history furnish us of great men, gifted with intellectual accomplishments, afflicted with degrees of insanity more or less intense-from moping melancholy to

confined, the victories of Magenta and Solferino might have been dispensed with. Montaigne, in his interesting essay on "The Art of Discoursing," observes that the reason why great men appear sometimes to be more foolish than they are, is that they undertake more than they are able to perform, and make a greater parade; whereas he who has not exerted his full strength leaves you to guess whether he has been tried to the utmost that he is capable of doing. "This," he adds, "is the reason why there are so many more silly mortals among the learnThe career of John Mason, the self-ed than in other classes. Knowledge is styled Messiah of Water Stratford, in En a thing of great weight; they sink under gland, affords a melancholy example of religious folly. Calm, acute, and intelligent in all worldly affairs, his consistent enthusiasm in matters of religion must have been founded on sincere conviction. Exorbitant as were his pretensions, they were received as genuine by a large mass of believers, whose faith in his mission was unshaken even long after his death, which happened in the year 1695. This extravagance recalls that of Johanna Southcote, the demented old woman, ignorant and ugly, who not only affected to believe herself about to bring forth a Redeemer, but also convinced a number of fanatics, who, in the ardor of their enthusiasm, actually went the length of preparing a magnificent cradle, with appropriate fittings, for the new Messiah. However, the millennium which she failed to introduce may yet be inaugurated through the virtues of Elizabeth Cottle, of Kirkstall Lodge, Clapham Park, Lon-"Jerusalem Liberated." We can not don. The name of this lady is, perhaps, new to our readers; but it is a name that the powers of the earth, including especially the Emperor of the French, the Cham of Tartary, Lord Russell, and John Bright, can not hear without a shudder. In her numerous addresses to these personages Miss Cottle proclaims herself an angel inspired to conclude all the little political and social difficulties of our epoch, and to regenerate the human race. Had the sovereigns of France and Sardinia availed themselves, on the occasion of the Italian war, of the analogy which she has been the means of discovering between the quadrilateral fortresses and the four centurions who kept watch before the prison in which St. Peter was

"Moody madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe!"

Alfieri, Ariosto, and Dante were victims, during the greater part of their careers, to a settled melancholy; but the most remarkable example of mental depression joined to exuberant fancy is that presented in the case of the author of

contemplate, without experiencing a sensation of profound sympathy, the lifelong sufferings of the gentle Tasso, whose imagination, overwrought and undisciplined, filled him with exaggerated suspicions of all around him, while superstitious terrors completed his misery. Wandering about for two years through his beautiful Italy, a prey to fanciful despondency, even while composing some of his works-sometimes taking refuge from imaginary foes in the trackless forests of the Appenines; and anon surrendering himself to the Inquisition, and coufessing, as heretical, doubts which the Inquisitors knew were but the illusions of hypochondria. Although at this period his mind had become much disordered

1865.]

MAD MEN OF LETTERS.

by the opposition of critics, a fate which
he has shared with many of his class, it
is doubtful whether his confinement in a
madhouse by the Duke of Este was at
all justifiable. It was probably a mere
act of retaliation for the reproaches and
insults so freely directed by the poet
against his former patrons for the altered
manner adopted by the ducal court to-
wards him. But before the end of his
seven years' confinement he undoubtedly
became a veritable Jack o' Beldam. And
no wonder; for to a mind capable of
evincing such exquisite sensibility as
characterizes his poetry, an incarceration
of seven years in that terrible hospital of
Santa Anna-

"That mighty lazar house of many woes,
Where laughter was not mirth, nor thought the
Nor words a language, nor even men mankind,"

mind,

must inevitably have produced that result. His conviction, therefore, of the reality of his constant visitor from the spirit-world, with whom he freely conversed, or affected to converse, in the presence of his friends, can only be treated as the delusion of a diseased brain.

The eccentricities of Benvenuto Cellini and Jerome Cardan entitle them to a place in the catalogue of Fous Litteraires. Who is not familiarly acquainted with the quarrels and escapades of the ingenious Cellini, or has not shuddered at the thrilling description which he has left us, in his interesting memoirs, of those terrible nights in the Coliseum when, lighted by a globe of fire, the ampitheatre was filled with legions of demons, with whom he conversed? We are constrained to believe that it was only an illusion practiced on his senses by the charlatan to whose guidance Cellini committed himself, and whose incantations are said to have raised the spirits from the nether fires, as Cellini's character for general Not so veracity stands untarnished. with Jerome Cardan, who was one of the most celebrated of Italian physicians in his day, but a consummate empiric; so addicted to the study of the occult sciences, and to the establishment of the truths of astrology, that having predicted the period of his own life, with a folly exceeding even that of Democritus, he is

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asserted to have starved himself to death
in order to verify his prediction.

The grandeur of Michael Angelo's ideas have procured for him the name of the "divine madman," as the harmless oddities of Goldsmith secured for him the soubriquet of "the inspired idiot;" but the inconsistencies of the great master were confined to the innovations which his sublime conceptions tended to introduce into the arts of painting and architecture.

The lamentable consequences attending excessive study, however, even when the subject is one connected with the sublime and beautiful in Art, are impressively exhibited in the life-long horror of Spinello, who, during his deep study for the picture of the Fallen Angels, kept his mind so especially concentrated on the conception of Lucifer, that the horrible shadow of the arch-demon was constantly before his eyes during the remainder of his existence. But though the sufferings of Spinello were of a sufficiently terrible nature, they sink into insignificance compared with the agonies of Jurien, whose intense study for the profound Analysis of the Apocalypse ended in the awful illusion that the beast of blasphemy, with ten heads and ten horns, and ten crowns on his horns, was pent up in his body, and preying on his vitals.

It has been observed that the friends of Pope ascribed his irascibility to a degree of "vapors" bordering on insanity. He himself also confesses that his moments of unaccountable despondency were very frequent. Cowley, all whose latter productions are pervaded by the deepest despondency, describes himself, in "The Complaint," as "the melancholy Cowley;" but his sadness is pronounced by his biographers as rather the result of disappointment than of mental infirmity. The unhappy fate of poor Collins will continue to excite pity so long as the admirers of poetry shall find a charm in some of the most exquisite creations of genius which the English language contains. The poetical temper of Collins has delightbeen described by Johnson as ing to rove through the meadows of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, and repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens." This

66

was at the period when, in his own words, "Hope, enchanted, smiled and waved her golden

hair."

But the bliss which he portrays in the ode in which the picture of Hope is so beautifully painted, was, as he says, short-lived. The disappointment of his literary expectations cast a gloom over his existence, and he descended through the paths of improvidence, dissipation, and destitution to the depths of misery. The picture of his later days is peculiarly affecting. After he had retired to his native city of Chichester, naked, destitute, diseased, and in wild despair, he would haunt the aisles and cloisters of the cathedral, loving their

"Dim religious light;"

and when the choristers chanted their anthem, the listening and bewildered poet, carried out of himself by the solemn strains and his own too susceptible imagination, moaned and shrieked, and awoke a sadness and a terror in the minds of the audience, who beheld their friend, their kinsman, and their poet before them, an awful image of human misery and ruined genius. It is in allusion to this circumstance that the line,

"Ye walls that echoed to his frantic moan,'

has been introduced into the epitaph on

his monument.

Cowper's mind, too, at one time so completely broke down, that he who wrote "The Task," and accomplished the still more arduous "task" of translating Homer's "Iliad," devoted himself to the childish occupation of taming hares, and constructing bird-cages, and traps for catching foxes. It is also a curious fact, that the humorous ballad of "John Gilpin," was composed during a fit of despondency so severe as to have nearly ended in his becoming a suicide. The well known anecdotes related of Grimaldi and Liston--both humorists by profession, but melancholics by nature

furnish additional illustrations of the extraordinary kind of connection which may sometimes exist between the agent and the action. A still more remarkable instance, perhaps, though not presenting such a strong contrast between cause and effect, is the event reported in the

life of Kotzebue, who once, in a fit of before he had carried out his purpose of melancholy, contemplated suicide; but self-destruction the mad impulse was diverted to his pen, and it is to this incident that we owe the impressive tragedy of "Misanthrophy and Repentance," better known under its English title of "The Stranger."

The inconsistencies of the moody, cynical, and superstitious Johnson, who inherited a melancholy from his father which rendered him "occasionally mad, at least not sober," may suggest reasonable doubts of his sanity at all times. Possibly the privations and hardships of his early career may have affected his mind, otherwise it is difficult to conceive how so robust an understanding could have committed such freaks as standing bareheaded for an hour in a provincial market-place, in his mature age, to atone for a trivial act of disobedience in his boyhood; engaging the services of an assistant to pray with him, and knocking down a book-seller with a ponderous volume before the prayers were well concluded. Incredulous on all other points, he readily believed in miracles and apparitions; and while doubting the reality of the earthquake of Lisbon, he confessed his belief in the existence of the Cocklane ghost. He even trembled at the thoughts of death, while he preached the vanities of life. The catalogue of his eccentricities would almost justify the biographer in classing the great doctor in his list of fools.

We need not dwell on the fate of Swift, whose life was one constant struggle between the exercise of physical energy and the chronic disease to which his great mind eventually succumbed. The reason-so cynical and morbid in its gaiety-which he assigns for the disposition of his property is not without significance among the many minor indications furnished by his eccentric life, of the sad catastrophe which was destined to overshadow the sun of his genius. He left, as he says,

"The little wealth he had,

To build a house for fools and mad;
To show by one satiric touch

No nation wanted it so much."

Smart, the translator of Horace, and
Alexander Cruden, the author of that

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