PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION.—OPIUM.

“Soon from his cell of clayTo burst a seraph in the blaze of day,”

“Soon from his cell of clay

To burst a seraph in the blaze of day,”

the mind is prone to yield to those feelings which it might perhaps in the turmoil of the busy world and at another period deem superstition. There is something in the approach of death of so holy and so solemn a nature, something so unlike life in the feeling of the dying, that in this transition, although we cannot compass the mystery, some vision of another world may steal over the retiring spirit, imparting to it a proof of its immortality. I do not fear to yield for once my approval of this devout passage of Sir Thomas Brown:—“It is observed that men sometimes upon the hour of their departure do speak and reason above themselves, for then the soul begins to be freed from the ligaments of the body, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.” It is on the verge of eternity, and the laws and principles of vitality may be already repealed by the Being who conferred them.—The arguments, then, regarding the phenomena of life may fail, when life has all but ceased.

With this admission, I may counsel Astrophel as to the danger of adducing heathen history or fiction in proof of this solemn question.

Cast.And yet Shakspere, for one, with a poet’s license, brings before us, as you do, the dying hour, as thecauseof prophetic vision. John of Gaunt, on his death-bed, mutters, —

“Methinks I am a prophet new inspired,And thus expiring do foretell of him,”

“Methinks I am a prophet new inspired,

And thus expiring do foretell of him,”

and then predicts the fate of Richard.

And remember, the dying Hotspur says, —

——“now could I prophecy,But thatthe icy hand of death,” &c.

——“now could I prophecy,

But thatthe icy hand of death,” &c.

Ev.Well, I will not controvert your creed, Astrophel; rather let me illustrate some of your apparent mysteries by simple analogy.

As in these extreme moments of life, so in the hour of extreme danger, when an awful fate is impending, and the world and our sacred friendships are about to be lost to us, a vision of our absent friends will pass before us with all the light of reality. We read in the writings of Dr. Conolly of a person who, in danger of being swamped on the Eddystone rock, saw the phantoms of his family passing distinctly before him; and these are the words of the English Opium-Eater:—“I was once told by a near relative of mine that, having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in amomenther whole life in its minutest incidents arrayed before her simultaneously, as in a mirror, and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part.”

Now, although the coming on of death is often attended by that slight delirium indicated by the babbling of green fields, and the playing with flowers, and the picking of the bedclothes, and the smiling on the fingers’ ends, yet in others some oppressive or morbidcause of insanitymay be removed by the moribund condition. In the words of Aretæus,—“the system has thrown off many of its impurities, and the soul, left naked, was free to exercise such energies as it still possessed.”

I will glance in illustration at these interesting cases:—from Zimmerman, of an insane woman of Zurich, who, “a few hours before her death, became perfectly sensible and wonderfully eloquent;”—from Dr. Perceval, of a female idiot, who, as she was dying of consumption, evinced the highest powers of intellect;—from Dr. Marshall, of the maniac, who became completely rational some hours previous to his dissolution;—and from Dr. Hancock, of the Quaker, who, from the condition of a drivelling idiot, became shortly before his death so completely rational, as to call his family together, and, as his spirit was passing from him, bestow on them with pathetic solemnity his last benediction.

Thus your impressive records are clearly explained by pathology; and, perhaps unconscious of this, Mrs. Opie has a fine illustration in her “Father and Daughter:”—the mind of the maniac parent being illumined before his death by a beam of reason.

But in the languid brain of an idiot excitement may even produce rationality.

Samuel Tuke tells us of a domestic servant, who lapsed into a state of complete idiocy. Some time after, she fell into typhus fever, and as this progressed, there was a real development of mental power. At that stage when delirium lighted up the minds of others,shewas rational, because the excitement merely brought up the nervous energy to its proper point. As the fever abated, however, she sunk into her idiot apathy, and thus continued until she died. It was but thetransient gleamof reason.

PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION.—OPIUM.

——“Have we eaten of the insane root,That takes the reason prisoner?”Macbeth.

——“Have we eaten of the insane root,

That takes the reason prisoner?”

Macbeth.

Ev.The contrasts to these phantoms of blind superstition, are those of theoverstrainedcondition of the mind. The Creator has ordained the brain to be the soil in which the mind is implanted or developed. This brain, like the corn-field, must have its fallow, or it is exhausted and reduced in the degree of its high qualities. In our intellectual government, therefore, we should ever adopt that happy medium, equally remote from the bigotry of the untutored, and the ultra refinement of the too highly cultivated mind.

It is not essential that I should now offer you more than a hint, that the essence of the gloomy ghosts of deep study, like the melancholy phantoms and oppressive demons of the night-mare, consists in the accumulation of black blood about the brain and the heart; and a glance at phrenology would explain to you how the influence of that blood on the various divisions of the brain will call up in the mind these “Hydras and Gorgons, and Chimeras dire.”

The learned Pascal constantly saw a gulph yawning at his side, but he wasawareof his illusion. He was, however, always strapped in his chair, lest he should fall into this gulph, especially while he was working the celebrated problem of the cycloidal curve.

A distinguished nobleman, who but lately guided the helm of state in England, was often annoyed by the spectre of a bloody head;—a strange coincidence with the phantom of the Count Duke d’Olivarez, the minister of Philip of Spain.

From Dr. Conolly we learn the curious illusion of a student of anatomy, who, during his ardent devotion to his study, confidently believed that there was a town in hisdeltoidmuscle.

And, from Dr. Abercrombie, the case of a gentleman of high literary attainments, who, when closely reading in his study, was repeatedly annoyed by the intrusive visits of a little old woman in a black bonnet and mantle, with a basket on her arm. Sofilmy, however, was this phantom, that the door-lock was seen through her. Supposing she had mistaken her way, he politely showed her the door, and she instantly vanished. It was the change of posture which effected this disappearance, by altering the circulation of the brain-blood, then in a state of partial stagnation.

My friend, Dr. Johnson, has told me of a gentleman of great science, who conceived that he was honoured by the frequent visits of spectres. They were at first refined and elegant both in manners and in conversation, which, on one occasion, assumed a witty turn, and quips, and puns, and satire, were the order of the evening; so that he was charmed with his ghostly visitors, and sought no relief. On a sudden, however, they changed into demoniac fiends, uttering expressions of the most degraded and unholy nature. He became alarmed, and depletion soon cured him of his phantasy.

A Scotch lawyer had long laboured under this kind of monomania, which at length proved fatal. His physician had long seen that some secret grief was gnawing the heart and sucking the life-blood of his patient, and he at last extorted the confession, that a skeleton was ever watching him from the foot of his bed. The physician tried various modes to dispel the illusion, and once placed himself in the field of the vision, and was not a little terrified when the patient exclaimed, that he saw the skull peering at him over his left shoulder.

The “Martyr Philosopher,” too, in the “Diary of a Physician,” saw, shortly preceding his death, a figure in black deliberately putting away the books in his study, throwing his pens and ink into the fire, and folding up his telescope, as if they were now useless. The truth ishe himselfhad been engaged in that occupation, but it was his own disordered imagination that raised the spectre.

You will believe from these illustrations, Astrophel, that Seneca is right in his aphorism, —

“Nullum fit magnum ingenium sine misturâ dementiæ.”

And Pope also in his unconscious imitation, —

“Great wits to madness nearly are allied.”

Lord Castlereagh, when commanding in early life a militia regiment in Ireland, was stationed one night in a large desolate country house, and his bed was at one end of a long dilapidated room, while, at the other extremity, a great fire of wood and turf had been prepared within a huge gaping old-fashioned chimney. Waking in the middle of the night, he lay watching from his pillow the gradual darkening of the embers on the hearth, when suddenly they blazed up, and a naked child stepped from among them upon the floor. The figure advanced slowly towards Lord Castlereagh, rising in stature at every step, until, on coming within two or three paces of his bed, it had assumed the appearance of a ghastly giant, pale as death, with a bleeding wound on the brow, and eyes glaring with rage and despair. Lord Castlereagh leaped from his bed, and confronted the figure in an attitude of defiance. It retreated before him, diminishing as it withdrew in the same manner that it had previously shot up and expanded; he followed it, pace by pace, until the original child-like form disappeared among the embers. He then went back to his bed, and was disturbed no more.

The melancholy story of the Requiem of Mozart is an apt and sublime illustration of this influence. It was written by desire of a solemn personage, who repeatedly, he affirmed, called on him during its composition, and disappeared on its completion. The requiem was soon chanted overhis owngrave; and the man in black was, I believe, but a phantom of his own creation.

A step beyond this, and we have the spectres of the delirium of fever: the wanderings of typhus, in which the victim either revels with delight in the regions of fancy, a midsummer madness, or is influenced by gloom and despair, in which, with a consciousness of right and wrong, he is driven headlong to acts of ruin and devastation.

Ida.In this illusive condition of the intellect consists even the monomania of suicide; and the phrenologist will declare that torpor or excitement of the “organ of the love of life,” will incite or deter from such an act. But surely this is error: it is certain that there was afashionamong the Stoics for this crime; and even in the early history of Marseilles, suicide was sanctioned, not only by custom, but by authority.

Ev.It is a truth of history, but theessenceof the crime is the predisposition in the brain. You will think to confute my position, Astrophel, by adducing Brutus and Cassius, and Antony and Cato, and a host of Roman heroes, in proof of the sanity of these suicides; but even in the case of Cato, if we read Plutarch and not Addison, who with Rousseau, Montaigne, and Shaftesbury, leaned toward asanction, we shall believe that Cato was indeed a monomaniac. I speak this in charity.

And to all these morbid states we may still offer analogies. Such are the effects of opium.

The brilliancy of thought may be artificially induced, also, by various other narcotics, such as the juice of the American manioc, the fumes of tobacco, or the yupa of the Othomacoes on the Orinoco. To this end we learn from a learned lord, that even ladies of quality are wont to “light up their minds with opium as they do their houses with wax or oil.”

Indeed a kind of inspiration seems for a time to follow the use of these narcotics. The Cumean sybil swallowed the juice of the cherry laurel ere she sat on the divining tripod; and from this may have arisen those superstitious fancies of the ancients regarding the virtues of the laurel, and the influence of other trees, of which I remember an allusion of the excellent author of the “Sylva.”

“Here we may not omit what learned men have observed concerning the custom ofprophetsand persons inspired ofoldtosleepupon the boughs and branches oftrees, onmattressesandbedsmade of leaves,ad consulendum, to ask advice of God. Naturalists tell us that theLaurusandAgnus Castuswere trees which greatly composed thephrensy, and did facilitate truevision, and that thefirstwas specifically efficacious, προς τους ενθυσιασμους, to inspire apoeticalfury: andCardan, I remember, in his bookde Fato, insists very much on the dreams oftreesfor portents and presages, and that the use of some of them do dispose men to visions.”

During the reverie of the opium eater (not the deep sleep of a full dose, but the first and second stage ere coma be induced), he is indeed a poet, so far as brilliant imagination is concerned, but his scribbling is mere “midsummer madness,” the phantoms of which are as wild as those of intoxication, dreaming, or insanity. But the philosophy, the metaphysics of poetry, are not the product of mere excitement: “Poeta nascitur, non fit.” A poet’s genius is born with him. The influence of opium on the philosopher or the orator is the same, but in them it does not usually elevate the force of imagination beyond that of judgment. The power of the faculties has been in fact exhausted by thought or study; the stimulus of opium, then, restores that depressed energy to its proper level, leaving the judgment perfect, and not overbalanced. The celebrated Thomas Brown, during the composition of his Essay on the Mind, kept his intellect on the stretch by opium for several successive nights. Sir James Mackintosh (one of his favourite pupils) informed us, that on entering the doctor’s library one morning somewhat abruptly, he overheard the following command addressed to his daughter: “Effie, bring me themoderatestimulus of a hundred drops of laudanum.” So that the excitement be obtained, it matters not how, whether by the use of opium, or other “drowsy syrups of the East, poppy or mandragora,” as in the case of some of our modern statesmen; or the free libation of brandy in certain orators, who were wont to stagger down to the House from White’s or Brookes’s, with those clubhouse laurels, wet towels, round their brows, and overwhelm Saint Stephen’s by the thunders of their eloquence. Unless, indeed, this be carried to excess, and then we have two very interesting states of vision, as you may gather from the following witticism on two of these departed legislators, which was founded on a truth:

“I cannot see the Speaker, Bill, can you?Not see him, Harry, d——e, I see two!”

“I cannot see the Speaker, Bill, can you?

Not see him, Harry, d——e, I see two!”

For the effects of alcohol and opium are alike: the first degree is excitement; the second, reverie; the third, sleep, or stupor. “Ben Jonson,” writes Aubrey, “would many times exceede in drink; Canarie was his beloved liquor: then he would tumble home to bed, and when he had thoroughly perspired, then to studie.”

Thesecondvisions of that moral delinquent, the practised opium-eater, like the cordial julep of Comus,

“Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight,Beyond the bliss of dreams.”

“Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight,

Beyond the bliss of dreams.”

The phantoms of thethirdstage are often of unutterable anguish: visions of bright forms dabbled in blood, and scenes of crime and horror which are at once loathed and revelled in. The awful curse of Lord Byron’s infidel—a vampyre—who, haunting the graveyard with gouls and afrits, sucks the blood of his race:

“ ’Till they with horror shrink awayFrom spectre more accurs’d than they.”

“ ’Till they with horror shrink away

From spectre more accurs’d than they.”

Thus for a moment of delirious joy, he yields up his mind to the agonies of remorse, his body to a slow poison, perhaps to a sinful dissolution.

Ida.The scenes which I gazed on among the opium-houses of Constantinople, ever excited my wonder and my pity. These slaves of pleasure, when they assemble and take their seats, are the perfect pictures of either apathetic melancholy or despair. As the potent poison creeps through the blood, they are lighted with unholy fires, until, these being exhausted, the vulture of Prometheus again gnaws their vitals, although the fire is not stolen from heaven.

Listen to the confessions of such a slave: —

“At last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were all the world to me, and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then everlasting farewells, and with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed, when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated—Everlasting farewells.”

“Whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye; and, by a process no less inevitable, when thus once traced in faint and visionary colours, they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of my dreams, with insufferable splendour that fretted my heart.”

Is there any earthly pleasure which will compensate the victim of this voluntary condemnation?

Ev.And yet a visionary once thought of renting the Hummums in Covent Garden, and purchasing a large stock of opium, for the purpose of supplying us with visions. He would have succeeded, perhaps, if he had hired a second Helen to serve up this nepenthe to the guests.

The intense effect of opium is insensibility or death. Thus the Natches give narcotics to their victims, and the Brahmins to the suttee women, ere they ascend the pile, for the purpose of producing insensibility. Its mildest effects will be, if long continued, especially in early life, idiocy; and Oppenheim states that it is sometimes administered to adults by design, to substantiate a statute of lunacy.

Astr.I cannot disprove your facts, Evelyn, nor dotheyyet disprove the rationality of my own faith. And is there not one illusion from opium-eating which seems to reverse your laws? From the tales of the Opium-Eater we learn, that the healthy thoughts of the mind seem to be frozen up in the brain, like the notes in the frozen horn of Munchausen, or the Irish echo which was so long in giving its answers, that if you had a concert, you should play and sing the airsthe day beforethe assemblage of your company. And then, when the effect was wearing off, these thoughts followed so copiously and fast, as that not one in a hundred could be recorded. Is this true?

Ev.It is a slight fact embellished. The action of opium, however, is not uniform: it may produce deep sleep, or insensible stupor; or it may quiet some of the faculties; and when it does so, it excites a dream of irregular associations.

The salts of morphia exert an especial influence over the organ of language; so that the orator in the fluency of his power of speech finds it difficult to stop. Themuriateis the best preparation to induce fluency and confidence in speaking, or the mind to luxuriate throughout a night in delightful reverie: and in the morning, after this phantasy, the body will even riserefreshed.

In some cases, however, morphia will create a very strange illusion,a spectral language: so that, in reading or listening, we may feel or think that the words have lost their true meaning. This effect is, I am told, attended with severe headache.

The poem of “Kubla Khan,” which Coleridge has termed a psychological curiosity, had its origin in the excitement of opium, a spinning out of a theme in “Purchas’ Pilgrim,” which he had been reading: it is an effort of the poet in recording the wild images which had been before presented to the mind’s eye of the enthusiast,—the impression, indeed, of the pleasures and the pains of memory.

POETIC PHANTASY, OR FRENZY.

“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth—from earth to heaven.And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet’s penTurns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothingsA local habitation, and a name.”Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth—from earth to heaven.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothings

A local habitation, and a name.”

Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Astr.Is there so potent a charm in poppies, Evelyn? You will make us believe, soon, that opium can make a Shakspere, that genius can be imparted by a drug.

The ghosts of fairyland, those bright emanations of a poet’s fancy, which are wafted through the air on the thistle-down, or swing to and fro on the filmy thread of the gossamer, sprang from a deeper source than this. The fairy mythology of Shakspere, the beautiful creations of the “Tempest” and the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” are the very offspring of thatinnategenius, that “exhausted worlds, and thenimagined new.”

Those exquisite and tricksy spirits, the mischievous Puck and the delicate Ariel, indeed, the whole train of ghosts which appeared to Macbeth, and Richard, and Clarence, and Brutus, and Hamlet, and the spirits of the “Midsummer Night,” the “Tempest,” and “Macbeth,” of Bolingbroke and Joan of Arc, could not have been so painted, unless they had stood before the mind of Shakspere as palpable as reality.

Look, too, on those splendid illustrations of the Gothic poets by the eccentric, or, as Evelyn would call him, the half-mad Fuseli. Look on the wild pencillings of Blake, another poet painter, and you will be assured that they were ghost-seers. An intimate friend of Blake, himself a reader of the stars, has told me the strangest tales of his visions. In one of his reveries he witnessed the whole ceremony of a fairy’s funeral, which he peopled with mourners and mutes, and described with high poetic beauty. He was engaged, in one of these moods, in painting King Edward I., who was sitting to him for his picture. While they were conversing, Wallace suddenly presented himself on the field, and by this uncourteous intrusion marred the studies of the painter for that day.

Ev.A most unhappy comparison, Astrophel. The difference between Shakspere and Blake isantipodean. Blake was a visionary, and thought his fancies real—he was mad. Shakspere was a philosopher, and knew all his fancy was but imagination, however real might be the facts he wrought from. Ben Jonson told Drummond that he lay awake one whole night, gazing in mute admiration on his great toe; surrounding which, in miniature, appeared the inhabitants of Rome, and Carthage, and Tartary, and Turkey; but he also was aware of the illusion.

Cast.My most gracious smile is yours, Evelyn, for this honour to my sweet Shakspere. I pray you accord the same to the spectral visions of a poet, in whose beautiful Aminta each line is a breath of inspiration—the day-dreams of the elegant Tasso. Listen.

“At Bisaccio, Manso had an opportunity to examine the singular effects of Tasso’s melancholy; and often disputed with him concerning a familiar spirit which he pretended to converse with. Manso endeavoured in vain to persuade his friend that the whole was the illusion of a disturbed imagination; but the latter was strenuous in maintaining the reality of what he asserted; and, to convince Manso, desired him to be present at one of these mysterious conversations. Manso had the complaisance to meet him the next day, and while they were engaged in discourse, on a sudden he observed that Tasso kept his eyes fixed upon a window, and remained in a manner immoveable; he called him by his name several times, but received no answer. At last Tasso cried out, ‘There is the friendly spirit who is come to converse with me: look, and you will be convinced of the truth of all that I have said.’ Manso heard him with surprise: he looked, but saw nothing except the sunbeams darting through the window; he cast his eyes all over the room, but could perceive nothing, and was just going to ask where the pretended spirit was, when he heard Tasso speak with great earnestness, sometimes putting questions to the spirit, and sometimes giving answers, delivering the whole in such a pleasing manner, and with such elevated expressions, that he listened with admiration, and had not the least inclination to interrupt him. At last this uncommon conversation ended with the departure of the spirit, as appeared by Tasso’s words, who, turning towards Manso, asked him if his doubts were removed. Manso was more amazed than ever; he scarce knew what to think of his friend’s situation, and waived any further conversation on the subject.”

Ev.I shall forfeit your smile, sweet Castaly, or change it, alas! for a frown. I have ever thought Tasso a monomaniac, for he yielded to his illusion. I can give you in a fragment from Lorry, the counterpart of Tasso’s phantasy in a far different mind. “During these paroxysms she would talk, and was accustomed to address herself to some one individual present, with whom she conversed at first in an obscure voice, but afterwards in a distinct and audible manner. She evidently perceived him, and observed all his gestures; but all she said to him bore a reference to one idea, on which she was intent. In the mean time she appeared not to see or hear any other person, even if he exerted his voice to the utmost to make himself heard. This fact I witnessed with the greatest astonishment, but many other persons are living who can attest it. The mother of this female died unexpectedly, after which the daughter used to hold conversations with her as if she was present. She would answer questions as if interrogated by her mother; would entreat her to take care of her health, and recommend some physician as more able to restore her than others. Moreover, she would talk to her mother of her destined marriage, although it had already been some time completed, in a manner perfectly like that of a sane and modest young woman, making some objections to it, and replying to others, and appeared to be revealing all her secret wishes; in a word, she seemed perfectly collected and rational, excepting the error respecting time, and the supposed presence of her mother. This woman had in other respects good health, but was afraid of the smallest noise, and was easily affected by any thing she saw or heard. At length she fell into a consumption.”

In other cases, especially in accomplished minds, the phantasy is usually combined withderangement of health. A very ingenuous and elegant young lady, about the age of seventeen, was suddenly seized with catalepsy. It commenced with violent convulsions of almost every muscle of her body, and the most distressing hiccoughs. In about an hour came on a fixed spasm, one hand being placed against her head, and the other to support it. In about half an hour more, the spasm subsided, and then began the reverie in a moment, her eyes and expression indicating a fixed attention. She then conversed with imaginary persons, her eyes being wide open, and during thisecstasyshe was completely insensible to the most irritating, and indeed most violentstimuli.

Sir Henry Halford related to us, that on a visit to a person of exalted rank in his chamber, he heard him with great energy request Garrick to play a scene in “Hamlet,” reminding him of the lines in Horace’s Epistles:

“Haud ignobilis Argis,Qui se credebat miros audire tragœdos,In vacuo lætus sessor plausorque theatro.”

“Haud ignobilis Argis,

Qui se credebat miros audire tragœdos,

In vacuo lætus sessor plausorque theatro.”

In Dr. Darwin, too, we read of an epileptic girl, who during a fit of reverie, when insensible to all externalstimuli, conversed fluently with imaginary people, and was surprised to hear of her illusions when fully awake.

And, in Andral, of a gentleman of distinguished ability, who believed that an absent friend was sitting among his guests, welcoming him to his table, and, with great courtesy, handing him a chair. You remember how pathetically Crabbe has illustrated this illusion in his poem of “Sir Eustace Gray.”

Cast.Hark to the profane philosopher who associates poetry with madness! Tell me, Master Evelyn, while you wandered in the Water walks of Magdalene, with the balmy breezes of heaven around your brow, and the mellow sunbeam streaming through the green leaves upon your cheek, with the inspired volumes of Virgil, and Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus, breathing nature in all the lines of their beautiful idylls—while Astrophel, perchance, was musing among cobwebs in Friar Bacon’s study—tell me, felt you not the sublimity and truth of poesy? You remind me of the quaint tradition among the shepherds of Snowdonia, that if two persons lie down, on midsummer eve, to sleep upon a certain rock on Snowdon, one will wake a poet, the other a maniac. I pr’ythee, think otherwise of Tasso, whose reveries were an ecstasy of bright thoughts. Even when the light of day is eclipsed, as when the senseless orbs of Homer and Milton were merged in “ever-during dark,” the thoughts of a poet may be deeper and clearer for the gloom.

Ida.And so pure and holy withal. In the “Defensio Secunda,” I remember this gem of sentiments:—“Involved in darkness, not so much from the imperfection of our optic powers, as from the shadow of the Creator’s wings,—a darkness which he frequently irradiates with an inner and far superior light.”

Never did poet feel more intensely than Milton the truth of that divine thought, that “the shadow of God is light.”

Cast.And call up that glory of the Elizabethan age, Philip Sidney, whose life, in the words of Campbell, was “a poetry in action,” and who more than embodied the brightest pictures of Tasso and Ariosto, and eclipsed the glory of that Chevalier Bayard, like himself, “sans peur et sans reproche.”

Ev.I cry you mercy, fairest ladies, I speak not of the light of poetry, but of its shadows.Cheromaniais the first form ofmonomania, or the madness of one idea; and this is marked by cheerfulness and splendid ideas, which indeed often tend to mitigate the melancholy scenes of derangement, as if “the light that led astray was light from heaven.” I will illustrate this by repeating to you the letter to his brother, of a young officer, whose progressive changes of mind, from excitement to confirmed mania, it was my duty to watch over.

December 4th, 1832.“To ——, Esq.“I am Lord President of the Counsil, a most honorable situation, and the richest gift of the Crown, which brings me in seven thousand pounds every year. The Counsil consists of Three Secretaries of State, of which I am one; and the Paymaster of the Forces. When the King William the forth shall die, then shallI be crowned King of England, and be crowned inWestermister Abbey, By The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. I shall on the occasion of my coronation have placed in the different street of London one thousand pipes of wine for my people, and at night in theHyde Park a magnificent display of Fireworks, and one hundred pieces of Artillery shall fire three rounds for the amusement of my people and subjects. I have only now to give you a list of my titles and honors:“King of England.First Heir Presumptive to the Crown.Major General and Field Martial.Duke of Leitzep.Prince of Denmark.Lord President of the Counsil.Knight Banneret.Lord Treasurer of the Exchequer.Lieutenant Colonel ——, Lord and Baronet.Aid de Camp to the King.Champion of England.“Dear ——, I wish to acquaint you that Windsor Castle belongs to me, that the palace of Brighton also belongs to me, also I purchased from the Duke of Wellington the splendid park and Palace of Stratfieldsea, wherein there are very extensive Forests of Oak and of Pines trees, together with a magnificent sheet of Water containing Ells and Salmon Trout.“Dear ——, I have to beg that you give my love and duty to your wife—and give this letter to read, I pray you, according to my desire and wish.”

December 4th, 1832.

“To ——, Esq.

“I am Lord President of the Counsil, a most honorable situation, and the richest gift of the Crown, which brings me in seven thousand pounds every year. The Counsil consists of Three Secretaries of State, of which I am one; and the Paymaster of the Forces. When the King William the forth shall die, then shallI be crowned King of England, and be crowned inWestermister Abbey, By The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. I shall on the occasion of my coronation have placed in the different street of London one thousand pipes of wine for my people, and at night in theHyde Park a magnificent display of Fireworks, and one hundred pieces of Artillery shall fire three rounds for the amusement of my people and subjects. I have only now to give you a list of my titles and honors:

“King of England.First Heir Presumptive to the Crown.Major General and Field Martial.Duke of Leitzep.Prince of Denmark.Lord President of the Counsil.Knight Banneret.Lord Treasurer of the Exchequer.Lieutenant Colonel ——, Lord and Baronet.Aid de Camp to the King.Champion of England.

“King of England.

First Heir Presumptive to the Crown.

Major General and Field Martial.

Duke of Leitzep.

Prince of Denmark.

Lord President of the Counsil.

Knight Banneret.

Lord Treasurer of the Exchequer.

Lieutenant Colonel ——, Lord and Baronet.

Aid de Camp to the King.

Champion of England.

“Dear ——, I wish to acquaint you that Windsor Castle belongs to me, that the palace of Brighton also belongs to me, also I purchased from the Duke of Wellington the splendid park and Palace of Stratfieldsea, wherein there are very extensive Forests of Oak and of Pines trees, together with a magnificent sheet of Water containing Ells and Salmon Trout.

“Dear ——, I have to beg that you give my love and duty to your wife—and give this letter to read, I pray you, according to my desire and wish.”

I may tell you that the very onset of frenzy is often but an elevated spirit of poesy, in which brilliancy and judgment shall be companions; but, like Æsop’s bow, the mind shall be warped and wrung by being constantly bent on its subject; and thus the source of brilliancy and wit may be the source of madness. A change of subject will often do much to unbend such a mind, as a change of posture will relieve muscular fatigue, or as a sudden impression of fear or fright has thwarted a suicide on the moment of his self-attempt. Indeed mania will often appear to induce an almost inspired talent, which, I may hint to you, may be explained by theoxygenizingof the blood in the brain.

In Van Swiéten, we read of a working female who, during fits of insanity, displayed the faculty of rhyming, or poetic talent; and (as I am fond of analogy) in Pinel, of one who, during his insane moments, argued (as if from concentrated memory) in an acute and intelligent manner, on the events of the Revolution.

Then Haller tells us of an idiot, who was wounded on the head, and, during its healing, the intellect became lucid (and this on the principle of a counteraction); but, on the healing being completed, again the creature was an idiot.

When we are roaming over the flowery fields of poesy, we are seldom inclined to reflect on the mental labour by which they are embellished. We may suppose that, whatever is born of the brain is ushered in by an easy birth; but poesy is often attended by a pang of parturition, and one single line may rankle in the brain for hours ere it struggle into light; and, perhaps, require a frontal blow, as violent as that which cleft the skull of Jupiter and gave birth to Pallas.

There are some minds which can support the effort of composition with impunity; but when we recollect the diseases which are entailed on genius—the melancholy of Cowper, and the distraction of the amiable Collins, who

“passed in madd’ning pain life’s feverish dream,While rays of genius only served to showThe thick’ning horror, and exalt his woe;”

“passed in madd’ning pain life’s feverish dream,

While rays of genius only served to show

The thick’ning horror, and exalt his woe;”

when we remember the gloomy setting of the brilliant sun of Scott, during the period of his apoplectic tendency, when his letter “filled the minds of his publishers with dismay,” and he sunk into the delusive hope that his debts were liquidated to the full; when we are told that Ariosto was never seen to laugh, and rarely to smile; that Rousseau was ever restless, and on the verge of mania; when we reflect on the premature decay of unhappy White —

“When science self destroyed her fav’rite son;”

on the painful conflicts of Byron, when his dark hour was on him; on Chatterton, “the sleepless boy who perish’d in his pride:” are incited, almost unconsciously to echo the apostrophe of Wordsworth: —

“We poets in our youth begin in gladness,But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.”

“We poets in our youth begin in gladness,

But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.”

Ida.The laurel, then, contains more poison than that of prussic acid in its leaf. The perils of romance are noteverin these extremes; yet the mere indulgence of poetic thoughts may so raise the beau-ideal of beauty in the sensitive and youthful mind, as to unfit it for the common duties of life. Like Narcissus, the heart perishes for love of its own shadow. It becomes so acutely sensitive, as to “die of a rose in aromatic pain:” or like the Sybarite, it cannot sleep, because a crumpled rose-leaf lay beneath the pillow.

I have often thought that the secret of happiness may lie in this precept: “Take thegoodof life as it is, a divine gift, and notan agreeable deception;” whenevilis in your path, search its cause, analyze its nature, and if you discover not that you have yourself to thank for it, at least you may prove that the evilitselfis made up of mere trifles, and thus you will learn to be resigned.

And with the beauty and treasures of earth: ifyoupossess them, enjoy them with a prudent and a grateful heart. If they belong toothers, sigh not—pine not for them, but analyze them also, and you may find that the hope of their enjoyment was a phantom; for aggregated beauties are often made up of deformed or unlovely atoms.

I might illustrate my remarks by relating to you an episode of the life of my young friend Stanmore; from which I learned, with sorrow, that the heart may droop beneath its own excess of sensibility, (a mystery to those who were strangers to its secret,) and that the blossom of love may beself-blighted:

“His existence was a withered hope, that, like the icicle in the cup of the early flower, freezes the life-spring in which it is so deeply embosomed. In his mind was lighted a vision of Elysium, beyond what earth with all its virtue and beauty could give him: a spectral Utopia. His life was a blank. He found not happiness,becausehe knew not contentment. He was the leader of many a forlorn hope in Spain, and fell in a midnight enterprise among the guerillas in the Sierra Morena.”

Ev.And had the sword spared him, he would have died a moral suicide.

What folly, thus to chase a butterfly, instead of yielding to the virtuous influence of woman, which, beyond aught else, softens and ennobles man’s heart; entrancing it in floods of human passion, which, with all its pains, yields happiness a thousand-fold more than the maudlin sentiments of Rousseau, that, reducing love to a mere phantom, leave the lone heart to prey on its own sensibility.

Such was the romantic poet of Endymion, who for the phantom of his waking dreams, gave up the study of that science, which might have nursed and fortified a mind, so soon chilled to death by the icy finger of criticism. Erato was the mistress of John Keats; but while he wooed, he perished: like the Rosicrucian, who, to save the life of his lady, took the oath of celibacy, and thus lost her love for ever. Even in the lecture-room of Saint Thomas’s, I have seen Keats in a deep poetic dream: his mind was on Parnassus with the muses. And here is a quaint fragment which he one evening scribbled in our presence, while the precepts of Sir Astley Cooper fell unheeded on his ear: —

“Whenne Alexandre the Conqueroure was wayfayringe in yelonde of Inde, there mette hym a damoselle of marveillouse beautie slepynge uponne the herbys and flourys. He colde ne loke uponne her withouten grete plesance, and he was welle nighe loste in wondrement. Her forme was everyche whytte lyke yefayrest carvynge of Quene Cythere, onlie thatte ytwas swellyd and blushyd wyth warmthe and lyffe wythalle.

“Her forhed was as whytte as ys the snowe whyche yetalle hed of a Norwegian pyne stelythe from yenortherne wynde. One of her fayre hondes was yplaced thereonne, and thus whytte wyth whytte was ymyngld as yegode Arthure saythe, lyke whytest lylys yspredde on whyttest snowe; and her bryghte eyne whenne she them oped, sparklyd lyke Hesperus through an evenynge cloude.

“Theye were yclosyd yn slepe, save that two slauntynge raies shotte to her mouthe, and were theyre bathyd yn swetenesse, as whenne bye chaunce yemoone fyndeth a banke of violettes and droppethe thereonne yesylverie dewe.

“The authoure was goynge onne withouthen descrybynge yeladye’s breste, whenne lo, a genyus appearyd—‘Cuthberte,’ sayeth he, ‘an thou canst not descrybe yeladye’s breste, and fynde a simile thereunto, I forbyde thee to proceede yn thy romaunt.’ Thys, I kennd fulle welle, far surpassyd my feble powres, and forthwythe I was fayne to droppe my quille.”

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