THE JOURNAL

OF

PSYCHOLOGICAL MEDICINE

AND

MENTAL PATHOLOGY.

JANUARY 1, 1852.

ART. I. THE WEAR AND TEAR OF LITERARY LIFE; OR, THE LAST DAYS OF ROBERT SOUTHEY.*

THE medical psychologist restricts his attention for the most part too exclusively to the study of the mind when, under eclipse, it may be observed passing through various phases of disease; but much instruction may also be derived from watching its course when, unaffected by the slightest aberration, it may be seen steadily traversing the ecliptic of its own glory. It has often occurred to us that it would be a striking, and indeed affecting spectacle, if we could only contemplate and contrast the same mind with itself at different periods of life; now exulting in the meridian of its brightness, and now sinking-"shorn of its beams"-perplexed, bewildered, and lost amidst the shadows which too often darken round the tomb of afflicted genius. "Walking in the fields, during the last summer," says an elegant writer, "I saw the sun going down in great glory, suddenly cut in two by a strip of dark cloud, which nevertheless showed itself, by the colour dimly shining through it, to be connected with that magnificent luminary; and while I stood, the vapour melted, and the sun reappeared in its large refulgence. My thoughts turned to the great lights that rule the intellectual day. I called to remembrance how the broad splendour of genius, as it rolls along the sky of life, from the morning until the evening, has its little intervals of shadow. The radiance of its manifestation is often broken. An inferior book or picture comes between the rising and the setting glory. A dark strip of cloud seems

* The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey. In six volumes. Edited by his son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, M.A., Curate of Plumbland, Cumberland. London: Longman, Green, and Longman. 1851.